.Kabu+Oro. Trust Me

"You trust me, don't you, Kabuto?"
"Of course I do...Orochimaru-sama."

--

Okay, so I'm way proud of myself for finishing this when it looked to be yet another epic fail. It's still not perfect, but at least I stuck with it! D;

And no, this is not OroKabu. xD Silly fangirls.

I wanted to illustrate my theory on Kabuto's whole "old blood" thing. (Refer to the end of the first round of the Chuunin Exams if you have no idea what I'm talking about.)

Personally, I think it was a preliminary form of the curse seal Orochimaru seems so fond of. I have a few reasons for thinking this.

1) Kabuto's the only really powerful servant of Orochi's that hasn't displayed any use of a curse mark. (I'm ignoring Dosu, Zaku, and Kin because they were clearly expendable to Orochimaru.) Of course, that could be because he doesn't need a "leash," or because he was undercover in Konoha and couldn't risk letting the curse mark bring up questions about his affiliation. But I still think that it's odd that he's the only one without the usual curse seal...

2) The curse mark had to be developed somehow, and it can't have been perfect right off the bat. While most of the experimentation would undoubtedly have been performed on unimportant random ninjas, Orochimaru obviously wasn't opposed to testing it out on students of his (namely, Anko). So it's plausible that he would have injected Kabuto with an even earlier form.

3) As an alternative to the former, Kabuto could easily have injected himself with the formula if he were involved with its development at all. (Which may or may not be the case, being as we know little about his history before the start of the series.) He's unpredictable enough to have done so...

4) The conditions under which the "red eyes" appeared were very similar to the conditions under which normal curse marks manifest. Anger is obviously a trigger for the curse mark, and also appears to be a trigger for whatever it is that Kabuto has...

So yeah. Done rambling now. xD;; Sorry.

Art (c) ~crazyhighlander
Yakushi Kabuto, Orochimaru (c) Masashi Kishimoto

Enjoy~