Finn had expected needles. Scalpels, maybe. Some kind of extended procedure with preparation and recovery involved.
Orochimaru reached across the laboratory bench, picked up a syringe, found Finn's arm, and injected the contents into it.
Done.
"That's it?" Finn looked at him.
"That's it," Orochimaru said, examining the injection site without looking up. A cluster of white marks had appeared on Finn's skin around the point of entry — small, faint, spreading slightly outward the way frost spreads across glass.
For most people, those marks would have stayed. Would have grown, in some cases. The cells of the First Hokage were aggressive by nature — they competed with host tissue, they asserted dominance, they reshaped the biological environment they entered. That aggression was what made them so difficult to integrate safely. It was why the sixty children Orochimaru had experimented on decades ago had mostly not survived. Their bodies had been overwhelmed. The cells had won the internal competition, which was not the outcome anyone wanted.
Finn watched the white marks shrink.
They were the size of a coin. Then a thumbnail. Then smaller. Then gone, the skin beneath them exactly as it had been, no trace of what had just entered his body visible on the surface.
Orochimaru's expression had been carefully neutral throughout. Now a small smile appeared.
"Exactly as I predicted," he said. "No aggression. No competition. Your body simply absorbed them." He straightened up. "The cells of the First Hokage entered your biology and immediately stopped being the cells of the First Hokage. They became yours. That's perfect integration — not just compatibility, but complete assimilation."
Sasori had drifted over from his workstation and was watching with the specific attention of someone who had been skeptical and was now updating their position.
"How does it feel?" he asked Finn.
Finn closed his eyes.
He went through the full inventory: chakra flow, physical sensation, any new pressure or warmth or altered quality in how his body felt from the inside. He extended his awareness through his limbs. He ran a brief check using the physical techniques he'd been developing since arriving in this world.
He opened his eyes. "Nothing. It feels exactly the same as before." He paused. "Can I have another injection?"
"No," Orochimaru said. "More wouldn't change anything. Your body would absorb them the same way and you'd feel exactly as nothing." He set the syringe aside. "What I gave you is a seed. It's there now, inside you, doing nothing visible and nothing you can currently perceive. Whether it grows into something usable depends on you. Go back to your water and earth chakra work. Try to merge them the way you've been trying. The difference is that now the cellular foundation is present — the bridge exists, even if the door on the other side hasn't opened yet."
"Understood," Finn said.
Orochimaru didn't stay for dinner.
He collected a selection of rare materials he'd arranged to take from Sasori's stores — the exchange they'd agreed on in lieu of conventional payment — packed them efficiently, and left with the same ease he'd arrived with. A brief farewell, a reminder to stay in contact through dark world channels, and then the cave entrance was empty and the forest outside was quiet.
Sasori cooked. He always cooked at this hour, regardless of what else was happening.
Without Orochimaru, the laboratory felt larger than it was. The dinner table — which was really just a cleared section of the preparation area — held three settings instead of four. Finn ate. Kakuzu ate. Sasori sat across from them and watched, in the particular silence that was his version of company.
When Orochimaru had been present, the evenings had developed a rhythm: Sasori and Orochimaru trading observations about technique theory, Kakuzu occasionally raising practical questions about ninjutsu application, Finn listening and asking things when something sparked his interest. It had been, in a quiet way, the most intellectually alive environment Finn had occupied since arriving in this world.
Now there was the sound of chopsticks and nothing else.
After a while, Sasori said, "What are we doing next?"
Finn looked up. "You're done with your current work?"
"Effectively. The Raikage puppet is finished. The cellular research wrapped up with Orochimaru's departure." Sasori was quiet for a moment. "I've been in this base for quite a long time. I think I should go out."
Finn considered his own position. The Lightning Release techniques from the Third Raikage's extraction weren't fully digested yet — he had the complete theory and the basic application, but the more complex forms needed continued practice. The Hashirama cell transplant was a seed that needed time. There was no urgent new objective presenting itself.
"I don't have anything pressing," he admitted, and looked at Kakuzu.
