How people managed their day without getting up at six, Tenten had no idea. It left plenty of time to hop in the furo for a quick bath – well, hobbling into the bath and letting out almost-obscene groans and moans at the pleasurable heat like an old man – and cook breakfast before starting her day.
Force of habit got her up even after a night like she'd had, trying to catch Jiraiya. The cabaret bouncer had been good at his job but ultimately fell for a good henge. The henge of a gender flip and some work aging her featured up had ended up being too good, or the cabaret girls too determined – she'd been locked down with eager female company almost immediately. Jiraiya had had plenty of time to order another sake, drink it and casually leave before Tenten had managed to extricate herself from the grip of a brunette cabaret girl who must have had ninja training.
She was still up long before her father, though.
For a business owner, her dad kept really irregular hours. A lot of his sales were commission, which meant appointments. He could be out meeting – drinking with – one of his eccentric blacksmith buddies all night and not open shop until the hangover cleared up, or he could close up shop early and wake up fresh for a day of business.
Today was not looking like one of the early business days.
Tenten left a pot of rice porridge to warm on the stove while she fried eggs and thin crispy pancakes in separate pans. One minute to an egg, five minutes to a pancake. Layering one on top of the other, then dice in mustard pickles and scallions and a spicy sauce.
She left half the rice porridge and a few pancakes out for her dad to polish off and was out the door by 7 am. Normally she'd have an hour to jog around the village to warm up before meeting her team, but with two members down that wasn't happening. A break to regain their youthful energy, Gai-sensei had said. She wondered what Neji would be doing to prepare for the tournament. Hopefully Gai-sensei had set something up for him, or he could consult with his family. Neji was a genius, but that just meant he understood concepts faster or applied them better than other people. He couldn't just pull new concepts and techniques out of nothing.
… Probably. Sometimes, admittedly…
Well, that had nothing to do with her right now. A quick kawarimi took her to the flat ceramic-shingle roof of her house, displacing a scarecrow doll she kept up there for the purpose. The thing had a silly face drawn on and straw hair done up in pigtails; she'd made it when she was in the academy and wanted some extra practice with the jutsu at home. When she was done, she could just kawarimi back down. She greeted the sun and the clear skies with a smile.
She slowly stretched up towards the sky, feeling where the pleasant ache of limber muscle shaded into a much more unpleasant ache and stiffness. She held that pose for thirty seconds before moving onto the next. Her body, back still straight, curved forward like one of those drinking bird novelty things to stretch out that way instead. She couldn't even touch her toes, for the first time she could honestly remember.
She slowly slid into a kneeling position, like she was going to kowtow. Her back bowed gently, gently. Her face and rear flexed upwards, shaping a shallow U. Then she arched her back upwards like a car, tightening her core muscles and her glutes, holding it...
"Oh hey, nee-chan! What're you doing with all the flexing and stuff? It kinda makes your butt look huge."
"What? It's not!" she corrected instinctively. She was serious about her job, and part of that was keeping in shape. Her body was a love letter to the ninja arts! She was taller and more muscular than any girl her age she knew, and took pride in that! It wasn't easy keeping up with Gai-sensei and the boys.
So her butt wasn't big. It wasn't! End of story.
Her glowering eyes swung round past her – totally normal – rear to see Naruto behind her. Of course it was him; the voice was distinctive and what other semi-grown ninja would be that tactless?
The blond blanched when her burning eyes rest on him. "Uh, I just mean, you know, normally I don't notice it and now it's just right there." His arms waved as though to encompass her butt's there-ness.
She went back to her stretches pointedly, hips flat on the roof with her weight supported by her elbows in a kind of L shape.
"It's… nice?" He attempted another recovery.
"What are you even doing here? You don't live around here do you?" she asked. She assumed she would have noticed, somehow.
"Nah, but I got a bun on the way to practice!" he looked at her like he was hoping she'd be impressed. Like a dog hoping it's owner was impressed it brought the slippers without chewing them this time.
