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Hey everyone!
Bad news again…
I am so, so sorry to inform y'all, but I won't be able to post for the next 2ish~ weeks. Life caught up to me again, but I swear I will make it up to you guys! For now, please accept this little idea as a decent advanced apology gift?
Thank you all for being so patient with me, and I'll see y'all in two weeks!
-not_very_H0n0red-0ne
Deep within the subterranean chambers of Otogakure, the air was thick with the scent of chemicals and aged parchment. Torches flickered against the damp stone walls, casting long shadows across a laboratory filled with glowing green stasis tanks and jars of preserved organs.
Orochimaru stood before a massive scroll, his long, pale tongue slicking across his lower lip as he traced an intricate fuinjutsu formula. His slit-pupil eyes gleamed with a manic, unholy ambition.
"Human life is so painfully brief," Orochimaru whispered, his voice a smooth, theatrical purr. "A flame that gutters out just as it begins to see the truth of the world. That is why the flesh must be transcended. I seek immortality, Naruto-kun. Absolute, unyielding eternal life."
Naruto was sitting comfortably on a stone examination stool, casually swirling a beaker of some glowing purple fluid he had found on a nearby counter. He looked entirely unfazed by the giant white snakes slithering across the ceiling.
"Immortality," Naruto repeated, setting the beaker down with a soft click. "A grand word. But tell me, Orochimaru-san, why do you seek it? What is the ultimate good that eternal life provides?"
Orochimaru turned slowly, his long black hair shifting over his shoulders. He smiled, a terrifying expression that usually drove grown men to paralysis.
"To learn all jutsu, of course. Every technique, every secret, every hidden manipulation of chakra that has ever existed or will ever exist. The human lifespan is too short to master them all. I need centuries."
"I see," Naruto nodded slowly. "So, you desire to learn all jutsu. And why is that? If you master every technique in existence, what does that achieve for you?"
"To understand the world," Orochimaru said, his voice rising with a rare touch of genuine passion. "To grasp the laws of nature, the mechanics of creation, the very fabric of reality itself! To know everything is to become a god. To hold all understanding in the palm of your hand."
Naruto adjusted his worn-out tunic, leaning forward with a sharp, piercing gaze that seemed to cut straight through Orochimaru's aura.
"Then, my scaled acquaintance, you do not seek immortality."
Orochimaru's narrow eyes narrowed even further, a dangerous, cold chakra beginning to leak into the room, cracking the glass beakers on the shelves. "Be careful, boy. I just told you my life's ambition. Do not insult my intelligence by telling me what I do or do not seek. I seek an immortal body."
"And I am telling you that you are confusing the vessel with the cargo," Naruto said calmly, entirely unbothered by the crushing pressure of the Sannin's chakra. "Let us look at it logically. If a man walks across the continent to reach the sea, does he love the walking, or does he love the sea?"
Orochimaru paused, his tongue darting out instinctively. "The sea."
"And if he could instantly appear at the sea without walking a single step, would he still insist on walking across the continent?"
"No," Orochimaru hissed. "That would be an inefficient waste of time."
"Then the walking is merely a tedious necessity, not the true desire," Naruto argued. "Now, consider your ambition. If a divine being were to descend right now and instantly grant you absolute, flawless understanding of every law of nature, every piece of knowledge, and every jutsu in the universe... but told you that your physical body would still age and die in forty years, would your ultimate goal not be complete? Would you not already possess the very thing you wanted?"
Orochimaru opened his mouth to reply, but the words died in his throat. His golden eyes went remarkably wide.
"If... if I knew everything..." Orochimaru muttered, his mind suddenly spinning. "If the understanding was already mine..."
"Then the immortality itself is completely irrelevant to you," Naruto concluded smoothly. "You do not crave endless existence for the sake of existing. You crave understanding. Immortality is merely a panicked logistical workaround you invented because you are afraid your mind cannot digest the universe quickly enough. Your true desire is wisdom. You are, by definition, a philosopher, a lover of wisdom. You've just spent the last few decades violently murdering people and stealing their bodies slowly because you're bad at time management."
Orochimaru stood entirely still.
The brilliant, terrifying mind that had mastered forbidden jutsu, engineered genetic anomalies, and assassinated multiple sitting Kage suddenly encountered a problem for which it possessed no countermeasure.
A rebuttal.
'I don't want to live forever,' Orochimaru realized, his hands beginning to twitch. 'I just want to know things. But if knowledge is the true metric of my soul... then my obsession with the physical vessel of immortality is an ideological error. I have spent decades perfecting the wrong technique.'
The giant white snakes on the ceiling stopped slithering, sensing their master's sudden, catastrophic drop in mental stability. Orochimaru slowly sat down on the floor, his knees giving out slightly, his eyes staring blankly into a puddle of stagnant water on the laboratory floor.
Three hours later
The heavy iron door of the laboratory creaked open.
Kabuto Yakushi stepped into the room, holding a clipboard stacked with medical charts and data on the latest curse mark experiments. He adjusted his glasses, clearing his throat.
"Lord Orochimaru, the reports from the Hidden Sound vanguard are ready, and the next vessel is prepared for the—"
Kabuto stopped dead in his tracks.
The laboratory was completely silent. The torches had burned down to mere embers. In the center of the room, the legendary, terrifying Sannin, the leader of the land hidden in the sound, the snake demon who struck fear into the hearts of the entire legions of shinobi, was curled up into a loose ball on the floor. He was staring intensely at a blank wall, his eyes completely glassy, mumbling incoherently to himself.
"Am I a snake because I am Orochimaru? Or am I Orochimaru because I am a snake...?" Orochimaru whispered, a single tear of pure existential dread rolling down his pale cheek.
Kabuto slowly lowered his clipboard, his jaw dropping slightly. He looked around the room and noticed the whiskered-teen sitting on a stool nearby, happily munching on a roasted sweet potato he had apparently found in a breakroom.
"What... what did you do to him?" Kabuto stammered, pointing a shaking finger at his catatonic master.
Naruto swallowed his food, wiped his "beard" with the back of his hand, and gave Kabuto a cheerful, completely innocent smile.
"We just had a minor chat about definitions," Naruto said brightly. "He's a very bright man, but he really overcomplicates things. By the way, do you happen to have any wine? This laboratory air is terribly dry, believe it!"
A/N
I swear I will be back in like 2 weeks!