Shikamaru was haunted by that conversation for the rest of the afternoon. No, he thought, I'm not a hardened killer like Gaara. So what that I'm not insane; that I'm sheltered and I pretty much fit within the confines of 'normal' for a Konoha genin. I have every right to be normal and it's none of your business if I am.

That sounded petulant, said the logical part of his brain. Not to mention stupid. But he couldn't help but think about it.

She didn't need to tell me all that. I know I'm not like Gaara.

Why did she slap me?

It's none of their business how I compare to their brother.

Ino got bored with the tree-climbing around half an hour after Shikamaru's conversation with Temari, and provided a useful distraction for Shikamaru, who practised catching her in the shadow bind while she threw various projectiles at him. Neither of them was performing at their best, though, and the team practice dissipated as soon as Chouji descended from the trees.

During the walk back across the fields together, Chouji was conscious that both of his friends were preoccupied by something. Ino was watching Shikamaru with the kind of evaluating look she generally reserved for anyone claiming to be 'as hot as Sasuke', and Shikamaru was sporadically frowning and rubbing a hand across his jaw-bone, eyes looking at the distant landscape and not the sky. Finally, he caught Ino looking at him and raised an eyebrow in question.

Ino chewed on her bottom lip. Then tossed her hair, looking away and seeming to drop the matter.

They reached the highest part of the sloped field, and Shikamaru yawned as he glanced down over Konoha, slowing his walk and looking back, wondering if he could stay for a while and watch clouds before going in to eat.

Chouji had watched him glance backwards, and as he was walking behind the other two he could see his friend's expression as in Ino spoke abruptly to Shikamaru.

"What does jinchuuriki mean?"

The plump genin didn't know that himself, but Shikamaru visibly flinched. Ino had her head tilted to one side, tone light and showing that the question was insignificant to her. She noticed his expression, and stopped walking. He looked at her, body language terse and defensive, then he turned and walked determinedly on.

She and Chouji both hurried after him. She noticed Chouji's look was concerned, but not really confused. What the hell was this about?

She caught up, but stayed a little behind Shikamaru, respectful that she might have somehow (accidentally!) hurt his feelings. She was surprised when he spoke, voice strained.

"Please don't find that out, Ino."

She nodded, confused. He couldn't see, but she decided not to voice agreement out loud. She didn't want to promise something that she'd break.

They didn't strike up another conversation, only saying cursory goodbyes at Shikamaru's door.

Shikamaru had been wondering what to say to her, mind working frantically to think of how to explain the whole issue. But though he knew he should tell her himself rather than leave her to investigate that term - jinchuuriki, and being called that sent a shiver down his spine – when her looking at it would draw far too much attention to it. He hadn't known how to start a conversation about the whole troublesome matter.

He became convinced as soon as they walked on past his house that he should have talked about it and not let them go just yet. He wanted to run after Ino and tell her the idiotic secret so he wouldn't spend the night in futile worry about it, but he restrained himself from dashing after them. Kages, why was it such a big issue? He didn't want her to stare at him like that Temari girl, intent and maybe disgusted by him; he wanted even less to let Ino wandering around suspicious of him. She'd doubtless wonder if he had some kind of dirty secret, some skeleton in his closet. Why the fuck should he have to worry about this, it didn't affect anything except people's behaviour towards him that Naruto's stupid fucking father had sealed an even more idiotic fox-thing inside him. Why couldn't people realise it didn't fucking matter? That bastard Yondaime, leaving him to have to worry about trusting people and confiding in them when he'd rather the whole world just forgot about it...

"Uh, Shikamaru? Why are you standing on in the door?"

Rumiko was leaning out of her bed-room window, rebraiding a lock of hair. He was leaning against the outside of the front door, and had been since Team Ten had left. Oops.

"I'm thinking."

"You're brooding, and don't tell me you're not."

He shrugged, and went inside. He deliberated for a moment, then went into her room and slumped down onto her bed.

"That kunoichi from Sand came onto our land."

"Hn, Temari? Why?"

"Yeah, her. She came and stared at me, then said I wasn't like Gaara, then slapped me and left." The whole incident sounded bizarre in recollection.

Rumiko picked up the candle on her dressing table, then held it at an angle over her hair so a drop of wax rolled onto the end of the thin plait. She quickly pulled the bead down over it, effectively gluing the braid in place.

"She's Gaara's sister." Rumiko said it as if it was significant, but guessed Shikamaru hadn't understood the same things she had from it when he looked at her, confused. She explained:

"So she's spent her life trying to stop her screwed-up possessed sibling from killing people. And she sees you being all – well, not normal, but at least not sociopathic. So she's either upset she can't blame his fucked-up-ness on him being a demon-host-type-person, or she's figures that whoever did whatever to him apparently didn't do it right, or ... well, anything. Those Sand kids have a pretty shitty life, from what I've seen. So, she's, like, jealous of your normality."

