AN: Yo how's it going?

Arc 2 part 1
Chapter title: Introductions are key

When I got to class Naruto was there with a huge smile on his face and a Hitai-ate on, people immediately went to him to ask why he was hereafter failing the test, me knowing why he was there just left it at that and let him be. Iruka arrived later without Mizuki which got some questions from some of the class, he waited for the rowdy class to settle and become quiet before he got right to the point of the class and started naming off teams.

"Team 7 Naruto Uzumaki, Kiba Inuzuka and Sakura Haruno, your Jonin Sensei is Kakashi Hatake" Naruto cheered, Sakura looked downcast while Kiba and Akamaru seemed content.

"Team 8 Shikamaru Nara, Chouji Akimichi and Ino Yamanaka, your Jonin Sensei is Kurenai Yuuhi" none of them seemed particularly bothered though I thought I heard Ino mumble something.

"Team 9 Shino Aburame, Ito Sumon and Keiko Mousu, your Jonin Sensei is Kurisu Asaribi" I hadn't actually interacted with anyone on this team aside from like talking to Shino once because I asked him for help with something.

"Team 10 Hinata Hyuuga, Sasuke Uchiha and Takezou Rakurai, your Jonin Sensei is Asuma Sarutobi"

'Wait what… huh didn't expect that… our team is all quiet people- the edgy kid with the horrific backstory too sullen and festering in his own hate to talk, the shy girl of a renown clan with no confidence and Me.'

"Alright when you come back from lunch you're Sensei will show up then so go eat," Iruka said before walking out of the class as the bell rung.

I went outside and as I did so snagged Sasuke by the arm not letting him go and kindly asked Hinata if she wanted to eat with us, she stutteringly accepted following behind as Sasuke tried to free himself of my grasp by hitting my hand and wriggling it around, now I'd be a very poor swordsman if I let go of my sword so easily so I built up quite the death grip during my training. As I went to sit down, I let go of Sasuke making him rub his now sore wrist, Hinata sat down quietly while before Sasuke went off at me.

"Don't bloody touch me! You damned oaf! We may be on the same team, but I don't have to like or talk to you! I don't need the either of you anyway this whole team farce is meaningless to me." he stated angrily with a dark scowl before he could stomp off to sulk somewhere I spoke up.

"You may not but I'm fully aware of what you have made your life goal, and right now I can tell you safely that having a member of the strongest clan in Konoha on your team, that being Hinata, will help you immensely to get there." He stopped in his tracks for a moment he didn't turn to me though.

"What the hell do you know?! You don't have any clue what my goal is!" he said voice full of venom.

"S-sa-suke… w-why d-don't-" Hinata started trying to stutter out but stopped herself.

"Your brother right?" I said simply waiting for him to turn, I mean it was obvious really, even if I hadn't known beforehand. It's not like anyone tried to hide the fact that Itachi did what he did, let alone the fact that the thing with the drawing from forever ago, though whilst I had talked to my Aunt about how in bothered me that I had done it without really thinking, I wasn't really sure how much it bothered me. I mean I actually didn't remember what Itachi looked like to be completely honest and I still don't because it's just been that long at this point that I don't remember.

"What would you know?" he said turning to us, scowl still present.

"I don't and that's why I want us to come together and talk as a team, become friends of some kind so we can rely on one another for things like that, I'm fully willing to dedicate myself you either of your dreams, if you have a goal bigger than your current self then I want you to know I'm here to help you no matter the cost," I said looking at the two of them, this was sort of my plea bargain because I literally had nothing else to do with my life so helping them out seemed like a worthy cause for my sword. Well I did have my family sure, but they aren't something I can dedicate myself to like I can my team.

"Tch! What about you then? What kind of goal do you have?" Sasuke asked after a moment of pause.

"I'll be honest kiddo-" he cut me off "Don't call me that we're the same age!" I waited to continue "Anyway, I don't have a goal to be quite honest, I reached mine, that was finishing my Kenjutsu apprenticeship and for the moment I've done that. My only other goal is to write a book on philosophy and its relation to swordsmanship." I finished waiting to hear his response, what I had said was mostly accurate, I joked about Musashi's writings and recreating it but I'd probably get more out of it if I went on my own little soul searching journey to write it all.

"That sounds way too convenient and like some bullshit." The Uchiha replied with narrowed eyes.

