AN: Wassup, so Take gets a new outfit for this arc while its happening and I just thought I'd give some refernces for why it looks the way I described it, that being because its based off of Ozymadias' outfit in F/GO as well as Bayek's normal outfit in Assassin's Creed Origins, because I really like both of their outfits.

Chapter Title: Fashion Sense
Arc 5 Part 1

I was here again.

In the Uchiha district.

A ghost town within the lively village of the leaves we were supposed to call home and defend with all our lives, not that I ever really thought like that. I didn't care for the village, I didn't have a love for its inhabitants, I thought nothing of the Shinobi above my rank, I held no allegiance to the Hokage.

How could I offer my love to something that never seemed to share it back?

It wasn't like I knew Lady Tsunade all that well, it wasn't like I got to chat with Hiruzen before he went and died against Orochimaru. Obviously I never met Lords First, Second and Fourth so there wasn't anything for me there either, yet I was expected to think that they were my heroes for being grand people. All I could see was a foolish man with enough power to stomp out the moon if he wanted, someone who's grudge got the better of them and sacrificed himself to give his student the position. Then a man that was quickly overwhelmed by the truths of the shinobi world and the actions he had to make and pawned them off on his loon friend, after that it was the kid who was too smart for his own good and yet entirely too willing to kill himself leaving his son behind if it meant removing a beast and finally a drunk that while she's sobered up she's still dependent on her old teammates for help in spite of her strong personality.

None of that was really relevant though was it?

Because I was here again.

The Uchiha district, the ghost town within the village hidden in the leaves.

I had come over to see how he was doing and asked if he wanted to hang out or train, I even waited at his door for twenty odd minutes after knocking and calling his name before I remembered where he had gone.

I was still waiting here even, staring out at the sky from his balcony.

The sun was high in the sky blaring its midday glare down upon the world with few clouds in sight to block out the sky and cast shade.

Turning around and heading back through the sliding door into the bland almost spartan like room I noticed something I hadn't seen before, there was a letter sitting on the low bookshelf under the window of his room. It was next to his framed photo of our team- Asuma was behind us with a big smile, his hands resting on mine and Sasuke's shoulders, I was on the right side and Sasuke was on the left with Hinata in the middle. He was scowling at something while I had my hand retracting from tapping Sasuke's shoulder while I laughed.

Picking up the envelop I realized it had something written on it.

"To Takezou" was all it said.

I opened it up and found a piece of paper that was blank aside from the center of the page where it just had-

"Sumimasen deshita" or "I'm sorry for what I did."

At the very bottom in the left corner was his name signing it.

His pristine handwriting.

Man.

I almost wish I hadn't spotted this and it had gone on unnoticed for the rest of time, until the day he returned. It reminded me of something I heard a long time ago, it didn't really make any sense but at the same time it kind of did.

Never say goodbye. If you don't say goodbye, then you aren't really gone, you just, aren't here right now.

He had said goodbye with this letter though.

A sigh escaped me as I sat down on the side of the bed and put the letter back where it was.

Well at least this wasn't as bad as the few times my mind has gone blank and I walk around the Uchiha district talking to him and having conversations, a bird would chirp and I'd be brought back to the present and realize that it was all in my head, that I had just walked around chatting with no one for an hour. It was one of those things you didn't want people to find out about because then they'd know how crazy or off kilter you really were, so no one knew about this. No one.

Though when I looked back on them it made sense that they were in my head because I could see colour in both of my eyes, whereas in real life here I hadn't been able to see colour since around the time I went to the Land of Snow. because as it happens I lost most of the ability to see colour in my left eye back then and now it was shades of black, white and grey in it. I hadn't told anyone and it was pretty annoying whenever colour came up and I had to fill out reports and stuff where often it was a requirement to give descriptions of people we fought.

Luckily for me though I had a team that was willing to remind me of what their descriptions were.

It didn't matter now anyway.

Without looking back I walked out of the apartment closing the door behind me and locking it, walking for a few minutes led me down the stairs of the building to the ground. Passing several small planters filled with roses.

Not before long I was back out onto the main street where the sounds of village life filled my ears again.

[Still Looking Back]

It was a few weeks later now and I was finishing up a lesson with my Aunt where she continued to show me how to teach children or more specifically she showed me how to keep their attention and make learning fun.

