Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Something is watching him.

That was perhaps one of the last things Tobirama realized after waking up sprawled on a pile of soft snow, with gentle flakes falling and melting against his skyward-facing face.

Waking up in an unknown place would be strange, that is, if at that moment Tobirama wasn't trying to improve his use of the Hiraishin.

It's dark, cold and damp, and his clothes clinging to his body and inflexible armor do not make for a good place to lie down…

…Armor…?

Tobirama never conducts experiments in armor.

He doesn't even remember if he was doing that or anything else before being there.

He stands up quickly, snow flying as he gets to his feet and analyzes his surroundings.

He finds himself in the middle of a pine clearing, the trees about five meters in diameter from one end to the other, above there is only a starry sky and scattered clouds, and that is what scares him the most.

Tobirama has traveled to many corners of the world on missions or in search of knowledge, he has studied and admired many stars, but the ones he stares at with an increasingly deep frown… are completely unknown constellations. Some look old, almost faded by the surrounding luminosity, others, newly born, radiating in yellow-white and blue.

"Where the hell am I…?"

First thing to do in such moments, then.

He shakes his head as he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and opens them again; first, see what he has on hand to improve his chances of survival, and what he finds is somewhat worrying. It's a totem right behind where his head rested in the snow, an unknown animal in a dangerous pose, baring its teeth, the rest of the details lost to the erosion of time.

In front of him there are also scrolls and more scrolls, seven of them in total, in a semicircle around him and in front of the sculpture, slowly getting wet from the melting snow seeping into the plant fibers.

He feels the Chakra enveloping them; they are probably storage scrolls, and as he picks them up one by one, tucking them under his arm, he notices they are larger than he expected.

Second thing, a temporary shelter from the snow, then fire, and hunt something to eat.

Fifth, seek civilization.

He nods to himself, already preparing to look for a cave or an unused hunting cabin when a beam of light falls right on a pile of stones, one of them round and reflective.

He crouches down, the ill-fitting armor clinking as he places the scrolls between his knees and stomach, observing with his head tilted what he begins to notice is a strange sphere of dark metal. He pokes it with a dry, fallen branch he picked up near his foot, and the most it does when Tobirama carefully prods it is roll and leave trails in the snow.

If it was near where he woke up, it must be something important.

He grabs it, noticing it must be as heavy as three Kunai. In the scant light that the tree-surrounded clearing allows to pass, he studies the sphere's details. It's relatively large, his hand unable to hold it with room to spare.

It has three predominant colors, a dark gray or black on the part he thinks is the top, and a lighter shade on the bottom, the two halves being divided, or glued, in the middle by two steel rings and a strange interlocking clasp, with another one to insert on the top of the sphere, with no key in sight. There are also three connected lines in egg-yellow and fish-scale ornaments in a lighter shade over the designs.

It's beautiful, but he doesn't understand what it's for.

His armor clinks again as he rises, the metal sphere held along with the scrolls in his arms as he looks around the clearing, noticing for the first time the slope growing at his back and the descent in front of him, trying to choose one of the two directions to follow. He knows the risk of landslides is greater for those living at the foot, but it's just as dangerous, if not more, to live on top of a mountain.

He circles the totem and heads in the opposite direction pointed by the gaping stone teeth - reasoning that he's still not sure if the civilization below, his fifth item on the list, can be considered an ally or an enemy - for perhaps seven minutes when he feels it.

The gaze.

The forest isn't completely silent, whatever nocturnal animals inhabit it following their own wild routines, but he still hears the clumsy, quadrupedal steps following him. The noise is minimal; whatever is on his trail is small, light, or extremely young.

He continues on, and the almost silent trotting follows him. Tobirama isn't too worried; he's not arrogant, but he knows it would take at least an elite execution squad, a Bijuu, or a particularly powerful Yōkai to kill him.

So he proceeds on his way, the path slowly becoming steeper and more dangerous, the wind threatening to carry away the fluffy snowflakes… at least the ones that haven't yet turned to stone.

A storm is approaching.

Tobirama quickens his climbing speed, and whatever is following him also speeds up. Fortunately, not much further ahead, another clearing opens up near the base of a new mountain peak and an unexpected entrance marked by a worn gate and, in the background, far away, something resembling a shrine carved into the mountain's stone face.

It's grand, with a Torii gate marking the little-used entrance clogged with snow, continuing onto a path even more poorly maintained than the stone steps, where he guesses some human community exists. With the red paint peeling and the dark wood it was built from showing, the structure is slowly being worn away by natural forces, demonstrating that it has been a long time since anyone passed by to pay respects or perform basic, yet necessary, repairs.

He approaches slowly, bowing once in deference as he crosses the arch, carefully avoiding the center, shifting his attention from the Torii and observing the long, narrow path leading to the shrine.

It's perhaps two to three kilometers of steps carved into the ground, every five meters marked by a smaller Torii to show the path of the Jinja, the mountain slopes on its sides having holes of two sizes, the smaller ones two meters high protecting paper lanterns, many of which are missing or broken, and the larger ones, five meters high, containing guardian statues.

The Jinja he can see at the end of the winding path is large, not the largest he's ever seen - Uzumakis don't joke when it comes to appeasing their Kami of whirlpools - but it is scenic, with two smaller structures on each side as if to compare imposingness.

He can safely say that, besides being abandoned, it was also built in a strange way, with guardian statues, the Niozo, placed in abnormal positions, the faces that should show ferocity and courage stained by a madness demonstrated by wide, stone eyes.

The Niozo was molded exactly like the statue in the clearing, just less worn, with Tobirama finally able to study the details carved in the stone and, the first thing he notices is that the Niozo is… wrong.

Not for any reason, other than it's not a dog, lion, or wolf, nor even celestial guardians like Nio or Kongorikishi, but rather some kind of fox, of all animals. He shouldn't notice that, not when the guardian statues are there to protect the Jinja… or perhaps to warn not to approach, with their stone faces threatening with exposed teeth and expressions of fury, warning not to release whatever is trapped inside the shrine.

Then perhaps the foxes would make sense, being messengers of Inari or something like that.

Tobirama would be the first to say he knows almost nothing related to Kami or their places of rest and worship, the most being knowing when to bow and how many times to clap.

He passes under the Torii, a cold wind moving his hair and tiny ice pellets clinking against his armor.

The worst part is that there's no way for him to avoid entering the Jinja and waking or irritating whatever is sleeping or sealed inside it; Chakra doesn't make Shinobi immune to the cold, after all.

So, as he approaches the outer garden and ignores the shivers, he observes the statues, with their long fur swaying in a ghostly wind, their bizarre bipedal posture, and tries to suppress a shudder, not just from the cold, that runs up his spine.

The footsteps also seem to slow down from where they are following him.

It takes just over twenty minutes for him to reach the inner gardens, and what he finds doesn't surprise him as much as it should.

The Jinja sits in the middle of another clearing, this one so large it seems it was carved by the very Kami who made the Shrine his dwelling, with five hundred meters from the shrine's doors to the last of the carved steps.

There is no trail to follow, but there are stone gardens covered in snow, small, circular frozen lakes, and trees growing from the walls, straight conifers with twisted branches and crowns of red leaves.

