Many years flew by. Madara was none too pleased to be hindered by the effects of old age. Yet it was not as if he were completely powerless; soon after awakening the Rinnegan, Madara had summoned the husk of the Ten-Tails from its prison on the moon. He then took as much of Hashirama's DNA as he could and surgically implanted it into the base of the Gedo as part of an experiment.

"Gotta say, while I was totally grossed out watching that, I appreciate the symbolism, buddy! I will always support you, whether you want me to or not!"

… An interesting side-effect occurred as a result. Countless humanoid creatures sprouted from the Gedo on branchlike constructs. So like any good savior of the world, Madara cut a number of them down from their branches and personally inspected them. Some were defective, good for nothing. But a great many were capable of independent thought and had the peculiar yet useful ability of travelling through the earth. Perhaps the most infuriating aspect of these white, mostly green-haired clones was their personalities.

Damn Hashirama's DNA. Damn it to hell. He'd inadvertently gone and created an army of Hashirama Senju, even if they lacked his power, which was the most important aspect to him.

"They're nothing like me! Nothing! Some of them are totally single-minded! Like the one that can't stop asking about defecation… or the one that's constantly in the corner, chattering about world domination. Thank kami he's the only one… The absolute last thing we need is an army of Madara. Am I right or am I right, Mads?"

Yes, Project Tsukuyomi looked like it had been about to fail in Madara's waning years, even with the achievement of the Rinnegan. So as one of his final acts before confining himself to a cave for the rest of his days, Madara had gone and bestowed his Rinnegan to a newborn near the middle of the Second Shinobi World War. The child would need instruction when he got older, but Madara had this inkling that he wouldn't live for very much longer…

"By the way, I'm still trying to figure out how you carried out that surgery without Nagato's parents knowing a wrinkly old pedophile was in their house. Oh, wait… That's right. You just plucked his eyes out and crammed your eyes into his sockets. And you put the parents under a Genjutsu while you did it. I'm glad there are standards for Medic-nin, 'cause you'd make a terrible one!"

He would need a successor, Madara knew this. A real successor. Anything could happen as the Nagato brat grew up; he might develop an ideology that clashed with his own. Heaven help if the brat inherited that Will of Fire crap… Damn Hashirama. If he had a successor in the wings, Madara could die happy knowing that the brat would be taught the harshness of reality, and that he would inevitably be resurrected one day.

Suffice to say, only an Uchiha would do. Though he held a grudge against his clan for turning their backs on him, Madara knew they were the solution to his problem. An Uchiha who knew love but lost it would make for a very powerful shinobi. Just look at how he turned out! With a swipe of his Susano'o's sword, he could level entire mountain ranges. Madara doubted another Uchiha like himself would crop up in this defective and degrading system, but he could still aim for a similar Uchiha and hope for the best.

That's why years later, in the midst of the Third Shinobi World War, Madara found himself sitting before a young boy by the name of Obito. A boy who had a deep-seated love for the village that he and Hashirama formed. Who was known by and large for his acts of kindness to the elderly citizens of the Hidden Leaf. Who saved his teammate from an untimely demise.

Everything had gone according to plan.

"Where… am I…?" A weak voice called out, the boy regaining consciousness on the simple bed Madara had placed him in. Madara hovered over his bedside.

"At the crevasse between your world and the next… Young Uchiha…" Madara intoned in a decrepit voice. Oh, how he loathed growing old…

Hovering beside Madara, Hashirama developed a thoughtful expression as he sat cross-legged.

"You're gonna make this kid wet himself. It won't even take five minutes. C'mon, I'll wager it! … If I had money on me…"

Obito seemed to blink in confusion for a moment, swearing he heard someone else's unintelligible voice just now, but nobody else was in his immediate line of sight so the boy gave up on that endeavor. Then the boy's single eye widened in realization.

"Your eye…! Could it be that… you're an Uchiha, too…?"

Hashirama whistled.

"This boy's sharp as a tack, Mads! Sharp. As. A. Tack. … Then again, it doesn't take excellent deductive skills when you're practically in the brat's face…"

"Who knows…" Madara gave a nonanswer. Hashirama waved his arm enthusiastically. Damn un-aging figment of the imagination…

"… You said we were between this world and the next… Where am I? It's dark, I can't see well… And anyway, old man… Who are you…? Heh! Do you happen to be a Shinigami? The ones that take you to either Heaven or Hell…" Obito froze as he caught sight of the kama that Madara was leaning on. Madara shot a side glare at Hashirama, who looked like he was trying and failing to hold in his giggles. Crap… just what he needed… an Uchiha that acted like Hashirama. The sickle seemed to gleam as Obito's eye widened comically. "WAAAH! I don't wanna die! HELLLP! I saw the scythe! You're definitely a Shinigami! A Shinigami that targets Uchiha! My motto so far has been to help old people! It's true that I also did a few bad things and broke the rules, but I think all in all it was even! Please spare me from Hell!"

