Green Tea: Whew, lots of work lately... And lots of writing. I hope my quality hasn't gone down... But then again, I'm not recieving many reviews lately. Well, here you go, the next oneshot, a Neji/Tenten. It doesn't have much fluff, in fact you can barely notice the Neji/Tenten ness... But still, I wanted to keep them in character. This is my first fight scene, so please tell me what you think! As always... Enjoy!

NOTE: This scene/shot takes place when Neji and Tenten are still Genin, and their team is still relatively new. They don't really know each other well yet, and Neji is still very much, an unsociable arse-hole.

Ninja Way: Chapter 2

Tenten- A Will of Steel

It was a long day of practice, and Tenten's body was well aware of this fact. It ached and moaned as she stumbled to the edge of the clearing to gather her scattered shruiken and kunai.

"Grr... Stupid Neji... He doesn't have to make those weapons repel so far... And I have to go after them and get them. Stupid Neji. Stupid Byakugan. Stupid Heavenly Spin. Stupid Neji. I swear he does it on purpose..."

And so she mumbled to herself as she bent over and retrieved every scattered weapon, knowing that she made absolutely no sense and was simply talking to get her mind off her sore muscles.

She was in the process of placing a shruiken in her holster when, from the corner of her eye, she saw two figures talking. Further observation revealed the two to be Gai-sensei... and speak of the devil, it was Hyuuga Neji!

This was a bit odd... Since when did Neji ever talk to Gai?

Tenten crept behind a nearby bush and hid her chakra, hoping that they wouldn't sense her presence some other way.

Gai frowned.
"Neji, I understand your ambition, but..."

Neji cut him off.
"It's absolutely a waste of time. Her skills are laughable, her speed is lacking, and she has absolutely no strategy what-so-ever. I'm not to be used as a baby-sitter, Gai."

Tenten winced.
That was harsh. I wonder who Neji is talking about THIS time? Hinata?

"Now, Neji, I don't think you're giving her enough credit. Our little buttercup has a lot of talents, not to mention her dexterity is excellent."

The white-eyed Genincrossed his arms.
"Dexterity doesn't do you any good if that's all you're good at. She may have one hundred percent accuracy, but the way she uses it is just purely wasteful."

Wait... Wait... Wait... This sounds awfully like...

"Tenten is good at many other things Neji, she just needs more practice. I demand that you continue to train with her. End of story. I'll see you tomorrow."

Me.

Gai walked away, leaving Neji standing there, looking extremely irritated, eventually, he walked off as well.

Tenten was absolutely furious. Her previous muscle sores forgotten, she punched the tree beside her, leaving a large dent in the middle of the trunk.

WHO THE HELL DOES HE THINK HE IS?

She flung a kunai at a tree. It twanged metallically as it embedded itself in the thick bark.

Waste of time...

She flung a shruiken.

Laughable Skills...

A Scythe.

Lacking Speed...

Katana.

No strategy...

A handful of senbon.

Wasteful...

In a blind fury, Tenten dug out all her weapons she spent so long retrieving and hurled them at the unoffending tree, hundreds of senbon, four scythes, countless numbers of shruiken, kunai, fuuma shruiken... Swords, katanas, kodachis, anything she could find. She stopped herself as she was about to pull out her scrolls.

"Ughh..."

She slumped to her knees, facing the tree, which now resembled a pincushion more than a respectable member of the Quercus family. (AN: Quercus is the family name for oak trees)

The weapons mistress balled her fist and punched the ground.

"YOU'LL BE SORRY YOU SAID THIS, NEJI!"

-----------------------

Neji frowned as his team took a lunch break. He, of course didn't take breaks and continued to practice, while Lee and Gai stuffed their faces. Normally Tenten didn't stop either, but today, she was sitting under a nearby tree, reading a book.

She was reading? He didn't know she read books...

From where he was standing, he couldn't make out the cover of the book, but she obviously seemed to be entralled by it.

Probably a love story.

Was he not Neji, he probably would have rolled his eyes. But seeing as he was, and he settled for a sneer and continued with the fifty-eighth stance of his Hakkeshou practice.

-----------------------

The kunai was repelled by Neji's Kaiten, and spun back at her, heading straight for her shoulder. The kunai found it's mark and she cried out, falling from the tree and landing heavily on the ground.

Neji frowned. Even with her speed, she had more than ample time to dodge the kunai... What was she thinking?

"Tenten. You aren't focusing."

Tenten pulled herself up and began to bandage her wounded shoulder.
"Gomen."

"You're a waste of my time, I'm leaving."

"But, no, I-"

"I'm leaving."

As he walked away, Tenten smirked.

"Just you wait..."

-----------------------

A year passed faded by, and everyday, Neji would continue to train with Tenten. And everyday, he would continue to defeat her in every spar, thoroughly convincing him that he was truly wasting his time.

Until one crisp fall day, the unthinkable happened.

It started out as any other ordinary training day, except before they began to spar, he heard Tenten mutter crytically to herself, "This is my chance...".

He shrugged it off and prepared to be bored out of his mind.

The two genin prepared their usual battle stances and waited.

-----------------------

Tenten tensed herself, waiting for an opening. And then she struck, fast as lightning.

Neji was caught unprepared and barely dodged the rain of kunai.
When did she get so fast?

The weapons mistress smirked as she pulled out a red-handled kunai and ran towards Neji, in what seemed like a suicidal attack.

What is she doing?

Neji blocked her with his Kaiten spin, sending her reeling back into the forest.

To his surprise, she quickly recovered and continued her suicide attacks, and he continued to send her flying back into the same patch of trees, over and over again.

This is a waste of energy, I don't have time for silly games.

