The Pretext of Puppy Abuse
Summary: What begins with a possible attack/doorbell, and ends with organic cabbages? Why, the reason Sakura always receives the Akatsuki as tame baby house pets, of course. K+ for meanness to small furry things. Friendly mockery of Akatsuki Puppies/Kittens.
-Slightly Confused Kitty
-SCK-
The doorbell rang, and Tenten only recognized the sound after leaping straight out of her bath, scrambling into a custom Velcro-ed bathrobe, and snatching up two scrolls of weaponry. It wasn't often that someone used the doorbell. Or the door, for that matter.
Tenten reached out with her chakra, attempting to recognize the person. Outside the door, there were eight- no, nine small signatures, too small to be civilian, or even human. And one, rapidly-fading, civilian-level chakra signature.
She snarled, but figured it was some bizarre trick. Anything was possible when that Uzumaki kid had become Hokage. So she cautiously unlocked the five deadbolts and disabled the three traps connected with the door.
By the time she had it open, the brat who played the trick was gone. Through the bright crack to the outside world, she saw trees, her doormat, and the street a ways to the right. Then she saw the box, and opened the door fully.
The box was cardboard, and a good two feet by a foot by a foot and a half in height. The nine non-humans' signatures were clearly in there. Tenten cautiously poked the box with the end of a kunai. Something rustled inside.
She considered the thing, then retreated into her house and changed into more battle-worthy clothes. When Tenten returned, the box still sat there, and its contents squirmed more as she lifted it (and almost dropped it upon feeling the warmth from the base).
The Weapons Mistress only dared to open it when it was a good hundred feet from her house (and the other possessions she didn't want being possibly blown up). It only took two slices from a kunai to release the tape. Then she bolted behind a makeshift barricade, also commonly referred to as a tree and hands ready to execute the substitution jutsu.
The cardboard box failed to explode, and she peered cautiously into the clearing. The flaps were being pushed gently by something inside.
Then the something leaped out in a flurry of packing peanuts. Tenten bolted, and conducted reconnaissance from a distance.
Satisfied that the something had it fact merely emerged, then fallen over, she returned.
A black puppy lolled a pink tongue at her as it lay with its paws in the air in a circle of Styrofoam peanuts. Tenten approached with caution, and soon ascertained that it had no exploding tags attached to it.
More confident from the apparent lack of malice in the package, the Weapons Mistress dared to spin, flip and dump the remaining contents of the box onto the ground, which they hit with whimpers.
Nine puppies sprawled before her, seven of which were severely winded by their treatment, and one of which was just stupid. A snow of packing peanuts surrounded them.
This prankster had a funky sense of humor (although it wasn't that uncommon in a ninja village). Aside from the first, black one, there were blue, yellow, dirty white, green, red, pure white, orange and grey puppies. They were bizarre colors for dogs: you didn't have to be in the Inuzuka clan to know that.
The orange one shambled over to her, and stared up with idiotic eyes. The thing reminded Tenten of Lee.
So when the suicidal thing started licking her toes, she instinctively kicked it into the air, caught it by its shoulders, and shook it until its eyes rolled. Yep, just like Lee.
As she abused the puppy, she realized it might actually be a mistaken delivery, and have some sappy owner, or to-be-owner, who would actually care if its brains were a bit loose.
Although… the whole lot of them didn't look all that bright. Tenten sat on her heels, and cast a careless glance toward the rest. The dirty white one was gnawing at its tail with great enjoyment, the blue was running around in circles around the black one, while carrying a poky branch in its mouth that Tenten suspected had fallen from the nearby rosebushes. The black was still upside down and staring. She dropped the orange puppy on it to check if it was alive. It was- it twitched, pushed its bemused boxmate off, and returned to its comatose state. The bright yellow creature was ripping up the grass, followed by the green one, which meticulously scraped the displaced stalks back over their original spots. The red one watched this, its paws neatly together in the smallest space possible. The pure white and grey puppies seemed to be unsuccessfully trying to drag the rest back into the box (which was upright, and therefore too tall for a puppy dragging another to jump into).
The group definitely had more than one screw loose. Heck, Tenten had never regularly encountered a dog, but knew that this bunch wasn't normal.
She'd let the real owner deal with the creatures. So she, to the relief of the grey and clean-white puppies, tossed each squirming retard of a dog back into the box. Eventually, that is.
You see, being the Weapons Mistress, she decided that she may one day have to fight with a puppy. Therefore, she should seize the opportunity to train with this unusual projectile.
Tenten spent the next ten minutes dumping peanuts back into the box and securing each to-be-projectile in a leather holster or strap. The cardboard target sat, its flaps closed loosely and packing peanuts stuffed inside.
And she vanished into the trees. The box had only a second of peace before four kunai and two shurikan struck the flaps from every direction, ending with the flaps being a bit tattered, but opened to the next volley, which would be cushioned by the peanuts.
