Shikamaru was almost comforted by Kurenai – the woman adopted a strict tone that was obviously developed to cope with Kiba, and without delay she gave them a task: water walking. A year ago, he'd have been complaining for all he was worth; now, he was glad of the work, because it prevented any more awkward discussion.
Team Eight obviously already knew tree-climbing, since the genjutsu mistress told them it was similar to that. After a brief explanation, the six genin headed out to a river.
The river was some distance away from Konoha, and since the practice grounds themselves were on the edge of the town, their walk was through the forestland. Shino walked with Chouji and Shikamaru, silent and looking calmly ahead. He didn't look at all bothered by the Kyuubi revelation, but then, who could tell what he was thinking? Nonetheless, Shikamaru was relieved by his unshaken appearance. He couldn't tell what Hyuuga Hinata thought: the clan heir was walking behind the three boys, but in front of Ino and Chouji, and whenever Shikamaru looked back, she had her face turned to the ground. The position made her eyes invisible behind her thick hair, and the only thing the position spoke of was meekness.
Ino and Kiba were strolling some distance behind the rest, talking loudly about Asuma and Kurenai being a couple. The Inzuka boy was disconcertingly loud, and Shikamaru wondered if he was over-acting to prove some kind of a point. But the real sign that Kiba wasn't somehow aggrieved was that Akamaru had run around Shikamaru, sniffed him, and jumped up to lick the shadow-user's hand. Shikamaru felt sure that Kiba wouldn't have allowed this gesture if he was scared or hateful toward him, so he made an effort to stop brooding on the results of his revelation.
Chouji asked Shikamaru if he did think there was something between Kurenai and Asuma. He considered it for a moment, and said it seemed more than likely. Chouji laughed quietly and said he didn't doubt it. Shino glanced at them, but didn't add anything.
When they arrived, Ino dropped herself onto a boulder on the riverbank, stretching luxuriantly. Shikamaru didn't feel any need to get near that water, so he leant back and made himself comfortable on the grass beside her – he'd train, but why start so soon? Chouji joined the other two, and Kiba (who'd walked out to where Shino stood by the river-bank) laughed and returned to continue the conversation he'd been having with Ino. Shikamaru was amused – clearly his team was a bad influence. Maybe they could convince the whole genin population to join in their slacking, and start a revolution.
But Hinata stood indecisively on the banks, twisting her fingers together. She looked at Shino, and – they realised he was going to attempt their task – everyone else did too. There was a moment of strange tension.
Then Shino silently walked out onto the water's surface, only to stumble and stoically drop through. He didn't attempt to balance, but a cloud of bugs buzzed away from him, which drew an alarmed and disgusted look from Ino.
Kiba laughed at her, and called for Hinata to attempt the task. Hinata ducked back, and the Inuzuka reluctantly stepped forward to Shino, who had dragged himself ashore, frowning under his shades with a tightly drawn mouth. Kiba crouched and sniffed the water, muttering about having to leave Akamaru on the bank. But Ino called out for him to have a go, and Chouji and Shikamaru echoed her - the Inuzuka couldn't even keep both feet on the surface for a second, but he laughed as he surfaced, and the awkwardness of training together was dispelled completely.
Ino marched forward:
"Leave it to an expert, Doggy-boy!"
And then Chouji tentatively tried it, then Shikamaru, then Shino and Hinata and Kiba, and soon enough the six were co-operating easily enough with advice. They got involved enough that they didn't notice the arrival of their teachers, or that the jounin had been holding hands.
Hinata mastered the skill first – Shikamaru was pretty sure she'd been competent at it from the start, and it had only been modesty keeping her back. She helped Kiba, and only reluctantly left the lake to practice genjutsu with Kurenai, who was looking much milder than she had in the morning. Asuma smiled over at her as she spoke to her student.