He prepared his sixty-four hands of Hakkeshou, and prepared for her next attack. As he expected, she emerged from the trees at a breakneck speed, but, instead of throwing herself into a suicide attack again, she leapt onto a nearby tree branch and threw a barrage of weapons at him.

This threw him off, and Neji switched from his Hakkeshou stance to his Kaiten barely in time to fend off the hail of steel. After emerging from the haze of swirled dirt and dust, he used his Byukugan to scout her out amidst the trees. But, before he had time to jump after her, she sent another wave of shruiken raining down on him. The Hyuuga prepared to repel them, but then he noticed the white tags attatched to the spiky metal stars.

Shit, exploding tags...

Neji leapt away, just in time to avoid the explosion, but was blinded by the smoke. He clenched his eyes shut and leapt away from the explosion.

After landing on a tree branch on the other side of the clearing, he activated his Byakugan.

But, instead of seeing the forest, he saw nothing but swirls of colors.

It took him a moment to realize what it was.

Genjutsu... Since when did she use that? I didn't even know she knew how to use genjutsu...

He bit his thumb to awaken himself and found himself facing a mass of shruiken headed his way. Neji jumped left to dodge them, but was greeted by another wave of them- apparently Tenten anticipated his dodge. With no time to dodge, he had no choice but to use his Kaiten once more. Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead as he spun. His chakra was running low.

Why isn't she out of weapons yet?

He looked at the ground around him to take inventory of how many weapons she threw, and was shocked to realize that the 'shruiken' she had thrown at him were no longer there. This meant only one thing- Another genjutsu.

Neji inwardly slapped himself. He wasted chakra dodging fake illusion shruikens. Great. It also meant that she still had a store of weapons in her arsenal.

Clever, she used her first genjutsu to blind his Byakugan, and took advantage of his confusion to cast another. Simple, but very effective...

He made no attempt to dodge the next shower of kunai, thinking that they too, were also genjutsu. Unfortunately for him, these were real, and he tasted the metallic tang of blood as one struck him on the cheek. Thankfully, none of the kunai hit any vital places, was it luck, or was it mercy?

His vision was beginning to blur and his chakra was nearly completely depleted from extensive use of the Byakugan. Neji was getting desperate.

It was now that the Weapons Mistress decided to use her Twin Dragons attack. She formed the correct handseals and pulled out her scrolls. A thunderstorm of metal hailed down upon him.

Neji scraped his last bit of chakra to use his Kaiten once more, but he was still pushed back into the forest by the sheer recoil of chakra exerted.

Through his 360 degree vision, he noticed a trap string behind him. He veered left to dodge the trap and landed neatly on his feet, dead-tired, but unharmed.

It was then that realized that he couldn't move. His vision alerted him to the four trap seal tags pasted on the trees around him, locking him in a chakra-created prison. He inwardly cursed. He was too busy avoiding the first trap to notice that he dodged into another.

Tenten stood in front of him, her hands still forming the dog hand seal.

"Game over, Neji. I win."

-----------------------

"You cheated."

Tenten raised an eyebrow.
"Excuse me?"

"You set up these traps beforehand and planned to push me back here."

Tenten apparently took offense to this. Her retort was laced with bitterness.
"And you're supposed to be a genius? Use your thick head to think back to the beginning of the battle, before you start throwing accusations."

Neji recap-ed the battle in his mind... Suicide attacks, thrown back into the forest multiple times...

And then it hit him.

So she planted traps here... when she was thrown back... And then she cornered him into this part of the field, and struck, forcing him back into the woods, and onto her traps...

Tenten apparently read his astonished expression, and smirked.

"That's right. Had you not been so arrogant and actually followed me when I was thrown back here, you wouldn't have discovered that I was planting traps."

"When did you learn genjutsu?" He asked abruptly.

Tenten looked away.
"Sakura... Did you like my illusion kunai?"

Neji only grunted in reply.

But he had to admit, she was greatly improved and her genjutsu made her only more formidable, not to mention her newly-found strategy. Impressive. To think she'd been hiding her skills all this time, in anticipation of this fight...

-----------------------

Tenten sighed. Although she did win this battle, she knew that she wouldn't have stood a chance, had Neji not underestimated her. She took advantage of his ignorance, but there was no doubt that this wouldn't happen again.

Well, bask in the glory for now, because this is your first and last chance to.

"Well, whatever." Tenten muttered to herself, releasing her handseal and freeing Neji from the trap. She supported him with her right shoulder, and like that, the two limped back to the center of the training field in silence.

The kunoichi gathered her scattered weapons, while watching Neji bandage himself from the corner of her eye.

Oh, how badly she wanted to shove her victory in his face!- but she knew she had no right to.

He was the better one after all. Petty squabbles like this were above him. For all she knew, he could have been going easy on her.

Somehow, she imagined victory to be a lot sweeter than this.
Shit. Now she felt like she was going to cry.

Tenten discreetly wiped away a renegade tear and finished gathering her weapons. She packed her bag and prepared for the walk home.

She was not two meters away before she heard someone call her name. Tenten stopped but didn't turn around.

What does he want?

"Good job."

Her eyes widened in shock. Did... Did... Did that... living ice cube... just... compliment her?

Impossible.

She whipped around so sharply that she nearly lost her balance.

"W-w-what... did you... just say?"

Neji stared back her impassively, majestic, despite all the bandages. She never understood how he could do that.
"I said that you did a good job. I look forward to our next fight."

Tenten stared for a moment, shocked, before she realized she had nothing to say in reply. Quickly, she turned around and continued to walk home. She walked only but a few steps before she found herself smiling gleefully. After she was out of sight from her training field, she skipped the rest of the way home.

I'll beat you one day, Neji. Just you wait.

But this time, her resolution was not backed by anger or contempt.

It was fueled by hope, determination and a will of steel.

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Green Tea: Yay! Tenten rocks! Please review!