Sky on Fire: Slow Burn - Chapter 10 (Part 1)
Title: Slow Burn
Chapter: 10 Misjudged (Part I)
Author/Artist: Skylar Inari
Pairing: Yamanaka Ino/Nara Shikamaru
Theme: 11 - Lady Luck
Word Count: 8907
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. It's Kishimoto's and I just play with it. AU immediately after the Sasuke Retrieval Arc. Part 10 of ? Unbeta’d.
--
Chouji was angry.
It wasn’t anger like Ino’s, not the quick-lash of snapping words, biting tones, and hasty retorts. It wasn’t the anger that made him rage whenever someone insulted his weight, or his teammates.
Rather, it was a fury that simmered slowly, just under the surface, and for all that his other anger was more explosive this was a sort that would last longer and be less forgiving. He was angry, and it was Shikamaru’s fault.
As Asuma-sensei helped him get the wounded ANBU to the other bed-one, he saw, already occupied by a blue-haired man with keen eyes and a sardonic parody of a smile on his face, and bandages neatly tied off and wrapped around various injuries-Chouji also kept note of what Shikamaru was doing.
Which wasn’t a whole lot.
He bit his tongue and made himself focus on the ANBU as they helped the man-not that old, eighteen at most, with grey eyes and ash-blond hair-out of his uniform and tend to his wounds. Chouji couldn’t help but think that having Sakura around right now would have been useful, basic first aid was something that all shinobi were taught, but beyond that...
No point in worrying about it. He did his best, giving the man a startled look when he offered advice on how to dress the wounds. Chouji listened though, and learned. There was no doubt in his head that this man, this Kobayashi, knew better about caring for injuries than Chouji did.
Kobayashi, though, laughed when Chouji had asked him if he’d any medical training. “Not me,” he said, that getting a smile, “just been patching myself up for years.”
And that, he found, was that. Once everything had been taken care of that could be handled here, and the man was resting as comfortably as they had been able to manage, Chouji went to wash his hands.
It was then that Shikamaru looked up from where he’d been leaning against the wall and stared at Asuma-sensei. “What trouble do we have, exactly?”
If he’d been Ino, then Chouji would have said something waspish about it being rather obvious. He could almost hear her voice, giving intonation and disdain to having to explain anything. They had two ANBU down, two ANBU and he didn’t even know why they were here, just that their hotel room had been designated Point A and that Asuma-sensei didn’t seem surprised about that.
Which meant that he’d known about the possibility of this happening.
All of that flashed through his head in the time it took Asuma-sensei to give Shikamaru an unreadable glance-which was, Chouji knew from experience, a bad sign-and opened his mouth to speak when there was an uneven thud against the door.
Chouji had barely made it to the end of the bed by the time that Asuma-sensei had reached the door. It wasn’t long after that, while Chouji remained on alert-if it came to a fight, the two in the beds might be ANBU, but he was unwounded and not exhausted-and, to his pleasure, Shikamaru remained just as alert as he.
When Asuma-sensei came back, he wasn’t alone. The thud had been that of a kunoichi-a tall, broad-shouldered girl who was taller, in his quick estimation, than both the men and shoulder-length green-black hair-slumping against the door. She was injured and Yuuta rolled off of the bed he’d been in without needing to be asked.
“Shimako,” he said, identifying her, and at the sound of his voice her eyelids fluttered open. She didn’t say anything though, as Asuma-sensei helped get her down on the bed, blood was everywhere it seemed and Chouji hurriedly went for the blood replenishers and bandages.
This time, even with the help Asuma-sensei, it took them longer to get her resting as comfortably as they could manage. While they worked, Yuuta talked urgently to her in a whisper he didn’t even try to decipher, much more concerned with the way that she kept bleeding. Once the pills had taken affect, at least a little, she started answering back in a voice that was no louder than Yuuta’s.
His hands were red, the blankets were red, and he barely paid attention when Asuma-sensei sent him to wash up, that he was also ordering Shikamaru to get the blankets off the bed and fetch clean ones.
Chouji didn’t stay to see if Shikamaru would argue that. When he got back, both Shikamaru and Asuma-sensei were putting new sheets on the bed while the woman, Shimako, rested on the other. Kobayashi had edged over so there was room and Chouji was starting to think that there were way too many people in the room that had only been meant for the three of them. Another injured person and they were going to be out of beds.
Yuuta looked somewhat wobbly where he was leaning against the wall, out of the way of the two who were remaking the bed, so Chouji silently helped him get over to one of the chairs, and watched the bandages carefully to make sure nothing started bleeding heavily from the movement.
“I’m not badly hurt,” Yuuta said, almost sounding bemused to Chouji’s unpracticed ear, “I got off lucky.”
He couldn’t argue. Injured or not there was no denying that of the three ANBU Yuuta was the only one that was still mobile if it came to a fight. Koyabashi’s arms were fine beyond a few bruises, but his legs...
Yuuta was speaking again, this time to him, and Chouji glanced at him. “You’re still a Genin?”
Chouji nodded. “Lost out in the preliminaries last time around.”
“You keep your head pretty well,” came the calm response.
He disagreed, but silently beyond a shake of his head. In most things, yes, but it wasn’t exactly hard to trigger a response to his temper where he stopped thinking. Chouji was trying to get past that, but years of reacting the same way weren’t exactly easy to ignore.
“Going to take a wild guess,” Yuuta said, “and say that you’re the chit’s team.”
“Chit?” Chouji frowned, even as Shikamaru’s head jerked up to stare over at them. Asuma-sensei sighed.
Yuuta shrugged even though the movement had to be painful. “The Yamanaka girl.”
“What about Ino?” Shikamaru asked, getting the words out while Chouji was still contemplating how Ino would react to being called a chit. He would have liked to see the look on her face. “She’s supposed to be safe.”
While Yuuta blinked incredulously at that, Chouji gave Shikamaru a look of his own. “What do ANBU have to do with Ino?” he said instead.
“Over-lapping missions,” Asuma-sensei said, sounding tired. “I was notified of the presence of ANBU and volunteered our room as a safe spot if there was trouble. It’s just a problem of two many shinobi in one place.”
Too many people hiring shinobi to do their dirty work all at once.
Well, it was more money for Konoha. “Did Ino know about your presence?”
That got a shake of his head. “Megumi did though, we weren’t careless.”
Chouji had several opinions on that, and not many of them were complimentary. He kept his mouth shut on any of that. “If you’re like this...” Then what about Ino?
Good question. And, from the expressions on Asuma-sensei’s face, on Yuuta’s face, and the sick realization dawning on Shikamaru’s... Chouji found he knew the answer before anyone spoke.
“She’s currently thought to be caught, but alive.”
Alive was better than dead, Chouji thought. He deliberately didn’t think about his Dad’s stories about how, sometimes, that wasn’t better at all.
--
Her head felt like it was on fire.
The ground was cold, and it was dark. A shivery contrast to the pain in her head. Ino struggled to sit up, the movement getting a moan out of her as her head lurched, and underneath it all the mild surprise that she was unbound. She couldn’t see, the dark of the room-was it a room? The ground felt like stone, but that could be a natural cave, and not the inside of a building-blinded her and left her feeling vulnerable.
“Onee-sama?” she croaked, a cracked whisper, throat dry and needing water. Stay in character, just... stay in character.
“Here, Junko-chan,” came the quiet answer and then, before Ino could even turn her head in the direction of the voice, familiar hands were helping her sit up more steadily. It helped soothe the low-level panic that Ino was doing her best to ignore. Her first big mission and they’d gotten caught.
She wondered if it was anything that she’d done. She hoped it wasn’t, though the point was rather ridiculous to worry about now when they were stuck here. Worry about the past later. Ino couldn’t think of anything, but if it was so small...
“Where are we?” Ino asked, her voice coming out gratifyingly young and lost for all that her throat was still dry and speaking hurt. “Onee-sama? What happened?”
There was a bit of a fumble and then a half empty cup with room temperature water in it was pressed to her lips. Ino drank, taking the cup in her own hands, and Megumi-san answered while she did.
“I don’t know much,” Megumi-san said, smoothing one hand over her hair, and Ino leaned into the touch, making herself relax slightly, “you were brought to our rooms unconscious and I... made tea then...”
And then Megumi-san had allowed herself to be taken.
She shifted, moving herself closer to Megumi-san and did the utterly most childish thing she could think of doing-burying her face against her ‘sister’ and bursting into tears. “I’m scared, Onee-sama. S-Scared...”
It was a useful skill to be able to cry on command, and to make it look real. The fear in her voice though was entirely real. Suzume-sensei had always said that that was the best way to go about it. Mix the real with the fake and make it hard to tell them apart. Nothing sweetens a lie more than a truth.
In being scared, in letting it show, she was making the tears more realistic. It wasn’t something she was consciously thinking about in so many words, thinking right now would be bad because nothing showed up quicker than the fact that you had to think about things, but underneath it all there were reasons.
Megumi-san’s hand on her hair, arm around her shoulder, came quickly and soothing nonsense was murmured as Ino let herself react, and react badly to the situation.
It was scary, it was dangerous, and she was scared to death that they wouldn’t get out of here. But training was a powerful thing, and being so emotional on a mission was a thing that they’d learned quickly was bad.
This was different than D ranked missions. So different. It was worse than an exam because if she failed an exam oh well, she’d try again. This, though, was life or death. Thinking was bad, so Ino didn’t think.
She just cried, and let Megumi-san soothe her. And, in doing so, the both of them could look to come to grips with the situation somewhat. It was hard to tell in the dark, but Megumi-san’s hand on her hair and the way that a small message, passed through that way, only one word but even still, assurance enough--Good.
Good. Simple praise, but enough to make her thoughts steady and stop rolling around quite so much with panic. Ino just made herself stay where she was.
Slowly time passed. It was bizarre to be stuck in the dark, and not be able to do anything about it. After awhile Megumi-san shifted, leaving Ino on the floor and draping a thin blanket over her shoulders.
Ino wrapped her arms around her knees, her face feeling puffy with tears and she rubbed at her eyes as Megumi-san moved around in the dark. “Onee-sama? W-What are you doing?” Her throat hurt, and that was real. She needed water and they didn’t have much to spare. She’d have to do without for a little while longer.
