Review giftfic for Tarrangar, who wanted more with the resurrected Hokages.


When Maddy finally made it into the afterlife – Uchiha liked being fashionably late because of how rude it was and how much you could infuriate people by making them wait around until you deigned to honor them with your presence – some misconceptions had to be cleared up.

"Being Hokage means being buried under a pile of paperwork!" Hashirama said, shocked that Maddy had gotten an idea like this. He'd had no idea Maddy was upset! Sure, Maddy had tried to kill him with the kyuubi, but he'd figured that was Maddy's way of saying Hashirama was his best friend – the Uchiha always tried to kill their best friends. Then there was all the evil energy filling the valley during the battle! Sure, he'd foreseen that Maddy would disappear afterwards, but ninja. And Uchiha were prone to sulk.

Well, he had intended to maim Maddy a little, but that was because if he didn't seriously try to hurt Maddy, Maddy might think he wasn't Hashiramas best friend! Uchiha weren't completely heartless, even with the demonic ancestry, but the hearts they did have were tiny, brittle and easy to break, so you had to be careful not to hurt their feelings.

Hashirama had figured that Maddy would show up when he got hungry for inarizushi, and then Hashirama could pay him back for the great meal of evil energy he'd been able to soak up during their fight. The fight was a lot of fun, too, and Madara and Hashirama showing off their power always got the village a lot of clients, so he'd figured that Madara started the fight to do him a favor as well as have some Uchiha fun trying to murder his best friend. He'd had no idea that Madara was genuinely upset and felt like a terrible friend.

But really, after those years mocking his pile of paperwork Maddy should have known that Hashirama wouldn't make Madara the next Hokage. "I wouldn't do that to my best friend! Annoying little brothers, on the other hand…" Or right! He should have realized that Maddy wouldn't predict Hashirama wouldn't want him to suffer. Sometimes it was still a little hard to think Uchiha, even if growing up thinking ninja helped.

"Of course I did my best to convince everyone that you were evil incarnate!" Tobirama said, looking very annoyed, so annoyed he was pretending he hadn't heard Hashirama admit he'd set Tobirama up to take the job. "It was my job to market village services! Are you complaining about how many customers specifically asked for your clan because of my hard work? If you're going to be that ungrateful, maybe I should have said that your reputation was exaggerated and you liked fluffy chicks and baby bunnies alive instead of raw!"

"We founded the village with you, and look, it inevitably turned on us!"

"Maddy, are you complaining?" That the Uchiha had a home-grown collection of enemies to humiliate and leave alive to remember for the rest of their lives that they'd had their asses kicked by the Uchiha and couldn't do shit about it?

"…No," Maddy admitted, looking shifty.

"There are only a handful of people who still have the Senju name, and the Uchiha were considered the most evil ninja clan in our village." Hashirama folded his arms. "I destroyed the Senju for you and you didn't even notice?" Was Maddy sick or something?

Hashirama didn't say that the Senju still won the debate over which was the better path to peace, and practically dissolving the clan would keep the fight from being restarted by some idiot who didn't grasp Hashirama's genius and make it possible for future generations of Senju to lose. He'd solved the conflict between the clans by entering into peace and brotherhood with the Uchiha, friendly murder attempts aside, thereby proving that his was the better path to peace. The Senju won, the Uchiha lost, the end.

Honestly, if anything, Maddy should be complaining about how he'd made Konoha such a good deal for the Uchiha, made them prosper and it was an evil plan to make the Uchiha lose the old clan conflict. Because obviously. "Did I hit your head?" he wondered. "All that evil energy from being around the Kyuubi should have made this more obvious to you, not less."

"I'm still slaughtering the descendents of the Uchiha who didn't obey me." Maddy said, folding his arms. "I don't care how easy being police officers made it to have fun abusing power. They could slaughter civilians as they pleased just as easily outside Konoha."

Hashirama and Tobirama shrugged: that was Madara's prerogative as clan head, and anyway if he was really angry with his clan he would have come up with one of his elaborate evil plans to maximize human, or human-demon, suffering instead of promising them clean deaths after they defied him. Aww, Maddy really did love his family, once you translated it out of Uchiha, of course.


Hashirama tossed Tobirama another enemy ninja as soon as Mito came out of the coffin so Tobirama could hurry up and bring Maddy back to life. He wasn't dealing with an army of half-him and half-Maddy babies by himself – Maddy had damn well better get up here and do his share of the parenting.

"Must you use Sand ninjas? They're our allies and will be again as soon as you deal with a few minor matters."

Minor matters: ha. The Sarutobi who had been suckered into taking the Hokage job hadn't given up on making someone else do it.

"Then Sand should be thanking me for reducing the amount of bunglers getting their comrades killed among their forces. My face is right there." He pointed upward at the mountain. The sand ninja really had no excuse.

"I can't be Hokage," he told Sarutobi firmly. "I'm going to be too busy." He supposed he was grateful that being Hokage meant he had a great deal of experience dealing with people acting like children. He supposed he'd be seeing if that applied to large numbers of evil plant children dedicated to the resurrection of a mad Moon Tribeswoman who had achieved goddesshood. Children should have ambitions, but really? "Not it," he added.

"Not it!" Sarutobi and Tobirama hurried to say.

"Not it!" another voice called with glee from the rooftop. "Aww, I said it last! Darn, guess now I have to be Hokage!" the blond boy said, grinning.

Hashirama blinked with surprise as the holy tree senses within him recognized the boy shared his soul. This must be his reincarnation. Should he warn the boy about the Hokage job?

Nah, if he hadn't learned that lesson from experiencing Hashirama's life, then he'd better learn it now so that Hashirama's soul didn't spend even more lives chained to a desk.