Konoha, Year 56 – Night
Yakushi Kabuto moved through a shadowed passage deep beneath the earth.
Raised within Root, he had undergone rigorous training in such lightless corridors since childhood. By all rights, he should have felt at ease here. Yet the youth's pale face, still retaining the softness of his age, betrayed a rare gravity.
The recent chain of events surrounding Orochimaru-sama had unsettled even him.
If he thought carefully, the first anomaly had appeared last year.
At that time, already absorbed into Orochimaru-sama's service and prepared to continue his role as a sleeper agent in Konoha after his master's departure, he suddenly received orders to halt the plan without explanation. The relocation of their hidden bases ceased altogether. Kabuto himself, despite his value, was withdrawn from infiltration duty and reassigned to assist in restarting the Wood Release cell experiments.
Yet unlike the painstaking research he had witnessed before, this project advanced with unnerving ease—almost as if they were simply retracing a path already mapped out. Within half a year, all major objectives were completed. If that could still be credited to Orochimaru-sama's brilliance, then what followed this year defied all reason.
Since the start of the year, Kabuto knew of at least three large-scale human experiments. One even involved multiple Konoha jōnin—so reckless that even he, hardened by Root, had felt a chill. And yet, ANBU and Root alike remained curiously blind, as if their eyes and ears had been sealed.
Kabuto knew all too well the reach of these organizations' surveillance. The silence was unnatural.
Orochimaru-sama had clearly noticed the same. The pressure from the unseen hand in the shadows had grown immense.
Thus, tonight's operation.
"Clang."
The hinges groaned as the steel door swung open. Kabuto entered the chamber, buried far beneath the surface, its walls layered with seals and guarded by multiple barriers. At the far end stretched a massive, multi-angled screen covering nearly the entire wall. Rows of white-coated researchers worked feverishly at their stations below it.
"Surveillance Team One—calibration complete."
"Team Two—calibration complete."
"Field counter-surveillance barrier inspection beginning… recording in progress."
Reports echoed as Kabuto took his seat, his gaze lifting to the screen.
At its center stood Orochimaru.
After numerous failed attempts, his master had chosen to act in person—offering himself as bait to draw out the hidden figure manipulating events from Konoha's shadows.
Kabuto recalled the operation brief, a faint gleam flickering behind his glasses. Strength, wisdom, foresight—Orochimaru possessed them all. Kabuto's belief in him bordered on worship.
If it's Orochimaru-sama, then there will be no problem.
"Begin the operation," Kabuto ordered coolly.
"Yes!" the researchers answered in unison.
On-screen, Orochimaru had already arrived at a secluded village within the forest.
---
Moonlight spilled across the treetops.
A tall, slender man with flowing black hair stood poised upon a branch, overlooking the settlement below. Arms folded, Orochimaru's serpentine pupils narrowed, studying the chosen site.
Seventy kilometers southeast of Konoha, home to three or four hundred souls, the village lay upon a trade route vital to Konoha's exchanges with the outside world. Remote enough to minimize notice. Large enough to serve as bait.
The entire area was already ensnared within Orochimaru's surveillance net.
According to plan, a batch of experimental bloodline subjects—procured from the Land of Grass—was hidden beneath the village. Their transport had been "discovered" by a Hidden Cloud ANBU unit. At the same time, Orochimaru himself had ensured the Cloud's movements were leaked to both Root and Konoha's border forces.
The convergence of so many factions promised inevitable chaos. In that turmoil, the true hidden hand would have no choice but to reveal itself.
Orochimaru's tongue flicked across his lips, tasting the night.
Every insect, every ninken, every summoned beast, every trace of spatial distortion or chakra fluctuation—none would escape the dragnet he had spun.
His golden eyes narrowed further.
"…Just who are you?"
Yet no ambush stirred. His tongue, so often his most reliable sensor, tasted nothing of the Root, ANBU, Cloud, or experimental subjects.
Instead, a sharp, burning sting struck his senses. His eyes widened. Without hesitation, he vanished forward.
"Thud!"
The door to a farmhouse slammed open.
"Hsssss—"
A middle-aged man writhed upon the floor, white mucus gushing from his body. His muscles convulsed violently as branches burst from the ooze, rooting into the earth and drinking greedily of his life.
Still, his trembling hands clawed desperately at the floor, dragging himself toward another room. But the wood already anchoring his body made escape impossible.
"Wood Release cells…" Orochimaru's lips curled, but his expression darkened. He stepped past the dying man and tore open the adjoining door.
Inside, the wife and daughter had already become grotesque growths of wood, their frail constitutions overwhelmed. Their bodies had ruptured through the walls, transformed into a tumor-like mass that continued to swell and split.
Impossible. Orochimaru had kept this village under observation for three days. Every villager accounted for. No abnormalities recorded.
Who could have performed these experiments beneath his very nose?
No. Something was wrong.
He bolted into another house. Then another. Then another.
The village was silent now. Even the nocturnal cries of insects and birds had faded. One by one, every dwelling revealed the same: villagers grotesquely consumed by Wood Release. Some of the hardier had grown into towering trees, their trunks bursting through rooftops.
The quiet trade hub had been remade into a monstrous forest. Of Cloud, Root, ANBU, or the experimental subjects—there was no trace. Not even a whisper of chakra lingered.
'What is this…?' Even Orochimaru, who reveled in the grotesque, felt disbelief gnaw at him.
Driven to uncover the truth, he strode through the transformed streets until he reached the village edge where moonlight bled into forest shadow.
There, he saw him.
A young man in a Konoha uniform, shoulder-length brown hair, thick black-rimmed glasses. A notebook in hand. Calmly, he stood among the ferns, recording as if nothing around him was amiss.
Orochimaru's memory was flawless. He recognized him instantly—one of Kakashi's peers. And yet the name tasted strange upon his tongue, disbelief lacing his rasping voice.
"—Aizen… Sōsuke?"
The youth lifted his gaze at last, as though only now noticing him.
"Good evening… Orochimaru-sama."
Moonlight spilled through the trees like strands of silver. Shadows swayed. Fireflies drifted between them like fallen stars.
Closing his notebook with unhurried grace, Aizen Sōsuke offered a polite, gentle smile. His voice was calm, almost tender, his eyes drifting past Orochimaru toward the endless night sky.
"What beautiful moonlight," he murmured. "To see you off beneath such a scene… truly, a fortunate matter."