“Trying to see where we are,” came the smooth response, and for a moment Ino was confused because she didn’t think...
Oh. Right. Stupid. Civilians would do that too, right? They definitely would.
“Did you want my help?” she asked, pitching her voice to sounds lost and childlike.
“Stay there,” Megumi-san answered. “Keep talking so I don’t trip over you, Junko-chan.”
Talking. Talking she could do. What followed was a rather painful hour or so (her sense of time was rather dubious considering all of the dark) while Ino tried desperately to keep talking even as her throat protested being used and she had to struggle to come up with topics that would sound natural for a scared civilian girl.
Megumi-san didn’t tell her to stop, and Ino tried to take that as encouragement, but couldn’t quite convince herself that it was all well done. How could she, when it was dark, she couldn’t see anything, and Megumi-san could only be told there from the sounds she made while looking. Her breathing. Ino made herself focus on that and not on the way the dark made her skin want to crawl the longer she was in it.
“Nothing,” Megumi-san sighed, stepping over to her and settling down nearby. “We’re stuck good and well, Junko-chan.”
She shivered, and that was pure Ino instead of Junko even though she didn’t know if that was just what Megumi-san was saying for... in case of anyone watching them. Ino didn’t even know if someone was.
Just that, had it been her on the other side of the situation she’d have had people watching them to.
How long it was then before the door flipped open, Ino didn’t know, just that she’d fallen half asleep and the light that spilled across the room was almost painfully bright. She made a sound of protest, blinking her eyes furiously, even as Megumi-san made it so that Ino was behind her. More protected.
So that they’d get the Jounin, rather than the Genin. Ino was grateful for this, and tried not to be shamed at the fact that she was so weak. Don’t be stupid, she scolded herself, the moment we got caught you were way over your head. Amaya-san knows better.
And, here and now, it was easier to swallow that she couldn’t do it all.
When the light cleared, she managed to see enough to notice that the walls across the hall were brick, with wood paneling on the first foot from the floor. Then two shinobi grabbed Megumi-san, and Ino protested shrilly, as Junko-chan, even as her ‘sister’ put up a ‘fight’.
Then the door was closing, and she was alone in the dark.
--
The pace they took ate up land like it was nothing. The energy it took, chakra fed to their legs with precise, painstaking skill wasn’t nothing, but it was a slight enough amount that they could recuperate it quickly during breaks.
Not that there were many of those, Yuugao thought, as she all but flew over the ground, arms down and back, hair neatly braided, then coiled around her head and ANBU mask firmly on. It wasn’t raining, though the sky was dark enough and the air heavy enough that she could tell it would start up again soon.
Her team ranged behind her, all ANBU, all experienced, though one was still counted as hardly more than a rookie, and she directed her thoughts, again, to their orders. Yakushi Kabuto had been spotted in and around the area in the presence of more than one Jounin from Iwa.
That would have been bad enough-the idea of Yakushi dealing with any of the Fire Country’s daimyo was an idea that gave far too many ways that it could turn out really badly for them. Too much sensitive information all around, and so close to the surface. Even worse when they had, still, no real idea of just how much privileged information Yakushi had obtained. At the very very least, far too much of their medical knowledge had wound up in his hands.
And then they’d gone and dropped a Genin into that mess. Brilliant. Yuugao took savage pleasure in the fact that Ibiki and Hiromasa were severely unhappy with the agents they’d had gathering information in Aomori-shi. It helped, a bit, that the Genin, the Yamanaka girl, had an ANBU directly with her, and that there had been, apparently, a team set in place to keep further eye on her.
But Yuugao knew that things could change in a heartbeat, and not even the most skilled ANBU could stick close to someone twenty-four seven. At the very least, sleep was still required. And the girl had enough training to be quiet when it suited her. That much had been gleaned from the mission briefing.
Hiromasa himself had done it, and he’d been quite... informative. Good grades, clever mind, skilled more than many kunoichi twice and three times her age in the arts of being a kunoichi-with the exception of the seduction arts, but that was hardly a surprise when they’d removed courtesan training from the Academy nearly eight years ago now. It wasn’t needed, they’d said back then. Yuugao, who’d gone through it, was still of two minds about it.
It was a skill, and it was never too early to learn a skill. It wasn’t as if the course had been much more than theory and discussion anyway. The practical uses of it were taught later, under the discretion of the Jounin sensei, and the maturity of each girl was taken into specific account.
That way had worked, and the girls who excelled there got a better idea of what to expect earlier. Not to mention the simple fact that all girls, and some of the boys for that matter, always had the chance of needing to know at the very least, the basics.
She shook her head-where were her thoughts tonight?-and, after a quick check back to ensure that her team was still good to go, upped the pace. They still had a good bit of distance to travel and Yuugao knew good and well that they had little time to waste.
They’d rest in a bit, she silently passed the message on with a few simple hand gestures. But for now, they’d run.
Yuugao wondered at the reasoning behind testing the Yamanaka girl so young. Alright, admittedly, it was not so young had they been in the midst of a war, but they weren’t with the exception of the Oto attack and few months back, and this...
Spoken quietly, in hardly more than whispers even in the ANBU headquarters were murmurings of the signs of another war. Everyone one there had heard the same rumours, but very few knew if there was any weight to them. Yuugao, for her part, had been of the opinion that talking about war was all well and good but until they had proof there was no point in her fretting about it.
Squad leader, yes. But she wasn’t all that high in the command chain, and so her job wasn’t to... engage in speculation. Gossip was to be listened to, of course, sometimes it was valuable, but for the most part Yuugao abstained from adding to it. Hayate had been more of a talker than she...
Oh, bravo, she thought darkly, shoving the pain away and down. She couldn’t mourn out here, not while on a mission. Time enough for that back in her too quiet rooms in Headquarters. Adjusting to death, and death of a loved one, was never easy. But worse still was it for a shinobi to lose themselves to grief and continue to take missions with that hurt powering their motivations.
Mission: suicide. That’s what it was named by dark-humoured agents in Intel. One in five ANBU went that route, they’d noted at last count. It had actually been only one in twenty during the war. She knew why too-in the middle of a war there was no time to get close, and if you did, even then, there were barriers that were left up to keep the relationship safe. Keep it on a level that they could move past, and get over, without so much fuss and feeling.
Peace had hurt them there, too. More and more shinobi were caring too deeply, and that caring, while strengthening their teamwork and the morale of the village... left them easier to manipulate.
The ground disappeared quickly beneath their feet, the passage of space only noted in the fact that it alternated through dark patches of forest, and wide open clearings. They would make better time if they followed the main roads, but that wasn’t something that they could afford-even if and ANBU team running at their pace was nothing but a blur almost too quick to be seen to the average civilian.
But, and that got a bit of a grin underneath her mask, it wasn’t the average civilian that they were avoiding. If they were running into trouble, and all reports said that was likely, then no doubt there would be enemy agents in the towns they would have to go through who would make note of their passing.
Better by far then to add a few hours more of travel time and not be seen. That had been her opinion for years, and she’d gotten it from her sensei. So far it had proven right. Yuugao had no plans in being proven wrong on it ever. Caution saved lives, so long as you didn’t let caution freeze you and keep you from reacting.
It was that caution that let her know people were in the clearing ahead of them. It was that skill that had her signaling quickly for weapons to not be drawn. It was her memory that let her put names to the faces that she came upon. It was fast reflexes that allowed her to avoid the wave of sand that came smashing at them even while she called out her allegiances and hoped it was the right thing. Distantly she heard the girl with the fan echoing the order.
It was good old fashion prudence that wondered what Suna was doing so far within their borders.
This team in particular. She landed light, moonlight sending details into harsh relief as clouds broke away from the moon.
“Name and business,” she ordered, drawing her head up and glad for the mask that kept the glare she directed at the Jounin of the Suna team from being noticed.
No need to start an international incident, she reminded herself sternly even as the Genin with the hood stepped forward. Even if she wanted to.
Hayate...
--
Inoichi’s favourite place (besides his bed) was the greenhouses. He’d lie glibly and say it wasn’t though to most people, because in his opinion most people had no business knowing that, but it was and when he’d slipped out that evening, with a kiss for Mui, a quick greeting for Sakura, and half a bagel still in hand, he’d headed straight for the greenhouses and their leafy insides.
The bagel, of course, was gone before he reached them, and Inoichi slipped inside, shutting the door behind him, and smiling as the scent of flowers, leaves, and herbs washed over him. Other people, he knew, found it all too overpowering, but it was just about right to him.
Peaceful, and calming.
It was a rare chance when he had the availability to spend a lot of time in the greenhouses, and he was determined to make the most of it, never minding that the sun had set a few hours ago. What was day and night when he’d just gotten back from a mission?
There was nothing particularly pressing to do in the greenhouse, but the beauty of having so many flowers meant that there was always at least one or two to check in on and make sure that they were flourishing and then, of course, once he’d done that he had to check up on all of the rest just so he could make sure that they were doing as well.
That was his excuse, and he was sticking to it. He hummed a bit, parts of a song that was playing constantly on the radio, some silly teenage thing and found he didn’t mind it when just the plants knew about it.
He had his pride after all and it was enough of a pain dealing with Shikaku and Chouza’s occasional ribbing about him owning a flowershop. Chouza cooked, Shikaku spent his spare days up to his eyes in deer and came out reeking of them. In Inoichi’s opinion, they were no better than him, and flowers smelled better than deer.
Night was, he supposed, an odd sort of time to want to do gardening in, but that was the time he’d had and Inoichi knew that he’d never be able to sleep without at least a few hours of time spent here. Not when he was wound tightly enough that his shoulders and neck ached dully with a pain that no painkiller would touch. Only time could do that, time and really relaxing.
This would allow him to ground himself, take himself out of the other mindset that he used on missions. Nothing was ever easy and even Jounin got tired of them. This one had gone well, and he was still tired. Needed a break. Maybe he’d talk to Mui about taking a vacation to the shore for a week, or something. They could afford it.
Inoichi let himself dwell on that pleasant idea as he puttered. No doubt Ino would like to come, but he doubted her schedule would allow for it. Not at her age. And not after her first big mission. He bit his lip in concentration as he carefully pulled a few dead leaves from a finicky plant. Perhaps he’d teach her another jutsu for that, making it to her first mission like that was impressive improvement from the exam.
