Saul followed the purple haired Anbu a short ways out. As the time passed though, he grew more and more suspicious. Where exactly was she taking him? And why was she leading him even further away from the center of the village? Even though the woman had seemed familiar to him from his memories from the canon Anbu, his trust only extended so far. He had walked far enough.

Saul stopped. The woman didn't turn around, but a slight glance over her shoulder told him the woman had immediately noticed his lack of movement.

"What's the problem...?"

"I'm going home."

"But... I need to verify your identity. You will be taken in by force if you do not comply. Do you understand?"

She placed her hand on the edge of her Katana. Saul's hand moved to his ninja pouch to hold a kunai as a front, but in reality he primed the frontloaded body flicker and shadow clone ninjutsu.

Saul chuckled. "You're not really working for the Anbu, are you...? Do you think I'm afraid of a fight?"

The woman glared back. The light of the moon made its way into the spherical eye sockets of her mask, giving him a glance at the eyes that were hidden within. They were brown but also dead. Emotionless. Saul's mind raced. Was she a part of Root? Had he entered Danzo's sight?

The woman pushed up at the center of where her brows would be, as if she was pushing up a pair of glasses. It was an unconscious action, a force of habit. Her pointer finger touched the white animal mask she wore in silence. Her hand suddenly dropped by her side. Then she chuckled.

"You've grown sharp, haven't you. I would expect no less from the one "He" asked me to find."

Her hands came together to make a hand seal.

"If you're going to make things difficult for me, I guess I'll have to see if you really are worth all this trouble, huh?"

The woman vanished. Teleportation!? No, she was still there...

Saul could feel it. The air itself shifted from her presence and with her movements. Everything except his sense of sight told him she was still there. And yet... He had never even seen this Jutsu before.

The air currents instantaneously shifted. She was coming!

Saul body flickered away immediately. A few moments later, he heard the whistle of a katana slicing through the remnant smoke of his body flicker Jutsu. Only the two holes of her mask were visible through whatever invisibility Jutsu she was using, black, bottomless pits of darkness deeper than the night.

The eyes vanished once more. Saul made hand seals and flickered away again before she could strike.

"Who even are you anyway!? I have no quarrel with Root!"

The woman chuckled. "Wrong. I have nothing to do with that organization anymore. Why don't you take another guess...?"

Saul felt the flow of wind behind him and he flickered away again, dodging another strike. What in the hell was he supposed to do? Sure he could sense 'an' attack was coming, but the specifics of said attack eluded him. Actually fighting his invisible enemy without precisely knowing how they were positioned or how they were attacking would be a gamble at best. In addition, somehow she knew the shadow clone Jutsu or something similar. How else would she attack him from somewhere else when he knew where she was, after all?

"You can stop trying to distract me with your words. Any more of this and I'll call for help. Do you want me to wake up the village?"

This was a double edged sword. He would inevitably fall under the village's suspicion for being involved in something like this, but at the same time, the risk was much less than fighting an invisible foe he knew nothing about. Her suspicious behavior and willingness to attack immediately without calling for Anbu reinforcements spoke volumes about her position. She was not a Konoha ninja. She had taken him to this remote area to avoid attention.

The woman seemed to take his words seriously. She paused for a moment, black eyes boring into his. Then she canceled the invisibility Jutsu. The woman started lifting up her mask to speak. Pale, blue lips appeared, colored more by the lack of oxygen and blood rather than any sort of lipstick.

"I have to give it to you, Saul. You're much smarter than your appearance lets on..."

The Anbu in front of him collapsed, like a puppet whose strings were cut. The woman in front of him had her mask fully taken off by the fall. Saul recognized her as the dead corpse of Uzuki Yugao. He took a sharp breath.

A deep voice resounded behind him where he had previously dodged away. Saul turned to face it.

It continued, "Regardless of however much of your intelligence is jaded by your ignorance."

The man in front of him had silvery white hair banded into a short ponytail that glinted within the moonlight. He was wearing round rimmed glasses that he habitually pushed up to his nose. Yakushi Kabuto...

"It's been a long time, Saul-kun. How have you been? And how is mother doing?"

"Kabuto... What?" Saul cursed himself for not going through the memory of his previous body rigorously, only reviewing the day prior to his transmigration.

He smiled. His lips were pressed into a thin line yet curved unnaturally wide. The man had clearly taken after Orochimaru in this respect.

Saul wracked his brain for what would be the most appropriate response. Then he visibly frowned.

"The director is doing just fine. If it really mattered to you, why don't you just go see her yourself?"

