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Becoming a kunoichi was the hardest and easiest thing Tenten had ever done.
Her mother had been one, but she’d been killed when Tenten was just a baby, before she could really claim that she’d known her. So that wasn’t saying much.
It wasn’t even by the kyuubi the way so many of the other orphans’ her age had lost their folks, but by the aftermath.
Konoha was rich but it wasn’t so rich that they could stop taking work, a week or two’s pause when they were occupied with rebuilding, doing triage, tallying up the cost, that was one thing but in the weeks and months after that ? Well, a lot of the stronger shinobi had died during the invasion (holding off the demon and protecting the populace) but Konoha still had A and B rank missions that needed to be accepted to protect their reputations and their relationships with their civilian clients. Their image as a strong and functional village was a shield that couldn’t be allowed to falter.
Her mother had been a good chunin, or so she’d been told by the family friends who’d reached out to help her pay for her school things when she’d grown up a little more and progressed out of the larval stage and was ready for the toddlers' playing tag and calling it ‘playing ninja’ stage of childhood development.
(Blunt but well-balanced training-kunai and ninja wire, shuriken and senbon, tekkō and tetsubishi. She was an orphan yeah, boohoo, but unlike the others, Tenten always had all the best toys.)
From what she’d been told, her mother’d been a solid shinobi.
Reliable and skillful in her niche - but she was unprepared for the higher rank missions Konoha had had to find people to fill in for.
She’d gone from taking them once in a while to every time she went out and in cases like that? Well, mistakes were bound to happen.
It wasn’t a rare thing either, it was just another set of losses Konoha had had to adjust for.
Her ka-chan was a statistic and so was Tenten in her way, the majority of orphans in Konoha signed up for the ninja corps.
And the chances went up by a lot if the orphan in question had had at least one shinobi for a parent. The number of girls in Konoha who idolised Tsunade of the Sannin too, you’d probably have to look extra hard to find one who didn’t at least admire her and, if they were a kunoichi too? No two ways about it. Tsunade-hime was the benchmark of what they could achieve at their best, she was the goal to aim for, the hero to dream of and play-pretend as, the icon they tried their utmost to imitate. She was revolutionary, take no shit powerful, beautiful, smart, a literal warrior princess who saved lives as easily as she took them! She-
Uh, well to get back on topic. Tenten wasn’t an outlier when she volunteered for the academy was the point.
She had no civilian parents hanging over her head worrying about her safety or how it might affect her chances at marriage, in fact she had no obstacles in her way and every encouragement. Even the fact that her mom had died doing regular shinobi work wasn’t much of a deterrent.
She’d died for the village - in a different way to those who’d fought the kyuubi, not something that wasn’t dramatic or heroic, no, but still, something more normal by ninja standards. Mundane and forgettable in a way a clanless orphan out of a dozen could identify with.
Ka-chan had put her day’s work in and then kept going out to do it again, no matter how scary and dangerous it was or how much she’d rather’ve been relaxing at home on maternity leave. She could have stayed off duty even then - Konoha prioritised the raising of the next generation a lot - but she’d chosen to go back to field duty even though she’d known the truth of the situation and the new consistently high risk to her life she’d be taking on.
Because Konoha had needed time to bounce back, and her mother had been one of the lives that had bought if for them.
So yeah.
The fact it got people killed, real people not just the idea of them, people like her mother who’d had friends who missed her enough to pay the way for a kid that wasn’t theirs and that they weren’t actually obligated to bother with. . .
It wasn’t a dealbreaker for Tenten.
Being a ninja was dangerous, everyone knew that, (everyone got told that even if they didn’t really believe it when they were little) but it was important, it was cool, it was what Tenten had wanted with every part of herself. With every childish crayon drawing of a slug and a blonde senju holding hands with a stick figure wearing Tenten’s hair buns and with every time she practiced throwing her toy kunai in the woods or had awkward fumbling mostly guess-work taijutsu spars with her fellow wannabe ninja at the orphanage. She wanted it. More than anything.
And she was suited for it!