Shikamaru frowned. That didn't make much sense. But some of it did – Temari was jealous that her brother was less sane than he was. Although he was vaguely resentful that he would be assumed to be like the Sand demon-host, and maybe just a bit sympathetic to Temari, he felt suddenly and strongly that he was out of his depth. Temari had said he was 'soft', and it was pretty much true – he'd never been in a real fight between shinobi, but she had called him a jinchuuriki - he didn't have any kind of demonic abilities to justify the title. In terms of his standing as a ninja, he was normal. But he'd be treated – by Gaara, at least – as if he had freaky demon skillz.

Urgh, being a demon-host was troublesome.

Rumiko snickered at him, and he realised he'd made that complaint aloud.

"At least you're not crazy" She added, then poked him and asked: "Are you?"

"I'm lazy, Rumiko, there's a distinct difference."

She reached behind him on the bed to retrieve a box of beads, then returned to pick up her candle and affixed another bead. Shikamaru finds it easier than the rest of us do to acknowledge what he is. That's a good thing, right?

He's right, of course, that there's no real reason for him to be ashamed of the fact the Kyuubi was sealed in him. It wasn't something he had any control over.

Shikamaru was stuck on thinking about Temari's words. He was soft, that made him vulnerable, particularly to people as predatory as Gaara. She was amazed I survived one confrontation with him, and I probably wouldn't survive another. She knows where this house is, and she can tell him. And probably will. Rumiko spoke to Kankuro, this means Gaara must have said something about me to them. Which means he's interested enough in me to be likely to come back again. And probably kill me. I'm not like he is, and that's decidedly a disadvantage here.

On the next day, Team Ten were subdued as they walked through the forest with two noble children. The mission was to accompany the pair to their uncle's holdings, a day's walk at civilian pace away. They'd come to attend the chuunin exams, but their father, an influential lord, had ordered them sent away. Shikamaru, who may or may not have been trying to distract himself from what to say to Ino, found himself wondering at their motives in getting the kids out of the region. He thought back to the stacking of the preliminaries – the finals were more carefully decided, pairings there were less significant because it would be likely that any trouble would be before or unrelated to those matches. Gaara had attacked Zaku, but it seemed to be of his own volition. A treaty between the two Villages... Now he came to think of it, Rumiko had mentioned that the Sand had only sent minimal numbers of dignitaries, none of whom were important civilians. Had this lord sensed trouble and decided to back out while he could?

Ino was involved in a discussion about flowers with the children. The older of them, a girl, was pointing to various flora and haughtily demanding information on them, while the younger, a boy, was snorting in disgust at the feminine occupation. Chouji had intervened on the behalf of flowers (You can use herbs make food taste nicer) and then been drawn to meaningfully emphasise other merits when the former response prompted a comment on his weight (and you can use them to kill people, you brat!) but he had dropped out of the conversation in order to restrain himself from violence towards the snooty children.

Walking behind the children and Ino, Chouji felt free to make a quiet enquiry.

"You okay, Shikamaru? You're too thoughtful."

"Meh."

"It's about Ino, isn't it. And," he frowned meaningfully. "That other thing."

"Do you know what jinchuuriki means?" Shikamaru asked. He was talking quietly, but with the kind of emphasis that showed the topic was occupying his full attention.

Chouji shook his head. He had a pretty good idea of what Ino's question had related to, but this was Shikamaru, and Shikamaru didn't resent answering Chouji's questions in full, so he didn't need to pretend to be clear on things he didn't understand.

Shikamaru folded his arms, his voice taking on a familiar 'teaching' intonation.

"Jinchuuriki is a term literally meaning 'living sacrifice', used historically to describe an individual permanently altered by jutsu, like the Kaguya clan, who were artifically given the equivalent of a bloodline limit at the cost of their mental and physical stability. Basically people who were altered to be better ninja or soldier, sacrificed for the good of their country. Nowadays there are very few shinobi or shinobi clans that do things like that to people, and the word's fallen out of usage expect to apply to demon-hosts. In any case, Temari used that to describe Gaara."

"And you." Chouji looked uncomfortable with this, remembering his friend flinching as Ino asked about the word. He wondered how Shikamaru knew stuff like that, and imagined with unease a younger Shikamaru hearing the unfamiliar term as abuse, curiously looking it up. Not for the first time, Chouji felt curious how things really affected the indifferent-seeming genin – did it hurt him, to be given a label with such a dark history?

"Yeah." the so-called jinchuuriki nodded, grim.

Shikamru could see the difference between himself and Gaara, now: he, Shikamaru, was sacrificed to save Konoha from a demon. Gaara was what jinchuuriki had been historically – someone created to kill.

They walked on in silence, both listening to the sound of Ino's forcedly cheerful voice, tuning out the words.

Well, this chapter's full of information. Read carefully... It has lots of extras, too: etymology and derivations for all, sly leetspeak, and conspiracy theories. Aren't you lucky, kiddies? XD patronisation for all.