"Shit! You couldn't even buy me a few more moments?"
Orochimaru-sama's voice was a sharp, frantic hiss as he heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps materializing behind him, far too soon and far too close. The muscles in his entire body coiled tight, a primal reaction to the oppressive, playful pressure that now blanketed the clearing like a physical mist.
This Namikaze Raimon… he was utterly, profoundly insidious!
He'd left Kimimaro-kun, his most splendid vessel, as a rearguard. A Kekkei Genkai user of that caliber should have been able to stall anyone, even a Kage, for a respectable amount of time. Yet, it had barely made a dent in Raimon's advance. A cold, oily sweat traced a path from Orochimaru-sama's temple down the pale column of his neck, soaking into the high collar of his robe.
"Just… two and a half minutes left until the preparation is complete!" he snarled inwardly, his mind racing faster than his feet could carry him.
"Orochimaru, you know, I'm not actually here to—" Raimon's cheerful tone was like salt in a wound.
"Silence! I will never submit to you!" Orochimaru-sama spat, cutting him off. There would be no parley, no trickery. He saw only the blinding, golden-haired obstacle between him and his ambition. His right hand flew to his mouth, teeth piercing his thumb with practiced efficiency. He slammed the bleeding digit onto the cracked earth.
"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"
A catastrophic boom of smoke and chakra erupted, flattening the surrounding trees. From within the plume, a shape of impossible scale began to uncoil. A serpent, its body as vast as a hillside, its presence choking the very air. The legendary Manda of Ryūchi Cave.
"Orochimaru…" Manda's voice was a subterranean rumble that vibrated in their bones. Its single, enormous eye, slit-pupiled and ancient, fixed on the summoner. "Remember your promise. One hundred human sacrifices. Do not forget."
Even as it spoke, it barely acknowledged the ant-like blonde figure standing nearby. Such was the arrogance of the great snake sage.
"It is guaranteed! Slay that golden-haired brat for me!" Orochimaru-sama shouted, a desperate edge to his voice. He didn't truly believe Manda could kill the monster behind him, but if it could buy him those precious, final moments… "I will prepare two hundred! No, five hundred sacrifices for you!"
Manda's massive head swayed, a hint of pleasure in its inhuman gaze. "Oh? You learn, Orochimaru. You are finally showing appropriate… respect."
A thick rope of drool, corrosive and pungent, dripped from its maw, sizzling on the ground. "Five hundred… Aoda will be green with envy for a century."
What the great serpent did not comprehend was the cruel calculus in Orochimaru-sama's mind. Promises to a dead snake meant nothing. If, by some miracle, Manda survived this encounter, then five hundred souls were a paltry price. But facing Namikaze Raimon was a death sentence. He intended to let Manda hold the bill.
"A… blonde one?" Manda's head swung ponderously, its forked tongue flicking out to taste the air around Raimon. Its eye narrowed. "Is it you? The one who smells of ozone and sunshine?"
It then noticed the two subtle, horn-like protrusions of golden chakra that often curled from Raimon's brow in this state. "Hn. You've even sprouted horns. A curious garnish."
"Ooh~! And you've got some nice ones yourself!" Raimon shot back, his eyes gleaming not with fear, but with a chef's appraising scrutiny. He ran his tongue over his lips. This Manda… the sheer volume of prime ingredient! The potential! The chakra-rich meat, the potent venom sacs, those magnificent horns! Just imagining the soups, the braised dishes, the specialty brews… his stomach gave an audible, unprofessional growl.
The irony was almost laughable. He'd merely been tracking Orochimaru-sama to deliver a message—that the Hokage and the Council had, after much debate, provisionally cleared his name and even carved out a peculiar, Raimon-shaped niche for him back in Konoha. A sort of "Special Strategic Consultant." But before he could even get a word out, the paranoid snake Sannin had escalated straight to summoning what was essentially a mountain with fangs.
One section for a snake wine, using the horns as the key component. Another section for a rich, milky-white broth that would strengthen the bones. A portion for charcoal-grilling, to seal in the umami. The thick middle for a slow, red-braised masterwork… Raimon's mind was a whirlwind of recipe cards.
"Nagato, you'd better hurry up with that technique!" Raimon muttered to himself, a flicker of frustration crossing his face. If his main body were here, he could savor this properly! This Edo Tensei form just didn't do justice to fine dining. "No… the more I think about it, the hungrier I get! I need to subdue it quickly, and cleanly!"
The last thing he wanted was for a wounded Manda to dispel the summoning and flee back to the depths of Ryūchi Cave. Lost ingredients were a tragedy.
Manda observed the shift in Raimon's expression—the predatory gleam, the salivating focus. A deeply unsettling sense of recognition dawned. "Why… why does the look in this human's eyes mirror my own when I survey a pen of sacrifices?"
Yet, millennia of pride overrode instinct. A human, no matter how strange, was still just a morsel. One good tail-sweep would reduce him to a red smear.
"Jūgo! Karin! Retreat now!" Orochimaru-sama barked at his stunned subordinates, not waiting for a response. His form seemed to liquefy, arms streaming behind him as he weaved a frantic, serpentine path through the forest, putting as much distance between himself and the coming storm as possible.
