Aaaaand, we're back.
Hana Inuzuka was a baseball prodigy. No two ways about it. Standing six foot even she often took a crouching wide legged stance to compensate for her large strike zone. All the while the bat would dance expectantly just behind her head, directing the pitchers attention to the ferocious, hungry look on her face. All of these factors combined made her appear like a lone wolf, stooped low over the plate as she stalked her prey. To compound matters Hana seemed to have been born with a sixth sense, an instinct that told her just where and when to swing. Maybe she just had good fundamentals, maybe she was able to get into a pitchers heads better than most. However she did it, by the time she was a high school freshman she was easily able to fill the formerly thought to be un-fillable void of "best slugger at Sofia High School" that had lain vacant since Itachi Uchiha graduated the year prior.
Tenten would always pride herself on the fact that she'd seen Hana's inaugural game with the school. As a 5th grader with absolutely no interest is baseball watching Hana electrify a crowd the way she had was a spectator even akin to watching the parting of the Red Sea. Hyperbolic? Probably, she was a hyperbolic kid.
It had been such a boring game up to that point, thanks mostly in part to the spectacular pitching lineup the area had boasted during those years. It was a simple two and a half hours of mound psychology she wasn't yet privy to. Yet, in those final innings something changed. The offense looked meaner, tougher, chomping at the bit to tear into the ball. Then freshman Hana walked out, shortstop, number six, already a good quarter head taller than the tallest girl on either team. Her eyes peered forward like they were piercing through fog, gaze just visible below the brim of her helmet, just enough of her pupils visible to give her target the undeniable sensation of being hunted. The ball belted forwards, down the sight line and right into Hana's sweet spot.
The resounding crack was only deafened by the subsequent insanity and screaming that followed. Teachers and parents beside her bouncing up and down with joy, strangers screaming like the world was coming to an end, some middle schooler was even reduced to tears as the ball took flight and never looked back.
In all probability the ball would've ended up in Mr. Kamizuki's fields only to be lost amongst the dirt and vegetables, but to Tenten's 5th grade mind that ball might as well have continued on to infinity and she would insist to anyone that asked that the ball had never been found, hoping to create something of an rural folktale around the incident. That was the day after all, that Tenten had decided to try out for baseball.
From that point on Tenten tried to emulate Hana to the best of her abilities. Hana loved Wheaties to the point where she'd show up to school with the bowl still in hand if she was running late. This was about the time that Tenten decided she should develop a taste of the breakfast of champions. Hana was a shortstop, so obviously she was going to have to play shortstop. Hana went to Iowa State, obviously Tenten knew where she was going once she graduated. Hana nearly flunked geometry and got herself kicked off the team…
Ok so maybe not everything. Wheaties, she discovered tasted like so many shards of cardboard stitched together and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Tenten had excellent reach, exceptional fielding ability and cat like reflexes, but then again so did Itachi's younger brother in the year her junior. Iowa State would've loved to have her, but of course she lacked the guts to move that far away from home. Oh well…at least she'd succeeded in nearly failing geometry.
That was high school, years of her life that might as well have been in a different generation. A different time with silly things like ambition and dreams. An era where she didn't hang around the towns' one coffee shop with her class buddies turned co-workers.
The year 2021 tapped her on the shoulder and dragged her head back to the present warm August day, back to the smell of black ground beans and air conditioner ozone, to the table closest to the window, to the inside seat piled high with papers and plans for the upcoming school year. Across the table, sifting through the morass sat Sakura and Ino, slick condensation forming on their chilled, untouched iced tea, the droplets sliding along the outside of the glass and onto the red and blue Chicago Cubs coasters beneath while the girls continued their march through the paperwork unconcerned. Both of these girls, Tenten reminded herself once had been her juniors in high school. Somewhere along the line things had gone just a little topsy-turvy.
She was staring at the same duo that had done nothing but fight over boys their entire freshman year in some petty rivalry. Their fight in the cafeteria line, which ended up with more than one head buried in a serving tray of creamed corn was still a tale whispered of in the halls of Sofia High. Oh what joyfully innocent days those were.
Then she turned her back for two seconds and suddenly Sakura "voted most likely to own a gym" Haruno was married with a house and ranch, while Ino "voted most likely to stage a fight to the death over a parking spot" Yamanaka had her masters degree and was now officially handing her assignments. And just what had she done with her life? Just where was she now? Was there anything left of that old high school spirit? What could she do…
She eyed Ino briefly. Helping out with the P.E program back in high school she'd seen the blonde take a glancing dodge ball to the shin to which the girl had collapsed, screaming. Yeah, she could take Ino no problem.
Sakura though, her gaze shifted here as she raised the glass to her lips and peered over the rim at the pink haired, English teacher. Sakura was more of an enigma, especially after whatever bizarre superhero training regimen she'd undergone in sophomore year. Suddenly she was doing track and field and spending time tossing tires out behind the old automotive shop. A regimen she seemed to have kept up over the years, but the question remained. If they fought who would win…
"Tenten?" Sakura piped up. Tenten realized she'd had the cup held up to her lips for a good couple of minutes now. "You've uh, got that look like you want to strangle me in my sleep again? Anything wrong?"
"Just reevaluating my self-worth by using which of you I could take in a fight as a metric."
"Whatever gets you through the day," Sakura shrugged nonchalantly, returning to resolving the conundrum of an overlapping schedule.
WHAM!
Tenten and Sakura nearly jumped out of their seats, as a figure outside slapped himself up against the window of the coffee shop. His face remained smashed and distorted as it pressed itself against the transparent wall though his eyes darted back and forth, smile appearing on his lips as he took stock of the pairs shocked expressions.
With careful, almost plodding pace, Ino so far the silent figure at the table allowed herself to look up and take in her colleagues faces. Piecing together the events that had just unfolded she set her office work down. Slowly, ever so slowly, Ino morphed her face into a death glare and strained her form 180 degrees until she had it trained perfectly on the man behind the windowpane.
