AN: So this chapter is being released early as an excuse to talk about my chapter release schedule for "AVID", for the most part, the chapters are going to be released on a month by month bases, that being one chapter per month.

First few chapters if not the first ten or so are going to pass quite quickly in terms of timeline-wise because I'm unused to setting a minimum word limit as I have so it has lent a lot to me going through the passage of time much faster then expected so forgive a little for that if you could. err.. and if there are any questions that you have about Takezo or possibly anything else about the story so long as they aren't privy to spoiler territory I am fully willing to answer them if you review or even just PM me.

Arc 1
Chapter Title: Black Steel Kazuko

Ya'know I was surprised at how little I was bullied in the academy in my first year, to be honest like I was basically prime target for it. My hair is the gaudy dark blood red with these licks of silvery-white, I have dark skin and I stand half a head above most of the class if not a little more, I'd have thought kids would have gone after me more but I guess not.

Anyway, the first time I actually interacted with the Avenger was about four months after we started at the academy when Iruka had been cycling people through different opponents in sparring, when it finally came around to Sasuke vs Me there was little cheer for myself that being the few friends or the closest thing I had to them and then Sasukes was a larger reception with all the girls cheering for him except Hinata, I noticed Naruto standing behind everyone, he was cheering quietly for me which was a nice thought as far as it extended to him wanting me to put Sasuke in his place because the two's rivalry had begun a month or so before. I honestly didn't expect much of myself in the fight because he had actual training and I had minimal it was an area I was poor at; my endurance was decent but actual strength was pretty poor if I ever won my matches it was always the height advantage that these kids didn't know how to abuse yet.

Making the unison sign we faced each other a fierce look on the adorable rounded face of the young Uchiha, Itachi was actually here today watching the matches at the request of Sasuke so that was probably his motivation. While my motivation just being that I didn't want to lose to this kid that would find a stick up his arse soon enough that he'll become asinine to deal with. Iruka called us to begin with a whistle.

Sasuke dashed at me immediately, causing my eyebrow to raise, I might call It a bit of a David and Goliath moment if not for the fact that the poor kid misjudged his reach and mine in which resulted in me just sort of throwing a right hook and sending him into the dirt with a now bruised face I actually kinda felt sorry he really wanted to show his brother how much better he'd gotten and here I was with every way to physically outclass him except actual strength which I still hold him to being stronger than me.

He charged me again and as I moved towards him to dodge to his left his foot caught mine and he tripped me, before jumping onto me and began punching my forearms that I was guarding myself with. A sigh escaped me as I grit my teeth from the kids punch cause it fucking hurt, there was a moment in his strikes where I realised the pattern he was dishing out and I ended up getting punched in the face as I grabbed him by the throat and threw him off me at which point Iruka whistled again and asked us to make the unison seal. We did and I gave him a grin.

"Alright, who wants to fight now that Takezou and Sasuke have finished?" a wave of hands shot up. In the background I noticed Itachi give a smile to his brother before leaving in a whirl of leaves.

Most of our interactions after that were through spars, to be honest, I didn't go out of my way to talk to him but that was mostly because he was surrounded by the hive mind of girls that wanted on his dick. I did end up talking to Shikamaru of all people along with Chouji though, Shikamaru had at the request of his large friend asked me to hang out with them a little after that initial fight with Sasuke. My first impression of the two was, holy mother of fuck Shikamaru was smart that kid was going places without a doubt and with Chouji it was more, so he was just fun to talk to and he had a good eye for food it was always a blast when he asked me around to his house for dinner with my family. I'm not sure what kind of impression I made, hopefully it was what I intended which was, that I was languid towards most things and I enjoyed reading, that I was quiet for the most part which is why I think Shikamaru liked me if I think about it the kid enjoyed just lazing around watching clouds.

I tried not to interact with too many people because of the memory stuff, like Naruto that kid was a trove of them that would definitely make me faint from overload again which sucked the kid needed friends and I did want to introduce myself at the least. I did find a moment to talk to Hinata mostly I wanted to because the girl was really reserved and seemed like she didn't really have anyone to be friends with, She uh… got a little spooked when I approached her though I explained myself and got rid of the misunderstanding she seemed rather wary of me still which I wasn't too sure about until I got a memory about her being kidnapped by Cloud ninja which then I suddenly realised "oh right I look like I'm from cloud/lightning" but aside from that I didn't talk to too many people. Kiba was too loud for me, Shino was just sorta there and didn't talk so… yeah, Sakura was part of the gaggle that wanted Sasuke, Ino I might have called a bunch of uncouth rude words in English because she pushed me over for standing near Sasuke when I was walking over to talk to the kid, heh.

that was pretty great, to be honest, I normally don't like swearing be it here or in my original life but man, did it feel good to see her in stunned silence before spouting that I needed to stop speaking gibberish and get away from her precious. Err… onto the others wait, I think that was all the main characters from the show, otherwise, the rest of the class thought I was some jerk-ass red-headed kid from lightning that would attack you if you bad-mouthed my hair colour. So ya'know, not great.

