Family

"Old Danzo, you're just messing around at this point." Said Fugaku angrily. "According to my investigation, Malaria was born and raised in the Aburame clan. His talent for their insect techniques has always been abysmal, and to escape his current infestation's side-effects he started learning chemistry by himself to find a remedy."

Fugaku continued, "He hasn't even been taught how to squat from you. His accomplishments in the field of medicine are entirely unrelated to you. Has he even studied, at all, under you?" At this point, Fugaku's face was sneering. He finally got something to leverage on Danzo through that devil child.

"I have not taught him anything yet, because he was still too young! But now that he has grown enough, wields chakra and uses his mind in ways that's beneficial to the village as a whole – he must follow me." Danzo snorted and changed the topic.

"As you said, the boy has studied pharmaceutics on his own, but he barely made any achievements. Look at his concoctions, the first 'remedy' to ignore the itch was an Aphrodisiac. The second turned out to be some sort of perfume or blinding spray." Danzo continued, fully showcasing his disdain for Fugaku.

"In comparison, he has shocked all the elders of the Konoha council members with his mosquito's deadly power in a crisis when a foreign shinobi infiltrated the village - through your Police Station no less. Just today he revealed his third creation, the healing medicine. Everything suggests that he should do further studies and research – something my Root is deeply engaged in as we speak." He concluded.

"All of that is bullshit, and you know it! What does his talents and capabilities have to do with the healing medicine getting stuck exclusively with your damnable Root!?" Fugaku was so angry that a flickering and spinning Sharingan was struggling to activate in rage.

Inabi and Yamaha both felt that the entire argument was surreal. Two national celebrities were having a huge fight over Malaria, someone every shinobi in Konoha thought would get 'euthanised' after his continuous 'incidents'. Both thought he was sent to the battlefield to 'die-for-the-village' as a proper excuse for his death.

"What should we do?" asked Inabi. Yamaha scratched his chin in thought. He sensed that something bad was bound to happen if these two kept arguing. A noble clans Patriarch and the Hokage's right hand man, brawling in the middle of an army encampment? Just thinking about it was scandalous.

"Seniors, may I speak a few words?" Orochimaru stepped forward from his make-shift desk, a thin smile on his lips.

"Speak!" Fugaku and Danzo kept glaring at each other, not letting go of an inch.

Clearing his throat and moistening his lips, Orochimaru said, "Patriarch Fugaku, as a matter of fact, there is another matter Malaria has brought to my attention. The first time I met the boy he said that he wished to follow in my footsteps." At this point, Mr. Snake glanced at Danzo.

Danzo immediately picked up on it, "Yes, that's correct. Everyone in Konoha acknowledges that Orochimaru is the second coming of Tobirama Senju. The plan right now is to have him continue his future studies under Orochimaru (and me), and once the healing medicine can be mass-produced, we'll leave the decision of supply to the Hokage."

"Let's talk about Malaria again, later." Fugaku kept glaring at Danzo and dragged Orochimaru outside the tent. He had to make sure that Danzo didn't insist in front of the Hokage that the medicine was hard to produce and should be focused only on the Root and Anbu.

Orochimaru after all, on paper, is the Hokage's ace student. His words carry a hefty weight, and if not for Namikaze Minato showing up – he would've been the top contender for the next Konoha Hokage. He doesn't believe for a second that the feeble pockets of Malaria could produce usable samples, while Konoha's entire wealth couldn't.

"Nothing will change even if we talk again. Malaria is going to become Orochimaru's (and my) student, whether you like it or not." Danzo spat and showed zero respect for the Uchiha Patriarch.

However, Danzo was rather delighted in his heart. With this new healing medicine, Malaria wouldn't have to be sent to the most brutal battlefields. If anything, his future successor could stay in camp or even return to Konoha to continue inventing and working on other creations.

Uchiha Inabi smiled bitterly at the conclusions of the two big shots and followed Fugaku out of the tent…

--

A new day has arrived for the bruised Konoha encampment. It was only the second day after they left the village, but already they had lost over 200 men in battle. After the explosions and combat, giant pits could be seen everywhere next to the tents and mud-huts.

Rising and stretching out his arms, Malaria gave two bottles, one pink and the other orange, to Hikari. "The pink one is the aphrodisiac, and the orange one is the 'repellent'." After a brief show of hesitation, Hikari took and placed them in her ninja pouch.

"Who is it?" Yamana suddenly had goosebumps all over her body. Sensing danger, she unsheathed and slashed her Chakra Sword in a wide arc, only to hit nothing. Someone had just tapped her shoulder, but she couldn't find any trace at all.

Malaria and Hikari were on high alert as they observed their environment warily. Hikari's Byakugan found nothing wrong inside their mud-hut, making it seem even creepier. "Malaria, where is the enemy hiding?" Yamana shouted.

Malaria frowned; he couldn't feel any presence at all. Taking a deep breath, Hikari wore the gasmask she received from the medic-nin yesterday and took out the 'repellent' that Malaria just gave her, throwing the bottle to the ground.

Malaria's eyelids couldn't help but twitch. He barely managed to make enough potions to fill his grenade belt, prepared to be used as his final trump card. Hikari used it just like that, without an ounce of hesitation.