"Uh huh," she sighed, moving into the next pose with determination. This one had her fold her torso over her knees, resting her forehead on the ground, like going fetal.
"Soooo…" Naruto dragged the word out. "Are you practicing poses for the pervert hermit?"
He sounds vaguely mulish, but she wasn't sure what he was dissatisfied about.
Tenten paused in the midst of a stretch, reluctantly drawn back into conversation. "... Do you think that would work?"
"I'unno," Naruto answered promptly. "I could lend you some good research books if you want."
"For posing?" Tenten clarified.
"Sure, you know, naked girly posing. It's harder than it looks, trust me."
That vaguely offended her, since by any reasonable metric she – a girl – should be better at 'girly posing' than Naruto. Although to be honest she wasn't 100% sure how to pose prettily. You couldn't get out of a team under Gai-sensei without a certain amount of image training, but that mostly involved muscle spreads or weird poses like something out of comic books.
Then something clicked for her about the research material he was offering. "No I don't want your porn!"
"Okay, okay, sheesh," Naruto said, looking vaguely insulted. Like he thought she was being rude. "Go back to hiding in trees if you want, I got training to do."
She suddenly had a better idea. "Naruto, wait!"
Naruto walked along, hands behind his head. A grandpa with a receding hairline in a restaurant outfit like Teuchi at Ichiraku waved at him. Naruto blinked, trying to decide if he should wave back. People on the street didn't usually wave to him. Unless you counted shaking their fists at him after an awesome prank, which was acknowledgement of a sort but not really the same thing.
Which was okay, they were basically just jealous. He could deal. Still, friendliness was kinda new.
"Hey, Ten-chan!" the old man hollered with a voice like he regularly chewed gravel. "Who's your boyfriend? You give up on trying to land a chuunin and decided to go cradle robbing instead?"
The girl walking next to him carefully flipped the apron oji-san off. "Knock it off, Masa-san, you know I'm just after their techniques! If I wanted a boyfriend I could just get one." She added, "Maybe when I make chuunin."
"Uh huh," Masa said, unconvinced. "And what kind of 'techniques' are you gonna be learning from that kid there? Kid that age only thinks about one thing, girl, and–"
"He probably has techniques!" she protested. She added, "... Not that I'm after him for that, geez, Masa-san. Although if I was after his techniques, he has to be pretty good for Jiraiya-sama to take an interest."
The crotchety old guy raised both eyebrows. "Jiraiya-sama and that punk? Really?"
Naruto scratched his nose, pleased and a little proud. Then he considered that they were just impressed because of the old letch, and wasn't sure how to feel about that.
"I am pretty good, and I'm Uzumaki Naruto!" Naruto decided loudly. "And I'm awesome because of that, not 'cuz of the pervert sage."
He paused, mentally rewinding the conversation. "And whadda ya mean cradle-robbing? I'm not a kid! She can't be that much older than me!"
So he was short for his age! So what! She couldn't be more than half a foot taller than him, and he drank lots of milk. His growth spurt would happen any day now, believe it.
"... No, seriously, why are you with this brat? Does he owe you money?"
"He is Uzumaki Naruto, and he is getting taught by Jiraiya-sama," Tenten confirmed blandly.
A middle-aged guy with stubble and an apron and a hat with a brim on it shouted, "Hey hey, springtime has come for that uncute tomboy of Tamura's? Man, I gotta tell everybody!"
"Knock it off, Kouhei," Tenten grumbled.
"What?" an older woman with fancy blonde hair and a blue dress, with surprisingly muscular arms, poked her head out of the door next to Kouhei's trinket stall. "Spring has finally come for that mannish girl? Congratulations!"
"No it hasn't!" Tenten hollered back.
"Hm, yes, you can do better, honey," the older woman agreed. "His dress sense is awful."
"Hey!" Geez, these guys were rude. What was wrong with the way he dressed? Not just anybody could pull off bright orange!
"Kawarimi-race you to the end of the street?" Tenten offered through her fixed smile.