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There was a two week period where Sasuke didn't show during our second year and that's when I realised what had happened since I had no intention of seeking the fuckery afoot in the village I totally forgot what happened to the Uchiha, he was an absolute asshole though, it was funny to watch the girls get told to sod off by him when they crowded him after it. Any interaction after that was his unsavoury attitude getting on my nerves leading to me just sorta punching him when he treated me like dirt and us getting into fights which lead to Naruto talking to me which I didn't collapse at, so it was fine. He was cool to talk to if energetic to have as a friend and someone that was also fed up with the edgy one's antics.

Sasuke seemed to find his place in fighting with Naruto though falling away from me and focusing on the rowdy blonde, which I was more than happy with dealing with Sasuke took too much energy and drew me away from Shika and Chouji who were probably my closest friends.

Outside of school I was now quite accurate with shuriken and kunai, on top of that I finally got the Henge down it only took two years while I could use the substitution and Clone fine without too many problems, Dad had started to show me some Jutsu after he tested my chakra nature which seemed to be wind and with a slight affinity towards fire for whatever reason. Not that I was complaining about having two natures it was pretty cool, made it easier on Dad because he mainly knew fire jutsu anyway with a few earth jutsu, Mum no longer helped him teach me them so he was left to showing me a chart he drew up of the hand signs before doing the Jutsu himself showing me what the final product should be.

One afternoon when we finished up training he decided to take me out to a food stall, when we arrived it looked vaguely familiar but didn't click until we went past the banner into the cover of the stall and found Naruto sitting there slurping away on his bowl of food.

"Oh, hey Naruto!" I said with a smile getting an odd look from him as he looked to Dad and all his one-armed glory.

"This is my Dad, Dad this is Naruto he's one of my friends at school," I said getting introductions out of the way.

"it's nice to meet you Naruto, I don't meet too many of Take's friends so it's interesting to see who he's picked up" Dad held his hand out to Naruto to shake, the blonde stood a little ramrod shaking his hand going back to his food.

"So Naruto do you eat here often?" I asked fishing for info on the kid, he kept to himself about his position normally.

"I-I uh yeah! Teuchi and Ayame are awesome, so I come here all the time!" he announced with an energy that made the owner smile at and got a chuckle out of Dad after he ordered for us.

As time rocked on I noticed Naruto casting glances at Dad's arm "I bet you're wondering how Dad lost his arm aren't you Naruto?" I got him hook line and sinker when he nodded back furiously.

With a sigh Dad realised what I was doing and went with it "Well Naruto, When I was on a mission way back before you two were ever born during the Third Great Ninja War, I was fighting this Iwagakure Shinobi who used and explosive style Jutsu that She moulded through clay before throwing the creations at me and my team, that's when they came to life" he paused dramatically "She pushed us back and fought us off like we were nothing but we started to push her after a while of fighting when she seemed to be running out of Chakra but, alas it was a ruse to make us get closer where she threw super powerful versions of her jutsu in the form of spiders at us!" he stopped making motions with his hand "My teammates were caught in her trap and she made them explode in a glorious colourful explosion of rainbow colours stunning me as I was caught in the tail of it losing arm though battered as I was seeing my close friends gone I charged her in one final attempt and tackled her to the ground with my one arm slamming into her…" pausing from more dramatic effect for the already hooked Naruto.

"Finally after ten more minutes of us fighting she was knocked unconscious and she left me with only one arm which led me to getting the nickname 'The One-Armed Terror' not as cool as 'The Yellow Flash' or 'The Red Hot Bloody Habanero' like Lord Fourth and his wife but still." Naruto looked enthralled by the tale and Teuchi with his daughter both looked disturbed by the connotation of the story.

We were asked to leave.

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The blue sky with its fluffy white companions passed over us as we lay on the grass of a slope in the Nara forest, the eating sounds of Chouji, the sound of rhythmic breathing from a cloud watching Shikamaru and myself, I was trying to remember some stuff from before when a line came to my mind and I said it aloud in English.