And he knows that something like this shouldn't exist, not just the trees, for Kami's sake, but the very hole in the shape of a full moon at the base of a mountain. It should be buried in snow and rock and stone until it slowly becomes indistinguishable from the other sheer walls, the Torii leading to nowhere, the Niozo warning or protecting nothing.

But he has no time to think about that, not when the ice is gradually making his hands stiff and his teeth chattering against each other. He even considers having to share the space inside the shrine with whatever is following him.

He crosses the half kilometer with a quick step, struggling not to touch the metal sphere or let any of the scrolls fall to the ground, approaching the water pavilion, the Temizuya. Tobirama doesn't even attempt to purify himself; at these temperatures the water must be as liquid as the snarling statues.

He still bows three times, one more than necessary.

And then there's nowhere left to run, Tobirama stares at the shrine door, swallows what was clogging his throat, and pushes the door with his eyes closed, with a shoulder protected by metal shoulder pads.

The interior, he notes when he opens his eyes and the heavy door stops creaking, is exactly as he expected and exactly as it is not.

It's completely enclosed, without any windows or openings, lamps or lanterns, dark and stuffy.

It's also strangely warm, with the smell of wet fur, mineral water, and rotting meat.

The smell of rotten flesh would be distressing if it weren't already old, at least as old as the odor of the temple's former inhabitant, some bear that came out of hibernation and never returned - dead or found a better place to sleep -, a wolf pack, or even some solitary feline.

He also notices it is totally and completely empty, with nothing but the bare stone floor, some remnants of gnawed bones gathered together in a separate corner, and a trickle of underground water, drops periodically falling from a stalactite on the ceiling and accumulating into something like a river, slowly leaking out through a tiny crack at the back of the cave. The cave - it can't even be considered a room, with the stalactites on the ceiling and the natural rock shape carved by water - is large, matching the facade of the shrine outside.

With this realization, he runs his hand along the left wall of the cave, finding something flat that might resemble a shelf or table and placing all his belongings on it - the scrolls and the dark metal sphere - and then immediately looks for some shallow hole to sleep in. Fatigue doesn't kill as quickly as a Kunai, but it can still cause death.

When he finds one that might serve - on the opposite side of the shelf - he returns to the storage scrolls.

There's no better moment to discover what they hold inside their seals.

Chapter Text

The scrolls are… practically useless.

Tobirama groans as he throws his head back and hits it against the wall.

To start with, they are small, with just over three by three meters of usable space - in his humble opinion, a complete waste of good conductive ink - the ink on the scroll is almost a shade of blue - and of a steady hand -, the lines of the seals cannot be described as anything but 'perfect'. Whoever brushed this is a true master of the art.

The worst part is that four of them are completely empty, and the ones that aren't contain things of little to no help.

One contains carpentry, lapidary, and chiseling materials, of all things; another, bars upon bars of a dark metal, stacked to the last available square inch of the seal; and the last one… a set of tattoo needles, red ink, and countless calligraphy brushes of every imaginable size.

Where are the soldier or vitamin pills? Jerky? Something to protect against the cold? Any kind of weapon?

He feels like banging his head against the wall again.

But there's no point in complaining; he was practically predestined to find this Jinja, if waking up almost in the lap of one of its Niozo was any indication.

Tobirama sighs again, and in response, the structure groans back.

So now he knows why they put carpentry materials in there… but he doesn't understand. There were four more empty ones; would it have been so hard to put a handful of food in one of them? Well, once this storm passes, he's going to be a very busy Shinobi…

But for now, it's best not to leave his belongings lying around. He picks up the third scroll and takes out the tattoo needle set. He has nothing else to do, his skin is bare and pale, and he has very important things to preserve.

It's not because Hashirama didn't let him get more markings, and now that his brother isn't around, there's no one to stop him, not at all…

There's no time like the present! Tobirama takes the hollow glass needle and fills it with the red ink, beginning to sketch on the back of his hand where the inscriptions will go, careful with the proportion, direction, and thickness of the seals. And just as he finishes the design and is about to press the sharp tip to the back of his right hand, the Jinja's door begins to creak.

It seems his hunter has finally given up on freezing its nose off outside.

The inside of the cave is dark, so the gray sliver of light is almost a beacon as the pursuer crosses the threshold. It's human - which is undoubtedly a surprise; perhaps the animal that was following him was a summon? - just over one hundred and sixty centimeters tall, with gangly limbs covered in plate armor, facial features obscured by being backlit.

But the mist it brings with it - which swirls around its feet and practically hisses in the air - can't be a good thing.

The man or woman - the short, spiky hair could belong to either or neither - approaches with the same clumsy steps he heard before - only this time it's two feet, not two pairs of paws - and, when it's far enough in, a tentacle of mist detaches from the amorphous cloud at its feet, pushes against the door, and closes it.

The intimidation factor must be dialed up to the maximum.

Tobirama's eyes are slightly wide; he's never seen a Hiding in Mist Technique used like this, physical like Dotton, like a second limb. He is properly intrigued.

When the door closes and the lighting returns to shades of black and gray, he realizes it. The man looks exactly like him, only younger.

Same spiky hair, same plate armor - he can't tell if the coloration is the same shade of blue - no Happuri or fur mantle. Except for the face, which can be positively described as vulpine.

Smoke seeps from within a mouth too large, with teeth sharper than his Hatake blood can defend against, large, reflective eyes, a pointed nose. A Yōkai has taken his form and come here. Or perhaps it's a Transformation Technique created solely to frighten.

But he can't sense any Chakra consumption from the entity, only another type of unknown energy covering almost the entire cave, more oppressive and dense. With the Yōkai at its center, now almost a confirmed Kitsune.

He bows slightly from where he still sits against the left wall, hands on the floor and face averted in respect.

"Great messenger spirit of Inari, I beg forgiveness for daring to invade this sanctuary which belongs to you to dwell, populate, guard, and provide, but there is no protection anywhere for kilometers where I sought shelter to refuge from the storm. Would you permit this foolish, mortal human to take shelter from the snow and cold within your dwelling?"

Almost completely formal, and he's sure he forgot something - perhaps touching his forehead to the floor? - but it's the best he could think of with this unexpected visitor.

The snow-dirty feet, inside those hateful Shinobi sandals, stop at the threshold of his vision, partly obscured by the whispering mist. The energy emanating is a humming bed, calm and heavy around the Yōkai, and where he gets close enough to sense its state of mind, he can feel only loneliness and apathy.

At least until those languid rivers become erratic upon contact with his skin, the whisper he hears inside his head rising in intensity until it becomes a tortured scream, nails on a chalkboard, the straight, closed mouth opening to reveal blade-like teeth, the Yōkai's subtle sharp-toothed smile tearing through the sides of its face from one cheek to the other.

…VAAADER.. –DIE.-AA. INVA— SORR–. . … ENE-..-MIIII..-----GO DIE–EE… DIE… .--DIE —--- A. DI—--.. EEAA… DIIEE… –A —A AA— . . .. DIE.. — - -DERRRR

Or it might have been anything other than a Kitsune, perhaps a Nogitsune, or a natural enemy of them. A Tengu? It was foolish of him to name the spirit when he barely has a notion of its nature beyond shape-shifting.

