Author's note: I always did want to write a pre-Konohagakure/Founders story, in which Inuzuka Tsume's ancestors more-or-less herds Hashirama and Madara cross-country on Adventures and Shenanigans. Also, this is, like, probably the only story in existence in which there are Jashinist-Vikings in the same universe as Naruto, so, uh, go me? (Also, even better, I can guarantee weekly updates! I have managed to complete a story! Which, uh, requires extensive editing, because I wrote it all in one week while sleep-deprived. Which is why updates would be weekly.)

The stench of blood and burnt flesh was thick in the air, every bit as heavy as the clang of warring weapons and the screams of the wounded.

And Uchiha Madara wanted the world to burn. "You dare!" he hissed, the edge of his gunbai locked against Hashirama's. Their arms trembled as Madara bore his full strength and weight against Hashirama's sword. Hashirama's gaze was narrow and flint-hard. "You told me you wanted peace – men who want peace don't attack innocent women and kidnap children!"

"I do want peace!" Hashirama yelled back. He dug his heels into the churned dirt clumps and used his leverage to push against Madara.

Madara twisted his body and blade to capture Hashirama's weapon, keeping them locked. "I trusted you! Who strikes down pregnant women?"

"WE WOULD NEVER! No more than you would, and our pregnant women are dead too!" The rage that flared in Hashirama's face, rage that had been simmering below the surface until now, shocked Madara even more than the sight over Hashirama's shoulder, when he saw Izuna slide backwards from Tobirama, blade stuck tight against bone. So instead, he focused on a blot of shadow across Hashirama's face… a shadow that was quickly enveloping his own self. With another twist, he unhooked their blades, and they pushed away from each other in a silent agreement.

Madara's enhanced vision allowed him to see every individual fluttering strand of copper-bright hair, every shiny bauble and feather and weapon woven into the hair, the crimson triangles, the upside down whales painted across a voluminous pair of bare beasts, and the curled fist as she silently dropped to where they had stood.

Inuzuka Natsumi struck the battle-churned ground with such chakra-enhanced force that the ground split asunder, ripping into a small ravine that would've engulfed Madara and Hashirama. The ground continued to splinter and separate even as she somersaulted in midair away from the rapidly-born ravine without once touching any solid surface – damn Inuzuka women and their impossible aerodynamic attacks – and softly landed beside Hashirama. The sudden attack immediately drew attention from everyone else on the battle field, most freezing in surprise.

"Stupid men," Natsumi declared, catching a near-by Senju's blade barehanded when he lunged at her to protect Hashirama. The chakra visibly flaring at her hand prevented any injury. Hashirama didn't move as his face went beet red when he realized just how close they stood together. "You aren't the only ones the South Sea raiders hit."

Madara jerked back, raising his gunbai in defense as another shadow darted in front of him. Inuzuka Shinzou, her hair as red as her sister's but much more wild and evidently free of ornaments, was crouched low, so close he could feel the warm puff of her breath against his shin, laid bear from where Hashirama's attack had destroyed his shin guard. "But evidently you were just stupid enough to blame each other," she said, "and if you kill each other off, there's less of you to hunt down and make the real culprits pay." Then she straightened from her crouch.

Like Natsumi, Shinzou was naked from the waist up. Her skin was painted with the crimson outlines of wolves taking long, leaping strides. She was also very, very pregnant, so far along that her pierced nipples leaked milky trails over her swollen belly. Oh fuck. He was never going to get that image out of his mind, thanks to the thrice-cursed vision of the Sharingan.

"Kind gentleman," Shinzou said, glancing around, raising her arms and her voice and not caring at all that the sight of her body was so unusual in its public display. Her expression clearly indicated that she found the men present to be neither kind, nor gentle. "We all have a mutual problem. And while you may insist on carrying on with a grudge between each other that's generations old, my sister and I kindly request that you let bygones be bygones long enough to assist us in rescuing our children." Shinzou's eyes and smile were as cold and as sharp as Madara's blade as other Inuzuka women flashed onto the battlefield, their half-naked bodies poised for attack as they stepped between Senju and Uchiha, knocking aside blades and separating those who had frozen in mid-grapple with each other. "While I would love to say we don't need your assistance, we probably do, considering how these raiders managed to brutally slay the very capable guards we had left behind, and we want to leave your children with the raiders a lot less than we want your assistance."

As Madara attempted to parse what exactly the Inuzuka Clan Head meant, Natsumi tossed her tangled hair over her shoulder. One of the caltrops woven in its waist-length end bounced off of Hashirama's cheek, leaving a bloody scratch behind. "We could keep the female children if you boys killed each other off, but what would we do with the male children?"

"The Nara would take them," Shinzou replied.

Natsumi blew a raspberry. "I refuse to subject myself to the Nara Shikataro's whining and pouting about the inconvenience we've brought upon his clan for the gods' know how many generations. I say we dump Senju and Uchiha boys on the Hyuuga clan. It's not like they wouldn't want their hands on them, anyway. Now, excuse me, I have to heal this clumsy idiot for tripping and falling on a blade." She snarled at a Senju who raise his staff to block her path. "Do you like your balls where they're at, or should I rip them off?" He immediately dropped his staff.

