Note: Thanks to everybody who reviewed. :) You guys rock. These five drabbles take place…at any point after the chuunin exams, and before the beginning of Part II.
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Weakness
Tenten never forgets the first time she faces Temari of the Sand in battle. That experience during the chuunin exams was the first time she ever felt the true meaning of humiliation, and pain, and fear.
When she regains consciousness in the hospital afterwards, she is glad that Gai-sensei is the only person there to see her cry.
They talk about her defeat, afterwards, and she is dismayed when he tells her that a wind-using shinobi would always get the upper hand over a weapons specialist.
"The truth is, Tenten, that the weapons in your armory right now – kunai, shuriken, and that kind of standard-issue weaponry – are simply too light to withstand wind attacks. If you want to even stand a chance against somebody like that, you have to rely on completely different weapons."
"Sensei?" asks Tenten curiously.
"Nunchaku. Tri-sectional staffs, chains, the bo, perhaps the ball or sickle and chain, if wielded correctly…you need to use weaponry that is too heavy to be torn away or derailed by chakra-enhanced gusts of wind."
Tenten stretches her sore limbs, and manages a smile. "It looks like it's time to branch out, Gai-sensei."
Her sensei gives her one of his trademark impossibly bright smiles and a thumbs-up. "That's the proper fighting spirit, Tenten!"
As soon as she recovers from her injuries and the residual soreness, Gai gives Tenten the run of his collection of weaponry, pointing out anything that may be particularly useful to her. And so, their training begins.
The first things to show are the bruises. When you mishandle a kunai or a shuriken, you get a prick on the skin and a drop of blood for your troubles. When you mishandle a tri-sectional staff or a chain, you get long, winding purple-and-black marks around your limbs that refuse to fade, and bruised, stiff muscles that refuse to cooperate when you lift the staff again and try to spin it correctly this time.
The third time Tenten hits herself with the nunchaku, she sets the weapons down gently, deliberately, and goes to nurse the spreading bruises on her shoulder.
An hour later, she tries again.
This time, she gets a hairline fracture on her shoulder. She hears her own bone crack, and the resulting scream echoes through the clearing.
She collapses of pain and exhaustion shortly after dragging herself to the hospital. Once her teammates discover where she is, she is treated to a long lecture about the dangers of training alone with unfamiliar weaponry.
"Why did you do it, Tenten?" Neji asks her, later, after the others have gone. He lingers, citing the excuse that he has to visit Hinata in a little while, anyway. "You know better – and we've always trained together."
Tenten shrugs her uninjured shoulder, admitting to him what she hadn't told Lee or even her sensei. "I can train alone with kunai and shuriken and senbon. They've never hurt me like this…and I guess I took my aptitude with weapons for granted. I guess it doesn't apply to this kind of weaponry."
Neji snorts. "Don't be stupid, Tenten." He walks to the door, and turns back to look at her. "You'll need tomorrow to recover. Meet me the day after in the clearing. I'll bring the weapons."
"Neji, no! You should be preparing for the final round, not wasting your time with—"
Neji waves his hand dismissively and steps out.
When she meets him in the clearing, he has an impressive array of weaponry laid out. In response to her inquiry, he merely says that he borrowed a few of the more formidable-looking ones from the Hyuuga armory.
Tenten chooses the bo first, as it is the only one of the present weapons that Neji has any familiarity with. He tells her to watch him, and then performs a stunningly executed pattern dance. She blinks, and he explains that, from the age of five, all Hyuuga children are trained with the bo, in order to help them perfect the Eight Trigrams techniques. "Now," he says, tossing the bo to her. It is solid dark wood, unexpectedly heavy in her hands. "Let's begin."
They do this every day, working their way through the bo, the tri-sectional staff, and chain basics, before Tenten finally puts her foot down and declares that she can't train with him anymore, because his refusal to hone his tactics for the final exam is driving her to distraction.
"As you wish," he replies when she tells him this, with a barely-noticeable roll of his white eyes. "But first," he puts the nunchaku into her hands. "We need to learn this."
