A/N: Happens before Shippuuden, but elements and characters from Shippuuden will still be incorporated. There's a general OOC thing going on where all characters will be smarter and snarkier than they are in canon. There will also be pairings. But they take a while. A long while.
Drumming Song
It started with drums.
She felt the vibrations shaking her before she even heard a sound.
Shaking her to her very core, her heart aligning to the rhythm resounding from all around here, filling her room, filling the streets, filling the entire village.
They were beating the drums in the ancient chorus, calling for blood and gore and justice and victory, or whatever else you needed to get a whole village ready for war.
It was the first time during her lifetime that Sakura ever heard it. It was a sound she wouldn't soon forget.
Despite her awareness of the purpose of drums beating in a hidden village, there was something oddly soothing to the sound. Something familiar. Something telling her she belonged here, despite how foreboding it all was.
Hurried steps now mingled with the even drumming sound, coming from the hallway leading to her door. Only when her mother entered her room did Sakura actually sit up in her bed.
"Sakura, sweetie?" Her mother sounded worried. She had heard the drums before. "What's going on?"
"I don't know," Sakura replied, getting out of bed and rushing over to her wardrobe to retrieve clothing and weapons. "But mom, promise me not to leave the house until we know what's happening, okay?"
"Alright," her mother agreed, watching her getting dressed in a hurry. "Where are you going?"
"Tsunade-sama's office," Sakura answered, pulling on the gloves Tsunade had gotten her for passing her last medic ninja exam. "They'll be handing out assignments there that might explain the drumming, and if not, Tsunade-sama will at least have an explanation." Or at least that's what they'd been taught about standard protocol in case of drums back in the academy.
"Will there be a war?" Her mother glanced out the door to the small balcony, old worry lines clearly visible in her face. Sakura shrugged.
"It's what the drums are for, as far as I know," she explained. "But if we're the ones drumming, that probably means we're on the offensive. So you should be relatively save here." She double-checked her supply bag. "But still, don't leave the house until you get official notice, you hear me?"
"Yes, I heard you," her mother assured her and pulled her into a tight hug when she turned to leave. "But you be careful out there as well, understood?"
"Of course," Sakura mumbled into her mom's shoulder before turning away and leaving her room through the balcony door, the cold and misty morning air intensifying the chill in her that the ever-present drums had caused.
The dark and foggy streets of Konoha were completely empty. Which was to be expected - streets were for civilians. The rooftops however were quite busy, with every shinobi who remembered the drumming protocol using them as a shortcut to reach the command center. Not even the occasional complaint about the noise a person walking across your roof made was an issue right now. It might have been 4 AM, but the drums left nobody asleep.
Sakura had already climbed the railing of her balcony to reach the rooftop of her house to join the crowds hurrying towards the Hokage's office, when a familiar voice startled her.
"No need to hurry, Sakura-chan. They want us last."
Turning around, she saw Naruto, sitting on the roof of a neighboring house, the long strands of his apparently new forehead protector blowing in the wind, aloof grin in place. He even had the moon at his back, for maximized epicness, which still did nothing to make his bright orange jumpsuit any less recognizable, even at night.
"You're back!" Sakura shrieked in delight, glad to have at least something familiar to soothe the dread the drums had caused her. "...Did you practice that entrance?"
Naruto laughed his signature whole-hearted laugh that stretched across his entire face and body and would have been contagious if it weren't for the steady rhythm of impending doom in the background.
"Nah, I'm just awesome that way," he assured her, looking about as giddy as she felt about seeing him again. It had been almost a year and a half since he'd left to go training with Jiraiya-sama, and he'd grown about half a foot since then, she realized, as Naruto crossed the distance between their rooftops in one fell swoop and pulled her into a hug so tight it made her bones groan. "I missed you!"
"I missed you, too," she replied, fighting for air and patting his back soothingly. "We didn't expect you back so soon."
"Soon?" He asked incredulously and let her go. "It's been like forever since I left, and you call this soon?"
