Many people were of the opinion that, as the jyuuken taijutsu style was deft, graceful, and easy on the eyes, that the Hyuuga would naturally be good at dancing. That was not necessarily true. While some Hyuuga, such as current heiress Hanabi and most surprisingly, the clan head, Hiashi, were exceptionally gifted in the art, others...were not.
Hyuuga Hinata, former heiress, was as duck-footed and awkward in dance as they came. But then, no one in the Hyuuga expected her to be good, because they'd cruelly written her off just because she didn't have the natural ability for jyuuken that others had. So it was that they would politely nod and cover their smiles in their sleeves whenever they'd see her stumble and trip, which was often, whether it was in jyuuken, dancing, whatever.
And whenever this would happen, Hyuuga Neji would see red. How dare they all mock Hinata-sama's effort? Did they know how hard she tried every day, how difficult it was on some mornings just for her to wake up and face the world? The amount of effort she put into mastering Thirty-Two Palms far surpassed any that those cruel, mocking clansmen put in anything. And now they had the gall to smile behind their sleeves because she stumbled and tripped during the Rinne Festival a few days ago.
She'd turned ghostly pale at her slip-up and had not eaten properly for several days. And that made Neji's stomach hurt, like he hadn't properly eaten for several days.
It just wasn't...it wasn't fair. That someone could try as hard as Hinata-sama and still get no respect. Something burned at the corners of his eyes and he blinked.
Deep in his mind, he knew that he felt so strongly about Hinata-sama because Hinata-sama reminded him of himself. Some days, he felt like they were both swimming upstream a river, like they'd fallen into a dark well and were clawing themselves out, like they were trying to catch the wind in a net.
He knew he was being irrational; that both of them had been learning and growing every day; that the results were plain to see for everyone except those foolish clansmen of his; that perhaps he shouldn't worry too much about what they thought. On a good day, he'd just tell Hinata-sama not to worry, that even monkeys fell out of trees sometimes, and he'd teach her how to dance properly.
But today was a bad day. Because Neji's much-vaunted genius did not extend to everything. He couldn't tell her not to worry and that he would teach her how to dance properly. Because Hyuuga Neji absolutely sucked at dancing. He too was as duck-footed and awkward as Hinata-sama in this regard.
Neji was of the opinion that he really needed to remedy this, so that he could teach Hinata-sama how.
Which was why he was stuck out in the training grounds, tied to a tree as Tenten brandished a wicked-looking scythe at him.
He gulped.
"Dance training?" Tenten asked, blinking at Neji in surprise. "You want dance training?"
"...Yes," he muttered, staring at the ground, avoiding what he was sure was an amused look. It wasn't every day that he revealed his weaknesses, no matter how trivial. "Some of our clan have mocked Hinata-sama lately because she tripped and fell a few days ago during the Rinne Festival dance. And I want to..."
"Teach Hinata how to dance?"
Tenten's voice sounded neither amused nor mocking. Neji cautiously looked up. She...was smiling? No, he corrected himself, she was beaming. Her dark eyes suddenly reflected the light of the winter sun and her grin stretched not from ear to ear, but hair bun to hair bun. That was how widely she was smiling.
It was...
Terrifying.
The wind was suddenly knocked out of his lungs as Tenten threw a tessen at him, slamming him flat on his back and onto the formerly pristine snow.
"What...what was that for?" he wheezed. Barely had he gotten to his knees and glanced at the dented(!) fan lying on the ground when Tenten proceeded to throw an exploding note at him. This time, he did dodge, but not before the paper flew dangerously close to his face and detonated in midair, its heat melting the frost on a nearby tree.
Neji winced as his ears rang ominously.
"Wait, wait, time out!" he yelled, desperately waving his hands around like a flightless chicken. "Tenten, what are you doing?"
"Dance training!" came a cheerful response, followed by a volley of...cannonballs. Were those...Neji winced as another explosion shook the training grounds. Yep, they were exploding cannonballs.
"Dodge with no jyuuken, Palms Revolving Heaven, nothing, got that, Neji?"
