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A colossal white serpent, Orochimaru's true form, reared in the chamber, its head eerily human, its body all scales and hunger. Any ordinary shinobi would've balked.
Sasuko didn't flinch. If anything, pity touched her eyes.
"A phosphorous-white serpent from head to tail… so this is what you really are," she said softly. "You carved yourself up for new vessels until nothing human was left. Pathetic."
She remembered a warning once given to her: If you chase power, immortality, and control past the line where your humanity lives, you become a monster. Not a person.
She understood it now because the proof loomed right in front of her.
"What you get in the end is emptiness," she continued. "No home to return to. No one to speak to. Only drifting, rootless… and memories that gnaw like teeth."
Orochimaru didn't hear, or refused to. His voice rasped, fevered. "Sasuko… give me your body. Give it to me."
He lunged. Jaws like a guillotine slammed down on the bed where she'd stood.
Too slow for a Sharingan.
Sasuko flipped upward, grass fluttering under her sandals as the serpent's scales split two pale phantoms firing from the gaps. Her [Kusanagi] flashed, arcs of steel carving the phantoms apart. Bright red sprayed, painting a halo around her never touching her skin.
She slid, planted, eyes narrowing.
From Orochimaru's trunk erupted a forest of white snakes, hissing, coiling, rushing her from every angle.
Sasuko's mouth quirked. She shrugged off the top half of her shirt the bandages beneath crossing over the curse-mark. Steel rasped free.
Black markings bloomed across her pale skin as the seal unfurled. Whites of her eyes dimmed to coal; tomoe burned red. In that stark contrast, her beauty turned otherworldly, edged and cold.
"The snake that crawls in the dirt dreams of wings," she murmured. "It never had a sky."
The snakes wrapped her then detonated into chunks. Power roared off her frame as wings, armored extensions of chakra, unfurled behind her.
[Curse Mark, Second Stage].
"Instead, it finds itself hunted," she finished, voice low, "by the hawk that actually flies."
Orochimaru stared half in awe of her growth, half in greed for it. His lips peeled back. "Sasuko—"
His name on his tongue tugged loose a flicker of memory: a younger Hiruzen, a fresh grave, a child staring at a shed white skin and calling it rebirth and luck. The meaning had festered ever since.
The vision vanished in a spray of sparks as Kusanagi sliced. The white serpent convulsed and crashed, body cut into neat, smoking lengths.
Sasuko exhaled, the mark retreating from her skin. "Done. Too easy."
Her knees softened suddenly. She caught herself on one hand, breath tightening. Across from her, meat crawled. A severed head lifted, yellow eyes bright.
"Good," Orochimaru crooned. "It's working."
"The serpent's body produces a vapor when exposed to air," he said. "A paralytic. I can't be killed by your little tricks."
His mouth opened wide, unhinged the maw of an apex predator. He lunged to devour her.
Sasuko's gaze sharpened. The three tomoe spun.
"Heh… wait," she whispered. "You'll see."
The world lurched.
A heartbeat later, their minds fell into a different place.
Sasuko stood upright in a shifting, fleshy cavern. "Where—?"
"My inner world," Orochimaru's voice slid from every surface. The ground writhed up in coils, shaping his face. "The space where I perform my [Reincarnation Ritual]."
Walls pulsed. Faces bulged from the tissue agonized masks of those who'd been vessels before. Snake-like tendrils rose around her, trying to swallow her whole.
Sasuko didn't panic. Her calm reminded Orochimaru of another Uchiha the one who had once looked at him with the same bored superiority. The same absolute control.
He chuckled, hungry, delighted. "Those eyes… at last, they'll be mine."
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Elsewhere, at the workbench—
Kabuto adjusted vials with steady hands. "Medication won't hold much longer," he muttered. "The ritual… tomorrow. No tonight."
He tucked the ampoule into his tray, lips curving in that careful, artificial smile.
"Sasuko won't submit. But inside his realm, she won't have a choice."
He turned toward the corridor and started back.
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