Chapter Text
Shifting Sands Chapter 19
Content Warning: Depiction of Rape/Non-con
Saying goodbye to her family hadn’t been so difficult this time. Hina figured she might as well get used to it. Shikaku reminding her she had an out, or at least what he thought was an out, didn’t give her the comfort he thought it would. At the end of the day she trusted Orochimaru when he said he knew how Danzo worked. He had no real reason to request her promotion other than to get his hands on her. Maybe it would be done through ROOT proper instead, but she was unwilling to put her family in that kind of danger. She couldn’t risk them for her choices. She needed the buffer Orochimaru provided her, and if that meant going on dangerous missions before she was ready, then so be it.
She approached the gate with him again, this time preparing her normal warmer gear. He hadn’t taken her on a shopping trip this time. Her pay from the A-Rank was more than enough for her to stock up on gear and discreetly deposit the rest into her family’s bank account without her parents knowing. She was pretty sure they’d reject her money otherwise.
“Good morning Orochimaru-sensei. Lovely day,” she greeted, looking around and noticing no one else was by the gates.
“It’s just us,” he answered her unasked question.
“Will that be enough for this mission? They didn’t exactly tell us who we were meant to kill in the scroll,” she said.
“That’s because we won’t know until we meet our contact in Rice. Missives with explicit mission parameters being delivered between villages are often vague on details,” Orochimaru explained.
Which was a logical byproduct of those mission requests being intercepted by enemy Shinobi, she thought idly. She began following him out of the village and noticed he wasn’t exactly running.
“Sensei… this pace is quite slow,” she said after an hour.
“And?”
“We were running faster in the last mission,” she said shrugging.
“Do you want to set that pace again?” he asked.
She quickly shook her head. “It was a little too much for me…”
He smirked as if it say he had just asked to spook her into silence. She grumbled behind him, utterly bored out of her mind, which inevitably made her start asking him a slew of questions on theoretical Fuinjutsu to pass her time. Eventually after a time, Orochimaru stopped answering her questions altogether, that was until they started camping for the night.
“We’ll use this downtime for training. Practice on your swings,” he said.
Hina had to hold back a grumble of protest because every time she went to Orochimaru now it was always the same swing. She didn’t think it would actually help in a fight if the only thing she knew how to do was swing a sword down. But he had her repeating the step until the palms of her hands were rubbed raw from the constant motion and she was pretty sure she’d get carpal tunnel syndrome for the repetition.
“Don’t we need to set up camp?” she asked, discreetly trying to get out of this particularly useless training.
She itched to grab her supply pack and start drawing Fuinjutsu. Orochimaru threw a rock at her head and Hina held the wound in indignation.
“What was that for?” she whined.
“For trying to get out of training. I’ll set up camp. You won’t stop swinging that sword until I’m happy with your form, so I suggest you start now.”
After grumbling some pointed obscenities under her breath at the man, she went and got back to training. She hoped he’d be happy enough to at least teach her the next part soon. Hina didn’t mind training, in fact she welcomed the work, but this repetitive motion was entirely boring, and didn’t stimulate the part of her brain that enjoyed working. It was utterly, entirely thoughtless. At this stage she’d much prefer a nap on a nice hill with a newspaper to read after.
Despite her grumbling, she did listen to Orochimaru. At the end of the day, he was her teacher, and that afforded him respect. So she kept swinging until she thought her arms might fall off. Then infuriatingly, the man took a look at her stance and hummed in a manner she couldn’t entirely read.
“Keep working on it. For now eat,” he said.
Hina considered stabbing a kunai into his neck while he slept.
The more they travelled, the more Hina was sure Orochimaru was stalling on purpose. For what reason, she wasn’t entirely sure. She felt hesitant to ask since he gave her a rather chilling look when she broached the subject the last time. Whatever his reasons were, it was good for her, because she was able to spend their downtime practising. He’d finally stopped getting her to swing and now he was teaching her how to draw her blade efficiently. Hina wasn’t sure if she was beginning to hate Kenjutsu or not, but Orochimaru seemed to insist she learn it. Seeing as it was something he had mastery in, she could understand learning it from him, though she thought he’d have better spent that time teaching her Fuinjutsu or some other Ninjutsu technique. So far all she knew was a basic Genjutsu technique and an Earth tunnelling Ninjutsu technique. It wasn’t much, though learning an elemental release was difficult for any Genin.
