A/N: Two years later... genre experiment it is! This one is Adventure/Crime (close enough.) See if you can find how this chapter relates to the last—they're in different universes, clearly, but there are links.
Also, for those of you waiting on Thoughts on Things, good news! I finished the newest chapter and am working on PM responses.
Peering over Tenten's files, CoveOps Director Tsunade grunts—in approval or displeasure, Tenten can't say. The woman plucks three papers from the stack and spreads them across her desk with a splay of fingers. Perfectly clipped nails tap impatiently against the varnished surface. "Have a look," she says.
Tenten doesn't move a muscle, having already looked. "My assessments, ma'am," she responds, a trace sheepishly.
The corners of Tsunade's lips quirk upward. "Very good," she commends. "Subtle. Which brings us to why I've called you in. Humor me with the papers, will you? I won't have had them printed for nothing." When Tenten smiles at but doesn't comment on the "logic," Tsunade's grin widens. "Go on."
Tenten slips the leftmost paper toward herself. It's the first page of the agent assessment summary, with her mission statistics, combat skills, and every existing metric of a human being. "What interests you?" Tenten asks. She's learned to never assume, or at least to keep assumptions to herself. It's always better not to volunteer information.
"As you well know, your accuracy has always been top notch. Your speed has improved. Proficiency in a vast range of weaponry." She nods, almost absentmindedly. Tenten waits. Silence usually prompts elaboration, and she's proven right when Tsunade continues after a beat. "But I'm particularly impressed by your stealth, infiltration, espionage... And your character assessment. Never has any agent scored so… remarkably stable. Let alone perfect scores. Those are unheard of, and for good reason—they're impossible."
Tenten holds Tsunade's gaze. Here she will discover if the risk has paid off.
"Lying on assessments would normally be grounds for failure, but, off the record, that only applies when you don't do it well. You clearly have the ability to not only read situations but know what people want and act upon this knowledge accordingly. We would be fools to turn you away."
"Thank you."
"I had you pegged as a sniper from the beginning," says Tsunade. "Well, we all did. But clearly, not putting you in the field would be a waste of your… ah, subtler talents. So congratulations, Ghost, we've cleared you. The briefing will be in 1202B."
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0956 hours. Tenten prints off a ticket at the kiosk and heads over to the benches directly facing Rail 4. Her gaze sweeping quickly over her options, she chooses the seat next to a matronly woman, two feet away from the ticket office. From the glass window, the line of those awaiting customer service extends like a withering outgrowth of dead expressions.
"May I sit here?" Tenten asks the woman cheerily, luggage in tow.
The woman looks up from combing her fingers through unusually long, gray hair. Her eyes glance over Tenten's open posture, light smile, unassuming features, her pastel top and jeans. "Of course," the lady says and returns to her work.
Tenten settles in and glances between the station's clock and the ticket atop her lap like she is actually waiting for the rail. She's positioned herself so the clock is far enough out of her range that twisting around to see it allows her to discreetly survey her surroundings.
She intermittently scrolls through her phone and strikes up light conversation with the woman, riding the tide of noise as she waits.
A stocky man with the broadest shoulders she's ever seen wanders into her line of vision at 1000 hours. His path points to the drop point, a trash can, that Tenten is supposed to be watching. She doesn't turn from the lady, instead begins to count seconds, and glances as she turns toward the clock. Sure enough, the man has changed trajectories. (The person with what he is expecting, unbeknownst to him, has already been taken into their custody.) He heads in her direction, toward the ticket office.
Tenten allows herself to glance at him in passing, showing no more curiosity than one would a stranger, before turning disinterestedly back to her phone as another man, a lean blond, files into line behind him. She can feel an assessing gaze on her—on everyone in his proximity—and she looks up with the blandest of smiles, directed nowhere in particular. The attention lifts and she is already forgotten.
She tucks a curl of hair behind her ear, switches on the earpiece.