"Excuse me," Hashirama began, allowing the tip of his blade to point downward and raising his other hand in the air, "but what the hell is going on? Inuzuka women just don't interrupt battles."

Nor did they surround active battles with their ninken. Madara glanced around and saw the lurking canines, massive in size and their haunches rippling with intimidation, circling the site. If anyone attacked the Inuzuka women, the ninken would close in with readied fangs and claws. He couldn't remember the last time he was surrounded. Well, actually, he could, and he had taken out every single one of those fools. But he had been surrounded by four Hyuuga, not dozens of ninken. Carving a bloody path through animals bred to fight might prove to be more difficult.

"Weren't you listening?" Shinzou asked as she turned towards Hashirama. Madara's gaze flickered between her – standing so close that he could sink a kunai into her spine and sever it without having to take a step forward – and her sister, whose stride across the field to where his brother lay, gurgling as the blade buried in his chest bobbed with each desperate gasp, was smooth and as steady as a stalking wolf. Then Shinzou raised a hand and yelled at Uchiha Natsuo, who decided to try sliding a second tanto free of its scabbard, "THE FIGHTING ENDS NOW OR I'LL RIP YOUR ARM OFF AND CLUB YOU INTO SUBMISSION WITH ITS BLOODY STUMP."

It was so terribly like an angry mother yelling at her child that Hashirama snorted in amusement, and then quickly wiped away the smile when Shinzou turned back to him, brow furrowing in irritation. He coughed. "So, uh, you mentioned South Sea raiders. There hasn't been any in the last three generations."

"La-di-da. They came back. Apparently, three generations was enough to recover from the beat-down the Uzumaki provided."

"Did you see them?"

Shinzou placed both hands on her widened hips, just above where the short leather skirt hung, barely hiding the slope of her buttocks. Madara was really contemplating the pros and cons of tearing out his eyeballs and living the life of a blind warrior. He had heard of an order of warrior monks up north who were fully capable of protecting their village and herds despite sacrificing their vision to their gods.

"They were gone three days by the time we reached our wintering huts. I don't have to see to know what my nose tells me. Their stench was full of the odors of the South Seas – fruits not native to our lands, heavy with deep-sea fish, whales, sea creatures we don't have here. Their broken weapons – weapons left in the bodies of my clanswomen – were created from whale bones. Any more questions?"

Hashirama's gaze, soft with pain, flickered towards Madara's. "But history doesn't describe the level of viciousness that destroyed our people."

Madara remembered what had happened to his own clan, in vivid detail, never to be forgotten as the Sharingan had seared the details into his brain. The Uchiha had been divided on three fronts. The first front – two-thirds of the clan – had been preparing the clan's winter fortress. The second front had been left at a small, seasonal village. Fifty women and children, guarded by an experienced force of ten men, were supposed to spend a very busy week harvesting the fruits and nuts for the fortress's food stores.

The third front, Madara, along with his brother and another ten strong, had met with the Senju to work on a peace treaty between their clans, and to discuss Hashirama's dream of creating a village to live side by side in peace. They agreed that they should actively start next spring, creating homes and breaking ground for crops, and use the winter to hammer out the logistical nightmare known as administration. After what had been a week filled with treaty discussions and burgeoning hope, Madara and others had returned to their seasonal village to safely escort the women, children, and harvest back to the fortress. Madara had looked forward to spending the winter convincing his kin and clan of the possibility of finally achieving peace, and also figuring out how to implement the newly-invented wonder of indoor plumbing.

They found death and rot, instead.

The adults had been brutally slaughtered, their bodies twisted from bones shattered in multiple places, and skin hanging like tattered ribbons, like someone had tried to artfully skin them alive. Madara, long used to brutal battle deaths, had never seen such wanton destruction. Disturbingly, the wounds on the men had been identical.

Worse, there had been thirty-three Uchiha women, over a dozen who had been in early to mid stages of pregnancy, and all were slain. Of the eighteen children, ranging between newborn to ten years of age, only four had been found – two infants beneath six months of age, their throats slit and their eyes and organs consumed by roaming animals, and the two eldest, girls who had just been shy of seeing their tenth birthdays. They had tried to defend their clan, if the weapons clutched in their hands or fallen on the ground beside tattered bodies had been any indication, but the Uchiha clan didn't train their girls to fight. In less than a week, an entire generation had been utterly destroyed.

Madara sent one man to their winter fortress to relay the news, and then he, his brother, and nine others followed the trail of destruction without rest for an entire day, and the trail of destruction led them directly to the Senju. Without stopping to demand an explanation, Madara and the others threw themselves at the Senju with weapons raised.

"That's my kill," Tobirama muttered angrily as Natsumi knelt at Izuna's head. Her hands were already glowing green as she placed them flat on his chest, one on each side of the sword. Izuna's arms twitched as her heavy breasts nearly smothered him. What blood he had left in his body was filling his face a bright red of embarrassment.