"Well, Tsunade-sama told me not to expect you back this year." Sakura shrugged. "Or even next year, so that's all I had to go by."
"Ooh, you've been spending time with Baa-chan?" Naruto beamed at her. "How is she doing these days?"
"Busy, I guess," she replied, nodding towards the direction of both the Hokage's office and the unrelenting drumming sounds. "And I've been actually training under her while you were gone."
"Eeek!" Naruto shrieked and jumped away from her a little. "Does that mean you're all scary and destructive now?"
"You'll see." Sakura smiled sheepishly, before turning somber again. "So, is your return related to whatever is going on here at all? And what do you mean they want us last?"
"Well..." Naruto scratched his head and looked towards the command center as well. "So, the pervert has been doing some sort of... Research while we travelled, I guess. Gathering intelligence, he called it, and it didn't even involve women or bath houses, so I guess it might be something useful. So a few days ago, he got back from doing some sort of scouting thing, don't ask me, I don't question this anymore, and said we had to get back here asap, no questions allowed, and so we've kind of been running all the time. Then we got here about an hour ago, I guess, and he even woke up Baa-chan, have you ever seen her at 3 in the morning? Not a pretty sight. Anyways, so he woke her up, we somehow lived to tell the tale, and then they'd had some secret discussion, sent me to get you for later, and then this drumming business started."
"I... see," Sakura said, trying her best to comprehend the rapid succession of information he'd just given her. "So you don't actually know what this is about?"
"Nope!" Naruto admitted freely. "Just that they think we're important for this, or something."
"But you do know these drums usually mean war, right?" She gestured towards the dwindling stream of Shinobi still rushing to the Hokage's office all around them.
"So that's why everyone's freaking out!" Naruto slapped his forehead protector, and then shook his hand in dismay because it hurt. Sakura couldn't help it, she had to laugh. Again. Despite it all. It was just so good to see Naruto again. She hadn't even realized how much she'd missed him until now.
"Pretty much," she agreed. "So did they say for how much later they wanted us?" The first shinobi were already returning. Their administration was nothing if not efficient. At least in times like these they were. Maybe they should consider making Tsunade do her paper work at 4 in the morning more often.
"Ah, huh." Naruto followed her gaze. "I don't know, they didn't mention a specific time or anything..."
"So we should probably get going before we miss something important, right?" Sakura suggested, smiling.
"Right!" Naruto positively beamed at her before he leapt away. "Race you to Baa-chan!"
Rolling her eyes and sighing didn't keep her smile from staying in its place while she followed him.
Sakura lost the race.
Not that it surprised her; she'd never been one for speed and Naruto was pretty much the epitome of endurance. So he could just go all out in a friendly race at 4 AM before going to war and still be fresh as a daisy, while she had to regulate her speed somewhat. Or maybe he just didn't think that far ahead. Same difference, really.
There were desks put up in front of the command center, where different high-rank government officials were handing out scrolls to the shinobi that arrived there. The drumming sounds were coming from the balcony above, where Sakura spotted several retired shinobi she knew from council session. While no longer taking missions, these people usually had an advisory or administrative position. It made sense for them to go on drumming duty; they wouldn't need to save their strength for the upcoming fights and were old enough to remember the rhythm quite intimately.
Upon spotting their arrival, Shizune, who was handing out scrolls to the medics that had shown up, immediately waved them through into the building. So apparently, they really were quite important, as Naruto had said. The all-around somber mood seemed to have gotten to him after all; he was no longer beaming happily at everything and everyone the further they got into the building. The command center was positively bustling with activity, and nobody they encountered seemed too happy about it. Or about seeing them. In fact, some people they met actively glared at them, Naruto in particular.
"What's their problem?" Naruto asked her with a hushed voice after a whole group of people had just thrown nasty glances at them when they'd let them pass first. "They act like we're responsible for this war thing you were talking about!"
"I don't... know..." Though while she was still forming those words, it suddenly occurred to Sakura that maybe she did know. This was a grand scale operation. So grand that apparently the entire village was needed to prepare for it, hence the war drums. Tsunade had requested Naruto's and her presence specifically. People were looking at the two of them like they were the cause of the problem.