Thoughts like that were far better than what lurked on his mind, just beneath them. Missions weren’t, like his wife thought, something that came entirely easy to him. It was just something that he had to do. Inoichi couldn’t imagine not doing missions, and so he kept doing them. Because that was all he could do. Flowers were nice, and he was perhaps fonder of them than he let on, but only as a change.
Inoichi was old school in more than one way, he subscribed freely to the idea that all shinobi should have something that was utterly non-related to their job. As a way to unwind, and relax. It was never a good idea for a shinobi to put themselves in a civilian situation while they were still strung taut with nerves.
And Inoichi had always had nerves, more than enough that Kai-sensei had more than once despaired of him ever settling down enough to work properly in the strict confines of a mission’s parameters. He’d managed though.
Kill your heart, but let it beat all at once. He’d taken it to mind, and made it his. On a mission, he was distant, and some would say not-all-there. That was fine, he got the mission done, he managed to be more than effective.
And the flowers were his way of reconnecting.
Losing himself in tending to the plants, he was almost startled by the quick rap of a knock on the door to the greenhouse. There was more than one way out of the place, of course, but to someone who didn’t know the building inside and out there was only one real exit.
He paused, tilting his head at the door. It was past late, he’d just gotten back from a mission, and there was no way they’d be pulling him out right away again. That wasn’t something that was done often-even in ANBU they’d allowed the agents at least a day between missions, generally more than that though as the agents had had a tendency to come back injured.
It wasn’t a chakra signature that he recognized and so he had a kunai in hand as Inoichi ambled over to the door, outwardly at ease. The sight of a masked and cloaked figure filled him with nothing but exhaustion and an inward curse at the trend of his thoughts.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” was his greeting, and he opened the door and stared impassively at the ANBU. “I did my duty.”
“ANBU requires you again,” was the uncompromising response to that. “Your duty ends, and begins, when you’re needed.”
A girl, he couldn’t tell how hold she was, but even money said she was a good bit younger than he was. ANBU was the province of the young, the powerful, and the stupid. He’d been there once, and his hand slipped up to brush where the tattoos still marred his skin.
The scarlet spiral. A twisted descent into madness.
“My mask,” he said, holding out one hand for it, knowing that she’d have it on her. “I’ll need to be reissued a kit, for the rest of it. It’s been sixteen years.”
That made the chit pause, and he lowered his estimate of her age to even younger than he’d thought. She had to be close to that, he guessed, just to react so powerfully to the fact that, yes, he’d been there and left it so many years ago. Necessity was a cold mistress. She handed over the heavy white mask, and he stared at it.
“Why are people getting called in now?” he asked. “If it was going to happen, I would have thought that right after the Oto attack.” Inoichi couldn’t call it an invasion. It hadn’t been. Just one attack, and then it was over.
The ANBU shrugged, clearly she didn’t know, and anything she might have heard… wasn’t going to pass it on to him. He let out a sigh. Figured. “I’ll be there,” he said. “In the morning. Assuming that’s early enough?”
She nodded and in the blink of an eye disappeared.
“Show off,” he muttered, staring down at the mask in his hands before quickly tucking it away. No one else could see it, belonging to ANBU was a secret.
“What am I supposed to tell Mui?” he murmured. Inoichi would figure it out, but not now. There was someone else he needed to talk to first.
And the greenhouses would just have to wait. “I’ll be back,” he promised them, as he tidied things up quickly. “But not now.”
He had more important things to do.
--
Megumi knew, from the moment she’d woken up, that they were being observed. When the first thing out of Ino-kun’s mouth had been a pained ‘Onee-sama’ she’d been almost pathetically grateful for that.
Still in character, even when injured. Suzume hadn’t been exaggerating the talents of this kunoichi, however green she was in terms of experience. She’d not minded at all, when Ino-kun had admitted to being scared-and Megumi had been able to tell that that was both the mask and the real girl talking there, though the tears were the mask only-because it was something that could only help to further suspicion on them being simply who they’d claimed to be: civilian sisters who’d needed employment.
Every bit helped. And Ino-kun had surpassed her expectations easily. Megumi would not have blamed even kunoichi only than Ino-kun for breaking character in a situation that had gone so badly awry. Fighting against your instincts... it wasn’t easy, especially not when, in not fighting, you could get hurt. No one liked getting hurt, beyond a few of the agents in ANBU. Which, admittedly, had it’s uses, but not in this mission.
So far, so good though. Neither of them had been injured more than the absolute minimum that had been used to take them down, and if they were thirsty and tired, well, there were far worse fates than that. Their luck was holding well, though she doubted that Ino-kun would precisely say the same thing.
She couldn’t exactly blame her for that. Ino-kun was just a Genin. It was a different level of thinking altogether. Megumi could only hope that Ino-kun would be left alone as the door was opened and light streamed in. She was glad, almost, when they grabbed her, forcing her to her feet even as Ino-kun erupted, right on cue, into shrilly protest about taking her ‘Onee-sama’ away and what were they going to do with her.
And, in her own role, she’d offered brave assurances and gone without a quiver of fear in her voice. The door slamming shut on Ino-kun made her shiver, and Megumi-san scolded herself for being so silly as to take that as almost an omen. They would get out of here, and they would do it well. She wouldn’t allow anything else.
It was almost too bright after the dark of the room, and Megumi’s eyes watered as she faked a stumble that only made her captors grip on her arms tighten. The halls were stone, with wood paneling along wall for the first foot from the ground before giving way to whitewashed stone. She wondered at that, and wracked her brain in an attempt to recall where they could be. Aomori-shi wasn’t huge on stone buildings. Wood was more common in the Fire Country.
“Where are we going?” she demanded, a quiver of fear permitted to slip out under her mask of bravado now that she was away from her sister and the need to act stronger than she really was. “Where are we? What are you planning to do with us?”
She wasn’t surprised when the only answer she got was hands tightening further, to the point of pain, and she knew that she’d have bruises developing fast if they insisted on that being their only method of telling her to shut up.
Megumi didn’t of course. Giving a cry of pain, and one that while genuine, had she been able to act as herself would have merely earned a wince and likely a kick to the perpetrator. She bemoaned her fate, that of her sister’s, and the entire situation. As loud as she could.
It was difficult when she didn’t know, or have much of an idea about where they were, but loud was always preferred over silent if you were pretending to be a civilian. The fact that they didn’t strike her in the face only gave more credence to the fact that, so far, there was hopefully the doubt that they even were kunoichi.
Better to be thought a weak and terrified woman than one competent of taking on pain in this situation, at least. The opposite was true in some cases, naturally, but seldom in the case of a hostage situation.
The room she was shoved roughly into was blindingly bright after the ordinary light of the halls, and her eyes streamed as she stumbled and tried to look around. Empty but for a drain in the middle of the gently sloped floor, cuffs and chains on the wall, and a stand that had blades of different widths and other things she didn’t manage to identify in the brief look she got. Megumi was glad for the light as it gave her a distraction while she tried not to let herself tense up in ways that a civilian shouldn’t know.
No civilian would have chakra steadily rising with powerful intent behind it. Flared uncontrolled chakra was allowable, even civilians had chakra-all living things did-but anything beyond that... would speak of training. And, faced with two masked ninja wearing Iwagakure headbands and a quick glimpse of a flash of silver hair and Oto’s hitae-ite answered good and well where Yakushi was.
Leaning against the far wall, he was looking better than any traitor had the right to be, and she was glad for one of the others grabbing her roughly and pressing her wrists into chains embedded in the wall. She shrieked, channeling emotion into it so her mind stayed clear.
Dimly she was aware of a muted conversation with Yakushi, but she couldn’t make out the words. Megumi didn’t try. Such an action would only draw more attention to her.
As the other Iwa shinobi picked up a fine bladed knife Megumi was never so glad that it had been her instead of Ino-kun.
She, at least, had the training to withstand what was coming. All the training didn’t stop it from hurting though, and as the first cut became a fiery line of blood down her arm, Megumi let herself scream.
“Gently,” Yakushi admonished, faint amusement in his voice. “At least to start.”
--
Asuma had been keeping an eye on Chouji, and Shikamaru, while they’d laid out the situation, leaving out a few key bits of information-such as why, exactly, there’d be ANBU around-and hadn’t liked what he’d seen at all.
It was rare that Chouji, his most easy-going student, got angry. If it wasn’t about his weight, which he was more sensitive than Asuma thought he should be, then Chouji was regularly a rock of stability for both Ino and Shikamaru to balance off of. Their temperaments flourished with the stability that Chouji possessed.
After ordering Shikamaru out to obtain food, he was hungry, and the ANBU had to be, and even this late at night there were still a few places open, he gestured for Chouji to come over. In this situation he had no patience for any sort of teenage squabble. Not his third student’s life was in danger.
Chouji gave the three ANBU a long glance-two of them were sleeping, one knocked out by all the painkillers in their systems, the other just in a fitful doze that was shy of real sleep, while Yuuta still worked on compiling what they knew so far-before coming over.
“What’s going on between you and Shikamaru?” he asked bluntly. This was no time for him to be skipping around and trying to spare the feelings of his kids.
That earned him a look, and Asuma raised his eyebrows slightly. If this was less serious, if he could have a cigarette, it would be almost amusing. As it was though, there was nothing amusing about a flare up between two teammates when the third was in a situation that she shouldn’t have been in.
“He’s not thinking,” Chouji said, sighing and leaning back against the wall. “Even getting Kobayashi out-we were out of bounds.”
Out of bounds. Asuma’s eyes narrowed. “And you were out of bounds why?”
“Shikamaru’s shadow said something was wrong.” Chouji sounded mulish about that and Asuma couldn’t help but want to groan at that news. There was no telling how much of that was true, and how much of that was just wishful thinking under the circumstances.
He wasn’t a Nara. It wasn’t like he’d know. Asuma had to admit, in his own head at least, that it sounded reasonable enough to him. But Shikamaru hadn’t been reasonable for most of the mission.
“So you disobeyed my orders because his shadow thought something was off.”
To his credit, Chouji flushed.
