i first started writing this piece for Tenten Appreciation month... in March 2019. Yeah, last year.
finally finished it...
"Shut up, Tomoe!" Akari yelled, furiously launching herself at her teammate and pummeling her over the head with both fists. Tomoe let out a growl and raised her arms in defense, and seconds later the two were scuffling on the ground wildly.
Behind them, a nervous-looking Higuma stepped out of the way and did his best to ignore them both, squinting his eyes at the houses lining the streets and trying to determine which was the specific one they were looking for.
"I think that's it," he told Akari and Tomoe, pointing at a moderately-sized house with neatly kept bushes. His teammates ignored him, pulling each others' hair and swearing loudly.
"Hey!" He kicked some dirt at them. "Knock it off! We have to meet sensei."
Tomoe gave him a mean look and stood up menacingly, taking half a step towards him. "Do we, freak?"
"Y-yes."
"Leave him alone, Tomoe!" Akari stood up and dusted herself off. "Let's just get this over with so we can all leave. What're we doing again?"
"Choosing weapons." Higuma muttered. He was the only one actually excited for it.
"Stupid." Tomoe said derisively. "I can use a jutsu to fight. People who use weapons are weak."
She gave Higuma a sneer. "So I guess that makes you the shittiest shinobi in Konoha."
Higuma scowled back. "And what happens when you run out of chakra, dumbass? You get killed."
"Ugh, both of you shut up." Akari pushed past them and marched up the walk to the door. She rang the doorbell with decisiveness.
They waited for a while, shifting on their feet. Tomoe shoved Akari's shoulder, just to be annoying, and had her foot stomped on in response.
"Should we ring the doorbell again?" Akari wondered. Higuma shrugged, and Tomoe just muttered, "Whatever," which probably meant she thought it was a good idea. Akari rang the bell again, and this time they heard light movement in the house as someone approached the door. It opened.
"Hi sensei," Akari and Higuma chorused, Akari very chipper and Higuma… not. Tomoe just grunted.
Their sensei inspected them slowly, pale eyes inscrutable. After a moment, he said, "Students," and gave them a nod of acknowledgement.
His hair was messily braided with a pink ribbon bow on the end, but he was such an intimidating presence that none of them, not even Tomoe, commented on it.
He continued, "I realize you're here to pick out your weapons, but I'm afraid my contact is running a little late. But she's nearby, so we'll be going to her."
"Okay!" Akari said, very peppy. Higuma shrugged morosely, and Tomoe grunted again.
There was the sudden thumping of feet on tatami mats, and a little boy came careening around a corner to run to their sensei's legs.
"Baba, I grabbed my kitty-cat-" He began, then suddenly noticed the three of them standing outside and instantly dove behind their sensei's legs, peeking out at them with wide eyes.
"Good, Haruki-chan," their sensei told him. "Is there anything else you want to bring?"
The boy ducked back behind his legs, his little hand clutching the fabric of their sensei's tactical pants. "No," he whispered.
"Then let's go." Their sensei stepped out of the house and they parted for him, swiveling back to look at the little boy. He stared at them, frozen in fear and clutching a little toy cat in his hand, then yelled, "Baba!" and ran after their sensei.
Their sensei, who had already mostly disappeared from sight along the corner of the house, waited a few moments for the boy to catch up, then continued on, calling behind him, "Close the door and follow."
The three of them startled into movement- Akari and Higuma both reached to shut the door at the same time and wound up awkwardly closing it together, while Tomoe slouched her shoulders and skulked after their sensei and his kid.
They walked for a few blocks towards downtown Konoha, a few meters behind their sensei as his kid clutched his hand and gave them wide-eyed looks in between chattering to his father.
"I didn't know sensei had a kid," Higuma muttered.
"You don't know it's his," Tomoe snarked back. "Maybe he's watching it for someone else."
"It called him 'baba', idiot."
"Yeah, so? That's what I called my grandma. The kid's stupid."
"Some immigrants in Konoha use it to address their fathers-" Akari chimed in, her tone edging into know-it-all territory. Both Tomoe and Higuma quickly cut her off; "Okay-" "Yeah yeah yeah we get it."
Akari sniffed. "Whatever. Point is it's probably sensei's kid."
The boy stopped dead in the street, whipped around to face them and yelled, "MY NAME IS HARUKI!"
They all stopped and stared at each other for a little. The three of them were very taken aback- and slightly guilty at being so easily eavesdropped upon by a toddler. Their sensei stopped too, and waited patiently until the little boy- Haruki, apparently- had enough and ran to hide behind him again.
He picked Haruki up and tucked him against his side, calling back to the genin, "Keep up."
He jumped up to a rooftop and started darting away, leaping from one to the next at a pace they'd be hard-pressed to keep up with. Tomoe let out a loud swear and hurried after him, which sent Akari and Higuma flurrying into movement as well.
They caught up to him while he waited for them on a rooftop a few blocks down, talking to another shinobi.
"Holy fuck, who's that?" Tomoe said incredulously. She was right to be shocked- the other shinobi was possibly the largest man any of them had ever seen, towering over their sensei and completely dwarfing the child in their sensei's arms to the point of comedic proportions.
Oddly enough, the kid seemed all right with the man, talking cheerfully to him and showing him the toy he had while the man smiled pleasantly down at him. In fact, for all his fierce size, the man exuded friendliness.
The three of them approached cautiously, trying not to stare up at the man. He gave them another pleasant smile. "Hello! You must be Neji's genin team!"
They nodded dumbly.
"Students," Their sensei intoned, "This is Akimichi Choji, the leader of the Akimichi clan."
