AN: With regard to Naruto canon, I take pre-shippuden as canon and include other stuff on a case by case basis. In general I keep things to the pre-shippuden attitude, which is a little more bloodthirsty than post-shippuden. I don't like to go super edgelord with it, but remember that in this time period Shino exploded a guy's arms during a ranking exam and the collective reaction was "that guy's cooler than we thought."

ooOoo

The first thing Tenten felt when she woke up was a flash of surprise that she was still alive. The second thing was a splitting headache.

She stifled a groan and brought a hand to her face, massaging her temples in an attempt to relieve her headache while she conducted a hurried self-assessment. She found that all of her limbs were still attached. They even moved in response to her commands. Other than the headache she didn't feel any pain, and a quick pat-down came up dry of blood. All in all, she was in much better shape than she had any right to expect after surviving the collision between two high end space-time warping techniques.

She hadn't escaped completely unscathed. Tenten frowned as she discovered the source of her headache: she was running low on chakra. Very low. Just a hair's breadth away from falling into a coma from full-on chakra exhaustion. She'd have to be cautious until she either recovered or reunited with her teammates.

Now that she was sure she wasn't in imminent danger of dying, Tenten turned her attention to her surroundings. She found herself in a small cul-de-sac formed by the back walls of the surrounding buildings. The road was paved, which suggested that she was in a large city. The nearby piles of refuse suggested she was in a poor neighborhood. Listening carefully, she could make out the sounds of some kind of machinery moving around and none of the sounds of nature.

The last thing she remembered was moving with the joint operating force through the forests on the border of Fire Country and Grass Country. A man wearing an orange mask had ambushed their combined forces by himself, a series of increasingly desperate clashes culminating in that final attack, and now she was in an unknown city. It seemed finding her teammates would have to be a long term mission rather than an immediate goal.

Tenten felt a pang of loss and immediately pushed it to the back of her mind. She had always prided herself on being a practical person. She was fine. Anything that she survived couldn't possibly have killed her teammates. She wasn't the type to give up easily, and neither were they. Her team might have been a little unconventional, but they each embodied Konoha's will of fire in their own way. She'd find them or they'd find her. Everything was fine.

Levering herself to her feet brought a brief spike of pain from her headache but nothing more, confirming that she truly had come through everything in one piece. Tenten said a brief prayer of thanks for the small miracle before reviewing her priorities. Find out where she was. Figure out a plan to get back to her team. And go to sleep until this damn headache went away. Not necessarily in that order.

Well, whatever she was going to do was going to start by leaving this dead end. She brushed herself off, checked that her hidden weapons were still where she had left them, and straightened her clothes as best she could before she set off. She rounded the corner to find a much more inviting scene.

It was still an alley way. There was still trash strewn all over the place. But where she'd woken up to find herself faced with blank brick walls, this alley ran along the rear of various commerical establishments. Restaurants, stores, and more to the point, bars. The particular business that had caught her eye had three young men gathered around the back stoop in various stages of inebriation, smoking and talking amongst themselves.

The three of them were clearly small time criminals of some sort or another. They weren't wearing any gang colors that Tenten recognized, but they each had matching tattoos, they'd shaved their heads into matching hairstyles, and they carried themselves with that over the top macho swagger of somebody eager for a fight to break out. Tenten smiled as soon as she saw them and made a beeline for their position.

"Where am I?"

Generally speaking it would be unwise for a teenage girl to approach a group of hoodlums at night in an isolated area, but the circumstances were quite different when the girl was a trained shinobi. The criminal elements of the elemental countries were well aware that they existed at the sufferance of the various hidden villages. As such, they limited their crimes to the sort that were tolerated at the edges of any civilized society: gambling parlors, largely voluntary prostitution, drug smuggling, and so on. They also knew better than to start trouble with anybody from a major village like Konoha.

Which is why Tenten was quite shocked when the leader of their little group gave her a long look up and down before drawling out something incomprehensible but obviously disrespectful. She stood rooted to the spot as he stood up and said something to his companions, only stepping back automatically as he reached for her shoulder.

"Do you want to die?"

