"Tobi, put Naruto down! If you actually like him, then pursue him openly and honestly, not by taking advantage of him while he's vulnerable!"
Hashirama glanced at Naruto—who might have already been subjected to God-knows-what—and felt a sudden surge of deep empathy.
He immediately rebuked the masked man.
"Yes, Lord First... I understand. hiks.."
Tobi kept up the dramatic, delicate crying routine as he slowly lowered Naruto back onto the bed.
He looked extremely reluctant.
And that reluctance was one hundred percent genuine.
The masked man desperately did not want to surrender the Nine-Tails' jinchūriki after finally getting his hands on him.
If he just put Naruto back, wouldn't that mean this entire miserable trip had been for nothing?
Not only did he fail to secure the Rinnegan, but he also lost a hand and suffered a disgusting ordeal.
But if he refused to drop the kid and tried to force a getaway? That wouldn't work either.
To activate Kamui and suck both Naruto and himself into the pocket dimension, he had to remain physically tangible.
Given the First Hokage's monstrous reaction speed, if Hashirama threw a punch during that exact window, he would absolutely lose way more than he gained.
What confused the masked man even more, however, was why the First Hokage hadn't noticed anything blatantly wrong with him.
When he whipped around earlier, he managed to pop a quick Transformation Jutsu to swap his mask out for a cute catgirl mask, but he physically couldn't change his clothes right in front of the God of Shinobi.
He was still wearing his signature Akatsuki cloak!
Did the First Hokage seriously not suspect an unfamiliar Akatsuki member standing over a paralyzed kid?
Despite the massive plot hole in his disguise, the masked man avoided further interrogation.
After gently setting Naruto down, Hashirama actually let him leave.
"Good kid. Don't do this kind of thing again. If you really can't control your urges, go buy a cup."
As the masked man squeezed past him, Senju Hashirama patted him firmly on the shoulder, his tone thick with sincere, earnest advice.
"...All right." The corner of the masked man's mouth violently twitched, and he quickly bolted out the door.
As he speed-walked down the street, the masked man spotted several random passersby casually wearing Akatsuki cloaks too.
'Did the Akatsuki launch a massive recruitment drive?'
Totally puzzled, he sent out a brief sensory pulse and realized they were literally just ordinary traveling merchants.
'Could it be that the Akatsuki cloak has actually become some kind of trendy fashion item?'
Well, no wonder the First Hokage hadn't batted an eye at his outfit.
The masked man let out a heavy breath of relief.
"Flying Raijin Slash—!"
Suddenly, a lethal arc of blade light streaked past.
The masked man felt a burst of agonizing pain rip through his torso, and he instantly hacked up a mouthful of blood.
He stared in utter disbelief at the Second Hokage, who had literally materialized out of thin air!
'When? When the hell did the Second Hokage plant a Flying Raijin mark on me?!'
"Hmph. Inherently evil Uchiha, surrender quietly." Senju Tobirama let out a cold snort and sharply flicked his longsword, snapping the fresh blood right off the edge.
The masked man's pupils instantly shrank to pinpricks.
Senju Tobirama's left hand was currently crumbling and re-forming into paper-like ash.
That was the signature regeneration of the Edo Tensei. But Tobirama had clearly been the one dealing the damage just now, so why the hell was his hand injured?
Wait. No.
'It isn't an injury!'
The horrific realization smashed into the masked man's brain.
Just a minute ago, the First Hokage had patted him on the shoulder.
That specific hand hadn't belonged to the First Hokage at all!
The two brothers had literally swapped hands just to make him lower his guard and plant a Flying Raijin marker directly onto his body!
The masked man grabbed his shoulder and craned his neck to look.
Sure enough, the cursed formula for the Flying Raijin was stamped right there.
He frantically ripped the fabric of his cloak away, exposing his shoulder, only to discover that the damn marker was seared right into his flesh!
"You finally noticed, did you? Foolish Uchiha! Your body is practically overflowing with my brother's cells. What on earth made you think he wouldn't sense something completely wrong with you?" Senju Tobirama mocked, his voice dripping with condescension.
As for the overall operation to deal with the masked man, Tobirama fully approved of the strategy.
