Fanfic / Orochimama

Alternate title: The Snake Goes Ara Ara

When Orochimaru prepares to possess his latest victim — a young woman — something goes horribly wrong, resulting in a random soul from another universe getting thrown into the mix. The end result of the three souls crashing together is something... a little different.

Now, the world has to contend with Orochitama: a woman with all the skills and abilities of Orochimaru, all the foreknowledge of a Naruto fan, the morals of a sane, functioning human being who didn't grow up in a war-torn world, and a grand sense of humor, as she makes waves in the world, and tries to reform the crazed, remorseless killers of Hidden Sound into a force for good.

Meanwhile, Jiraiya and Hiruzen try to figure out what the Hell is going on, Danzo plots, Kakashi is done with everyone, and the rest of the Elemental Nations are just dragged along for the ride.

Orochimama is a Naruto Self-Insert fanfiction on SpaceBattles.com (link), Archive of Our Own (link), FanFiction.Net (link), and Royal Road (link).

---

This Fanfic Contains Examples of the following Tropes:

• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Orochitama makes Sarutobi an offer that, despite seriously upsetting the status quo to aid a known traitor, is far too beneficial for Konoha to turn down. She'll make Kakashi the Jinchuuriki of a cooperative Isobu and help them regain Itachi's full loyalty in exchange for endorsing her new alliance being recognized as the sixth Hidden Village.
• Back from the Dead: Nono Yakushi is revived via Edo Tensei by Orochitama and Kabuto.
• Batman Gambit: As Sarutobi summarizes, Orochitama specializes in having people act in their own self-interests, but in a way that distinctly benefits her.
• Big Eater: Jirobo gets the job of serving food at Konoha, because when selling food to ninja from a different village, it's important to regularly eat a portion yourself to show it isn't poisoned, and he's the one who can eat the most.
• Boring, but Practical: Orochitama has dozens of "Ninja Kiosks" set up throughout the land where villagers can hire ninja without making the dangerous trip to a hidden village. Their requests are relayed to a central hub which determines the pricing and time frame then relays orders to one or more of the dozens of ninja spread throughout the country. Though the missions are almost entirely C and D rank, the new setup allows them to complete dozens, if not hundreds of missions in a day. An village elder from Hidden Waterfall notes that doing more low level missions brings in far more money than focusing on risky high level ones.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Tsunami blushingly turns down being propositioned, so Orochitama just offers that next time she comes by, they can chat, have a meal, go shopping, and plot world domination.
  Tsunami: Oh, that would be- wait, what was that last one?
• Closest Thing We Got: Kabuto might be a sociopath who views everything "Orochitama" does through a Pragmatic Villainy lens, but he's proven to be the only person who can follow her guidelines to act as a substitute leader when she's busy elsewhere. Everyone else goes for the most blatantly evil response to any problem, such as catching a minion stealing food and force-feeding him live burrowing beetles as punishment.
• Deadpan Snarker: Kakashi becomes more and more of this as the sheer ridiculousness of Orochitama's antics takes it's toll, and he resorts to biting sarcasm to cope; he even shocked himself when he mouths off to Danzo in the middle of a council meeting.
  Danzo: You would allow the failure [Naruto] to dictate your opinions?
  Kakashi: Why not? The Third takes your advice.
  The whole room has a moment of Stunned Silence
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Danzo is killed by Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura via a combined noose and explosive tag trap the three set up on a nearby tree.
• Dissonant Serenity: The titular character gently chides a lieutenant for "making such a mess in her meeting room" after she impales him through the throat for questioning her. Though notably, she's only so calm because she has all of Orochimaru's memories.
• Didn't See That Coming: While watching Orochitama's play version of Return of the Jedi, Itachi assumes Luke choosing to spare his father (aka choosing sentiment over duty) will result in his death, especially when Palpatine starts subjecting him to Electric Torture. As such, he's caught completely off guard when Vader kills Palpatine to save his son's life, proving Luke made the right decision.
• The Dreaded: Orochimaru to most of the Ninja world, which is why Orochitama's constant sexual advances are so incredibly off-putting. Of course, that's the point. To those who don't know Orochimaru's reputation, like Naruto and the Wave citizens, she just seems like a very nice, if flirty, woman, and don't understand why Kakashi is constantly freaking out around her.
