Chapter 5, A Senju in the Stars

Hashirama knelt beside the wounded boy, boots scraping on broken steel and loose stone. The child’s breath came in shallow bursts. A damp smell hung in the air, mixed with burned metal and spilled blood. Hashirama’s gaze flicked over the gaping wound across the boy’s lower belly. Bits of tissue and torn muscle glistened under the dim light. Without care, the child would die in moments.

He pressed his palm against the boy’s abdomen, chakra gathering in his fingertips. A faint green glow bathed the child’s torn flesh, knitting it at the edges. The bleeding slowed, and the boy’s stiffening muscles softened under Hashirama’s touch. Another pulse of chakra mended deeper layers, sealing ruptured vessels and broken tissue. A third pulse suffused the boy’s entire body, flushing out lingering fever and infection. The boy’s chest rose in a steadier rhythm, his eyes fluttering shut in unconscious relief.

Hashirama leaned back on his heels, inhaling the stale air. The corridor around them was silent save for the distant rumble of artillery. He reached into a fold of his robe and withdrew a sealing scroll, smoothing its surface across a fragment of warped flooring. He glanced at the boy once more—a child no older than six or seven, limbs thin as twigs, hair plastered to a pale forehead. For all the chaos raging in this desolate place, for all the monstrous powers roaming the gloom, this small form was still so fragile.

He unfurled the scroll with a quiet rustle of parchment. Lines of ink glimmered under the faint light. He touched the center with two fingers, and a ripple of chakra spread across the surface. An instant later, the boy’s body vanished, leaving only a faint swirl of smoke and a stain of half-dried blood on the floor.

Hashirama exhaled, rolling the scroll shut and tucking it away. 

He had always been gifted in healing. Tobirama, for all his brilliance, never came close to this level of medical ninjutsu. Nor, in truth, had anyone else he’d met or knew–not even Madara. It made little sense to him why others struggled so fiercely with a task he found so straightforward. Chakra was life energy. One simply guided it along the body’s natural paths, encouraging cells to mend more swiftly, but also supplementing the necessary energy for natural regeneration, ensuring that the patient did not age a few months just to seal a bleeding wound in their gut. Simple.

Or, at least, it seemed simple for him. 

He shrugged off the thought. Questions of talent could wait. The boy was safe now, nestled within that storage seal until Hashirama could deliver him to a calmer place.

He rose to his full height, glancing down the ruined corridor. Pillars and walls lay collapsed. Dust drifted in the flickering light, and somewhere far away came the hollow roar of war machines and men. The echoes left a bitter tang in the air, like the taste of iron. Weapons changed, but war never really did. He looked in the opposite direction, where he sensed that abomination prowling. A subtle pulse of malevolent spritual energy brushed his senses.

He stepped over the rubble, mindful of broken glass and crumpled armor plates. His gaze settled on a half-melted door frame that led into an unlit passage. That might have been the child’s path before he was cut down. Hashirama considered following it, then decided otherwise. The entity roamed somewhere beyond. He felt the faint pulses of its twisted aura, each wave prickling at the back of his mind.

He breathed out, recalling the old axioms of shinobi warfare. Never charge blindly into unknown territory. Never fight an enemy whose nature you can’t comprehend. He recalled glimpses of that towering form, the swirl of unnatural energies about it. It wasn’t so monstrous as to be godly–nothing like the Shinju, for instance–but the impossibility of its existence put his mind on edge. His own strength might suffice if combat became inevitable, but there was also no point in looking for a fight. So he stepped away.

Hashirama counted the minutes once, then forgot them altogether. He trudged through halls of scorched metal, stepping over more bodies than he cared to remember. Now and then, he stopped to kneel beside a survivor, pressing green-glowing palms to torn flesh. Sometimes they stirred, coughed, lived. Other times, he sealed them away into scrolls for safekeeping. More often than not, all he found was death.

He avoided the lower depths of this endless city. Down there, the thunder of war never ceased. Distant detonations rattled the steel frameworks. A thick stench of smoke drifted up through every broken shaft. He told himself there was no point in descending, not when the majority of those below seemed intent on killing one another in the most brutal ways possible. He had no business in battles he did not understand.

Amid a silence punctuated by far-off blasts, he heard a low groan. He paused, listening. Another groan, weak and breathless, came from beneath a collapsed column of concrete and twisted beams. He stepped close, a faint frown creasing his features. These people lacked chakra signatures, so his usual senses offered no help. It irked him that he’d missed so many lives hidden beneath this ruin. There were some he could have saved, had he known they were there in the first place.

He pressed his palms together, forming a single seal. “Earth Release: Earth Flow Wave.”

The debris and broken ground rumbled. He twitched a finger, and the rubble shifted aside as if drawn by a gentle current. Stone and twisted metal slid away with a scrape of grinding edges, revealing the figure beneath.

It was one of the giants, slumped and nearly torn in half. Light gray armor, streaked with blood and grime, encased its massive form. Crimson trim gleamed dully along the plates, though it was hard to tell where paint ended and blood began. A jagged lightning bolt emblem marked one pauldron, the other so mangled it might have been anything. The giant’s chest was caved in, organs visible through broken plating. Despite that, he was breathing, barely.

Hashirama knelt. He peered at the gashes and holes peppering the giant’s torso. Blood pooled beneath the fallen warrior. Yet there was life in him still. The giant’s breath rasped in short, ragged gasps, testament to some inhuman tenacity. Hashirama set a hand on the battered pauldron, feeling the heat of life that remained, faint as it was.

