Just a nice little Tenten-centric drabble. If you want to see me write about a certain character or character combination, tune in to the poll on my profile.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
"The odds are stacked against you."
Those are the words Tenten heard every time she took the chunin exam, and they're the words she hears every time she takes the jonin exams.
She knows it's true.
Only the cream of the crop, the best of the best ever become jonin, and it's understandable that the powers that be think that Tenten, who excels only in weaponry and taijutsu, doesn't have the skills it takes to become a shinobi of the highest rank.
There are other reasons as well.
The world of shinobi has always been, if nothing else, a man's world, and most of the older men, the tradition-minded men who think that women should just stay in the homestead, don't like to see a woman get ahead in the world. Tenten keeps this truth to herself because of the denunciations she would receive if she aired her views, but she knows it to be true.
Off the top of her head, Tenten can only think of four kunoichi whom she knows who have become jonin, and only three of them hail from the Leaf village. Tsunade, obviously, has the brains and brawns to outmatch any man, Temari has the strength of a man and a woman's cultivated cruelty to match, and Kurenai and Shizune are both geniuses in their chosen field. But they're all special cases. Tsunade and Temari are both from the oldest clans in their villages, Kurenai is so much of a genjutsu genius that rising to jonin seemed a given, and Shizune learned straight from Tsunade.
Usually, the living or no-longer-living shinobi are men. Three exceptions are, of course, Tsunade, Temari's ancestor who was the right hand of the Shodai Kazekage, and Chiyo of Suna, but they are the only women Tenten can think of.
Tenten knows that few women ever rise above the rank of chunin, and at most usually make it to Tokubetsu jonin like Anko and Inuzuka Tsume did. There's a chance that Sakura might advance to jonin, but Tenten wouldn't be surprised if Ino and Hinata stay chunin for the rest of their lives.
It's not going to be easy to become a jonin. Kunoichi are automatically held to harsher standards than their male counterparts, judged with brutally rough edges and dumped on the sidelines at the drop of a hat.
But Tenten doesn't care.
She has never been one to fall into place in the grand scheme of things. She has ambition, she has hope, and she has confidence.
When she hears Temari boast of her late mother's fighting prowess and watches Tsunade and Sakura tear up the ground during training, she has confidence.
When she watches Moegi and Hanabi spar, she has hope for the future.
When she herself trains and hits the center of the target every single time, she knows that her ambitions are not unattainable.
The odds are stacked against her. But Tenten has never cared about the odds. She will not let a table stacked against her stop her from beating the odds.