Tenten sighed and put her hands on her hips. She stared at her sensei's back with frustration, knowing she had to pull out all the stops until she got what she needed. It was a decidedly low blow, and Tenten had never used the line before, but it was certain to deliver the results she wanted.

"Fine. I'll go find Kakashi and have him feel me up."

Gai turned swiftly to look at her with a furious look of indignation, "I will not have that pervert touching my one and only female student!"

"Good, then you do it." She prompted quickly.

"I…" the man trailed off, taking in the revealing little getup she was supposed to wear for her mission and cringed. She just didn't look like Tenten should, the little girl he treated more like a daughter than a fellow shinobi. She looked elegant and sexy and part of his brain just couldn't wrap around the fact that she had become a woman at some point and was taking a higher ranked mission than he thought she was ready for and with someone apart from their team, no less. She wanted to earn his approval, coming to him for help to see about how many weapons he could spot off of just a simple pat down. She needed a jounin, someone with incredibly high sensory skills to be able to detect what she had hidden away on her person. But something about putting his hands on her while she was wearing that dress unnerved him.

"It will take ten seconds, please, I have to know if you can find them all." Her big brown eyes weren't helping him to say no, as she used them to plead silently on her behalf.

Gai simply closed his eyes; he really didn't want to do this.

"Don't make me ask one of those two." She nodded in the direction of the rest of the team that decided to show up and didn't bother turning towards them as she continued to stare at her sensei.

"Don't ask one of us to do what?" Inquired Lee tilting his head with curiosity, not at the question, but at the person who posed the question. Lee exchanged the questioning look with Neji, who shrugged his shoulders. After the two blinked at each other, they promptly continued to stare at the two with fascination.

"I understand that you need to be pat down for weapons, but I'd rather not, perhaps Kurenai would be a better alternative." Gai suggested, staring up at the sky as if asking Kami himself why he would subject himself to this kind of torture.

As soon as the sentence left his mouth, the two young adult males stepped forward, both speaking over one another as they kindly offered their services to the kunoichi, stating how it would be no trouble at all for them to lend a helping hand. Gai quickly frowned at the more than eager teenage boys while Tenten firmly stood her ground over the matter, not bothering to look anywhere else but at Gai until he caved.

"She is out of town, and you know I don't have time to find anyone else. They called me in last minute. Now, are you going to do it, or am I going to have to ask these morons who haven't figured out it's me yet?" Hand on her hip, she wasn't honestly going for sassy, just making her case as to what needed to be done, verses keeping Gai safely in his comfort zone where little Tenten still had her hair in twin buns and remained twelve for all eternity.

The boys who were overhearing the conversation blinked dumbly at one another.

"That's not Tenten," Neji stated as fact. Then with a tiny squint of his eyes he changed his tone, "is it?"

Tenten let her eyelids drop half way, the boys continued to blink with wide eyes and look her up and down. Hair down, cleavage, make-up, high-cut slit up the side. She was incredibly sexy.

"I thought for a second it was," Lee started smartly, "but no, Tenten has different features," Lee intoned with a large hand gesture. Neji nodded with a sudden low "ah" at his statement, as if it had registered exactly why this person standing in front of them could not possibly be their teammate.

Tenten baulked wordlessly at the two boys engaged in whispering and pointing at her various body parts, still hashing it out as to why this particularly good looking female differed greatly from their teammate. She distinctly heard the terms "flat as a board," and "taller," when they referenced their teammate. She became slightly annoyed. She wasn't allowed to wear her regular bindings on this mission. Not that she thought her teammate had ever noticed her chest size, teenage boys or no. Apparently, she was sorely mistaken.

She turned to Gai for an explanation. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Gai covered his face with a hand then rubbed at his eyebrows with his fingers, a pained expression on his face, "Guy code for something even more embarrassing and painfully uncomfortable that I would really wish to not discuss with you."

With a huff, she all but yelled with frustration over the boys' discussion at Gai, "Are you going to feel me up or not?"

There was a momentary gap of reverent silence over those simple words. Some where overhead, a bird left its perch from a high treetop, making the only sound for miles in the clearing of the forest during that short pause.

Neji and Lee rushed forward after their real brains kicked in, nearly pushing each other over at the opportunity to "help," spurting out how very supportive they could both be with their hands.

This earned death glares from both Gai and Tenten with a quick snap of both of their heads in that direction. At the sharp daggers that threatened to kill them with their eyes, each boy took a hasty step backwards from the sudden anger directed at them, and their words suddenly were full of apologies as they back-peddled.

Tenten held her hand out like a showcase model to her teammates, as if to demonstrate how "useful" they really were on such occasions. The gesture spoke the words of, "do you really want one of those hormone driven idiots to touch me? Or are you going to be a man and do it yourself?"

Gai considered all the information, still scowling at Neji and Lee who were now hypothesizing just exactly who Tenten really was. Tenten distinctly overheard the sentence, "never mentioned a kunoichi girlfriend before," and "no, definitely not Tenten," with a shake of each of their heads as if that confirmed the matter entirely.

With a defeated look, Gai asked that she raise her arms so that he could begin the procedure. He knelt on the ground and stared somewhere behind her the hole time he thoroughly patted her down.

She was glad he didn't take her request lightly; she had hoped she wouldn't have to tell him he did a half-assed job and would have to repeat the whole awkward process over. He probably already realized this, which was why he was leaving no stone unturned.

"Seven," Gai announced as he got up, "though two of those were pretty tricky, only a jounin would be able to know about those senbon."

He crossed his arms across his chest as Neji and Lee openly gawked at how anyone could possibly hide anything under such a tightly fit dress.

Tenten smiled at her sensei, almost preening, "Great, the others you weren't able to find."

Gai raised a massive black eyebrow, "What?" Her last statement wasn't a question.

"I'm actually hiding twelve."