"Kiba! Get your filthy face off my glass!" came the demand from Kotetsu Hagane, the coffee shop manager behind the counter.
Kiba Inuzuka, another featured selection on the hit parade of figures from her past. Kiba was the second member of the athletically gifted Inuzuka clan, and in Tenten's mind the polar opposite of everything Hana had been. Kiba had excelled as a relief pitcher in his years at Sofia, despite his goofy pitching form and almost naively honest style. If Hana was a wolf behind the plate then Kiba was a golden retriever on the mound. As a high schooler he looked scruffy, unkempt; he was loud, almost as obnoxious as Naruto and, bafflingly enough would've been Salutatorian if not for a poor showing on the AP British Lit final.
Kiba "voted most likely to have his midlife crisis a decade early," Inuzuka tramped through the old battered green door, snapping his fingers in time with the chime of the bells. He immediately slowed at the dirty looks from Kotetsu though his efforts to wipe his grin from his face were failing miserably.
Suddenly, as if remembering why he was there Kiba snapped to attention and pulled up a chair with his fellow academics, letting the metal legs scrape across the baked red quarry stone tiled flooring.
"Great news guys," he began breathlessly, leaving no space in between his sentences to allow the insertion of any smart remarks he almost knew were already forming on each of their lips. Not chancing an interjection he raised a beige paper folder, displayed it to his audience like a magician preparing for a trick and slapped it down perfectly in between the papers and drinks. "I found us the perfect P.E teacher."
Everyone perked up at this, even Kotetsu seemed to lean in closer to try and hear this discussion from behind the bar.
To her disgust Tenten found herself leaning in to listen to what Kiba now had to say. She had to find a second to force herself to pause and reevaluate the statement. It was verbal click bait, and given Kiba's track record with these matters she should have known better than to bite.
Kiba now remained silent, his smile looking a healthy dose more smug as he realized he had their complete and undivided attention. Tenten rolled her eyes, taking his displays as evidence that he was just out to get a rise from the three.
"Oh yeah? You find his resume on another one of your internet anime forum boards?" she sassed almost derisively. Tenten looked out over the table to try and telepathically beg her cohorts not to take fall for the mans obvious scheme.
"Nooo," Kiba sassed back with equal vigor. He slipped into the file and pulled out page one, the name of an international recruiting firm, the stamp of the very respectable institution stamped at the bottom. Tenten suddenly felt her insides churn as he produced the document.
Everyone here was, in some way shape or form involved with the high school baseball team. In fact if she did a quick head count of the towns thousand or so residents odds were good that most of all of them would have some sort of stake in the sport. Sofia was, after all a town founded on the twin principles of a healthy corn crop and a healthy baseball program.
Ino's face also indicated she'd mixed more than just a little skepticism with her curiosity. Kiba had never exactly been in the running for an administrator on any level, but everyone knew that the Inuzuka's took to baseball like ducks took to water. After all Hana had been the one to head the program up until the end of the 2019 season. Since then she'd had the school board snooping around her files trying to drop some not so subtle hints about which direction she should take the program in.
"Better not be your photo in their scuz," Tenten snipped.
"Well it's certainly not yours," Kiba chirped, plucking the file after having placed it so dramatically on the table and waving it around in the air, taking obvious joy in watching Tenten's eyes track it back and forth.
"Enough you two," Ino said, quickly snapping her fingers and demanding the folder. Any childishness about the proceedings vanished as Kiba bowed to Ino's administrative demands and handed it over without another word. Despite her proposed indifference Tenten started peering over the table along with Sakura while Ino began flipping through the pages, both of them keen to get a better look at the new recommendation.
"Japanese?" the first question came tumbling out of Tenten's mouth, almost subconsciously.
"Not just Japanese, an actual professional as well." Kiba replied, dropping the fact as quickly as he could, it clearly being one of the highlights of his presentation. "Played for a professional team and everything. A big star in college as well, and from a Japanese Hall of Fame recognized family. Get this, they actually have great families of baseball over there! He's got crazy experience and the resume on this guy is crazy good."
"Well it was only for one game," Sakura mumbled as Ino handed her the resume page while she kept looking through bundles of statistics. Tenten felt her face almost light up at the admission, enjoying the look on Kiba's face, like he knew he'd had to defend this one.
"Yeah sure, but he was coming off of an injury anyways. Look, the point is…chances like this don't come across our desk everyday. If you were to ask anyone with any sense which country produces the best baseball players Japan would easily crack the top 5. Easy." Kiba continued like he'd, unusually for him practiced the speech. He leaned forward in his seat, moving his pitch forwards as if they were in a corporate boardroom. "Look through the file, he's got English as a second language. Look at the wording there, not just 'proficient' or 'experienced'. Fluent."
Here Ino closed the file and handed it off to the girls beside her as she resumed Kiba's old position. Leaning back in the air, eyes directed skywards, hand resting against her cheek, obviously taken by the possibilities. Sensing he was close Kiba pressed his advantage, trying his best to sell the idea.
"Look at the price he's asking for! It's not cheap, but it's certainly not going to break the bank. This is almost exactly what we allocated for in the budget this year!" there was a grand little silence, with only the cold sigh of the air conditioner ahead as even Kotetsu seemed to be holding his breath while awaiting Ino's response. Kiba furrowed his brow and pressed on, "Look you go and tell the school board that you got an actual professional player from abroad to come and coach the local program and they will set you into this position for life."
He practically crowed as he finished that last part of his sentence, turning his salesmanship up to eleven.
Only here did Ino avert her eyes long enough to give him a sour look.
"Don't try to butter me up Inuzuka."
"Hey," he said, pulling back, hands up. "I'm just saying. It would look pretty sweet."
Tenten knew Ino long enough to get a sense of when the girl had become scarily decisive. This was one of those moments. Already she could feel the atmosphere around the table changing, shifting in ways she definitely didn't like. Something about it just…just ground her up inside.
