[6] Lurking Lizard Sets His Eyes

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Chapter 6: Lurking Lizard Sets His Eyes

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In the morning, Tsunade Senju woke up with her little brother in her arms, hugging her softly and sleeping with a relaxed expression.

She felt absolutely at peace seeing him like that. Her parents' goal was a future like this, where their children could sleep without any worries. Tsunade felt proud of herself for being able to deliver such a life to Hashirama.

That's why she felt somewhat guilty for sharing that story with him— to spread her spark of revenge to him. In the worst-case scenario, both he and she might die at the Pirate's hands.

Oh well, even if they died, at least they'll die together. Dying with him won't leave her with any fucking regret.

Tsunade carefully got up from the bed and made her way to the washroom to get fresh. Once done, she wore a sports bra and short pants to go cook breakfast. They ate in a restaurant yesterday due to it being Shira's birthday, so Tsunade decided to cook his favourite meal today.

Around the end of the cooking session, she heard him walk to the dining table and look at her while rubbing his eyes before speaking.

"I didn't mind you sleeping in your underwear, but really, why are you wearing such revealing clothes in broad daylight?" He asked, his tone dry. "I am growing older, you know."

Hearing him, she recalled how she was wearing nothing but her white undergarments, with a denim jacket covering her top.

Tsunade's lips stretched to form a smile involuntarily. So cute. She hummed as she finished the dish, turning to look at him. "It's just the two of us, it won't matter even if we are naked."

"You really should get yourself a man."

"Why would I when I already have you?" She turned to grab his cheeks, cuddling them softly. "How can any other man compare to my Shira, hm~?"

"..." his dry look didn’t change before he turned around and left for the washroom, making her break into laughter.

"Hey, be quick with your hands~ the food will go cold." She tried to tease him once more, though she doubted if he understood this joke or not.

When he was back and eating in front of her, she suddenly remembered something else she had to tell him.

"Mhm, that's right, Shira." Tsunade gulped her food as she looked at him. "You know Warlord Crocodile? Yesterday, he sent me a letter, inviting me to join his group and help protect Alabasta. What do you think?"

Hashirama frowned for an instance before feigning indifference.

…That was one thing that Tsunade had noticed over the years. He did it rarely, but sometimes he gave her a strange reaction before quickly hiding it. She wondered what that was about.

—-

'So Crocodile is finally targeting me, huh?' Hashirama thought after hearing his sister's words. 'I expected him to do that much earlier, honestly. Given I have been putting a middle finger to all his plans.'

But then again, it surely took him some time to figure out who the hand behind the overnight forests were in Alabasta.

After the day when he made his backyard into a mini-forest, King Cobra came to inquire what had happened and they lied to him that it was Hashirama's devil fruit ability. That got the King hyped, as his declining Kingdom would greatly benefit if Hashirama agreed to create forests for him.

Hashirama did agree, with Cobra offering him the job as a "mercenary" who fought against the drought that ate away this country. Hashirama went from one city to another in this country and populated forests around the cities overnight.

People called it a miracle, as Hashirama had asked to keep his identity a secret from the general public. He didn't want too much attention due to the many big and small threats and annoyances that would come along with that attention.

However, it seemed Crocodile had finally managed to figure out his identity and was targeting him via his sister.

"Don't go," Hashirama told Tsunade, who raised an eyebrow. "I don't like how he looks."

She blinked before breaking into laughter. "Yeah, he does look somewhat hideous. But to not go just because of that? You know, joining him will give me opportunities to fight many pirates, right? That'll allow me to grow stronger and faster. To not accept such a beneficial offer just because…"

He stared at her, a small frown on his face as she trailed off, seeing which she smiled awkwardly and shrugged. "Okay, fine. Come give onee-sama a kiss and maybe I will consider your words."

Surprising her, he didn't protest like usual and stood up, walking over to her and grabbing her face before pulling her to a kiss. Tsunade was too stunned to react as his lips touched hers before the brief kiss ended. She could only stare at him with an agape mouth as he went back to his seat.

"Uh…"

"That much enough?"

"Uh… y-yeah, i-it is." Tsunade gulped and rapidly shook her head. "I didn't mean that sort of kiss, though, Shira. You should only kiss like that to girls you love."

"I love you, though?" He asked in confusion, tilting his head and giving her a strange look.

Tsunade knew what sort of love he meant, but still, as she watched him say that so casually, she couldn't help but feel a bit strange.

…Suddenly realising one day he will have a family of his own, one where she won't be included, it would be a lie to say she didn't feel hurt and empty.

'...No. This isn't right.' Tsunade sighed as she understood she needed to stop these feelings somehow unless one day she did something that he would hate her for. 'Maybe I should set him up with Vivi… a Princess as a future wife sounds fine to me.'

She decided, unwilling to let this ‘joke’ grow into something bigger.

* * *

The next day, Hashirama woke up in the earliest with two small hands shaking his body.

“Hey, wake up- Shira!” a soft, childish voice called him.

Hashirama groaned, opening his eyes and immediately finding Vivi sitting on top of him.

“I told you to not call me that.” he said, rubbing his eyes before glaring at her.

Vivi  pouted, “But you don’t mind when Tsunade does that!”

“Because she’s my sister and you are not.”

“But I am your friend!”

“That’s not enough to call me that,” he looked at her dryly, grabbing her waist and putting her to the side. “Just Hashirama is fine. Anyway, why’re you here so early?”

