Industrious - Chapter 61 (NSFW) (Patreon)
Content
Arriving back in Konoha, Tenten immediately knew something had happened while they'd been on their latest mission. It was a subtle thing, but being out in the field was seeing her apply the lessons of the academy more and more. The central tenet of situational awareness, for instance, was understanding the flow and energy of your environment. That included the living parts untrained civilians didn't consider, such as they, themselves.
A town at peace felt different than a town in crisis.
That didn't mean Konoha was in crisis, though. There were various attitudes between outright panic and a normal carefree day.
People were still outside, walking around, doing business for one. When people became truly scared, that was one of the first things to go. No one wanted to leave their homes and their family. Partly because they were worried something would happen to them while they were out doing their errands. The other side of it was that they were worried someone or something would find their home while they were away.
Another trick was to look at the average purchases the civilians were making.
Whatever was happening almost always resulted in a direct correlation to the amount of supplies people were buying. Villagers outside of shinobi-run areas and even the majority of townspeople in Hidden Villages didn't have the kind of training to think through a crisis and plan out their response step by step.
Oh, Tenten was sure some did. There were exceptions to every rule, of course.
But the majority acted on instinct. If something scary happened it made them worry, they purchased more and unnecessary things, even when they didn't need them. Especially then. The weight and mass of things being held in shoppers' arms was often a far more accurate indicator of the general mood in the settlement, especially when taken with the body language of the people doing the shopping.
Are there lines at the stores? How about the money-changer or the bank? Are people milling about in small close-knit groups? Are they gregarious or secretive? How much stock is on store shelves?
Murta, their teammate, was the first to speak on the observation all three of them made within moments of passing through the gate. “Something's happened.”
Guy hummed, crossing his arms with his usual confidence. “Do not fret, my young genin! It is clear that any such incident has already been taken care of!”
...which Tenten knew was said just as much for their benefit as that of the civilians milling about around them. Whatever you thought of their jounin-sensei, no one could deny that Guy had earned his rank. As one of the most visible and well-known quantities of Konoha, he was also more trusted by the populace. He was loud, cheerful, friendly, and surprisingly open. Those, some might say, were poor qualities in a shinobi. Tenten, though, thought they were great qualities to get someone to trust you, which was an essential part of a ninja's job.
To Guy-sensei's credit, he was being honest. It was clear even to her at a cursory glance that the mood of the village was that of a storm having passed, not one still being dealt with. It was in the way people hesitated before putting one item too many back on the shelf, how people would jerk at loud noises then shake their heads in self-recrimination, and how several people were walking around obviously hungover given it wasn't even sunset yet.
People don't drink to drunkenness during a crisis, but they sure do afterwards.
There was stress in the air, yes, but it was not the pent up energy of something waiting to happen. There was no anxiety, just the release of worry and previous panic.
So... something had happened.
Even as Guy and Lee chattered on, she exchanged a glance and a shake of her head with Murta. Both of them had been scanning the village for damage or a cordon of some type. The kind of thing that would indicate the magnitude, location, and severity of the damage that had been done. In turn, those indicators would give them pieces of the puzzle to figure out what had happened.
The problem, though, was that there just weren't any.
Of course, that lent itself to its own conclusion.
Her hands flowed through a few easy signs.
'Isolated incident, resolved quietly, civilians noticed – not affected.'
After a moment of thought, Murta nodded, the long black curtain of a mask shifting slightly over his face. Even after more than a year working with him, the lack of easy to read facial expressions irritated Tenten. Even with her boyfriend, Kotaro, his characteristic blank and cold demeanor was interspersed with flashes of emotion and a kind of low level feeling that Tenten could somehow understand. The combination gave him an air of unknowable maturity and wisdom despite being a year younger than her. Which, if she was honest, was part of the reason she liked him.
'Agreement.'
Tenten nodded and looked to her teacher. “Maybe we should go ahead and turn in the mission report? There'll probably be someone there who knows what happened.”
“Yosh! An excellent idea, Teammate Tenten!” Lee shouted, grinning.
Then they were moving again, towards the Hokage Tower. The actual mission report was fairly short and lacking in serious complications. They'd been gone a little over a week, picked up the packages from the minor noble in question, and ran them clear across the Land of Fire to his relatives. It was an easy mission sensei had signed them up for in the name of getting them more experience outside of the Village, couching it as an endurance exercise they were getting paid for.
