AN: The story isn't too far off the final chapter now, only seven more to go and then it's at the end of where I can write to for the time being.

Chapter Title: Still growing
Arc 6: No longer Armed

It was officially done.

I had just finalized my resignation from being a Shinobi in a meeting with the Hokage, Asuma-Sensei and Hinata was present as well seeing as she was a part of Team 10 and all. I had told them that I was done about a month ago and that I would be stopping, obviously Sensei and Hinata were both understanding and disheartened about it seeing as Sasuke had run off and now I was leaving the team. I didn't tell anyone other than them and my team either which was what made seeing Kiba, Team 8 and Hinata waiting for me outside the tower- it made sense I guess, Shikamaru and Chouji were like vaguely my friends in the academy even if I didn't talk to them anymore, Kiba… well I talked to him and the last time I actually hung out with him was in the land of snow I realized. Ino though, I knew for certain that she was only there because Shikamaru probably said for her to be, or something like that.

If I had to say though it's been about a year since I started training to become an instructor, just like the first day I was still in love with it, teaching was cool too, I got to start teaching a class of my own at the 'Black Steel Kazuko' dojo, the kids I taught were only ages five to seven at the moment- there were about nine kids.

My class aside though, being fifteen? again was something else- I had grown pretty significantly, now I was around or just under six feet tall, my shoulders were getting much broader, my body itself was filling out and most annoyingly hormones were back again. And fuck me I hated this. Imagine going to talk to your teammate who was effectively your sister and starting to notice her curves forming- it was awful and I've had to straight up leave training over the months when it became too much and I would go and throw myself into things like Kyudo to keep me focused. That was on the backburner for now though, being this tall was weird now… I've always been tall be it here or what was left of another life time, but when I went from being a head or so above most of our class to almost as tall as Dad and Asuma Sensei who were both like three or four inches taller than I was now. I was taller than Kakashi which was funny to point out whenever I saw the man, I didn't see him often as you might expect seeing as I wasn't on his team but Hinata and I did get assigned to help Kiba a few times as well as Asuma.

It was nice to not have to get all my armour and whatnot on when I didn't have to, now I just wore Kimonos and Yukata's when the occasion called for it, because of this though I had like ten different ones while beforehand I had like four. I wore a lot of black, grey or darker blue coloured Kimono's, I had a few red ones but mostly, like I said stuck to the simple colours like black and grey. For instance right now I was wearing a black Kimono with a white singlet, wifebeater, undershirt or whatever you'd want to call it under it, it had a small crimson obi and other than that I was wearing straw sandals- why? Well because it was simple and easy to get into in the mornings as well as take off.

Going back to the question I placed about my age though, Mother finally told me on my last birthday that she and Dad didn't actually know how old I was because Mum had lost- yes I just said lost my birth certificate. So my parents had just been guessing how old I was, so for all I know I could be a year or two older than I think, or even a year younger. I didn't really have a response to finding out my own parents weren't aware of how old I was… this probably explains my growth though right? Aside from my heritage- Mum said that her Father was even taller than Dad and he was already super tall.

Back to the now though.

I was sitting next to Hinata in a booth at a restaurant that they'd all booked for a send off so to say, with her to my left, Kiba and Akamaru to my right with the rest of the spots being filled out by team 8 while we all ordered food. Despite how it was pretty bittersweet I was happy, joyful even, a smile danced across my face while I listened to Shikamaru and Chouji retell some of their teams more insane or absolutely nutty missions and just generally catching up with everyone at the table- Kiba was arguing that we'd had the craziest missions so far with things like the Wave fight, Land of Snow, helping a bounty hunter in the land of stone- where Shikamaru countered with helping stop a war and saving the land of Wind and the rest of the elemental nations from being raided… Kiba called bullshit and his mood only got worse when team 8 all swore to it being an S-rank mission on a need to know basis.

"So Sakura is a nurse at the Hospital then?" I asked Kiba and kind of Ino depending on if she decided to answer.

"Well from what she's said she tried to do just that but Lady Tsunade picked her up nearly instantly and now she can cut you open to restart your heart and punch people through buildings- that being if she doesn't use them as weapons… kinda why she isn't here today- she had some tests or something going on." He informed everyone as there was a visible shudder across the booth as we all unanimously weren't comfortable with that thought.

For a moment I noticed a certain amount of glee in Ino's eyes as they lit up in anticipation of what she was about to mention.

Clearing her throat she got everyone's attention.

I was already terrified of what was about to happen.