…so that's what he forgot. Foolish, foolish Tobirama.

He stands up, finally looking the creature in the eyes - there's no more reason to place himself in a subservient position when he recognizes that such posture will only result in his death - eyes that glow in an alarming shade of yellow. So he just prepares himself, spreads his legs, and raises his arms at hip level, beginning to conjure Suiton when the Yōkai acts.

It is fast, faster than an arrow or a Senbon; one moment it was near the door, the next, a figure loomed intimidatingly before him, an arm already raised and falling to split his head in two. Pity Tobirama isn't the fastest Shinobi of Fire for nothing; a step to the side, just enough to dodge the attack, the air displaced by the spirit's arm messing up the strands of hair at his temple, and he responds to the attack with a Chakra-enhanced kick to the ribs.

The Yōkai flies to the back of the cave, bouncing twice before skidding with limp limbs into the small puddle of water. Tobirama stops, opening and closing his fist as he watches the creature rise on soft limbs, one arm already broken. Fragile, then.

But it's not the Yōkai's resilience that worries him, but his kick. It was weak, as weak as a Genin who just graduated from the academy.

Tobirama looks at his clenched fist, fingers tight.

His Chakra isn't responding; it moves like frozen molasses. How did he only notice now?

The worst part is that he didn't even realize his sensory area - which had always been active since he became a Shinobi - barely covers two meters around him, and he can barely make it grow another half meter in exchange for less environmental detail. How did he not notice?!

He walked carefree through a potentially enemy forest, barely able to sense the souls around him, nor did he notice his sense of distance was absent, leaving him completely unprotected against projectiles and long-range Jutsu. In these conditions, he judges himself only strong enough to face his own students.

Tobirama takes a deep breath and almost closes his eyes in disgust and self-criticism, but he can't afford to spiral, not now and not when the spirit finishes rising, drops of freezing water dripping from the side of its face and loose armor. Its formerly yellow eyes now glow red - a sense of foreboding covers him, his breath coming faster, his skin feeling more fragile - and he can even perceive a certain resemblance between the jaws of the Niozo and the Yōkai's teeth.

The shapeshifter? Copycat? finishes standing, the broken right arm limp, the unprotected forehead leaking blood from a deep scratch on the eyebrow. It seems not to perceive the pain, or perhaps doesn't feel it, as it raises both hands - black claws growing from its fingertips - and roars in his direction. A red smoke, a shade lighter than the new color of its eyes, seeps from its pores and condenses around it.

The sound comes almost like a barrier or a physical punch, pushing him two steps back, and this small action - losing ground to something so weak/frightening? I'll skin you alive/flee, I have to flee! - leaves him in an abnormal stalemate. The fear and hatred he feels can't be natural, leaving the Yōkai as the only cause. Now, whether it was the roar or the red cloud that caused these contrasting states of mind… that is the true unknown.

When it finally seems ready - after a metallic, hollow clang of claw against claw - the spirit charges, and now that Tobirama is prepared for its speed, he can see how it runs, with almost quadrupedal movements, chest parallel to the ground and hands with splayed fingers, palms facing down, the fifteen-centimeter claws occasionally digging a trench where they touch the floor.

It has increased its speed; what was once a Senbon has become a gust.

It's not the best way to start a fight: a quick, almost instantaneous straight-line charge, with the head near the opponent's knee, so counterattacking is as easy as any other action.

Tobirama simply raises a leg - channeling the meager amount of Chakra he managed to gather in the scarce seconds of inactivity - and waits for the trap to be sprung on its own. When the red eyes follow the action and veer in the opposite direction, he almost smiles, bringing his leg down diagonally in an ankle strike, hitting from the cheekbone to the opponent's chin.

The Yōkai plummets like a sack of rice, its face hitting the ground with a crack that means broken bones, leaving a series of cracks - in the skull and the floor - as a memento, blood splattering slow and steady from the new wound on its temple until it pools under its head.

The red eyes - he doesn't want to consider them the same as his when in a bloodlust, he doesn't - slowly focus on him again, trying to dissect his soul from where it stares up from below, the trickles of blood evaporating like smoke, and the body, the armor, and… everything in general, seeming to boil, detaching from the central mass of the body and rising in sinuous turns to the cave ceiling, carried upward as if by an incorporeal wind, like the heavy, omnipresent mist of Kiri or a desperate mirage of Suna.

It is beginning to return to its natural form; from within the white hair, where human ears should be, the mist becomes almost solid, forming a pair of triangular, furry ones, and from the back of the trousers, a tail made of evaporated blood rises. The same happens with the four stretched limbs.

The eyes staring at him cannot be considered those of a divine spirit; whatever was using his face is gone, consumed by malice, hunger, need, and loneliness. Mostly the last.

The monster is almost at its limits, but still within his small sensory radius, so he feels the waves of negative emotions overwhelming rationality, slowly driving mad what was once divine. They are sharp, irregular waves like shards of glass, cutting and wounding anything that gets too close.

It's sad, watching the being drag itself with a broken leg—its arms long since transformed into a white mass of mist vapor—claws emerging from within the small nebulae to serve as traction, the short fox snout with a dislocated jaw dripping blood, the entire body mass evaporating and rising into the darkness above.

What remains is a small fox, perhaps a third of his size, dragging itself toward him.

His heart aches; the little Kitsune is barely a hundred years old and already like this, dragging itself through its own blood, a growl far too deep for one who couldn't land a single bite.

It's a feeling of pity that makes him act.

When the spirit finally crosses the meter and a half and manages to touch the black claws to the tips of his toes, Tobirama crouches down, looks right into the center of the little fox's dilated pupils, into the irises shifting from red to a luminescent yellow, and weaves a small thread of Chakra in his palm.

He molds the brief connection and, as he touches the floating tuft on the fox's head, lets the bonds of affection, protection, acceptance, and kinship wash over the tortured soul.

It takes one to recognize another, after all.

Chapter Text

Madara was almost giving up.

He wanted to, he tried to give it one more opportunity, one more attempt, one more small chance or opening, but…!

But it seemed the damned Senju did it on purpose. The styrofoam cup of hot chocolate - sugar-free, gluten-free, and skimmed - crumpled and almost overflowed with the tight squeeze of his fingers. He really, really didn't want to be in the same field lab as Tobirama, but the albino truly looked like he was only standing upright because the cup of tea was holding him, not the other way around.
His concern for the other was stronger than his own sense of self-preservation, and for that, Madara cursed himself.

Why? Why did the damned albino have to look like he survived solely by divine will?!

Madara had almost given up on trying to understand, actually. After the first time he saw an experimental bomb explode right in Tobirama's face and he just… put out the fires with a Suiton dragon, waved the smoke away with his hand, shook his head, and muttered to himself that it was still too unstable for field use; he just concluded the Senju was blessed not only by the Kami, but also by his enemies.

And both divine beings fought tooth and nail in the afterlife to see who could save Tobirama from the most inexplicable death in the most incongruous way possible.

An extreme case of 'nothing ventured, nothing gained,' indeed.

