"Hello? Is anyone home?"
Madara lifted his head. What he saw made him burst into tears on the spot.
Garfield, who had clearly come to Madara's house to freeload a meal, was sitting cross-legged on Kurama's head.
Worse still, Kurama had a smaller Nine-Tails perched proudly on his head.
Meanwhile, Madara himself was eating in his own courtyard. This was bullying. Open, shameless bullying.
"Garfield! Kurama! Shōkyū!" Hashirama waved enthusiastically from above.
Garfield glanced down at Madara, then casually patted the massive fox beneath him.
"Kurama, look at you. You're terrifying. You scared Madara so badly he's crying."
Kurama bristled. "That's nonsense. He was clearly smiling at me."
"Are you blind?"
"In our village, this expression is a smile! What are you trying to say?"
Garfield stared at him in silence. At that moment, Garfield concluded that the Nine-Tails was a barbarian.
As a wise and enlightened being, Garfield decided not to argue with a single-celled fox.
He hopped down from Kurama's head, the little Nine-Tails still lying lazily on top of the big one, and strolled over to Madara's dining table. she leaned in and sniffed the plate.
"Madara." Garfield asked casually, "Are you still planning to eat this fish?"
Madara stared at Garfield. Then at Shōkyū.
Then at Hashirama. "You people… are plotting something, aren't you?"
"What?" Garfield said innocently.
Madara snorted, picked up the grilled fish, and shoved it into his mouth in one bite. He chewed twice.
"Cough, cough, cough!" It was stuck.
Pap! Pap!
Hashirama hurried over and patted Madara's back several times. "Spit out the bone! Come on!"
Madara finally hacked up the fishbone, breathing heavily.
"There," Hashirama said brightly. "Feeling better, brother?"
Madara's eyes went bloodshot.
"How many times do I have to tell you," He snapped, "I am NOT your brother!"
"I am an Uchiha! You are a Senju! Our parents have nothing to do with each other, nothing!"
Facing Madara's fury, Hashirama scratched his head.
"…Brother. Brother Madara. Don't get upset. If you don't want to admit it, then don't."
Madara roared. "I, Uchiha Madara, swear that I have NOTHING to do with Senju Hashirama in this life, the previous life, or the one before that otherwise may lightning strike me down!"
CRACK!
A thunderbolt split the sky.
"…" Madara stared at the black spot.
The lightning struck exactly where he had been standing a moment earlier, blasting a smoking hole into the ground.
Uchiha Izuna stared at the crater, then slowly looked up at his brother.
"…Brother?"
"…What?"
"…Maybe we should… check the family records?"
"Don't."
Madara turned stiffly toward Garfield, who was standing beside the smoking pit.
"Orange cat," He demanded, "Did you do something just now? Is your goal to steal my brother?"
Garfield rolled his eyes.
"If I didn't take your brother away, he'd die sooner or later. Do you think I'm so bored that I'd help you babysit him?"
He sniffed disdainfully. "What, is your family richer than mine? Stronger than me?"
Madara lifted his chin proudly. "My family is rich. Tens of millions."
Clang.
Out of thin air, mountains of gold bricks appeared, stacking neatly in front of Madara and cutting off his next sentence.
Hashirama immediately dove onto the gold, hugging it with sparkling eyes.
At that exact moment, Senju Tobirama arrived to drag his brother home for dinner.
He stopped, and his face twisted in pure disgust.
"Garfield," Tobirama said coldly, "Can you please take my idiot brother away from someone else's front door?"
Hashirama protested, "Brother, don't be like that!"
"You're embarrassing the clan."
"But… that's a lot of gold."
"I'm your brother."
Hashirama muttered under his breath, "That's not worth as much as these gold bricks. And besides, you won't die."
Snap.
"NO!"
Tobirama grabbed Hashirama by the legs and dragged him straight out of Madara's courtyard like a dead dog.
Hashirama clung desperately to a gold brick, scraping it across the ground as he was hauled away.
Izuna glanced at the remaining gold, picked one up, squeezed it, then took a bite.
"…Brother," Izuna said carefully. "It's real."
Madara's shoulders slumped instantly.
These gold bricks were worth more than the combined treasuries of the Five Great Nations. His 'tens of millions' suddenly felt laughable.
"Hmph."
