Chapter 135: The Snake's Interest

Pipes carried pale fluid through the underground laboratory. Sealed tanks lined one wall, each holding tissue, organs, or a body at a different stage of experiment. The air smelled of medicine beneath damp stone.

Orochimaru looked up from a formula as Kabuto entered. The boy's hair appeared silver under laboratory light. His face held the careful calm of someone trained to become whatever an observer expected, though Orochimaru had begun teaching him the pleasure of being useful without pretending usefulness was affection.

Kabuto carried three reports. One came from a trade clerk who believed he served Gatō. One came through an Akatsuki contact who did not know Orochimaru had requested it. The third was a Konoha mission notice stripped of names but identifiable by destination and rank. Agreement among independent sources made the location reliable.

"Tonbo has left Konoha," Kabuto said. "He accepted an A-rank contract from the Hagoromo clan and traveled north with three sensory chūnin. Current position: Gale Valley."

"At last."

Pain's warning about Tonbo had remained interesting precisely because it was cautious. The leader of Akatsuki possessed the Rinnegan and enough power to make Orochimaru avoid direct challenge, yet he had ordered specific measures against a former Analysis Team chūnin whom Orochimaru barely remembered from the war. That mismatch demanded examination.

Orochimaru remembered Tonbo during the Third War as a useful sensor with an unusual tolerance for stolen memories. Nothing in the boy's early record predicted Return Mirror, Sealed Horizon, Living Weave, or techniques capable of making Pain plan around him. Either Konoha had concealed his talent, the war had transformed it, or Tonbo had acquired knowledge from a source no report identified.

Orochimaru had delayed while completing a transfer technique whose test subjects could not tolerate interruption. Research required patience even when curiosity hissed. Now the formula on his table had reached a stable stage, and Tonbo stood beyond Konoha's barriers with only four allies and a civilian clan around him.

"Do you intend to capture him?" Kabuto asked.

"First I intend to meet him. A mind capable of creating genjutsu that concerns Pain may prefer a laboratory without Hiruzen's restrictions."

"And if he refuses?"

Orochimaru smiled. "Then refusal will still teach me something."

Tonbo would recognize manipulation in any appeal to village resentment; his marriage and children made defection less likely, not more. Orochimaru would offer access: research materials, living specimens, and freedom from committees. If Tonbo rejected even that, the terms of the rejection would reveal which limits were ethical and which were merely institutional.

Kabuto supplied the rest. Gatō-funded rogues had infiltrated Hagoromo territory. The clan's principal escort force was unreachable. Tonbo appeared aware of a threat but had continued to the trial site.

"You found the hidden contract before Konoha did," Orochimaru said. "Your intelligence work improves every month."

Kabuto lowered his head. Praise still reached a vulnerable place beneath every identity Root and the orphanage had imposed upon him. He distrusted the feeling and treasured it at once.

"I only followed the channels you gave me."

"Tools do not choose which inconsistency matters. You did."

Orochimaru dismissed him with new instructions: maintain cover, avoid direct contact with Tonbo, and preserve access to Hagoromo casualty reports. Kabuto withdrew without allowing satisfaction into his stride.

On the laboratory table, a corpse lay surrounded by sealing formulas mapping the boundary between body, chakra, and identity. Orochimaru traced one line with a fingernail.

Tonbo's Illusion Body research approached the same boundary from another direction. Where Orochimaru changed flesh to preserve mind, Tonbo persuaded flesh to obey a constructed state. Recruitment promised knowledge. Conflict promised data.

Either justified the journey.

At Gale Valley, wind made speech difficult even from the highest ridge.

Tonbo planted one sensor rod and watched its needle strike the limit. The instrument measured only local speed, not the vertical shear that lifted stones from one current into another. Temperature changed several degrees between sunlit walls and the shadowed floor, feeding pressure differences the valley multiplied.