But on that day… ah, on that specific day, even Hashirama lifted his head from where he was playing with a sprout he'd grown from the corner of his desk - instead of doing his miserable Hokage work - when his brother came stumbling through the door like a lost whirlwind, looking like death warmed over multiple times.

And this was because his friend lived with the madman in the same house and compound. As soon as Madara saw the younger Senju's appearance, he was torn between getting up from his chair and starting to scream for a Med-Nin or just staying petrified and in shock at the 'just-walked-out-of-the-grave' look.

The white hair was spiky and burnt at the ends - had one of those jars with flammable solutions exploded? Had an assassination attempt occurred and been thwarted with a fireball? Had he tried to light the fire to heat the kettle but ended up setting his own forehead on fire? He wished he was joking, but all options had occurred, with varying degrees of burns and sizes of devastated areas… mostly because of the kettle.

His clothes were more like rags for floor cleaning or covering chicken coops; they were tatters with pockets full of brushes, pens, and carefully folded pieces of paper, with the sleeves and edges of the shirt - a gift Madara had given him, once a beautiful navy blue, now a worrying shade of yellow - covered in scribbles, calculations, and analyses of whatever Tobirama was obsessed with at the moment.
And the plastic cups stacked in a small tower with dark rims; from where the Uchiha sat, he expected to smell coffee, but it was the scent of tea that enveloped the albino's stumbling, swaying figure.
But that wasn't the worst part.

No, by far the worst part was the eyes.

It was as if Raiton had escaped Tobirama's iron control and painted the inside of his cornea, the branching veins spread around the eye, and the pupils like small, bouncing needles lost in the red sea that was his iris. Darting from side to side while his body - drunk on black tea and showing symptoms of withdrawal from decent food and sleep - swayed behind them.

When Hashirama gave up making the plant dance and gave his brother his full attention… well, Madara knew someone in that room wouldn't leave happy. Whether it would be Tobirama for being forced to take a vacation - damn workaholics - or it would be him - being force- sorry, offering his precious rest time to babysit a certain scientist - that remained to be decided.

But when it took calling the younger Senju's name four times for him to look at Hashirama with the slightest focus, and the answer to the question 'what are you doing, Tobi?' was a full-blown smile and a breathy laugh, Madara understood it would be him who'd be unhappy after all.

Tobirama doesn't laugh, much less smile; the most movement Madara had ever seen him make with his mouth was to chew food, mock some idiot, or a slight upturn of the corners of his lips - serving to demonstrate either happiness or the purest, most distilled hatred - to display the points of his Hatake canines.

His luck had truly been thrown out the window and left for the vultures when Tobirama almost threw himself onto his brother's desk - forgotten cup of tea spilled at the foot of the table, hands splayed over the papers he himself had filled out the night before, papers he treated as well as karmic prophecies or a particularly rare document - eyes with streaks of red electricity sparking, his full dentition on display as he said The Words.

"I think I've finally found a way to teleport body mass using the Hiraishin."

Madara had never seen his friend's neck turn so fast, tears forming at the speed of light.

And he didn't even have time to stretch his back and feel his spine crack, to take off his glasses, or to eat the Mochi Izuna had bought for him that morning.

And, as Tobirama invaded the archives in the next room, looking for only the Kami knew what, Hashirama turned in his direction, whining for him to 'please keep an eye on Tobi? He doesn't look well and I'm very busy now…!' while shedding crocodile tears, Madara just accepted that by the end of the day, he wouldn't return to the clan compound in one piece.

And for good reason.

Each carrying three armfuls of bound books and scrolls in each arm as they leaped over roofs and commercial buildings, with their speed, it didn't take long to reach Tobirama's newest lab - one of the training grounds, number 44 - affectionately nicknamed the Forest of Death.

The Uchiha cursed his luck.

And he cursed his life when he saw the entrance to the underground hole in the center of the field, with barrier seals so potent the Chakra coated him like a second skin, right in the middle of the arch left by two fallen trees. And so he became the first Uchiha to see where the reclusive Senju spent his overtime hours.

He didn't know whether to be proud of the self-imposed title or wary of it.The lab could be better described as a madman's den, with stacks of paper and books on any horizontal surface, mainly the floor, half-opened scrolls tossed randomly on top, and lines, strokes, and suspicious red swirls staining the walls.

The stains, actually - Madara discovered after tilting his head at an extremely specific angle, standing on tiptoe, squinting, and activating his Sharingan - had order and purpose, being actually a truly gigantic seal matrix drawn all over the room, with arcs of Hiragana painted on the ceiling like splatters from an accountant's slate. The four walls had Kanji disfigured to the point of impossibility and beyond, enough to be a linguist's personal nightmare. The floor, in the little he perceived wasn't covered by paper, scrolls, and - surprisingly - leather, was full of geometric shapes, with enough edges and vertices to make Madara feel dizzy and unable to name them all.

The scene was macabre, with the room's interior being perfectly suited to serve as a cage to trap something monstrous… or to attract it.

And the sight wasn't improved by the albino on his knees in the center of the room, tossing the newest armful of scrolls onto several other open ones, muttering broken syllables, and pulling a still-damp brush from one of the many pockets sewn into his shirt.

Madara almost knelt and prayed right there on the red-stained floor for the poor garment to have a deserved rest when it finally burst at the seams.

But he really preferred not to touch anything the Senju was drawing; everything had an inexplicable tendency to catch fire and, only then, explode. Not while Tobirama began adding even more scribbles - in sections that Madara, with his exemplary practice of studying Fuuinjutsu with the aid of the Sharingan, considered random - to the floor and walls. He pondered approaching and looking over the Senju's shoulder - his height didn't help with these plans either - to see what the albino was writing so intently, but he didn't even know if Tobirama was conscious of Madara's presence inside his very evil and very poorly hidden lair.

"...Senju?"

It's as if Tobirama was thinking out loud. He lifts his head from where he's crouched, filling a scratched corner on the floor with more red ink, his eyes passing right through him and going to the door as if Madara weren't even there, as if the question were just the voices in Tobirama's head or the wind moving the leaves.

He's already feeling he's going to regret this. Again.

"Tobirama?"

And yes, the same movement, only with more swaying as he stands up, picks up the strange leather scroll in the center of the room, and compares it to a tiny, burnt piece of paper he pulls from his robes, a look of concentration on his furrowed brows and squinting eyes.

He's almost certain the albino must have a killer migraine if he's showing visible signs of discomfort.

Right, this torture has lasted long enough, time to get Tobirama into a bed before he blows himself up with his own seal and goes flying in a poorly made parody of a firework.And, as if in agreement, Tobirama already comes towards him in a staggering step, until he gets close enough to bump into his shoulder, jump back, and act as if he'd been burned.

Well, how ridiculous.

"...Mad… ra…?"

Yes, truly concerning. Madara purses his lips while pressing the back of his hand to the other's forehead. Tobirama isn't one to use first names with anyone. For him to not use honorifics or the surname, he must be almost dropping dead, especially the way he is, almost seeming to have a stick up his ass poking his spine until it's straight.

