You see? It's not all bad. I'm not going to say much in the notes, unless something catches my eye. Will someone please tell me, which is a woman, fiancee or fiance? I have it as 'ee' in this, but I will change it if corrected. Oh, and tell me if I do anything wrong. I will listen. The first chapter was beta-ed, thank you, Adi, but I'm trying to proofread it myself.

Speaking of corrections: It isn't Komo no Kiri, as I thought and looked up in the books (I probably got it wrong in transferring it over, right?). Abhorsen has told me that it would be Kumo no Kuni. So, I modified the first chapter and this does not have that mistake.

One last thing. I'm attempting to humanize Mira, and give her a personality, in this. So pay attention to that, I suppose. ShinoKiba is awesome.

Read happily!

It was the day after our mission to Komogakure. Kurenai, Hinata, Kiba and I stood in the Hokage's office, at stiff attention. Tsunade, the Fifth, sighed and ran her hand through her bangs, loose from the leather strap holding back her hair. "Alright, let's go over this again. You got Kumo to agree, and completed your mission, and you were inside our country before the attack?" At our stiff, uniform nods, she sighed. "Then we can't blame Kumo for it. And the senbon you recovered had high nickel content, found in Suna-no-Kuni. So they were from the Village Hidden in the Sand?"

"Yes, Hokage-sama," Kurenai said solemnly.

I glanced at Kiba. He was staring straight ahead, and the jaw muscle beneath his cheek was standing out. He hadn't healed well enough to be at attention for long; he could barely walk into the room. As a dog, Akamaru wasn't allowed inside – one of the assistant, Shizune's, ridiculous rules, since she exempted her own pet pig – and Kiba didn't have any support. I was worried that he was going to pass out. He hadn't gone to a hospital, and didn't even own any pain medication. I had insisted on changing the dressings for him, at the very least, because I knew that he wouldn't do it himself.

"Is there anything else to add?" Tsunade turned to the three of us, clicking her high heels on the ground. She was pensive, as though she already had a lot to think about. I weighed the options: to speak up now and try to give my opinions, or wait until I was sure.

Sorry, Kiba, but endure it for a little while longer. "Hokage-sama, I may be mistaken," I said, and heard a little snort from Kiba, "but don't the Suna ninjas make a habit of using another country's weapons, because they know that their own give away their identity? At the same time, they were not trying to kill us."

She tilted her head to the side, thinking. "You suggest that we can't assume that Sunagakure is breaking our armistice with them." She studied me for a moment. "Thank you, Shino-san. It will be taken into consideration. That will be all."

As we turned to go, Hinata and Kurenai walked swiftly away. Kiba managed, more slowly, and I kept pace with him. When we were halfway across the room, Tsunade said, "A moment, Shino-san." I left Kiba to his own devices, reluctantly, and turned back. She beckoned me close and held out a medicine packet. "Give this to him, in tea or any other drink. It will take away most of the pain and help him heal."

I nodded, and pocketed it. The legendary medic-nin had struck again.

As I was walking again, she called, "And congratulations on your engagement!" I winced.

Kiba had reached the door, and was holding his hand discreetly on the wall. I knew that he was trying to keep as much of his weight off his legs as possible. We left together, and, once we were out of Tsunade's sight, he wobbled just a little bit and I slipped my arm around his waist and held him. He paused a moment, and then wrapped his arm around my shoulders. "Sorry, again."

"You are an idiot. At least try to heal before doing things like this." We went out of the central administration building of Konoha and took to the street. "Are you hungry?"

"Ye-ah," he coughed out, breathing heavily. "Let's get to Ichiraku's. I'm up for some ramen." It was only two blocks away and we got there quickly. After we ordered, he said, "I just don't like being an invalid. I'll heal faster if I use my legs, you know? It's physical therapy, just like in the hospitals."

I glared at him. I'm sure that he could feel it. "Kiba, it'll be physical therapy after you've healed. Right now, it's just torture."

"Yeah, yeah." Our food arrived, and he was suddenly disinterested in our conversation, yelling, "Itadakimasu!" Then, his entire face was lost inside his bowl. His eating habits had always mildly disgusted me, and I was a man with bugs crawling beneath my skin.

"Shouldn't Akamaru be here soon?" I asked casually. My fingers, inside my pocket, slipped the fold out of the paper and brought it up, careful not to let the powder slip onto the counter.