Kiba and Ino seemed to get on well, Shikamaru and Chouji both noticed. The kunoichi argued with Kiba, flicking water at him whenever she fell in, and dragging him under with her, but they seemed comfortable in each other's company, or perhaps it was just the social ease of two confident people together. Chouji and Shikamaru didn't know; they gave side-long looks to each other and wondered whether Sasuke was off the list of their friend's crushes.
Shino stood apart from the two pairs remaining – he could happily stand still on the water, after an hour's practice, but whenever someone fell in, the disruption would make him lose his balance and join them in the water. He kept his coat on, although Chouji's scarf and Shikamaru's jacket lay with Kiba's coat away from the water, drying out in the sun. Shikamaru wanted to know what he was thinking, although he'd never been curious about the enigmatic Aburame before. Did he sympathise with Shikamaru?
Shikamaru walked over the water to Shino, close enough to see that the bug user's hair was dripping with water and that a cloud of insects was hovering around him. The fox-host wobbled, unnerved by the creatures that looked like pins of chakra-energy, swirling around in an organic pattern. He didn't know how to ask what he wanted to ask.
Then Kiba crashed into him from the side, arms windmilling. Shikamaru's foot slipped under the water, but he twisted and landed on all fours, fingers spread and sending chakra down to steady him.
Shino's mouth twisted in a frown as water rippled.
Kiba balanced himself unsteadily, looking at Shikamaru and starting to apologise.
"Huh, it's easier to stay up like this," the fox-host observed, palms flat on the water.
It was. The lower centre of gravity and multiple contact points were working in his favour. But more than anything, being caught off balance had triggered reflexes to send him into a defensible position. Shikamaru wasn't sure what to make of it.
"Hey, I know!" Ino called, "Let's have a competition! Last one standing!"
She hooked Kiba's leg out from under him, grinning, and took up a stance. Shikamaru lifted his arms, eyes narrowing to predict her move.
Kiba propelled a wave of water out, using both arms, then dragged himself up.
And Shikamaru leapt, landing on Ino's back and overbalancing her, then hopping off to face off with Kiba. The dog-clan member had his hands on the water, still, and he darted across to crash into Chouji - who'd meant to stay out of the game – knocking the Akimichi in before being dragged down into an underwater tussle with Shikamaru.
Asuma needed Kurenai's prompting, but he did go over to break up the students' water-fight. (Hinata had watched, wondering if she could have joined in. She'd probably have been too awkward to, and she knew enough that she wouldn't fall, which would make her reluctant to attack anyone else. It hurt a bit, to see people able to be so spontaneous and comfortable with one another. Even Shikamaru, who'd been scared before...) But Asuma called Shikamaru out, and warned him against wearing wet clothes – you'll get pneumonia – before introducing the rest of the day's work. The other genin let the battle fall apart.
"You need practice attacking efficiently," the jounin told the Nara, who was dripping but had ignored the suggestion that he undress. It was sunny enough.
Shikamaru was prompted to demonstrate the youki-based attack he'd started using – slashing while focusing youki around his clawed hands.
Asuma tsked, calling Hinata over, and the Hyuuga hesitantly told him that the attack was inefficient. Shikamaru was torn between being interested – after all, why waste energy? - and annoyed – he wasn't likely to run out of the borrowed youki, and it was going to be troublesome and pointless to train to use it better. But he was vaguely interested to hear Hinata's opinion, since she had the byakugan bloodline limit.
"Ah," she murmured, limit activated, and Asuma told Shikamaru to mould chakra. Kurenai was looking on, watching Hinata with an almost maternal gaze.
"You see, your energy – dissipates – when it is released from you... Only, it's not just dispersing, it's reacting with the air and – I don't know how to explain it if you can't see - it's like, as if it is burning. You're not moulding the energy - you can't, can you, because it naturally disrupts any order placed on it. It's similar to elemental chakra, but it's not obvious to me how you're manipulating it. Also, I can see that it reacts with other energy, especially chakra, to – over-run it. That is why it is – unnatural to us – it seems to invade, to attack life-energy and chakra. I said it disrupts things, and that counts chakra. It breaks up human chakra, and interferes with our thoughts – that causes us to fear it on a - visceral level."