"Senju-San, I think that's enough for today, don't you? I believe it would be more productive if you rested and then tried to solve… whatever this is."

The albino seems to even agree and is nodding his head, a jaw-cracking yawn interrupting him, and he even rubs his eye while almost leaning on Madara.

Madara might even consider the act cute if it weren't for the dark bags under said eyes; the Uchiha himself looked like he could fit inside them and take the nap he was denied earlier that same day.
"Right, then I think that's enough," he heads for the door, putting the Senju's arm over his shoulder and almost managing to turn the doorknob, "do you prefer I drop you at Hashirama's house? Or your-?"

He doesn't even get to finish. Tobirama stiffens as if he'd poked him with the tip of a Kunai, red, swollen eyes staring at him with something akin to betrayal.

"But…! I'm so close to figuring it out!"

He almost whines, and the Uchiha doesn't want to poke that particular hornet's nest even with a pole Hashirama's size.

The Senju begins to struggle, and Madara lets him go without preamble, watching his eyes turn back to the scattered notes. But the dazed, almost drugged look doesn't leave the albino's expression, and he feels, may Amaterasu save them all, but he senses he's going to regret what he says next.

"And what if I… helped you?"

When Tobirama stares right back at him immediately after - into his Uchiha eyes, without blinking - it's as if he's seeing him for the first time, since the mandatory handshake at the Peace Accord.
And then it doesn't take long for him to start dirtying his own clothes with red ink that, he later discovers, was made using Tobirama's concentrated blood, imbued with the purest Chakra he can produce, resulting in a mixture that, according to him, 'becomes faster at capturing my specific Chakra speed and, since what I'm trying to reproduce is a transfer of quantum states between entangled particles, without the physical movement of matter. Speed is essential'.

Madara just blinked tiredly and nodded.

So there he was, sitting on the floor with his lap full of research in Tobirama's slanted handwriting - what language is this? He doesn't even know what he's reading anymore - and abusing his Sharingan, since he hadn't even thought to bring his glasses to this research binge, let alone anything else. And they stayed like that for hours.

But it wasn't all bad, not when Madara felt that finally, after years of only knowing of Tobirama's existence, he had finally seen him. And he was astonished. The spontaneous thoughts for new Jutsu or the refinement of others written in the margins explained little of how the Senju thought, but it was instructive; the papers scattered around the room showed how much of a polymath the man was, with subjects ranging from 'The Art of Sculpture,' 'Best Recipes for an Incompetent,' 'Substitute Materials for Gunpowder,' to a very suspicious volume of an erotic novel amidst calligraphy books.

The man was truly a genius. Or a madman. The description was still being decided.

But the Uchiha was a man like any other, and staying in that position for hours after even more hours sitting in the uncomfortable office chair was killing his back.

He lifts his eyes, looking for Tobirama, and blinks a few times. Wow, they're dry.

"Senju-san?" A light grunt answers him from where the albino is busy upside down on the ceiling. "What do you expect me to understand with this language book?" A mutter and a shake of the head. "Senju? I'm tired, I know it's already dinnertime, and although this moment with you has been truly enlightening, I have a very impatient mouth to feed at home."

The man on the ceiling stops, looks at him with eyes even redder than before, nods his head in concession, and opens his mouth.

"Shorthand."

He says, with a serious face, as if that solved all the world's problems. But perhaps it really did for Tobirama, the way this project was consuming him. Madara decided to throw him a small rope.

"...shorthand?"

Tobirama nods once more, serious, and with the small action, he wobbles and almost falls.

"I'm developing a shorthand for the Kanji of Fuuinjutsu, since I observed that… teleportation is only unviable because of the size and complexity of the network traversed by Chakra with intent."
Shorthand in an art where any error in the brush's inclination could result in death, with the Chakra channels being emptied, the body imploding, or being divided into carbon atoms.

Madara took back what he said before; the Senju was completely insane, and perhaps Madara was too, since he just blinked once and opened his mouth again.

"Ah, yes?"

He was really going to use what he'd perfected in the Art of Sealing to lock his own mouth and never open it again.

But Tobirama just showed the tips of his canines, a flush of happiness coloring the tips of his ears. Or perhaps a flush of sickness. Yes, that was more likely.

"Exactly!" He raises his arms up - or down, depending on who's looking - brush in one hand and book in the other, and, as if there were no way he could crack his head on the floor, he plummets from the ceiling and falls almost on top of Madara. "Let's start from the beginning then; for a Fuuinjutsu to work, it needs a single Core to anchor everything…" he grabs the book he was studying before and shows a page, undoubtedly visited many times, where the Kanji for 'Movement' is written in the Senju's careful handwriting, "... and a fixed number of Auxiliary Sub-Cores to spread the Chakra through the network and not overload the Central Objective System, which is the goal for which the Seal is being developed. Since Hiraishin is a Seal for something meant to be used many times in succession in a battle state, it needs to be light on Chakra consumption and fast to activate, so the best option is to make a Simple Core, which has only one anchor. The simpler the word or Kanji of the Simple Core's anchor, the more Auxiliary Sub-Cores can be linked to the network, and the closer the meaning between them, the more Sub-Cores can be linked to each other, improving the Seal's efficiency and potency." He points this time to the Kanji for 'speed,' 'dexterity,' 'haste,' 'agility,' and 'swiftness,' all linked together, and each one individually linked to the central 'Movement' Kanji. "But even this has a limit before the network itself collapses from the amount of Chakra and structural size, consuming itself from the inside out and degrading, mainly due to the absence of Resistor Nodes that limit the Chakra flow through the network, which undoubtedly increases durability but makes the Seal's activation slower. But!" He opens to another set of pages, these with notably more elaborate Kanji. "These are just the benefits and contraindications of a Simple Core. A Complex Core, which is what I'm trying to shape, is much better for this type of Seal, since it can have more than one anchor, meaning the Central Cores and some of the Auxiliaries don't need to be directly related!"

The way he explains it is… easy to digest, Madara supposes, and he is enthralled. Of course, he knows one can't learn such a systemic and intricate art from someone half-drunk on sleep, but many of his undoubtedly basic questions were explained as if they were obvious. He understands now why Kagami almost kisses the ground his Sensei walks on. He nods, eyes focused on the Senju's dirty, scarred, slender fingers.

"I see." The way Tobirama's eyes widen shouldn't make him want to smile, but such is life. "But you haven't explained the problem with the Complex one yet."

Yes, he's sure now; the blush on the tips of his ears descends to leave a faint, almost imperceptible color on his angular cheekbones.

"Well, Complex Cores exist in prime numbers; I'm using a base of three, forming a triangle in the center of the network, each opposite in meaning to the other and linked by Stability Threads to balance the result, because the purpose of these types of Fuuinjutsu is an action involving the three Cores as a single unit." A new page, with the Kanji for 'Ephemeral,' 'Incorporeal,' and 'Abrupt' written. "Each of these is something Hiraishin should be: to manage to go from the starting point to the desired mark instantly, silently, and ignoring all obstacles in the path… as if…" he looks up, his head falling onto Madara's shoulder as he yawns again; Madara can't help but yawn in reflex too— "as if they were a single Central Core instead of three distinct weaves linked together, with the Core serving as the connection between all three different parts of the network, without the Sub-Cores linked to it interacting and wearing each other out. But the problem is that the use of Resistor Nodes is mandatory, but each Core can only receive its third of the energy, and since the size of the weave triples, the consumption is directly proportional, so these Nodes, besides preventing the destruction of the Cores, also guarantee the safety of whoever performs the Fuuinjutsu."

