Shinobi Isekai!

Snake Breath

Hanako stretched her arms out above her head, popping something in her back as she and the other passing genin followed a yelling Anko Mitarashi out of the Academy.

"Well, that was certainly interesting," Kabuto said as he wiped non-existent dirt from his glasses. "Had I known, I wouldn't have tried so hard to answer every question."

Hanako hadn't tried at all. She distinctly remembered Naruto turning in a blank test and still getting through, so she just turned over her test and waited for the hour to be over. It proved a good opportunity to go over her plan for the Forest of Death.

She'd long ago familiarized herself with Training Ground 44, letting her dogs loose among the trees so they could scope it out, too. She knew how to get to the tower in its center from every gate, the nesting grounds of every dangerous beast, and, most importantly, where all the Anbu emergency tags were hidden.

The only issue was her team.

It would likely be impossible to interfere with Orochimaru's plans with his henchmen on her tail.

With a sigh, she reached into her seal, the pain of activation an old, familiar ache. She pulled out an icy cold can of tea and popped the tab.

"Huh? Where'd you get that?"

She turned to Kankuro with wide eyes, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and hiding her face with the motion. "You want one?"

He blanched as she pulled out another one, flinching comically back as she held it out to him. Temari rolled her eyes and took it.

"Thanks, Hatake." Her can opened with a hiss and she took a shallow sip. "Does that hurt?"

Hanako looked down at her chest. "Yeah, actually. I'm used to it, though."

The taller girl looked like she might say more, but Naruto's nonsense with Anko drew everyone's attention.

Some things just couldn't be changed, huh? Hanako's focus narrowed on the Kusa ninja with the tongue—eugh. Had Orochimaru already taken her face? Was that him, right there? Was there anything she could do to keep him away from Sasuke and Naruto?

"Good luck, you guys," she said to the Suna team, voice carefully casual. "See you on the other side."

She and her team walked through the crowd and past maybe-Orochimaru. Hanako kept her gaze set dead ahead, not even sparing a glance for who might be the catalyst of nearly every canon conflict from then on. She accepted her waver and approached the hut against the fence to turn it in. Once she, Kabuto, and Yoroi had officially signed their lives away, they were supplied with an Earth Scroll.

Kabuto looked down at her with a smile. "I'll leave this to you, Hatake-chan."

She took it and made a show of placing it into her thigh pouch. When both her hand and the scroll were concealed, she activated the seal on her palm and swallowed the scroll. That done, she pulled out her hand and buckled the pouch closed, meeting Kabuto's eyes with a nod.

The three of them walked up to gate 38 and Hanako had to take a deep, deep breath to steady her mounting anxiety. She'd spent the last six years planning almost exclusively for these exams, but those years had also made it clear that canon wasn't set in stone. Orochimaru wasn't a character that popped into being the moment Kishimoto introduced him. He was a living, thinking being capable of adapting to new and changing situations—like the ones Hanako's existence likely created.

The Butterfly Effect is way scarier in reality.

Hopefully—wait, no, that's awful—Orochimaru's depravity was a universal constant.