HV - Chapter 24 (Patreon)
Content
Chapter 24: The Oasis & The Desert (3)
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Officer Miss Doublefinger, real name Zala, had eaten the Spike-Spike devil fruit. With curly blue hair, she wore revealing clothes and wore a confident expression all the time.
– Bam!
Her confident expression changed momentarily to an angry one when she was sent flying through the air. She activated her power to become a ball of spikes and sharply fell on top of a tree, penetrating it and avoiding any fatal damage.
She canceled the transformation and freed herself, jumping off the tree and looking around in the hope of figuring out which direction she came flying from.
“No point in looking around, hottie.” A voice spoke, and a boy walked out of the shadows, smiling at her. “Hey, you don’t even look surprised. Not gonna ask how I am here when you saw me somewhere else just a second ago?”
“It’s meaningless to ask such things to a dead body.” Zala scoffed and straightened her right hand, turning her fingers dead sharp.
“Scary,” Hashirama smiled, raised his hand upwards, and revealed his fingers turning tall and sharp. “But I can do that too.”
“…So, a copy-catting fool?” Zala grunted and rushed at Hashirama, her hands ready to cut him into pieces.
Though Hashirama mocked her ability by turning his hands sharp, he was going to lose in a clashing battle. Pointy sure, sharp too, but this wood wasn’t strong enough to clash with her fingers and survive. Thankfully, his plan wasn’t to fight her head-on.
“Everyone, come out!”
Hashirama rushed forward to clash head-on, while six more of himself rushed from the sides, coming out of the shadows and coming at her from a circle.
“Ugh, what the hell is up with your power?” Zala clenched her jaws and attacked the first Hashirama, pushing her sharp fingers right inside his chest. “Die.”
Hashirama didn’t turn into a puff of smoke this time, even though he was a clone. Instead, he turned into a solid piece of wood that was taking the shape of him.
One moment, Zala impaled Hashirama, and the next moment her fingers were stuck inside the solid piece of puppet. She frowned and began pulling out, but it was really stuck for some reason. She did succeed two seconds later, but that much was too late for her when the clones reached her.
“Goodbye, hottie!”
One of the Hashirama’s yelled, his arm turning into a hammer as he slammed it on Zala’s face. Zala was too caught off guard to turn into her spike form and got sent flying a few meters back.
Before she could get back to her feet, one of the clones used Wood Release to drag out a wooden cross from under the ground. Vines came out of the wood and pulled Zala towards it, sticking her figure on the cross. Vines began choking her, causing disruption when she tried to transform into a full hedgehog, and when that happened, another Hashirama rushed forward to slam another large wooden hammer on her face.
– Bam!
Zala’s body throbbed… and then she felt limp. The few parts of her body that were distortedly transformed into spikes returned to normal and her body loosely hung from the cross.
“She is alive, right?” Hashirama asked himself—seeing her chest rise up and down gently. “It seems so. Good, good.”
That counted as one done, along with the two before.
Honorable mention; the carriage driver, who was most likely a Baroque Works agent too, was already out of the game the moment he landed on the ground.
Now, it was time to take care of the more dangerous ones, namely, Mr One.
* * *
Daz Bonez, popularly known as Mr One, had run after the culprit vine that pulled Mr Two to the depth of the forest.
Daz had multiple shots to be able to cut the vine and free Mr Two, but didn’t take them. Because he wanted to get a lead to where this brat was hiding.
After nearly a minute of running through the forest and watching his fellow officer get dragged through the rough terrain of the forest—who lost consciousness at one point when his head slammed on a tree—Daz found himself standing in front of the famed Hashirama Senju.
Daz braced himself and looked at the boy with narrowed eyes.
The vine that was Hashirama’s left arm, retracted back to take the shape of a normal arm, consequently putting Mr Two’s throat in his handgrip.
“I had to drag him further than initially planned because of you,” Hashirama said, throwing the unconscious Mr Two behind him as the tree nearby parted in two like a mouth and devoured the body within it, only keeping the face visible. “But it does make my job easier. Let’s start.”
Hashirama didn’t want to play around with Daz. This time around, he rushed forward with all seriousness—clasping his hands in front of his chest. Under his command, the trees nearby moved their branches to strike at Daz.
Daz was not taken aback. He stood on his spot, his body moving in a smooth flow, and his sharpened forearms cut through the tree branches that came to attack him. He overpowered the trees that came to attack him, though ‘overpowered’ may be the wrong word to use here—after all, it wasn’t even a match. Attacks from the trees were useless as they were cut the moment they touched Daz.
If Crocodile was a direct counter to Hashirama, a Blade-Human like Daz wasn’t so far off either.
However, thankfully, Hashirama wasn’t a one-trick pony—Wood-Release was just one of his powers.
“You are approaching me?” As he finished all the trees that attacked him, creating a small clearance inside the forest, Daz clenched his jaws and looked at Hashirama, who was walking towards him.
Hashirama raised his right hand, his lips forming a grin simultaneously as a blue ball of spinning energy appeared, hovering on top of his palm.
“I can’t put a hole in your chest without getting closer.” Hashirama Senju said as he kicked the ground and appeared right in front of Daz, at a speed that shocked the older man, and pushed the ball into Daz’s chest. “Rasengan!”
With a groan, Daz threw his arms at Hashirama right before the ball could hit him. Daz’s forearms curved into blades, and those blades began rotating fast, turning his forearms into mini-tiller blades that could shred anything they touched.
That “anything” included Hashirama’s entire body that was close to Daz, getting touched as his body turned into splinters of… wood?
“What-”
Daz’s shock was interrupted as Hashirama’s severed, wooden arm slammed on his chest regardless. With a loud groan, Daz felt as if he was hit by a bomb and got sent flying backward.
His back hit a tree in the far, the trunk of the tree unwrapped creepily and devoured him inside it, closing with only his face revealed. Daz groaned, trying to free himself, and felt the trees cutting from within, however before he could fully succeed, another Hashirama appeared in front of him, dropping from the sky.
Daz was shocked, pausing for a moment, and that allowed Hashirama to turn his hand into a wooden hammer that slammed down on Daz’s face.
– Bam!
Once, twice, thrice, and more—Hashirama didn’t stop until Daz’s eyes went blank. Even then, he attacked three more times, while the tree's interior squeezed down on Daz’s body, making him lose consciousness for sure.
– Bam!
With one last slam on Daz’s broken face, causing the tree to break down because of the force, Hashirama stopped and released a big breath.
“I was lucky with them.” Hashirama clapped his hands, calling out to nearby clones who landed right behind them. He gestured to one of them to take Daz away from here and asked, “Is that thing ready yet? Sir Crocodile will negate all these tricks I used against Daz and Zala. I wouldn’t be able to win without that thing.”
“It’s ready,” one of the clones replied. “Main is ready to come out any time.”
The Main hadn’t yet entered the battlefield at all, all the Hashirama here were clones. It was hard to control them, and the Main knew he would get a deadly migraine that might last a month after this session was done, but there was no other choice.
“I see.” The other Hashirama replied. “Then we should go and weaken Crocs to make it easier for Main. Let’s go.”
With that order, the clones didn’t waste a second before rushing to where the main fight was happening.
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Master4thWall Note: A whole 16 years, or in this case, 8 years (due to the lack of motivation earlier) was enough to learn Rasengan. But would that help against a Logia?