A/N- Welcome to this little intermission from the larger story I'm writing, The Broken Fan. This was requested of me by my alpha, Jaraiya's apprentice, who is doing beautiful work on his story, The New Sennin: Mad Monkey and the Golden Fox, and clearly he has gotten what he wants from me. Hopefully I shouldn't have to explain that the rating is high for good reason and I won't need to mention that the characters and setting are not owned by me. Most interestingly, this work is going to be three chapters long, which is unusual for requests I receive, as they tend to be one-shots. I tried to do that with this story, especially since my prompt was so... threadbare, but suddenly all this plot got in my way, so I just let it be. Regardless, please enjoy.
xXx
"Man, this is so lame! Why do we have to take the jounin test in pairs? No one else had to; Sakura didn't have to."
"I'm relieved," Tenten said reasonably. "This test is going to be hard and pooling our resources gives us a better chance of getting through."
Naruto wasn't listening, though. "This sucks! Everyone from the chuunin exams made jounin before me! There's no one left that I know!"
"I don't know if you noticed," she retorted frostily, "but I was in the chuunin exams."
Naruto finally turned around and looked at his test partner in the eyes. He realized that he had been complaining for almost half an hour and she had bravely been trying to put the best face on a situation that she clearly found undesirable as well. The color rose in his cheeks. "I'm sorry, Tenten... I didn't mean to be annoying."
She sighed, still frustrated and looked out across the training grounds, so he did, too. The sun was still high in the sky, though well past its zenith. They were not the only shinobi training today; plenty of other jounin hopefuls were anxious about the upcoming exam and were determined to do as well as possible. He didn't see anyone that he'd trained with before or any of his previous teachers. The jounins were probably all out doing missions.
"I know you didn't mean to hurt me. I can't really blame you, I guess; we never really hung out." She smiled at him, her big, brown eyes crinkling at the corners. "For me, it will be nice to train with someone who doesn't keep challenging me to impossible tasks."
The blonde laughed. "Yeah, that Lee is a bastard."
"Naruto..." she admonished, shaking her head again.
"What?"
"Everything is in extremes for you! You either love someone or hate them and it changes depending on the time of day, or whether or not you're hungry or the alignment of the stars or something. You're really a strange guy."
He shrugged. "I just like what I like. What more is there to it?" If this remarkably Zen statement had any effect on Tenten, she didn't show it. Instead, she turned around and planted her fists on her hips.
"All right. The first thing we need to do is think about our weaknesses and our strengths and find ways to make them compliment each other. I'll go first: I have an arsenal of weapons that can counter any attack, I am very fast and I am very good at taijutsu. On the other hand, my ninjutsu is only average and my genjutsu is practically nonexistent."
"That's not a lot of strengths..."
"Shut up. What about you?"
Naruto's eyes flashed and his face lit up with a huge grin. "I have super amounts of chakra and I can make hundreds of shadow clones! Also, I heal really fast."
"...Is that it?"
He rubbed his head. "Sensei told me that I'm very strong, but I'm not good at strategy... or patience," he added, grinning.
Tenten bit her lip. "That's not a lot to work with. How is your speed?"
"I'm the fastest ninja ever!"
"I doubt that, but we'll put it down as a strength. Usually, I'm weighed down by my weapon scrolls."
"I have a question," Naruto said suddenly, unnecessarily putting his hand in the air. "What happens if your scrolls are destroyed? Do you still have weapons or do you have to fall back on your fighting moves?"
"I pretty much have to use taijutsu, but like I said, my ninjutsu is average, so I can use that as well. I've used some protection jutsu on my scrolls so that they're lighter, resistant to fire and water and can't be grabbed with other jutsu, but I guess you're right in that their loss would be a major liability." She thought for a moment. "For right now, I'll carry them, but I won't use them to train." Naruto was stunned that his input had carried some weight.
"Ok," she continued, unaware of the effect her words had, "I'm going to use this information and also what I observe during training to come up with some strategies that we can practice later."
"O...ok," he said, standing up a little straighter. "Maybe what we should do now is... warm up?"
