“Home at last. You’re as busy as ever then,” Orochimaru said in the same old husky voice and took a silent sip from his teacup.
“Huh … Hunh?” Naruto rubbed his eyes, convinced that he was now seeing ghosts. But the vision before him was, without a doubt, real.
Orochimaru was drinking tea. In the Uzumaki living room.
“Hi, Naruto. Welcome home,” Hinata said, smiling at him from where she stood in the dining room. “Orochimaru brought strawberry zenzai. It’s really delicious. Do you want some?”
“H-Hinata,” Naruto stammered. “Orochimaru is in our living room …”
“He is. He arrived a little while ago.” Hinata’s calm was in contrast to Naruto’s panic. “I was surprised to see him too, but he’s been a real help, playing so much with Himawari. He said he has something to talk to you about.”
Talk? Orochimaru? Me? Were we friendly like that?
Hinata set out some tea and strawberry zenzai for him. “Well, I’m off to pick up some things for supper,” she said gently and left the living room.
“Right. Be careful,” Naruto murmured and then realized he was still standing, so he tentatively pulled out a chair.
Himawari ran in clutching a pencil crayon and wrapped herself around Orochimaru’s legs. “Orocchi! Draw moooore!”
“Maybe later, hm?” he said, looking down at her. “I need to talk with your daddy for a second.”
“So what do you want to talk about?” Naruto was still baffled, but he nevertheless straightened up in his seat.
Orochimaru had been quietly minding his own business as of late, so Naruto had let his guard down a bit. But he knew the snake man would happily commit any evil for the sake of his own goals. He wasn’t the sort of person to sit leisurely in your living room sipping a cup of tea. Not normally.
“Could you be a little less defensive? I came because I wanted to lend you something.” Orochimaru reached a hand into the sleeve of his kimono and dug out from its deep pocket a pair of large goggles.
“What’re those?” Naruto asked warily.
“My latest invention. These goggles can give you the ocular jutsu of someone else.”
Give? Someone else’s ocular jutsu?
Naruto blinked rapidly, confused.
In the last few years, there had been remarkable development in technologies that could separate ninjutsu from their users and store them independently. The pioneer of this advancement was Katasuke, and his key inventions were the scientific ninja tools. But ocular jutsu, based on kekkei genkai, were extremely difficult to reproduce. Common thought was that it was impossible for ocular jutsu to be used by other people with scientific ninja tools.
Naruto took the goggles and stared at them. Grey frame with orange lenses.
“So they’re like the scientific ninja tools?” he asked. “An average person with no chakra can use these goggles?”
“Yes. Their performance has no relationship to the wearer’s chakra. Earlier, your wife was kind enough to work with me to set them with the Byakugan ability.”
“The Byakugan?”
Orochimaru looked at Naruto’s surprised face, and his smile had a cruel edge. “However, while the ability is set in the goggles, your wife cannot use her Byakugan. Go ahead and put them on.”
No matter how he looked at it, this technology was sketchy. But his curiosity outweighed his suspicions, and so Naruto put on the goggles, keeping an eye on Orochimaru the whole time. All he could see through the glass was a slightly warped living room; his field of view did not change.
“Nothing’s happening,” he said.
“There’s a small lever on the frame,” Orochimaru told him. “Pull it.”
Here? He tugged hard on the little switch to one side of a lens, and his field of vision flipped like he was looking through a kaleidoscope.
“Ah!”
It wasn’t a kaleidoscope. It was the familiar sight of his living room. Except that he could see everything. The sink on the other side of the counter, the designs on the plates and cups in the cupboards, the mosquito behind a cushion on the sofa, the movement of Himawari’s hands where she sat on the carpet drawing, each and every one of the pages of the sketchbook, everything.
Unable to keep his eyes open any longer, Naruto pushed the goggles up onto his forehead.
“What is that even?!” he yelped. “I can see so much, but I also can’t see anything at all!”
“At first, your brain can’t keep up and process everything. Train with them.”
“Train?”
Naruto guessed at Orochimaru’s intentions and narrowed his eyes sharply. “So that’s your little game. You’re making me test your prototype.”
“I wouldn’t lend them to you out of the goodness of my heart,” Orochimaru said gracefully.
“Why me?” Naruto took off the goggles and stared at them again. “If you want to test a prototype, you’ve got Suigetsu and Karin. Why come all the way to my house?”
“Well, put simply...” Orochimaru suddenly stretched his neck out. “You can’t use chakra now, yes?”
An icy breath stroked the back of his own neck, and Naruto scowled, not hiding the chill he felt. “How do you know that?”
“Snakes have excellent hearing.” The forked tip of his long tongue licked at the back of Naruto’s ear.
Recoiling in disgust would only make Orochimaru happy. Naruto kept his arms crossed and his face expressionless. Seeing this, Orochimaru smiled, seemingly pleased.
“Working with me isn’t such a bad deal for you,” he remarked.
“And if I refuse?”
“I don’t think you can.”
He was exactly right.
Naruto was reluctant to lend a hand to this man’s research, but now that he couldn’t manipulate chakra, the goggles were appealing. And to be honest, he’d always wondered what the view was like when Hinata was using her Byakugan ability.
With no clue about what was going on, Himawari trotted over and innocently clapped her hands. “Wow! Orocchi, you can stretch your neck out?! You’re like a giraffe, huh!”
“A snake. Snake. Not a giraffe.” Orochimaru pulled his neck back in and slowly stood up. “I’ll come again,” he said and headed for the front door.
Utterly smitten, Himawari trotted after him on small feet. “Orocchi, you’ll come over again, right? Next time, I want you to draw my brother’s picture.”
“Yes, all right.” He smiled. “I’ll draw whatever you’d like.”
As always, Naruto was puzzled by this guy.