Pandabot: Well, it's definitely been a while. Sorry about that all, life's been crazy busy for the last few months. I've only just had time to start writing again. As it is, this chapter is easily my least favourite. It's been written over a long period of time and, unfortunately, you can tell. It reads like it was written by four seperate people who all wanted to write different things. But I just need this chapter out of the way. So have a read (you might need to go back a bit to have a bit of a re-cap) and hopefully the next chapter will be up soon
Chapter 26: Preparations
"...Did you place the seal?" A man in formal robes stepped into the light filtering through the holes in the roof of the sand caves. His one eye, pupiless and blank, locked onto the speaker,
"Of course. Everything went as planned." The shadowy figure nodded, turning away from his companion,
"Good. Head to ground and lay low. Now we wait for the storm to be unleashed." There was a seconds hesitation and then the man in robes spoke again,
"Are you sure you can-"
"Don't question me, Hirotu" the shadowy figure snapped, a surge of chakra silencing his ally. After a long pause, Hirotu bowed his head,
"As you command." With a burst of smoke, he was gone, leaving the shadowy figure alone.
"Now, little girl. It's all up to you."
Kazuki and Kana were noticeably subdued when Ino met them at the training field. She sighed; it was an understandable reaction. Yomiko had been cleared to leave the hospital but was banned from training for at least another day. It was a strange feeling to have the pretty girl absent, to have her team one member down.
"Ok, look," Ino began, tugging restlessly at her ponytail, "I know it's weird to not have Yomiko with us." She paused as Kazuki gave a grunt of agreement, folding his arms tightly,
"It's weird but there is only one week left until the Chuunin exams. Yomiko will be back by then but we can't waste any training time while we wait for her to recover. Ok?" With a grumbled assent, Kazuki nodded and Kana just gave a distracted sort of nod.
"Good. Ok, so today we're going to work on some basic combinations. In particular, we're going to practice defending a target." Kana and Kazuki gave each a look,
"I'm pretty sure we've already done that, sensei" Kana said dismissively. Ino raised an eyebrow,
"Not like this you haven't" she said harshly. The pair shut up, intimidated by her tone and the intensity now radiating off her in almost physical waves,
"This time you're going to be defending me from a Jounin."
"Um, what?" Ino gave Kazuki a look, ignoring the shock on his face,
"In this Chuunin Exams there are likely to be shinobi who are more powerful than you. You know what I've learned about powerful shinobi? They're arrogant."
"Too often a powerful shinobi thinks they are above their teammates and fight alone. That's their weakness" she said, smiling as she felt a particularly familiar chakra enter the training grounds.
It was nice of him to not hide his chakra as he approached; everyone was a little on-edge after the attack on the Hokage. Ino refocused on her team,
"So here's the mission. I have a scroll with vital information for my village's continued survival. You have to get the scroll from here to Hokage Tower so that includes getting me there too. Understood?" Her students nodded uncertainly and Ino turned, securing her weapons pouch readily.
"Alright then," she said, flaring her chakra to let her friend know the test had begun, "Let's get moving."
There was only a second of shocked disorganisation before Kazuki naturally stepped forward, leading the way while Kana stayed a few steps behind Ino confirming what she had always suspected about them; they had brilliant chemistry.
Ino smirked to herself, imagining how they'd react if she ever told. Actually, that could be funny; she should do that sometime soon. Maybe before the Chuunin Exams?
A flurry of shuriken flew out of the trees and Kana threw herself forward, using a quick burst of wind to knock them off-course, missing Ino by inches. At the same time, a flash of movement appeared from the trees, heading straight for Kana.
With a warcry, Kazuki managed to intercept the flash, trading lightning fast blows before he was sent flying through the air. The flash bounced away and slid to a stop, flashing through hand seals faster than the eye could follow. Kana hesitated for a half-second as she recognised Kakashi of the Sharingan, sharingan eye watching her with a terrifying intensity,
"Fire-Style! Fireball Jutsu!"
Ino leapt forward, catching Kana by the waist and throwing them to the side, dodging the huge ball of flame that blasted through the area they had just been. She twisted as they landed, a kunai coming up and blocking Kakashi's attempted stab through the neck,
"Enough." There was an instant change in Kakashi's demeanour, the tenseness and intensity disappearing from his frame and leaving his usual lazy self behind.