Oh stow it all. Here she was, so many years out of high school and still resigned to just milling around Sofia. If she didn't speak up now, she might as well just mill around for the rest of her life.
Abandoning the usual plan of letting Kiba's ideas dash themselves up against the rocks she switched tactics, calling an audible as she tried to get herself into Ino's ear.
"Really? At this stage? Kiba there's a ton of immigration stuff to deal with before we can even think about getting him to teach here. This file says he'd need room and board." She finished, playing the difficulty card before turning to Ino as if she'd just made the counter claim of the century. "I mean at this stage this is going to be, well almost impossible yeah?"
"Fair points…but I would say impossible is a stretch." Kiba tried, almost sounding diplomatic in the way he slowly answered her question. Condensation droplets continuing their slide down the glasses in the space of time it took his to finish the sentence.
"Look Kiba we don't have time for this. Bringing someone in all the way from Japan? We're a tiny little town in Iowa. We're nothing but corn in all four directions as far as the eye could see. What would he even do out here? I just don't think…"
"Well Tenten, the boards really breathing down my neck here." Ino cut in suddenly, forcing Tenten back into silence. "I do have to make a decision soon and the more credentials to his name the better."
"Ino, I'm telling you there's better options out there." Tenten said swiftly, actually standing to her feet as she picked up the file again and making a face at it like it was her tax forms. "A lot better options out there."
Ino leaned forward once again, pressing her hand up against her cheek as she turned a flat, eternally waiting look up at the girl now putting on a course in showmanship before her. Sakura just blinked back and forth between the combatants, finally raising her almost forgotten glass to her lips as she continued watching with wry amusement. Kiba for his part also turned towards Ino, holding his breath as he awaited her response. Finally, after another good minute of dry suspense Ino shrugged, hand still up against her cheek as she motioned for Tenten to continue.
"I'm all ears, let's hear these options."
Shoot, she'd called her bluff. Well, it was now or never.
Tenten looked around the coffee shop dramatically like she'd been stood up by a taxi on a New York street corner. She held her arms open, still glancing left and right expectantly. Finding no takers to what she considered obvious she locked eyes back with Ino and brought her arms back in to point directly at her chest, file still clutched tightly in hand.
"Do I have to spell it out for you people?" she almost demanded.
"Ah, so that's what this is about, of course." Kiba snickered beside her, clearly having guessed what her entire routine was right from the start.
"Oh Tenten not this again," Sakura sighed from beside Ino, rubbing her hand across her forehead. Though Ino didn't react, quite in the same way it was evident from the pursed look on her face, and the way she pulled back from her thinking position that she felt a similar way.
"What do you mean not this again?"
"Tenten," Ino began, not wasting the time as she swiped the folder from her hands "The credentials…"
"What credentials? I was Hana's right hand for her entire tenure at this school. I know the kids, I know how this job works. I was first base all four years here in high school and…"
"Tenten, Tenten, Tenten," Ino began rapidly, hands up as she tried to head this tantrum off at the pass. "No one's saying you don't have the skill, but how's it going to look if it comes out that I passed up on a legitimate Japanese pro baseball player from a respected world recognized league? Like Kiba said, look at what their correspondence. If I can land this we'll have a new coach, enough to update our equipment and a balanced budget for once in my life. "
"That's,…" she stopped herself. The words "not fair" hung on her tongue, practically burning a hole in it, everything telling her to just spits the words out.
The problem was, she already knew the answer to the statement. So it may not have been fair. Well neither was Ino getting shoved into the principle position by the board when old Mr. Mitokado had suffered that heart attack. A turn of her head towards Kiba, a quick look at his face reminded her that saddling him with all the pressure to live up to his sister throughout all of high school hadn't been fair either. None of it had been fair, but it's what they'd all learned to live with.
"Tenten…I'm waiting." Ino said. It was meant as a stern, quick, demanding interjection. Yet, the way Ino said it was far slower that she was probably used to, even a bit gentler than she'd intended. It was here that Tenten realized Ino was handling her with kid gloves. She was being the difficult one here.
The brown haired girl just glowered to herself, running a hand through her hair as she finally acquiesced.
"Alright," she said finally, sounding more like she'd just signed surrender documents on behalf of the entire nation. "Alright, you do what you have to."
Tenten was not the happiest of campers. True, she was in the largest city in the state to pick up a new hire who had just flown across the Pacific Ocean and was doubtless dogged by jetlag and the prospect of moving halfway across the world for a new job in a new country. On the other hand she had to drive for three hours, three long, stiff, endless boring hours to drive to the busy streets of De Moines, capital of Iowa from the fields of Sofia, and her own self-pity party wasn't something she was keen to let go of so easily.
In her defense though, dragging her car all the way across the state to chauffer the man who had been hired to steal her job right from under her nose wasn't exactly the best way to make her sympathetic to his plight. It was in fact all she had really ruminated on during the drive. Yet…here she was. Not out her own choice or by the inevitable machinations of some democratic process…
"Why me?"
"Well the rest of us the staff are getting their classrooms organized today, and since I basically let you live out of the shop room all summer,"
"Ugh, fine."
But rather by royal decree, authoritative will, autocratic ukase, and so on and so forth.
Oh, and there was also the tiny, little, blatant fact that De Moines, was on her list of places she would least like to return to. Being forced down one way streets with automated traffic cameras and roundabouts after coming from a town with exactly two traffic lights within the city limits wore on her nerves. Not to mention the smells from this fine metal metropolis combined both the worst of rural and urban scents to create something that, when baked in the mid-western sun produced something truly deserving of the adjective "gut-wrenching".
Cities, it seemed were one enigma piled atop another. She clearly remembered the class field trip they'd taken up to De Moines in middle school, and how she'd stood transfixed outside a parking lot for minutes on end looking at the 10 dollar an hour charge for parking and wondering why anyone would agree to such blatant highway robbery.
