Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Or Tenten. Or Sasuke. But I made up Kaede and Itoichi so they're all mine, even if no one else is! Ha!
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It wasn't long before the Uchiha cousins were sitting down in Tsunade's office, both wanting to just get this over with. Tsunade came in after they had arrived, sweat-dropping when she saw the look on their faces. This was not going to be good news, and all of them knew it.
"When I was meditating today, I saw how the Twin Swords died. It was like my dream from before, except I was in Kaede's body and felt everything she felt," Tenten said before Tsunade could ask.
"Are you serious?" Tsunade's eyes widened. She couldn't believe this was happening so soon, and things were falling together all too well.
"When she came back, she was clutching her side and panting like she'd really taken a hit," Sasuke added.
"Oh no…" Tsunade sat down in her chair. Tenten glanced over at Sasuke nervously, but he sat there as impassive as ever. "This wasn't supposed to happen yet. You're far too young."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Tenten asked, her voice mixed with misunderstanding and annoyance.
"Most members of the Neko clan don't 'feel' their visions until they've had the sight for several years. And you get it the first time you meditate. This is going to get complicated," Tsunade said but was lost in thought. Kaede had been precisely Tenten's age when she got the feeling from her sight. Curiously, Tsunade turned to Sasuke. "How did you know she had the vision?"
"I don't know…It's like I felt it," He answered. Tsunade nodded and the room fell into silence as she began to think.
"Alright, here's what we will do," Tsunade finally said. "Tenten, next time you meditate, I want you to picture a different background. If you used two colors, next time just use the middle color. You'll be able to touch your sight but nothing will happen this way. And the two of you need to train together more and with your team a little less. Leave your teams an hour early and finish together." The two nodded and rose to leave. Tsunade excused them and turned around in her chair, her head in her hands. 'Why now? This is all too sudden…' She thought.
An hour later, at the Uchiha manor…Tenten and Sasuke had decided against sparring for the day, since they had already had one close call. Instead they took to each working on their particular styles. As Tenten rested from target practice and sat polishing one of her beloved weapons, she couldn't help but notice Sasuke working on hitting targets with kunai. She cringed, his stance was off and his grip on the weapons was poor. She watched him throw, and he was close but too many minor things were causing him problems. Before long, she couldn't take it anymore.
"Stop," She said sternly and rose from where she sat. He looked at herin annoyancebut didn't say anything considering she was better armed at the moment. "You're doing it all wrong, it'sa wonder how you can even come close." She took his hands and repositioned the kunai for better accuracy. While she was at it, Tenten made him shift his footing. With a grunt, he tried things her way. Naturally everything hit its target perfectly. Tenten smiled at him knowingly, and went back to her side to work with her own weapons.
He watched her out of the side of his eye for awhile. He'd never paid her that much attention before, but now that they were living together he was starting to see her in a new light. Tenten was strong, he'd overlooked that before. And she'd even corrected him, the Uchiha Sasuke. A part of him wondered how Neji could take having someone as critical as her for a teammate. Instead of talking, Sasuke turned his attention back to his training. He would have time to think about this later.
There was a knock at the main door, and Tenten hopped up to answer it. Sasuke paid it no heed, she was closer and it was her house too now. Tenten scrambled towards the door, and pulled it open only to see Naruto standing there.
"Sasuke-teme! How dare you leave us-" Naruto started yelling but then seemed to realize that it was actually Tenten standing there, not Sasuke. "Hey…What are you doing here?"
"I live here now," Tenten answered, watching the blonde boy's jaw drop. People really needed to work on the spreading of rumors in this town. She sighed Naruto just stood there, trying to understand the situation. "Do you want to talk to Sasuke?" Tenten finally asked and Naruto nodded slowly as he followed her in.
Another point of view…"What! She's living with him? As in, permanently? Why would he let her move in with him?" Ino watched the scene where Naruto rang the Uchiha's doorbell and Tenten answered. She had heard Tenten admit to living there, very clearly in fact.