"Hmm...Not bad" he mumbled pleasantly, withdrawing his kunai and slipping it back into his pocket. Ino nodded,
"Told you they were good" she said with a hint of smugness. As she straightened up, pushing Kana off her, Kazuki came limping back over, face like thunder. She turned to them with a thoughtful expression,
"Well then, you two. Firstly, bear in mind that I'm not expecting you to win. I'm expecting you to complete your mission. Of course, if our friendly Jounin here had played by the rules," she shot Kakashi a look, "we wouldn't have been attacked so quickly."
"But whatever, now you know how powerful your opponent is, what are your tactics?" she asked, instinctively looking to Kana. To her suprise, Kazuki grunted and dusted his combat vest clean,
"Distract and avoid, right?" Ino, taken aback for a second, nodded with a smile,
"Got it in one. So your plan has to be to keep him from even finding us while we deliver the scroll. It's an important skill to have; if you can't do it, then escort missions will get a hell of a lot harder."
Kakashi, suprisingly not browsing his usual book in the moment he had, piped up,
"Distract and avoid tactics are very important for a shinobi in combat as well. Distraction is one of your greatest weapons in a confrontation with any fellow shinobi; a single moment of distraction can get you killed." Ino nodded,
"He makes a good point," she said, noting how off Kana seemed today. She was probably worried about Yomiko but she was going to need to concentrate; these were valuable lessons. Ino gave Kakashi a look;
"Alright, we're going to try this again. Kakashi's going to give us a one minute headstart and then he'll hunt us down." Ino looked intently at her students,
"Get me to the tower."
Ino stomped down the main street, trying to ignore the strange looks and the pungent smell of burnt hair trailing after her. She supposed it was her own fault, telling Kakashi to take the test seriously but she hadn't expected to him to use the Sharingan. Or an A-rank fire jutsu.
She shook her head, weaving gracefully past a young man laden down with a mass of shopping bags, trailing after a pretty teenage girl. She caught his eye with a smirk; You poor sap.
Thud! Ino, distracted by her pity of the young man, slammed straight into a little body, knocking it to the floor with a muffled grunt. She stopped in suprise, watching as the bags fell to the floor and split, spilling fresh fruit and vegetables all over the dirt. Ino cringed, dropping to her knees and scooping what she could from the ground, focusing on what could be salvaged.
"Ah! I'm sorry, Ino-sensei!" Ino's head snapped up so fast, her ponytail actually flipped over her head and hung along the front of her shoulder,
"Yomiko?" The smallest member of her team was planted on her butt, blushing terribly as she tried to get back to her feet and simultaneously hide her face. Ino frowned,
"I'm pretty sure you're meant to be at home resting, right?" she said with the hint of reprimand in her tone. Yomiko looked down at the ground between her knees and mumbled something unintelligible.
"Project, Yomiko" Ino said with a small smile; she was so cute. Yomiko mumbled something else awkwardly before she cleared her throat,
"I had to get food sensei." Ino gave the tiniest hint of a frown for less than a half second, then smiled indulgently down at her smallest, cutest genin,
"Well then, we'd better get that food home for you, huh?" Yomiko looked up at her, looking suprisingly calculating for a second before she nodded silently in agreement, heaving her self from the ground. Picking up her groceries, she led Ino into a back alley cutting through a few streets at a rapid walk; Ino stayed silent, watching how tense her student was.
She had figured something was going on when Yomiko had said she needed to get food. Why would she need to get food? Surely whoever lived with her (and if she remembered correctly, that was her aunt) would be the one to get food for her. Quickly running back through her memories, Ino knew that she hadn't applied for the orphan support benefit so she couldn't be living alone. Could she?
Yomiko had led her halfway across the village, ending up near the site of the Uchiha Massacre, by the time Ino had an answer to her question. And she wasn't happy.
Because as Yomiko pushed open the door of the house that sat in the shadow of a gorgeous cherry blossom, it was obvious that she was alone; there was a build-up of dust on some of the furniture that Yomiko, tired after a long day of training and small missions would never have bothered keeping up with.
