And here's this, for those still following me and those just tuning in. If you're new, please remember to review with several sentences. Or, Hell, even one will be enough to let me know I still have readers. Thanks!
Revy was a surprisingly good shot. TenTen munched on the remains of her "giant pretzel," wondering if it was possible to get sodium poisoning from one "meal" as Revy won yet another round at a stall. Apparently, even civilian kids were taught about shooting at a pretty early age if these "water guns" were to be taken seriously.
"Hey, Ten," Revy called, "get over here! Yer a projectile expert, right?"
TenTen eyed Revy, Aubrey, and Dutch at their stations, the perfect scores between all three of them, and the prizes hanging from the walls of the stand. "I dunno…" Holding any gun felt like a betrayal of Konoha. She wadded up the napkin her pretzel had come in and lazily noted the light weight before tossing it into a trash can some five meters off, about to say no.
"Okay, that's it!" Revy exclaimed. "Sit down right now, ninja!"
"Fine," TenTen sighed. May as well see how one of these things worked…
The basic point was to hit the target so that water would rise in the above column, for all the sense that made. It didn't take her too long to hit it and hold it steady, although the learning process had given the other three the lead.
Aubrey won. Revy looked ticked, but resigned. Dutch shrugged it off as Benny joined in for another round.
TenTen tied with Aubrey. Three times in a row. Revy growled and dragged TenTen off to another stall as Aubrey consulted a random child about what prize to get. She didn't get to see the final decision, since Revy spun her around to see…
A darts booth. With balloons stuck to a wall, with enough nostalgia to almost slip TenTen into another flashback, but she staved it off by looking at the darts. Most of which were flawed.
"You and me," Revy announced. "Best two out of three."
TenTen shrugged, knowing that this was a foregone conclusion. "Sure."
They paid up and got five darts each. TenTen noted the bend in the first, quickly deciding the angle of trajectory.
"Never seen a dart before?" Revy teased as she popped her first balloon.
"No, we have this game back home," TenTen shrugged in the second she analyzed the targets. They were bobbing too much to be filled with anything than atmospheric gas, just slack enough that anything but a perfect shot would probably glance off. Revy's second throw confirmed this. The resulting curses prompted TenTen to pop her first balloon.
She was holding her next dart by the time the bang reached her ears, and a quick study told her at what angle she would next need to flick her wrist. She and Revy simultaneously popped a balloon. TenTen was tempted to double-throw, but the fletchings had always made it difficult to throw properly. So she threw her third as Revy made another hit, making the score 3-3. Revy threw her last one, making it 3-4.
TenTen wanted to up the ante. It was two out of three, after all. So she took one dart in each hand, took note of her targets' movements, watched Revy for any sign of interference, and let both fly.
Naturally, both hit.
"Round two," Revy declared, setting another five on the table. TenTen smirked and laid out her own, noting the stall-keeper's assessing eyes. Revy took her darts and let them out in almost rapid-fire, raising TenTen's eyebrows at the five pops.
"Nice," Benny noted. "So Ten, gonna go for five again?"
TenTen frowned slightly, fighting down the response of, "No, I'll go for ten." This was a game, after all. No need to show off anything close to her real skills and let them think of her as anything other than… Some child of war who talks and doesn't back it up. That old, Team-Gai-ingrained need to show the skill of Konoha shinbobi flickered into her thoughts… And really, she'd rather not leave anyone with doubts about Konoha's military.
"I guess," TenTen mused as she picked up two darts, "I'll start with four and work my way up." She blocked out the questions as she picked out her row, analyzed their movements, and double-checked her darts. Her right hand flicked the dart to the far right of the board, and her left flicked out a pursuit. The darts clashed centimeters from the board, the first changed course…
Po-po-pop! Pop!
"Holy cheese!"
"Sugoi!"
The first dart's new course had swept through three balloon's, the second only one. TenTen fought down a smirk as she selected two more darts. People stopped to notice.
"How'd you do that?" Revy demanded.