Tenten lifts the weapons, feeling no small amount of trepidation. "Are you sure?"
"You've already mastered the rounding techniques necessary for the bo, tri-sectional staff, and chain. The nunchaku is the last logical step in this sequence." Neji pauses, and his eyes soften slightly. "Tenten."
"Hm?"
"…Don't be afraid of it."
It takes her three days of constant training before she is able to successfully complete the most basic of the nunchaku patterns, but the groundwork for future improvement has been laid, and there is a definite gleam of satisfaction in Neji and Gai-sensei's eyes, as well as her own, when she spins through the first set without error.
Her training with advanced weaponry continues, month by month, until the day of her second try at the chuunin exams, when Tenten and Temari again face each other.
This time, when Tenten's ball and chain rips through the material of Temari's fan, the agonized cry of the Sand kunoichi echoes throughout the stadium.
That night, at the celebration for all of Team Gai's stunning victories during their respective battles, Tenten gives Neji a hug.
Neji is not used to being hugged by anybody. He turns as red as a tomato and claws his way out of Tenten's embrace. "What was that for?" he hisses, completely shocked.
Tenten grins at him, completely unfazed. "For helping me turn my weakness into a strength."
Tears
Tenten sees no weakness in tears. Despite this, she hates crying. She hates the way her throat burns, how her voice shakes, and how nothing in her body or mind seems stable when she cries. On top of that, her teammates and sensei have a tendency of running around like chickens with their heads cut off when she even looks like she's about to tear up. So, naturally, she reserves crying for when she is alone in her apartment.
It isn't an uncommon sight for Lee and Gai-sensei to be seen with rivers of passionate tears running down their cheeks as they declare their fervency for youth, but it's just different when they're the ones doing it. And Neji? Well, Neji never cries. If Tenten ever sees so much as the hint of a tear in her teammate's eyes, she will believe the apocalypse has arrived.
The first time Tenten sees her sensei cry, really cry, tears of sadness and pain, opposed to the usual ones of joy and youthful fire, they are all gathered around Lee's bedside in the aftermath of his fateful battle with Gaara of the Sand during the chuunin exams.
She had believed that Lee was just going to be temporarily out of commission. Nobody had told her anything different. Now, though, she stares at Gai-sensei disbelievingly, his words still not completely registering in her mind. Lee? Determined, stubborn, fiery Lee, the one who refused to believe that he was any less of a capable shinobi than Neji, despite his lack of skills in ninjutsu and genjutsu? Impossible, she wants to say, it's absolutely impossible that their Lee is never going to be able to live as a shinobi ever, ever again, and that the medics must be mistaken—
Then she sees the tears slide down Gai-sensei's face, and before she knows it, her knees almost buckle beneath her and she starts to sob.
Neji watches everything, a seemingly impassive expression on his face, before striding out of the room and slamming the door so hard it almost falls off its hinges. When he makes it back to his personal training grounds, he Kaiten's a twenty-foot deep crater into solid bedrock.
Seeing Lee, vibrant, alive Lee, restricted to the confines of his hospital bed is too painful. Seeing his bent and broken legs brings back a rush of heartrending memory of how they used to race through the trees, laughing and calling out to each other, while Neji and Gai-sensei followed at a more sedate pace. The sight of his arms is no better – when they first began to spar together, Tenten had been shocked at how powerful his punches were. When she discovered he had been pulling them, afraid of hurting her, she had shaken him and yelled that if she was the enemy, he couldn't afford to rely on outdated ideas of chivalry. The spandex-clad boy had dubiously asked her if she was very sure. Tenten responded by kicking him in the solar plexus.
Lee's next punch had sent her flying into a tree.
When she opened her eyes again, Lee was peering into her face tentatively, and he picked her up very gently and set her onto her feet again.
Tenten shook her head and suggested they take a break for some ice cream.
The entirety of it seems to hit her over and over again. She is sparring with Neji (like they used to do with Lee), and when he punches her, she trembles and sits down on the spot, and asks Neji in a shaky voice if he really believes that they will never train with Lee again.
Neji says nothing, but he lets her cry on his shoulder.
