Third Kiss: Adhering to Tradition


She wasn't sure what she had expected after smooching him—for a second time, no less—in front of so many people like that but not hearing a peep or catching a fleeting glimpse of him for more than a week definitely hadn't been it.

Maybe it was her over-inflated ego dictating her thoughts but she'd always believed herself too gorgeous, too talented in everything she took up to just be ignored like any other girl you can see prowling the streets without a purpose in her life.

Yamanaka Ino was too damn tempting of a minx to be avoided by anyone, especially that no-good demon vessel Uzumaki!

It was safe to say she was displeased with the turn of events after she got her promotion.

And, although her mind chanted hurtful, taunting names like a mantra for one certain Hokage aspirant, it wasn't as though she really meant it all—that was mostly just her indignation speaking.

After all, one didn't risk one's job for someone one didn't think at least a friend, right?

Or was the guy just that naïve?

She was loathe to admit that it wasn't beyond him, but still she wasn't desperate enough to seek him out and demand some attention of him. You don't get kissed twice by a girl as otherworldly as Ino and not say a word about it!

But she had her pride to keep, and face to save, so she kept quiet and waited for the chance to clear up whether she'd thrown him off by suddenly jumping him like that (although she deeply doubted it; a kiss like that could never be dubbed anything short of magnificent by anyone).

And then they met again, pulled conveniently together by the threads of fate, summoned for a two-cell team mission.

Again, maybe she was overestimating herself by thinking that he should've been edgy, or fretful, or at least marginally uneasy in any way.

But could you really blame her for being miffed about the guy being as composed, blissfully ignorant of her feelings on the matter and ditzy as usual?

Ino was a professional though and she wasn't easily swung by her emotions, however powerful they may be at times, especially when it came to doing business. She could keep her temper checked; she could refrain from throwing selfish tantrums over things she shouldn't even bother herself with in the first place. After all, she had more self-control than most and, when necessary, a patience to match it.

When they both arrived at the Hokage's desk, backs straight as boards in awaiting their orders, she didn't even look at him and neither did he at her. They chanted together the respectful and very much obligatory, "Yes, Hokage-sama!" and disappeared in a pair of smoke clouds.

They reappeared at the same time in front of the entrance of the Hokage tower, no longer using mind-boggling speed to move—which lay in the base of the so-called Jounin 'teleportation'—and discussed the mission's specifics in hushed tones, sticking strictly to business, just as any two serious shinobi should.

It was an easy enough mission to give even a genin three-man cell with their Chuu- or Jounin sensei but, considering the person it involved and the kind of circles he moved within, upper class ninja were better suited for it.

Ninja without passes for the Fire Country had been seen roaming somewhere around the Village, asking for "Uchiha Sasuke", a traitor branded a Missing Nin in the bingo books long ago—something Ino wasn't sure whether or not her current mission partner had made his peace with—when he first left the Village after nearly killing one of its ninjas—her current partner himself, ironically enough.

When the intruders didn't get any satisfying information—or maybe even if they did, who knew?—they destroyed hide-outs of border nins and caused general mayhem that was not welcomed with open arms by the higher ups of Konoha.

Because all previous teams that had been sent to investigate had not returned, this time Konoha's elders had chosen to send the most capable interrogator they had—Yamanaka Ino—who could fend perfectly well for herself but, should it come to fighting multiple enemies and if she needed any aid in prying information from her prey, they had sent with her the unbeatable one-man army, Uzumaki Naruto. This way, no matter how tough the opponent, no matter his connection to the Ex-Leaf Missing Nin, they would surely be able to take them on and bring to an abrupt halt this illicit crusade of the outsiders on Fire Land.

However she looked at it, though, Ino couldn't help but feel that her bosses were overdoing it when sending her and Naruto to the site. Just how many and how powerful people had to have gone missing for those in charge to send out Naruto, of all people, and her, who rarely set foot out of the village for fear of anyone unwanted intercepting her and figuring out how to counter her techniques, or, god forbid, copying those she used for information gathering?