“You both could have been killed,” Asuma held up one hand to forestall any argument there and continued on, “I’m well aware that you didn’t, and indeed that what you found may have helped us-and that it certainly saved a life. Nonetheless, you will be mentioned as being in violation of your orders though on my report.”
That got a nod, a slightly stiff one, but no argument. Asuma could live with that. He suspected that the other member of the team would be harder to deal with than this one.
“What,” he asked, voice carefully measured, “is your opinion of what’s up with him?”
He watched silently as Chouji carefully turned that over in his head, obviously deciding how much information there was that he felt he could give up. There were times, especially times like this, when Asuma wished that the Academy still covered some of the classes that they’d done away with once it had become clear that the war wasn’t going to restart for a goodly while.
How were they supposed to know better without training? The only answer to that, of course, was that it couldn’t be expected that they’d just pick it up. Situational discussion. What was and wasn’t important in the moment. And when, exactly, differences had to be put aside and ignored.
Better a screaming match of a spar in the middle of training, than a whispered fight concerning the exact same issue in a situation where a nudge at the wrong time could wind up with a battle and then people would be injured.
Or worse.
Asuma wasn’t sure how much his impatience for the entire issue was reflected on his face, but what there was wouldn’t be recognizable unless, like Chouji, you were one of those that he was currently exasperated with. He wished, absently, that this was a time that he could have a cigarette.
But no, not with Ino in a mess that she shouldn’t have been in. He should’ve made her said no. She didn’t have the experience. It wasn’t that he doubted her technical ability to perform a mission.
Technicalities, though, made up only a small part of what made a ninja able to complete their missions. And Ino didn’t have the experience. He’d hoped that she wouldn’t have to gain experience this way. Wishes and hopes were useless though, especially now, and he shoved them away and down out of his mind as Chouji opened his mouth.
“He’s been...” his calmest student shrugged a bit helplessly, “weird about Ino since that mission. Not sleeping well, and-“
That pause got raised eyebrows. “Go on.”
“He has dreams about her,” Chouji said, in a quiet rush with a wary glance at the other shinobi in the room, “about her dying, about him failing to save her, and apparently that’s just... something he’s going to have to deal with. His dad gave him a bunch of books, but books aren’t a cure, and he’s been being stupid about it. I had to pry that much out of him, and I know there’s more. He’s been skittish about talking anything out though, and everything he’s said about this mission has been predicting disaster. I don’t know if any of that was more than him just worrying about Ino though, and I don’t think he knows either. He’s... not really... thinking a lot? Just reacting, and that’s not like him at all. And his shadow is acting up, apparently it’s something his dad was teaching him before the mission started, but for the moment it’s more reactive to his thoughts and opinions...”
As Chouji trailed off, Asuma pinched the bridge of his nose and digested what he’d just heard. As Kurenai had said, Ino was the most motivated by that mission and Shikamaru... would take the longest to heal.
He didn’t have all that much time to coddle him, not now. Not when his students were keeping things like that from him. Asuma had known about the shadow being more reactive, and had known that Shikamaru hadn’t been pleased by the mission at all, but...
“Dreams of her dying because of him.” It wasn’t a question. More of a statement, and even that had heavy overtones of ‘I can’t believe this’. “And neither of you thought that it might be something that your Jounin sensei would want to know about before a major mission like this.”
Major to them, his students, of course. To more advanced shinobi it was just another mission, like a hundred others.
Chouji flushed and his answer came out mulish. “I promised Shikamaru that I wouldn’t.”
That got a sigh. “Kids,” Asuma muttered, not feeling anything complimentary for any of them at the moment. “And do Shikamaru’s feelings rank above Ino’s life?”
His student paled.
“If I had known about Shikamaru’s difficulties, in more detail, so that I better understood what was actually going on with him, rather than the few tidbits I gleaned from dragging details out of him...” He shook his head. “We could have turned the mission down.” He doubted that Tsunade-sama would have minded. She hadn’t been pleased with the idea in the first place. If he’d only had a good excuse...
Chouji looked like he was going to be ill. Asuma clapped him on the shoulder. “Think about it,” he advised, knowing that anything else would just soften the point that had needed to be made, “and remember the difference between information that’s on a need-to-know basis and what’s not.”
“I’m going out for a bit.” Let them think it was for a cigarette. “Keep a watch out.”
Chouji’s answer was so quiet he almost missed it. “Yes, Asuma-sensei.”
--
Ino’s head hurt less, the water Megumi-san had given her helped with that, but she was still cold and the blanket they had was thin. She huddled herself under it, back to the far corner, pressed up against the wall, and stared at the door.
She didn’t know where they were taking Megumi-san. And all she could do, all she dared do was breathe in the dank air of the room and try to marshal her thoughts into some useful form. It was harder than it should have been, and she wondered if that was to blame on the pain meds-some of them were known for ruining concentration.
Leaning back more firmly against the wall, it was still dark but she was almost getting used to that, Ino paused when the wall shifted slightly behind her, before continuing to move. She had to look like she hadn’t noticed anything.
It was easier, really, than it would have been under different circumstances, since she didn’t even know if what she’d noticed was anything useful. Ino knew, in all honesty, that she didn’t even know if it was useful. But it was something of interest.
And even as green as she was for a shinobi, Ino knew that captors never wanted anything of interest to catch the enemy agents-and how weird was it, that she was an enemy and a captive?-and with good reason.
Things of interest, however small, could make all the difference.
Ino shifted so that her shoulders and neck were leaned against the wall while scooting out so that her lower back wasn’t so closely pressed. It looked a bit silly, a little bit obvious, but between the blanket she had wrapped around her, and the dark, Ino thought that even this was a reasonable chance. She needed to know what was there, and if Megumi-san had missed it...
Carefully, so carefully and as casually as she could manage, Ino silently reached out with her arms and felt out the area of wall behind her. At first it was just the paneled wood, and above it, the stone that her shoulders were pressed against, but then her fingers brushed an edge of a panel that was slightly raised and the wall shifted again.
She froze, barely breathing, and hoping like hell that whatever watchers she had on her-if there were any, Ino knew good and well that Megumi-san was of greater interest than she was-hadn’t noticed what she was doing.
If she was cautious, then she’d stop there, with maybe no more than a few more attempts to check out the area of wall that moved when she touched it. If she had more training, Ino might have been able to stealthily check out if there were chakra signatures around her. As it was though, she was a Genin, greener than spring grass after a rainstorm, and what she had to work with was just her instincts.
And her instincts quietly suggested that she ought to press her luck while Megumi-san wasn’t around. If the watchers had gone with her ‘sister’ then this could be her one real chance to make sense of what was going on here-and find enough information for them to figure out how to escape. They couldn’t just rely on other people to come and save them.
Her heartbeat sped at the thought. Shikamaru and Chouji were out there. If she knew them, and Ino thought she did, then Shikamaru would be swearing that he’d known she couldn’t handle a mission like this.
Ino’s eyes narrowed, and her lips thinned. Right. She wasn’t just going to sit around and wait for rescue. No way, not with that facing her. If she could help Megumi-san get them out... that’d prove that she wasn’t entirely useless. It had to. She was not incapable of taking care of herself.
She closed her eyes, making herself breathe deeply, careful steady gulps of air as she wrestled her temper back under her control. Ino couldn’t lose it here. If she did, and it’d be so easy to, then she wouldn’t get anything accomplished. And that, as a point of personal pride, she couldn’t let happen. It wasn’t all about Shikamaru, Ino told herself silently. This mission had been given to her because they thought she could handle it, the Hokage had thought she could handle it.
Ino had to prove that she could, even when it went wrong.
When her head was clear, and her temper back to fueling her energy rather than clouding her mind, Ino carefully, but very deliberately, pressed the panel. The wall shifted, more than before, and this time there was a squeal of old unused metal that sounded painfully loud to her ears. Her breath caught in her throat, making her cough, and she waited almost frozen with fear for someone, anyone to come running and see what was up.
No one did.
With a tight grin, that was more than a little vicious, directed at the door, Ino carefully explored the depression in the wall. It was only an inch or two deep, but wide enough that...
Ino, acting more on a hunch than anything else, dug her fingernails under the edge of the depression. The wood made her wince as it bit into her fingers but, with nothing more than a wince and a hissed curse, she made herself tug at it.
To her delight it moved under her hands. The amount of noise it made was not to her delight though. A few more not-quite-panicked moments as she waited for someone, anyone to hear her and make her stop. Again, there was nothing.
It took her another twenty minutes or so-she was guessing, time seemed equal parts fluid and at a standstill in the complete dark she found herself in-to get the depression, and the panel to move enough that she could wiggle through it.
Ino, still blind without light but more confident in her hands ability to tell things apart than she’d been before this, carefully felt around in the hole. It almost felt like a tunnel, and she wished futilely to be able to see more clearly-could Hinata see in the dark with her eyes activated?-and Ino contemplated for a moment on activating Hypnosis no Jutsu. Pink light was almost better than none, right?
Except for the fact that that would break their cover. Even a civilian girl could accidentally find a way out of their prison if a room had been left so open for exploration. So far, everything she’d found could be blamed on the need to get out, and pure chance.
The moment she brought chakra into play... that’d be busted. Ino swallowed, glancing back at the door, and quickly wriggling out of the blanket. And, before she thought better of it, wriggled through the opening. There was a bit of a drop, less than a foot, but it still caught her off guard and she had to bite her lip to keep from making a sound.
Ino peeked back behind her, reaching to carefully shift the blanket so it looked somewhat (hopefully) like she was just sleeping. Then she turned, facing the dark with no idea of how long the tunnel would go on for, or where she’d end up.
Get moving, she told herself. You’ll need to be back before Megumi-san is returned.
And that was a time limit she had no frame of reference for. Ino steeled her nerves, ordered herself to remember the way back to this point, and started inching down the tunnel, feeling the way with her hands and hoping for no more sudden drops.
The dark of the tunnel closed in behind her, and Ino made herself concentrate on anything but the press of the walls and tried to occupy her thoughts with practical contemplation about where she was, and what exactly they’d been caught for.
She disappeared into the tunnel, leaving the room behind. I’ll be back, she promised herself. I’ll make it back before they return, for sure.