She flipped back her bangs, as if the Konoha symbol on her forehead protector could possibly have been obscured from his vision. Rather than back off, the man snarled something to his companions and drew a knife from his waistband. He held it out in front of him with a sloppy gesture as his companions moved to flank her. Tenten took another step back as she tried to process the situation.

Could this criminal group have the backing of a rogue ninja? It would explain the confidence, but not the behavior. Most missing nins went to great effort to keep a low profile. Konoha would send a team to smack down an uppity crime boss; it would send a task force to utterly destroy any missing ninja operating in its territory.

Could they be backed by a major power? It was hardly unheard of. If that were the case, then Tenten was in trouble. She hardly had enough chakra to keep herself upright, let alone fight off whatever hidden protector was lurking in the shadows.

The lead criminal took another step forward, and Tenten shrugged. Whatever was going on, she certainly wasn't going to just let this thug have his way with her. A trio of kunai dropped into her hand and a single smooth motion sent the small knives flying on their way. At the same time she prepared to squeeze out enough chakra for an escape technique from the dregs circulating through her body.

Thunkthunkthunk.

The kunai sprouted out of the foreheads of the three men like they'd grown there. The three bodies slumped to the ground and a hush fell over the alley. Tenten looked around in disbelief. No protector in the shadows, no hint of chakra from the men themselves... either they had been more drunk than they appeared, or they were just tired of living. Another possibility niggled at the back of her mind, prompted by the gibberish the man had spoken, but she pushed it down for now. Best to focus on immediate needs.

Tenten frisked the bodies as she had done many times before. The men were unarmed aside from a few cheaply made knives. She pocketed some keys and some unidentifiable odds and ends, but the real prizes were their wallets. Unfortunately, what she found inside proved more unsettling than reassuring. The wallets contained some paper money that she'd never seen before along with a collection of cards made out of a material she'd never seen before. The cards were covered with what she could only assume was lettering, and a few of them bore photographic likenesses that matched the bodies in front of her.

The fact that these men were important enough to carry photographic identification probably didn't mean anything good. Tenten sighed. Overwhelming confidence that wasn't backed by hard power must be backed by soft power. Which meant that within five minutes of her first independent operation on foreign soil she'd created a diplomatic incident.

There was no technique that would turn back time or raise the dead. All she could do was try to make the best of things. Tenten tucked the men's wallets in with the rest of their belongings, removed and cleaned her kunai before slipping them back into place, and then sealed the bodies into a specialized storage scroll. If she was very lucky she would be able to turn in the criminals for a bounty and start off on the right foot with the local authorities. Otherwise it was for the best that the bodies just disappear.

Cleanup done, she headed down the alley and made her way out into the main street. Streetlamps lit the surroundings up as bright as day despite the empty street. This really was a wealthy city. Unfortunately, while the light was good, the surrounding street signs were as completely indecipherable as the cards she had looted off the dead bodies. Tenten knew she ought to explore the city to make sure she wasn't just stuck in a foreign enclave, but another urgent spike in her headache made her decide to put such things off for the night.

Fortunately, one of the stores lining the street was only a single story building that neighbored a pair of buildings that didn't appear to have any windows overlooking it. She didn't burn much chakra at all making the leap up to the roof. Once she confirmed that she was in a local blind spot she unsealed a small tent and bedroll and started making camp. The one saving grace in this whole mess was that her hobby of making her own storage seals meant that she carried the bulk of her team's supplies, so she didn't have any urgent needs at the moment other than to find a way home.

A wave of exhaustion crashed over her as soon as she crawled into bed. Despite that, she found that sleep eluded her for a good long while as that thought she'd been avoiding swirled to the forefront of her mind.

What if she was so far from home that she hadn't even been recognized as a Konoha shinobi?

ooOoo

Tenten woke the next morning to find that her headache was gone but her other problems remained. The cards she had taken from the dead idiots were as indecipherable as ever. She tried channeling her own chakra into them, she tried smearing them with blood taken from the bodies of their owners, she tried channeling chakra into them after the blood was applied. The cards remained stubbornly nonresponsive. They were either embedded with sealwork that was far beyond her ability to decipher or they truly were used for identification purposes only.