I sighed "Well you got me Sasuke! I just want to live to see sixteen! That's it! My life's goal is to reach sixteen and preferably not die in some horrible war." I said sardonically, again which wasn't inaccurate, I would like to live to see sixteen in this world.

"I'm leaving." He disappeared scowling.

I sighed and just went back to trying to make small talk with Hinata, she was really kind, I don't think I ever realised that much from these years of being in the same class though I supposed that had to do with the fact that we only talked a few times. We didn't talk too much though, I asked her if she wanted to come with me to talk with Naruto about his passing the test even though he failed and, but she shyly stuttered her way to deny it, which was fine she could make her way to talking to him and expressing her feelings on her own.

Naruto was trying to get Sakura's attention when I wandered over to him, Kiba was playing with Akamaru nearby, I gave him a small wave and he nodded back.

"Hey Naruto, I wanted to talk to you." I said getting his attention.

"Yeah whats up Take?" He replied looking away from his teammate.

"So how did you manage to get you Hitai-ate? Cause I don't feel like Iruka suddenly had a change of heart afterwards." I said. He went on to detail what happened missing out all the bits like him being the Kyuubi Junchuriki and what was said exactly by Mizuki.

"That explains Mizuki not being here then, so what about this clone jutsu you learned? Can you show us one? It sounds pretty interesting." I asked with my curiosity peaked by the tale he told me.

"Sure!" He said making a cross hand seal before there was suddenly two of him.

"Whoa that's cool!" I said walking around the clone looking it over, I poked it and it was solid.

"How'd you make it solid like this? Is it similar to water clones and wood clones?" he seemed somewhat stumped when I asked that.

"I dunno" he said scratching his cheek.

The bell tolled after that and he dispelled the clone as we headed in, I went and took a seat with Hinata, while trying to urge Sasuke to sit with us through looks without saying anything, he blew me off and sat in the corner next to the windows. Slowly Jonin started coming in and taking their teams out, eventually a man with darkish skin wearing a guardian Shinobi sash came in with a woman that had dark hair and red eyes.

"Team 10? I'm Asuma follow me." The man, Asuma said, we followed him out Sasuke behind us.

I heard the woman speak as we left "Team 8? I'm Kurenai, come with me."

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Asuma took us to a training field he had reserved and sat on a rock getting us to sit in front of him, he pulled out a cigarette and lit it before speaking to us.

"Alright, now that we're here lets get to know each other, I don't need your life story or anything just your name, likes, dislikes and your dreams or goal but you don't have to say those if you don't want to." He blew smoke to his side as he finished speaking.

"Sensei?" I asked, "What about you all we know is your name." I looked at him expectantly.

"Ah, I guess you're right, I'm Asuma Sarutobi, I like my friends, I don't really have any dislikes and I have no dream to share as such." He scratched his cheek.

"I guess I'll go next then. I'm Takezou Rakurai, I like spending time with my family or learning Kenjutsu from my Aunt and for things I dislike…" I paused "I hate loud people that're obnoxious, I don't like prideful idiots that can't see the truth or people that think we're bound to a certain fate." I paused thinking about my dreams. "As for dreams or goals, I suppose living to see my baby sister and niece get married is up there." I finished.

"Huh…" Asuma breathed with an understanding look.

Sasuke was next "My name is Sasuke Uchiha, I hate a lot of things and I don't particularly like anything… what I have is a goal… nay an ambition to kill a very certain man and restore my clan to its former glory.." He said with the same dark scowl and edgy vibe.

"Fuck that's edgy and dark, did you practice that?" I blurted out on accident, Asuma coughed and laughed a little while Sasuke was annoyed and Hinata seemed unsure of how to react.

"Moving on," Asuma said between coughs.

"I-I'm H-Hinat-ta H-Hyuuga, I l-like… My family-" she stuttered out before stopping herself. "I-ah… dislike violence… and I-I want… never mind." She stopped herself finishing.

"Right now that we're all acquainted let's go do some D-ranks or something unless you lot want to stick around out here and do nothing?" he asked.

I stood up eager to get the chores of D-ranks over with. Before we knew it, we were off to the Hokage tower to the mission desk, entering the large circular room I noticed a stack of scrolls that were lining up the large desk where the Hokage and several Chunin were sat. The withered old man that was the leader of our village was wearing a white formal outfit with the large hat the had the fire kanji on it sitting in front of him.

