Chapter 67.5- One Thousand hands

“That’s impossible” Uzume bluntly disputed.

“I concur. If it were possible to transmit genes like that after a subject’s death then the Hyuga clan would be aware and would guard against it beyond just sealing the eyes away. Besides, if we had this kind of thing, we would already have stolen kekkei genkai from the other villages before now” Uraume added her voice to the discourse.

“I just have a good feeling that I’ll manage it” I said, and stretched my hand for the scrolls. Uraume gave Uzume a look and when the Uchiha did not object, my cousin handed the scrolls over.

“Thank you” I said, even as my eyes remained focused on that hand of hers— the missing one. With Iwa defeated, I could focus my attention on projects I hadn’t gotten much of a chance to work on. One of them would be designing a suitable prosthetic for her. Something perfect. Something fitting, and I could already feel ideas coming together.

—

Where are the Hashirama cells? I asked myself as I studied another of my Granduncle’s journals from beginning to end. He had never kept a dairy like Hashirama did. At least, never a dairy in the traditional sense. He had comprehensive notes on every jutsu he worked on— whether learned or created. And yes, the edo tensei was one of them, but the thought of messing around with the dead like that made my back crawl. Maybe it was my Uzumaki upbringing, but messing with the dead was one of the few things that I genuinely couldn’t bring myself to do. Not even with my enemies.

Besides, the version of the edo tensei that had been so scary was the perfect edo tensei that had what was at least a decade of work from Orochimaru, and then Kabuto taking over after him. While I had my issues with both men, none of those issues related to their intelligence or capabilities. Both of them had been geniuses without compare.

But back to the issue at hand. The notes cut off around my Grandfather’s death and did not continue for another two years afterwards. He’d actually only done the bulk of his work on the edo tensei after Hashirama’s death so something told me the jutsu had been at least partially motivated by a desire to bring him back— he never said so, of course. But he wouldn’t have.

I’d asked Mito already, and she said he was buried and left it at that. I could not probe without seeming like a creep, and something told me that she wouldn’t know either way. I was actually tempted to believe he was truly buried and that was it, but Danzo would give Orochimaru access to basically unlimited stores of my Grandfather’s cells in canon. So where were they?