My Shinobi Academia: Naruto x ATLA x HxH x MHA

Chapter 19: Sasuke's Insecurities

Fire Style: Dragon Flame Jutsu! Sasuke thought. This was followed by several screams of pain and terror. The scent of burning flesh was strong in the air as the people were roasted. The image of his brother, Itachi, formed within the smoke, reaching out to him. "Let your hate grow! Until you can defeat me," the apparition said. The apparition gave way to those of his mother and father's dead bodies, lying within the flames.

Sasuke shot up, puking over the side of his bed from the horror of his nightmares. "I won't do it your way..." he roared. He reached for his left shoulder almost immediately, trying to soothe the sharp pain that shot through it but a heavy weight pulled him to the floor, which made him finally realize that his hands had been encased in a block from the wrists.

"Good! You're awake. I wondered if I had gone a bit overboard when I knocked you out," he heard the familiar voice of Orca, who stood outside the bars of his prison. "Sorry about the hands. Just precautions."

Sasuke frowned. In the dimly lit jail, the killer whale man's awkward body appeared more monstrous, his outline highlighted by the small light that managed to sneak in through the windows. Even a well-pressed suit couldn't hide what he truly was, an abomination, one of Orochimaru's experiments — probably one so weak they needed all the help they could get.

"Heh! If looks could kill..." Orca said, acknowledging Sasuke's disgust. This was nothing he hadn't experienced before as a heteromorph.

"Tell Orochimaru I've had enough of his games," he snapped at the hero. "I'm tired of talking to low grade lackeys!"

Orca held back a grin, a slight chuckle causing his shoulders to shrug. "Not while you still have an attitude problem," Orca noted. "Lord Orochimaru has no place for brats in his plan."

Sasuke's jaw tightened, his fists pushing against the blocks to try and break through them.

"Oh I dare you," Orca goaded. "Pit your strength against the many prisoners Orochimaru has held. Maybe then you could prove yourself worthy of a meeting."

"Is that what you had to do?" Sasuke shook his head and chuckled. "It must be sad to know that despite giving your body over to him, your power was not enough to match mine. How does it feel to know you'll always be a worthless underling?"

He paused for his words to sink in, inspecting his body language with his Sharingan. A slow laugh began to build up from Orca's belly, filling the room with raucous laughter.

"Do you think I'm still a pup like you? The lord Orochimaru asked me to test you, not to break you. And I must say he was very disappointed in you." Orca stopped, shooting Sasuke a menacing glare. Sasuke instinctively took a step back, bumping into the bed behind him. Itachi's face filled Sasuke's thoughts as he saw his brother's glowing Sharingan in the monster's red eyes. "The master was very unhappy with you. So much that he asked that you be thrown out with the riffraff," Orca told Sasuke. "You may be useless, but you will keep some people fed in the very least."

Orca walked towards the door, leaving Sasuke flummoxed and angry. Before exiting the room, he turned on several screens. "You can at least spend your last human moments seeing how well the others did." The door slammed shut.

Sasuke growled in frustration, smashing his blocked arm into the prison bars. This sent a shock through him, the bars barely moving. He fumed at his own weakness, his ninjutsu rendered useless with a single block. He remembered the weights Lee had worn during the chunin exam. Maybe he should also build his strength to complement his jutsu. Sasuke imagined how much more powerful he could be with taijutsu like that used by the right ninja, him. Itachi was certainly physically stronger than he was currently, dispatching him with a single arm, a reminder of how far behind he had fallen playing ninja with Team 7.

He glanced at the screens that that monster had left playing. There were four of them in all, playing different recordings of events that had transpired earlier. Sasuke's bout with Orca was played on the central television, in between the fight at the beach and the fight in the alleyway. The screen next to the beach fight showed a video of the Sound Five massacring some unfortunate souls in an alley, before proceeding to swiftly dispatch three heroes, who Sasuke thought were stupidly dressed freaks.

So this was all a test by Orochimaru? Sasuke wondered, looking at the screens. Investigating the environments however, he found it hard that Orochimaru could have advanced the Hidden Sound that much more without drawing attention from the Five Kages. It couldn't be genjutsu though. He had already tried releasing it several times before. With his hands sealed, there was nothing else to try.

There was another thing that bothered Sasuke though. Orca didn't react to his Sharingan when he activated it. There was no reference to its legendary power, or to Kakashi or Itachi's prowess with it. Even if he'd never encountered one, he definitely had to know of it if Orochimaru trusted him to capture Sasuke right? Moreover, he made no attempts to protect himself from genjutsu. Was he that confident in his own ability? Or was that how low he thought of Sasuke? The mere disrespect made Sasuke bite his lip.

Orca arrived in an observation room which had multiple live feeds from the jail. There were three others waiting in there for him, one being his right hand, Okuma Teruo, very short portly man, who had a tablet in hand. He had a quilled back, resembling a hedgehog. The other two underlings, one with catch eyes, and the other with slightly webbed hands, worked the computers in the room.

"You really love playing the bad guy, dont'cha?" he noted as Orca came through the door.

"People with prejudices are the easiest to manipulate," Orca told him. "Did you learn anything about this Orochimaru person?"

"No direct matches were found in the hero database, matching heroes or villains," the cat-eared underling replied.

"We expanded the search to include international bases too, and no direct match," the webbed-hand underling chimed in. "The closest hits appear to be villains inspired by the Orochi's motif, but none who could run such an operation."

"From what the boy said, this Orochimaru person appears to be giving out quirks to these children in exchange for their loyalty. Look for people with quirk transfer abilities or the sort..." Orca specified, the two typing quickly on their computers.

The pro-hero turned to Teruo. "The HPSC wanted to let you know that the escort would be taking a while as they are still processing the others. There is an urgent meeting in Tokyo to discuss Stain's transfer to Tartarus though."

Orca waved away the issue. "I'm not leaving you guys alone with him. The security here is barely enough as is. And despite being a child, he killed a dozen men."

A loud beep punctuated his sentence. He turned to Nekoeko, the cat-eared guy, whose furrowed brow couldn't hide his confusion. There was another loud beep, causing them to grimace.

"Another dead-end?" he asked Mizukaki, the webbed hand guy.

"There's one result, but it's marked controlled information," Mizukaki explained. "We can't get through without clearance..."

"Unless you want us to bypass..." Nekoeko started.

"It's fine. That tells me enough," Orca interrupted, stopping his eager underlings from committing another crime. "Get me a secure line to the PSIA," he told Nekoeko before turning to Teruo. "In the meantime, watch him closely. I want to know how he reacts to each of the other terrorists!"