The others had already gone when a long-haired figure in a green Konoha jonin vest finally stepped into the moonlight.
"You've been noticed."
Orochimaru lifted a finger, eyes narrowing as a tiny white snake coiled up his sleeve and climbed onto his arm. A crooked smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as the little serpent hissed twice, then slipped back into his sleeve.
"That Uchiha brat is pretty interesting. Cautious, sharp, knows sensory ninjutsu, even understands how to seize command in a team this small. Not bad at all."
He sounded as if he were talking to himself. Then he turned his head slightly and looked into the darkness off to one side.
"What do you think, Jiraiya? That last line wasn't meant only for this snake."
"Heh-heh, Orochimaru, how did you know I was here?"
A white-haired young man stepped out of the shadows with a grin, hands tucked behind his head as though he had merely wandered by.
"How can a toad hide from a snake's senses? What are you doing sneaking around here, Jiraiya?"
"I came to bring you some news so you wouldn't be left in the dark while you were out here. Things in the Land of Hot Water have improved a lot. Kumogakure wants peace talks, and an envoy may arrive soon. For now, there's no need to rush to that battlefield."
Jiraiya pointed vaguely toward the distant frontier as he spoke. Orochimaru listened without much expression, then answered in his usual unhurried tone.
"Sarutobi-sensei wants me to serve as a jonin instructor and take care of his son. I probably won't be assigned away for the time being."
"Oh? I thought you were going to refuse. From the sound of it, you actually accepted."
Jiraiya leaned closer, curiosity plain on his face. Then he asked the question he really cared about.
"So how's that kid from the old man's family? I heard he's doing pretty well at the academy. Maybe just a tiny bit worse than I was back then."
Orochimaru gave him a flat look. "Idiot. If that team were worse than you were, it would be hopeless beyond saving."
Jiraiya was not offended in the slightest. After all, he had been on the receiving end of Orochimaru's contempt for years. He crossed his arms and waited for the rest.
"Still, his personality really is a lot like yours. Naive, indecisive, reckless. He has talent, yes, but without a strong mentor, a teammate capable of taking charge, and someone with a cool head to keep the entire squad together, he would've died on the battlefield sooner or later."
Jiraiya's face immediately darkened.
"Are you insulting me or praising yourself?"
"I'm only stating facts."
Orochimaru kept his tone calm, but the faint curve at his lips made it obvious he was enjoying this far too much.
Not everyone had been born cold-blooded. Not even Orochimaru. At barely twenty years old, he was still closer to the man he would become than the monster people would one day fear, but the change had not fully finished yet.
"So you really plan to keep leading this genin squad," Jiraiya said at last, looking up at the evening sky through the gaps in the trees. "That means someone in that group caught your eye, didn't they? Someone clever enough to interest you."
Orochimaru folded his arms. "At the very least, I know how to make the fools in a team useful."
"Hey! Orochimaru!"
"What?"
"You were definitely talking about me again, weren't you?"
"You're the one who decided to take it personally, idiot."
With a flick of his sleeve, Orochimaru turned and walked off, leaving Jiraiya bristling behind him.
The squad really did remind Orochimaru of Team Hiruzen from years ago.
The resemblance was not perfect, but some of the same pieces were there. A child from the Hokage's line, born with status no ordinary ninja could rival. A loudmouthed fool with good talent and a straightforward heart. A single girl in the team. And, hanging over all of it, the shape of another memory Orochimaru had no interest in naming aloud.
All of those things somehow converged in Sarutobi Enjun.
And then there was Uchiha Gen.
A gifted, cautious, capable child. A boy who knew how to watch, how to think, and how to quietly take control before anyone even realized command had shifted into his hands.
"Uchiha Gen..." Orochimaru murmured the name to himself. "With that kid there, this team shouldn't fall apart so easily in the future. But we were still too lenient today."
He looked deeper into the darkening forest, his narrow eyes unreadable.
"Sarutobi-sensei... for the sake of that Scroll of Seals, I'll help you whip these children into shape."
He ran the tip of his tongue across his lips, then disappeared into the night.
***
Uchiha Gen had been fully aware the entire time that Orochimaru was observing them from somewhere nearby.
That was exactly why he had said those words to Sarutobi Enjun earlier.
He knew what kind of person Orochimaru was. He knew what road the man would eventually walk. Sometimes, when dealing with people like that, speaking certain truths aloud was more useful than hiding them.
Whether those words would have the effect he wanted, though, was another matter entirely.
For now, all he could do was focus on leading his team through the trial in front of them.
Fortunately, once the hidden layers of Orochimaru's test were stripped away, capturing the bandits themselves was not all that difficult.
Any newly minted genin from one of the Five Great Villages, after six full years of formal training, could overwhelm dozens of ordinary men armed with blades. And the three members of Orochimaru's squad were not average genin by any stretch. Each of them had graduated near the top of their class. Each of them was, in one way or another, exceptional.
The real difficulty had never been beating the bandits.
It was finding them.
A few days earlier, that might have been enough to give Uchiha Gen a headache. But now things were different.
He had ninja crows for distant reconnaissance and chakra sensing for the space close around him. Against ordinary people, that combination was overwhelming. Unless the enemy possessed some unusually strong counter-tracking method or a scout with vision on the level of the Byakugan, they had no chance of escaping his search once he had their trail.
These bandits were nothing of the sort.
By tracing several townspeople connected to the outlaws—people Uzuki Ruri had already identified—and then setting his crows to shadow them from above, Gen had followed the chain all the way to a mountain peak more than ten miles outside River Valley Town by the following morning.
So by noon, more than a hundred bandits had been hauled back to the lord's estate as prisoners.
As for the taxes and supplies meant for the daimyo, the bandits had only seized them a few days earlier. They had not yet had time to move or divide most of it, so the bulk of the goods had been recovered intact.
The money, however, was another story.
Much of that had likely already flowed back into the town through the hands of desperate families and those who had quietly supported the bandits from the start.
"Orochimaru-senpai, are you satisfied with how we handled it?"
Uchiha Gen looked over at Sarutobi Enjun, who was currently speaking with the steward in the distance, then turned toward Orochimaru, who had appeared soundlessly at some point nearby.
He had deliberately left the actual negotiation to Enjun.
Being the Hokage's son was, at times like this, an extremely useful title.