"In this world, is the destiny of mankind controlled by some transcendental entity or law? Is it like the hand of God hovering above? At least it is true that man has no control; even over his own will." I breathed a sigh after quoting it not quite placing where it was from.

"You... uh... okay there Takezou?" Shikamaru asked giving me a concerned look.

"Oh, did I say that out loud?" he nodded, shesh whoops.

"What kind of language was that? Was it from Lightning or something? I know you're not from there but is it something your mother taught you?" Shikamaru asked in a flurry of questions.

"As far as I know it isn't, and it more so just me blurting out gibberish pay no mind to it" I said unconvincingly, yeah he so wants to know more, fuck.

Though he let it go for now and went back to cloud watching, we sat like this for another hour before I had to head home, I bid them farewell. When I got home, Dad was in the living room sitting at the low table that had couches surrounding in on two sides, he was writing something out in a scroll with ink. I think it might have been a seal of some kind, I gave up on that the first time he tried to teach me because it confused the crap out of me and I didn't think it worth putting my time towards when I wanted to learn Kenjutsu which I had kinda started, my aunt Ume used Ninjato and a Katana's so she said she'd show me the ropes when I asked about it.

In fact speaking of Aunty Ume she wanted me to go to her house tomorrow for lessons, she had been teaching me basic kata's for shorter blades and wanted to move onto stuff more Katana like in length, she also seemed to think that it was 'impractical' to use training weaponry like Bokken but rather she'd give me a ninjato or a wakizashi to use just assuming I wouldn't cut myself and cause damage which rightfully so scared me shitless because I had a knack for clumsiness in my last life where I would often end up hurt from simple things or handling knives would mostly lead to lacerations unintentionally of course but still.

Well, I spent the rest of my day what I did most that being reading studying and writing in my English book thing, I ended up remembering some songs while I was working in it which lead to me humming them and singing a few of the lyrics.

"Always look on the bright side of death!" I whistled the tune "Just before you draw your terminal breath!" I whistled again "Life's a piece of shit when you look at it! Life's a laugh and deaths a joke! It's true!" this song seemed more to be more relevant and enjoyable now that this has happened to me. I continued to hum and whistle the rest of the song as I worked onward, trying to piece the memory fragments I had together. One thing was for sure I wanted absolutely nowhere near team 7 for my genin team I might actually take being with my 'bullies' over being anywhere near that train wreck.

I mean c'mon who in their right mind would actively choose to be in the middle of all that cluster fuck? S-rank missing-nin on their first C-rank, Orochimaru in the chuunin exams and then the invasion of Konoha while that one wasn't avoidable it doesn't change the fact that a group kids chased Gaara down. I don't plan on actively searching for situations like that if I can help it as far as I care I'm here to live out my Naruto fantasies and dreams of becoming a swordsman that can spit fire and things of that nature. Though I did want an actual introduction to Kakashi because he seemed like the kinda guy that might actively be an ass because he found it funny to watch others reactions, though he could just be an emotionally stunted guy who inadvertently is an asshole because he can't move on from past traumas and things in his life that have gone awry.

I finished up my work right as Mum called me for dinner, I left my work out and left my room for the living room where the food was set up on the table, Dad was sitting in wait for me and Mum was walking back into the room from the kitchen window with drinks. I sat down next to Mum facing Dad as we ate, after finishing and helping Mum clean up I sat back on one of the couches and relaxed contemplating what I wanted to look into for Jutsu to learn because I remember there being some really cool ones like 'Majestic Destroyer Flame' which was like a wall of flame that Madara used on the Shinobi during the fourth war. I knew that I held a fire chakra affinity from Dad testing me though I seemed to have some amount of affinity for wind too so that was a plus I could combo them and make massive attacks.

While I was thinking I noticed Mum come back into the room with a cake which confused me, because her birthday had passed and Dads wasn't for a while then she and Dad started singing a variation of Happy Birthday in Japanese. Oh… right it must be July 15th then, my birthday, so what I'm nine then? That sounds about right.

"Happy Birthday, Takezou!" they said in unison with large infectious smiles.

"Oh…" I let the surprise take me.

I hadn't actually remembered when my birthday was, I had long since stopped caring about them though for whatever reason since getting here I found myself liking them more maybe it was the family aspect, or how much closer I felt to Kaede and Nobuyuki then my original parents… no, that's not it... I'm about the same for how close we are. Maybe it's just the appreciation for it after dying, yeah probably that.

"Whoa! Thanks Mum! Dad!" I said cheerily with the brightest smile I could give them.

