"You are so not going to believe where I've been the last few weeks!" Izuna yelled as he barged into his brother's tent the minute he arrived back at camp.

"Actually, I would." his brother Madara replied. "You've been in camp with the rest of us right up until you vanished last night."

"Huh? Last night?" Izuna replied.

"Yeah, last night you got completely smashed and ran off to do god knows what. The only witness to where you went was equally as smashed as you if not moreso and was telling anyone who'd listen to him that you had sucked yourself into one of your eyes and vanished." Madara replied, sounding somewhat irate at having been woken up. "I was almost willing to believe him until you showed up just now sounding like you usually do after you've finished with one of your "conquests"."

"One? Try like thirty." Izuna replied.

"Thirty? In one night? Like I'll ever believe that." Madara scoffed.

"Not in one night, no. Like I said, I've been gone a few weeks." Izuna said. "I went to this odd universe where I got mistaken for this cockblocking asshat called Sasuke and got dragged to some village called Konoha that an alternate you who was completely bonkers had founded with Senju Hashirama."

"I founded a village with the Senju?" Madara asked incredulously. "You're right, the other me is completely bonkers."

"Yep, and that wasn't even the best part." Izuna replied.

"The best part?" Madara asked, dreading his brother's answer.

"Hashirama got made First Hokage instead of you, or your counterpart rather, and your counterpart turned on the village, and tried to kill Hashirama with the Kyuubi." Izuna replied.

"I tried to kill Senju Hashirama with the Kyuubi? Awesome!" Madara exclaimed. If Izuna had such cool stories every time he woke him up after he'd only gotten about two hours of sleep, he wouldn't be half as irritated when he did so.

"Not so awesome." Izuna said. "Hashirama pulled some trick out of his ass and handed you and the Kyuubi yours. Afterwards, you don't handle the defeat so well, and devote your life to the "The Moon's Eye Plan"."

"The one you came up with when you were high?" Madara asked with a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"Yep." Izuna replied.

"Where were you for all of this?" Madara asked.

"The other me apparently died before you founded Konoha after you, the other you, went nuts and stole my or rather his eyes." Izuna replied as he moved from his position at the entrance of the tent and took a seat on Madara's bedroll. "By the time I ended up in that universe, you were older than that guy that wears his underwear on the outside who keeps following us around, and twice as crazy."

"Oookaaaay." Madara said as he backed away from his brother, almost falling out of the back of his tent as he did so. Dream or not, he didn't want to be anywhere near the brand of crazy his brother had gotten his hands on.

"On the plus side however, the trusting twits in Konoha let me have virtually unrestricted access to their library, and you're not going to believe what I found..." Izuna said with a large shit-eating grin.

"What did you find?" Madara asked, hoping that if he played along, his brother would eventually grow tired of his game and start bothering someone else with his insanity.

"Got a spare scroll?" Izuna asked.

"On the table." Madara replied.

After several minutes of drawing and writing, Izuna presented Madara with the scroll. He initially gave it a cursory glance, but something caught his eye, and he found himself reading the entire thing.

"If this is real..." Madara breathed, barely able to believe what he had just read.

"The Sage of the Six Paths hid his real legacy where that little bastard he promised it to couldn't get at it, which means if we get it, we'll have something to hold over the heads of the Senju which means no Konoha, which means I won't have to worry about you killing everybody."

"What does this have to do with me killing everybody or not?" Madara asked, completely confused at the sudden shift in topic to a completely ludicrous one.

"You mean I didn't tell you?" Izuna asked. "You and one of my great-great-grandchildren, one of the Uchiha ones, not the blond Uzumaki freak of nature, go on a killing spree and wipe out the entire clan except for you, him, and his little brother."

Madara sat there quietly wondering not for the first time whether or not his brother's Mangekyo Sharingan had had a negative impact on his sanity.

"So, how exactly are we going to get to this hellish world of ice and snow that's been closed off to the Senju for centuries?"

"You are not going to believe how insanely brilliant and trusting that Uzumaki brat was." Izuna replied as he picked up another scroll and started drawing something on it...

&!&!&!&!&

"Oh thank Merlin!" Albus Dumbledore exclaimed when he'd looked out the window and found a pair of complete strangers wandering around on the lawn. As the muggles would say, "His prayers had been answered". Getting up from the desk, he raced outside before the men could conclude whatever business they came on.

He'd been fearing that he would have to hire the person the Ministry had chosen for the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor since there had been problems with this year's only two applicants (one had died of old age and failed to be considerate enough to leave a ghost behind, and the other had been arrested for performing illegal experiments on muggles). He wouldn't have minded this too much if the Ministry had selected say, an Auror who was loyal to Fudge, but the Minister had selected that odious Umbridge woman instead. He knew that he shouldn't play favorites or particularly like or dislike certain students, but...Umbridge had been on his list a couple places below Tom Riddle.

If he didn't manage to persuade at least one of the men to consider taking a year out of his busy life to pursue the honorable career of educating future generations, he would be stuck with Umbridge. In order to do so, he would have to catch him first.