Note: Once again, thanks to everyone who reviewed. You guys rock. :) Five more drabbles, once again ranging from a time of pre-Tenten, to an unspecified point in the future. Eh, this chapter earns the current rating, for themes of not-extremely-graphic violence and sexuality. Yeah.
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Name
Tenten's mother is a formidable kunoichi of the Mist in her own right. By the age of sixteen, she has achieved jounin rank.
When she is sixteen and a half, the Mizukage gives her an A-ranked mission involving the seduction of a corrupted shinobi lord of an enemy country. Sayaka accepts the mission, and almost dies during its execution. She succeeds, though, and brings back the man's head to the Mizukage.
Three months later, she discovers she is pregnant.
Her family disowns her as soon as she tells them the news.
There are no provisions for pregnant and unmarried kunoichi, without title or even a family name, in the Village Hidden in the Mist.
Sayaka travels the countryside for a year, staying nights in one inn or another. She goes into labor in the night of the eighth of March, lying on the floor of the forest while attempting to rest her injured ankle. She is not a medic-nin, and she is convinced she and her baby are going to die here. Her last conscious memory, aside from the pain, are the distant voices approaching through the trees.
In the very early hours of the ninth of March, Sayaka wakes up in the arms of a male shinobi, not that much older than she is and with a curious patch covering one eye, cradling her gently as he speeds through the trees. Through the blinding pain in her abdomen, she asks who he is, and he replies that he is the leader of a Konoha ANBU Squad, and she and her baby will be safe soon.
They arrive in the Village Hidden in the Leaves less than an hour later, just in time. She has her baby within the safe confines of Konoha's hospital, aided by a gentle medic-nin with short black hair, who assures her that everything is going to be alright.
The baby girl is born on the ninth of March, one month premature. Sayaka has no illusions about the fact that neither she or her child would have survived if not for the ANBU squad who brought them here.
When the medic asks what the girl is named, for the village records, Sayaka replies, "Tenten," for the fact that they had lived nowhere in particular, just here or there in random places, until now.
Sayaka doesn't give a last name, because she no longer has the right to call herself or her daughter a descendant of the Hoshigaki family.
She kisses her baby girl on the forehead and thinks that it might be too late for her, but she knows, just knows, that Tenten has the power to forge a bright future here.
(She has no idea how right she is.)
Sensual
Tenten's one true love is her collection of weaponry.
It doubles as her biggest quirk, and her biggest secret – the feeling she gets when she touches the firm leather handles of her kunai, and the heady scent of metal and leather that emanates from them. The way each kunai fits into her hand so perfectly.
She can caress the blades of her kunai and shuriken, and delight in the sensation of the razor-sharp metal against her fingertips. To her, they are objects of art and beauty, not merely killing weapons.
The tri-sectional staff is one of her favorite weapons. While doing her pattern dances, sometimes, she can get so wrapped up in it that she can hear the whirring metal as it flies inches from her body, and it's almost like they're voices that give her advice, or a little bit of motivation: go on, push a little harder, a little faster, I know you can do it—
The Souryouushu is, without a doubt, her most beloved technique. Everything about it is just so completely dizzying – especially the power she feels when her dragons are twirling her up into the sky, as she is wrapped in their smoky embrace. She loves seeing her weapons spin away from her as she throws them, loves seeing them hit the mark every single time. The thin, nearly-invisible strings that she painstakingly attaches to every weapon are like dozens of phantom touches along her fingers and hands, as she redirects and throws them.
Tenten will never admit to anyone that she experiences a twisted sense of enjoyment at feeling the point of a kunai prick her skin. How much farther does it have to go, what tiny fraction of an inch does the person holding it have to move their wrist, until the point of the metal punctures the skin, and the first drop of blood is drawn?
To her intense displeasure, Shiranui Genma discovers this little condition of hers during one evening he is training her for her impeding jounin exams. She missteps and doesn't notice his trap, and within a moment his arm is around her waist, and he's pulling her very, very close against his chest, with one kunai trained against her throat.
"Wrong move," he whispers into her ear. Another few moments pass, and Genma raises an eyebrow as feels the blood race through her body. "Forgive me for being impudent," he murmurs at last, and Tenten shivers where his senbon brushes her cheek, "but I don't think it's normal to get this…excited…when you're being held at the point of a knife."
