Orochimaru's raspy voice rang out from both everywhere and nowhere at once.
"I must admit I'm impressed… after what I'd done to you, I was not expecting you to be in any state to be walking or even talking, much less charging into my hideout tens of thousands of kilometres away from Konoha… how did Tsunade's precious disciple restore your mind, I wonder…?"
Tsubaki and her Wood Clone looked around wildly in search of the source of Orochimaru's voice, but he was nowhere to be seen. The only signs of life were the five velociraptors keeping a vigilant eye on them.
"Sasuke!" Tsubaki cried.
If Sasuke could hear her, he showed no sign of it. He did not stir so much as a centimetre.
Tsubaki was at her wits' end. What had Sakura been thinking, sending her all alone down here? What was she thinking, going along with those ridiculous orders? She was no match for Orochimaru!
"Wood Style: Four-Pillar Prison Jutsu!"
Without warning, the Wood Clone pushed Tsubaki out of the way as thick beams sprouted from her body, enclosing herself and the four velociraptors under Orochimaru's control inside a wooden cage.
"Sasuke, hang on!"
Tsubaki snapped out of her trance and ran over to Sasuke. A strange sense of relief washed over her as she realised nothing was getting in her way… only a few more steps, and she would be able to free him from his chains… whatever Orochimaru was planning, it had failed, thanks to her Wood Clone's intervention…
Click.
Hang on, click? It was never a good sign when things clicked on their own.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the flagstone Tsubaki had just stepped on sank two and a half centimetres into the ground. A gleaming crescent blade sprang forth from a slit in the wall, and with a swift cut, it sliced through Sasuke's neck, sending his detached head tumbling down to the ground.
Tsubaki froze in incomprehension as Sasuke's head rolled along the floor and bumped against her big toe. What was that doing down there? Sasuke's head obviously belonged on his shoulders, so why, why, why…
"It's okay, I can still heal him, I just need to reconnect his neck…"
With trembling fingers, Tsubaki stuck Sasuke's head back onto his body, but she needed both hands to perform the Mystical Palm Jutsu… she could barely see anything, bloody tears blurred her vision as an additional tomoe spun into orbit in her eyes…
"It's no good, I'm not good enough," Tsubaki muttered to herself incoherently. "Wait, that's right… if I can get him on ice, Sakura can save him…"
This was all her fault… if she hadn't been so prideful and asked for help from the start, none of this would ever have happened… and then Sasuke's eyes suddenly snapped open.
"You… killed… me…" he said hoarsely.
Tsubaki blinked… and then she slammed Sasuke's head as hard as she could against the wall of the crypt, smashing it like a watermelon. She then stared at her hands and watched as the blood dissolved away into nothingness… Sasuke's body had been nothing more than an illusion from the very beginning.
"That's a bit much, don't you think?" she said coldly as a third tomoe spun into each of her scarlet eyes. "Heads can't talk without their lungs."
A low chuckle echoed through the chamber.
"A bit of a waste to stop there, don't you think?" Orochimaru said. "If you'd lost yourself just a little longer in the illusion that you had killed Sasuke with your own hands, you might have evolved your eyes into Mangekyō Sharingan…"
Tsubaki gazed coldly at the reconstructed fossil of a giant carnivorous dinosaur in the middle of the room. The illusion shattered like glass before her three-tomoe Sharingan, revealing its true form to be a tyrannosaurus covered in white feathers… but it was more than that. The entire crypt was covered in his pulsating flesh… there was no telling where the real Orochimaru began and ended! She was already inside him!
"Hiruko's Chimera Jutsu is quite something, albeit somewhat lacking," the dinosaur said. "My version is far more stable… this body can withstand any number of modifications!"
The Hōzuki clan's Hydrification Jutsu, the ability to turn into a substance akin to water…
Dr Shinnō's Body Revival Jutsu, the ability to manipulate one's muscles…
Furthermore, the Chimera Jutsu allowed for five Kekkei Genkai:
Kimimaro's Shikotsumyaku, the ability to manipulate one's bones…
Sakon and Ukon's Perfect Cell Control, the ability to control one's cells…
Jūgo's Innocent Monster Physique, the ability to constantly attract nature energy…
Hashirama's cells, granting unparalleled cell activity and Wood Style Ninjutsu…
Only one Kekkei Genkai remained… the Uchiha Clan's Mangekyō Sharingan; and by exchanging Tsubaki's and Hikari's pair, he could even obtain the Eternal variant!
"As you can see, I am no longer just the Great White Snake. With this body, I have finally become a Sage," Orochimaru chuckled as he drew his dinosaur body to full height. "I have transcended mere snakes… I have evolved into a DRAGON!"
Without warning, several stone spikes erupted from the floor, ceiling and walls around Tsubaki, but she twisted her body out of the way, and the jutting stones merely scratched her breasts as they flailed wildly, lagging behind the rest of her body slightly as she pirouetted to safety.
"Once I have obtained your three-tomoe Sharingan," Orochimaru said smoothly, "I shall no longer need to fear the genjutsu of Tsunade's disciple. Then nothing will be able to stop me from absorbing the Sixth Hokage and acquiring the physique of a Shikkotsu Forest Sage… With both Organic and Inorganic Reincarnation Sage Arts at my disposal, I shall be truly unkillable…"
Did that mean Orochimaru hadn't captured Sasuke? But Sakura had clearly said he was down here somewhere…
"Eep!"
Orochimaru whipped his tail, shattering the Wood Clone's cage and flattening her into the stone floor in an explosion of splinters. Tsubaki began weaving hand signs, but stone and bone spikes kept popping up underfoot, preventing her from completing more than one by forcing her to focus on avoiding being skewered.
"SKREE!"
The monocled velociraptor suddenly leapt onto Orochimaru, agilely climbing up the side of his body. It reared its sickle claw as it flung itself at the broad flank of his tyrannosaurus face, but before it could plunge the banana-sized claw into his eye, a bone spike erupted from the larger dinosaur's skull and skewered the smaller lizard.
"Nice assist, Sasuke!" Tsubaki called. "Ice Style: Earthen Consecutive Chains of Ice Jutsu!"
Tsubaki slammed her palms against the floor, freezing the water flowing into the crypt into ice and moulding it into spear-tipped chains, which she sent drilling into the great beast's side, like a whaler's harpoons.
Sasuke clearly wasn't here, so it was time to leave… but not before she collected her prize. Tsubaki shattered a funerary urn on her way out and pocketed a broken piece of bone, hoping it was from an era when they still spoke the old tongue.
"That's what you get for being cold-blooded," Tsubaki gasped as she flickered towards the exit. "See you later, alligator!"
The water flushing down the runnel had turned from a trickle into a veritable ankle-deep stream… where in the world was all this water coming from!?