I don't want to wake up yet.
"Stop crowding her, Ino. She probably can't even breathe with you being that close."
"She doesn't deserve to! Do you have any idea what she put me through?!"
Stupid Pig. You weren't the easiest to get along with either.
"We're the ones who were carrying you around for an hour while you were getting your beauty sleep, brat. Now you just wake up and start yelling at us about gods and demons and some kind of mission?" That's… Mitarashi Anko. She hates me. "Just sit there and rest a minute while I try and remember how to get out of this damn sewer."
"And I'm telling you that it's all real! We were there, we saw the old man! He said we have to stop the Shukaku thing! We have to get to the Hokage right now!" Screaming at them won't make them believe you, Ino-Pig. "At least that psycho believes me."
I'm not a psycho. I'm- "How could I not believe you when that chakra is following you around?"
Kabuto? Kabuto. "Kabuto!"
Sakura bolted straight up so fast her forehead plowed into Shikamaru's. The boy hissed in pain but Sakura ignored the splitting headache she'd given herself. Ino let out a surprised "Sakura?", but the girl was only looking for one thing. And there, sitting tied up in the corner of the small room, was it.
"Ah, Sakura-san. Welcome back to the world of the living," Kabuto greeted.
Sakura threw herself at him. No neat punches or kicks, no artful taijutsu. Just an animal lunge of snarling and curses before anyone could stop her. Her elbow slammed into his face, knocking him over. Sakura landed on top of him and started swinging. He was tied up but Sakura didn't care. He was still grinning at her through the blood and bruises and by god she would kill him!
Ino tried to pry her off. "Sakura! Sakura stop!" All the blond caught for her trouble was an elbow to the stomach. "Help me!" she demanded, probably at Anko.
"Let her have a few more swings. She can't kill him." Ino glared at her and Anko sighed, disgusted. "Fine. Fine. She's going to freak out in a minute anyway."
Sakura screamed as she felt hands lift her up like a child. "Let me go!" she screamed. "I'll kill him! He deserves to die!" She kicked out with her feet, getting a last few hits on the prone teenager, before she was dangling in the air, arms and legs flailing. "Let me go, let me go, let me go!"
Anko scoffed. "Yeah, not doing that right now. When that adrenaline wears off you're going to need the support anyway."
What was this mad woman saying? Sakura felt fine! She felt powerful, invincible even! She felt…! She felt… tired? Sakura felt the shortness of breath before it really dawned on her, but she was heaving. Like she'd gone a full day of running nonstop.
"There it is," Anko muttered. Sakura was let down, but Anko kept a steadying hand on her shoulder because the girl could barely stay upright. She felt like she'd just been through one of Kakashi's nightmare training marathons.
Ino stormed up to her. "What are you doing?! Sit down! Sit!" She pushed and prodded Sakura away from Anko and Kabuto. Sakura didn't realize how tired she was until the back of her legs hit a stone chair and she flopped down into it, heart beating a mile a minute and her chest rising and falling just as fast.
Shikamaru wandered over. He didn't look pleased, holding his nose like that. "Welcome back," he rolled.
Sakura flushed. "Sorry about your nose, Shikamaru," she apologized, only a little bit of a rasp now. Her breathing was starting to get back to normal.
Something was definitely wrong. Sakura looked down at her arms and legs, not seeing any of her old scars, and realized that everything Tobi had told her in the mindscape was probably true. Her body, her old body, was gone. It had been one of those… white monsters.
She stared at her hands. "Whose body is this now?" she wondered.
Hesitantly, Ino said, "We found it down here in this lab, floating in a tube or something. Kabuto… he said he grew it." Ino glanced at the teenager, who was still laying on his back. "I don't know what he meant, though."
Sakura clenched her hands into fists. There was a trickle of blood on her knuckles, but not nearly as much as she would have expected. She had been putting her entire weight into those punches.
Ino moved to stop her when she got out of the chair, but Sakura shook her head. "I want to know," she said, and the blond hesitantly stepped back.
Kabuto hadn't moved. He was laying on the ground, eyes closed, a little smile playing on his unharmed face. His eyes opened when Sakura stood over him, though. "Sakura-san," he greeted.
The urge to stomp his face was there. "Kabuto. What am I?"
"A very interesting ten year old girl."
Self-control failed. Sakura kicked him straight in the stomach, which didn't seem to bother him at all. All that happened was his eyebrow quirked. "Not the answer you wanted, I take it?"
