Suttering

Tenten the weapon mistress did not stutter.

That was Hyuuga Hinata's job.

Ever since she was born, she was confident, carried a decent amount of pride, and never stuttered. To her, it was a sign of weakness. And she hated it. With passion.

Then… Hyuuga Neji had to come and walk onto this very Earth.

Whenever she was around him, her face would turn a pale but pretty pink shade, and avoid his cold gaze, stare at the ground, and talk to him. Stuttering.

Hyuuga Neji was the only one who made her stutter.

Not the bullies at school. She beat them up.

Not the teacher's glare. She'd glare back.

Not even her parent's wrath. Her parents were dead.

Only Neji.

She sighed as she continued twirling her wooden staff.

She'd tried to be his friend.

She really did.

But he just had to be the antisocial, arrogant jerk and barely notice her.

Tenten paused as she heard a familiar voice yell, "Byakugan!"

She let her staff disappear with a 'poof' and crept behind a tree, watching her crush train.

She let herself relax and gazed at him dreamily…

And forgot to conceal her chakra.

"Tenten."

"W-what?"

He stopped training and de-activated his Byakugan as he turned towards her, "May I ask why you are staring at me?"

She blushed and tried to keep looking at him.

Fortunately, she succeeded, making eye contact with him.

Unfortunately, her blush increased tenfold.

"Anou… Neji-san…"

"Hm?"

"Um… um… um…" she continued staring into his emotionless eyes, "I…"

"Uzumaki-san said you liked me. Is this true?" he asked bluntly.

Her eyes widened, and her jaw dropped gawking at him, "W-WHAT?"

"Is it true?"

"…I… I guess…" she said slowly.

He smirked as her brush increased.

"So you do."

"Y-yeah… so what if I do?" she shot back.

He shrugged in the oh-so-I'm-always-cool-and-too-good-for-you way that drove her nuts and walked away, leaving a furiously blushing and embarrassed weapon mistress.

Tenten let out a couple of breaths to calm herself down before spinning around on her own heel and stomping off muttering something along the lines of, "Stupid Hyuuga Neji, why the hell does he have to exist…"

She knew the villagers were staring at her.

She knew her idol, the Hokage, was watching her.

She knew which weapons to kill Naruto with.

What she didn't know was that Neji was following her.

And off went a seething Tenten stomping through Konohagukure, with a cool, calm and collected Hyuuga prodigy follow her.

"Tenten."

"Whaddya want?"

He smirked, "You're cute when you stutter."

Tenten froze and blushed heavily as his words kept repeating over in her head.

You're cute when you stutter.

Hm. Maybe stuttering isn't all that bad…