Huh? A rogue ninja from Konoha? Everyone looked puzzled.
Anko, however, immediately caught on. Someone she had encountered during the second exam, who was also a rogue ninja-who else could it be but the man who had always terrified her?!
"Orochimaru?!"
Orochimaru... Why did that name sound so familiar... Huh? Orochimaru?! Orochimaru of the Konoha Sannin?! Everyone was startled. Orochimaru had appeared here?! Where?
...Surely it wasn't the man Naruto had pinned beneath him?!
Hiruzen Sarutobi was startled too, but before he could think it over, the body of the Sound Ninja lying in the crater suddenly began to swell unnaturally. The next second, it burst apart. Yet, bizarrely, what lay inside was not flesh and blood, but-snakes! A great many snakes! Live, writhing snakes!
At the sight of those snakes, Hiruzen Sarutobi and Anko had no doubts left. This was indeed Orochimaru's style!
"Fire Release: Phoenix Flower Jutsu!"
Hiruzen Sarutobi was, of course, the quickest to react. He rapidly formed hand seals, then opened his mouth and spat out an enormous number of fireballs. Thanks to his exquisite chakra control, every single fireball struck a snake with perfect accuracy.
The smell of burning protein assaulted everyone's nostrils, and firelight illuminated their faces. Only then did they react, hurriedly following the Hokage's lead to eliminate the swiftly slithering snakes.
With everyone working together, they were extremely efficient. Despite the sheer number of snakes, in the blink of an eye, the ground was covered in their corpses.
Naturally, Naruto was killing snakes too. There were so many that the Sound Ninja's body seemed less like a human body and more like a gigantic snake den, riddled with winding tunnels where countless snakes made their home.
A short while later, seemingly all the snakes in that "den" had crawled out, leaving nothing