￣, ￣
"Compared to real wealth, you're still a bit green." Garfield said lazily.
"Unless that super-rich Bat shows up, there's really no point comparing with us."
Madara had nothing to say.
Garfield raised one paw. In an instant, every gold brick vanished, except the ones still clutched in Hashirama's arms and Izuna's hand.
Then Garfield leapt back onto Kurama's head.
"Come on, Kurama." He said. "Let's find a river and catch some fish."
"Alright."
The Nine-Tails bent his legs and sprang forward.
With a single leap, fox and cat vanished from Madara's courtyard, leaving behind only a smoking crater, scattered gold dust, and Madara's hollow stare.
After Garfield left, Izuna held a gold brick in one hand and helped his brother up with the other.
"Brother." Izuna said gently, "Don't be sad."
"Just like Garfield said, following him is still better than following Death."
"But!"
"Onii-san."
"Ododo."
The two brothers looked at each other, eyes full of sincere familial affection.
✦••┈┈••✦••┈┈••✦
They arrived at the river.
This world was absurdly generous. Even the fish in a narrow mountain stream could grow several meters long, their flesh dense with chakra and rich flavor.
Garfield stared into the water, swallowing instinctively. "…This is good civilization."
"Nine-Tails," Garfield said, rubbing his paws together. "You're up."
"Why me?"
"You're big. You eat a lot. If you don't work, someone will kill you."
"You eat a lot too," Kurama shot back.
He had personally witnessed Garfield's appetite. Despite the cat's small body, his consumption bordered on cosmic disaster.
"I eat a lot, but I'm small," Garfield replied reasonably.
"If I were big, I'd pay more labor tax. Besides, how about I catch the fish, and you grill them?"
Kurama immediately rejected that idea internally.
Given Garfield's cooking skill, which could char water, Kurama chose the lesser evil.
"I'll catch them."
The Nine-Tails waded into the river, chakra spreading outward. At the deepest point, nearly ten meters down, he locked onto the largest presence.
With a violent plunge…
BOOM!
Water exploded upward, spraying more than ten meters into the air as the river split apart.
Garfield instantly teleported onto a nearby rock to avoid getting soaked.
The small Nine-Tails perched on Garfield's head gagged twice.
"Cat." Shōkyū groaned weakly, "Can you at least warn me before teleporting? I'm going to throw up."
"Don't puke on my head," Garfield snapped. "You're a Kyuubi, your resistance is embarrassing."
"Our clan is still young!"
"Hey, it's good to be small."
"Cat, what are you planning now?"
"Thinking." Garfield suddenly pointed dramatically at the sky.
"Sister Pandora," She announced solemnly, "The Cat is about to attack the innocent, adorable underage Shōkyū."
A terrifying presence erupted from above Garfield's head. Pandora descended.
Shōkyū immediately seized the opportunity.
"Yes!" Shōkyū added rapidly. "He's been plotting it for a long time! Very suspicious and extremely criminal!"
Pandora's eyes flashed.
"Garfield!" She said coldly. "You dared target an underage Shōkyū?"
"Please die."
WHAM!
The mace came down.
"Ow, OW~WAIT!" Garfield rolled across the rocks, howling.
"Pandora Godzilla! Watch the mud!"
"I, Garfield, am a renowned Great Devourer of the universe! And you hit me like this?!"
"Then I must educate you properly," Pandora replied flatly.
"You degenerate pervert cat."
"Oh, Ancient One above," Garfield cried, "Can you please take this violent woman back?!"
Garfield was beaten so thoroughly that Pandora eventually sat down on Shōkyū's massive body and began splashing water with her like nothing had happened.
Garfield lay sprawled on a rock, staring blankly at the sky.
In the distance, Pandora and Shōkyū were playing in the river, laughing and splashing far too harmoniously.
"…This is exhausting."
This fox called him a perverted cat whenever it met she. And yet, it got along suspiciously well with Pandora.
What was the secret between those two?
Did they secretly travel through time together? Garfield glanced downward, then shuddered.
"…I don't think I can keep living like this." He muttered to himself.
"These two are too violent. I'm afraid one day they'll team up and beat me to death."
He sighed deeply. "Alright. I'll go to the pet hospital first."
"…Farewell, you two."
꧁𓊈𒆜༺⚜༻𒆜𓊉꧂
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