Chapter six
The Shinigami sees the little monkey, he thinks it of no consequence, if his Master had wanted complete privacy he would have said so. Probably. Well, if need be he can fix it latter, nothing of great importance has been revealed yet, when the actually important talks begin he will ward the place.
Tsuyoshi continues being draped over the Shinigami.
Minato is getting healed by a medic as best as possible and if the child does not want Minato to die yet, and the man does not die from the deadly wounds, well that's just a coincidence.
-/-
Azuma is working inside the hollowed out mountain, guarding the civilians and children, helping as much as a chunnin can, when a little monkey appears out of the shadows and runs up to him.
As soon as he sees Hijii-kun, the little monkey, he immediately feels tense as fuck.
His father is not a very present parent but his busy father took a break the week after he became chunnin and spent the entire day telling him secrets and discussing shinobi life with him.
Hijii is a monkey Hiruzen does not use often, for some reason the little one doesn't grow and since he isn't very suited for battle, infiltration, information gathering or as a messager for long distances he is mostly used on a day to day basis for informing family of mundane things, basically a way to keep an active channel of communication with his family even though the ex-Hokage was so busy.
Hiruzen has not used Hijii since he retired, and he has never used Hijii when Azuma was working, maybe Azuma is being too twitchy about this but he thinks is strange his father would send him Hijii for an unimportant message right now.
With Hijii on his shoulder he moves to a more secluded part of the cave system, difficult, since it is so full of scared people.
As soon as he confirms it Azuma speaks. "We are alone, Hijii. What is the message?"
Hijii is uncharacteristically silent for a second. Azuma is vey worried, has his father died? Was he at the hospital? Missing? "Spill!" He hisses at Hijii.
The little redling complies. " Your father is in a delicate situation right now and so he could not tell me the message." The monkey looks at an impatient Azuma pointedly."He hand signaled me Commander, Death, Azuma, Proceed, Secret and Jutsu in that exact order, do you understand Azuma-chan?*" Hijii doesn't really understand but he gets the basics.
The monkey watches as Azuma's eyes and mouth slowly, comically, widen to unbelievable dimensions, it seems the boy understands. His job here is done, he pops out of existence with a nod.
Inside the next five minutes Azuma is home and searching quickly for the old scroll. 'where the fuck is it!' He takes a deep breath and tries to not panic, he has searched everywhere he could think of inside this room.
His father had told him the scroll would stay in his brother's room but he could not find it!
After a minute the chunnin goes to the old nursery attached to his father and mother's room, the one he and his brother used at some point in their life none of them remembers it, right now it has been empty for quite a while.
It's worth a shot, he already exhausted his brother's room anyways.
Azuma enters and starts searching the most obvious places, there aren't many but luckily he doesn't have to go to more extreme measures, he finally finds a familiar looking seal on the back of a photo of his brother and himself, (dirty as can be inside a just as dirty house, he remembers the dressing down and punishment they got for that, it had not been fun, but he also remembers the brotherhood between them two, he misses those times) the photo had been inside a frame and so it took Azuma a while to find it.
By the time Azuma has unsealed everything needed, (it was a inside a five layers seal with blood locks, chakra locks, word locks and shit, it took way too fucking long, in his humble opinion), and reread the final instructions, once upon a time his father had made him read all of it and state it back to him in intervals of months and irregularly just to make absolutely sure he understood it correctly, still, it was smart to make sure, yet again, that he knew what he was doing.
Azuma proceeds to mold the chakra and perform the hand seals, with a last deep breath he calls out " Summoning: Impure World Resurrection!" And stares, he is not gonna lie, very freaked out, at the trembling ceramic pot inside the ink seal.
The pot opens and the gore inside inflates and spills over the rim, it's sickening and smells horrible. It boils and the white pieces on bone make weird noises against the ceramic. Ok so, maybe, Azuma did something wrong. 'What the fuck does he do NOW!?'
Azuma backs away slowly but cannot stop watching the mess that starts getting out of the pot like a thick goo with chunks.
After a few minutes the goo seems to stick together in two separate lumps, one just as disgusting as the other. The two lumps tremble and starting rising up in a seemingly impossible way for something so gooey looking. It gets to a certain height and stops. As if peeking up the pace it, like a mud clone, takes the form of two people and when Azuma blinks and looks there are the first two Hokage are in front of him in their iconic armors, red and blue, long brown hair and white shaggy hair, one confused and one blank faced.
Tobirama looks around and at Azuma and sharply asks. "Who are you?" Narrowing his eyes.
Hashirama quickly pouts at his otouto. "Tobiraaama, don't speak to children like that! He'll get scared!"
Before Azuma can register it he is being embraced by the God of Shinobi.
Hashirama pets the poor boy on the back and rubs his cheek on the relatively dirty hair.
Tobirama glares at his brother. "And why would I care about the unknown shinobi's feelings, Anija? More relevant than that, why are your stupid self here?" His voice is low and threatening.
