-nd I'm staring at a wall. I hear groaning from behind me. Turning towards it reveals a heavily wounded Sakura. Her guts are spilling out of her. Her healing tattoo's are either not working or just depleted outright, since she isn't healing at all.
Once I turn she weakly throws two sealing scrolls at me, thankfully I manage to catch them. She groans. "Edo Tensei… One instru… tions… oth…".
She stopped breathing. I understood that one of the scrolls has the instructions to the edo tensei, meaning the other almost certainly has her flesh. Possibly Hinata's as well.
After confirming which scroll is which, I seal her body inside the one with her flesh and Hinata's body. My skin has cracks everywhere. I analyze my surroundings.
I am inside of a dark tunnel. This is either somewhere in Konoha, which I doubt, or more likely inside of Orochimaru's hideout. This combined with the state of my skin leads me to the realization that I am an Edo Tensei.
I died in the fight against Shukaku. Whoever attacked us managed to get an instant kill on me, but not on Sakura.
I probably shouldn't be wasting time. A max powered amaterasu blast creates half the black flames that it should, but still more than enough black flames for me to drill outside with kagutsuchi.
A thought occurs to me. As an edo tensei I have an infinite supply of chakra, what seems to be limited is how much I am able to use all at once. Once I reach the surface I decide to put this theory to the test.
I activate my susanoo. Amaterasu is then relentlessly spammed, filling the lair below with black flames. Some of the black flames I pull towards me and use to fill fifty meters around me with black flames along with making a barrier around myself, all kept aloft by kagutsuchi.
Orochimaru bursts out of the ground two hundred meters away from me, almost certainly flushed out by the black flames currently devouring his lair.
He gives one look to the giant sphere of black flames surrounding me and my susanoo before deciding to just fuck off and run. I blast him with amaterasu and try to give chase but I am just too slow. Can't even use the gates as an edo tensei, since my physical body does not exist anymore. I doubt that the amaterasu will end up killing him. I managed to land a clean hit with it but the fucker is slippery.
I extinguish the flames underground and leave towards Sakuragakure. I need to bring Hinata and Sakura back.
—
The journey to Sakuragakure takes about fifteen hours. Not having to worry about chakra expenditure making the journey much quicker. A short conversation with one of the guards reveals that not much time has passed, around one month, since my… death.
I don't waste any time afterwards. I unseal the scroll with the instructions on how to perform the edo tensei and study it like a man possessed. Five days are spent studying it. No breaks taken at any time.
A trip to the dungeons gives me the two sacrifices I need. Two girls around our age, probably former sound shinobi. I'm not sure whether the sacrifice's resemblance to the person being revived matters, but it won't hurt.
After taking them inside one of Sakura's empty experimentation rooms I begin preparing to use the jutsu on them. Once the preparations are complete I begin doing the handsigns for the jutsu. Tiger into snake into dog into dragon into clasped hands.
The girls immediately begin screaming in pain as their bodies and souls are sacrificed. Their skin begins to crack and their eyes start to turn black. Slowly their bodies also begin changing, slowly and painfully transforming into Sakura's and Hinata's bodies. After the transformation is complete both Sakura and Hinata are in front of me. Hinata immediately activates her byakugan, looking somewhat confused afterwards. Sakura just smiles.
She puts her hand on Hinata's shoulder. "You died immediately after Sasuke. Kakuzu striked your head after his. I managed to escape. Afterwards I stole the edo tensei from Orochimaru. Orochimaru caught me and killed me. Before dying I thankfully managed to bring Sasuke back, and he's managed to bring the two of us back."
Hinata sighs. "At least now we don't have to worry about getting killed from a distance. What do we do now?"
I smile. "We kill those three fuckers. Orochimaru, Kakuzu and Black Zetsu will be dead by our hands before the year is over."
Sakura nods resolutely. "I'll try to perfect the edo tensei, get it to the point where we don't suffer any power loss. Only afterwards should we try to attack anyone."
Hinata nods. "Kakuzu took advantage of us being exposed out in the open and of us being weakened after our fight with Shukaku. We will not be vulnerable to that anymore now…"
I look at Hinata. "Are you all right? Do you need to talk about, well, everything."
She shakes her head. "Not really, I expected us to become edo tensei out of sheer necessity at some point in the future, I just did not expect for it to be so sudden and… and so soon. I had hoped to have a child beforehand at least…"
Sakura and I both give her a hug. I pat her back. "Don't worry, we'll manage to get ourselves properly revived. We have as much time as we need to do that."
Sakura also smiles at her. "Don't you worry. Like Sasuke said, we've got all the time in the world now."
Hinata hugs us back. "thank you.".
I pat her back again. "Don't worry about it."
Sakura leaves the hug and crosses her arms. "Now that you've brought that up. What are we gonna do with each other? We shouldn't keep putting it off, we might just die for real next time"
Hinata takes a deep breath. "We did die for real, we just got lucky and got back… Let's just not worry about the… details of everything right now. We can talk about that later, once we have survived the coming storm."
My back has reached the door by now. "So… is this the part where I leave?"
Sakura and Hinata both give me a deadpan stare. They march towards me and drag me off towards our apartment. In hindsight we should've talked about each other's feelings before we ended up dying.
-two days later.
I am standing in our courtyard, susanoo activated. I use amaterasu and create black flames right above myself. I then get them to move as far away as I can upwards. At around two hundred meters they stop, with me being unable to channel enough chakra to move them any higher.
My skillset is extremely well-suited for the edo tensei. Infinite chakra means I have free control of any black flames near me permanently. The susanoo can be kept up indefinitely. The biggest detriment is the decrease in speed, since I just can't use as much chakra at once as I could before. Thankfully Sakura is hard at work in that aspect.
Another pretty broken jutsu now is the shadow clone jutsu. I can make about seventy shadow clones at once. Then I can just do it again, and again, and again. Hinata formed around a thousand of them as a test. At my behest she then dug a straight hole into the ground with an arrow barrage.
Sakura, Hinata and I are standing at the edge of said hole, looking inside it. I can't even see the bottom without activating the sharingan. I look at Hinata. "How deep is this fucking thing?"
She shrugs. "I cannot tell. My byakugan cannot see that far."
Sakura does a so-so gesture with her hand. "It's about four kilometers deep. You could probably reach the magma layer if you dedicate a full month to it."
I shudder. "Let's not do an apocalypse, okay? There's already one in the works and we live here."
Sakura rolls her eyes. "The hole would probably just collapse before it even got past the crust, it wouldn't even be an apocalypse. Only around a thousand square kilometers would get ruined if we somehow managed to get to the magma layer."
Hinata nods. "I agree with Sasuke. We live here. Perhaps let us try this on another planet instead?"
I shake my head. "Let's change the subject. How long do you think it'll take you to perfect the edo tensei?."
Sakura does another so-so gesture. "About three months. At most four. Most of the issues the jutsu has are medical in nature, which is probably why Kabuto managed to perfect it as quickly as he did."
I nod. "In the meantime we'll search for leads to Kakuzu and Black Zetsu, since we know nothing about their location as of yet. For Orochimaru I have an idea for a bait that the fucker won't be able to resist."