It was another 2 weeks before they saw the village they were meant to enter in the distance. Despite it being the Capitol of Rice, it was still smaller than Konoha. This just made her wish to see the Fire Capitol. Rumours were it was three times the size of Konoha. She’d of course seen far larger cities in her previous life than what she thought capable of here, since the Elemental Nations was actually quite small.
“Sensei, where are we meeting our contact?” she asked.
“Down by the outpost. We will be meeting in a henge,” he said.
“Why? I thought Rice was one of our allies?” she asked.
“We are too noticeable. I am a Sannin, and your hair is green,” he pointed out.
Hina let out an affronted noise at being called out for her hair… not like she could help that. But she understood his reasoning. It would probably be pretty obvious if a Sannin and his upcoming student strolled in the night before a high-ranking official got assassinated. By comparison, two average Konoha Shinobi wouldn’t be out of the norm. Many went in and out every day out of Rice.
They changed into a look fitting with most of Fire Countrymen, which meant dark hair, tan skin, and brown eyes. The Rice Shinobi at the gates stopped them to ask for their Shinobi ID, which Orochimaru produced for the both of them. It was completely fake of course. It was there that Orochimaru paused by the hall, his head turning to a door by the corner. Hina wondered what he caught and followed behind him into the dark room. She caught the glint of a blank mask an arm in a sling.
“Fan?” she asked.
The woman nodded in confirmation. Orochimaru skipped pleasantries to hold out his hands for the scroll. Fan bowed briefly before passing the information and disappearing like she’d never been there to begin with. Her sudden departure was anticlimactic, but she didn’t get time to dwell on that when Orochimaru handed her the scroll. His gaze was on her.
“I’ll let you execute this mission,” he said.
Hina tried not to show her alarm. “A-an assassination…”
As her first kill too. She wasn’t sure how most Shinobi did things, but she was certain children her age traditionally weren’t given assassinations at all, let alone before they had even taken a life. Despite living a whole life to adulthood, she’d never taken a life before. Even now the thought of it made her uneasy. She knew it came with being a Shinobi, but she’d always figured her first kill would have been in the heat of battle against enemy Shinobi, not in the intimate setting of a home where she’d slip poison into a drink. It was a much worse thought. She knew Konoha allowed for Shinobi to decline certain kinds of mission. Kunoichi weren’t forced into honey pot missions, and all Shinobi had a right to decline doing something like killing a civilian child or a pregnant woman. Of course personalities were considered before a mission like that was even handed out. She didn’t think ROOT was the type to care about personalities, or even believed Shinobi could have them.
“Are you sure?” she asked her sensei.
“You showed too much mercy the last time. It is a dangerous trait to harbour as a Shinobi. You will prove to me that you can do your job. Don’t fail me,” he said.
Hina nodded, though it was half-hearted and hesitant. She wondered once more if she was capable of such an action. She didn’t think the day would come so soon.
They were henged into rich nobility as they entered the Rice Capital. It was a rather traditional and older looking area, with wooden structures and terracotta tiled roofs. The streets before were gravel, but the closer to the nobility they came, the smoother those streets became, until it was cobblestone framed with intricate street lanterns on lampposts. Women in this walled off section of decadence wore fabrics of a higher quality, more colourful and patterned, with intricate hairstyles and vibrant makeup. The whole place seemed to be stuck in time almost. Hina couldn’t help but glance off at the castle in the near distance and wonder what kind of life the rich lived over there. It felt so alien, especially when the Shinobi Villages, walled off as they were, did not hold the same sort of historical quality to them.
“This place seems old,” she noted.
