The pillow fight went on for hours, and Ren found himself very much at a disadvantage when Ino, Hinata, and Temari decided to gang up on him in the name of girl power.
It was blatant cheating. He didn't condone cheating. He decided to use his seals in return.
That evened the odds, and he had managed to get some pretty nice pillow shots to all three of his opponents' faces. But then Ino got the bright idea to enhance her pillows with wind chakra, giving them a speed boost with a little bit of cutting-edge.
And suddenly, Ren found himself ducking as if his life depended on it when Hinata followed, and her crackling pillows of doom became quite shocking. Worse yet, Temari also didn't have any respect for the rules. She threw her own wind-enhanced pillows at him with almost vicious glee. The problem was that she also didn't have Ino's skill when using wind chakra, so her pillows were more about their cutting edge than the speed boost.
At that point, the living room became a bona fide battlefield, and the furniture would have been reduced to pieces if Ren didn't have the foresight to store it all away in his storage seal. The walls were, fortunately, reinforced by his durability seals and thus didn't have even a single scratch from the three girls on the pillowy warpath.
Speaking of the durability seals, Ren delighted in imbuing his pillows with them. It made the impact still soft on the face, but every time he hit one of the girls with it, it managed to topple them onto their backs. The very first time, Ino even did a backflip in the air when the pillow hit her face as she jumped.
That might have had something to do with her starting to use her wind chakra... not that Ren would ever admit his own fault in the matter. Such was the way of the ninja.
By the time all four of them started to stop holding back all that much, the living room was full of time-stopped pillows in midflight, piles of petrified pillows littered the areas near the walls and corners, and Ren had started using experimental momentum reversal seals that threw the girls' pillows right back at them with two times the momentum plus because he didn't have the time to finetune it properly to lower levels.
Hinata was downright gentle-fisting the living hell of the pillows coming at her, sending them back at Ren with her own chakra-infused palms, adding even more momentum to the poor beaten pillows, only to have them come back at her even faster the next second.
Ino was concentrating on leveraging her wind chakra, altering the flow of air in the room to redirect the pillows to the floor, back at Ren, or toward Hinata, who sent them at Ren with her strikes.
And Temari was shrieking for her dear life as she hopped left and right, trying to avoid the fate of being pelted by the pillows, and failing more often than not.
But at least, she had a big grin on her face while doing so.
"Stop it! I give uuuup!" Temari shouted with a shriek as she pushed herself into a handstand in the middle of doing a cartwheel to evade a pillow. She had to stop midway by pushing herself on her fingers and twisting her body midair, as another pillow flew past her, right where she was supposed to be if she hadn't stopped.
Glancing toward Ren, her eyes widened when she saw him poke one of his time-stopped, and freaking hell, she never thought she would seriously think those ridiculous words in her life, pillows. The pillow instantly stopped being suspended mid-air and was now barreling through the air straight at her at speeds that made it almost a blur to her vision.
Gritting her teeth, Temari did not waste her time and forcefully threw herself at the ground, barely evading the pillow blow to her posterior with her cheeks flushed.
She was really, really wondering how many damned pillows these three had stored in their storage seals! And why!?
"Ha! Only if your side surrenders unconditionally!" Ren exclaimed from his side of the room, where he was deeply entrenched with many active and inactive seals all around him.
"In your dreams!" Ino, clearly having fun, smugly shouted back as she hurled a pillow at Ren with enough wind chakra that Temari barely registered its existence before it reached Ren, who smoothly time-stopped it mid-air as if it wasn't moving at insane speeds.
But she could not gawk at it for long as yet another pillow headed her way, and Temari pushed herself off the floor to get out of its flight path.
"That's what she said!" Hinata retorted with an easy-going giggle in her voice that made Temari inwardly pissed. She sounded relaxed, as if this was not even a morning exercise to her! Temari was both jealous and incredulous at the absurdi-
Her thoughts were cut short as she jumped to the side with a hiss as yet another pillow almost nailed her in the face.
"Hear that, Temari? Your teammates have forsaken you! Consider yourself a hostage under a crossfire!" Ren proclaimed, and Temari could swear the fucker started to target her more for fun and giggles as she desperately twisted and twirled out of the projectiles' way.
