Taka

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File:Snake Naruto.jpg

The members of Taka.

File:HawkAkatuski.jpg

The members of Taka as part of Akatsuki.

• Name: Taka (鷹, literally meaning: Hawk), formerly Hebi (蛇, literally meaning: Snake)
• Leader: Sasuke Uchiha
• Members: Suigetsu Hōzuki, Karin, Jugo
• Affiliation: Akatsuki
• Status: Active

Following his defection from Orochimaru, Sasuke collects former subordinates of Orochimaru into a team to help him find and kill his brother, Itachi Uchiha. Once Suigetsu, Karin, and Jugo are recruited the group is named "Hebi" and they split up to look for Itachi's whereabouts. When they find it they go to the location and Hebi is left with Itachi's partner, Kisame, while Sasuke deals with Itachi.

After Itachi dies and Sasuke meets Madara Uchiha, he renames the team "Taka" and changes their objective to the destruction of the entire Konoha village (though Sasuke lied to his teammates that he only planned to kill the three elders who were responsible for the Uchiha Clan Massacre). To help with this, Taka goes to Kumogakure to capture Killer Bee, the host of the Eight-Tailed Beast. Despite struggling with the battle they are able to capture him and deliver him to Madara (though this is later revealed to be a fake). Once the team recuperated, they headed out for Konoha. Soon after heading out to Konoha, Madara astonishes them when he appeared out of no where. He and Zetsu explain how Taka was deceived by Killer Bee, how Pain destroyed the village, how Naruto defeated Pain, and how the five Kage will meet up. Sasuke then decides to go to the meeting to kill the new Hokage, Danzo.

When the Five Kage Summit begins, Taka hides in the dark recesses above the chamber, waiting for their moment to strike.

Motives

In addition to Sasuke's goals, each member indicates having their own motive for joining the team upon its formation:

• Suigetsu - Take ownership of Kisame's Samehada.
• Karin - Claims to just be going in the same direction, but wants to be with Sasuke.
• Jugo - See how Sasuke compares to Kimimaro.

Additionally, although they are all somewhat indifferent to each other at first, they come to consider each other teammates and risk their lives to protect each other.

Name

The name "Hawk" likely derives from the Japanese proverb "a hawk born from a kite" (鳶が鷹を生む, tobi ga taka o umu). It normally means that an extraordinarily gifted child can be born from ordinary parents. However, here it gains an extra meaning, since Tobi (whose name means kite) was responsible for the reformation of Hebi into Taka.

Trivia

• Three members of Taka have matching eye and hair colors: Sasuke Uchiha (black), Karin (red) and Jugo (orange).
  • And the fourth member, Suigetsu Hozuki, while not having eyes that match his hair, has an eye color that matches the shirt he commonly wears (purple).
• All of the members of Taka recruited by Sasuke had an additional side story that only appeared in the anime where you got to see some of their abilities.
  • Suigetsu had to retrieve his sword from Tenzen Daikoku. His Hydration Technique is shown.
  • Karin had a flashback of her helping Sasuke retrieve a group of escaped prisoners. Her Mind's Eye of the Kagura technique is shown.
  • Jugo had a flashback of being recruited by Kimimaro to joing Orochimaru. His cursed seal ability is briefly shown.