"Orochimaru?"
Senju Haruto turned his head toward the hoarse voice, confirming what he already suspected—it truly was Orochimaru.
But why was he here, now of all times?
From Haruto's memory, Orochimaru shouldn't have appeared until after the Chūnin Exams, when he sought out Karin and brought her to his laboratory.
"Mm."
Kakashi, standing at his side, misunderstood Haruto's reaction, assuming he didn't know who this man was. He began to explain in a low, serious voice.
"He was once one of Konoha's Legendary Sannin, alongside Jiraiya and Lady Tsunade—student of the Third Hokage himself.
But he betrayed the village. He is now an S-rank missing-nin, extremely dangerous."
Kakashi laid out the information in one breath.
He held no illusions about Orochimaru's power.
Years ago, during an ANBU mission, he had personally crossed paths with the man.
They fought.
And Kakashi had been utterly outclassed.
If not for Orochimaru's whim to spare him in that final moment, Senju Haruto might never even have known that Konoha had a shinobi named Hatake Kakashi.
The gap between them was that vast.
Haruto nodded lightly, showing he understood.
In truth, however, his knowledge of Orochimaru far surpassed Kakashi's.
The reason Orochimaru defected from Konoha was his obsession with the inevitability of death.
No matter how powerful a jutsu, no matter how firmly one inherited the Will of Fire—every human being was fated to die.
Even the so-called God of Shinobi, Senju Hashirama, had passed like smoke in the wind.
Orochimaru, unable to accept such an end, sought ways to defy death itself.
To escape the enemy no shinobi could ever defeat—mortality—he stole forbidden techniques from the archives of Nidaime Hokage, Senju Tobirama, and began his inhumane human experiments.
Shinobi began to vanish mysteriously.
A dark shadow descended over the entire village.
To calm the spreading terror, Sarutobi Hiruzen assembled a special unit to uncover the truth.
What they discovered was Orochimaru's work.
The sight of his beloved student committing such atrocities shook Hiruzen to his core. Yet, in his weakness, he could not bring himself to kill Orochimaru.
That single act of mercy became one of the gravest mistakes in shinobi history.
After his defection, Orochimaru did not repent.
He delved deeper into his experiments until he perfected the dreaded Living Corpse Reincarnation.
It granted him something close to true immortality—at the cost of constantly changing bodies.
This weakness crippled him in other ways: he could never master Sage Mode, and his resistance to genjutsu plummeted.
Thus, he would always be defeated by Itachi and Sasuke.
Even so, he remained one of the most formidable missing-nin in existence.
Haruto recalled clearly: during the Chūnin Exams, Orochimaru confronted Kakashi while testing Sasuke.
Kakashi had declared that if Orochimaru took a single step closer, he would kill them both then and there.
Orochimaru's response had been a mocking smile: "If you think you can, then by all means… try."
Watching the Sannin walk away, Kakashi had been drenched in cold sweat.
For once, he knew victory was utterly beyond his reach.
Yet Haruto's perspective on Orochimaru was not so one-dimensional.
He didn't believe Orochimaru's true goal was to destroy Konoha.
Otherwise, in the Forest of Death, why would he strengthen Naruto's seal with the Five Elements Seal instead of tearing it open and unleashing the Nine Tails during the exams?
Why, during the invasion of Konoha, had Orochimaru spared nearly everyone?
The only death had been Hiruzen himself—and that was through his own use of the Reaper Death Seal.
If anything, Orochimaru had manipulated Sunagakure into taking the brunt of the fallout.
Haruto remembered his words back then: "All I did was set the stagnant windmill turning once again."
Perhaps, in his eyes, it was Hiruzen's weakness that kept Konoha from advancing.
And indeed—under Tsunade's leadership as Fifth Hokage, the village flourished with a far stronger hand than her teacher had ever shown.
More evidence followed. Orochimaru attempted to eliminate Akatsuki's Sasori at Tenchi Bridge.
He rejected Danzō's offer to participate in a second invasion of Konoha.
When Sasuke nearly severed his bonds with Naruto using Kirin, it was Orochimaru himself who stopped him.
Even in the Fourth Shinobi World War, he returned alongside Team Taka and the reanimated Hokage, turning the tide of battle.
"Haruto?"
Kakashi's sharp voice broke through his thoughts, dragging him back to the present.
"What's wrong?" Kakashi frowned, not understanding why Haruto would lose focus now of all times.
No matter how one looked at it, Orochimaru was a deadly enemy.
A master of countless forbidden jutsu.
The kind of opponent one could never, ever underestimate.
Karin clung tightly to Haruto's back.
Beyond her healing powers, she could sense chakra—and the one before them radiated a crushing presence.
This man was dangerous.
"Kakashi," Orochimaru drawled, his lips curling upward. "You're injured. Why not hand that little girl over to me?"
His snake-like eyes shifted toward Karin.
The red hair was enough to mark her as Uzumaki.
The teeth marks scarring her arm confirmed it beyond doubt.
Orochimaru's interest in her was obvious—if he could take her back to his laboratory, it would be ideal.
"Kakashi… don't delude yourself. Even at your peak, you were never my equal."
He paused deliberately, letting his gaze slide toward Haruto. His tongue slithered out, moistening his lips.
"Or… do you want to watch another comrade die right before your eyes?"
Haruto: "???"
Tch—
Even Haruto couldn't help but draw in a sharp breath.
Orochimaru, the infamous master of information gathering, didn't know who he was?
Had he just arrived?
Did he miss the part where Haruto slaughtered the Kusagakure shinobi and the traffickers?
So that was it.
He had mistaken Haruto for one of Kakashi's subordinates.
"I only want the girl," Orochimaru said confidently, utterly assured of his dominance. "Hand her over… and I'll spare your lives."
He had no idea how grave a mistake he was making.