"… approaching the ticket office," Hound, another rookie, is declaring. He sounds snippy. "Large, square face. Nervous as hell. Clear to apprehend Muscle Man? Ghost, where the hell are you?"
"I can't see you, Ghost," buzzes another voice. Falcon. "You're supposed to still be in the station."
"I don't either. Honestly, do orders mean nothing to her?"
Tenten coughs "station" into her elbow. The voices fall silent for a second. Then Falcon says, surprised, "I still don't see you."
She can see them. Falcon, hunched over his laptop on the other side of the platform. Hound looking so obvious in his dark "spywear." He's leaning against a column. At least he's got the sense to face a different direction.
"Don't approach," she murmurs.
"What?" asks Falcon.
Muscle Man finally reaches the counter. He asks if there is another trashcan nearby, claims he'd accidentally thrown something away but doesn't remember where he'd done so. The lady points out a couple, and the man turns… to look right at Hound. He's ignored her, impetuous as always.
Time seems to freeze as the two men lock eyes.
And then the train pulls into the station. Its doors hiss open and oblivious passengers begin to stand. Muscle Man turns tail to run into the underground stairwell, Hound giving chase.
But Tenten's eyes are on the thin, fair-haired man, who has now reached the front of the line. Her suspicions are confirmed as the man, Muscle Man's shadow, discreetly steps to the side and turns in the same direction as the two.
"Nice to meet you," she tells the lady, smiling despite the sinking feeling in her stomach. She points to the train. "But I have to leave."
"Good day, sweetheart."
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"Hound. Target has a partner. He's headed after you," she hisses. "I was waiting to confirm." There's nothing but static on his side. Falcon curses and calls for backup. This is not anyone's idea of an easy first assignment.
She stalks across the platform. "You were next to them the whole time?" asks Falcon in astonishment.
Tenten ignores him. "I'll fix this."
"Ghost, are you sure? I haven't identified Target's partner yet. He's an unknown variable. Backup is on the way from the other side. I know this is your first mission, and we can't afford you choking—"
"You don't know me at all," says Tenten. She enters the stairwell.
The space is cramped and dimly lit. Quiet, mostly. No one takes these stairs anymore, not since elevators were installed. She can hear the distant sounds of the scuffle a couple floors below. And a different set of footsteps.
She sprints as quietly as she can, taking the steps two, three at a time, sometimes crouching so low the backs her knees press into her ankles. Her calves burn with the strain.
The noises of the scuffle stop abruptly before she winds around the last staircase. She holds back, stays out of sight.
The target's massive body lies crumpled against the wall, a nasty lump on the forehead. The apparent weapon, a considerably dented stainless steel waterbottle, lies two feet away as Hound stares down the barrel of a gun.
"Where is the bag?" The cold voice of the Muscle Man's partner cuts through Hound's heavy breathing. "You don't know, you die."
Instead of knocking away the barrel and going for the jugular as he has been trained to, the rookie who is unmatched in physical strength hesitates, terror frozen in his eyes.
Antecedent: Hound is not ready to kill.
The wiry man cocks back a fist and throws it squarely into Hound's face. Crack. Apparently, appearances are deceptive. Hound stumbles back, dazed, hands uselessly clutching his bleeding nose.
Consequent: He is going to die.
"Where is the bag." Muscle Man's partner grabs Hound's shoulder with his gun hand, and bodily throws him against the wall. The force of the shove causes the man to stagger backward, skewing the gun.
Tenten steps out of the shadows, and, without hesitation, plunges a dagger into his chest.
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The rooftop party celebrating the rookies' first day begins on the precipice of evening. Torso pressed against cool stone, Tenten rests her elbows on the ledge and watches the heavens slowly bleed red. Perhaps blush is the better word for it; the shifting colors of the sky blend into a more delicate beauty, one that is slow, patient, kind—not at all like a bloody death.
