Chapter Text
When Kagami and Hiruzen reentered the room through Tobirama’s door, Tobirama had set up a long table, clear of all items except for two large cardboard boxes. Tobirama gestured for them to each stand behind the table, each in front of a cardboard box. “You boys beg for me to teach you, then when I oblige, you’re all tentative and bashful,” Tobirama sighed, pressing his palm into his eyes and rubbing heavily. Once his students scuttled behind the table, Tobirama stood in front of them and crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow.
Immediately, Hiruzen bowed deeply, pressing his forehead against the wood. “Thank you for inviting us into your home!” He yelled into the furniture, his voice muffled. “Excuse us for entering your home!” At that, Tobirama smacked his head and forced him to stand straight up.
“We’re in my lab, training, not in my home drinking tea. Now, what are we learning today?"
Kagami squinted at the cardboard box and frowned. “Taijutsu? No—nature transformation!” Hiruzen and Kagami looked up at Tobirama pleadingly with wide, innocent eyes, making the elder groan. “Please, Tobirama-sensei? I heard you mastered every nature transformation!” At this, Hiruzen hollered his agreement, and Tobirama rolled his eyes, albeit amused, not denying what they claimed.
“As useful as offence-based jutsu are, in the end, they cannot save a comrade’s life,” Tobirama apprised, his tone sharp. “Academy instructors teach you how to maim, kill and defend, yet they do not teach you how to save a life. They do not teach you how to heal a fatal injury. Tell me, Kagami-kun, what would you do if young Saru here and you were on a mission, far away from Konoha, and Saru had a terrible injury that couldn’t be healed with bandages?”
At Kagami’s silence, Hiruzen piped up. “Medical ninjutsu?”
Tobirama smiled and nodded. “Correct. Medical ninjutsu is heavily associated with kunoichi and is considered useless. However, without it, I would not be here today, as well as your family and friends. One day, it might even save your lives . . . or you will use it to save another’s life . . . whether it be a friend, a comrade or even a stranger.” He removed the lids off the cardboard boxes, and Hiruzen reeled back in disgust once peering inside, letting out a small shriek with exaggerated retching noises.
“A rat!” The Sarutobi screamed, tugging at his hair harshly as he stumbled away from the table. “Oh . . . gross, gross, gross! Tobirama-sensei, why would you show me that?!”
In contrast, Kagami simply examined the rodents, his expression a mixture of adoration and interest. The Uchiha poked his rat, the smaller of the two, which sported silky white fur and gleaming red eyes, making it yelp and try and hide itself in the corner. “It kind of looks like you, Tobirama-sensei . . .” Kagami murmured, then blanched when he saw his sensei glaring at him, killing intent arising in the air in the room. “I mean he has the same colours as you!” Kagami squeaked, his hands waving over his head in a diplomatic gesture. “Please don’t kill me!”
Once Hiruzen recovered, staring suspiciously at his rat with a disgusted expression. His rat was larger than Kagami’s, with dark brown eyes and chestnut fur, squeaking furiously and scratching the walls aggressively as it tried desperately to escape prying eyes. “Mine looks like Hashirama,” he commented, and Tobirama smacked him upside, making the Sarutobi yelp. “Ow! I meant the colours too!”
Tobirama simply huffed. “Ignoring the insults, you fools, we’ll simply be learning how to heal broken skin today, nothing internal. Medical ninjutsu focusing on the internal organs requires intricate chakra control, patience, composure and an astute intellect—all of which you two have the potential of, in my eyes.”
Hiruzen and Kagami preened under the praise before blushing and giggling like a gaggle of teenagers mooning over an actress and Tobirama began to teach them how to save a life.
--
Once Tobirama had finished his lecturing, his newly gloved hand shot out and he grabbed the brown rat, which squealed and scrabbled at the offence until Tobirama squeezed his hand like a vice, making it go limp in his hands, playing dead. Hiruzen let out a whine of distress. “Not Hashirama! Tobirama-sensei, slice up Tobirama instead!”
“You named them?” Tobirama growled, glaring at Hashirama the Rat. “Hashirama nor I will be subjected to having the same name as rats!” But then he stared into Hashirama's pleading eyes, and he admitted there were some similarities in his brother. “Well, I’m not going to slice up Hashirama—just give him a small cut.”
