Normally when someone walks down a hospital hallway, he or she expects to see solemn visitors coming to see the patients and nurses quietly shuffling in and out of the cheap plastic doors. But since abnormality trailed behind him like a curse that was not what he saw. Far from that…

Instead nurses were running down the hallway in their girly, high-heeled shoes, making everybody wonder how they managed to stay upright. Their mad race seemed to end where the loud shattering of something, probably insanely expensive, began.

And since he was always attracted to breaking objects, whether they are bones, skin, or vials, he followed the scrambling nurses at a more leisurely pace.

As he came closer to the source of the disruption, a shocking realization came across him. The voice shouting curses at the nurses had not only stolen those insults from him, but had shouted them at him during many a spar. Taking the realization in stride, he walked his way through the mess of nurses, his eyes and clothing granting him access to the scene.

One at the doorway of the room the commotion had erupted from; all his suspicions had been confirmed. In front of him stood Tenten, barricading the door while a stressed out doctor tried to escape. Behind him a nurse, equally as stressed, was busy avoiding eye contact, glancing over at the inert body of an old woman, and refolding for the umpteenth time the hem of her uniform.

And in came Neji, calmly intruding into the scene and forcing all to look over at him.

"What are you doing here?" Spit out an angry Tenten, ready to whip out her weapons if need be. Considering the circumstance, he was surprised she hadn't already impaled someone.

"Sit." Was his response, explaining absolutely nothing, yet again.

"No I will n-" she said, but she never got to finish that sentence.

"Akane sit down." Neji interrupted with a sense of finality that left no room fot arguments. Turning his back to Tenten as she slammed down onto the nearest chair, pouting and muttering at the injustice, he bade the doctor to tell his tale.

"I was called up to check on a patient," he began, a nervous sweat running down his face as his eyes darted between Neji and Tenten. "You see, I came up here and Yoko was settling the patient down on the bed. I asked to see the patient's information; it's normal procedure to check if the patient is allergic to a certain drug and other such things. I was told she had no such information. I thought that was curious, since all children are given such a sheet at birth. So I asked again, and the young lady here yelled at me! And then-" the man rambled on, getting more and more nervous as he spoke. Eventually he started kneading his hands and shoved them in his pockets to try and stop.

"He refused to look at her!" Tenten cried out, making everyone look at her, particularly Neji who sent a glare over in her direction before turning back to the man. He was fidgeting more than ever.

"She didn't have any papers, I-I couldn't work without knowing what she could react negatively to!" the man managed to stutter.

"When you see someone dying on the street, do you ask for his papers too? He refused to look at her because she's not registered!" Tenten spit out, the venom obvious in her voice. This time, everybody stared at the man who was squirming as if the glares were eating him alive. Not being registered was synonymous with being an illegal immigrant. And since all illegals were extremely poor, and by consequence forced to live in the filthy neighborhoods of Konohakagure, they were considered the scum that tainted the village's reputation.

"She h-had nothing to p-pay with. G-good will won't feed m-my family." The man said feebly, knowing that his life as a reputable doctor was now over. Over because of her. Now he would be marked as a racist for life because of her.

Hey, making enemies is just part of a shinobi's job.

Before the situation could turn any worse, another doctor walked in and checked if the old woman lying clumsily on the hospital bed was still alive. Since she was, he busied himself by running the regular tests to see what was wrong.

"What happened to her?" he asked as the previous doctor shuffled away, followed by the rest of the crowd. The commotion was over, they had moved on.

"We were walking to the market and she started coughing. She's been sick for a while, coughing a little here and there, but never as much as then. After a couple minutes she still hadn't stopped and she looked like she had trouble breathing. And then she passed out." Tenten responded calmly, adding a worried "Will she be okay?"

"Yes I believe she will be fine. It seems she just has a common cold, but because of her age and… condition it has become more virulent than it should." The doctor said, scribbling messily across his notepad. "But Doctor Aomori was right about one thing; good will will not feed my family either. Can you pay the balance?"

"It depends how much the balance is." Tenten answered back, laying the old woman's hand on the pristine sheets.

"23, 890 yen." The doctor stated as Tenten's jaw dropped. That's just about what she made in a month if she was lucky! But before she could answer the amount of money in crisp new bills passed into the doctor's hands. The stunned Tenten only managed to look appreciatively into the white eyes of the bills' previous owner.

"She will only need to stay here a couple days, just as long as it takes for the virus to take its course and for her to recover. Please fill this form out so that we may know whom to contact when she is ready to leave." The man said handing over a clipboard with a printed sheet and a pen attached to it.

