A week had passed since Akane arrived in the leaf village. Over that past week she had been training hard with her new teammates, pushing herself above and beyond her limits. She could feel herself becoming stronger but she needed to keep working on it. She had eaten out with Naruto several times, that boy could eat a ridiculous amount of ramen and he never seemed to stop talking. He told her all about the missions he had been on and about his teammates and sensei, Kakashi Hatake, the copy ninja. She had heard stories of him and Naruto said that one day she should come and meet him. She had told him that that would be nice but she wasn't sure when exactly that was going to happen. Gai sensei really was a slave driver, he and Lee just didn't seem to stop. Akane admired it sure but sometimes she did wish that they would calm down a little, come back down to earth. Tenten and her had become closer friends and of course her feeling for Neji only became clearer to Akane. She got nervous when she was around him now and just the thought of him made her go weak at the knees. She was sure that there was something wrong with her but Tenten had told her over and over again that those were normal reactions to have around a crush. Neji was still treating her with the same cold and distant attitude that he did when they first met. Tenten had said that she might be able to get somewhere with him and part of her believed her but after a while her hopes of that faded. It was clear Neji wasn't interested and why would be be? Akane wasn't anything special, not really, plus Akane wasn't really sure she wanted anything to happen between them. Whenever she thought about it she got nervous, she would have no idea what to do if something did happen so it was probably for the best that it didn't. Akane smiled at her new head band and tied it around her neck. The cloth had frayed because she was training so hard so she had gone to the market and brought some new red cloth and sewed the metal band onto it. It went with her outfit and eyes more so she wasn't really complaining still the third Hokage was pretty shocked when he saw she had already torn he head band. Still though he was pleased that she was fitting in well and that she was working hard. Akane walked to the mirror by her bed and smoothed her clothes out a little.

"Stronger than I was yesterday." She said as she looked at herself in the mirror. That had been what Lee had told her a few days ago when they were training. She remembered being on the ground, all cut up, almost out of chakra, sweating buckets and on the brink of giving up when Lee had turned to her and said those words. At first she didn't know what he was talking about but then Tenten told her that it was the team moto. They had come up with it a while back, it was something the remembered when the training was particularly hard, it got them through the darkest of times and it had helped. Akane had managed to get to her feet and ever since then she had been taking measure to make sure that she was stronger than she was the day before. She always looked in the mirror and told herself those words, it made her feel more part of the team.

"Akane!" She heard someone call her name from outside and opened her balcony window and stepped outside. Just below her she could see the three figures of her teammates. "Akane come quickly, we have been assigned our first mission as the newly formed team Gai." Lee called up to her. A mission? Akane thought.

"Okay I'll be right there just give me a minute." She replied and ran back inside to grab all her stuff. She charged down the stairs at lightening speed and joined her three teammates.

"Well don't you seem excited." Tenten commented with a smile.

"It's my first mission of course I'm excited. So what do we do now?" She asked them.

"We go to the Hokage's office as a team and he gives us the details of the mission. Gai sensei should already be there so we should hurry. We don't want to keep them waiting." Neji told her sternly.

"Right of course." Akane replied looking at the floor to avoid his gaze.

"Then let us go. Gai sensei is sure to also be waiting for us." Lee said as he began to walk off.

"His personality is just to much to handle in the morning." Tenten said with a sigh and took Akane by the arm and began to follow him, with Neji following closely behind them...

Gai sensei stood before the Hokage in his office with his four students right behind him. Lee was on the far left, with Tenten to his right, Akane next to her and lastly Neji on the end of the row. Akane felt a little nervously. This was her first proper mission, with a team she had only known for a week and a few days. She liked them sure but she didn't know if she was exactly ready to trust them with her life. When she had met up with the Hokage a few days before had he had told her that he understood that it might be hard for her. She had always been alone and trust wasn't something that came easily to her because of the betrayal she had faced in the past but he had said that being in a team meant trusting your comrades with your life, as they would you with theirs. Akane wasn't even sure that she wanted them to be placing their lives in her hands, she wasn't sure she was ready for that but there was was, eagerly waiting for the details of her first mission.

"Alright Hokage Sir, team Gai are ready to hear their orders." Said Gai sensei with his usual nice guy smile.

"I see." He began looking down at the piece of paper in front of him. "Your first mission is a b rank, I understand that maybe it is a little high ranked for Akane's first mission but I'm afraid that at the moment there is no one else and this mission must be completed as soon as possible."

"No matter what it is my students and I can handle anything." Gai told him confidently.

