Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, only this storyline, my OCs and my artwork.

Chapter 17

"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself."
― Rumi

I found it odd to work out exactly when 'dawn' was. Sure, I was familiar with the phenomenom - Sun comes up, birds tweeting and all, but how could I set an alarm for 'dawn'. Didn't it change with the seasons?

And how stupid was it that I relied on clocks so much that this was giving me anxiety?

Voluntarily go into a profession that involves being beaten up on TV? Bring it. Let by best friend and her crazy grandma stick needles in my back? Sure, why not. Live with the possibility of being late? Crippling, endless anxiety.

Naturally, this meant that I woke up even earlier than I should have and found myself alone in training ground 4. I had enough time to stretch a bit, then nervously wander around the clearing until Keiko joined me, almost an hour later. She practically stormed in with a fearsome expression, and I didn't need to guess much as to why when I spotted Akuma trailing in behind her with a self satisfied smirk. "Ah, I see all of us are after the worm this morning."

"Yeah, tweet tweet." I mumbled. I may like waking up early, but that didn't make me a great conversationalist until around lunch time.

"Tora chan, how's Ichiraku's?" He drawled.

"Still standing."

"Mm. And your family?"

"Functioning."

"Lovely. How about-"

"Enough with the small talk, you're doing my head in." Keiko snapped.

Akuma placed a hand on his chest. "Oh my dear Keiko, how your words wound me."

"Why don't you let me show you what else I'm gonna wound!"

Before murder could be attempted, our new sensei slipped out of the trees. Hayate came to a stop in front of us with his hands in his pockets and the same dower expression he had worn the day before. "I don't think fighting amongst yourselves is the best way to start today."He took a moment to assess each of us, coughing lightly before continuing. "You'll have to entire day to finish this task. Your objective is to obtain this, and its purpose." He pulled out a dark wooden box, the delicate sort with a glossy sheen. "Any questions?"

There was a pause, and then Keiko acted. Without so much as waiting for a 'begin', she hurled several senbon at Hayate and charged didn't miss a beat. As Hayate dodged without a single change in his expression, Akuma dove in to attack with a kunai, aiming for his side. Again, Hayate easily moved out of the way and behind Akuma, so that he would take the brunt of Keiko's senbon.

This all happened in the time it took me to stop gaping and get in on the action.

Moving out of Akuma's trajectory, I sprinted forward and aimed my right fist at Hayate. The jounin blocked it without a glance and knocked my elbow out of the way as I tried to engage him. I pivoted to throw a hard roundhouse kick, then all of a sudden I was staring at the sky on my back.

I blinked.

Then hissed at the new pain in my hip. Hayate had managed to grab my leg then quite literally swing me to the side.

I hadn't even seen him move.

Keiko's yelp of surprise broke my daze and I scrambled up to see her legs kicked out from under her. In the same roll of momentum Hayate was then blocking another strike from Akuma and throwing him on top of our other teammate. They collided loudly and groaned until Keiko shoved Akuma off of her with a furious expression. "That's it! Hand over the freaking box, Sensei!"

Hayate raised an eyebrow. "I'm afraid you'll be hard pressed to find an enemy that'll just do what you say, Keiko san."

"What about if I ask nicely?" Again he easily blocked my foot with his forearm, holding me in place. "I think you need to work on your definition of 'nice', and your taijutsu." He pulled at my ankle so that my shin was pressed against his chest, then sharply jabbed his hand like a claw into the underside of my thigh. My shocked face morphed into pain as I cried out and fell. Whatever Hayate had done had cramped the muscles inside my thigh and calf simultaneously.

I didn't see the next few moments of the fight, being too preoccupied with the immobility I was dealing with, and it was only after furiously rubbing my hands against my leg did the pain start to wade away. I absolutely hated cramps, always making sure to drink enough water to avoid them, but that had been something else.

There was another grunt of pain, and then a sigh. "I was expected at least one of you to still be standing. It hasn't even been two minutes." Hayate said dispassionately.

I rolled onto my shoulder to look up; Keiko was stuck in some sort of nylon robe and swinging from the lower branches of a tree, her white skirt panels covering her face while she cursed and struggled, while Akuma was on his hands and knees wheezing. Hayate was standing in his original spot and looked quite untouched. He opened his mouth to continue, then shifted to allow another kunai to pass him. However this one erupted with a loud bang and plume of white smoke.