"Asuma! Looks like you've got your team then? How're you three doing?" the man once known as a God asked us with a fatherly smile.

"Good Lord Hokage." the three of us replied.

"So what D-rank will you be taking? There's babysitting, Gardening for an elderly woman and mail delivery." He stated taking the scroll for each out onto the desk.

"Er… I guess we'll nab the gardening one, I can't imagine that one going wrong." Asuma answered.

The Hokage threw the scroll to sensei then we were ushered out and we made our way out of the building onto the street at which point stage one in my master plan was initiated.

"Sasuke I bet I can plan more efficiently than you and I bet the Uchiha aren't even as good as people used to say!" Man, that sounded odd even to me, but he took it at face value and excepted my challenge.

"Tch! Yeah, right loser you're on!" Sasuke said smirking.

And thus began our competition until Hinata beat us thoroughly, I wasn't sure why I was so surprised that she was good with her hands considering the Hyuuga signature style is the Jyuuken and their entire style is around taijutsu hand to hand stuff. Sasuke was slightly bothered I think as well though I'm sure he was still happy I didn't get more than him in fact I had the most trouble out of everyone, not sure how but I managed to make one of the ones I was doing explode covering me in the dirt. I was laughed at as was expected, our client wasn't all that impressed though she thought it was a waste of material and said that if it happened again she wouldn't pay us, I was extra careful after that though. When we were done and got paid Sensei let us off for the day and told us to meet him again tomorrow at the same training grounds we were at earlier before Hinata and Sasuke could run off I asked them if they wanted to come to my house.

"Why would you invite us to your house?" Sasuke said giving me a look.

"I-I'm n-not sure f-father w-would let m-me…" Hinata said sadly.

"Your dad doesn't control you Hinata you're allowed to do what you want, also the reason was so you could meet my family cause I'm sure my Mum and Dad would want to meet either of you at some point, so better to do it now." I stopped for a moment then continued "That and at some point, I'd like to know where you guys live, because I don't know, and it'd be nice for future reference when any of us need it." I got another questioning look from the slowly thawing out Sasuke and a confused look from Hinata.

"I don't care, I'm going home." The Uchiha stated as he turned to leave my hand shot out and latched onto his wrist again, a pleasant smile rising on my face as I began to drag the boy. Almost literally kicking and screaming, but more death threats and hitting me.

"I- I'll go to," Hinata said quietly walking alongside us.

"Cool let's head there now then. Oh! And if you don't like hugs or physical contact then you'll want to be fast otherwise my Mum will have you in one when she sees you." I specified by looking at the still annoyed-looking Uchiha.

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"My just look at you! You're so adorable!" My mother said dragging Hinata into a tight hug, the poor girl looked frightened at how sudden it was, thusly she was suffocated in my mother's endless love.

I smirked at the Uchiha who had jumped back slightly to keep from being grabbed, Dad was in the doorway to the kitchen holding Akatsuki with a smile on his face as he watched my shy teammate be let down from a hug, Sasuke was schooling his scowl next to me as I had a shit-eating grin on my face watching him. He was pissed off sure, but he had also decided that it would probably go easier if he resigned himself to what was happening for the moment, that and he'd probably spar with me and beat my shit into the dirt.

"So Sasuke are you next?" I asked laughing when he paled somewhat, even though it was near barely noticeable with his already pale complexion.

"Takezou this is your team then?" Dad asked.

"Yeah, Dad and Mum this is Sasuke Uchiha and Hinata Hyuuga, Hinata, Sasuke this is my Mum- Kaede and Dad- Nobuyuki." I introduced them briefly.

"Good to meet you Sasuke," Dad said after putting my sister down to shake his hand.

"You too Sir," Sasuke said stiffly shaking his hand.

"Nice to meet you as well Hinata," he said to the now dishevelled girl.

Not too long after that Hinata had to go and Sasuke saw his opening and left as fast as he could, my parents found his want to leave funny and laughed about it after he was gone, I ended up playing with Akatsuki while Mum cooked dinner for us. Dad said there was something he wanted to talk to me about at some point during the week, so I should remember to come find him when he wasn't busy, and I didn't need to be with my team. The next day when I arrived at the training field Sensei was there smoking while he read from a scroll of some kind, and so I headed over to him and waved.

