"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

...shirama

Hashirama!

*Smack*

"Gah" Hashirama gasps at the sudden spike of pain

Disorientation fills Hashirama's senses as a blank grey ceiling blurrily comes into focus. His sense of his chakra denied completely by something. He finds that his limbs and forehead are strapped to some kind of metal table and nothing seems to be making much sense.

"He is awake, I think that last attempt did it. Looks like we do need a sacrifice to pierce the dimensional boundary into the pure world." A familiar voice concluded

"Well, I'm glad that my little brother's eye didn't go to waste. You still owe me for this Tobi and are you even sure it's him and not a random soul we pulled through?" A different voice replies condescendingly

"I'm ninety percent certain but I suppose there is only one way to find out." the first voice replies

Two familiar figures enter into Hashirama's view and sudden recognition breaks through some of the fog of his mind. One was the white-haired and red-eyed visage of his younger brother Tobirama and the other was Madara's brother Izuna who was for some reason sporting some kind of jutsu shiki script over most of his face centering around his left eye. For some reason, the eye was cloudy almost like it had been blinded or damaged severely by something.

"Tobi, Izuna what's going on?" Hashirama queried sluggishly to the two figures hovering over his restrained body.

"He seems pretty coherent, the eyes are weird though, what do you think caused that?" Izuna states curiously while giving Hashiramas arms and face a few pokes with something that looked like a giant serrated scalpel.

Oddly enough there wasn't any pain where the blade met skin, just a strange discomfort.

"Its partially the seal works fault I think, the sclera connecting the eye analogs must be getting a bit of feedback. It's not optimal but there isn't much I can do about it at this point." Another familiar voice echoes from a corner of the room outside Hashirama's restrained view.

"Mito is that you? What's going on? Where am I?" Hashirama croaked

"I think it's safe to move on to restraint level 4, all the tests show that it's really him. Everything seems stable so there shouldn't be any danger but let's keep the chakra seal on for now just in case." Tobirama says to the room before releasing the restraints on Hashirama's body.

Sitting up Hashirama groggily takes in his surroundings, taking note of the strange instruments adorning the room and what seemed to be miles of seal work crisscrossing the walls. The floors seals were a bit different though, forming concentric rings of ink with a few feet in between each circle. In one of the outermost rings sat Mito, and a few clan heads from the major founding clans. Within the innermost ring with him were Izuna and Tobirama their serious demeanor dampening the mood of the already dreary and tense atmosphere.

"Hashirama Senju please report your most recent memories. You will be informed of everything else afterward." The Nara clan head commanded from the outermost ring of the room.

With a small amount of hesitation Hashirama lays out everything he could remember to the room, including his shared visions provided by Madara. By the end of his story, the clan heads were quietly conversing among themselves in worried whispers about what he revealed about the visions. Eventually, the group of adults pardoned themselves from the laboratory stating that they needed to confirm some suspicions about the information he provided.

Alone with Mito, Izuna, and Tobirama, Hashirama starts to talk.

"So um are you guys gonna tell me how I'm alive right now or…"

"Technically this project has been declared a double S class secret until the village leadership can determine what they want to do with what we've accomplished. Suffice it to say that you are technically back from the dead and do not need to worry about the details." Izuna decreed in a stereotypical Uchiha way

"It's a seal myself and Mito created to bring back the dead from the pure world," Tobirama states not two seconds afterward. Receiving a glare from Izuna in the process.

"Now how about we continue with the rest of the tests? What do you guys think about experimental test 14 as a starter." Tobirama states suddenly

"Limb retention? Why would we start with-" Mito starts before a horrifying tearing sound interrupts her words. The sound originating from the center of the room.

Looking down at his now missing left arm Hashirama gapes at his brother who was now holding said severed limb. Still gaping Hashirama is then smacked in the face with his own arm.

"W-what THE HELL is wrong with you!" Hashirama manages to screech as he clutches at the hole where his limb used to be.

"What is wrong with me? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!" Tobirama roars in apoplectic fury.

"You go on that goddamn training trips for months without giving the village any reports about your safety and then you pull this shit! What the fuck were you thinking! You let a possessed Madara kill you and for what?! Some bullshit vision that you had no way of confirming?"

"But it was shared with ninshu, it couldn't have lied," Hashirama states with utter confidence

"What if this Zetsu thing made a clone with altered memories and possessed Madara." Tobirama States with clenched teeth

"Or it could have locked its memories away with seals to present a purposfully biased data set." Mito chimes in from the corner

"I believe that a sufficiently powerful genjutsu could perhaps permanently alter perceptions as well and Genjutsu cast on oneself is always easier," Izuna adds his own two cents

"Uh, well you see...I hadn't thought of that." Hashirama murmurs to himself while looking down at his feet in dejection.

