[76] The Grown Greenhorns

Chapter 76: The Grown Greenhorns

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Tsunade could only wait so long outside the Reverse Mountain, it was natural for her to assume Hashirama would use this path to return to the Grandline since the only other way was littered with dangers. But knowing him, she soon accepted that he wouldn’t care about the danger on that side and would casually choose the Calm Belts to travel.

It was dangerous, but Tsunade didn’t worry as much as usual. Because if anyone were safe while riding a ship, it would be Hashirama. Despite worrying for his life earlier, she was confident in his abilities enough to know the Sea Kings were no threat to him.

So the only emotion she felt after reaching the conclusion that he used the Calm Belts to return to the Grandline, was annoyance.

“Smartass.”

So that was why he casually revealed his location to the Marines, because he knew she wouldn't be able to catch him.

Tsunade’s next course of action was to go to Loguetown to meet Captain Smoker. According to his report, Hashirama had left a “peculiar item” that was said to be given to her. Smoker seemed nervous to talk about what the item was, which made Tsunade think it must be something of great importance.

So, she left the Reverse Mountain range and went to Loguetown.

There, she received a middle finger.

No, literally, Hashirama had left her a wooden hand, a sculpture of his own hand, that was forming a middle finger. Seven letters were carved on the middle finger, reading “Fuck Off”.

Smoker who had given the item to Tsunade looked a little awkward as he waited for her reaction, while Marianne looked pissed. She couldn’t understand why this guy was acting this way with his sister who loved him so much.

To their surprise, Tsunade broke into a burst of laughter after three seconds of silence.

“That stupid punk.”

Compared to the serious and worrying expression that she had been wearing for the past few weeks, her smile was soul-healing. She released a long breath while smiling as she gently put the wooden hand into her pocket.

“Come on, we are leaving. It’s hard to guess where he will come out from in the Calm Belt, so we will have to be extra vigilant in our search.”

Giving Smoker a few compliments on his work, Tsunade walked out with her cape fluttering behind her, and a confused Marianne following behind her.

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|_Time Skip_|

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After 78 days of searching, the Senju Pirates decided there was nothing more to look around on this side of the Calm Belt.

To begin with, the Calm Belts didn’t have many islands inside them. The few it did have, weren’t that hard to search around for. After all, anybody could tell if an island was a city or a deep forest after one look. Given the geography of this world, the crew did more than a simple look, but there was rarely a need for a thorough search.

However, it wasn’t as if these nearly 70 days were a waste. Other than the expected growth of the girls, the scout of the crew and the super duck – Karoo had also grown a lot. She was faster, and strong, and had even constructed a level of Observation Haki out of pure instinct.

She was constantly in danger of being eaten by Sea Kings after all, and since they were underwater, the only way for her to evade them was to know their location with Haki. So her natural instincts kicked in to give her just that, and now she was more than just a fast duck, she was slippery as hell too.

It would be a lie to say Hashirama wasn’t surprised, but given Karoo’s intelligence, it wasn’t shocking that she had enough willpower to learn Haki. That made him wonder if he could teach her Armament too or not, though he was sure that would take much longer time than this.

After that were the four girls of his crew. While Vivi didn’t train like the others in the definitive sense, she did fight with a lot more Sea Kings than most others in this world, so that helped her strength.

The other girls were strong as well, though they were trained in different sides of expertise than what Hashirama had initially planned for. Their styles couldn’t be the same after all, so Hashirama focused on the thing they were good at, and tried to make it better.

That’s what led to the current situation ahead of Hashirama.

“Today, if you are able to satisfy me, prove to me that all this wasn’t meaningless, we will leave right away. Otherwise, you can continue eating cabbage and continue until day 100.”

Hashirama spoke in an impassive tone as the three girls stood before him, with Vivi and Karoo playing in the far distance. Hashirama was standing on the deck under the three dragon heads and watched the three girls with his lazy eyes.

“You are going to show me a glimpse of your new powers. You can choose to show me any of the things you learned, though I will say if I am displeased with any of your presentations, none of you will pass.”

Mikita looked annoyed, while Nami sighed, and Robin gave him a deadpan look. Hashirama ignored their looks and snapped a finger in Robin’s direction.

“Starting with Robin. Show me something impressive.”

Hashirama leaned back against the railing of the deck and gave her a bored look as if to mock her – that she couldn’t possibly have anything impressive in her pockets. To be fair, he knew everything these three could do – so there couldn’t possibly be anything that’d surprise him, but surprised and impressed weren’t the same.

They could use the same technique he saw them use before, and he might get impressed by just that. Though by now they should know he didn’t show his good emotions when training them.