"Oh, okay." Shikamaru said, feeling vaguely distressed. Ino must have been badly hurt by hanging on to him while he set himself on fire with youki, if it was inimical to other forms of energy. If it interfered with 'thoughts'. Does she mean neural transmission? That would explain the paralysis it caused.
"Thanks, Hinata," Asuma said, waving the dark-haired girl away with a smile before turning back to his student, "Shikamaru, knock that post down with chakra."
Shikamaru frowned; if he used too much energy, people would sense it and get freaked out because of the presence of the 'Kyuubi'. Hadn't Hinata just confirmed that?
He voiced his concerned, but Asuma waved his hand dismissively.
"What I want you to try and do is focus your chakra into a denser shape, so less of it spills away. If you can master the skill, you can stop it leaking into other people's chakra coils. And the stuff she said it was doing," he shrugged, then said: "Watch."
Asuma pulled out his trench knife, slipped it over his knuckles, backed off, then focussed and smashed into the post with the weapon, which was now glowing with chakra. The wood had a wedge-shaped slice gouged out of it when he lowered his fist.
"That strike uses energy concentrated enough that it takes on visible form; with chakra, it is easy to give such energy the properties of a solid. But you need to learn to manipulate the properties of the Kyuubi's energy. Try to emulate that attack – I want to see you using energy like a blade."
Shikamaru nodded.
He returned home tired. He'd made progress in the task he'd been set, but throughout the day he'd felt despondent – his old, lazy life was almost gone, destroyed by the overhanging threat of Akatsuki and the village. He'd been hopeful, last month, that letting his friends in on his secret would mean the hostility of other people wouldn't bother him, but that hadn't been true. As he'd walked back through the village, he'd been followed by nervous and resentful looks.
He slipped his sandals off in the long hall of his house, wiggling his toes and then just stretching. His arms were stiff, the muscles aching after the efforts he'd put into controlling his chakra. Youki, rather. And not really his... Che, it was too troublesome.
His toe-nails clicked against the floorboards, and that one sound prompted him to listen – it had intruded a the back-ground sound of voices, voices that were so familiar he hadn't registered them. Did that mean Shikaku was back? Rumiko was awake?
The voices were both female, and – yes, one was his sister's. Slightly hoarse, but recognisable nonetheless.
He pushed his sister's door open, to see his mother sitting on the bed beside her. Both women smiled as he entered, and he was immediately struck by the fact his sister had taken her braids out, which left her with a mass of surprisingly light-coloured fluffed-out hair.
But then Rumiko's eyebrows pinched together, she blinked sleep-encrusted eyelashes, and then gasped.
"Shit." She bit out, voice distant as she voiced the expletive. But then she spoke faster, immediately and angrily: "Shit! I remember now, what I needed to tell you two. It's Imn, she was taken too and they've done something, shit shit-shit-shit!"
"Oh, dear. Calm down now, deep breaths..." Yoshino soothed her daughter.
Shikamaru resisted the urge to scratch something with the claws his fingernails made. It was very tempting. He felt angry, at both himself and Akatsuki and fate in general. He felt just a little helpless, and – unfairly -annoyed at Rumiko for caring so much about a stranger that she'd be unhappy despite her safe return. He wanted to be proud of himself for carrying off that mission, but he knew he couldn't be, because he hadn't done all he could and her grief would remind him of that.
He left Rumiko's room – he couldn't say anything to comfort her, and he wasn't needed.
But he couldn't bring himself to go far away – he rested against the wall in the hall, directly outside her room. He kept his back straight and forced his shoulder-blades to touch the hard surface he was leaning against. He looked at the opposite wall, straight ahead. She's crying, my sister's crying.
And he forced himself to remember that room, the room they'd only looked into for a second.
