Alvarcus's Room
"So how did it go?" I ask Shirokumo as he plonks down onto my head. "You're in one piece, that's a good sign."
"Yeah not for their lack of trying. You've got to stop making me do that. One of these days I won't move fast enough."
"Right. The second I get a teleportation technique in my repertoire I'll just go myself. Happy?"
"No." Shirokumo whines. "Do you have any idea how rare those techniques are? Like super rare. Hell I'm a fluke to be honest, simply one of a kind. No one can mimic my style, it's exclusive to me. There's no way you'll learn or make one of those any time soon. Or ever."
"Yeah I know, that's why I said that." I smirk in victory. "I guess it'll just have to be you."
"You suck." Shirokumo continues to whine from his perch.
"I know. So are they in?" I eagerly ask.
"Oh yeah. They're in."
"Perfect."
...
Five Days Later
"It is time to leave." Orochimaru repeats for some unknown reason as he addresses the group before him.
Myself, Sasuke, the Sound Three, and a ragtag bunch of shinobi and a handful of prisoners are arranged before him. He's got quite the posse to go with him to the next base. I never pictured him traveling with a group at all, he seems like a loner to me.
"Well?" I playfully ask as I sling my backpack over my shoulders. "What are we waiting for! Let's get this show on the road!"
"Yes." Orochimaru rolls his eyes at me and swings open the exit to the base. Sunlight spills into the underground passage and everyone squints under the sudden brightness. "Let us go."
"WAIT!" I shout as I dump the contents of my backpack onto the ground. Scroll after scroll pour out of it, they make a small pile on the ground. I waste no time in quickly falling to my knees and hurriedly rifling through the mound. "No no no! It's not here!"
"What?" Sasuke bolts into action helping me sort through the scrolls. "What is it? What's wrong? What are we looking for?"
Everyone is looking at me in worry, even Orochimaru is showing a great deal of concern for letting me put on this show without rebuking me at all.
"My couch! It's not here!" I wail. "I've got to go back for it!"
...
"I'm bored." I dejectedly kick a stone that happened to be in my path as everyone is walking.
"And this is my problem how, exactly?" Sasuke blandly says as he scans the surroundings. Again. For the sixth time in two minutes.
"Because you're my friend." I retort with as much blandness as he used. "Entertain me."
"Entertain yourself. One of us has to pay attention." Sasuke dismisses me with practiced ease.
"Please, Orochimaru-sama has minions for that." I wave him off and one of the minions behind me scoffs. "Anyways do you really think anyone, sane or otherwise, would attack this group? There's like thirty of us! Not to mention Orochimaru-sama of all people, then his bodyguards, then us, then everyone else who I really hope are capable. If not whatever, we can always use them as meat shields."
"Hey!" A minion speaks.
"What?" I casually turn around and start to walk backward solely so I can stare at him. "Do you want to entertain me? Cuz I've got some ideas."
"Uh..." The minion's courage wavers.
"Hold on." I sling my backpack off and start to rifle through it. "I know I put it somewhere. There's no way I didn't bring it, so where is it?"
"What the hell are you looking for?" Sasuke asks as he rips his eyes off of potential ambush points and hiding spots.
"A specific scroll." I randomly discard one over my shoulder and it bonks into the head of the minion that spoke up. "Oi! What the hell is wrong with you pick that up!" I shout at the minion and surprisingly he listens.
"And what is in this mysterious scroll?" Sasuke dryly asks, but there's a hint of playfulness underneath. He's enjoying the rapidly whitening minion squirm as things escalate way past what he expected.
"A rake, two watermelons, a lot of plastic sheets, precisely 13.75 meters of rope, a rubber ball and a wheelbarrow. Oh and matches! Can't forget about the matches."
"Alvarcus." Orochimaru's cool voice penetrates the quiet conversations of the rest of the group. "Stop terrorizing the meat shields."
"But I'm bored!" I whine and stomp my foot for added affect. "I need something to do and he was practically volunteering!"
"That's irrelevant." Orochimaru hasn't even bothered to look back to scold me. "Stop it."
"Fine!" I huff out.
Jirobo casually slides over to me. "Just out of curiosity -"
"No!" Sasuke shouts out. "Just don't! Don't ask what he was going to do with all of that stuff. Don't. Trust me."
"Ah. Okay." Jirobo moves back to the other two members of the Sound Three.
"Wow. Way to kill every single chance at fun I get." I groan at Sasuke. "Seriously? Why can't I get five minutes of enjoyment?"
"Because your enjoyment is weird and creeps out a lot of people, especially those who don't know you're kidding around." Sasuke blandly explains as if he's dealing with a petulant child.
"But I wasn't kidding!" I hold up an innocent looking scroll. "I do have all of that stuff in a scroll!"
"I'm not going to ask." Sasuke sighs. "I know better."
"Fine. I'll just find another way to entertain myself." But how? What can I possibly do?
I slowly start to inch my way closer to Sasuke over the course of the next five minutes until we're almost standing shoulder to shoulder.
"Can I help you?" Sasuke irritably asks as he pins me with a stern look.
I simply smirk at him, then proceed to poke him in the shoulder. "Tag. You're it."
Sasuke's glare intensifies as his hand bundles into a fist.
"No tag backs." I cheekily taunt him.
Sasuke storms off towards the Sound Three and all of them are chuckling among themselves at my antics. As he's walking between them his hand lightly touches Kidomaru on the back. "Tag. You're it."
Sakon and Jirobo scatter.
"Oh it is so on!" Kidomaru shouts out in glee.
...
"I'm actually surprised." I offhandedly comment as the entire group enters the new base.
We're somewhere that is relatively close to the Land of Waves. This is Orochimaru's Southern hideout and also the place that he stores the majority of his prisoners. Or as he likes to call them his test subjects. We spent the better part of a day getting here and if it wasn't for the slow pace we had to set for the more lackluster shinobi and prisoners we could have cut that time in a quarter.
An impromptu game of tag had absolutely nothing to do with it.
"And what is so surprising?" Sasuke asks as Orochimaru is barking out orders to everyone who came with him and a group of shinobi that welcomed us all into the base.
"Well, nothing went wrong. Usually shit always goes wrong. We were practically tempting fate with everyone that was traveling."
"You're not wrong. Stuff always goes wrong around us. I don't know if we have the best luck ever or the worst. It's a miracle that we've made it out of all those situations unscathed."
"Speak for yourself." I point an various parts of my body. "Here. Here. Over here. Oh and there. Not to mention here. Plus all the times that I got stabbed in the chest. Yeah I didn't get away unscathed, I just didn't slow down from it all. I suppose there was that one time I got away from Sasori unscathed but that's one of many. I never did come to terms with that."
"You've really got to work on dodging." Sasuke points out.
"SHH!" My eyes widen in fear behind my sunglasses and I shrink on myself. "Dodge training is the worst. Don't let anyone hear you say that! I don't want to go through it again!"
"I don't know what you get so worked up about. I've been put through dodge training, it wasn't that bad."
"That's because if Orochimaru filled you with over two hundred kunai you'd die."
"Oh. Ouch." Sasuke winces in sympathy.
"Yeah. Ouch."
...
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