Disclaimer: Naruto characters belong to Kishimoto-sensei and all things Marvel to their rightful creators. Internet broke me so I'm just here for a ride.

Title: Mumford & Sons – After The Storm, because it's awesome and maybe doesn't go well with the crack, but it's kinda my low key anthem for defeated, longing, lost villainous souls. Also because I worship the band.

A/N: Inspired by a fanart and a grief after Infinity War

Warnings/tags: crack treated seriously, crossover, bromance, lots of swearing and destruction, canon typical violence, shameless abuse of genjutsu, dimensional travel … more to be added as the story progress.

Chapter 1: HASHIRAMA!

Something was off.

Something was very, very not right.

Madara didn't really register that he was somehow transported to some unknown, distant land, until the dust from his collision with Hashirama's wooden Thousand Hands cleared, but when he finally did, his first reaction was anger. Blinding rage. Apparently Idiot Senju used some new, freaky jutsu on him to get him out of his hair and now the moron was nowhere to be seen. Oh, Madara was so going to skin him alive the second he saw the cheerful oaf next. He couldn't just… just… ditch the fight like this! Madara deserved better! He might've been a little bit crazy but he was still a dignified opponent! He had the Kyuubi! The Mangekyou! The freakin' giant Susanoo armour, for Sage's sake!

Well, speaking of weapons.

The Kyuubi was nearby, quiet and suspiciously unmoving. Huh. He must've been chakra-drained by that weird jutsu way more than Madara himself to not wake up yet, and that was saying a lot, given he was a chakra construct and thus undrainable as such. But the Fox being apparently asleep meant also that Madara didn't have to deal with him in an instant, thank fuck.

His second reaction to this unsuspected change of surroundings was… confusion. Because when Madara actually managed to shake off his fury enough to take a good look around, he realized he's never seen anything even remotely like this before.

There were buildings bigger than the Kyuubi next to him, way bigger, and there were numbers of them. The whole fucking ocean of ginormous concrete monsters, stretching as far as he was able to see. And everything was covered in lights. But it wasn't fire. There was not a single candle in sight. And the noise. The constant, loud noise, full of eerie, unnatural, high pitched sounds, and the background fluctuating hum, intertwining with hundreds of voices, echoing above the water.

What the hell.

Madara was no sensor. His chakra was wild and rapid and jumpy, the perfect mirror of his personality, really, and taking control over it was never easy. Not in the way that would allow him the deeper sight anyhow, anyway. So Madara couldn't just lie a finger on the ground or turn on the flashy make-up in the manner the Senju bastards did, and be able to tell how many people he was surrounded by or how advanced chakra usage in this place was. What he could do, though, was to summon his hawk and take a look from up high for a better perspective. Yeah.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" Quick bite to the thumb was all it always took to get his feathered friends to appear, subtle spark of chakra and—

Nothing happened.

Huh. How… unexpected. Madara could feel his chakra levels being annoyingly low since he's woken up, but not nearly low enough to fuck up a simple summoning. And he certainly couldn't have been put inside some chakra-suppressing barrier, because Kyuubi was there too, and he was chakra—

Small fireball escaped Madara's lips before his consciousness could kick in to stifle the show.

So he could use jutsus. But if he could use jutsus and his summons still wouldn't appear, he must've been somewhere they didn't have access to. Which was… kind of ridiculous, as the only place summons usually couldn't appear was the sacred place of other summons species.

So where the fuck could he possibly…

The realization hit him like a solid punch to the gut and Madara squealed.

Oh no.

Oh fuck no.

Oh holy fuckin' mother of holy fuckin' Sage no!

Something must've happened when he and Hashirama both tried to force control over the Kyuubi, releasing ridiculous amounts of chakra in the process and it wasn't Hashirama's jutsu that kicked him out of the Fire County. He didn't know how or why, but apparently he was now stuck with the Fox in some other, bizarre dimension with no easy way of return.

He was going to murder the idiot Senju when he got back. If he ever got back. He will eviscerate him. Slowly, painfully, gleefully and without an ounce of remorse.

But if that's the case, firstly he needed to get out of sight, and fast.

There was no freakin' way the guards of this… this monstrosity wouldn't notice gigantic Fox appearing out of the thin air in an open for plain view, green area by the riverbank, middle of the night or not. And if he was really in some different… plane, then as long as he didn't know what his potential freaky opponents were capable off, temporal disappearing would be the best option.

Even Madara wasn't arrogant enough to wage war with a powerful nation, and judging by the scale of everything around they really had to be, without at least basic understanding of their firepower. Not when he had literally no clue what that could've been.

Madara hastily evaluated his options and a growl escaped his lips as he punched the nearest tree.

The problem was Nine Tails. Sleeping, unmovable and immediately pissed off upon awaking Nine Tails, he couldn't just leave behind. Sure, as draining as it was, he could summon the Fox to the safe location once he's found one – and he was sure it would work just fine as the Kyuubi was stuck here with him – but leaving him unprotected seemed… unwise.

Well, waking him up, and then riding an over three hundred feet tall Demon Fox throughout an unknown land seemed absolutely, ridiculously stupid on the other hand, so it wasn't even an option to ponder.

Madara sighed. He couldn't believe he was actually worrying about the Kyuubi, but given the circumstances he hasn't seen much other choice.

"So fucking troublesome," he spitted, irritated, and checked up his gear.

He wasn't pleased to confirm he was running low on his supplies after the fight with Hashirama, and wasting most of his chakra tags of this one while not having an Uzumaki around to restore them will suck later, but what the hell.

Attaching tags to still unconscious Fox didn't take very long and when Madara was sure they covered the whole perimeter around the beast, he shunshined away, disappearing deeper into the woods. If he was lucky enough, nothing would happen until he could find a good hiding spot and summon the beast, both of them in one piece. If not… Well. The amount of chakra furious Kyuubi would generate when attacked would be more than enough to power the seals and therefore release his own chakra to struck attackers with mild genjutsu. Of course, completely concealing something like Kyuubi, especially while in motion would take much more than just a cheap trick like that, but bewildered opponent is always better than clear-headed one.

It'll have to do.

o0o

Roughly at the time Madara mysteriously appeared at the banks of the Hudson River, in the deepest, most secured pits of SHIELD secret facility the Tesseract started to wake.

Cross-posted from AO3