It was an enigma she was no closer to unraveling all these years later as she licked the last specks of mustard from between her pointer and middle fingers, wiped them clean with the one napkin she had on her person and chucked it into the nearest airport garbage bin. Five dollars on the street for a hot dog, and not a particularly good one at that. How the city dealt with these prices on top of this byzantine labyrinth that was city planning she'd never know.
The lighter wallet made her that much more anxious to pick up the package and jet; but as she stood outside the arrival gate awaiting the crowds that were just beginning to disembark from the 7:30 incoming from Vancouver she suddenly felt herself struck by another impulse. As she looked out at the small crowd surrounding the chrome barrier railing that separated the regular realm from the unsleeping, unceasing world of air travel her eyes drifted over to where she could catch her reflection in the large panes of airport glass.
Suddenly, she felt the urge to check her hair, to keep the stragglers from her bundled brown mops tops from standing out, to straighten her t-shirt just a bit and clear the hot dog breath as a familiar monologue began playing out in her head. She started down her reflection in the mirror more intently now, adjusting things here and there, popping a stick of mint flavored gum into her mouth while she tried to iron every crease and put every spare strand of hair in its place.
Hick: a word that probably wasn't used by the polite folks around you growing up, but which you yelled at your friends all the time; some variation of the old English word, country yokel, which meant approximately the same thing. Oh of course you weren't one of those folks. No you completed school, you went to college for goodness sakes, got a degree and found a good job. No, you were sophisticated enough to mingle without placing a big neon sign above your head that said 'hello, I'm from the sticks'. So fix your hair, and iron out that vocabulary of yours so no one ever has to know.
She grumbled again under her breath, going over her hair once more, eyes always glancing back at the crowds every once in a while…
She briefly considered the book under her arm and the signs a select few individuals seemed to be raising over their heads with their guests names on them. It had seemed like a fun idea in the car, something like she'd always seen folks do in the movies. Yet now, perhaps writing the peculiar looking phoneticization of his name on the back of her old Iowa interstate atlas was a bit much.
She briefly considered the idea of leaning as hard as she could into the uncouth image she'd been so careful to avoid. Maybe, if she really played her cards right she could scare the city big shot away from the job. It sounded like an amazing plan in her head. Were she six years younger she probably would've gone through with it as well.
But no, she was a grownup now, with an actual job to do. Slowly, as she heard the clamor of the doors, the distinct gravelling of suitcase wheels and the sharp snapping of dress shoes against polished tiled floors Tenten moved herself in with the crowd as they began to break off piece by piece, greeting associates or family members as they appeared.
He spotted her long before she saw him, somehow picking the name she'd scribbled on the atlas in marker almost as soon as he'd walked from the automatic sliding doors.
Tall, stern, unassuming, with long silken black hair, tired eyes and a days worth of stubble, the plainest looking black bag being drug behind him and a gray featureless sports coat draped over his shoulder. Neji Hyuga…tall, above it all and well groomed for a man who'd just stepped off of 24 hours worth of interconnecting flights. Her first point of reference for such a figure was…a very large poodle.
She quickly decided that image was not one she wanted to continue entertaining and shook her head as he rounded the barrier.
"Mr. Hyuga," she asked, her tone the most convivial it had been in her own recent memory. She mentally slapped herself. If she'd made her voice any more homespun she probably would've scored herself a roll on the Andy Griffith Show, and the idea here was decidedly not to appear like a small town fish lost in the big city.
"Ma'am," he returned, taking her outstretched hand in greeting. "And please Mr. Hyuga is my uncle's name. No need to stand on ceremony here."
Oh, so when Kiba had said fluent he'd really meant fluent. His speech was nearly flawless. In fact, being this up close and personal was the only way she'd really have known that he'd just come from the other side of the globe. He was tired, that much was evident. Dark circles etched themselves bellow his eyes and his jacket looked to be more than a little mussed, but taking everything else into consideration he looked better after hours in the air than she did…it was really giving her the urge to strangle him right then and there.
Maybe she was being a little hyperbolic, but then she was probably more hyperbolic now than she'd been as a child. Now that she thought about it, had she really changed all that much? As they broke off a very firm handshake, she took the shortest, smallest questioning glance up at his perfect features, taking in this groomed, gorgeous specimen they'd brought in…once again to do her job.
No, she decided. No, when push came to shove she really hadn't changed all that much over the years.
"Tenten, great to finally meet you as well."
"You know this really isn't necessary," he tried reasoning with her from the padded grey vinyl upholstery. As the words left his mouth, Neji Hyuga realized that his pleas probably wouldn't get him very far in a situation like this. Here he was on the other side of the world in a truck two sizes too large, its engine making animalistic growling's that were louder than the entirety of the Japanese subway on his old morning commute to school. Pleading was, in all likelihood not something that would work on his new host.
"Oh please, I insist." She said, laughing his comment off. Half of the form of her face was just barely illuminated by a golden halo, more and more becoming visible as the truck rolled forward under bright neon lights outside. She rolled the window down while the truck crawled along. "C'mon, you just got off one of those trans-pacific flights. You've gotta be famished by now right?"
"Air travel doesn't sit with me that well, no." he replied, his gut doing a twist as new smells wafted in from the outside. His stomach at least, really wasn't up to this right now. "That's why it just might best…"
"Can I take your order?" a garbled voice greeted from outside the window. Without so much as a glance in his direction Tenten popped her head out and ran her eyes across the billboard sized blue and white menu.
"Hey, yeah, can I get two double cheddar butterburgers with bacon, and uhhhh…" Tenten let her eyes free roam across the menu, leaving her last breath hanging to the point of absurdity.
"Will that be all ma'am?" the less than amused voice came back from over the intercom.
"Value meal?" Tenten asked suddenly, popping back inside and turning to face Neji. Before the clearly queasy passenger could voice his opinion Tenten dismissed it with a wave. "Ah what the heck, it's a special occasion, we can splurge. Can you give me an order of large cheese curds and get me two sweet teas as well?"
