Boom!

Or, Bonding over Explosives is Fun!

A Naruto one shot by Andrew J. Talon

Disclaimer: I don't own it, and I'm not making any profit from it. It's just for fun.

Author's Note: This takes place after Naruto's return with Tsunade, but before the anime Tea Country filler arc.

- - -

Tenten sighed. Another day, another training session…

Another game of 'How many kunai can Neji and Lee dodge before I run out?'

"YOSH! Closer this time, Tenten-san! Closer! You can do it!"

One of the few times Tenten was glad about Neji's reticent and silent nature was during target practice. She didn't need him adding to her irritation by commenting on how many times she'd failed to hit him.

Perfect accuracy my butt… As much as Gai might occasionally brag about her incredible marksmanship, it was only as useful so far as directing her weapons exactly where she wanted them to go.

If her target was moving fast enough, it made things a bit more difficult.

Another salvo and she managed to cut Lee on the cheek. Neji once again danced out of the way just in time. His movements were always so graceful, so perfect.

Like a ballerina…

The mental image of Neji pirouetting in a pink tutu made it a struggle to keep a straight face. It did, however, allow just one of her kunai to hit Lee right in the leg as he leaped into the air. Unfortunately, it struck right on one of his weight sets, bouncing off and flying away into the trees.

"D'OWWWW!"

Tenten paused. So did Lee and Neji.

"SON OF A-OWWWW!"

Tenten moved instinctively, rushing off through the trees to find whoever she'd accidentally skewered.

Bursting out of the trees onto a rocky river shore, Tenten's keen eyes easily spotted a loud, orange, person-shaped object lying among the stones, gripping his blonde head.

"Oh my God, are you all right?" She cried, rushing over.

Please, don't let me have hit him in the eye! Please!

That would be all she needed, sending a stray kunai right into someone's eye socket.

Stooping down, she put comforting hands on the screaming boy's arms.

"Calm down, it's okay! Let me just see…"

The boy's cries quieted slightly, and his arms relaxed. Tenten carefully pulled his hands away from his face. To her infinite relief, the kunai wasn't lodged in his eye socket.

There wasn't a kunai at all. Just a big welt on the boy's whiskered cheek. She blinked.

"Naruto?" Tenten asked incredulously. Sure, there were only a few people in the village who wore orange, but still! Not recognizing him?

It's just the stress, that's all…

Naruto groaned and blinked at her.

"Oh! You're… Um…"

"Tenten," she reminded him. "I'm on Neji's team?"

"Oh! Right! I remember you!" Naruto raised his arm up to wave a greeting. "Hey Neji! Hey Lee!"

"YOSH! Naruto-san, it is good to see you my rival!" Lee cheered. "Also, that you are not seriously harmed!"

Neji merely nodded to Naruto. "Naruto."

"Oh, um… I guess this is yours," Naruto winced, reaching over his head to retrieve the kunai. Tenten took it, blinking a bit in disbelief.

It hit him in the temple…The blunt part…

No wonder some people had been naming him "Luckiest Ninja Alive", if even half the stories about him were true.

"At least you are all right, Naruto-san!" Lee grinned, giving a thumbs up. Neji sighed at the irony. The blunt end of a kunai knocking Naruto down, where the 64 Palms couldn't?

Tenten's eyes looked about and spotted some brushes, ink, and pieces of paper near where Naruto lied. Picking up one piece of paper, her hand began to shake as she looked it over. Naruto sat back up, blinking at the intensity of Tenten's stare at one of his seals.

"N-Naruto… This is…"

"Oh, yeah!" Naruto exclaimed with a grin. "I'm working on seals!"

"Seals?" Asked Neji, raising an eyebrow. Naruto nodded.

"Yeah, Ero-Sennin finally gave me more cool stuff to learn. Though it's a bitch to figure out," Naruto admitted. He shrugged.

"Right now, I'm working on explosive tags!"

Lee and Neji's expressions morphed. The Green Beast's eyes widened as his smile became extremely strained, while the Hyuuga genius's eyebrows went way up, and he looked even more tense than usual.

Naruto felt warm breath hitting his cheek and turned his head to the source. Wide, warm brown eyes greeted him.

"Bwah!" He yelped, scooting back slightly on his butt. The gravel hurt, but this was ignored in favor of the radiant, and slightly manic smile on Tenten's face.