Madara agrees and already knows where this is going.

"Yes, if the Sub-Cores don't have balanced energy consumption among themselves, the network will start using the energy contained in the bonds between the bodies to keep the weave united so as not to kill the Seal Master." The head on his shoulder moves in agreement. "Have you tried making a connection between the Sub-Cores using the Nodes? Not with a full Stability base, of course, just a Control one, to form something comparable to the main Core's energy expenditure… as if everything were a fourth Core with grooves around the three Central Cores."

He feels it when the albino freezes, and Madara slowly looks back at him. The Senju's eyes are so wide the Uchiha can even see the reflection of his Sharingan in the other's red irises.

"Senj-?"

"You're a genius. How had I never thought of that before…?"

The last part is almost whispered as Tobirama stands up abruptly, but the pressure change was too much for his fatigued body to handle; as soon as he's relatively upright, his eyes roll back in their sockets and he plummets, his head making a painful thud when it hits the floor.

"Senju!"

Madara barely notices as he drops to his knees beside the albino, turning him onto his back and seeing the cut on his forehead dripping blood onto the floor. Well, at least he isn't foaming at the mouth.

"Damn it a-"

He doesn't even have time to curse when a crack expands from the absolute nothingness right in front of his face, when a reptilian eye covered in armor and the size of his head opens, as if waking from a millennial sleep, and looks at them with a vertical, slitted pupil. How did this happen?

Damn it all.

The Seal of a Jutsu that messes with space-time. Of course Tobirama's blood would activate it, and of course he had to be caught in the middle when it happened. But he's only blessed by Amaterasu, not by the legion of profane spirits that walk on the Senju's leash; there's no way he'll survive this cosmic terror that just expands and grows before him, as if it didn't know the meaning of limit.

Damn it all.

He doesn't have time to leave a note for Izuna—apologizing for not making dinner—or for Hashirama—explaining what happened—nor to curse one last time, not when a sonic attack, an attempt at wordless communication, a completely unnatural sound assaults his ears, burning inside his Sharingan, the lines of the giant Seal glowing in the same scarlet as the supernatural eye.

And then his own vision cracks like glass, and everything dissolves into absolute blackness.

Chapter Text

They is nothing.

They is merely floating in the nothing and being nothing.

Yet They is not alone. There is another Them there, and They and Them continue to be nothing.

Time, however, is something. Just like… distance and space. They surely exist, unlike They and Them.

Time is an infinity that ends right at the curve of nowhere. Distance is a demarcated line connecting two unknown points in space.

And then The Other comes, The Other exists.

It is not a paradox, except for the fact that it can only exist in a place where nothing exists.

What a sad existence.

If They could feel anything, They would surely be sad too.

But They are nothing and can never be anything, not while in limbo.

The Other does not understand, and The Other wants to change this.

The Other is strong as a dragon, The Other is weak as a drop of water.

The Other takes They and Them between its scaly claws, between its fingers the size of an expanding galaxy, and marvels at the connection.

The Other and Them have an agreement, They knows this, They heard, They saw, and They was there when The Other watched - both, watched both with its eyes the size of a molecule, watched Them and They watched The Other in return. But Them could not see, Them was sick, but Them still managed to sign with the blood of Them.

They understands and does not understand.

And why would They need to understand? If They is anything, nothing is They.

But The Other must fulfill the agreement, and in the agreement was the sentence that Them wrote in the forgotten tongue.

Them asked for 'Ephemeral', so something 'Ephemeral' Them shall have. The Other is wise, just as a fool when choosing company.

Them asked for 'Incorporeal', so someone 'Incorporeal' shall accompany Them. The Other is long-lived, just like a leaf blown by the wind and separated from the branch.

Them asked for 'Abrupt', so nothing 'Abrupt' shall Them witness. The Other is merciful, just like the hungry predator seeing the wounded prey.

But They asked for nothing, because They is nothing and has no connection with The Other.

But does They have? Or does They not have? Is They? Or is They not?

For how could the seed resemble the plant that bore it, after all?

But The Other is foolish, mortal, and merciless, so They shall also have '[R3d4Ct3D]'.

The Other lifts They and Them in claws feathers hands scales skins fur as infinite as a grain of sand, stares at the nothingness that They and Them are.

And then They and Them are not and neither exist.

The Other continues to stare at the everything and nothing within the void space crowded by its claws, sighs, grunts, growls, roars, screams.

Then The Other contemplated all that it had done, and behold, it was good.

Chapter Text

Madara feels as if decades have passed since he last breathed.

They we- They…? No, not They, he.

He was smelling sea salt, volcanic smoke, and decay with a nose that was actually functioning.

He was hearing the sound of seagulls, waves crashing, heavy footsteps on sand, and a breath very close by with ears that weren't clogged.

He was tasting the bland flavor of something he couldn't name, and when he licked his lips, he tasted salt and the bloody cracks on his mouth.

He was feeling warmth on his torso and hips and a burning sensation on any other part not covered by clothes, a feeling of cold caused by moisture on his face.

He was feeling a headache, a drum gong in his temples, perhaps from dehydration after being too long under the sun.

He wasn't seeing anything, just the red of the inside of his eyelids.

…The red…?

As if sensing his growing state of consciousness, whatever was breathing near his nose moves, hot and fetid air is blown onto his face, the heavy locks of hair flying back. Madara has his head half-raised, almost opening his eyes when what feels like wet velvet covers his face from top to bottom with warm slime.

"What the…?!"

A whimper like stones clashing, low and near his ear, a light shifting of sand - he feels some grains entering the folds of his clothes - the velvet wets his face again and the smell of wet ashes clogs his nostrils. Madara groans.

"I swear by the Sun, Hashirama, if you do that one more time I'll burn your hair until it's ugly and crispy enough for even Mito to find it impossible to lie about."

He doesn't hear the indignant screams he expects to hear after that proclamation.

Seagulls he's never heard before, a wet, hot snort very close to his ear, waves hitting the beach, sand being carried by the wind, leaves flying in the distance, a background buzz of human activity.

Seagulls screaming, a snort in his ear, beach waves, sand hitting his skin, leaves flying, human buzz.

Seagulls, snort, waves, sand, leaves, buzz.

Since when aren't seagulls chased away from Uzushio?

Since when don't they respect his personal space when a simple breath can reduce someone to ashes?

Since when are there waves lapping at the sand and not lashing against the cliffs?

Since when?

Since when?

Since when?

Madara wakes up.

And immediately wishes he were dead.

As soon as he opens his eyes, the sun burns his corneas and the headache only grows in intensity.

"Holy shit… how much did I drink yest-?"

Yesterday. Yesterday.

Yesterday he was next to a happily unconscious Tobirama, yesterday he saw something that didn't belong in this world tear reality apart as if it were nothing. Yesterday he saw the vertical pupil, the limbs covered in armor, he saw something a human shouldn't see.