She put the cards away as she was forced to admit that she wasn't going to get any further without talking to a local. She used a simple camping technique to materialize enough water out of midair to fill her bucket. That allowed her to at least wash her face and hands and make herself somewhat presentable. That done, she broke camp, sealing everything away into storage. She checked over the rooftop to confirm that no trace of her presence remained behind, then checked again. On the third check she realized she was stalling.

That nagging fear that she was far from home with no way to get back had wormed its way through her mind overnight. She'd heard rumors that people in far off lands spoke a different language than the people of the Elemental Countries, but she'd never met anyone who actually couldn't speak her language. None of the tales she'd heard of foreign cities matched at all even the brief glimpse she'd seen of this city last night. She was almost certain that wherever she was, it was somewhere that wasn't on any maps in Konoha. If that was the case, what could she possibly do to get home?

Tenten took a deep breath. She squared her shoulders and gave herself a light slap across each cheek, forcefully breaking her train of thought.

"Calm down. You carry the will of fire with you no matter where you are. Your teammates are looking for you just like you're looking for them," Tenten said, then paused. "In fact, if they find me before I find them then I'll climb the Hokage mountain twenty times without using my legs!"

Resolve bolstered, Tenten dropped down to street level and started looking for somebody to talk to. Her first target was a neatly put together middle aged man. He was walking down the street with a briefcase in his hand and smiled politely at her as she approached.

"Excuse me, sir, could you tell me what city this is?"

The man paused for a moment, looking at her with confusion in his eyes. When he spoke his tone was polite but Tenten couldn't understand a word that he said. With that, he resumed his brisk walk. She stared after him, rooted to the spot.

Tenten finally shook her head and decided not to let the failure get her down. She wandered for a while before spotting her next candidate, an elderly woman using a walker to take one painstaking step at a time. She proved much more congenial, clearly willing to spend all day talking Tenten's ear off. Unfortunately, she proved just as impossible to understand as everybody else Tenten had spoken to since arriving in this unlucky city.

Tenten did her best to say a polite farewell to somebody who obviously didn't understand a word she was saying, then ducked into a side alley. She had noticed that she was getting some strange looks from other pedestrians and once she thought about it she quickly noticed that her outfit, while practical and (in her opinion) quite flattering, hardly matched with what everybody else was wearing. After glancing around to be sure nobody was watching she made a quick handsign and changed her appearance in the blink of an eye, matching the simple shirt and blue pants combination that seemed popular. Using the transformation technique to change outfits was a bit petty, but for the moment it was the easiest way to keep a low profile.

She did find herself receiving fewer sidelong glances once her disguise was in place. Despite that, she continued to come up short in her attempts to find somebody she could talk to. Other oddities about the city began to present themselves as the morning wore on. For one thing, the metal carriages that she had seen parked along the side of the road proved to have their own means of propulsion. Tenten had heard that Snow Country had something similar, although there the horseless carriage ran on rails. She couldn't imagine the sealwork involved in making such a machine that could drive freely along the road. The traffic laws alone would be a nightmare.

She was able to stay out of trouble by sticking with groups of pedestrians and moving when they moved. Since she didn't have anywhere in particular to go she chose her path by aiming for the largest crowds she could find. It was a pleasant walk, all things considered, so long as she didn't dwell on her complete inability to understand a word coming out of anybody else's mouth.

Following the crowd led her to an oceanfront boardwalk. The smell of salt on the breeze and cries of the gulls overhead reminded her of the seaside village that had hosted one of her squad's more pleasant team building trips. Tenten began to consider where such a large city with an ocean to its east might be located relative to Fire Country but was jarred from her train of thought when an impossible structure caught her eye.

Out on the water was a shining fortress, standing tall and proud despite the endless passage of the waves. The base structure itself was an impressive piece of engineering, but it was made truly imposing by the translucent force field that covered the whole thing. Tenten felt at once both nervous and reassured. She would certainly need to keep her nose clean around people who could build something like that, but if she was able to maintain cordial relations with the locals-and figure out how to talk to them-such a capable people would certainly be able to get her home, no matter how far away it might be.

A grumble from her stomach brought her out of her thoughts. Tenten scratched her head a bit sheepishly as she tore her eyes away from the marvel on the water. It was later in the day than she had realized. Time for lunch.

