Tenten didn't believe in fate. She really didn't. Even if she loved palmistry and tarots and fortune-telling, that wasn't the same as believing in fate. For her, those things were like weather forecasts. They would tell her if it was rain or shine, blizzard or sandstorm. They would tell her if she would have trials and tribulations in her life, or if she could expect an easy journey, whether she would reach her goals early or late.

Just because it would rain didn't mean she had to get wet. It just meant that she would need to carry an umbrella. And when she was promised treasure, she knew that she needed to bring a treasure chest. Only, three days into this B-rank treasure hunt mission that Tsunade-sama had sent them all on, she was nowhere close to finding her treasure. Passing through potholed roads, traversing muddy fields, and taking shelter from the dark, murky sky, Team Guy was currently camping out in a wonderful cave, deciding to turn in for the night after several hours of fruitless searching.

The old lady cackled madly as she examined Tenten's outstretched palms. "Child, how do you expect me to read your hands properly when they're in this state?"

The palmist ran her knotted, gnarled fingers over one particularly nasty laceration slashing through the fate line of Tenten's left hand.

"Hey!" Tenten snapped, her cheeks growing warm. "I'm a ninja, you know! We have training and missions and stuff! This is normal!"

The old lady cackled again. "You, child, have been playing with knives long before you were made a ninja." As proof, she ran her fingers over another nasty laceration. And another. And another. And...well, Tenten's hands were always more sliced up than a cook's cutting board. It just came with the territory of being a weapons specialist.

"Listen, baa-san, can you tell me my weekly forecast or not?" she asked, sighing heavily. If this old lady was going to run over every single cut and indent on Tenten's hands, they would both be here forever.

The old lady turned businesslike, examining Tenten's fate line ever more critically with a dark, beady eye. "You have strong willpower. You'll do whatever it takes to seize your goals."

Tenten scoffed. Well, duh. Of course she knew that already. What did the old lady expect from the greatest weapons user ever? She wanted a forecast, not a personality rundown.

"Patience, child, patience," murmured the old lady. "Let's see...you have a keen appreciation for the things that are truly valuable. Combined with your strong fate line, I do believe that by the end of your mission, you'll find a valuable treasure, child."

Tenten's ears perked up. "Treasure? What kind of treasure? A golden kusarigama? Or maybe a sara from a komahiki? Or maybe – "

"You have a one-track mind, child." The old lady chuckled. "This treasure will be right in front of your eyes."

Tenten sighed. What was it with chirologists and speaking in riddles? She just wanted to know if she would come across something incredibly amazing soon, like the Bashosen, the Kusanagi no Tsurugi, a naginata from Kirigakure, or maybe even...

"TENTEN!" yelled Lee's voice. "ARE YOU READY YET? LET'S GOOOO!"

"Right, that will be three hundred ryo," said the old lady, letting go of Tenten's hands and turning to rearrange the items on her shelves. "Hurry up and find your treasure, child."

Where was her treasure, though? The mission was to find the mystery item that some merchant had hidden somewhere and forgotten the location of, leaving him despondent and terrified and begging Tsunade-sama for help. Help she had given in the form of Team Guy, after wryly telling the man that there was such a thing as a bank nowadays, and he didn't have to bury his valuables in a pit like they were still stuck in the Warring States Era.

Guy-sensei and Lee had taken to the mission with gusto, vowing that if they didn't find this merchant's mystery item within the week, they would...actually, Tenten decided not to think about it. She didn't need migraines so early into their mission. Neji had rolled his eyes when they were assigned the B-rank, whether at Guy-sensei and Lee's stupidity for inventing such a silly challenge for themselves, or whether at the merchant's stupidity for actually storing his treasure in an untraceable location, she didn't know. Maybe both.

The problem was, when the merchant said he couldn't trace it, he meant that he really couldn't trace it. The best Team Guy had gotten out of him was that he'd stored it somewhere in the outskirts of his village, which was on the border of Fire and Wind. And was that border long. The outskirts of the village were taken up mainly by the presence of a deep, deep forest, with trees so big and green, they looked almost black. Neji had done a cursory scan of the forest with his Byakugan and had informed them that the woods were approximately ninety kilometers in width.