They let out awkward hellos- or at least Akari and Higuma did, Tomoe just nodded- equally as awkward as her teammates, at least.
"See you next week, then," Akimichi-sama told their sensei. "Bye-bye, Haruki!"
"Bye!" The kid yelled after him, as the man leapt- completely silently and with all the skill of a highly trained shinobi- from roof to roof until he faded from sight, which took a much longer amount of time than if the man had been of average size.
Their sensei strode to the edge of the roof and said, "Come," before dropping out of sight. Akari let out a startled noise and raced over to the edge to look down, and surprisingly enough Tomoe was only a step behind her. They both peered over the edge, and Tomoe muttered, "Fuckin' showboat."
Higuma, perplexed, joined them, and gaped with Akari over the scene below. Their sensei was coaching his fucking toddler through chakra walking, holding both the kid's hands in his own and walking backwards down the wall in front of him. The kid was wobbly but had clearly practiced it before, and could get in about three steps on his own before his control wavered and he fell forward against their sensei's legs with much exaggerated oof-ing.
Their sensei wasn't looking at them at all, his attention completely focused on the kid, but he was wearing the softest expression they'd ever seen on his face.
Suddenly he looked up at them staring, and they all jerked a little. Even after all this time, his gaze was… unsettling.
"I presume you are all standing there because you need me to walk you down as well, or else you would have done it on your own." His dry tone was all the rebuke they needed, and they scrambled over the edge.
They made it to the bottom at about the same time the kid did, which was… somewhat embarrassing, but he'd had a head start.
The kid didn't even say anything, just ran into the door of the storefront they had just walked down. The three of them watched him go in slight alarm, but their sensei seemed unbothered.
"Before we go in, have you given any thought to what type of weapon will be most useful to you?"
"Kusarigama," said Akari immediately. Their sensei gave her a searching look, then turned to the others. "And you two?"
"I don't know yet." Higuma shifted awkwardly on his feet. "Maybe like a- a katana, or something."
"I see. Tomoe?"
She scowled- not at their sensei, she was actually somewhat respectful to him- and muttered, "I don't need a weapon."
"Perhaps not," their sensei acknowledged. They all stared at him, surprised to hear him admit such a thing. "But being proficient in some weaponry is a useful skill to have."
He looked them all over again, and they unconsciously straightened up under his gaze.
"You should know that my contact won't care about what weapons you think you should have, and will in all likelihood give you an entirely different one. She will hear your fighting techniques and match you to what will be best, and there is no use arguing with her about it. She is blunt and does not care what you think of her. Remember this before you cross her."
Ominous, cryptic warning given, he turned and walked into the shop.
Even Tomoe hesitated a little before following.
The store was a weapons store, unsurprisingly, and the walls were lined with huge, antique weaponry with signs that read, 'DISPLAY ONLY. NOT FOR SALE. DO NOT TOUCH. ALL WALL DISPLAYS ARE RIGGED. WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY INJURIES THAT OCCUR IF PIECES ARE TOUCHED, BECAUSE WE PUT UP THIS WARNING AND YOU TOUCHED IT ANYWAY, IDIOT.'
The more standard shinobi weapons were on racks and in display cases throughout the store. Higuma covertly looked at the blacksmith's insignia on the kunai and found it matched the ones they were given at graduation- the store must have been the main supplier.
Most startling, there was a girl sitting behind the main counter, a stack of shuriken in front of her that she was sharpening and polishing with alarming expertise.
(Sure, she could be an Academy student- but they didn't start any real weapons training until they were about eight, and nobody mastered it as well as this girl apparently had until they were genin at least.)
The girl spoke without looking up from her task, "Hello, welcome to-" She glanced up. "Oh, hi baba!"
"Hello, little bird. Is your mom around?"
"She's in back taking inventory. But Haruki went to see her, so she probably got distracted."
"Probably." He turned back to the three of them, who were reeling at the revelation that their sensei apparently had not one, but two kids. "Go ahead and take a look around, but heed all the warning signs."
The three of them slowly dispersed, and poked around as their sensei turned back to his daughter. "Your hair looks good, baba."
"Thank you. I had an expert stylist."
The girl giggled. Akari leaned over to Tomoe and whispered, "Was that a joke? Can sensei even make jokes?"
Tomoe poked at some senbon and shrugged.
Footsteps sounded from behind a doorway with a sign that said, 'EMPLOYEES ONLY', and a few seconds later a woman pushed through the doorway carrying a crate of something metallic and clanky, judging by the noises. The kid from before followed close behind her, meowing and making his cat toy jump up and down her leg as she walked- which seemed like a safety hazard of some sort.
The woman was dressed in a manner somewhat foreign-looking, with a qipao of red and pale pink that had frog ties across the collar and her hair in two elaborately braided buns. Her eyes, when she looked at the three shifty-looking genin skulking around her store, were bright and warm, but also keenly calculating.
After a moment, she turned to look at their sensei. "Hi, honey!" She set the box down on the counter he was leaning on, then leaned up and kissed him.
The genins' jaws hit the ground at the exact same time, the most synchronized they'd ever been. It was almost a shame that their sensei missed it- but he seemed rather busy kissing random women in weapon stores, surrounded by his secret children.
The woman pulled back and said, "Love the hair."
"Thank you. Hui Na helped me with it this morning." The girl at the counter giggled.
The woman turned to the genin again, and Higuma chewed his bottom lip nervously as she approached.
"So," she said, "You three are Akari, Tomoe, and Higuma, respectively." Her friendly smile broadened until it was too wide and they could see the feral bite to her words. "I've heard a lot about you."
She stared at them for some very long seconds, her mouth still stretched in that too-wide smile and her eyes terrifyingly blank.
