Serpentes Impudicus

The truly foresighted unethical ninja scientist hellbent upon achieving immortality leaves nothing up to chance. He layers failsafes on top of failsafes, to be absolutely sure that one careless accident will not end in his ignominious death in spite of everything he's worked so hard for. But sometimes, even when one sets up failsafes, not everything goes as planned.

Jirōbō was dead. Quite definitely dead. As it turned out, however, not all of his importance to his master had ended there. He would probably have found what came next a little creepy, which was why it was just as well that he was dead, and thus unable to see much of anything anymore.

A patch of skin bulged, squirmed, grew larger, and then finally, disgorged a very puzzled Orochimaru.

He looked around, frowning a little. He glanced down at Jirōbō's dead body. And then, with a shrug, he set off through the forest. He was very far from any of his bases, after all, and he really needed to get back to them as soon as possible, and find out what was happening there.

Orochimaru was, meanwhile, also looking down at Kidōmaru's dead body.

"You took quite a beating, didn't you?" he mused.

That was life, though - or the end of it, at any rate - when one followed Orochimaru. He shrugged, and turned to keep moving, entirely unaware of the company he might soon have, from the person who was behind him, and gaining on him all the time.

Orochimaru pushed a tree's branch aside with his foot, peering down at Tayuya. From the look of things, she's had a nasty encounter with someone who used some manner of wind jutsu; the scene of the battle was full of clues, if one cared to read it.

There was the crunch of bark underfoot, somewhere behind him, and Orochimaru turned, tense -

- and stared into yellow eyes, slit-pupilled, as wide with astonishment as his own. As a matter of fact, they were his own, and so was everything else upon the person who'd just joined him.

"How can this be?" Orochimaru said, checking for genjutsu upon him. (He'd been the victim of genjutsu in the past, after all, and he was absolutely certain that he was far too clever to ever let it happen again.)

"I should ask the same question," Orochimaru said.

They stared at each other in mutual disbelief and just a hint of appreciation of the chance for Orochimaru to see himself without the aid of a mirror.

"You came out of... her cursed seal?" the second Orochimaru asked, nodding toward Tayuya's corpse.

"...Yes."

"I came from Kidōmaru's."

"Then, the others..." They stared with dawning horror toward the treeline as a third Orochimaru emerged, looking just as bewildered as they had been.

The discussion that followed was long and confusing, mostly because Orochimaru kept interrupting himself and talking over himself. And just when they thought they had it all hashed out, yet another Orochimaru showed up, and the whole process started all over again.

"The cursed seal contingency experiment backfired, then," one Orochimaru said, at last. "It was supposed to activate at the moment of my death, but instead it activated at the moment of theirs."

"And now there are four of us," another Orochimaru concluded. He glanced over at a third and asked, "Shouldn't there have been five? Sakon and Ukon each had a cursed seal."

The third Orochimaru spread his hands slightly and smiled. "I'm as mystified as you are."

"Then I am still alive, and back in the hideout," the fourth Orochimaru declared. He paused, and frowned. "That may be somewhat inconvenient."

"We shall need to distinguish between one another until this is all over," one of them pointed out. "And our... originator."

"That's true. Only one of us can simply be Orochimaru, or this will get confusing," another conceded. "And since none of us are likely to agree that one of the others should be the only Orochimaru, we'd better reserve that name for the one back at the hideout."

In the end, they took their names from the titles of the ninja whose curse marks had spawned them; Tō-Orochi, Sei-Orochi, Hoku-Orochi and Nan-Orochi, from the directions of gates to which the Sound Four had attached their names. Sei-Orochi looked particularly pleased with himself while this was being resolved, and declined to explain why. Since they were all, technically, Orochimaru, the other three were immediately deeply suspicious, and kept a very close eye upon him while they were heading back to the hideout.

He did behave himself, though, even if he had that somewhat smug expression the whole time.

Gen'yūmaru's body was not the one that Orochimaru had planned to occupy at this point, but it was young, and strong, and it would suffice. And he had time, now, to train his little Uchiha into a truly remarkable specimen, one that would be the ideal body he'd been craving for so long. Just looking at the boy made him lick his lips in anticipation. There was promise in those limbs, promise he would mold to his intent, and those refined features promised all of the treasures of an ancient bloodline, one that had earned all of the legends it had accrued.