After achieving this, Akuma jumped to his feet with a grimace and tugged Keiko down to the ground roughly, but before he could help her out of the knotted mess Hayate was there again, slamming his palm against the side of his jaw. Akuma staggered, hitting the trunk of the tree and barely managing to block the next attack with both forearms.

I staggered to my feet, attempting to run to help, but after putting weight on my cramping leg I gasped and fell to one knee, cursing my lack of pain tolerance. I grabbed a kunai from my belt and tried to remember how to execute a proper throw, however the weapon hit the trunk inches from Akuma's face. Hayate turned slightly with a bemused expression, while Akuma glared incredulously.

At that point, Keiko came to my rescue from humiliation. One leg still awkwardly bound, she yelled a war cry and launched senbon at Hayate's lower body. The close proximity brought her closer to her target than ever, but still Hayate deftly leapt away from the attack.

At the very least, Akuma was no longer cornered in. "You'll have to do better than that!" The jounin taunted.

I half stumbled half shuffled over to Keiko and tried to use another kunai to cut through the rope, but its tough fabric made it time consuming. Huffing in exasperation, I began to unwind Keiko's leg by hand. "You look ridiculous." She muttered. I could feel the thick mud that was caked to one side of my face.

I scowled at her classic effort to spread the bad mood. "I could just leave you like this, you know."

Meanwhile, Akuma had peeled himself from the tree to meet our sensei in battle again. With gritted teeth, he threw another exploding tag at Hayate and began to flip through hand seals once the smoke had enveloped both of them.

Keiko was now free, and my leg was fading to irritating pins and needles, so we both jumped and circled to either side of the smoke, ready to strike. After a few tense moments, I could make out Hayate's silhouette, then the silence was broken by Akuma's hand breaking out of the ground (1) and latching onto his ankle. For one split second, I thought that he had him, but then with a grunt Hayate grabbed onto the hand and pulled Akuma himself out of the ground.

Stunned, Akuma hung limp and was too slow to counter the knee that made contact with his stomach. I rushed forward, then yelped and twisted sideways to avoid more senbon from Keiko. A hot sting on my upper thigh told me that one of them had scratched me. Not noticing my predicament, Keiko snarled and threw more, only this time catching Akuma while Hayate merely dodged again. However this time, Keiko had used the distraction to flip through her own hand seals; a wave of leaves whipped around Hayate, and were gone just as quickly (2).

Whatever Hayate saw caused the greatest emotional response they had seen from him so far, but even Narakumi no Jutsu did little more that narrow his eyes and grimace. He broke out of the genjutsu almost immediately, used shunshin to close the distance to Keiko and knock her rolled back up and out of the way as I took hold of Hayate's attention again after having used the distraction to cast my own jutsu (3).

Hayate was greeted with three of me running towards him. The first was instantly burst with an open palm, the next with a kick to the legs, but it was all I needed to get a clear shot at his head. My leg sprung up almost to 180 degrees then fell down to hit the muscle between neck and shoulder. To my horror, Hayate blocked the attack with only a slight grunt.

With my foot caught again, he spoke condescendingly. "I thought you would've worked out by now that your legs are far too slow for you to not end up in this position."

My face burned red with shame and anger, and with a cry I threw all my weight onto him. His eyes narrowed slightly, then he twisted and let fall me to the ground to duck more flying senbon. "Aren't you running out of those?"

While Keiko had Hayate's attention, I rushed to Akuma and pulled him out of the way. He was clutching his hand from where he had been dragged out of the earth like a broken doll. "This isn't working." He sighed with irritation.

"You think so?!" I winced as Keiko had her own senbon launched back at her to burst the clone she had made. "We shouldn't be fighting head on. We need to get Keiko and regroup away from Sensei."

"He won't let us run off like that." Akuma frowned in thought, then a cunning smirk reappeared. "But I do have another idea."

Akuma sunk to one knee, centred himself, then flew through another set of familiar hand seals. He grimaced when nothing happened; I watched with confusion, realising that this was the first time I'd ever seen him struggle with ninjutsu, but then a moment later I understood why. After making the hand seals again, Akuma disappeared and reappeared next to Hayate. The latter slapped the kunai out of his hands, which caused the clone to burst.

Out of my peripheral, I saw something approaching and neatly caught the projectile. I opened my hand and gaped when I saw what Akuma had thrown to me, and finally understood.