Higuma had a sinking feeling in his stomach. If she was as close to their sensei as all the- kissing indicated, then he had probably told her all the horrible details of their team practices, and how they couldn't stop fighting long enough to do anything their sensei directed them to do.
"Well!" The woman chirped brightly, stepping away from them and clapping her hands together. It was as though a cool breeze had gone through the room, and suddenly the three genin felt like they could breathe again. "Let's find you some weapons!"
Tomoe made a very quiet, derisive noise. The woman smiled at her, all warm brown eyes and bright sunshine. "Hm?"
"We don't even know who you are," Tomoe pointed out. Akari and Higuma exchanged a look, silently agreeing.
"You don't- Neji, did you tell them anything?"
Their sensei looked up from where he was playing dolls with his toddler, using a shuriken as a stand in for another cat toy. "I told them we'd be picking weapons."
She tch-ed. "You're hopeless." She turned back to the students, tassel earrings swinging against her neck. "I'm Tenten, the Weapons Mistress of Konoha. How nice to meet you. Now do everything I say."
Akari went first. "I want a kusarigama!"
"Hmm…" The Weapons Mistress cocked her hip out and stroked her chin in thought. "What's your main attack?"
"Gōkakyū no Jutsu!"
"And how's your taijutsu?"
"It's… well, it's fine for my level."
"Mhm." The Weapons Mistress thought on it for a moment, then declared, "No kusarigama. I'm giving you tessen."
"What?"
"The last thing you need is a long-distance weapon if your main skill is Gōkakyū no Jutsu. Tessen will make you balance out your skills more in taijutsu and give you something to fall back on if you ever run out of chakra."
"But… a kusarigama."
"A flashy weapon that is far beyond your skill level."
Akari pulled a face. "That's the point of training!"
"You don't have the base skills yet," The Weapons Mistress told her frankly. "Once you've mastered tessen, then maybe you can persuade me to let you try out a kusarigama."
"...Don't think I won't."
The Weapons Mistress grinned. "I hope you do. Here-" She crossed to a corner of the store and pulled twin tessen off the wall and weighed them in her hands for a few moments, then handed them to Akari. "Try those. Start with them closed, using them with the same movements as defensive kunai while you adjust to the weight. Do that for a month-"
"A month?"
"Yes. Do that for a month and then come back to me so I can teach you more."
"A… month…" Akari thoughtfully hefted the tessen in her hands for a few moments, then shifted her grip so she was holding them towards the ends. "Is this how I hold them?"
"Yes. Good instinct."
Akari looked pleased at the praise. "Fine, I'll use them."
"How nice." The Weapons Mistress smirked at her for a moment, seemingly amused. "There's a training yard out back if you'd like to go give it a shot now, or you can wait-"
Akari was already walking out the door. "Good luck guys see you later-" The bell tingled as the door opened, then again as it slammed shut.
In the silence that followed, the two remaining genin stared blankly after their teammate. The little boy, still sitting on the counter and playing cat-and-shuriken with their sensei, said, "Hey mama?"
The Weapon Mistress turned to look at him, her eyes softening. "Mmhm?"
He held up his toy. "Did you see my kitty-cat?"
"I did."
"Oh." He turned back to their sensei and said "Baba?"
"Yes?"
"Did you see my kitty-cat?"
Their sensei just stared at the kid for a few seconds, and the toddler started to giggle. Finally, he said, "No, Haruki-chan. I did not see your cat."
The kid let out a sharp burst of laughter. "Yes you did!"
"Are you calling me a liar?" Their sensei leaned forward and folded his arms on the countertop, pressing his forehead against the kid's and smiling down at him.
"Yeah!"
"How rude."
Over the sound of the wildly giggling kid asking the girl if she had seen the kitty-cat, the Weapons Mistress turned to the genin again, who were now reeling over the fact that their sensei apparently had at least one kid with the Weapons Mistress of Konoha.
(It seemed like the girl was probably hers too, but no confirmation yet.)
The woman's gaze settled on Higuma. "And you? What kind of weapon did you have in mind?"
"It- uh, uh, uh-" Higuma rapidly spiralled into panic. He was fine when she was addressing them as a group, but the second she actually fixed her attention on him he felt like he was going to barf. Finally he squeaked out, "Sword?"
She tilted her head. "What kind of sword?"
"... a… pointy… one?"
Her brow pinched. "Uh-huh."
They stood in silence for a moment. Higuma was almost positive the girl at the counter was laughing at him.
"What's your main ninjutsu?" The Weapons Mistress finally asked.
"Erm, I use genjutsu, mostly. I'm not great at ninjutsu. Or- or taijutsu. Or genjutsu, really, but I'm better at that than the other ones."
"What do you think your problem is with ninjutsu?"
Higuma inwardly balked. He hadn't expected the conversation to take this sort of turn.
"It's, well-" He struggled to find the words, looking anywhere but at her. His gaze landed on his sensei, watching him calmly as his kid(s?) played together.
His sensei, after a moment of looking steadily into his eyes, inclined his head slightly, a 'go on' sort of gesture.
Feeling desperate, he blurted, "Hasn't sensei told you anything?"
"Doesn't matter. I want to hear what you have to say about it."
"Great," he muttered under his breath. He shifted on his feet, feeling sweaty and upset as the silence grew larger and heavier.
The Weapons Mistress cleared her throat, just a hint of impatience bleeding into her expression.
"I overthink it. I start to worry about amounts of chakra and how to control it and how to make the jutsu do what I want and then I panic and it all goes wrong." He blurted, then gasped for air.
She considered it for a moment. "How's your chakra control?"
