"I didn't expect it either."
After saying that, Tobirama Senju swallowed the last of the food pill in his mouth.
His wounds were still bleeding, and he had only a trace of chakra left. But he ignored that, crouched down, and began drawing on the ground with his finger.
He drew quickly.
"What are you doing?" Izuna asked.
"Drawing an array." Tobirama did not look up. "A summoning array."
"To summon what?"
"Ryuto."
Izuna froze for a moment. "Didn't you say you couldn't sense him?"
"Not normally." Tobirama's finger kept moving, tracing complex patterns in the dirt. "But I left a Flying Thunder God Mark on him."
At those words, even Hashirama, who lay slumped nearby, raised his head.
"When did you leave it?" Hashirama asked.
"When he first arrived," Tobirama said. "He has no chakra, and I was afraid we might lose contact with him again. I never expected to need it so soon."
Madara snorted. "You certainly planned ahead."
"There's no point talking about that now." Tobirama kept drawing. "The point is, I'm not sure he's still alive. Even if he is, he's in another dimension. It's too far away for an ordinary Summoning Technique to pull him back."
"Then what do we do?" Izuna asked.
"Use a big one," Tobirama said. "An enormous one. It needs a massive amount of chakra to force a passage through space."
He finished the last line and stood up.
On the ground lay an enormous array over ten meters in diameter, its patterns dizzyingly complex.
"That's a summoning array?" Hashirama stared at it. "How come I've never seen one like it?"
"I created it myself," Tobirama said. "It should work in theory, but I've never tested it. It takes so much chakra that one person simply can't sustain it."
He looked