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There's an old saying, 'The heart finds its morning and is refreshed.'
Many people interpret this as the idea of inspiration finding us in our most cherished place or act.
For Tenten, that place might have been the training ground where she relentlessly practiced on her training dummies, unleashing the full extent of her arsenal. Yet, as she stood there, surrounded by the familiar sights of punctured targets and the comforting weight of shuriken in her hand, inspiration was as elusive as a shadow in the night.
"How can I help this orange idiot?" she pondered.
Traps, after all, weren't the most glamorous aspect of being a ninja.
They were seen as a means to an end—slowing down pursuers or securing an escape route.
Not exactly the stuff of legends.
Naruto's ambition to become a "trap master" seemed, at best, a quirky diversion from the traditional shinobi path.
At worst, it was a one-way ticket to obscurity.
After all, how many tales of heroism sung praises of traps over the direct confrontations of Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, or the elegance of Kenjutsu? Traps were practical, yes, but hardly the making of a Hokage.
As she mulled over these thoughts, Tenten couldn't help but feel a growing frustration. Traps, by their nature, were defensive, strategic. Against an average person, perhaps they held some surprise. But a high-level ninja? Most would dismantle or outright destroy a trap with a mere flick of their chakra-infused fingers. The reality was harsh—physical traps, especially those devoid of chakra, seemed fundamentally inferior to the other, more robust techniques in a ninja's arsenal.
"Uh… hello? Tenten, you still in there?"
Her attention rapidly turned back to the blond, gazing at her up with eager eyes.
She wanted to tell him that he was still an academy student, and he should not be bothering so much about any of this now, considering his Jonin sensei could just come up one day and kick all of his hard work to the curb. She likewise wanted to tell him that utilizing traps was not in his best interests, considering how he seemed to be a walking ball of chakra, and he would excel at becoming a ninjutsu tank.
She wanted to shake her head and contemplate what in the world she was doing, spending her Saturday morning off tutoring someone.
This was one of the only two days when she was usually free from Gai, his eccentric mini-me and the fate-douche.
What had spurred her to come out so early, and start training to learn how to deflect shuriken with a headbutt? It sounded like something Lee and Gai would do when they were fired up and did not think about the larger picture.
"Um… Tenten… You … uh, you never really wanted to be a weapon specialist did you?"
Naruto's voice had drew her from her thoughts, and she turned back to the blond, who's eyes were the same blue, but rather than sparkle, they seemed to have a curious depth to them, like someone had dipped their hands into water and caused continuous wavy ripples.
Then her mind interpreted the words and identified their semantic meaning together as sound around her started to slowly go mute.
"Well..."
She had never wanted to become a weapons specialist, even though she did like the sharp pointy objects.
No, her true dream was to become like her role model, like Senju Tsunade, one of the Densetsu no Sannin, and the world's greatest and foremost medical practitioner. She had wanted to become a medic, a healer, someone who would aid her companions on the battlefield when they were wounded, someone who would ease and comfort bruises and pain.
There were a thousand people who could kill and there were a dozen kunoichi who only knew how to seduce, but there were very few individuals who could heal and restore, because that was a truly difficult task.
One that had been too difficult for her, so it had seemed.
Dreams were fragile, and reality came crashing upon the realization that she did not have the chakra control to become a medic.
There was no hopes of her ever saving life in a profession that demanded all she did was to take it. So in the end, her dream tarnished, realization that her lifelong idol was a person she could never work to become, she had thrown herself into Weapons instead.
It was also around time she lost her mom.
She did love and care for weapons, she really did, but there was always the nagging reminder at the back of her mind that the only reason she was a weapons specialist in the first place was because she had failed her original dream.
Her goal of becoming a weapons master was just a cheap substitute.
Still, no one should have known this, or at least, remembered it.
Not her sensei, not her teammates, and not even her adoptive father.
She gave him a steady gaze. "Why do you ask?"
"Huh? Whadd'ya mean?"
"No one has asked me that before. Ever."
She would remember easily if there had been anyone that had brought it up, but there was none.
Questions she had gotten instead was about how she got so good at weapons and why she seemed to love them so much, but not one person had looked upon her and asked, 'you didn't really want to do this, did you'.
