The clone I created either spent itself in a jutsu to counter the wide-area one of Hashirama, or acted as a support, allowing me some breathing room when facing the Mokuton user.
...
After that, I had begun anew fighting against the two Senju Brothers, again without Sage Mode and Sixth or Seventh Gate.
It took me three months. Three months of endless battle, with two Sage Clones at the ready to jump in and save me. The general feeling of that stretch of time was of me being slowly worn down. Combination attacks, twin assaults, ambushes, feints and counterfeits.
It was one thing to fight in planes where mist clung tightly to you. It was a thing fighting in evergrowing and moving forests that answered to your opponent.
It was a whole different thing learning how to survive in a mixture of the two without the unnaturally efficient and vast sensing capabilities of Sage Mode.
The first month of me facing against both Tobirama and Hashirama had been survival camp: I ran. I avoided ambushes, I learned how to mask my presence better and better, but in forests made of a wood fed by Hashirama's chakra, I likely stood out like a sore thumb.
At the beginning, I lasted less than twelve minutes on average before I was found out and 'killed' (I counted as a failure every time a Sage Clone had to jump in to allow me to retreat).
I didn't know what kind of awareness the two Reanimated Corpses had, but apparently, they gunned for the original, knowing that my clones would not attack them.
Even so, I suspected that they roughly understood what was going on, after all, while standard protocol stated that when facing a team you had to take down the weakest member first, it didn't quite apply when the weakest member was the one providing the existence of the strongest components of said team (in this case, my clones).
A tactically sound decision would have been hammering down on my clones every time they appeared, forcing me to tire out by creating them before tearing me apart.
I suspected that they were still acting on Orochimaru's order of killing me, and that they were still somehow choosing to interpret said order in a way that allowed me to get out on top.
One month against Tobirama, two weeks against his brother. That had allowed me to grow stronger in way I had only suspected were possible.
It was the difference between being someone that attained a certain musculature through training in a gym, and being someone that had performed a set of actions that had caused the development of the musculature, only applied on every level of my being.
From how I thought about a fight, to how I set up feints and traps in my taijutsu, to how I exploited the action of my opponent against him.
Without Sage Mode and using the Sixth and Seven Gates (the last option would have left me almost half-dead, to begin with) facing Tobirama and Hashirama both, while not being even remotely close to the real deal, had turned a one-trick pony (albeit a one-trick that was basically a trump card against almost anyone), to something far more dangerous.
It had granted me the edge necessary to buy myself time if I ever was to openly fight Pain.
Sarutobi, old as he was, managed to fuck around Tobirama, Hashirama, and Orochimaru without ever using the Gates or Sage Mode. That was a scary old man, there was no other way to explain it, not really. Enough experience to fill a whole library, enough control to make it count.
With a last burst of speed, I weaved through Tobirama's last bout of taijutsu while my clone distracted Hashirama, without giving any pause to the Second Hokage, my hand plunged inside of Tobirama's body, clutching the kunai tied to the strange seal that Orochimaru had used to control the reanimated bodies, and ripped it out.
I didn't stop, dropping low as an accuminate branch tried to skewer me while manipulating the humidity in the air in order to slide over the wet ground, as I charged Hashirama, a clone that I had set up four minutes before out of sight from both of the Senju Brothers appeared out of nowhere, clutching Hashirama's kunai in his hand, Orochimaru's seal dangling quietly in the slowly calming wind.
"Boy." the voice of the second hokage echoed in the small clearing in which I had ended up freeing Hashirama from the renegade Sannin's control: "You could have freed us months ago, explain yourself."
I turned towards him, and his expression was not amused, his pink-red eyes truly fitted well with the deep scowl that was marring his otherwise delicate features, while the tone of his voice was flat, clearly he was expecting me to answer to his orders like he was my superior, and I couldn't truly blame him.
He was a scary ninja when alive, now he had on his belt immortality and endless chakra, it was understandable that he felt somewhat entitled to an answer. The dead should remain dead.
I ignored Tobirama Senju and turned towards his older brother, who was looking at me with what looked like genuine curiosity. At least he's not expecting to be in charge. I scoffed in the safe confines of my mind. But then again, what I've seen of him in both the manga and the anime points at him as some kind of man-child, albeit a scary powerful one.
With a sigh, I pulled lightly on my connection with one of the two Sage clones I had at the ready, swiftly compensating the new influx of chakra while my awareness expanded to encompass the whole forest that Hashirama had created in the last months.
I felt the black markings don my face while my own presence became somewhat heavier. I breathed in, and I could smell every small insect, ever different flower, deadly or not, that Hashirama had tried to kill me with.
I could hear the brushing of leaves and grass against the breeze, while my skin could pick up the position of the two reanimated corpses simply in virtue of how the air moved around us.
With a negligent smirk that I couldn't even try to contain, I tapped the Konoha's symbol on my forehead protector, reminding to both of the undead ninja that I was in service of the Village they had helped found. It wasn't true, but they didn't need to know that, nor they had any reason to doubt me.
I studied for a second their grey-ish appearance (after I removed the seals that still bound them to Orochimaru's orders, they lost the vibrant colours that had characterized them, returning to the unhealthy pallor and weak looking constitution).
"We have a lot to talk about." I started: "Your summoning at the hands of the missing-nin Orochimaru had been accounted for, and I received orders from Sandaime-sama about what to do if that eventuality manifested itself."
"You're awfully young to be entrusted to fight my brother and me along with that snakey traitor." Tobirama spoke with an unnervingly calm tone, if this was because the last sparks of vitality had left his body when I removed the seal that enforced Orochimaru's will, or for some other reason, I couldn't tell.
"We can no longer move, nor mold chakra, I assume that this was your intention when you removed the blood seals from our bodies?" he asked again, his eyes trailed up and down my form, evaluating me.
"If Sandaime-sama had the time, he would have hammered me into shape himself, however.." I started to reply, only to be interrupted when the First Hokage proved himself quick on the uptake.
"You weren't a true S-class, only a powerful A-class with a couple of dangerous tricks." the elder Senju nodded thoughtfully, while the second completed his reasoning.
"Hiruzen-kun certainly has become more cunning since I've last seen him, and more ruthless, I don't know if this is for the better or not."
"There are circumstances you should be made aware of." I waved my hands in a soothing motion, there was no need for the old sensei of the Sandaime to start questioning the orders that I had 'received'.
In the following hour, I shared with them the History they missed since after their death, trying to cut short on their commentary, it wasn't something I truly needed, and I didn't quite care about their opinion.
So I told them about the Great Ninja Wars, they had missed, about the Fourth Hokage and his demise, the Uchiha Massacre, and about the general state of weakness of Konoha.
When we finished, it was Tobirama to take word: "I still feel the connection to our summoner, why did you keep him alive? Our bodies wouldn't disappear if he was executed."
I nodded without showing a hint of surprise, Kabuto had told the same in the manga, but as I watched the blank expression of the Second Hokage, I knew that his question was more to see my reaction to it than for receiving an answer.
If Sarutobi had truly been the one to take into consideration the possibility of Orochimaru using Edo Tensei on me, and had actually charged me with taking care of it, he would have told me weaknesses and strong points of the technique, if only to grant me a greater measure of success.
"He had tattooed on one arm the Snake Summoning contract, for now, is a potential asset for Konoha." I bullshitted.
"A dangerous thing, keeping enemies of your home alive only to further your gains, more often than not you end up regretting it." Hashirama spoke with the same empty tone of his brother, forced in unnatural immobility from the condition of the Edo Tensei.
...
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