The Chunin Exams - 57

Tenten shook her head, "So not cute Daiki," she replied, before sighing and leaning back into the pillow, her arm coming up to cover her eyes, "…It's frustrating." she admitted.

Daiki was savvy enough to know she wasn't talking about his cocky arrogance.

…This time.

"Losing?" he asked, getting to the root of the issue.

"Failing to keep up," she replied, "I've always been way below Neji, but even Lee's leaving me in the dust, Gai-sensei has even been teaching him a super special jutsu lately. I train every day, I study my butt off, I collect every type of weapon I can find and learn how to use every single one…but, normal stuff like this can't keep up with a Hyuga genius or the things Gai-sensei is teaching Lee."

Hmm, did she know it was the eight gates or not? Daiki assumed she did, after all, to use the the Lotus, Lee had to open the first gate, and he wasn't shy in using it last he remembered.

"They're not that special," he assured her, "There's a limit to how far the Byakugan and Gentle Fist can go alone and Neji's approaching it rapidly and the gates are full of drawbacks that Lee is incapable of getting around."

The best Lee could do, was train his body and adapt as best he could to handle the strain. He wasn't like Daiki or even Naruto who had innate healing abilities that would massively lessen the strain on them from the Eight Gates.

"You even know about the gates huh?" Tenten mused, biting her lip, "When you come away with stuff like that so casually, it almost makes me believe your boasting about being as strong as you say you are."

"I'm being truthful, it's not my fault if nobody believes me until they get my foot up their asses," Daiki shrugged, "I suppose seeing is believing, so you can watch me kick everybody's asses in the third round."

For a moment, she was silent.

Then she lifted her arm from her eyes and looked up at him, her eyes slightly red and puffy. It looked like she had been on the verge of crying in sheer frustration.

'It's understandable, young as she may be, she has put a not inconsiderable amount of time of her life into training to become strong,' Isobu mused, 'You are anomaly as far as gaining strength as a human goes, you're a freak really with your obsession with grinding, but on top of that, you're a freak who cheats. Someone like her who has no special teacher or the opportunities you have, will find it a struggle to progress after reaching a point.'

A cheating freak, huh? Well, he wasn't wrong, but still, hurtful.

Still, he did have a point. Tenten had quite large chakra reserves and she was very, very skilled at what she did.

But skill only went so far in the face of raw unadulterated power.

"Can…can you help me get stronger?" Tenten asked.

He blinked.

Huh.

"Okay." Daiki agreed with a shrug.

Tenten stared at him, "…Just like that?" she asked, looking quite lost.

"Just like that." he nodded. While he was going to be pursuing a possible relationship with this girl and as such it would be in his best interests to make sure she didn't kick the bucket on missions, there was also something else.

Tenten had trained with more or less, every type of weapon, to the point where she was basically a master of almost every type of weapon, or at least every type of general weapon shape. On top of that, she in the future would have went on to be able to use the tools of the Sage of Six Paths, be better with them even than the Gold and Silver brothers, or Darui.

The skill was there, the potential was there and the drive was there. If he helped power her up, she would be a great help in the future.

Honestly, out of all the Konoha twelve as they were called in the other timeline, besides Naruto and Sasuke, Tenten was probably the easiest of them all for him to help reach S-class tier.

Especially with what he had sitting in his Dimension Force Seal gathering dust.

Well not really since there wasn't any dust in there, but the point remained.

"…I kind of expected to have to plead with you a bit or something, maybe bribe you." Tenten pointed out slowly.

"I mean, you still can it might make me help you even more," he pointed out with a grin, "I'm partial to-"

"Lap dances, I know," she cut him off giving him a dry look, "You're an idiot, you know that?"

"I know you are but what am I?" Daiki retorted, grin widening at his epic retort.

She rolled her eyes and sat up, and then surprised him by promptly standing up, only to sit right down atop him, straddling his thighs, wrapping her arms around his neck, "Still an idiot." Tenten replied, before leaning forward and pressing her lips against his.

It wasn't some epic passionate kiss, and more really just a chaste press of her lips against his for a few seconds before pulling back and pressing her forehead against his gently, staring into his eyes, "Still, thank you." she said gratefully.

"Jumping the gun a bit, aren't you?" he chuckled, wrapping his arms around her waist, "You don't even know if my training help will be all that good." he pointed out.

"That wasn't for the training help, that was just me marking my territory," Tenten snorted, "You've got too many girls hounding after you."

"…Since when?" his forehead wrinkled in thought. At most he'd flirted a bit with Sakura and Ino, but they were still solidly into Sasuke, feelings didn't change that easily. Temari thinking he was hot, didn't mean she had feelings for him either.

Well he did have that little heart to heart with Sakura he supposed and she was receptive to his flirting and seemed to have opened her eyes a bit. But that didn't really change anything at the moment.

And it wasn't like she knew anything about his arrangement with Anko. Which, now that he thought about, probably wouldn't go anywhere since Tenten was all but saying she wanted to date him right now.

He was a lot of things. Many of them bad, such as an asshole, a prick, a serial killer, a thief, a bastard, devilishly handsome…

But he wouldn't cheat on someone.

Unless they were cunts.

'Well, that sucks, guess I won't be riding Anko like a pony, but oh well.' he withheld a sigh of disappointment.

Well not really a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

"How do you flirt so easily and so much, yet still be such a dunce about this kind of thing?" Tenten arched an eyebrow at him, deadpan look in her eyes.

"I'm a genius, what can I say?" Daiki shrugged and unwound his arms from the older girls waist, holding one arm up, "But since you're big on marking your territory apparently, these will probably fit you best." he focused on the Dimension Force Seal and pulled one of the summoning contracts out of it, the huge scroll appearing atop his palm a moment later.

"What's that?" Tenten looked up, confused.

"A summoning contract I made," he replied, "For a pack of giant black maned wolves, they're big and will get tougher and smarter thanks to the contract, though they need training, so that'll be up to you."

"Umm, what?" Tenten stared at him blankly, "How the heck am I supposed to train giant wolves?"

"Kakashi owes me instructions on training ninken, so I'll give them to you," Daiki replied, "I'll give you or show you everything you need to do to become super strong, the actual training will still be up to you though."

He couldn't hold her hand through it, not when he still had a ton of shit and training of his own to go through.

"Oh," Tenten blinked, "Wait, you're just giving me what amounts to being able to make my own summoning clan, training and all? Like, how'd you even make a summoning contract anyway?"

"Cuz I'm awesome, like I keep saying," he shrugged, "And yeah. A lot of what I'll help you out with will have to wait until after these prelims though and during the month leading up to the third exam."

"What do you mean a month leading up to the third exam? Won't it just be right after the prelims like the others?" she asked.

"Nah, there'll be a month break before it to give everyone a chance to train more and show off to those coming to watch." he replied.

"…That makes sense going by what the Hokage said," Tenten nodded, "But, how do you know that?"

"Cuz I'm the next Hokage." Daiki smirked.

Tenten rolled her eyes, "If you didn't want to tell me, you could have just said it was a secret. Like anyone will believe that." she snorted.

Why was it nobody ever believed him when he told the truth so blatantly?

She unwound her arms from his neck and stood up, accepting the scroll from him, "Still, thanks for this." she smiled down at him, summoning scroll in her arms.

"Don't mention it," he waved her off, "Just call me Sugar Daddy Daiki." he winked at her.

"You have some weird fetishes you know that?" she replied blandly, "First there was that simpering personality you had me put on, then the lap dance obsession and now this?"

It sure was lonely being a genius. nobody understood his greatness but himself.