Hoshigaki

Verge

"He knew your last name," Shino interjected, near silent. Sakura's jaw nearly cracked at the force of her tension as kikaichu beetles crawled out from behind her ears and from the collar of her hood. "He called you Hoshigaki."

The seals around them crackled a bright, dizzying red—the only warning of an outside attempt to break through the silencing barriers. Kiba jumped to his feet, Shino swelled the room with his insects, and a kunai was in each of Sakura's hands.

Four whole seconds passed before the seals glowed blue again and the light faded back into its paper confines. It was ten more seconds until Kiba crept over to one of his seals to check it.

"They're all... still up. No tears in the algorithms or an addition of a stop matrix," he informed them. "Whoever tried to break in didn't make it all the way..." He glanced at the other seals. "Should we take 'em down or-or something? It's—look, we're already in pretty deep shit as it is, I don't know how much, you know..."

Sakura exhaled through her nose. "Keep them up," she said. She looked down at Akamaru as he trotted over and placed his paw on her knee, then looked back up. "I have a lot of things to tell you."

::

Orochimaru nearly gagged on the blood that flooded his mouth as a hand crushed his throat and choke-slammed him into a tree deep in one of Konoha's training grounds. He laughed wetly at the furious glare of his attacker and was rewarded with a tighter grip.

"I should've known," he wheezed. "Little Hoshigaki Sakura, pink-haired and lovely and alive. Why be surprised when her doting father is lurking around the village when he's supposed to think she's dead?" He eyed Kisame's disguise. "You're a bit discolored, I suppose, but humor me. Have you known she was here the whole time? Was it a recent discovery? Oh, don't tell me, did you know about this the whole time?" The corners of Orochimaru's lips turned up in the vaguest hint of a smile. "I'm impressed. That's cunning, especially for you."

Kisame kept his grip, unfazed at the jabs. "Stay out of her way. She wants to be chuunin and I don't want you fucking it up for her."

"Does she even know you're here, Kisame-kun?"

"And if I ever catch you tryin' ta' break in her apartment again," he continued like he hadn't been interrupted, "I'll snap your bones one by one, piece by piece, and stuff the rest of you into the fresh body of the next shinobi I kill."

Orochimaru chuckled, and though it sounded more like a hack than a laugh, his amusement was as clear as the disgusting shine in his gaze. Kisame loathed people like him—people who toyed with human lives because they could, not because they should. Sure, maybe there were times when he killed and relished in the fight, but he wasn't the kind of sick, twisted fuck that experimented on people for fun.

Kisame opened his fist and dropped the bastard, a slight downturn to his lips. "There're thousands of other lives you can ruin. Leave Sakura's out of it."

Orochimaru pressed a few fingers wreathed in green chakra to the parts of his neck beginning to bruise and stared at his counterpart with clinical fascination. Hoshigaki was never one to shy away from chaotic brutality, and really, someone such as he wouldn't survive without bloodshed. Orochimaru would have expected Kisame to start that earth-shattering fight then and there, bringing both his plans and the exams to a shattering halt. But he hadn't.

All for the sake of one person. And that hadn't changed in over twelve years, it seemed.

"You've always amazed me," Orochimaru said. He glanced at the bright greenery around them, noting all the paths of escape and that Kisame was blocking none of them. "Fearful of nothing towards yourself, fearing everything for her. Thinking nothing of others, thinking the world of her. You're a killer wrapped in sentiment." He hummed. "I've always wondered: why make a weakness for yourself when you could be invincible?"