It's not technically stripping...

I'm not ashamed of my beauty, you can see what I got.
Shouldn't I freak you out? Imagine if I work it out.
If I get on top, you're gonna lose your mind.
The way I put it down on you, you know what should be up...

Had fate been slightly less merciful, Tenten might not have existed. Her mother, Eliza, was a tired waitress in a shitty café by day, and she picked up extra cash working the streets by night. As these stories often go, there was some form of irresponsibility, some mishap, some general fuck-up that led to Tenten's conception.

The man who played second-party to the event was a mild-mannered Chinese man, named Hua Chen. When he allowed himself to be seduced by the pretty red-headed woman, [no older than nineteen, he had thought] he had no idea what he was getting himself into.

Eliza was careful, however. Her questionable choices of employment were not to belie that she was actually a very intelligent woman, in her own right, and with the news of her pregnancy, she sought Chen down using the business card that she had swiped from his wallet, demanding money for an abortion.

"Don't. Please... don't. I'll keep the baby."

He didn't know what made him do it. If asked, he would have been completely at a loss.

But what was done was done, and Eliza carried the baby to full term. After giving birth, she left the hospital, leaving only Chen's business card sitting on the tray with a single word written across it: Tenten. Three hours later, he was picking up a newborn baby girl from the hospital. He never saw Eliza again. Chen took Tenten home, and stayed up the entire night, wondering what the hell he was going to do.

He tried to love her. He really did.

It wouldn't have been fair to say that Tenten grew up in a lower class family. Chen worked in a business, as a lower-ranking figure, poorly paid, but still respected. Between the two of them, there wasn't much money to spare, and they lived in an apartment that was less-than-desirable. She went to a public school, wore plain, ordinary clothes bought from a thrift store, wore her hair tied up in two buns, because her father thought that it was cute. That she excelled had been a surprise to her father, who hadn't expected much from the illegitimate child of a prostitute, a little girl that was only alive because something inside him couldn't stand to have his progeny killed.

Later, he would come to change his mind, and regret not simply handing over the sum necessary to avoid the burden that the child had placed on his life.

Her intelligence came from her mother, and that was the only helpful thing that Eliza had ever done for her daughter, beside allowing her life. They determined her to be far too smart for primary classes, and so Tenten entered the second grade when she was only six years old. She was proud, as proud as a six-year-old could be, because her success in school was a good thing, which meant it would please her father. When she was seven her father stopped doing her hair for her, and Tenten had to wear it in simple pigtails until she figured out how to form the odango buns on her own.

For the first several years of her life, all that was important to Tenten was making her father happy. She knew he was trying, she knew, but he was always so sad. Always so angry. Angry at her, though she couldn't for the life of her figure out why. If she could only satisfy him, then maybe he would hold her like the fathers of the other little girls, maybe he would love her.

It wasn't until Tenten turned eight that the began trying to live for her own love.

The elementary school had an enthusiastic theatre program, one that involved all of the grades of children in some way. When her class was chosen to do a song and dance number, Tenten discovered something so much more rewarding than vying for her father's affection.

A week into practice for the performance, she came home, approached her father, and spent the next three hours begging for dance lessons.

She did not actually get them until nearly a year later, when Chen finally gave in and tossed some money aside for dance lessons. He was able to pull some strings, thanks to a woman he knew from his business, and got Tenten into a dance class for half of the usual price, on account of him being a single parent.

From then on, Tenten's life was defined by two specific things: School, for her father. Her grades and success, all for him, and his approval.

And dance. That was for herself. When she was happy, she would dance. When she was sad, she would dance. When she was angry, she turned up the music as loud as the speakers would allow, and danced as hard as she possibly could. After a fight with her father, a reckless spin had sent her left arm into a bureau, breaking it in two places.

Though Chen got angry--hospital bills, Tenten! We don't have the money for this. Why are you so careless?--she couldn't find it within her to feel sorry.

She was only sorry that her injury prevented her from any serious dancing for nearly a month and a half.