Not paid much, really, but it was a low-risk mission that only rated a 'C' because of the distance covered and the potential political consequences of losing a dependable client from the minor nobility. In other words, it was exactly the kind of mission that got deliberately shelved for genin teams to help them build experience and run through scenarios. They actually had gotten 'attacked' by bandits once three days into the run, but only one of them had any sort of training.
Nothing that could stand up against a jounin, though, even if he could have potentially challenged a regular green genin.
Which the students of Might Guy were decidedly not.
And, as they received an unofficial summary of the latest village gossip, Tenten excused herself under the knowing gaze of her sensei to go have a talk with one of the primary reasons she wasn't a 'normal' genin.
Marching past the old man Sagara with a firm nod, the blacksmith huffed at her expression and jerked a thumb up the stairs towards the store's expansion. She mentally chastised herself for how easy she was to read in that moment, but didn't care enough to correct it. She was frustrated enough to put it off. Thankfully, the two weirdos who worked as junior apprentices seemed to be busy in the forge so she didn't have to restrain the urge to throttle either of them. Even if they'd improved by leaps and bounds under Kota's supervision.
As most people seemed to.
Throwing the door open and slamming it behind her, Kota's head languidly slid up from where he was looking over a set of scrolls.
“You got into a fight with a jounin and scared the shit out of half the village,” Tenten declared with the surety of someone saying water was wet or the sky was blue.
Kota raised one brown eyebrow. “I thought they hadn't identified whoever got into that sparring match with Uzumaki Kushina.”
Tenten crossed her arms. “For some reason, it seems like anything weird seems to circle back to you, lately, Kota.”
An almost imperceptible flicker of chakra caused the scroll to roll itself up in her boyfriend's hands, allowing him to safely deposit it on the desk. “Officially, at least, the Hokage would prefer if everyone just chalked it up to Lady Kushina deciding to celebrate having her mobility restored to her in a particularly on-brand way for the Uzumaki.”
Which wasn't an admission of guilt, but she was a kunoichi and Kota was 'Not A Ninja.'
Tenten sniffed and let some of the tension flow out of her body with a sigh. “Then she really started it? I thought so, but it never hurts to get it straight from the horse's mouth.”
Kota shrugged, flexing in that weird way he had a habit of and sending a series of tiny static-like pops up his spine at the very edge of her chakra-enhanced hearing. Suppressing the twitch of her own brow, Tenten knew he'd just do it louder if she mentioned it. That was the kind of thing that, in anyone else, she'd make an issue of them intentionally annoying her. Kota had so few immature habits, though, that she found she didn't want to seriously deprive him of them.
“She wore me down over three days,” Kota admitted with a brief scowl of irritation. “How'd the mission go?”
“Mostly uneventful outside of a brief fight with bandits,” Tenten waved him off, taking a few steps over towards his bed and dropping herself onto it, laying down with her lower legs dangling off the side. “Don't change the subject. You really fought a jounin to a standstill? Uzumaki Kushina, even?”
Kota sighed. “She was rusty, and holding back, but it was fun to stretch my legs a little. I'm worried that I might have encouraged her to try for a rematch, though.”
Tenten snorted, then paused. She stared up at the ceiling of her boyfriend's bedroom in quiet contemplation for a long moment. “You said she was holding back. Were you?”
The silence that lingered for just a bit too long answered the question for her, even as Kotaro scoffed. “I might have a few tricks in reserve that I don't want to broadcast, but nothing particularly impressive.”
Then why hold them in reserve, if they weren't that impressive?
There were moments where Kota scared her. They were thankfully few and far between, but... she was grateful she didn't have to worry about fighting him. For all his taciturn and cold attitude, for all the fact that he wasn't truly loyal to Konoha itself, she knew he was loyal to her. Her, Satsuki, and Yakumo. That wasn't ideal and, in the small time she'd thought about finding someone, hadn't envisioned she'd be one of 'those kunoichi' who wanted a shared house-husband.
She could see why other women went in for it, though.
It was nice to come home to someone, and nicer still to not feel obligated to spend all of your leave with them. Odds were they'd have someone you trusted warming their bed to keep them interested. Kota could be surprisingly warm when they were together as well, and it made her feel warm inside to be one of the few people he trusted with seeing that warmth.