Wait a minute.
"Naruto... You don't think..." Sakura tried to keep her voice calm. "I mean... All of this... Could this maybe have... Something to do with... Sasuke-kun?"
Next to her, Naruto stopped dead in his tracks. He gaped at her, eyes wide, mouth wider.
"That... That would make sense, somehow, wouldn't it?" He seemed completely lost in thought for a moment, then bolted away faster than she could see, further up the stairs. Sakura only caught up with him when he had already reached the door to Tsunade's office, which he unceremoniously threw open without bothering to knock.
"Are we getting Sasuke back?" He loudly asked into the room before marching in. Sakura entered behind him, closing the door as silently as possible.
"Oh, there you are."
Tsunade was not in a good mood. Unlike Jiraiya next to her, and the two other people currently in her office, Nara Shikaku and Yamanaka Inoichi, she wasn't visibly tired, due to the genjutsu she used to keep up appearances, but she had that pissed off look in her eyes which she always got when she'd been woken too early (too early being before sleeping off her hangover) and had only paper work to look forward to. With a nod, she dismissed the two men, who left not without sharing a concerned look that Sakura caught when moving away from the door.
"So are we?" Naruto had proceeded to the desk where he stared down at Tsunade intently, who glared back at him.
"We really need to work on your respect and obedience," she snarled. "Be glad I like you, or I would just leave you home."
"But you can't get Sasuke back without me!" Naruto insisted. Tsunade rolled her eyes.
"I didn't say that's what we're actually going to do," she pointed out. "If you haven't noticed, this is kind of a big thing that's happening right now. Involving the entire village, drums, and starting at 4 AM. Do you really think I'd make that much fuss just to get your boyfriend back?"
That make Naruto choke and kept him busy coughing for a minute or so, before he finally managed an indignant "WHAT?!" which was swiftly ignored.
"Yeah, I didn't think so," Tsunade continued as if nothing had happened. "Though I will admit, that getting the Uchiha boy back is part of what we're doing. More specifically, your part." Her glare almost silenced Naruto's triumphant cry.
"Our part in what?" Sakura asked, looking around uncomfortably. "What exactly is going on?"
Tsunade sighed. Deeply.
"Well, remember Orochimaru's parade of freaks?" She asked somberly.
"They were kinda hard to miss, yeah," Naruto answered. "And pretty obvious about being freaks, too."
"Exactly," Tsunade continued. "Turns out he's got a whole village of those. Well, in numbers, at least. He keeps them split up between four different bases that we know of. We don't really know what he's planning with all those shinobi, but the fact that he has them is troubling enough. He's also used his strength to attack us and there have been incidents recently where Oto nins attacked Konoha teams within our own borders. So while it appears as if he's not planning any more major attacks on us for the moment, there's no way to be sure he isn't planning something against us."
"So we're gonna strike first," Sakura concluded.
"Yes," Tsunade confirmed. "We're getting ready to besiege all of Orochimaru's hide-outs, as long as he resides in the one closest to us. Our numbers will suffice, with a little aid from Suna. Thank the gods you get along with the new Kazekage so well."
"...We do?" Naruto asked, clearly not quite up to date on recent events.
"Well, I heard you kicked his ass when they attacked us," Tsunade explained, shrugging. "And since then he holds you in high regard. Same difference, really."
"Wait, wait, wait!" Naruto demanded, slowly catching up. "Gaara is Kazekage now? But... But, but... He's my age!"
"He sure is." Tsunade grinned sheepishly. "And it's still me sitting on this chair. Weak performance on your part, wouldn't you agree?"
"And what are we supposed to do about Sasuke-kun?" Sakura asked, before this could result in any kind of argument.
"Catch," Tsunade demanded and threw a scroll at her. "The two of you basically get a secret S-rank mission to sneak in once we get to the hide-out and drag the Uchiha boy out there kicking and screaming if need be."