Because otherwise was too awful to think about.
--
Previous Chapter // Chapter List // Next Chapter
Chapter: 10 Misjudged (Part I)
Author/Artist: Skylar Inari
Pairing: Yamanaka Ino/Nara Shikamaru
Theme: 11 - Lady Luck
Word Count: 8907
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. It's Kishimoto's and I just play with it. AU immediately after the Sasuke Retrieval Arc. Part 10 of ? Unbeta’d.
--
Chouji was angry.
It wasn’t anger like Ino’s, not the quick-lash of snapping words, biting tones, and hasty retorts. It wasn’t the anger that made him rage whenever someone insulted his weight, or his teammates.
Rather, it was a fury that simmered slowly, just under the surface, and for all that his other anger was more explosive this was a sort that would last longer and be less forgiving. He was angry, and it was Shikamaru’s fault.
As Asuma-sensei helped him get the wounded ANBU to the other bed-one, he saw, already occupied by a blue-haired man with keen eyes and a sardonic parody of a smile on his face, and bandages neatly tied off and wrapped around various injuries-Chouji also kept note of what Shikamaru was doing.
Which wasn’t a whole lot.
He bit his tongue and made himself focus on the ANBU as they helped the man-not that old, eighteen at most, with grey eyes and ash-blond hair-out of his uniform and tend to his wounds. Chouji couldn’t help but think that having Sakura around right now would have been useful, basic first aid was something that all shinobi were taught, but beyond that...
No point in worrying about it. He did his best, giving the man a startled look when he offered advice on how to dress the wounds. Chouji listened though, and learned. There was no doubt in his head that this man, this Kobayashi, knew better about caring for injuries than Chouji did.
Kobayashi, though, laughed when Chouji had asked him if he’d any medical training. “Not me,” he said, that getting a smile, “just been patching myself up for years.”
And that, he found, was that. Once everything had been taken care of that could be handled here, and the man was resting as comfortably as they had been able to manage, Chouji went to wash his hands.
It was then that Shikamaru looked up from where he’d been leaning against the wall and stared at Asuma-sensei. “What trouble do we have, exactly?”
If he’d been Ino, then Chouji would have said something waspish about it being rather obvious. He could almost hear her voice, giving intonation and disdain to having to explain anything. They had two ANBU down, two ANBU and he didn’t even know why they were here, just that their hotel room had been designated Point A and that Asuma-sensei didn’t seem surprised about that.
Which meant that he’d known about the possibility of this happening.
All of that flashed through his head in the time it took Asuma-sensei to give Shikamaru an unreadable glance-which was, Chouji knew from experience, a bad sign-and opened his mouth to speak when there was an uneven thud against the door.
Chouji had barely made it to the end of the bed by the time that Asuma-sensei had reached the door. It wasn’t long after that, while Chouji remained on alert-if it came to a fight, the two in the beds might be ANBU, but he was unwounded and not exhausted-and, to his pleasure, Shikamaru remained just as alert as he.
When Asuma-sensei came back, he wasn’t alone. The thud had been that of a kunoichi-a tall, broad-shouldered girl who was taller, in his quick estimation, than both the men and shoulder-length green-black hair-slumping against the door. She was injured and Yuuta rolled off of the bed he’d been in without needing to be asked.
“Shimako,” he said, identifying her, and at the sound of his voice her eyelids fluttered open. She didn’t say anything though, as Asuma-sensei helped get her down on the bed, blood was everywhere it seemed and Chouji hurriedly went for the blood replenishers and bandages.
This time, even with the help Asuma-sensei, it took them longer to get her resting as comfortably as they could manage. While they worked, Yuuta talked urgently to her in a whisper he didn’t even try to decipher, much more concerned with the way that she kept bleeding. Once the pills had taken affect, at least a little, she started answering back in a voice that was no louder than Yuuta’s.
His hands were red, the blankets were red, and he barely paid attention when Asuma-sensei sent him to wash up, that he was also ordering Shikamaru to get the blankets off the bed and fetch clean ones.
Chouji didn’t stay to see if Shikamaru would argue that. When he got back, both Shikamaru and Asuma-sensei were putting new sheets on the bed while the woman, Shimako, rested on the other. Kobayashi had edged over so there was room and Chouji was starting to think that there were way too many people in the room that had only been meant for the three of them. Another injured person and they were going to be out of beds.
Yuuta looked somewhat wobbly where he was leaning against the wall, out of the way of the two who were remaking the bed, so Chouji silently helped him get over to one of the chairs, and watched the bandages carefully to make sure nothing started bleeding heavily from the movement.
“I’m not badly hurt,” Yuuta said, almost sounding bemused to Chouji’s unpracticed ear, “I got off lucky.”
He couldn’t argue. Injured or not there was no denying that of the three ANBU Yuuta was the only one that was still mobile if it came to a fight. Koyabashi’s arms were fine beyond a few bruises, but his legs...
Yuuta was speaking again, this time to him, and Chouji glanced at him. “You’re still a Genin?”
Chouji nodded. “Lost out in the preliminaries last time around.”
“You keep your head pretty well,” came the calm response.
He disagreed, but silently beyond a shake of his head. In most things, yes, but it wasn’t exactly hard to trigger a response to his temper where he stopped thinking. Chouji was trying to get past that, but years of reacting the same way weren’t exactly easy to ignore.
“Going to take a wild guess,” Yuuta said, “and say that you’re the chit’s team.”
“Chit?” Chouji frowned, even as Shikamaru’s head jerked up to stare over at them. Asuma-sensei sighed.
Yuuta shrugged even though the movement had to be painful. “The Yamanaka girl.”
“What about Ino?” Shikamaru asked, getting the words out while Chouji was still contemplating how Ino would react to being called a chit. He would have liked to see the look on her face. “She’s supposed to be safe.”
While Yuuta blinked incredulously at that, Chouji gave Shikamaru a look of his own. “What do ANBU have to do with Ino?” he said instead.
“Over-lapping missions,” Asuma-sensei said, sounding tired. “I was notified of the presence of ANBU and volunteered our room as a safe spot if there was trouble. It’s just a problem of two many shinobi in one place.”
Too many people hiring shinobi to do their dirty work all at once.
Well, it was more money for Konoha. “Did Ino know about your presence?”
That got a shake of his head. “Megumi did though, we weren’t careless.”
Chouji had several opinions on that, and not many of them were complimentary. He kept his mouth shut on any of that. “If you’re like this...” Then what about Ino?
Good question. And, from the expressions on Asuma-sensei’s face, on Yuuta’s face, and the sick realization dawning on Shikamaru’s... Chouji found he knew the answer before anyone spoke.
“She’s currently thought to be caught, but alive.”
Alive was better than dead, Chouji thought. He deliberately didn’t think about his Dad’s stories about how, sometimes, that wasn’t better at all.
--
Her head felt like it was on fire.
The ground was cold, and it was dark. A shivery contrast to the pain in her head. Ino struggled to sit up, the movement getting a moan out of her as her head lurched, and underneath it all the mild surprise that she was unbound. She couldn’t see, the dark of the room-was it a room? The ground felt like stone, but that could be a natural cave, and not the inside of a building-blinded her and left her feeling vulnerable.
“Onee-sama?” she croaked, a cracked whisper, throat dry and needing water. Stay in character, just... stay in character.
“Here, Junko-chan,” came the quiet answer and then, before Ino could even turn her head in the direction of the voice, familiar hands were helping her sit up more steadily. It helped soothe the low-level panic that Ino was doing her best to ignore. Her first big mission and they’d gotten caught.
She wondered if it was anything that she’d done. She hoped it wasn’t, though the point was rather ridiculous to worry about now when they were stuck here. Worry about the past later. Ino couldn’t think of anything, but if it was so small...
“Where are we?” Ino asked, her voice coming out gratifyingly young and lost for all that her throat was still dry and speaking hurt. “Onee-sama? What happened?”
There was a bit of a fumble and then a half empty cup with room temperature water in it was pressed to her lips. Ino drank, taking the cup in her own hands, and Megumi-san answered while she did.
“I don’t know much,” Megumi-san said, smoothing one hand over her hair, and Ino leaned into the touch, making herself relax slightly, “you were brought to our rooms unconscious and I... made tea then...”
And then Megumi-san had allowed herself to be taken.
She shifted, moving herself closer to Megumi-san and did the utterly most childish thing she could think of doing-burying her face against her ‘sister’ and bursting into tears. “I’m scared, Onee-sama. S-Scared...”
It was a useful skill to be able to cry on command, and to make it look real. The fear in her voice though was entirely real. Suzume-sensei had always said that that was the best way to go about it. Mix the real with the fake and make it hard to tell them apart. Nothing sweetens a lie more than a truth.
In being scared, in letting it show, she was making the tears more realistic. It wasn’t something she was consciously thinking about in so many words, thinking right now would be bad because nothing showed up quicker than the fact that you had to think about things, but underneath it all there were reasons.
Megumi-san’s hand on her hair, arm around her shoulder, came quickly and soothing nonsense was murmured as Ino let herself react, and react badly to the situation.
It was scary, it was dangerous, and she was scared to death that they wouldn’t get out of here. But training was a powerful thing, and being so emotional on a mission was a thing that they’d learned quickly was bad.
This was different than D ranked missions. So different. It was worse than an exam because if she failed an exam oh well, she’d try again. This, though, was life or death. Thinking was bad, so Ino didn’t think.
She just cried, and let Megumi-san soothe her. And, in doing so, the both of them could look to come to grips with the situation somewhat. It was hard to tell in the dark, but Megumi-san’s hand on her hair and the way that a small message, passed through that way, only one word but even still, assurance enough--Good.
Good. Simple praise, but enough to make her thoughts steady and stop rolling around quite so much with panic. Ino just made herself stay where she was.
Slowly time passed. It was bizarre to be stuck in the dark, and not be able to do anything about it. After awhile Megumi-san shifted, leaving Ino on the floor and draping a thin blanket over her shoulders.
Ino wrapped her arms around her knees, her face feeling puffy with tears and she rubbed at her eyes as Megumi-san moved around in the dark. “Onee-sama? W-What are you doing?” Her throat hurt, and that was real. She needed water and they didn’t have much to spare. She’d have to do without for a little while longer.
