Summary: Between a hunter and a monster, there's always the promise of a hunting trophy. In her case, he will take her velvet gloves after he kills her. NejiTen [Zombie!AU] Rated for violence.

Recently, I have grown obsessed with the idea of a zombie!AU. I'm glad I finished it just in time for the last day of Tenten days. :) This was originally a oneshot, but my hand slipped, as they say, and it's now a short story.

Pairing: NejiTen

Warnings: Nice and bad zombies eating brains, some cursing, a non-graphic make-out session. Just so you know, this is rated M for blood and gore and just good old general violence.

There is a bit of dark comedy in here, a lot of blood, even more brains, but it's mostly the love story between a human and a monster.

Enjoy! :D

-X-

Special Agent Neji Hyuuga opened the refrigerator, and his hand stiffened, whitened on the door.

The motor whirred faintly, brushing the cool air toward him. Its light was almost blinding, ghastly and aggressive. And the black box on the highest shelf taunted him, beyond the arid smell of the cleaning detergent, beyond all the times he had discovered her lair only after she had vacated it. This time, she was enough ahead of him to wrap the box with a silk crimson ribbon.

His jaw twitched.

Slowly, Neji leaned in to take out the box, knowing full well what was inside.

He slammed the door.

"Two steps ahead, this one, huh, Agent Hyuuga?"

Neji ignored the crime technician as he brushed by him. He walked through the rest of the empty apartment, each surface pristine and gleaming. There was no mirror, but many surfaces of steel and silver distorted his reflection, turning him into a metallic, mechanical shadow. Still holding the box, Neji pushed the door open of the bedroom. It was empty except for a bed in its centre, white sheets creaseless and taut around the mattress. The waxed floor glistened faintly, creaking under his weight, and the pale curtains half-drawn over bleeding dusk.

She was deathless, methodical, and she left no trace.

"We already did that room, sir!" the technician shouted after him, and brief muffled laughter erupted in the living room.

Neji glared down at the box in his hand. With stiff hands, he untied the bow, and opened it, his jaw clenched. He flinched. The ribbon slipped on the floor.

Her gloves, black velvet, were arranged neatly inside in a hand open gesture holding a card in place. Her writing was angled, but crisp, red: 'Sorry there's no alcohol in the fridge to drink your sorrow away! Until we not-meet again! -Your favourite zombie.'

Even if he had never heard her voice, he imagined her whisper it to him along with all the other messages she had left for him. He imagined her, having just fed, her lips dripping with blood pressed against his ear, her hand on his jugular, crushing it slightly. Ready to kill.

'Your favourite zombie'.

The zombie, he couldn't catch.

His obsession.

-X-

Dusk

by Clementive

-X-

"She has made a mistake," Neji whispered to himself, and other words and his name buzzed, echoed around him indistinctly.

"Neji!"

He followed with his eyes the red strings he had pined to the board. He followed her, the zombie, his prey, across years of chasing. His gaze shifted from pictures to pictures, frames that revealed nothing; apartments devoid of colour, always pristine and glistening, yet empty. A world of silver without mirrors or brains. He read his handwriting next to hers for every message she left him, black next to red.

He repeated it like a mantra.

No brains.

No mirrors.

Only the gloves. Black velvet. Taunts, all meant for him.

"Oi, dude!" Special Agent Kiba Inuzuka's voice boomed, and Neji snapped back to reality, blinking rapidly.

Kiba shoved him again before letting go. He took a step back, panting heavily. He flattened his tie, his pale face floated out of reach, still unfocused, now turned toward his overcrowded white board.

"You're losing it, I swear..."

Neji ran a hand through his hair, vaguely feeling the imprints of his hands on him. He leaned back, his hand rummaging behind him for his jacket. Absently, he knocked over empty cups and rustled through sheets of paper.

"Shit! How much coffee have you had?" Kiba alternately pointed at the garbage can and his desk.

"Enough to solve it," Neji replied distractedly as he reached over for his jacked buried beneath his file cases.

He pulled at the sleeve sharply, and folders and empty cups tumbled over his desk, crashed on the floor. He pulled at his sleeves, unrolling them before putting his jacket on.

"Hey!" Kiba grabbed his arm and Neji stared back into his dark eyes, his own gaze feverish, but the rest of him, drawn, tired. "You need to get a grip," he added roughly, but his voice rang, low drenched in worry. "Sometimes, we lose. Sometimes, we catch them. So, I say this will all the love in the world, but you look like shit compared to a zombie."

"She has made a mistake," Neji repeated his lips barely moving, as he tightened the tie around his neck.