"Fine, except when I have to do any real jutsu and then I panic."
"I see. It seems to me that you might benefit from something that forces you to use chakra more."
That was the opposite of what he wanted. "Okay."
"I can tell you're not happy with it, but you're choking those feelings down like a champ. Here-" she grabbed a short sword-thing off of a display. "Standard chakra blade. Start by using it as a stand-alone blade, and work separately at channeling chakra through it. You'll be able to tell when you're getting better at it based on how it feels."
"Uh… okay."
"Good. Go practice."
Obediently, Higuma took the blade and headed to the practice yard. Akari was doing katas with her new tessen, wielding one with a great more ease than the other- she never did like using her non-dominant hand with weapons.
She spun to face him and held up a closed tessen to his throat. He blinked, alarmed.
"What'dya get?" she chirped.
He held up his weapon. "Chakra blade."
"You suck at using chakra."
"I know. She said it'd help me balance it out more."
"Huh. Well, she'd probably know."
"Yeah. Hey, guess what?"
"No. Just tell me."
He sighed. "That ruins the whole premise, Akari."
She rolled her eyes. "You're really going to argue with me about this? You're the one who has something to tell me."
"It's some pretty mind-blowing information, so it's really your loss."
"That's fine." She swivelled away again, doing some more katas and looking completely unbothered. After a few seconds she yelled, "OH!" and spun back, jabbing the tessen excitedly in his face. "Let's spar! Me and my tessen versus your chakra blade."
He absolutely did not want to do that, but the only way he could think to get out of it was to blurt, "Those kids in there are sensei's and the Weapons Mistress's."
"What?" Akari's tessen fell from her hand and hit the ground with a dull clang, but she didn't even seem to register it. "Sensei and the Weapons Mistress?"
"Yeah. I mean she did kiss him when she came in, remember? But I guess I didn't make the connection until the little kid called her 'mama.'"
"Holy fuck." Akari blinked at him for a few moments, before her face turned thoughtful. "Well, I can see it now that I look back on it. The girl sharpening the shuriken did look a lot like the woman, but she had eyes like sensei's, did you notice?" He hadn't. "Plus it explains why the kid was so excited to see her, and so comfortable with her.
"I mean, I knew sensei is married, but-"
That was news to him. "Wait, really? They're married? No, not even that, sensei is married?"
"YES!" Akari scooped up her dropped tessen and gestured with it wildly in irritation. "I keep telling you both that he's actually a super well-known, super powerful shinobi in Konoha and it's really easy to find information about him, but you guys never listen to me! I'm not even from a shinobi family like you two are, how come you don't know this?!"
Higuma was still digesting the information that his sensei had a wife. "He's… married… weird..."
"Okay, whatever. Let's spar."
"No, wait, I don't want-"
"ThreetwooneGO!" She leapt at him, tessens flashing, and he hastily yanked his new chakra blade up in front of him to parry her attack.
She continued striking at him, with much twirling and theatrics, and he stayed on the defensive, trying to use the blade the way that he'd been advised. His hand wasn't used to the weight, and it wasn't long before his grip began to tire.
Akari knocked the blade out of his hand with a loud "HA!" and a flourish of her tessen, snapping the other one open and fanning herself with it dramatically as she smirked at him.
It occurred to him then that the Weapons Mistress really had known what she was doing, because Akari had a flair for the dramatic and the tessen were just flashy enough to keep her interested.
"Yield," he sighed to his teammate, and she grinned, smug.
There was a clattering from the alleyway leading into the sparring yard, and suddenly Tomoe came storming in, looking stone-cold furious. Behind her was the Weapons Mistress, juggling a few kunai in her hand and looking bleakly cheerful.
Their sensei was a few steps behind, and his approach was best described as… cautious. A chill went down Higuma's spine.
Tomoe spun around to face the Weapons Mistress. "It's all bullshit. I don't need a weapon."
"Then prove it," she fired back. Her grin was maniacal. "If you don't need a weapon, that must mean you think that if you run out of chakra, you'll be able to fend for yourself with taijutsu, right?"
Tomoe snarled wordlessly.
"You attack me as much as you want. I'll defeat you with this senbon and nothing else." She held up the senbon between two fingers, and it glinted in the low lighting.
"Tenten," their sensei called abruptly. "Disarm yourself completely."
The woman huffed, but started to comply, tucking the senbon into her hair and removing the bracelets around her wrists that the genin were suddenly realizing were actually summoning scrolls, then taking off the kunai holster from around her fishnet-clad thigh in such a sinuous and purposeful manner that it had both Akari and Higuma flushing a little.
But if they thought that was bad, then what she did next was even worse, which was to snap open the ties of her dress and pull out two sai and a handful of shuriken from her… ahem.
She flicked them over her shoulder and they embedded themselves in the tree their sensei was sitting against, coming very close to slicing his skin. He said nothing, but the look he gave the Weapons Mistress was scorching, although the exact nature of it- whether it was in anger or in some other, more debaucherous emotion- wasn't clear.
"There," she said at last, uncoiling an honest-to-god chain from around her waist, which had been concealed under her belt (that apparently acted as another scroll container when needed) and setting it on the ground. "Senbon only."
"Your boots," their sensei called.
She cursed under her breath and pulled three slender knives from the sole of each boot, then a small jian from each calf. "Is that good enough for you?"
"What about the karambit in your hair?"
"What about your hair, Neji?" She fired back, reaching her hands up and tugging at the strands to her buns.
"What's to discuss? It looks very fashionable."
"Yeah, to a nine-year-old." The woman pulled a curved blade from her hair and flicked it over to rest at their sensei's feet.