She said she had some kids in mind for me to teach, said that they had signed up recently and that having kids that were new would be better for me because I would grow and learn with them. Another plus side being that they wouldn't know any better if I was flubbing it.

So there was that at the least.

Anyway I was leaving my Aunts wasn't I?

There was something to be said about that though wasn't there? I wasn't going straight home from Ume's like I might normally, I was headed for the training ground Sensei usually asked us to head to before missions for that exact reason.

I was in my Konoha blues so to say, normally when I was at Ume's I wore a Gi or Kimono depending on what I found first but that was mostly because I didn't have many different outfits and Kaede brought me Kimono's all the time despite not wearing them herself. I still don't know why, the only reason my original Ninja outfit was normal clothes was because I brought them myself.

Maybe I should ask her about why?

Actually...

Didn't I wear one back at my grandparents' when we went for that fishing trip?

It was Mum's supposedly wasn't it? Whatever happened to it? I had been wearing it when the explosion happened after all.

…

That's not important is it?

Right so the training grounds.

Sensei wanted to do a B-Rank with us, he didn't say who our third was going to be so I was assuming that it would just be Him, Hinata and me on this one. When I finally did arrive though what I found was Sensei smoking while standing under the tree I had sat up in so many times, Hinata was waiting next to him reading a book I didn't recognise.

"I thought I told you to get dressed in clothes for hot weather?" Asuma said as I got closer.

"And I told you I needed to buy some because all I have are Kimono's." I replied as I reached into my pocket for my wallet which I had brought along with me.

"I thought you brought clothes for that mission to the Land of Snow, what happened to those?"

"Yeah but I don't really feel like wearing heavy insulated clothing while in the desert- and not to mention this seems like a lot of effort to travel to Sunagakure just to pick up some rich lord." waving my hands flippantly I watched as Sensei shrugged at me.

"Well hurry up then- we have to be gone within half an hour." Asuma pointed at me with his right hand motioning for me to leave.

I turned and left without even getting a chance to actually say hello to either of them let alone ask about who we were supposed to be getting for a third or whatever.

[Dress Code]

It took me a few minutes to leap through the village to one of the closest shinobi stores that I could find.

Once I was actually in it and I started looking around I immediately gravitated to a small section that had a bunch of highgrade material desert wear, I snagged a white hooded shawl that went down to my waist then found some similarly white with black and gold accented gloves that went up to the middle of my forearm that had padding for armour and lastly I snagged these slightly baggy black shozoku pants that were padded inside for armour as well though they had a white skirt like thing that was open at the front assumably for movement.

I also took up the opportunity to buy a new whet stone because I had needed a new one for a while, aside from that though I did buy a Chokuto with a black and gold ribboned hilt/handle. I brought a new sword because I had a feeling any sword I brought wasn't going to make it back, so a new sword and some ninja wire for those bracelets that dispensed it since those were super useful last time.

There was a changing area for trying stuff on in the shop so I put all of it on before I walked out, the sword was sitting on my hip strapped onto the waist of the pants and the hood was down once again reminding I needed a haircut- now that my wallet was significantly lighter I left to the store, went home to drop my clothes off and quickly threw what I needed into my backpack. I put the new wire into the bracelets then set out saying bye to my parents as I left.

By the time I got to the main village gate it was midday and my team was there along with team seven making me think about the fact that this happened at least twice now, where we had been paired up with them. I know Hinata had done a few missions with them and I had done a couple.

Everyone was dressed in light clothing, even Sensei and Kakashi were wearing thinner versions of their usual gear. Though I realised I stood out.

I stood out alot.

Why was I the only one dressed for the dessert instead of just a hot day in the land of fire?

Sensei was smirking and I could see Kakashi trying to not look in my direction.

I already paid for the outfit so it's not like I was going to return it all.

"Takezou what's that on your chest?" Asuma said his interest was taken from my fashion choices to my bare chest- yes I was shirtless, the desert is hot and I didn't want to be wearing sweaty clothing.

"Huh? What do you mean?" I was confused as I stopped in front of him while I ignored Kiba laughing and Sakura's wide eyes that seemed to have found something that surprised her, Hinata's face was flushed.

"This-" he poked my chest parting the already slightly open shawl.

Looking down I found something I had forgotten I had.

