Chapter 19

With Tenten's new schedule, days were hectic. In the end, Genma decided not to bother with missions, and just made her eat with him for dinners and lunches, and transferred the automatic taking out of the money for her rent to his bank account. Despite numerous protests from her.

She still took care of her own breakfast, which was good by her. It left her something she could still do on her own. Excluding the loads of homework she often had from Jiraiya and Shizune.

She was slightly grateful she wasn't dealing with dinner or lunch anymore, since her kitchen had starting getting overrun by materials for poisons, and general poison things.

She was starting to amass a collection of poison scrolls, scrolls exclusively filled with poisons, alongside a matching antidote scroll, which held all the antidotes for every poison Shizune could come up with, and then some from Tsunade.

Her skill with the tanto and katana were improving by the day from sparring with Kakashi and Yuugao, plus some extra tutoring on the side from Kurenai regarding genjutsu, both doing them, and breaking out of them.

Then Sasuke thought it'd be a great idea to run away. And Shikamaru followed him, completely forgetting she even existed on their chase, taking Neji, Choji, Kiba, and Naruto. She could understand not taking Lee, who was still injured, or even not taking Sakura and Ino who were, Tenten hated to say it but it was true, pretty much useless. Hinata was excusable since they were already taking her cousin, who was older and had more experience with the Byakugan.

But not taking her or Shino? The only other two shinobi of their generation who made chuunin on their first try? That was stupidity Tenten didn't think she'd see from someone of the Nara clan. Then again they were pretty sexist as a clan, so perhaps that was why. It was a stupid reason anyway.

She was on break for the moment, resting after being healed by Tsunade after Kakashi accidentally almost gutted her. She was still slightly annoyed at him for that one.

Shino sat down next to her. "I assume you heard the news?"

"Yeah, who didn't," Tenten scoffed. "The Uchiha heir, the last Uchiha, running away like a rat running away from a cat."

"Worse, considering he is betraying the village." Shino said darkly.

"Worse indeed," Tenten agreed calmly, ignoring the angry buzzing of the Aburame next to her.

She paused. What was Lee's marker doing, moving away from the village like that?

"Is something the matter?" Shino asked curiously.

"Lee's leaving the village. I can sense the marker I put on him running after the party."

Shino frowned. "Is he not still injured?"

"Yeah, he is," Tenten said, frowning. "Despite his best attempts to pretend otherwise after the invasion."

"Ah yes, you roomed with him for a while, yes?"

Tenten didn't want to know how he knew that. "Yeah. He should still be on crutches, despite Tsunade's best efforts."

Shino stood up. "We'd better go fetch him then."

"We'd better tell Tsunade and then go fetch him," Tenten suggested instead. "Then she can know to be ready when we get back and be ready to metaphorically gut him like a fish for doing this."

Shino blinked, but otherwise showed no sign of emotion. "Alright. That then."

They hurried to the tower, and Tenten waved to the receptionist, who knew her from her many trips in to see Shizune, and let them pass.

"I was not aware you were here often," Shino admitted.

"I'm training with Shizune a lot," Tenten said, shrugging. "I'm pretty common around the tower now, both for some healing from Tsunade, and training from Shizune."

"I see," Shino agreed.

Tenten opened the door with a chakra string before they reached it, and ran inside.

"You'd better not be back here for more healing brat," Tsunade huffed when they ran inside, not bothering to look up from her paperwork.

"I'm not promise," Tenten said quickly. "I sensed Lee's marker I stuck on him a while ago moving away from the village, I assume you haven't cleared him for missions yet?"

"I haven't," Tsunade growled. "Since I'm a bit stuck here, I assume you two want to go hunt him down and, I assume, by extension, crash Shikamaru's 'Fetch The Uchiha' mission?"

"That would be a correct assumption," Shino agreed.

"Yeah that'd be great."

"I'll write you down as sent backup," Tsunade agreed. "Head out immediately."

Tenten turned to Shino and offered her hand. "I can get us straight to Neji, who's a bit behind where Lee's now presumably fighting someone to see if everyone else needs some help with Hiraishin."

Shino blinked, apparently momentarily confused, then nodded and accepted her hand.

Tenten reached out to where she could sense the marker on Neji, and triggered Hiraishin, bringing them to Neji's passed out side.

"Wow he passed out dramatically," Tenten commented. "Can you handle that other passed out probably dead guy?"

"I will ensure he is dead," Shino confirmed.

Tenten nodded and saluted before teleporting to Lee's side. Or rather, to Lee and Gaara's side, since apparently they were fighting together now.

"So, who wants to guess who's the idiot here?" Tenten asked in a cheery tone. "The one who forgot that our Hokage is a very powerful medic who will not appreciate you trying to do stupid things to get yourself injured further, or the idiot who thought sand was going to fix everything."

"Braken Dance!" Rang out across the clearing, and Tenten chucked a kunai at it, and then off to the side, grabbing Gaara and Lee's shoulders as soon as the bones started exploding out of the ground and teleporting off to the side.

"I apologize! But I needed to assist Naruto!" Lee said, not really apologizing.

