AN: This is the beginning of the next arc, though it's short and flows into the Exams, even then, the Chuunin Exams was a little weird for me way back when I was writing it because I had trouble trying to space it out. Actually I almost had it a few chapters earlier, but luckily I realized I needed to have more build up and whatnot.

Also if you're aware or maybe haven't realized it yet there are a lot of chapters already written out, I'm like 110k words into the story I've just been slowly putting them out to let me write what I can when I can and how I want.

Arc 3 Part 1
Chapter Title: Learning Jutsu

Fuck Asuma Sensei with a damned rusted metal pole, this man told me what he wanted me to do in order to help me learn how to use my Wind chakra and I spent three days straight throwing Kunai and knuckle dusters like his around pumped full of chakra. Do you understand how fucking mind-numbingly boring throwing knives and other such sharp objects for twelve hours straight for three days straight? Because it fucking was and I was starting to have second thoughts about this whole thing.

I love Sensei, but this is genuinely the most boring thing I've ever done, and I've actually watched paint dry let alone the time I sat in complete silence for six hours straight waiting for something. Yet still, with all those times I had the patience for that stuff, this was still hell for me. I realize that yes, I get much better control over my chakra nature and that I had asked for this, but that doesn't change my feelings on the matter at hand, at least it's not as bad what Kakashi is going to force Naruto to do when he eventually goes for it if that's how it plays out.

Hinata was just working on her family jutsu and whatnot while Sasuke had just been playing around with lightning and trying not to damage his hands from all of the sparks, which had happened a lot already over the last two days, he had been forced to go to the hospital to have them healed while Sensei got a stern talking to about unsupervised nature transformation training with Genin leading to severe damage. I had gotten a fair few of my own scars from my wind chakra getting out of hand, or well in hand, I guess. Nothing as bad as all the lightning-shaped scars streaking all over his hands and up part of his arms, it looked pretty metal and I had said as much but Sasuke just found it asinine because it was getting in the way of him becoming more powerful.

The Nurse had argued that him losing all the nerves and senses in his hands was far more important than getting powerful at the current moment, so he was forced to sit out for a few days until he was healed and could feel his fingers again. It was kind of funny to watch him sulking about the whole ordeal, though I had to sit out for a day as well because of all the mangled flesh that had been leftover in the wake of it basically being stripped from my hands, there were a few large spots of discoloured skin now because of it.

All the while Hinata and Sensei just sparred constantly and we watched from the sidelines, I kept making bets with Sasuke about how many hits Hinata could land before Sensei gave in and stopped for a cigarette break or how long it would take before Asuma would have to start defending seriously against our Princess with her being the fastest taijutsu user on our team.

I lost a few bets and Sasuke would always gloat about it because I said that I'd give him a favour that had me doing anything so long as it didn't cause myself or another bodily harm, he used it for challenging me to races or making me cook everyone food so it was fair, I got to do what I would have anyway and he got his precious Omusubi. For a guy like him he was surprisingly boring when it came to what he likes in food, like he could near anything that I could try to put together or have Mum help me with, but he chooses to have Onigiri.

Though he still had two unused favours at the moment and I was kind of just waiting for him to appear out of the woodwork and use it to get me to fight him without holding back, we had done that a few times beforehand though I had held back still just because after all that training with my Aunt I was quite fast, so I held back on that turf because he didn't have his Sharingan and I didn't want to move so fast he couldn't keep up, nor did I want to move so fast that I couldn't keep up with myself.

Which was something that had happened when I had gone back to fight against Ume a few times, she now fought at a constant level that was on par with if not more than what we fought at during my fight for the Nodachi, It was hell, but worth it for sure. I wouldn't want to spar her any other way either because it's a good way to train, against someone at a much higher level that is, seeing as you adapt to your situation it makes for good spars if she's upholding an insane level while I try to compete with her and just keep myself from collapsing of exhaustion.

Anyway, I wouldn't be able to do that with Sasuke and Hinata for my own safety really, it was just too dangerous with their moves and skill sets, especially with Hinata's gentle fist and thirty-two palms and Sasukes love for Ninja wire, shuriken and fire jutsu.

Aside from that though all things considered we were all coming along pretty well, I had begun on the jutsu that Sensei had shown me while Sasuke had started to work on some lightning pulse jutsu that Asuma had found that essentially tazed people and stunned them. He had tried it on me and I ended up convulsing on the ground for a few minutes until the effects faded, I was still a little jumpy afterward though.

Nothing like a little pain to remind you that you're alive I guess.

By the time that Sasuke and I had recovered and another few days went by we were becoming a little overly confident and I ended up with one of my jutsu going a little out of control and taking out a few trees accidentally.

8888888

By the time I could properly perform any of the wind jutsu I now had in my arsenal Sasuke had gone from zero to eleven really quickly with his lightning style training, so much so that he had decided he wanted to try to make his own jutsu. He was a real nutcase and Asuma said as much to him, saying that it would be far too dangerous at this point especially without much control or experience with his nature type.