It wasn't a just clone jutsu he had cast, but Kawarimi no Jutsu; the reason for his first failed attempt was that Akuma was trying to swap himself with the box hanging from Hayate's hip (4). Unlike what we practiced at the Academy, he had to do it on a moving object since Hayate was lazily dodging Keiko. However instead of just replacing the box, he'd substituted himself away again, and the real Akuma was now running back to save Keiko's ass.

I was extremely envious of Akuma's chakra reserves, because seriously, for a new genin he should be exhausted by now or something.

I crouched in the shrubbery and examined the box in my hand. It was minimally decorated, but looked to be on the expensive side. I opened it to find it had a velvet lining as well, and upon seeing that, I realised how we could win. I just needed...ah hah!

Excitedly I made what I hoped to be the last jutsu I needed, forming another clone of myself. We both ran towards the fight, then I split off to pull Keiko away while my clone and Akuma took Hayate's attention.

Keiko was breathing heavily, but looking more pissed off than ever. Evidently, she was angry that the jounin had managed to evade her usually perfect throws. "Keiko, I need your necklace."

She looked at me like I had gone crazy. "What the hell for?"

"Just trust me, and then go help Akuma." Keiko possessively gripped her clan necklace, then huffed and handed it over. She ran past and joined the assault again, while I rolled up the necklace as neatly as I could, then closed the box. The adrenaline made my fingers uncooperative, but once I was done, I turned and raised the box in my hand. "GAME OVER!"

The three of them froze, staring at me like I had gone mad. Hayate narrowed his eyes on the box in my grasp. "I don't think so, Tora san. You haven't completed the test yet."

"I'm pretty certain I have." And now, I couldn't help the grin that formed on my face. "You said we had to get the box and its purpose, right? Well, here's the box, and here is its purpose." I popped the lid to reveal Keiko's necklace displayed inside. "It's too decorative to hold anything that isn't valuable. It's a jewellery box!"

Akuma and Keiko snapped their heads to Hayate as well, as we all prayed in the silence that we were in the clear. My smile started to grow weak at the completely blank expression the jounin was using to stare at me, until finally, his lips quirked to the side. "Huh, I guess you guys aren't so useless after all."

"Does this mean we pass?" Keiko asked hopefully.

Another twitch of the lips, and then a nod. I whooped while Akuma gave a relieved laugh and Keiko looked up as if to say 'thank you'.

Hayate relaxed from his combat position and coughed lightly, as if the condition seemed to be overcome by physical activity (which really didn't make any sense). "Congratulations, you're all officially part of Team 11. Go and get some food, then in an hour I want you all back here to get properly started." With that, our sensei promptly left us.

I gave another whoop with my arms in the air. "How cool was that!"

Keiko threw her arms around my waist. "Ahh, that was awesome! How did you get it?"

"Actually Bug Eyes, I got the box for us." Akuma drawled with no attempt at modesty.

"Huh, would you look at that, you're more than just an ugly face."

"Alright, enough!" I said firmly before a fight broke out. "We're genin now, so shut your mouths and lets go get some food." Keiko rolled her eyes at my mothering tone.

"Now that we're officially teammates, I get free ramen, right?" Akuma poked at my side, jumping away as I swatted at him.

"In your dreams, Ametsuchi."

"Ha! I've never had to pay for my ramen." Keiko boasted.

"What! That is extremely unfair!"

Our bellies sufficiently full and our moods light, we managed to make it back to training ground for without Keiko committing murder, getting lost or Akuma complaining about discriminating discounts at Ichiraku's. Hayate was already waiting for us, reclined with one knee up in the branches of a tree. Spotting us, he jumped down and motioned for us to sit.

"Alright, listen up, From here on out, I am your sensei. This morning was only a taste of what I expect from you. Today, we're going to discuss our plans, but first I need to address this." He made a face as his hand vaguely gestured towards us. "I don't care what you think of me. I don't care if all your friends are in another team, or if you think you're some big hotshot who think this whole squad idea is holding you back. You can go do whatever the hell you want on your own after training, but in the hours I have you, you're going to live the way I tell you to."