As she set off home to get ready for dispatching early next morning, the girl got the feeling that there was something someone wasn't telling them.

She'd have plenty of time to worry about that later though. Now she was better off focusing on making sure that whatever information she was being kept from would not prove crucial to the success of her mission.

Child's play easy or not, a mission was a mission, and failing one just because she had underestimated the odds against her was something Yamanaka Ino did not do.

Not just anyone succeeds Morino Ibiki. And Ino didn't plan to stop her climb up in ranks just at taking Ibiki-san's place. If she wanted to continue upwards, she'd have to take every job to heart.


As it came out, Ino and Naruto proved to make a very good team.

Upon setting out of Konoha, the kunoichi enlightened her partner about the handy use of her Shintenshin no Jutsu. They wasted no time in finding a bird picking at its feathers for morning grooming and, before the woodland animal could have being scared away by the soul speeding towards it, the buzzard was possessed by Ino's mind.

Naruto scooped up carefully Ino's vacated real body, feeling only slightly disgruntled by the fact he was carrying a soulless shell, just an idea better than a corpse, and set off after the bird of whose actions his partner was currently in charge of.

They discovered the rough whereabouts of the foreign nins not long afterwards, to the blonde young man's great relief. Her reconnaissance task complete for the time being, Ino returned to her own body once again. They wasted no time in chit-chat—as soon as she stirred awake and could articulate words well enough, she told him everything she had seen through the bird's eyes.

There were only two trespassers—a man and a woman, both in their twenties by appearance, skilled nin judging by the fact that the female was suddenly on the alert once Ino was in a five meter radius of her and the man throwing a kunai that dissolved into water at the sound of her wings flapping lightly as she touched down on a branch not too far from them. They sensed her presence but did not continue looking for her, gradually getting lulled into a false sense of security, which led her to believe that they were not spies.

"Did they say anything while you were there?" Naruto asked her in low volume. "Anything about Sasuke or scheming a riot or whatever?"

Platinum haired head shook slowly.

"No riots but they began bickering as soon as they weren't wary of me. Something about losing their team thanks to the guy and so on and so forth—it was worthless chatter but I do believe I heard the girl muttering something about Sasuke." She huffed and crossed her arms. "Honestly, I think that they were just some vagabonds passing through or something—I don't see what the big deal is, sending us out…"

The demon vessel shook his head, disagreeing with her point.

"What about the teams they sent before us? Did you see any Konoha ninjas around? Any discarded corpses or something?" he prodded on.

Ino sighed through her nose. She really didn't see why he was so insistent on believing that this wasn't some practical joke of the Hokage's. Sure, some capable foreigners were passing through Fire Country territory without passes and no one knew where they came from but it's not as if such cases didn't happen all the time, just without anyone detecting those teams.

True, it was odd that a number of teams that were sent to investigate had not contacted back since encountering said outsiders but it could be that they had got themselves in trouble with the woodland animals… or something. Alright, so it was very odd but how long were those teams gone? Who was on them? It was difficult not being half-hearted about the mission when the mission's specifics were given to her just as half-heartedly. She had just become Ibiki-san's successor and she didn't feel like wasting her potential on pointless goose chases across the country.

"No, nothing. There weren't too many flocks of crows accumulated anywhere I flew through or around their campsite which only leads me to believe that they did not kill anyone even if they were the ones responsible for the teams' disappearance," she said truthfully, craning her neck around the large tree trunk that they were hiding behind to catch even a glimpse of the intruders' chakra signatures.

"They didn't kill anyone yet…" If Naruto had been the type of person for that, he would probably be chewing on the nail of his thumb in anxiety right then—that's the kind of aura he gave off. It almost made Ino roll her eyes. "So we have no proof that they are in violation of any other regulations except trespassing on our territory and that is not in our jurisdiction…"

This time Ino did roll her eyes.

"There's nothing more to think about, Naruto. It's out of our field of work and they haven't done anything wrong—they did not prove hostile and there is no trace of the teams that have disappeared, even less that they are the ones responsible for the disappearances. It's over and you should accept that so we can go home."