Personality wise; her academy sensei agreed that she was level headed and had a good calm temperament in emergencies, she was hard working and practical without being inflexible. She thought quickly and reacted decisively. She had decent teamwork skills and plenty of focus and ambition. On group projects she exhibited the charisma necessary for a leadership position but was also prepared to set her ego aside and take a backseat.
Her early weapons training had given her a good base for a wide-ranging skillset to develop and improve on, she wasn’t a prodigy by any means or particularly book smart but you didn’t actually have to be book smart to memorise information and learn to break it down - you just had to pay attention in class, take good notes, and force yourself to sit down and work until you knew the material.
The problem was her chakra.
The thing that made becoming a kunoichi so much more difficult than it could’ve been, made it feel impossible, like reaching for the stars when she’d always been grounded, with her feet planted stubbornly on solid earth.
She didn’t have Lee’s struggle thanks be to the sage, but her chakra was… limited.
Her mother had been a civilian born kunoichi, an unexpected daughter of an aging local carpenter and a stereotypical Konoha housewife who’d mistakenly assumed after over two decades without a child, that one of them was infertile.
Her sperm-donor was some land of honey civilian that had provided Konoha with access to information they’d needed without ever knowing he’d done so. Her mother had wanted a kid anyways so she’d kept her. It was a good time for it seeing as Konoha was at peace for the foreseeable future with Minato-sama taking the reins.
Between the two of them, Tenten had known she was going to have to work her way up, as with everything else in life.
Genetically, she’d been pretty much bound for an average store and she’d always struggled a just a little bit harder with the leaf exercise than the other kids. (Except for Lee of course, poor guy, he’d made her look a lot better by comparison, he was distractingly terrible at it and distractingly loud about trying his best despite his inability.)
Only, she didn’t get average. As she had with pretty much everything else in life.
She didn’t even get below average. She got pittance, a dribble, drops.
It was frustrating. It was so frustrating.
Sinking her time into improving and growing her chakra stores took that time away from studying her academy texts which took time away from taijutsu and weapons training - which is what would actually matter when she was a shinobi!
And she needed both her studies and her physical training to be at as high a level as she could manage if she wanted to be kunoichi of the year.
Which she had to be if she wanted to be put on a guaranteed good team with the best available jounin sensei on the teaching roster to learn from.
Civilian kids on random teams could get rejected and sent back to the academy or even dropped from the programme entirely if they failed the jounin sensei test badly enough.
Tenten knew too many sob stories from her fellow orphans, she might not be cut the first or second time just sent back to the academy but being an older kid in a graduating class full of younger people who didn’t know you or have bonds with you was stressful in a completely different way for a whole slew of reasons.
The pressure to improve was intense and overwhelming, the humiliation from not having succeeded when you were supposed to was constant and demeaning especially with other kids commenting on it, the teachers would size you up analysing whether or not you’d make the grade this time and how much of their energy they should still put into you when there were so many other hopefuls in need of their attention.
It was different for clan kids, they had more chances and more options, if they had a clan specialty they could hone it to the point they wouldn’t have to go to the genin corps and could get drafted into their something to do with that specialty (growing chakra infused herbs for soldier pills, psych work, cyphers and codes, medic work, messenger bird handling, intel - every clan had a couple of areas their careers tended to gravitate to and their kids had at least basic training for them as a result) they could intern and work on catching up on combat training in their free time with help from their clan.
Tenten might not technically be civilian-born but she was close enough that it wouldn’t make a difference to whether or not the village would see fit to invest in her potential if she kept failing at the last hurdle or didn’t show them her worth properly. She had to secure a good team and earn herself the best teacher she could or else she was risking her future on a random draw of her classmates and a possibly disinterested or even reluctant sensei.
The others in her class were all so good, her taijutsu was second only to Neji - he was from a taijutsu clan she wasn’t, which meant she was basically top but the thing was even if his grades had been terrible (they were perfect) as a Hyuuga his taijutsu alone could’ve gotten him a graduation spot, but Tenten needed more than taijutsu - but her class grades were As and Bs so her rank went up and down too often to feel secure neglecting her studies to focus on growing her chakra stores.