• Enlightened Self-Interest: How Orochitama frequently gets people to go along with her plans, when she isn't disguising it as Pragmatic Villainy: she simply offers them a way to get what they want through means that are both less violent, and ultimately benefit her plans for peace.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • For a brief time, Kakashi believed the woman who resembles a female Orochimaru is someone trying to frame the Sannin somehow, thinking that Orochimaru could easily pass himself off as a woman and wouldn't make such an amateur mistake as to just look like himself genderswapped.
  • Everyone assumes "Orochitama's" apparently more benevolent nature is actually part of some long term plot to manipulate others into seeing her as a benevolent ruler, such as Kabuto noting that making the change after turning into a woman allows her to more easily portray herself as an "innocent, overly busy woman". In reality, a fan of the series possessed Orochimaru right as he changed bodies for the first time and is trying to remake Sound into an actual hidden village.
• Exact Words: An accidental example. Naruto talks about Orochitama's "steamy girl fight" but Sarutobi largely ignores it, not realizing Naruto is talking about Orochitama fighting Mei Terumi.
• Failed a Spot Check: Orochitama's fair has a number of "reverse pickpockets" who slip coupons into visitors' pockets, something the more senior ninja find hilarious. Naruto loudly claims he'd never fall for such a thing while a reverse pickpocket is slipping a coupon into his pocket. According to Kakashi, Naruto's actually fallen for it far more times than anyone else.
• Five-Finger Discount: Inverted by Sound's "reverse pickpockets", who slip notes into other ninjas' pockets to gently chide them for not being more aware of their surroundings. A mark who catches them at it gets a voucher for a free cotton candy.
• Heel–Face Turn: What it looks like Orochimaru has made, though the truth is more complex, and no one trusts it; Tama is also determined to drag the rest of Sound along with her, whether they like it or not.
• Hoist With His Own Petard: Orochitama holds off Mei's lava and water attacks by blowing them away with exploding tags stolen from Gato, who was supposed to be shipping them to Mei's faction in Mist. Mei realises that not only are Mist's own tags being used against her, but the longer she fights, the less will be left — and the rebellion needs them.
• Hope Spot: Orochitama inspires a brief spark of hope in Gato, when she chastises Tayuya for beating up a prisoner. Then she announces that what she's about to do to him will be much worse, and proceeds to sacrifice his soul in the Edo Tensei technique.
• I Need A Drink: After a few days of Orochitama hanging around and being generally kind, Kakashi recognises that whatever she's going to pull, it's long-term enough that he's going to survive long enough to make a report to the Hokage about it. He promptly concludes that he needs a drink.
  Orochitama: Ara ara, that's bad for Chakra exhaustion.
• If I Wanted You Dead...: Orochitama's snake summons are generally told not to bite without a specific instruction, but having them helps her send the message that she just wants to talk — because otherwise everyone else would be dead already.
  It was stupid, but apparently showing that you can kill them is pretty much the only way to make a ninja respect you on initial meeting. That or just showing yourself as a really hard person to kill, though that involved more steps.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: After Tsunade successfully cures Kimimaro, Ukon insists he and Sakon can't simply poison him again as it'd be far too suspicious and eyes would be on them specifically due to Tsunade having a rough idea how it was done to begin with.
• Lost in Translation: After receiving an extremely urgent coded message from "Orochimaru", Kabuto notes the last line says "I can't even leave for two hours to buy a bra without these idiots setting something on fire", even after he double checks his work. Initially, he assumes Orochimaru must've had someone else write the message and they accidentally slipped in their own thoughts.
• Mad Artist: This is slowly becoming Sound's new hat under Orochitama's new direction; it's certainly a step up from their previous Mad Scientist vibe, though.
• Mad Scientist: Orochitama does appreciate the occasional useful results from her minions' research, but their methods of getting there violate the international ethical standards of even their world, let alone Earth, plus they tend to have incidents like pigs going up in green flames that somehow don't produce smoke, setting fire to the lab walls in the process.
