Hanzo's ninjutsu collection room smelled of old ink and dust and decades of careful hoarding.
Orochimaru had worked through the scroll racks methodically, pulling, skimming, returning. Now he stood near the center of the room with his hands at his sides, surveying what remained.
"Mostly water-style techniques," he said. "Nothing particularly remarkable beyond that." He clicked his tongue. "Disappointing, for a demigod."
"He became a demigod because he was powerful enough to earn the title — not because he was an innovator." Finn moved along the nearest shelf, running a finger across the bindings. "And the Rain Country's foundational depth just isn't there. The Hidden Rain Village was barely founded before the Second Shinobi World War — Hanzo built it himself. Stack that against nations that have had several generations of Kage developing their techniques and passing them down through great clans, and the gap isn't surprising."
There weren't many powerful ninja families in the village to begin with. The Hidden Rain's reputation had always rested on one man. When that man was Hanzo, it worked. It didn't translate into institutional depth.
"You make sense," Orochimaru admitted, without much interest in dwelling on it.
He glanced back along the racks, then asked, "What about his summoning scroll? The Salamander gave all three of us considerable trouble back then. It's not on the level of the Three Sacred Summoning Grounds, but it's still a substantial creature. I'd imagine one of your people could put it to good use."
Finn shook his head. "I didn't find one. I'm not sure he had a formal summoning scroll at all."
He had thought about this. The Salamander was an extraordinary asset — if Juzo, for instance, could add a beast of that scale to his repertoire, it would meaningfully raise his combat ceiling. But the scroll simply wasn't there.
The more Finn considered it, the more he suspected Hanzo had never needed one. A summoning contract required the consent of both parties and a signed agreement. There was another path: a forced contract, where sheer strength and will bent the creature into service without its willing participation. Uchiha Obito had done something similar with the Nine-Tails during the Kyubi Incident. Madara before him. They had used the Sharingan to override the beast's will and then formalized the bind after the fact. Hanzo had no Sharingan, but at his peak, he may not have needed one. Raw power could substitute for a lot of things.
"That's unfortunate," Orochimaru said, shrugging it off. He already had his contract with the Ryuchi Cave. One more summoning beast was a minor footnote.
He turned to leave — and stopped.
Finn was holding a scroll. The kanji stamped on the outer wrap read: Forbidden.
Orochimaru's eyes went to it immediately. "What is that?"
"Something that will make you considerably happier than anything else in this room." Finn lifted it slightly, just enough to tilt the label into the light.
"I wouldn't assume that." Orochimaru's tone was flat, but his gaze didn't move off the scroll. Then, without further comment, he brought his hands together in a summoning seal.
A soft bang. A puff of white smoke dissolved in his palm, and a scroll appeared in his hand.
He held it out to Finn.
"Impure World Reincarnation," he said. "A detailed summary I compiled — everything I've worked out so far. You've had an interest in soul-related ninjutsu for some time. This will at least give you a solid foundation. Once you've absorbed the structure of the technique, picking up other spirit-related ninjutsu afterward should be significantly easier."
Finn's expression shifted. The scroll landed in his hands and his eyes went directly to the bindings.
When Orochimaru had still been in Konoha, there had been a line he never crossed — Konoha's ninjutsu stayed in Konoha, regardless of their personal arrangement. That restraint was gone now. He could hand over Second Hokage-developed forbidden techniques and explain them at length, and no one could say a word about it.
"I appreciate it," Finn said, and meant it. He didn't bother softening the admission. "I won't stand on ceremony."
The technique mattered on a practical level that had nothing to do with academic curiosity. No one knew the exact shape of their own future. Finn had survived things that should have killed him more than once, and he would not always be in a position to prevent the next one. If someday, against all expectation, he ended up dead — recalled through Impure World Reincarnation by whoever happened to have his remains — then mastering the technique himself was the difference between being someone's weapon and having options. Understanding the mechanism from the inside was its own form of leverage.
"And this." Orochimaru summoned a second item — a handwritten notebook, dense with his own notations. He extended it to Finn. "Foundational material. Start here before you touch the other scroll."
Finn opened it before Orochimaru had finished the sentence.
The first section introduced the divine figures associated with the soul — entities that the ninja world's various traditions had catalogued, cross-referenced, and argued over for centuries. Finn had expected the God of Death to sit at the top of that structure. He didn't.
The God of Death, Orochimaru's notes explained, occupied a specific and limited role. He devoured souls. He responded to the Shiki Fūjin seal. He was dangerous in the way a weapon is dangerous — effective in his function, constrained by it. The notebook's tone was almost dismissive.
The figure at the actual apex of the soul-world hierarchy was called by several names: the King of the Underworld. Pluto. Yama. In some traditions, simply the Judge.
Orochimaru had sketched him. It was a rough thing, assembled from accounts and second-hand records rather than any direct observation, but Finn recognized the figure immediately.
That's the King of Hell.
The one the Rinnegan's Human Path could call upon. The one who could drag souls directly from living bodies, read the truth in them, and return them — or not. Finn had always filed it as a Rinnegan-specific construct, something conjured by the technique rather than a genuine independent entity.