"If you are insinuating that Hui Na did this to be fashionable, you are sorely mistaken. She was trying to embarrass me."
"Well you're really rolling with it, so the joke's on her, I guess." The woman grinned.
"Precisely."
Tomoe had been standing with her fists curled tightly, her aura darkening as the woman seemed to take her so glibly. "Are we fighting or not?"
"Oh, of course," the Weapons Mistress pivoted smoothly to face her, senbon glinting obviously in hand. "Ready when you are."
Tomoe charged her, one hand ready with her Crystal Release. The woman's hand flicked out in an idle motion, and seconds later an entire branch from a tree fell down, almost on top of Tomoe. She barely managed to dodge out of the way.
The genin all gaped. The Weapons Mistress twitched her finger, and Tomoe threw herself to the ground as a sharp whistling noise filled the air and a streak of silver, almost indistinguishable from the surrounding air, whistled past the spot her head had been.
The Weapons Mistress raised a casual hand and snatched the senbon from the air.
Tomoe mustered herself again and spread her legs apart, ready to charge at a moment's notice. Her hands flickered through their positions, and she braced herself and yelled, "Crystal-"
Another twitch of the finger, and the blur of silver was darting away again, this time to slice against the dip between Tomoe's index and middle fingers.
It was a painful, distracting wound, and Higuma winced in sympathy as Tomoe jerked her hand into a fist with a curse, blood welling up and running over the back of her hand. She didn't let it deter her for long, however, gritting her teeth and beginning the motions of her hand seal again.
She was stopped once more as the senbon went darting away again, headed for Tomoe's arms. It stuck deep into her bicep and stayed there.
Tomoe let out a grunt of pain, trying futilely to yank the senbon out as blood darkened her sleeve and slicked up her fingers.
Higuma tore his eyes away from the mildly disturbing sight of his teammate's struggles to look at the Weapons Mistress. She was standing silhouetted by the setting sun, resting her weight on her heels with her arms folded across her chest, back ramrod straight. For the first time, she was standing completely upright, not cocking her hips out to the side, not tilting her head, not leaning over to rifle through bins and shelves of weapons.
She was taller than Higuma had realized.
Finally seeming to decide the senbon wasn't worth it, Tomoe stopped pulling at it and charged straight for the Weapons Mistress, hands flicking in her seal and finally yelling, "Growing Crystal Thorns!"
One of her mysterious crystal structures began to form and leapt towards the Weapons Mistress- but stopped abruptly as Tomoe staggered to a kneeling position, gasping for breath.
Higuma and Akari both took a lurching half-step towards their teammate before remembering she was in the middle of a spar and stepping back. Akari chewed her thumbnail nervously.
Tomoe stared up at the Weapons Mistress, her eyes glazed, then shoved herself back to her feet and stumbled towards her again. She got three more steps in before sinking down again, chest heaving as she crumpled onto the ground.
The Weapons Mistress walked over to her small form and pulled the senbon out of Tomoe's bicep, wiping it on a small cloth before tucking it out of sight within her hair. She glanced over at their sensei.
"Pass me my right wrist scroll?" She caught the scroll as their sensei tossed it to her and unsealed a small vial from it, then injected some of the contents into Tomoe's other arm. Then she hoisted the genin over one shoulder and stood, fixed her eyes on Higuma, and said, "Run down to the Yamanaka flower shop and get the blonde woman working there- Ino. Tell her that Tenten wants her to swing by the shop to monitor the effects of her Beta strain."
Higuma blinked, stuttered, "Yamanaka flowers, Ino, Tenten weapons shop, Beta strain."
"Correct. Come on back once you've delivered the message."
Higuma nodded, and dashed away.
Akari watched with wide eyes as the Weapons Mistress (Neji-sensei's wife, probably) carried an unconscious Tomoe back into the shop through the back door, laying her down on a small table before moving out of sight in the doorway.
Neji-sensei, meanwhile, had picked up the various weapons the woman had removed and was starting towards the shop himself. "You can come in too if you wish, Akari."
She followed him in, clutching her tessen- which she already loved, even if they weren't what she was expecting to get- and peering around nosily at the back of the store. It was slightly smaller than the front part, with crates on shelves containing common shinobi weapons, and another section leading further down to the left with a sign saying "SPECIALIZED." There was a door directly to the right that read "SMITHY", and another door at the edge of the room that was unlabeled, but presumably led to the front of the shop.
Tomoe, on the table- which was greasy with oil and who-knows-what from all the weapon-ing that occurred in the shop- twitched slightly, her eyes fluttering. As far as Akari could tell, she'd been knocked out with some sedative, and probably an unusual one because Tomoe was weirdly immune to the common ones they'd learned about in the academy.
(To be fair, a lot of senior chunin and most jonin were immune to the common tranquilizers, but that was a combination of specific training against them and the build up of the body's natural defense after being poisoned with them enough times. But Tomoe was a genin and barely batted an eye the day they'd all been tripped with the slightest amounts to make them understand and identify the effects.)
Tomoe opened her eyes fully and glared at Akari. "Son of a bitch," she muttered, then passed out again.
Presumably, she wasn't referring to Akari as the son or the bitch in that phrase, but Akari sniffed and put on an offended face anyway. After a moment, she glanced over at the Weapons Mistress and Neji-sensei, who had given the woman back her weapons and was now standing close to her, tilting his head down to look at her as they spoke quietly. Feeling a little awkward, Akari looked at Tomoe again. She had drool running down the side of her mouth.
After their conversation, the woman turned and walked briskly out the door to the main part of the shop. Neji-sensei turned to Akari.
