Epilogue: Life of a Ninja
Ino and Naruto walked under the fading light toward Sakura's house. The sunset was nice, Ino guessed, but she wasn't feeling all that nice.
A profound sense of exhaustion had fallen over Ino. She didn't know what to say or do now that she knew all this. How could she talk to Sakura? Or Sasuke, for that matter. How did you even deal with a thing like this?
Orochimaru's advice had seemed good, but... but there was something Ino needed to talk to Naruto about.
"Naruto, we need to talk about Orochimaru?" said Ino suddenly. She knew one thing she had to get out of the way right now. It had been growing on her mind all this time.
"What is it?" asked Naruto.
"I..." Ino thought about how to say this. "I think he's grooming you."
Naruto paused. "What, like a horse?"
"No, not like that I..." Ino tried to think about how best to say it. "Naruto, haven't you noticed that he keeps taking you aside and revealing secrets to you. Secrets that he shouldn't tell you, but which conveniently can't hurt him."
"Yeah, because he trusts us," said Naruto.
"No, he doesn't," said Ino. "Orochimaru has no good reason to trust us, not yet. We're green recruits. It's not about him trusting us, Naruto. It's about you trusting him."
"But he's Hokage, we're supposed to trust him?" said Naruto.
"Yes, but..." Ino tried to find the words. It was a lot more difficult than it should have been. "Orochimaru is trying to get into your head. He's manipulating you, Naruto. Trying to get you to be completely on his side."
"Well, why me?" asked Naruto.
"You are the Nine-tailed Fox," said Neji with a shrug. "It would be logical for him to want you as a loyal subordinate."
"I am not the-," began Naruto. "How did you even know about that?"
"He mentioned it in the conversation, and I put two and two together," said Neji.
"Well, what's wrong with being loyal to the Hokage, Ino?" asked Naruto. "We're supposed to be loyal to the Hokage. He's the pillar the Leaf stands on."
"I know, Naruto, but..." Ino halted and realized her training was in agreement. But the office and Hokage and Orochimaru seemed somehow separate to her. "I just want you to know that Orochimaru might be manipulating you. He might not care about you as much as he pretends to."
"You don't have any right saying that Ino," said Naruto, voice guarded. "He's never been anything but nice to me."
"After you graduated the academy?" asked Ino. "If he was so fond of his rival's son, why not get in contact before that?"
"Why didn't you get in contact before that?" asked Neji flatly.
Ino hesitated and realized the question was a good one. "Because I...
"Because I was kind of a jerk, okay. I just thought of you as an annoying kid in our class. But Orochimaru knew everything about you, he'd have to. I'm not saying you can't be grateful for him, but just...
"Just keep thinking for yourself, okay."
"Fine, whatever," said Naruto. "Let's go see Sasuke and Sakura now; I'm sure Hinata is getting sick of waiting around."
"Do as you like, I find this conspiracy of little further interest to me," said Neji. With those words, he broke off and walked down the street.
Ino stared. "You just forced yourself into a leadership position, and now you're walking off?"
"Yes," said Neji. "The mission is complete. I have spars among the Main Branch to observe." And he walked off.
"I cannot read that guy," said Ino after a moment.
"I'll bet he's pretending he doesn't care so he can feel cool or something," said Naruto. "Sasuke does it all the time."
"Let's just go," said Ino. "I don't know why he even invited himself into this anyway."
Neji knew a lot more than he did before.
Except he hadn't really seemed to care all that much. World-shattering stuff like this should be screwing with his head. But he'd just been standing by with that same indifferent expression on his face. And now he was just walking off without going to see if Sakura was okay.
Had he just thought the information might be useful? Or maybe Neji was just really antisocial and didn't know how to act around people. Ino decided to go with Naruto's interpretation until proven otherwise.
Together, she and Naruto found Hinata observing the house while pretending to read a book. Her Byakugan was actually peering through the pages at the house beyond. As soon as they arrived, though, Hinata stood right up and ran to Naruto. "Oh, Naruto, you're here."
"Hey Hinata, we uh, found out what we were looking for," said Naruto.
"Oh good, then you found out what the truth was?" asked Hinata.
Naruto opened his mouth before Ino shot him a look, and he nodded "...We're not allowed to talk about it.
"If you want the truth, you'll have to go to Lord Orochimaru himself."
Hinata paled a little. "That bad?"
"We can't talk about it," said Ino.
"Oh, right," said Hinata, pressing fingers together. "Well, where's Neji?"
"He walked off as soon as we left," said Naruto.
"Well, in any case, no one has tried to get into Sakura's house at all since Sasuke entered," said Hinata.
Oh damn, Sasuke had spent hours with Sakura. "They um... how are they getting along?"
"Well, Sasuke introduced himself as you said," said Hinata. "Sakura welcomed him in, and they sort of just... sat there. They didn't talk or anything from what I could see. Sakura seemed pretty disappointed."
Well, that was one good thing, at least.
No, no, Ino had to be thinking of Sakura here. "Well, let's see how they are doing?"