  "I swear, it's like Aperture Science as run by Three Stooges."
• Make an Example of Them: Despite wanting to cut down on the amount of deaths, Orochitama has to kill one of her minions very early on during a meeting, when he starts complaining about having any constraints on his research. She cuts his throat with Kusanagi so fast that no blood gets on the blade, then turns to everyone still standing.
  Orochitama: Ara ara, causing such a mess. Now then! I lost track of what we were talking about. Were any of you stating that you were going against my order too? I'm a bit tired and forgot who were on which side.
• Moment Killer: While Orochitama is trying to figure out how she can possibly escape a Jiraiya in Sage Mode, the latter remarks he figured out the trap she laid for him, which derails her entire thought process to ask what he's talking about.
• No Social Skills:
  • Tatewaki's idea of picking up a woman is to insult her bust but admit her posterior is acceptable and tell her to make sure the "better half is facing him when they retire to his bed".
  • Due to a combination of jealousy and simply having terrible parents himself, Jiraiya absolutely failed at expressing sympathy for Orochimaru when the latter was mourning his parents. Jiraiya's attempts to help him grieve instead resulted in Orochimaru refusing to grieve at all and never visiting his parents' graves again.
• The Oath-Breaker: Gato and Zabuza would both quite like the other dead, but Zabuza believes in doing the job he's been paid to do. When Zabuza and Kakashi appear to be weakened, though, Gato announces that he intends to finish them both off — which means Zabuza no longer considers himself bound by their agreement, and is happy to see Orochitama finish Gato off.
• Oh, Crap!: Orochitama quietly freaks when she runs into Jiraiya in Sage Mode, knowing he completely outclasses her at the moment and that using it means he's completely serious about killing her.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In the aftermath of their fight, Kakashi is extremely interested to hear that Orochitama didn't flirt with Jiraiya at all, citing that she flirts with everyone. Jiraiya is offended that he's not worth flirting with.
• The Power of Friendship: Sakura has a hard time taking Orochitama seriously when she hears, "Nothing beats the power of friendship." Then Orochitama follows that advice up with, "Taking one person by surprise with the help of three other people goes a long way," and Sakura has to double-take and give it some more thought.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The Self-Insert portrays a great deal of her actions this way, such as vastly reducing human experimentation, encouraging training and friendship, and insisting on taking lower risk missions to all serve the purpose of increasing her standing forces as she needs a great deal of manpower in the coming months. Kabuto also sees her acting as a nurturing mother towards her subordinates, especially the young children, as nurturing their Undying Loyalty, citing that many will die for their country but far more would die for their mother. In reality, she's just doing her best to make Oto into a proper Hidden Village rather than a group of psychopaths and monsters.
• The Prankster: After hearing about the subtle campaign Orochitama is running against Gato, Kakashi decides that she must never spend time with Naruto.
  Orochitama: I need him to run for help without getting him so spooked that he just runs. That means inconveniencing Gato's life in hundreds of small petty ways every day.
  Kakashi: Petty ways?
  Orochitama: Yeah. Petty. Like stealing all his toilet-paper. Removing the bookmarks from his books. Steal his food an hour before his meal time. Put ginger in his soap. Small things.
• Precision F-Strike: When Jiraiya rants about the "trap" Orochitama laid for him but he saw through, she confusedly asks, "What the fuck are you talking about?", though it later turns out Jiraiya was half-right.
• Rage Breaking Point: Gazeru, being a seduction specialist, is used to keeping her temper under control when dealing with slimeballs, criminals, and assholes. But dealing with Tatewaki has her repeatedly considering just killing him. She manages to keep it together until he makes a comment about how he'd probably catch a disease from her. At that point, she decides he has a death wish and she's happy to oblige him.
• Recruiting the Criminal: Orochitama recruits both Haku and Zabuza to join Sound, the latter in particular to train up her troops.