“Fine.” Robin nodded at his words, as her arms twitched to come up, but she kept them hanging by her side.

She needed to cross her arms to use her powers, though it’s more accurate to say she needed to cross her arms to ‘focus’ to use her powers. In that sense, it was the same reason why Hashirama needed to use hand seals to easily use his Jutsus. In that same sense, it meant she should be able to use her powers without the sign, just like how he could, even if it required more focus.

“Fuuh…”

With her arms hanging beside her, her eyes sharpened as she stared at the air, her head turned towards Hashirama, as she used her power. She could pop her arms from any part of her body, but at the same time, at any spot where her eyes could see.

Now, her eyes focused on his shoulder, his neck-blade shivered as miniature bones of another person started to grow out of thin air, and that bone started to spread in a web – soon forming a small humanoid.

“Ohh!”

“That’s slick!”

Nami and Mikita were enjoying the show, as the humanoid skeleton, which was 5 centimeters tall, moved on its feet. Robin’s eyes were red and bloodshot as she was focusing on the small creature, it moving on Hashirama’s shoulder, climbing by his shoulder-length hair, and reaching near his ears.

It sat down on his ear, using it like a hanger, and waved a hand at the three girls.

“Haah…!”

Robin’s arms flinched back as she released a long breath, the miniature skeleton dissipating into sakura blooms.

The two other girls clapped, and Hashirama’s eyes snapped to lock at them – making them shut up. He was still in the same position, leaning back and arms crossed, with his eyes focused on his ear until now.

“So you used the principle of copying your body parts and tried to make a small version of yourself. But I thought we only advanced up to the part where you could create smaller limbs. It seems you were training in secret.”

Hashirama smiled a little.

“We learned to make flesh limbs, with the final goal being a miniature clone of yourself. But it looks like if you exclude the flesh part, and just try to make the bones, you can successfully make a mini clone. Though that clone can’t control its own body since it lacks a brain, and therefore you had to control it with your own mind. It was hard without using your hand sign, but it wasn’t bad. It’s fairly impressive.”

Hashirama planned to teach her how to make clones. In truth, her power was very similar to his, except she made flesh and he made wood. Hers was a cheap version of his own power, but that also meant she could make a cheap version of nearly all his powers. That was proven by how she could make clones in the canon timeline, after the two-year time skip.

The problem was, that was too hard for her. Also making smaller clones could be very beneficial too. Hashirama himself could make smaller clones, as he could make giant clones, so he just had to teach her the principle of that. However, she couldn’t make small clones yet – since he didn’t allow her to use her hand sign while training.

However, she could make skeleton clones. It wasn’t very practical, but it was quite impressive nonetheless.

Hashirama clapped his hand soundlessly thrice, “Nico Robin pass.”

The clone technique was not the best thing he taught her. No, the best thing he taught her made her a battle machine if she decided to use it. However, she chose to show her clone power, and it wasn’t bad.

Robin sighed in relief with a hand on her chest, for not having to use the other technique since she didn’t like it, and smiled. Shooting Hashirama a proud look, she backed off and went to read a book.

The next one on the line was the blonde, “Mikita, show me something good.”

Hashirama winked at her as Mikita grumbled. Shaking her head, she wore a serious expression and closed her eyes. The next couple of scenes were hard to follow even for Hashirama.

In the One Piece manga, there are four fruits who are said to have a superior version of themselves. It’s said by the mangaka, Eichiro Oda, so there was no denying it.

Flame-Flame Fruit, inferior to Magma-Magma Fruit.

Snow-Snow Fruit, inferior to Ice-Ice Fruit.

Dice-Dice Fruit, inferior to Arms-Arms Fruit.

Lastly, Kilo-Kilo Fruit, inferior to Ton-Ton Fruit.

In hindsight, it made sense, but did it really – in all cases? Sure, Sakazuki had more destructive power than Ace, but if Ace tried he could fly. When Hashirama thought about it for a moment, he realized the case was similar with Mikita and Machvise too.

While Machvise could reach up to 10,000 Tons, Mikita could only reach 10,000 Kg. In that same sense, while Mikita could reach 0.00001 KG, Machvise could only reach 0.00001 Tons. Four zeroes before and after each one, that was the rule. To put it into better perspective, Machvise could lower himself down to 10 grams, while Mikita could reach 0.01 grams.

The difference may not seem much, but that translated to the fact that – Mikita could become 1000 times lighter than Machvise.