One sprint through the drive through and Neji suddenly found a brown bag plopped straight into his lap; heat waves diffusing down and the smells of grease, among other things rising upward. Salt, oil, cheese, meat. It might have been temptingly appetizing in most other circumstances had he not been 20,000 feet in the air dealing with stomach acrobatics just a few hours earlier.
He really, really didn't feel like doing this.
"Hey don't wait for me y'know, feel free to go ahead," his host said cheerily, leaning back and letting one hand take the wheel as the truck careened down the highway, the urban sprawl of De Moines already beginning to give way to sparse suburbia. The sun had already long left it's place in the sky but even still he became aware of just how much open space there was out here, outside the city bounds.
Inside of him were two contrarian impulses. The one that said he should keep this bag shut and set it aside lest he lose what little contents already lined his stomach, and another that told him to quit being so squeamish and just to accept his hosts hospitality.
In the end his upbringing won out and he slowly peeled open the bag, trying not to inhale as the hot mass of scents was released into the trucks ecosystem.
"What…even are these portion sizes?" he asked, cracking open the first box to get a look at the size of the burger contained within. Even worse was the volume of the side, what he could only describe as deep fried cheese balls in a family value, mega sized…trough.
"Ay tough it out there string-bean, if you're gonna be working amongst Iowans you might as well eat like one." Tenten laughed, still not looking from the wheel.
Neji placed the items back inside and scrunched up the bag. Unsure of just how much more of the smells he could take. He didn't know how much clearer he could make it that he just wasn't interested in food right now. He really, really didn't want to come off as rude when she was might be an individual he would be working with, and he definitely didn't want to try and offend someone who'd been kind enough to pick him up and buy him a meal…but either this woman was just oblivious to fairly common signs of nausea or…
Instead he set the bag down into the space right under the trucks radio and opted instead to take a swig of the tea sitting in a equally sized monster glass beside him. Drinks, something to keep him hydrated might suit him better. He leaned back in the chair and took some pleasure in the extra leg room the extra large truck offered him. So many flights had certainly done his aching joints no favors and he felt like he imagined mannequin, stiff at every imaginable point. With an inward sigh of something, almost resembling relaxation he raised the straw to his mouth.
Instantly, a sensation like he'd just taken a shot from a sugar bowl filled his mouth nearly causing his to hack what he taken from the cup all over the trucks dash. Only one forceful muscular movement in the throat saved him from spewing the tea everywhere.
"Kaachk…" the unnatural noise belched back from his throat as his brain tried to process what he'd just drunk. He held the paper cup to the window to try and use the miniscule starlight from outside to help him decode the identity of the saccharine liquid. "What…is that?"
"Sweet tea," Tenten said matter-of-factly, face barely shifting, eyes twitching his way only once to get a look at the reaction on his face.
"No kidding," he coughed again, trying to force what little taste that was left of the beverage in his mouth back down.
"Hey you'll get used to it. Go on, eat." Tenten tried amiably.
Ok, here was the thing, he pondered to himself as he worked the straw around the brown stew of a liquid. Sure, there were bound to be a boat load of culture differences in his case. You didn't just move to someone else's country and expect to click instantly. But this moved beyond oblivious…this seemed like something distinctly different.
"Are you trying to scare me out of this job," he asked, rearing back and letting the question fly with cool precision. The first perturbed look he'd seen since first meeting her passed across the woman's face telling that, yes that was exactly what was going on here.
Tenten looked dumbstruck, like she really hadn't expected him to figure it out, or at least not that quickly. 15 miles out from the airport and he'd already pieced together exactly what her deal was. Well maybe not exactly, but it didn't sting any less knowing she'd been pegged almost instantly by the very individual Ino chose over her.
There was silence in the car, only the humming of the engine keeping them company as the truck rumbled down an increasingly desolate highway. Any chance she may have had of covering her tracks flying out the window with the increasing silence.
"Do I at least get an explanation?" Neji asked at last, cracking the silence that had settled into the air.
The silence rushed back in almost as quickly as Neji had dispelled it. Tenten looked almost mortified by this point, racking her brain trying to come with something. This certainly wasn't her night, but then it certainly hadn't been her year either…or run of years now that she thought closely about it. She'd had one plan and as usual, nothing around to cover herself in case that fell through. She had nothing to fall back on.
In what she hoped wasn't typical of her fashion she decided to respond to his question with one of her own.
"Ok hotshot, what's the most important thing to learn in baseball?" she asked finally, taking her own swig of the drink perspiring in the cup holder beside her. She saw his inquisitive look out of the corner out of her eye, the people's eyebrow hanging up on his forehead. She spared a second long look away from the road and locked eye contact. "You're going to be teaching kids, and I do mean kids here. Little young ins just stepping onto the diamond. How do you break them in? What's the first thing someone of that age should learn when they're just starting out?"
Her question blanketed the truck in silence much as Neji's had done minutes earlier. The man sat back and crossed his arms, watching the oncoming rows and rows of fields just passingly illuminated by the yellow headlights.
Memories snapped before his minds eye like the images of a stereoscope. The faded memories from the first time his father had brought him to a professional sized stadium and let him look up and up and up at the enormity of the building. The feel of the rubber grip that lined all the children sized metal bats, the stuffy sensation of his first starched little league uniform, the one piece of advice, keep your eye on the ball, wild swing, a chance connection and a mad dash to first causing him to kicked up the sand and the dirt as he went…
Tenten watched silently, the palpable silence being replaced by a calculated atmosphere of pondering. Not exactly the kind of back and forth one would look for in a three hour drive back home, but at least they weren't talking about how she tried to purposefully get him car sick.
