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Tenten is the chaos.
How could she be anything else? She is most comfortable when she has hordes of pointy objects whizzing through the air to confuse and intimidate her enemies. She controls them with a skillful touch, directing some to play a mere distraction while the rest draw blood.
She reflexively opens with this strategy now, turning the tables on their ambushers. They grossly outnumber her and Neji, but that doesn’t faze her. Her team has always specialized in achieving the impossible. Hopping to a higher vantage point, she reinforces the counterattack of her teammate with an explosion of poisoned shuriken. She picks off her enemies one by one, engages those brave enough to approach her directly, and covers her teammate’s back.
Tenten embraces the chaos of battle, adapting to the challenge of attacking her enemies while staying alive and gleaning valuable information. For example, these attackers wore no headband, and they were careful to use no unique jutsu that would betray their allegiance, but their style was distinctly Cloud. She flicks several explosive-equipped kunai in their direction, almost bored, while she tries to decide what their goal is. Their attackers are endearingly green. Neji and I are rather ambitious targets for these rookies, she mused. Were they traveling towards a mission? From? Did they attack opportunistically or …
Her gaze sharpens on the third Cloud nin converging on Neji, as he begins his rotation. Tenten watches the kunoichi smoothly break out of her previously sloppy form and calmly brandish her glowing katana. Her demeanor is completely different from seconds ago. Is it possible, Tenten wonders, heart pounding. -that we are the mission? The Cloud nin thrusts with her sword, and somehow, she is able to jolt Neji out of his spin. Or rather, just him? He disengages safely, but Tenten can see her coolly prepare the same attack again.
Tenten feels her world slow down to this one moment. The chaos fades away, and all that is left are two choices.
It was never really a choice.
Tenten dives to save him. She intercepts the second attack, taking the katana through her stomach. She clutches onto the kunoichi’s wrist with one hand and the sword with the other, quickly sealing the katana away. The Cloud kunoichi gapes at her captive, weaponless hand in shock, looking back and forth from Tenten’s face and her gaping abdominal wound. With a grim smile, Tenten pushes her chakra into the woman’s body to activate a short, paralysis jutsu. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she murmurs, holding her hand out to the side and calling forth the katana from the seal. She cleanly severs the swordswoman’s head from her shoulders with her own sword. The Cloud nin’s body falls to the ground, and Tenten collapses with it. She twists her wrist, pressing the dangerous sword back into her seals. Tenten closes her eyes.
And that ever-elusive calm envelops her.
Neji is the calm.
He must be. His technique requires steady hands and absolute precision. His fighting style depends upon his ability to monitor the position of every enemy and calculate their weak points down to the millimeter. Only a calm, controlled mind can accomplish that.
He quickly deduces the allegiance of these enemy ninja, though their level seems rather low to be confronting him and Tenten. The two of them fall into the familiar rhythm of fighting together. He carves his way through their ranks, dispatching each one with cruel efficiency. She keeps the rest at bay, picking them off at her leisure. But he notices, after a while, the oblique approach of a certain Cloud nin, armed with a glowing katana that seems almost too big for her. This kunoichi, at first glance, seems the same as all the rest, if incredibly lucky to survive multiple rounds of his and Tenten’s combined attacks. But there is something unnerving about her, something in her cold gaze that betrays hidden experience.
So, Neji waits. He does nothing to change his attack patterns, simply tracking her movements through the battle. He allows her to draw close, attacking in poor harmony with the lesser cloud nin, who he now guesses to be distractions. And … there! He widens his stance and begins his rotation. The chakra expense is worth it; he can feel the Cloud nins being repelled. He catalogues their positions and …
The technique fizzles to a stop, as his rotation is disrupted by the katana-wielding kunoichi. He breaks away just in time, but he is momentarily rattled. How did she do that? Are they targeting me? Has this entire attack been calculated? He readjusts and prepares to block the kunoichi’s second attack, but Tenten suddenly appears in front of him.
She takes the Cloud nin’s sword. She takes it into her stomach, absorbing the enemy’s strike. She takes it into her seals, adding to her vast collection. She takes it into her hands and beheads the kunoichi with her own katana. Then she crumples to the ground in a sea of blood.
And that closely held calm vanishes.
He snaps. Taking out the ten closest shinobi is too easy, and he quickly hunts down the remaining attackers as they flee. He is unstable, in a way he has never allowed himself to be while fighting. He wields some bastardized version of the Gentle Fist, somehow induced by his loss of control. It is not gentle.
He resents his byakugan, not for the first time. He curses Cloud’s destructive obsession with seizing it for themselves, also not for the first time. The only thing worse than getting hurt over a power he didn’t ask for is his precious people getting hurt over it. And they have. Time and again.
The second that the last of the Cloud nins hit the dust, he returns to his fallen teammate. She’s not dead, he told himself grimly, gathering her limp form into his arms. She will not die for this. He leaps into the treetops, thundering down the fastest known route back to the village.
He doesn’t know calm for a long time.