"So we're bringing Sasuke back and you're paying us for it?" Naruto asked. "Awesome!"
"Well, not really," Tsunade relented. "It's not going to be easy, we don't exactly know where the boy is hiding, just that Orochimaru keeps him close, or how cooperative he's gonna be. But don't get me wrong, we need him back. It's insulting enough he got taken from us in the first place."
"He... Wasn't exactly taken..." Sakura brought up quietly, biting her lips. Not her favorite memory there.
"I know, that's what makes it worse," Tsunade continued. "I don't know yet what the village has done to him to make him voluntarily leave us for a freak who wants nothing more than take over his body, but it's gotta be pretty bad. And if word of that spread, that would paint Konoha in a bad light. Not to mention that the boy is kind of a national treasure, last of the Uchiha not in a bingo book yet, Sharingan and all that jazz. So getting him back is kind of a big deal."
"Yeah, you don't need to tell us that," Naruto pointed out. "It's what we've been training for the last year, right?"
"...Right," Sakura agreed reluctantly under the strict gaze of her master. Tsunade's mouth thinned at that and she didn't seem too pleased with her answer. And truth be told, of course 'just' getting Sasuke back hadn't been the only thing she'd trained for. Sasuke's part in her motivation had been a frequent point of contention between them, as Tsunade refused to train a lovesick child who just wanted to get her crush back. So she'd constantly had to prove that she had less shallow motivations as well. Such as finally being useful and able to contribute to the team or just plain not being almost completely helpless anymore. But she couldn't bring herself to break Naruto's enthusiasm, and it was at least part of the truth, anyways. So no harm done. Probably.
Tsunade sighed again.
"Yeah, well, you see... It's because of that that we can't afford not getting him back," she continued. "So that's the, ah, other part of your mission. I don't want it to come to this, and I'd really prefer just getting him back here and cooperating, but if that's not possible..."
Sakura had to keep from shuddering at that implication. Surely, Tsunade couldn't mean what Sakura thought she meant... Right? And if she did, wasn't it incredibly stupid to entrust, of all people they were currently rallying, Naruto and her with that mission, the two people in the village the least likely to obey when it came to that?
"You... You want us to kill him if he doesn't come willingly?!" Naruto all but yelled. "Hell no, we won't do that!"
"Ideally, you won't have to," Tsunade snarled, eyes gleaming dangerously. "And you're only supposed to do it if he doesn't come at all, got it?"
"No!" Naruto protested. "I'm not doing a mission that could include me killing Sasuke! And neither will Sakura-chan! Right?!"
"Right," Sakura agreed as firmly as she could under the circumstances. It was her Sasuke-kun they were talking about here, after all... And it was her master giving them a look of severe disappointment. And annoyance.
"You are still shinobi whose first and foremost obligation is to this village," Tsunade spat at them. "Remember that bit about personal feelings not getting in the way? We didn't teach you that for fun. Well, the way you're acting right now, it seems like we didn't teach you that at all, but no matter. So will you take the mission, or do I have to assign it to someone else who will be more cooperative?"
Oh. So this was where this was going, Sakura realized. She took a deep breath, stored the mission scroll Tsunade had thrown at her in her pouch, and touched Naruto's wrist soothingly.
"We're taking it," she than assured her master, squeezing Naruto hard when he opened his mouth to protest and glaring at him for effect.
"Good for you." Tsunade seemed grimly pleased with her. "Now leave. You'll find your temporary assignments in the scroll, we'll contact you once your little extra mission starts. Dismissed."
"Are you insane?!" Naruto yelled at her as soon as they had left the office and were sort of out of earshot. "How can you agree to this? They want us to kill Sasuke! How can you?!"
"Calm down," Sakura hissed at him, dragging him further down the corridor by the wrist until she'd found her destination. It was a small, dusty room full of old mission reports and other documents which would muffle most of their conversation and ensure them a minimum of privacy.
"Calm down? How am I supposed to calm down?" Naruto broke free from her grip and stared her down furiously. "You just agreed to kill Sasuke! Didn't you listen?"