"I'm a ninja," TenTen replied as she repeated the trick.
Po-po-po-pop! Pop!
["Amazing,"] Rokuro repeated. The growing crowd agreed in English.
Four darts down and nine shots made.
"I think she wins," Dutch noted, apparently amused by the stunned face Revy couldn't change. Just for the fun of it, TenTen threw one more dart.
Which, of course, hit perfectly.
For Revy, it looked like an insult to injury.
"Where're you from?" the stall-keeper, a twenty-something year old man, smiled in slight shock. He'd already seemed friendly, though.
"Konoha," TenTen smiled back with pure national pride.
It took a second for the name to register.
When it did, TenTen really wished that she could've settled for tying with Revy.
"Konoha?" the stall-keeper blinked. "As in Hinokuni's Konoha?"
Murmurs went up, and TenTen pointedly acknowledged them before replying, "Yes, I am a citizen of Konoha and Hi no Kuni." After an oppressive pause, she added, "Is there a problem?"
"No-no…" the man stammered. "I'm sorry… You must be happy to have moved here."
"No, I want to go home," TenTen replied, trying to keep the bite out of her voice and blatantly ignoring the suspicion in his eyes. "No offense meant, of course."
"Offense taken," someone shouted. TenTen turned toward the speaker, who wasn't at all surprised that she could. Male, about the same age as the stall-keeper. Bigger frame, though, and a completely different air. He apparently thought that he was smart.
"How so?" TenTen asked, biting back a more acidic tone.
"We saved your asses!"
"You invaded our country," TenTen clarified.
"We were helping!"
"We had help."
"Not enough!"
"Ah, yes," TenTen mused with an overdose of sarcasm. "The aid of fifteen-odd nations that we know and trust is nowhere near enough. Extra stuff from some random nation that we have absolutely no history with is absolutely what we need."
"We're America," the man's buddy drawled. "What more trust did you need?"
"Plenty," TenTen drawled. She heard Revy sniggering. "After all, your media's just about useless. I haven't been here 48 hours and I can already tell that much-"
"What do you know?" the first man sneered.
"More than you," Aubrey cut in wearily. "Can we please not cause an international incident at Six Flags?"
The second man was about to snap, but suddenly a shrill female voice shouted, "Look what I won!"
The men turned to see a woman hidden behind one of the gigantadon teddy bears TenTen had noticed, and graciously used it as an excuse to end the confrontation. With a melodramatic "I'm Watching You" gesture thrown in for good measure, of course.
Aubrey tossed TenTen a discreet look of apology, and TenTen shrugged it off with her annoyance at the Americans. She knew that they were probably being watched, and that Aubrey had to keep up the appearances of a jailor. That included not letting any truth about the war escape to the general public, at least not that obviously. It was an unfortunate annoyance, but they'd live.
"The Hell 'as that?" Revy demanded. "That was gettin' good!"
"We have forty-five minutes," Aubrey shrugged. "And if it didn't end soon, we'd be spending the rest of our time in a security booth. Probably more than that, given TenTen's nationality."
"Fine," Revy snorted. "Be a pansy on us and we'll go ride Runaway Mountain."
"Uh, do you want a prize?"
TenTen noted his stock—most of it bulky, obnoxious, poorly made, or a combination of the above—and then the section he was motioning. There was a necklace bulky enough to carve a summoning seal onto the back of, but it was way too gaudy. "You guys want anything?"
Everyone either didn't feel like lugging something around, either, or had too much pride to ask—Aubrey conspicuously had no prize—and she almost missed a child's failed attempt to speak.
"Hm?" she smiled down at the little boy.
"You should go with Taz," the boy said.
"Taz?" TenTen followed several gazes to a brown… thing. With an impossibly wide mouth. "You like Taz?"
"Yeah, he's funny!"
"I guess I'll take Taz, then…" She watched the man pull down the smallest one—she'd only won two rounds, after all—and thanked him when he handed her the plushie. "Here you go," TenTen smiled to the boy.
"Re-really?"
