D: Jack Black made me do it.

Kung Fu Panda

Tenten woke up.

She yawned. Stretched. Got ready for work.

It wasn't everyday she woke up in such a good mood. But today was special. Today, she was learning the secret ingredient to the famous Soup Number Five of Lecheng Teahouse.

"Skibidi bee bop, skibidi do," she dodged a cleaver flung at her by the shop owner, "Dad! I keep telling you, scat-singing is a perfectly respectable musical vocal form!"

"Quit it with the gibberish and just wipe down the tables, young lady," her father grunted, not even looking behind him as she threw back the knife, catching it between his upraised index and middle fingers. "You'll scare away the customers, make them think you're retarded."

"Yes master," Tenten hunched over and pretended to limp from table to table, using a wax-on wax-off circular motion with the dishrag, "I hear and obey."

Her father threw a paring knife at her.

The regular customers of the well-known noodle shop were met with the familiar sight of the walls and furniture embedded with various kitchen implements and the daughter-father tandem in earnest battle.

"Special Soup Number Five please!"

"Coming right up! Just pull out that fork from the chair and make yourself comfy!" Tenten called.

She had a good feeling about today.

It was mid-afternoon, and Tenten was cursing anyone who would choose to live at the very top of a mountain and order dimsum and dumplings with noodle soup (the special, of course) for delivery right when the sun was blazing at its hottest. Then again, she couldn't blame people for loving her dad's cooking. Panting, she deposited the boxes she was carrying on the ground, wiping the sweat off her forehead.

"Yoohoo!" she called at the closed doors of an immense compound. From within, she could hear some sort of ruckus, similar to the uproarious cheering from a crowd of martial arts enthusiasts. But not quite.

"I said- YOO-WHOA!" she was nearly blasted away by the force with which the doors were flung open. Then she was attacked.

"Dimsum!"

"Dumplings!"

"Soup!"

"Number Five!"

Tenten screamed, grabbing the wooden pole she used to balance the boxes suspended on either end for ease of carriage on her shoulders, and prepared to defend her delivery, "I'm under orders to deliver this directly to the Hokage! Stay back!" she waved the stick threateningly at the ravenous hordes.

Who were only made up of two kids her age, apparently. They were salivating worth a dozen though.

"You think that can stop us? We want food, and we want it now!" a pale boy with yellow eyes hissed at her. He looked to be wearing a large rope around his waist, the thick, heavy-duty kind used to fasten ships to port. Tied in a bow behind him. Tenten's jaw dropped.

"We're kung fu masters, girl, don't even try to resist," a good-looking boy with spiky hair and strangely-patterned red-black eyes growled at her.

"Just give them the yumyums," the Hokage's voice said tiredly from somewhere beyond the gates. "I wouldn't want them to beat up another delivery person, we can't get a decent pizza anymore."

Tenten lowered her weapon, face blank. She already knew this wasn't going to be a good tip.

"Come inside, young lady. I'm sure you'd like to rest a while after that climb."

Resigned, she allowed the two boys to ransack the food items and hurry inside. Keeping firm hold of the wooden pole, she followed them.

The doors shut rather ominously behind her.

"So you've held this tournament every year, for the past three years, in order to determine who is worthy of receiving this ultra-powerful dragon scroll and will henceforth be called the Dragon Warrior," Tenten tried to sound as interested as possible as she poured tea for the Hokage. She wasn't really interested. She also wasn't really happy about how she had been roped into unboxing, preparing, and serving the meal for them as if they were dining in at the teahouse. Her dad had told her to make a good first impression though.

The Hokage sighed, nodded. "Time is of the essence. I had a bad dream last night."

Tenten pursed her lips, trying not to remark that bad dreams could sometimes be caused by heavy drinking. The woman before her was very young and beautiful, not to mention powerful, but something told Tenten that she preferred bars to teahouses. She poured more calming tea for the hung-over Hokage.

"What was it about?" she urged solicitously. She ignored the looks the two boys with strange eyes were shooting her, that conveyed that they knew very well she was just humoring the old bat. They were slurping the noodles most heartily, and that was all she cared to know.

"The escape from captivity by a dangerous ninja, my former student, Neji, who seeks the secrets of the Dragon Scroll," a voice right behind her startled Tenten into dropping the teapot, but Tenten caught it with the tip of her foot before it hit the floor with the deftness of long practice and trauma from many a scalding. She spun to meet the bushiest eyebrows she had ever seen.

"Say," she began, then shut her mouth. She was about to comment that his haircut looked the exact size and shape as one of their jampong soup bowls but had been beaten too many times by a stern paternal figure to let loose more than five tactless statements in one day.

"Say what?" the tall green man asked her gravely.

"What?"

"No, you say what."

"I did."

"What?"

"Yes," she smiled at him. He smiled back, uncertain but charmed.

"What do you think, Nin-kame?" he seemed to throw the question to someone over his shoulder.

"She is the one. The Dragon Warrior." The heavy voice declared from the shadows.

Chopsticks and bowls clattered to the floor as the place erupted into chaos.

A/N: Well, that's the last time I let sudden inspiration inspire me. I'm not saying Tenten's a fat panda, but I did like the message of that movie, y'know, how an ordinary girl with nothing outstanding about her could become the strongest warrior by simply believing that she's special. Wait. I mean, panda. And now that I've started the ball rolling, I think you can all see the parallelisms as well as I can. So is this something I should continue? It'll end fluffily, if I do. I don't plan to have Tenten sit on Neji though. Or maybe she should. Yeah...