"I did," she assured him. "Better than you, it seems." She brushed through her hair nervously, for the first time feeling it was only 4 AM and that she missed out on a few hours of sleep. "Now, listen to me. Tsunade-sama does not want to see Sasuke-kun dead. If she did, she wouldn't have assigned this to the two of us in the first place, okay?"
"But she said -," Naruto tried to interrupt her, but Sakura would have none of it. Not right now.
"She said we'll have to kill Sasuke-kun, if there is no other way of getting him back," she paraphrased. "Sure. That's what she had to say. But don't you realize how much freedom this actually gives us?"
"...No?" Naruto was still not convinced.
"Well, first of all, if we manage to kill him, we can manage to not quite kill him and take him with us after all," she pointed out. "Also, if we don't do that, try proving that we didn't kill him. Maybe his body caught on fire and we couldn't bring is corpse. Or he fell down into some abyss, or whatever else we can come up with. Bottom line, we can still choose to let him go and not kill him if there's no other way, and won't suffer any consequences as long as he stays out of the village's business. And we had to agree to do this ourselves, because otherwise, she would have given the mission to someone else who probably would be a lot less creative in carrying it out."
"Huh." Naruto seemed to have calmed down and now regarded her with something between curiosity and astonishment. But at least he was listening now without looking like he wanted her head chopped off.
"Or we can just say he beat the crap out of us, woe is us, so sorry, won't happen again," Sakura pointed out with a slight smile. As if Naruto would agree to do that.
"Never!" He protested almost immediately. Sakura laughed slightly.
"Okay, then we'll come up with something better if we have to," she calmed him down. "And that's a big if." She opened the assignment scroll and scanned the instructions. "Says here we are to sneak into the underground hide-out in a few days and find him there. According to our scouts, the one they're at right now has only three exits, and they all will be highly guarded, so there won't be any way for Sasuke-kun or anyone else to flee unnoticed. We just don't know how many people are down there, so there might be some resistance, but oh well, never expected this to be easy."
"Right." Naruto smiled back, this time not his all-consuming beaming smile he showed the whole world, but a more somber, slightly sad and incredibly vulnerable smile that almost broke her heart. "So I guess we're doing this together, huh?"
"Seems like it." Sakura had to force a smile, even though the look on Naruto's face made her feel more like crying. "The way it should be."
"I guess..." Naruto still didn't seem too happy about that. "I just... Wanted to keep my promise, you know? To bring him back for you."
"I'm not holding you to that," Sakura said, uncomfortably shifting her weight from one foot to the other, avoiding looking at him anymore. "We're doing this now, one way or the other." She scanned through the scroll again for additional information. "Oh, great. You got assigned Combat Unit C until our special mission starts, and I get the healing tents. Seems like you're getting all the fun," she joked half-heartedly.
"You can heal now?" Naruto asked, his sudden state of melancholy gone as fast as it had come.
"I trained under Tsunade for over a year," Sakura reminded him.
"Yeah, like, smashing walls and the ground and stuff, I thought," Naruto explains. "That suits you, but now you can heal, too?"
"Uhm, yes?" Sakura frowned. Usually people told her how much better healing suited her than fighting. And truth be told, mending bones came a lot easier to her than breaking them, but in most if not all combat situations, that was not what she wanted to do. Sure, it was amazing to watch flesh growing back together seamlessly under her hands, but after spending the beginning days of her ninja career in a nurturing position by default, tearing the flesh open in the first place felt so much more satisfying.
On the other hand, in their profession, nobody would ever give her any medals for being able to cause much harm. That was nothing special, more like a minimum requirement. Sure, Tsunade was widely known for her combat prowess. So was every other ninja who made it into his or her fifties. What set her apart were her incredible healing skills, which had always been criminally undervalued by just about every hidden village there was. So Sakura saw more of a future for herself in that department, on the long term. For the short term however, she was quite content tearing stuff apart.
"So, are you any good at it?" Naruto asked her teasingly.