Hashirama was on his backside by this point, rolling in laughter.

"This one's a keeper, Mads!" Hashirama wheezed out with tears pricking at his eyes. "Oh kami. Kid, regale us with some of those times you broke the rules! I swear I can hear Mads' sanity snapping already!"

Imperceptibly, Madara twitched. He would not respond out loud… He would not respond out loud… Madara Uchiha was sane. Madara Uchiha was normal.

"Pfft. Says the guy that summoned a moon statue and made a tree grow out of it! And then went and poached a kid with the intent of molesting and brainwashing him." Hashirama giggled. Madara refused to reply to that, too.

"You feel pain… because you're still alive." Madara grumbled. The irritation in Madara's voice did not go unnoticed by Obito. "However, it's a miracle that you're alive. I don't know how that rock didn't crush you," Hashirama coughed off to the side. "… It's almost as if you were able to slip away from it."

Hashirama rolled his eyes.

"Or like those not-me's pulled him under…"

"Where was I?" Obito couldn't help but ask.

"You were lying in my underground passage… next to the rock." Madara answered smoothly. Hashirama snorted.

"Bad Mads, lying to an impressionable child! Bad!" Hashirama twitched when he realized he didn't have a squirt bottle in hand. … Sometimes it just sucked being a ghost…

"But half your body was crushed, indeed. Though I did treat you."

"So you saved me?" Obito asked uncertainly. "… Thank you."

"Don't encourage him!" Hashirama roared, shaking a fist at the boy. "Mads needs to wean off molesting on small children!"

"It's still too early to thank me… because you'll have to repay the debt." Madara allowed a small smirk at Hashirama's expressed frustration. Sometimes it was the small things in life… "You said that your motto was to help old people, right?"

'Well yeah, that's true, but… well… what do you need?" Obito seemed hesitant about this, but it was his motto. When Madara didn't reply, Obito trailed off uncertainly. "Take care of… your lower parts…?"

Hashirama gagged and retched off to the side. A small chuckle escaped Madara's lips, unsettling the teenager before him. Madara narrowed his eye as he reined himself in.

"Not really…" He smirked again when Hashirama thanked Kami for small mercies.

"Sorry, but I can't stay here too long. If I'm alive then I need to get back to the Leaf! There's a war going on now. I finally awakened the Sharingan… now I'll be able to protect my friends!"

Hashirama's eyes widened as he waved his hands wildly in front of him.

"Brat… Brat! Don't go there! You're gonna set off Mads, and when he starts..."

"Protect your friend…" Madara scoffed.

"What?" Obito demanded to know what was so wrong about that.

"With that body… you can't go back to being a shinobi…"

Needless to say, Obito did not take this well. Hashirama moved to cut him off, but as usual it did no good.

"Wait, wait, wait! I finally… finally got my hands on these eyes! Now I'm confident that we can work better together. I will be able to become a shinobi that can protect his…"

"Look at reality," Madara cut him off sharply. He would nip this problem in the bud early on. He did not need another Hashirama clone. An Uchiha that acted like Hashirama was unacceptable. "This world is full of things that don't go as you wish…"

Hashirama sighed theatrically as Madara delved right into his planned speech. He'd been forced to hear the rehearsals, and they were maddeningly boring…

'What's with this old man…?' Obito thought to himself with a deadpan expression on his face. Hashirama moved over to him to pat him on the shoulder.

"There, there… I'm sure we can drive Mads insane together! Hopefully before you snap, too. All three of us will be insane! Won't that be splendid, brat?"

"So where am I?" Obito tried to cut into Madara's lecture. There was that unintelligible voice again…

"There were people that were saved because you got wounded… isn't that true?"

Hashirama palmed his forehead.

"Smooth, Mads… Real. Smooth. He's gonna figure out you know too much now…"

"What the hell are you going on about?! I don't want to stay here forever. Just…" Obito grunted in pain. Hashirama stared at the stupid, stupid boy.

"… Or not…"

"If you want to leave, do it. If you can move, of course." As if to mock the boy, Madara stood up slowly and hobbled over to a chair that sat below the Gedo Statue, leaning his sickle against the chair.