She was cranky; she was annoyed that he had yet to mention what had happened—again—between them—although it was nothing really if neither of them meant anything with it, was it? But she tried not to dwell too much on that fact—and the last thing she needed was to be stuck in a lush forest thinking where exactly corpses could be hidden—not exactly a mood brightening thought, as you can tell.

So why couldn't he just let it go—like he had obviously let go of the fact that she had kissed him full on the mouth and he had discredited that completely—so they could go back to good old Konoha?

She was probably being unreasonable, above all else. Very much possible—the bottom line was that she didn't care anyway.

"Did you see anything around their site that could suggest that they are still holding the team members hostage?" she heard vaguely Naruto asking her once again and this time she rolled her eyes very demonstratively.

"No, not at all!" At the pointed look he gave her, she decided to stop being too petulant about it and actually give it some thought. "No, yes, I don't know—they could've been discarded in the tent or something, I don't know."

"Then we should go investigate."

Ino was sure that if she was the one captured and disillusioned about ever getting herself out of the mess that her bosses had got her into she would be eternally grateful for Naruto's drive for righteousness. But seeing as she was on the other side of the fence—with the "rescuing team"—and it didn't feel very nice there in the first place, she had no wish to cooperate. Call it woman's instinct, if you want—she had a bad feeling about disturbing that pair.

Or you could call it capriciousness of some sort as well because she just didn't want to do it. Whatever—it didn't matter. Whatever label you slap on it, she still only desired to go home and sleep that irritation off!

She opened her mouth to call after him and stop him but before she could do that her senses went haywire, alarm bells in her head ringing deafeningly of approaching danger.

The blonde didn't even have the time to react although she knew it was coming but she was hauled out of harm's way—in the form of a sword leveling all trees and creating a small clearing in the place she had just stood—by her partner jumping away from the scene.

Once they touched down on a tree branch, Ino had already pulled herself together. Naruto was talking to her but she wasn't listening. He would soon learn that a pissed Ino made a very crappy damsel in distress.

While the two of them were having a small spat about whether she could have dodged that herself or not—for which is wasn't the time of place, Naruto kept reminding her repeatedly every few seconds—in the rubble a shark-like man with pristine white hair and his raven-haired colleague were sizing the blond duo up and down with condescending eyes, something Ino hated people doing.

The large sword dislodged itself from the trunk it had dug into to stop it and relocated itself on the swinger's well-toned shoulder. He was leering up at the two of them and oh, just how badly Ino longed to smack that smug smirk off his face.

"Seems like we found ourselves a new pair of rodents, Karin," he drawled out.

The silver haired guy let out a throaty cackle. It was easy to tell that he was about to make another remark he probably thought witty but Naruto cut him rather short, charging straight at him with a hand outstretched, clutching a kunai.

The foreigner scoffed at him with a lopsided scowl and swung down his heavy sword. But it only parted the smoke of the dispelled Kage Bunshin. He had no time to even realize that his Konoha opponent had stabbed him with a kunai in the back before his internal fluids were coating the cold blade.

But unless the guy had pure water running through his veins, Naruto's plan at a surprise attack had backfired badly. The droplets of the clear liquid dripped down the blade and the blonde couldn't even begin to comprehend what had happened before his enemy splattered into several liters of water himself.

'Water clone?' pondered Ino idly before parrying a hit to her head from this Karin girl, whoever she was.

"You were what was wrong with the chakra pulse I sent out earlier, aren't you?" the brunette hissed menacingly, while one foot outstretched in hopes of kicking the air out of her antagonist's lungs.

It didn't work—Ino caught the appendage before it made contact with her body and used the momentum of the attack to try and flip the other girl over her head and flatten her on the ground. That didn't work either, because as soon as the darker haired girl was air borne, she slammed her free foot in the leaf nin's hands which were holding her ankle hostage, successfully freeing it by catching the other young woman off-guard once again.

