Note: I don't really follow canon past Shippuden. It was a shame what Kishimoto did with Tenten and the rest of Team Gai, so hopefully some of that is brought to terms through this silly little fic. Enjoy!

Some basic terms:

Shinobi: another word for ninja

Kunoichi: a female ninja

Genin, Chunin, Jonin: Beginner, Middle, and Advanced level ninjas

Taijutsu, Ninjutsu, and Genjutsu: physical hand-to-hand combat; manipulation of chakra for certain movements, actions, or physical properties; and illusory jutsu

Fuinjutsu: summoning jutsu, which Tenten uses to summon weapons

One of the strangest relationships among the rookie ninja was that friendship between Hyuga Neji and Tenten of Team Gai. They were the only genin team of that year, as despite the normal three genin teams that were formed after the academy graduation, two were disbanded soon after. Thanks to this and also to Rock Lee's particular situation, the team was held back from entering the Chunin exam by their teacher until the following year, which they participated with the highly talented new batch of rookies.

The beginning of their ninja careers began with an unorthodox but highly spirited introduction with their new teacher and teammates. Gai was flamboyant, Lee desperate to prove himself, Tenten excited to get started, and Neji reserved and judgmental. It took all of half a day for them to get to know each other, and all of fifty-six seconds (over the span of three scuffles in fifteen minutes) for Gai to whoop his thin, bony ass, at which point Neji conceded defeat and acknowledged his instructor's superior abilities. Being thrown like a wet ragdoll into seven trees tended to do that to a person.

Over the next year, Neji ruthlessly assumed leadership and hungrily devoured any and all instruction Gai had for him, though perhaps he didn't show his passion as well as Lee. At that time, he thought that any show of emotion was something to be shameful of and, though he mellowed out after his defeat at Naruto's hands and over several long years of being berated by Tenten and loudly encouraged by Gai and Lee (the latter of which often had the reverse effect and threw him back into his anti-social tendencies), he would remain mostly stoic and reserved throughout his life.

Though he derided Lee and mistrusted Gai's devotion to the team and specifically to himself, the one person who frustrated and baffled him the most was Tenten. At least he could understand the others' motivations: Lee was desperate to better his abilities and prove himself and Gai was well-meaning and annoying by nature. Tenten, well, sure, she had a backstory.

She had lost her parents to disease that could easily have been healed if the virus had been detected in its earlier stages and she entered the academy as a means of survival; ninjas were servants of the country and its responsibility – it was hard to become a ninja, hard to survive as a ninja, and hard to maintain the appropriate lifestyle, but ninjas were afforded a semblance of financial stability, meager as their earnings were. She lived as a foster child in several civilian homes and had little to no problems with the families, though neither did she form any long-lasting relationships. She was respectful and even deferential as a child. She knew instinctively how to survive when dependent on others, but loathed the necessity nonetheless. As soon as she became genin, the first thing she did was get a low-interest loan for shinobi and find the lowliest, most dilapidated, beautiful, perfect apartment she could find. The landlady was deaf in two ears and made up for it by screaming at Tenten whenever she could, but Tenten loved and cared for her like a grandmother. She could afford to do so – she was self-dependent now and any show of respect or compassion was entirely her own.

Her biggest motivations included paying off her loans and being able to protect herself against any foe. This made her a good teammate: she would train hard so that she could become stronger, take on better-earning missions, and become more independent faster.

However, her true motivation in training lay in her love of steel. One of her greatest fears, though Neji discovered this slowly in bits and pieces over several long years, was that of someone doing her harm, bred by years of sleeping on odd couches and back-cots in her foster homes and her overwhelming sense of childhood aloneness. The death of her parents had distorted her active imagination into having her speculate poisoning, assassination, and police cover-ups. She trained her aim and accuracy with a fanatic desire to root out any and all servants of evil in the shadows that might wish her harm and focused on steel rather than her genjutsu or ninjutsu: steel was real in her small, soft hands. Chakra was too abstract and capricious for her to really trust, genjutsu too easy to dissolve or distort, ninjutsu too complicated. Tenten regretted this later when she found that her chakra control was not fine enough to become a medic ninja like her idol, Senju Tsunade of the Sannin and the Fifth Hokage, but she swallowed the bitter pill and put even more trust in steel.

This fear of being harmed by unknown outside forces was what made her turn, instinctively, to fortune telling. To Neji, fortune telling wasn't even comparable to genjutsu, which he and Tenten shared disparaging opinions about, but to Tenten, it was tantamount to preventative action. Learning what was lucky and unlucky for her, about her own specific characteristics, and any looming misfortune and how she could prevent it – to Tenten, this was as important as learning a new jutsu or a new technique. The first time she gifted her teammates with an auspicious paper crane she had folded herself, Lee promised to treasure it forever and promptly tossed it into the laundry with the rest of his sweat-soiled clothes and equipment later that night, Gai juggled the crane long enough to make Tenten nervous but placed it lovingly into the front pocket of his flak jacket when she wasn't looking, and Neji crumpled it into his pants pocket like he was hiding someone else's pornographic material. He was definitely embarrassed of her in that moment and almost embarrassed on her behalf. She didn't know better, he felt. Perhaps he could expand her horizon away from such superstitious mumbo-jumbo. In fact, it was his duty as a good teammate. (The crane he discovered later that evening in his room and was unable to throw away – for some reason, throwing away that crane was a betrayal of trust, more to himself than to Tenten.)