She had approached the man from the back but buried the dagger in his front, in a fluid motion but at an awkward angle. Her right hand had swung counterclockwise from her chest and back directly toward herself, catching the body in between. The blood that spread beneath his shirt was dark, instant. It burbled, like she'd been boiling wine inside him and let it overflow to stain the navy cotton a sticky black.
Nimbly, Tenten had twisted the man around, pulled the dagger out and up like a book from a shelf, and danced away from the spray of blood. Her hand had not trembled once.
Tenten's grip remains steady around the red solo cup. The sunset, she thinks as she turns away from the sky and back to the celebration, more closely resembles eyes from which something ineffable has vanished.
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Music throbs in her ears, refrains and sometimes entire songs reduced to the bass line. The sound of clinking glasses and the slosh of liquid mixes with voices raised in tipsy excitement.
"Tenten!" An arm snakes around her elbow and draws her away from the margins of the room. It's Ino, her pale cheeks tinged pink. From her daffodil yellow sundress to cream-colored heels, the blonde is a work of pastel. "Stop being a wallflower and have a little fun!" She giggles. "How was your mission?"
"A success," grins Tenten, matching the girl's cheer. "And yours?"
"Boring," says Ino, predictably. If the other attendees of this party had had missions gone awry like hers, Tenten thinks, none of them would have shown up. In fact, she doesn't see anyone on her mission team around. "I mean, I expected nothing less from a first mission. But you saw Kiba, didn't you, so it couldn't have been as bad."
Tenten doesn't even question how Ino knows; gathering sensitive information is her line of work. "Kiba," she repeats instead, watching Ino's waggling eyebrows with amusement.
"Yeah," says Ino conspiratorially. "He really buffed up after training, didn't he?"
She smiles good-naturedly. "I don't think it'd work out, but maybe you'll get him next time," she offers before redirecting the conversation. After all, the last she'd seen of Kiba was his shell-shocked expression as she yanked a dagger out of another man. She imagines that was what one would call a red flag.
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She's begun to blend comfortably in, mingling with the right number of acquaintances but keeping away from the center, when someone stops right in front of her as she's pouring another glass of punch. Tenten masks her surprise—she's rarely approached by people, and when she is, interactions are typically on her terms—and looks up.
It's Neji Hyuuga, possibly the most talented rookie in hand-to-hand combat. His signature style targets pressure points; he can disable any limb with a well-aimed strike. "Hi, Neji" she says, outwardly friendly but immediately assessing, racking her brain for clues on how to speak to him. Neji keeps to himself, to an even greater extent than she. Quiet, efficient, prefers to let skill speak for itself. Why has he sought her out?
"You're the talk of the party," he says.
"I think you have the wrong person," responds Tenten mildly. If he expects her to volunteer information, he'll be waiting a long time.
"What makes you say so?"
"Ino would've mentioned."
Here, his lips stretch into the beginning of a smile. "I don't believe she and I run in the same circles."
She reads between the lines. So he knows about the mission. She must admit she's slightly curious as to how. Is he privy to classified information? More impressively, is he not? "Neither do we, really. We've never talked before."
"I know you," he says, as though that's enough. Tenten cocks her head. He clearly doesn't observe social niceties, but she doesn't believe he's unaware of them. Rather, she gets the impression that Neji simply doesn't care for such trivialities.
"You really don't," she says shortly.
He rattles off a list of her statistics, likely the work of an impressive memory rather than last-minute research, before summarizing. "Skill in close combat, particularly kung fu. Below average strength. Above average intelligence. Average speed. Skill in weaponry, long-range and short-range. Standout in reconnaissance. Standout in accuracy. Potential in sniping but better fit for field work. Perfect character assessment." He stops, and she opens her mouth to say something along the lines of "is that all?" But then he continues. "Different person to different people."
She blinks. Fits the rim of the solo cup between her teeth and tilts. Sweet red liquid washes down her throat and warms her stomach. "You don't know anything about me," she says. This time, it's also for herself.