Silently Tenten filled out the form, entering her old apartment's address instead of the place where she actually lived. It's not like it had an address anyways. Plus the apartment now belonged to the gang's children and they were trained to know how to respond if someone came asking for her.

When she was done, she left the hospital, aware of the half dozen stares directed at her. She turned left to return home and tell everyone what had happened instead of the planned trip to the market.

"What do you want?" she asked, not even turning around to check who was trailing her. She knew it was him, for only he would know to modify his features with a genjustu after entering the building where her apartment had been.

"Who was she?" he asked, now level with Tenten instead of a dozen steps behind.

"You don't remember Kaa-san? She was there when you were introduced." Tenten stated, surprised that he hadn't known.

"I was introduced to the gang, the gang wasn't introduced to me." He stated simply, his lips curved into a smirk that could be considered a smile.

"Psh. Technicalities." She said waving the comment off, feeling Neji's contagious happiness. "Why did you pay anyways?" she asked, unable to keep the question from coming out any longer.

"Because I know you don't have that kind of money and that you wouldn't make a scene unless that person was very important to you." He declared as if he was stating that the sky was blue. Which it wasn't at the moment, because a storm was coming, but that's not the point.

"I didn't make that big of a scene, did I?" she asked cautiously, hoping that it had been just a minor thing.

"That was probably the biggest thing that happened in the past weeks or so. I don't think it will be forgotten very quickly." He said, amused as Tenten slumped at his words. "Akane wasn't being very cooperative."

With an audible groan Tenten muttered a few of her favorite insults at her twin personality. She had only regained control as the balance was announced, probably since Akane had been satisfied with the amount of chaos she had created. "Did I make any enemies?" she asked as the couple stepped into a small restaurant bordered by a green roof holding up a battered red sign.

"The doctor you accused of being racist wasn't too happy about it. Other than that, no." Neji answered as they nodded a greeting to the small kitchen's staff and walked into the second supply closet bordering the fridges. Instead of ending up in a tiny cramped closet, they walked down the packed mud hallway that stemmed into the large subterranean grounds the gang inhabited.

Taking two lefts and a right, a path they had both memorized by now, they found a beaten wooden door covered in graffiti. Behind it lay the never-ending mess of weaponry and clothing that was Tenten's room.

"You haven't even tried to keep it clean." Neji stated as he looked on at the horror that was a pile of clothes in an urgent need of laundering. Compared to his pristine and elegant room this place was a pigsty. And somehow it didn't bother him as much as it should.

"I never have, why start now?" Tenten said as she threw her weapon pouch and scrolls somewhere in the mass of pointy objects.

"How do you eve find anything in this… this place?" Neji asked, like their ritual required. In truth, if the room were clean, he would know something was wrong. Plus it was fun to fake outrage at the clutter she called a home.

"I manage." She responded as Neji brought his face closer to hers.

"EW! Get a room!" came a cry from behind them as three figures appeared in the room.

"This is my room you idiot, you're the ones who walked in!" Tenten cried out as she turned to face the intruders. The little boy who had said the previous comment immediately looked at his feet, realizing how truly dumb it had been.

"We heard that you came back without Obaba. What happened?" the oldest boy asked as the other two looked up at the adults.

"She's at the hospital right now, but she'll be back in a couple days. Don't worry. And we don't have to pay the bill either, Neji already paid it." Tenten said, wishing for the brats to disappear so she could go back to her previous activity. "Go away now."

"Can't you thank him with your pants on?" muttered the boy previously termed idiot.

Not wishing that Tenten's impeding fury detonate on the boys, Neji took control of the situation. Grabbing her at the waist and pulling her towards him, disarming her in the process, he said, in all seriousness, to the boys, "She's had a long day. So if you don't want to end up with a lot more holes that you ever wished for, I suggest you scram."

And so they did. In an instant they were gone, the door shutting behind them. But instead of becoming the parasite he really didn't mind having attached to his lips, she rested her head against his shoulder, exhausted. The mention of a long day had made her realize just how much energy the events had sapped away from her. Mumbling something completely incoherent to the average human she closed her eyes and fell asleep.

"Fine, I'll got tell them what happened." Neji muttered in response and lay her down on her bed, after having cleared off all the weapons he could reach. Pulling a bright red duvet from under a pile of gleaming steel, and knocking all of it onto the many piles on the floor, he placed it over her sleeping body and left the room.

……

Somewhere in the far reaches of the rows of file cabinets a furious doctor thumbed though a certain kunoichi's papers. Smiling as he read over her strange behaviors and laughing silently to himself he mumbled something about revenge, disorders and therapy.

But what can a simple doctor really do to a fighter?

Apparently a lot.