Madara... nii-san?
Looking at the boy before them, dressed in the Uchiha clan clothes of this era, with that spiky sea-urchin head of hair, it was easy to imagine that if he grew it out, he would look like a hedgehog or a porcupine, one massive explosion of hair.
For no reason, Naruto and Young Obito suddenly remembered the time they had experienced Naruto Uzumaki's life in another world, when they had seen the Edo Tensei Madara Uchiha instantly slaughter the Allied Shinobi Forces on the battlefield and say, "Do you want to dance too?" That overwhelming scene of sheer dominance!
His eyes were dark and deep, and his features bore a slight resemblance to Sasuke Uchiha at the same age.
The members of Team Minato and Team Kakashi looked at the boy before them with extremely complicated expressions.
What had Kurohi just called him?
"Madara-nii-san?" Naruto pointed dramatically at the young Madara Uchiha and asked Kurohi, "Who did you say he is?!!"
Kurohi answered proudly, "He's my brother!"
"What's his name?"
"Madara, Madara Uchiha!"
They were stunned!
The members of Team Minato and Team Kakashi stared dumbfounded at the black-haired boy walking toward them.
Having just gone through a bloody battle, the young Madara Uchiha still had not shaken off the hostility around him.
He had hurried over to ask whether the extra supplies he had requested had arrived. On the battlefield, the clan members were already running short on shuriken, explosive tags, and smoke bombs.
But after seeing his three younger brothers, the young Madara's mood still brightened.
After greeting his brothers, he stared suspiciously at the group standing beside Togakushi and Myoko. "Who are you people?"
Perhaps because they were both reincarnations of Indra's chakra, the young Madara instinctively felt awkward whenever he looked at Sasuke Uchiha. It was like the strange magnetic field between two kings who could not coexist, attracting and repelling each other at the same time.
At the same time, Madara's three younger brothers looked at Madara, then at Sasuke.
"I thought so earlier," Togakushi said. "Sasuke really is a lot like Brother!"
It was not that they looked especially alike, and their personalities were not the same either, but he simply gave them a strangely familiar feeling.
So it was not that someone among Myoko's group was Sasuke Uchiha's ancestor. It was because Myoko's older brother was Madara Uchiha, the previous reincarnation of Indra's chakra!!
"Mm-hmm. He looks like Izuna-nii-san, but his vibe is more like Madara-nii-san."
Kurohi nodded along, drawing sidelong looks from everyone else.
Sasuke rejected it inwardly, but said nothing.
The young Madara Uchiha showed his disdain outright. "How are we alike?" Madara pointed at the lower half of his own face and told his younger brothers to look carefully.
Then his gaze moved past Sasuke and landed on Obito. "If you said he looked a little like me, that would at least make some sense."
Obito said, "I don't want to look like you at all! Thanks!!"
His other self from another world had once been dragged onto that sinking ship and never returned, all because Madara had said, "You're a lot like I used to be."
The young Madara Uchiha said, "The clan clothes you two are wearing are strange. They have the fan family crest, but I've never seen this style before." He looked at Hikaku Uchiha. "Who are they?"
"They're the people who saved Young Lord Myoko, Young Lord Togakushi, and Young Lord Kurohi."
"What?!" Madara froze.
Myoko explained that before Togakushi and Kurohi took part in wartime missions, he had wanted to let them gain experience by escorting supplies. Besides, the destination was not very far. It was only a day's journey, making it perfect for training.
"But I never expected to run into five adult Senju ninjas on the road."
"Five?! Adult Senju ninjas?!!"
The young Madara Uchiha looked at the bandages still wrapped around the three brothers in places and could hardly imagine what kind of situation they had survived.
Myoko was one year younger than him, while Togakushi and Kurohi were not even six years old yet!
And they had faced five adult Senju ninjas.
"Oh, right, Madara-nii-san! Myoko-nii-san awakened his Sharingan!!"
"Sharingan?!"
Myoko revealed the single-tomoe Sharingan in both of his eyes. The young Madara Uchiha was happy for him, and as the young Clan Head of the Uchiha Clan, he solemnly thanked Minato and Kakashi.
Naruto poked Sasuke and whispered, "He really doesn't look like you. When you were little, you were so full of yourself, like some flower, with girls swarming around you every day like bees and butterflies. Bzz, bzz, bzz."
Then, as Naruto buzzed, he got stung by a bee.
Well, actually, it was Sakura's "gentle" punch.
"You people are really weird," the young Madara Uchiha said, looking at Naruto. "I mean you."
Naruto said, "Me?"
Madara nodded. "Your hair looks like fireflies. If you go out as a ninja like that, won't you be the enemy's first target?"
Minato Namikaze, the genetic culprit behind it, was mortified.
Naruto choked. The Madara Uchiha in his mind had always been the impossibly cool adult version, the one who was always asking people to dance.
But this young Madara Uchiha, who started roasting him the moment they met, was something Naruto and the others had never seen or imagined. And why was he only picking on him out of everyone here?!!
"Because Ashura and Indra's chakra attract each other?" Young Obito said. For some reason, he felt as if Sasuke's position had been taken by someone else, and he even felt a little sorry for Sasuke.
The young Madara Uchiha put away the supply scroll.
