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Untitled Tale

Chapter 2: Your next task is—…


Tenten knew that going to this maid-training was one of her worst choice she had made in her life. However, she didn't think this situation could go even worse, such as now.

Turn left, turn right; look slight up, bent down a bit… Nothing seems to cover the hilarious look of herself in the body length mirror, as the maid dress hung over her curves. As she had predicted, the colors were black and white with enormous amount of lace saw around and too many bows tied to it. Dressed in this uniform made her looked like a cream puff in disguised, and the image was certainly not pleasing this former-hunter.

"Tenten dear! You look fabulous in this dress…of course, all thanks to me for hand making this precious dress for your arrival! Aren't you excited?" Trainer Gai had hearts popped into his eyes as he admired the work on Tenten, as she mumbled low curses.

"I can hardly wait for my first assignment." Tenten grumbled in whisper as she tried to look for a solution to resolve the strange way she walked, which was resulted from the dress.

"Dear, dear. Your first assignment would not begin until you have fully completed my personal training, which is going to last one week under my youthful supervise! I am going to overlook as you start to behave like a maid, and even give you useful advice for each step you take! It's going to all about us—well mainly about me, but you got the idea!" Gai smiled as he fantasized over the future-training. God this is reminding me too much of Lee…only worse…

---

The following days were all about training—how to enter the room, take orders, make tea, prepare desserts, set tables, help somebody to dress up, bring towels, sit with the correct ways, respond in urbane manners… All maids were to train at least one week before serving somebody, and if they do serve, the new maids always serve somebody in the lower rank, then work their way up to serving the grand master. Tenten had to admit the training wasn't that bad, as Gai wasn't a cold hard bitch teacher and actually offered good advices. However, she could say that she could hardly wait until all of this bullshit is done with. The combination of hunter and serving as maids (or slaves) still stuck out in her mind, and forced her to loss focus during the training. She often found herself daydreaming of her former life as well as her friends.

It was the forth day of her wonderful training, Gai had gave her a scroll of text on ways to set a table—101 ways to be exact. She was expected to have half of them memorized by drawn. Tenten frowned at the fact that she was stuck inside reading this boring text while the weather was blooming outside—and to be honest, she didn't think she could divide 101 into half, not with her math skills anyway. Autumn wind sneaked onto her, and she started thinking back at her old days.

If she was still a hunter, she would be doing something she likes, instead of sitting here memorizing a 101 ways to set a table. She would be somewhere in the woods, hidden in the colorful wind and autumn leaves, waiting for the next victim who happen to pass by. Once it made its grand arrival, she would start to plan her attack with her partner…

"Lee, your left."

"Roger that." A figure with green suit wrapped around him moved swiftly through the forest as he tracked down a wild hog. When the two hunters push the animal to the edge of the mountain, Tenten pulled out an arrow and aimed toward it.

"Forgive me." She whispered lightly before taking it to its death bed.

---

"Wow, Tenten, that's big! I can hardly wait until the harvest festival! You spent a lot of time fighting it?"

"Heh, thanks for the remark, Kiba." Tenten grinned proudly, "But it was no sweat."

A couple of children ran towards her, hands crowded with wild flowers while calling her name, "Miss Tenten!"

"Huh?" Before she could react, flowers were stuffed to her arms.

"My mama said to bring flowers to award your kindness for hunting for us so we wouldn't starve!" One of them exclaimed it all in one breath.

"Yeah, Miss Tenten, you are great! I want to grow up like you! Then I am going to prepare the village with the best meat they ever had!"

As the children were exclaiming with excitement, Tenten was enjoying herself—being worshipped and admired, thanked…

---

SLAM. SLAM again.

Tenten was back to reality with scrolls of text on the "101 ways to set a table" as before. Everything was the same, except her roommate, another maid, was lying in front of her tiredly.

"I'm done." The girl hissed through her teeth, and Tenten notice her upper dress was ripped into strips, exposing the pinkish skin underneath. Before she could squeeze anymore information from the girl, the door was flew open again, with Gai at the door huffing for breath.

"Kari! You couldn't just step out of young master's dinner! You should have…"

"I said, I am DONE. Out. Quit. Through it. I am not dealing with this bullcrap anymore." Kari jerked out the words as she stood up and walked toward her empty bed, started to pack. Say it out loud girl, this whole thing IS BULLSHIT!

"But being a maid here will earn you…"

"No! I don't care! I don't fucking care! So what if I am not viewed as the village's fucking "ideal wife" anyway! He could go whine about what he doesn't like about the fucking tea for fucking god's sake!" Heh, she should go persuade my mother, sincerely.

"Kari, I don't approve of your language! You were well trained under me, and should appreciate that you were given a chance to…"

"Gai, she is gone." Tenten remarked as her finger pointed at the emptier empty bed.

"KARI!" Before Gai was going to run out of the door s to capture Kari, a guard came and gave Gai a private message. Gai's brow furrowed a bit, then his head turned toward Tenten and gave a sheepish grin, showing his over-brightening teeth.

Awkward smile + Gai + private message + staring at me Go back to reading or get screw up.

Digging her head back to the infamous "101 ways to set a table", Tenten tried her best to focus on the text, which failed when Gai spook to her split second later.

"Tenten, do you wish you were doing something instead of reading this?"

"Like serving someone?" Without even picking her eyes off the scroll, she mumbled, "No. Never will."

"Good to hear! I have both good news and bad news for you, which one do you wish to hear?"

Awkward smile + Gai + bad news + ignorant Screwed already. "Whatever you wish to tell me first."

"Bad news it is!" Gai smiled, seem to appease with the respond he heard. "Well, the bad news is… I ran out of bad news, and the good news is, you will be serving young master Neji, starting tomorrow."

Tenten felt her jaw fall through the 18th floor of hell. What the hell! Serving somebody…not to mention anybody but the young master… starting tomorrow! I didn't even completed the training yet! "Gai, this is NOT funny."

"It is not supposed to."

"What ever happen to completing my training? I couldn't serve some other grand master with my degree of experience! There must be some other maids available!"

"If we kept back ups, we would have. But sadly, we don't. Since too many had run away, the only one that is free now is you." Gai speaked with a cheerful tone, attempting to light up the atmosphere a bit, which wasn't working because Tenten was in too much shock. Oh wow, TOO MANY ran away. Have they ever reviewed the reasons that they ran away at all? "Ah well don't worry, I will always assist you whenever you needed… Seeing that you are overwhelmed with joy, why don't you take a good night sleep and wake up 5 am tomorrow for your first assignment! I would be going, so sweet dreams!" Quickly, he made his escape route.

Mental note, Tenten thought as she stood; slaughter Gai before leaving this mansion.


That's all for chapter two, enjoying yourself, I hope? Well, the next chapter, Tenten is actually going to met Neji. It's quiet a drag that I made for Neji's appearance, but it's hard to cut up the story into chunks so people will keep reading, thus his appearance is delayed. I promise the next chapter would include the beloved Neji though.

It might take a longer time before chapter 3 is up, because mid-terms had arrived in our school and I need to spear time for that. The deal is, if I fail completely, this story will go to my discontinue catalog as I would be force to study more.

Sorry if Tenten sounded awfully rude. Plain OOC here, I need to make her independent and strong, and the only way to do so is to make her sound this way. And Gai sounded too much like Kakashi…should have made this a SasuSaku fiction but oh well.

My grammar still sucks as always, I hope I am improving though.