Sakura clutched the blanket she'd been wrapped in. "I meant this body, Kabuto! What is it? Another monster!? I know you were experimenting with those things! What kind of freak did you turn me into this time?!"
"Nothing of the sort," He sighed, looking bored. "I needed a soul to mature a special white zetsu culture, nothing more. It was not personal, Sakura-san. Surprisingly, I grew to admire how you were coping with the situation I put you in, so I started a side project. A scientist is not just someone who is good at taking things apart, but also putting them back together." He suddenly smiled again. "You were an excellent test subject."
Before Sakura could think of trying to find some place on him she could actually harm, Ino's foot came down hard on his neck. He made a strangled noise before his mouth snapped shut. "You bastard!" she yelled, twisting her foot. "All of this is your fault! Suna wouldn't have attacked the village if you'd never have made Sakura into that thing!"
Shikamaru pulled her off. "He can't tell us anything if he can't breath," he told her. The boy did sound regretful, though. He looked down at Kabuto in disgust. "You want us to believe you had a change of conscience? That the body Sakura's in right now is one hundred percent human?"
"A conscience is useless to a scientist," Kabuto growled. "I want to know what the boundaries of the human soul are. What makes us human to begin with. Was your friend still a human, despite being in a completely inhuman body? Was she still human when she was nothing but a soul sealed in a scroll? These are questions that are worth answering!"
He stilled and took a calming breath. That outburst had been the most emotion Sakura had ever seen from him in over a year. "Regardless of my motivations," he started again, sounding like his usual self, "that body is completely human. Not only that, it is a direct clone of Sakura-san's original body as she was when we met. There is nothing added and nothing taken away."
"There's a lot taken away!" Sakura countered. "I feel horrible! I can't even cast a doton! Just trying to hit you makes me tired!"
"Did you think your growth last year was due to your own efforts?" Kabuto asked, a sarcastic expression of shock on his face. "You had an unnatural talent for doton because the body you were in was the earth incarnate. It was a living expression of nature. Your natural self, your human self, is no more talented than a civilian child."
Sakura rocked back on her heels. "You're lying."
Kabuto rolled his eyes. "Ask Mitarashi-san for some benri tree paper then. See what results you get."
Anko looked surprised at being the sudden center of attention and fumbled around with her coat. "I think I have some left…" she muttered, checking pocket after pocket. "I used some with the Yamanaka brat… here it is."
Sakura snatched it out of the woman's hands (ignoring her gruff complaint) and ripped off a piece. "I'll prove it!" she yelled, waving the paper in Kabuto's face. "Just watch!"
The paper twisted in Sakura's hand as she forced what little chakra she had available into it… and then grew slightly damp. It didn't crumble.
"The paper's broken!" Sakura screamed, throwing it down. "I'm earth natured! I can prove it!" She pulled all the chakra she could and tried to use a sealless doton.
Nothing. Her chakra didn't budge.
Frantic, Sakura actually did the seals. Her fingers cramped at being put into positions they'd never been put in before, but she managed to force it. The chakra in her stomach squirmed like she had a belly full of worms and it made her nauseous, but she tried to push through it.
Anko yanked her hands apart, breaking the seal. "We didn't come all this way for you to give yourself an aneurysm!" she snapped.
Sakura whirled on the woman, but the sudden motion made her vision swim and she collapsed to her hands and knees. Bile raced up her throat and what little was in Sakura's stomach splashed against the stone floor.
It's all gone. Everything. Every little piece. All of her suffering, all of her pain, gone like it hadn't existed in the first place. She slammed her first down and only got angrier at the sharp throb of pain she felt.
"I find it incredible you believed your rapid advancements had been natural," Kabuto taunted. "Nothing about that body was natural, from the way it gathered chakra to how much physical punishment it could take. Orochimaru-sama and I were impressed when he partially dissected it in Sunagakure, after you were found in the desert. It could even assimilate human organs to repair its own damage."
Sakura's hand went to her chest out of habit. Of course the Y-shaped scar wasn't there on this body. "Orochimaru knew," Sakura rasped, staggering to her feet. "He knew back then that I wasn't…"
"Human? Of course. He thought it was an interesting experiment so he allowed me to continue. With Suna's supervision, of course." Kabuto's glasses seemed to flash in the darkness and she saw the smile spread over his face. "They had to know what he was offering them."