Shikamaru didn't move until he heard them stand up inside Rumiko's bedroom, and then he went into his own room. That's enough – I can't do anything about it. He had a go at distracting himself by concentrating the development of an efficient attack. Anyway, it might be useful soon.
The problem with the Kyuubi's youki was that it naturally tried to expand to cover everything it could. It was attracted to chakra because the two were polarised – he'd seen with Gaara's attacks and his own that youki could forestall any chakra attacks, nullifying the properties that the process of 'moulding' gave it. Since his transformation, Shikamaru couldn't have used much ninjutsu even if he'd known it, because youki could not be moulded into a controllable form – he'd been lucky that the kagemane was easily emulated with the fox's energy. That was only because the youki was easily directed towards people, who were stores of chakra, and it naturally had the effect of paralysis.
The shadow-user doubted that he'd ever be able to use genjutsu. Not that he'd had any intention of doing so. But now I think about it, it wouldn't be too hard to learn how to use the effect the Kyuubi's energy has on people naturally and make a kind of fear genjutsu...
But who would he practise such a thing on? He'd wanted to speak to Ino and ask her about possessing him – he remembered when she was clinging to his mind, her thoughts being reduced to jumbled senses of emotion - 'fear' and 'panic'.
He needed to apologise, he needed to talk to her.
Hinata had said that the Kyuubi's energy affected 'life energy' – did she mean chakra, or something more fundamental? Surely there wasn't anything 'more fundamental', though, at least nothing that the byakugan could see.
Shikamaru cut this train of thought off viciously, returning to how to create blades of energy. Under Asuma's watchful eye, he'd learnt – more or less – how to contain the Kyuubi's energy somewhat. He did it instinctively when he attacked, but all the times he'd done that thus far, he'd been channeling such a lot of youki that it had been simple to send a large amount of it into one place. It was much more difficult to do the same thing when there was less latent power in his chakra coils.
There had to be a short-cut. Hadn't Ino said that he found a lazy way to do anything?
By the time he came to dinner, he'd lost himself in ideas.
Yoshino and Rumiko were both subdued at the dinner table, and his sister's eyes were red and her cheeks were tear-stained. Her hair had been tied back in a loose ponytail, but she'd made no other concessions to appearance. Shikamaru looked at her and felt guilty again, and hated it.
They all ate in silence.
Leaving the table, Rumiko stood up. She seemed calm, but her fingers trailed on the table-top as she straightened herself. The tips touched her knife, an old piece of cutlery that was heavy and sharp.
Shikamaru realised a second before she acted that she was unsteady, and jolted to his feet, taking in the fact that she was biting the inside of her cheek below her lower lip from the shape of her mouth, taking in the loose appearance of her face and the sudden convulsion of muscles. He lifted his hands, and Rumiko looked at him in alarm.
And then she gripped and stabbed with the knife in one motion, bearing her teeth (Shikamaru registered the green of a remaining piece of salad behind her lower right incisor) in a doubtless automatic motion. She stabbed the implement cleanly through her plate.
"I'll killUchiha."
The knife's tip had cut an indent into the old table, and the plate was in three pieces, with smaller shards. Crazed cracks were visible under the remaining sauce, and the table was starting to stain as the liquid ran through the breaks. All three of the Nara stared at it for a long moment, then Rumiko whirled and ran out.
Shikamaru heard the front door open, and he listened fixedly for the retreating footsteps as she ran down the path, which then became inaudible, muffled by grass.
Yoshino stood, one hand pressing down hard on her side of the table.
He turned back to his mother, trying not to see that she was upset and vulnerable. Scared, even. Excesses of emotion weren't easy to deal with. But Shikamaru thought that it was - in some ways - his fault that Rumiko was so distraught, so he told Yoshino: "I'll go after her."
He needed to be there for his sister.
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Also, please tell me what you think about the character interactions. Particularly Team Ten - are they in-character? It's hard to write so many people in one scene, I kept having to do a mental head-count on them. Please review!