High school glazed by. She graduated in the top of her class, surrounded by encouragement from her peers, her teachers, her close friends, and the rest of the world.

The only one who didn't offer encouragement was her father.

Though she slowly stopped caring, Tenten never stopped trying to win his favour. Though his words were cutting, and grew sharper over the years, more brutal and abusive as age rotted his heart, she continued to throw herself into her studies, hoping to somehow break through the wall he'd used to seal her away from him. Eventually, it even stopped hurting when she failed every time--even when she presented him a scholarship to a good college; one close to home, too.

"Baba, we won't even have to spend money on a dorm. I can walk to school. I'll get a job and help pay for the apartment, to help you along. Isn't it great?"

Chen was not a drinking man. He did not typically get drunk, or intake any large amount of substance. There was nothing that could be blamed on his ill treatment of his daughter but his own self, and for some reason, that made him resent her more. He wasn't the bad guy!

It was all Eliza's fucking fault.

She was in her Junior year of college when they had their final clash. Tenten came home after a party--it wasn't anything off of the norm, hardly unexpected, but it was different. Different because there were three streaks of red in her hair, stained with temporary dye at the insistence of one of her classmates. They were subtle against the warm brunette, but still very, very there.

When Chen saw them, he thought of her mother, and flew into a rage.

After telling her just how worthless she was, explaining to her--in detail--how much he wished that he had just given her whore of a mother the money to have her miserable existence removed from his life, he kicked her out, and told her never to come back again. Tenten was given a half hour to pack, and that was the last time she ever saw her father.

She cried for approximately two days after he abandoned her. Her friend let her crash in her dorm--it was the least she could do, once she found out Tenten's father had kicked her out because of the hair dye she had applied. When those two days were up, Tenten stopped crying, washed her reddened face, and went to dance class. She wouldn't want to miss a lesson, after all.

Thanks to her job in a fast food restaurant, Tenten was able to scrape by. She began auditioning for dancing roles in different revenue, hoping to bring in extra money. She rented an apartment--one more shoddy than her previous one--and continued going to dance lessons. Without her father to impress, her grades dropped, no longer a focus. Staying alive was more important than maintaining a 4.0. But she let them slip too far, neglected one too many essays, was just too tired from shaking her ass at a camera in the background of some half-rate musician's music video, and she ended up losing her scholarship. Without it, she couldn't afford to pay for the rest of her college.

Tenten was forced to drop out.

Dancing became her world. It kept her alive; kept the breath in her lungs and her head on her shoulders. But jobs were hard to find, and running the drive through at McDonald's was hardly a decent means of supporting herself. As money became more and more tight, she was forced to cut back on all sorts of expenses--food, clothing, heat, anything so that she wouldn't have to stop going to her dance lessons.

Once desperation set in, she began auditioning for more raunchy spots, things she once swore to avoid, things she once found degrading. It was still dance, though, and throwing herself into the passion of movement helped her to ignore her weeping pride. She carried on.

Tenten found herself unwillingly being pulled further and further down the ranks, until someone told her of a place. They gave her a recommendation and a business card, and told her that she had talent. "You have what it takes to go places in this business, sweetcheeks." [She hadn't appreciated the nickname, but it was hardly within her priorities to reinforce formality.]

It was somewhere she had once sworn she'd never work. A level she was loath to stoop to.

She did it, anyway.

"You're hired."

Getting a job had never felt quite so much like being punched in the stomach. For a second, and then several seconds following that, Tenten wished that she had been refused. Really, truly wished, and she squeezed her eyes shut as she sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair, prayed with all her heart that when she opened them again, the Man at the Desk would be frowning, and letting her down gently. She willed that to be the truth, but when she blinked the darkness out of her eyes, all she saw was a pleasant smile.

Fuck.

Fuck.

So she went home, and she screamed and cried for about half an hour. Then she sat on her bed, told herself she was an idiot, and went to sleep.

She showed up for work bright and early the following Monday.