"I don't really feel like carrying it around," TenTen smiled. "You said you like him, right?"
"Thanks!" the boy took it and hugged it, still young enough not to be embarrassed about it, and the mother smiled… with a shadow in her eyes. TenTen beamed as if she hadn't seen it, and waved good-bye as her group headed back to the rides. So this was how people felt about her country…
"Jeez, you two are alike," Benny was sighing.
"Hm?"
"You and Aubrey, handing off the prize to random kids."
"Huh." That explained Aubrey's lack of an obscenely colored plushie.
"A little girl wanted a hat." Aubrey pointed at a hot pink, leopard-printed… hat… not unlike a sombrero. The top had caved in, though.
"That's… some hat."
...
"Shotgun!" Aubrey declared.
"Dammit!" Revy cursed as TenTen took her previous seat.
"Did you have fun?" Malgen-san beamed as they piled in.
"Yep," Aubrey beamed back from behind a cloud of cotton candy.
TenTen ignored just how childlike that made Aubrey look, instead thinking about what she had learned about America's technology, customs, and… mindset regarding Konoha. It wasn't very comforting.
"You got lunch?" Malgen-san inquired.
"Yep, Revy smirked visibly.
Rokuro gave a snort, indicating what he had thought of their "lunch." TenTen was somewhat inclined to agree, and then noticed Malgen-san slurping something out of a paper cup.
"Chocolate malt," Malgen-san explained. "I felt like adding a layer of cholesterol to my arteries." As if to prove a point, she plucked a long, golden yellow something from a paper bag with her free hand.
Which left no hands on the wheel!
"No knee driving!" Revy shouted.
"Too late," Malgen-san called as she switched lanes.
"God dammiiiiiiiit!"
TenTen was inclined to agree. Twenty minutes of Hell later, Malgen-san was pulling up to a building amidst ridiculously tall buildings as a song called "Ragnarok" poured from the speakers.
"God's awaiting the end of the world~" The vocalist cheerfully declared with the melody, "The end of all…"
TenTen recognized her from Leaves' Eyes. Maybe.
"I'll be back in two hours," Malgen-san called calmly. "It'll be thirty minutes before rush hour, so we'll want to move. "'K?"
"'K," the teens replied, most of them near-desperate to get out of the car.
"Have fun, then," Malgen-san beamed as she unlocked the doors.
TenTen quickly evacuated, lest she be run over by Revy. The others spilled out behind her, Aubrey climbing over the seats to do so. Considering the speed of the cars on the road, not opening the passenger-side doors was probably quite wise.
A quick wave from Malgen-san soon found the teens meandering into the building, which smelled faintly of damp and stone. Tickets were quickly obtained (unlike at Six Flags), and they soon walked into…
A jungle.
TenTen contemplated Neji's reaction to the gorgeous tropical birds perched in trees beyond the netting… before wondering how many of these birds were imports. Same for the fluffy little monkeys that she could see, and then she remembered Aubrey's reason for coming here: all of their animals were captive bred.1*
"This is an aquarium?" Revy asked. "Where's the fish?"
"The lower levels," Aubrey explained. "The Dallas Aquarium is built more like a rain forest than a reef."
"Clearly," Benny noted. Rokuro began looking at signs, Revy watched two tamarins squabble, Dutch and Benny placed mock-bets, and Aubrey watched some type of parrot flap overhead. TenTen looked at the artificial waterfall and surprising aesthetics. It wasn't what she had been expecting.
The lower levels had revealed fish, a large snake called an anaconda, river otters, large spiders, bats, caimans, turtles… And something that faintly resembled a cross between a dolphin, a seal, and a cat.
"It's a manatee," Aubrey explained, watching the gray thing float in the tank. It watched them curiously, whiskered face brushing the glass.
It was far more peaceful than the outdoor penguin exhibit. The raucous, splashing birds were everywhere beyond the netting, audible over even the children yelling something about skipping. Or a skipper, or something. TenTen dodged excrement from the sea birds above the netting, blinked her eyes as they adjusted from pleasantly low light to stark brightness, and quickly decided to go back and see the manatee.
