Chapter Text
Tsunade always supported healthy eating. As a medic nin, she would persuade threaten her teammates on proper diet and healthy lifestyle. She would always beat up Jiraiya for not eating his vegetables and glared Orochimaru to death whenever she learned that he ate nothing for the whole day, again. It was quite funny how in the end, she didn't heed her own rules and gravitated towards an unhealthy obsession with sake.
Orochimaru sighed for the third time that day when he remembered how Jiraiya somehow messed up his storage scrolls. Instead of the things he packed up for his mission, what that imbecile toad replaced for his food reserve (which consists of tea, protein bars and some food pills) was a storage scroll that had tons of cup ramen, hashi, a gallon of water and a kettle.
It was one of Jiraiya's pettiest pranks after Orochimaru snitched him to Tsunade for not eating the stir fry vegetable she made specifically for Jiraiya's consumption. And that event happened years ago! That imbecile still remembered it! That petty bastar—
Orochimaru swore that when he got back to Konoha, Jiraiya would pay.
But, back to his current predicament.
The Snake Sannin glared at the pile of cup ramen on top of a storage scroll and cursed the Toad Sannin for his childishness.
He felt exhaustion and hunger overtaking him after his mission. It was an A-rank retrieval mission he took after his sensei told him that he needed a capable shinobi for this task and someone discreet enough to enter Kumogakure and retrieve back a scroll from the Raikage's secret archives without alerting anyone with his presence. A scroll that consisted of forbidden jutsu made by the Nidaime Hokage himself that was stolen from his body after his death from the Kumo shinobi.
Orochimaru's mission lasted him seven days and for the duration of the week, he once or twice have eaten in one of Kumo's open tea shop when he declined with fervor to not eat any of Jiraiya's blasted cup ramen. He must have been influenced by the Toad Sannin's dim-wittedness because he haven't had the mind to restock his supplies at Kumo and now that it has been two days since his last intake of solid food, Orochimaru is fighting the fact that he needed to eat.
It will take him just a day of travel to go back to Konoha but his body insisted that he needed to eat now or he will be sent to oblivion because of hunger and exhaustion.
Swallowing his pride and dislike of instant noodles, Orochimaru decided that once he got back to the village, Jiraiya will dearly, dearly pay for this.
He ran for another half an hour when he remembered a cave that the Sannin used to camp when they were just yet starting with their mission and found the location near the Land of Fire's boarder.
Orochimaru went inside the camp and gathered dried leaves to sit on. He built a fire to set water on a kettle and waited for it to boil. He took the chance to warm himself near the fire and retrieved a miso ramen from his storage scrolls when the water boiled.
Mentally cursing Jiraiya's whole existence, Orochimaru started eating his ramen.
He stopped at his first bite and cursed Jiraiya again.
Orochimaru never had ramen before, because he believed that it was food for idiots, and it was really not that bad. It wasn't. And he won't tell Jiraiya that he instantly liked cup ramen at his first bite.
If cup ramen was this good, what of the real one?
He stopped at his mental ramblings and stiffen when he felt a presence near the cave. He paused eating and in a second, he threw a kunai at the direction where he felt the presence and was rewarded by a surprised squeak.
Orochimaru stood up from his position and readied himself from a fight when a golden creature emerged from the bushes where he threw the kunai.
"Hey! What was that for?!" The angry squeak of a child, waving Orochimaru's kunai, "didn't you know that throwing this thing is dangerous and you might harm someone, 'ttebayo!"
The small child continued his angry rant about 'shinobi randomly throwing their weapon like a paranoid freak' and Orochimaru was left blinking. He expected an ambush from an enemy nin but a small angry child was not in his list.
He stared at the child and noticed his distinct features. His skin was tanned due to the long exposure from the sun, his dirty blond hair was sticking in all direction, strange whisker mark on both of his cheeks and he was wearing a dirty pair of jumpsuit that was shaded in the most obnoxious of orange. What intrigued him to the small child was when he caught a look at his eyes, it was startlingly blue.
His eyes didn't belong to a small kid but to a hard jaded veteran of war.