When Tenten suggested they get their palms read together before their first overnight mission, Neji jumped at the chance to instruct her on the illogicality of the whole matter, how she was being ripped off by people-astute cold-readers, and how nothing she did could change the great river of fate. He was sure she would acquiesce to his superior knowledge and insight and even perhaps thank him for his guidance. What he did not expect was for her to rip him a new one, which she did, with a scathing monotone and poker face that was far more devastating than if she had thrown a hundred senbon at him. At least he could defend himself against a physical attack – quite effectively, in fact. He had no defense against her accusations of being a 'fatalistic ass-smushing worm-child' and her question as to 'why you bother training at all – you should just stand in front of a train and see how many pieces you fall apart in.' Tenten was a poet of the profane.

She left in a huff, leaving Neji paralyzed in the training field to clean up the mess of weapons on his own. As he gathered the countless shuriken, kunai, and senbon, his emotions settled like sand in water, leaving behind a grudging admiration to float to the top. None of his peers had ever referred to him with such wild disdain: He was a Hyuga, for fuck's sake, and a genius Hyuga to boot. Hinata trembled in his sight, Hanabi admired him in her own twisted way. Even Hyuga Hiashi might reprimand him for a reckless word or a disrespectful look, but never would he have called him a 'bare-bottomed, shit-stuffed wombat of a ninja.' Children at the academy who were disgusted with his supremacy (and superior attitude) might call him names, but they did so out of a lack of self-respect. Tenten did so out of the rage of charging rhinos that did not recognize whether it was life or death they were headed toward. Had he not been ambushed so, Neji might have challenged her to a battle and made her eat the dust at his feet. As it was, he mutely collected the weapons, put them in a large unorganized pile under Tenten's favorite (and therefore, most battered) tree, and went home.

The next day at dawn, the two met under the tree, where Tenten was already gathering her weapons, and Neji helped her organize them the way she liked, with her little color-coordinated tags. She stiffened when he appeared out of the gray behind her, and only really relaxed when Gai and Lee appeared, marching loudly toward them on their thumbs. Neji silently enjoyed her visible discomfort – he was allowed, probably legally, at least that level of pettiness – but did nothing to rub it in or antagonize her in any way. By midday, she had relaxed in his presence enough to be no more than gently wary of any juvenile revenge; by evening, she was treating him exactly as usual. Neji was silently going over his general plans for the next day, lying in his sleeping bag, when his tent opened quietly from outside and someone stepped in. He would have gotten out of his bag and killed the person if he hadn't seen the silhouette of two buns and the general build and height or smelled the faint sweet scent of peaches that seemed to follow Tenten. He despaired the choice in fragrance – kunoichi should be scentless. Much more effective and prudent. Even Hanabi knew that much. But he relaxed and laid his head back down as Tenten threw down her sleeping bag beside his and zipped the tent back up, not bothering to be quiet this time.

"Cold," she muttered, before she undid her hair, got in her sleeping bag, rolled away from him, and fell asleep.

When Neji woke at dawn the next day, she was gone, back to her own tent.

He only began to guess at her real reason for invading his tent every time they slept out away from civilization – which was more often than one would assume, given Gai's rapturous delight in nature – when the team first visited her home. It was dilapidated and run-down and guarded by a loud-voiced, blind-deaf grandmother who screamed at Tenten her thanks about the hot water like a Fury from Hades. On the second floor, Tenten stopped in front of a massive steel door, which had ten or more locks, and took out a key-ring reminiscent of prison guards in old movies. She opened each lock carefully, and Neji even recognized a faint glimmer of chakra on some of them. The door and its shiny locks were the only new addition to the building in what looked like thirty-some years.

The home was tiny – Lee and Neji were seated on Tenten's bed, Tenten on an old weapons crate, while Gai was given the seat of honor: a wooden chair with a broken staff for one of its legs. But it was clean. More peaches. On her small foldable table was laid out a feast of Chinese cuisine they all knew was homemade. The only domestic skill Tenten lacked was cooking, for her foster homes had at least fed her – a pity. It was a crippling defeat for Team Gai that night, as Lee got into the spicy mapo tofu and had loud diarrhea for the rest of their stay. Gai stood in front of the bathroom and cheered him on through the door. Lee reciprocated with vague and bizarre shouts. Tenten touched a bead on a lucky rosary – God, remember me, Tenten? Please don't let him break my toilet, God, please.

"Why…" Neji murmured, before he had quite formulated his question.

Tenten sipped her hot tea, which she enjoyed whatever the weather.

"Lee is sticky," she said matter-of-factly. Neji took her word for it – except during training, he suffered no physical contact with any of his teammates, Lee least of all. "And plus," she said bitterly, "I will never look at Lee the same way after hearing what I've heard tonight."