Tenten frees herself from his grasp, and turns around to face him, eye-to-eye, mirroring his expression. "You can say it's one of my little hang-ups."
Genma chuckles slightly, and the kunoichi can't help but notice that he's kept the senbon in his mouth the entire time. "One that we had best get rid of before the exams. You can't afford to enjoy the sensation of about being to be killed."
"It's never hurt me before," Tenten retorts.
"It's best to play it safe," replies Genma, shrugging. "You're just lucky nobody's noticed it before. It's fairly obvious to anybody holding the kunai, really. Increase in heart rate, sharper breathing, fidgeting…"
"Which you could all chalk up to nerves at being about to be killed."
"True." Silence. "Then, maybe, I'm just trying to get you to get close to me again."
Tenten raises an eyebrow.
Genma puts his hands up defensively. "Hey, you never know with people like me."
Later, when she's safely at home, away from certain perverted young jounin, and peacefully polishing her weapons, Tenten realizes that in the years that she's seen him, Shiranui Genma has never been seen without that senbon in his mouth.
Of course, that brings all sorts of practical questions to her mind. How does he eat? Drink? Talk effectively? Take a hit? Kiss?
At this point, Tenten calmly puts all her weapons away, and goes into her bathroom, to bang her head against the tiled walls, curse her weaponry fetish, and take a cold shower.
Death
As a shinobi, Tenten's seen more than her share of death. That doesn't mean it gets any easier each time it happens.
Thankfully, she's never lost any of her friends, or Gai-sensei. But part of her, the morbid part, knows that it's only a matter of time. How long will it be until Lee or Neji push themselves too far? What if that boy with the spider-style curse seal, or the one with the mutating bones, of the Sound Four, had been just a little stronger? What if the team from the Sand hadn't made it in time?
Her teammates would have been lost. Her boys. Her best friends. They would have left her alone here. And there have been hundreds, thousands, of times since then, that she's sat by their bedsides and cried all her tears out, and prayed that they would recover.
They always have…so far. It's why Tenten doesn't trust them on solo missions. Who would take the hits for them, or who would immobilize the other enemy, giving them a chance for a fair fight back? They claim that they're older now, more skilled, and they don't necessarily need that anymore. Neji's the greatest prodigy the Hyuuga clan has ever seen, and Lee has grown into a world-renowned taijutsu specialist.
But even they are not invincible, and Tenten is afraid, so afraid for them.
Gai-sensei is one of the most formidable shinobi Tenten has ever met, and she has complete confidence in his skills. She just lives in fear that there's someone out there, an Akatsuki, or another missing-nin, who's has the pure dumb luck necessary to ever defeat him.
Tenten is a kunoichi. She prides herself on her courage. It is part of who she is.
Unlike most shinobi, she is afraid of death. Most people in her line of work can think of death and square their shoulders and accept that as a part of life, but she can't. She just can't.
Tenten is not afraid of dying.
Tenten is afraid that one day, Lee, or Neji, or Gai-sensei is going to leave the rest of them behind. She has nightmares about the time Neji almost had his arm sliced off, or the time Lee was slashed with a missing-nin's katana, from shoulder to hip. Except in her nightmares, there is no medic-nin to stop the bleeding. Just her, just Tenten, holding their hands and watching them die. Powerless to do anything to stop it.
She sees the life slip away from Lee's animated eyes. She feels Gai-sensei's heart stop beating. She sees Neji's eyes close and feels his last breath, the genius finally defeated.
Tenten always wakes up screaming.
Sex
Every kunoichi learns how to seduce a man for his secrets.
Tenten doesn't go on as many "special" kunoichi missions as some of the others. Kurenai-sensei is the most experienced with said missions, so she gets the majority of them. Sakura takes a few, but like Tenten, her skills are considered too specialized for the average special kunoichi mission. Ino and Hinata take the majority of those assignments, Ino because of her Shitenshin ability, and Hinata's Byakugan also serves as a valuable asset for that kind of mission.
