Summary: Blow for blow, strike for strike – Tenten is the killer of her team.
Disclaimer: I make no claim on owning the mega-money-maker that is Naruto, alas.

A/N: Inspired by a quote from Exile's Honor by Mercedes Lackey. There's also a fanart that tangentially goes with this, by the same title as this piece, in my deviantart. Strange, these vignettes are getting darker and darker…

By These Hands

When it comes down to it, Tenten is the killer of her team.

Blow for blow, her strikes leave more dead and dying behind than either of her teammates.

While Lee may take down far more enemies than her, his hands do not carry the same sort of lethality that hers does.

That is the nature of a weapon, after all.

Technically, Neji's jyuuken is more deadly, but even with the hakke kuushou his range is extremely limited. Tenten's range extends to the range of her bow – 70 meters. Actually, her range could be much farther – the bow weight allows for it – but for the assurance of a clean, quick kill she makes her assassin shots at seventy meters or less.

But her lethal range is still a hell of a lot greater than most other shinobi.

She is the first one to have killed on her team. It wasn't clean, or fast, or elegant at all – she used fifteen kunai to kill the man coming at her, and in her terror two of them missed, much to her shame in recollection – but she was the first one from Team Gai to tremble over a body while Gai-sensei clasped their shoulder and said,

"You are a shinobi. Some must be shinobi, so that others may live in peace."

That she, the physically weakest, is the most lethal of her team does not escape her irony.

It does not escape her teammates' irony either, and so they increase their efforts to decimate their opponents before she can, so that she does not have to leave so many dead as they. So that, while nearly all of her victims are slashed open and dying, at least she did not kill as many as she could have.

Because of the three of them, it is Tenten who is most at risk for going quite mad.

It's what happens when you are consistently covered in another one's guts. At least Neji's kills are cleaner.

- x x x x x -

She stands in the training grounds, honing her accuracy – she is making a cut-out of the Hokage mountain, complete with shading and texture as she varies her choices between kunai, shuriken and senbon needles, and how far she embeds the points – when Gai-sensei comes out to observe her.

"You are enjoying yourself."

She makes a wry smile – the weapon-mosaic of the Hokage mountain might just have given things away. Tenten lets fly a senbon, finishing the eye of the Yondaime. "I'm good at it."

Gai-sensei nods, slowly, and when Tenten turns to face him, beaming as she has completed a small art wonder of weapon-sculpture, she sees that this is one of those times when her sensei is being very serious.

She recalls that just yesterday she had killed seven people in their last B-ranked mission.

Oh.

That was why today, instead of practicing on proper targets, she was juvenilely playing "color-by-weapon" on a fallen tree.

"I— I like being good at it," she says defensively for some reason. It is not her fault that she is good at what she does, that she likes the feel of her hand clasping the hilt of a new blade and the knowing that she has hit her target perfectly again. She's good at it, and she likes being good at something, even if it's—

"You are proud of your skill, even if you do not enjoy killing. I see no difficulty with this."

Gai-sensei walks over to the studded tree, and begins pulling out the weapons so that she may start again.

- x x x x x -

Something in her mind snaps back into place, and she freezes.

Oh.

Tenten looks down at the katana in her hand, and knows that in a moment she is going to feel sick.

She isn't going to be actually sick. She's done this enough times to wrestle that guilty, despairing feeling down and tell herself that there was need for it.

Though, when Tenten looks up and sees the bodies lying around her with eyes that are not fighting-drunk, not with eyes that are hyperaware and filled with unholy glee, with a manic grin and a body filled with the white-hot heat of rage, she thinks— she has never brought down so many before.

There are fifteen dead in a circle about her, five teams in all, and all dead by the blade in her hand.

There was need for it.

A mission gone awry. There is a proverb that "most battle plans do not survive the initial encounter with the enemy," and it is painfully true. Lee and Neji were to move in first, with Tenten for cover and back-up. Except the ambush Team Gai was planning to spring was instead sprung upon them. They hadn't expected their opponents to attack first.

She can't – or doesn't want to – remember exactly what happened. There was a trap – catching Neji and Lee, but not her, because she was farther back. A strange, gooey, suffocating, chakra-resistant gel that prevented Lee from moving and made Neji's jyuuken useless. That their enemies had pooled their chakra together, so the only way for her to set her teammates free was to kill them all – except, as the enemy leader taunted, that was impossible. How could a single girl face these odds and win? She might as well surrender – see, her teammates had already stopped moving in suffocation…

Something had snapped inside her then.

She burst from the trees with a sudden barrage of weaponry and explosives, and three bodies already had fallen – she charged forward, screaming, with katana drawn…

Then, there was only target and response and the terrible, terrible joy of killing.

Only when the sound of the last body falling reaches Tenten's ears does she return to sanity.

Lee stumbles over to her, sloppy bits of gel falling off him as he unexpectedly sweeps her into a massive hug. Tenten is still frozen rigid as her mind runs around in circles, I did this I did this I did this. Neji pries open her hand still gripping the katana until she finally lets go. Neji clasps her shoulder.

"It's over," he says. We're safe.

She breaks down and clutches both Neji and Lee, bawling like a little child.

They're safe.

x x x x x

Gai-sensei hands her back the first kunai from her weapon-mosaic.

"Better that you should be proud of your skill. When need drives, you cannot hold back."