Hence days of fruitless searching.

Goodie.

Tenten cursed under her breath as she warmed her hands by the fire. Stupid merchant and stupid cold, dark, freezing cave. The treasure he'd buried had better be good to make it worth all this trouble.

"Say...Neji..." she mumbled, turning to face her serene teammate, who was currently sitting in seiza, having just wrapped up his daily meditation. "Where do you think the treasure is? What do you think it is? We've been searching for it forever, you know."

"Hmmm."

"Don't 'hmmm' me." She sighed in a mixture of boredom, irritation, and exhaustion. "I asked you a question."

"Yes, I'm aware," Neji said quietly, staring into the flickering campfire for so long, she was afraid that he would strain his Byakugan. "We are in the correct location. That man said that his 'treasure' was in this forest somewhere, didn't he? And we've already searched eighty-five of the ninety kilometers of the forest."

"Yeah?" she muttered. "And...?"

"And..." Neji frowned thoughtfully, still somehow as serene as ever while doing so, looking the image of a perfect Hyuuga, not a strand of his long, dark hair out of place, his white kimono still spotless after five whole days of searching for the treasure. His white eyes looked mesmerizing in the light of the fire, and as a cool gust of nighttime wind swept into their cave, she believed that he truly did face the sun. He basked in it, and it made him radiant, just as his clan name indicated.

Somehow. How he gave off that aura was still an enigma to her.

Tenten would have to find out what his secret was.

"I rather think..." Neji mused, abruptly derailing her train of thought, "a cave is a great place to hide treasure, don't you agree, Tenten?"

Tenten blinked, then straightened up in interest. "I think you're right. Use your Byakugan, Neji, and we can hurry up and search this whole cave!"

Neji nodded once, then stood and activated his kekkei genkai, eyes zoning in on the rocks near the entrance, then behind them, and then finally underneath them. His eyes widened, his eyebrows quirked, and he blinked several times, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Her heart raced. If that look meant what she thought it meant, Team Guy had hit jackpot. Was it a golden kusarigama? Or a sara from a komahiki? Or maybe it was a naginata from Kiri, or perhaps the Kusanagi no Tsurugi, or the Bashosen.

"Guy-sensei, Lee..." Neji said, rousing the two from their lookout at the cave entrance. "I need you two to do something..."

Tenten's heart was now suffering from arrhythmia.

What was the treasure?

"What the actual – " Tenten's heart had gone from arrhythmia to plunging into her stomach in absolute, utter disappointment.

"Guy-sensei! Could you believe that there are some people who love ramen as much as Naruto-kun?" Lee asked brightly, his fists dusty from the pummeling he and Guy-sensei had given to the pit underneath. "What an amazing treasure!"

"Lee, ten thousand all-you-can-eat ramen coupons is. Not. Treasure," Tenten snapped, her teeth bared. "Seriously. How. Was this. A B-rank mission?"

"Now, now, Tenten, one man's trash is another man's treasure," said Guy-sensei sagely, stroking his nonexistent beard as though he were a philosopher. "We shouldn't judge. After all, as Lee said, Naruto would consider this to be – "

"Naruto is not a normal human being!" she bellowed.

She stared gloomily at the pile of coupons on the cave floor, her fading adrenaline rush giving way to numbness. What a stupid merchant, leading them all on with his despondency on losing his "treasure" and begging Tsunade-sama for help.

Neji was shaking his head in what appeared to be amusement. Not too common from him.

"Ramen really does give people brain damage, doesn't it, Tenten?"

And here she thought the chirologist said she would find a really cool treasure right in front of her eyes. All that was there in front of her was Neji.

And a bundle of coupons that no human on the planet would appreciate other than Naruto. She sighed.

Speaking of eyes, Neji's eyes locked onto hers in a rare glimmer of mirth.

Huh. She didn't see that kind of face from him often.

She supposed she would find it, whatever it was, by the end of the week, then. That old lady did say the treasure was right in front of her eyes.

She just had to be patient. Neji sure seemed to be.

A/N: Written for Day 10: Treasure. Thanks for the comments, luljigak, Guest, and latte!

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