It's one of Tenten's insecurities that she might not be as good as seduction as some of her other counterparts. Ino's the natural flirt, Sakura can hide her true feelings behind a glass mask and put up a scarily good pretense of real emotion, and one would be surprised at how many sick, twisted men like shy, unwilling types like Hinata.
Tenten isn't quite comfortable at letting her hair down, or at abandoning her usual clothes for more…revealing…things. She hates the feeling of exposure, of everyone being able to see her every physical attribute. Short skirts and low-cut tops offer so little in the way of hiding weaponry. And all the exposed skin – so much for an enemy to target.
Tenten hides rolls of shuriken inside the sleeves of every shirt she owns. Her clothes tend to be loose because she has a lot to hide in them. Even without summoning scrolls, she is her own walking armory.
The first time she has to let her hair down, put too much makeup on her face, don a far-too-short dress, and put on a pair of red stiletto heels, she almost cries.
It happens on a Tuesday evening, the day of her usual get-togethers with the rest of her team, and usually Naruto, Sakura, and whoever else cares to join, at Ichiraku Ramen. She calls Lee and tells him that she isn't able to come, and he asks, in his concerned, sweet, innocent voice, if she is alright.
"No," she says, her voice a little higher-pitched than usual. "Just tired."
Lee inquires if she would like him to stop by and bring her a little food, and she declines again, a little more vehemently than she would have liked. But the thought of her teammate seeing her like this is enough to make her sick.
Her target is lounging at the bar, alone, when she arrives. She does everything that Tsunade-sama had instructed her to, sits in the proper seat; shoots him the proper provocative looks. She remembers what Sakura had told her about buying the target a drink and sending it his way, and how to hide her disgust when she walks over to him when he beckons. She utilizes Ino's advice about more physical flirting—"Believe me, it's not going to be your conversation he's attracted to," the younger kunoichi had said darkly. And Hinata had just told her not to be afraid.
Everything goes well. Too well. Within an hour, she's in his room. Within the next, his dead body is on the bed, flecks of his blood are on her skin, and Tenten knows the name of his informant inside Konoha's Council.
She pulls on her too-short dress (which she will burn when she gets home) and slips on her red high heels, and walks out of the room, shutting and locking the door behind her.
The village is deserted by the time she returns, but there is a light, as always, in the Hokage's office, and Tenten makes her report. Tsunade-sama has the traitor's name, and he will be arrested within the hour. She has surely done an important thing for Konoha—all she had to do was fuck someone to get it.
Tenten runs into none other than Genma while leaving. He takes all of it in - the slow pace, the slightly-torn dress, the smudged makeup, the too-high heels. She is too tired to feel anything but a dull sense of shame as he looks at her, and then, wordlessly presses her hand between his own. "All right?" he asks at last.
She laughs wearily. "Not really."
"I'll walk you home," he says, in a tone that brooks no argument.
Too exhausted to argue, she stumbles along in his wake until they finally reach her apartment. Belatedly, she realizes that she hadn't let go of his hand through the entire walk. They stand in her doorway, an odd couple, Genma and his senbon, and her appearance, which she knows must be less than savory by know.
Suddenly, he surprises her by touching her dirty cheek lightly. "Will you be okay?"
Tenten gazes at him as his fingertips trail along her cheek and then drop back to his side self-consciously. "Yeah. I guess."
He looks at her for another moment, and then shakes his head hard. "I'm sorry. It's just that – when my teammate first had to do this, it just about killed me and Raidou. We were like her brothers."
Tenten smiles wearily, remembering Neji and Lee's more overprotective escapades. "Mmm, I have those too."
"You're tired – I should let you go." He steps away from her a little awkwardly. "Good night, Tenten."
She unlocks the door and steps inside before looking back at him. "Hey, Genma?"
He turns back toward her, the ever-present senbon giving a concerned twitch. "Hm?"
"Thanks."
He smiles. "Anytime."
Touch
It takes three showers and two sleeping pills for Tenten to forget the indignity of that night. With time, she knows that she will gradually cease to remember the way his hands felt on her body.
However, the feeling of Genma's hand gently cupping her cheek refuses to fade.
Tenten spends hours puzzling about it, before she finally realizes that maybe, she doesn't want it to.
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Reviews appreciated!
(And yes, this was the promised GenTen. Has the potential for extreme hotness, does it not? XD)