"Yo! Sensei!" I called to him.

He turned to me returning a smaller wave "How's it going Takezou?" he asked as I came up to him, man he was tall.

"I'm doing well," I responded shortly.

"Well that's good, I'll tell you what we're doing when the other two get her-" he looked behind me "Speak of the devil-"

"And he shall appear" I finished for him.

"Alright Sasuke, Hinata now that you're all here I can talk about what I wanted to, putting it simply I want to test you lot because the stat blocks the academy give generally don't mean much in actual ability." He blew some smoke to the side away from us. "I'd like to see how well you all perform together without any team training" he pulled out a blue flag and planted it.

"Now I'm somewhere in this area with this exact same flag, your goal is to get it from me and depending on how well you do will depend on how long we do this exercise for." He said dispelled into chakra smoke.

"Oh cool shadow clone," I said lamely watching the spot where our newly assigned Jonin had disappeared from.

"Hey, Hinata are you able to use your Byakugan?" I asked her, she nodded seemingly understanding what I was getting at activating it.

"That's pretty easy then isn't it?" Sasuke asked with a confident smirk.

"It could be, but he's probably trying to see how well we can fight together in some amount tandem instead of the search and destroy," I said looking to him.

"I-I've found S-Sensei!" Hinata announced pointing in the direction for us.

"Hinata could you guide us there then? Sasuke and I will be right behind you to keep you safe, we gotta come up with a strategy to capture the flag before getting there as well." I finished getting a nod from Hinata, Sasuke dashed off ignoring me.

I sighed "C'mon Hinata lets go make sure he doesn't get caught in any traps Sensei might hav-" there was a yell followed by a few curses.

We dashed off after him to find him back up against a tree slightly frightened, with kunai and shuriken covering all of the trees within a five-meter radius.

"That's what you get for not trying to work with us and assuming you had all necessary knowledge," I said condescendingly watching as he scowled at me. "Also, you know that's exactly what the substitution jutsu is for, you didn't need to dodge them," I added.

"P-Please l-let me g-guide us S-Sasuke!" Hinata said leading us further towards where she could see Sensei held up.

We followed closely behind Hinata dodging shuriken traps and a pitfall or two, Sasuke still seemed annoyed to have to work with people, Hinata seemed like she might be gaining he confidence, I also found out that the training grounds were fucking enormous like a forest, it was insane. As we approached a clearing Hinata stop using her Byakugan when we got within viewing distance.

We burst into the clearing… and it was the same one we started in… I thought the Byakugan could see through genjutsu? None the less Sensei was standing there in the centre with the flag.

"Took you guys long enough" Sensei said dropping his cigarette and crushing it.

"So-" before I could say anything our avenger attacked on his own.

Sasuke went in for a taijutsu assault but, I don't think he was aware of our sensei's fighting style, he was thusly tossed into the air and thrown back to us, where I tried to catch him but instead was knocked to the ground and used as a springboard by the Uchiha. Hinata helped me up and then I dashed forward catching Sasuke as he was tossed at me but this time I caught his hand and spun around throwing him back allowing him to go back with more speed, Sensei went for a kick that Sasuke managed to use to springboard himself into the air and let off a fireball that slammed into the ground as Sensei substituted out of with a log.

Sasuke landed down next to me and Hinata who was waiting for this moment "Sasuke we've got a plan stop thinking a genin can go against a jonin and let me explain." He turned angrily and gave in.

After a few moments of explaining Sasuke and I ran forward, we both ran through hand seals though he was faster and he launched another fireball that was enhanced by a whirlwind jutsu I used creating a small tornado of sorts that carved its way towards sensei who looked mildly shocked before he went to dodge the jutsu and was subsequently attacked by Hinata with her Byakugan flaring, she grabbed the flag from him. I cheered for Hinata when she did so, the Uchiha had a vaguely satisfied look.

"That was great and all, but you should've worked together like that from the beginning." A voice said from behind us.

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Sensei ended up spending the day beating teamwork into us, or more specifically making Sasuke work with us to achieve a goal, it was rather surprising considering all I remembered about the man was that he was laid back and like a second father to Shikamaru. Though I suppose that's not a lot of information to work off of so it wasn't all that fair of me to judge him by that, anyway when we were done and mostly out of chakra he had us go and do a few D-ranks, which went better than last time, I didn't have dirt explode on me. I challenged Sasuke some more to give him a bit competition and more reason to do the work.