Atmospheric Guidance could not reproduce terrain. It might reproduce a temporary gradient strong enough to organize existing wind around a target. That distinction would decide whether the technique remained a research curiosity or became a battlefield threat.

The valley opened below Tonbo's team like a wound cut between mountains. Currents crossed, collided, rose, and split around pillars of stone. Dust moved in spirals large enough to hide buildings. Loose rocks became projectiles and vanished into gray distance.

Tsuyoshi planted chakra through both feet and still leaned into the pressure. Gaku crouched behind him with ears flattened. Shikyō kept most insects sealed; the few released near the ridge were thrown backward despite anchor threads. Atsushi's Byakugan followed windblown debris rather than chakra and found the motion nearly impossible to separate.

"This is the calm approach?" Tsuyoshi shouted.

"Not yet," Hagoromo Ki answered.

The twelve candidates stood behind him wearing full protective gear. Their chakra pulsed in short patterns synchronized with breathing, reducing resistance by allowing clothing and stance to yield at the correct moment. Strong Wind Release affinity did not make them immune. It made the movement legible.

Ki demonstrated by turning one shoulder into the gust. Chakra flowed across his clothing in a diagonal line, guiding pressure rather than opposing it. His body moved half a step and settled. Tsuyoshi attempted the posture with too much rigidity and slid backward until Gaku braced him.

"Do not wrestle the valley," Ki said. "It has more strength than you."

Tonbo's interest sharpened. Gale Valley was not one storm. It was a stable system produced by terrain, seasonal pressure, temperature, and the way currents fed one another. Atmospheric Guidance would need to identify leverage points rather than imitate total force.

"Tomorrow the monthly low cycle begins," Ki said. "The central winds weaken enough for trial access. The outer currents remain dangerous."

He led them along a stone route protected by embedded seals. At the platform, Ki cleared dust from a circular array and supplied chakra. A translucent barrier rose, dividing the observation post from the wind.

Sound changed at once. The storm became a deep continuous vibration beyond the field.

"Candidates enter in groups of three," Ki explained. "They maintain footing, follow marked routes, and use the wind to refine nature transformation. When reserves fall, awareness breaks, or injury exceeds the threshold, retrieve them here. After treatment and rest, they return."

"Why one month?" Atsushi asked.

"The low cycle lasts that long. Our seals cannot hold the platform during the peak."

Tonbo inspected the array. It drew stability from mineral bands within the surrounding rock and would fail if several anchors broke at once. He marked every anchor his contract permitted him to know.

"The valley has killed candidates before," Ki said. "Do not let their confidence persuade you to delay extraction."

He named the failures without dramatizing them. One candidate struck his head and appeared conscious until he stepped beyond the marked route. Another exhausted his chakra while maintaining an anchor and could not release it when rock shattered beneath him. A third vanished after a radio failure during an older trial with fewer sensors.

The current rules existed because those children had not returned.

Some children looked offended. Others studied the currents with fear they tried to conceal.

Tonbo unsealed his observation equipment. Pressure gauges, humidity sensors, chakra-resistant anemometers, and woven carriers filled one side of the platform.

Tsuyoshi stared. "You brought a laboratory."

"A small one."

"How much did that cost?"

"Less than ignorance."

The first woven carrier entered the wind and nearly tore apart. Tonbo reinforced it, adjusted the flight pattern, and sent it lower along the rock.

The second carried pressure ribbon, temperature seals, and a chakra relay. It survived eleven seconds before a crossing current folded one wing. Tonbo allowed it to break rather than waste chakra preserving equipment at the cost of candidate monitoring. Shikyō's insects recovered the relay after it fell within the permitted zone.

"Your small laboratory loses expensive pieces quickly," Shikyō observed.

"That is why it has redundant pieces."

Tonbo logged the failure and moved the next launch point behind a stone spur. Research inside danger began by accepting that measurements were expendable and people were not.

Beyond the ridge, too distant for ordinary perception, Orochimaru traveled north.