AN: A reminder to watch the land of moon naruto movie before jumping into this chapter, unless you don't care to know how this arc was originally meant to go.

Chapter Title: Swordplay was like a dance
Arc 5 Part 2

The land of Wind was just how I remembered it from a previous visit.

Windy and full of sand.

The occasional animal or plant and most importantly a temperature change that was so sudden it nearly put us all on our asses.

It was early morning when we reached the border of it with the land of fire's border so we still had a good day of running before we made it to where we were supposed to meet with this client, who I still knew nothing about aside from their wealth. He was paying us quite an exorbitant amount just to guard him out of the land of wind to- well actually I didn't know that part either.

But at least my outfit was doing its job, we happened to be running through a heavy patch of wind at the moment and it kicked up a lot of sand. So my shawl and shemagh that I had were doing their jobs, other than that though my body was certainly cooler than the last time I came where I almost blacked out on our journey across the desert to Sunagakure.

Along the way though we crossed paths with an enormous snake that was hurtling itself across the desert heading somewhere that didn't seem very obvious to us. I asked either Sensei's if they knew anything about the wildlife, but they were both unhelpfully uninformed about the wildlife here.

It made me wonder what else lurked in the dark crevices of the land of wind.

Though I never got that answered because around midday we came across a massive long caravan of vehicles making their way through the desert and I was once again reminded that there was some pretty cool tech out there in the world even if we didn't see it all that often.

I could hear Kakashi, Asuma and Sakura talking to someone so I turned and found a fairly plump well dressed man who was introducing himself as 'Prince Michiru'.

Which meant he was our employer.

He got all creepy and close to Sakura taking her hand and caressing it saying something I didn't catch when she put on a sweet smile before there was a subtle crack as her hand tightened around his and he pulled away from her- Kakashi made some joke about dangerous flowers often being the bright and colourful kind.

Rolling my shoulders as they had a bout of stiffness I pulled the shemagh down from being over my mouth and nose as well as the hood of the shawl. I suddenly felt a wave of heat intensify its feeling on my face making me squint my eyes.

When my eyes refocused and I was ever gratefully returned to noticing the colour difference again I heard Kakashi and Asuma introducing us all to the Prince.

"This is Takezou- he might look like someone twice his age but he is the same age as the other kids." Asuma said when he got to me.

"I resent that- it's not my fault my face has aged poorly and has scars on it." I joked while closing my left eye because it was bothering me, it made me consider getting out the cloth my hitai-ate came on out so that I could just cover my left eye so it stopped bothering me.

"It is your fault it happened, I kept telling you how to prevent it but you didn't listen and now you have those huge stress lines on your face." Sensei corrected me and I laughed it off with a shrug.

After a few more minutes of introductions and working out what would be the best positions for everyone while we traveled we were on the road. Team seven was around the middle to the back of the caravan leaving the front back to the middle up to us. I wasn't all that worried about the likelihood that anything would happen so I was laying on the roof of the cart I was guarding while listening to the sounds of the desert around us as well as the clicks of our clients son's video game handheld.

Traveling was slow and I guess that was to be expected with such an enormous line of vehicles, I hadn't noticed anything going on aside from the prince and his son having idle conversations when the prince wasn't learning about Ninja and our hierarchy from Asuma.

This was probably another one of those times when I should have been putting more effort into our job but it was kind of hard when there were so many of us let alone the fact that we had two scent trackers and Hinata. Still hot though, it had managed to get hotter than it already was and I laughed at Kiba about it because he had said my outfit wasn't going to do anything in the hot weather yet there he was with a black leather jacket making pools of sweat- there was probably going to be a river trailing us because of him. The girls had decided to wear what were effectively thinner versions of their normal outfits and I think Akamaru thought he was dying because the poor dog had gotten pretty huge recently and had a fair amount more fur so he wasn't in all that great shape.

From what I understood and overheard though we were taking the Prince back to the Land of Moon or whatever you wanted to call it, and after looking at the map Sensei had I realized it was going to be like a month of traveling to get there. The place was south of the Land of Water, or roughly south-east of the Land of Tea… no wait it was east of it- I'm pretty sure it was. Maybe this heat is messing with my head?

I rolled my shoulders as I sat up and began stretching, breathing out a sigh of relief. I turned my head and body flickered off the roof of the cart stopping right in front of a gang of which there were six people holding weapons getting ready to attack.

Clearing my throat made them all jump out of their skin. "You can surrender or I'll make you wish you had." I offered them with a slight motion of my right hand before it landed in the natural position of resting on the hilt of the sword I had brought with me.

Ugh they raised their weapons at me- one was even swinging a sword.

Blocking the attack by raising my Chukuto in a reverse grip I parried it and instead of landing the riposte I kicked the man back into his friends hard enough that there was a very solid thump when they crashed into the sand. I followed this up by moving around and making sure they were all unconscious before tying them up in rope and running along to help with the rest of the groups that were attacking near the front of the caravan that the drivers and passengers didn't seem to even notice.

