Follow the Leader
Mar. 10th, 2019 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wafflelateSummary: Bat, Crow, and the ghostly Kisuke follow Cat-taichō to Land of Rice, where they investigate Orochimaru's northern base.
Notes: At the end!
On the way to Land of Rice, Cat-taichō rapidly delivers a great deal of information: there's been a drop in textile prices in northern Land of Rice in the past year; Orochimaru has been seen escorting several children through the local village; Orochimaru has ordered a great deal of wook and hired several wood workers who haven't been seen since. Shikako files it all away, because anything could be useful, but she doesn't expect much of it to be relevant to their duties in Land of Rice, as they're not trying to dismantle Orochimaru's operation, just observe it, test its security, and report back.
Days later the three corporeal members of the team crouch on the ceiling of the cement bunker that hosts most of Orochimaru's operations in this area. Bat hadn't wanted to believe the report that Kisuke had brought to them, but beneath them it was plain as day: dozens of children hunch over their laborious work, all of them concentrating, barely a sound being made except the quiet despair of a failed attempt here and there.
It's some kind of training contraption, Bat thinks, as several of the more frustrated children have started to actually pour chakra into their wooden devices, but the ceiling in this room is about 25 feet tall and the perspective is terrible, so Bat can't see what they are.
She flicks a few curious ANBU signs at Crow, who's definitely a Hyūga, but his responding signs indicate it's not something he can sum up with ANBU vocabulary — he uses the set of signs that Bat always mentally translates as "Weird as fuck."
A few minutes later, Orochimaru enters the room and the crowd of children ripples like a pond seized for an A-rank water jutsu, half of them rocketing to their feet in excitement, the other half hunkering down lower over their task, muttering anxiously to themselves.
"Orochimaru-sama!" calls one of the children breaking bravely from the group. "Orochimaru-sama, Orochimaru-sama, look! I have almost two meters! That's even better than Aiko! She can't beat me at this!" He holds out a long string of something.
A girl behind the first kid says, "Shut up, Kaito!"
Orochimaru crouches down to the level of both children and beckons Aiko forward as well. "Both of you show me."
The children both hold out their projects. Aiko shifts nervously while Orochimaru inspects Kaito's and praises it highly for its quality and length. "You're a natural. I knew you would be," he says to Kaito, and the little boy beams. Then Orochimaru turns to Aiko's offering and frowns.
"I'm sorry!" Aiko blurts out. "I'm sorry, it just won't go, I'm doing it all wrong, even though— even though—" Aiko sniffs loudly, trying and failing to hold back the tears that have been welling this whole time.
"None of that," Orochimaru says far softer than Shikako would have expected him to be able to sound. Of course, he's inspired intense loyalty in a wide number of people, so maybe Shikako could expect that he would be good at this, but it's still almost frightening to see him reach out and pat Aiko on the head, then turn the motion into almost a proper paternal notion, tucking a stray strand of Aiko's hair behind her ear and resting a long-fingered hand on her shoulder.
"I k-know, I shouldn't cry," Aiko stutters, as she absolutely continues to cry.
"No, you should not," Orochimaru says. In response, Bat can feel Cat-taichō's suppressed chakra twist and shift — this must be hard for him to watch, although Bat's not supposed to be privy to Cat-taichō's background with Orochimaru and she's not sure how much of that time Cat-taichō even remembers. Luckily, instead of escalating to punishment or even chastising the girl, Orochimaru says, "Let me know you something, Aiko-chan," and takes his hands off of her.
His next few hand seals are definitely the summoning jutsu. There's a large puff of smoke and then there's a snake draped across Orochimaru's shoulders, wrapped around his waist, twining down his arm towards Aiko as it flickers its tongue in and out curiously.
Bat should probably be concerned that Orochimaru is going to have a snake that big just eat the little girl in one bite, but it's very hard to remember the potential danger to the little girl when the snake is wearing a lumpy, hideous sweater.
"This is Scale-chan," Orochimaru says. The children have all stopped their work by now to watch him and Aiko talk and now they press close. Several of them reach out to pet the snake's tail where it peeks out from the end of the long knit tube it's wearing.
Aiko reaches out with wide eyes and, with some encouragement from Orochimaru, pats Scale-chan on the head just like Orochimaru had done to her minutes beforehand.
"You see, when I built our home here under Land of Rice, I had to run out some very nasty sorts from the local area to make room for myself and all of you," Orochimaru says. "The nice villagers you all met when you arrived were so grateful, but they didn't have any money." He uses a tone that Bat has absolutely heard her mother use to talk to Kino, which is maybe a little condescending for Aiko — who seems to be about five — but is not a tone Bat could have imagined Orochimaru taking with anyone before this exact moment.
Cat-taichō's chakra makes a small but sharp fluctuation and then his hands makes the ANBU signs for "Genjutsu?"
Crow replies with, "Negative. Hallucination?"
Cat-taichō indicates that he thinks that that's highly likely.
Below them, with the tone of a child paraphrasing an often-repeated lesson, Aiko says. "Well, everyone knows that only a dummy thinks you can only pay with money."
"Yes." Orochimaru nods seriously at her. "And what else?"
Aiko squints, thinking.
Kaito — who's a little older than Aiko, Bat's sure — blurts out, "Only an even bigger idiot turns down learning something new!"
"Exactly," says Orochimaru. "So the nice villagers, they wanted to pay me with wool. And I didn't have any use for it, so I rejected it. But then I started digging down and down and down for out little nest and Scale-chan complained about it being cold. So I took the wool, and I took some lessons, and I made my first sweater." Orochimaru gives a flourish with the arm holding the snake out to Aiko.
"You made this?" Kaito asks, shifting from trying to get close enough to pet Scale-chan's head to stroking a hand over the poorly-constructed sweater.
"But it's made with yarn as bad as mine!" Aiko cries — which is when Shikako realizes that all of the children are holding drop spindles rather than some kind of very specialized chakra exercise equipment. She can't see the texture of the yarn the sweater is made with from the ceiling, but several other children exclaim about its poor quality.
"I got better, and so will you, so I forbid you from crying." Orochimaru makes it sound like Aiko doesn't have a choice about whether or not to get better at spinning thread, a tone that sends a shiver down Shikako's spine, but Aiko brightens like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, tears completely forgotten.
"Orochimaru-sama, can I hug you and Scale-chan?" she squeaks.
"Maybe later," Orochimaru says, by which Shikako is sure he means no. "Show me how you're using your spindle first, and everyone else watch closely."
Their team exfiltrated the based soon after to regroup, around the time Orochimaru announces it's time to move on to checking their dyed yarn. In their secure camp, they all share at each other dead-eyed and confused, no one wanting to speak first.
Notes: Everyone on the discord was sleeping on these absolutely hilarious comments from Morne:
Morne: Maybe orochimaru took up knitting and is intending to live out his mortal lifespan calmly and rationally
Morne: he probably makes little tube sweaters for his snakes
Everyone please appreciate Morne she's really funny.