There was a litany of popular mutually therapeutic buzzwords she would've shunted out of her trap had she been put on the spot like this. Teamwork and camaraderie perhaps …it's not like she started playing baseball until the end of her elementary school days anyways. She'd helped to coach t-ball before though, where the emphasis was on making practice an activity. As hollow as, 'make sure they're having fun' sounded to anyone with a pulse it still rang true.
"Yakyu flux."
Well…that was certainly a new one. Both seemed pulled from their respective introspection as Tenten was left to sit and drive in briefly quizzical silence.
"I beg your pardon?" she asked.
"It's a Japanese baseball philosophy, hard to translate. It refers to the interplay and movement techniques between the infields defensive lineup."
"Are you deaf? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," Tenten said, her voice scoffing. Perhaps most ridiculous was a little harsh, but she was a little bit beyond just sitting on pins and needles here. "I just said told you, these are kids…"
"And if you'd let me explain," Neji interjected with a tone that was just prim enough to get under her skin. "Baseball theories can be adjusted to account for age and skill level. Conceptually speaking, all we're really focusing on is the fundamentals of fielding."
"Oh…yeah?" Tenten asked, trying to sound more confident in her baseball knowledge than she actually was. If her plan had been to put him on the spot, it was going down in spectacular flames now. She recalled the resume she'd seen Kiba slap down onto the table all those months ago. As long as she'd been at the game, he'd been at it longer, played for bigger and better leagues, then gone to college specifically to learn about this stuff.
She…just strutted around one one town for her entire life running games with her friends until they got to tired or eventually had moved on to do other things with their lives. What, if anything, did she possess…no what made her even begin to think she was qualified for this when someone like this was sitting right across from her?
"Still sounds like a load man. Don't philosophize here ok? We need something practical," she practically snapped. She could feel the anger in her bones. This wasn't even about him anymore, but still she pressed on emotions broiling over just a bit.
"We can boil down the complexities that you seen in higher level play to a few rudimentary drills that even younger children can grasp," Neji continued. The man glanced at her from the corner of his eyes and smiled, detecting and taking some gratification in seeing his driver somewhat subdued by his sudden explanation of baseball theory.
"Oh, cool…I guess that would be…practical," Tenten grumbled, now struggling for things to say as she started to get bogged down in her own head. Neji smiled to himself, now assured that he had her mentally up against the ropes as he prepared to exposit four years of sports education all over her.
"Right. Let's say…late game, relief pitcher on the mound, twenty four balls thrown, runners on second and third, one out, late game. Now, the pitcher move the infield in…"
"Wait a minute," Tenten said quickly, taking her eyes off the road just long enough to deliver an all too knowing eye. "You talking about the 2017 World Baseball Classic here?"
"What?"
"Yeah! It is! Semi-finals, top of the eighth, infield snuggles in, pop to third base and the man just boggles it at the worst possible moment. Fumbles it and looses the precious seconds he need to fire it off…" Tenten began, now fully taking the reigns of the conversation as she sensed a chance to change the subject and begin trading barbs again.
"I'll appreciate you not to talk ill of Nobuhiro Matsuda," Neji attempted to cut in briefly.
"USA beats Japan 2-1," Tenten said slapping her hands against the wheel definitively, cocky grin now growing wider by the second. "Did you guys really create an entire baseball philosophy based entirely on not getting yourselves into a ditch like you did four years ago?"
"Don't talk to me about baseball academia in 2017," Neji returned with an annoyed tone.
"Yeah, yeah, sure everyone makes mistakes…" Tenten began, obviously jovial with the new direction the conversation found itself moving in.
"That they do," Neji cut in with uncharacteristic abruptness. Tenten let eyes dance away from the road for just the briefest of seconds. That one certainly seemed to have stuck itself in his craw more than any other of her earlier comments.
So maybe she blew it a little bit out of proportion. It was all technically true. 3rd baseman on the Japanese national team, Nobuhiro Matsuda had fumbled a grounder from the briefest of seconds and lost Japan a run, ultimately leading to the USA advancing to the World Classic finals. Yet, he seemed to be taking the whole thing fairly personally, his arms crossed head raised chin lifted a little defiantly, bottom lip set and eyes peeled. Maybe it was a cultural thing? Maybe he'd taken her hammering home of the mistake it as a sleight against him?
For the first time she found herself treading a bit lighter, and ultimately decided not to press the issue.
"Hey, I'm not knocking it or anything, the Japanese nation team is pretty renowned for their defensive lineup," Tenten returned, surprisingly herself with how conciliatory she made her own tone. "I swear Masahiro Tanaka might have been the only solid part of the Yankee's for a spate there. What's he been up to back in Japan by the way? Everything gets kind of fuzzy once they cross back over the ocean."
"Signed with the Eagles, 900 million yen a year,"
"Shoot, what's that in dollars?"
"A lot. Not undeserved for the best pitcher in world."
"Ok, that's a stretch. That's a stretch and you know it."
As the truck hummed down the blacktop off into the deep black of the rural Iowan night, stars ahead the only other light for miles in any direction the conversation dipped further into the one thing both of them shared in common. Baseball.
They pulled into Sophia somewhere around 11:57, just a stroke away from midnight. The truck hummed to a halt in the cities downtown in front of the one blinking red light. Tenten let her foot fall all the way on the breaks, letting the truck come to a complete halt as she did the cursory left and right glance despite the fact that the town was indeed almost completely deserted this time of night.
"And I'm telling you," Neji reiterated, his tone more than a little haggard at this point though still full of pomp and bluster. "That eight is a perfectly acceptable age for pop fly drills in the pitch dark. That's they way I was raised."
"Uh huh, yeah that's great man, but I think out here you might want to try a more local approach. Let's try not to bean any kids with pop fly's they can't see alright?"
Their baseball talk had, surprisingly lasted them all the way home. Unsurprisingly she'd found herself lost more and more when the discussions drifted further into the more technical aspects of her chosen sport. The more he spoke the more she could feel him eroding on her anger, chipping away on that ego of hers.
