Progress and pragmatism
Sometimes, Verde thought, his enemies really did make things far too easy for him.
He hadn’t even needed to fabricate any evidence in the end, Orochimaru had dug his own grave, along with the graves of all those Konoha orphans. All Verde had to do was make sure the right pieces of evidence found the right people, at just the right moment.
Timing had always been a strong point of his.
It hadn’t been a casual decision. Verde was the furthest thing from sentimental there was, but there were few enough gifted scientists in this world and he wasn’t petty enough to damage the progress of knowledge for the sake of his own advancement. No, Verde had in fact, felt a certain amount of regret when he came to the conclusion that Orochimaru had to go. It was an unfortunate necessity, but a necessity nonetheless, and so Verde had done his part to accelerate the process.
It really was a shame, the man was brilliant, in that fractured, obsessive way that Verde knew all too well, and together they could have reshaped the laws of man and nature. But Verde was a pragmatist and Orochimaru had made himself a liability, allowed creativity and impulse to compromise the rigours of the scientific method, creativity had its place, but it had to be backed up by the hard slog of research and repetition to have any true scientific value.
He supposed it was a cautionary tale of sorts. Nothing good comes of experimenting on oneself unless one is very sure of the potential outcomes of any modifications, and Verde was more and more convinced that Orochimaru’s “self improvements” were affecting his ability to reason. He had, after all grown increasingly unstable as the modifications were added.
Orochimaru had allowed obsession to cloud his judgement, running experiment after experiment on the same subjects until it was impossible to say what results came from which tests, conducting experiments that, were he discovered would see him exiled or executed, and likely half the research department along with him for complicity. It made Verde coldly, viciously angry, that a fellow scientist, one who professed to value knowledge above all, could risk all their work, for the sake of his personal obsessions.
Did he not think, what would happen when his illegal experiments were discovered? How long would it be before the village put their trust in scientists again, how would it affect their ability to recruit fresh talent, their freedom to act unscrutinised, their funding. It was careless, and unprofessional, and it was a threat to the work of every other scientist in Konoha.
So Verde had acted to limit the damage. One scientist going rogue could be balanced out by another being the one to stop him, and if it put him in prime position to take over research and development with Orochimaru gone, well, he’d never claimed to be completely altruistic.
Orochimaru knew it was him of course. No-one else within the department would have dared betray him, and no-one outside had the necessary access. But Verde had risen to second in rank in the department purely on merit, was every bit Orochimaru’s equal, he knew where all the bodies were buried, and he had never feared the snake Sannin.
That lack of fear alone would have been enough to make Orochimaru hate him, even without their academic differences, and their debates over the merits of biological studies, over technological advancements were the stuff of department legend. Verde believed biological research took too long to be effective, and was too unpredictable in its results, Orochimaru argued that technological devices had no loyalty, could just as easily be used by their enemies. Verde had responded snidely that with the ongoing missing nin issue adding a biological component didn’t exactly solve that issue. Things generally degenerated from there.
Really, Verde was the very first person Orochimaru would have expected to turn on him, and for that very reason he hadn’t seen it coming until it was too late. He’d known Verde disapproved of the direction he’d been taking the department in, and would probably be quite happy to take his job, and what was more he’d known Verde knew that he knew that. And so he’d expected Verde to be more cautious knowing that he was under suspicion, that Orochimaru was watching him. He’d expected him to be subtle.
If Verde had feared Orochimaru he might have been. But Verde was once arcobaleno, with all that meant, was still arcobaleno, even with the curse broken and that life gone. He had been cursed, and died, and rewritten time, and then died again in blood and battle and he’d never let any of it turn him aside from his dedication to progress, to the advancement of human knowledge. It would take more than the likes of Orochimaru to make him cautious.
So he’d walked into the Hokage’s office bold as brass and left certain files on the man’s desk, while he was delivering the budget reports. After all, he wasn’t the one trying to hide things, what need did he have to sneak. Orochimaru knew it was him, but he still hadn’t seen it coming until the men in the bone white masks came for him, found the secret basements where the children in cages lived, found the incinerator, found the charred bones. And then of course there had been no talking his way out, no way to retain his power in Konoha. He’d been thoroughly outplayed. He knew Verde was behind it, but Verde had outplayed him, to the point where there was nothing he could do about any of it but run. No doubt he would hold a grudge, and try and get back at Verde at some point, but at least for now, Verde had won, and in science, the here and now was really the only thing that could be counted on.
A week later and Verde, as the new head of research and development had announced a new direction for the department, away from the inefficient, biological modifications that had been so tainted by Orochimaru’s work, and towards more technological devices, that could be issued to any shinobi as needed. He smiled, it had been all too easy to gain the Hokage’s support for his changes, with everything Orochimaru had touched so discredited, and himself the loyal voice of principle.
It was a shame to lose Orochimaru’s mind, but for the greater good of the department, Verde would have been willing to make far greater sacrifices.