Damn it, damn it, damn it! You deserved this for mocking me—mocking me!"
Tsunade babbled as she rubbed her face against Orochimaru's until their cheeks were equally streaked with soot. She stopped only when the sight of his flushed expression made her bare her teeth in a rueful grin by the firelight.
"Indeed," she teased, baring that grin. "The life of an Inuzuka's training dog suits you remarkably well."
Orochimaru looked at her with an expression somewhere between helplessness and amusement. He could tell at once that whatever had driven her into this mood wasn't easily quelled.
"You laughed at me," Tsunade snapped, refusing to own up. "So it's not my fault."
"Who told you to skimp on training?" Orochimaru countered, watching the embers reflect off the pale planes of her face. In the firelight her cheeks gleamed. He almost wanted to laugh.
"You were fussing over research again," he continued. "If you trained with me more often, your Fire Release wouldn't be so lacking. You go to the academy sometimes to teach sealing techniques, watch over Nawaki, and every other distraction. When did you find the time to train with me?"
Tsunade, arms folded across her chest and pressed into Orochimaru's side, huffed in mock indignation. "I have trained with you—lots. Remember?"
"You did that with a shadow clone," Orochimaru said dryly.
Tsunade's blush deepened. "My shadow clone is still me—mine thoughts, mine reflexes. How can it not be?"
Orochimaru sighed, the corner of his mouth twitching. He understood her point: a shadow clone carried her intent. But he also knew a clone was a clone—an approximation, not the whole person. Tsunade, being Tsunade, insisted otherwise until hunger interrupted their squabble.
"Oh…" She sat up abruptly, clapping a hand over her stomach. Her cheeks flared the color of the fire, mortified. "Let's go. Come with me—we'll clean the fish and wash up."
Orochimaru eyed the row of fish they'd recently cleaned: grilled, stewed, and dried provisions, enough to fill their bellies. He nodded.
Tsunade muttered, still irritated at having their pleasant mood broken by appetite. But she tucked herself into the same sleeping bag as Orochimaru anyway, pulling him close. He summoned a few small snakes, sent them slinking outward as sentries, and summoned some kikaichū to hover like guardian insects in the air. With their unusual watchfulness, they'd sleep lighter but safer than if they let their guard down.
Orochimaru closed his eyes. For the night, they let the fire's murmur lull them. For now, the village of Konoha was a distant silhouette and the world felt small and warm.
---
Konoha — Senju Manor.
Uzumaki Mito turned the small chest over in her hands. She frowned. A map? Hashirama had an ancestral treasure map? She could not recall seeing anything like it before. The label that had once been glued to the box had long since peeled away; without that clue, the chest looked unremarkable—just another item that had been stored and forgotten.
If it had mattered, Tobirama would surely have kept better track of it, she thought. That realization eased her concerns a little. Perhaps nothing important lay within.
They found themselves in a thick forest of mist and dew, the sunlight slanting through leaves and turning every droplet into a jewel. This was once a battlefield—the scarred ground between the Senju and the Uchiha. Over time nature had reclaimed it; rusty tools lay half-buried, and trees still bore the marks of old clashes.
"This is it," Tsunade said softly, reading the map. She crouched and picked up a half-buried kunai, which crumbled under her touch. "This battlefield… the Senju and Uchiha fought here."
Orochimaru squinted at the mark on the parchment and then around him. Time had been cruel to tools left to rot. "If there were gold, silver, or jewels, they would survive. Books and scrolls could too—some."
He hesitated. Forbidden techniques sealed away on ancient parchments—what if they crumbled on the touch and their effort was wasted? The thought pricked at him. He probed the soil with his senses and then pointed at a spot. "Here. This is where it's marked."
Just as he unfastened the Yin seal at his abdomen—preparing to release a portion of his Sage chakra to test the grounds—Tsunade thrust a shovel into his hand.
Orochimaru blinked, confused. Tsunade rolled up her sleeves and grinned. "Treasure hunts call for treasure-hunt methods," she declared. "We dig."
They dug like children: shovels biting into loam, sweat beading on brows, the world reduced to the rhythm of work. After a short, stubborn effort they broke through to a hollow. The hole looked like a cage. Together they heaved the iron lid away and jumped into the shallow pit to lower the enclosed contents gently onto the mud.
The rusted lid came free with a metallic screech. They watched the dirt slide away, and then they saw her: a girl wrapped in ragged blue cloth, black hair falling to her waist, ankles ringed with banded shackles. Her skin was pale, and her breath came in shallow, brittle gasps.
"A girl?" Tsunade blurted. She peered at the child's red eyes and the three–crescent, shuriken-like pattern within them. Her heart, normally armored and practical, skipped a beat.
Orochimaru's eyes narrowed. Mangekyō Sharingan. A relic before Uchiha Madara—too ancient for Madara himself, yet bearing resemblance. The mind leapt to questions: why seal an Uchiha behind a treasure map? Why burry a child where only the determined would find her?
