The heat of the room was nearly insufferable. He had been sitting here, in vaguely the same position, for the past hour and a half. The orbs of his eyes rotated between the two ancient men who were arguing with more fervor than thought possible. He had forgotten long ago what they were fighting about. Something about the maids most likely, they always seemed to be against the female half of the servants.
His mind drifted away once again, to the reason why he was stuck in this torture pit. The torture was supposed to be his training to become head of the clan, and he had no intention on ever taking that position. His jailor sat not five inches from him, at the head of the low table. He was silently sipping a cup of tea, listening intently to the conversation that the elders were having. He even frowned if something 'shocking' came up… which was quite often due tot the manner in which the elders were exaggerating.
They always exaggerated when it came to women. If someone told them they were spawns of evil and ready and willing to eat your guts on moment's notice, they would spout out some stupid tale about a personal account involving a maid eating guts. That or how a mother beat her child mercilessly.
Really the reason he was here was because of the hatred the clan 'elite' held against all of female-kind. He was not the true heir; Hinata or Hinabi would have fulfilled that job quite well, even with two X chromosomes. Come to think of it he had no reason to be here at all. Sure he was Hiashi's nephew, but there were many others with the same family ties that would be more than willing.
That itself might be the reason why he had been picked. A reluctant ruler was generally a better one than a power-hungry maniac. But still, he would never take the post. He wanted to be like a bird; free to fly wherever it wanted to. He'd made steps in that direction since he joined the academy against the clan's wishes. And team Gai had been a major collaborator with about ninety percent of those.
Speaking of Team Gai, he was missing training for this. Even though the team had been disbanded the year before, they were still together. They would never be able to leave each other, not now, not ever. They held so much of his sanity, he could not even dream of letting them run off with it. Plus they were the most efficient team there was; they always ended up together on missions anyways.
Absent-mindedly he reached out towards his cup of tea.
He was recalling his last mission, a quick assassination that had caused more trouble than necessary. The target had not only been armed, but knew how to used those blades too. Overall they had faired fine, only a couple of minor scratches on the majority of the squad.
He slowly lifted the filled-to-the-brim cup off the table. It's elegant fragility amplified by his rough and dangerous hands.
Tenten had been another matter. She had crumpled to the ground before any blows could have hit her. And she had stayed there, curled in a ball and clutching her head the entire fight. They had all realized how necessary she was, for the battle would have been over quickly if she hadn't fallen. While the others cleaned up he had gone to her, anxious and scared to know what was wrong.
It had taken her a while to uncurl enough to talk to him. He had been carrying her all the while, not ready to risk the both of them in the crime scene for much longer. The squad had stopped as soon as she moved, dispersing within the trees to do whatever they needed to. He had simply crouched on the closest branch and let her get used to controlling her own limbs. She stretched in silence for a while, inhaling as much fresh air as she could.
She told him she'd been having reoccurring headaches, ones that would take over her mind and destroy any hope for thought. She said they hurt a lot, but she would survive. She always did; life was though, but she was tougher.
Neji awoke from his trance as he felt burning liquid scalding his hand. He looked curiously at the source of the pain, realizing that he had been shaking.
Shaking from what?
As he looked around the room he realized nobody else seemed to feel …cold? Like he did. The elders were still arguing, others adding a comment here and there. Hiashi was still listening intently. None seemed bothered by the intense cold that seemed to permeate everywhere.
Realizing that he would find nothing by looking at the others, he looked back towards the small burn. It was of an odd shape, a thin crescent, much like the marks left behind after a nail dug into the skin.
His previous trail of thought rocketed back towards him. He had seen the marks her nails had left after she uncurled, and she had been shivering so hard he had wrapped her in his cloak while he carried her.
Tenten!
Completely without warning he rose from his seat and fled the room. He wasn't needed anyways, he wasn't even allowed to comment. They wouldn't miss him, but someone else would.
I'm coming!
Behind him, the teacup shattered as it hit the edge of the table. The poor piece of china never had a chance.
… … … … …
He found her curled on the ground floor of her apartment. Her groceries abandoned in a corner, at least what was left of them. In her kind of a neighborhood he was surprised there was actually something left in the crinkled paper bags.
Beside her hovered the crude form of what he supposed hid a boy. The shape scuttled back and forth between her and her bags. The boy picked up a spherical glass container out of one of the bags and stared at it in wonder, fondly caressing the bees on the label, as Neji strode next to his teammate.
