As always Naruto belongs to Kishimoto. Please review.

Whoops and hollers reverberated through the training field Neji and Tenten quickly escaped from. On days they didn't have missions their normal training tended to end this way. Lee and Gai would enter into a strange and alien male bonding ritual that Neji was more than happy not to be a part of, and he and Tenten would head home to finish any personal training with their families. Tenten's father was thrilled she'd taken up weapons' practice, while her mother was just happy she was empting their house of her father's collection.

For Neji though, jyuuken practice, however routine, was beginning to stifle him a little. There was only so far he could go being branch family, but Neji knew he could do better. He could feel it in his chakra begging to be taken to its full potential. So that evening as Neji and Tenten found the sweet relief of quiet flight, Neji broke the communal silence they normally shared.

"Tenten, I have a favor to ask of you."

She pulled a senbon from her right bun and twirled it idly between her fingers. It was a habit she'd picked up from training with her father (or so she said). "What do you need?"

"Your weapons," he answered.

The senbon stilled between her middle and index fingers. "You want to learn weaponry?"

Neji smirked. "No, I want you to throw them at me."

Tenten stopped walking and replaced the senbon back into her bun. "You want me to what?"

"Preferably the senbon to start with," Neji said casually. "If I end up a pincushion it'll be less fatal than if you use your larger weapons or even kunai and shuriken. We'll work up to those."

"And why exactly do you want me to turn you into a pincushion?" Tenten chuckled, though confusion was still plain in her brown eyes.

"Well, if all goes well, you won't," Neji corrected. He glanced around to make sure they were still alone before continuing. "You remember some of the things I've told you about the differences between main and branch in the clan?"

Tenten nodded.

Neji checked the area again, paranoid despite his own reassurances. What he wanted would be severely punished if anyone in the clan found out about it too early. "Well, there're techniques that only the main family is allowed to learn, and even though I live at the main house, I'm still branch."

"And as a good branch boy you've decided to accept that and move on, right?" Tenten teased, sensing better than the rest of his team would exactly where this was going.

"As far as the clan's concerned," Neji agreed with a laugh.

Tenten pulled the senbon out again and started twirling it, a smile on her lips as she envisioned where the small metal needle would strike. "So, what does this have to do with me turning you into a pincushion worthy of Lee's mother's sewing drawer?"

"You're enjoying this idea a little too much," Neji mumbled.

Tenten shrugged and started walking again, the mirth bright in her eyes. "I do enjoy live target practice."

Neji lifted a wary eyebrow. He knew what her non-living targets ended up as. "Well, if I learn to do this right, none of them will hit me."

"Mine always hit the target," Tenten said with a smirk.

Neji snorted. Didn't he know. But that was why her particular talents would be useful to him, after all. "The technique I want to practice is a shield of sorts. It uses chakra to resist physical objects or attacks and then rotation to expel them away."

Tenten nodded, her mind going through the logical possibilities (an ability that made her superior to their other teammates). "So if all goes well none will actually make it to your body, but if all goes badly . . ."

"Pincushion," Neji finished for her.

"All right, sounds like fun," she agreed. In her hand the senbon twirled faster than any normal shinobi would possibly dare without stabbing themselves. "I only have one question. Why, other than the fact that if you can do it you want to do it, are you risking going against the clan to learn this? From what you've always talked about, it's more than a slap on the wrist for a brancher to try and step into the main family's shoes."

"Other than the fact that my jyuuken is so good I can learn these without being properly taught," Neji remarked, picking up on her chiding of his ego, "these are some of the most powerful techniques in the clan. If I learn them, I'll be able to protect her better. I don't see why that should be punished."

A perceptive smile tugged at Tenten's lips as he talked. "You've got such a sister complex."

Neji's eyes narrowed at her all too favorite taunt. "An only child wouldn't understand."

"Careful, Neji, or a few shuriken might end up accidentally slipping in with all those senbon."

Neji resisted the urge to snip back. She'd make sure those shuriken hit the worst possible areas too, if he knew her, and he wasn't certain how well the kaiten attempt would work the first time. He knew in theory how it should work, but theory and execution didn't always mesh perfectly. At least he'd seen kaiten in action once as an example (thanks to Gai's idiocy). When he eventually started working on the sixty-four points, it was going to be blind – so to speak.