"Tomoe will be fine after a few minutes, and we're having a poison and antidote specialist come along to monitor her progress just in case. Would you like anything to eat?"
"Uh, um, no thank you."
"Very well. Stay here with her for a moment, please." He followed after the Weapons Mistress.
Akari lingered awkwardly by Tomoe's side for a few moments before reaching out to poke her. She didn't respond.
Instantly bored, Akari started looking around the room in earnest, now that she was unsupervised. There was a large whiteboard on one wall that had order forms pinned to it, organized into sections presumably based on their status of completion. There was a calendar just next to it with bright red notes scrawled on certain dates- some of them were the dates for order pick-ups, but there was one written in bold handwriting that said "HUI NA'S BIRTHDAY ️ ️ ️"- whoever that was.
Akari's wandering attention led her to the specialized weaponry section, and she peered nosily up at a few of the more intricate pieces- they were very interesting and shiny.
Footsteps sounded down the hallway, and Akari thought wildly for a moment about rushing over to her teammate's side to pretend she wasn't snooping- but then she decided she didn't care, and just turned to look at who came through the door.
It was the girl from earlier, struggling a little with the weapons from earlier all loaded into one crate. She met Akari's gaze with a polite smile and said, "Do you mind helping me put these away?"
"Sure." Akari crossed to the door and grabbed the other side of the crate, then they hefted it over to the common weapons shelf and started filing them into place.
"I'm Akari, by the way." She told the girl cheerfully, running her thumb over the edge of a kunai that had a chip out of it.
"Oh, I-! I, um, already know. Hui Na," the girl introduced herself. She smiled a little shyly up at her, and Akari felt her own smile widen- she was cute.
"Are you in the Academy, Hui Na-chan?" The girl immediately flushed at being addressed in such a way, but her smile remained genuine.
"Yes. I'll graduate in three years."
"Cool! What kind of jutsu do you like to do?" She didn't ask wha jutsu Hui Na was good at- experience had led her to ask about people's interests, rather than their skills, because usually it made them like her more. If people wanted to brag, they would. And if they were like Higuma, they'd talk about how cool Nara-senpai was instead of talking about themselves at all.
(Which was so stupid- Higuma wasn't cool, obviously, but he was smart and funny in a sarcastic and somewhat macarbe way. He needed to be more confident in what he did.)
"I'm pretty good at the Hyuga Clan jutsu- at least the ones I've been allowed to learn- and I really like using nunchucks, like Lee-ojisan."
"Wow, I bet you're really good with them if your mom's the Weapons Mistress!" It was a bit of a gamble, to assume that she was, in fact, Neji-sensei's and the Weapons Mistress' daughter, but it paid off when the younger girl smiled in delight, her serious expression changing completely.
"Well," she giggled a little, "Really, mom gets a little bored with nunchucks, since she mastered them ages ago- she likes swords a lot, though, and she's been trying to collect all the legendary swords of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist for years now."
"Huh! Any luck?"
"Of course not- most of them are in Kirigakure, and it's not like they're going to give them up. But mom's really stubborn and everytime Baba tries to point out that she won't get them, she gets all pouty."
Akari snorted at the image of Neji-sensei trying to placate his wife. Seems like he had a little practice before he had to deal with two sulky genin- not her, of course, she was a star pupil.
Thinking about her teammates made her remember Tomoe, still lying prone on the table, and she turned to look. Yep, unconscious.
"So what'd she stick Tomoe with, then? She's immune to a lot of stuff, so it's pretty impressive that it worked so fast and so well."
"I'm not sure. She and my auntie Ino develop and test new poisons together, so it could be a lot of things. But mom wouldn't have used anything that would hurt her."
Hui Na put the last kunai into place with a little clink, then stood back up. Akari grinned at the still-shy look she gave her from behind her hair.
Aw, sensei's daughter is so CUTE!
There were voices sounding down the hall- two women, from the sounds of it. The Weapons Mistress came in first, looking moody, and a few paces behind her was the head of T&I, poison expert, special jounin, goddamn leader of the Yamanaka Clan, Ino Yamanaka.
Wait- Hui Na had called her auntie Ino- was she that close to her?
Akari's head was spinning with new information- sensei was married to and had kids with the Weapons Mistress of Konoha, was friends with the leader of the Akimichi clan, and his kids considered the head of freaking Torture and Interrogation as an aunt.
Yamanaka-sama gave Akari an appraising look with a friendly smile, which broadened into a beam when she looked at Hui Na. "Hey sweetie!"
"Hi, auntie." Hui Na's tone remained as steady and calm as ever, but she bounced up and down on her feet a few times in excitement.
Yamanaka smiled at her a few seconds longer before turning to Tomoe. "Seriously, Tenten, you just left her back here…?"
The Weapons Mistress muttered churlishly in reply, too soft to be heard, and the two women descended into quiet conversation. After a moment, the Weapons Mistress turned to Akari and Hui Na, watching mutely, and said, "Why don't the two of you head up front? Higuma is there, probably dying of awkwardness as your dad tries to prove how wise a sensei he is."
Hui Na laughed- and Akari couldn't get over how much her expression changed, from quiet seriousness to pure joy- and told her mother, "All right. Good luck, auntie!"
"Thanks, baby. I'll see you for your lessons tomorrow, okay?"
"Okay!" Hui Na bobbed up and down one more time, then turned and obediently trotted out the door. Akari gave a little wave to the women and followed her.
The hallway was quite short, leading past one other tiny room filled with weaponry before reaching the storefront. Just as the Weapons Mistress had predicted, Neji-sensei was looking as serious as ever as he spoke quietly and intensely to Higuma, who fiddled listlessly with his new chakra knife while looking generally miserable.