• The Reveal: A conversation between Sarutobi and Orochitama sees the former learn that the latter's actions the past few months were all to get Sound recognized as the sixth major Hidden Village by allying with Waterfall and Grass while bribing both villages and their Daimyo immensely and having said Daimyo adopt the child ruler of Rice country. Everything, from taking over Gato Corporation to holding the carnival outside Konoha, was all part of that same plan.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Jiraiya assumes the entire fair Orochitama puts on is to distract him and that she'll spring her trap during the final play. It's not until later she realizes that she really was trying to distract him but mostly so he wouldn't try too hard to kill her when she was revealed.
• Running Gag: Because Orochimaru became Orochitama, a large-breasted and flirtatious older woman, after his encounter with Itachi, who's famous for his skill at genjutsu, a number of people think the Uchiha himself caused the situation. Not helping matters is that Itachi is seventeen, causing those same people to assume he is having sex with Orochitama.
• Self-Insert: Subverted. While it initially seems that the author has completely taken over Orochimaru, she eventually admits to both Hiruzen and herself that she's an amalgamation of Orochimaru, his prisoner, and the third more dominant soul. Even if the third soul "won", Orochimaru was still older and far more experienced, causing quite a bit to bleed over.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Much like the character he's named after, Tatewaki is an idiot who thinks he's pretty much the second most amazing person in all of Sound (after Orochitama) and is only kept around because his hero worship and idiocy are useful to Orochitama.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Zabuza and Haku survive the Waves arc, thanks to Orochitama's intervention, and she even recruits them to join Sound.
• Springtime for Hitler: Orochitama attempts to have Tatewaki leak important information to Konoha, but despite his idiocy, the man is fanatically loyal and doesn't tell them anything useful.
• Stupid Evil: Most of Orochimaru's researchers and officers engage in pointless sadism for seemingly no reason. One researcher asks for permission to start human testing for her research... which involves using chakra to stimulate plant growth. Orochimaru finds herself pondering why said research would ever need human testing at all. Another one is so incredibly reckless with his experiments that he goes through his entire supply of a hundred pigs (for test subjects) in a single week. Still, others have to be stopped from testing a new fire jutsu on a live target, rather than just using a wooden post. Finally, despite Orochimaru stating she's changing policies to increase manpower, most of her officers decide all forms of punishment towards misbehaving subordinates should be fatal.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Kakashi knows full well that if Orochitama wanted to kill him then she could do it directly and easily. But he still checks the food she's preparing for needle marks, unexpected smells, or oils.
  It probably wasn't poisoned. Orochitama could just kill him at her leisure. But if a ninja just ate something that a known enemy gave them without checking it for poison then that ninja probably deserved to die.
• There Are No Therapists: Most ninja have no comprehension of why therapy might be wanted or needed, and would consider it a sign of unacceptable weakness.
  Apparently your superiors telling you to talk about your problems was uncommon in the ninja world. Which really went a long way to explaining all of its...everything.
• Too Dumb to Fool: Naruto is the only person who can consistently predict and understand Orochitama, something the higher-ups eventually realize. What takes them longer is figuring out why: Because Naruto never met Orochimaru, he doesn't have any preconceived notions and isn't trying to understand why Orochimaru would do one of the many out of character acts Orochitama performs.
• Ugly Cute: In-Universe, Orochitama finds snakes somewhat cute as a result of Orochimaru's memories. Which is quite a change for her, having previously been scared of them.
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: Sakon and Ukon hate Orochimaru's Heel–Face Turn and want to return to when the strong did whatever they wanted and the weak had to deal with it.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Kakashi is pissed to learn that Tsunade's self-proclaimed "mild hemophobia" actually translates to her completely freezing up in the middle of a battle against an extremely dangerous enemy at the first sight of blood, leaving Kakashi to protect her. When she later tries to complain about the presence of Kakashi's genin, he reminds her of this fact.
• You Have Failed Me: Gato's food keeps getting stolen from the kitchen. As a result, he needs new cooks.
  It probably wasn't the last one's fault it happened but failure just couldn't be allowed.

---