"All Kill Landing Edge"

By Nes Mikel

Acknowledgment;

I hereby acknowledge that the work of fiction presented here is for my own personal amusement and entertainment purposes alone. I hereby also acknowledge that while this story is mostly based on Kishimoto Masashi's "Naruto", certain crossover elements from Type-Moon's "Garden of Sinners/Kara no Kyoukai" also exist, although knowledge of it is not a requirement. Thus, I acknowledge that the original story concept and ideas, while heavily altered for the sake of the crossover, are copyright of all its associates.

For non up-to-date readers, this fiction will contain spoilers up to the latest Naruto manga chapters.

With that said, enjoy.

"All Kill Landing Edge"

- Chapter Ten -

"Avaliar"

Greek – "Appraise"

Surprises were coming to her in daily doses.

This time, it was the quiet clicking sound her ears picked up when she was just about to raise her hand to courteously knock on the slightly-ajar door. One of her eyebrows rose as she listened to the spruce clacks as it came, stopped, and then stared again. A little puzzled as she wondered just what exactly her father was going to teach her now, she shrugged it off and continued her interrupted knock on the doorframe.

"Come in."

The invite sent, Ino slided the door open and stepped into her father's Hokage Tower office and stopped just inside the threshold. In keeping with his high-profile position as the head of the Information and Espionage division in Konoha, Yamanaka Inoichi held a comfortable, sun-lit office inside with baring windows that showed off the entire view of the village down below, although Ino would've realized it was more modest compared to the view from the Hokage's office had she'd ever stepped foot in it. Still, as much as Ino loved her father so dearly, she still felt that the office did not fit with Yamanaka Inoichi's character, especially given his position in the village. She had always pictured her Daddy working in some dark chamber down in the basement of the Tower, since that was the image most associated with Information and Espionage due to the fact that they worked so closely with Torture and Interrogation. At least, that's the image she came up with when she learned from the Academy the roles each division held anyway.

Her father had by now risen from his position behind the desk and stood there, head cocked with a sly smile on the tip of his lips, no doubt from having already figured out what she was thinking. "Not quite you expected, Ino?" He said, confirming what she already knew. "But, yes." He waved a hand in front of his disk. "This is where I spend most of my time working."

Stacks of paper, covered with her father's strong handwriting piled high on top of her father's desk, but what caught her attention the most was the two rectangular-framed devises that sat at its center. It was about two shakus long and five suns tall. It was constructed with a bamboo frame and had twenty-one vertical rods that connected the upper and lower sides of it, and on each rod there were six flattened beads, five below and one above a dividing strip near the outer frame's upside, arranged so they could slide up and down accordingly.

It was an abacus.

But wait. One was obviously for her father's personal use, as she could see some wear and tear out of it that could only come from years of using the device, but the other one looked brand new. I mean, even trying to imagine her father's ridiculous look in him using the counting frame as if he was some mere merchant – especially when he was supposed to be the hard-ass diehard man in charge of the division that made ninjas ninjas with their use of intrigue and handling of information – was hard enough. He couldn't possibly be considering what she was thinking, right?

Ino shook her head to get rid of the comical image of her father outfitted with a yaoya grocery-store vendor's black apron with abacus in hand. How did that make it into her mind? "I thought we were supposed to be going to the training grounds after you were done with work today?" She said. "You said you were going to teach me a new technique."

"I did say I was going to teach you a new technique, yes." Inoichi replied as he walked around the furniture and into the corner of the room where stool chairs were stacked neatly on top of one another. He pulled one from the top of the pile and slid the four-legged appendage into the front of his desk. "But I didn't say I was going to teach you anything combat-related. Today, I'm going to train you several techniques in using an abacus."

Ino stared at her father as if he'd just gone psychotic. Then again, the Yamanakas were a clan that regularly dealt with the human mind. Occasionally some of their clansmen did fall from the far end of the cliff. It wasn't far-fetched to think it had finally happened with her father.

"No, I haven't gone insane Ino." Inoichi quickly defended himself when he noticed the strange look his daughter was giving him. "Teaching you to use the abacus is a form of mental training I developed."

It quickly caught Ino's interest. "Mental training?"

"One thing I've always envied about Shikaku – Shikamaru's father," Inoichi began. "Is his intellect. He's a genius tactician and strategist. He can analyze great deals of information in a blink of an eye, anticipate actions and use his predictions to formulate or rearrange highly effective plans, all in the face of turmoil and remain calm throughout the entire process. Chouza nor I have ever been able to beat Shikaku in shogi or go, and the Nara clan's encyclopedia of medical knowledge has been the most up-to-date in centuries."