The notebook said otherwise. The reason the God of Death felt underwhelming relative to his reputation, Orochimaru had written, was that the God of Death dealt exclusively in killing. The King of the Underworld dealt in something far broader: the reversal of life and death itself. No deception could survive his presence. Anyone who lied before him was executed on the spot.
I wonder if I could get him out and take a closer look at him someday.
The thought arrived fully formed. Finn let it sit without pursuing it, and turned the page.
"You're right that Jiraiya will very likely track us here," Orochimaru said, picking up the previous thread as if he'd never put it down. "You may not be giving his intelligence capabilities their proper weight. Among the three of us, he was always the most gifted at tracking and information gathering. It's not an instinct people usually associate with him."
"Hm." Finn kept reading.
"It doesn't concern you? His finding us here would expose the Rain Country operation entirely."
Finn looked up from the notebook.
"Orochimaru," he said, "Jiraiya finding out is practically inevitable regardless of whether he comes here. Our partner in this is Shimura Danzo. You've worked with the man. Do you genuinely believe he looked at Konoha's intelligence channels and decided that the Yorozuya's takeover of the Rain Country was something he needed to keep to himself?"
A beat.
"Konoha almost certainly already knows," Finn continued. "Danzo told them, or had someone tell them, because that's what Danzo does. He puts Konoha first — sometimes ruthlessly, sometimes with his own interests folded in, but Konoha first. The Rain Country situation is too significant for him to sit on." He turned back to the notebook. "So the question of whether Jiraiya comes here and discovers it himself, or receives a report through back channels in Konoha, is just a question of timing. The outcome is identical."
Orochimaru was quiet for a moment. "You're right," he said. "I was letting the surface-level secrecy confuse the actual situation."
"If he shows up," Finn said, with a slight curve at the corner of his mouth, "I'll pour him a drink and see if I can get him to tell me where Tsunade is."
Orochimaru gave him a flat look. "That won't work."
"Why not? I have no ill intentions toward her. I just want to negotiate."
"Because," Orochimaru said, with the careful patience of someone explaining something obvious, "you are extremely handsome, and Jiraiya is not going to willingly point you in Tsunade's direction." He let that settle for a half-second, then something shifted in his face — a private amusement working its way to the surface.
He started laughing.
It built in a way that seemed to catch even him off guard. Not the usual cool, controlled sound he allowed himself, but something genuinely unguarded. Loud, a little unhinged, and completely unselfconscious. He laughed for a long moment.
Finn watched him with the expression of someone waiting for a storm to pass.
Orochimaru wound down at his own pace and returned to his usual composure as if nothing had happened.
"Speaking of Tsunade," Finn said, ignoring the entire episode. "Is there... any realistic possibility there? Between her and me?"
Orochimaru looked at him directly. "What kind of possibility?"
Finn cleared his throat. "I've heard she's been struggling. Psychologically. Something from her past that she can't move past." He touched his nose. "I'm a generous person. I was thinking, if the opportunity arose, I could help her work through it. Sacrifice a little of my own time for her wellbeing. That sort of thing."
"So you want to know if you can seduce her."
"That's a crude way of putting it, but if you're going to insist on plain language — not entirely off the table."
Orochimaru's smile returned, sharper this time. "Let me paint the picture for you. Tsunade Senju. Granddaughter of the First and Second Hokage. Princess of the Land of Fire by bloodline. You, meanwhile, are an S-rank missing-nin wanted by every major hidden village, a man who controls a foreign country through a private armed organization, and who may become a formal enemy of Konoha at some point in the not-distant future. You think this is realistic?"
Finn set the notebook down with some dignity.
"You're mischaracterizing the relationship between Konoha and me completely," he said. "Let's be precise. I have played shogi with the Third Hokage. I personally witnessed the Fourth Hokage catching Jiraiya in the act of peeping on a women's bathhouse. Shimura Danzo — senior Konoha official, the Third Hokage's oldest peer, a pillar of the village's shadow infrastructure — is my business partner. When you look at it clearly, I am less a threat to Konoha than I am an informal part of its extended network. We're allies, practically speaking."
Orochimaru's expression was patient in the way a wall is patient.
"You're also planning to steal the Scroll of Seals," he said, "and acquire as many Sharingan as you can."
Finn was quiet for a moment.
Then he placed one hand on Orochimaru's shoulder, solemnly, like a man delivering a eulogy.
"I'm glad you brought that up," he said. "Because I think there's some important context missing from your understanding of this. I have always had a deep personal admiration for the Second Hokage, Tobirama Senju. Extraordinary man. Visionary. His documented skepticism toward the Uchiha clan, in particular, represents a level of foresight that I find genuinely inspiring. Naturally, as someone who shares his perspective on that matter, I feel a responsibility to carry his work forward — to help resolve the internal tensions within Konoha, eliminate the friction the Uchiha situation creates, and guide the village toward a more stable and prosperous future. In that light, inheriting the Scroll of Seals — which contains the majority of his recorded ninjutsu legacy — is not theft. It is a gesture of tribute. A student honoring his master's work." He paused. "Doesn't that make me something of a contributor to Konoha? I think it does."
Orochimaru stared at him for a long moment.
"With that level of shamelessness," he said finally, "you might actually be able to deal with Tsunade."