It was a snake slithering up an arrow that had its head replaced with a rose, around the snake and arrow was branches and vines with more flowers- this was in the middle of my chest. The arrow was for Kyudo obviously but the rest of it was just because it looked cool. My tattoo, I also had a blue monarch butterfly on my left bicep, but that one wasn't visible at the moment.

"Right, I forgot about that" and I had, it wasn't like I looked at myself shirtless in mirrors ever so I had just forgotten.

"How do you forget about something like that? It must've taken hours." Sensei said, baffled.

"Well it took multiple sessions other than that I really don't know what to tell you, I just forgot…. Can we go now? I'd really rather not continue having everyone stare at me like this."

Eventually we finally left on the three day journey to the Land of Wind.

The first day of running was fine and nothing happened thankfully, plus I got to cook our meals at night so I was happy to be back doing that again. It had been a long time since I had cooked on a long mission before, the last time was probably when Sasuke was around. While we were traveling though I did talk with Kiba and he was telling me about how he had seen some of the posters for the movie that we helped film.

Apparently they had a few of them with all of us on them in the background of Koyuki and whoever else was on the front cover. He was disgruntled about it because the one they had of him was him and Akamaru doing fang over fang, the way it was done looked stupid from what he said- though when he described the image they had of me was the one of me carrying Koyuki when we were ontop of the train tunnel watching the samurai die. So my face was wearing a particularly fierce expression in it, he also said the different posters with each of us on them had nicknames his said 'Fanged duo' and mine said 'Crimson Samurai' the others titles were just as bad.

[Butterfly Effect]

"What are you doing Takezou?" Asuma asked when we had all just finished eating, I had cleaned up the dishes with the help of Hinata and Sakura.

"Just sanding the plate of my Hitai-ate so that the sun stops reflecting off of it seeing as that gives you away and it seems like the opposite of what we'd want." I continued brushing at the steel, removing the shininess to it.

"Wait what happened to your bandana?" he motioned to the plate that I had attached to a small piece of leather that I had sewn onto the shawl and seeing as that was in my lap- yes I did have a shirt on, I threw spare clothes in my bag before leaving.

"Uh it got torn up remember? I was going to replace it but didn't get around to it- surely you noticed that I just haven't been wearing it right?" He made a noise of agreement before flicking out a cigarette and lighting it.

"How are you holding up though?" he asked after a few minutes of silence passed between us.

"What do you mean?" it was a rather open question after all.

"With what's happened of course, I know you hated what happened with the other kids not telling you about Sasuke leaving when he took off as well as that though, you've been more distant with 'Hime' and I." he said Hime name in a lighter tone, it had become a bit of a joke at some point that Hinata was the princess and we were her guards. I don't remember why either though.

"Yeah… I did, still do even." I paused for a moment sighing and putting the shawl down. "But what made it worse was just that I put so much energy into loving our team and he ended up burning us for it- to me he was my brother, Hinata is my sister and you're like an older brother if not like a second dad though that might just be the similarities in your personalities." there was so much more to it.

"Right… you know sometimes I get reminded that you actually are just a kid, you spend so much time acting like someone so much older and with more experience ever ready to lend your mind to them- yet there's that smidgen of your personality that slips out amongst the cracks and we see you really are a kid." he reminded me of something, but beyond that I realized we were almost having different conversations.

"Sensei- no Asuma. What do you do about the cracks and nicks? Or when the blood has begun to rust the blade but you know that you can't sharpen it because it'll only break it due to how fragile it has become." I posed the cracked blade idea to him because he reminded me of it.

"Cracks in the blade huh? That sounds just like you doesn't it? Well as for my answer I guess despite how good I thought my skills were if I knew it wasn't something I could fix on my own I'd find someone to help me do it- sometimes blades are just too important to be replaced right?" he offered a smile as his hand landed on my shoulder.

"Guess you're right… maybe I should do something similar." After another few minutes of silence I spoke again. "I should be off to sleep for now then shouldn't I?"

"Yup, I'll get you when your watch starts." with that Sensei left me to my devices or lack thereof to get some rest from all the running we'd been doing.

"Oh! Before you go Sensei- would you be able to show me the hand seals for the Shadow Clone Jutsu?" it was something I had considered using but always forgot to ask about.

"Sure I'll teach you them tomorrow morning." I went to bed after that.

When my mind finally drifted off into the land of dreams it was invaded by images.

Crimson

The spray of blood splashed into my eyes and covered my face as I stumbled back from the scene before me.

AN: Later.