“Let’s go play! We haven’t played in weeks!”

“We did… three days ago.”

“Same thing.” Vivi hugged his arm. “Tsunade told me to take you out since otherwise you are scared to go alone. Today I had a meeting with the Suna Suna Clan, so I thought why not take you with me?”

He was scared to go outside? Wow, his sister was ruining his reputation as the cool kid.

The Suna Suna Clan, on the other hand, was a group made by some children who do childish things. Hashirama didn’t like them, and neither did any of them liked him since that one time when he beat up their leader, Koza, when the boy was being annoying.

Due to the changes brought up by Nefertari Titi being alive, and also Hasirama fixing the drought problem in most places around the Capital— Koza and his parents hadn’t left for Yuba yet. Though from what Hashirama was hearing, King Cobra planned to send himself to Yuba in order to fix the dry land there. Cobra hadn’t done that earlier because nobody lived in that place so it wasn’t of the utmost importance.

In any case, these changes meant the Suna Suna Clan was still a thing and hadn’t been disbanded as Koza hadn’t left the capital, and Vivi planned to take him to those kids.

“I don’t want to,” Hashirama rejected outright and just moved to the washroom to get freshed up. “Stop following me.”

Vivi was forced to stop as he closed the door on her face.

“But but! I wanna play with you!” Vivi tried from outside the door.

“Then let’s do that after I come out of the washroom. Why should we go to the Suna Suna Clan?”

“Because I wanna play with them too!”

“...”

—-

In the end, due to the constant annoying voice of hers, Hashirama agreed to accompany her to the “Suna Suna Clan”. Seriously, who came up with that name?

“Hey, why are you bringing a book?” Vivi complained aloud while he and she walked towards the outskirts of Alubarna where the clan’s ‘HQ’ was located. “You are not fun, Hashirama.”

“It’s for your Kingdom’s own good, this book.” He pointed at the book with a sigh. “You don’t know how my power works.”

“Then explain to me!”

“I will not.” Hashirama ignored her and focused on reading the book once more— the book titled [Plant Life].

How Hashirama’s tree creation worked was simple— he could only create trees he was very familiar with, or had scanned using his chakra. The second wasn’t possible for all trees, since not all sorts of trees were available in Alabasta’s rough atmosphere. But the first one meant he could read about an ancient plant that has ceased to exist at this point, and upon reaching a certain understanding, he could create that exact tree using his powers.

This helped his sister greatly, who was in constant demand of rare plants due to her job and hobbies.

“Hmph!” Vivi scoffed, pouting and running away from him. “You are rude!”

She didn’t know how his powers worked, but at least she knew what powers he had at all. Only a handful of people knew he was the reason behind- why forests suddenly appeared on Alabasta, since he didn’t want unwanted attention. That's one reason why the little old Crocodile needed two years to figure out the hands behind the forests, at all.

Hashirama didn’t run after Vivi, and rather tried to follow her presence using Observation Haki— to no avail. He had yet to unlock that.

Few minutes later, Hashirama found Toto, Koza’s father, working in the field. Upon asking him if he had seen Vivi, he got the direction in the west. Moving there, Hashirama found a spectacular scene ahead of him.

Vivi was shaking terribly as she watched the scene in front of her— every member of the Suna Suna Clan was on the ground, groaning in pain while their leader tried to fight two grown-up men who had swords in their waist.

Both middle-aged, one was a fat man with black hair, while another was muscular, and had red hair.

“Huh, this kid ain’t dead yet?” the fat man asked, chuckling as he slapped one of Koza’s clumsily swung club attacks. “Look at him, kekh.”

“K-koza!” Vivi yelled seeing Koza fly far and fall on his back. “What is happening here?!”

“Huh- Vivi?” Koza noticed the girl as his eyes widened in worry. “Run, Vivi! These guys are after you!”

“H-huh–”

“We will keep you safe, Vivi.” one of the knocked up guys said, standing up. “You run away, we will keep them busy!”

The bandits laughed at that. They clearly weren’t taking the children seriously, and it made sense why that was so. Both bandits rather looked at Vivi before starting to walk towards her, kicking anyone out of the way when they tried to interfere. At last, when the men had closed the distance almost entirely, Vivi took a step back before turning around and running.

Running— until her face hit Hashirama’s chest who was standing just behind her.

“What a scaredy cat.” Hashirama smirked down at her, making her eyes shake in panic. She opened her mouth to warn him to run as well, but before she could speak Hashirama handed his book to her. “Keep it safe.”

Then, as the bandits approached, he kicked the ground, vanishing from everyone’s sight and reappearing between the two men, in the air. Everyone paused, and time seemed to slow down as Hashirama spun rapidly in the air. His legs seemed like the fans of a helicopter as they hit the two men in their necks and heads, one after another, continuously, until both men just stopped groaning in pain and dropped to the ground, unconscious.

“There,” Hashirama dropped on his feet, dusting off his hands. “Enough playing for today.”

Everyone, including Vivi, fell into silence after they watched the scene unfold. That was… simply astonishing to their childish senses.

Vivi watched with a slightly agape mouth as Hashirama slowly walked back to her before casually pulling her in a princess carry. She gasped, stuttering, but he ignored her and just jumped away from there, moving towards the palace.

“Let’s not stay here any longer. We should report to your father.”

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