This is going to keep happening from now on wasn't it?

[Teenage Dirtbag]

The desert tour we were doing went on for another day or two, occasionally we would have to deal with bandits or a few morons looking to get an easy score.

At the moment though we had settled on the edge of a massive desert plain that blended into an open area of rolling hills and grassy plains. Though we had all sat down to eat, Prince Michiru offered us the food that his cooks were making and so despite Sensei and Sakura being about to turn down the offer I took the prince up on it. Mostly because I wanted good food and because I wanted more recipes to add to my repertoire that was ever growing.

The chefs were all for talking about food while they were preparing the meals so that was nice of them to give me the time of day when they didn't have to, though one of them was actually super surprised to find that a Shinobi did something as mundane as cooking and loved it at that. It made me happy to break any preconceptions that they had of us, plus they were just really nice people. It wasn't often you ran into just genuine people when we worked but these guys were telling me about how they don't actually care about the pay for the job but rather the experience of cooking all the different meals and trying new things out all the time. It was one of those things where I was just invested in hearing what they had to say.

Another thing though was that like with most people they had assumed I was in a similar age range to Kakashi and Asuma based on my appearance, which was fair because I had so much visible scarring, the height, my greying hair and the stress lines or whatever you'd call them. Now that things had settled down though and everyone was eating with both Sensei's on guard around the camp that had been set up, I had a shift during the middle of the night so I was planning to nod off after eating.

The sleep I did get was pretty lackluster and I woke up with a sore back, but I decided to take the chance to try performing the shadow clone jutsu seeing as Sensei showed me how to do it.

Running through the hand seals I imagined the form of myself and waited for the clone to appear.

…

What the hell?

Where was it?

I looked around and I couldn't see it at all, there wasn't even one of those half dead malformed ones that Naruto did.

Alright.

Guess I'll do it later when I'm not meant to be doing a job.

Though my attempt at performing the jutsu had gone sour my mood was pretty good all things considered, it was probably because of the fact that the food we had was so good I was still beaming. Like I don't think I could put it to words how much good the food was, to think Michiru and his son eat like that all the time.

Man that sure would be nice to have meals like that all the time.

On to my shift I guess, all this thinking about food is going to make me hungry again and I'd rather not wake people up because my stomach was as loud as a lion.

[Cloning Science]

Over the next few days we traveled across the land of tea where we weren't attacked at all by comparison to the deserts of Wind where we were attacked pretty often.

I noticed Prince Michiru's kid playing some kid of video game while we were traveling through Wind and he seemed to like using a bow if his performance at a circus we stopped off at was anything to go off of, so I was beginning to consider asking about if he liked archery and seeing as I'm in a Kyudo class myself it would be cool to talk to him about it.

At the time I was sitting on the roof of the cart just behind the Prince's and his son, of whom I didn't know the name of was sitting on the back of his cart playing his game.

"Hey kid, you like archery right?" I asked.

He ignored me.

"I know you're probably going to continue not giving me the time of day but I just thought you might like some pointers-" I saw his eyes acknowledge me for a moment and that was all I needed. "I do archery as well- or more specifically I train in Kyudo, but it's archery either way."

Still he kept his focus on the game, yet his ears were perked in a way that I knew meant he was still listening to what I had to say even if he wasn't verbally acknowledging it.

I just sort of began talking, there wasn't necessarily a point where I ever thought to myself that I ought to stop or maybe even see if anyone cared, maybe I was just reiterating it all to myself to make sure I remembered what I had learned. But by the time I had run out of stuff to say an hour had passed and it seemed like a few more people were listening in than there was when I started, Sensei and Hinata had moved up towards us and now were within hearing range of what I had been talking about.

The Prince had his head out the window of the cart listening too.

Clearing my throat I realized that it was fairly dry after an hour straight of talking, so I got out the water canteen I had in my bag.

"That's all I can remember for now..." my voice trailed off as I started to feel uncomfortable with all the people focussing on me.

"And here I thought I was meant to be the teacher." Asuma said while blowing smoke from his cigarette.

I felt like that time Ume offered me a position at her Dojo as a teacher suddenly made sense. Though I think that was also because she just wanted help more than anything else.

Time continued on and my impromptu teaching skills being displayed was asked about by Sensei as he tried to get an answer out of me about how I had managed to give such a good description of forms and whatnot. I didn't even really know how so I just avoided answering the question.

Though as the day finished and rolled over onto a new morning we were making decent progress.

There was something to be said about the fact that the longer we went on and the days bled together and became indistinguishable from one another that I had begun to want for some kind of fight. I was feeling like I was missing out on throwing myself around in combat.