Haruki-chan was sitting on the floor with his little feet turned out, playing with his cat figurine. When the two girls came in, he gave Hui Na a delighted grin but kept playing.
Neji-sensei paused in his conversation with Higuma. "How's Tomoe?"
"Auntie Ino didn't say," Hui Na said, crossing to where he stood at the counter and plopping down in the seat. She tucked herself against his side, and he reached up and ran his hand over her head.
Akari turned away, feeling slightly uncomfortable to be privy to the private moment, and her gaze met that of Higuma. "Hi, Higuma."
"Hi," he said glumly. She scowled at him.
"What's wrong with you?"
"If I knew that, then-"
"Ugh. Shut up, Higuma. You're a perfectly decent shinobi but your attitude makes me tired."
He sputtered, finally looking a little more fiery, and she nodded once in satisfaction. She
swiveled to her sensei and chirped, "Anything else for us to do, Neji-sensei?"
He tilted his head thoughtfully, and she realized too late that they were doomed.
Tomoe woke up and immediately shot a fist up in the air to punch the face staring down at her.
The face cursed, startled, but swatted her hand away with ease. Then it said, "Tomoe-san. So glad you're up."
Tomoe rocked up to a sitting position, glaring at the face- which turned out to be Hyuga-sensei's wife. The psychopath.
It was all the worse that the woman had defeated her so thoroughly, in such a fuckin' awesome way. Now her rage was mixed with deep respect, which was way too confusing.
She fixed her glare to the other woman in the room, who was blindingly blonde and statuesque. She gave Tomoe a smile that was nothing short of dazzling and said, "Oh, goodie! The strain lasted just as long as it was supposed to for your body weight. I think we're ready for the next phase of testing." All of which was said like Tomoe was supposed to understand it.
Instead, she just scowled and took a look at her surroundings- the back of the store, it looked like, with shelves of weapons all the way up to the ceiling. It smelled like fireworks- and when she saw the sign that read "SMITHY", it made sense.
She turned to Tenten. "Do you make all the weapons yourself?"
"Not always. I import stuff like kunai and senbon, then just refine them and add my insignia. The special orders I usually forge myself."
Tomoe watched her for a moment more, then grunted and looked away again. She refused to like the woman, even if she seemed smart and interesting.
"Where's Hyuga-sensei and the genin?"
There was a pause, and the Tenten said, in a carefully controlled voice, "You know you're a genin too." Tomoe looked over at her, brow pursed at her tone of voice, and scowled when she saw the woman fighting back laughter.
"I'm above their level. Where are they?"
"Out front in the shop," the blonde woman said. She reached out, and before Tomoe could snap at her, injected her with something. Tomoe snarled, hackles raising, and the blonde told her "That'll help fight any residual nausea and dizziness. You'll be back to normal within an hour."
Tomoe glowered. "I'm leaving." She swung her legs over the bench and trudged to the door that must've led to the shop front, pointedly not looking back at either woman.
The door didn't even slam behind her. Damn it all.
She opened the door to the storefront with a loud bang that made her feel a little better, then stopped short at the sight of Higuma, Akari, and Hyuga-sensei's daughter busily polishing all the weapons on the shelves. For his part, Hyuga-sensei was reading quietly while his son fell asleep in the crook of his arm.
Everyone (except the sleeping toddler) turned to look at her when she came in. Embarrassed, she snapped, "What?"
Akari rolled her eyes and turned away, Higuma made a face like she was being unreasonable, and Hyuga-sensei's kid twitched her shoulders and pinched up her entire face before jerking around to face her work again.
When Tomoe turned to look at her sensei, he was watching his daughter with a blank expression on his face that didn't change one bit when his gaze met Tomoe's, but still somehow became terrifyingly oppressive.
She actually sighed in relief when he looked away again. He stood, hoisting the kid in his arms, and said, "Hui Na, come here for a moment."
The girl put aside her rag and followed him into the back hallway. Akari and Higuma instantly whipped around to face her, both pale, and Akari hissed, "What-did-you-do-"
"Nothing!" She scream-whispered back.
"Clearly you did something, I've NEVER seen sensei like that-"
"BOTH OF YOU SHUT UP LET'S JUST FINISH CLEANING ALL THE WEAPONS OFF FOR HIS WIFE AND THEN MAYBE WE CAN LEAVE WITHOUT HIM KILLING US." Higuma, somehow, came through as the voice of reason, and after scowling at each other for a few seconds more Tomoe and Akari began working again.
They worked in silence for ten minutes before Hyuga-sensei came back into the room. He gave them all a slight smile and said, "That should be sufficient, thank you. Shall we go to lunch? I will pay for it-"
Akari didn't even let him finish his offer before she threw her arms up in the air with a gleeful "YES!" Her polishing rag smacked into the ceiling, clung for a bit, then came back down. She snatched it out of the air with a sheepish look.
They all ignored her, quite used to the theatrics, and Higuma nodded to Hyuga-sensei's offer.
"Tennie, we're going to lunch," Hyuga-sensei called back to his wife.
"Don't call me that!" She hollered back. She sounded a little flustered, and they all gaped, incredulous, as Hyuga-sensei grinned to himself- outright grinned.
Fucking Akari let out a little sigh, like she was swooning, and that snapped Tomoe out of it pretty quick. She didn't need to hear the dumbass mooning over Hyuga-sensei's good looks again- because she didn't fucking care about his dimple and never fucking WOULD, Akari.
Their sensei looked back at the door. "Ino, would you like to walk with us?"
"Sure!" She yelled back. "Just a minute!"