"Rico!" a little girl shouted.
Revy wanted to go see something called a jaguar.
Back up to the top floor they went, to find a large, powerful-looking cat staring at them from behind glass. Not nearly as big as the tigers from the Forest of Death, and not particularly concerned with random humans, but still impressive-looking. Muscles were heavy beneath the dark coat, spots breaking up his shape—or at least trying to in the stark white room, and powerful jaws were the second most prominent feature in the cat's face.
First place went to the cat's nearly luminous gold-green eyes, which regarded her with a moment of interest before drifting near-closed, again.
Revy lost interest, quickly, and mumbled something about "the yogi panther" being more interesting. Aubrey had chuckled knowingly, and Rokuro had watched it with polite interest. Benny made some joke to Dutch that TenTen didn't get, and TenTen herself wondered what the point was in showing her so much South American wildlife. Getting her downtown in a major city, she supposed.
And doing it with a patch of green for refuge. The roar of near-endless cars, the stink of the roads and exhaust, and the sheer level of mankind's intrusion on the environment were leaving TenTen all but ragged; even downtown Konoha at its height had fresh air. Without the pleasant green of the aquarium's canopy level, she didn't know what she'd do about all of this.
Grit and bear it, her Shinobi instincts replied.
Yeah, pretty much.
...
This was a pretty good blade. Not nearly the level of her uncle's work, of course, but still better than she had hoped. When she began inspecting it, the saleswoman had been able to recognize an expert eye. They were halfway through the alloy when Revy had declared TenTen to be a "nerd."
"A what?"
"A nerd, ninja girl."
"Forgive me for being from Konoha."
The salesgirl paled. If TenTen hadn't been in the middle of checking the line, she would have face-palmed. Instead, she pretended not to notice.
"The blade's a little heavy, though… And there's a slight waver in the line."
"You… really do know your swords," the salesgirl said cautiously.
"My uncle owned a weapons store," TenTen smiled. "Best knives in Konoha."
The girl flinched on "Konoha," again. TenTen sighed and sheathed the sword, which seemed to calm her a bit.
"It's still a fairly good sword. Of course if I buy it, security'll probably jump me."
It was supposed to be a joke.
Aubrey called her over to the clothing section, which to TenTen's delight was packed with Chinese-styled silk tops.
She took one look at the fabric quality, though, and the delight quickly faded. Aubrey was able to find a well-made halter, though, and had proven herself to look quite stunning in moon blue silk.
It made it a little awkward when TenTen wanted a similar style in red. So she tried on a sleeveless red dress different enough from Sakura's old style, and was surprised when Rokuro tripped over his own feet while staring.
They wound up adding three more items to TenTen's still-small wardrobe—the dress, the halter, and a white short sleeve top—all on Malgen-san's insistence. She'd have preferred knives, but she and Aubrey both knew better. Especially with some of the glances she felt from the clerks and fellow shoppers. She hadn't dared to touch any of the katana, again.
It thus irked her that Revy bought a pocket knife.
She didn't know what to think when Benny bought something called a "key blade." It looked too impractical to live.
TenTen managed to ignore the looks all the way out the store, halfway out of a desire not to provoke the fight and halfway to avoid making Aubrey break anything up or avoid blowing their cover. Her guide didn't seem too happy about "selling TenTen out" along with her own beliefs.
They then crossed to a particularly "mainstream" store, and it became quite evident that they were going to mock it. Revy pulled frilly blouses over Rokuro's head, pointed him in the direction of the frilly panties, and mused which frilly dress he'd look best in.
"What about you?" Rokuro shrieked.
"Me? Well, I'd never wear any of this…" Revy smirked "innocently."
Rokuro's eye twitched.
"Okay, stop annoying the poor, defenseless foreign exchange student," Aubrey sighed before dragging Revy off behind several large racks. Rokuro used it as a chance to ditch Revy's fashion pointers.
