|Dead|

Epilogue

Gai's loveliest flower was too susceptible to the Yamanaka's dastardly influences. He was positive that rooming with Ino for that long had tainted her. Ever since she had gotten back from her mission in the Land of the Sea, Tenten had been acting very unyouthful. Well, he thought, perhaps that was incorrect. She was full of a different kind of youth, just not any kind he wanted a part of—or would admit aloud to wanting anyway. Clad in her tiny, curve-hugging ninja qipao, she leaned over his seated form to reach the boxed porcelain tea set from the high shelf.

"Surfing really pushed me to exercise my balance in a totally different way, Sensei," Tenten said as the kettle began to scream. Her teacher flinched, not at the sound but the way his former rookie student stuck her pert rear out when she turned the knob on the stove.

He cleared his throat. "I am glad you found time to acquire new skills. I assume the construction was completed without a hitch."

"Huh? Oh, yeah. The job was finished on schedule, even with the heavy rain."

Tenten poured the piping brew into a pair of teal cups embellished with copper-colored floral designs. Placing them on a tray, she walked back to the table Gai was sitting behind and offered him one.

"I tried to make it the way you like," she said. "but making the perfect tea and accompanying meal is much more exhausting than it looks. I feel more tired from this than my last sparring session."

He accepted it but did not drink any tea, choosing to instead put the steaming cup on the table. Tenten set the tray down as well.

Gai inhaled nervously. "Thank you, my caring and attentive blosso…"

He trailed off at the sight of her stretching, one hand holding her upper arm, which was elongated towards the ceiling. It wasn't anything he hadn't seen her do before, but the look in her eye was different this time. Unbeknownst to him, she had sported that look for a while; this was just the first time he was noticing it. With her bosom swelling outward, Gai was perceiving Tenten in new shapes he wanted to un-see, simply because they made him feel nothing but pure shame. He looked down at his plate of sausage-fried rice.

"Good thing that mission was so refreshing and invigorating," Tenten said, sauntering towards him and causing him to swallow hard. "I even considered running a few hundred laps around Konoha with you when I got back. It's so awful that you were injured while I was gone."

Before he knew it, she was hugging him in his wheelchair. His body tensed and he clutched her naked shoulders for a second before pushing her away.

"U-Um," Gai stuttered. "It is okay, Tenten. Your old sensei will be just fine in a couple weeks. And then we can do one-thousand laps around Konoha! A-ha-ha…"

She cocked her head to the side cutely before doing the unthinkable. Gai's breath died in his throat as he watched her kneel down and rest her chin on the edge of his lap.

"Mo, Gai-Sensei," she purred. "you're so resilient and passionate. I know I don't say it often, but you're really magnificent."

"Tenten," her name an unwavering address as he found his sternness. "You must not."

"Must not what?" she asked, faking innocence.

Gai could only question—why? Why was she doing this to him and not Neji, or Lee…he had been positive she had long harbored a thing for at least one of them. To think she would behave this way towards him was astounding. It made him want to encase himself in a concrete mold to restrain even the slightest bodily reaction.

"Let us eat, Tenten. We should not let this delicious food you prepared with all your love go col—mmf!"

The feel of Tenten's lips sent jolts of electricity through every vessel in his body. The way she kneaded his strong, brawny shoulders turned his brain to mush. He would consider it one of his greatest disgraces, but he let her kiss him for a good five seconds before shoving her back.

"No, Tenten," he said darkly. "No."

She ground her teeth together and put her hands on her hips, grinning bitterly. "I guess you know best."

He knew she both meant it and didn't mean it. Either way, it crushed him to watch his grown student storm out of his apartment.

.:.

Months after he had fully recovered from his injury, he squared off with the monster of the Hidden Mist, Hoshigaki Kisame, for the second time. Gai would never forget the horrific way he goaded him, not through insulting his nature or fighting techniques, but with a method that got him where it really hurt.

"How's that little girl of yours? The feisty one who likes to talk about cosmic equilibriums and such?" he asked, swinging his nightmarish sword at the jounin. "The one I made call me 'sensei.'"

Gai was not a mind-reader, but in that brief, shattering moment, he didn't need to be aware of the explicit pictures sliding through the film of Kisame's mind to instantly know everything the villain was implying. He blocked Samehada with the chain of his nunchaku, being almost completely taken by the undertoe of the Mist ninja's great colliding wave.

Gai had not thought it humanly possible to hate a friend of Tenten's this much for something as small as having a sunburn, nor had he ever felt a stronger urge to kill.

fin.

Eh, not exactly pleased with it as a whole. Just trying to exercise some more KisaTen love. Tell me if you liked it!