Kakuzu and Biwa Juzo had settled into the chairs outside Orochimaru's laboratory with the ease of men who had learned to find comfort in whatever surface was available. Jiraiya was moving back and forth in the corridor, not precisely pacing — more like a man who needed to occupy his body while his mind worked through something it wasn't ready to resolve yet.
Sasori came around the corner, looked at the three of them, and tilted his head slightly. "What's this? Looks like someone is performing surgery on the other side of that door."
"I was going to help Juzo sell Orochimaru's body," Kakuzu said, without particular emotion. "Finn told me to hold off. He has plans for it."
Sasori accepted this, then asked: "Where is Finn? What happened to him?"
"Dryad," Kakuzu said, in the tone of someone filing a one-word report.
Jiraiya stopped walking for a moment and looked at them, then resumed walking. He wasn't familiar enough with Sasori to start a conversation, and his mind was elsewhere anyway.
"He just successfully completed Sage Mode," Kakuzu continued, "and then the Wood Release woke up at the same time and caused some problems. He's inside getting Orochimaru's read on it."
"Sage Mode." Sasori said it with the attention of someone who had been waiting to hear that confirmed. "It finally happened."
"Finally," Kakuzu agreed.
"How's the Hanzo reconstruction going?" Kakuzu asked.
"Finished. It took longer than it should have." Sasori paused. "Finn tore him apart too thoroughly. I spent three days on assembly alone."
He said this without complaint — with, if anything, a mild satisfaction in the technical challenge of it. Sasori's roster of human puppets had reached a level that was difficult to overstate: the Third Kazekage, the Third Raikage, and now Hanzo of the Salamander restored to functional combat form. Between the three of them, Sasori could field the equivalent of a small army of historical heavyweights. He had not needed to act in a direct engagement since joining the Yorozuya, but the option was there.
Kakuzu looked at him with something that was, for Kakuzu, a relatively open expression. "Your combat power is being wasted sitting here. Come do field work with me."
"I thought the Akatsuki organization was handling current contracts."
"They handle the routine ones." Kakuzu's tone settled into something more candid, and he glanced at Jiraiya's back with a slight inflection that meant we can go further with this conversation later. "The complicated ones need people with actual capability. Consider it."
Sasori didn't commit to anything, but he didn't refuse either, which from him was essentially the same as agreement.
The laboratory door opened.
Finn stepped out, arms first — the wood visible on his forearm and up past the elbow now, the branches extending in small arcs, leaves catching the light of the corridor. He looked functional. He did not look pleased.
Sasori looked at the arm with unconcealed curiosity. "Dryad transformation?"
"Can everyone stop calling it that," Finn said, with the resignation of a man who has already lost this particular battle. "Orochimaru says three days. After that, the Wood Release is fully integrated and I can control it. I'll be fine."
Kakuzu said, with something that might have been appreciation if you listened closely enough: "Sage Mode and Wood Release. You're moving toward the First Hokage at a meaningful pace."
"It's not finished yet," Finn said.
He left the rest of that sentence alone.
Orochimaru came out behind him a moment later. Jiraiya was already positioned — not aggressively, but solidly, in the way of someone who has decided they are going to have a conversation before the other person gets any further down the corridor.
"You owe me an explanation," Jiraiya said.
"I don't recall owing you anything," Orochimaru said, looking at him with mild impatience.
"Why the Yorozuya. Why Konoha. Why the Uchiha." Jiraiya's voice was level, but the effort of keeping it level was visible. "You don't just leave the village and kill your own people without a reason, Orochimaru."
Orochimaru regarded him for a moment. Something moved through his expression — not softness exactly, but a recognition of the weight Jiraiya was carrying into this conversation, and a decision about how much of that weight he was willing to accommodate.
"Konoha isn't the Konoha it was," he said. "I find it suffocating. I find the Yorozuya interesting and the people in it worth my time. That's the whole of it." He paused, then added without warmth: "As for the Uchiha — you know the situation in the village. The Sharingan interests me for research purposes, and the clan's position gave me cover to act on that interest. I added fuel to a fire that was already burning."
"They were comrades," Jiraiya said.
"They were Konoha's comrades. Konoha and I are finished with each other."