She was up against clan kids! She couldn’t afford to fall behind.
She killed herself to maintain her rank, barely keeping her neck above water all in the hopes that she’d secure a future with a teacher who’d help her achieve her dreams. Tsunade-hime was her hero, she wanted to be just like her, she wanted to be strong and beautiful, she wanted to keep her teammates alive even if she had to stitch their bodies back together with nothing more than willpower, she wanted a sensei who’d actually try and help her get there instead of laughing her off as another sannin fan. Everyone else in class looked at her and thought she was doing great, the Kunoichi’s kunoichi, popular, talented and hard working. She was struggling more than ever and she couldn’t show it in case the sensei noted it down in her file as being likely to crack under pressure.
She desperately wanted to keep a perfect record, needed one, she had no backing in the village except for the foundation she built for herself here and now, she needed the kind of record jounin sensei would look at and say ‘I can make something out of this one’ even with her shitty chakra reserves.
And then Lee started gaining on the rest of the class in taijutsu.
He’d always been decent at it, it was the one thing he could actually practice after all, well besides the bookwork where he clocked in at average to slightly below middling depending on the subject.
(Yes Tenten knew how all her classmates did in each subject, basic intel gathering considering the academy teachers didn’t really care to hide past test scores so much as future tests questions. She had to know what she was dealing with to figure out where she needed to aim with her own grades to stay in the lead, besides, eventually she’d be teammates with two of them, so it’s not like it was wasted effort to figure out their strengths and weaknesses.)
But up against kids with actual out of class trainers backing their efforts? Which was pretty much every clan kid even from the smaller ones like the one cat faced Uzuno kid (who’d been, understandably a lot gloomier ever since the Uchiha friends he used to sit with had passed away when they were eight - another grim reminder of how high the stakes for this job actually were) or Nagari-chan who was an Onikuma.
Well, it wasn’t just Lee who struggled, pretty much no one civilian born was putting up much of a fight save for Tenten who had her mother’s friends to help her on their days off or Akio-kun, who honestly seemed like he only lived for the parts of the day when he got to hit people, thriving on violence in a way that got the academy teachers exchanging glances and writing on their clipboards. Akio was weird and probably bound for T&I either in a cell or doing the torturing, but at least he made the clan kids work for their wins.
Well, the regular clan kids, for the ones like the Inuzuka and Hyuuga, well, Tenten had worked herself to the bone to stay ahead of the pack - pun absolutely intended.
And no one else really stood a chance. And they knew it. And the academy sensei knew it. And everyone was very fucking angry about it in the quiet way of people who know yelling about the unfairness is only going to humiliate them more. Other classes weren’t like this, other classes had civilian borns who just gave up and accepted that taijutsu-heavy clans were going to win the taijutsu matches against everyone but each other. Had clan kids that only focused on the things their people were best at, because it felt good to be good at things even if they were things you’d already been taught.
Other classes didn’t have Tenten, pushing and pushing and actually succeeding, didn’t have Neji who looked down on everyone and treated his wins like an inevitability written by the hand of a Kami long before you’d even decided to try, didn’t have Lee who was bound to wash out early only he kept not doing that, kept hanging on by the skin of his teeth, and when a guy you made fun of was working that hard just to stay in the place the other classes took for granted? When a girl you saw as an equal was winning the race, even against people she wasn’t supposed to be able to beat, when a guy you fucking hated was treating you like a dust mote, like making the seal of reconciliation with you after the match was a boring chore he was enduring rather than an interaction that was basic fucking manners for everyone involved, well, it lit a fire under people.
But unlike Tenten and the rest, who had to be good (the best she could be) or at least decent at everything to hope to pass the graduation exam.
Lee could focus on taijutsu to the exclusion of all else.
And he started getting better at it.
He started getting so good he beat Ojiro who was a weedy twerp of an Aburame who did lose to the rest of class occasionally so no one thought much of it, beyond a quick thought of “ha take that ya condescending jerk!”.