Ino waited until Yomiko had put her food away, humming quitely to herself as she wandered around the kitchen and pantry, inspecting the house. It seemed nice enough, too big for Yomiko alone, but a very pretty house. As she wandered further afield, she came across a library, stocked full of dusty scrolls and leather bound books. Marking it's place down in her head map automatically, she headed back into the kitchen to meet with Yomiko and talk to her.
Yomiko was standing at the kitchen counter, allowing her hair to fall across and hide her face, a habit that Ino noticed she had when she thought she was in trouble.
"Yomiko, why are you living alone?" There was a long pause as Ino leant against the wall, watching her body language carefully; she already knew that she wasn't going to see Yomiko's face for this exchange.
"Because there's no-one else here" she mumbled, clearly unsure how to answer. Ino sighed,
"What about your aunt? I thought you lived with her." Ino saw her shoulders tense for a second,
"She's gone." Ino frowned at the tiny voice,
"What do you mean gone?" Yomiko, to her suprise, looked up with an angry glare, tears in her eyes,
"She's not here, she has vacated the premises, she is elsewhere! What the hell do you think I mean?!" Her voice caught at the last and, instinctively, Ino stepped forward and pulled the girl into a hug. She felt Yomiko go limp and clutch at her back, heard her actually begin to cry and Ino's anger started to rise.
She was going to go and see a man about a house.
Leaving Yomiko hadn't been easy, and she actually had a plan to deal with that long term, but she forgot about that the instant she kicked her way into Iruka's office. More than once, Iruka had compared her tactics to Anko's, both terrifying and seductive - Ino was beyond pleased. So the shock, slowly turning to terror, on his face was to be expected.
She slammed her hands down on his desk, leaning right into his face with a blank expression,
"Why is Yomiko Nagashi living alone?" she asked with deceptive calm. Iruka frowned, leaning backwards surreptiously, trying to put space between him and Ino,
"Um, isn't she living with her aunt?" Ino raised an eyebrow, waiting for the penny to drop; part of his duties was to track his graduate's status for a year after graduation anyway to ensure they were being looked after. His eyes widened as he dove into a pile of paperwork and he went pale, re-reading a sheet he pulled out,
"Oh, shit. I hadn't even gotten around to this pile yet." Ino snatched it out of his hand, reading the report dated from two weeks ago, obviously from the Hokage's desk;
Mei Nagashi - MIA
Disappeared on mission in the Sunagakure region. Initial searches unsuccessful.
"I just can't keep up with all my paperwork" Iruka explained lamely as Ino scanned the report; she supposed he had a point. He had a class to teach as well as all of the graduates to track; it was a lot of work.
It didn't matter to her.
"Go complain then" she snapped, turning on her heel and storming out of the room, report in hand.
She had a plan.
Ino touched lightly down onto the top of the wall that surrounded the Kazuki Clan residence, balancing perfectly on the narrow stone. She smiled as she looked down at the courtyard below, watching Kazuki as he ran through a string of hand seals with a kunai held backhand in his left hand.
"Lightning Style! Lightning Kunai!"
He threw the kunai but the electricity fizzled off the kunai almost instantly and it stuck into his makeshift target with a lacklustre thump. He grumbled something to himself in annoyance before stomping over to the kunai and angrily yanking it free.
"Good to see you trying something different." Kazuki jumped as Ino spoke from atop the wall, dropping to the ground as he turned in shock. Then he grinned,
"My dad's so pissed at you." Ino shrugged,
"Ah well. Guess I'll just just have to struggle on then" she said nonchalantly, swaying over to Kazuki casually.
"Alright kid, I've had an idea," she said, poking him in the forehead, "Tonight, get some things together and tell your family you're heading out on a special training thing with me. Then head to Kana's and get her to go to Yomiko's with you." Ino looked into his eyes,
"You get all that?" Kazuki nodded,
"Yeah but, uh, why are we going to Yomiko's?" Ino's face darkened as she turned to leave,
"Trust me, you'll know. Just go and I'll see you guys tomorrow morning for training. We've only got a week till the exams so practice hard, alright?"
Kazuki, though clearly confused, nodded firmly and flipped kunai in his hand readily.
"By the way, Kazuki," Ino began, flitting to the top of the wall, "Use more chakra. Kunai need more chakra than shuriken."
Pandabot: Next time - We begin the Chuunin Exams!