But.
Kota was occasionally just a bit terrifying, even to her.
“I used Kajiya, by the way,” Tenten stated, deciding not to confront that particular thought today.
“On bandits?” Kota asked, his voice just barely chiding.
“In battlefield conditions,” Tenten replied dryly. “Against opponents who wouldn't be able to kill me if I didn't execute a technique perfectly.”
Kota grunted, dismissing the point but not explicitly agreeing with it. Tenten smiled a bit, knowing that although he tried to hide it, his pride showed through in the blades he made. Which, it should, she wasn't contesting that, but he could be oddly prickly about using his 'pieces of art' on 'trash mobs.' Whatever the latter of those two phrases meant, she got the gist that they were superior blades intended for superior opponents.
“Let me check your chakra network, since we're being cautious,” Kota stated, standing with a stretch.
Tenten rose up on her elbows, then mentally shrugged and stood the rest of the way before beginning to shuck her clothes. Another thing she enjoyed about Kotaro was that, when she undressed, she could feel the weight of his attention on her. It was... different from the last year of the academy where boys were beginning to figure out what their dicks were for. She somehow knew the base lust was diminished within her boyfriend, even as his gaze swept over her bare chest, the wrap cascading to the floor in a tumble of cloth.
Instead of hot passion, those brown eyes were cool and analytical.
Like he's looking at one of his swords.
The thought blossomed as she dropped her trousers, stepping out of them and folding them to show off her ass while bending to pick them up before peeling off her panties, the material somewhat uncomfortable after the literal race sensei had announced in the last half-day of travel. Sure enough, although Kota's eyes appreciated the reveal of her sex and the crevice of her rear, they didn't linger like so many of her classmates' had. She knew that even Murta and Lee would occasionally sneak glances when she was bathing during missions, but didn't begrudge them that when she got her own eyeful once the tables were turned.
If nothing else, it was nice to confirm her boyfriend was exceptional in that department as well.
Finally, her hand went to the black bracelet on her right wrist, catching the blade as it unfolded itself from its storage form. Her fingers tightened around her 'partner' briefly, feeling the pulse of energy from the blade as it, for lack of a better word, 'woke up.' It was still drowsy, though, not being urged to bloodshed by its wielder. It stayed in the state of half-consciousness even as she handed it over to its creator.
Kotaro's touch and a spark of chakra lit up an immensely complex series of seals on the naked black blade. Seeing them reminded her that, for all the hubris of calling a sword a 'work of art,' the term might be deserved in this case.
“Hmm... good, everything seems to be working well,” Kota stated, setting the blade aside after only a moment of consideration. Tenten could feel the blade perk up and then, metaphorically, curl back up and allow itself to fade back into hibernation.
“I still don't see why you can't make Satsuki and Yakumo's blades do that,” Tenten stated, raising her arms as Kotaro approached her own nude form.
“It's a function of what the blade's abilities are,” Kota replied thoughtfully, his fingers dancing over bare flesh and hitting a few of her chakra points as intricate seal work faded into existence on her right arm and shoulder. Eventually, the image stabilized into a stylized representation of a forge, the 'hearth fire' resting just over her right breast, opposite her own heart.
'Balance' Kota had replied when she'd asked.
She supposed she could see it.
“Satsuki's blade isn't anything particularly special or exotic in the grand scheme of things,” her boyfriend continued as she tried to ignore the way his hands occasionally slipped to touch something she was sure wasn't related to her chakra network. “It's made to be an extension of her bloodline. Or, rather, a specific part of it. But the principle of a blade that throws a fire jutsu around isn't anything new or revolutionary. Hers just throws around a corrosive black flame capable of burning for an entire week and consuming virtually anything if left unchecked.”
“Not special or - ah! - exotic, right.” Tenten scoffed, two of his fingers pressing a sensitive chakra node on her inner thigh.
She swallowed.
“That's the Uchiha bloodline working, mainly,” Kota demurred. “Yakumo's sword is... technically complicated, but not really all that exotic, either. It was tricky, but getting it to hold all of those kinds of paint and switch seamlessly was an interesting challenge. Again, though, most of its strength is in the way it acts as a force-multiplier for her bloodline. Another ninja wielding it wouldn't be able to make use of it anywhere near as well.”
