VVVVVV
The next day was even more uneventful than the former because neither ninja wanted to be the one to open a conversation (Temari thought she had done her part with the preliminary introductions and Neji, well, he didn't give a damn) and the only moderately interesting happening was the spontaneous migration of a colony of red ants from Suna to Konoha. Temari observed them with great interest and considered asking them for their passports and immigration documents but by the time she had decided to do so, they had disappeared in the undergrowth on the other side of the road, so she could only hope that they would nest under Neji's log and bite him.
On the third day things started out as usual: Temari nursed a death wish from the sheer dullness of the place and Neji did his job with the unwavering intentness of a professional jounin.
"Jounin, yeah, okay," Temari thought with an eyeroll, "more like mega-nerd oh my god get a life maybe?" Besides, she told herself rather severely, she was a jounin too and it didn't mean that she was going to pretend that all of this was somehow interesting or important.
Temari returned to her paperback (The Adventures of Norman the Nudist Ninja) and immersed herself in the gory death by flossing of the protagonist. Good, she hated him anyway, because she was jealous that her name prohibited her from being a nudist. She could only be Temari the Terror or something. Temari the Torturer, the Terrible, the Tyrant, the Tormenter. Whatever.
Temari was presently distracted by a sound from across the road. Woah! The Neji twit was actually up and moving around. Temari dropped her book and watched as Neji lifted up the log upon which he habitually sat. Perhaps the ants had settled there after all. Temari rejoiced internally and hoped that Neji would do some sort of entertaining dance when he realized that he had ants in his kimono.
Unfortunately no such dance materialized, Neji merely pressed the log forcefully into the ground so that it stood firmly on its end and made for quite a passable training block. He then began to assault the log with various hand strikes and kicks which all looked the same to Temari but were nevertheless somewhat impressive.
Temari watched him train for a few minutes and wondered if she should train too and show off her hot moves, but she could not muster the energy to do so and so she settled, to Neji's great chagrin, on making a running commentary on his training.
"The Leaf jounin has entered the arena," Temari announced. "The log is quivering in fear."
"The Leaf is now smacking his palms repeatedly on the log in an attempt to, we can only assume, dislodge some bugs and eat them."
"He has now progressed to kicks, demonstrating great prowess at knee jabs but producing a slightly wobbly roundhouse."
"The Leaf is now playing air guitar."
"He is now back to using his hands and he is making seals which I do not recognize but – HEY! Was that a middle finger?"
Temari drew herself to her full height on her boulder, grasped her fan and shot Neji a withering glare. "Was it?"
Neji turned to look at Temari with an equally withering look rendered all the more unsettling because the freak didn't have pupils. "Maybe," he finally said rather anticlimactically.
Temari wondered vaguely whether challenging Neji to a fight would constitute a breach in the Sand-Leaf treaty. Yes, she decided, it probably would. But inviting him to train with her wouldn't, right? Right.
"What do you say," Temari said in the most innocuous manner she could, "we train with each other?" If she accidentally decapitated him, she would blame it on the ants.
"No," came the toneless answer immediately, and Neji turned back to his log and resumed his fist-smacking.
Temari was not used to being turned down quite so abruptly and so she sat back down, ruminated for a while and finally muttered, "wuss."
Neji's back stiffened noticeably at this affront but he kept on training and did not favour her with a response.
Temari retreated temporarily to her bunkhouse to fetch her fan maintenance gear and returned to her rock where she proceeded with the burnishing of her fan.
She was careful to make the strokes as long as possible and allow for as much irritating squeaking as she could – which was, in truth, quite a remarkable amount; when she worked the cloth particularly hard the sound was somewhat reminiscent of a troupe of mole rats bathing in hydrochloric acid.
Temari kept up her delightful squeaky symphonies throughout the afternoon and late into the evening until a tight-jawed Neji asked her whether she was planning on continuing throughout the night or only until she drove him to a homicidal rage, to which she answered graciously, "only until you agree to train with me, you frigid clod."
To which he responded, "fine. Tomorrow. Try not to die or something."
And there we leave them for tonight.
