Naruto : Venom

Bottom of The Pit

I land on my feet with a dull thud. Instantly I feel a hand grasp my shoulder. "Alvarcus, tell me one good reason why I shouldn't hurt you." Sasuke squeezes down hard.

"Because Orochimaru pushed me down after you?" I weakly offer. "I can't believe he did that, who would have guessed the Snake Sannin had a playful side? Okay, maybe playful isn't the right word."

Sasuke squeezes harder. "I don't believe you."

"Ow ow ow! Why would I lie about that? Come on man! I'm probably the only one down here who won't attack you!" He releases me. Thank Kami, he has a death grip.

He sighs in defeat. "You're probably right. So, got a plan?"

"I have an idea or two. It depends on how big of a target we want to make ourselves. We could suck up to the strongest one here and use them to get us food." I say while rubbing my abused shoulder.

"No." Sasuke cuts in. "I will not be a minion for something down here."

"Then we become the strongest." I say with a smirk. "We should take a day or two to observe how things work then get a better plan together."

"Fresssssh meat?" A raspy voice calls out from the dark. "We haven't had fresssssh meat in sssssso long. It'sssss juicy and tender." Sasuke and I turn towards the voice.

"Their plan won't work. They think they are strong? Strong enough to become the strongest? No, they need to learn their place." A surprisingly feminine calls out from off to our left.

The two unknown people step into the light. Correction, one steps and the other slithers.

Who I assume is the first voice can no longer pass as human. Their entire lower half is the body of a snake. The torso is male and the entirety of his body is covered in dull brown scales from the tip of his tail to his face. He even has a forked tongue that tastes the air every few seconds. Creepy as hell.

The second voice, the feminine one, is a scantily clad woman with horns and bat like wings sprouting from her back. She also has a tail that extends out of the base of her spine. She has dark red hair and pointed incisors. She's a succubus. A literal succubus. I wonder if Orochimaru planned that? Do succubi even exist in the lore of this world?

I turn to Sasuke. "Or we could just beat everyone down here into submission right now. That works too."

Sasuke grins and his eyes flash crimson. "I like the third option. Let's do that one."

"Dibs on the hot one!" I call out.

"Uh... Alvarcus? Which one is the hot one? They both look disgusting to me." Sasuke asks.

I look at him with disbelief on my face. "Dude. How is that a question? Option A: Demon woman wearing kinky leather. Only thing that could make that better is a whip, that would totally complete the look. Option B: Naked snake-man. Take a wild guess. Here's a hint, I'm not into men or snakes or any combination of the two."

"You wish to fight Gina?" The demon woman asks uncertainly.

"You Gina?" I ask back. She nods in confusion. "Then yes, I want to fight you. I have a bad history with snake-men. The last one I met shoved me down in here. Still processing that to be honest."

"And I still don't believe you." Sasuke dryly retorts. "Orochimaru isn't the type. He's definitely more of a 'kill you then let your corpse fall down with a sickening splat.'"

"Gina is confused." She turns to the snake-man. "Gina thought that fresh meat is supposed to be easy pickings? The fresh meat isn't scared of Gina and Apodora."

"They will learn their place!" The snake-man, Apodora, says while rearing up to a shocking three meters. That snake body really adds on the height. He lunges at Sasuke like a striking cobra.

Sasuke steps out of the way and turns to me uncertainly. "Should we kill them or just beat them into bloody pulps? I mean if we kill them they'll never bother us again, but if we just beat them they'll talk about us to others."

Gina rushes towards me in a burst of surprising speed and at a very extreme angle. Her tail must be helping her keep balance. Her clawed hands rake towards my face and I calmly lean back. I don't even move my feet.

"Let's just go for bloody pulp this time. Who knows what is down here, they might have friends. We shouldn't try to piss everyone off on our first day. Actually..." A devious grin makes its way onto my face. "we could do exactly that."

"It would certainly make it memorable." Sasuke agrees with me while lazily side stepping Apodora's quick snake lunges.

"It is decided! Let's go kick some ass!" I roar.

...

Sasuke and I drag our beaten and broken bodies off to a defensible alcove along the wall. We're covered in bruises and blood. Most of it is from those we defeated.

"Let's piss everyone off he says. It'll be fun he says." Sasuke groans in pain. "I hate your plans. I really do."