"Ok!" Tenten replied enthusiastically, punching one palm. "Let's see who can do more situps!"
Kuso, thought Naruto, she's more like Lee than I thought.
xXx
"Kami, why are we running laps at night? I'm tired!"
"We should be ready to perform at any hour. We don't even know when the test is scheduled!"
"But it's 4 in the morning!" he whined.
"Well, when we're done, you can just go straight back home and sleep."
During the day, he would have continued to complain, but Naruto was too incoherent to think of anything else to say, so he contented himself with grumbling noises while he stretched. Tenten nodded with a satisfied smile on her face, then leaned down and planted her palms on the ground with her knees completely straight. The ninja at the village gates took no notice of them; they apparently saw shinobi training here at all sorts of odd hours.
This morning, clearly in anticipation of a cardio-based workout, Tenten had traded in her long, billowing leggings and high-collared blouse for shorts and a loose t-shirt that left her limbs free and unobstructed. Her usual clothing looked made her body look bulky, though the material was cut generously to keep her arms and legs from becoming tangled in fabric and not because of any excess in bodily girth. This look accomplished the same objective, but in a much more pleasant to observe way.
She continued reaching downward, her arms dangling heavily, but then when her elbows touched the ground and her forearms were flat against the dirt, she lifted her legs one at a time over her head pointing her toes, unwavering, at the sky. Gently, she bent them forward until they were nearly parallel with the earth and her torso was curved into a semicircle. Naruto, who had been in a sitting position trying to grab his ankles, could only stare speechlessly. By the time she had unpretzled herself, he had hidden his burning face by doing several push-ups.
"Are you ready?"
He nodded, but added, "You go first."
"Ok! Once around the village!" As elegantly as a gazelle, she sprinted off down the wall of Konoha with Naruto following closely in her wake.
He had asked her to go first to reduce the risk of her seeing his awkwardness around her, but unfortunately the view from his position, even in this faint light, didn't help his composure. The moon tonight was full, which threw everything into sharp relief. The wall was a slab of black against a sheet of gravelly white, the trees were puffs of shining grey supported by thick, dark poles and Tenten's legs were brilliant flashes of pale flesh pounding out a punishing rhythm.
He studied their perfection while unconsciously matching their exact pace. The lovely ankle bone turned into a taut calf, dipped at the knee, then swelled through the thigh into the hip. Her hips swayed with each springy step she took. Naruto's eyes swung with them, so hypnotized that he was able to run along without noticing how far they had gone. On the positive side, the focus of his gaze meant that he saw immediately when his running partner turned around suddenly.
"Think fast!" Tenten's foot sliced through the air. He fell back into a defensive stance and held up his arms to block, but her foot turned and hooked around his arm, throwing his defense wide open. He had enough time to swat away her fists, but not her other foot, which flew up after a sudden turn to land a heavy blow under his sternum. He went down like a sack of rocks.
"That wasn't fair!"
"Who's to say what's fair? You're just upset that I beat you."
"Am not!"
"Are too," she said back, her voice suddenly softer, which prompted Naruto to look up. Her eyes twinkled in the growing light and she smiled impishly. Was she teasing him?
"Wha-?"
Suddenly, she straightened her clothes and looked out over the village. She cracked her knuckles absently and said, "Now that we're warmed up, I propose a new method of training: hide-and-seek."
"A kid's game?"
"Yes; to improve tracking and evasion." Her face remained curiously neutral when she glanced sideways at him. "One of us will be the hider and the other will be the seeker."
Naruto rolled his eyes. "I know how hide-and-seek works. It doesn't seem like much of a challenge, though."
"Well, for one, we're using the whole town as a playground. There are no safe zones, no extra players, only running back and forth across the town looking for each other. When you find and catch the other person, we start again... so I suppose it's more like tag with a head start..." She pressed a finger to her pursed lips. Dawn began to break over Hokage Mountain and Naruto noticed that the light of the sun bathed Tenten's face in a warm, amber light. Her lips looked pink like flower petals. He suddenly felt very hungry, but not necessarily for breakfast.