"So where do you want to clandestinely practice this forbidden technique so your clan doesn't find out?" Tenten asked.

"Outside the village," Neji answered, shaking his head at the sheer enjoyment he saw in her eyes at the intrigue of his plan. "Come on, I got a spot in mind."

Neji led her about ten minutes outside the village proper to a wooded area that was at an odd angle from the Hyuuga compound. Neji chose it carefully so that someone would have to be specifically looking at this area for someone to see it with byakugan; a general sweep of the village wouldn't catch it. The woods also gave Tenten the high ground and an easier ability to strike from multiple sides at once. Neji needed to know that his kaiten didn't have holes in it, and hopefully a dislike of being a pincushion would be sufficient incentive to master it quickly.

"Try and attack from a full 360 if you can, and don't aim all at the same height," Neji instructed as Tenten jumped into the treetops for better access.

"Just don't complain when you look like a porcupine."

"I thought you were going to turn me into a pincushion," Neji joked.

"I'll decide which one when I see how many land," she laughed. "Tell me when."

Neji was hoping it was neither. Aside from conveniently mastering one of the main family's sacred techniques in a flash, it would hurt a lot less. He headed to the center of the small clearing between the trees and focused on his chakra. Expelling chakra from his hand and feet was simple, especially with his jyuuken training, but this would be the first time he attempted to release it from all his tenketsu. He stood there a moment, just feeling the flow of his chakra through his body. He pushed out once and noted the difference between the easy release in his extremities and the resistance holding his chakra to his torso. It wasn't impossible, but his body fought his attempts. Two more small pushes and his torso relaxed enough to allow the chakra out slightly better than the first time. Neji hoped adding in the rotation would compensate for the resistance. With more apprehension than he'd expected to have, Neji activated byakugan and nodded to Tenten.

As thin as they were, he heard the senbon more than saw then. A shrill whistle piercing the wind all around him. With a single, fierce push of his chakra, Neji started his turn. He thought the spin would be the easy part, but he'd failed to take into account the uneven force of chakra leaving his body shifted his center of gravity. What should have been a graceful pirouette ended up a stumbling, bumbling somersault to the ground with a number of those whizzing senbon planting themselves right into his upturned ass. His chakra managed to deflect several from his arms and ankles, but (to his dismay) most of her senbon found their targets, and Tenten had very good aim.

He was almost too embarrassed to move, face shoved into the ground and posterior high in the air, four shiny metal needles sticking out of his left butt cheek and two in his right. Two waving lines ran up his back as Tenten was kind enough to avoid his spine, and a couple had lodged in his upper calves, thighs, and biceps. As if to add insult to (quite literally) injury, a single senbon stuck up from the back of his head. This was not going to be as simple as he thought.

Tenten dropped to the ground beside him, a thoughtful expression on her face. "Porcupine. Definitely porcupine."

Neji reached up and pulled the senbon from the shallow spot in his head. He wanted to stand up but the position of several senbon only allowed him up on all fours. "Are you just going to stand there?"

"And help the great Hyuuga Neji?" Tenten reached out and pulled the two needles from his left butt cheek, a snarky little grin on her face. "I'd never dream of it."

"Ha-ha," he returned dryly. Neji grit his teeth and ignored the sting spider-webbing across his skin as she pulled out the other four. Tenten was just playing with him now; the one in his head hadn't been nearly that deep.

At least he was able to move enough to stand now. With a little cajoling between Neji and Tenten (mostly Tenten since he'd fallen face first and the senbon had hit his back), he was senbon free and feeling like he'd just been tenderized. Small splotches of blood dotted his shirt and –more tellingly– his shorts. If his attempts continued to the same success rate, Neji was going to have to make a few adjustments. Neji reached back and pulled his shirt over his head.

"What're you doing?" Tenten asked, an odd expression crossing her face.

"One attack I can say hit me during training, but if I come home with a hundred holes in my clothes, my mother's going to wonder what's going on."