"Yes well you'll be travelling to a small town near our boarders. They have been having some trouble with bandits recently and have requested our help. This town is due to have a festival in three days time to celebrate the mayor's sons birthday but a note was sent to the mayor a few days ago informing him that if he didn't give these bandits what they wanted, then they would launch a full scale attack on everyone at the festival."

"What is it that the bandits asked for?" Neji asked suddenly.

"60,000,000 ryo."

"Really? That much?" Tenten questioned him. The hokage nodded at her.

"Indeed. The town does not have the kind of money, they are not poor but they are not that well of either. It is a simple farming town that enjoys a reason to throw a celebration." He told them.

"If that is really the case then surely the bandits must know this as well." Lee said.

"It is likely that they do."

"Then what would be there reason for making such ridiculous demands?" Neji asked him. The Hokage shook his head, now knowing the answer to that either but that was when Akane stepped forward with a theory of her know.

"Maybe they are simply using that as a reason to attack the town." She told them.

"What in earth do you mean Akane?" Lee asked her as everybody's eyes turned to her to listen to what she had to say.

"I mean that what if they had every intention of attacking the town in the first place, they didn't care about the money. However maybe they didn't want to be seen as attacking with no reason so they set a price that they knew was much to high, a price they knew the town couldn't pay so when the inevitable came around they could attack and use the excuse that they did it because they didn't meet their demands. Then again a theory like that leaves you to wonder why they would wish to attack the town so badly in the first place, or why they would need an excuse to attack them."

"Perhaps they didn't want to seem heartless." Neji suggested.

"But these people plan to harm the innocents of the town. Why would people that planned to do that desire a reason to not seem heartless?"

"I suppose they wouldn't, perhaps it is for there own conscious that they need a reason to attack, which would suggest that these people are not all round bad people. Which leads me to believe that they have some kind of personal grudge on the mayor of the town."

"Then why bring innocent people into it?" Akane asked him.

"They best way to injure a mayor is to aim for his people. They may even have one specific target at that festival."

"The son." Akane said.

"Indeed. These bandits seem to hold something against the mayor of the town and wish to kill his son at his son's festival unless he meets their demands, demands they know cannot be met and are simply using that to justify their actions."

"Or cover their tracks. They say they are attacking for one reason and really they are attacking for another. That would make more sense than using it to justify their actions. They they simply look like a band of thieves and leading others to believe that would lead them down the wrong road to finding out who the culprit was. In other words it's the perfect cover up, they would be left untraceable."

"Yes that makes sense, but would they be simply covering their tracks in order to escape unharmed? It seems like an awful lot of work to go to if they really were just bandits."

"Yes it does. What is they were people from the town?"

"Why would people from his own town attack him?"

"Well think about it. Being a mayor of a town is hard and sometimes he had to make decisions not everyone is happy about. What if he simply made one too many mistakes and the townspeople want revenge. So they staged this attack, blaming it on bandits while they attacked from the shadows of that lie. They kill the son, get their revenge and they return to their normal lives after, with no consequences to pay for committing a murder."

"You too certainly make an excellent team. Coming up with all that from such little information is impressive, you two are worthy of the title genius." Said the Hokage. Akane and Neji looked away from each other a slight blush on both of their faces. "However I think it wise to keep your suspicions to yourself for now. After all they are just speculation and you haven't any evidence that it is true of to why the townspeople would want to kill the mayor's son as there revenge."

"Well that's simple. It's much more painful for a parent to see their child die in front of them and live on than it is to be put through immense torture and then die. Any parent would only wish for their child to be safe...any loving parent that is." Akane added as an afterthought. The Hokage nodded.

"Yes but still you have no evidence for this. Your mission is simple, attend the festival, protect everyone in the town from this attack and capture the bandits. Protecting a whole town by yourselves will be hard and you will have to work out who the bandits are to capture them. It's no easy task but with this group's skill and analytical knowledge it should be achievable. That is all, you should set off as soon as you can. The town's festival is tomorrow evening."

"Don't you worry about a thing. No one is going to lay a finger on those people while team Gai is around. Now let's go." Said Gai sensei and he left the room laughing.

"Yes Gai sensei." Shouted Lee and followed him outside. Tenten sighed and the remaining three all bowed to the Hokage.

"Thank you Sir." Said Tenten.

"If that is all we will be taking our leave now." Said Neji as the three stood up. Tenten and Neji turned to leave and Akane followed after them, closing the door behind her with one last look at the old Hokage...