They waited in silence for a bit, then suddenly the door rocketed open and Hyuga-sensei's son bawled out, "BABA, I WANT TO COME TOOOOOOO!"
He looked like he was on the verge of tears, and all the genin immediately took a step back from him.
Hyuga-sensei's expression went all soft again, and he said gently, "That's fine, Haruki-chan, but weren't you going to help your mama in the store?"
The kid thought hard for a second, then said, "I want to go too more than I want to stay here today."
Tomoe squinted her eyes at him, trying to decipher his complicated toddler nonsense-speak. Hyuga-sensei just smiled and held out his hand.
The kid booked it over, seizing his father's hand and chattering happily."Tell mama," Hyuga-sensei told him softly.
"MAMA!"
"WHAT?"
"I'M GOIN' WITH BABA TO EAAAAAAAT!"
"OKAY! HAVE FUN LOVE BUG!"
"OKAY!"
Silence for a few blessed moments, then another voice. "Waaaait, Baba!"
"Yes?" Thank fuck, Hyuga-sensei and his other kid seemed to be less of the hollering type, and more of the 'speak at the exact volume needed to be heard' type.
"Can I come too?"
"Of course, little bird."
"WAIIIT, THEN WHO WILL SPEND TIME WITH ME IN THE STOOOOORE?" The Weapons Mistress again.
"MEEEEE!"
"PISS OFF, INO!"
There was some raucous cackling, then the blonde woman came through the door, still laughing. The kid followed a few steps behind, smiling down at the ground.
"BYE, TENNIE!" Blondie bellowed.
"SHUT UP!"
"Bye, Tennie," their sensei echoed.
"I- don't call me that!" Her tone had gone from annoyed to flustered again, and Tomoe rolled her eyes. What, like her husband was all that? Seriously.
"Y'all cute," Blondie told Hyuga-sensei.
"Thank you."
The door opened- again, fucking hell- and Tenten came in, looking sulky. "If no one is staying, then I'm going to lunch too."
"Yay!" The toddler shrieked.
This was the worst day of Tomoe's life.
Wordlessly she pushed out the door and started walking towards Ichiraku's, not even really caring if they followed her or not. She had money.
To her (expertly hidden) surprise, Higuma caught up to her a few seconds later, walking in silence at her side as the flock of people behind them loudly and chaotically got themselves sorted out. He looked glum, but she couldn't be fucked about it.
"What's wrong with you?"
He eyed her nervously. "What?"
"What's wrong with you, dipshit?"
"Nothin'."
"Fine." She rolled her eyes and ignored him again.
Behind them, Tenten had put her hysterically laughing toddler on her shoulders and was playfully biting at his legs. What the fuck.
The girl was listening intently to Akari as she talked her head off- seriously, she didn't know how the kid did it, because Akari was the most annoying person in the world and she was staring up at her like she was made of gold.
Hyuga-sensei and Blondie were walking side by side at the back of the herd, talking. The woman was ridiculously tall, with a good couple centimeters on their sensei- who was by no means a short man. This was a weird day.
She got to Ichiraku's and settled into a chair. Higuma sat next to her, which was irritating, and Akari sat on his other side. Hyuga-sensei sat next to Tomoe, and his wife ushered the two kids into the seats on his other side, with her on the end.
Blondie just yelled goodbye as she kept walking, then said something that stopped the genin in their tracks.
"Oh, hey, Naruto! Playing hooky again?"
"Hi Ino!" The fucking Hokage was genuinely bouncing in his seat to see the woman. "Aw man, and Neji and Tenten too! Lucky timing for me!"
"Hello, Naruto," their sensei said in a measured tone. Tenten just waved distractedly at him as she tried to settle the toddler in the seat, because the kid was basically trying to run across the counter to get to-
"Naruto-ojisan! Hi, hi, hi!"
"Sit down, love bug!"
"Mama, it's Naruto-ojisan! HI!"
"I know, sweetling. But we gotta sit to eat, okay?"
"Okay," the kid said, looking terribly sad.
The Hokage had been talking to Blondie, but she departed with a slap on his back and he turned to face them all.
"HARUKI-CHAN! How's it going, buddy?"
"GOOD!" The kid launched to his feet again and went off talking a mile a minute, and the Hokage seemed entirely engrossed- except for when he gave Hyuga-sensei's daughter a huge grin and a hair ruffle when she wordlessly went over to sit down next to him.
When Tomoe was able to turn away from the golden, radiant presence and tune back into her other surroundings, Hyuga-sensei had already ordered all of their usual food and was watching over them with an amused smile tugging at his mouth.
"Naruto is a long-time friend," he told them quietly.
"And cousin-in-law, honey," his wife called to him, a glitter in her eyes.
He sighed, looking a little more annoyed. "...That too."
"What the fuck, sensei."
Tomoe had been thinking those very words so intensely in her head that it took her a moment to realize that she wasn't the one who said them.
They all turned to stare at Higuma, who was going steadily redder. "Uh. Sorry."
"Seriously, Higuma!" Akari reprimanded. "He's right though," she told Hyuga-sensei.
Much to their surprise, Hyuga-sensei laughed, tilting his head back a little. "It's too bad you and Ino didn't get to spend more time together," he told Akari. "Another day, perhaps."
Akari looked both thrilled and terrified at the very prospect.
Teuchi slid their bowls in front of them, and they all rustled around hastily for the chopsticks. Tenten had given up trying to contain the toddler, and let him run (on the ground) to go sit next to the Hokage as well. She slid into the spot next to her husband, running her hand over his shoulder blade as she did and then leaning up to kiss his cheek.
Hyuga-sensei held his chopsticks over his bowl and murmured, his gaze focused elsewhere, "Thank you for the food."