It was such a pity, really, that they had been almost entirely wiped out, but some things were more valuable when they were rare, and though the Uchiha were almost all gone, the very best had been saved for last.

The Sharingan was not visible in the boy's insolent eyes just now, but Orochimaru knew it was there, waiting to be trained into the most magnificent tool of all. And it would be his, in only three years' time. At last, the secrets of any jutsu he cared to acquire would unfold themselves before his eyes, once the Sharingan was his to use as he saw fit.

And the boy wanted revenge; that was the goal for which he was even willing to offer up that remarkable body, knowing what might await him.

Orochimaru had considered this, and he had concluded that the boy's hand would indeed be the one to bring down Uchiha Itachi - but this dear, angry little child would not be the one controlling it by then.

In a way, their goals were aligned; Orochimaru wished to be free of the threat of the Akatsuki, which had not taken his departure lightly, and to finally prove that he could overpower Itachi, who had offered him the most humiliating defeat he'd ever known.

He would give his new little pet the revenge he desired, in a manner of speaking.

After all, that was where his true benevolence lay; he could grant the dearest wish of those who came to him, for a price. It was only fair, wasn't it? They gave him what he wanted, and he gave them the thing they'd needed so deeply, so fiercely, that they would choose to make that bargain.

Orochimaru knew a thing or two about wanting things so deeply that they became the deepest need in one's life. In some respects, he might even have been an expert in it.

And just now, that need was being fulfilled, step by step, with the arrival of one small Uchiha with such incredible potential, who moved and spoke as though the world would deliver him what he wanted, or he would make it do so by force. So insolent, so determined, so focused - it was almost a pity that everything that made him who he was would inevitably disappear, to remain as no more than a vestige of spirit and memory somewhere in the deepest recesses of the jutsu that preserved Orochimaru's immortality.

If he had still been mortal - perish the thought! - he might have considered training the boy as his heir.

As it was, though, he could afford to indulge his little Uchiha, cater to his wishes, give him free rein to speak with that sharp little tongue, until the time came.

It did not please Kabuto, so faithful, so devoted that he could not stand insults to Orochimaru, but he would not avenge these slights upon the boy if Orochimaru bade him stay his hand.

Everything was going perfectly according to plan.

He was certain of that, and he remained certain of that, right up until the moment where he heard reports of some kind of presence approaching the hideout, ventured out to investigate, and found himself face to face with four more of himself.

In what was a rarity for him, in that moment, Orochimaru found that he was completely at a loss.

It was not a comfortable sensation.

What was even more uncomfortable, really, was listening to the stories of his copies, recognising the truth of their words, and having to accept that they were, indeed, him. This was not some trick by an enemy of his, but rather the result of one of his own jutsu experiments, and now he would have to work out what to do with the results.

His first thought, naturally, was that he ought to kill them, but they seemed to have established some kind of tenuous alliance, and he knew he couldn't defeat four more of himself if they were working together.

His second thought, therefore, was to wonder how he could turn this to his advantage. It was a little like having shadow clones, in a way, but each of them had their own chakra, and they would not fall as readily as a shadow clone would. With five of himself, he would have his own intelligence at hand, to be turned to multiple topics at once, and his own power to use five times over.

It helped, too, that they had already established names of their own, and were thus still ceding him the position of the original Orochimaru.

They were not challenging him for his identity, and so he could afford to welcome them into his hideout.

Sasuke had not expected there to be more than one Orochimaru. When he'd come here, looking for training from one of the Sannin, one had been the operative word. Now, there were five, almost entirely identical, with the same greedy eyes and the same insinuating voice.

It was unsettling, but he had to shrug off that feeling. He'd come this far, and he wasn't going to stop just because his teacher had multiplied.

There were absolute downsides, like the constant patting of his hair and the general aura of creepiness, but there was an upside, too; Orochimaru was never too busy to train him. At any given moment in which Sasuke had the energy to train, there was an Orochimaru available to teach him, and sometimes more than one.

He was even getting used to the advice coming from more than one direction in the same voice; it wasn't really all that much more annoying than Naruto's thing for overusing shadow clones, and at least Orochimaru sometimes had useful things to say.

Orochimaru was repulsive, his habits were cruel and disgusting, but he was a means to an end, and if Sasuke's revenge was on the line, he would even use someone like Orochimaru in order to get there.