“Trying to see where we are,” came the smooth response, and for a moment Ino was confused because she didn’t think...
Oh. Right. Stupid. Civilians would do that too, right? They definitely would.
“Did you want my help?” she asked, pitching her voice to sounds lost and childlike.
“Stay there,” Megumi-san answered. “Keep talking so I don’t trip over you, Junko-chan.”
Talking. Talking she could do. What followed was a rather painful hour or so (her sense of time was rather dubious considering all of the dark) while Ino tried desperately to keep talking even as her throat protested being used and she had to struggle to come up with topics that would sound natural for a scared civilian girl.
Megumi-san didn’t tell her to stop, and Ino tried to take that as encouragement, but couldn’t quite convince herself that it was all well done. How could she, when it was dark, she couldn’t see anything, and Megumi-san could only be told there from the sounds she made while looking. Her breathing. Ino made herself focus on that and not on the way the dark made her skin want to crawl the longer she was in it.
“Nothing,” Megumi-san sighed, stepping over to her and settling down nearby. “We’re stuck good and well, Junko-chan.”
She shivered, and that was pure Ino instead of Junko even though she didn’t know if that was just what Megumi-san was saying for... in case of anyone watching them. Ino didn’t even know if someone was.
Just that, had it been her on the other side of the situation she’d have had people watching them to.
How long it was then before the door flipped open, Ino didn’t know, just that she’d fallen half asleep and the light that spilled across the room was almost painfully bright. She made a sound of protest, blinking her eyes furiously, even as Megumi-san made it so that Ino was behind her. More protected.
So that they’d get the Jounin, rather than the Genin. Ino was grateful for this, and tried not to be shamed at the fact that she was so weak. Don’t be stupid, she scolded herself, the moment we got caught you were way over your head. Amaya-san knows better.
And, here and now, it was easier to swallow that she couldn’t do it all.
When the light cleared, she managed to see enough to notice that the walls across the hall were brick, with wood paneling on the first foot from the floor. Then two shinobi grabbed Megumi-san, and Ino protested shrilly, as Junko-chan, even as her ‘sister’ put up a ‘fight’.
Then the door was closing, and she was alone in the dark.
--
The pace they took ate up land like it was nothing. The energy it took, chakra fed to their legs with precise, painstaking skill wasn’t nothing, but it was a slight enough amount that they could recuperate it quickly during breaks.
Not that there were many of those, Yuugao thought, as she all but flew over the ground, arms down and back, hair neatly braided, then coiled around her head and ANBU mask firmly on. It wasn’t raining, though the sky was dark enough and the air heavy enough that she could tell it would start up again soon.
Her team ranged behind her, all ANBU, all experienced, though one was still counted as hardly more than a rookie, and she directed her thoughts, again, to their orders. Yakushi Kabuto had been spotted in and around the area in the presence of more than one Jounin from Iwa.
That would have been bad enough-the idea of Yakushi dealing with any of the Fire Country’s daimyo was an idea that gave far too many ways that it could turn out really badly for them. Too much sensitive information all around, and so close to the surface. Even worse when they had, still, no real idea of just how much privileged information Yakushi had obtained. At the very very least, far too much of their medical knowledge had wound up in his hands.
And then they’d gone and dropped a Genin into that mess. Brilliant. Yuugao took savage pleasure in the fact that Ibiki and Hiromasa were severely unhappy with the agents they’d had gathering information in Aomori-shi. It helped, a bit, that the Genin, the Yamanaka girl, had an ANBU directly with her, and that there had been, apparently, a team set in place to keep further eye on her.
But Yuugao knew that things could change in a heartbeat, and not even the most skilled ANBU could stick close to someone twenty-four seven. At the very least, sleep was still required. And the girl had enough training to be quiet when it suited her. That much had been gleaned from the mission briefing.
Hiromasa himself had done it, and he’d been quite... informative. Good grades, clever mind, skilled more than many kunoichi twice and three times her age in the arts of being a kunoichi-with the exception of the seduction arts, but that was hardly a surprise when they’d removed courtesan training from the Academy nearly eight years ago now. It wasn’t needed, they’d said back then. Yuugao, who’d gone through it, was still of two minds about it.
It was a skill, and it was never too early to learn a skill. It wasn’t as if the course had been much more than theory and discussion anyway. The practical uses of it were taught later, under the discretion of the Jounin sensei, and the maturity of each girl was taken into specific account.
That way had worked, and the girls who excelled there got a better idea of what to expect earlier. Not to mention the simple fact that all girls, and some of the boys for that matter, always had the chance of needing to know at the very least, the basics.
She shook her head-where were her thoughts tonight?-and, after a quick check back to ensure that her team was still good to go, upped the pace. They still had a good bit of distance to travel and Yuugao knew good and well that they had little time to waste.
They’d rest in a bit, she silently passed the message on with a few simple hand gestures. But for now, they’d run.
Yuugao wondered at the reasoning behind testing the Yamanaka girl so young. Alright, admittedly, it was not so young had they been in the midst of a war, but they weren’t with the exception of the Oto attack and few months back, and this...
Spoken quietly, in hardly more than whispers even in the ANBU headquarters were murmurings of the signs of another war. Everyone one there had heard the same rumours, but very few knew if there was any weight to them. Yuugao, for her part, had been of the opinion that talking about war was all well and good but until they had proof there was no point in her fretting about it.
Squad leader, yes. But she wasn’t all that high in the command chain, and so her job wasn’t to... engage in speculation. Gossip was to be listened to, of course, sometimes it was valuable, but for the most part Yuugao abstained from adding to it. Hayate had been more of a talker than she...
Oh, bravo, she thought darkly, shoving the pain away and down. She couldn’t mourn out here, not while on a mission. Time enough for that back in her too quiet rooms in Headquarters. Adjusting to death, and death of a loved one, was never easy. But worse still was it for a shinobi to lose themselves to grief and continue to take missions with that hurt powering their motivations.
Mission: suicide. That’s what it was named by dark-humoured agents in Intel. One in five ANBU went that route, they’d noted at last count. It had actually been only one in twenty during the war. She knew why too-in the middle of a war there was no time to get close, and if you did, even then, there were barriers that were left up to keep the relationship safe. Keep it on a level that they could move past, and get over, without so much fuss and feeling.
Peace had hurt them there, too. More and more shinobi were caring too deeply, and that caring, while strengthening their teamwork and the morale of the village... left them easier to manipulate.
The ground disappeared quickly beneath their feet, the passage of space only noted in the fact that it alternated through dark patches of forest, and wide open clearings. They would make better time if they followed the main roads, but that wasn’t something that they could afford-even if and ANBU team running at their pace was nothing but a blur almost too quick to be seen to the average civilian.
But, and that got a bit of a grin underneath her mask, it wasn’t the average civilian that they were avoiding. If they were running into trouble, and all reports said that was likely, then no doubt there would be enemy agents in the towns they would have to go through who would make note of their passing.
Better by far then to add a few hours more of travel time and not be seen. That had been her opinion for years, and she’d gotten it from her sensei. So far it had proven right. Yuugao had no plans in being proven wrong on it ever. Caution saved lives, so long as you didn’t let caution freeze you and keep you from reacting.
It was that caution that let her know people were in the clearing ahead of them. It was that skill that had her signaling quickly for weapons to not be drawn. It was her memory that let her put names to the faces that she came upon. It was fast reflexes that allowed her to avoid the wave of sand that came smashing at them even while she called out her allegiances and hoped it was the right thing. Distantly she heard the girl with the fan echoing the order.
It was good old fashion prudence that wondered what Suna was doing so far within their borders.
This team in particular. She landed light, moonlight sending details into harsh relief as clouds broke away from the moon.
“Name and business,” she ordered, drawing her head up and glad for the mask that kept the glare she directed at the Jounin of the Suna team from being noticed.
No need to start an international incident, she reminded herself sternly even as the Genin with the hood stepped forward. Even if she wanted to.
Hayate...
--
Inoichi’s favourite place (besides his bed) was the greenhouses. He’d lie glibly and say it wasn’t though to most people, because in his opinion most people had no business knowing that, but it was and when he’d slipped out that evening, with a kiss for Mui, a quick greeting for Sakura, and half a bagel still in hand, he’d headed straight for the greenhouses and their leafy insides.
The bagel, of course, was gone before he reached them, and Inoichi slipped inside, shutting the door behind him, and smiling as the scent of flowers, leaves, and herbs washed over him. Other people, he knew, found it all too overpowering, but it was just about right to him.
Peaceful, and calming.
It was a rare chance when he had the availability to spend a lot of time in the greenhouses, and he was determined to make the most of it, never minding that the sun had set a few hours ago. What was day and night when he’d just gotten back from a mission?
There was nothing particularly pressing to do in the greenhouse, but the beauty of having so many flowers meant that there was always at least one or two to check in on and make sure that they were flourishing and then, of course, once he’d done that he had to check up on all of the rest just so he could make sure that they were doing as well.
That was his excuse, and he was sticking to it. He hummed a bit, parts of a song that was playing constantly on the radio, some silly teenage thing and found he didn’t mind it when just the plants knew about it.
He had his pride after all and it was enough of a pain dealing with Shikaku and Chouza’s occasional ribbing about him owning a flowershop. Chouza cooked, Shikaku spent his spare days up to his eyes in deer and came out reeking of them. In Inoichi’s opinion, they were no better than him, and flowers smelled better than deer.
Night was, he supposed, an odd sort of time to want to do gardening in, but that was the time he’d had and Inoichi knew that he’d never be able to sleep without at least a few hours of time spent here. Not when he was wound tightly enough that his shoulders and neck ached dully with a pain that no painkiller would touch. Only time could do that, time and really relaxing.
This would allow him to ground himself, take himself out of the other mindset that he used on missions. Nothing was ever easy and even Jounin got tired of them. This one had gone well, and he was still tired. Needed a break. Maybe he’d talk to Mui about taking a vacation to the shore for a week, or something. They could afford it.
Inoichi let himself dwell on that pleasant idea as he puttered. No doubt Ino would like to come, but he doubted her schedule would allow for it. Not at her age. And not after her first big mission. He bit his lip in concentration as he carefully pulled a few dead leaves from a finicky plant. Perhaps he’d teach her another jutsu for that, making it to her first mission like that was impressive improvement from the exam.