He paused to rub his throat a little after a short wheeze. "Akuma san, Keiko san, short of murdering beloved members of each other's clans, I don't give a damn what bad blood there is between you. Get over it. In these walls, you're safe. Once we're out doing missions, everybody has to have each other's backs, and you need to trust each other. To be completely honest, you could've failed my test and still passed." We all gave him incredulous looks. "Yeah. It didn't matter what the outcome was, as long as I could see how you worked together. Teamwork is extremely important, and it's certainly going to be a while before any of you qualify for solo missions. Lucky for you guys, despite your differences, you work well together; you gave each other sufficient time to recover from the fight, even if you weren't being completely altruistic."

"But to truly succeed as a squad, to become exceptional, you need to do more than just tolerate each other. Keiko san, enough with the demon nicknames. The Ametsuchi clan may have a reputation, but I've seen your sister do worse in the field, so grow up. Remember that Akuma san covered for you several times today."

Keiko flushed, but nodded solemnly.

Hayate pressed on. "Good. Now, I want to talk about the test. Akuma san, that was clever use of Kawarimi no Jutsu. Be careful in a real fight though, I would have used chakra to keep the box on my person, so that wouldn't have worked. Your ninjutsu's good, and you adapted well. Tora san, again, good thinking with the necklace. You managed to work out the meaning of the box, which is an important lesson." Hayate spoke to all of us as we listened attentively. "When you're in enemy territory, say, on an infiltration mission, you could come across objects that could be of value to the village, so you need to use you brains."

He focused on me again. "Your reaction time was slower than the others, and we'll definitely be focusing on that aim of yours, but you pulled your weight. Your taijutsu's good, but too flashy and because of that you were too slow. There's no point hitting heavy if you're easy to dodge and subdue. Keiko san, your genjutsu was stable, but don't bother with such a low level jutsu against anyone higher than genin. Your aim was good, but you need more on your arsenal in terms of tactics. Does everybody understand what I've said? Good. Now let's start with your endurance."

For the rest of the day, Hayate sensei drove us like dogs. By the time I made it home, my clothes had turned several shades darker from perspiration, and I couldn't bring myself to climb through the window like usual. But boy, did he give me something to think about. A lifetime of experience, and I couldn't even touch Hayate sensei. It just goes to show how powerful ninja were in comparison, even without the use of chakra and barely any effort.

It was also a testament to Hayate's experience that he could take apart my fighting so easily, and he really had hit the nail on the head. In the boxing ring, there were rules. Publicity stunts, public statements and even a damned face off before a single match. While you're filled with the desire to win, you're also thinking about flashy moves, entrance songs, hoping someone will get a shot of the final kick which will end the match in KO.

Despite the initial novelty of living in a village full of ninjas, I was quickly accepting it at face value, rather than what I had seen on a TV screen. First I had had to adjust to a new body and family, then to the reality of where I was; I had fought for the kind of lifestyle I wanted, to become strong again, and now I had to fully understand that my old definition of strength was mediocre at best to the fighters of this world.

As ego crippling as it was, I was still looking forward to the next day.

(1) Earth release: Double suicide decapitation technique - D rank

(2) Demonic Illusion: Hell Viewing Technique - D rank

(3) Clone technique - E rank

(4) Body replacement technique - E rank

Guys. GUYS.

Holy frick frack, a lot of people have been joining the band wagon on this story while I've been away. It's absolutely incredible, and I wish I could jump through everybody's screen to give you a big kiss, but I won't 'cause I've been told it's creepy.

I got a few inquiries about why Kisame is tagged for this story, and I promise, that's not a mistake. I probably should've added him on later, because he won't appear until at least after Team 11 do the chunin exams, and he is very important :3

Since jutsus are now coming into the story more often, I thought it may be a good idea to have a key for each one that's used in a chapter. Is that helpful? Also, I hope you guys enjoyed the first proper fight for this story (punching Keiko doesn't count), even if Hayate totally used like 20% effort.

I SWEAR that update will be regular again within like, 2 weeks (approx.). My last exam (statistical physics woop) is coming up on a freaking monday of all days at 8;30 in the morning, so I will most like celebrate for the rest of the day then be back to writing on tuesday.

On a side note, it's been a nasty week for the world, even if technically a lot of horrible stuff happens every day that simply doesn't get news coverage. All the same, I hope everybody's staying safe and keeping a hold on hope. It may be a bit strange, but if anyone does need an anonymous ear to listen to them, then just send a PM.

Love,

Renzin xo