The light overhead flashed red and then went dark once more. On the corner the four way crossroads one particular building caught her eye, laying outside her left window twenty feet away was the café, the same one she'd sat in precisely 98 days prior and reviewed Mr. Hyugas file along with Ino and the others.
It was with more than a little melancholy that she turned her attention forwards once more, looking down the silent strip of blacktop in front of her and to a tiny row of buildings. The red brick antique store, the elder Yamanka's shop of sowing supplies and flowers she'd spent so many hours at, a fresh steel hardware store that had two years prior replaced the candy shop she and so many others had practically grown up in as a child.
Down the right road was the cities singular dinner and grocers, both of which had turned down very lucrative offers from larger national chains to be bought out. Tenten knew both buildings like the back of her hand. Even in pitch black she could probably have waltzed right up to the diner and found her booth she'd used for so many years.
To the left was the boarded up newspaper office, Mr. Ebisu finally having folded the family business after so many years, giving into the encroachment of digital to the former domain of print. Past that was the assessors office and town hall, the towns major landmarks where half a decade prior officials from De Moines had showed up to declare the rickety building a historical landmark. Off into the very distance lay the bar, a building not zoned for the city square, the only other artificial source of light still beamed and buzzed with patrons.
Just another quiet Sophia night, the kind of night she'd grown up knowing so well, and yet all around here were the signs of the inexorable march of time, like some hopelessly dreary county song that strangled the regional radio waves. Was it selfish of her to wish that these kinds of nights could carry on forever?
She looked to her passengers seat once more, and there under the blinking crimson lights and what little headlight glow illuminated his face sat the embodiment of it all. The change given human form, sitting in her car, waiting for her to usher it right into the only town she'd ever lived in.
That, Tenten felt with a resigned sigh, went a long way to explaining why he so thoroughly irked her. It might not even have been the man as a person. On every level, straight to the symbolic he represented the thing she was afraid of.
Was it so selfish of her to act the way she had then?...Yeah, yeah it probably was. Well he was here now, that was that. Still, one part of her brain, the little small voice crouched in the crevices of her soul whispered ideas to her, suggestions. Little confirmations that she knew well enough that she wasn't going to shake until she gave them at least some indulgence.
"Hey," she began innocently enough with a blank look in his direction.
"Yeah?" he replied, raising an eyebrow at the angelic little look on her face.
"Hold on."
"What?"
Without further warning she let her foot fall onto the gas like she'd dropped a brick on it. Her truck screamed to life, illuminating the thick silence of the Sophia night as it barreled off the line and through the little stretch of downtown that remained, streaking off into the night with the grace of a bull in a china shop.
Tenten's face lit up as they sped down the road, speedometer forgotten, letting up only on the gas pedal once the truck hit a bump in the road and something resembling hang time was achieved.
It was, if you had asked Neji at the time, it felt much like riding on a roller coaster at the midway point down a drop when the car jumps the tracks and goes careening and screaming off through the air. Currently however, the mans mind was occupied with other thoughts such as taking the advice from the pilot of this screaming metal death trap to heart and clutching the sides of his seat so tightly his knuckles seemed to be turning white.
For some time, he couldn't recall what length, Neji could sense, coursing right through the floor of the vehicle, up his seat and straight into his bones an impending curve. As though he could feel what the trucks tires wanted to do, like this animal of an automobile had a mind that he could read. Perhaps it was intuition or perhaps he was just feeding off of the cackling mad scientist like vibes his driver was giving off. In either case, in the best interest of his own sanity he slammed his eyes shut just as he felt the truck lurch.
There was a sudden screech, the silence and near weightlessness of another airborne bump and then suddenly the grinding of dirt beneath the wheel, a plowing, rumbling, crunching noise altogether different what his ears had become accustomed to.
As soon as he opened his eyes his suspicions were confirmed. His driver, eyes still peeled on the road in front of her, maniac grin on her face had yanked the pickup off road and was now spinning across the country dirt like a bat out of hell, their significantly reduced speed offset by the fact that she seemed intent to barrel through just about every obstacle she came across.
In the dark of the night, his visibility reduced to what was directly illuminated by the headlights the world seemed like a whirling black blur with the occasional tree flying past his view like it was ducking out of the way. A set of bushes didn't appear to be that lucky and were instead reduced to pile of sticks and leaves. For a brief spate of time his brain accepted it, that he was just in the car with a driver who had completely lost her marbles and that this was just how life was now. The truck swerved to the right and for a brief surreal moment Neji felt the world slow to a crawl as a group of dull eyed cows appeared out of his window, the bovines watching him pass by like he was a sort of zoo exhibit. Only a final wall of shrubbery, planted just so as to indicate a demarcation line of some sorts, beyond which there might've been a cliff or a brick wall finally convinced his brain that this moment, of all moments was the time he should fish a piece a paper out of his bag and begin penning his last will and testament.
He shut his eyes once more, fingers still clasped onto the seat. There was another crunching noise and then…
He felt the truck turn sharply, the screeching of the breaks split the country night and finally the horseless carriage came to a blessed halt and final resting place.
A click of the seatbelt, a zipping of the strap, a creak of the door, the subsequent slam…she'd exited the vehicle. Something he should probably consider doing as well, rather than just sitting there, tied to the chair, eyelids clamped together like he was awaiting death. He would get up, he really would, but from the way his organs seemed to have migrated up into his chest, and by the way his heart was now rattling around in it's cage almost as badly as the truck had been moments ago he figured he'd give his body some time to realize that Charon had revoked his one way ticket.
He gathered up the stress and tension of the last few minutes and gradually, ever so gradually released it in one long continuous breath out his nose. Slowly, his fingers removed themselves from the fresh indents they'd created and his eyes creaked open, taking in the now gentle hum of the still operating engine.