"I am," she answered, a dangerous edge in her voice. "I'm also very adept at punching holes in the ground, so wipe that smirk right off your face."
Naruto threw a glance at the ceiling-high shelves, overstuffed with records and reports and all kinds of documents.
"Punching me here will hurt you more than me," he pointed out. "If I know anything about Baa-chan, then it's that if she's teaching you, she's also making you take care of her paper work. That means you stacked some of this stuff. That means she'll have you put it back when you mess it up."
"She'd make you help me," Sakura mused. "And then I could just let you do all the work."
"Yeah, but I have no idea how this stuff works and you do and you have no patience," Naruto countered. "Especially not with me."
"You make a compelling argument," Sakura acknowledged, nodding grimly. "Also, we need to get going. The drums have stopped; I think we're moving out soon."
"Right." Naruto turned serious as well. "There's like a war going on here."
"So I've heard." Sakura read through the mission scroll another time. "You better go find combat unit C."
"And you need to find the healing tents." Naruto hugged her again. "This is so weird..."
From the first beat on, Tenten's house had been overflowing. Overflowing with tears.
Silent tears, of course, they were shinobi and doing their duty and crying out loud would help nobody. But still. When the drums had started going off, her mother had started to treat all of them like dead people.
And statistically, they were.
In places like Konoha, there were two kinds of ninja. The ones with careers, and the ones in the system. Your career usually started with your parents. If one of them had a career, you might just get one. If both of them had one, you were a shoe-in, unless someone with more famous parentage needed your place on a Genin team. Then chances were you'd get thrown into the system.
The system started after you graduated the academy but failed to impress your Jounin teacher. Or to have someone with a significant last name on your team. That usually pulled you through, no matter how weakly you performed. She might know that from experience; the jury was still out on that.
System ninjas were proper ninjas. They might even get ranks like Genin or Chuunin, they just didn't really take official exams for it. Those were for show. System ninjas were not. They were remarkably unimpressive and unrecognizable. At least the ones that stayed alive for a while.
Usually, they'd be trained in big groups to perform the dirtiest work, and either the most unspectacular missions that paid so badly you might be better off as a waiter, or the most dangerous missions, where they were essentially cannon fodder. The small print on the memorial stone.
Tenten's family had no last name for a reason. From what she knew, they were pretty big, with all the cousins and second and third cousins she and her five siblings shared a house with, and that wasn't counting the people who had moved out or were even more distantly related.
Right now, there were only four career ninjas in the whole family. One of them would retire soon, having lived to the ripe old age of thirty-six.
Of course, the no last name thing wasn't the rule; there were plenty of system ninjas with a last name. Those names just didn't come with significant abilities like super power eyes or mind control tricks or your own bunch of animal companions. The lucky ones had a family familiar enough with the system to be adept at some kind of ninja art.
Her family always told Tenten how lucky she had been.
For one thing, and this was the most obvious one, with her team assignment. She would not have made a Genin team if someone hadn't paired her up with a Hyuuga of all people. And a personal favorite of the man who'd conveniently been assigned as their Jounin instructor.
Tenten however was quite sure that luck didn't have that much to do with it. While Lee's chances had been even worse than hers, no chakra and no family to back up anything, Gai-sensei probably would have taken him as a student even if their team hadn't made it. Neji had confided that his family, especially at the time, would have been a lot happier had he just been thrown into the system, like any good branch member should. Some even went as far as to claim that the branch family of the Hyuugas had been the first system ninjas around, long before there had been hidden villages.
Oh no. What pulled them through was Neji's status as a prodigy, even for a Hyuuga, and her significant talent with weapons. A talent she had acquired by hounding every half-way talented ninja in her family for instruction ever since she'd understood how the village worked. Jutsus and the talent to use them were determined by blood. Weapons were universal.
And so here she was, sitting in the large kitchen of the house, surrounded by siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles and her parents, and everyone was preemptively mourning everyone. Currently, they were expecting back her oldest brother, the only one she had left out of three, who had gone to the Hokage's office to get their assignments for whatever war they were headed to. Because drums meant war. And war meant casualties. And most casualties occurred for the system ninjas.
