Chapter 1

Rumors of a giant snake running amok had drawn Uchiha Sasuke to the largely unexplored forests on Lightning Country's eastern border. It was a harsh landscape, with uneven, jagged peaks of stone slashed with copses of evergreens and other hardy trees. Those who venture into the forest dare only go to its fringes to hunt for game or harvest medicinal herbs, but never alone, and never at night. Sasuke remembered the gossip from his Genin days that the beasts in Training Ground 44 were originally from around here.

Judging from the ferocity of the local wildlife as soon as he walked in, there was probably some truth to that rumor. Kusanagi was a flash of silver as he slashed at the neck of a particularly large black bear, deftly jumping out of the path of its dark claws already tipped in the blood of a recent prey. Its death howl rang in Sasuke's ear. The self-exiled shinobi paid it no mind, instead slashing his sword in the air to rid it of blood, before sheathing it in one swift movement. He would clean it more carefully later.

Sasuke straightened, glancing at his surroundings. The forest was deathly silent.

"Hn." He started walking in a random direction, eyes peeled for any sign of the rumored giant snake. Reports from Kumogakure have confirmed sighting of the beast – it was, indeed, a "giant"; chuunin who have managed to get a visual of the animal estimated it to be around 80 feet in length. It hasn't attacked anybody yet. But any snake that large was too dangerous, and it seemed its scales were thick enough to deflect kunai and other blades alike.

It was also well camouflaged, and eerily silent; those who have seen the giant snake found it by accident, and none of the shinobi could sense chakra from it, which rules out the possibility that it was a summon. No one has seen its face either; it was always just a flash of scales, a rustling from underneath a heavy copse of trees, and a huge, slithering body that almost always vanishes completely out of sight (this ability to vanish near instantaneously bothered him – animals of this size were hardly stealthy).

And tracks of course. No animal that large could have moved across a forest without leaving traces behind.

Half an hour into the forest, Sasuke saw these tracks himself.

He was walking along the bank of a small river, the ground sloping upwards a few meters on either side. The river was only a few inches deep, and as wide as five people walking abreast. Sasuke jumped over a rotting log, careful to keep his footing on the muddy bank when he saw it.

Sasuke had seen snake tracks before – not surprising when he can summon them. He did have a contract with the Snake summons, after all. Smaller varieties hardly leave any tracks behind, but the larger snakes like pythons and constrictors definitely do, especially on the ground: something akin to a thick rope being dragged across the ground in a repetitive, wave-like pattern.

These tracks were almost exactly the same, with the only difference being that they were several times larger than what he expected. He stopped for a moment and stared, his brain doing the math. This snake was unnaturally huge; it was probably bigger than Manda, or at least as big as the summons is. Snakes normally don't grow to this size unless it was either exposed to Nature chakra (possible, but highly unlikely), or it was the product of experimentation (again possible, but who in their right mind would experiment on—oh, right).

"Hn." Sasuke's brow furrowed, his lip pulling down. Orochimaru did put up a hidden base in Lightning country, but Sasuke had no idea what sort of insane experiments the Snake sannin had done here. This snake could well be one of them.

If that was the case, then there is only one thing to do: kill the snake and report this back to Konoha.

A voice from above made him freeze. "Either you are lost, or you are hunting, and I do not like the idea of both. Please tell me you're just passing through?"#

A/N: Thank you for reading. This story updates every Wednesday. Feel free to write a review, or send me questions.