Hashirama could hear the gears turning in what he considered to be the boy's pea-sized brain. It wasn't fun if it all went Madara's way, damn it! He wanted entertainment!

"Old man… are you a missing-nin? Who are you?!" Obito demanded to know.

"I'm… a ghost of the Uchiha." Madara muttered tiredly. Hashirama comically shook a fist at the old geezer, cursing quite colorfully. "Madara Uchiha."

Obito gaped at the old man.

"By Madara you mean… my ancestor Madara Uchiha?!"

"Nooo," Hashirama sarcastically replied. "We're talking about your pet goldfish named Madara Uchiha. Of course we're talking about your ancestor!"

"Madara should be dead by now!" Obito roared. "We're talking about a faraway era!"

Hashirama moved to strangle the boy, failing miserably.

"You little brat…! If Mads dies, I die! C'mere you little…"

Madara chose to go back to ignoring Hashirama.

"So for you… it's more believable if I say that I'm a Shinigami? In a way, you could say that I'm a Shinigami indeed… because this reality is Hell." Madara's lips thinned as he shot a single Sharingan glare at Hashirama. Not that Obito could see the abomination. The brat probably thought he was being glared at… not that Madara cared. He could be petty when he wanted to. "I escaped death… and if I don't keep on absorbing Chakra from that statue… I'll die right away."

It took Obito a great deal of effort, but he forced himself out of the bed he was in.

"I'm going home!" Obito collapsed rather pitifully before he could even get on his feet. Hashirama toed him with his boot.

"You tell him! Yeah!"

"Give up… there are no exits here. And anyway, neither you nor I are able to leave this place… with our bodies. If you move, Hashirama's artificial body that I stuck to you will be ripped off… do you want to die?"

Hashirama adopted a panicked expression.

"What?! But that's the best part of his body!" He paused mid-exclamation. "… Wait. We decided that was not me. Bad Mads!"

Obito continued to struggle on the ground, using his chin to move around. For a while, Hashirama and Madara watched in companionable silence as the boy suicidally moved around.

"There are quite a few things I want you to do for me from now on… After all, I saved you. Don't be eager to die."

"What do you want?!" Obito yelled hoarsely. "What does an old geezer like you want to do with a boy?!"

Hashirama shuddered at that.

"Brat… You don't want to know…"

"I want to change the fate of this world." Madara replied simply. "A world of winners. A world of peace. A world of love. I'll make a world of just that."

"Never mind the fact that that's impossible…" Hashirama grumbled, crossing his arms. "What about the losers, the warmongers, and the haters? Do they get a world, too?" Hashirama's eyes widened comically as Madara's Sharingan glare was on him again. "Er… Go Mads? Ehehehe…"

"I couldn't care less…!" Obito continued his vain efforts. "I just… wanna go back to where the others are!"

"As I told you, here things don't go as you wish. One day you will realize, too…" Madara seemed to briefly consider changing tactics. "You can die, if you really want. But I'll get your Sharingan."

"Why do you want my eye?! You already have a Sharingan yourself!" Obito pointed out. Hashirama coughed awkwardly.

"No… I left my real eyes to someone else." Madara said as he moved to brush away his hair from the right side of his face. "This is just a spare I implanted afterward… I'd be glad to have a few extra ones. I still don't have a right eye… You need to have both eyes to awaken their full potential."

Hashirama moved to stand in Obito's line of sight, but again failed miserably… Only Madara could see and hear him, truly. Although… the brat did seem to show occasional signs that he might be hearing his voice, and that was comforting enough to Hashirama. Now he could keep two Uchiha company!

"Maybe these next several months won't be so bad after all!" Hashirama beamed. He laughed uproariously. For whatever reason, Obito felt a subconscious urge get the fuck out of dodge.

Madara twitched violently. Death was looking more and more inviting...

Author's Note:

Longer chapter! Hope you enjoyed. I had most of this finished already, and thought I should just complete it now. I'd say that there's just a couple of more chapters left for this one… and then there's the sequel. I think you all know how this one will end… XD

Review Replies:

Callian31: Mark Hamill's the best. :D

Guest: Perhaps. It's a hilarious concept nonetheless. Even in all of his seriousness, Madara's got a sassy side… "No, children are impatient things." I dunno. Anything's possible. :D

Black' Victor Cachat: Thanks! I thought Mads needed some torture… er, I mean a friend. Yes. Part of the problem with Tobirama is that Kishimoto might have been working out what he specialized in; Tobirama claiming to have created both the Hiraishin and the Shadow Clone Jutsu didn't seem very genuine on his part, but that's me. I'll allow it… for now. lol