Whoever suggested that Tenten was the only non-unhinged member of Team Guy needed to be shot, in Neji's opinion.
How the hell, he wondered, was this dance training?
Why had Tenten turned into Anko?
His previously-sane-currently-deranged teammate had, as of two hours into the "dance training," created two large craters in the training ground, four smaller ones near the forest, frightened many poor birds, genin chasing cats, cats being chased by genin, and Neji. She was of the view that Neji focused far too much of his taijutsu training on just deflecting her weapons barrage with Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven, thus not living up to his true potential as a dancer. Therefore, she'd declared, just after launching a volley of flaming, poisoned fukibari at him, he needed to hone his evasion skills the good old-fashioned way.
No ninjutsu. No genjutsu. No taijutsu.
Just "duck and run and pray to all the gods that Tenten doesn't kill you." So far, he supposed he'd been successful. He hadn't suffered any serious injuries, but an unpleasant charred smell hung constantly in the air and on his clothes, and he was soaking wet (and dirty) from tromping around the frozen training grounds to avoid the flaming, poisoned projectiles.
Neji wondered if Guy-sensei and Lee had spiked Tenten's breakfast with youthful hallucinogens. Then a horokubiya spun past his elbow, and Neji's life flashed before his eyes.
Tenten had a real fetish for explosions.
As she enjoyed saying from time to time...
Boom.
Which was how Neji woke up to find himself tied to a tree and Tenten brandishing a wicked-looking scythe at him.
She still had that terrifying hair bun to hair bun grin on her face, which did nothing to reassure Neji's worries that her breakfast may have been spiked.
She approached closer and closer, each footstep magnified a thousand times in Neji's ears, sounding like a colossal being ready to crush everything in her path. The scythe sailed past his left ear and embedded itself into the tree bark. The thwacking sound it made combined with the booms, slams, swoops, and other special effects from the "dance training" had all served to induce a premature case of tinnitus in poor Neji's ears.
Tenten kept grinning that Glasgow smile, and Neji was reminded of how, years ago, his cousin Ko had once told him a nightmarish story of an onryo named slit-mouthed woman, whose mouth was predictably split open in a devilish smile.
Neji looked down to avoid her stare. He hoped he wouldn't have dreams of her tonight.
"Good job, Neji!" she said, coming up nose to nose with him. Neji tentatively looked up. To his shock, Tenten's smile seemed perfectly normal, kind, and sane again. Her dark eyes still caught the light of the sun, but in a really nice way, not a bloodcurdling way. "I'd say you performed very youthfully today. Dance training was a success!"
She guffawed loudly. Neji found himself blinking in surprise at how suddenly she'd flipped the switch back to normal.
This was weird.
It got weirder.
"Anyway, I'm tired after all that practice!" No kidding. They would have a lot of explaining to do when Tsunade-sama saw the state of the training grounds. It looked like an asteroid had struck and wiped out all traces of greenery. "So take me out for some dinner tonight, 'kay?"
She leaned in ever closer, something Neji would have thought impossible, given that they were already nose to nose.
Then she bopped him on said nose with her finger and ran away. Neji stared after her in bafflement, not even realizing that she hadn't untied him.
...Her breakfast had definitely been spiked with something...
A/N: Written for NejiTen Month 2021 Day 1: Dance. :)
So does anyone remember that one Shippuden episode where Naruto, Neji, and Tenten go to meet that weapons developer (Iou or something), and he had a helper, and that helper's clothes were on fire, and Tenten didn't even care, she just pushed the flaming guy out of the way so that she could geek out over the ninja weapons...? And Neji had this mildly frightened expression on his face as she did that? Yeah...
I feel like deep down, Tenten is just as unhinged as Guy and Lee, ha ha.
I'm so busy, I don't know what possessed me to write a prompt for every single day of NejiTen Month. Seriously...I have so many things to do...but it just won't leave me alone. Also, does anyone know how to contact the mods running the event? Because I'm not on tumblr, I just saw the prompts and wanted to write something, is all...
So anyway, please review! :)