"What about you, Ten?" Benny asked a bit more innocently. "See anything?"
TenTen barely spared the wall of fabric a glance. "I prefer something a bit more… practical." Hell, even for formal stuff she'd wear dress pants if she could get away with it.
"A-a!"
TenTen froze, and instantly pinpointed the sound of Revy's hushed cry. She instantly moved behind the rack, and barely caught Aubrey's "it's fine" gesture in time to stop the guys from seeing.
"You don't want to know," TenTen said simply, and refused to give the guys a chance to decide for themselves. Rokuro returned just in time to be oblivious, and the talk had shifted to something called "Halo Reach." TenTen just nodded and shrugged whenever appropriate.
At least, until Rokuro's jaw hit the floor.
TenTen turned, and blinked at the sight of Revy in a dress.
Somehow simultaneously frilly and form-fitting, with a generous level of cleavage just above skank level and an equally ranked skirt height… And surprisingly good-looking on Revy.
"Well we managed to make Rokuro look even stupider than usual," Revy shrugged, breaking the spell. "I'm gonna go get this thing off."
Rokuro stared, incredulous, as Revy scooted back to what must have been the changing rooms.
"That was random," Benny noted. Dutch snorted.
"I'm surprised she could pull it off," TenTen acknowledged.
["Bitch…"] Rokuro murmured.
...
They were just leaving a media store (why, exactly, was TenTen expected to know what "pocky" was?), when the product of namedropping finally caught them. Said product took the form of two uniformed men and three teenagers (two guys, one girl), and none of them looked happy. Actually, the teens looked downright scared.
"Excuse me," the bigger man said, standing right in front of TenTen. "Are you from Konoha?"
"Yes, sir," TenTen nodded, not giving the snitches the pleasure of seeing her squirm. "Can I help you?"
"We need you to come with us."
"Are any of you others from Hinokuni?" the thinner man asked in a gruff mixture of seriousness and "this was supposed to be my lunch break."
"No," Malgen-san automatically replied, "but she is staying with me and my daughter. She's a foreign exchange student."
Two of the teens had the decency to look embarrassed.
"She's a terrorist," the third stated. "She knows how to handle weapons."
"My uncle owned a weapons shop," TenTen countered. "And before you say anything, my father sold fireworks."
The would-be Defender of America shut his mouth, but still glared at her. "We just defeated you guys. There's no way in Hell you're just here to—"
"Learn about your country so maybe you'll get out of mine?" TenTen suggested brightly.
"I'll need you to come into the office," the bigger man sighed.
Revy promptly groaned. Loudly. "Look, she ain't doin' nothin', we're just havin' one last hurrah before school. Wha's the problem?"
"The problem is," the annoying teen growled, "you can't trust these guys; they—"
"Quick question," TenTen cut in. The teen glared at her, in an accusing manner she knew now that she recognized. "Who died?" she asked with complete seriousness.
The boy's eyes widened, the anger he'd been trying to hide finally becoming quite evident.
"Leon's dad was a soldier over there," the girl explained quietly, realization dawning.
Then there's a chance that I killed him, TenTen refused to say aloud. She looked over his features again, but nothing there reminded her of her enemies. Well, besides the look in his eyes, but the soldiers hadn't liked her, either. "My condolences. I know what it feels like."
A faint light of empathy dawned in Leon's eyes, struggling against the boy's suspicions. TenTen hated to think about how well-founded they were.
"Back in Konoha—"
"Konoha?" a passerby gaped.
"Yes, Konoha. Back home…"
"You're from Hinokuni?"
"No way!"
"Go home!"
"Are you a child soldier?"
"Did you kill our soldiers?"
"Get out of here!"
"We're taking her into the office," the bigger officer declared, annoyance obvious. "As you were, please."
TenTen felt glares on her back all the way to the Security Office.
"This is so stupid," Revy grumbled at Leon. "What the hell, hero?"
"Sor-ry," Leon grumbled back. "How'd you feel if you suddenly ran into someone from an until recently enemy country?"