Thoughts like that were far better than what lurked on his mind, just beneath them. Missions weren’t, like his wife thought, something that came entirely easy to him. It was just something that he had to do. Inoichi couldn’t imagine not doing missions, and so he kept doing them. Because that was all he could do. Flowers were nice, and he was perhaps fonder of them than he let on, but only as a change.
Inoichi was old school in more than one way, he subscribed freely to the idea that all shinobi should have something that was utterly non-related to their job. As a way to unwind, and relax. It was never a good idea for a shinobi to put themselves in a civilian situation while they were still strung taut with nerves.
And Inoichi had always had nerves, more than enough that Kai-sensei had more than once despaired of him ever settling down enough to work properly in the strict confines of a mission’s parameters. He’d managed though.
Kill your heart, but let it beat all at once. He’d taken it to mind, and made it his. On a mission, he was distant, and some would say not-all-there. That was fine, he got the mission done, he managed to be more than effective.
And the flowers were his way of reconnecting.
Losing himself in tending to the plants, he was almost startled by the quick rap of a knock on the door to the greenhouse. There was more than one way out of the place, of course, but to someone who didn’t know the building inside and out there was only one real exit.
He paused, tilting his head at the door. It was past late, he’d just gotten back from a mission, and there was no way they’d be pulling him out right away again. That wasn’t something that was done often-even in ANBU they’d allowed the agents at least a day between missions, generally more than that though as the agents had had a tendency to come back injured.
It wasn’t a chakra signature that he recognized and so he had a kunai in hand as Inoichi ambled over to the door, outwardly at ease. The sight of a masked and cloaked figure filled him with nothing but exhaustion and an inward curse at the trend of his thoughts.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” was his greeting, and he opened the door and stared impassively at the ANBU. “I did my duty.”
“ANBU requires you again,” was the uncompromising response to that. “Your duty ends, and begins, when you’re needed.”
A girl, he couldn’t tell how hold she was, but even money said she was a good bit younger than he was. ANBU was the province of the young, the powerful, and the stupid. He’d been there once, and his hand slipped up to brush where the tattoos still marred his skin.
The scarlet spiral. A twisted descent into madness.
“My mask,” he said, holding out one hand for it, knowing that she’d have it on her. “I’ll need to be reissued a kit, for the rest of it. It’s been sixteen years.”
That made the chit pause, and he lowered his estimate of her age to even younger than he’d thought. She had to be close to that, he guessed, just to react so powerfully to the fact that, yes, he’d been there and left it so many years ago. Necessity was a cold mistress. She handed over the heavy white mask, and he stared at it.
“Why are people getting called in now?” he asked. “If it was going to happen, I would have thought that right after the Oto attack.” Inoichi couldn’t call it an invasion. It hadn’t been. Just one attack, and then it was over.
The ANBU shrugged, clearly she didn’t know, and anything she might have heard… wasn’t going to pass it on to him. He let out a sigh. Figured. “I’ll be there,” he said. “In the morning. Assuming that’s early enough?”
She nodded and in the blink of an eye disappeared.
“Show off,” he muttered, staring down at the mask in his hands before quickly tucking it away. No one else could see it, belonging to ANBU was a secret.
“What am I supposed to tell Mui?” he murmured. Inoichi would figure it out, but not now. There was someone else he needed to talk to first.
And the greenhouses would just have to wait. “I’ll be back,” he promised them, as he tidied things up quickly. “But not now.”
He had more important things to do.
--
Megumi knew, from the moment she’d woken up, that they were being observed. When the first thing out of Ino-kun’s mouth had been a pained ‘Onee-sama’ she’d been almost pathetically grateful for that.
Still in character, even when injured. Suzume hadn’t been exaggerating the talents of this kunoichi, however green she was in terms of experience. She’d not minded at all, when Ino-kun had admitted to being scared-and Megumi had been able to tell that that was both the mask and the real girl talking there, though the tears were the mask only-because it was something that could only help to further suspicion on them being simply who they’d claimed to be: civilian sisters who’d needed employment.
Every bit helped. And Ino-kun had surpassed her expectations easily. Megumi would not have blamed even kunoichi only than Ino-kun for breaking character in a situation that had gone so badly awry. Fighting against your instincts... it wasn’t easy, especially not when, in not fighting, you could get hurt. No one liked getting hurt, beyond a few of the agents in ANBU. Which, admittedly, had it’s uses, but not in this mission.
So far, so good though. Neither of them had been injured more than the absolute minimum that had been used to take them down, and if they were thirsty and tired, well, there were far worse fates than that. Their luck was holding well, though she doubted that Ino-kun would precisely say the same thing.
She couldn’t exactly blame her for that. Ino-kun was just a Genin. It was a different level of thinking altogether. Megumi could only hope that Ino-kun would be left alone as the door was opened and light streamed in. She was glad, almost, when they grabbed her, forcing her to her feet even as Ino-kun erupted, right on cue, into shrilly protest about taking her ‘Onee-sama’ away and what were they going to do with her.
And, in her own role, she’d offered brave assurances and gone without a quiver of fear in her voice. The door slamming shut on Ino-kun made her shiver, and Megumi-san scolded herself for being so silly as to take that as almost an omen. They would get out of here, and they would do it well. She wouldn’t allow anything else.
It was almost too bright after the dark of the room, and Megumi’s eyes watered as she faked a stumble that only made her captors grip on her arms tighten. The halls were stone, with wood paneling along wall for the first foot from the ground before giving way to whitewashed stone. She wondered at that, and wracked her brain in an attempt to recall where they could be. Aomori-shi wasn’t huge on stone buildings. Wood was more common in the Fire Country.
“Where are we going?” she demanded, a quiver of fear permitted to slip out under her mask of bravado now that she was away from her sister and the need to act stronger than she really was. “Where are we? What are you planning to do with us?”
She wasn’t surprised when the only answer she got was hands tightening further, to the point of pain, and she knew that she’d have bruises developing fast if they insisted on that being their only method of telling her to shut up.
Megumi didn’t of course. Giving a cry of pain, and one that while genuine, had she been able to act as herself would have merely earned a wince and likely a kick to the perpetrator. She bemoaned her fate, that of her sister’s, and the entire situation. As loud as she could.
It was difficult when she didn’t know, or have much of an idea about where they were, but loud was always preferred over silent if you were pretending to be a civilian. The fact that they didn’t strike her in the face only gave more credence to the fact that, so far, there was hopefully the doubt that they even were kunoichi.
Better to be thought a weak and terrified woman than one competent of taking on pain in this situation, at least. The opposite was true in some cases, naturally, but seldom in the case of a hostage situation.
The room she was shoved roughly into was blindingly bright after the ordinary light of the halls, and her eyes streamed as she stumbled and tried to look around. Empty but for a drain in the middle of the gently sloped floor, cuffs and chains on the wall, and a stand that had blades of different widths and other things she didn’t manage to identify in the brief look she got. Megumi was glad for the light as it gave her a distraction while she tried not to let herself tense up in ways that a civilian shouldn’t know.
No civilian would have chakra steadily rising with powerful intent behind it. Flared uncontrolled chakra was allowable, even civilians had chakra-all living things did-but anything beyond that... would speak of training. And, faced with two masked ninja wearing Iwagakure headbands and a quick glimpse of a flash of silver hair and Oto’s hitae-ite answered good and well where Yakushi was.
Leaning against the far wall, he was looking better than any traitor had the right to be, and she was glad for one of the others grabbing her roughly and pressing her wrists into chains embedded in the wall. She shrieked, channeling emotion into it so her mind stayed clear.
Dimly she was aware of a muted conversation with Yakushi, but she couldn’t make out the words. Megumi didn’t try. Such an action would only draw more attention to her.
As the other Iwa shinobi picked up a fine bladed knife Megumi was never so glad that it had been her instead of Ino-kun.
She, at least, had the training to withstand what was coming. All the training didn’t stop it from hurting though, and as the first cut became a fiery line of blood down her arm, Megumi let herself scream.
“Gently,” Yakushi admonished, faint amusement in his voice. “At least to start.”
--
Asuma had been keeping an eye on Chouji, and Shikamaru, while they’d laid out the situation, leaving out a few key bits of information-such as why, exactly, there’d be ANBU around-and hadn’t liked what he’d seen at all.
It was rare that Chouji, his most easy-going student, got angry. If it wasn’t about his weight, which he was more sensitive than Asuma thought he should be, then Chouji was regularly a rock of stability for both Ino and Shikamaru to balance off of. Their temperaments flourished with the stability that Chouji possessed.
After ordering Shikamaru out to obtain food, he was hungry, and the ANBU had to be, and even this late at night there were still a few places open, he gestured for Chouji to come over. In this situation he had no patience for any sort of teenage squabble. Not his third student’s life was in danger.
Chouji gave the three ANBU a long glance-two of them were sleeping, one knocked out by all the painkillers in their systems, the other just in a fitful doze that was shy of real sleep, while Yuuta still worked on compiling what they knew so far-before coming over.
“What’s going on between you and Shikamaru?” he asked bluntly. This was no time for him to be skipping around and trying to spare the feelings of his kids.
That earned him a look, and Asuma raised his eyebrows slightly. If this was less serious, if he could have a cigarette, it would be almost amusing. As it was though, there was nothing amusing about a flare up between two teammates when the third was in a situation that she shouldn’t have been in.
“He’s not thinking,” Chouji said, sighing and leaning back against the wall. “Even getting Kobayashi out-we were out of bounds.”
Out of bounds. Asuma’s eyes narrowed. “And you were out of bounds why?”
“Shikamaru’s shadow said something was wrong.” Chouji sounded mulish about that and Asuma couldn’t help but want to groan at that news. There was no telling how much of that was true, and how much of that was just wishful thinking under the circumstances.
He wasn’t a Nara. It wasn’t like he’d know. Asuma had to admit, in his own head at least, that it sounded reasonable enough to him. But Shikamaru hadn’t been reasonable for most of the mission.
“So you disobeyed my orders because his shadow thought something was off.”
To his credit, Chouji flushed.