"Who should start?" he asked, unable to keep a low cough out of his voice.
"I will. A five second head start should be enough." She brought her fingers together and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
"Ichi... Ni..." he started automatically, forgetting to spot which direction she went. "San... Shi...GO!" Aimlessly, he sprinted down towards the town, trying to think of where she might hide and furthermore what she would be doing while she waited. If it were him, he reasoned, he would just go home, so he purposefully struck out through the streets of Konoha.
On the other hand, he thought to himself, she isn't me. She would probably guess that I'd search her apartment first, so she'd go somewhere else. At this point, he realized exactly how little he knew about Tenten. Where did she hang out most of the time? Where did she go when she wanted to be alone? Were there places in the village where she had fond memories? Would she go to a friend's house? He resolved to find out the answers to some of these questions another day. For now, his only lead was to go to her home.
He had only been to her house once and it was a long time ago. He vaguely remembered a clean, white space decorated with ornamental weapons and brightly colored wall hangings on a high floor of a wood-and-brick building. Unfortunately for his stomach, her flat lay on the opposite side of the business district, which would just now be opening for breakfast. He took his hiate-ite and tied it around his nose and mouth to remove a little temptation, then fired up the chakra in his feet and blazed through the marketplace as fast as he could.
The smell of Ichiraku ramen wafted through the thick cloth making his mouth water, but through an uncharacteristically strong surge of self-control, he managed to keep his feet travelling straight. He resolved to visit it on the way home. Maybe Tenten would be hungry, too.
He wasted no time when he arrived, looking at the names on the doorbells out front, then bounding straight up the fire escape to the fourth floor. The furniture was arranged differently, with an open space and a handsome carpet in the middle of the living room. The kitchen was small and opened out into the living room with a counter that extended past the dividing wall. Her bedroom was off to one side, completely decorated in blue and brown, and beyond there was a bathroom.
It was as clean as he remembered, though, a finger dragged across the coffee table coming up spotless. His brief inspection of the place reminded him why he was here. Immediately, he began to search every surface and inside a few select drawers to find any clue as to her location. Nothing in the kitchen... nothing in the living room... nothing in the area by the door... nothing in the bathroom. He refrained from looking in her bedroom, but with no solid leads, he was out of ideas. Frustrated, he flung himself down on her couch.
How was he supposed to find her? The idea had sounded so good at first, but the village was just a little too big and she was a little too fast. His eyes wandered over the pictures on a bookshelf. There was a picture of team Guy filled almost entirely by green suited monsters (Tenten and Neji were crushed off to the left). Next to that was a picture of a younger Tenten flanked by her parents. Judging by her mother's clothing and her father's beard, they looked very proper and conservative. There was a picture of all the girls, squished together at a bar and brandishing girly drinks, except for Tenten's, which came in a shot glass. He got up to squint at the picture and see if he could tell what she was drinking.
"I knew you would come here."
Naruto turned around so fast, he lost his balance and landed on his ass. "Tenten!" She sat cross-legged on the protruding, yellow kitchen counter, grinning at his embarrassment with her head cupped in her hands. "Where were you?"
"I was in the fridge. I thought you would come here. I realized after I started the game and was halfway across town that there was no way you were going to be able to find my hiding place, so I came back to head you off." She looked around, noting several things out of place. "Did you go through my stuff?"
"I was looking for clues. I thought I could figure out where you went by looking for something. I'm sorry."
Tenten blinked with surprise. "That's very resourceful, Naruto. It's good that your first thought was to gather information. I wish it hadn't been in my apartment, but still."
He grinned widely. "Yeah, it was, wasn't it?" At that moment, his stomach growled loudly.
"You're hungry, aren't you?" He nodded. "All right, let's get some breakfast. Ichiraku is your favorite, right?" Again, he nodded enthusiastically, but it was suddenly tempered by guilt. She knew his favorite place to eat, but he didn't know hers. Maybe it was time to ask.
xXx
A/N- And there you are! Please leave reviews, even if they're bad.