"What's it to you?" glowered Ino back, retrieving a few shuriken from her pouch.

A few droplets of blood shed by the kunoichi whose mind had been too jumbled with an expertly cast jutsu of the blonde girl's to evade completely all six shuriken, Karin snorted cynically, wiping the crimson off her cheek.

"I'll show you how fearsome chakra can become when you master it as well as I have," the raven-haired woman all but threatened, a positively evil glint in her eyes.

"Yeah?" muttered arrogantly the other, some ninja wire muffling her words as she readied it for use. "In that case you may consider yourself lucky enough to be subjected to witness how powerful a tool the mind can be when using the right amount of chakra in the right place."

They stared each other down for a while longer, both irked for very different reasons, but both equally frustrated with the current predicament they found themselves in.

Their feet left the ground at the same time and it did not need to be spelled out by anyone—the death match was on. It was kill or be killed.

Only the stronger team would survive the clash.

They were in on it up to their necks.


An hour into the battle and neither side was blatantly overpowering the other yet. They had strengths and weaknesses that were too different, that the other couldn't use very well against them and that was good recipe for a lengthy and exhausting fight.

And yet Ino had managed successfully to entrap Karin in one of her illusions, giving the blonde crouching on a branch nearby the hallucinating brunette the time opening needed to get ready for one of her most mind-messing techniques of all.

Her hands were already in the designated seal, lips forming the necessary words when the familiar sense of alarm from earlier seized her again. But this time she couldn't move—her mind was so concentrated on the task of getting control over a second body—a strenuous exercise in itself—that it couldn't react to the self-defense mechanisms seeded deeply within her very core, all of which were going insane with wariness at the moment.

She made a great attempt to take herself out of her vulnerable state and move out of impending doom's way but she knew even before she did anything that it would be for naught—whoever had attacked her would have taken into account the few seconds of incapability of protecting herself and was turning them against her. It would be the last mistake she'd ever make as it stood then.

Her cornflower blue eyes grasped the sight of a madly spinning large something intended to obviously behead her but not the even larger whatever that grabbed her roughly off the branch, dragging her down and away from the weapon hurled at her. She realized a moment later that the thing around her neck was a broad arm clad in an orange shirt and there was only one person in the entire shinobi world who could dress quite as atrociously as that.

Naruto had once again saved her from certain death and had left a few Kage Bunshin behind to shake off their opponents for the time being enough to get their bearings about themselves again.

When he made to stick his feet to the trunk of a eucalyptus tree they were otherwise going to crash against though, the chakra he channeled to his legs became unstable and repelled him, much like in the earlier days when he had first been learning the tree walking exercise.

Desperate for stability, the youth's arm made a grab for the branch above his head instinctively, but what his fingers closed around in a vice-like grip was small and definitely not part of an ages old tree.

The feeble object he had grasped didn't do any good to decrease the speed at which they were falling and something was so wrong with the Hokage aspirant that he couldn't even think of turning around and using his chakra that had repelled him from the tree—messed up as his control obviously was at that moment—to repel him from the ground as well and give them a safe landing.

Instead, he just used his side to cushion the girl's fall—because she had been the one he was rescuing, after all; letting her take damage now would defeat the purpose of him jumping head-first to save her, right? They fell—hard—and it hurt—like hell.

At least at first it did. He may have broken something or fractured a bone but Kyuubi saved him the agony—how unusually helpful of the beast; was it actually enjoying the real action, yearning some actual battle, after all that time sleeping dormant inside him those last few placid weeks?

Ino pulled away from him quickly and examined his sore shoulder that he had fallen on while he propped himself up on his healthy hand, studying the small amount of the plant that had been absolutely no help at all in his predicament. It had puny, white, ball-shaped fruits that were obviously in full blossom, judging by how many they were on such a miniscule branch of it he had unintentionally ripped off.

He glared at it as though it could actually feel the scorn he willed it to.

"Are you alright, Naruto?" Ino fussed, her hand casting a statistical jutsu on his body. "How does your shoulder feel?"