Hashirama starts to sweat under the heavy gaze. "Maa, otouto, I was worried, you see?"
Tobirama feels not even a bit forgiving at those words.
"Haha ha..."Hashirama rubs the back of his head and eye smiles.
Tobirama continues to glare.
Hashirama lifts up his hand apologetically. "Ok otouto, no need to glare so much, that will give you wrinkles Tobi! I was only trying to keep you safe."
"And how does that correlate to this mess exactly?"
"Well, you see, after we fought about this resurrection jutsu of yours I could almost sense that you would still finish developing and probably pass it on. I am your brother, Tobirama, I do know you." He gives Tobirama a meaningful stare.
"The moment you walked away from our fight I decided to keep a closer eye on your lab." Hashirama can feel the terrifying, if you were not used to it, flare of chakra from his younger brother as soon as he sounded the word 'eye'.
The God of shinobi lifts up his hand and glares for a second at his brother, telling him not to interrupt.
"Because I care about you, I found the scroll after you sealed it and read the explanation of the jutsu and what not, I thought it was very weird of you to prepare even the 'ingredients' to be used for this jutsu and so I decided that if you were to one day be summoned then I would ensure you would not be alone to face what ever it was.
But even more worrying was the mention of a Master of Death, I racked my memorie but we had never encountered anyone using that nickname, you had also never mentioned it before. I went so far as to search about it with Mito and we did not find anything at all.
I decided to give you time to tell me about it, even a little hint, but in case you did not I wanted you to have backup if you ever woke up in the future and had no one to turn to.
After that I had Mito help me prepare some material and we sealed it all back together and returned it to your lab."
Firstly, that rundown of events was greatly humbled, He didn't just leave the scroll with all his preparations laying around at his lab, that means Hashirama had to go to pretty extreme lengths to have done all that. He is very pissed, he feels like his special lab and privacy were violated but he also feels a little fond of his brother for being so protective.
By this point Tobirama wants to strangle and berate his brother at the same time. He settles for glaring and then scoffing at his anija.
At Hashirama knows he is mostly forgiven and smiles a little, warmly.
As one the ex-Hokages look at Azuma, who is watching all this like it is a comedy/horror from his place at the first Hokage's arms. Hashirama smiles brightly at him. He can't help but give a small grin back. After today his bad boy image will have suffered much.
"Hello again young shinobi! What has happened for you to have called for us?" He starts out the sentence enthusiastically but ends it at a more quiet note. Both he and Tobirama can feel the Kyuubi's chakra of course, the shinobi as well, but they can assume, by the lack of noise, that the battle has reached a stand point.
"Ugh.. Hello Hokages-sama." Azuma tries bowing but the first Hokage's hold doesn't let him, so it's just a weird like little movement. Embarrassed once again and at the end of an encouraging smile by Hashirama's part and a never abating glare by Tobirama he continues. "I'm Sarutobi Azuma and my father is the third Hokage, wh-"
"Ahhh, so you are Saru's child hun? Un, un" Hashirama says looking the teen up and down."How fortunate are we Tobirama!? We get to meet little Saru's son, and such a healthy and cute child too!" Azuma gets a happy rustling of hair by the first Hokage.
"Focus, anija! Continue Sarutobi."
Hashirama laughs and Azuma decides to just get all of this over with, it's just too weird."Right," throat clearing "I'm the Sarutobi Hiruzen's youngest son and when I became chunnin he entrusted me with the knowledge of a scroll given to him by Senju Tobirama shortly before his death." he says and looks at Tobirama as if looking for agreement.
Tobirama nods back.
"As you know the scroll had this jutsu and all the ingredients needed should it ever come a time a certain Master of Death appeared.
I don't actually know where and if the Master appeared, but earlier I received a message from my father trough a monkey summon used only for familial matters.
Trough Hijii father sent the words Commander, Death, Azuma, Proceed, Secret and Jutsu, judging by the circumstances and the words I could only come to the conclusion that the Comander/Master of Death has appeared and I, Azuma, should use the secret Jutsu that had to do with the Master of Death.
If I am wrong I apologize, but I think that when we find father we will find the Master of Death, and better sooner than latter, the village has just suffered an attack and is very vulnerable right now."
Tobirama's glare loses a little intensity as he thinks, it does not seem like the boy is lying, it deserves a trip to wherever Hiruzen is. What if Harry is actually here? Well, he can't lose such an opportunity. "Let's go."
Tobirama leaps out of the window and follows the biggest chakra signature, the kyuubi. There is a little discomfort in his body even after a few minutes since the completion of the jutsu, he is a bit annoyed that his jutsu is not as perfect as he wanted but at least it seems to have served its propose.
When they get near the bijuu he can sense little vestiges of Chakra going many directions, but he wasn't called one of the best trackers for nothing, he locks on Hiruzen's chakra, glad it is still so familiar to him, and shushins. Trusting Hashirama to follow and decide wether to bring along the kid or not.