All the strength and anger evaporated off Sakura. She didn't feel the shock of what Kabuto had just said, just implied, in a real way, even as Anko's foot plowed into Kabuto's head. "You son of a bitch," she hissed, looming over him. "You're saying that Orochimaru is doublecrossing us? That he was seriously working with Suna this entire time? The entire song and dance he fed the Hokage about telling Suna that this brat was the Kyuubi container was a lie from the start?!" she demanded, either forgetting or not caring that she was breaking a village taboo right in front of Ino and Shikamaru.
Kabuto spat out a tooth. His expression wasn't one of anger though, and he wasn't looking at Anko. He was still staring straight at Sakura. "Not at all. I'm saying that the Hokage and Shimura Danzo fed all of you a 'song and dance' about how much they knew of my experiments. Or did you believe that your life mattered to anyone in this village?"
Several things happened at that moment.
Shikamaru had to block Ino from getting a kick of her own in, but the black gudodama shot out of her fingers, zipping toward the boy's head. Kabuto looked terrified of it and the rope holding him was rapidly coming undone.
Anko cursed and jumped at him, her sleeves bulging with something just under the fabric. Yellow eyes peered out from her coat sleeves.
All of this was secondary to Sakura, though. Her mind, now operating without her direct input, had decided something - that Kabuto needed to stop. Talking, breathing, living - all of it.
It needed to be over. He needed to be over.
She raised her hand.
Everything seemed to stand still. Anko, hanging in mid-air, struggled to turn her head. Ino and Shikamaru, still locked in a wrestling match, slowly floated off the ground.
Kabuto, crouched on the floor, hands and feet glowing with chakra, grinned rapturously. "That's it," he urged. "Let go. Let me see what gift the god of all ninjutsu gave you! Let me-!"
Sakura pushed.
Anko was tossed to the side, her back cracking against the far wall, as something pulsed out of Sakura. The stone floor cracked and shuddered, a spray of rocks kicking up in the bow wave of the invisible something racing toward Kabuto at a breakneck speed. It slammed into him and his chakra did nothing to hold him steady. A terrible snap came from both his arms as the ground under his feet was ripped up at a slightly different speed than his body.
In the very blink of an eye he was pressed up against the distant wall, slamming into it with enough force to deform the wall around him, pressing his body into a concave depression a bit wider than he was tall.
Sakura let out a gurgle. She collapsed on the spot. Ino and Shikamaru crashed to the floor. They quickly covered their heads as bits of the ceiling started to collapse above them.
"Doton! Rapid Pillar!" Stalks of stone popped out of the ground around the two genin, shooting up to the ceiling. Across the room Anko staggered to her feet, forming a snake seal. "Made it," she hissed, spitting out a glob of blood as she did so.
Ino crawled over to Sakura. The girl was out cold, breath coming out in ragged huffs. "Anko, she's-"
"She's just out of damn chakra," Anko snapped, not looking at either of them. Ino followed her eyes.
Across the room Yakushi Kabuto was somehow already up. His arms were hanging limply at his side, snapped at strange and terrifying angles, but he was still on his feet. His glasses were gone and Ino could see where their glass had cut into his face as they'd shattered in… whatever it was that Sakura had done.
But he was smiling. No, not just smiling. Grinning. He was giddy.
And he wasn't just looking at Sakura. Ino had his attention and it was terrifying. "Two parts of one god," he murmured, not looking straight at her, but rather the gudodama floating over her head.
Then he promptly collapsed to his knees and fell flat on his face.
LOYALTY CHAPTER 40: ACT 5
"Papa!"
Better words Inochi had never heard. He didn't even notice the ANBU at the door give him the all clear - he knew his daughter more than some Suna genjutsu. Ino leapt into his arms and he twirled her around, shocked but relieved at the sudden, unannounced reunion.
An ugly voice had told him he'd never see his daughter again when one of Anko's shadow clones had let them in on where she was taking Ino and Shikamaru a night ago, before they'd evacuated the hospital. Shikaku had been the one to convince him not to go straight down into the Yamato Works after them, reasoning that they would be safer down there with Anko than moving with the rest of the hospital group. Inoichi had hated the idea, even though it made a warped kind of sense. The implication that he couldn't protect his own daughter was… well.