Neji laughed to himself when he tugged off his shorts and Tenten glanced away. It wasn't as if he was showing anymore than if he'd gone swimming with her. Heck, Lee and Gai's normal outfits left less to the imagination than Neji in his boxers.

"Give me a few minutes. I want to try and fix my rotation before you attack again," he told Tenten, allowing her to retreat back into the treetops without even a smart quip back. She must have been embarrassed, which seemed silly to Neji. He was the one half naked.

Neji returned to his previous spot in the clearing and felt out his chakra again. He started slow this time, adjusting his position as necessary to maintain balance and struggling to even out his chakra throughout his body in the process. This was more difficult than he'd given it credit for. If his body would only release the chakra steadily then these constant shifts wouldn't be necessary. Neji was beginning to believe that even if branchers were allowed to learn main family techniques, not all of them would be capable of learning it. He had to wonder how much trouble Hinata was going to have when it was time for her to learn. She had the chakra control, no doubt, but it was taking considerable power to force his chakra from his whole body. Hinata was never skilled in brute strength.

After three successful (if stumbling) spins with chakra, Neji looked up into the trees to find Tenten. She was sitting with her legs dangling off a branch watching him. He tried not to read his teammates too much with byakugan. For one it was rude, and for another he didn't often want to know what Lee or Gai were thinking – it tended to hurt his brain. But sometimes it was unavoidable. Like at that moment, when his enhanced sight caught the barely there quirk in the corner of her lips, the way her eyes were fixated on him, and the softest hint of pink on her cheeks. When he saw that –against all his better judgment– a smug smirk plastered itself firm onto his face.

"Enjoying the show?" he called up.

"Just deciding if I should go for pincushion this time instead of porcupine," she said.

"Of course you are," Neji chuckled, seeing the lie in the slight aversion of her gaze when she spoke.

Tenten's eyes narrowed in sudden irritation and a dark haze clouded her normally pleasant atmosphere. "Are you reading me with byakugan?"

As much as his common sense was bludgeoning him to shut his mouth and go back to training, there was a certain arrogance he couldn't deny with byakugan. He knew she had enjoyed the view. His ego won out over common sense and the smirk glaring back at her was his only reply.

Tenten stood up and glowered an expression so dark for a moment Neji was sure the sun had dimmed. Her hands slipped into the pouches on her hips and Neji didn't need byakugan to see the malevolence in her grin.

"Pincushion."

He definitely felt like a pincushion now. You'd think for being called a genius Neji would be smarter than to taunt the person he'd asked to throw a large number of sharp, pointy objects at him. The shurikens in the thighs were a bit excessive, even if she was mad. Though, Neji had the sneaking suspicion that was warning on how good her aim was. A few inches over and he wouldn't have been bandaging his thighs.

Thankfully, his clothing concealed most of the damage. Since he was already accustomed to releasing chakra from his extremities, his semi-kaiten resisted the senbon better on his arms and legs (not perfectly, but better). Neck to knees was a completely different story. He wasn't going to be able to take off his shirt in front of anyone for quite a while without a lot of questions being raised.

Part of him wished he could go to Yumi and get healed, say that he'd agreed to be target practice for Tenten, but he couldn't risk it. If anyone found out he was practicing kaiten he'd be in serious trouble. He didn't want to get into trouble like that until he actually mastered it. Yumi was out, but he did have one avenue to hasten healing, and he was pretty sure she should be back from her mission by now.

Neji headed for Hinata's study, trying his best not to limp despite how much worse the shuriken wounds hurt compared to the senbon. He was relieved to hear a 'come in' answer his knock and quietly entered his sister's study, closing the door behind him.

"Neji-niisan," Hinata called happily. She maneuvered the scroll she was looking over onto her desk as best she could considering it was larger than the entire cedar desk. Once certain it wasn't going to sprawl onto the ground, Hinata slipped out and ran to give Neji a hug.

He shot out his hands to stop her, wincing at the quick motion. "Tenten used me for target practice," he told her honestly. "I was hoping I could get some of that salve Yumi-san taught you how to make."

"Sure, but Grandma would probably take care of it for you if you asked," Hinata said, turning to one of her cabinets to search for the salve.

