Ch6... of Ino-cense
Ino takes a slow inhale and stares at the mirror in front of her. It's cracked on one side, with smears of make-up.
"Do you have everything you need in your kit, love?" the matron to her left asks.
She glances down at her bag- foundation, curlers, false lashes, body glitter. Ino gifts the matron a relaxed smile,
"Think so, mama. Thank you for allowing me into your home, I really appreciate it."
The matron is somewhat appeased, and folds her arms. "Fresh talent always helps us, and nice ones are good backstage! We run similar to Yui-chan's, but Saffron will have you to save should things go awry."
Saffron turns out to be a woman with Kumo dark skin and a rear that Tenten would gut people for. She's displayed her best asset prominently with a corset cinched tight and high on her hips.
"Whatsya theme?" She asks, with a rough voice from smoking too much.
"Shimmer," Ino grunts, carefully applying false lashes and braiding her hair back.
Ino is in an exotic dancing club in the Land of Rice. She faked a sob story to get here. She obtained a letter of recommendation from 'Yui-san' (a matron of a brothel who is in Konoha's pocket), saying she is a dancer who had an accident and needed a break from the club.
She's here to swim in the sea for a little while and find the target they know as Miyaji. He could be called Tsubaki Moramito, or any other name.
This is her first night. She doesn't want to be the star of the show. She wants to be a little rusty, a less than kilowatt smile. Ino deliberately makes a mistake on the mascara and has to swipe away panda eyes, to give herself bags.
Saffron nods.
"Aight," she says, "take it away girl. Cinnamon is gonna be on centre stage. So you gonna have to circle the booths if you want tips."
Which is exactly what Ino hopes to do.
The club music is loud and pounding and sweaty. She has to twist and weave her way through people at the bar, ferrying free shots on a platter.
Each table she passes, each drunken slob, she gives a tired fake wink and asks if they want a shot. If they say yes and light up, she has to tease them out of their money. You get the free shot and wink, but anything more comes with a price.
Of course, Ino is actually a kunoichi and she has a mission budget for this thing. She doesn't work too hard for the money. She just has to go through the motions to avoid suspicious behaviour.
Saffron gives her a nod when she gets asked for by a booth. In the ninja movies that Konoha civilians gorge themselves on, if you're asked for a booth it's always THE guy- be it the enemy or love interest. But movies lie for drama. Ino gets asked for a booth to entertain or dances several times a night. That's true of all the girls, even the tired and unpretty ones.
Which is why when, at 12:30am, Saffron gives her a nod and holds up four fingers, Ino sighs and gives her current companions a charming smile, extracting herself from their groping hands.
"Private booth, one guy," Saffron mutters as they pass. "Not a regular. Security'll be watching from the curtains if shit goes nasty."
"Thanks gal," Ino smiles, because that probably means someone wants sex rather than just flirtatious hosting or dancing.
Her outfit is, to be fair, shimmering sparkles, cinched tight across shoulders and thighs. She had great fun picking it out- she found such irony in it. Where most dancers chose outfits designed to show off their best assets, Ino chose it for the fact it hid most of her lean tone and kunoichi build, made her look less slick and flexible than she was. It gave her some heaviness in the upper arms. It shortened her legs. All without revealing it was doing anything other than 'I'm trying to be sexy'.
She slides into booth number four and purrs a hello.
The man sat there is a blond, with rough stubble and a rugged jawline. He has eyes a shade darker than her normal hue (she is wearing contacts tonight, duh), and a shirt unbuttoned a few.
He grins at her tipsily, smoothing his palms along his thighs.
"So, my friends put me up to this," he says in a wavering tenor, "I have no fucking clue what I'm doing, ha, if it's ok to ask you where the lines are and stuff."
"Of course you can, handsome. Are you looking for a dance or...?" She leans forward, shimmers catching low light. "We can shut the curtains if you like."
"What other options does this place do?" Ino meets the man's eyes. He sounds like he's about to try and start a gentle questioning, but she's not sure.
"How much money do your friends have laid down?" she laughs, watching his eyes follow her throat and legs.
"A lot", he parries, muzzily swallowing some sake, "what are your... rates?"