"You'll be apologizing more when Tsunade gets through with you," Tenten informed him venomously. "You and the rest of the idiots who forgot that I have been training my butt off more so than any of you and was one of three people to make chuunin, the other of which was also left behind because Shikamaru is apparently a moron!"

Gaara looked almost surprised at her outburst, and was even moreso when a bone spike exploded out of the ground in front of them, and before Tenten could throw another kunai to get them away, Kimimaro attempted to straight up kill Gaara, only to stop right before he stabbed into the jinchuuriki's head.

He slumped over a minute later, and Tenten pressed her fingers against his neck. "He's dead," she reported. "Now, we'd better go collect the rest of the idiots!"

"Ah, yes," Lee agreed, looking contrite.

Tenten summoned the pair of crutches she perpetually carried around in a scroll in case Lee pulled something like this(which he did often), and handed them to him. "You will be using these while we head back or Tsunade will have your head."

Lee nodded meekly and accepted the crutches, leaning on them gratefully.

Tenten smiled viciously at Gaara. "Now, do you have somewhere to be or are you coming back with us."

"Back with you," Gaara said, slightly too quickly, staring at her.

"Wonderful," she spat. "Let's go. I have one more idiot teammate to pick up, two more idiot genin, and one more stupid chuunin I will be beating up the second he is conscious enough for me to actually beat the tar out of him."

She started striding back towards Konoha, uncaring of whether Gaara and Lee were following her.

They reached where Kiba was sitting, leaning against a tree, while Kankuro stared at his puppet, sitting in the middle of the clearing with blood pooling around it.

"Hello idiots," Tenten greeted, cheerful with zero patience for further bs. "We're going back to Konoha, you're welcome to join us on our search for the other dinguses."

"Neji, Choji, and Shikamaru stopped to battle the other sound four before here," Kiba groaned, cradling something small, white, and also covered in blood. Akamaru, Tenten assumed.

"I gathered as much," Tenten agreed. "Gaara, I would suggest making some stretchers, it doesn't look like Kiba will be going much of anywhere."

Kankuro stood up and recalled his puppets. "I'm going to need to clean that one out." he wrinkled his nose at the one covered in blood.

Tenten tossed him an empty storage scroll. "Seal them up and lets go."

Neji was closest, and Tenten easily led them to where her idiot teammate was still passed out with Shino walking around and inspecting the area. He nodded politely to her, and she nodded back.

Gaara made another stretcher of sand and Tenten picked up her teammate easily and dumped him onto it.

Choji was similarly passed out, and was also placed onto a stretcher.

Shikamaru and Temari were last, and neither was passed out, or even all that hurt.

"Hello absolute dingus," Tenten greeted cheerfully, smiling in the way that her teammates had learned meant 'run and maybe find something to appease her because she is going to use you as target practice'. She casually ignored everyone around her carefully backing away, and Temari's feral grin. "Would you, perhaps, like to explain why I, one of the three people that made chuunin this most recent chuunin exams, and Shino, the other person who did that, weren't included on this particular mission? Or even warned so we could be applied as backup?"

Shikamaru looked like he hadn't realized how much danger he was in. "You just didn't seem useful." He yawned. "Troublesome."

Tenten's face went carefully blank with how hard she was trying not to murder him. "Hm, well, I suppose that I can see where this might've gone wrong. I see that you have been rescued by Temari. Who I, you might just remember, beat in the preliminaries. And you brought along my teammate, who I also beat in the chuunin exams."

"You're a mostly long range fighter," Shikamaru pointed out. "With few other skills. I needed close range fighters."

"Ah, perhaps you didn't hear," Tenten remarked, pulling out one of the poisoned kunai. "I've been training with multiple people on a variety of arts. Including such wonderful things I could use to murder you such as poison, seals, genjutsu, and further training in close combat weapons. When you can hit a fly at thirty meters while fighting Lee, you can inform me I am a long range fighter with few other skills. Plus I can teleport. You didn't even think that I could save someone's life by being ready to be used as fast backup! You could have killed someone by not thinking of using back up! My teammates could have died and we could've lost Kiba and Choji if I didn't get in here to collect all of you."

Shikamaru seemed to realize a slight portion of the danger he was in, and paled slightly at the sight of the kunai.

"Now, give me one good excuse why I shouldn't impale you with this and leave you to Tsunade's tender mercies."

"Cause we need him to do the report," Temari pointed out logically. "He is the technical leader for this operation."

"Hmm, you make a valid point," Tenten agreed, not actually really caring about that. "Oh well. I was looking forward to making a very good point about how much of a dingus he is. I'll live with beating his backend later."

"I'll be there to see it," Temari promised, grinning.

Tenten smiled somewhat forcedly at her. "Wonderful. Now we need to get back to Konoha. Some of these dingus need medical attention."

———

Tenten's angry… Very very angry. I wouldn't suggest crossing her. Sorry if any of this is out of line with canon, I murdered canon in a back alley. I'm using the blood for dark rituals. ~LeViAcKeRmAnN