Naruto and Sasuke stood still, eyes locked on the raging inferno. The towering flames before them had blocking their view entirely. None of them could see what had happened to the person inside the flames.
So, they waited.
Their breathing was heavy, hearts pounding as they stared into the blaze.
"Did… did we get him?" Sakura asked, her voice shaky. She clutched her arms, glancing anxiously at the dying flames.
Slowly, the fire began to fade. Smoke curled into the air as the last of the flames flickered out—revealing the battlefield once more.
But what they saw was far from what they had hoped for.
A sharp snap! cut through the silence, followed by several more.
The sound of metal snapping under pressure.
The steel wires Sasuke had used to trap Orochimaru began snapping one by one, like overstretched rubber bands. Orochimaru moved forward, step by step, casually tearing through them as if they were made of paper. Within seconds, they all lay scattered on the ground.
He was completely unharmed.
Not a single burn, not even a scratch except for one disturbing detail.
His face.
It was melting.
Or more accurately… peeling.
Beneath the melting skin, something else was staring back at them. A cold, inhuman face emerged, its snake-like eyes locking onto theirs. As they stared into that eerie gaze, a chilling realization settled in what they had seen before was nothing more than a mask.
"What the hell… is he fireproof!?" Naruto yelled, his voice filled with disbelief. "He doesn't even look burned!"
But as Naruto caught a clearer glimpse beneath the melting mask, his pupils shrank.
He had seen that face before.
Not in real life, but in books, to be more specific.
"Hehe~ You two really are impressive," Orochimaru chuckled, voice cold and slippery. "Your instincts… they're even sharper than your brother's, Itachi."
He turned his attention directly to Sasuke, licking his lips with amusement.
Orochimaru moved forward slowly, in no rush to attack just walking leisurely toward them with an unsettling calm, like a predator toying with its prey.
His face now looked grotesque. The skin hung loosely, half-slid off, like a patchwork of flesh badly glued to a skull. From one side, part of the real face beneath was now visible especially his eye.
It didn't belong to a man. It belonged to something snake-like.
Sasuke stepped back slightly, tense. "Who… are you?" he demanded, voice low and alert.
The figure stopped and tilted his head slightly, studying them like insects in a jar.
"Orochimaru, that's my name" he said.
Halfway through the name, his voice shifted starting in the same feminine tone they'd heard before, but ending in the deeper, cold voice of a man.
At the mention of that name, Naruto's eyes widened further.
So it really is him…
He had read about Orochimaru the one author whose books he'd studied the most. He had been genuinely curious about the kind of person capable of writing such detailed works on bloodlines and kekkei genkai. But when he finally read about the man himself, it terrified him.
And now, that name stood right in front of them making his whole body tense.
Although Orochimaru was known for his obsession with science and experimentation, that wasn't what truly terrified Naruto.
It was his past.
Orochimaru had once been a respected shinobi of Konoha until he was branded a traitor. His crimes weren't simple desertion or political betrayal. He had conducted horrific experiments on Konoha's own people. Civilians, comrades, innocents none were spared in his pursuit of "research and development."
And when his actions were discovered, he vanished, escaping the village and earning his place among the S-rank rogue ninjas criminals too dangerous to be ignored.
Now, standing face to face with this monster, Naruto felt sweat forming on his brow.
Orochimaru still wasn't truly fighting them—he had been merely toying with them from the start. If he had been serious from the beginning, Sasuke and Sakura might have already been dead.
They had been dancing in the palm of a Kage-level powerhouse. One of the legendary Sannin.
Whatever he was after, it wasn't simple.
And that made it worse.
Then Orochimaru slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out something that made Sasuke's heart skip a beat the Heaven Scroll.
He twirled it in his fingers like a toy and smiled.
"Can you guess where I got this from?" he asked mockingly.
Sasuke's eyes widened. He immediately checked his pouch, fingers trembling. He searched every pocket, every fold—but… he found nothing.
The Heaven Scroll was gone.
"W–When did you steal it?!" he snapped, stepping back in panic.
Orochimaru chuckled darkly. "Does it matter now?"
He kept tossing the scroll into the air and catching it lazily, continuing to mock Sasuke with every motion. And then suddenly he stopped.
With a blur of motion, Orochimaru formed several strange hand signs.
"Now then…" he said coldly, staring directly at Sasuke.
"Let's wrap this up."
Before any of them could react, both Sasuke and Sakura froze in place, eyes wide with confusion. They couldn't move.
They were instantly paralyzed by Orochimaru.
"Wha—!?"
Naruto's eyes darted between them and Orochimaru, realizing they had been hit with some kind of sealing or paralysis jutsu.
Orochimaru smiled again and then, his neck began to stretch.
Elongating. Slithering toward Sasuke like a monstrous snake, closing the distance in one grotesque movement.
"..."
'WTF is he human or snake?'
Naruto was horrified.
He had never seen a jutsu so strange one that could stretch someone's neck to such an unnatural length. The sheer weirdness of it all left him stunned. Watching Orochimaru like this, Naruto found it easier to believe he was a snake rather than a human.
But Naruto didn't back down.
If he let fear take over now, they'd all die. He had to believe someone would come. He just had to hold Orochimaru off until then.