Staggering, he untangled himself Kiba's grip and stepped across his chaos, wondering faintly about her sense of order and his sense of justice. The Zombie Virus Regulation Office had branded him a genius. He had caught his first zombie at the end of the first zombie outbreak. He had raised through the ranks seamlessly. Because he was a genius. Because he was someone, and for once he belonged. The chase, the hunt had made him him. Kiba couldn't understand.

"Where are you going? Didn't you hear what I said? The director wants to see you... 10 minutes ago."

"Hn."

Swiftly, Neji walked out of his office. Kiba shouted something after him, but his mind hummed frantically toying with her black velvet gloves, blocking him out. His fingers ran through his hair over and over again. He pressed on the button to call the elevator, steeling himself when the doors slid open.

He pressed for the fifth floor and his neck prickled with the heavy gaze of his colleagues on him.

The moment the doors opened again, Neji walked down the hallway, other agents nodding at him, and mumbling his name as he approached the director's office. He turned on the right at the end of the hallway, and pictures of wanted zombies followed him with crimson eyes.

Their images surrounded the door of the director's office, all zombies sentenced to death for proliferating the zombie virus.

He readjusted his tie before he knocked on the door.

"Enter," a voice bellowed.

Neji opened the door and bowed stiffly at the scarred man behind the desk. He sat down on the one of the chairs facing the director's desk, his face impassive. He ignored the eyeballs, blank crimson irises, floating in the glass recipients displayed around the room. Trophies.

"You're late."

"I apologize."

Director Danzou Shimura watched Neji with narrowed eyes, his nostrils flared. The skin around his mouth was taut, his wrinkles smoothed, tamed by his anger. Danzou knew Neji's failures had turned into an obsession. He knew of the white board covered in analyses of her writing and her messages she left him. He knew all of his agents. Just like he knew when it was time to cut them loose.

"Have I not been clear about the importance of finding her?" he asked quietly, but his voice had a sharp edge.

"Yes, sir."

"Then, why isn't she in our custody?" Danzou violently slid her file across the desk and it spun off, gutted, sheets of paper flying between them.

Neji's knuckles whitened around the armrests. He said nothing.

"This is patient 1," Danzou said lowly, breaking the terse silence. "Patient 0 is dead. How are we going to study the virus without her?"

"Sir..."

"Silence!" he waved him off sharply, his eyes gleaming with anger. "You've disappointed me again and again, Hyuuga. Unable to catch this... monster. I think, I'll have Torune babysit you."

"I've a lead," Neji cleared his throat, and shifted in his seat, his heart hammering, his tie crushing his windpipe.

"Yes?" The director pinched his lips, still glaring at him.

"The gloves... They were also found at her first location. They are only available at the gift shops of National museums."

Danzou cocked his head to the side, considering him. He wondered if the monster had broken him, infiltrated his thought, the crimson of her eyes cuddling into a sickness of the mind that paralyzed him. Made him useless. Maybe his thirst for acknowledgement and validation had finally been quenched.

"This is your last chance, Hyuuga," Danzou said finally, dismissing him with a wave of the hand.

The director turned away from him, surveying his city through the window. The view scattered by heavy clouds and soft rain, he could barely make out the wall separating the city from the wilderness. The wilderness was where zombies truly belonged, with their kind, starved and white with looming death, tearing at each other for scraps of food. There was no room for monsters in his city, or in the other walled-in cities.

Danzou heard Neji stand up and bow, stiff and fearful and desperate. 'Good,' he thought to himself. 'Despair leads to obedience.'

"Thank you, sir."

The knob turned and Danzou threw one last disgusted look over his shoulder, when he knew it would have the most impact; his eyes, flickering and piercing, and the ones he had ripped out of zombies during the outbreak, dead and useless.

"I just want us to be on the same page, Hyuuga... You find her now, or you find a new job."

Neji paused as he was about to close the door, and nodded curtly.

The door clicked softly behind him.

-X-

Neji stood below the dome of glass in the museum's hallway, cast in bright light, his head raised toward the cloudy sky. Tight groups of rich tourists brushed by him, excitedly talking among themselves, numbing echoes of his past. They were the chosen ones of a limited quota of tourists from other walled-in cities; the rich and famous. Those who never needed to worry about getting bitten and turned into a zombie.

He tore his gaze from the greyness of the sky.

The birds have long deserted his walled-in world. The memories of his family faded below the surface of his mind, sinking deeper and deeper, with each brisk step he took toward the gift shop of the museum.

He straightened his jacket, his tie, his hands numb and his mind blank.

It was the last museum on his list.

