Maito Gai took Tenten to the Pool of Eternal Tears the next morning for training. Among the things she had learned from Shino was that Gai and Lee had filled up that pool all by themselves, with actual tears. Armed with the knowledge, she brought her own water for tea.
"I notice, Tenten," Gai began, as he watched her set up a place for them to rest and have a spot of refreshment after the hard trek up the mountain, "That when you try to do serious kung fu – you suck."
Tenten was not offended. She liked where this was going, and smiled to herself as she poured steaming water into the pot. It was clear that Gai was going to give up on her, and she could go back to her beloved noodles, her beloved dimsum, and her father who she would hold in loving memory if he would just hurry up and die and leave the teashop to her already. She loved her father, of course, but he believed in the school of thought of not sparing the rod. Or the belt. Or the slipper. When she had gotten older, it had advanced to various kitchen implements. All in all though, Tenten had had a happy childhood.
They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes to allow the tea to steep, then Tenten graciously handed her soon-to-be ex-mentor a teacup and bent to pour hot liquid into it.
Gai dropped the cup and slapped the teapot out of her hands.
Emitting a sound like a strangled elf, Tenten lunged for the pot and snagged it by the handle, extending herself so high she ended up tiptoeing on one foot. At the same time she kicked out her other leg behind her and caught the falling cup with the underside of her arch, correcting the vessel's position neatly to catch all the liquid and balance upright again.
Student and teacher looked at each other, eyes blazing, one in a Nice Guy pose, the other in a position that might have been choreographed for Swan Lake. With tea.
"Your teahouse," Gai grinned at her, not entirely pleasantly, "completely loses to the ramen place at the other side of town."
Furious, Tenten told him in no uncertain terms that there was no way her family's restaurant would ever, EVER lose to a small-time ramen shop. Her throat hadn't recovered fully yet, so the words came out as a series of indignant-sounding squeaks.
"What's that? I can't hear you." It was true, but it didn't mean he wasn't mocking her. "I can only hear the un-youthful sound of falling ceramics." He kicked the teacup far away and watched her race after it with a shriek, further abusing her vocal cords. Already he saw a marked difference in her movements and speed from when she had been unwillingly sparring with the five other kung fu masters yesterday.
Tenten could not believe how utterly rude and uncouth martial artists were! She caught the flying cup, springing from one rock to another to avoid falling into the pool. She'd accidentally fallen into other bodies of water before in her life, and if those incidents had been unpleasant, what more a pool of undiluted salty eye fluids.
Cradling the cup close to her chest, she examined it for cracks. It wasn't expensive, but it was precious to her for sentimental reasons. She glared at Gai, who was giving a huge thumbs up and a blinding smile. Then he went to her hiking pack and began tossing out her cooking ware over the cliff.
Tenten realized she wouldn't have any voice left again today, she was yelling so hard at the stupid green man to stop touching her stuff as she ran to defend her property.
Swirling clouds obscured the peaks of the mountain range, an orogenic belt topped with perilous glaciers and icy rivers flowing into unexpected rifts near the crest, with water tumbling sediment into the surrounding lowlands hidden beneath the clouds, the massif rising ever higher and growing broader as the continents continued their inexorable collision, the slow but relentless movement of the earth's crust thrust faulting rocks in chaotic and fantastical shapes that lunged and clawed at the sky.
In the flurries of mist, only the sharpest of eyes could see the barely visible figure cloaked in gray, trudging tirelessly and, it seemed, effortlessly, across the dangerous alp. Unerringly, Neji walked towards Konoha, to claim the scroll that was rightfully his.
The clay crane dipped slowly to give its rider a clearer view of his target through the fog. It cast no shadow to alert Neji, the clouds working favourably to disperse what light there was into blurry nothingness.
Wheeling low enough to scoop snow from the mountain side, Deidara gleefully packed a snowbomb in his hand, a spur-of-the-moment innovation he had artistically conjured, inspired by the surrounding panorama. Flitting silently, never too close, and always in the direction of the wind so as not to disrupt the current, the fair-haired boy assessed the opponent. So this was the Terror of the Five Lands.
Deidara found him lacking in artistry and good taste. It was impressive, though, how far Neji had travelled on foot from the prison, considering he had been shackled for three years without any chance of training or conditioning. Deidara surmised that must have been some exceptionally good gruel they served in the slammer.
Nothing as good as what Tenten serves, un. That girl's true calling is in cooking, not martial arts. He thought to himself, completely un-sexist. He ought to know, being rather deft in the culinary department himself, and appreciative of art in many forms.
For a phantom of walking doom and destruction, Neji didn't seem very alert. Deidara hovered a second or two longer, deliberating whether he should do the sporting thing and hail his opponent before engaging in battle, since he was on the side of good and a defender of the Land of Fire and all that.
A hazy patch of condensation fleetingly obfuscated his view, paradoxically enhancing the feeling of suffocation Deidara already battled from the too-thin atmosphere. The scope on his left eye focused to compensate. Too late.
"Where did he-' the thought was dismembered, together with both arms, as Neji crashed down on the clay avian from a hitherto unseen spire of rock that was wreathed in vapour and ice. The bomb tumbled from the nerveless fingers onto the mountain, where the sound of its detonation was muted by the surrounding snow. The tremors upon the ground did not end, however, but continued and began to increase as the violent stress on the already overburdened snowpack triggered roiling avalanches both local and remote, magnifying the noise of the explosion into a continuous, endless roar.
Muffled curses at the 'idiot crane boy!' hissed out from the tumbling barrage as the other kung fu masters scrambled away from the disaster. Their plan to ambush Neji now thwarted, they regrouped, straining their senses and not-insignificant abilities searching for the escaped prisoner, but even Sasuke could find nothing. He had vanished.
Then, they were blown off the mountain by a blast of chakra, nerve points simultaneously paralysed. Their only glimpse of the assailant before the attack was a flash of silvery eyes in a ghostly face, framed by dark strands flecked with snow.
Freezing mountain fog writhed and coiled around Neji as he stood upon the precipice, watching their descent. He had deigned to tell Shisui that long exposure to the Sharingan had allowed him ample opportunity to divine its weaknesses. What he had not bothered to narrate was his slow, imperceptible deflection of the restraining genjutsu over the years and gradual delving into the Uchiha's mind to obtain information on the goings-on in the outside world, including the skills and flaws of the five kung fu masters.
The one who would be Dragon Warrior turned away from the crag, and was enveloped once again in the impenetrable mist.