“The nobility hold onto their traditions because we provide them with the safety to do so. Shinobi cannot be so backwards with progress, not when wars are waged,” Orochimaru said.
That made sense. Historically, Konoha was quite new, and so were the other Shinobi village. Couple that with wars, which often progressed technology, and militant leaders forgoing ancient traditions meant a boom in progress and innovation. Yet somehow the universities she so eagerly desired to attend were here in this secluded slice of the past.
“Our client must be rich,” she mumbled as they stopped at a smaller fortification past the castle gates.
The looming gate in front of them gave an impression that her client required a level of security and privacy. So close to the Daimyos castle too… she wondered just how politically powerful he was. To hire a Sannin during wartime it was no wonder he was rich.
“Do not bother with formalities such as bowing or deferring to show respect,” Orochimaru said as they stopped in front of the gate.
“You want to be rude to nobility?” Hina asked, alarmed.
Orochimaru looked amused almost. “Outside of the Hidden Villages, Shinobi are somewhat of a mystery… people look at Ninjutsu in a more mystical manner, more akin to Ninshu, than a practical art of war. We are harbingers of death in the dark, a children’s bedtime tale of monsters to be wary of. Nobility outside of the Daimyo themselves are unaware of the intricacies of our abilities. You should remember that we are a higher breed, even to self-proclaimed nobility.”
Hina didn’t voice that Orochimaru sounded a bit too presumptuous, but she wasn’t going to ignore his advice. She’d never been fond of such things as nobility or kings. Even in her old life she had been staunchly against her country still partaking in the Commonwealth, supporting the Monarchy in England. It also added to the same distaste she had for the Kages in these lands. While they weren’t always inherited titles in the end, they weren’t democratic leaders. What they had now was an oligarchy with a hint of meritocracy. A proper military dictatorship. Democracy wasn’t perfect, but it was leaps above their current system.
She was no revolutionary. Her opinion on the state of Konoha’s governing body wasn’t going to matter. Maybe it would in the future as she was somehow now a part of that Oligarchy, by association to a Sannin who was a student of a Hokage. That was… if she managed to keep him from defecting and by association tarnishing her own reputation.
“In saying that, leave the talking to me. And put on a mask, this is a ROOT mission.”
Hina caught the smooth, ROOT standard mask and nodded. It left a bad taste in her mouth to hold such an impersonal object that dehumanised people she had come to know on her previous mission. Once again there was no benefit to voicing her distaste. It seemed somehow that she had no agency in how things went…
She followed him onto the roof, as they both dropped their henge. She supposed it was Shinobi formality in a way to enter through windows and scare the ever-living sh*t out of civilians, because that was exactly what they did. Their employer, she assumed at least, let out a rather undignified shriek, as the guards in his room drew out their katanas. Though they withdrew it immediately when Orochimaru produced the scroll.
The man straightened out his half-undone kimono, his large pot belly protruding out from behind the loose tie of string and doing nothing to hide his genetalia still sickly wet with... was that blood? Hina noted the woman in the room was far more unclothed and dishevelled, sitting on the bed with what little of her makeup smudged, tear stains trekking her face and looking wholly mortified by her situation. Orochimaru barely spared her a glance, but Hina was transfixed on her look of distress. It took a moment to reconcile what she was seeing to something Hina could understand.
Had they walked into a rape?
Maybe a part of her would have liked to think she would have gloriously swooped in demanding justice, cutting off the balls on the clearly still semi-naked man in front of her. But she couldn’t move. She didn’t know what to do. She was a Shinobi. Anything outside of the mission wasn’t her business. There was a woman in front of her crying and violated.
“Couldn’t you have found a better time to interrupt. I was just about to finish as well,” the man said angrily, swollen cheeks turning red with anger before he paused in front of Orochimaru’s silent figure.
Whatever grandeur he had before faltered, and he coughed awkwardly into his hands. He glanced towards the shorter figure with the briefest moment of uncertainty before deciding not to say anything too bold in front of the menacing figure before them.
“W-well I don’t want to delay your important business. Here’s your mission.”