The girl stirred. The chains at her feet clinked. She opened her eyes and stared straight at them. Her voice, hoarse from disuse, slithered out: "Who… are you?"
Tsunade took an instinctive step forward, but before she could reach out, the child activated a genjutsu. Orochimaru's contact lenses registered the ripple of Yin chakra; he moved faster. He slapped a hand to Tsunade's back, breaking the illusion.
"Free her!" he barked.
Tsunade's fist flew, and the cage shattered in a gust of anger. The bands that had bound the girl snapped and clattered away. She stood, stretching cramped limbs and glaring with an intensity that belied her slight frame.
"You are Senju!" she spat, voice raw. "You are… Senju!"
Tsunade bristled, fists balling. "What if I am?"
The girl's left eye was already bleeding and the scar across her face deepened as she forced herself up. "Senju… die!"
The single phrase slashed like a blade. The girl's gaze fixed on Tsunade and, to their horror, the air ignited. Black flames slithered from the area around her and began to lick at the earth.
"Amaterasu!" Tsunade managed to gasp—because even amidst shock, a trained shinobi named that black fire.
Orochimaru reacted in an instant, shoving Tsunade aside and summoning his snake-skin layer. The black flames snapped and hissed against the shed skin but did not take hold. The girl's eye bled anew; she looked as if she drew suffering from every blink.
Orochimaru's mind raced. How could a genjutsu produce Amaterasu? Uchiha visual jutsu draw on the user's heart—on the truth within them. If this child's Mangekyō could manifest Amaterasu, then whatever trauma or intent burned in her core was unlike anything he'd read.
The girl did not relent. With a cry she shaped those black flames into weapons—kunai and shuriken of shadow-fire that whistled toward them.
"Flame Emission: Kagutsuchi!" Tsunade recognized the principle and called it aloud with the reflex of experience.
Even amid the astonishment, a realization followed like a chill: Kagutsuchi was Sasuke's technique, but here, in the hands of a sealed ancient Mangekyō, it had become something raw and fused with hate.
Orochimaru's serpentine tail whipped, catching one of the flaming shuriken and snapping it away. Tsunade deflected another with a block of chakra and grit. Both moved with practiced speed, but the littlest detail unsettled them—the child's technique was not tidy, not elegant; it was jagged, a child's survival rendered lethal.
"You," Tsunade said through clenched teeth, eyes softening for the first time. "Why were you sealed?"
The girl's lips twisted. "You — the Senju — cursed me. They said my eyes would bring ruin. So they buried me. I woke to the hunger and the darkness and the chains. I learned the cold."
It was less an explanation than an accusation. Tsunade's hands trembled despite her best effort to stay calm. Orochimaru's curiosity sharpened into a blade as he saw the pattern of reasoning: the Senju had feared a power—perhaps a power the clans themselves could not control—and had rather cruelly preserved her in pain instead of ending it. Their choice had been monstrous.
"Who are you?" Orochimaru asked, softly. He crouched, lowering himself to the girl's level. "A name—if you remember one."
She breathed. For a moment the world narrowed to that small pulse, as if destiny itself held its breath. "Hikari," she whispered, the name like a blade and a prayer at once.
Orochimaru felt the name settle in the air. It fit—Hikari: light, a cruel irony given the black flames that had answered her anger.
Tsunade's eyes watered, not with pity but with a slow-burning anger. "They buried a child for fear of power," she said, more to herself than to anyone else. "We swore never to repeat the sins of our ancestors."
Hikari's gaze flicked between them, suspicion and a brittle need for truth etched deep. Her shoulders shook as she tried to steady the volatile storm of her emotions.
"Do you remember anything?" Tsunade asked, gentleness cutting through the hard shell she usually carried.
Hikari's laugh was a dry rasp. "I remember hunger. Chains. The sound of wood and earth above me. The smell of old oil. I remember the night I learned to bite fire."
Orochimaru's mind whirred. A sealed Uchiha pup, buried for a century—something in the old scrolls hinted at such practices. The Uchiha were complex, proud, and dour. Had these elders thought to bury a child rather than face the fallout of her ability? The more he pieced together, the more morbid the logic.
Tsunade knelt as if to wrap an arm around the child, but Hikari recoiled as if from a hand that would bind as well. Pain had taught her caution. She had learned to equate hands with enforcer's grips.
"We'll help," Tsunade said, steady and maternal—more than she often allowed herself to be. "We'll get you clean, fed, and safe. This village is no place for seals like that."
Hikari lowered her head, uncertain and raw, staring at a world that had moved on without her. "Will you… not bury me again?"
"No," Tsunade promised. "No one will ever bury you for who you are."
The flames that had licked and flared slowly died back as tears and exhaustion took their place. The night's fire crackled as if agreeing with the new verdict. Orochimaru watched them both, feeling a complex knot of fascination, dread, and a scientist's wonder. Hikari's eyes—those terrible, ancient orbs—still gleamed with a history no one fully understood. Whatever she would become, the old world had failed her. Now the new one would have to try