The Sharingan is like a curse, he can't not see, he can't forget, he can't, he can't, he can't…!

It's as if a sledgehammer is pounding on both sides of his ears, trying to burst his eardrums, and he's barely aware that he's thrashing in the sand, screaming and scaring off whoever was near him with his violent movements.

He feels but doesn't feel when something heavy is placed on his body, trying to make him stop moving, and then…

Red, is what Madara remembers.

He is breathing heavily, cold sweat covering every inch of his skin as he pants, his eyes unfocused and protected from the sun by a shadow to his left, watching the heavy clouds fly quickly across the blue sky.

He hears movement behind him, many footsteps, shouts, and exclamations.

His face is still damp and his skin still feels burned.

The object they placed on him is warm, moves like something alive, and smells of smoke and soot.

He shifts his gaze from where it was focused on the dawning sky to the shadow. He sees first the white, then the black dot and the orange spots, fluffy segments upon segments in front of him, seeming soft. Before he can focus his vision, he thinks he's seeing the sweets Izuna gave him much earlier that afternoon, before lunch.

"…Mochi… gome…?"

Madara is hungry.

He should be making dinner, but thanks to Tobirama he-

Red. Tobirama. Pupils. VOID-

His mind goes blank, it is blank. Madara knows this blockage has to do with the… environment he was taken to after the cosmic terror was invoked by Tobirama. He thanks his body's coping mechanism for not turning his brain into mush.

He sighs, opens his eyes, and looks again - he didn't even notice when he closed his eyelids - at the Mochi shading him. A very large Mochigome, with a wet red tongue - he now knows where the smell of rot came from - a mouth wide enough to take his head off in one bite, round ears, and a soft, swaying tail.

A huge dog is lying on Madara's torso, with four comb-like claws right on his stomach.

Right on his very soft and very fragile parts, covered only by the cloth he wears, completely unprotected.

He doesn't even think about how calm the animal seems, not when it has Madara's life between its paws. He's already getting up, one hand raised and thrust into the middle of what seems like the white mane around the dog's neck and a flame on the tip of his tongue when the first person arrives skidding in the sand and throwing themselves beside him, turning their back to him, grabbing his hand that's buried in the white mane and pulling it out, then opening their arms towards the dog.

The Uchiha is appalled by the sheer courage of the action.

By the courage and the folly. He is a shinobi, he certainly has a better chance of surviving being gutted than the civilian in front of him, and although he almost overdid it by almost turning the animal to ashes, he recognizes that the man in front of him—young, a red beret on his head, dark, thick pants, wearing some kind of white lab coat—is being more rash than he should be, especially since the dog is obviously a Komainu.

Blessed be Amaterasu.

But the boy's body is still trembling and his breathing is even heavier.

And it's obvious that Mochigome didn't like this one bit; what was once a calm, happy snort is now a baring of teeth, canines as long as his fingers, head lowered and ears back, the jaw so close to Madara's stomach that he feels the steaming breath through his clothes. The tail that swayed in slow movements now thrashes from side to side, the fluffy fur standing on end, almost blurring the surroundings with the change in temperature.

And the commotion around them isn't helping the situation.

Madara is still watching the standoff, surprised, between the boy and the guardian, but a call - the boy's name? Rūkasu? - makes him look around.

He is definitely on a beach; on one side, the sea breeze, the waves, the fairly large shells scattered along the shore, some crabs in the background, and the shadow of birds in the middle of the ocean.

On the other, a small murmuring crowd.

Well, he really hoped he hadn't attracted that much attention.

They appeared almost as if summoned, a mixed group of two dozen people, all watching with wide eyes and hands covering open mouths at him, the Komainu, and 'Rūkasu'.

Nothing attracts a crowd faster than the chance to see bloodshed, he supposes.

Madara sighs as much as possible with the weight of the divine dog crushing his lungs, feeling in the hollow of his bones the silent growl the dog produces, undoubtedly bothered by the boy's presence.

The Uchiha sighs, better deal with this before the guardian's fury reduces the child to charred pieces.

He sits up, pushing Mochigome onto his knees with one hand and is almost putting himself in front of the boy when an old man with an impressive mustache - Elder Kuchihige would turn purple with envy - being pulled by a little girl wearing a large red scarf, about the age to enroll in the Academy, emerge from the middle of the crowd of curious fishermen and gossiping housewives.

"Brother!"

He doesn't understand what they're saying.

The shock of this tiny piece of information almost makes him fall on his back again.

Where the hell did Tobirama, where did that animal he summoned, take them?

But the absence of a certain albino nearby makes him reconsider his words.

He closes his eyes, the hand that was on the ground for support now covering his forehead, dirtying his face with sand and feeling the fast pulse of stress, the other squeezing the boiling hot fur of the dog until his knuckles turn white.

Tobirama is nowhere within his sight.

He doesn't even notice when he takes his hand from his forehead and grabs the boy by the neck with it, at the same instant turning his face, filthy with dirt, and growling back in the direction of the Komainu.

The lack of a certain half-Hatake is making him act like a savage, and he doesn't even care; he's in the middle of who-knows-where, surrounded by chattering civilians and with only a guardian dog for company. The person most likely to know how to get out of here is missing.

He is completely and utterly helpless.

Madara's breathing is speeding up, becoming almost as fast as 'Rūkasu's', his tongue is dry.

The old man - dressed in a buttoned blue vest and pants of the same color but darker - approaches slowly, furrowed brows and a face wet with sweat studying the situation.

The little girl - the boy's sister? They have a very similar skin and hair tone for it to be a mere coincidence, especially with how tense she is - has her hands clutching the older man's shirt, her body half-hidden and only half of her head, covered with a white hat, peeking out.

"Lucas, get away from there slowly and calmly."

The human throat constricts against his hand, the boy still stubbornly with his back to him.

Madara feels like tearing the boy's trachea out with his bare fingers and showing them that, between him and Mochigome, the human lying on the ground covered in sand is the more dangerous one.

"B-but, Professor! Growlight looks like he's almost killing hi-!"

The man is an immovable rock, and the hissing crowd and the boy are like water flowing past his permanence.

"Growlight is not a danger to anyone but you, Lucas. Get out of there now. I'm almost certain this stranger is going into shock and seriously thinking about breaking your neck."

The neck tenses, a wide gray eye turning in his direction.

Yes, he thinks, activating his Sharingan and staring deep into the boy's eyes, he wasn't named Calamity for nothing.

A glow at the old man's feet, an excited cry of 'Pi! Plup!'. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up, sensing that something unknown has taken the stage.

He has no time to look for the new threat when a jet of high-pressure water hits him right in the face. It's cold, enters his open mouth and eyes, and his muscles contract in reflex; 'Rūkasu' takes advantage of the distraction to escape from between his fingers.

But Madara can think now; the literal cold shower has put his head in place, and he almost feels like apologizing to the boy for the violent way he acted. Although he doesn't really want to; this unknown place, apparently miles away from Konohagakure, doesn't make him comfortable.