Tenten hummed, not trusting her voice at the moment as fingers which had no business being so talented swept up the chakra points on her back and released tension and stress as they worked. The flickering flame of Kota's own chakra was nearly invisible to her senses, so tightly controlled was it even as he stood in physical contact with her. Still, the effect that he could have on her.
Am I panting? Oh gods, I am, aren't?
“What you wanted was a little more complicated,” Kotaro stated calmly, as if he wasn't working her body into a frenzy with the effortless grace of a master. “A blade that can manifest other blades, control them, and dissipate them on command. Kajiya can make real blades, of course, that would kill you every time you used it.”
Tenten tried to focus on the fact that he hadn't disregarded the possibility as something that couldn't be done. Instead, her mind began to swim with lust even as her body refused to obey her own will.
Yeah, Kotaro is terrifying sometimes.
“So instead of just engraving a shuriken kage bunshin technique with a chakra capacitor in it, which would only allow a handful of types of blades to be created, I got... creative. A blade that can twist space, just a bit. The blades still aren't real, of course, but... oh, are you okay, Tenten?”
The question was so innocent it might have fooled someone who didn't have as much history as she did with Kota. Unable to restrain the whimper that passed her lips, Tenten replied weakly. “B-bastard... wanted me na-naked – ah! - teasing me.”
Kota stepped around her, raising one brow curious as his lips twitched into a sly smirk. “Are you saying you don't enjoy it? The puddle you're making on my floor says otherwise.”
A mortifying blush swept over her face as her attention was drawn to the thin line of fluid on the inside of her legs, something she hadn't noticed until. “Aaah! K-Kota puh-pluhease!”
“Please what?” Kotaro asked, the fingers on his right hand drawing lines of fire over her side as he swept them across her skin towards-
“Cum! Lemme-cum! Please!” Tenten shouted, forgoing restraint and self-respect completely.
Kotaro's sly smirk widened and, despite the surprise and torrent of sensation, she felt nothing but safety and trust looking in those eyes, even as his hand swept down to the rise of her sex pressing down on the upper reaches of pubic hair and-
Tenten's vision went white and a scream echoed in her ears. Belatedly, she realized that it was her own. The roaring of her own blood in her ears as pleasure choked out rational thought might have had something to do with it. When her vision returned and her pulse slowed, she found herself cradled against Kota's chest, his hand still running over her nude body but quieting the tremors left over from one of the most powerful orgasms she'd ever experienced.
“Wow,” Tenten breathed, sighing against her lover. “That was...”
Kota chuckled into the lingering silence. “I'm glad you liked it. You girls had been encouraging me to, ah... take more initiative.”
“It's good, really good,” Tenten replied, complex words still a bit beyond her at the moment. “Woulda' tol you ta' stop if I didn't like it. Mmm. How'd you hol me still?”
“One of those tricks that's not very impressive,” Kota replied, his lips twitching again.
Tenten huffed a breathless laugh. “You're... hmm, playing around. Not like you. The fight with her was that fun?”
Kota hummed in reply, shrugging slightly. “It got my blood pumping, so I might be feeling a bit more energetic than usual.”
“Is good,” Tenten felt herself slur slightly, then squirmed down her boyfriend's body. “Lemme, let me... take care of you.”
Kota stared at her and, for a moment, she thought he was going to refuse. Even Tenten could tell that she was tired from the sudden bout of 'fun.' Still, it assuaged her pride when Kota leaned back and loosened his pants to fish his dick out. A moment after it was free, Tenten pushed her head forward, sucking and licking sloppily. It wasn't her best job, but... the act she had once thought demeaning and humiliating wasn't. Even as clumsy and desperate as her actions were now, the fact that she was doing them to please someone who had helped her so much, who meant so much to her...
It was a comfort that he wanted her just as much as she wanted him.
~~~
Initially, I had something different planned for this chapter, but I couldn't get it to flow. So, instead, have some Tenten Lewds.
Next chapter will feature Team 7 returning from the Wave mission and revealing how things finished out.
Winning Peace coming up next. At least, probably. I've got another chapter of The Hand We're Dealt that's almost done, too. One will go out late this week and the other over the weekend.
Until then, Rock on, Stay awesome, and Thank you for all the support.