"Crappy," he groaned, flexing his arm joint experimentally. "But I'll live. Kyuubi took most of the pain away anyway."

"And I'll take care of the rest—" She made as to use some medical jutsu on him but he grabbed her wrist, stopping it, before she could do anything. "Let go—it's the least I could do—"

"We're both already used up enough and I'm guessing those guys back there are as well so we should save up any chakra we can. I'm fine, I can fight like this," he assured her, the strength coming back in his voice bit by bit.

And she hadn't even noticed before it started returning that it had been gone.

"Besides, we should get back there. Even though I had one Bunshin transform into you they might have already figured it out and shadow clones aren't always great of a distraction with lunatics who hurl cold weapons all over the place."

Left without another choice when presented with a solid argument like that, Ino nodded reluctantly, dispelling the chakra she had channeled to her hand, the green glow disappearing from it at once. They stood and dusted themselves off, making quick mental checks as to how their bodies were handling the stress.

"I just can't believe that I lost the control over my chakra up there like that!" Naruto muttered irritatedly. "That kind of thing hasn't happened to me in years…"

Ino bit her lip while she secured all the kunai in her pouch.

"Well, that was kind of my fault." At the lost look he gave her, she decided to elaborate. "You see, I was performing a complicated mind-control technique when you grabbed me like that and its forceful dispelling might have had some effect on you that messed with your chakra control."

The boy cocked an eye brow at her, an unreadable expression on his face.

"But," he drew out, "I'm fine now?"

"Yes, I believe it should have worn off already—you weren't hit with it in the first place." He nodded and made to set off back towards the fight scene and the adversaries that his Kage Bunshin wouldn't be able to hold off for much longer.

Before he did though he threw away the small branch with the tiny sphere-like fruits.

"Stupid plant," he growled disgruntled, resisting the urge to stomp on it in a petulant fit. "Such a puny and completely useless, totally unknown vermin—"

"It's mistletoe," Ino said suddenly, putting a stop to his rant that she wasn't sure was even intended for her to overhear. Judging by the startled look he had, it was most probable that he hadn't known he was speaking aloud or something. "That thing that you ripped almost half of—it's mistletoe. A parasite plant that lives off the minerals and water from its host."

They both looked upwards at the small dwarf mistletoe bush that had sustained some damage from their recent escapade. Naruto made a noncommittal grunt that Ino couldn't decipher—her best guess was that he was still pissed that the thing hadn't proved to be strong enough to hoist the weight of two healthy adults—and kicked away the tuft he had severed from it.

Figures that Ino, of all people, would know about flowers and plants of any sort. Mistletoe, mistletoe… that had a conveniently familiar ring to it.

Oh, how he had waited for an opportunity like this… Masculinity, welcome back! Dignity, long time no see—glad to have you back!

"Mistletoe, huh?" he murmured thoughtfully while she made to return to kicking Karin's ass out of the country. She stopped when she noticed he wasn't following. "I believe there was a tradition of some sort involving that plant, wasn't there?"

She sighed, miffed once again, marching back to his side, her arms crossing over her chest as she regarded him stoically.

"No, there is no tradition involving mistletoe about our lands and can we please get back to fighting those foreigners for our lives?" Though she was one to nag about that when she had slipped up—twice—because her mind was so off what has happening around her to get into the mood to defend herself for real.

Naruto, though, didn't seem to relent. He was tapping his chin contemplatively with his index finger.

"Surely, there was some eastern belief involving people standing underneath branches of mistletoe and it being bad luck to just walk away without keeping the tradition… but what exactly were you supposed to do while under the accursed thing."

Ino rolled her eyes in exasperation, getting tired of these arguments she was trying to spike.

But if exasperated was all she was, why did her heart skip a beat or two when her mind offered her the answer to Naruto's rhetoric question? She knew about that tradition but this was neither the time nor place to be so silly and—

"Bad luck is the last thing we need in this nowhere land where we can't even send for back up. So if only I could just… Ah hah!" He exclaimed at last, a forefinger demonstratively erect to emphasize his point. "I remember now what that superstition was about!"