He knew what Orochimaru wanted from him, had decided that this was an acceptable risk already, but as he trained with the five of them, he was beginning to wonder one thing, more and more: when the time came, and Orochimaru finally decided to make a move to try and get his body... which Orochimaru would it be?

With that thought lingering in his mind, he decided to test something out.

On a day in which he'd been trained by just one - Hoku-Orochi, apparently - he deliberately pushed himself just a little too far, accepting the strained muscles as a consequence, just so that Hoku-Orochi would chide him for it.

"Oh, Sasuke-kun, you really need to be more careful with that body of yours," Hoku-Orochi told him, eyeing him with the covetous air that made Sasuke think he'd wanted to end that sentence with 'mine' rather than 'yours.'

He shrugged with deliberate unconcern. "Trying to keep me fit for later?"

"We do have your future to think about, Sasuke-kun."

"Your future, you mean." The Orochimarus never really seemed to take offence when he was rude, so he felt free to dial up the bluntness in his voice, putting on the most provoking attitude he could conjure up. Then, he let it fade away into a carefully staged expression of uncertainty. "Well, the future for one of you. That's how it works, right?"

"Oh, you needn't concern yourself with that," Hoku-Orochi said breezily. "You have your goals to focus on, don't you?"

This one was easy, because it wasn't fake at all. He just had to call up the anger lingering deep in his bones at all times, scowl, and spit Itachi's name like a curse, and Hoku-Orochi would accept that he'd successfully been diverted back into thinking only of his revenge.

He was thinking of it, that was true... but he was also reflecting, with some satisfaction, upon the speculative look on Hoku-Orochi's face after this conversation, and the way he shifted just a hair closer to Sasuke in the corridor as they passed Sei-Orochi on the way back. That possessive attitude could have been annoying; right now, it was a sign that he'd set a barb deep and felt it catch in place.

He'd done a good job, today, and now it was only a matter of continuing on from there.

It was Hoku-Orochi, upon later reflection, who'd first come up with the idea. He'd been helping Tō-Orochi to choose new clothing, since they occasionally felt some desire to differentiate themselves with what they were wearing, when it had happened. Of course, choosing new clothing tended to turn out a little bit futile, since they had the same sense of aesthetics, leading them to choose the same clothes, and the same body size and lack of compunctions when it came to taking things from others, meaning that any clothes one of them acquired were likely to be admired by one of the others and subsequently pilfered, copied, or both.

Hoku-Orochi had, therefore, been choosing his own future clothes, in a manner of speaking, when he'd been assisting Tō-Orochi to choose between the purple top and the off-white one.

Tō-Orochi had been shirtless, and Hoku-Orochi had reached out to touch his summoning tattoo.

"I remember getting this done," he'd mused.

"We didn't, though," Tō-Orochi had pointed out. "We came into being with it already in place."

"Yes, but we remember it, so it comes to much the same thing. It looks so good on us, doesn't it? And the other one, too?" His fingers had drifted higher, caressing the tattoo that encircled Tō-Orochi's upper arm.

What followed had been both unexpected and, viewed in another light, entirely predictable. Orochimaru had always preferred his own looks to those of others, and now he had the chance to admire those looks continually, and get compliments from the one person who could match him in appearance and mindset both - himself.

It shouldn't have been any kind of surprise that they'd discover themselves to be eminently compatible physically, but they had indeed discovered it, and so gladly that the secret hadn't stayed with just the two of them. Before long, they were all in on it, enjoying the body they had in common in ways only possible for a man with inordinately flexible limbs and an infinitely extendable tongue. Not to mention, of course, a kind of absolute self-regard that turned the act into one of arrogance compounded, refracted, transformed into adoration for himself in all his compounded forms.

Sasuke had made a mistake in coming here, he thought, rounding a corner and stopping dead at the sight in front of him. He stared, transfixed and horrified, and suddenly wished he was back in Konoha, where nothing like this ever happened.

He'd thought that it couldn't be much worse than Naruto's incessant self-multiplication.

He'd been wrong.

Naruto, for all his strange and irritating ways, would never have done this. That stupid 'turning into a naked girl' trick Naruto had deployed now seemed almost charming by comparison, a naive and innocent gesture.