The good news was that she had a decent wad of the local currency thanks to last night's adventure. The bad news was that she couldn't read a word on any of the menus that she saw posted outside of the restaurants that she passed. As she moved north along the boardwalk the restaurants became noticeably less fancy in appearance. Tenten knew she had found her lunch location when she found a spot boasting a pictorial menu showcasing what looked like different bowls of ramen. Even better, the chef running the place had an honest face.

The layout of the restaurant was simple. A spot to order up front and a bar perpendicular to the boardwalk where customers could sit facing the cooking area while they ate. The weather was warm and pleasant, so the entire front of the place had been opened up to the elements. Tenten placed her order by smiling and pointing, and paid with one of the crisp unused bills that had been placed in the back of one of the crooks' wallets. She received more bills and coins in exchange, which she could only hope was correct change. More importantly, she also received a bowl of pork ramen.

Tenten found a seat about halfway down the bar that didn't have any other patrons nearby and settled in for her meal. She was thoroughly enjoying her lunch when she felt somebody enter into her personal space. Spinning around on her bar stool, she saw a girl who appeared a bit younger than her standing just outside of arm's reach. The other girl looked like she had seen better days. Her blonde hair, dyed blue at the tips, didn't look like it had been washed recently. Her clothes were rumpled, and she was wearing more layers than were really needed on such a nice day. Most notable was the look of barely restrained panic on her face.

The girl said something which sounded like it was the same language Tenten had been hearing all day.

"I'm sorry, I can't understand a word you're saying."

The panic on the other girl's face was more obvious now. Her eyes darted from side to side. Tenten followed her gaze and the situation soon became clear. Two people stood in front of the exit from the restaurant, a man and a woman, unmoving islands in the stream of foot traffic. Judging from their bearing, although Tenten wouldn't say that they looked well trained, they at least didn't appear to be strangers to violence. Glancing in the other direction, Tenten could see another man lounging next to the door leading deeper into the restaurant, his sharp eyes belying his casual demeanor.

Tenten frowned. She'd been inclined to keep a low profile, but she was hardly going to watch a kidnapping play out right in front of her. She gestured to the stool next to her.

"Sit."

The other girl understood that much, at least. She perched on the edge of the stool, imploring eyes fixed on Tenten.

Tenten sighed. "How am I going to help you when I can't even talk to anybody?"

None of the three that Tenten had mentally labeled as potential kidnappers reacted when the other girl sat down, at least. Tenten turned back to her meal and scooped up another mouthful of noodles to chew on while she thought. If she were back home, it would be simple enough to tell the local thugs that the girl was under her protection. More than that, if she were back home she could be sure of securing a commendation for ending the lives of anybody vile enough to engage in human trafficking.

Here, though, she didn't know. Did the kidnappers have some kind of connection to the local authorities? If they didn't, how could they possibly act in such brazen fashion? If they did, then this was a situation that might require some finesse. Finesse was rather difficult to achieve when she couldn't communicate.

"You... help... I?"

Tenten snapped her head around in shock. She hastily gulped down the noodles in her mouth before she spoke. "You speak my language?"

The girl shook her head, then held out her hand. Her thumb and forefinger were pinched together and almost touching, and after a beat she spread them a fraction of an inch farther apart. Tenten cocked her head in thought for a moment.

"You understand what I'm saying?"

The girl nodded.

"You're... learning the language from listening to me talk?"

The girl nodded again. Tenten was shocked. After a moment she relaxed into a smile as the situation became clear.

"You have a bloodline talent?"

Bloodline talents were the ultimate proof that the world was unfair. Or that some people had been blessed by the gods, depending on your point of view. Abilities that were inherited and perhaps awakened, but that couldn't be taught. Boosts in power that outstripped anything that could be accomplished by diligent training. Tenten's home village of Konoha hosted two clans that claimed two of the world's most preeminent bloodline talents: the sharingan of the Uchiha and the byakugan of the Hyuuga. The strength of those clans had been pivotal in securing victory for Konoha in the great wars between the hidden villages.

The girl seemed a bit puzzled by the question, but after a moment's thought she nodded once more.

