Chapter 27.1- One Thousand Hands

After Tobirama’s last breath, it felt like everything took place in a blur. The therapist assigned to me says it’s a symptom of shock. She’s impressed I could even remember things as vividly as I did. But I would never forget what he looked like when the life left him. For the first time I realised just how old this man was.Chakra had done a good job of hiding it, but this man had been a full adul when Konoha was formed, and that had been decades ago. His white hair, darkened by time had lost its life as he lost his, with his head falling limply against the floor and his hair fanning out around him. I could see it on his skin, the darkened remnants of a seal. The cause of death revealed itself to me in no time Shiki Fuin. One of the seals I was forbidden from even looking at. Now, all the secrets of it were bared before me and I could not even care less.

The first time I looked upwards, it was her eyes I met. Kushina. She was weeping. Maybe it was the pain of the sealing or just grief, but she was wailing none the less. I took a step back from Tobirama’s cold, lifeless, dead….breathe. I opened my arm and she fell into them and I tightened the hug around her, breathing in deeply the smell of life that came from her. I wanted to examine the seal. To see what had been done to her, but her grip around me was not loosening and I left mine around her just as tight.

With my byakugan, I could see Tsunade approaching. The tears around her eyes had not stopped, running down her cheeks with abandon as she walked towards us. Her face, on the other hand, it was furious. Her eyes were narrowed, her nose was flared, and she glared at every living thing that crossed her space as she made the walk between the distance that separated us. Her lips remained pressed into a thin line. HJoriaya and Orochimaru stumbled after her, eyes watching her every movement as if careful to make sure she did not fall or collapse suddenly.

“What happened?” I asked once she was close enough that I did not have to scream and risk startling Kushina.

“Where were you?” She asked instead.

“What?”

“Where. Were. You, Shorirama?” She asked again, nose flaring even wider as she took quick breaths.

“I reverse-summoned myself to escape the explosion” I told her.

“Your regular bullshit” She said, and her tone was the opposite of fond. The words were almost spat out.

“What happened, Tsunade? How did Kushina get here? What’s going on?” I asked.

Instead of answering, she just huffed and moved to pull Kushina off of me to begin examining the girl, clearly deeming the question beneath her. Pissed as she was, I was still certain she’d never hurt her so I smiled at the red haired girl to make her acquiesce to Tsunade’s pulls. I turned to her teammates with an expectant gaze.

“The Third Mizukage. He had some sort of genjutsu ability that worked on the tailed beasts. After you killed the Three tails and we resealed the six tails, he somehow managed to do something that unsealed both the six tails and eight tails again. Killed their Jinchuriki as well. We were able to kill the Six tails. Well, I say we but it was Hokage-sama that did the bulk of the work. Haven’t seen lightning release like that in my life. The Eigth tails was a different beast though. He said he was running out of chakra and couldn’t manage it. Next thing I know, he’s disappeared and he comes back with the kid. He called Sensei and Tsunade aside for a bit and then he sealed the Eight tails into the kid somehow” Jiraiya explained. I nodded, even as the revelations hit me like a truck.

“He knew he was going to die. He named Sensei Hokage after him. He thought you were dead. We all did. He named me the Head of the Senju Clan” Tsunade spoke out from her position next to Kushina, and I felt the weight of it crash down on me from that point.

A/N; Explain everything?