"You're… pretty good," Genma groaned as he crumpled into an unconscious heap at Kakashi's feet. "Urk."
Breathing heavily, Kakashi stepped over Genma, Raidō and Iwashi before pushing open the door to the operating theatre. Thankfully, in the week he had spent recuperating at home after overtaxing his Mangekyō Sharingan, he had recovered most of his stamina, enough to neutralise two tokubetsu jōnin and one elite chūnin.
"Get away from Sakura and drop the syringe," Kakashi said menacingly. "I won't ask again."
An unconscious Sakura lay naked at the centre of a medical ninjutsu formation in the middle of the room, four medic-nin standing on each of its corners. Her gigantic breasts rose from her chest like two mountains, pooling off to the sides of her body onto the cold floor inscribed with spidery runes. Opposite her lay Manyū Kyōko on her own bed of jutsu formulae, and kneeling at her side were Dr Shinnō and his disciple, Amaru.
"How did you find us out?" Dr Shinnō asked coldly. "What gave us away?"
Taking advantage of Kakashi's momentary confusion, Amaru threw herself at him, grabbing his wrists with strength that belied her small frame while Dr Shinnō scrambled to his feet and dived towards Sakura, drawing a kunai from his surgical tool pocket...
"NO!" Kakashi cried in anguish.
With a judo throw, he slammed Amaru to the floor and flickered forwards, desperate to stop Dr Shinnō from finishing off Sakura, but he was too late.
"Formation of Ten Thousand Snakes!"
To Dr Shinnō's complete and utter shock, one of the four medic-nin standing at the corners of the healing formation suddenly unhinged his jaw. A swarm of snakes burst forth from his maw, binding the good doctor's limbs and stopping him in his tracks before taking him to the floor, preventing him from assassinating the comatose Sakura. At the same time, a few of the snakes slithered towards the dazed Amaru and constricted her as well.
Upon seeing this, the other three medics recoiled in shock. Kakashi assumed those were real… but he was still very much confused. What in the world was going on here?
"The good doctor and I go way back, which you would have known if you were the real one..." Orochimaru sniggered, tearing the human-skin mask from his face and flicking his forked tongue. "Now, let's see who you really are, Dr Shinnō..."
To think Orochimaru had been masquerading as one of the medics… but what was this, now?
"What's going on here?" Kakashi asked suspiciously. "Orochimaru, aren't you the one who brought these two back to the village?"
Orochimaru grinned enigmatically and performed the Serpent Seal.
At once, his snakes sank their fangs into their two victims, injecting venom into their bloodstreams. The impostors' bodies began to shudder, one shrinking and the other growing, as all colour drained from their skin and clothes until naught remained but two naked White Zetsu...
"The Akatsuki, it's as I thought," Orochimaru said thoughtfully. "I did think it was all rather too convenient that Shinnō and I should cross paths in the middle of a warzone as I was returning to the village, just as the Hokage was dying and in need of the best doctor in the world's help... They must have been waiting for me to pass by so they could officially gain entry to the village."
Kakashi's gaze hardened.
"You knew that, and you still would have let them operate on the Lady Hokage?" he said harshly.
Orochimaru merely shrugged.
"I wanted to know what they were after," he said. "I had everything under control, I had dosed them with a certain toxin while we travelled to the Hidden Leaf together..."
Orochimaru broke off as one of the White Zetsu began inflating.
"Fascinating," he said, his eyes narrowing. "Now this, I was not expecting…"
The White Zetsu's yellow eyes flashed red, its grotesquely bubbling skin developing deep crimson boils as its entire body expanded to twice its size…
"Die, Uchiha dog…"
"Eh!?" the other White Zetsu shrieked. "What's happening to you!?"
Kakashi kicked the fat White Zetsu away.
"Earth Style: Drywall!"
"Summoning: Rashōmon!"
As one, Kakashi and Orochimaru slammed their palms against the linoleum floor, raising two layers of wall between the Zetsu and Sakura: the first, a fragile wall fashioned from the hospital's gypsum walls, adorned with multiple decorative dog heads; the second, a pair of iron doors locked fast with chains, emblazoned with a leering, demonic face.
Boom.
The iron gate's chains jingled as the White Zetsu detonated harmlessly on the other side— or at the very least, harmlessly to them, which was the important part. Explosions are only very rarely harmless, and as they were about to see, the operating theatre was very harmed.
"Smells like blood," Orochimaru said, flicking his forked tongue and tasting the air. "Interesting… the Chinoike clan, eh? Haven't collected one of theirs yet…"
Once they were certain the danger had passed, the two shinobi lowered their barriers, revealing a large hole blasted through the operating theatre's walls and floor that led outside, its jagged edges plastered with crimson bloodstains. One of the three real medics had unfortunately been caught on the wrong side of the barriers and had perished, while the other two had merely been knocked unconscious by the shockwave.
"He exploded…" the surviving White Zetsu said, dazed. "I didn't know we could do that…"
"That's because you can't," Orochimaru replied good-naturedly. "Now, that's enough out of you…"
With a hand sign, Orochimaru activated the toxin in its bloodstream, instantly paralysing the White Zetsu before sealing it away in a scroll for research. Naturally, he could have done so earlier, but he'd wanted to verify the Akatsuki's objective, so he'd refrained from doing so before they acted.
"So, if I'm following," Kakashi said slowly. "The Akatsuki's been infiltrated by some third party…?"
"It would appear so," Orochimaru said.
It was then that Kakashi finally remembered why he had come in the first place: to prevent Sakura's eggs from being stolen. He knew she had wanted to abort them, but even so, he doubted that was how she would have wanted things to happen...
"Wait, that's right," Kakashi said, glancing at the two unconscious girls on the floor. "Sakura's eggs—"
"...one of the embryos has already been implanted in this Manyū woman. I personally performed the operations on the other two women as well, though they've already been taken away," Orochimaru said, visibly losing interest in this line of questioning. "I do have some interest in experiencing motherhood, but I have no plans to become pregnant in the immediate future..."
Kakashi's eyes widened in shock.
"You wouldn't—"
The world lurched as vertigo overcame him.
Kakashi reached for his weapon pouch, but his numb fingers missed it completely. Moments later, his legs gave out beneath him, and he stumbled before landing heavily on his backside... his ankle, it was slightly swollen, dotted with two red puncture marks… he had been bitten by a snake, but when…!?
"Special snake venom mixed with a local anaesthetic," Orochimaru's distant, tinny voice echoed amidst the maddening roar of blood rushing through Kakashi's ears. "You lowered your guard for a fraction of a second when we raised our barriers to protect Sakura-kun… you never felt a thing."
Kakashi could no longer speak. His tongue felt wooden, and his throat was constricting, he couldn't breathe…
"Now that Sakura-kun is helpless to resist, the time has finally come for us to become one... Living Corpse Reincarnation requires a three-year recovery period between bodies, which has not yet elapsed, but fortunately, this cloned body shares almost all of its DNA with the original… this compatibility should allow for long-term parasitisation..."
To think that Sakura had so desperately coveted Sakon and Ukon's Kekkei Genkai, the Hagoromo clan physique that allowed its users to merge together and share a single body... Assembling all the divine lineages would have allowed her to ascend to a higher level of existence and fight Madara on equal footing... but now that her wish was about to be granted, Kakashi was powerless to stop it.
"For the good of the Hidden Leaf Village."
Kakashi fainted.