He let his daughter go after she started squirming, but still wrapped an arm tight around her shoulder. Shikamaru was an arm's length away and Inoichi ruffled his hair for good measure. "Shikaku is with the Hokage right now," he told him. "Who's that with Anko?" The woman was furiously arguing with the ANBU at the door, gesturing over her shoulder to the unconscious teen there. He was bleeding all over the floor.
It was Ino who replied. "Kabuto." Inoichi paused. Not just because he knew the name, but because of the venom in his daughter's voice. It was different from the usual annoyance she saved for someone like Sakura; he heard real hatred, and a bit of fear, in it.
If he touched a hair on her head… "Yakushi Kabuto? He's supposed to be dead."
"Yeah, well, he's not," Ino snapped. She was still furiously glaring at the teen.
"Does it have anything to do with Sakura not walking herself in here?" he asked. Ino had been carrying the girl on her back but had dumped her like a sack of potatoes when she'd spotted her father. One of the chunin, a medic by the band on his sleeve, was looking her over.
Ino rolled her eyes. "No. Well… yes, kind of. Sakura did that to him then passed out."
That answer shocked Inoichi. He knew that Sakura was technically a chunin, but he'd thought it was more of a ceremonial promotion. The state that teen was in was… extreme. "Isn't Kabuto an Oto-nin? Why would she-"
"He isn't an Oto-nin!" Ino declared. "He… he did some really messed up things to her…"
Inoichi waited for Ino to continue, but his daughter just clenched his arm harder. Shikamaru was the one who stepped up.
"That's not Sakura's original body," he said. "How much do you know about Orochimaru's experiments?"
"I think I should be asking you that," Inoichi countered, growing worried. "What do you mean, 'that's not her original body'? Possession? A kage bunshin?"
Shikamaru seemed to be at a loss for an explanation, which only worried Inoichi more. Shikaku's son wasn't a fool. If he was at a loss to explain something then it had to be a real issue and he needed an expert.
Regretfully, he pulled away from his daughter so he could get at the little radio mounted on his belt. It hissed to life in his earpiece. He shot his daughter an apologetic look as he turned away and murmured into his collar-mounted microphone, "Tenzo, are you on the radio?"
A beat. Then, "Yes."
"We have a situation at the lobby. I think… Mitarashi found something in the Yamato Works. Something to do with Orochimaru's old experiments. Shikaku's son just asked me if I knew anything about cloning."
Inoichi knew that would get a response, but he didn't expect it so swiftly. In the span of a heartbeat the number of ANBU in the lobby doubled and the ones at the door, interrogating Anko, fell back and let her through.
And the man himself was there as well. Inoichi was a jounin, one of the most experienced in the village, but even he hadn't noticed the man's shunshin. As always, the special forces were impressive.
"Your daughter's mission was a success then," he said, cat mask angled down at Ino. "I see that you recovered Haruno and our escapee."
Anko dumped the boy at Tenzo's feet. "Escapee?!" she growled. "The Hokage and Danzo implied he was dead!"
"At the time no one was cleared to know of his capture and detainment. His insight into Orochimaru's research is invaluable to the village. But now…" he poked the teen with his foot. Kabuto didn't move. His chest was barely moving. "Well, he's not dead. That's a start." At a motion of his hand two ANBU walked over and picked the battered, bleeding teenager up.
Inoichi saw the subtle ANBU signal language being used, but like any of the regular forces he couldn't decode it. They disappeared with Kabuto in the blink of an eye.
Tenzo's hands slipped back into his robes. "You mentioned cloning. I assume that is how Haruno Sakura obtained her current body?"
Ino stomped forward. "You knew! You knew that Sakura wasn't Sakura!"
"We had an idea," Tenzo readily admitted.
"Why weren't the clan heads informed of this at the Jounin meeting?" Inoichi demanded, stepping in front of his daughter, stopping her from doing something foolish. "Or at least Interrogation? A body possession falls within my authority, Tenzo."
The ANBU angled away. "Ask the current commander of the ANBU," he said. It wouldn't be obvious to any of the children, but Inoichi heard the frustration in Tenzo's voice. "That information was decided to be speculation and not worth passing along."
"On Danzo's orders."
Tenzo said nothing to that, which was enough confirmation for Inoichi. It aggravated the Yamanaka clan head, but there was little he could do now, in the middle of an invasion. "Okay, putting that aside for a moment, Shikamaru - explain to Tenzo what you said to me earlier. Why did you ask about Orochimaru's experiments?"