It was like looking at a pro-fisherman, smiling with a giant shark in his hands, and then telling him that he never wished to be a fisherman and then somehow being correct.
What could possibly even draw that conclusion?
"Well I noticed that –" he looked as though he was going to continue, before shaking his head "Uh… never mind. It – it's not important."
Her lips pursed.
Not important?
No, there was not a chance in hell that she was going to take that.
"Oh no you don't. If you've got something to say, you'd better say it."
Naruto seemed doubly reluctant and it made her more annoyed.
What was he hiding?
Was he secretly some kind of stalker that had been following or was obsessed with her?
It seemed unlikely for that to even be the case because she was certain she was a good enough kunoichi to have noticed someone wearing bright orange with bright blond hair stalking her.
"So what, you just looked at me and it came to you just like that? That's not possible. What tipped it off?"
"Well…" he rubbed his chin, his eyes still giving that strange depth "It's kinda in the way you throw."
She rose an eyebrow.
"In the way I throw?"
What kind of vague ridiculous statement was that?
How did the way she threw her kunai and weapons indicate anything of the sort?
That was like saying that you could tell a husband was cheating because he always hoarded family funds, or a woman was a murderer because she cut meat at ungodly speeds.
She grabbed him softly by the collar and gave him the 'nicest' smile she could muster.
"Naru-chan, would you kindly mind explaining what that means?"
"Gah! That's t-the only way I can explain it dattebayo!"
A pair of scissors was rapidly in her hands, summoned easily from her scroll in a puff of smoke, and her smile was becoming strained further and further as the seconds ticked by, and Naruto's face still looked reluctant.
"Try harder, or the orange gets it."
"Wait! H-hey now, t-there's no reason for that –"
She gave him 'the' look.
The one she had first given Neji when he thought he could get away with talking down to her the same way he talked down to Lee, the one she got whenever someone insulted or called her one-dimensional for her choice in relying only on weapons, and the one that had usually sent tall bullies twice her size reeling back before her fists and even began to shatter their noses.
There was no mirth in her eyes at this point.
"I don't mind getting a black eye because of hijinks, but what I do mind, is when someone who literally met me yesterday can give me the googly-eyes, and then suddenly come to conclusions about things that not even my own teammates and Jonin-sensei realized. So either you start talking, or I start snipping."
His reluctance seemed to remain strong as his face squirmed in a myriad of expressions, right until the snipping of the scissors took off a large portion of the orange jumpsuit.
"Alright! Alright! You throw like Sasuke-teme!"
She blinked, the scissors coming to a stop in her hands.
The name was infamous at this point, and you would be hard pressed to find anyone who did not know Uchiha Sasuke, sole survivor of the Uchiha Massacre.
"Explain. Now."
Naruto groaned.
"When you throw, you don't really give off that super awesome vibe of you saying 'I can do this' even though you really can, you give off that vibe saying 'I have to do this'."
"And what's the difference?"
Uzumaki Naruto gave her a shrug, his shoulders raising and dropping in rapid succession, and his depth-filled blue eyes hit her brown straight on.
"I can become the Hokage, but I don't have to become the Hokage."
Not a word was uttered as she gazed into his eyes, and then eventually detached her grip from his collar, as she snapped the scissors close with a flick of her wrist.
"I think we're done here."
"Oi! Oi! Oi! What's that supposed to mean? What d'ya mean we're done?"
She dusted off her training attire as she gave the annoyingly perceptive blond a final look. She wasn't even sure if the blond understood the insinuations of his own statement, or perhaps he did, and maybe he was pretending not to.
"Hey! Tenten! Tenten! Where are you going-ttebayo?"
The clearing was left with only a blond boy within it, slowly scratching his head.
"Was it what I said? But she's the one who wanted me to say it! So why'd she get angry-ttebayo?!"
He proceeded to irritably scratch his head.
[ Skill "Spirit Possession" has been deactivated ]
[ Quest Completion: Tenten's Ambition ]
[ Status: Successfully Completed ]
[ Rewards Granted: ]
- [ Dungeon Key ]
- [ Feat "Weapon Master" ]