Kagami whimpered. “Isn’t this animal abuse? What would my father’s summons think?” He pressed his hands to his eyes as if Uchiha Akira was standing in front of him with a disappointed expression plastered over his face. “They’d probably eat the rat . . .”
Tobirama decided not to mention the hundreds of animals he’d sacrificed in the name of science. Hashirama initially disliked his slaughtering of animals, but after a few clever words about ‘scientific advancements’ and ‘being Hashirama’s last brother’, he had successfully won the argument. “Unless you two haven’t been listening for the past forty-five minutes, Hashirama won’t die. Now, do you need an example done, or shall I just give you a dying rat?”
Both Kagami and Hiruzen asked for the former, so Tobirama placed Hashirama down and after taking off his left glove, sliced open the palm of his hand with a kunai before healing it, giving them a clear demonstration of healing, the low hum of medical jutsu filling the silent lab, along with the gentle green glow. “The more informed you are on the anatomy of whatever or whoever you are healing, the more informed you are of the injury itself, the easier it is to heal. If you want to practise, try healing yourself if you’ve fallen over or cut yourself on a kunai. Do not heal deep wounds or deliberately hurt yourself. That will only cause more trauma to your body, as well as chakra exhaustion.”
Once he had finished healing himself, the only evidence of his injury was a thin line of blood, which he promptly ignored, putting Madara's glove back on. “Even small cuts and such are better left healed. Infections are deadly and if you end up with something permanent, you’ll curse yourself every night before bed for being careless when you have to retire from being a shinobi early.”
With that confirmed and sunk in, Tobirama picked up Hashirama the Rat, ignoring Hiruzen’s protests, and promptly ran his kunai over the rat’s flank, making the rodent shriek and scrabble in his hand. Tobirama didn’t want rat blood getting in any scratches along his handsand silently thanked Izuna for stealing Madara’s gloves for him. They were thick and barely irritated his skin, which was a wonder, considering his sensitive skin. He knew the Uchiha would probably skin him alive if he didn’t wash them afterwards.
Repeating the same thing with the albino rat, Tobirama watched as Hiruzen and Kagami, both wearing equally thick gloves, frown as they concentrated their own chakra into the bleeding rodents.
Hiruzen was the first to stitch Hashirama’s skin back together, much to Kagami’s despair, but Tobirama encouraged him to stay calm and focus on healing. He, too, after a few more minutes, healed the albino rat, which simply scuffled around in fear after having its body violated.
“This is the first step into one of the harder fields—if not the hardest—of ninjutsu, due to the level of chakra control required. The branches that Medical ninjutsu can go off into are unknown, and if you want, you two can research it as much as you want . . . under mine or another medic-nin's guidance, of course. I’ll start timing you, then we’ll be working on bigger wounds, and then eventually we’ll move onto real patients in the hospital.” Tobirama picked up his rodent namesake and frowned when it squeaked. “Precise chakra control is incredibly useful in nature transformation—something we’ll be learning soon.” Hiruzena and Kagami both squealed in excitement, hugging each other as their sensei let Tobirama scuttle out of his fist and onto his bracer. “As I said before, I’m well aware of your potential. You two very well may be Konoha’s next generation, and it will do no good to have you kidnapped or worse by enemy shinobi"
To Tobirama’s disappointment, Kagami’s smile slipped from his face and looked down at the floor, biting his lip. “Bloodline thieves, you mean,” the Uchiha murmured.
Tobirama’s expression softened as he looked at his saddened student. “That’s right, Kagami-kun. They don’t talk about all that in the Academy, do they?"
Hiruzen frowned. “I sure haven’t . . . what . . . who are they?”
Tobirama ran his finger over his rat’s white flank, making it squeak and shudder under a warm finger. “They’re greedy, malevolent people who only care for themselves,” Tobirama said quietly. “I won’t go into the details, but their main motivation is to kidnap shinobi from clans with special traits, such as a kekkai genkai, and steal them for themselves."
Hiruzen’s eyes widened in understanding and horror as he took in Kagami’s sullen mood. “Sharingan,” he whispered.