Now Neji stood in front of Tenten's door, to find only one lock – the most battered one. He put his finger on it, sensing if it were chakra-activated. Nope. Just steel. The door clicked and he moved aside as the door swung outward.

"I sensed you through the door," Tenten said, smiling impishly. "Come on in."

The house wasn't much changed, but Tenten had renovated the bathroom – Lee's mapo-inspired efforts did in fact break her toilet, but that was years ago now – and the kitchen. It turned out that even Tenten couldn't stand her own cooking after a while, and she actually learned how to cook from Ino, that master of all things domestic and comely and also vicious and crazy, and Gai, who could cook a mean stew. A noticeable change was that all of her furniture was functional, though Tenten still scrimped and bought second-hand, so that all of her possessions were eclectic and mismatched. Neji admired the glass bead ornaments hanging in her window which set the apartment aflame and gave it auspicious fortune. Three years ago, he would have lectured her on her supermarket-discount-three-minutes-till-you-die-of-dysentery milk that she bought in order to sustain her expensive weapons and fortune-related purchases; two years ago, he would have known to keep his mouth shut unless he wanted to have his entire ego stripped down. Now he wasn't so sure. Maybe Tenten really was blessed by these ornaments because she believed they did and therefore lived as though they did. She was really blessing herself, but that didn't invalidate her beliefs. Who knew? Maybe they actually were lucky. All the paper cranes she folded for him and the rest of the team certainly did them no harm.

After the first initial burn, Tenten took a while to suggest anything fortune-related to Neji, but Lee was enough of a catalyst. Lee was sympathetic to Tenten's interests and even excited to experience new things, but he just wasn't reverent in the right way.

"Bad fortune!" he exclaimed, cutting off the fortune teller before he could finish. "Yosh! Then I'll scale Mt. Konoha and scream the bad fortune away while jumping rope thirty thousand times!" he screamed and ran off to do just that. Perhaps he was scared away from the prospect of bad fortune and fought it off in the only way he knew how, but Tenten (and the fortune teller, for that matter) was irritated, and never asked him to accompany her on any such stint ever again.

"You don't need that!" he'd yell, whenever she bought a slice of cheesecake on her way home – her lucky item of the day. "Tenten, you are the most inspiring kunoichi I've ever met! I think you could make your own fortune if you so choose! Let's run around the village fifty times together and see if you don't feel better!"

"Lee, you baka, you idiot – I can't explain this to you again," Tenten snapped at him as she received her change and the cake. "You can run my laps, too."

"Yosh! That's a wonderful idea! I'll run your laps for you, see if that doesn't help!" he'd yell, already running and leaving Tenten to eat her cake alone.

Tenten never suggested that Neji participate in her interests again – no palm reading or getting his fortune told – but he would accompany her to get her yellow item of the day, to buy the new month's magazine with the best horoscopes, to bow at an auspicious shrine (he would stand stiffly to one side) as often as he accompanied her to the weapons shops and blacksmiths, next to the new-edition flak jackets and shuriken holsters.

"Tea?" Tenten asked, bringing Neji back to the present. That was what she called the ionized sports drinks that she kept in the fridge specifically for him. He nodded, the corners of his mouth curling slightly upward.

"You're in a good mood," she noted, fetching the bottle from the fridge and tossing it toward him without even looking.

"I haven't seen Lee or Gai all day," he said by means of explanation.

"Wow, that's a joke. To think," Tenten snorted, but he never got to hear what she thought. She fetched her scrolls and brought them to the table, giving him the chair and bouncing onto her bed.

"Is this what you're working on with Anko?" Neji asked, poring over the calligraphic brush work with a slight notch between his brows. Tenten was studying his face when he looked back up and she grinned brightly.

"Yup! Can you imagine what it'd be like if it succeeded – an entirely new strain of fuinjutsu, an entirely new understanding of the abilities of chakra, and the manipulation of space and time," she said emphatically, pointing out written words and phrases here and there. "Tsunade-sama looked at it and, and I think she was really impressed. She has a good poker-face, that woman – except for at the poker table, of course – but she complimented me more than she ever has. I think this time it might work."

Neji smiled, sudden understanding dawning on him as she rambled on. Did she want to be complimented? No, not that – she was proud of her accomplishments and wanted to be acknowledged by a talented, competitive peer.

"It looks really powerful, though complicated. If you could pull this off, I would love to see it," Neji said, studying the scroll once more. "You have to show me when you do."

Tenten beamed at him.

Neji left soon after, his stride light as he went to find Lee and participate in that stupid handstand race he'd been challenged to. Tenten sat at her table, sipping her scalding tea as she always did after a meal, shaking her head.

That idiot. He still hadn't figured out that she was in love with him or the scale of his own admiration for her.

Eh. Give him another couple years. It wasn't entirely his fault that he had the emotional awareness of an ornamental carp.

Thank you for reading!

I might return with a couple more chapters, or I might end this here, but I am definitely preparing some more background on what Tenten is working on with Anko - for another fic!

Let me know if you'd maybe like a chapter from Tenten's point of view! :)