His pale gaze swept across the small gift shop, pausing for a second on the black gloves displayed among other souvenirs representing the Regency era. There were two other display stands holding imitations from the Mesopotamia and the roaring twenties exhibits; all eras before monsters walked the earth.

"I wonder, if you could help me?" Neji asked the young clerk behind the counter.

"Yes," the clerk squeaked, and pushed her cellphone farther away from her.

Her beady eyes widened as she took in the badge he was holding up in front of her. She touched her hair in a nervous tic. The game she was playing beeped softly between them until the screen of her phone turned black. She gave him an embarrassed smile, and he pinched his lips, impatience seething inside him.

"How many of your gloves do you sell per day?" Jerkily, Neji pointed behind him at the black gloves.

Then, he took out a pen and his notepad.

"The Regency gloves?" she blinked, her hand reached again for her mousy hair, smoothing it back. "Oh, not much, sir... Oh, did a zombie used them... For the silver, is that it?" she gulped and leaned farther over the counter, dropping her voice to a mere whisper: "or is it the steel, they can't touch? I can never remember between werewolves and zombies..."

"I will ask the questions, Miss..." he glanced at her name tag. "Miss Matsuri."

"Right," she flushed and straightened her back abruptly. "I can give you the records of all past purchases for them, but we are a small museum. I'm not sure..."

"I'll also need the security cameras," Neji cut her off, nodding toward the camera in one of the corners of the shop.

"Of course, I'll just ask my boss."

"Make it quick."

Matsuri gave him a shy smile and walked swiftly to the back store, brushing aside the curtains that separated it from the main store. He tapped his pen impatiently on the empty page of his notepad, glancing around at the tourists who were watching him with ashen expressions, curiosity bleeding on raw fear. Most of them exited the shop pulling their crying and screaming children by the hand. They knew his presence meant there was a zombie in the vicinity.

Neji turned back toward his notepad, still empty, the hushed voices around him thinning. He could now hear Matsuri's muffled voice, young and high-pitched and the one of her older boss who hissed impatiently. Lack of cooperation with the Office could lead to deportation to the wilderness. Moments later, the curtains moved, and Matsuri bounced back toward him, her arms filled with sheets of paper and one USB-key.

"We don't keep footage past four months. Otherwise, everything is here."

She bit her lip watching him as he leafed through the list with a frown.

"Can I ask-"

"No," Neji interrupted flatly and pointed at a line with his pen, "No name here?"

"It means, that she paid cash."

"She?" he looked up at her, and Matsuri nodded, agitated, her lips whitening.

"Oh, it's just the lady downstairs... She buys them once in a while. We call her the lady, because she has this air of... you know? Nobility. We first offered her the gloves as a joke."

"The lady downstairs?" he repeated, his heart exploding in his chest with each second ticking past.

"She authenticates weapons. She's quite a genius about weapons. She has this condition... this skin condition."

"So, she wears gloves," Neji finished for her, and he almost laughed, dryly, coldly.

Of course, she would hide in plain sight.

Of course, she would be surrounded by steel, a metal zombies couldn't touch.

"Yes, sir," Matsuri replied quickly, the tip of her ears reddening. "She showed us once... her hands were red, irritated, like eczema."

"What's her name?" Neji asked briskly, and he started writing on his notepad.

"But, sir, she works with weapons. You can't possibly think..."

"We want to remove her from the suspect list as fast as possible, don't we?" Neji tried to sound pleasant, but his voice sliced through her, booming, icy and harsh.

"You've never had an employee who disappeared," he added with a slight smile, when Matsuri remained frozen with tears in her eyes.

"No, never," Matsuri said softly shaking her head.

"Yes, so, no harm done. We are just exploring every lead," Neji cleared his throat. "Her name?"

Her hand clawed nervously at the necklace hanging around her neck, her face pale and closed. Steel. After the zombie outbreak, the ones who were still humans started wearing steel to protect themselves. Then, it was known as the only thing that could repel a zombie. Children of survivors seemed to have carried on the practice, Neji mused. Matsuri was probably too young to remember the outbreak.

"Zhang," she whispered. "Tenten Zhang."

-X-

Tenten Zhang was dressed entirely in black, an indistinct shadow in the humid basement. She occupied it alone, the other rooms all used as storage.

Neji watched her from the entrance of her office, his knuckles centimetres from the opened door. She was bent over a steel table, her dark hair pulled back with hair sticks in a bun atop her head. She worked slowly, carefully, almost lovingly, her gloved hands rolling brushes or other tools toward her. Every so often, she readjusted the light over the weapon she was restoring.