It wasn't too hard to rope the kid into doing stuff if I challenged the pride of the Uchiha's, it was an asshole thing to do but it was probably the easiest thing I could do at this point to make him enjoy his time with us, that and one time I went and got Naruto because he wanted to challenged Sasuke, they fought for quiet a while before Asuma decided to step in, not long after that Kakashi showed up looking for Naruto.

"There you are Naruto" The silver-haired man said, smut in hand.

"Sensei!" Naruto yelled leaving Sasuke standing next to Asuma.

I took the moment to get up from the tree I was against "You're Kakashi-Sensei, right?" I asked walking over to them.

"And you're Asuma's student," he said cheerily with a smile as I rolled my eyes at the man who was now already making quite the impression for our first meeting.

"Gee did it hurt trying to figure that out? Anyway, it's nice to meet you, Kakashi, I'm Takezou Rakurai" I held out my hand to shake his.

"Ah…" he stood there for a moment while I waited then he slapped my hand like it was a high-five.

"Sensei you're pretty socially challenged, aren't you?" I asked. "I mean you're reading smut in public" I specified as I did so I heard Asuma try to stifle a laugh off to the side of us.

"How do you know what it is?" the Jonin asked eyeing me with his brow arched, awaiting my answer curiously.

"Because I read 'Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi' and wanted to see if the author had other books like it, but all his other work was smut." I said vaguely annoyed about the issue still, which I felt like it was a fair complaint right? Cause I mean the guy was a decent writer, even the bits of his smut I had checked out to see what it was like were actually decent.

"He's got you there Kakashi, reading that stuff all the time can't be good for you." Asuma said walking over.

Kakashi shrugged before picking up Naruto and disappearing as he started to protest, Asuma sighed and turned back to our little outing. I went over to Sasuke who was brushing dirt off himself, I wasn't sure if he wanted to spar or not, so I went over to Hinata, she was practising her Jyuuken on an imaginary opponent.

"Hey Hinata, do you want to spar for a bit? I don't think you and I ever got to face off against one another in the academy." She nodded to me.

We took our stances and waited for Asuma to call us to start, as soon as he did I dashed at her and went to kick at her head, she blocked following up by jabbing forward into my stomach. As I moved back trying to ignore the pain I kicked off the dirt back towards her and tried to get around her attack when she managed to catch me with another stab, I collapsed to the ground winded. When I recovered, I pulled myself into a sitting position.

"Thanks for the match Hinata- Ah Man," I breathed a sigh "This is why I use swords instead! getting hit like that sucks!" I complained rubbing the spots were her attacks landed, they might even end up bruising.

"I don't think I've ever seen you use a sword despite talking about it Takezou" Sensei said watching us cigarette in hand.

"Oh, right I suppose you haven't, I kind of reserved using it for like C-ranks and stuff 'cause it would be unnecessary if I wore it all the time." I paused for a moment "Actually there is an entire aspect of my outfit I don't wear, that I have for missions where we'll be fighting." I said jumping to my feet and started popping my back earning a fair few audible clicks.

"What type of sword do you use?" Sasuke asked seemingly interested, though he had one in the show at some point, didn't he? So maybe I could be the one to get him into them.

"I can use most because that's how I was trained but the one I have is a Nodachi" I said stretching my arms with a sigh of relief as the tension left my body.

"Wait… Nodachi? Takezou are you trained to use Samurai weapons?" Asuma asked.

"Er… cause I wanted to learn Kenjutsu and my aunt loves the whole Samurai aesthetic, so she got me hooked on it too, therefore she ended up giving me Nodachi." I said.

"Isn't that one of the biggest standard blades you can get?" Sasuke asked still somewhat interested if his tone was anything to go by.

"Pretty sure yeah, but considering how tall I am it works out fine, I can bring it tomorrow if we aren't doing D-ranks?" I looked to Sensei he shrugged as if not knowing himself. "I've been meaning to train more with it anyway, how about that Sasuke? You seem interested in taking to swords I could help you get into it if you want?" he seemed to think about it for a bit.

"Sure" he said shortly.

AN: Seya later.