Of course. An intelligent person might start to learn a language after weeks of intense study. To pick it up over the course of a conversation required a monstrous talent. Never mind local criminal gangs, major villages would fight for the right to recruit this girl. Konoha would pay through the nose if it meant convincing her to join them. Other villages would no doubt resort to less savory methods. While the exact details were hard to come by, Tenten knew that, for example, Kumogakure's bloodline acquisition program was more like a forced breeding program than anything else.

That left the question of what to do. Tenten would no doubt be rewarded if she could persuade the girl to follow her to Konoha. More immediately, she could well be the only person in this city that Tenten could actually hold a conersation with. Forget her principled stand against kidnapping, saving this girl was clearly in her self interest. The only question was whether she could do it without getting herself crosswise to the local authorities. The kidnappers didn't look to be wearing any kind of uniform, but Tenten had no idea whether that was significant here.

Tenten shook her head and smiled as she realised she finally had somebody that could answer her questions. "Those people that are following you... who are they with?"

The girl looked at her helplessly before shrugging her shoulders. Tenten felt her own shoulders slump slightly. She could hardly have expected the other girl to have held a civil conversation with the people who were trying to kidnap her. A moment later Tenten realized her mistake. The girl had been learning how to speak to Tenten for all of five minutes. It was silly to expect her to answer anything but yes or no questions.

"Those people, are they with ANBU?"

The girl frowned and shook her head.

"Are they acting on the kage's orders?"

The girl shook her head again.

"Are they criminals?"

The girl nodded.

Tenten smiled and gave her a nod. "All right then."

Mind made up, Tenten acted decisively. She turned back to her meal and scooped the last of the noodles out of the bowl with her chopsticks. Once she had finished those off, she held her chopsticks in her fingers as she picked up the bowl in both hands and began drinking the broth. A quick glance out of the corner of her eyes confirmed the location of the kidnappers.

Tenten's wrist snapped once. Twice. Three times. Her bowl was sent flying out toward the boardwalk. One chopstick shot toward the back of the restaurant. The other darted past the bowl.

Tenten brought hard hands down on the counter with enough force to send herself springing out of her seated position into a crouch on top of the bar. She brought her hands together to form a seal, channeled her chakra, and with a single step the surroundings of the bar rushed past and she landed lightly on the boardwalk outside. She arrived shortly after her projectiles had struck. As expected, the female kidnapper was stumbling backward, dazed from the bowl striking her in the head. The male was pitching back off of his feet, the end of the chopstick just visible where it jutted out from his eye socket. The only surprise was that the bowl that Tenten had expected to shatter had instead held together as it fell to the ground at her feet.

Tenten frowned at the incongruity, then put it out of her mind. Darting forward, she wrapped her arm around the neck of the female kidnapper. She applied enough pressure to cut off the blood flow from the carotid artery for one breath. Two. Three. The woman slumped over as consciousness fled. Tenten released her before unconsciousness turned to death, then turned to the body of her colleague. It was a moment's effort to seal his body away with the thugs from last night.

Back in the restaurant, a ripple of panic was just starting to spread. Tenten exerted herself once more and flashed to the side of the man at the back of the restaurant. Her chopstick had proved just as deadly as its twin, bringing a small smile of satisfaction to her face. The man's body vanished into the scroll, prompting a cry of alarm from a good samaritan who had rushed over to check on the health of the fallen man.

Fortunately, nobody tried to obstruct Tenten as she straightened up, brushed herself off, and began walking out of the restaurant. She had to pause briefly to tug on the elbow of the girl she had rescued. The blonde seemed shocked at the sudden turn of events, but she followed along willingly enough.

Once they were outside, Tenten stopped to scoop up the unconscious kidnapper. Although the woman was a little bit taller than she was, it was a simple matter to lay her across her shoulders. Tenten wouldn't be able to handle a top speed chase while carrying her along, but keeping up with a civilian wouldn't be a problem. The only question was where to go. She spent a moment looking around, trying to decide on a direction, then felt a wry smile creep onto her face as she remembered she had access to a local guide.

"Can you lead us somewhere private?"

The blonde girl looked into Tenten's eyes. After a long moment of thought, she flashed a predatory grin before turning to stride off down the street.

ooOoo