However, before pushing forward, he firmly believed this Uchiha punk needed a brutal reality check.
They had to force the masked man to completely abandon his delusional fantasy that "redemption" was some grand, generous choice he was offering the world.
No.
They were the ones offering him a chance.
If they truly wanted to eliminate him, they could execute him right here, right now.
They needed to thoroughly crush the masked man's arrogant confidence and pride.
Only after breaking him down could he recognize his actual position and reform faster.
"..."
The masked man's expression turned incredibly ugly.
The sole reason he had stood completely undefeated all these years was because his space-time ninjutsu heavily suppressed normal shinobi.
Throw in the massive gap in battlefield intel, and his intangibility basically functioned as a permanent invincibility cheat.
Even when throwing hands with his old teacher, Namikaze Minato—who also packed top-tier space-time ninjutsu—the masked man had commanded the tactical advantage during the first half of their duel.
That was purely because Minato mistakenly believed getting sucked into Kamui equaled instant death, so he aggressively spammed Flying Raijin to evade the suction.
But this time, the Second Hokage played a completely different, ruthless game.
The exact millisecond Tobirama teleported in with Flying Raijin, the very first thing to arrive wasn't his blade, but several thrown kunai.
The daggers streaked straight toward the masked man's waist and shoulder. Acting on pure muscle memory, he triggered his intangibility and completely ignored the projectiles.
But precisely because he phased his body to let them pass, the physical mass of his waist and the shoulder carrying the Flying Raijin marker were temporarily transferred into the Kamui dimension.
Exploiting that exact spatial mechanic, the Second Hokage instantly used Flying Raijin to warp straight into the Kamui dimension and ruthlessly slashed the masked man's vulnerable waist while it was stored inside the pocket space.
Right after delivering the crippling strike—and before the masked man could even process the pain—Tobirama instantly teleported back to the Flying Raijin markers painted on the kunai he had just thrown, cleanly extracting himself from the Kamui dimension.
His execution speed was so blindingly fast that he didn't even give the masked man a single fraction of a second to actively snap Kamui shut.
Of course, the masked man seriously suspected that even if he had reacted fast enough to lock the dimension down, it wouldn't have saved him.
The First Hokage was definitely lurking nearby, rushing the scene.
If he successfully trapped the Second inside the Kamui dimension, he would basically be sealing away his own intangibility cheat.
Because if he did, the next time he phased a body part to dodge an attack in the real world, the Second Hokage would just be waiting inside Kamui to hack it off.
Without his intangibility, what the hell was he supposed to use to block the First Hokage's monstrous fists and Wood Release?
The masked man clutched his bleeding waist and frantically swept his gaze across the street.
Sure enough, the First Hokage leapt out of the shadows.
Hashirama's arm was currently crumbling and regenerating.
'The two of them really had swapped arms. It was way too damn sinister!'
Hiss—
Without a single second of hesitation, the masked man made a decisive sacrifice.
He viciously grabbed the shoulder stamped with the Flying Raijin formula, ripped the entire arm right out of its socket, and chucked it into the dirt.
Watching the bloody display, Tobirama's expression remained dead calm.
He didn't show an ounce of panic or urgency over his marker being discarded. Instead, he shot a sharp glare at the First Hokage, who had just arrived, and started chewing him out.
"Brother, didn't I explicitly tell you to pat his trouser pocket? If you had planted the mark on his crotch, then his little stunt of tearing off his own limb would have turned into a full-blown self-castration."
"..." Hashirama's expression turned painfully awkward as he scratched the back of his head.
"I didn't exactly have a good reason to do that, did I? I couldn't exactly tell the guy, 'Hey, let me help Naruto check whether your dick is totally normal,' could I?"
"As expected of the legendary First Hokage, the man who ruthlessly stabbed Uchiha Madara in the back at the Valley of the End! I let myself be deceived by your famously honest, goofy appearance. Next time, you won't be so lucky."
The masked man dropped the classic, textbook villain threat, gearing up to activate Kamui and warp out of there.
However...
A single, crisp sheet of paper suddenly phased right through his body.
As it drifted lazily in front of his face, it violently exploded!