“You both could have been killed,” Asuma held up one hand to forestall any argument there and continued on, “I’m well aware that you didn’t, and indeed that what you found may have helped us-and that it certainly saved a life. Nonetheless, you will be mentioned as being in violation of your orders though on my report.”
That got a nod, a slightly stiff one, but no argument. Asuma could live with that. He suspected that the other member of the team would be harder to deal with than this one.
“What,” he asked, voice carefully measured, “is your opinion of what’s up with him?”
He watched silently as Chouji carefully turned that over in his head, obviously deciding how much information there was that he felt he could give up. There were times, especially times like this, when Asuma wished that the Academy still covered some of the classes that they’d done away with once it had become clear that the war wasn’t going to restart for a goodly while.
How were they supposed to know better without training? The only answer to that, of course, was that it couldn’t be expected that they’d just pick it up. Situational discussion. What was and wasn’t important in the moment. And when, exactly, differences had to be put aside and ignored.
Better a screaming match of a spar in the middle of training, than a whispered fight concerning the exact same issue in a situation where a nudge at the wrong time could wind up with a battle and then people would be injured.
Or worse.
Asuma wasn’t sure how much his impatience for the entire issue was reflected on his face, but what there was wouldn’t be recognizable unless, like Chouji, you were one of those that he was currently exasperated with. He wished, absently, that this was a time that he could have a cigarette.
But no, not with Ino in a mess that she shouldn’t have been in. He should’ve made her said no. She didn’t have the experience. It wasn’t that he doubted her technical ability to perform a mission.
Technicalities, though, made up only a small part of what made a ninja able to complete their missions. And Ino didn’t have the experience. He’d hoped that she wouldn’t have to gain experience this way. Wishes and hopes were useless though, especially now, and he shoved them away and down out of his mind as Chouji opened his mouth.
“He’s been...” his calmest student shrugged a bit helplessly, “weird about Ino since that mission. Not sleeping well, and-“
That pause got raised eyebrows. “Go on.”
“He has dreams about her,” Chouji said, in a quiet rush with a wary glance at the other shinobi in the room, “about her dying, about him failing to save her, and apparently that’s just... something he’s going to have to deal with. His dad gave him a bunch of books, but books aren’t a cure, and he’s been being stupid about it. I had to pry that much out of him, and I know there’s more. He’s been skittish about talking anything out though, and everything he’s said about this mission has been predicting disaster. I don’t know if any of that was more than him just worrying about Ino though, and I don’t think he knows either. He’s... not really... thinking a lot? Just reacting, and that’s not like him at all. And his shadow is acting up, apparently it’s something his dad was teaching him before the mission started, but for the moment it’s more reactive to his thoughts and opinions...”
As Chouji trailed off, Asuma pinched the bridge of his nose and digested what he’d just heard. As Kurenai had said, Ino was the most motivated by that mission and Shikamaru... would take the longest to heal.
He didn’t have all that much time to coddle him, not now. Not when his students were keeping things like that from him. Asuma had known about the shadow being more reactive, and had known that Shikamaru hadn’t been pleased by the mission at all, but...
“Dreams of her dying because of him.” It wasn’t a question. More of a statement, and even that had heavy overtones of ‘I can’t believe this’. “And neither of you thought that it might be something that your Jounin sensei would want to know about before a major mission like this.”
Major to them, his students, of course. To more advanced shinobi it was just another mission, like a hundred others.
Chouji flushed and his answer came out mulish. “I promised Shikamaru that I wouldn’t.”
That got a sigh. “Kids,” Asuma muttered, not feeling anything complimentary for any of them at the moment. “And do Shikamaru’s feelings rank above Ino’s life?”
His student paled.
“If I had known about Shikamaru’s difficulties, in more detail, so that I better understood what was actually going on with him, rather than the few tidbits I gleaned from dragging details out of him...” He shook his head. “We could have turned the mission down.” He doubted that Tsunade-sama would have minded. She hadn’t been pleased with the idea in the first place. If he’d only had a good excuse...
Chouji looked like he was going to be ill. Asuma clapped him on the shoulder. “Think about it,” he advised, knowing that anything else would just soften the point that had needed to be made, “and remember the difference between information that’s on a need-to-know basis and what’s not.”
“I’m going out for a bit.” Let them think it was for a cigarette. “Keep a watch out.”
Chouji’s answer was so quiet he almost missed it. “Yes, Asuma-sensei.”
--
Ino’s head hurt less, the water Megumi-san had given her helped with that, but she was still cold and the blanket they had was thin. She huddled herself under it, back to the far corner, pressed up against the wall, and stared at the door.
She didn’t know where they were taking Megumi-san. And all she could do, all she dared do was breathe in the dank air of the room and try to marshal her thoughts into some useful form. It was harder than it should have been, and she wondered if that was to blame on the pain meds-some of them were known for ruining concentration.
Leaning back more firmly against the wall, it was still dark but she was almost getting used to that, Ino paused when the wall shifted slightly behind her, before continuing to move. She had to look like she hadn’t noticed anything.
It was easier, really, than it would have been under different circumstances, since she didn’t even know if what she’d noticed was anything useful. Ino knew, in all honesty, that she didn’t even know if it was useful. But it was something of interest.
And even as green as she was for a shinobi, Ino knew that captors never wanted anything of interest to catch the enemy agents-and how weird was it, that she was an enemy and a captive?-and with good reason.
Things of interest, however small, could make all the difference.
Ino shifted so that her shoulders and neck were leaned against the wall while scooting out so that her lower back wasn’t so closely pressed. It looked a bit silly, a little bit obvious, but between the blanket she had wrapped around her, and the dark, Ino thought that even this was a reasonable chance. She needed to know what was there, and if Megumi-san had missed it...
Carefully, so carefully and as casually as she could manage, Ino silently reached out with her arms and felt out the area of wall behind her. At first it was just the paneled wood, and above it, the stone that her shoulders were pressed against, but then her fingers brushed an edge of a panel that was slightly raised and the wall shifted again.
She froze, barely breathing, and hoping like hell that whatever watchers she had on her-if there were any, Ino knew good and well that Megumi-san was of greater interest than she was-hadn’t noticed what she was doing.
If she was cautious, then she’d stop there, with maybe no more than a few more attempts to check out the area of wall that moved when she touched it. If she had more training, Ino might have been able to stealthily check out if there were chakra signatures around her. As it was though, she was a Genin, greener than spring grass after a rainstorm, and what she had to work with was just her instincts.
And her instincts quietly suggested that she ought to press her luck while Megumi-san wasn’t around. If the watchers had gone with her ‘sister’ then this could be her one real chance to make sense of what was going on here-and find enough information for them to figure out how to escape. They couldn’t just rely on other people to come and save them.
Her heartbeat sped at the thought. Shikamaru and Chouji were out there. If she knew them, and Ino thought she did, then Shikamaru would be swearing that he’d known she couldn’t handle a mission like this.
Ino’s eyes narrowed, and her lips thinned. Right. She wasn’t just going to sit around and wait for rescue. No way, not with that facing her. If she could help Megumi-san get them out... that’d prove that she wasn’t entirely useless. It had to. She was not incapable of taking care of herself.
She closed her eyes, making herself breathe deeply, careful steady gulps of air as she wrestled her temper back under her control. Ino couldn’t lose it here. If she did, and it’d be so easy to, then she wouldn’t get anything accomplished. And that, as a point of personal pride, she couldn’t let happen. It wasn’t all about Shikamaru, Ino told herself silently. This mission had been given to her because they thought she could handle it, the Hokage had thought she could handle it.
Ino had to prove that she could, even when it went wrong.
When her head was clear, and her temper back to fueling her energy rather than clouding her mind, Ino carefully, but very deliberately, pressed the panel. The wall shifted, more than before, and this time there was a squeal of old unused metal that sounded painfully loud to her ears. Her breath caught in her throat, making her cough, and she waited almost frozen with fear for someone, anyone to come running and see what was up.
No one did.
With a tight grin, that was more than a little vicious, directed at the door, Ino carefully explored the depression in the wall. It was only an inch or two deep, but wide enough that...
Ino, acting more on a hunch than anything else, dug her fingernails under the edge of the depression. The wood made her wince as it bit into her fingers but, with nothing more than a wince and a hissed curse, she made herself tug at it.
To her delight it moved under her hands. The amount of noise it made was not to her delight though. A few more not-quite-panicked moments as she waited for someone, anyone to hear her and make her stop. Again, there was nothing.
It took her another twenty minutes or so-she was guessing, time seemed equal parts fluid and at a standstill in the complete dark she found herself in-to get the depression, and the panel to move enough that she could wiggle through it.
Ino, still blind without light but more confident in her hands ability to tell things apart than she’d been before this, carefully felt around in the hole. It almost felt like a tunnel, and she wished futilely to be able to see more clearly-could Hinata see in the dark with her eyes activated?-and Ino contemplated for a moment on activating Hypnosis no Jutsu. Pink light was almost better than none, right?
Except for the fact that that would break their cover. Even a civilian girl could accidentally find a way out of their prison if a room had been left so open for exploration. So far, everything she’d found could be blamed on the need to get out, and pure chance.
The moment she brought chakra into play... that’d be busted. Ino swallowed, glancing back at the door, and quickly wriggling out of the blanket. And, before she thought better of it, wriggled through the opening. There was a bit of a drop, less than a foot, but it still caught her off guard and she had to bite her lip to keep from making a sound.
Ino peeked back behind her, reaching to carefully shift the blanket so it looked somewhat (hopefully) like she was just sleeping. Then she turned, facing the dark with no idea of how long the tunnel would go on for, or where she’d end up.
Get moving, she told herself. You’ll need to be back before Megumi-san is returned.
And that was a time limit she had no frame of reference for. Ino steeled her nerves, ordered herself to remember the way back to this point, and started inching down the tunnel, feeling the way with her hands and hoping for no more sudden drops.
The dark of the tunnel closed in behind her, and Ino made herself concentrate on anything but the press of the walls and tried to occupy her thoughts with practical contemplation about where she was, and what exactly they’d been caught for.
She disappeared into the tunnel, leaving the room behind. I’ll be back, she promised herself. I’ll make it back before they return, for sure.
Because otherwise was too awful to think about.
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