"Half a year ago, ya didn't know they existed," Revy growled. "Oh, and just for the record, I just met her this morning. I was stuck with her in a car for three hours, and all she did was read."
Leon was looking more guilty by the second, which was just fine with TenTen. It did make her wonder what Magnet would be like, though. Since there was a military base in town, there was a good chance that she'd run into more kids like Leon.
Then again, America had a lot of bases.
The office was lit by florescent lights and floored in linoleum. There was a waiting area with a few chairs, and a few doors leading off here and there.
"Hey, chief," the smaller officer radioed in. "We've got the terrorist."
His sarcasm was not unlike the ANBU.
"Yeah?" a man's voice radioed back. "Send her on back."
"She has a few friends," the officer replied before Aubrey had a chance to. "Including the American family she's living with."
"No, just her."
Aubrey and Malgen-san frowned, always expecting to be watched.
"Sure you want to go in alone?" Aubrey asked as TenTen stood.
"I'll be fine," TenTen shrugged tersely. The Malgens relented, and the bigger officer led her down a short hall. The door they stopped at had a sign reading "Hughes" taped to the side.
The man waiting for her had kind eyes behind his glasses, but there was an edge to them; they weren't unlike those of Sandaime Hokage.
TenTen felt a twinge at that, but really the resemblance died there. This man was young, perhaps 30, with short black hair and sharp golden eyes. There was also something faintly Shikamaru-ish about him, which put her still more on edge. He also had the look of a soldier.
"Hey," the man smiled as he stood from his desk. She shook the proffered hand. "I'm Officer Hughes, charged with protecting this high-security mall from terrorists. You're not a terrorist, are you?"
TenTen's shoulders hitched with a suppressed laugh as she took the offered seat. "Try 'foreign exchange student.'"
Hughes-san nodded and snorted. "Your English is pretty good."
"Thanks. I've been described as a die-hard researcher." Still not lying.
"You must be a pretty good student to come over here."
"I try."
"So do Konoha's schools include weaponry in the curriculum, or is that a hobby?"
"I spent a lot of time in my uncle's weapons shop," TenTen explained, since the Academy curriculum did include weaponry.
"So I'll take the weapons school joke as a no."
TenTen gave him a look meant to say, "Duh, you must be joking." Unfortunately, his eyes read it as, "No would be a lie."
So he asked her point-blank, "Are you a child soldier?"
"No," TenTen growled. Her Shinobi pride would never take that insult.
"Your eyes tell me something different."
TenTen looked at those eyes and knew that she was seeing a fellow soldier. There was no point in lying, unless she wanted to make him any more suspicious. "I take the term 'child soldier' as an insult. I am a ranked member of Konoha's military, thank you very much."
"So why're you here?"
"Foreign exchange student."
"I meant at the Grapevine Mall."
TenTen blinked. "Learning American customs from the kids I'll be going to school with. You people are seriously confusing."
Hughes-san snorted. "So says a high school-age soldier. What's your rank?"
"Chunin."
"That's mid-rank, right?"
TenTen nodded, surprised that he knew that much.
"I've been following the media."
"I was actually there."
"For the war?"
"And the aftermath. Your media is pathetic. No offense, of course."
"None taken. I was a soldier myself back in the day," Hughes-san smiled with an edge. "Gulf War, '91."
TenTen frowned, before remembering that she was still learning about America's 1790, never mind the past two decades. "Sorry, I'm still learning your history… Where was that one?"
"Middle East."
"Ah." The latest American can of worms.
"Not nearly as bad as Vietnam, but no war's exactly pretty." Hughes-san paused, debating whether or not to ask something. There was also a hint at the surprise at having this conversation with a teenage girl, but at least he wasn't like Lee's guide… "What was it like?"
What really happened, TenTen read. "Horrible. The first war Konoha ever lost, and it was to a nation we'd never met."
"I thought Konoha was the name of your hometown?"
