Naruto thought hard for a few seconds, then looked faintly embarrassed.
How did Orochimaru show up again?
It'd been ages since Naruto had watched the original. He only vaguely remembered Orochimaru's killing intent freezing Sasuke, Sasuke stabbing a kunai into his own thigh to break the fear, and dragging Sakura in a desperate escape.
That image was burned into him.
Naruto turned to Sakura and lowered his voice. "Where's Snake-guy supposed to be right now in canon?"
"…I remember he impersonates you. Then Sasuke goes solo against him."
"Got it."
So the question was: how was he supposed to "coordinate" with Orochimaru?
As he was thinking—
A harsh wind suddenly sliced across Naruto's face, stinging his skin.
A heartbeat later, that breeze became a gale. A towering column of wind burst forward, swallowing everything around Team 7 and slamming straight into them.
Naruto's eyelid jumped. He remembered now—canon Naruto got blown away here, separating from Sasuke and Sakura.
He pulled back all the Nine-Tails chakra shielding his face and let the wind pillar hurl him into the distance.
Boom!!
Naruto's back smashed into a tree. The bark thundered; a crater formed in the trunk.
His organs felt like they'd shifted. The world spun and flashed.
He braced himself against the tree and stood, leaning there a moment.
"Good. Great. This grudge is officially on the books." Naruto was irritated. If he hadn't forgotten the details, he wouldn't have eaten that hit.
"Ahem. So do I go beat up Gaara, beat up the Sound trio, or beat up more Rain guys…?" Naruto reminded himself of a sage lesson from his old life: venting your mood protects your health.
Then a hiss cut through his thoughts.
"Sss—"
A giant snake, several times a man's size, coiled on deadwood above him. It spat its tongue, stinking of blood and musk, green slit-pupils filled with killing intent.
"Oh? Snake-guy delivering warmth." Naruto grinned viciously. "Even summoned me a punching bag. What a sweetheart."
He slipped into Nine-Tails mode instantly.
The serpent charged head-on. Naruto kicked off, dodged easily, and perched on a branch.
Nine-Tails chakra stretched off his back into the shape of a hand. Naruto lifted his right palm upward as spiraling chakra gathered.
The chakra-hand swirled around his right hand.
Hummmm—
Power piled up, cracking earth and stone, twisting the air into a whirlpool. A dazzling glow bloomed in his palm—tinged faintly purple, eerie and beautiful.
Nine-Tails Rasengan.
"Only half-finished, but plenty for you." Naruto compressed chakra under his feet. The snake felt the threat and lunged again, spiraling up the trunk at him.
Puff!
Naruto tossed a smoke bomb at his feet. As the snake lost him in the haze, he shot out from the side—Nine-Tails chakra flaring into wings—vaulting onto its back.
Bang!! Thunk!!
A hole exploded through the serpent's spine. Naruto drove his right arm deep into its body, then intentionally destabilized the Rasengan—
BOOM!!
The shockwave blasted Naruto backward. With seconds to spare before he hit another tree, he whipped out an extended chain from his pouch, snagged a branch, and yanked himself into a stable landing.
"Sss…" Pain flared up his arm. He looked down.
His right hand was a mess of abrasions, bloody and raw.
"Nine-Tails chakra is too brutal. And I detonated the Rasengan mid-strike—so it bit me back." Naruto analyzed calmly, ignoring the two-sectioned corpse at his feet.
Dead beyond dead.
He pulled out a sealing scroll and summoned stored medical supplies.
This was a spacetime storage technique Tenten had taught him. You infused chakra into a scroll, set a coordinate, stored items in its linked subspace, and could summon them whenever you wanted.
Whether that counted as a token of affection was… another story.
Naruto bandaged his hand quickly.
"Good thing I'm wrapping it now. Another minute and it'd heal on its own." He joked. With Nine-Tails regeneration, he'd be fine in a day even without treatment.
He jumped onto the serpent's body, scanned for human tracks, and carved a marker onto nearby trees—one of the signals he'd agreed on with Sakura.
If she saw the mark and followed its direction, she'd find him.
"I'll scout the central zone. Sasuke and Sakura should be okay."
He moved forward, leaving marks as he went.
But at one tree, he froze.
There were crooked, freshly carved letters on the bark.
…
On the other side—
Sasuke and Sakura faced a "woman" in a straw hat, tall and thin, staring at them with a cold, heavy gaze.
"You've got the Scroll of Heaven… so you want my Scroll of Earth, right…" Orochimaru slid his tongue around the scroll and swallowed it.
Was it really him?
Sakura wasn't even focused on the fight. She was analyzing every micro-expression and twitch.
At least so far, he matched canon perfectly.
"Then let's begin… either you die, or I die…"
Whoosh!
Before Orochimaru finished, Sasuke flashed in with Body Flicker, kunai thrusting for Orochimaru's eyes.
"Sakura, cover me!"
Sakura's eyes widened. Sasuke was the one breaking canon first!
No way he was possessed too, right?
Thk!
Orochimaru let the kunai pierce his palm and grabbed Sasuke's right hand.
"Eager, aren't you?" he licked his lips.
Sasuke spun his body, left hand diving into his pouch. He drew a second kunai and slashed across Orochimaru's arm—
RIP!
Orochimaru's right arm was severed cleanly.
Sakura stepped in, hands already sealing.
"Hidden Mist Technique!"
Fog surged, swallowing her body into thick haze.
She glanced at Sasuke. There was no fear in his eyes—only battle hunger.
Maybe Naruto's earlier pressure, stronger than canon, had pushed Sasuke into a sharper, more proactive state. He'd struck before Orochimaru even released his killing intent.
But Sakura knew perfectly well: these "fatal wounds" meant nothing to Orochimaru.
As the inventor of snake-style Body Replacement, he could shed skin and restore himself. Even Amaterasu wasn't a clean answer to him.
That exchange had only been a probe.
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