They came up through the old tree roots into the night air and walked without any particular destination, just moving at the pace of a conversation that hadn't finished yet.
Orochimaru glanced sideways. "You're actually going to go after a Tailed Beast."
"Does that interest you?" Finn asked.
Orochimaru thought about it. "Not uninteresting." A pause. "I went to the Cloud Village a few years ago and removed one of the Eight-Tails' horns. It was a side project. I wouldn't call it a serious interest."
He said it the way he said most things — as information, not as boasting. Then he added: "What I will say is that two forbidden techniques is a low price for a Tailed Beast. And Danzo is not the sort of man who gives you good merchandise out of generosity."
"Maybe not," Finn said.
"He could hand you the Shadow Clone Technique and call it a day. It is technically in the Scroll of Seals. It is technically classified as forbidden." Orochimaru's tone carried the dry amusement of someone describing a thing he genuinely believes would happen.
Finn considered this. It was a fair point. Tobirama had restricted the Shadow Clone Technique because overuse drained a ninja to death — a real enough danger for ordinary practitioners. By the time of the current era, the technique had become so widely known among Jonin and senior Chunin that the designation was largely ceremonial. Finn had already figured out the basic form on his own. The Multiple Shadow Clone variant was simply a question of chakra volume, and on that score he had no shortage.
If Danzo tried that particular maneuver, there would be consequences. Finn was reasonably confident Danzo understood this, and would not be so short-sighted. But the warning was worth having filed away.
"I'll handle it," Finn said. "But noted."
They walked for a stretch without talking. Then, with no particular transition, Finn said, "What do you think of the Uchiha clan? As a cooperation target."
Orochimaru didn't look surprised. He looked like he had been waiting for the question. "Give it up," he said.
"They want influence. They want the Hokage seat eventually. We could find common ground —"
"The Uchiha Kagami situation aside," Orochimaru said, "my concern is simpler. You managed to call Danzo 'Danzo-sama' for an entire meeting without your expression betraying you once. That's a real skill. Danzo, to his credit, returned the courtesy and called you 'Your Excellency' throughout. It was a civilized transaction." He glanced at Finn. "The Uchiha would not do that. If you approached them with the same proposal, the most likely outcome is that someone says something condescending within the first five minutes, and then you kill everyone in the room, and we have a completely different set of problems."
Finn opened his mouth. Closed it. The assessment was irritatingly accurate.
"There's also," Orochimaru continued, with the air of a man completing a point, "the question of what you might want from them later. If you've built a cooperative relationship, obtaining their eyes under certain circumstances becomes... morally complicated. Even for you."
Finn exhaled through his nose. "Fine. You've convinced me."
He looked up at the street ahead. The night market was thinning out now, the stalls closing down, a few lanterns still lit above the remaining vendors. Konoha in the late evening had a specific quality — quieter than the day version, but not empty, the village still breathing.
"In this entire village," Finn said, with something between amusement and genuine reflection, "is Danzo actually the only person I can do business with?"
"Am I invisible?" Orochimaru asked.
Finn glanced at him. "You I don't count as Konoha anymore." He paused. "Speaking of which — why not just take the Hokage seat yourself? Danzo supports you. I'd support you. You'd have the backing."
"So that you can use me as a door to Konoha's resources and eventually walk away with the Scroll of Seals, the Uchiha bloodlines, and everything else of value," Orochimaru said flatly.
"We'd complement each other very well," Finn said, without any shame whatsoever.
Orochimaru looked at him for a moment. Then he sighed — not deeply, just enough to express that he had weighed the proposal and found it insufficient. "No."
"Fair enough," Finn said, and dropped it completely. No pressure, no follow-up. The offer had been made and declined, and that was the end of it.
Orochimaru noted this, as he noted most things. It was one of the qualities he found genuinely interesting about Finn. The man pushed where pushing was useful and stopped where it wasn't, without residual irritation. Danzo had been pushing Orochimaru toward the Hokage position for years and apparently intended to continue until one of them died. The contrast was significant.
They walked in comfortable silence until Orochimaru said, "You mentioned interest in senjutsu. Myoboku Mountain specifically."
"Still working on access," Finn said. "Jiraiya won't give me the location. I have a contact on the inside who may advocate for me, but it's slow."
"There's an alternative worth considering," Orochimaru said. "Ryuchi Cave. I could get you a summoning contract there."
Finn thought about it. "If I take Ryuchi Cave's contract, Myoboku Mountain becomes complicated. The three sacred summoning places don't share practitioners happily. There's not a formal rule against it, but there's friction — something between rivalry and hostility. I'd rather not spend time managing that friction when the senjutsu I actually want to learn is the toad variety."
"Reasonable," Orochimaru said, without argument.
"Besides," Finn added, "I don't particularly resemble a snake. I'm not sure Ryuchi Cave's residents would be enthusiastic about teaching me. I'd spend months just getting past their skepticism, and at that point it's wasted time compared to simply waiting for Myoboku Mountain."
Orochimaru was quiet for a few steps. Then: "There's something else I've been developing. Potentially more relevant to your situation than either option."
Finn looked at him.
"Near Ryuchi Cave, I found a group of people. Small community, unusual physiology. They absorb natural energy passively — not through training or technique, but as a biological baseline. Their bodies process it as a matter of course. I've been studying the mechanism." He paused. "The core principle of senjutsu is simply the controlled integration of natural energy into the body. The reason most people can't do it is that the body rejects the foreign input unless it's conditioned through years of specific practice. This group has no rejection response. I've been working on a technique that replicates that property artificially."
Finn recognized the shape of what he was describing. The clan near Ryuchi Cave, the natural energy absorption, the cursed seal — the trajectory was coming into focus even if Orochimaru hadn't named it yet. The timeline in his head had always been fuzzy around Orochimaru's research, and clearly for good reason. The development was further along than he'd assumed.
"Your physical constitution is already unusual," Orochimaru continued, with the clinical interest of a researcher describing an interesting specimen. "Your vitality is well beyond normal parameters. You may be a better candidate for this than anyone I've yet tested it on." He looked at Finn with the careful, appraising attention of a man measuring something. "The application method is direct. I apply the seal to the neck. It transmits a modified form of my own natural energy pattern into the recipient's chakra network and rewrites the rejection response."
He let that sit for a moment.
Then, with complete composure: "Have you washed your neck recently?"
Finn stopped walking.
He turned and looked at Orochimaru, who was watching him with the steady, patient expression of someone who had made a perfectly reasonable scientific inquiry and was waiting for a productive response.
"Don't bite my neck," Finn said.
"The application is precise. It requires —"
"I'm telling you right now. Do not bite my neck."
He stared at Orochimaru. Orochimaru's tongue moved slightly at the corner of his mouth, which did not help.
The idea itself was not without merit — Finn could feel the logic of it, and his Dark-Dark Fruit's absorption properties meant that any attempt at external control embedded in the seal would simply get swallowed before it could take root. There was no real danger in the technique itself. The problem was purely that accepting it required standing still while Orochimaru bit his neck, and something in that image refused to settle as acceptable regardless of the practical justification.
A joke from a previous life surfaced without invitation: the only reliable defense against Orochimaru was to apply something sufficiently unpleasant to the target area in advance.
He kept this thought to himself.
"Let me think about it," Finn said finally.
"Of course," Orochimaru said, in a tone that suggested he was entirely prepared to wait.