"No touch! Ours!" screamed the boy, throwing the jar of honey at the wall only seconds before Neji bent down to carry her out. Quickly he dodged the oncoming missile, turning to face the boy all the while.
Behind him he heard the sphere shatter, expelling its sticky contents all over the area.
The poor boy was now pinned under Neji's murderous gaze, cowering and shying away from his eerie white eyes. Truth be told, that was the expected reaction, only a few had ever been able to stand him down, but the boy didn't know that. He was terrifed, and he had all the right to be. The boy darted to the corner, warily eyeing Neji the entire time. Once he was finally cornered the boy's tearing eyes rose to meet Neji's glare.
"N-no hurt... no hurt... h-her," the boy sniveled, sobbing between each set of words. Neji's gaze then softened marginally. The boy meant no harm; in fact, he was the reason she, and her groceries, still remained.
"I won't hurt her, I will help." Neji answered softly, delicately picking Tenten up. The boy seemed to nod in agreement, rising as well. Even though he was still afraid, he walked out of the lobby after Neji.
He smiled before pulling on the hem of Neji's shirt.
"Hospital?" he asked, running out ahead as soon as Neji had nodded in agreement. Neji walked on, instinctively knowing where the nearest hospital was, and the quickest route there.
After a couple minutes the boy disappeared, only to appear five minutes later at the doors of the hospital. Behind him stood five other shapes, all as covered in grime as he, and all as malnourished.
Under Neji's questioning stare the boy accounted for the others, "Wanted to see ane-san," Neji simply nodded and kept on walking through the sliding doors. Behind him the six shapes scuttled in as well.
… … … … …
"Ugh… m'head." Tenten mumbled as she opened her eyes.
"Well it is expected; you are in a hospital." Neji said sporting a cross between a smile and a grin. He teased her, and her only, and always in private. After all, he couldn't let the world know he had emotions.
"You didn't have to ruin the surprise." She said as she fell back on the bed with a strangled cry of pain as her head hit the pillow.
"Now that was smart," Neji said, still showing his sad imitation of a smile. With an indignant snort she rose from the bed, swinging her legs over the metal frame with just enough force to hit him in the knee.
"I'm guessing I'm here thanks to another headache, right?" she asked as Neji caught her ankle mid-flight.
"That and them," he answered, jerking his head to the right all the while still holding her ankle.
"Them?" She said before turning her head towards the mass of limbs that had decided to occupy the couch. She looked puzzled for a minute, making all sorts of worry blossom in his chest, before she recognized them. "Oh, them. I've never actually seen any of them without that coat of muck before. It's like they are different people." She said, with a motherly smile.
He let go of her ankle as she got up and off the bed, slowly approaching the sleeping mass.
"One of the nurses felt bad for them so she washed, clothed and fed them… the biggest one ate so much I had to pay for it." Neji said simply and with a hint of glowering that made her laugh.
"That would be Beetle. He always eats like no tomorrow, they all do." She said sadly, noting how visible their malnutrition was now. "I did too."
"How do you know them? The one… Beetle, called you ane-san." Neji said, not so subtly wanting to know.
"I was one of them until I was eight, and I help them when I can nowadays." She said while trying to untangle the mess and reposition them so no one was suffocated.
"You were a street urchin?" Neji asked in disbelief. No street urchin had ever made it to the academy, never. You needed a ninja to recommend you and pay for your education, and urchins didn't have that luxury. Plus the extremely poor didn't have time to go to school, much less the most time-consuming one there was.
"I guess you could call it that. I was part of their gang though, so not quite that low." She said with a smug smile, turning around to face her teammate. Not many people managed to shock the Hyuugas, but then again not many got close enough to do so.
"You… you were part of a gang?!"
"Yep, we are called the shuriken, appropriate no?" she said, no fully enjoying her friend's disbelief. "Want to see the tattoo?"
Against all common sense (what kind of Hyuuga became ahem friends with an ex-gangster?!?!) he nodded, intrigued. With a mutter of "I better be wearing shorts" she lifted up the hem of the hospital robe just enough to show the small of her back.