So, no, Hashirama didn’t believe Mikita’s fruit was in any way ‘inferior’. Sure it couldn’t cause as much destruction as the other fruit, but this gave the user just as much speed to counter that. A thousand times lighter meant just that much faster, if she could train herself on it – and that’s what Hashirama trained her to do.

Mikita kicked the wood off the deck.

– Swoosh!

And in a single swoop, she vanished and appeared a few hundred meters up in the sky. She didn’t use any umbrella this time, her feet kicking the sky as she easily maintained a hovering status and even moved around like a bird – faster than a jet plane.

It was the technique, [Sky Walk] that Hashirama developed for her, purely out of the idea of the Marine’s [Moon Walk]. He didn’t know how the latter technique worked, of course, but he had enough martial arts knowledge to imitate it from the execution alone – more so since the one to perform it was a woman weighing less than a feather, and not himself.

“Watch me!”

Mikita yelled from the high sky, and kicked the air again. She vanished from her spot entirely, and Nami couldn’t follow her at all. Hashirama could though, as he saw her move in the sky, dancing through the clouds as she was like a bullet through the endless blue sky.

Then, Mikita went downwards towards the ocean, and stopped soon after, throwing her leg downwards in a motion of attack, as it momentarily gained all the weight of the world – to shoot a blade of wind down at the ocean.

The blade cut through the clouds and rushed down from the high sky, and the more it came down the larger it grew. Hashirama watched it become nearly two hundred meters long, as it split the ocean in two – making the blue water turn red, from the sea kings who died from that single blow.

While he was impressed with Robin a little, this was something that made him smile widely. This was fantastic.

Mikita soon returned and landed on her feet beside Nami, and Hashirama had to fight the urge to not go and kiss her – since Nami was still there.

“Pass.” He didn’t say much and just gave her a smile, getting a bright smile in return too. Hashirama cleared his throat and looked at Nami, nudging his nose at her.

“Now, it’s Nami’s turn. Tell me what you want to show me, and I will make the preparations depending on that.”

“Uh…” Nami looked to the side, at the sea. “Can you bring out a Sea King?”

Hashirama didn’t answer it verbally, and just tapped his feet on the floor. Chakra traveled down his feet and controlled the wooden dragon in the middle of the three, as it dove its head down in the sea and poked a sea king gently.

Sea Kings had lowered their attacks on their ship since when they realized winning was hard, if not impossible, but in the end they were just beasts. When poked for a battle, they would come out. When the dragon’s head returned to its position, there was a huge Sea-King the size of a four-story building following right behind it.

“Be quick.”

“Yes.”

Nami kicked the floor, and her feet exploded. As did her hands, exploding to throw her upwards in the air, while painting the air with a smell of explosion.

Nami’s hands were the ones to explode most of the time, with her feet only going off occasionally, as it was better to control this way, as she reached near the head of the enraged sea king in just under three seconds.

Hashirama had come to learn that Mr. Five didn’t use his fruit that well. He wasn’t necessarily trash, but given Hashirama’s knowledge of countless fiction, he didn’t like the ideas Mr. Five had used – as recited by Mikita. So he used Mr. Five’s limits of use as the minimum base of use for Nami, and started putting her flexibility to test.

Rather than teaching her how to make bigger and bigger explosions, he taught her how to make controlled and calculative ones. That allowed her to move through the sky like a reverse shooting star, and her nimble body came in handy as she went closer to the sea king.

– Kroarh!

The sea king roared like a hungry beast, opening its jaw wide to gulp Nami whole, but the ginger girl made her move first.

Nami paused mid-air, floating for a second, as she stretched out one of her hands and used her other hand to form a circle on the palm of the former outstretched hand.

Then, a beam of orangish red slipped from her palm and through the circle.

[Armor-Piercing Shot]

– Shiinggg!

By focusing the path of her explosions into a single point instead of around her whole palm, Nami created a concentrated blast with reduced area of impact, but with enough power to successfully pierce even solid concrete. What that resulted in was a basket-ball sized beam of circular destruction that rushed forward in a straight line, and into the open jaw of the giant fist.

The sky went bright orange, and the sea king’s head evaporated into essence.

The beam ended, and Nami gently landed back on the deck, while the sea king fell on the sea and caused huge waves to rise and fall. Hashirama channeled his chakra at the same time to move the ship far from the incident, reaching a safer spot.

No, it didn’t stop at a safer spot. It continued moving, away from the Calm Belt, as Hashirama gave Nami her pass and moved as agreed.

“Pass.”

“Yay!”

While the crew cheered, the captain moved the imaginary steering wheel to leave the dead sea and enter the Grandline.

The Senju Pirates, now strong enough to survive the rigorous ocean, returned with the intention to conquer it all!

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