He clapped his hands together and began forming seals as quickly as possible, gathering a massive amount of chakra.
"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"
A violent gust exploded from Naruto's position, his chakra surging forward like a storm. This time, he didn't hold back. He pushed himself harder than ever before, pouring everything into the jutsu.
A roaring blast of wind tore through the forest, ripping apart everything within a five-meter radius. The jutsu cleared the area around them with sheer force, and that powerful burst came hurtling straight toward Orochimaru's stretched neck.
"Huff… huff…" Naruto dropped to one knee, panting hard. That attack had drained him more than anything he'd ever done before.
"Sasuke! Move! Now!" he shouted, voice strained, hoping his jutsu had done enough to stop Orochimaru from reaching Sasuke before he could break free from the technique.
Using such a massive amount wind of chakra for a single jutsu was dangerous—very dangerous.
If the user's body wasn't strong enough to handle the surge of wind chakra, it could lead to internal damage. And without sufficient mastery over the technique, it could backfire wasting energy, dispersing power, and severely reducing the effectiveness of the jutsu.
This time, Naruto had pushed himself to the absolute limit. He had used an amount of chakra nearly equivalent to Kakashi's reserves to unleash that jutsu. Although it wasn't at full power his lack of mastery made it difficult to control it was still incredibly powerful.
"Oh… now that's something," Orochimaru muttered with clear intrigue, his eyes gleaming as he swiftly retracted his neck and leapt away, avoiding the worst of the blast just in time.
The spot where he had stood was obliterated.
The terrain had been completely altered—the ground stripped bare, the topsoil was gone, plants shredded, and not a single blade of grass left behind. All that remained was cracked, barren earth.
Orochimaru stood at a distance, silently taking in the destruction. His eyes gleamed, not with fear but with fascination.
Had he been caught directly in that attack, even he might have sustained some real injuries.
To unleash such a jutsu at that age...
'This brat… really is something,' he thought, a strange grin curling on his half-melted face.
But enough was enough.
He couldn't afford any more delays. It was time to plant the Cursed Seal on Sasuke and he had no intention of letting Naruto interfere.
With a swift motion, Orochimaru bit his thumb, letting a drop of blood fall. Then, he unfurled a scroll and slammed his hand into the ground.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
Poof!
A huge cloud of smoke erupted.
And then—
THUD!
The earth trembled as a monstrous weight landed in the clearing as the dust slowly settled…
And Naruto's eyes widened in horror.
A giant snake had appeared on the battlefield towering, thick-bodied, and radiating killing intent. Just its head was nearly four times Naruto's size. Its massive body coiled around the clearing, scales glistening in a dark brown hue, patterned with black markings. Every time it moved, the ground shook beneath its weight.
Gulp!
Naruto swallowed hard, his throat dry.
The beast slithered forward slightly, tilting its head, eyes locked on Naruto. For a moment, the snake seemed to wait until Orochimaru gave the unspoken command. The creature hissed, and its attention sharpened.
Naruto could feel the tension spike in the air.
Naruto's mouth twitched nervously the moment the giant snake locked eyes on him.
Under Orochimaru's silent command, the enormous creature began to slither toward him slowly at first, or at least that's how it seemed from a distance. But to Naruto, who was watching that massive body close the gap with terrifying ease, it felt way too fast.
"W-Wait a minute! Let me tell you something!" Naruto shouted in a panic, raising his hands as if trying to reason with it. But the snake's unblinking eyes and unhinged aura told him everything he needed to know.
"Yeah—I'm definitely dead. Should've just run earlier!"
He turned and bolted into the woods in an instant.
Naruto sprinted as fast as he could, glancing back at the towering serpent barreling after him. Trees were being crushed, uprooted like weeds as the snake tore through the forest in pursuit.
Before vanishing into the undergrowth, Naruto yelled back one last warning toward Sasuke:
"Sasuke! He's one of the Legendary Sannin and a konoha traitor! If you get the chance, run!"
Then he disappeared into the woods.
The battlefield where they had started was now in ruins open, exposed, and dangerous. Naruto knew he stood no chance in the open against something that size. He had to use the forest, its trees, its uneven terrain. Anything that could buy him a few seconds longer.
He zigzagged through the woods, leaping over fallen logs and ducking under branches. The snake was still coming. It smashed through trees with brute force, its massive form cracking trunks and splintering wood. But its sheer size, while terrifying, was also slowing it down.
Naruto panted, sweat dripping from his brow, and let out a breath of relief.
'It's not as fast in the forest... That's my chance.'
Back at the clearing, Orochimaru stood with an amused expression.
"Heh~ You sure know a lot, don't you?" he chuckled darkly muttering to himself. "You're making me more and more interested in you, boy."
Sasuke, meanwhile, who had been frozen by Orochimaru's jutsu, finally felt the strange paralysis start to fade. He still wasn't sure what kind of technique Orochimaru had used on him. But thanks to the time Naruto had bought, he had finally broken free.
Looking at Orochimaru, his fists clenched.
That strange, snake-like man… he had paralyzed him without even touching him—and he was one of the Sannin. The realization brought immense pressure. He had also read about the legendary Sannin in the academy curriculum, but he had never expected to meet one in person, let alone in a situation like this.