"It's not that bad," he lied. "Just stings a bit." If 'by a bit' meant his entire torso was on fire.

While she shuffled through her cabinets, Neji wandered over to her desk to check out the scroll she'd been reading. It was a family tree, or more specifically the main family's family tree. He knew it couldn't be the branch as well, because with as many intra-clan marriages as there were in the Hyuuga clan, the branch's family tree was more like a labyrinth. Of course, for that very reason the clan council kept detailed records of marriages to ensure couples aren't too close genetically. It was frowned on for clan members less than seven generations apart to marry, though not entirely unheard of, while less than three was forbidden. Neji's own parents had ten generations out before a common ancestor.

Neji perused the linage he came from, for even if he was sealed into the branch family, the tree itself was proof he came from main family: on the second to last line Hizashi's name was clearly written next to Hiashi's. Neji wasn't sure why, but it saddened him a little that his name wasn't listed as cousin to Hinata. He knew that Hizashi's name had been added to the branch family's tree as well and that was where his and Naomi's names were, but to see the last line bearing Hinata's name alone made it feel incomplete.

"Why do you have the family tree out?" Neji asked when Hinata finally returned with a small jar of medicinal salve that would save Neji's skin from scarring.

"Grandpa's making me memorize it," she groaned.

"The whole thing?" Neji felt sorry for Hinata, it might not be as bad as the branch family's but the main family tree wasn't short. They were considered one of the oldest clans in Konoha for a reason.

Hinata slumped down into her chair again, looking as mopey as she could get. "He said as clan head I should know the past clan heads and what they did."

"Learn anything interesting?" he asked as he rubbed the salve into one of few wounds that made it onto his arm. The cold concoction soothed his skin immediately.

Hinata scoffed, an odd sound coming from her soft voice. "I learned I'm not naming my kids anything that starts with H."

"I'm pretty sure there's a law demanding that," Neji joked as he sat down in the chair opposite her desk to work on his sore legs. He wished the shuriken wounds weren't so high on his thighs. He'd have to undress to treat those properly, and he really needed the salve there most of all.

Neji continued to examine the names on the scroll. Hinata might not have found much of it interesting, but Neji noticed something that made him smile. He closed the salve jar and leaned closer to double check the names.

"There's only been one other female clan head before," he commented, pointing to the immaculate calligraphy more than halfway up the scroll to a time before Konoha's founding when the Hyuuga were still an independent shinobi clan for hire. "Hyuuga Hisako."

"Hisako's mother died giving birth to her," Hinata recited as if reading from a textbook. "Her father refused to remarry or take a lover, so Hisako was the only heir. Her father raised her as a boy though, and the clan treated her as a man. Supposedly the only time she ever wore women's clothes was on her wedding day."

Neji chuckled to himself. Seemed she learned something after all.

"So you'll be the second female clan head, but the first girly one."

Hinata snickered. "I guess so. I wouldn't want to be like Hisako, though. She was one of the strictest of all the clan heads."

"She probably had to be back then to be respected," Neji mused. There was still a gender divide in positions of power nowadays, but not nearly as severe as when Hisako lived.

"Yeah, but she killed her own clansmen when they defied her," Hinata explained. "If there was a fissure between the houses before her, there was a canyon between them afterwards."

The practical side of Neji understood that Hisako lived in a much bloodier and harsher age, before the families merged into villages or the delicate peace they lived in now. And he knew that being a woman in power during that time she had to ensure respect and loyalty by any means possible. The rest of him cringed at the idea of the clan head killing off her own people. It was the reason for the seal, but it still made Neji's stomach turn. That definitely wasn't the kind of leader Hinata would have to be, not if he learned to master kaiten and the sixty-four points. Once he mastered those, even if there was dissent in the clan he'd be able to help her take care of it without resorting to the seal.

"Well, on that wonderful thought, I'm going to go and take care of the rest of the wounds Tenten gave me," Neji said, groaning a little louder than he meant to when he stood up. Recruiting Tenten might not have been his smartest idea. Before he opened the door, Neji turned back to Hinata and waved the jar at her. "You'd better make more of this. I have a feeling Tenten's target practice is going to be ongoing for a while."