Another smack to the head from Tobirama has Hashirama reeling from the sheer force, sending him sprawling to the floor in a heap. Looking up Hashirama sees Tobirama examining Hashirama's contorted and now extremely broken left arm.

With a sigh of frustration Tobirama throws the arm outside of the innermost circle they were staying in watching as the appendage began to unravel like thousands of papers loosely stuck together.

"That was my second favorite arm, Tobi, you can get that back right, Tobi...Tobi" Hashirama begins to panic as his brother merely stares dispassionately at his prone form.

With an exasperated sigh, Tobirama takes a step forward and begins picking up Hashirama showcasing the now reforming left arm.

"Oh, that's a thing now." Hashirama squeaks in horrified wonder as his severed limb reformed piece by piece.

"He seems stable even after dismemberment, I think we can take down the first containment barrier and go onto the next experiment," Mito says happily before meticulously undoing the innermost fuinjutsu ring of the laboratory room.

With a sinking feeling, Hashirama takes stock of his situation trying to come to terms with his new pseudo-life.

"Um, how many tests are there? Are they all going to be like test 14?" Hashirama asks nervously

"Oh, no test 14 is rather tame in comparison to the others. There will be 423 more until we can likely convince the village leadership to let you leave this bunker. It should only take a day to go through them all and then we can discuss what the village wants to do about this Zetsu thing." Izuna retorts impatiently

A few hours pass in which extensive testing is performed on Hashirama, testing which involved horrors the likes of which he had not imagined experiencing let alone surviving before. One particularly interesting experiment tested his ability to remain conscious even after his head was smashed completly away from his body.

"That has got to be the weirdest feeling of all time" Hashirama states as he observed the top half of his head reforming in a mirror, it was like shredding paper but in reverse.

"Also is my head empty?" Hashirama asks while trying to peek inside the hollow interior of his body.

"Your head has always been empty. But yes your form is essentially hollow, too complicated to get all the internal stuff to work correctly. Your outward appearance and such should be a perfect mimicry though. I based it on the principles Kurama said his form worked off of. Essentially you are just a living chakra construct." Tobirama states

Looking into his now black sclera a thought strikes Hashirama suddenly.

"I don't remember seeing this." He blurts out loud to the room

"What's wrong Hashi, is something else wrong with your eyes," Mito asks worriedly

"No, it's just...I don't remember seeing myself in Zetsus Visions. Which doesn't make sense if I'm alive again. Shouldn't I have been there to help stop everything thats going to happen?" Hashirama wondered

"Well, there are a few things that can be happening. The first and in my opinion most likely thing happening is that all of the visions were a complete fabrication to get at you and Madara. But since you still think that these visions were honest then it could be that you fall outside of the parameters of the visions now due to your new nature. We literally had to drag your soul from a different dimension, I wouldn't be surprised if that made you difficult to see. Especially if it worked like how you said that Toad sage visions worked with the world's natural energy as the divining source."

"Just a few more tests and we should be able to get you out of here and get a team ready to track down my brother and this Zetsu thing. We can get our answers then. Regardless I will be back in a little while, and don't break our pet zombie Tobi I paid a lot to get it working." Izuna states before exiting the lab with an acknowledging nod to Mito as he passed the last of the circles on the floor.

"I didn't want to ask about while he was here but what happened to his eye?" Hashirama asks his Brother

Instead of his brother answering Mito was the one to answer the question.

"The Impure World Reincarnation ritual requires a human sacrifice. It's needed to properly pierce into the pure world dimension where souls are kept. Izuna presented his own solution to our problem by offering himself as the sacrifice."

Hashirama gapes at the admission of using human sacrifices but then frowns in confusion.

"That still doesn't explain why he is alive now or why he is just missing an eye instead of being dead." Hashirama retorts

"The Sharingan has an ability that is nearly mythical even to the Uchiha called the Izanagi. Izuna used it to essentially cheat death at the cost of one of his eyes." Tobirama finishes

"...That's such bullshit! And Madara has the balls to keep telling me the mokuton is broken when he has that kind of bullshit under his hat!" Hashirama exclaims

Mito and Tobirama sweatdrop for a moment before returning to their experiments.

AN: Not quite story progression as usual but this is here mostly to try crossing the gap of knowledge between Worm and naruto fans. Somethings might still not make sense but I blame that On me not having a beta to bounce ideas off of. Anyway, I may have the story put on hiatus for a while to work on some other things, haven't yet decided so we shall see. Anyway, have a great weekend everybody who hasn't abandoned the story.