At first, he didn't know where he was. He'd never seen this place before. When he wasn't attacked the moment he appeared, he went exploring, drifting through the streets where some sort of ceremonial procession was taking place like a ghost, and for all of the attention that the people were paying him, he may as well have been one.
It had been when he'd hopped up onto one of the higher rooftops to get a good view of the surrounding area that he realized where he was, and it made him want to weep. It was the place Hash had picked out oh so long ago, and it looked just the way Hash had wanted it to. The once barren land was a lush forest much as his brother had planned, with hundreds, perhaps even thousands of trees growing in the village proper as well. The village was brightly, almost cheerfully painted in many bright colors, with the tallest building being a tower on which the kanji for fire had been painted. In the distance was a cliff on which the faces of the village's past leaders had been carved, his own face amongst them.
Looking at this place made his heart ache as he remembered his lost brother and the dream that had practically consumed him.
It was mainly out of curiosity that he'd ended up following the stragglers to the arena. He ended up staying to watch the tournament style "Chunin Exams", settling down next to the current leader of the village since nobody here took any more notice of him than the people in the village streets had. He may as well have been invisible for all the attention they paid him.
He had followed the Hokage when the leader of the other village that was being represented in the so called exams kidnapped him, and watched the battle that followed unfold, since he had no more substance than a ghost. During the battle, he witnessed the final piece of a puzzle that he'd set aside in his grief over his brother's death. A puzzle which had been little more than an intellectual exercise when he'd started working on it, and therefore fell by the wayside like everything else.
After an exhausting evening of wandering through the streets of his brother's village watching shellshocked survivors salvage what was left of their home, he ended up falling asleep on a park bench.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself back on the battlefield where he should have died, where whatever technique that Uchiha bastard used on him should have killed him, and where he had most likely had been left because his opponent had thought him dead as well. He then crawled away to recoup, recover and finish the puzzle that had started out as a frivolous mental exercise.
After three days of feverish work, he completed his puzzle, his jutsu, his Edo Tensei. Now, the world would burn just as his brother's dream had burned when Uchiha Izuna had come bearing poisonous gifts.
He ignored the screams and the pleas for mercy. He had a clan to resurrect.