Ino turned and ran to Sakura's house to tell her about her discovery. When the pink-haired girl had finally answered the door and heard the story, they decided to try and find out everything they could about the situation.
"Why don't I just ask Naruto tomorrow? He'll tell me anything," Sakura said.
"No, that idiot won't know anything good. we have to do some real research," Ino replied, a wicked grin creeping across her face.
"We're not going to end up stuck in a closet again, are we?" Sakura groaned, remembering the last time she'd gone along with one of Ino's notorious plans.
"Maybe later, I have a better idea for right now," Ino squealed, grabbing Sakura and running out of the house.
Back to Tenten and Sasuke…"So she's really living here?" Naruto had seemed to forget why he'd come the second Tenten opened the door and now needed a lot of clarification.
"Yes, I'm really living here. Is there a point to this?" Tenten rolled her eyes. She could deal with Lee, but explaining things to this guy twelve times a day was irritating.
"Sorry, I just came because I wanted to know why Sasuke left training so suddenly," Naruto smiled apologetically. He couldn't figure out why it seemed so unnatural to have Tenten in Sasuke's house, but for some reason it had gotten to him. Over time, Naruto had come to think of Sasuke as the type who preferred to fight alone. But now he had a girl living in his house. It just seemed odd.
"My cousin needed me," Sasuke said simply, gesturing at Tenten slightly. Naruto raised an eyebrow curiously and looked back and forth between the two. Tenten shared a look with Sasuke, they both knew what the dobe was about to say.
"Wait a minute, so Tenten is that Uchiha Neko I heard somebody talking about?" Naruto asked, putting the question more intelligently than the other two had expected him to.
"Yes, I'm Uchiha Neko," Tenten answered matter-of-factly.
"Can you do any of that bloodline stuff, like sharingan?" Naruto asked and there was a bit of silence.
"We…Don't really know yet, it's looking like I'm more like my Mother," Tenten said sheepishly. It felt weird to talk about it that way. Could she have sharingan? It didn't seem very likely to her. Sasuke just got up and left the room without a word, the other two were left just staring at where he'd gone.
"What was that about?" Naruto wondered out loud.
"He just does that sometimes, he's not very social. I think he's out of practice," Tenten said, and Naruto looked at her oddly.
"How long have you been living here?" He asked.
"Umm…This is actually only my second night," She said, a little surprised at the number herself.
"I should go, but I might drop in a little more often now that it's not just Sasuke-teme here," Naruto started for the door as Tenten smiled at his joke. "See ya later, Tenten."
"It's Neko now," She corrected him but he just smiled back at her.
"I haven't known you that long, so I'll try but I'm still going to think Tenten whenever I see you," Naruto said plainly and left the manor. Tenten shrugged, if one person was going to call her Tenten it just made the transition a little bit easier.
As she went back towards the center of the house, she saw Sasuke emerge and push a pile of clothes into her arms. Tenten glared at him but he returned it emotionlessly. Tenten was glad she's had to deal with Neji for all this time, it made living with an ice cube a little more bearable.
"I can get my own laundry, thank you," Tenten said sternly.
"That's not what this is. Some of these were my Mother's, some were my Aunt's and so on," He grabbed the shirt on top and held it up for her to see better. It was a dark green top that had ¾ sleeves and a round neck, there were gold patterns around the hem of the sleeves and the main shirt and on the back it had the Uchiha crest. Sasuke pointed to the crest as he continued, "Since you're an Uchiha, you might as well look like it. If there's so few of us we should at least show some unity. Tomorrow I want to show you something else."
Tenten looked down at the clothes in her hands. They all had the crest on the back, and looked to be exactly her size. When she looked up again, Sasuke had already disappeared down the hall without another word to her.
Another point of view…
Ino rang the doorbell as she and Sakura waited on the porch of a big house. They were standing outside of the Hyuuga manor, and Ino's plan was about to unfold. The door opened to reveal a very nervous looking Hinata, who seemed to be expecting the girls to pounce on her at any given moment. Sakura was relieved it hadn't been a complete stranger to answer the door but Ino acted like it was still someone they didn't know.
