Chapter 11
His fingers flexed. Flesh memory overrode muscle memory—these weren't the calloused hands of a frontline medic but the soft palms of a clan heir who'd never held a kunai. Wrongness prickled through his chakra coils. He exhaled through his teeth and watched his breath curl in the predawn chill. It carried the scent of damp earth and something richer underneath—rotten persimmons buried beneath Hashirama's favorite training ground. The Senju compound smelled exactly as he remembered. Exactly as it shouldn
't.
Twigs snapped thirty meters east. Not foraging animals—the rhythm was all wrong. Three, maybe four shinobi moving with the cautious syncopation of a perimeter sweep. He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and copied their footfalls into his marrow. Their chakra signatures bloomed behind his eyelids—two water-natured, one lightning, all stamped with the Senju clan's particular humidity. Family. Or what passed for it in this timeline. His fingers itched for a blade that wasn't there
.
The scent of persimmons grew stronger. Itama's childhood fear leaked through their merged chakra networks—a visceral, childish terror of disappointing Father. He grinned wetly. Let them come. Let them see what grew in the hollow of their dead heir's ribcage. The first birdcall of dawn sliced through the trees. Perfect. He'd always wanted to try Hashirama's famous morning sparring sessions from the other side of a kunai.
They came in formation—two scouts flanking, one center—standard Senju infiltration patterning. Their forehead protectors gleamed dull silver in the half-light. He exhaled, copying their postures into his muscle fibers, their breathing patterns into his diaphragm. The center shinobi froze mid-step, sandal hovering above a tripwire only visible to those who knew where Butsuma buried his traps. Recognition flared in the man's widened eyes. "Itama-sama...?"
The name tasted like maggots in his teeth. His stolen fingers flickered through hand seals older than this body's bones. Devour. His chakra lashed out in a whipcord of hunger, sinking into the nearest scout's sternum. The man's scream gurgled as veins of stolen chakra erupted across his skin, pumping lineage techniques and childhood memories straight into Itama's nervous system. The other scouts' kunai found his throat a half-second too late—their blades passed through mist as his newly copied Body Flicker dissolved his form.
He rematerialized behind them with their clansman's blood cooling on his lips. The lightning-natured one was already spinning, hands sparking with the Raijin technique he'd watched Tobirama invent three timelines ago. Itama licked his teeth. Oh, this would be delicious.
Their jutsu crashed through the trees in a blue-white arc—exactly where his old instincts would've dodged. Instead, he stepped into the voltage, letting it sear through his stolen nervous system as he copied its pattern into his chakra coils. Charred flesh peeled away, revealing fresh skin humming with stolen electricity. The scouts' synchronized inhales tasted like winter mornings and funeral pyres.
The eldest lunged with a grief-sharpened tanto. Itama caught the blade between his palms, savoring how the steel shrieked against his copied callouses. Up close, the man's eyes held the same shattered look Hashirama wore after Kawarama's death. His grin widened. "Tell Butsuma," he whispered, pulling the tanto deeper until warmth gushed over his wrists, "his weakest son sends regards."
Dawn broke properly as the last scout's body hit the dirt. Itama tilted his face to the light, tasting iron and ozone as copied memories settled into his marrow—secret hand signs, childhood betrayals, the exact pressure points Madara used when adjusting his armor. He flexed his fingers. Still too soft. But not for long.
The compound alarms began screaming—three short bursts, two long. Hashirama's personal signal. Itama chuckled wetly, wiping persimmon pulp from his chin where a stray kunai had grazed him. The pulp wasn't his. The blood was. Both thrilled him equally
.
Eastward, the trees trembled with approaching chakra—that unmistakable cedar-and-sap signature, bloated now with grief and fury. Itama inhaled deeply. There. That was the scent from his borrowed memories: big brother's rage after a failed ambush, thick enough to drown in. He stretched his stolen arms wide, tendons popping
.
"Come on then," he murmured to the shaking leaves, already copying Hashirama's footfall pattern from the vibrations in the earth. His grin split fresh as bark unspooled from his skin in perfect mimicry of the First Hokage's signature technique. The wood cracked louder than his laughter. "Let's see which one of us dies better this time."
The forest erupted. A spear of heartwood the thickness of a warhorse's thigh impaled the space where his ribs had been—but his body was already unraveling into the Raijin's stolen lightning, reforming fifteen meters up an oak as Hashirama's chakra roared beneath him like a flash flood. Itama blinked resin from his lashes, tasting the afterimage of their childhood summers in the sap
.
Hashirama's armor gleamed through the canopy, its plates shifting with the telltale hitch of a left shoulder injury—that old Uchiha arrow wound from the last timeline. Itama's borrowed heart stuttered. How many times had he stitched that wound closed in another life? His fingers twitched toward absent medic's tools before he caught himself and sank his copied teeth into his own wrist instead. Blood bloomed copper-bright as he painted stolen Senju hand seals onto the
bark.