Orochimaru took the scroll wordlessly before his hands fell on Hina’s shoulder. Before she could blink they were on the rooftop. The body flicker was disorienting, but not more than the sight she had just witnessed. She stood there for a moment, trying to make sense of things.
“S-Sensei he was…”
“That is none of our business,” Orochimaru said as he continued moving.
Hina chased after him.
“Sensei this is wrong... he was raping her. We have to go back in there and save her," Hina insisted, her fingers digging into her trembling palms.
Orochimaru did not look phased. "Shinobi don't deal in right and wrong. We simply deal in contracts irrespective of morality."
"I can't help a man like that! How can he not be rotting in prison for what he did to that woman?!"
Rape was despicable, barbaric, and downright cruel. Hina wanted nothing more than to see him get his justice. Keeping a man like that in power was not justice.
"What did you think we would be doing when you signed up? I find it hard to believe someone who solved my ciphers, despite being a child, was unaware that being a Shinobi meant we would be killing others," Orochimaru said.
"I knew about that. I'm not ignorant," she said.
"Oh but you are, or did you not consider that murder is wrong too?" Orochimaru asked.
"It is, but it isn't like rape," she protested.
"Is murder wrong?" Orochimaru repeated.
“Y-Yes…”
She felt like she had no counter argument to his questions. She had to concede that he was correct. Who was she to say one horrible crime against a person was okay if it was done by her, and condemn someone else for another crime? Hina felt dirty, but she knew this would be the least of the feeling. She dragged her fingers through her hair and let out a frustrated sound. Orochimaru handed her a vial of poison.
"Shinobi who propose to care about morality are the worst kind of hypocrites. Such things as right and wrong cannot be in our vocabulary. The only language we speak is in power and in contracts."
“Still, if we can reduce suffering should we not?”
“No, it is not our responsibility. You have yet to learn Hina, that they’re all just pigs for the slaughter,” Orochimaru said.
The glint of animalistic yellow in his eyes when he took off his mask made Hina freeze where she stood. Gone was her mentor, now replaced with a predator far beyond her capabilities. Truly looking at him now, she knew he meant every word he said. Their lives held no meaning to him, nor did their pain.
“Do you mourn for the pain of the animals slaughtered in the thousands to feed us?” he asked.
Hina didn’t respond. She couldn’t. Though the more Orochimaru spoke, the more she felt like she was just an animal as well. Shinobi or Civilian, that was a human with hopes and dreams, wishes of their own. But in her sensei’s eyes they were nothing more than cattle in a butchers house.
All those days searching for the goodness in him, and now all she saw was a monster when she looked into his eyes. Her hopes were dashed against a rock.
And now all her fears turned inward, wondering if that same cold apathy would be her fate as well.
Killing an unsuspecting civilian would have been considered a war-crime in her previous world. At least in her mind it still was. Hina held onto that disgust as Orochimaru explained their plan to her, a simple, clean plan. Knock out a servant girl, take on her appearance, serve poisoned tea to their target, and leave. The blame would be on the servant girl, and while there would inevitably be rumours of Shinobi dealings, like there always was, no could directly point fingers at Konoha.
“Why him?” Hina asked.
Orochimaru handed her a newspaper, and she opened it. The title read “New Treasurer to be Stated; By Popular Civilian Vote”. She already knew politics were involved. Then she saw mention of her employer in the article, and of how he disproved of the position falling to a bastard child. Apparently, Nobility had a sense of blood purity and status as well.
“A power play… figures. But it helps Konoha too, right,” she ventured, slowly connecting the dots.
“Yes, the current Rice Daimyo is a child of 12 years old. Unlike Shinobi children, he has no sense. Our target has been currying favour from the boy whilst helping supply Kumo through Frost,” Orochimaru explained.
