The playground was filled with children of all ages, some the older ones were playing ninja, some were playing in the sand, some were playing catch.
None of the children present were older than 12 : it was in the center of the village, mostly a ninja district ; the older ones had graduated and were considered semi adults, while they couldn't exactly marry, they could live alone, earn money and go to war.
The one who would now be called Kaguna knew it : he was the one who established the districts of Konoha that way : so that it would be a matter of course for children living in these district to go the ninja academy.
After walking a few steps, an older child came to him, smiling and asking if he wanted to join him and his friends to train to become a ninja.
He had light brown hair, a bright smile and Kaguna instantly fell a sense of kinship with him.
« Hi, my name is Nawaki, do you want to play ninja with us ?
- Sure"
I mean, Kaguna truly had no choice… It wasn't that he wanted to play with this children but… his mother was watching sharply… What could he say ?
Besides, Tobirama Senju had never played in his whole life. It had always been a challenge, from the moment he was born everyone had expectations for him, and the foremost was that he join the battlefield as soon as possible to replace his family members that had already died there.
His only moments of peace besides training and becoming stronger had been with his brothers, but apart from Hashirama, they all died on the battlefield, either ambushed or from a lack of strength… Most of his cousins and uncles also died that way…
Raised in this atmosphere, Tobirama Senju never had time for himself, he always needed to improve himself, because he knew that if he wasn't enough, he would die like many others…
He never stopped, in his whole life, because there had always been people stronger than him, people that could threaten him, as long as there possibly existed stronger ennemies, he couldn't rest, he couldn't pause, he had to continue and further his strength.
His brother and Madara were monsters and they weren't the only ones.
For people like his brother, strength came almost naturally… If there had been no Madara, he would have still been one of the most powerful people in the world and with Madara's existence, he had a rival that pushed him to take risk and grow stronger.
He learned Senjutsu, he learned sealing jutsu, he developed new jutsus.
And he, with this "small efforts" became the God of Shinobi, the strongest person in the whole world, the strongest person in recent history !
But Tobirama was different, while he was a genius on his own right, he wasn't a monster like Hashirama, he always needed to train, to improve because as long as there were more powerful people in the world, it meant that he wasn't safe and could never be sure that he could protect his family.
His training frenzy never stopped, not after Konoha's creation, not after Madara's death, not after Hashirama's death.
He was always creating new jutsu, experimenting, to be able to survive any difficulty. Finally, he only died because he wanted to avenge his brothers now that Konoha was finally in track and safe from its enemies.
And so, Kaguna spent nearly four hours playing while making new friends (I mean, networking with future allies) :
Nawaki (4 years old), Shinnosuke (3 years old) and Minato (2 years old).
He additionally discovered that Nawaki was in fact Nawaki Senju, grandson of the first Hokage… His grandnephew…
So the feeling of kinship was real.
After playing a few hours, correction : after exercising and training for a few hours with his past life's grandnephew, his mother finally called him.
Leaving regretfully, he promised to come back to play again another day.
Obviously, it wasn't because he was having fun but rather to take care of his grandnephew who he had never known : Tsunade was born in 7 AK, Tobirama died in 20 AK, Nawaki was born in 28 AK and Kaguna in 30 AK.
So yeah, Tobirama spent a lot of time with Tsunade but Nawaki was born quite late : their mother, a princess of the fire Nation was quite sickly and the birth of Tsunade had her bedridden for nearly 10 years. Because of this, with Tsunade and Nawaki's father (Hashirama's son) being the Daimyo's guard, and her being bedridden, Tsunade spent a lot of time with her grandparents.
Anyway, he was only going to continue playing with these guys for three reasons :
- Networking issues
- Spending time with his grandnephew
- Experience what his brother's dream allowed to create : a world where children don't just have to worry about if they and their family are going to survive.
A world where children of different clans can grow and play together.
So yes, he was going to enjoy this new world that was created with they hearts and efforts.
Sure he was also going to put in the effort to become stronger than Hashirama ever was but... Enjoying himself wasn't a bad thing to do, right ? Besides, his mom wouldn't let him train like he used to so...
And a whole year passed by, where Kaguna trained his chakra while not overdoing it for the sake of his growing body but also having fun with the friends he made.