Natsumi's answering smile was only slightly less deadly than her sister's. "It's not a kill if your target trips and falls on your blade, Senju."

Tobirama's face burned as bright as Izuna's, although it was in anger. "He did not trip!"

Izuna, metaphorically faced with deciding which was more embarrassing (being clumsy enough to trip and fall on his enemy's blade, or his enemy being skilled enough to successfully land a mortal blow), decided that he would much rather sacrifice his dignity than acknowledge the skill of his enemy. "I did too trip!"

Tobirama waved at the ground they stood on. It was a seasonal flood plane beside the Naka River. It was flat without any rocks, bushes, or large clamps of grass. "You did not!"

"Did too!"

"Did not!"

Natsumi shifted her chest lower so that Izuna's voice was too muffled to argue back. "Do you want your sword back, or do I get it to keep it?" she asked Tobirama with a husky purr in her voice. When Tobirama wrapped his hand around the hilt, her voice took on a more serious tone. "Pull it out gently; stop when I tell you. I have to heal around the blade so he doesn't drown in his blood."

"Would you like some help?" Hashirama called. "Because I'm really good at the Mystic Palm."

Izuna's arms flailed, although not with much strength, given his blood loss and the sword in his damn chest. The muffled sounds were definitely a refusal on his part, as well as a few choice insults. May the Sage of the Six Paths preserve Madara – his brother was a fool.

"That's rather rude," Hashirama declared. "And if you really did trip, then clearly Tobirama didn't mean to accidentally-nearly kill you."

Tobirama bristled. "I did too mean to kill him."

Madara wasn't secretly too sure that Izuna wasn't more deliberate than Hashirama or Tobirama actually suspected. Madara's attack on the Senju had been motivated by anger and sadness. Izuna had been motivated by rage and sorrow.

Hashirama turned back to Madara. "Truce? At least until we figure out who we're supposed to kill in all of this?"

Madara hadn't really wanted to kill the Senju – they had just been an easy target to blame. "Sure." They both looked at Shinzou. Then Madara shuddered in horror as her stomach began rippling and moving, like a monster caught beneath her skin. Shinzou merely grunted and gently pressed a fist into her side.

Hashirama cocked his head to the side, eyes wide with curiosity as he studied Shinzou. Like the Uchiha women, Senju women wore a lot more clothes than the Inuzuka; the later into their pregnancy they progressed, the more likely they were sequestered into the women's quarters. Without a wife, Hashirama was as unlikely as Madara to ever have seen such an advanced state of pregnancy. Izuna, whose wife had been pregnant with their third child, would've been much less shocked by Shinzou, but currently couldn't see anything other than Natsumi's chest. "Was – was that an elbow?" Hashirama's voice was hushed in reverence.

"Yes. And a pair of knees. Eyes up here, Senju." She pointed at her face. "Stop staring at my torso."

Hashirama's frown bordered on a pout as he made a show of sheathing his weapon. "If you didn't want anyone staring, you should put on a shirt, or something."

"I wear what I wear for my comfort, not for anyone else's." Shinzou raised her chin in a defiant challenge as she turned to Madara. "Do you have a complaint about my wardrobe, or are you and your men grown up enough to sit with us around a fire without fighting over whose cock is bigger? I've got a measurer in my pack somewhere. We could settle the score once and for all."

Madara looked up at the skies. They were starting to darken as the sun dipped below the line of trees. Mid autumn days were yet warm and bright, but the approaching night would get cold. "I don't care if you freeze, Inuzuka," he replied. "You're a big girl. You can take care of yourself." And besides, it wasn't the size of one's personal tools that mattered – it was all in how it was used.

He didn't look to see what his clansmen did as he leaped over the ravine, crossed the field they had clashed in, and knelt at the puddle of blood that formed beneath Izuna. He refused to look at Hashirama's younger rat of a brother as he studied Natsumi's glowing hands with his Sharingan-bright gaze. Like Hashirama, her chakra manipulated cells in rapidly reproducing. He watched as she knit capillaries shut and fused flesh together as centimeter by centimeter, Tobirama slid his blade out. Unlike Hashirama, the base of Natsumi's healing chakra were two different colors, the famous gold of the Uzumaki – well renowned for being the cause of the Uzumaki clan's long life and rapid wound regeneration – mingling with the blue of Yang Release to form the green. Rumor had it that the current head of the Inuzuka clan had been sired by an Uzumaki. Evidently, so had the Clan Head's little sister.

"Interesting," he murmured softly as he allowed his Sharingan to fade. Without the enhancement of his Bloodline Limit, he caught only the slightest glimmer of gold, closest at the base of her skin where she released the chakra. Aside from the fact that she was able to heal – something so rare that Hashirama's ability without the blood of the Uzumaki running through his veins was considered nothing short of miraculous – Madara had never been so close to any Inuzuka woman to realize that they had claws. "Are you feeling better?" he asked his brother, pretending that he wasn't using his proximity as an excuse to study a non-pregnant Inuzuka woman up close. They really were as animalistic as the stories said.

Izuna raised a steady hand and gave him a thumb's up.

Well, his brother always did consider himself a boob man.