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“I am not,” Kotetsu stresses, fingers gripping his kunai blade, eyes frantically darting between shinobi standing in front of him, “related to any of you.”
“It’s fine,” Senju Hashirama says sympathetically, arms raised as if he is currently trying to avoid scaring off a small animal. “You don’t have to hide from your own uncle!”
“What,” Uchiha Madara says, eyes bulging out of his eye sockets, no traces of other emotions visible on his face.
“Madara,” Shodaime Hokage turns around, his red-and-white robes fluttering around him. “Madara! You never told me--you and my baby brother--you!”
Kotetsu is very lost.
The last thing he remembers before waking up, disoriented and not where he is trying to stand his ground now, is reanimated Madara, trying to immolate Tsunade-sama, Mizukage dashing towards Godaime Hokage and trying to avoid the horrifying cage of Susanoo’s ghost-like skeleton ribcage.
He was standing back-to-back with Izumo then, feeling the heat of his partner with his back--the only grounding and reassuring thing that kept him going through the Fourth Shinobi War. Kotetsu had spent so much time being Hokage’s assistant and personal delivery boy--watching as Tsunade was almost annihilated with the attack had unsettled him enough, and he missed a blow to his midsection to one of the horrible plant-people, and he remembers just thinking Izumoizumoizumo before blacking out from the pain, enemy’s fist going all the way through Kotetsu’s guts, familiar coppery taste fresh on his tongue, and--
Then he just wakes up in the forest, surrounding Konoha, firmly believing he is in a genjutsu, forever alert and forever looking to get back to Izumo as fast as possible.
When a patrol in an outdated shinobi dress--or perhaps a variation of samurai wear, Kotetsu isn’t sure--corners him in a cave where he was fleeing, chakra-exhausted and lacking any weapons but the kunai blade he shared with Izumo, Kotetsu did his very best fighting for his life. He was well aware Uchihas were good at putting their targets under a genjutsu--back then, before the massacre, Kotetsu himself was subjected to a couple of Sharingan-induced genjutsus during his training with Mikoto-sensei who was very persistent at readying them to make sure all of her students are adept enough to avoid basic versions of Yin release. Kotetsu had a predisposition to it, and with the help of Mitoko-sensei he had made it far at training his own genjutsu skills--she oft told him that he was nearly as good at breaking and weaving the illusions as a regular Sharingan-wielder, and he was proud of that--Kotetsu was usually picked for missions requiring a genjutsu specialist if Kurenai wasn’t available, seeing as she was a Jonin and he never really wanted to make it past Chuunin.
Kotetsu still missed Mikoto-sensei, sometimes. She was practically a second mother to him and Izumo, back when they were part of her genin team.
When Kotetsu got cornered by the patrol, he tried to use all his remaining chakra to put the platoon under a genjutsu. His shoulder was probably dislodged--he wouldn’t be any good at dealing any damage to them with the kunai blade--so he used whatever remained of his chakra reserves to try and weave a quick illusion, making the attackers see him dash to one side to clash with a shuriken-wielding teen, planning to make a narrow escape and figure out where he could’ve been possibly teleported or what jutsu he was put under by Madara and his plant-like goons.
He didn’t expect the platoon to have any Uchiha, seeing as the only one alive was Sasuke--and that guy who turned evil, Kotetsu vaguely remembers him from the Academy; he was a few years older than him so not particularly important to be paid attention to when you're seven years old--plus Madara, who was too loudly and annoyingly evil to bother using a henge to face a random Konoha Chuunin.
Kotetsu was a good sensor, so he’d spy Madara’s dark chakra from anywhere after feeling it for the first time. He wasn’t appointed a Village Gate Guard for nothing--his sensing abilities were strong enough to notify the Barrier Team at least fifteen minutes prior to a potential enemy arrival, Izumo’s level-headed-ness and strong affinity to Suiton a good grounding effect on Kotetsu’s otherwise way-too curious personality that made him easily distracted despite the flares of chakra of incoming visitors.
So, when instead of Madara or Sasuke or That Guy From The Academy, The Other Uchiha had appeared to dispel Kotetsu’s genjutsu, he was confused. The Other Uchiha looked uncomfortably like Shisui who often trailed after Mikoto-sensei unless she’d appoint him to babysit her kid--albeit dressed in samurai armour, too clunky and too troublesome to put on before the battle, eyes rounder and face softer around the edges.
Other undead Uchihas really shouldn’t have been Kotetsu’s main concern.
Specifically, because he was currently cornered by non-Edo Tensei’d Uchiha Madara, Senju Hashirama and Senju Tobirama--and a bewildered-looking Sasuke clone,--all of whom looked a whole another taste of uncomfortable.
Kotetsu really missed Izumo’s level-headed approach to weird situations. Kotetsu was only really good at coming up with unconventional solutions by slapping multiple jutsus together when Izumo’d lay out the cards and do the strategizing for him.
“Niisan,” not-Sasuke says, face pale and Konohan hitai-ate bright on his forehead. “Tell me you did not.”
Not-Sasuke looks like he is currently fighting a mental breakdown, barely holding himself upright on his trembling knees a few feet away from Kotetsu, eyes wide and disbelieving.
