“Oh my god, Obito, I don’t care that you keep turning our roommates into mindless zombies devoted to serving your will, but in the name of everything holy, at least stop putting them in thrall when you're singing Taylor Swift songs in the shower.”

Zabuza steels himself, breathes out. Remembers he can move, that he can speak, and slowly, carefully slides to his knees. Not a position he would take for anyone else, even Mei if she ever wore the Mizukage's hat, not after a lifetime spent clawing his way up from the streets and into a place of his own power. But—gods are something different. They have to be, or they can't offer miracles, and Zabuza needs that miracle right now. “I was told that you help those seeking justice,” he says.

“Thank you,” he says, and the words feel like they don’t fit right in his mouth. What are you supposed to say, really, when someone gives you a piece of their spirit-form? Especially under these circumstances. Shisui wishes treason came with some kind of manual. Maybe a book full of helpful hints. When plotting to overturn decades of hatred and stop a war by lying to the whole world, be careful not to offend the man giving you his teeth to wear as earrings.

The creature chuckles, and as Genma watches his upper body shifts, changes. He loses the more monstrous features, and a moment later a blue-skinned man with a shark’s tail is hauling himself all the way up to sit on the bank, his tail still dangling in the water. “No one has to get hurt,” he says, and deliberately sets Genma's knife on the grass. “You unlocked my prison. I'm not going to eat the guy who helped me out.”

There's something in the water.

“There's something down there,” Tobirama says when he surfaces.