"You're on!" Naruto agreed, argument forgotten when his competitive spirit roused.
"Great! 1-2-3-go," chanted Tenten in one breath before instantly switching with a tanuki statue.
Naruto wasted a second or two staring dumbly at the stupid ceramic grin staring back at him before he yelped "You cheat!" and scrabbled after her. By the time he replaced himself with a flower pot and leaped after her along the window sills, she'd switched with a vending machine and was further ahead.
"I can't hear you over the sound of how far behind you are," she teased him.
"Not for long!" Naruto fired back. He couldn't match the smooth, well-honed precision of her kawarimi so he made up for it in effort and energy. He teleported erratically in great gouts of smoke, bouncing from street level to roofs to even convenient people who held still long enough.
The shopping arcade folks watched them pop in and out all the way down the street. "Cute, they're cute," Ms. Aki sighed fondly in that way that middle-aged people did while watching the young.
He totally won, by the way. They'd never said he had to only use kawarimi, and a Naruto crossed the finish line first, so he won.
Tenten tried not to let the loss get to her. She was used to being the sneaky one, at least compared to the rest of her team. Lee's pure heart and Neji's pride in himself meant they never did less than their best, but they also wouldn't cheat. The kind of mind that took the concept of 'race' and applied itself to 'creating clones to throw him over the finish line' was kind of new to her.
"So hey, hey, I've pretty much got this water walking thing down, right?" Naruto declared. When his attention wandered, his toes immediately dipped into the drink. He abruptly made a strained face and blue chakra flared as he slowly inched back up to balance on the water.
"More practice," Tenten recommended.
"This is really boring," Naruto complained.
"Uh huh," Tenten replied feelingly.
She didn't know what his problem was, he was at least getting to practice! She was stuck watching him practice without being able to do anything herself. Her idea of camping out with Jiraiya's apprentice, figuring Jiraiya had to show up eventually, had seemed brilliant this morning. Hours later, she realized that a lounge lizard like Jiraiya who spent his nights at cabaret bars probably wasn't the type to show up to training bright and early.
Tenten amused herself by flicking another smooth river rock. It skipped twice and shot between Naruto's legs, startling him into sinking up to the knee. It went on to skip another three times before sinking into the water with a cheerful 'blip' on the other side of the river.
Bullseye.
"Hey!" Naruto scowled at her, but his flailing to try and stay upright robbed the expression of any force and just looked like childish pouting.
"I'm helping," she claimed with innocence like that of a saint. "You need to be able to deal with distractions if you want to say you've mastered the technique. Ninja have to be able to fight on the water, you know."
"Yeah, yeah… I'll get it, believe it!" Naruto reapplied himself to his task with all his effort.
Tenten sighed and walked her last river rock along her knuckles to balance on the tip of her thumb. She flicked it away where it sank into the river with a sad 'plop'. "I'll catch you later, okay, Naruto?"
"Ahuh," he mumbled, face screwed up in concentration into a furious-looking rictus.
Chakra steamed off him like blue mist as he forced more and more chakra into the water beneath him, until suddenly he lost his footing. Rather than sink, the chakra-infused water caused him to pop up off the river like it was a trampoline. The hand he put out instinctively to save himself skidded out from under him so that he face-planted into the river directly. He slowly bobbed with the ripples, drifting downstream atop the charged water.
Tenten carried her fondly mean-edged smile all the way into the hot springs.
After spending an hour leaning against steam-warmed rocks, letting the heat from the hot water sink into her bones, she was feeling much more like her old self again. Various wrinkles and pruning aside. A vaguely satisfied whine escaped her as she stretched her arms up over her head, body feeling limber and languid with the heat.
She'd halfway risen out of the hot springs already when her eyes caught a glint from a whorling knothole in the fence. She spun to face it, pointing. "A ha!" she declared giddily.
"What is it?" a middle-aged woman demanded, flexing one brawny arm. She had the hard musculature of a laborer rather than the lithe muscles of a shinobi, but it was still kind of intimidating. Her hand was big enough to palm Tenten's head.