"Explosive tags, you said?" She asked, like a little girl whose parents had sprung for that pony. Neji coughed.

"Well, we had better get back to training-"

"Yosh! My youthful energies cry out for struggle! Let us go, Neji-!"

The two male members of Team Gai headed away, as though fleeing. Naruto watched them leave, and then slowly turned his head back to Tenten, who was still smiling at him. He blushed slightly at the intensity of her gaze.

"Explosive tags? You know… How to make them?" Tenten asked, almost breathlessly. Naruto grinned. Neji and Lee's weird behavior was almost immediately forgotten. She actually seemed… Interested! Impressed, even!

"Yeah! It's not so hard after enough practice," Naruto went on. He pulled a sheet of random paper from the pile by the shore, took up the brush, and quickly and efficiently drew the seal. Focusing, he injected a fair amount of chakra into the sheet, transforming a previously harmless scrap of paper with a few symbols drawn on it into a potentially lethal explosive.

"Nicely done!" Tenten enthused, snatching the tag from him and looking it over. Naruto blinked. True, he may not seem to pay a lot of attention to stuff around him, but he did recall something about Tenten…

"Wait… Don't you make your own sealed scrolls?" Naruto asked. Tenten nodded.

"Oh yes, definitely! I make them all on my own!"

"Really? That's cool!" Naruto enthused. A stray thought occurred though, urged by the slightly uneasy feeling he'd developed at Neji and Lee's departure.

"Um… Well, wait. If you can do that… Can't you make explosive seals too?"

Tenten shook her head, sighing as she held the tag to her chest.

"Oh no… Gai-sensei won't let me make explosive tags. Never let me learn."

"Why not?" Naruto asked, blinking.

Tenten couldn't help but recall the incident that had led to her sensei banning her from anything remotely explosive in nature.

"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! DIE YOU BASTARDS! DIIIIEEE, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

The bandit camp was already in flames, said former occupants mostly running and screaming. But still the madly cackling girl threw kunai wrapped in explosive tags, her laughter billowing up with the smoke from the constant explosions.

The male members of Team Gai stared, all sharing the same look of disbelief and slight fear, as Tenten went utterly postal on the targets of their first C-Rank mission.

Neji easily noticed this and quickly tried to regain his usual indifferent look. Which was really, really difficult when his composure was being disrupted by either another explosion, or Tenten's frightening laughter.

"Uh… She is… Most youthful, is she not Gai-sensei?" Lee offered tentatively.

Gai slowly nodded, wondering just where he'd missed this in Tenten's school file… Just before a stray exploding kunai flew towards Lee. It ignited in mid-flight, the spark reflected in Lee's widening eyes.

"GAI-SENS-!"

KABOOM!

"Huh?" Tenten paused her mad cackling long enough to turn around. "Hey guys, what was-? Oh… Eh heh… Um, h-hello, Gai-sensei…"

She smiled nervously as a most unhappy, disheveled no-longer-Green Beast glared at her, two unconscious and debris-covered genin behind him.

It took Lee three months to grow his eyebrows back.. he'll probably never forgive her for it…

"… No reason!" Explained Tenten with a nervous laugh. "But… Do you possibly think we could… Test it out?"

Naruto blinked, and shrugged. "Sure! But what on?"

The two ninja hummed thoughtfully. Tenten's eyes wandered to the river. A fish jumped out of the stream, splashing in the sunlight. It was a tranquil, picturesque scene with the rich, green forest as a background.

Naruto's stomach growled. He blushed slightly and put his hand behind his head, laughing in mild embarrassment.

"Heh… I guess it's lunch time… Well, I'm going to go get some ramen. Would you like to come?"

Naruto blinked when he received no response. Tenten was still staring at the river. Her eyes slowly turned back to Naruto, and she grinned.

"Actually… Naruto, have you ever had fish cooked on an open fire?"

Naruto blinked again.

"Well yeah... We could catch some, I guess."

Naruto stood up to go into the river, but Tenten put a hand on his wrist, stopping him. He turned his head to look at her, noting that her eyes had gained a slightly manic glint.

"No... I've got abetter idea..."

- - - - - - - - - -

"Naruto! Naruto, where are you?" Sakura shouted, irritation coloring her voice. Walking nearby, Sasuke scowled as Kakashi leisurely walked behind him, reading Icha Icha Paradise as usual.

"Don't see why we need the idiot," the Uchiha survivor snorted. "No hard missions today."

