Tenten and Hiraishin
okay so my hot fucking take is that Tenten should have learned the Hiraishin no Jutsu (Flying Thunder God Jutsu).
Some info about Hiraishin: It is a space-time ninjutsu, and was created by Tobirama Senju. Each person has a unique seal formula that they can apply to any object by touching it. The mark never disappears (even after the user dies), and there’s seemingly no limit to how many marks can be placed. Once the mark is placed, the user can teleport to a mark’s location, regardless of distance. Anything the user is holding or is linked with the user’s chakra will teleport with them, but that would likely require additional chakra. Users can also teleport objects to a different location than them, or teleport an object without teleporting themselves. The technique is also commonly used with projectile weapons like kunai to give the user an escape or another location to teleport to.
One quick disclaimer: The most we saw the technique used was with reanimated Minato during the 4th Great Ninja War, and he had infinite chakra in his reanimated state, so that may not be the best example for the jutsu’s limitations. I’d assume that the further away the formula mark from the user, the more chakra required to move to it, and the larger the extra object one is trying to teleport, the more chakra it consumes (think about the chakra consumption from trying to teleport another human, compared to a giant boulder, compared to a Tailed Beast Ball like Minato did during the Nine-Tails attack).
Now back on the topic of best girl Tenten: The Hiraishin would fit quite well with her fighting style. Tenten is a mix of ranged and melee fighter. She tends to start off fighting at a distance, launching weapons at enemies, and then getting in close and finishing them off. Hiraishin’s projectile style would work out well for her. She’d start by launching a bunch of kunai from a scroll at the enemy, like her usual opening move, except all of them would be marked with her Hiraishin formula. Once those land, if there are any enemies left (because just regular old kunai are deadly too), she can pull out another weapon, teleport to the kunai closest to the enemy/enemies, and start fighting in close range.
Also, as a weapons’ specialist, Tenten isn’t limited to using just kunai with the Hiraishin. Shuriken and maybe thicker senbon work too as projectile weapons. We’ve never seen it, but Hiraishin’s formula can potentially be applied to any weapon, so why not on the end of the chain of a kusarigama? Instead of having to draw an enemy in with the chain in order to stick them with the sickle, she can just teleport to the end of the chain where they’re being held and kill them. Using paper bombs also becomes a million times easier since she can teleport away so she isn’t caught in her own explosions.
Tenten has also trained with Gai, Lee, and Neji, so you’d better believe her taijutsu is good. Tenten can likely hold her own against a master after Gai’s training, and probably knows a few Gentle Fist moves from sparring with Neji quite often. So in a combat situation, if she (for some reason) didn’t have any weapons on her, Hiraishin can be applied by a touch of the hand, so she could use a bastardized version of the Gentle Fist to apply her seal formula onto the enemy/enemies. She could apply the seal formula on multiple areas of a person’s body. By doing that, she can teleport in close to the enemy, beat them with some taijutsu (probably using Strong Fist at that point), and then teleport onto a different side of them to beat them up from a different angle. If fighting multiple enemies, she can teleport between enemies at any given moment, effectively occupying the whole group.
Giving Tenten Hiraishin would also even out the huge power gap between her and the other ninja in the series. Since pretty much everyone in the Konoha 12 has at least one very powerful technique, Tenten, with her normal human scale powers seems very weak in comparison. I’m not saying this’ll make her equal to Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, or hell, even Lee, but at the very least she’s on a tier equal to Neji, or InoShikaCho.
Edit: IT WAS ALSO JUST BROUGHT TO MY ATTENTION, BUT IF TENTEN HAD HIRAISHIN, SHE COULD HAVE FUCKING SAVED NEJI, BECAUSE YOU BETTER BELIEVE SHE WOULD MARK HER TEAMMATES WITH THE FORMULA SO SHE COULD COME TO THEIR AID AT ANY MOMENT
Also the image of Tennie teleporting around the battlefield to fight a whole division of an army by herself is just such a cool visual.
Imagine Tenten arriving at a battlefield against a ton of enemies and releasing a horde of various projectile weaponry from a scroll like she normally does, but these projectiles are inscribed with her Hiraishin formula. They fly forward, and hit trees and the ground, and some of the kunai and senbon and shuriken find their mark on enemies. One of the surviving enemies lunges at her, and Tenten just vanishes in front of their eyes. She lands next to one of her kunai, and unseals a weapon or five. Teleporting from kunai to kunai, she slashes at enemies with her multitudes of swords, knives, chain whips, and other weapons, too fast for anyone to even react. In minutes, a horde of enemies would be dead bodies rotting on the ground.
We were fucking robbed.