"Nothing! I've got this," Tenten claimed. A kawarimi with a stack of towels – and a brief pause to whirl one around herself and knot it – and then she grabbed up a pair of wooden wash buckets. Replacing one thrown bucket at the apex of its ascent got her clear of the wall, and then a second one got her to the ground safely on the other side.
And almost directly on top of Jiraiya.
"Thought so," she declared, fingers curved like grasping claws. Like she could literally grab him and shake the secret techniques out.
"Oh heyyy, you!" Jiraiya claimed innocently, in an 'Oh my, what a coincidence meeting you here!' sort of way. He paused, visibly wracking his brains, then concluded, "Tenten-chan!"
There was a brief silence, both parties watching each other. Then Tenten leaped at him, hands grabbing the hem of his coat. "Please train me!"
"No way, I'm busy!" Jiraiya wriggled, trying to free his clothing from her grasp. The fact that he was struggling rather than already gone suggested he probably didn't mind too much.
"It doesn't have to be in person," she reasoned, locking an arm around his waist. "A technique scroll, a few pointers? Anything."
"Come on, be quiet, they'll hear you!" Jiraiya whined. He put one of his huge hands against her forehead and pushed, but she wouldn't be budged. Guy didn't train quitters!
"I could introduce you to the neighborhood oba-sans?" She offered. "Ms. Aki's been looking for a man."
"Hey, I don't want grannies! And what are you, some kind of pimp?"
"Oh, you're that kind," she realized.
His brow furrowed as he tried to follow her line of thought.
"Cradle-robber," she specified.
"Oi." One meaty finger flicked her in the forehead in protest.
"Ow," she said mildly. She curved under his arm and locked one leg around his while she hunted for something else to offer. "I could… do you do book signings? I could be a booth babe or something. You know, so it's not just creepy guys standing in line."
Jiraiya stroked his chin contemplatively, nearly elbowing her in the head accidentally. She ducked lower without letting go, almost sitting on his foot. The old ninja mused, "Get a spokesperson, female endorsement… could work, maybe. My books are romance literature, not smut! That committee had it in for me, and the 18+ rating is really hurting my audience demographics. How old are you?"
"Old enough," she decided to claim.
Jiraiya smiled, obviously imagining something else. Then he shot her a suspicious look, which she returned with all the innocence she could muster.
"Ehh… could work, but an underage booth babe might be a real problem, too. What would you do if you get me arrested or kicked out of Konoha?" he asked drolly.
"Like they could!" But yeah, that hadn't been one of her brighter ideas.
"And I'll have you know I do have girl fans," he sniffed, wounded.
"Of course you do," she soothed him absently, thinking hard.
"Can I go? Or at least, can you get off my knee so I can go back to watching the pretty ladies?"
"You know," she squirmed up so she could hold a face to face conversation with him without weird contortions. She told him, "It would save you time in the long run to just show me a thing or two rather than make me keep guarding the hot springs for a month."
"You don't have to do anything of the sort!"
"Yeah, but I'm gonna."
"Uncute brat, threatening to taking away one of life's great pleasures," he lamented. Then he giggled. "Do you promise to wrestle with me in a towel every time you do?"
Tenten froze. Oh right, she had been doing that. Not that it was in danger of falling off or anything, she had too much confidence in her knots to worry about that, but it was kind of… she was kind of keeping her leg locked around his, and for good measure she'd tangled a hand in his belt and fisted the other in his kimono.
Victory was for the bold, however.
"Fine! Maybe I will!" she declared.
"Great!" Jiraiya clapped his hands. "Well, not that it hasn't been fun, but it's past lunch and I'm hungry. See ya, Tenten-chan."
And then she wasn't holding anything at all. There wasn't even a puff of smoke; the huge old man was simply there, then not. Had it been kawarimi? Or an illusion? Since when? ... Something else? She honestly had no idea.
Tenten looked around bemusedly. "I could buy you lunch?" she offered.
The grassy knoll offered no reply.