Maybe I had just reached a point where my skill level was stagnating because the average enemy I was likely to face was so subpar to our team that it was hardly a rush, and yet still I couldn't understand this bloodlust that had begun to rise in my mind, I mean I normally hated conflict or fighting unnecessarily. Was this job getting into my head in a way I had never considered?

[Innate Teaching]

Eventually we made it to a seaside town where we were told there would be a ship ready to take us on the voyage over to the land of moon.

I was thankful this job was getting close to done until someone came to the Prince and told him their royale yacht had been staved off due to poor weather and seafaring conditions, so they had arranged for a new boat to take him there. Though he didn't seem all that bothered by the news and almost immediately went off and had us follow him to a flower shop where he brought an entire cart of random flowers.

It was odd for sure.

Despite that though just Asuma and I were walking alongside his cart with the others all back down at the docs looking after all the stuff Michiru had brought, as for his cart though it was taken out of the city to a home that rested in the forest on a hillside next to the port town. I didn't hear what the prince talked about with his son, but the kid seemed pretty happy about something.

My outfit had long since become useless, it had been a good week or so since we left the desert. Sure where we were was nowhere near as hot but I didn't really have anything else to wear aside from that extra shirt I brought. Though I wasn't bothered to be wearing the outfit so far from the desert, because most people we passed seemed to take it at face value and assume I was from Cloud or Wind. Which was a fair guess based on my appearance alone I suppose.

The trip onto the hillside took Michiru's carriage around half an hour most of which was spent in silence, me and sensei ended up playing I-Spy though that was because I randomly started it up on my own out of boredom for what we were doing. So much of the journey had become stagnant at this point, which was normally a good thing and even something I would prefer but the aforementioned want for a fight was only growing.

I was almost sad that I hadn't been able to stay back with the stuff on the dock so that I could train the shadow clone jutsu some more. I had been able to make the tiniest amount of progress towards actually making a clone in the last few days so I was beginning to get excited about it, plus Sensei said that a clone could help half the time spent on learning things.

When we finally stopped outside the house though, the Prince practically leapt out and called the name of a woman who was presumably the one in front of us in a garden. She immediately ignored the rotund man and called for Hikaru, the prince's son, she hugged him and was confused by who the prince was and her shock was hard to hide when she heard him say he was Michiru. This led to her mentioning that he was skinny and now he was fat.

I tuned out what was happening around this point and went to look at the flowers Michiru had brought with him as his conversation traveled inside the house with his ex-wife and son. As well as this I walked over the cliff edge where the drop off went straight down into jagged rocks and the ocean. Asuma was watching the family reunion to make sure nothing untoward happened while I was doing this, not before long we were back on the road again heading towards the port. The mood of the prince and his son both much more somber than when we had arrived, from what Sensei told me later it was because Michiru had come to ask for his wife to come live with him again because he still loved her and offered a bunch of expensive stuff, but she declined because all she wanted was just for them to be together rather than always be thinking about money.

It was sunset when I had decided to take break from playing guard so I headed out onto the water and began running through old Kata I remembered from my time training under Ume, while I was doing them I realized I had begun to dance across the water flowing each strike with the sword into another like a stream of water.

Without really thinking about it I began to hum and occasionally sing the lyrics to a song I remembered while prancing across the water off the docs, I made sure no one was around when it started because I wasn't sure how I'd explain my dance like Kata.

"Are you going to Scarborough Fair?" the lyrics left my mouth easily like I was reciting something ingrained into my memory. "Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme-" humming the tune as I continued as I felt the shawl I was wearing flutter around as I ended up twirling around before filtering on into the next swing of the sword. My eyes were closed and had been since I started because it helped to get used to fighting blind when you could and it was because of this that when I heard someone's voice I was caught off guard and nearly fell through the water.

"You Shinobi really are weird." when my eyes looked around I caught sight of who had spoken Kiba and Akamaru were sitting on the edge of the dock eating, Kiba had a huge shit eating grin. Not to mention the fact that I realised Hikaru was sitting nearby to Kiba playing his video game or was looking at me now.

"Shut your mouth Kiba." I warned my eyes narrowing at him as he burst into loud laughter that echoed like howls.

"I c-can't believe that o-our Takezou is a dancer!" he continued laughing at me.

"Whats going on?" Kakashi and Asuma showed up looking vaguely interested in finding out what had Kiba in stitches, though the look both Sensei had was one of someone who had already been watching but decided not to say anything.

"Nothing! Absolutely none!" I said my face flushing red with embarrassment for the billionth time this mission. "Damn it! Alright who doesn't know at this point then?"

"The girls don't." Asuma said through blowing a breath of smoke out and stifling a laugh.

"The girls don't know what?" Sakura's voice said as she, Hinata and Michiru came into view looking somewhat confused.

"Nothing!" I responded instantly, cutting off Kakashi and Kiba's responses.

AN: Takezou dancing around through his kata is more a representation of the similarities between Dancing and what sword combat can look like when its done by people of a very high ability.