So he was forced to settle with running around learning more Jutsu and trying to become as powerful and as effective with them as possible.

Other than that though I started getting a little lazy about the whole thing and all the scars stacking up on my hands or I suppose tearing away rather than stacking up, seeing as it had fucked me up pretty badly when one time my hands had damn near been blown right off- or so I was told by the hospital when I got taken there with mangled fingers as well as a grumpy sulking Sasuke who had been dragged their by Sensei which was the actual reason for us being there.

The Nurses we kept seeing were actually beginning to become annoyed with how much we had showed up with the space of a week and a couple of days, which was completely fair seeing as the Uchiha wasn't stopping anytime soon and I was just doing a shit job at learning to control it. Sure I could do a few jutsu but they were what was messing up my arms and hands.

Scars tell stories and all ours tell the boring ones about the time we hadn't figured out nature transformation yet, not a fun story like 'oh I got this one when I was charging in to fight a huge twelve-foot tall muscly beast of a man and he tore my arm from the socket.' Something like that anyhow.

Kind of makes me want to ask Dad about his arm again, he had told me some bits and pieces back when I asked him as a kid, but it was something he was evidently uncomfortable with discussing beyond how much he loved his younger sister that died on that mission. He would probably open up with me about it more now though, right? Now that I'm older and all that, surely? I mean the worse that he can say when I ask is no after all.

Suppose that's what I'll be doing when I get back from training today.

We didn't do all that much as the training bled on to midday and then early afternoon at which point Asuma dismissed us, Sasuke went to train on his own with his throwing skills, while Hinata went home and I headed for some shop in the market district that was kind of like a Bazaar. I was their to pick up stuff for dinner tonight and the rest of the week, sometimes Mum did it when she had a moment but a lot of the time she would just give me the list of what we needed in the morning before I set off, not that I cared though.

Doing a good portion of the weeks cooking left me with this duty, so I had no room to complain over it. I was just waiting for the days in which I could teach my sister how to cook and get her into it, then I could have something more to do with her outside of playing around in the yard or at the park with her. Plus cooking good food meant eating it after, so it was always a win to do it.

As I got into the house I was run into by Akatsuki who had been doing a lot of that recently since she had started waddling around and babbling or the occasional yelp and yell, nothing particularly out of place for a girl her age. I talk about her and Mum a lot, guess that's just my love for them bleeding through in everything I do. Just means I always have them on my mind, Dad is on my mind a lot too but just not as much seeing as his siblings have done to keep me away and introducing me to so much other stuff like Ume with the Kenjutsu and Samurai stuff.

She's just had such a huge impact on my person though with the training and all the time I spent in her dojo, I had once mentioned that it was common for her to knock me unconscious ending a spar with the wooden swords when she allowed for us to use them, but that wasn't wholeheartedly true in the fact that it was I who just collapsed from exhaustion. There wasn't much I could do about that though seeing at the height of it I was there for eight hours a day doing different forms and whatnot, I had wanted to learn how to use a spear at one point but she didn't have any and they were hard to come by, so I never got the chance.

It sucked too because the more varied my skills were the better for me it was really, that being because it meant I had a keen understanding of mindsets provided by the people using them if I ever got in a fight with someone that had one. While sure I can fight people with most weapons rather easily it didn't change the fact that I wanted to learn something like the Hōzōin Ryu, pretty sure it was a monk that made that spear style during the fifteen hundreds.

But alas I still got to learn a lot of other weapons though so it wasn't all bad, a lot of things still left for me to learn, basically.

8888888

I waited until after dinner and clean up to go and ask Dad about his arm, he was in the study/library room that Mum had made when I was younger, it had originally been a spare room for guests and whatnot, but my parents basically never ended up with anyone staying over so dad made it into a Study.

I knocked on the door as I entered, Dad looked up from the book he was running a hand down before marking something on a piece of paper next to the book, his desk was cluttered as ever with scrolls and documents. Now that I think about it, I have not a single clue as to what Dad actually does outside desk work- I suppose he probably did the same stuff as the Chuunin in the tower and whatnot. Though for all I know it's something else entirely.

A smile took over his face and his eyes got somewhat brighter "Takezou, did you want something?" He moved his hand away from what he was doing and sat up stretching slightly.

"Ah well… I kind of wanted to… you know…?" I made some weird gestures with my hands.

"No I don't know. You'll need to be more specific." He eyed me as I sat down across from him.

"Um… I guess I just wanted to know more about how you lost your arm and more about Aunty Katsumi?" I shifted in the seat as his gaze shifted from me to the stump where his right arm should have been.

"Hm…" he sighed before a resigned look overcame him. "I guess I should have expected you to want to know more, it always was something that you were drawn to when you were younger." His tone was rather light all things considered.

"Alright well let's start with my sister then, seeing as that leads into why I lost my arm and then I can give context to that." He cleared his throat and leaned back. "Katsumi…"

There was a long drawn out silence where neither of us said anything and Dad especially just stared off into the void.