Women that could punch you through a building were scary and women like Ino who could make you shit bricks just by giving you a look before she mentioned something that you'd really rather not have them know about.

"Takezou..." she licked her lips savouring every second of my misery. "I went to see a movie recently."

I felt my soul leave my body- I could see Kiba's eyes go a little wide, he knew how much I hated that part of our mission, after all he spent half a year teasing me over it until it came out and he was now of a similar vote to me.

"It was the final movie in the Princess Gale series, and well… how do I put this..." She paused for a moment, a grin rising. "I hadn't even known they were making the fourth movie- low and behold though, while I was at the theatre I saw a poster for it- you wouldn't believe who was on one of the posters for it!"

"Seeing as those two have gone pale I'll take a guess and say they were a part of it." Shikamaru cut in blandly with a vague smirk as Ino got annoyed at him for it.

"Yeah I suppose we were." I confirmed, I don't think I ever actually told Hinata and Sensei about what exactly happened on that mission. I say that because Hinata seemed interested.

"So were you like extras or something?" Chouji asked, bringing my attention to him as he spoke between bites of food.

"Something like that." was my simple answer, after all I'd rather not relive it all if I didn't have to.

"Y-you didn't say much a-about it when you g-got back..." the translucent eyed girl said from my left having found it in herself to speak up. Up until this point she's been pretty quiet, and to be fair her team is falling apart around her and then we've gotten together with people we're loosely friends with to send me off.

Thinking about it though… I tossed all those books into the fire didn't I? The ones I had shown to Sasuke and Hinata, I wasn't sure if the contents of them made much of a difference, Sasuke had called me out on them when he read through it in the forest. He was right that I had tailored them for a specific purpose, the thing was that I had written these short stories that were effectively the best way I found that I could express what I wanted to get across, they weren't terribly subtle but at the same time…

I was drawn from my thoughts when I heard my name being mentioned again, for a while the colourless nature of what my left eye saw was void, but now I noticed it again and it was getting on my nerves along with Ino.

"And then while he was holding her bridal style watching the destruction he said 'To live and die by the sword, for your lord and no other. That is the way of the samurai.' it was almost too cool to be true." she laughed like a kid. "Takezou if I had known you were such a good actor then I might've liked you more!" Ino said loudly not letting me live that week down.

While it was nice to know we might be able to repair our relationship to not be antagonistic, I didn't like that line being seen as acting though… After all, nothing I did was.

"It wasn't." I stated flatly cutting the overly fashionable girl off.

"What?"

"I wasn't acting, I really did say that, those men really did die." I was being pretty cold, but it's how I felt. "I may not have known any of them, but I've still spent years training like one, so I felt angry at Naruto when he was going off about it while it happened."

Kiba cleared his throat "That end of the movie was pretty great though right? The way the land of snow got turned to the land of spring was insane! I still can't believe it!"

The conversation turned away and I went back to eating.

I may have thought it stupid, but at the same time every now and then I looked back on it and even now I could see it. The director was right, I'm okay with all the scenes I was in by proxy. If someone learned something from what I had said while they were recording then I'm glad I was of some assistance to those who went to see the movie. I still hadn't seen it, but I do think my character was credited to as 'Yasuke the black Samurai' which was a joke I had made after the fact where I was talking to someone- I don't remember who and I had said that it was meant to be a joke seeing as Yasuke was a famous black Samurai that served under Oda Nobunaga. Hence why I had called myself it when she called me a Samurai- which all things considered I was basically one, I only use Ninjutsu where I have to after all, otherwise it's mostly Kenjutsu.

When everything started dying down later on and everyone was finished eating.

After that though Hinata ended up having to leave because she had some family business on, Kiba had something similar, Chouji left because we had stopped paying for the food and no one really wanted to support being eaten out of pocket.

It was just Ino, Shikamaru and me, the Nara was fading in and out, I suspected that Ino was making sure he didn't fall asleep in the booth and get forgotten.

"I had thought it was just make up by the way." my attention was drawn to the blonde.

"Which one?"

"Which one?' he asks." Ino laughed hollowly. "Guess that answers that then, you already knew about my question before I asked."

"You were looking at them when you caught sight of my face after I stepped out of the tower." I paused watching her nod. "It wasn't too difficult to guess, plus there aren't too many things about me that could be seen as fake aside from my hair- I had some lady ask where I got such good hair dye from once..." I let out a short laugh remembering it.