The nations should have been common knowledge, or at least already that of America's top. "Konoha is the military capital of Hi no Kuni and does answer to the Daimyo, but it has a lot more autonomy than most cities. All the hidden villages are like that."
"And you're a dictatorship?"
TenTen thought back to American terms for government, the first thing she had set out to learn after seeing the newscast. "No way, absolutely not." How best to explain this..? "Konoha's a military state, run by the Hokage and village elders, and the elders select the next Hokage."
"So the people have no say in it?"
"The Jonin have to approve, and they live like civilians… except for the job, of course. The candidates tend to come from their ranks, anyway, and these guys are the best of the best, time-tested and there solely by their own ability." See Neji for details, Lee perhaps even more so. It was a lot of information, but it was better than letting the lies circulate. TenTen would probably wind up giving this speech several times over, after all.
Hughes-san frowned slightly, trying to fit this together with what he "knew." "And Tsunade was your last Hokage?"
"Succeeded by Hatake Kakashi." If he said one thing about the media lies…
"And what were they like?"
TenTen blinked, impressed despite herself. "Lady Tsunade was both a doctor and a warrior, unparalleled in the first and highly respected in the latter. She saved more lives than she took and always put the lives of her people first. In all honesty, she's always been my idol."
"And she was the granddaughter of a previous Hokage?"
"The First Hokage, Senjuu Hashirama. She got the nickname 'Princess Tsunade,' but she was always her own person. She had a temper, but was pretty level-headed when it counted." That wasn't anything along the lines of secure intelligence, as far as she knew.
"So the news was completely wrong?"
"Yeah. I'm actually surprised that you knew that much, given how they failed on our military rankings."
Hughes-san snorted. "That was too obvious. Like a war-torn nation denying aid."
"From someone we didn't know, when we were surrounded by helping allies? You know it."
"But Konoha attacked the convoys?" Hughes-san didn't look happy.
"The convoys attacked us," TenTen corrected him. "When the convoys refused to send officials to meet with her and then tried to shove their way in, we had no choice to defend ourselves. Their actions just screamed of an enemy trying to sneak in."
Hughes-san nodded, a little disturbed by this information. "And our forces retaliated?"
"And then some. We evacuated most of our civilians into the countryside, and engaged in guerilla warfare." TenTen bit down hard before continuing. "Even then, we only lasted three months."
"Technology can do that," Hughes-san sighed. "Especially when it's your-what-fourth war?"
"Fourth time Konoha was demolished in three years," TenTen said, keeping this figure's near-hopelessness out of her voice. "And now I'm here, seeing if I can learn anything to help this end peacefully."
"As a high schooler?"
"Clandestine missions are a shinobi's specialty." Why else would their generation get away with their outfits? "We grow up fast in Konoha, but we'd just as soon avoid senseless death. And subjugation."
Hughes-san winced at the last word. "Do you have any family waiting for you?"
"Every citizen of Konoha is my family." See the Will of Fire for details.
"I mean your… you know… family."
"Yes. My mother, father, and uncle are now waiting for me in the afterlife." The first two had been killed by Madara, the latter when he came out of retirement against Americans.
Hughes-san watched her, clear pity in his eyes. TenTen felt a surge of annoyance at that, but at least it wasn't because she was a soldier. Just because she was still getting over it didn't mean she wanted sympathy.
"My condolences," Hughes-san sighed.
"It's not—"
"I have a three-year old daughter."
"Huh?"
"I left the military a bit after the Gulf War so that I wouldn't die and leave my wife Gracia alone. Neither of us would want to leave Elicia behind, either."
There was something of her father in the man, too. TenTen sighed, and smiled at him.
"Arigato, Hughes-san."
"Thank you as well, TenTen-san."
End of chapter.
Angsty? Funny? Wangsty? Imbecillic? OOC? Too much OC dominance? Hughes shouldn't be a mere mall cop? Tell me in a review, please.
1. I honestly don't know the origins of the Dallas Aquarium's specimens, although it is one of the nicer aquariums that I have been to. I just decided to be optimistic for once.