writetomyheart | [Team Three] Lunch Break

In which Tenten and Temari bond over ninja antics and paperwork. G, 700w.
"The floor's never going to be the same again," Tenten said as she passed another sheaf of papers across the table. The quarterly retreats with the Academy staff from Suna were always filled with too many meetings and too much paperwork in her opinion, especially as someone who wasn't a full-time instructor, but the opportunity to recount the most absurd stories to someone who hadn't had to handle the resulting paperwork made up for at least one meeting. Two if she could manage to sneak Temari away from the center of the chaos for a working break.

"Again?" Temari asked as she initialed her own set of papers. "Didn't you just replace it a couple of months ago?"

"It was last month, and yes, but you know how it goes. Next time someone proposes guest speakers for the genin classes, I'm making them submit a more detailed lesson plan and handing them a list of currently prohibited activities. Not that they won't find new things we haven't thought of yet."

Temari laughed. "Yeah, we tried that a few years ago. Three different students managed to almost poison themselves, and we were sweeping sand out from between the floorboards for weeks. It's gone much more smoothly since we started holding the assemblies outdoors, and Kankuro isn't allowed to do show-and-tell with his puppets anymore unless he leaves the poison at home. So what was it for you? Someone get too excited about showing off an earth-style jutsu and bust the floorboards again?"

"I wish," Tenten said as she sorted another stack of papers into their respective files. Did anyone ever look at these again after they were completed, or was it all just bureaucratic busywork? "That's the sort of thing someone would expect to see on the incident and requisitions forms. No, do you remember Lee's one-on-one from our chuunin exam?"

"As much as I'd like to forget that whole mess, it's not every day you see a genin opening multiple Gates. I still can't believe your sensei taught him that."

Tenten winced. "Me either, and I'd rather not think about that too much. Go back further. His first big dramatic moment."

"Oh, those absurd ankle weights? That's another floor that's never going to be the same again."

"Exactly. Anyway, we brought Lee in as one of our guest speakers, and one of the kids knew the story and asked if Lee still had the weights. Lee being Lee, he recreates the whole scene on top of one of the desks, and at the climactic moment boom he drops his current weights on the floor. In case you're curious, they weigh more the double the old set. The floor never stood a chance."

Temari reached across the table and snagged the top of Tenten's files. "And now you're stuck filling out all of the resulting paperwork in triplicate. You know, I'm sure Shikamaru could whip up an condensed form that covers all your bases for these sorts of situations. It sounds like you'd get good use out of it, and then you'd only have to do the whole filled out in triplicate thing once."

Tenten sighed. "I brought it up the last time someone sent a shuriken through a window doing target practice, but he's been swamped with whatever curriculum overhaul you all are working on. I don't want to know the details, but I swear he's been in meetings with the village elders every day for the last month."

"I did tell him public meetings were a mistake. Everyone wants to have an opinion, and the overwhelming majority of them have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. It's a recipe for a massive headache. Speaking of which, I'm going to get a headache of my own if I spend too much longer staring at all of this. Can I interest you in lunch? If we sneak out now, I might even be able to escape before anyone ambushes me for another signature."

"You don't have to ask twice," Tenten said as she quickly set her papers aside. "You promised you'd show me some of the hidden gems around here."