Kiba grunted, not even coming up for air. The powder slid smoothly off the paper and into the small cup of sake I had insisted he order. A little bit of medicine-laced alcohol helped take the edge off the pain.

He reached for the cup seconds after I withdrew my hand, and I watched him drink it. Mission accomplished.

Akamaru wandered up a few minutes before we left. He had been at the Inuzuka complex, getting fed. As we walked toward the chuunin section of the training grounds, I noted with satisfaction that Kiba wasn't limping as heavily. No need to tell him; he would only grow angry at me for making him comfortable. It was unnecessary, anyway.

"So, Shino, what are we going to train today?" he asked, obviously dreading the answer. "I mean, we're obviously strong enough for being chuunins, but the jounin test is in three months. Can we make it, do you think?"

I nodded, once, and pointed at the ground. "Push-ups, two hundred. Then sparring, and more push-ups, and crunches, and meditation, and more push-ups." I dutifully sent out a hundred bugs for Akamaru to track down – no small chore, in a field as large as the entire Aburame grounds.

"Gods, Shino, what is it with you and push-ups? Most of your attacks are with your kikai, you hardly ever punch people!" he whined, even as we both set to work, keeping the same pace. I focused on my breathing. In (up, down), out (up, down), over and over again. I like training; it calms me.

"Shino, you bastard!" Kiba whined after three hours. "I want to rest! We must've done a thousand friggin' push-ups by now, when are you going to ease up?" He dodged a kick, even as he was talking.

"When you are as strong as Tsunade-sama," I grunted, focusing my chakra on my feet for a high jump.

"But she's a monster! You don't even need it! Hell, neither of us have an ounce of fat on our bones!" He was falling into a familiar pattern of blocks, and, on the seventh one, I bypassed him and stopped before my fist connected with his solar plexus.

As he mimed falling back from the blow, I said, "Your attacks are mostly based on chakra and upper body strength."

Panting, he laughed and said knowingly, "Ah, so you're really just a bleeding heart, trying to help me? You're such a sweetie!"

"You're the one bleeding, of the two of us." I sat down next to him and poked at his stained pants, right over his thighs. "I told you to heal."

He crossed his legs, shrugging. "That was hours ago, and I didn't hear you complaining. Anyway, it doesn't hurt. Weird, right?"

I shrugged guiltily. I'm not good at lying to friends.

His head swiveled a full one hundred eighty degrees to growl at me. His eye twitched spasmodically. "Shino, tell me you didn't give me something."

"I would not give you something against your wishes," I said as calmly as possible.

"Not unless it helped with training!" He growled and messed with his hair viciously, the closest he got to passive-aggressive (in that it didn't cause harm to the other person). "I can't believe you!"

I frowned. "You said yourself that it doesn't hurt. You would be out here either way, so which is better?"

Now he just pouted, petulant. "I guess this way. Not like I have a choice."

There was a long period of silence. I remembered a subject that I had wanted to discuss with him and sighed, quietly. "About Mira."

"Oh, yeah, have you told her about your awesome heroics on the mission?" He pitched his voice annoyingly high, "'I'm Shino, and the enemy doesn't even aim for me!'"

I ignored him, instead following the progress of a glossy blue dragonfly. "I am going to be expected to invite her on a date, likely within the next two weeks."

"Score one for Shino!" Kiba cheered, throwing his hands up and flopping backwards in the grass. "What's your point?"

"I want to know when you are unavailable to train," I said obviously. "There is no point in missing a day unnecessarily with the exams so close. It is etiquette to escort her somewhere or other, but it's useless if it also puts you out of a day of training."

He scratched his nose, thinking. He was such a child. "Ano…I guess my sister's been talking about abducting Akamaru for his yearly bath lately." I brought my brows together, seriously worried. He saw the look and yelled, "You know that I take baths!"

I shook my head and looked at the sky. We had another good hour of daylight left. "Time for more push-ups," I said, as though commenting on the weather.

He was silent a moment, and then sat up, grinning. He poked my cheek, laughing, "Haha, yer funny."

I swatted his hand away and moved into position for the exercise.

More nervous, he held himself up as well, and we began. A few repetitions in, he said, "Um, Shino, you're joking about being as strong as Tsunade, right?"

I grunted noncommittally.

"Right, Shino?"