“I did not--how could you even--how could you assume that--!” very much alive Madara says, donned in the same red armour, albeit horrifying purple of the Rinnegan absent from his panicked eyes. “I didn’t!”
“Senju,” Not-Sasuke heaves then, whipping his head at Shodaime, the man’s Hokage robes somehow the cleanest thing in the cave where Kotetsu was cornered in. “Senju, say something.”
Not-dead Hokage just beams, staying silent.
Not-Sasuke lets out a long-suffering groan.
“Sensei,” says a robust-looking kid, very much resembling an Akimichi if only Kotetsu didn’t know the chakra signature of every Akimichi that passed by the Gates personally. “Did you really--?”
The man who looks and sounds and feels like Nidaime groans, burying his face in his palms.
“Senju,” it’s Very Much Alive Madara again, growling, eyes never leaving Kotetsu’s face, bright-red of the Sharingan scanning over Kotetsu’s cheekbones-and-chin coverings. “Senju, what did you do.”
A kid with an x-shaped scar on his chin--very much like councilman Danzou but also not as deranged-looking--hisses at Uchiha Madara, making a move to take a protective stance next to Possibly-Tobirama, body shielding the albino.
Another teen, single line running vertically under the outer corners of each eye, went to go and force himself in front of Possibly-Tobirama too, creating a double-barrier with an Unknown Shisui-Like Uchiha backing Tobirama from the back, Akimichi kid and two other unidentifiable shapes tense on Tobirama’s flanks.
Kotetsu was really lost before, when he first woke up not at the battlefield, and he was exceptionally confused now, some inter-personal beef of his ambushers taking priority over Kotetsu’s inevitable capture.
“I did not do anything,” Very-Alive-Tobirama says, red and piercing gaze scanning Kotetsu’s dark eyes and equally dark hair before returning to shoot a biting glare at Madara. “I told you not to leave any possibly reproductive genetic material in my lab; especially not next to my DNA-infusion experiments.”
Possibly-Madara groans, burrowing his face in his hands.
Possibly-Tobirama’s mouth twitches as he shoots a glance between Kotetsu’s and Madara’s face. “Especially not next to the test-tubes with embryos for the Houki clan, seeing as they requested to be the main test subjects for in vitro fertilisation since their clan head had married a civilian man--”
Not-dead-Shodaime makes a strangled noise, face heating up.
“Otouto! Not in front of the children!”
He pointedly looks in Kotetsu’s direction, who, last time he checked, was nearing his thirties.
Sure, Possibly-Madara, Possibly-Nidaime, Possibly-Shodaime and Not-Sasuke looked closer to their fifties, which Kotetsu was pretty sure had never happened in the real world, but--this was a genjutsu, even if he couldn’t sense it--he had no other explanation to whatever was happening around him right now anyway, and he really didn’t want to go for the second-best theory, which concluded that everything that was happening around Kotetsu was real.
“You mean,” Possibly-Madara growls, eyes shifting between Nidaime’s spiky hair and the same mess on Kotetsu’s head, “that you had hidden that we had a son together that you had never deemed important enough to mention to me, his other parent?!”
“It is literally impossible for me to be related to any of you,” Kotetsu breathes out long-sufferingly, free hand going to tug at his hair. “I am from the Hagane clan. We might be mainly civilians, but none of us were related to any of you, ever.”
“Look,” Shodaime says, way too cheerful for this situation, wildly gesturing at Kotetsu. “He even does the same hair-ripping thing when he’s frustrated! Just like you, otouto!”
Scarred Chin Teen makes a broken sound in the back of his throat.
“I think,” it’s Not-Edo Tensei’d-Madara again, Sharingan on and face projecting unhidden suffering as he scans Kotetsu’s bandaged cheekbones-and-chin again, “that we need to move this discussion somewhere away from the Land of Wind’s borders.”
“Agreed,” says Possibly-Nidaime, his own eyes fiercely piercing Kotetsu’s panicking dark eyes.
Kotetsu’d try to struggle against going with the platoon that looks uncomfortably like early-Konohan shonobi, but--he is aware he has no chance against the Mokuton, which Possibly-Very-Much-Actual Shodaime had already used to corner Kotetsu in the cave originally.
He also would like to hope that, seeing as everyone was having a barely-hidden personal investment in Kotetsu’s well-being, they won’t be very opposed to releasing him from the chakra-suppressing jutsu. He’d love to be able to check who all of them really were, and then find ways to shunshin back to Izumo, still left on the battlefield and not plagued by visions of awkward long-dead demons that persisted on never leaving Kotetsu alone during the travel through the mildly unfamiliar expanses of the Wind Country.
Izumo, Kotetsu thinks, cowering away from an X-Scarred Kid that kept regarding Kotetsu with an analyzing look as if he tried to both dissect him and snog him into another dimension.
The trip back to whatever the squad had called Konoha was going to be a very long one, Kotetsu had thought, nine sets of eyes firmly fixed on Kotetsu’s face.
He should have listened to Izumo and kept his Hatake-like silvery-white hair undyed--or maybe should've taken the contact lenses out from overly-sensitive red-tinted eyes.
Perhaps the Uchihas would’ve stared less at his face if that was the case.