"We need all members of our cell before we can take missions, you know that Sasuke," Kakashi reminded him. Sakura sighed. She wouldn't have minded alone time with Sasuke, but if they needed Naruto, they needed Naruto.

The tranquility of the wooded road was disrupted when two familiar Green Beasts and an equally familiar Hyuuga genius crashed through the trees through the path.

"We don't have a moment to lose, Lee!" Gai cried as they completely ignored Team Seven and rushed on by.

Kakashi blinked. Gai hadn't noticed him. He hadn't stopped to challenge him.

Something was up.

"C'mon," he stated, shoving his book into his pouch and rushing after Team Gai. Sasuke and Sakura followed, their curiosity piqued as well.

"Gai! What's up?" Kakashi asked as he easily caught up with Gai, still rushing through the trees. The spandex-wearing jounin spared Kakashi a most serious glance.

"No time to talk, my rival! We have an emergency!"

"What emergency?" Kakashi asked, all business now.

"Your most youthful student, Naruto, is learning how to make explosive seals," Gai stated. Kakashi blinked.

"Okay…?"

"And he is no doubt talking with Tenten, one of my wonderful students, you remember her do you not?" Gai asked. Kakashi thought about it.

Bunned girl. Weapons specialist. Got her ass kicked by that fan-wielding girl from Sand.

"I'm failing to see why this qualifies as an emergency," Kakashi stated, as both partial teams emerged at Gai's destination – A broad, gravelly river bank.

Gai's breath hitched. Lee whimpered and covered his eyebrows with his hands. Neji twitched.

Sasuke saw the idiot they'd been looking for, along with the bun-haired weapons specialist, standing in the middle of the river, dropping a wrapped kunai into the water. They both turned and ran as fast as they could, and wore identical grins.

"… Oh shit," Kakashi muttered. Sakura blinked, realizing what was going on only after Lee, Gai, Neji, and her sensei had hit the dirt, hands over their heads.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" Naruto and Tenten cheered, just before the river seemed to bulge and leap out of it's bed with a very loud KABOOM!

"AUGHHH!" Sakura screeched as torrents of water mixed with river rocks crashed down upon her, knocking her off her feet and right into Sasuke. The Uchiha heir fared little better, a rock beaning him right in the head and sending him down for the count with his pink-haired fangirl on top.

After the man-made rain had ceased, Kakashi opened his single visible eye. He got back on his feet, noting that Gai had shielded Neji and Lee with his body. The Hyuuga genius immediately scooted away, shuddering from the close contact with his sensei.

"You are all right, rival? Lee? Neji?" Gai asked seriously. Neji nodded, twitching slightly. Lee gave a thumbs up, his other hand double checking that his large brows were intact. Kakashi turned and checked on his own students.

Sakura was fussing over an unconscious Sasuke. Nothing new there.

A familiar excited whoop caught his attention, and he turned to see Tenten and Naruto, standing amid a large number of stunned fish. Both were soaked, both had scratches and bruises that probably resulted from rocks that had rained down on them from the blast, and both looked more than a little disheveled…

Yet both were grinning and laughing like lunatics.

"Oh man, that was awesome!" Naruto cheered. Tenten grinned and impulsively kissed Naruto, making the jinchurikki's eyes bug out almost comically.

She released his lips, breathing hard. Her cheeks glowed.

"…Let's do it again!" Tenten enthused. Naruto grinned.

"YEAH!"

"NO!" Everyone else bellowed.

Save for Sasuke, but he was a bit busy being unconscious while Sakura proceeded to molest him. Inner Sakura grinned wickedly.

Thank you, Naruto! This is the best day of my life!

- - -

Thus, a long running question a few people had had questions about was answered: Why didn't Tenten use explosive kunai in her battle against Temari?

The answer was simple: Gai forbade her from having anything to do with explosives, because Tenten gets a little… Carried away when she had access to massive firepower.

Actually, that was an understatement. She loved explosions. Loved them, wanted them, enjoyed every aspect of them, and more or less had an incredible fetish for anything that went boom.

Which easily explained why she essentially raped Naruto in public right after he showed her his Bunshin Daibakuha no Jutsu (Great Clone Explosion technique).

Not that he really minded by that point... But that's another story.

- - -

Short, rather pointless, but something that seemed funny to me. Plus, I need to keep writing and reading if I'm to break my writer's block regarding Key Through the Heart.

Please review.