"Right well my younger sister was a person who always valued your life over her own and that was something made worse when we were kids and during the war her team was killed and she ended up with a case of survivors guilt that just ate away at her." He paused resting his chin in his hand before continuing. "As you might be able to imagine from being with your Aunt for all her Samurai stuff, she loves her family til the end of time and would actually do anything for them, so seeing Katsumi like this messed with your Aunt a lot. Anyway, all that was on the back foot of most things we did, she was mostly outwardly happy and seemed to make an effort to make others have a good time."

"Anything else I should know about her?" I asked intrigued to hear more about her person.

"Not really no… actually now that I think about it, that friend of yours- the Uchiha boy, he has tendencies and actions that remind me of my younger sister, he might have a degree of survivors guilt." His eyes became half-lidded as he thought on what he just presented to me. "That's my guess anyway, and who could blame the boy if that is the case, he was the only one that survived a massacre, let alone the fact that his older brother did it and I remember that Kid being very strongly attached to his brother right from the Nine Tails being unleashed on the village down to all the times I was headed to the academy or tower and he was there watching over his brother from the roof or just out of sight."

That was something I had never even considered really… Sasuke probably does have it… Dad makes a really good point. I really wish that this was something I had seen at an earlier stage, the kid wants his brother dead sure but he also holds no value in is own life and couldn't care for others or at the least tries to keep from forming bonds so that he isn't put in a position for them to cause him pain again.

"Now onto my arm I suppose," Dad said looking at said stump and then back at me. "Right so when would this have been…? Hm probably during the last war, my best guess is 'round about two or three years before the war was coming to an end. Yeah so about at that point in time my team which consisted of myself as the acting Jonin, Katsumi and two of other Chuunin." He took a moment to drink from a glass of water that was on the desk.

"On this mission we were out fighting in the Land of Earth, I can't remember for what reason we were there, but we were. While on this mission we were ambushed by a squad of Iwa Shinobi one of which was rather profound in that they had this person from the Explosion Corps with them that I can't remember the name of for the life of me because I don't care to." He paused again for a brief second. "Anyway, what ended up happening is that the other two chuunin were caught in an explosion and killed while my sister and I were pretty beat up at the time. Katsumi decided to jump out and attack them managing to get all of the Shinobi but the Explosion release guy who in turn went into the blast a hole through her chest." He went quiet again.

"I know I asked Dad, but you don't have to continue if this is really hard for you?" I said watching the waterfall of emotions cascade across his face and especially in his eyes as he was made to recall the scene.

"No its fine, I'll continue." He said shaking his head.

"Right so because she was facing the opposite direction to the guy and I had just recovered, I leapt in the way of the attack and pushing her away and shielding her with my right side." Dads hand traced up the side of his face that had scars dragging up the right side that was very telling of what the blast had done to him. "What ended up happening though was that my sister was still hit and she had her head blasted and died once it hit the ground, I was covered in her grey matter…" Dad gagged slightly. "Though there was a side effect to the guy who did it, he ended up blasting his hand off and with what I had at that point still left in me I punched a hole through his chest with a Kunai from what the team that found us told me. I actually don't know what happened after I took the blast but rather it's just a guess from myself and the people that found me and patched me up." Dad said solemnly.

"So that joke one that you told Naruto forever ago could be accurate for all you know?" I asked changing the direction of the conversation.

"Uh Sure I guess… that's not really what I expected you to take from the story, but okay then." Dad looked to the window in the room that looked out into the yard where it showed a dark night sky.

"Oh it looks pretty late I'm going to go shower then sleep, goodnight Dad," I said abruptly exiting the room and giving myself a moment to think about the whole story and what he said. It was an interesting story.

8888888

"Hey, Sasuke?" I asked looking to where he was resting nearby since we had taken a break from training to eat.

"What?" He asked back disinterested eyes moving to look at me.

"Do you ever wonder why we're here?" the look he gave me was so worth asking him that dumb question from a show I barely remembered, he looked half confused and half annoyed that I'd wasted his time with another one of these one-line questions that have no answers or context. "You know not like metaphysically- but why are we sitting out in the open destroyed field when I got Sensei to put in the benches under the shade of the trees for this exact reason." I continued giving a little more reason for the comment beyond my enjoyment.

"Leave me alone." He stated as he stood up and walked away from me.

"See you tomorrow for missions then," I said after him, I got up and headed over to the aforementioned benches and sat on them.

This training ad kicked my ass pretty hard since we started it, I was glad we were slowing down to fill in our time with missions again, there was only so much more of this I could do before it started to affect my state of mind. Not that I did much else with my life aside from cooking and this whole Ninja deal, truly this is a job for fucking loonies. There is no doubt in my mind as to all the people that do this having far more than a few screws loose, I mean look at my team for example. Sasuke has all of his screws loose except for one or two that keep him tied down.

As it would turn out Sensei would come to us about the Chuunin Exams within the next few days.

AN: Farewell.