Then he started beating other clan kids, and a couple of especially talented civilian-born ones like Mai and Taichi who excelled at the physical side of things, regularly.
Then he beat Akio.
And everyone looked up and started paying attention.
The fight against Akio had been a mess, feral on both sides, the trio of Inuzuka kids in the class actually started baying and howling together with their dogs after things started getting bloody. The chunin teacher Noki-sensei tried to intervene but got a black eye for his trouble that only happened because Akio was an entire freak of nature who literally would attack a teacher if pushed. The only reason it worked was that Noki sensei hadn’t expected him to be that stupid but there you go.
So there the class was, one unconscious chunin on the ground, 6 howling maniacs (yes she was including the dogs), one bloodied up chakra-incapable ‘destined loser’ fighting as if it was a real life or death duel that would determine whether he made it home after school or not, and Akio, eyes alive and sparkling like a little kid as every other part of him screamed ‘WOE BETIDE YE WHO APPROACHES THIS ONE’, bared snarl frothing literal foam, as he tried his level best to beat the living shit out of Lee.
The final count was 12 broken ribs (roughly split between them), one snapped ankle, several infected bite wounds, a broken nose (damn it Akio the fact you were pretty was one of your only good qualities), an extra gruesomely injured black eye (because Akio tried an eye gouge after Lee got him in a headlock), a wrenched shoulder ligament (Because Lee tried to brute force his way out of an arm hold) a busted lip and a cracked tooth (because Akio hit like a wrecking ball without a conscience) one broken arm, some internal bleeding (that knee to the stomach had been painful to watch, the whole class had winced), a couple messed up black and blue looking toenails (because Lee had been on the ground at one point and had decided to smash Akio’s foot with his fist, granted Akio probably would’ve kicked him in the face next if he hadn’t but still ugh) and last but not least a wrenched neck because Lee got pulled off the ground and thrown across the ring with just his braided ponytail as a lever.
Lee had never fought that well before. Akio had never fought that well before.
It was probably not the worst set of injuries ever inflicted by academy-aged children upon each other, surely someone somewhere had been stupider and left the kids with knives, explosive tags and poor impulse control to their own devices and had to reap the destructive consequences. But uh… it definitely made the books judging by the absolutely done looks on the medics faces when they arrived after the match had ended.
Lee the barely standing and definitely limping victor, clothes ripped and looking like he’d come out the wrong end of a paper shredder but standing and giving the class a cheesy thumb’s up as Tenten had run for help.
Tenten had been scolded for not running to get a teacher sooner, which was unfair because no one else had either.
Hell, Neji, their class number 1, had literally had his byakugan active and locked on the fight. But she was ‘the responsible one’ and even if Neji was number 1 in class, absolutely no one expected him to do more than use the academy to nurture his own talent, which she couldn’t even blame sexism for. So yeah, class duties fell to her when no teacher was around to help and Neji didn’t feel like proving what an elite he was by taking control of a situation.
It wasn’t like she hadn’t been responsible at all! She and Nagari-chan had risked approaching the ongoing extremely vicious fight to pull their sensei out of the ring so he wouldn’t get further injuries.
Kunoichi of the year material right there.
Anyway.
Lee had beat Akio. Akio when he’d been stronger and more brutal than they’d ever seen him. Hell he’d brought that strength out of Akio, a fight that could rival the top ranks of their class. Tenten definitely didn’t know if she could have won against That.
Side note: It was depressing how easy it was to refer to Akio as That or It when he really got going.
Afterwards, Akio had been formally reprimanded for attacking a ninja of konoha and their sensei, he had also bitten the person who had given him the reprimand showing once and for all that deep, deep down? He did have a sense of humour.
In contrast he accepted his two week suspension (apparently it would have been one week if not for biting the vice principal who reprimanded him) with uncharacteristic (and slightly ominous) cheer.
Someone needed to put that kid on some mood stabilisers already.
This was followed by an equally uncharacteristically polite request to have the knuckledusters his sensei had confiscated from him on the first day of class that year returned for the duration of his enforced absence with the promise that he could re-confiscate them when he came back.
The request was denied.