She didn't even get a say in what followed—not that she had given him any when she had done practically the same to him before; twice, at that. He was at her side in a breath and his large hands—he could cup each of her dainty shoulders and some of her forearm with each palm—were on her shoulders, holding her in place, as he bent down and actually kissed her. On the lips. While they were supposed to be fending for their lives and country's borders.

It was strange that she couldn't even remember those logical arguments against what was happening in this temporary sanity relapse of hers.

Maybe it was because she had been the instigator of all other kisses before—even though they weren't all that many—and this one had been all his doing. Or maybe she was just really going nutters but she distinctly felt a powerful jolt the moment their lips locked together. And that was odd because the kiss wasn't fierce or passionate or anything of the sort. It was just an ordinary, harmless kiss and yet her toes curled in her sandals, for some reason.

The jolt of excitement wore off as soon as it had appeared when he pulled away, cerulean eyes dancing with mischief. At that moment, she wondered if all this "wondering" about mistletoe hadn't been a well staged act on his part.

"Now that we know that no superstition is getting in the way of our triumph over those guys, shall we go? One of my Bunshin got dispelled and it reckoned that the other one wouldn't last long either and then our opponents would be really pissed off."

They ran back, charging immediately upon seeing their adversaries' backs—using the element of surprise to the fullest—and the fight commenced again—blood and sweat coated their bodies in thick sheens as they continued to deplete their chakra reserves, using jutsu after jutsu on one another, the clash almost equal.

Almost but not quite.

Because Ino was no longer on edge, no longer irritated and Karin still was. Because Suigetsu was a durable guy but Naruto was a stamina monster.

And while the Konoha duo was slowly overpowering enemies, the Yamanaka daughter thought that the battlefield is definitely not the place for her to enlighten her partner that the tradition he was referring to takes place only on Christmas, a Christian celebration, when the branches of mistletoe conveniently placed around eastern people's houses; a celebration on which the plant becomes "bewitched" and brings "bad luck" to any couple who stops under it and does not kiss.

She deemed it unnecessary to tell him that even the mistletoe used for that superstition is not the kind that they were standing under or that there was no need to kiss under it when such a tradition was barely even heard of in their country.

His kiss had recharged her and taken the grumpiness of her shoulders for some unfathomable reason. The jolt she had felt alleviated her spirit, brought back the contrast of the colours in her day. She should've probably felt alarmed by that realization but she couldn't bring herself to care at current. Consequences could be dealt with later.

All that she considered relevant at that point in time was savoring the memory of the feel of his warm breath ghosting over the side of her cheek and his soft lips against her own and how she craved to know how much more there was to this guy than being a great closed mouth kisser.

Ino didn't know it then, didn't even think about it, but she was in more trouble than she could've imagined at that point in time.

She didn't care because adhering to tradition is ordinarily a very important thing.

Keeping traditions is what makes them into such, after all.


A/N: Ugh, that felt so off. I mean the fight sequences. So disjointed—thoughts and ideas flying everywhere, neither connecting with the one before them, blargh… Sorry that the tide retreated on me like that and left me writing such a flawed chapter—no flow to it at all, such a bumpy ride it was. But this is the best I could pull off. I hope that it was satisfactory enough of a transition. Things are going to spice up from now on—hope it managed to catch your attention. (Oh, and anything about mistletoe and such that is not true but works for the story—please ignore facts. The very existence of this chapter defies logic and reason. xD So I can't see why the content shouldn't distort the truth as well.)

I stopped the fight scene there because it wouldn't be quite as flashy if I had finished it and brought everyone back safely to Konoha. If anyone cares all that much about it, I might bring myself to writing a Suigetsu/Karin piece that will have some pre-history on why those two were in Fire Country at all and will continue after this chapter finished. That's to anyone who cares.

Those are all my thoughts on this chapter. Feedback is love, people; hated it, disliked it, liked it? Love to hear a reader's point of view.