"Is this morsel truly worth five hundred of my sacrifices?" Manda's voice boomed, scattering the last of the forest's wildlife for miles.
"Yep, yep, yep! Absolutely!" Raimon chirped, his gaze locked on the bony horns adorning Manda's skull. Yes, those would be perfect. Simmered in aged rice wine with rare herbs… the resulting tonic would probably let someone walk on lava.
"Then… DIE!"
Manda's patience expired. Five hundred sacrifices awaited. Its colossal tail, a blur of purple scales and devastating muscle, tore through the air with a sound like a mountain cracking, aimed to crush Raimon into the earth.
BOOM!
The impact was seismic. The ground erupted, sending shockwaves through the earth that Orochimaru-sama, now kilometers away, could still feel through the soles of his feet.
"Fool! Buy me time, you overgrown worm!" he hissed, his pace somehow increasing.
"Is it done?" Manda lifted its tail, feeling the satisfying crush of stone and soil. It had definitely connected. The blonde must be a paste in that new crater. "Five hundred sacrifices… secured."
It allowed itself a moment of reptilian triumph, eyes closing as it savored the imagined feast to come.
"Thinking of something delicious?"
The voice, light and conversational, came from directly above its head.
Manda's eye shot open. In the crater below, only the splintered remnants of a substitution log greeted it.
"Nani?! What manner of trickery—?!" Raimon stood calmly in the air, as if standing on solid ground, a technique that defied Manda's understanding. "Hmph. So you wish to make this difficult? Fine. It only makes the eventual feast sweeter."
Its tail became a violet blur, lashing out again and again, creating craters and felling ancient trees, trying to swat the infuriatingly agile human from the sky. "Human! Do you have any honor? Stand and fight!"
"If you insist!" Raimon's playful tone vanished, replaced by a focused intensity. Playtime was over. Orochimaru-sama was getting away, and this magnificent ingredient needed to be processed.
Preserving the integrity of the body was the challenge. A clean kill. A perfect cut. The answer came to him in a flash of nostalgia—for a rival with a famously sharp blade and a penchant for dramatic names.
As he danced between the tail-strikes, Raimon's hands began to move. Chakra, a dense, visible amalgam of Lightning and Wind natures, shrieked to life in his palm. It spun, compressed, and sharpened, morphing from a ball of energy into something distinctly… mechanical.
"Raiton: Fūton · Taijutsu Hiden: Shokuhin Kōkō Sokusei Hachidan Guruma!"
(Lightning Release: Wind Release · Taijutsu Secret Technique: Food Factory High-Speed Slicing Eight-Segment Light Wheel!)
A monstrous, high-velocity circular saw of crackling energy roared into existence. As Raimon pumped more chakra into it, it expanded, its diameter growing until the buzzing, lightning-wreathed blade was larger than a house. The air filled with the smell of ozone and the shriek of grinding elements. To the normal eye, it was a brilliant disc of light. But slowed down, one would see the terrifying, rotating teeth designed for one thing: flawless, high-volume slicing.
"Slicing a snake's neck… should be a clean cut if done fast enough."
Manda felt an instinctive, cold itch crawl up its spine—no, its entire neck. "A ninjutsu? Pathetic. My scales have turned the greatest swords. Your light show is meaningless."
Raimon ignored the boast. He judged the thickness of Manda's colossal neck, then the diameter of his spinning Light Wheel. A perfect match. A kunai, tagged with his Hiraishin seal, flew from his hand and pinged harmlessly off Manda's snout.
"Foolish—" Manda began.
"Hiraishin no Jutsu."
In a burst of space-time chakra, Raimon vanished from the air and reappeared in the exact spot where the kunai had struck. But he was not holding a kunai. He was braced against Manda's snout, the gargantuan, shrieking Eight-Segment Light Wheel held aloft.
"This'll be quick!" Raimon announced, his voice cutting through the saw's roar. "Try not to blink!"
With a motion that blended immense physical strength with perfect chakra control, he brought the spinning disc of energy down onto the base of Manda's neck.
There was no glorious clash, no shower of sparks. There was only a profound, seamless shearing sound, like the world's sharpest knife parting the softest tofu. Manda's legendary scales, its dense muscle, its immense vertebrae—none offered the slightest resistance to the vibrational fury of the Eight-Segment Light Wheel.
For a moment, Manda's world tilted strangely. "Why… is my body rising so high?"
The thought was its last. Its severed head, expression frozen in a mask of profound shock, tumbled from the sky. Its headless body, nerve endings still firing, thrashed in a catastrophic, ground-shaking dance of death before collapsing like a fallen mountain range.
As consciousness faded, Manda's final, furious thought echoed in the clearing. "Orochimaru… you bastard… you better produce… my sacrifices…"
Silence descended, broken only by the fading crackle of Raimon's dissipating jutsu and the final twitches of the colossal serpent. Raimon landed lightly beside the enormous, horned snake head, a wide, genuine smile spreading across his face. He patted the cool scale.
"This head… perfect for brewing. Definitely for brewing." The hunt for Orochimaru-sama would have to wait a few moments. First, he had some truly spectacular field dressing to do.