One week passed. We trained every day. I only saw Mira at mealtimes, if I showed up for them. It was ludicrous, seeing Father – my role model, the head of the Aburame Clan! – being hospitable. Mira's parents were going to stay with us for a month, meaning three more weeks, and then return to Komogakure. Mira herself was here for good.

I found myself wanting to ask about her life back then. She had been a snotty kid, back when every girl was snotty to every boy. I couldn't really hold that against her now, seven years later. For all I knew, she was a well-educated, dedicated woman. Or she could be a lot like Hinata, and that would be uncomfortable. Hinata was my little sister, after all.

Before dawn, I was sitting in the formal dining room. The staff all knew my sleeping habits – which had charmingly been compared to a flea's, by Kiba, who claimed that the things never stopped biting – and prepared an adequate breakfast each morning.

Today, there was another place setting. I asked a passing spirit (read: maid) and was informed of a guest's wish to be awoken early. Damn.

Mira was the one who walked through the door not thirty seconds before my planned escape. "Ah, Shino-sama, good morning. I had hoped that I would be able to see you off."

Sighing internally, I said, as accommodating as I felt the presence of mind for, "Good morning, Mira-dono. I did not expect anyone to be awake this early."

"Do you always train so diligently?" she said politely. She sat down to an empty bowl, but, expecting it, I 'watched' (it being a relative word – my kikaichu sensed it) as a chakra-induced-invisible servant filled her bowl and slinked away. Mira's eyes widened, but nothing more. She was the daughter of a ninja clan, after all.

In answer to her question, I nodded. "The jounin exams are in eleven weeks. Kiba and I are going to test."

She blinked – I could see her long eyelashes flutter, behind her stylish sunglasses. "Are you not strong enough already?" I immediately stiffened. She set her bowl down and apologized quickly. "I don't mean to insult you! It has always seemed pointless to train intensively only just before a test. Strength and chakra are built up over time, are they not?"

"It is our regular training routine, multiplied threefold," I said, only lying a little bit. We normally didn't train every day, either, but there hadn't been any missions since Kiba's injury, which had healed cleanly. "I primarily strategize in a fight, so cramming insanely like some that I know would be worthless." Before his own test a year before, Naruto hadn't slept for four days straight and had nearly missed the day altogether.

"And the boy you train with? Does he need it?"

"Kiba is the man that came on the day we left for our mission," I supplied her with background information. Or, at the very least, a face to match up. "He deals with his chakra more. He is ready, as well. The training is mostly for his rehabilitation, and to get us in the mindset." I didn't say that, of the two of us, Kiba was less prepared. I had been ready to test when Uchiha Sasuke had, two years before, but had decided against it.

"How was he wounded?" she asked innocently.

On the way back from your home town, I mentally spat, but said aloud, "It was an A-rank mission. Wounds are expected."

She nodded, quiet. "Are you-" she started.

She was going to ask about a date. I stood up before she did. "Excuse me, Mira-dono. As pleasant as your company is, I am already late."

"I understand. May you become stronger with each passing day," she recited the traditional saying for any ninja.

I bowed low, and left.

"Shino, when can I meet this Mira chick you so jealously keep trapped in your stupid mansion?" Kiba whined as we wandered the streets for a lunch break. "I mean, you're getting married. I'll meet her eventually, anyway, right?"

"You will meet her," I acknowledged, and his face lit up, "eventually."

He stuck his tongue out at me and grumbled about overprotective boyfriends. I ignored him. Minutes later, we passed a familiar pair on their way to the jounin training area. "Lee-kun, Neji-kun," I nodded to both. Kiba grinned and waved.

Neji turned his head to murmur something, apparently delaying their current conversation for later. Whatever he said, Lee, keeping a perfectly straight face, turned an incredible shade of red. As he frantically worked to school his eyebrows-eyelashes-bowl cut look into something presentable, Neji raised his voice in greeting. "We're going to go train. Lee managed to break something yesterday and got Sakura-kun to heal him, but he's still weakened."

Lee looked about ready to cry. "Neji! Have the Winter Gales of Malice hardened your heart against me? It isn't in the Spirit of Good to tell everyone of my injury!" His form-fitting green speed suit made him look, as Kiba had said many times before, like 'Gumby', whatever that was, but now it had the flak jacket of a jounin uniform over it. The different greens clashed horribly, and again with the orange leg warmers up to his knees.