"If you use those bottles so quickly, someone will get annoyed by your decisiveness." Yamana stuck out her tongue at Hikari, and also put on the gasmask the medic-nin left behind yesterday. Malaria quickly did the same.

As the cloud bloomed and filled the small mud-hut, Hikari was struck in the neck from behind. Falling to the ground unconscious, a flickering shadow soon did the same to Yamana before grabbing Malaria and rushing outside.

'Shit, those two are going to complain that I'm a quack, making fake drugs to fool them!' Malaria thought. That the enemy didn't react in the slightest to his gas was a mild shock to say the least. But the only people he couldn't perceive was the emotionless sort from the Root, so he wasn't all that anxious about getting captured like this.

Considering he's been followed by a Root Anbu for over a week, he had tried to find where he was being observed from with no results. Most probably, the Anbu masks covering their faces had some gasmask equivalent capabilities as well.

Malaria shook his head and stopped thinking about it. No matter what, it's a rare thing that one of the Root captures him in the middle of camp. He could've just shown himself and taken him wherever, was there a need to knock out his teammates?

Soon, he was carried straight to the commanders tent in the centre of the encampment. Inside, he found Suzuki Yamaha standing obediently with a crutch as he informed Orochimaru what he has experienced together with Malaria, Danzo listening on the side.

A team of medical ninjas were also present, anxious and in a hurry to find out the formula for the healing medicine from Malaria. The medic-nin who left him in the dirt yesterday came forward, sporting a monstrous headache about this matter.

"Malaria-'san', you said yesterday that your blue sludge could speed up the hemostasis effect on bodily wounds, in effect closing and healing injuries. We can understand that it's a secret formula, however, would you please allow us to study and recreate it? Your medicine can save hundreds to thousands of lives." She began.

Her method of immediately starting to guilt trip Malaria into spitting out the manufacturing method didn't sit right with him at all. "What has that got to do with me? I'm also on the battlefield and can make the stuff so long there's materials. No need for your useless self to get involved." Malaria replied in disdain.

Ignoring the pulsing vein on the female medic-nin's forehead, Malaria stepped past her to have a chat with Danzo. Somewhat nervous, he started, "Umm, so, uhh, should I call you my uncle Danzo?"

Instantly the tent got squelched into pin-drop silence. Everyone zoomed in their eyes to see how Danzo would react to that kind of greeting. For the first time in their lives, they saw Danzo widen his eyelid instead of squinting! What a peculiar phenomenon.

"No." Danzo calmed his turbulent thoughts and replied. "If you are willing, you could call me godfather instead." Dropping a figurative bombshell on the minds of everyone in the tent, the people almost staggered a step backwards.

Before they could collect the shattered pieces of their minds from the floor, Malaria knelt on the ground and shouted, "Godfather!" with a joyous tone. 'Finally, finally, finally I can study the 'emotionless'-technique and perhaps numb my senses to the itch permanently. I'll do anything for you, Daddy Danzo!' Malaria thought.

This time, everyone in the tent visibly recoiled. What sort of nightmarish pact did they just witness? The Devil just recruited a little Demon into his 'family'. Just thinking about the disastrous schemes they could come up with together, everyone couldn't help but feel pity for the world.

"Good child. Now, stand up and meet your new Sensei, Orochimaru. He's our Konoha's most brilliant mind with uncountable numbers of contributions to the village." Danzo didn't pat Malaria on his shoulder, but rather raised his hand in Orochimaru's direction. He knew the brat hated intimate contact due to the mosquitoes under his skin.

"Yes, Father!" Malaria stood back up treating Danzo as his actual old-man, looking with a fiery gaze at Mr. Snake. Orochimaru barely came out of his daze and nodded absentmindedly. Somehow, he just got himself another student other than little Anko just like that.

He wouldn't complain though, he had investigated what Malaria had been studying in his laboratory when the brat was absent. Herbology wasn't his strong suit, and he focused mostly on cell activity and methods of the soul – but it was still an interesting research direction.

"Well, we have met before. At that time, I wondered why you weren't silenced for knowing about 'those' matters, but things are now clearer than ever." Sticking out his long tongue and moistening his lips, Orochimaru gazed at Danzo with a knowing look.

A nurse couldn't help but ask the lead medic with a quivering voice, "What do we do now? There's too few of us to take care of all the injured in the coming battles at this rate." The leading medic sighed helplessly. Malaria had just got himself the strongest backing possible, whatever their decision is would be how they'll have to manage.

"As the commander for this battlefront, I hope you can begin work on a method to mass-supply your new healing medicine, for starters." Overhearing the medical staff's murmuring, Orochimaru glanced at them and delegated out some tasks. "We're still in the early stage of the campaign and require the medicine in large quantities as soon as possible."

Nodding his head, Malaria asked for some paper before writing down a list of proportions before calculating the proper amounts to create about 1000 bottles worth of repellent. The 'sludge' was only a by-product, and from making so many bottles he would get about ~250 snus-sized tins of the stuff, if there's no errors in production.

Looking over the material list, Orochimaru couldn't help but exclaim in his heart. Such mundane and trashy materials! Not even one item on the list could be called 'rare', it's no wonder the little devil was selling his schoolmates for money – he couldn't afford any good stuff to experiment with.