Puppies were not a stealth weapon, she discovered, as the yellow one yowled in flight, before plunking neatly into the box, and the blue and grey ones kept a constant string of complaints from their squished position in her shurikan pouch. So she threw them next, and they squealed through the air one after the other. The dirty white (now munching its own leg) followed, along with the orange and pure white puppies. Then she realized the green one had latched onto the glaring red puppy, and so she flung them together. They spun away, the centrifugal force straining the green pup's grasp on the red puppy's tail. The black one flew last and easiest, but that may have been because it didn't struggle.
She would have gotten in directly into the center of the miserable, dizzy box, too, if someone hadn't interfered.
"Tenten. What are you doing." Tenten rolled her eyes and dropped to the ground in front of her unimpressed teammate.
"Neji. Training."
Neji held up the limp puppy in silent inquiry. Tenten looked from it to him.
"Oh, that. I thought I'd try a different weapon today." Her innocent smile was seen right through.
The box whimpered pitifully. Neji glared at her, then investigated.
"What have you done to these dogs?"
Tenten strolled over, and looked in at the twitching, pained pile of fur as if she didn't know a thing about how it came to be.
"It was a gift."
"From who?" He placed the black pup into the box, and began arranging the puppies so they wouldn't crush or suffocate each other. Tenten tossed a spare kunai carelessly, then, on impulse, tossed it at a stray packing peanut. It was sliced neatly open.
"Well… I don't know. It was just left here. On my doorstep, really." Her curiosity sparked again toward the running civilian. "And there was some civilian-style chakra beating it out of here."
Neji raised his gave to her. "And you didn't see fit to pursue."
Tenten raised her hands in defense. "Hey, I was more interested in the possible bomb or monster-thing here. I think it was only a mistaken delivery though."
The Hyuuga, having put each animal in its allotted space, stood. "You should have reported this immediately."
"I didn't know it was safe to even touch for awhile." She thought guiltily of her swift change of clothes and training with the creatures. Yes, she probably should have reported it once it was cleared as a probably-not-immediate-threat. "And I didn't want to leave it around."
She wasn't graced with an answer, so she closed the flaps, pinned them down with shurikan, and hefted the box into her arms. Neji's lip may have twitched at her lack of care.
"Alright, so since they haven't killed me yet-" Neji glanced to the left in what Tenten had learned was a sudden, ironic thought – "I'll go talk to the Mysterious Devices Department, or whatever they're called nowadays."
"I will accompany you." Tenten smiled, and jostled the box a bit, just to watch his involuntary twitch.
-SCK-
A day later, the box was cleared by the department, and so Tenten received it with a 'Stamp of Safety' on the side. The woman at the counter sported such an outlandish hairstyle and clothing that Tenten knew immediately she was a civilian fashionista.
"Yes, all safey-wafey, right little cutesy-wootsies?" The receptionist giggled, petting the patchwork of fur as she gave it back to Tenten. "Funny fur –very cute though-" she assured the dogs. "-but not dye. Natural-like."
Tenten closed the flaps, certain that her nausea would show on her face if the woman forcibly rhymed more words. The puppies quivered and stared up at her hands with fear.
"Thanks."
"Oh, and the examiner said, like, give you the report."
Tenten waited, and the woman smiled through her viciously-red lipstick.
"Oh, right! Silly-billy me. Here you go." She extended the papers, sealed, in the clasp of overly-decorated, chipping nails. Tenten yanked up the ends of her mouth in an approximation of happiness.
"Thank you." The kunoichi fled, in a determinedly casual manner into the street, with the box dead silent and still.
Now the box and contents was proved safe- where would she put them? Thinking about how Neji would lecture and whine if she kept them as part of her arsenal put an extra spring in her step. Out of the question, although amusing.
Who would care for the little furry wackos?
Tenten doubled back and turned down a street she had passed earlier, her gait changing from aimless to determined.
-SCK-
One sunny day in Konoha, Sakura Haruno found nine puppies in a box outside her door. Box and puppies all had 'Stamps of Safety'. So, like the kindhearted medic-nin she was beneath the fists, she took them in.
Of course, they turned out to be S-class, murdering criminals of the most powerful and dangerous kind, merely under a strange jutsu that was accidentally released when Sakura dumped questionable dog shampoo on them in her bathtub, intent on removing their enduring stench of sweaty leather pouches.
Luckily, they didn't take advantage of their successful infiltration (the Hokage surreptitiously hinted that they experienced brain trauma and had forgotten their original purpose and most violent tendencies), and instead spent the rest of the story seducing various females in the village and out of it, including the flustered, violent Sakura. The Akatsuki also were eventually made Konoha ninja, due to enduring, albeit sudden, loyalty, and their heroic acts in stopping the Fourth Ninja War.
The nine somehow managed to avoid Tenten at all costs, and carefully did not mention her at any point in the remainder of their careers.
Tenten didn't notice, and never bothered to ask Sakura what became of the puppies that Tenten might have 'seen on her doorstep in passing'.
And the random civilian? Turned out to be a civilian smuggler for the Akatsuki, who was supposed to put the box behind the Hokage's tower and release the jutsu. But he chickened out, and dumped in on the front step of the most secluded house he could find, without the courage to ditch it outside the village. He lives in the South district and sells organic cabbages.
-Slightly Confused Kitty.