But they had destroyed most of Kumo’s major supply chains in their last mission, no doubt crippling their target’s efforts. Hina was beginning to understand Konoha’s play. Rice wanted independence from Konoha, and Kumo was leveraging that. Konoha couldn’t afford to let go of the annexed nation that provided them with 90% of the grain needed to feed their population and so it seemed they had accepted a foreign mission during war-time. Even if Konoha was caught red-handed, the blame couldn’t be placed on them entirely, not when the mission came from Rice itself. Konoha was encouraging the corrupt power-hungry nobility in Rice to stay in power, just so that they could keep control. It was smart, but it was also not how she thought Hiruzen operated. It all somehow fell back to Danzo. Her hatred for the man never ceased to stop growing.
She entered her targets home with ease. It shouldn’t have been this easy. There were guards outside with weapons, but they were mere mercenaries. She began to realise just how big of a gap there was between someone like her, who was taught to wield chakra, compared to men like them who couldn’t match up despite all their training. It settled an uneasy weight in her stomach. If it was so easy to kill a civilian, just how disproportionately powerful was the average Shinobi in comparison. Did people like her parents and brothers even have rights, outside of what was graciously decided for them by Shinobi.
The way Orochimaru moved in the darkness was graceful, fast, and silent. She briefly lost sight of him in the cover of darkness and he was right next to her. They were like shadows in the night, the angel of death entering Pharaohs’ chambers. She’d always hated that story. And as they entered a moderately sized estate on the outer edges of the nobility’s grounds, they came upon their prey. The sound of laughing children could be heard in the room beneath them as they landed on the tiled roof. Orochimaru handed her a veil of poison.
“Slip it into his tea. Do so from the servant’s chamber if you wish to make the process easier,” he said.
So she couldn’t see her targets face as she killed him. That begged the question about how she could confirm if no one else would be caught in the crossfire.
“Sensei… there could be others,” she said.
“So? There is always the chance of collateral damage. This is also your first mission. Precision isn’t as important as getting the job done. Don’t take any risks,” he said.
The vile weighed heavy on her hands, hot like she was holding fire. She felt the kneejerk reaction to throw it away. This was… wrong. It was all wrong. If she took a life it should be in battle, against a trained opponent, not a helpless civilian eating dinner with his children. This was not what she had signed up for. She knew these missions happened but you could decline it in the standard forces. She thought she would too.
But you’d still be working for an exploitative system like a hypocrite. Except you wouldn’t get your own hands dirty like a coward.
Dark whispers of contempt sent goosebumps down her body. She had done this before, hadn’t she? Worked in a dirty business with the intention of good… except back then she did it tucked safely away behind a desk where she couldn’t see her crimes, and now she was forced to face her own immorality head on.
Orochimaru, leant down so his breath tickled her ears. Slitted golden eyes burnt through her skin with their dark gaze, sending a wave of ominous pressure through her. She felt her breath hitch as his hand weighed heavily on her shoulder. For a moment she saw him slowly dragging a kunai across the soft flesh of her neck.
“What are you waiting for? This is what it takes to be a Shinobi. Are you a weak domesticated animal like them, or a Shinobi?”
“I-I…”
Hina’s breath caught in terror as his fingers snaked across her neck. She couldn’t move, only whimper as his fingers squeezed for a moment. And then like she had just imagined it all, the pressure was gone, and she was collapsed on the tiled roof, wheezing on the floor. Orochimaru’s dark laughter echoed in the night.
“That is the difference between you and them. But you have yet to grow into your own power. So let’s take the first step, shall we? Poison the young noble. Go on.”
Hina scrambled to her feet, holding her throat as she backed away from Orochimaru. Even now she felt the hairs raised on the back of her neck, every instinctual part of her begging her to flee. He had intended to scare her, and it had worked.
If you run, you’ll prove yourself to be useless.
That stray thought kept her in her place and she recalled one of the tricks detailed in the Yamanaka Psyche book, on how to stay calm during moments of intense fear. How to handle killing intent, more specifically. She breathed through her nose and let out a soft exhale from her mouth, gripping the poison in her hands in a deadly tight grip.
“Y-yes… sensei.”
And she schooled her face, before disappearing into the darkness.