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Swish

I dodged backwards several feet going into a fighting stance as I looked around to see where in the name of the gods someone just swung a Katana at me when I noticed my Aunt Ume standing there with the most shit-eating grin I've ever seen, holding her sword out and pointed towards me as she spoke.

"Good job kid! If you hadn't dodged that then I wouldn't allow you to move onto the next step in our training!" she stated with a laugh, her long black hair flowing about, and amber eyes crinkled into a smile.

"IF I hadn't dodged that! Then I would be dead!" I yelled at the older woman who was now sheathing her Katana, black and red ribbon tethered hilt into its dark silver coloured sheath.

"Then it's a good thing you dodged then, isn't it? Your mother might actually skin me, and my little brother would have me by my throat for that, especially after how much trouble they had having a kid in the first place." She said her pale hand on her chin.

"Wait… what do you mean 'trouble having a kid in the first place'? was there complications during the pregnancy for me?" I asked confused.

"I guess it's fair they didn't tell you, well they tried for a kid two or three years before you but Katsuya died at birth, that was your older sisters name by the way, also that's not counting the fact that one of the Hokage's council members showed up asking about Kaede's allegiance to Konoha because she was formerly a citizen of Lightning or Cloud." Ume rested her right hand on the hilt of her sword as she ran her left hand through her dark hair.

"Another thing is that you almost died at birth as well, something about not being born with chakra or something like that." She waved her left hand as if dissipating the memory "Anyway, don't mention that to either of them their still very touchy about your birth and Katsuya's." she finished.

"Okay I understand, so what are we doing today aside from you nearly killing me to test my reactions?" I looked to her as we walked through her house into a large backyard.

Ume's yard was massive, to say the least, she had a dojo in the back of it because there was so much room, the yard itself was more like a courtyard for sparring outside. The was a large circular area marked out by rope nailed to the ground, inside the circle, the ground was gravely and dirt being a change from the rest of the grass of the area. The dojo made sense obviously because she was an instructor and her partner my other uncle Hatsuda did all the actual business stuff for her allowing more time for her to teach and train. It was pretty cool, to be honest, I got to meet a fair amount of her students and Hatsuda was really nice.

We headed into the dojo that had a sign above the door that read 'Black Steel Kazuko's Dojo' Kazuko was her and Hatsuda's last name if you hadn't guessed, the floors were clean and waxed, there were bokken and shinai on sword racks with two swords in sheaths on a display rack at the head of the room with a mannequin wearing parts of Samurai splint. One of the swords was her Katana she was known for using and the other was a Nodachi of the same steel but she didn't use it all that often saying "It's too impractical when I could just feed chakra into my Katana and get the same body splitting effect" though she said I could have it if I impressed her before graduation from her training or if I beat her in our duels.

She handed me a Katana that was on her hip and she took one that was sheathed and leaning against the wall where we walked in, walking to the centre of the room she went and opened a screen door that opened out to the yard allowing more sunlight in and for fresh air to run through the dojo. I stood opposite her as she came to a position and started giving me instructions on stances for the Katana and how to get used to its length comparably from the shorter blades we had been using like a Tanto, Ninjato and Wakizashi.

I breathed in deeply through my nose then calmly out my mouth, eyes closing as the breath filed out, my hands gripped the handle of the heavy sword with an unusual weight for myself after having used the lighter swords. I raised it above my head the tip of the blade pointed behind myself before stepping forward and swiftly slashing the sword out stopping it short of connecting with the waxed wooden floor, I repeated the swing counting them out trying for as many as I could do, I managed to reach one hundred and forty-three before my arms gave in and I unceremoniously dropped the sword.

From just outside the screen door that my Aunt opened about an hour earlier I heard a yell.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing!? Those swords are expensive!" She yelled from the duelling circle where she currently had a few students in their Uwagi and hakama facing off against one another with bokken.

"Sorry!" I really don't want to get on her bad side, I can't swing a sword anymore today.

After ten or so minutes longer where I had decidedly collapsed to the floor on my back and put the Katana in its sheath, Aunty came in and her shadow looming over me for a moment, she didn't give me a moment to react before her foot stomped on my gut. I doubled over as she removed her foot with a satisfied smile and a bokken in hand.

"If you have the energy to react to pain then you've got enough for a round!" she said cheerily yanking me upward and forcing the training sword into my hands. "And you better pray upon Sussano-o that the blade of the Katana you dropped isn't chipped." Her grin got rather dark as her attention focused on me.

AN: and with that, the chapter is over, thank you for reading.