"You f-mphmh!" She couldn't help it and started swearing when a pillow, moving at suspiciously slightly faster speeds than what normally targeted her, impacted her face and muffled her angry words.
"Bulls-eye!" Ren victoriously shouted, and Temari growled as she could hear the irritating smirk in his voice, as he was no doubt still dealing with attacks from the other two girls.
"W-whoa! Oi! Cheap shot!" Ren complained as Temari pulled the pillow from her face, and found him flailing to regain his balance because Hinata almost got him.
"Then pay attention!" The Hyuga girl said with a smile on her face as she punched yet another pillow at him, only for Ren to somehow make it rebound back toward Ino, who redirected it to Hinata, who sent it crashing back at Ren, who-
Temari ducked under the pillow that almost nailed her in the face... again, trying and failing to suppress the giggle that wanted to come out of her throat.
It was an insanity, and didn't stand much of a chance in this clash, and she also didn't remember the last time she had to exert this amount of effort, even during her most rigorous training, all just to survive the stray shots for a bit longer with her dignity intact!
But she was undoubtedly having fun.
...
Ren stood in front of the door to his apartment, bidding Temari farewell while inwardly wistfully mourning the loss of his pillow stockpile.
Alas, the fight couldn't go on. Eventually, they had to run out of pillows. Ino, however, was a sneaky, sneaky cheat. She stockpiled way more pillows than either Hinata or Ren, and the true clash only started when both of them ran out and Ino decided to up her game, summoning two pillows into her hands with a smug, shit-eating grin.
The fight ceased to be girls versus Ren and devolved into a free-for-all as Ino pelted Hinata as much as she pelted Ren with her pillows for the next half hour.
'The next time, I will have more ammunition.' Ren secretly swore, finding the whole afair slightly embarrassing. He was the seal master here. He should have had more pillows stocked.
Putting these thoughts out of his head for a moment, Ren refocused on Temari and couldn't help but smile. He found her quite attractive, with her cheeks slightly flushed and her lips set in a sincere, relaxed smile that he doubted she consciously realized she was sporting.
"Next time we won't go at you so easily, hm?" Ren softly asked, stopping himself from reaching out and rubbing her cheek with his fingers.
Temari's smile widened, "Ass. I'd need to be an S-rank to even qualify as a proper combatant in your games." She said with a flicker of embarrassment appearing in her gaze.
Ren almost leaned forward as he stared into her teal eyes. They were beautiful when they sparked with such enthusiasm. "All the more incentive to train, then. No?"
"One day, I will kick your ass." Temari quietly promised.
"Everybody needs to have a dream. No matter how unreachable." Ren hummed, and silence fell between them as they stared into each other's eyes.
A moment passed.
Then, Temari huffed in annoyance.
"Men." She slightly bowed her head and muttered. But before Ren could reply, she spoke again with exasperation clear in her voice, "Come here." Her arms reached out, snaking around Ren's head as she pulled him down, and soon enough, Ren found his lips on hers.
It was unexpected that Temari initiated it. Ren expected it to take much, much longer until she was comfortable with something like this. But he was far too good a ninja to be caught by surprise. He deepened the kiss, pulling her into a tighter embrace with his arms that now rested against her back.
Temari's kiss was inexperienced, and Ren did his best to make it enjoyable for both him and her, but after a while, they separated. Temari ducked her head with a small smile, touching her lips before she realized what she was doing and let out a whine.
Ren chuckled.
"Right." Temari quietly muttered and turned her head away, "I should go."
"See you later." Ren hummed and leaned forward, kissing her on the forehead. When he pulled back, the girl was staring at him with wide eyes, only for a brief moment, before she flushed.
"See you!" She bolted away.
Suppressing the laughter that was bubbling in his throat, Ren turned back toward the door to his apartment, only to find it slightly ajar with two heads curiously peeking out, stacked on each other.
He mirthfully raised his eyebrow at them.
Ino looked like she was inwardly cooing.
But Hinata met Ren's stare with an indulgent smile, "That was adorable."
Ren closed his eyes, trying, and if the giggling was any indication, failing to stop himself from blushing.