Later, when she first learns about the surgery that Lee must undergo if he ever wants to regain his life as a shinobi again, she overlooks the risks and encourages him to do it. It's dangerous, yes, but without him by their side, Team Gai is glaringly incomplete.
Team Gai stays the night at Konoha's hospital the day of Lee's surgery. When Tsunade-sama comes out, finally, and informs her, a smile on her weary face, that Lee will survive and make a full recovery, Tenten laughs and cries at the same time until she is a hiccupping mess.
Speed
Upon her initiation into Team Gai, Tenten is displeased to note how damn fast her two maleteammates are. In her kunoichi classes, she had been the fastest out of the six. Now, she discovers that Neji and Lee are more than capable of beating her into the dust when it comes to speed.
Being reasonable (and slightly paranoid), Tenten knows that her comparative lack of speed can definitely hold her team back in any mission. So she starts to run laps around the training grounds with Lee and Neji, day in and day out.
…No visible result is achieved, aside from her getting awful stitches in her side, terribly achy muscles, and a sore throat and chest from all the gasping for breath.
To tell the truth, Gai is completely bemused as to how the kunoichi on his team isn't benefiting from the tried-and-true training method that had gotten him through his genin and chuunin days. While Neji and Lee's speed is further improved by the daily training, Tenten just seems to be getting worse.
It is out of this state of desperation that he is motivated to voice a Very Notorious Plan to Neji and Lee. Maito Gai is not proud of this Very Notorious Plan; not in the least. It is not one of his prouder moments, and as a result, he will deny any involvement in the ensuing activities for years to come.
The next morning, two masked and cloaked intruders sneak into Tenten's apartment and steal her diary from under her very nose. They snatch the purple-bound book, one of them does a horrible dance around her living room, and then before she can do anything more than reach for her shuriken, both of them hop back out of her window, black-clad blurs racing toward Konoha's East Gate.
At this point, Tenten is convinced that two notorious missing-nin have stolen her diary in an ill-conceived attempt to attain important village secrets, such as Gai-sensei's love for potatoes, and other assorted horrors. She knows that this cannot be allowed to happen, and without further ado, she jumps out of her window, racing after the mysterious diary thieves.
The two black-clad figures lead Tenten on a merry chase all over Konoha. It's fifteen minutes into the pursuit that her muscles start protesting and her lungs scream for calmer breathing, but the kunoichi pushes herself further, for the sake of Konoha.
This state of events continues for an hour and a half before Tenten, after pushing herself to her limits and fueled by the rage of mysterious masked ninja reading her diary and mocking her innermost wishes, comes close enough to said mysterious masked ninja (better known as Hyuuga Neji and Rock Lee) to almost grab at Lee's cloak. Lee looks at Neji, and without further ado, Neji disappears in a cloud of smoke, leaving the diary to tumble fifty feet to the forest floor below.
Tenten screeches and jumps down rapidly, too distracted by the thought of recovering her diary to remember the other thief. Lee takes advantage of the opportunity to leave the forest and jump into the nearest guard tower, in the process terrifying the three young chuunin in charge of lookout duty.
Later, when Tenten races to the training grounds, she is panting and thoroughly exhausted, but so pumped with adrenaline and exhilaration that she fails to notice the fact that Neji and Lee are sitting stiffly on tree stumps, looking completely worn out. "Guess what, Gai-sensei?" she asks excitedly. "You won't believe it, but today morning these two masked assholes broke into my apartment and stole my diary—"
A beady drop of sweat runs down Gai-sensei's face, and Neji and Lee look rather offended at the usage of the word "assholes."
"—and then I chased them all around Konoha, and…Gai-sensei? Neji? Lee? Are you guys all right?"
"Perfectly fine, Tenten!" Gai tries to flash his student the usual high-spirited thumbs up and grin, and Neji and Lee echo their mumbled assent.
Lee shoots Neji a look that says clearly, We're all going to hell.
Disdain aside, Neji flips his hair and communicates back, Pretty much.