“That’s right. The Hyuuga and the Uchiha are both heavily targeted by bloodline thieves due to both the ease of obtaining their kekkai genkai and their strengths. Doujutsu in general is a target for anyone looking for power through unethical means.” Such as Edo Tensei, his mind whispered treacherously, which Tobirama willfully ignored. Such thoughts were weak and disloyal to the village.
He held up two fingers. “There are two main ways that bloodline thieves steal these traits.” His fingers hovered over Tobirama the Rat’s eyes, which were, like his, the exact same shade as the Sharingan. “If it’s an outer manifestation, such as a doujutsu, they steal the eyes to replace their own.” He then grabbed Hashirama and placed him next to Tobirama, letting the larger rat scuttle up to his neck and nestle next to his neck. “If it’s something in the shinobi’s very essence, such as a strong life force or the Makutonk, they force the shinobi to sire children for them and use those children as their own soldiers.”
Hiruzen and Kagami had both paled considerably, suddenly quiet, and Tobirama smiled. “Ever since the creation of Konohagakure, the population of bloodline thieves has reduced exponentially. With incredible shinobi such as our Shodaime Hokage or Uchiha Madara-sama, no one has dared to try and steal anything from anyone.” He smiled at the pair before patting their heads with the hand that didn’t contain Tobirama, until he flared his chakra, sensing a familiar fiery signature approaching at high speed.
Mention his name and he shall appear, much like madman on fire.
Tobirama paled and glanced at his glove, which currently had an albino rat crawling over it. There was nothing he could do but watch as his iron lab door was blasted open, the hinges snapping right off as it slammed into the wall. Tobirama glared at their uninvited guest, gesturing for Kagami and Hiruzen to stand behind him.
“Can I help you, Uchiha-sama?”
“You stole my gloves!”
Tobirama feigned surprisem*nt as he raised his hand—hiding Tobirama the Rat from him—peering at his black woollen gloves. “Ah, I seem to possess your gloves . . . how odd.”
Suddenly Madara’s singular visible eye widened almost comically, his skin visibly paling underneath the lab’s cold light. “Is that . . .” The Uchiha suddenly took a step back, his eyes fixed on the furry brown rodent situated at Tobirama’s neck. His voice heightened several octaves. "Tobirama . . ." once he cleared his throat, he took another step back. "Tobirama, get that . . . thing away from me."
Tobirama frowned, and then raised an eyebrow teasingly. "My, my . . . Uchiha Madara, Clan head of the Uchiha, one of the strongest shinobi in Hi no Kuni, equal to Senju Hashirama himself, the God of shinobi? Shadow Hokage of Konohagakure?" Tobirama stalked around the table, towards the now-sweating Uchiha, grinning like a madman as he untucked his arm from behind his back, revealing Tobirama the Rat. Madara looked faint, staring at the red-eyed rodent on his glove. On Madara's glove. Four eyes, red like the sharingan stared into Madara's only visible eye.
"Senju-"
Madara was quickly cut off when Hashirama decided to take a daring leap off Tobirama's shoulder onto the ground and sprinted towards Madara, who promptly screamed as the rat scuttled up his pant leg. Tobirama raised an eyebrow as his Sharingan activated, but when Madara's movements became stilted and drunken, he walked away from him. Uchiha promptly swiftly out, his eyes rolling to the back of his head as he crumpled to the floor. Tobirama sighed at Tobirama, who was still clinging onto his arm, and Hashirama, who had clambered up the Uchiha's torso and was now making a nest in his hair. "Kagami, I think I figured out your Uncle's fatal flaw."
Tobirama trusted in Kagami and Hiruzen to clean up his lab and put the rats back whilst he picked up the Uchiha, bridal-style, and promptly walked towards the hospital. He wouldn't be surprised if Madara woke up with a headache, and he was not going to make things worse.
--
Madara woke up with his head resting against a firm chest, and his eyes opened blearily to stare at a tattooed chin and a prominent jawline. He snuggled a little more into the cool, flowing chakra. He felt a little dizzy, and memories of demonic rodents were faint, but neither of them spoke, and for a moment or two, his life was tranquil. Madara closed his eyes and tried to forget about the fact that he was snuggling against his brother's almost-murderer.