Kiba, thumb pointed at his own chest, loudly declared, "Don't worry, Lee! Your secret's safe with us! I got kunai-ed recently, and mine's worse 'cause of the exams in a couple months!"

"'Kunai-ed' isn't a word," I sighed, ears ringing. "Are you finished announcing sensitive subjects to the general population?"

His chastised body language made Akamaru's ears flatten, and a ferocious, two-hundred-pound dog whimpered at what I had said. "Sorry, Shino."

I rolled my eyes and cuffed him gently around the ears to make him stop. "Neji-kun, our little sister is with Naruto, right?"

He nodded his affirmation. "He's been treating her like glass since she 'almost died'." He glared at us with his blank eyes all the same, for allowing his fiancée to be put in danger. "Hinata-chan has also expressed concern over that one," he indicated Kiba, who had happily frolicked off with his dog to mangle what appeared to be a rosebush. I would be digging out the bandages soon.

"Tell her that Tsunade-sama gave me medicine to force on him, so he's better," I assured him. "You two go train. I'll let others know that pass by the chuunin area, so that you aren't disturbed."

He looked hesitant, confused, and worried. "Why would you say that?"

We both took a moment to look at Lee, who had been doing a 'good guy' pose for two minutes straight. Deciding not to say my real reason, I lied, "Do you really want other jounin to know that you spend time with that guy?"

He smirked, not really laughing, not really believing me, but he didn't have anything to call me on so we both bowed goodbye and they went on their way. Only then did Kiba come back, having lost his jacket to the summer heat.

"Those guys are pretty close, right?" he said, obviously making an effort to think. I nodded, and we went to our customary place. He seemed to strike on a particularly interesting idea and he said eagerly, "Don't you think it's great that our little sister and Naruto are still such great friends, even after they broke up?"

I stared at him, mouth open. He just grinned, and it was a rare instance in which I could not read him. He had to be kidding. No one was that blind. I settled on shaking my head. "You're such a man, Kiba."

"Hah! You are, too!" he barked, laughing at his own comeback. He mulled it over a while, finally muttering, "What the hell did he mean by that?"

"I think it's time for push-ups," I said, actually taking pleasure in his groan of despair. Training had its perks.

Another week went by, and we started getting basic missions again; one-day guard duty, paper-pushing in the Administration Offices. It was boring stuff. The only upside was that we had everything together; we could still talk, and I quizzed him on what to do in a fight. Since I had always been better at thinking, I had been the unofficial leader of our genin team years before, and I tried to get Kiba to strategize at least some of the time instead of rushing in, fists flying. He wasn't very good.

"Five Sound ninja are coming from the east, on a C-rank mission. You have a group of three chuunin against jounin. Terrain is sand. Speculate," I ordered, stamping a report and putting it the pile of the other ones.

"Um," he stalled, motioning for the next person in line to approach, "I guess that I would want to fan out and attack with…um…senbon? Because they… are more accurate. Yeah."

I shuffled my stack into straight-edged order, and said, matter-of-factly, "No. You don't even know if they're hostile at this point."

"So…One of us talk to one of them. As a greeting." I knew that he was guessing, but, since it was correct, I let it go.

"If they are hostile, they now know that your side is weaker, and are more confident to attack you," I reminded him. "You should keep one of your team hidden under the sand for use in a surprise attack."

"I was going to say that next, you just didn't let me finish," he laughed.

"They are hostile, and you now have yourself, one other, and one hidden to defend with."

"Um, duh, we fight it out. The hidden one will have to judge the right time to help for himself. And then we all get back here and have dango. Right?"

"I'm not certain about the dango, but the rest was acceptable. You may relax for now."

"And our shift's over! Yay!" he yelled, not really paying attention. "We're ready to go now!

"For what?"

"For a night on the town, you social pariah. Come on, I haven't gotten out in a couple weeks with your hard ass training, and you haven't gotten out in, what, a year?" He stood up as a younger chuunin tapped his shoulder to take his place, and waited as I was replaced as well. We navigated the maze of the inner, paper-based structure of the village, as Kiba refused to stop talking. "It'll be fun! That's F-U-N, Shino. That's where you enjoy something that doesn't relate to work or causing me physical and emotional pain."

"What do you suggest? It's already late. My father has mandated that I eat dinner at home, at least until Mira's parents go back to Kumo no Kuni. I can't go." I grabbed my bag and started to head home.