"Hey you agreed to my plan. You could have said no." I spit out a tooth. "Gross. That's not even my tooth. How did that get in my mouth?"

"That's disgusting. I'm fairly sure it is from that wolf man you fought about an hour or two ago." Sasuke rolls onto his back with a pitiful noise.

"I never bit anyone today." I plop down next to him. Jiongu or not, I am tired and sore. I've never fought that long and hard before. "I'm a shinobi. Shinobi don't bite."

"He bit you in the throat. Must have left a tooth behind."

"Yeah that fucking hurt!" I rub my tender neck. What kind of an animal does that? Oh, right. Wolf man, that's kinda obvious. "Did you see the surprise on his face when I ripped his jaw off? It's like he's never seen anyone live after having their throat ripped out. Good times."

Sasuke grunts. "That's probably because he's never seen anyone live after having their throat ripped out." He groans in pain again. "You have to be one of the freakiest people down here."

I lean against the wall, giving me a good view of where someone would attack us from. "Have you seen some of the weird creatures down here? How am I the freakiest?"

Sasuke flops his head in my general direction. "They look strange and have unique bodies, but you are literally made of threads. You surprised the things down here. Do you have any idea some of the stuff that they must have seen?"

I grimace. "Fair point. How many of them did we go through? I lost count when I was around forty three? Or was it forty five?"

"I have no idea. I think between the two of us we did half of what's down here?" He coughs up some blood. "Orochimaru said anywhere between one to two hundred. Last number I remember is sixty five. That was at the four hour mark. How long did we fight for?"

"Feels like days. Five or six hours I think?" I grimly reply. "The real question is why did you tell me to not use any high level jutsu, chakra strings or thread monsters. Hell you even limited your Sharingan usage! What was that about? We relied on basic taijutsu and that was it!"

"I didn't want the observers to know everything about us." He spits out a glob of blood. "We didn't fight the smart ones yet. They watched and learned about us first."

"Ah, you planned ahead. Smart. I still think we could have beaten everyone here if we didn't hold back."

"Of course we could have. It would have been child's play." There's the trademarked arrogant Uchiha tone. "I still want to know how many we went through. Let's figure we both got around seventy five. That's one hundred and fifty. So we beat three quarters. Not bad for the first day down here."

"Gina counted one hundred and seventy four." Gina's voice adds to our conversation. "Gina counted after her defeat." She adds on matter of factly. "Only twelve of them died."

She walks into my line of sight. I stand up and place myself between her and Sasuke. He's down for the night, it is up to me to defend him.

"Hello again Gina. Did you need something?" I ask politely. There is no reason I can't be civil, even if we were attacking each other five to six hours ago.

"Gina wants to know if you need help?" She asks uncertainly, as if she's afraid we'll lash out at her. "Gina knows some medical jutsu, she can close wounds and fix limbs."

That could be extremely useful. Sasuke has seen better days, he could use someone to patch him up. Plus then I don't have to do all of the heavy lifting when it comes to defending ourselves for the next few days as he heals.

I don't look away from her and call out, "Sasuke, your call. I know I'll be fine by tomorrow."

He huffs in annoyance. "How quickly can you kill her if she tries anything funny?"

"Sasuke, if she hurts you she won't get a quick death." I smile sweetly at Gina. "It'll take hours before I finally let her have that sweet release." I don't plan on torturing her, but she doesn't need to know that. A little misdirection never hurt and it will make her even more cautious around us if she is scared of us.

My plan worked, she pales dramatically. She's almost as pale as me now, which is saying something.

"Gina means no harm." She readily assures us. Still she looks ready to flee at a moment's notice. "Gina was a medical kunoichi before, her combat skills are small. That's why Gina attacks fresh meat, they are usually the weakest. Gina can't defend herself from some of the creatures down here, she needs protection."

"Oh, I get it now. You watched us fight and win against everyone that opposed us, hell we didn't even kill most of them. You know we're strong so you want to stand in our shadows and reap what we sow." She's trying to do my second plan, associate with someone strong and hide in their shadows.

That's awfully smart of her, she knows that she doesn't have any physical skills to help plead her case so she's bartering with the one thing she does have. Conveniently for her, that happens to be one thing Sasuke and I are lacking.

...

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