One Long Mission

Orochimaru moved through the village, humming under his breath as he sorted through the various items that were on sale due to the turn of the season. He had plenty of time, after all, given that nothing at home was in danger of exploding or otherwise being ruined presently, so he could enjoy the fresh air and company of those in the village.

Even if they sadly never had been willing to enjoy his company in turn. It mattered not, he would give them the benefit of the doubt, because doing anything else would have been spitting in the face of both his mother and his sensei's teachings, and he by no means wished to be a disappointment in such a simple way.

Still, most were welcoming to him, and thus there was no point in focusing on those who weren't. It would interfere with his studies, after all, and they were far more relevant than worrying on if a scattering of people knew how to be forgiving.

It was raining. Hard, irritating rain that at the very least wasn't cold... but also seemed to have no discernible source. Staring upwards in pure irritation, he narrowed his eyes, once again failing to see even a single cloud in the sky.

He didn't bother going back to change, as he'd already done so once, only to quickly find himself in a repeat deluge the second he left his home again. No, instead he stalked toward the village, utterly irritated with the bizarre weather of this place and the fact that it had decided that he desperately needed to experience the weather of a country he was happy to leave less than a year before, very largely in part because of this.

So there was a caravan coming. While he had money to deal with this, the timing was less than perfect and he sighed, once again going through the process of clearing his part of the rock face of snowmelt. Of -course- the caravans were due on the opposite side of the village, as he lived against the cliff face but still...

Irritating. With a last flick of his hands, he rested his hands on his hips. Better. Still snowy, but his part of the mountain was clear without a direct path to his door.

He had, on realizing how heavily the snow was coming down, decided to stay in his lab and try to wait it out.

After day two, he realized this might have been less than wise as his view of the outside became quite blocked, with the entrance thoroughly walled off in snow.

Come day three, he finally heard a lull in the constant faint tapping of what he'd come to realize was the snow outside his little cave network, muted though it had been, and he finally decided, after making sure all his projects were quite stable, that he needed to go -out-.

Digging his way free turned out to be another matter entirely though, and by the time he reached the surface of the snow, he was quite cold, damp, and half tempted to turn around and go back to his nice warm cave.

After all, what was out here that he actually wanted again?

Rolling out of his bedding hadn't brought him to an unanticipated level of comfort. He'd been on his way back to the village and had been in camp with his teammates after all. No, the jarring part was the mad scramble needed to avoid taking a headlong dive over a cliff that hadn't been there when he'd gone to sleep, and it was more than enough to immediately put him on the defensive, back straight as he slowly scanned his surroundings.

No teammates, no -forest-. Where the hell was he?