A deep roar overhead drew his attention. He looked up, catching sight of a vast, winged dragon-machine spitting fire at smaller craft that whirled away. The sky was a chaos of shrieking engines and flashing ordnance, the clouds set alight by streaks of flame. He blinked, the spectacle too distant and too alien for him to parse. Aerial fights were not common in his time, but they did happen, especially with Wind Release users. With a small shrug, he turned back to the dying giant at his feet.

This one was different from the others he’d seen in bruise-colored armor. Different heraldry, different aura. A different group, perhaps? Or a different rank. Both were possible–and both could be wrong. Maybe, this armored giant was an enemy of the others. Hashirama’s brow furrowed at that. He felt curiosity, but it clashed with caution. He had no shared language, no knowledge of how to pry answers from this battered soul. Interrogation had never been his gift; Tobirama excelled in that arena. His brother excelled in just about everything he set his mind to. 

For a moment, the God of Shinobi wished he had more time to tell Tobirama how proud he was of him. They were close, but a life of constant warfare meant they had little time to sit down and talk. He always regretted that. 

Hashirama sat there, fingers brushing the ruin of the armor, studying its every detail. The lightning bolt emblem shimmered under a coat of drying blood. Small bursts of ash drifted in the faint corridor light. Far away, something exploded with enough force to make the walls and the ground shudder. The giant’s breath caught in a wet gurgle. Hashirama, for a moment, let silence settle, deciding whether or not to extend the healing hand. He did not even know if it was right to interfere. Yet the figure lived, and that demanded some measure of care.

He looked up again. Outside, the thunder of war pressed on. Another scream, distant and haunting, echoed through this labyrinth of steel. He glanced at the giant’s face—masked behind a shattered helm, visor cracked to reveal only darkness. Perhaps no answers lay there, only more riddles. Hashirama sighed softly. He flexed his fingers, energy coiling in his palms. Right or wrong, his instincts told him he could at least try to keep the giant from dying in this lonely corridor, far from whatever cause he served.

He pressed a hand to the giant’s shattered torso, green light flickering over blood-slick armor. The first step was freeing the flesh of every fragment of metal. A subtle wave of chakra rippled outward, and slivers of shrapnel tumbled to the ground with soft clinks. Sharp shards, tangled wires, twisted bits of plating. All fell away, leaving wet holes and ragged edges in their wake.

He leaned closer, peering at the labyrinth of organs inside. Some were strange, bigger than anything he’d seen in an ordinary human. A few appeared layered atop one another, pulsing in ways that defied his understanding. He did not linger on their function. The body knew its own shape, and chakra merely urged it along a better path. He’d learned that long ago, patching up mortal wounds on the battlefield. You did not have to know every quirk in a man’s innards to seal them shut.

He released a second wave of chakra, guiding torn tissue to knit. Ribbons of muscle slid over exposed bone, sealing cracks in battered ribs. The giant let out a faint wheeze, breath catching at the edges of his throat. Hashirama’s brow twitched, but he continued, coaxing every cell into alignment. The chest cavity shifted, adjusting to those mysterious organs—whatever twisted science had fashioned them. Their dark shapes throbbed in time to the giant’s heartbeat.

When the bleeding slowed and the shallow rise of the warrior’s chest settled into a steadier rhythm, Hashirama exhaled. Healing was never a small thing, even for him. He withdrew his hand, the green light fading. Warm blood still stained the giant’s armor, but the gaping holes were closed. If life persisted, it would now have a chance to hold on.

He stepped back, letting the giant catch his breath. A rasp rattled in the man’s throat, followed by a pained swallow. Then the figure stirred fully, eyes snapping open. No kindness shone there, though neither did outright murder. Hashirama knew that guarded look. Mistrust. Uncertainty. The usual confusion that followed unexpected mercy.

The giant sat up, exhaling as he pressed a gauntlet to the newly sealed wounds. He tested the skin, nodding once, then turned to Hashirama. He spoke in a low rumble of unfamiliar words. Hashirama raised a hand to his lips, shaking his head. The giant paused, studied him, then inclined his head as if understanding that words would be wasted here. He pointed at the sealed gashes and back at Hashirama. Hashirama mirrored the motion, a simple confirmation. The giant touched his chest plate, gave a second nod.

Then he bent down, reaching into the rubble that ringed them. Chunks of metal and stone clattered under his grip until he found what he sought. He drew forth a curved blade caked in dust and dried blood. Its edge was broader than any Hashirama had seen, shaped for brutal cleaving rather than the neat slice of a katana. The giant hefted it with a firm grip, testing its weight. Sparks flaked from a chipped edge.

Hashirama watched, keeping his hands free of any threatening sign. The giant made no move to strike, though tension coiled in each motion. Their eyes met once more, each measuring the other. In the distance, gunfire echoed through the steel corridors. The giant glanced that way, then settled his gaze on Hashirama again. 

There had to be some form of communication available between them, Hashirama thought. This giant did not appear hostile and so might be able to provide some manner of insight as to what was going on. What options were there? Sign language, perhaps? But they were just as varied as spoken languages. The Elemental Nations alone had, at least, five variants of sign language during his time. After a while, he found that… he really had no way of communicating.

Hashirama sighed. “Ah, this is annoying.” 

The giant tilted his head, listening. He stood still for what felt like a full minute, as though weighing the air itself. Then he spoke, his words belching forth in a deep, grinding voice. “Annoying. Understand word. Barely. Ancient dead tongue. Variants now. How speak you it?”

Hashirama’s hands froze at his sides. The giant’s speech was rough, each syllable landing like a rock dropped in a pond. It was the first time any of these warriors had formed a phrase he could fully grasp. The accent was harsh, and the grammar was mangled, yet he understood. “You… understand me?”