Kakuzu took two more bites of rice, set his bowl down, and said, "Actually, I've been meaning to raise something. Our organization — it's loose, no internal rules, everyone operates freely. That's fine. But I think we should at least give it a name."
"A name," Sasori said.
"For external purposes. When we operate together, or when we operate separately under the same affiliation. Other organizations have names. The Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist. The Akatsuki, over in the Land of Rain. Even mercenary groups tend to operate under a banner. Without one, we're just describing ourselves individually, which limits how we're perceived and how much we can charge for work."
He glanced around the table, inviting responses.
"Red Sand Sasori," Sasori said.
Kakuzu's chopsticks stopped moving. He looked at Sasori. Sasori looked back at him with complete sincerity.
The silence stretched.
Finn put down his chopsticks and covered his mouth. His shoulders moved.
"That's how you introduce yourself," Kakuzu said, with the careful patience of someone talking to a wall. "That's your name. I'm asking what we call the organization. The group. All of us, together, operating under a collective—"
"I understood the question," Sasori said.
Finn gave up trying not to laugh.
Both of them looked at him. Kakuzu's expression had migrated into something resigned. "Is this funny?"
"Yes," Finn said, and composed himself. "Sorry. Professional training in the Marine covered introductions and organizational nomenclature. It's a reflex."
Kakuzu stared at him for a moment, then picked up his chopsticks again with the air of someone deciding that the context was not worth pursuing.
"Fine," Finn said. "The underlying point is reasonable. We need a way to introduce ourselves collectively when it matters. Something that conveys what we are without requiring a full explanation every time." He thought for a moment. "What we actually do is share techniques, pool intelligence, help each other pursue individual goals, and occasionally take work together. That's basically a study group with combat capabilities."
A name surfaced in his memory from a long time ago — from a life that had nothing to do with Marine admirals or ninja worlds. He had been a student. There had been a particular period when delinquent manga and biker gangs were culturally omnipresent, involving pompadours, fierce brotherhood, and the kind of dramatic, kanji-heavy self-naming that appealed to adolescent boys going through their rebellious phase. He and his friends had formed what they called the Black Dragon Syndicate, which had sounded appropriately fierce for approximately one day before the student council president reported it to their homeroom teacher and they'd been compelled, under significant adult pressure, to revise the name to something more socially acceptable.
The Black Dragon Study Group had not had quite the same ring to it.
"The Black Dragon Study Group," Finn said, allowing himself the nostalgia.
Sasori and Kakuzu both looked at him.
Neither of them said anything.
After a moment, Kakuzu turned back to his food and said, "I've been thinking about this for a while. Given what we actually are — a loose group that takes any work available, shares resources, operates without fixed hierarchy — the most accurate description would be something like the Yorozuya (Jack of All Trades). A general-purpose outfit. Takes any job. No particular ideology. Functional."
"The Yorozuya," Sasori said, testing the word. He nodded once. "That works."
"Excuse me," Finn said. "I just proposed a name. Black Dragon Study Group. I'm the one who organized this entire operation, found all of you, and constructed this whole arrangement from nothing, and no one responded."
"You said yourself there are no ranks here," Kakuzu said.
"That's a principle about internal operations, not about—"
"Black Dragon Study Group," Sasori said, with the tone of someone reviewing evidence and finding it insufficient. He set down his chopsticks. "No."
Finn looked between them.
The irony, which he was aware of, was that he had specifically framed this organization as non-hierarchical in order to avoid making the people he was recruiting feel subordinated. It was a deliberate choice that had worked — all three of them had joined, and all three of them operated with genuine autonomy. The cost of that choice was apparently that when he proposed a name for the organization he had built, nobody was obligated to listen to him.
He picked his chopsticks back up.
"The Yorozuya," he said, after a moment.
Kakuzu nodded, satisfied. Sasori returned to watching them eat.
Finn ate his dinner and privately kept the Black Dragon Study Group as the name for something that existed only in his own mind, which was fine. Some things didn't need external acknowledgment to be real.