"I made all kinds of food for you," Reiko said with mild disappointment, "and it turns out you're already full."
"As if you can get full with that J around!" I shot back irritably. "Glutton."
"Then march to the bath, change your clothes, and get to the table!"
Reiko—my current mother—was someone I did manage to save, unlike the First and Second Hokage. I just hope she never finds out who poisoned her so badly that she spent an entire year in a coma. But what could I do? At four years old, I couldn't come up with anything better. It's a good thing they didn't try to send her out on missions during the next six years of war—med-nins were needed in Konoha itself. Of course, it was hard for her at first, since only a handful of competent med-nin remained in the village, but later Tsunade and I joined her.
Yes, I carried out all the points from my original plan. Almost. The chronic fatigue remains—I'm still severely lacking in physical energy. Turns out I was right to suspect health issues back in childhood. CAH—congenital adrenal hyperplasia—with a 46, XY karyotype. And Swyer syndrome on top of that. Yes, I'm unbelievably lucky. I suppose it may be connected to my having a kekkei genkai. I managed to eliminate some of the symptoms, but on a genetic level, the condition hasn't gone anywhere. As for everything else: I saved Reiko, became an med-nin, more or less figured out my body, and restored all the organs to their proper places. No one knows about that last part, though. I introduced myself to my team as Orochimaru from the start, so they've always considered me a guy. Most of the villagers, meanwhile, simply try not to get involved with me and keep their distance.
In general, I'm not exactly well-liked in the village. Like Naruto, I'm treated as something of a demon. Probably because of my pretty snake eyes. So it turns out everyone recognizes me on sight, but no one knows any details about me. They probably find me distasteful. But Mom doesn't care what anyone says. To her, I'm her beloved daughter, Chi-chan. That's how it is.
"Is it good?" Reiko asked, watching me with a fond smile.
"Of course!" I replied immediately, pausing for a moment in my dinner to look at her.
She'll be thirty soon. My second mother—the one I've never quite managed to accept as my parent. Too young, and her attitude toward me is… strange. Then again, maybe all mothers treat their daughters like this—I wouldn't know. But Reiko seemed more like a friend to me than a mother.
By the way, she doesn't look her age at all. And that's thanks to one particular juvenile poisoner. When I was four, right as the war suddenly broke out, I had just begun figuring out my body and was riding an unprecedented high. Of course I was! I had an entire biochemical synthesizer hidden within me! In canon, Orochi implanted the Jugo clan's enzymes through bites—so why should I be any worse? Long story short, while everyone was wondering why Reiko-san had decided to "take a nap" for a year, I was giving her a full course in age stabilization. Not immortality, of course, but I secured her youth until around a hundred. She's practically like an Uzumaki now—except she won't grow much beyond seventeen anymore. Yeah…
Speaking of Uzumaki and such.
"Ma," I called out to Reiko, who was currently stacking dirty dishes in the sink, "did you manage to get what I asked for?"
"Yes," she replied, "it's in the scroll on your desk."
"Thanks!" In my excitement, I even hugged her from behind and kissed her on the cheek.
"Just be careful."
"Of course! I'm off!"
Ha! Now even the Senju won't be a problem for me!
I practically flew down to my lab—built beneath the house using Earth Release—driven by excitement and forgetting everything else. Finally, I had Senju stem cells! That's my mom for you—amazing! Members of that clan rarely give birth in Konoha's hospital, so obtaining their umbilical cord and the blood from it had been extremely difficult. It pays to have a mother recognized as a top-tier med-nin. And now I have this treasure—one hundred milliliters of blood!
"Looks like I've got a fun night ahead of me," I muttered with satisfaction, examining the red liquid in the flask. "Well, let's begin."
I became interested in local medical practices almost immediately after regaining consciousness thirteen years ago. Science developed in a very peculiar way here, I'll tell you that. Thanks to chakra and ninjutsu, these local butchers manage to implant foreign cells into the body without any equipment. Of course, no one here has the slightest idea what histocompatibility is, so they achieve positive results in creating chimeras simply by increasing the number of test subjects and the amount of chakra involved. And it's brutal, I tell you!
In fact, once I established myself as a genius in genetics—slipped up a couple of times in front of my teacher, Sarutobi—Danzo took an interest in me. Yeah, yeah, that bastard still managed to drag me into Root—he knew exactly how to tempt me. But that's not the point right now. The first time I witnessed local experiments with the genome was back when Shimura wasn't yet such an influential figure, merely beginning to get a taste of power under Tobirama's wing. Even during the Second's tenure, experiments on the Uchiha clan's kekkei genkai were already being conducted in the catacombs of the newly formed ANBU.
The Hokage really didn't like those red-eyes! Though, to be fair, those underground labs weren't limited to studying the Sharingan. Yeah… it seems the only truly decent ruler Konoha has had so far was the First.
Anyway, when I saw what was going on down there, I was stunned. Barbarians with magic wands—that was my first thought. To work so crudely with such capabilities! And the worst part is—it actually works! Eye transplantation completely blew my mind. They just shove in Sharingan and say, "Go ahead, use it!" and then wonder why nothing works. The chakra drain from trying to suppress histocompatibility issues is so extreme that actually using the dojutsu becomes nearly impossible! Idiots…