Wind
Tenten really hates wind – any kind of cold, in general. True, a lot of her dislike of the element is based at the natural disadvantage she faces when fighting against it, but beyond that, she just feels pure, completely unreasonable dislike of it.
Just her luck, one day comes when her team is assigned to a mission in the extreme northern parts of the Fire Country. Where there just happens to be wind, hail, sleet, and snow. Recon. Three weeks long.
Tenten stares, a stony look of disbelief on her face as she looks at her sensei. "You have got to be kidding me."
Gai chuckles nervously and shakes his head.
After he departs, citing the excuse that he has a report to make to Tsunade-sama, Neji and Lee peer tentatively at their teammate. "Tenten?" Lee ventures at last. "Are you all right?"
Tenten flops backwards off her log with a sigh, randomly firing a shuriken into the sky. "Let's put it this way, Lee. If I wasn't the dutiful young kunoichi I am, I would ask somebody to break a few of my bones so that I could get some rest and relaxation in the hospital while you two are freezing it up north."
The shuriken thuds into the ground where Gai had been standing a few minutes before.
Finally, the fateful day comes when Team Gai has to pack their winter clothes and head up north. Lee digs out a decidedly odd-looking green suede trenchcoat and bright yellow snow boots, Neji's fussy great-aunt makes him take along a hideous violet woolen cloak which he resolves to burn at the nearest possible opportunity, cold be damned, and Ino and Sakura drag Tenten shopping for the occasion, which leaves Tenten in possession of a long, sufficiently warm red coat, a pink cloak with little flowers on it, and a large, fluffy lavender scarf.
The last item is on Tenten's insistence, and when she models the entire outfit, Ino and Sakura fall about laughing and declare that she looks like a fashion-challenged member of Akatsuki.
"A warm, fashion-challenged member of Akatsuki," Tenten replies haughtily, drawing the coat tighter around her. "And that's all that matters."
The mission is sufficiently insufferable. The cold and constant snow is bad enough, but there is a penetrating chill in the air, chilly enough to dampen even Lee's youthful fire somewhat, After one day in the North, Neji begins to cling to his hideous cloak like a lifeline, and Tenten is more than glad that she has all her warm clothing, even though it made the clients look dubiously at her.
It would have gone down in Tenten's mission records as one of the lousiest experiences ever, if not for one saving grace. After they go off duty one day, Gai purchases hot chocolate mix and a large pack of marshmallows, and then Katon's a fire into the rusty fireplace.
Well, maybe sitting with her teammates in a warm cabin, drinking hot chocolate and throwing marshmallows at Lee wasn't one of the worst experiences of her life.
Freedom
Like most teams, Neji, Lee, and Tenten have a certain element of healthy competitiveness in their relationship.
…Well, maybe Neji and Lee's competitiveness borders on obsessive and slightly weird. But mostly, they function in the realm of normalcy.
Lee might not be able to beat Neji in taijutsu yet. They aren't quite evenly matched, after all, not with the advantage granted to Neji with his bloodline limit.
So when it comes to settling differences or even random challenges, they usually rely on a simple race. First person from one end to the forest to the other wins.
Tenten usually participates in said races, not because she has some ridiculous score to settle with her teammates (not usually, anyway), but just for the joy of it.
She doesn't care about speed, not really. Her run-in with the two diary-stealing ninja did a lot to build up her speed and endurance, and now she's fairly matched with Neji and Lee. That aside, though, flying through the treetops, pushing off on branches, and feeling the comforting tingle of the chakra that is centered in her feet is one of the greatest exhilarations of Tenten's life. The air is sharp and cold, and each gust is like a slap against her face. It brings tears to her eyes, spurring her on at the times when she feels like she needs to stop and rest.
Times like this, she feels like she could outrun anything, and that she is even more free than the wind.
Usually after their races, all of them end up lying on the soft grass of the meadow outside the forest, gasping for breath. Today, Tenten has beaten Neji and Lee, soaring out into the meadow before either of them.
"What motivates you?" Neji asks grumpily, ripping the head off a dandelion.
Tenten smiles brilliantly, gazing up at the blue, blue sky. "Everything."
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