Hikaku Uchiha's expression was complicated. After handing the scroll to Madara, he stepped aside and quietly told him that the two Uchiha among these people both had the Mangekyō Sharingan, but three of them had the red-haired Uzumaki Clan's family crest on their clothes.
After hearing these two pieces of information, Madara's expression shifted unpredictably.
First, he looked in surprise at Sasuke and Obito, who were clearly clan members at a glance. Then he searched the group for the Uzumaki Clan family crest Hikaku had mentioned.
Two blondes and one silver-haired person. No matter how he looked at them, they did not look like members of the Uzumaki Clan.
"You three, are you ninja servants who defected from the Uzumaki?"
Here we go again. Did they really look that much like servants?
What kind of thought process did the Uchiha have?! The Second Hokage-sama really had not lied to them! Uchiha thinking took several more turns than other people's. Ordinary people could not understand it at all. You said you did not want to kill him, and he would say you thought killing him was easy, that you were looking down on him.
Just as they were about to explain, the young Madara Uchiha spoke on his own. "Forget it. Since you saved my younger brothers, I'll find a way to repay this debt."
"Huh?"
The young Madara Uchiha said, "Hikaku, let them hide in the Uchiha's secret sanctuary for now."
"But, Young Clan Head."
"Listen to me. Besides, there are two clan members with awakened eyes among them. They don't look like they'll separate from these people, and we need to keep those two clan members here."
Keep them here and find out why ninja servants of the Uzumaki Clan had brought two Uchiha clan members all the way here.
And what method had the Uzumaki used to make two boys about his own age open the Mangekyō Sharingan?
Madara Uchiha was, after all, the young Clan Head of the Uchiha Clan in the Warring States era. Hikaku naturally had to obey him.
And so, even though Minato Namikaze and the others had no such intention, they were half-dragged and half-persuaded into following the Uchiha of the Warring States era to the secret sanctuary hidden here.
The mountain looked no different from any ordinary mountain, but when Hikaku Uchiha moved a half-man-tall stone tablet at the foot of the mountain slightly to the side, a hidden passage appeared, just large enough for a person to walk through while crouching.
The path was deep and winding, stretching for more than a thousand meters before light finally appeared at the end.
Just as Myoko Uchiha had said, this was a natural shelter in the side of the mountain, as if a giant sword had carved it hollow. From below or above, no one would be able to tell that a miniature village of only two or three houses was hidden here.
"Hikaku, has it still not..."
"Is that the Young Clan Head?!"
"The supplies still haven't arrived. Should we arrange for someone to meet them?"
"No need. I've already got them." The young Madara Uchiha carried himself with great presence in front of his clan members. He said, "Myoko and the others encountered the Senju on the way here. Thanks to these people, they survived."
At that moment, the Uchiha who were waiting here heard the voices and came out one after another.
There were not many of them, only a dozen or so.
"They were rescued? Kuuka and Hidane already went to meet them. They may have taken a different route and missed each other."
"It's fine. If those two can't find them, they'll come back."
"But who would make enemies of the Senju just to save our people?"
The Senju and the Uchiha were major ninja clans. Unless someone wanted to use this to curry favor with the Uchiha and intended to join forces with the Uchiha to wipe out certain Senju, no one should want to make an enemy of the Senju.
"Could they be from the Hagoromo Clan? I heard they're trying to take down the Senju right now."
"Wait, stop talking!" the person beside him snapped. "Look at the family crest on that blond guy's clothes."
With that reminder, everyone noticed the Uzumaki pattern hidden on Naruto and the others' strange clothing!
"The Uzumaki Clan?!"
"But the Uzumaki Clan should all have red hair, right?!"
Before Minato and the others could explain, the young Madara Uchiha said, "The Uzumaki are dependents of the Senju, but they're far away and have no real conflict with us. Besides..."
The young Madara Uchiha turned to Minato Namikaze and Young Kakashi, staring into their pitch-black eyes. He truly had a trace of the presence befitting the "legendary ninja" of later generations.
"Now can you tell us why people who aren't red-haired are wearing clothes with the Uzumaki Clan's family crest, and why you traveled all this way with two Uchiha clan members I've never seen or heard of, then saved my younger brothers?"
Minato Namikaze's expression also turned serious.
He understood that the young Madara Uchiha before them had brought them here as a show of sincerity.
Now it was their turn to answer Madara's questions.
"That may be a little complicated to explain. We actually already told Myoko and the others part of it earlier. Perhaps we should find somewhere to sit down and talk properly."
The young Madara Uchiha nodded and had someone bring tea.
Just as he was about to lead the eight people from Team Kakashi and Team Minato inside for a proper discussion...
"BOOM!"
A massive, majestic, domineering chakra. Even words like those could hardly describe it. It suddenly erupted beside them!
The sunlight that had originally streamed in through the hollow mountain was suddenly blocked out completely. Their vision dimmed, but through the scattered light, they could still make out the gigantic dark-blue tengu warrior.
This was...
Susanoo?!!
And...
"The color of that Susanoo!!"
It was Madara Uchiha, who had traveled to this era with them!!!
Inside the deep-blue Susanoo were three figures.
One was a long-haired man whose hair was thick enough to be used as a brush, standing with his arms crossed.
Even when he was not angry, his domineering aura was something only the First Hokage could withstand.
And standing to his left and right were Izuna Uchiha and Tajima Uchiha, who had been revived one after another because of Sasuke's wish!!