After all that? Well the clan kids plus Tenten had known what was up.
Everyone started investing more time in taijutsu practice.
It didn’t make much of a difference.
Lee grew and grew and grew, voracious and hungry and absolutely happier than ever, like he’d finally figured out what he was supposed to be.
Akio grew too, but in fits and starts, bursts. Consolidated gradual hard work growth wasn’t his thing, he was all passion and violence. He only really fought his strongest against Lee or Tobio the strongest of the class Inuzuka. Though the teachers (now in pairs for sparring lessons) were quick to keep things civil.
Not even Neji could bring out his inner fire, though Tenten thought he’d tried, being extra acerbic to him in that provoking way of his.
And Lee, just kept rising. It got to the point where even in ninjutsu matches where Lee was allowed to just use Taijutsu, he started winning there too.
Tenten stayed ahead of the curve.
She dropped chakra reserve practice entirely, (she had enough for the academy three and that would have to do) and devoted her energy entirely to class work, taijutsu, and weapons practice.
But she had a feeling that if graduation had been delayed by even a month or two, she would’ve been in for trouble.
She became kunoichi of the year.
It felt like a victory. It felt like she’d made it by the skin of her teeth, just like how Lee had made it through the academy until he’d started to thrive in his niche.
He wasn’t even close to a match for Neji despite his best efforts, maybe would never be.
Neji still had clan training, and the private tutoring it turned out Lee had been getting from their ‘gai sensei’ wasn’t going to be private anymore, Gai would have to split his time and attention equally between the three of them if he didn’t want to be a bad teacher. And the man was way too sincere about literally everything he did to ever risk that. The one advantage Lee had had going for him was now something Neji had too. Even with Lee learning Gai’s personal martial arts, the Hyuga gentle fist wasn’t famous for no reason. It was what it was.
But Lee had found his niche, the one thing he could pour everything he had into, while Tenten still had to worry about everything else a ninja and kunoichi was supposed to be good at.
Tenten… saw the writing on the wall.
After that first meeting with Gai it was obvious, she threw her kunai at a row of practice targets in her favourite training ground.
Thunk, thunk, thunk. Dead centre. Every time. It didn’t satisfy her like it should.
She kept going.
Lee was going to surpass her in taijutsu, it was as inevitable as the destiny Neji always went on about.
She lifted her kunai from the pack at her waist, she threw.
Thunk.
Neji had the best non-clan taijutsu user in the village to learn from now. He was a prodigy who absorbed everything around him and made it a part of his strength, he was a genius who worked hard on top of having everything he needed in terms of talent and expert tutoring, and that wasn't even getting into his kekki genkai. Like Lee, he was only going to get stronger too, at a pace normal people like Tenten couldn't hope to match, because he was a genius, a real one.
Thunk, thunk.
Tenten wasn’t going to be able to rival them in taijutsu, not in ninjutsu either, Neji had large reserves and Hyuga precise control even if ninjutsu wasn’t his thing. Tenten would always be better than Lee but it wasn’t going to matter because she’d only ever be average at best, it didn’t come naturally to her and Gai-sensei's specialty was in how to fight ninjutsu users with taijutsu as his main weapon for offence and defence.
Thunk, thunk, thunk.
She was going to lose her place as their teammate if she didn’t figure out a way to overcome this before it happened. She was going to lose their respect if she didn’t make a decision now and follow through. All the way.
And the only example she had to follow for overcoming impossible odds was the boy who’d only made the team because he was the class’ dead-last in the overall rankings.
So she decided to give her all to just one thing, the way Lee had sunk everything into his one ninja discipline, as much as she could without falling too far behind Neji and their age-mates in everything else a ninja needed.
Weapons mistress had a nice ring to it.
She’d worry about training as a combat medic like Lady Tsunade when they made chunin and had time for specialisations.
Tenten needed something that could keep her equal with her teammates.
Something that was hers.
Thunk went the kunai into the bullseye, finding the one free space in the cluster of the other kunai already sunk into the red painted wood that it could fit through.
Impossibly hard and incredibly easy.
That was her ninja way.