Right above the waistline of her shorts, on the left side of her back was an exquisitely inked shuriken, it's four points seemingly sharp enough to cut if he touched it. In the center of the masterpiece, a cockroach was crawling out of the handhold, ready to pounce on the closest person.
It was just too crazy for Neji to comprehend. His hand extended of it's own accord, tracing the outline of the pest. "Why a cockroach?" he asked, mesmerized by the realness of the tattoo.
"Isn't it awesome? And the cockroach… is because that was my name. No matter where or for what they sent me, I came back." She said, letting the fabric fall back over her.
"So Beetle has a tattoo too? And it has a beetle on it?" Neji asked, finally able to make sense of the mesmerizing drawing on her back.
"Yup, every member above the age of five has one. You aren't allowed to get one before that. It would be a liability to the gang if you got caught, and the young ones are the easy targets. Plus, why bother naming someone if it's just going to cost you later on? The tattoo is also paid by your skill, mine looks that good just because I was the best." she said with an amused smile as she finally explained something to her genius teammate. Something he hadn't known before.
"Unoriginal names." He said simply, disapproving of anyone that would call her a cockroach.
"Well they all have something to do with personality, likes, dislikes or family. I'm not ashamed of my name, and you have to admit it fits." She said with a smile.
"Hn. I admit no one can take you down for long, but that's no reason to take on the name of a pest. How'd your name change from that to Tenten anyways?" he asked, now genuinely interested in his teammate's hidden life.
"That one's a long story…" She said hesitantly. She kept this half of her life hidden for so long, it felt weird for it to be told, even to him.
"I'm not going anywhere, and neither are you. Might as well." He answered with a hint of a threat in his voice. Damn his overprotective nature.
"Just don't repeat it to anyone. I don't want the whole shinobi community knowing I'm a gutter kid." She said, getting an impatient glare in response. "What? I'm not the one who blurted my life story in the middle of the chunnin exams." This time a menacing glare was sent towards her.
"Fine, I can't remember when or how old I was, but it was a festival night…. I think New Years. In any case, I was doing my normal rounds, taking what I could from all the tourists milling about the shops." Tenten, started saying but she was stopped by the raised eyebrow of her teammate. "What!? I was a theif, and a damn good one at that. Back to the life story that you wanted to hear." She said with a fake pout until he lowered the eyebrow.
"Well I had gotten a lot of goods for one night, and I was about to go back to the hideout when I saw this very drunk-looking, blonde woman on heels that seemed way too big for her clumsiness with a huge purse of coins. I mean seriously, that thing could have fed us for a week at the least." She said, with extravagant motions for the size of the purse. Neji grinned at that, she had always loved wealth.
"I hid all my loot and followed her around for a while, learning her habits, weak spots, and all that fun stuff. After I'm guessing five minutes, she went up to buy dango and I trailed behind her. She sat at a table with this other woman, so that was going to set my plans back a little, but they quickly got into an argument and I managed to get my hands on the purse. I was about to leave the shop when a pig squeaked at me! Seriously, one of the best hauls of my life was ruined by a farm animal! Well at the moment I'm lucky I wasn't reduced to rumble, considering I had just robbed a drunk Tsunade, but I didn't know that then." She said as Neji emitted a sort of chocking laughter that made her worry.
"No, I'm fine… it's just the way you said it. I've never heard the Gondaime described that way." Neji said after she inquired about his health. Now she was just worried about his mental health… after all he had just laughed.
"Well, I ended up running across the plaza dodging all sorts of projectiles, and throwing my own in return. I managed to hit her three times, but she never stopped. Eventually I got caught and was dragged to the police office kicking and screaming… well mostly kicking since they had taped my mouth shut..."
"They interviewed me none too gently, and took away nearly everything I had on at the moment, even if it was mine to begin with. They even took my shirt because it looked too big on me! Stupid bastards ruined that perfectly awesome night."
"Did they know you were part of a gang?" Neji asked, knowing full well that gangsters were dealt with harsher than simple pickpockets.
"Of course they knew, I had escaped from their detention cells too often for them to forget me. They didn't ever check for the tattoo. So, once again I was reduced to my underwear and pants in a nasty jail cell that hadn't been cleaned since the first time I got caught. They eventually brought Tsunade and Shizune in as witnesses to my crime, so that I could be lawfully be send to a proper high-security jail."