The tree beneath him convulsed. Not an attack—a sob. Hashirama's face, twisted between fury and something far worse, split the wood grain inches from his own. "Itama," the name cracked like green timber, "why are you smiling like that?" The scent of crushed mint and childhood nightmares flooded his nostrils. Itama licked his brother's tears from the air and
laughed.
Wood rot spread through his copied veins. Not Mokuton—this was older. The clan's cursed binding technique, passed down through firstborns since before the Uchiha wars. Hashirama's hands trembled against the bark, each fingerprint birthing new seals that crawled up Itama's legs like starving vines. He sighed, admiring how the thorns pierced through stolen memories of lullab
ies.
Madara would've struck by now. But Hashirama—sweet, predictable Hashirama—hesitated that fatal half-second. Just long enough for Itama to bite through his own tongue and spit blood-soaked syllables into the sealing array. The vines blackened instantly, withering into ash that reeked of the Third War's mass graves. His brother's scream tasted like victory.
"Shinobi don't cry, anija," Itama crooned through the hole in his cheek, fingers already molding the ash into Tobirama's forbidden reanimation seals. The forest held its breath. Somewhere west, a dozen fresh corpses twitched in their blood-soaked earth. His borrowed chakra sang.
Hashirama's Mokuton lashed out—not the controlled strikes of a clan head, but the wild arcs of a brother breaking. Splintered oak rained down as Itama danced through the wreckage, catching splinters with his bare hands and copying their growth patterns into his marrow. His skin split with bark, then smoothed over with stolen Uchiha resilience
.
"Stop stealing faces!" Hashirama's roar shook persimmons from the trees. A particularly ripe one burst against Itama's forehead, filling his nostrils with the cloying sweetness of five summers past—the last season they'd picked fruit together. He licked pulp from his lips and copied the scent into his olfactory memory. Precious. He'd preserve this one
.
The first reanimated Senju scout erupted from the underbrush, jaw hanging by threads of Itama's lightning-charged chakra. Hashirama's hesitation lasted exactly 1.8 seconds—just long enough for Itama to sink teeth into the clone's wrist and drink deep of its Mokuton memories. The taste was... disappointing. Like chewing wax. He spat out a splinter of heartwood. "Your turn."
Hashirama's hands formed seals slower than Itama remembered—left pinky trembling where Madara's arrow had pierced the tendon last war. The wood dragon that erupted from the ground carried the scent of cedar and something darker—burial soil. Itama exhaled through his nose, copying the decay pattern even as fangs closed around his thigh. Blood wasn't supposed to smell like fresh-turned earth during the rainy season. Interesting.
Westward, the reanimated corpses hit the compound walls with the wet slap of meat on stone. Screams bloomed like poison flowers across the training grounds—but Hashirama's eyes never wavered. Too bad. Itama had hoped to taste that famous Senju compassion one last time. Instead, he got splinters under his nails as he gripped the dragon's tongue and whispered, "Remember Kawarama's funeral?" directly into its sap-filled veins.
The dragon convulsed. Its whimper sounded exactly like seven-year-old Hashirama begging their father for mercy. Perfect. Itama rode the collapsing beast down, drinking its death throes through their connected chakra networks—and oh, the flavors hidden in that scream: secret clan techniques, forbidden affection, the exact shade of blue Madara's armor straps had been when they first met. He licked bark from his teeth as the ground rushed up to meet them. Breakfast was served.
Hashirama's sandals skidded through crushed persimmons as he backpedaled, hands still half-formed in the next seal sequence. Itama counted the missing callouses on those fingers—three less than his timeline's version. Interesting. He lunged low, copying the exact angle Madara favored during their youth, and tasted copper as his teeth found purchase in Hashirama's wrist. The blood carried echoes of their mother's lullabies. He swallowed greedily.
Above them, the compound gates exploded outward. Twelve reanimated scouts moved with the jerky precision of pulled puppet strings, their eye sockets crackling with Itama's stolen lightning. The first to reach them still had Tobirama's senbon buried in its throat—a souvenir from last week's training session. Itama laughed against Hashirama's pulse point as the corpses formed perfect hand seals. Their combined Suiton techniques hit like a monsoon, drenching both brothers in water that smelled of the Naka River at high tide.
Hashirama gasped wetly through the deluge, his Mokuton splintering into useless kindling under the downpour. Itama pressed their foreheads together, sharing breath heavy with river silt and childhood promises. "You always did hesitate too long," he murmured, copying the exact pitch of Kawarama's voice from stolen memory. The sound broke something behind Hashirama's eyes. Good. Broken things were easier to devour.