"Because Suna knew about his labs in the Yamato Works," Anko interrupted. She was still furious about Kabuto, but Inoichi saw that she was actually trying to be professional. Frankly, it was the strangest thing he'd seen so far today. "Whatever her body was, it's now with Suna. Kabuto took her soul and put it into some kind of sealing scroll. Ino managed to put it into a new body Kabuto said he grew."
"And I think Kabuto was telling the truth when he said it was her normal body," Shikamaru continued. "She looks exactly like she did at the academy. All her scars are gone, her chakra nature changed, and she's a lot weaker than she was."
Ino made a disgusted noise and pushed her head back under Inoichi's arm. "Except for that crazy new jutsu of hers," she growled.
"A new jutsu? Then this is likely another experimental body," Tenzo said, voice tight. Inoichi imagined that all this was bringing up bad memories for him. "We have to take her into custody, for the safety of the village. If the last body was so important to Suna we cannot let them have another."
"No!" Ino snapped. "That jutsu's not because of her body!"
Inoichi gave her shoulder a squeeze. "It's not a real detainment. We're just going to keep her away from Suna until we can figure out what Kabuto did to her."
Ino opened her mouth to yell again, but all that came out was a clipped grunt. She looked at Shikamaru and Anko for help. Shikaku's kid looked back at her the way his father occasionally did when he wanted either Choza or him to come up with their own answer and Mitarashi shrugged.
"You'll have to tell them at some point," she said. "And don't look at me like that. Those eyes don't work on me. I still don't even believe some of it."
"Anko, what-"
"Dad. I… you need to see something."
Inoichi didn't like that. Whenever his daughter said something like that it usually meant a few thousand ryo in Academy damages or compensation payments to another parent. Ino slipped out of grip and took a few steps back from the group. "I don't like doing this in front of so many people," she muttered, looking around at the ANBU and chunin on guard. "But whatever."
She held out her hand. Her face was a mask of concentration as she focused on her palm. Inoichi didn't know what was supposed to be happening and he looked to Anko, but the woman was intently watching as well.
Then Inoichi saw it. Something was bubbling up from Ino's skin… no. That wasn't right. Something was just… rising through her skin. A perfect sphere, black as ink and as big as his fist, hovered a few inches up from his daughter's skin. Inoichi couldn't tell if it was rotating or anything because it didn't reflect any light.
"What on earth is that?" Inoichi asked, reaching out for it.
Anko's hand grabbed him by the wrist. She was deathly serious when she said, "Don't touch it. She can't control it yet."
Inoichi pulled his hand back. "Can't control what? What is it? A jutsu? Did you teach it to her?" He didn't mean to sound as alarmed as he did, but Anko didn't even seem to take offense like she normally would.
Tenzo stepped forward with a kunai. Inoichi immediately tensed, but the ANBU was very deliberately holding the thing by the very tip of its handle. Slowly he reached his hand out and poked the ball.
The kunai slid in without any resistance at all. Is it a genjutsu? Inoichi thought. Mentally he checked his chakra flow and found nothing out of the ordinary. A skilled user could fool even his mental checks, but surely not his genin daughter. Even Anko probably couldn't put one over on him, so what-
Tenzo pulled the kunai back. Half the blade was gone. Not cut or ground off, either. That black ball had just eaten all the length Tenzo had stuck into it.
"It'll do that with anything. Rocks, kunai, water - I've tried everything I could down in the lab while we were tying Kabuto back up," Ino said. She sounded equal parts giddy and proud. "Watch!"
She swung her arm around, making Shikamaru jump out of the way. Inoichi saw real fear on the boy's face. Ino pressed her hand into the stone floor and when she pulled it back up there was a clean hole the exact size of the ball.
"The old man called it a gudodama," Ino proudly said. She let her hand drop and the ball zipped around to her back, where it hovered a few inches back from her skull. "It's mine. He gave it to me! Isn't it great, papa?"
"I…" What could he say to that? In all of Inoichi's years, he had never seen anything like that. The only thing that came close was the old Tsuchikage's jinton and even that required seals and more chakra than Ino had in her entire body. "Who taught you this, Ino?"
His daughter's smile became sheepish. "You promise to believe me?" Inoichi nodded. Ino licked her lips then murmured, with all sincerity, "God."
"This is serious," Tenzo said.
