Disclaimer: I dreamt that a lawyer from Viz Media came to inform me they were going to press charges for license infringement. Then I laughed as he burned. I may not own Naruto, but in my dreams, you follow my rules.
Stranger with a Strange Name
"Yamato-taichou," Sai spoke. Yamato looked up from the scroll he was reading.
"What is it, Sai?" Naruto was late for their team-building session, an extremely rare occurence, and Sakura had gone off in a huff to find him.
"That girl," Sai pointed to a kunoichi across the training grounds, who was kneeling before a ginormous scroll spread out on the ground. "What is her name?"
"No idea." Yamato briefly glanced at her, then tossed a grin at Sai, "Why? Interested?"
"Yes," Sai smiled that strange, unsettling smile of his, and approached her.
Tenten frowned at the assorted seals on her beloved scroll. She'd been a little drowsy yesterday when sealing in the weapons, and was a little uncertain of where exactly she'd placed the nifty kunai bomb she'd been perfecting. She muttered under her breath about 'waste of blood' as she realized she'd have to unseal the whole thing to be sure it was there. You had to be precise about the kanji on scrolls, there'd been a time she'd written 'soup' instead of 'shuriken' in her hurry, and had nearly killed Neji, with laughter that is, as he'd watched her trying impotently to activate her scrolls during a sparring session. That was long ago in their genin days, but even now you only had to mention 'soup' to Neji to get him in a good mood while Tenten would fume quietly.
"Excuse me."
Whoever it was, was very good. She hadn't even sensed him. Tenten looked up indifferently, disguising her surprise.
"Tenten, is it not?" she studied the fake smile, the exposed midriff, the deceptive harmless posture he assumed.
She didn't like him. He looked like Sasuke, who was pretty cute, but gave off that weirdo-weirdo vibe she'd become preternaturally attuned to because her team seemed to attract weirdo opponents who were never as benevolent and youth-loving as her own weird sensei and team mate.
"Yes." She'd been raised to be respectful, however, besides noting that he wore a Konoha forehead protector. "Who are you?"
"Sai," the smile was more of a stretching of the lips, really, and the corners of Tenten's own mouth turned down at the sight of it.
"Really. Sai. No last name either?" She hoped small talk would ease the impending sense of something not-good she felt was fast approaching.
"Yes, it's quite a coincidence really. I'm the new member of Team Kakashi, except that Hatake Kakashi is no longer leader of that team. Over there," he gestured across the field to a dark-haired jounin, who was watching with interest, "Is Yamato-taichou. No last name either."
"Ah." Tenten very casually reopened the cut on her finger from yesterday's sparring session, and prepared to press it against the scroll if needed. The fact that a person was a fellow Konoha ninja did not exclude the possibility that he was completely wacko. Take Anko.
"I was just wondering, Tenten," Sai scratched the back of his neck and looked away bashfully. She wondered why he was such a bad actor, his facial expression did not reflect "bashfulness" in any manner or means. "Would you perhaps be interested in sharing a pot of tea with me some time? Perhaps this evening?"
Her mouth opened, then closed without a sound coming out.
"Why are you making fish faces?" he inquired.
"You ask a lot of questions." She couldn't help it, this was the bluntest come-on anyone had ever made to her, "And I don't know about tea. I might be busy this evening." It occured to her that this boy might be a serial killer. She didn't know why, it was just a hunch.
"Tomorrow?" he insisted. "It can be at any time and place convenient for yourself."
"Sai," she wanted to spare his feelings, but it didn't seem like he had any. He just kept that godawful smile pasted on his face and words came out of his mouth like something he'd learned out of a book. "I don't really know you, except for what you've told me just now. I don't know why you want to have tea together. I hope you understand, I'm not very comfortable accepting an invitation from a relative stranger."
He considered this. "Fair enough."
Then he sat beside her. "Naruto and Sakura will take a while yet. May I join you in the meantime?"
"Eh?"
Yamato chuckled into his hand at the baffled look on the bun-haired kunoichi's face as Sai continued to blithely converse with her, and returned to his own scroll.
I knew it.
Tenten ran for her life as inky black things sprang at her in hot pursuit.
One, two, shuriken for you. Three, four, kunai stuck to the floor.
Tenten thought it fitting that a silly children's rhyme was beginning to pound in her head, because it made everything so much more like a bad horror movie to have that kind of happy music playing in the background as the victim was torn viciously apart by fanged monstrosities.
"SAI," she dodged, yelled, dodged again, "What is your problem?"
"I attempted a subtle extraction of information from you, but it is obvious that you are well-versed in countering such verbal maneuovers." Sai smiled at her maddeningly. "So I believe torture is in order."
She cursed herself for allowing her curiousity to be so piqued that she had hung around to watch Team Seven train. They were terrible. Sai was really a misfit, and Naruto obviously hated his guts, but Tenten saw that Sakura performed much the same role as Tenten did for her own team. Peacemaker and/or enforcer of the law. After a little while, she'd engrossed herself in her scroll again and when she looked up after noticing the training area had gone silent, Sai was standing in front of her again using that sneaky way he had to sneak up on her, and Naruto was yelling something about "Enjoy your date!" with a naughty wave at them both as he and Sakura left. The jounin Sai called Yamato was also gone. They were alone.
And now Sai was attacking her.
"Extracting information about what?" Tenten cried as she ran up a tree, found an ink panther waiting for her on the top, jumped to another tree, found an ink jaguar, so she finally exploded into a million sharp and pointy weapons in every direction in frustration.
"Your affiliation. Yamato is ANBU, that is why he has no surname. I myself am part of a special operations force, which I am sure you are aware of by now, thus I also go only by one name, Sai. You, Tenten, are a mystery. No one knows your last name. And you are quite a tough nut to crack. Who are you working for?"
"Talk about nuts," Tenten groaned. "Sai, stop. I'll tell you." Why did everyone give her a hard time about this? No one knew Jiraiya's last name. Or Orochimaru's. Maybe she should have lived in Suna, no one had last names there either.
She landed in front of him, hands up in a gesture of surrender. "Nice drawings by the way."
"Thank you," his brush remained poised above the scroll, not trusting her for a moment. "Your brushwork is exquisite as well. And so?"
"My full name is Tenten--," she gave a series of complicated clicks and whistles.
"Tenten what?"
Repeat series of whistling and tongue clicks.
"I'm not from around here." Tenten explained wearily. "No one can pronounce my last name." She made a liquid trilling noise, then emitted a few more clicks and alien sounds. "That's my native language."
"Oh."
Sai bowed politely. "I apologize for my attack."
Tenten shrugged.
"Would you still like to get some tea?" Sai asked pleasantly. It wasn't often that he met someone odder than himself.
End.
A/N: Yes. My theory is Tenten is an Alien from Mars. Or related to R2D2 in some way. This explains why she is perfectly at ease in a team whose members include two green men. You grok?
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Oh no, I have the sudden urge to write Tenten vs. Predator now...