Neji was so angry, he had turned a strange purple color. He huffed and puffed and pointed straight at Tenten, apoplectic with rage.

"We should go," Itachi murmured to his companions. "Exposure to violence makes Kisame too excitable."

"Aw, can't we watch at least till they spill first blood?" Kisame pleaded and tried to do The Eyes but it just didn't have the same effect when he wasn't a cat.

"No, you can't be in the same room with Neji right now. His weird purple shade just clashes with your skin," Tobi agreed genially, taking Kisame by one arm while Itachi placed a deceptively gentle hand on the other. "Come on, let's continue our warm up vocalizations on the roof."

They blurred out of sight.

Genma was furiously writing with chalk on a wooden board the amount of money Neji owed him now when he realized he was no longer a panda and could talk. "Hey!" he shouted, "You're paying for that door!"

"I DON'T CARE! WHERE IS THE REAL SCROLL?"

"That is the real scroll," Tenten said as bravely as she could, which meant, of course, that it came out as a squeak of fright.

"Yeah, you tell 'im, Tenten!" Naruto cheered, then scratched his head. "Wait, the Dragon Scroll is just an empty parchment?"

Gaara nodded, immediately realizing the lesson of the story, "The Scroll is a lie. There are no heroes in this world, only villains. The Dragon Warrior is a myth fed to the masses to save them from utter despair."

Temari and Kankuro gaped in admiration at their clever brother.

"No!" Tenten shook her head, exasperated , "It means that a blank scroll, even the Dragon Scroll, is just that, blank, until you yourself decide what it should contain- what special or awesome things to put in it!" she said. "Didn't any of you study basic sealing and summoning?"

"I think Gaara's explanation makes more sense," Temari said.

"I agree," Kankuro seconded.

"What I think-," Naruto began loudly. They all turned to him.

"Is that Uncle should be cooking more ramen," he suggested with a bright smile to Genma. He was pelted with chopsticks.

With an inarticulate sound of rage, Neji blew a tremendous blast of ki energy at the girl who had mocked his dreams. She stood like a frightened deer caught in the headlights of a certain type of vehicle the technology for which had not yet been invented at the time of the setting of this story.

A gust of wind blew Tenten out of the line of fire and she crashed into the wall as everyone else sprang away to avoid the attack. The force of Neji's projected energy blew a hole straight through to the kitchen and Genma threw away his signboard and chalk in disgust. He knew he should have gotten insurance.

Tenten groaned, picking herself out of the Tenten-shaped crevice she had molded into the wall.

"You're welcome," Temari called to her from the other side of the room.

"I wasn't thanking you!"

"Such ingratitude," Temari said in a singsong voice but Tenten was out of earshot already, having run at full speed out of the restaurant with Neji hot on her heels.

"And here I thought having a man chase after my daughter would be good news," Genma grumbled, picking up the 'Closed' sign and hanging it on an available splinter of wood.

Tenten tore pell-mell down the street, various crashes and explosions sounding behind her as ki blast after ki blast came barreling in her direction.

"I'm telling you the truth!" she wailed, chancing a look behind her and squeaking in terror when she saw Neji catching up.

"Then having the Scroll proves nothing, and the only way I will be acknowledged as the true Dragon Warrior is by defeating you, who was speciously proclaimed as such, for good," Neji declared.

"Stop it with the hard words!" she cried as she consulted her handy pocket dictionary while running.

Neji had to admit, Tenten was quick on her feet. He had to stop her from moving so he could get her in his circle of divination. Aiming carefully, he threw a ki blast at a watermelon cart, shattering the wood and boosting the cannon-ball sized fruit at near-fatal velocities towards the girl in front of him.

Tenten shrieked, bringing out a kitchen knife from out of nowhere and slicing through the watermelons in a gory splatter. She didn't slow down in the slightest, surprising Neji. It was as if she was used to having objects thrown at her. He cursed and renewed the chase, not noticing the fruit falling to the ground had been sliced into perfect serving portions for teashop customers.

Shimmying up the rain pipe of a nearby house to scale the wall, Tenten reached the roof top and began to leap across the buildings, Neji not far behind. He wasn't bothering with ki blasts anymore, she was too fast for that, but she felt the waves of killing intent pouring out of him and she didn't dare look back to see her doom in his eyes.

They came to the edges of the village where the houses were fewer and spaced farther between. She figured Neji wouldn't be able to follow her across the roofs. She was lighter and should be able to travel farther on a jump. She put on an extra burst of speed and shot off the edge—

When an arm snapped out, grabbing her leg, pulling her body round in an arc and throwing her down back on the roof.

Tenten crashed through the thatched straw covering the barn they had landed on and into the rafters below, dropping into a pile of hay.

Neji followed, giving no respite. He approached her prone form and gathered energy into his hand to land a definitive blow on her ki centers and finish her off.

The Dragon Warrior panicked. She reached for whatever she had available.

Before Neji could press the attack, he was suddenly met with an explosion of knives and various other kitchen tools Tenten had stored in the scroll in her other pocket.

She stared in awe as he burst into a whirling sphere of energy, deflecting every utensil away and leaving him unscathed.

He looked with distaste at the forks and knives strewn across the floor, "What a disgraceful attack, Tenten. You are completely undeserving of the title of Dragon Warrior."

Then he rushed her, hands flashing to paralyze her various ki points. He was thwarted by Tenten's desperate wielding of a frying pan to cover the body part targeted by each attack, before dropping the makeshift shield and managing to snag the fingers on both his hands between chopsticks held in her own.

"Ow!" the sticks pinched his knuckles painfully. Before Neji could break the chopsticks, Tenten gathered all her strength and head butted him exactly where a cursed seal would have been placed on his forehead in another time, in another universe.

Neji's world went black, as did Tenten's.

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A/N: Yes. I tired of this story and killed them. Kidding. It's a concussion of love. Or youth. One can never tell with these two.