Ino knocked on the door and waited. A moment passed, and the door opened, and Sakura opened the door and looked out. "Ino, Naruto, you're here."
"Yeah, hey Sakura," said Naruto. "Is Sasuke here?"
"Yes, um... we've been speaking together," said Sakura, trying to look happy. "Sort of, I guess."
"Is something wrong, Sakura?" asked Ino.
"It's nothing, I just..." began Sakura, voice choking. "Thank you."
And then she ran away crying.
Ino and Naruto went into the main living room and saw Sasuke sitting by a table with arms crossed. He looked annoyed, very annoyed indeed, and Ino got the feeling he thought of all this as an unwanted chore.
Hadn't he even cared about Sakura's feelings?
"Sasuke, did everything goes well?" asked Ino.
"I've been waiting here for two hours, Ino," said Sasuke. "Where have you been?"
"Sorry if I was a nuisance, Sasuke," said Sakura, coming through the door. "I um..."
"Did you find out what we were looking for?" asked Sakura.
"Well, you're not gonna like it," said Naruto. "We're sort of sworn to secrecy on it."
"So, I came all the way out here for nothing, then?" asked Sasuke.
"No, not at all," said Ino. "I mean, we found out stuff that could be uh... really helpful to us, and the village. And um, Sakura is safe, we know.
"You could probably ask the Hokage if you wanted. He took us down into this basement and, um... told us the truth. Look, we're not allowed to talk about it; we were sworn to it."
"Great, so all this was a waste of time," said Sasuke, standing up and walking out. "Whatever. I'm going home."
"Right, goodbye, Sasuke," said Ino.
The door shut.
Ino turned to Sakura, who wasn't crying anymore. "Sakura, are um... you alright?"
"I don't know how to do anything," said Sakura. "I... I can't cook anything, I can't do any real jutsu I can't-"
And then Ino hugged her. Her words wouldn't help at all, so action would have to do. She held her friend, her oldest friend, and let her sob into her shoulder. "Sakura, listen, we all have our issues. But you can still be all those things. If you want to impress Sasuke, you... you have to stand out.
"You're back at the academy, right?"
"Yes," said Sakura.
"Well, maybe you could think of this as an opportunity," said Ino, breaking the hold. She had to say something to motivate her. "You can fix all your weak points and get a lot stronger before you start doing missions.
"Put Sasuke out of your mind for a bit and focus on becoming a powerful ninja. Once you do that, maybe he'll notice you." Why was Ino telling her to keep chasing Sasuke? After he'd just walked out like that...
It was Shisui Uchiha's fault. Not Sasuke's, he'd probably never even known about it.
"But forget about him?" asked Sakura. "That... that doesn't seem right?"
Sasuke had just completely shunned her, and she was still obsessed with him?
"Sasuke is your reason for living, right?" asked Naruto, suddenly.
Sakura halted. "Yes."
"But if you want to achieve that, you need something else to your life," said Naruto. "Maybe if you focus enough on other things, you'll get stronger. And then Sasuke will have no choice but to acknowledge you."
Sakura nodded. "Right, thank you, Naruto.
"I'll... I'll see what I can do. Can I... can I be left alone now?"
Ino and Naruto respected her and walked back together. As they left, they found Kakashi-sensei waiting for them on a telephone poll. He descended to land in front of them, thoughtfully. "So, I thought I might find you here.
"Did your meeting go well, with Lord Orochimaru?"
"Yeah, I guess," said Ino. Well, sure, pleasantly, not so much.
"I guess he told you some things you didn't want to hear," said Kakashi-sensei.
"He gave us a chance to walk out first," said Ino.
"But you heard it anyway," said Kakashi-sensei. "Do you regret learning it?"
Ino wasn't sure what to say. But Naruto was at once.
"No way, Kakashi-sensei," said Naruto. "Now that I know there's a problem, I can do something about it."
Kakashi-sensei ruffled his hair. "Well, that's a surprisingly productive viewpoint coming from you, Naruto. Even so, I've got some feedback for all of you." He drew out two scrolls and handed one to each of them. "I figure you could use some information on how badly you screwed this conspiracy up. Where's Sasuke?"
"Oh, he went off on his own," said Ino.
"Well, I'll get to him later, I guess," said Kakashi-sensei. "Still, we'll have more missions tomorrow. We've got to keep busy, after all. Even so, I think Team 7 should make it in the life of a ninja."
Ino smiled despite herself. "Thanks."
The next day would bring more missions and more work. Team Seven would do more D and C ranks, growing in trust and strength. Sakura, Shikamaru, and Choji would keep on working to graduate a second time.
And life went on.
Author's Note:
Okay, so I've decided to end the story here for several reasons.
First, I have more or less done all the things I wanted to do with this fic. All of the specific moments and ideas I wanted to convey have been conveyed. Second, the story arc is more or less complete. And third, I want to put complete on this thing so I can contemplate my next moves.
Hopefully, I'll be posting a sequel at some point once I've finished more of my fanfics. For now, I hope you've all enjoyed this fanfic. And if you didn't, well, thanks for reading this far.