"And us?" Jiraiya said. The question came from somewhere more unguarded. "Tsunade and me. Are we also finished?"
The briefest pause. Something in Orochimaru's eyes shifted — not much, and not for long — before it settled back into its usual controlled surface.
He put his hand against Jiraiya's chest and pushed him, gently, out of the doorway. As he walked past, he said, quietly and without turning back: "I am no longer a ninja of Konoha, Jiraiya."
Jiraiya's hand came up. It almost caught Orochimaru's arm.
"Stop inserting yourself into things that aren't your business," Orochimaru said.
The hand dropped.
Jiraiya stood in the corridor and watched Orochimaru walk to Sasori, exchange two quiet words — the Rinnegan research, come with me — and the two of them disappeared around the far corner without looking back. Orochimaru's footsteps didn't slow.
Finn put his hand on Jiraiya's shoulder.
"Don't," Jiraiya started.
"You didn't come here expecting to bring him back," Finn said. "You came here to hear it from him directly. To make it real." He let that sit for a moment. "You've heard it. That's what you came for."
Jiraiya was quiet for a long time.
"He's my teammate," he said finally. "He's been my teammate since we were kids. And now he looks at me like I'm a stranger."
"You've been living separate lives for a long time," Finn said. "That started before today."
Jiraiya didn't answer. He stood there with his arms at his sides, looking at the empty corridor where Orochimaru had been.
Then he said, with less force than before: "You're right. I knew that. I knew before I came here what the answer would be." He sighed, a long slow exhale. "Do you have any wine?"
"I have wine," Finn said. "I'd join you, but drinking right now feels like watering a plant." He held up the wooden arm.
Jiraiya looked at it. Then, despite himself, he laughed — a single short sound, genuine. "Fine. Point me toward it and I'll manage on my own."
"Ask any maid in the corridor."
Jiraiya took two steps, then stopped. "You're going to see those two?" He glanced toward Kakuzu and Juzo, still positioned near the door.
"Yes."
"Then I'll get out of your way." He turned back and looked at Finn with something warmer than the conversation had contained up to that point. "You are a good friend, you know. Even when you're completely insufferable."
"Go drink," Finn said.
Jiraiya started walking. After a few steps, almost as an afterthought, he said: "I'm leaving in a day or two. Going back to Konoha. Don't bother seeing me off."
"Where after Konoha?" Finn asked.
Jiraiya caught himself a fraction of a second before the answer came out. "Report to the old man. Then... wander, probably. The usual."
Finn nodded, without comment, and watched him go.
Konoha, he thought. Reporting the situation. Then — probably — back to Kushina's side before too long.
He held the thought for a moment without reaching any conclusion he didn't already have, then turned toward Kakuzu and Juzo.
"You said you had plans for the body," Kakuzu said, dispensing with preamble. "What plans?"
"It's not about information security," Finn said, preempting the concern he could see forming. "Orochimaru already handled the containment. That's not the issue."
"Then what?"
"You'll remember I mentioned I've been trying to locate Tsunade."
"Several sightings," Kakuzu said. "None of them current. She moves after every confirmed appearance. She's running a counter-tracking pattern, probably to stay ahead of debt collectors."
"Which means she's disciplined, not hiding from us specifically," Finn said. "Getting her to come to us voluntarily is more efficient than chasing her. And there's one thing that will bring Tsunade Senju out of wherever she is faster than anything else."
Kakuzu's eyes moved to the door of the laboratory and back.
"Orochimaru's body," he said.
"One of the Three Sannin," Finn said. "Her teammate, dead. When that news reaches her — and we make sure it reaches her — she'll come to confirm it herself. Tsunade is not the kind of person who leaves something like that unverified." He looked at Kakuzu. "We use the body to set the stage. She comes to us on her own initiative. I have my conversation with her, and we conclude whatever arrangement makes sense from there."
Kakuzu considered this. "And the body itself?"
"Still sellable afterward," Finn said. "Don't look at me like that. I'm not sentimental about it. This is just sequencing."
Kakuzu's expression did not change. It was possible that, somewhere underneath it, he found this approach professionally satisfying.
"I can work with sequencing," he said.