"Where's Neji? We need to talk to him now!" Ino demanded.
"H-He's not h-here r-right n-now," Hinata stuttered badly, no thanks to Ino's evil grin.
"Well, where is he?" She raised an eyebrow at the timid girl and Sakura rolled her eyes. This was getting ridiculous. So what if Tenten was living with Sasuke? It's not like… 'Wait a minute, what could they be doing right now?' Inner Sakura pointed out and that got Sakura going.
"We need to talk to him!" Sakura added enthusiastically.
"H-He's o-out s-somewhere… I-I t-think he said I-Ichiraku's f-for r-ramen," Hinata's eyes widened as the girls got more intense.
"Ha! We'll find him!" Ino jumped with a fist in the air, and ran towards the restaurant.
"Thanks for helping," Sakura managed to say to Hinata before joining Ino as they ran like lunatics.
'I have a bad feeling about this…' Hinata thought and closed the door.
As the two girls arrived at Ichiraku's they were just in time to see Naruto enter the restaurant ahead of them. He had come from the general direction of the Uchiha Manor, and Sakura knew the look on his face. It was one he only got after trying to deal with Sasuke. Sakura leaned over to Ino and hissed at her, "New plan, I have an idea…"
Neji was sitting there, poking at his ramen. He wasn't really all that hungry, but he liked to come into the restaurant to watch people out of the corner of his eye. For some reason it helped him think if he had been confused by something. And this time, as it was most of the time, it was either Tenten or training and this time was an odd combination of both. She had been meditating with him just fine one minute, then she was yelling the next, and then Sasuke had shown up. It was all too complicated. He could almost understand feeling a relative's pain…Okay, so he really couldn't. It just had seemed like there was a strange connection there. He had thought he was the only man Tenten had really been able to connect with, but he had been wrong.
"Hey Neji," Ino leaned against his table, smiling as sweetly as she could. He glared at her, a look that would have sent an ordinary person running. Then again, Ino was no ordinary person. And this time she was on a mission.
"What?" Neji turned back to his bowl, making a point to eat some to show that he wasn't just sitting there thinking.
"Did you catch up with Tenten about her moving?" Ino asked, moving ever so slightly closer to the prodigy.
"Yes, what does it matter to you?" He didn't even look at her.
"Oh nothing, I just happened to see that she'd moved in with Sasuke-kun," She said and it had the desired effect. A normal person wouldn't have seen Neji's eyebrow flinch, but then again Ino was no normal person.
Meanwhile, Sakura had gone over to Naruto and was able to get him to talk without much effort. He had seemed ready to talk from the moment she'd shown up.
"I showed up and she opened the door, it was weird," Naruto was saying between mouthfuls of ramen. "And she was looking at me like it was weird that I was there! Can you believe that?"
"Well, it's not everyday that you go to visit Sasuke, you are supposed to be rivals," Sakura said.
"Whatever," Naruto rolled his eyes. "And I guess she's family so she has to live there-"
"Wait a minute, Tenten's what?" Sakura's jaw dropped open. On the other side of the restaurant, Ino was having much the same reaction.
"I said 'She's family, why not move in with him?'" Neji repeated himself and looked at Ino with a frown. "Are you okay?"
"She-She c-can't be! Sasuke has no family!" Ino was getting paler by the minute.
"Well he does now, if you'll excuse me," Neji paid for his ramen and left the restaurant. Ino sat down in his chair, catching her breath as the realization hit her. Sakura came up to her, smiling for no apparent reason.
"I know why Tenten's living there," Sakura said.
"She's Sasuke's cousin," Ino said for her.
"Oh, so Neji knows too," Sakura shrugged. "It could be worse. He might learn some social skills and he won't have to rebuild his clan alone now."
"True," Ino said but looked at Sakura sadly. "But now he definitely won't be as desperate to…"