"I'm sorry, this part of the museum is closed to the public," she said lightly, never pausing in her work. "You should go back upstairs and find your guide."

Neji cleared his throat, and stepped in her office.

"Special Agent Neji Hyuuga," he said gruffly, and her shoulders tensed briefly.

Calmly, Tenten turned toward him, pressing the tool she was holding on the table. He moved his jacket aside to show her the badge on his belt, and her dark eyes shifted to it, then rest on his gun. Neji watched her carefully, but she gave nothing away, her face composed, her movement measured as she stood up to greet him.

He understood what Matsuri had meant, an air of nobility. Effortlessly graceful, but with a calmness that could only hide careless violence.

"How can I help you, mister Hyuuga?"

They faced each other, and even if she was serene and smiling, he was certain their expression mirrored each other.

Recognition. They recognized each other.

"You're Tenten Zhang," he breathed out.

She nodded, and her earrings clanked faintly.

As he stepped deeper into the room, he saw mummies and sarcophagi pressed against the walls, her desk of glass neat and glistening, empty, farther away. The rest was steel, in the centre of the room. Weapons and steel, that gave her face a palish and savage glow.

His hand rest on his gun, and her smile widened, crooked, purplish-red.

"I need your help authenticating something," he said, his eyes never leaving her.

Tenten leaned back against the table behind her, her eyebrows raised.

"Well, Mister Hyuuga," she drawled out his name, her smile unwavering as she clasped her hands in front of her, "I'm a curator. I don't authenticate anything the museum doesn't pay me to."

"Even this?"

Neji reached past her and dropped a bagged weapon on her table. She didn't move, sensing his discomfort in their proximity. His fingers grazed the clasp of his holster. No heat came off her.

"It was used in the first outbreak to kill zombies," he said softly, and he knew she knew he could see her colour contact lenses hiding the redness of her eyes.

Neji stepped away from her.

"Then, it has been authenticated," Tenten shrugged, the tip of her fingers gripping the bag and spinning it around so the handle of the mace was facing her. "Why would you need me?" Her eyes gleamed with amusement, and he swallowed hard.

She was supposed to fight back. The hunt meant nothing otherwise, he thought frantically.

Neji took out his gun from his holster, his finger now testing the resistance of the security lock.

"Take off your gloves and touch it," he ordered.

"Ah, yes, that stupid rule..." Tenten nodded to herself, and his jaw clenched, his lips thinning.

The hunt meant nothing, nothing, nothing, if she didn't fight. He was nothing if he couldn't fight.

"A member of the Agency can ask at all times to verify death status," he recited coldly. "Your colleague tells me you've been behaving suspiciously," he added trying to get a rise out of her.

"How suspicious was I?" Tenten smirked.

"The gloves..." He waved his gun towards them.

"I have a skin condition."

"Take them off."

Tenten sighed and shrugged, gazing around her at the spotless bookshelves with a resigned expression before finding his stare again. She tore open the plastic bag. The mace was small, compact, crudely made. Almost prehistoric-like. No one had been ready for the zombie outbreak, and most bullets were made of lead and gilding metal. Most bullets couldn't kill zombies.

But now, they knew about the steel. They charged their weapons with it.

The time of crude terrified prehistoric-like men hunting zombies was over; everyone was prepared now.

"You know..." Tenten said slowly peeling off the first glove. "Sometimes, you shoot in the darkness for something out of reach. I mean, if you are hunting someone. Hypothetically, of course. If you're a good hunter, you take risks," she angled her shoulder, half a shrug, and the first glove fell on the table, and his heart pounded louder. "And other times..." Swiftly, her hand gripped the handle of the mace and flung it at Neji's head.

His gun misfired.

His head bounced, whipped away from her, a wet echo, as his body dropped to the floor. The gun spun away from him.

"Other times, you crack some skulls open," Tenten finished dryly, glancing over her shoulder at the bullet embed in the stone wall above her head, deep cracks sneaking away from it.

She groaned.

Her skin seared as she watched the blood soaked him, swallowing him whole, crimson and mutely glistening. She forced her hand open with her other hand, hissing, and the mace clanked, dug into the floor where it fell. Thin layers of her flesh were still attached to its handle. She held her palm up to her face, wincing.

"They had just healed, fuck."

With inhuman speed, she crouched down and sat on her heels. She looked at his face paling, shrinking, blending into the neon light. With her still gloved hand, she prodded at the gash on his temple.

"Now, what am I going to do with you?" Tenten hummed to herself and licked her lips, smearing her lipstick around her mouth.

Her stomach growled, a blunt pain that shook her whole.

She was hungry.

-X-

Feedback is always appreciated! :D