And almost all civilians should know not to approach a helpless, injured, or unconscious shinobi so abruptly and recklessly.

May this near-death encounter have taught 'Rūkasu' something useful.

He opens his eyes, feeling his hair even more tangled on his back and covered with sand. It's going to be a pain to wash later, the Uchiha knows from experience.

He turns to the older man - a Professor? If not, a scholar, since he behaves and dresses like one - preparing to bow slightly in gratitude for not letting him turn this beach into a feast for the sharks, when he sees the blue penguin with a puffed-out chest flapping its small flippers in pride, its yellow beak raised high. Was it this little thing that used the Water Gun technique?

Can civilians summon?

He didn't even feel the Chakra explosion that comes with a summoning.

Forget that, he didn't even see the smoke that accompanies a summoning.

There's a Shinobi hidden in the crowd.

As soon as he arrives at this hypothesis, the small frown of apology becomes a full frown of violence. He begins to knead his Chakra - it's taking too long to respond, what's wrong with the air on this beach? - in preparation for any suspicious movement, the water in his hair evaporating, undoubtedly damaging the strands - all that work trying to make them soft going down the drain - and making the tangles almost impossible to undo.

Madara almost starts making a hand seal to see if the shinobi reveals himself more quickly, but the Professor acts before he even raises his fingers.

The man takes a small red and white ball from the side of his belt, touching somewhere so the ball doubles in size and pointing a small white circle in its middle towards the still puffed-up penguin, a bright line of energy hitting the summoning and turning it into water, which is quickly sucked into the ball - now open and revealing the complex mechanisms inside.

Forget surprised, he finds himself completely astonished.

The Professor observes his reaction, eyebrows raised and eyes wide, and approaches to where 'Rūkasu' is massaging the red marks on his neck. He grabs the boy by the shoulder and studies the marks that will soon turn purple himself, watching Madara's reaction out of the corner of his eye.

The Uchiha would feel guilty for hurting the boy if it weren't a valuable lesson for his future.

The Professor approaches closer, leaving the boy behind and staggering towards the sister. The Komainu, covering most, if not all, of Madara's legs, begins to steam and let out smoke from its mouth, a low growl echoing in its throat, but the Uchiha places his hand over its snout to make it stop.

When the man is three steps away, he stops, looking from the Komainu to Madara to where the Uchiha's hand covers the dog's nose without getting burned.

Madara studies him back, from the brown leather shoes to the belt, where he sees more of the red and white balls - six of them in total - the light blue vest, the white shirt underneath and the gray tie around the neck, the white mustache and hair, the aged face with few expression lines—mainly on the eyebrows and eyes.

The man starts to speak.

"Good morning. I notice that Growlight" he points at Mochigome with a movement of his head "has chosen you to be part of his pack. That's good, he's been haunting the outskirts seeking company for a long time, but let's get to what's more important; are you injured? Do you have any idea where you are?"

Madara might have an idea of the meaning of the words, the intonations are at least similar, but he can't understand what the man said, and that's exactly what he says.

"I… it pains me to say this being the researcher that I am, but although it's very similar to our language, I don't recognize this accent." The Professor turns to where 'Rūkasu' is kneeling, with the younger sister worriedly wrapping the red scarf around his neck. "Lucas, did you hear what the boy said?"

"Yes, Professor, but I don't recognize where it could be from."

"It sounds like it's from Kanto."

Both the Professor and 'Rūkasu' stare at the girl intently.

"I-I just watched a televised Pokémon battle!"

The older man just nods at whatever the girl said, taking a strange metallic device from inside his clothes and playing with it. After a while, the old man turns it so Madara can see… two Yōkai battling each other - a huge scaled blue dragon against a tiny yellow rat in comparison - words being spat out at high speed from the small device.

"And now?" Madara turns his attention back to the man, still reasoning about what he just watched. "I'm almost certain he doesn't speak the Kanto dialect, but it was as good a guess as any, Dawn." The man sighs and puts the metallic device in his pocket. "Anyway, as the only one, besides being the highest-ranked Pokémon expert in the area, it's my obligation to take you under my care, especially since it seems you suffered an attack from some Pokémon, wild or Legendary, to be in this state."

The Professor approaches closer, staring at the Komainu under Madara's firm control, his mustache twitching from side to side. On Elder Kuchihige's face, it would be something like a welcome surprise.

"It's good that you can already control Growlight… well, since we'll be living in forced proximity in the near future" he points to his own chest "you can call me Professor Rowan, or just Rowan, I answer to both. That one" he says, pointing to the boy sitting on the ground, who waves when seen "is Lucas, my newest assistant, the little girl" points to the girl next to the newly introduced 'Rūkasu' "is Dawn, his younger sister."

Madara thinks he understood the purpose of the action; he is introducing the people around him. The Uchiha still has his Sharingan activated, so he supposes he'll cheat a little in this business of learning a new language from scratch.

"'Rūkasu,'" he says, pointing to the boy "'Dōn,'" points to the girl "and 'Rōvan.'" the last one missing is the old man.

He knows his tongue stumbles over the wrong intonation of the unknown language, but he has to start somewhere.

"Your accent is strong, but it's understandable." The Professor just raises his eyebrows minimally, then points in the Uchiha's direction. "Well then, what is your name?"

Not much interpretation is needed to understand what the man wants.

"Uchiha Madara. Mochigome."

When he points at the Komainu and says the venerable name he gave it, the old man's eyebrows finish rising on his forehead, his mustache trembling.

"I suppose calling a Hisuian Growlithe… Mochigome is… acceptable."

Madara concedes; he was never good at naming things - Konohagakure is a good example of the crap he's named - but the Komainu - around here they're called Growlithe? - has fur dense and soft enough for him to forget about honor. Mochi is a very acceptable name for him.

And that's how the Uchiha gets to his feet—his joints and muscles ache, as if he's spent hours training against Izuna or Hashirama, or as if he's been rebuilt from scratch—pushing the mountain of fur, dust, and heat that is the Komainu aside and seeing what, after all, he is wearing, and the answer is… nothing very useful.

Just a dark Kimono and a Haori of dyed black silk, the stylized Uchiha crest embroidered on the front. All dirty with sand, nothing more nothing less, not even a pair of shoes or Geta.

He sighs, turning and looking at 'Rōvan' and… only finding his collarbones.

Madara accepts that he is not the tallest of people, but he is not the shortest either, and, looking around at everyone, he just accepts that… he has shrunk in size.Damn Tobirama. Damn that other animal.

Mochigome is so big that it can sniff his chest without standing on its hind legs, and that's all he wants to know about the dog at the moment… and he is almost the same height as 'Rūkasu'! How old is he now? Fourteen? Sixteen?

But Madara is… tired of worrying about such basic things, actually, so he just closes his eyes and… breathes slowly and deeply. 'Rōvan' just watches from afar, and soon calls for his attention to follow him. This is as good as it gets.

Later, when he is inside 'Rōvan's' house and surrounded by the siblings, sitting in a chair with a sheet firmly wrapped around him, Mochigome lying at his feet while he drinks a styrofoam cup of hot chocolate - sugar-free, gluten-free, and skimmed - he wonders where Tobirama might be.