Ceasefire

On the day the Senju Clan Compound received the Uchiha ceasefire document, Hashirama accidentally knocked over his inkstone.

When Tobirama's Kunai came flying through the air and pinned the document down, Hashirama was running his fingers over the signature at the end of the scroll: "Madara Uchiha."

Tobirama Senju insisted it was an Uchiha plot. As he spoke, a scroll lay open on the low table, marked with seventeen possible triggers for an ambush.

Hashirama Senju argued strenuously, sending wood chips clinging to his robes scattering to the floor. They were the remains of the third negotiating table he had smashed that morning.

The first two had been reduced to splinters during arguments over "whether the Uchiha could genuinely want peace" and "how many guards should accompany them," respectively.

Tears rolled from Hashirama Senju's eyes and struck the floor, causing fresh shoots to sprout from the wooden boards.

Tobirama Senju's pupils constricted. It was a sign that Hashirama's Chakra was about to go out of control.

With no other choice, he let go of his Flying Thunder God Kunai and relented.

In the end, the brothers reached an agreement: they would meet on a hill outside a neutral town, each side bringing only one trusted aide, and all weapons would be sealed.

Hashirama Senju personally pressed his bloody fingerprint beside the provisions added to the scroll, staining the words "mutual nonaggression" a pale pink.

Hashirama arrived three hours early at the hill in the neutral territory where they had agreed to meet. Without realizing it, he used Wood Release to cover the snow-dusted ground in green.

"Brother," Tobirama suddenly said, "your Chakra has turned the entire hill into a living thing."

"I can't control it..." Hashirama seized his younger brother's wrist, the fingers with bulging veins nearly digging between the bones. "This may be our last chance..."

At last, his brother pressed hard on his trembling shoulder. "Control it! You're a ninja!"

"Tobirama, I..." Before Hashirama could finish, Madara Uchiha's figure emerged through the morning mist, his eternal Mangekyō Sharingan already fixed on Tobirama Senju.

The pressure in his gaze seemed to bring even the surrounding mist to a standstill.

When Madara Uchiha appeared with only Uchiha Hikaku as a witness, the arrangement immediately put Tobirama on alert.

The fresh bandages wrapped around Uchiha Hikaku's right arm gave off the smell of medicinal herbs. They had clearly been changed only the night before.

That sharply contradicted the intelligence that he had remained at the Uchiha Clan Compound and taken no part in the fighting.

Madara Uchiha's Mangekyō Sharingan had changed subtly. Its rotating pattern was more complex than when they had last fought, and three new angular spikes had appeared around the pupils.

Tobirama Senju grew wary, his fingers already forming the Flying Thunder God hand seal in secret.

Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced toward Hikaku's position. Izuna should have been standing there.

By convention, a meeting between clan heads should have been witnessed by the heirs of both sides.

Tobirama Senju calculated to himself that Izuna would need at least three months to recover from the wounds inflicted by the Flying Thunder God Slash.

But Madara's Chakra showed that he had been in an intense battle just yesterday...

The inconsistencies brought a cold sweat to his back as countless thoughts raced through his mind. An old wound Izuna had left him began to ache faintly.

During the negotiations, Hashirama Senju was so excited that he became incoherent, his voice rising at times and choking up at others.

After some discussion, he had crushed the hem of his kimono into a wrinkled ball between his fingers.

At last, Madara grew impatient and slapped the ceasefire document bearing his clan emblem onto a boulder.

Hashirama Senju gripped the scroll tightly, repeatedly checking the Uchiha Clan Head's seal on the document. The wax seal shone dark red in the sunlight.

"Brother, this could be a trap." Tobirama remained in the shadows, his mind working at full speed as he analyzed the document.

"Madara's Chakra fluctuations show that he recently used the highest level of Genjutsu. The contents of the document may have been altered."

"No! It's real!" Hashirama pressed the document to his chest. "There's no malice in Madara's Chakra, only... relief?"

His voice trembled with disbelief on the last word, as though he were asking himself, or perhaps questioning fate.

As they were about to part, Madara faced Tobirama's pointed question: "Why did the Uchiha choose to negotiate a ceasefire?"

Madara Uchiha laid his broad, knuckled hand over his left ribs, where Utsusemi's vines had once crushed fine cracks into them.

Though healed, he could still feel a trace of warmth there.

The blood-red light of the setting sun shimmered in Madara Uchiha's Sharingan. "This was Utsusemi's wish."

"Utsusemi?!" Tobirama's voice rose sharply. "When did you meet..."

Hashirama Senju's face drained of color in shock. "What does this have to do with Utsusemi?!"

Madara Uchiha noticed the veins bulging over his knuckles and suddenly probed, "Is she a member of the Senju Tribe?"

"No!" the Senju brothers denied in unison.

The corners of Madara Uchiha's lips curved into an almost gentle smile, sending a chill up Tobirama's back. "Good, then."

The Uchiha figures vanished into the morning light, leaving the Senju brothers standing motionless.

Tobirama's pale hand trembled slightly inside his sleeve as his mind worked through the possibilities.

At some point, fresh Wood Release shoots had sprouted in Hashirama Senju's palm, hydrangeas and wisteria entwined in bloom.

Suddenly, he caught a scent from deep in his memories: orange jasmine from the banks of the Naka River, mingled with the dampness of the water.

It was the fragrance that had risen with the splashes when they skipped stones as boys.

As soon as Madara Uchiha finished the ceasefire negotiations with the Senju, he hurried straight back to the clan compound.

He activated the Yin-Yang Release tablet. Izuna, whom Utsusemi had taken outside of time for treatment, had remained like a thorn in his heart. "Izuna... how is he now?"

Utsusemi's projection flickered faintly on the tablet. "His external injuries have healed completely, but the optic nerve necrosis is irreversible."

She suddenly pressed her lips together, a rare hesitation showing in the image. "This is what's truly fatal."

As a scroll unfurled, a three-dimensional diagram spiraled upward.

"Yin-Yang Release scans show that a Cursed Seal has lain dormant in the Uchiha bloodline for a thousand years." Her hand tapped the crimson markers. "Passed down through the bloodlines of dozens of generations, the curse has persisted for nearly a thousand years."

She announced the cruel conclusion. "Clearly, it's the result of successive practitioners layering it over time. The curse has fused deeply with the genetic chain."

Violent Chakra exploded outward from Madara. "You're saying... the bloodline curse... comes from remnants of a jutsu from a thousand years ago?"

"Exactly." Utsusemi lowered her eyes. "Successive practitioners layered the seals like a spider weaving a web, and the condition for undoing them..."

"Is to eliminate the original practitioner." She sighed softly. "But judging by its age, I'm afraid the one who started it has already become dust in the annals of history."

"How profound must that hatred have been for a curse to reach across a thousand years?" she murmured after a soft sigh. "Unless we can find the jutsu's medium... there's only a... chance of breaking the curse."

"The jutsu's medium..." The runes on the Six Paths Stone Tablet in Madara's memory suddenly overlapped with the points of light before him.

He knew more clearly than ever that only by ending this war as soon as possible could he give Izuna a chance to return safely.