He looked at Ino. "Remember how I told you before that I was considering ending the tradition of the Ino-Shika-Cho by stopping you from becoming teammates with Shikamarau and Chouji when you graduated? So you can be teammates with Sakura in order to protect her now that she's half-blind?"

She nodded. It was the most recent piece of hard information she had to deal with in the aftermath of her best friend's awakening. It certainly helped to explain Sakura's behavior when Ino got to see her for the first time that other day – Sakura's didn't want to see Ino because Sakura apparently couldn't see Ino as she'd remembered and saw her with 'something' that her father did not explain in detail, but told her it was something that prevented Sakura from seeing things normally. If Ouka's death wasn't bad enough… now this. Ino wanted to cry out at lady luck with the amount of misfortune that seemed to keep on piling on top of her best friend.

Still though, it did relieve Ino when she was told that Sakura was eventually going to return to the Academy once her rehabilitation was complete. It meant that she was going to be classmates with her once again, and once they graduated Inoichi had told her that they were going to be teammates, and that made everything so much better. Ino was prepared to go any lengths to protect Sakura now that Sakura had a glaring handicap, especially if she was going to be a ninja alongside her. After all, teammates looked out for each other, didn't they? And with her father too going the extra length to teach her with his now-daily after school lessons, everything seemed so great. Well, there was that glaring demerit where, with all the extra training her father was putting her through she no longer didn't have any free time to go visit Sakura in the Hospital anymore, but that was just a minor inconvenience. She would be seeing Sakura in the Academy again in no time.

In her excitement, Ino didn't question exactly why the decision for Sakura to return to school was made so quickly despite the fact that a handicap such as blindness was normally grounds for a ninja to permanently retire from duty, much less for a previous-comatose child who had a two year 'blank' to advance into the ranks of one was unheard of. Ino was still too young to understand the ideas of politics swirling behind the decision of Sakura's return to the Academy. She didn't even know that the decision for Sakura returning to the Academy wasn't even really in Sakura's hands to begin with.

"Well," Inoichi continued. "When I talked the idea over with Chouza and Shikaku, it was Shikaku that came up with the idea that we didn't have to break the tradition, but just 'evolve' it slightly. So, instead of the Ino-Shika-Cho represented through one team, he suggested that each member of the Ino-Shika-Cho split into three different ones, with each member of the Ino-Shika-Cho taking a leadership role in each team so they can coordinate each team's inter-team teamwork under the Ino-Shika-Cho modelwork. So instead of just three people working together, it would instead be three teams working together. I talked the idea over with Hokage-sama, and he thought it'd be something interesting and worth trying for, so if things go according to plan we'll be seeing the first nine-member cell team in Konoha in just under two years."

"Of course, this means that Ino," Inoichi pointed a finger at her. "It means that you need to take the leadership role for one of the three teams. So does Shikamaru and Chouji, so I'm sure they're being taught by their dads accordingly. In my case, however, in order to shape you up for the leadership role I've decided to teach you the abacus."

"What does the abacus have to do with anything about being a leader?" She asked.

"I told you earlier how I adored Shikaku's intellect, right? Well, part of the reason why he's able to do what he does is because he's so fast in his way of thinking, and naturally it's because of those qualities he ended up as the leader of the Ino-Shika-Cho trio of our generation. When you become a leader of a three-man cell team, it's important that you become adept in your mental way of thinking so you can quickly come up with the right answers when you're faced with a task. Teaching you the abacus is that first step. When people become proficient in use of the abacus, almost automatically they become adept at speedy mental calculations. As a part of abacus instruction, intermediate-level students are asked to do calculation mentally by visualizing the abacus and working out the problem without trying to figure out the answer beforehand. I want your thought processes to be at least that level of quality. Think of it as a tool to help you speed your thought processes up."

"Besides," He laughed. "With this, you can finally help your mother in managing the funds for the flower shop! She was always asking for more help in that department…"

Ino groaned. She couldn't help but shake the feeling that that was her father's true motive in teaching her the abacus.

"All Kill Landing Edge"

- Chapter Ten -

-END-

Author's Notes:

As promised, chapter ten.

Shaku is an old Japanese way of measurement that's approximately a foot long, and ten sun make a shaku. So two shakus and five suns in English will translate to two feet and six inches.

Today's Japanese lesson, brought to you by yours truly.

Thanks for reading!

- Nes Mikel

All Kill Landing Edge, Chapter Ten "Avaliar", First Edition: February 28th, 2013, Last Edit: March 1st, 2013