Now, granted, things had started looking less bleak ever since Tsunade-sama had returned. Under her rule, the system got two-tiered, and those who showed promise when it came to chakra control and the like received medical training. Nothing that would lead them to greatness, but combat medics died less than system ninjas. Especially during wars. Or maybe the statistics were a little off since combat medics had been rare the last few years.
So statistically, Tenten, her younger brother Penghe, her older sister Xinlu and her cousin Yaohuan were a little less dead than everybody else.
Over the years, she had learned to distance herself from the constant death in her family. Or business in general. She was doing her part to prevent her untimely demise and trained her younger siblings and cousins so they might have a shot at escaping the system, but that was all she could do, and she had accepted that.
That didn't make sitting in that kitchen any easier.
It took until about half past 6 for her brother Singnan to return, his face looking grim, but at least not like he was about to read out a eulogy, even though their combat assignments were pretty much just that. The three medics they had gotten the medical tents, obviously. Everyone else got assigned combat units three, four and Singnan himself even unit two. The lower the numbers, the higher the casualties usually were.
"So what about me?" She asked once her brother was finished. "Am I staying home?"
"I don't know," Singnan replied. "You're not on my scroll, at least. So maybe."
She tried to ignore the dirty looks some of her cousins threw her. Being the only career ninja in the house and only one of four in the entire family hadn't exactly made her popular. She was used to that.
"Then you can help me with preparing some food and taking care of the house," her pregnant and thus off-duty cousin Mei suggested. "We sure won't be enough around here anyways, so that's good!"
"I thought you were too important to stay home," her young cousin Zhongwen said accusingly. He wasn't even out of the academy yet.
"Whatever, let's get going!" Singnan gestured for them all to get ready. Usually their father was the head of the family, but he was currently hospitalized. Lucky for him, all things considered.
Tenten got up with the rest of them and helped handing out the food they actually already had prepared while waiting for Singnan to return. Technically, the state provided food on missions, and so far this had been handled as one, but supplies also had a tendency to run out before reaching the system ninjas, so they had learned not to rely on that. Even though this had improved under Tsunade as well.
It wasn't until the people assigned to combat unit four had left that Neji showed up at their door. His presence always made most of her family (predominantly the female half) close to falling to the ground and worshipping him - not only did he have a last name, but a damn famous one at that. Hyuuga family politics weren't important in their household.
Today however, some of her younger cousins merely shot him dirty looks, as he sure as hell wasn't assigned a numbered combat unit, so Tenten rushed forward to meet him.
"What are you doing here?" She said instead of a greeting.
"I figured you wouldn't get the message," he replied and handed her a scroll. She took and screened its contents. Combat Unit C. Letters meant importance. And increased survival rates; not exactly because their tasks were less dangerous, but because they were specialized and the people in them were career ninjas who knew what they were doing. Most of the time.
"Team assignment?" She asked after realizing that. Neji nodded. She cracked a smile. "So what did your part of the family get?"
"One or two," he answered grimly. "Some of them even letters, or so I've heard. Hinata-sama is with us, unsurprisingly."
"Singnan got two," Tenten told him. "Everyone else three or four. My, my, aren't we moving up in the world?"
"We need to get going," Neji said instead of showing amusement at her joke. "Gai-sensei and Lee are waiting for us."
"Joy of joys," she sighed and went back to inform her family that she was too important to stay home after all. And statistically a lot less dead than anyone they knew.
So there we go. First chapter. Tenten is a regular POV character and gets her own subplot, that's why she's tagged as a character. Naruto is also kind of a character in this, but more in a team context, so his tag is Team 7. Even though he gets one or two POV scenes. Sasuke will turn up, and he will get POV scenes, and he's like, the male lead or something. Sakura is the absolute focus and main character though.
I'll try to keep a somewhat regular update schedule? Like, a chapter every two weeks until my 9 chapter buffer runs out, or something. After that, I make no promises. Feedback is appreciated, and stuff.