Tenten was sitting out in front of the truck, some ways away, a few feet from a sudden hill, her legs crossed and eyes drearily draped off towards the distance. Neji repeated her earlier motions and let himself out of the car, now fully processing what had just occurred. Without fanfare of urgency he approached her, working the stiffness out of his other limbs as he prepared to unleash upon her the biggest tirade of his life.
"I get that you might not want me here. I understand that I'm the one intruding on your territory. I know having someone trespass onto something you previously were in control of can't feel great, but all of this…all of this being said," Neji began, his tone rising gradually as he got the words out, their consonants becoming sharper and sharper as he did so, egged on by Tenten's tireless stares out into the distance, "What did you hope to prove here? Did you just develop an urge to play Formula 1 driver tonigh? Just where is the benefit in trying to kill us both? Come on, just tell me where your head's at, please I beg you."
He finished his entreatments with hands clasped mockingly together as he leaned down towards her resting figure, trying to force her to recognize that he really had not just enjoyed what she'd put him through.
There was, quite typically and expectedly a silent pause between the two. Neji brought himself back up to standing height and glowered down at her as the two remained quiet, only a summer breeze interrupting the ever present hum behind them. Neji took all his stress and released it into one great sigh again as he looked back down at his driver.
He'd gotten a distinct sense that he really wasn't welcome with her and this seemed to have sealed his earlier inklings. She knew all about baseball, she clearly prided herself on that, it was all they had talked about on the way here. Yet, at the same time there were two other conflicting impulses. She seemed recalcitrant whenever he began speaking beyond what she already knew, almost like she became scarred of him in those moments. He put two and two together and came to the obvious conclusion. He was stepping on the position she wanted and she was going to try and make his life a constant disaster. She'd gone about expressing these feelings it in the most abrasive and insane manner possible but at the same time it stoked that competitive part of his spirit. Neji Hyuga did not let himself get run out of town.
At the moment though, she sat in what was almost quiet contemplation…Tenten, this girl in quiet contemplation, an oxymoron if there ever was one. Still it didn't seem to fall in line with either side of his personality he'd seen so far. It was a curious anomaly after he'd spent the entire trip watching both sides. Slowly, he followed her gaze off into the distance, down the slope of the hill and towards the green grass and padded baseball diamond that sat directly behind the small high school complex.
"I grew up here," Tenten said at last, determining that he'd finally caught on to what she was looking at. There was another pause as she realized her statement might have been just a little obvious. "I mean most of us grew up here. Most of us leave to head off to the big city at some point…and then some of us come back. A lot of us don't, but sometimes we just feel that pull."
Her words seemed long, periodically marked with pregnant pause and melancholy daydreaming. She hadn't so much as looked his way since exiting the truck, just sat on the grass and reveled in her own memories.
"This will be the entire world for a whole new generation to come if providence be kind. We're not exactly at the crossroads of America out here," she finished with a small smile, thinking it humorous that he wouldn't have noticed after a three hour drive across the flat lands and fields. The look melted back into her face as she drew her legs up under her chin and pulled her hands close together. "Just think about that for a minute. This is the biggest thing out here in our small slice of the world. This is priority number one. It goes baseball, farming and the Akimichi's steak n' sweat corn dinner platters, in that order."
She finally turned her head to look at him, features as calm as the spacey blues and purples of the sky he'd flown in on. It was as calm and as neutral as he'd seen her in the four hours he'd known her, no easy feet. No mock casualness behind it, no edge to her voice like she was trying to one up his knowledge, just an earnest, honest answer.
"What was I thinking?" she asked, getting to her feet and brushing her pants off. "Well if I ever find the answer to that I'll let you know. I guess I just had some stuff I needed to get off of my chest. Baseball is...just something we do a lot of out here. This job is all for the kids. So you make sure they enjoy it alright?"
Neji watched in silence as she gave him a friendly punch in the arm as she strolled back to the truck, hands still in her pockets.
"Welcome to Sofia Mr. Hyuga. I really hope you enjoy your stay."
He blinked as he tried to process the words. Before he could movement could be seen from just beyond the line of bushes. The same sleepy eyed cows looked back at him mindlessly, not chewing or grazing, apparently just having popped in to see what all the fuss was about. With a half hearted bay they turned and left, deciding that any action was long over.
"Well come on hotshot! I gotta get you to your new digs tonight!" Tenten yelled, now leaning out of the truck window like this whole detour of death had been his idea.
As he climbed silently back inside Neji concluded that the evening had easily made his top three strangest near death experiences. He supposed that he should give some kind of acknowledgement, some recognition of the earnest heart to heart she'd tried to set up earlier.
"Is uh, anyone going to complain that you just drove through their fields?" Was the only thing his jet lagged brain managed to get out as Tenten looked over her shoulder while backing up.
"Ah, don't worry about it, this fields supposed to be fallow for the season…at least I hope it is."
The cows watched dully as she drove off, still giving Neji strange, empty farewell looks. The perfectly strange cap to a perfectly strange night.
For Tenten it had marked a perfectly amiable break between the two. He was here now, and she could live with that. She let a smile at the memory come to rest on her face, before a stern clearing of the throat from the figure in front of her brought her gaze back down. The individual to whom she'd just related the entire story stood there, arms crossed and not looking the least bit amused. In fact, Ino's stony face looked ready to break hers.
"…Tenten," her voice stormed in a voice she knew unfortunately all too well. Slowly, Tenten tried to inch back and looked over her back to make sure the door was open.
"I mean we got along fine…y'know I'm gonna go check on my room," Tenten said quickly, suddenly turning and bolting for the exit.
"Tenten!" Ino screamed, chasing after her in a scene not totally unfamiliar from ones that played out amongst students during the regular year. "What is wrong with you? What were you thinking?"
There was that same question again. As Tenten belted down the halls, letting her sneakers carry her away from her enraged boss she concluded that she still didn't know, but found the least bit of solace in the fact that she had all semester to work that question out.
Yakyu flux isn't a real thing. I just needed something that sounded vague and philosophical like. Anywho, sorry for the wait!