Laughing some on her own, Ino asked another question. "But seriously- where do you get such good hair dye?" giggling to herself the air around us lightened significantly.

"Making any sense why I decided to stop then?" I asked back solemnly, I may have once found her annoying and possibly even hated her, but right now we were two people laughing about something silly.

"It does, I wasn't quite sure why back when Shikamaru told me about it- in fact I was originally going to only come so that I could get back at you" She paused with a sigh. "But then we got to the tower and when you stepped out I realised something I might not have otherwise… and that was that this job line really does take a toll on people."

"It does. that's for sure… but the only real damage I have from being a ninja are the scars up my hands and forearms ." I gestured to the rest of myself, my Kimono top opening slight when I did so. "The rest of this is from other things, not to mention I don't even know why my hair is greying or silver."

"Oh… thats probably something you ought to look into, unless you want to look like some selfless hero character in a movie that has a tragic backstory." She joked "That scar over your face is pretty awful though." with that Ino stood up and started waking her teammate.

"Oddly specific, but I'll take it to heart just continue to be a teacher and instructor then." following suit I got up. "Guess I'll see you around then."

With that I walked away leaving her to get Shikamaru out and home.

[Dealt A Crap Hand]

My breathing hitched as I caught sight of something that was not meant to be there.

For a moment I thought I'd seen that girl from the prelims of the Chuunin Exam.

Kin- something or other.

My arrow had punctured through her skull knocking it back with a sickening

crack and squelch as the blood sprayed from it, and the body fell forward crumbling as it split in two where my blade had bisected her.

I nearly threw up falling to my knees.

My eyes closed a ragged breath releasing itself as I tried to push down the feeling of dread and gut wrenching horror as I felt one step closer to emptying my stomach's contents.

Finally when I opened my eyes I felt a weight lift from me.

I looked around and I was still kneeling on the floor of the dojo bow and arrows ready to start a sync point for the exercise, taking a moment to catch myself and breathe properly. With said breath I stood following the practiced movements I'd become accustomed to doing over the years, reaching the climax of my stance. I sucked in a calming breath to focus my line.

"Calamity untold, unbound by weight. So fly straight." I spoke softly in the breath I released along with the arrow, the barely audible thwip as it struck the dead center of the target.

"You alright there?" the older girl said from my left. "I mean your chants always sound fucked up, but this time your eyes were a whole lot more frightened or something like that..." Her voice trailed off.

The purple haired woman's hand landed on my shoulder "It's… just a leftover problem from being a Shinobi is all."

"I can't imagine something that's making you physically tremble after the fact to be 'a left over problem' seeing you react like this and all." Yumi said, turning me around to look at her worried face, and I understood it. I've been going here for two years now, not to mention at the current time we were the only ones in, I had come straight here after the restaurant with everyone else.

"You're right."

"I am!" she said proudly while her eyes crinkled into a smile. "And as your surrogate caregiver while you attend training I say you go home and let me come because I want to see your adorable sister again."

"Yes ma'am." I chuckled at what she said and we both got to cleaning up so that I could be dropped off at home by my teacher.

It took us just under an hour to clean up everything and put all the targets away, arrows, bows and the extra equipment. Most of the remainder was spent washing the floors and similar boring stuff.

Finally though when we were out of our gear and walking along the road toward my house the sun was setting, the sky was orangish pink, there weren't too many clouds above us though. Now that I got to thinking about it I wasn't really sure why Yumi had been at the Dojo alone though, we didn't have training on today and no one had mentioned coming in, maybe she did this all the time? I didn't ask though it wasn't really my place to pry into her personal life, she's a great friend though, I don't think I could ever understate how much I enjoy hanging out with her and doing Kyudo when I'm not teaching, learning about teaching and realizing how much money I actually had left over from being a Shinobi, like I could buy my own house if I wanted to and fill it with furniture. It was still insane how much we earned from all that over the years, it never really seemed like that much when I had to buy stuff for work.

We slowly began to approach the house around thirty or so minutes after leaving, there hadn't been much foot traffic either, probably because a festival was coming up and people were preparing. I think it was a Cherry Blossom festival if I had to guess based on the time of year, spring was soon.

Well that and we had a large Sakura tree outside the front of our house that provided shade to the front lawn, stepping past the old tree though I went to the door and opened it calling out that I was back, same as Yumi. standing in the genkan taking off our sandals took the lead into the house walking down a short hall into the living room where Mum was talking with a friend of hers.

AN: See you next week, and if you have any questions just pm me or review