"Ah, you see, that would be a problem. She wouldn't recognize me any longer. I'll have to trouble you not to inform her of our little meeting here. You can spare her the emotional turmoil, right?"

Saul's voice turned exasperated, "We'll see about that. Why are you even here anyway!? Who sent you?"

Kabuto grinned. "That is the question of the day, isn't it? I have to say though, Saul, you're much much different than I remember."

"Time does that to everyone. Forget me, you seem to have changed much more than I have. Now answer my question."

"Haha, that must seem to be so... Alright, I won't keep you in suspense any longer. The one who you battled in the forest, the Kage slayer, Orochimaru-sama, has a proposal for you."

"Proposal?"

"That's right." Kabuto pushed up his glasses, then reached behind him to take out a scroll. He threw it over to him.

Saul summoned a frontloaded shadow clone who intercepted the scroll midair.

"So cautious?"

"You've attacked me in the middle of the night. And the one who sent you attacked both me personally and my village. Isn't a little caution warranted at this point?"

Kabuto smiled disarmingly. "Oh, don't be like that. Neither Orochimaru-sama or I ever intended to harm you, Saul-kun. It's all in good fun. Orochimaru-sama even gifted Hinata the Sage Seal for your trouble! I'm sure you've seen how priceless such a gift truly is when she used it in the Arena to beat Neji. And we've known each other since we were kids. Do you think I'd seriously aim for your life?"

Fun, huh. Saul had no doubt that whatever prior relationship they had, it didn't mean shit to the current Kabuto. And from his knowledge of Canon, he also knew the true purpose of Orochimaru's curse mark.

It was not given altruistically. Rather, the goal was to develop and acclimate her body to Orochimaru's will and the natural energy of Sage Mode, to shape her into the perfect vessel for his body-stealing Jutsu.

Still, Orochimaru was one of the most prominent researchers in the whole Ninja world. Despite being a missing-nin without a village to support him or being able to do any of his activities out in the open, he had almost reached the peak of strength in the Ninja world merely as a byproduct of his intellectual pursuits.

Orochimaru had only been crippled by Hiruzen as a result of his own arrogance within the fight. He refused to take the old man seriously - engaging continuously with the man in fights of Taijutsu as a ninjutsu specialist. He even let Hiruzen grab him at the end, treating even the Reaper Death Seal as a joke. In the end, he paid the price for his arrogance. Both of his arms had become crippled due to the residual damage to his soul.

Saul could easily guess at this point why Orochimaru had sought him out. The Ninjutsu Saul used with the frontloading Jutsu did not require hand seals - a fact both Orochimaru and now Kabuto had seen for their own eyes. A cooperation between the two could be highly beneficial to both Orochimaru and the current Saul.

"...Very well then. I'll have a look at the scroll and see what he wants."

The Shadow clone unfurled the scroll Kabuto had thrown over to take a look at its contents.

Kabuto smiled. "I love dealing with smart people. When you're ready to discuss Orochimaru's proposal, come and find this corpse. She'll lead you to me."

Uzuki Yugao stood back up from the ground and wordlessly fixed her mask. In canon, the woman had survived the Chunin exams. Instead her boyfriend, Hayate Gekko, had died at the overseeing Sunagakure Jonin's hands after overhearing a treasonous conversation between him and Kabuto. Now it seemed like Hayate had survived, yet Yugao silently met her end. She now served as fodder for Kabuto's Dead Soul Technique as a mole within Konoha's Anbu. What a waste of a beautiful woman.

Saul frowned, "I understand. But what if I decide to expose you instead. This is my village, after all."

Kabuto chuckled, "Would you really? Do you think your actions within the forest of death went completely unnoticed? Orochimaru-sama knows you are a kindred soul, in the pursuit of knowledge just like him. Expose us, and we will expose you."

Author's Note: Yep sorry guys, Yugao didn't make it. In Canon, Kabuto infiltrated Konoha under Orochimaru's purview and only had his Dead Soul Technique exposed once he confronted Kakashi with the corpses of his Anbu subordinates while checking on Sasuke.

Due to Orochimaru having a backup in Hinata and not 100% reliant on Sasuke, he does not provoke Kabuto to check on Sasuke while he is recovering from the application of the curse mark. This means Kabuto does not have his confrontation with Kakashi.

With Konoha still in the blind to a technique like this, it was only a matter of time before Kabuto used this card to his advantage. And unfortunately as a sensory Anbu, Yugao would be a prime initial target for Kabuto's attack and subsequent control.

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