Orochimaru was brought back to the years when Jiraiya left them for three years to spend his time with the orphans they saw at Ame. Orochimaru insisted in killing the three children but the soft-hearted fool argued with him how they didn't deserve that. Orochimaru felt that his explanation as to why they should kill the orphans was reasonable at that time but Jiraiya didn't listen to him and he was surprised that Tsunade agreed with Jiraiya. So, the imbecile of a Sannin left them for three orphans of war and when he came back to the village, he peppered Orochimaru with stories of how those three will be a great shinobi one day because of their potential.
This child must also be an orphan of war because no small kid like him would be seen freely gallivanting at this part of the country.
Looking at the blonde-haired kid, his eyes were very different to those Ame orphans. Yes, he looked as dirty as those three and as miserable as them but the look in his eyes. It was hard. Clear. Determined.
(And so, so innocent.)
Orochimaru has seen those eyes before. When Tsunade wanted to prove that she will be the greatest kunoichi of her clan. When Jiraiya yelled how he will train hard to beat Orochimaru. And when Orochimaru once looked at the mirror when he was a child and told himself that he will prove everyone wrong about their claims of him.
This child...
"— and what if it really was just a rabbit and not an enemy and you made a fool of yourself in front of your teammates and that teme will call you paranoid—"
Orochimaru blinked to clear his musings and the child was still ranting but it was not about him anymore, it was about the 'teme always thought that he was so good than him' and he was very passionate about his words.
"— do you know understand my point, dattebayo?!" The child asked and stopped his flailing.
The Snake Sannin was left wondering what really was his point. But he held back his tongue before asking and just nodded.
The child beamed at him and Orochimaru was struck at how brilliant he was...
Orochimaru let the sunshine-haired kid approached him and he watched what he was about to do. The kid unceremoniously took the Sannin's hand that twitched at the hold and he carefully placed the kunai at his palm.
The Snake Sannin was blinking at the absurdity of his situation, then he remembered his manners.
"Thank you," he said at the kid, still confused at why and how this was happening.
"No problem, dattebayo— is that ramen?"
Orochimaru looked at what the kid was looking at and saw his cup ramen near the fire where he left it after he threw the kunai and went back to look at the blond, he nodded.
"It's good, right?" The kid asked and he narrowed his eyes at Orochimaru.
"It is," he replied.
The kid's narrowed eyes assessed Orochimaru for something and when he found what he was looking for, the Snake Sannin was again rewarded with his blinding smile.
"Ramen's the best, dattebayo!" He energetically pumped his fist heavenwards but stopped when he seemingly remembered something, "oh, but I have to go!"
The small child waved at him and he watched the kid ran away from him.
Orochimaru stared at the kid's back and noticed how thin he was.
'He must've been hungry,' he mused absent-mindedly.
And before he knew it, Orochimaru called out, "do you want some?"
His voice was not loud but the kid swiveled back to look at him, stars twinkling at his eyes.
"Really?!"
Orochimaru nodded.
"Thank you!" The kid yelled and ran back towards the entrance of the cave to stare back at him.
Orochimaru gestured at the direction of the fire and the kid excitedly nodded to sit near the fire. The Snake Sannin opened another cup ramen and put hot water in it before giving it to the boy.
"Itadakimasu!" The boy clapped his hands.
The Sannin was about to ask why he wasn't eating when he noticed that the boy was waiting for him to eat first. With a quiet 'itadakimasu' in Orochimaru's part, the kid immediately dug in.
Orochimaru watched the boy eat the food with gusto and he wondered if this was what Jiraiya felt like when he fed those Ame orphans when they first met them.
He was feeling very strange...
He can't help but asked, "what's your name?"
The boy stopped slurping noodles to look up at him, "I'm Uzumaki Naruto, dattebayo!"
He didn't know if he gave his name back to the boy because he felt his stomach dropped at the child's name. He didn't have the signature fiery red hair of the Uzumaki clan but he has some of the clan's facial structure and the boy didn't look like he was lying.
Orochimaru didn't like the conclusion forming at his head.