"I didn't hear much of what was said, but in the end I'm guessing they made some sort of a good deal, because I was set free… well sort of. Tsunade came to see me and said that if I escaped without setting any alarms off she would give me a proper life; one in which I would be free and live like a normal person. Of course I was completely up for the deal, it was better than any street kid could have ever hoped for." With those words said, she paused. Beside her sat the eldest of the girls, Bee, listening intently to everything she said. From behind she could hear the sounds of movement as the kids woke up and sat on every available surface, listening as well.
"I was out of the place almost before them, waiting under the tree on the front lawn of the police department. She gave me her coat, saying something about proper clothing, and I was off to my new life. She bought me new clothes and a couple of weapons, the best ones I had at the moment. They felt so much better than my cheap hand-made ones even though they were the bottom of the commercial ladder. They were mainly shuriken and needles, the stuff I knew how to handle, but I also got my first kunai from her. I thought it was simply the best weapon there was, it felt so cool to throw it." Tenten continued, adding in several more detail about the weaponry she had earned.
"Eventually she brought me to a temple where I was to stay during my schooling. It was nice and all, I was amazed by it's space and cleanliness at first, but the wonder soon wore off. Tne monks were nice too, but they tried to tameme, which I wasn't too fond of. They were the ones that changed my name; they said that cockroach was not the name of a respectable young woman. All they ever talked about was how I could be more polite, more well mannered, more refined; it wore me down."
"When I was finally allowed to attend the academy, I was first assigned to be with the beginners but I was completely out of place. Not only was I three years older- I'm really guessing, I have no idea how old I was… or am- and I was much more advanced than them. I was eventually brought up to your class and you know the rest." She said, glancing at her exponentially increasing audience.
"So basically you are just one really lucky urchin?" Neji asked, still absorbing the chaotic and confusing double life of his teammate.
"Yup, basically." She answered back , a goofy smile on her face. "And you are the first one I've ever told it to, so keep your mouth closed."
"Ane-san, is he a … a s-shinoobi?" a small girl asked, tugging on Tenten's sleeve, stumbling on the difficult word.
"Yeah, he's a really good shinobi, top of his class, prodigy and genius. See his eyes, with those he can see your insides." Tenten said, poking the girl's stomach to emphasize the kekkei genkai. She smiled as nearly everyone in the room shriveled in disgust and said "Ewww!" at her definition of his abilities.
"Very crude, but valid if one looks extremely hard." Neji said, summoning confused glances from the children.
"Speak like a child to a child, Neji. Especially the uneducated, street kind." Tenten chided him.
"How many of these 'uneducated, street children' are there anyways. Last time there wasn't this many." He said, watching the sea of faces in front of him. Beetle sat in a corner with two other boys, taking apart the cabinets of the room in search of more food, or anything they could later sell. The tree girls of the group sat around Tenten, while he held an infant that had not been there before in her arms. The last child has busy poking at Neji's Hyuuga dress, trying to figure out what the black cloth was for.
"Last I checked we're twenty three in the gang, but these eight would be the children. There was ten last year, but two died from the flu. These are actually very lucky to even be this old." She said, tucking the blanket wrapping the infant over the back of his head.
"And I suppose you take care of them on a regular basis?" Neji said, finally getting annoyed at the boy playing with his clothing.
"Mouse, stop that! He doesn't like it when you touch him." Tenten said, scolding the young boy for his overly curious nature. "And yes I do, they normally live in my apartment when I'm gone and all the time during the winter. And I clothe them once a year."
"Very noble of you," Neji said as another boy joined 'Mouse' to examine the contents of his weapons pouch. Wait- how'd they get that?
"Not really, they are my family. As the big sister, I tend to have to take care of them. Moral duty and all that." She said, trying to swat away the tiny hand that pilfered his pouch.
"Family?" he asked, surprised she could call them that.
"Yeah. They are really just like shinobi, so you can stop looking at them like animals. They are fighter, just like you are. The losses are the same, and just the conditions are better." She said as the boys finally relinquished his stuff.
In the background one of the girls stood up, puffing out her chest. With a thin and bony finger she poked at the center of her chest, hitting the ribcage. "Not animal!" she said, proudly holding her stare to Neji's questioning gaze. Around her, the children's head nodded in unison, whether they had understood or not.
With time, he could get used to that concept. She was re-writing half of his beliefs anyhow, this one couldn't hurt.