There were two Orochimarus in the corridor ahead, entwined with one another - and entwined was definitely the right word, because normal limbs didn't wrap around each other like that - while they made disgusting noises and... well, he assumed they were kissing, but he'd seen people kiss before, and it didn't tend to look like this.

Sasuke had a vague, dim sense that sometimes, when people kissed, their tongues went in each other's mouths. It wasn't an idea he was hugely enamoured with, but he could deal with it.

What he couldn't deal with was the tongues coming back out again and wrapping around the other Orochimaru, and the same Orochimaru, and venturing beneath various bits of clothing, constantly in motion. He wasn't sure if the tongues would return to each other's mouths after those detours, but he really didn't want to be here to find out.

What would happen if I spoke? he wondered. Certainly, these two were both Orochimaru, and so they'd certainly pay attention to him if he made them aware of his presence, but that didn't seem like a particularly good idea to Sasuke, under the cirumstances.

Orochimaru was irritating enough already to deal with, without trying to handle two at once after catching them amid a bout of amorousness with each other.

Sasuke wasn't usually the sort to walk away from a challenge, but this wasn't the usual sort of challenge. Very quietly, his expression twisted up with revulsion and more than a hint of nausea, he turned around and slipped away, just as though he'd never been here at all - and he found himself wishing, devoutly, that he hadn't been.

Nan-Orochi was bored. Hoku-Orochi was monopolising all of the interesting science experiments, and Tō-Orochi was with Orochimaru, once again exploring the limits of their collective body's flexibility and stamina. He'd considered joining in, but Tō-Orochi was especially loud about this kind of thing, and always seemed to want to be the focus of everyone involved's attention, leaving very little room for a third party to have a truly satisfying time.

He could seek out Sasuke, perhaps - the boy was always so impatient for more training, and getting to be the one training him was always a plus.

Only one of them, in the end, could take over Uchiha Sasuke's body. Out of the five of them, there could be only one victor, and Nan-Orochi had noticed that the others didn't appear to be thinking about that nearly as much as they ought to be. Perhaps it was a sign that out of all of them, he was the superior version of Orochimaru?

These pleasant thoughts were interrupted by the sight of Sei-Orochi drifting through a corridor, looking almost dreamy. Changing his goals without a second of hesitation, Nan-Orochi turned to follow him. If something interesting was going on, he didn't want Sei-Orochi to be the only one who got to see it.

Sei-Orochi didn't even appear to notice him following, not for a while, but at last he turned to face Nan-Orochi, smiling, just as Nan-Orochi realised that their path was leading them to one of the disused living quarters in the hideout.

"It's such a quiet day," Sei-Orochi murmured. "It would be such a pity to spend it doing nothing, wouldn't it? When we have so many more diverting ways to spend our time?"

The smile on Sei-Orochi's face was so openly lewd that Nan-Orochi could feel himself flushing in reaction already. Well, he had followed Sei-Orochi this far in search of something interesting, hadn't he? And he'd never been opposed to a bit of bedsport with his doubles, only to the insistence of Tō-Orochi upon getting more pleasure out of it than anyone else. Tō-Orochi wasn't here right now, so that problem had already solved itself.

"I'm sure we can think of something," he agreed, and let Sei-Orochi lead him into that disused chamber. There was a bed, there, and Sei-Orochi was already discarding his clothing and draping himself across it, their shared vanity admiring invitation of his pose. Nan-Orochi hurried to take off his own clothing and join him, arms slipping about one another, drawing each other in with knowing caresses and deep kisses.

He knew his own body - he knew Sei-Orochi's body - so perfectly already, and between them, they easily roused each other to a fever pitch, urgent and eager and always greedy for more.

It was in that final, blissful moment of release, though, that Nan-Orochi learned a lesson he would never even have time to regret not knowing already.

The world seemed to ripple around him, and suddenly the uniting of their flesh gave way to a fleshy world of its own, tendrils of strange substance coiling around him and holding him in place.

But... this can only be done every three years, his mind protested, stunned, and he heard Sei-Orochi's mind answer him, thoughts rippling with cruel triumph.

We can only take over another every three years. It turns out... that there's no such rule about what we can do to ourselves.

As he was devoured, mind, body and soul, Nan-Orochi's last conscious thought was that he'd finally worked out why there'd only been one of Sei-Orochi.