"I'm being serious! God taught me how to do it! Or he gave it to me… he wasn't really clear about that part."
The ANBU shook his head angrily and turned to Anko. "Mitarashi. Report."
The woman held up her hands in surrender. "Hey, I thought she was crazy too. But you tell me if that thing obeys the laws of ninjutsu." She even waited a beat to see if either Tenzo or Inoichi would. Neither did. "See? You're mentally where I was an hour ago. Listen to her story. Either she's the best liar in the village or something really did talk to her while she was stuck in a mindscape with Haruno."
"A mindscape?" That, at least, made some sense. "You went into someone else's mindscape, Ino?"
"It was an emergency, papa," Ino whined. She knew exactly why he was mad. "And it was just Sakura. I know Sakura."
Inoichi rubbed his forehead, trying to stave off the stress headache he knew would hit him very soon. "It doesn't matter how much you think you know someone, Ino. You know what I specifically told you about going into mindscapes you didn't create!"
Ino pursed her lips, but she didn't offer the swift apology Inoichi expected from her. Instead, she crossed her arms and turned her head away, not engaging him at all, which shocked Inoichi more than anything. Ino never just ignored him.
Between this new attitude and that jutsu he barely recognized his daughter.
Anko waded back into the conversation before Inoichi could think about what to do. "We're wasting time. The Hokage is the only one who can make sense of any of this shit, so we need to take the brats to him."
"Both of them?" Tenzo asked. "Are you saying that Haruno Sakura has one of these gudodama?"
Mitarashi went quiet. "She has something else," Shikamaru said. Tenzo's attention slid over to him, but he didn't look any more comfortable than Anko. "It's… she has some kind of repulsion power. She pushed Kabuto into a wall without touching him and then almost collapsed a room on the rest of us."
Pushed him into a wall? He was almost dead. Inoichi wanted to reach out to Ino and pull her back over to him, but that ball… Could it go through flesh like it could matter? Ino didn't seem to be controlling it, or even paying attention to it. She'd nearly hit Shikamaru earlier…
Inoichi realized with a start that he was afraid. Afraid of his daughter.
"We have to see the Hokage," he blurted. Everyone turned to him because he realized he'd interrupted Tenzo's questions, but Inoichi felt sure now. "We have to see him. He either knows, or has seen, every jutsu known to the village. If anyone can recognize what happened to the girls it's him."
Tenzo mumbled something. It took Inoichi a moment to realize he was talking into his mask's internal microphone; the ANBU were usually much more circumspect about how much they gave away. He's rattled. Of course, he should be given his personal experience with Orochimaru and his cloning experiments, but it was a shock to hear from the ever-professional ANBU who was said to be the second coming of Kakashi.
Suddenly Tenzo's attention shifted back fully to the group in the lobby. "They can meet with us now. Mitarashi, grab Haruno. You're in charge of keeping her restrained."
Ino watched Anko as she went to gather Sakura. "She's not going to hurt anyone," she said. "I know she won't."
"It's just a precaution," Inoichi told her. He (carefully) put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
She stepped away and instead jogged to catch up to Anko.
"Something happened to her in that mindscape thing." Shikamaru had stepped up to him and he was watching Ino. At that moment he looked very much like his father sizing up a new puzzle.
"There's a reason we don't go into mindscapes that we don't control or create. We can get trapped if the subject dies, or attacked by mental defenses." Inoichi sighed. That was one of the first things any Yamanaka was taught when they started learning their clan jutsu. "You were there for her, though. I appreciate it, Shikamaru."
The boy shoved his hands into his pockets. Ino and Anko were walking back over. "She didn't need me," he said, not masking his hurt nearly as well as he thought he was.
I know the feeling, Inoichi thought as Ino, Anko, and the unconscious Sakura completely passed him by on their way to the big staircase leading up. Tenzo fell in with them and the Interrogation's head didn't miss most of the ANBU that had come with him shunshin on ahead. Not taking any chances, that one.
"Papa!" Ino called out. She was waving at him from across the room. "Hurry up!"
And then she was gone up the stairs. Shikamaru was trailing after her.
Oh yeah, he thought, moving to catch up, I know exactly how you feel, kid.
AN: This was part of the last chapter that got I felt didn't need to be tacked on there. It makes more sense as it's own chapter, fully setting up the setting and major characters of Arc 5, the last arc, of loyalty. We're really rolling now, folks! I did this whole thing in about three days!