Kiba sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Shino, in all the years we've been friends, you have never been good at painfully simple concepts. When I say, 'Let's hang out,' you say, 'Come eat dinner at my house.' Try it out for yourself."

I kept walking, and he kept up. He sighed and droned, "Let's hang out."

Deciding to just go with it, since he never let go of an idea once he sank his teeth in, I obediently answered, "Come eat dinner at my house."

"I'd love to!"

I turned slightly to give him an admonishing glare. "This isn't technically 'dinner'. You have to have the sort of manners that are learned from birth. I am saying this to you honestly, Kiba; you will hate it. No one talks, everyone is uptight, and you will bite your own tongue off before the end. I know I want to, and I have a lot more patience." We were within view of the front gate of the Aburame grounds.

He sighed. "Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I'll just go home, then."

I rolled my eyes, and conceded. "You can have dinner with us in two more weeks."

"Yay! Bye, Shino! Remember, Akamaru has his bath tomorrow, so you better get that date thing over with while I have a day off!" And then he disappeared.

We were eating a traditional dinner of tako sunomono – cucumber and seaweed with octopus. It was served as a banquet for our guests, and, therefore, all our manners had to be impeccable. The flurry of people bringing plates, coupled with the stiff, learned-by-rote movements of the five of us were like an intricate dance of porcelain and chopsticks.

In my mind, I was reciting the laws of the shinobi code of conduct. It was better than small talk.

Mira broke the silence, saying quietly, "Shino-sama, may I ask after the success of your mission? It was nearly two weeks ago, and I have been very curious, though I have tried to forget about it." We had discussed it somewhat, but, as the meeting had not been publicly witnessed, it had not really happened.

"It was completed satisfactorily," I answered, hoping to discourage her. Father glared at me, and I amended, "I cannot discuss it, Mira-dono. My apologies."

She smiled brightly, mercifully ready to drop it. "No, I understand. Many of the people my own age in Komogakure said the same thing."

Her mother, an impolitic woman with no head for proper decorum, waved away my explanation. "Nonsense, surely there are some details we are permitted to know."

Thank you, Father. Now I had to keep most of the information back without seeming rude. I thought, of all things, about what Kiba would say at a time like this; "Oh yeah, we went to your hometown and our little sister was almost killed by Suna ninja that we don't really think are from Suna. Whatever." He would say exactly that, and then sit back and enjoy the uproar.

Carefully swallowing my laugh, I said evenly, "I attended a trade negotiation with a superior."

Mira, setting her chopsticks horizontally across her rice bowl to signify that she was done, pushed her sunglasses up her nose and said, "You left in the company of another boy, and we were not introduced. Who is he? Is he our age?" We both knew that we had had this part of the conversation before, but it was for our parents' sake. Heaven forbid that we would meet alone. Breakfast a week before, with the transient servants the clan employed all around us, hardly counted as 'alone'.

Still, I went along with it, saying dutifully, "Inuzuka Kiba, chuunin. He is going to turn seventeen in a month and a half. We were in the academy together, and our genin squad consisted of the both of us and Hyuuga Hinata." I followed her example with the chopsticks, and our parents did the same.

Dinner over, the three adults moved back against the wall to chaperone us. They must have thought that, as a male teenager and his fiancée, we would be tearing each other's clothes off.

Yeah, right. She fidgeted and tried to correct her posture, while I didn't see the use and waited for her to say something.

"This Inuzuka Kiba…he is a friend?"

"The best," I answered quickly. I was ready for this to be over.

"May I meet him? I wish to know more people in this village…" As her voice trailed off, I knew what was expected of me.

"Mira-dono, would you allow me to escort you around the town tomorrow? I will introduce you to my friends."

She seemed surprised, but then beamed. "I would be honored!"

After we exchanged bows, she and her parents went upstairs to get ready for bed. I was left alone with Father. I was well prepared to let the silence stretch on forever, but he spoke after a few minutes.

"That was the proper thing to do."

"It is how you raised me."

"Don't do anything untoward." I'm reasonably certain that he was being funny. You never know, with my family.

I stood and went to my room without answering. He and I both knew that I would not. I hadn't had a real conversation with Father in a very long time.

Now, I had a date for which to prepare.

It is satisfactorily long, yes? Review, please.