Ino is getting questioned, isn't she.
She moves closer, trailing fingers down his shirt, lids lowered.
Henge. fuck, Shinobi!
Ino has to keep acting like she doesn't know or she's going to blow her cover. So she sashays into the circle of his drunken arms, feeling the chakra hum against her in a cloak.
"I'll dance for you, handsome," she purrs, letting his hands roam over shoulders and her ribcage.
She moves in a roll and sway across his lap. "Wh-where did you learn to move like that?" he groans.
"Haven't seen your face here before," she replies, "is this a lad's night out?"
His chakra doesn't stutter much. She'll give him that. He also smells of nothing but alcohol. For a shinobi disguise, that's pretty good. She's used to a hint of ozone or earth or blood, just lurking beneath the surface.
But it does stutter, just a little, so Ino bats her fake eyelashes and buys whatever bullshit spills from his lips.
"So have you worked here a while?"
"m just on loan from another club. Can't steal Cinnamon's show!"
"Is she like the one in charge?"
God, is she this obvious? fucking hope not. It's actually painful, how he's trying any avenues to get her to start talking longer, while she grinds against him.
Finally, Ino's patience for the game snaps. She pivots in his grasp and strokes down his jawline, along his throat, other hand teasing the shimmers on her outfit. It looks suggestive.
"Do you want me to dance, or are you trying to pay me to talk?" she laughs. And the most damning thing this shinobi could do, the most mediocre act of tradecraft, makes her want to screech- he doesn't even hide his indecision for a split second.
"Dance away," he rolls his hands like waves, falling back into his drunk persona.
Ino sees Rice farmers and nearby shinobi in the club. Genuine ones on their time off. They aren't broadcasting SHINOBI to the world, but they aren't point blank hiding it. If they want to talk, they say they want to talk. If they want a dance as cover, they're laidback and don't ask dumb questions like this. Plenty of the men in this establishment are there for the business more than the girls.
She reckons this shinobi isn't Rice. Probably from Suna or the Land of Rivers. If she reveals herself to them, she can't predict how they'll react, and they may completely hinder her goals. She doesn't know if he's a sensor, so she can't use her usual mind-brushing tricks.
So the dance goes, and she picks up 'his friends money'. She reflects with a smile- at least this way around she is probably draining another village's mission budget and pocketing more for Konoha.
It's 5am. The dancing girls are counting up money, then handing it over to the matron.
"Good night?" Cinnamon asks, grabbing a pair of flat shoes with a sigh of relief. They're all tired, bone tired, always.
Saffron nods, watching Ino.
"Good earner," she grunts, "hope she don't stay long."
"My knees kill," Cinnamon cracks the joints in her wrists and ripples her spine. Her breasts still shine with the oil someone put on her at 3am. Rice is a tough place for a single mother, but the matron of this club has friends all over the land. They get you by offering a way out, being nice. They'll give you a job and watch your kid for you, put a roof over your head, anything or something to get you just off the street but not enough to leave.
Saffron settles her ass against the cold sticky bar, stuffing tonight's cut into a pouch. She wonders if this new girl switched clubs to get away from a problem customer, or an accident, or something. But really, Saffron just wants to sleep. That's more important than any bitching.
Ino thanks the matron once again for her kindness in allowing her to come work at the club. She bows clumsily and heads away to the inn that didn't pay attention to her.
Outside, she breathes in the early morning stillness. She shakes out stiffness in her limbs. The dawn will break in less than an hour and her senses are still twinging, alert from the stagelights and heady music of the club.
The Yamanaka heiress is reminded of Hatake then.
His mask shadowing his face, leaned next to her.
"The first days of any recce," he had said, "you'll be wired. It's after a week or so where it starts to show- the wheat cut from the chafe. You'll be bored, start to get comfortable, overblown from anxiety, whatever. After a week, most shinobi slip."
"But how do I be better than that?" Ino had asked, wide-eyed and terrified.
"You got me until you got yourself", he'd hummed, shifting to find Icha Icha.
Ino smiles, the memory a pleasant distraction. She's been lucky and had many people to learn from, Asuma to be her sensei and believe in her, T&I and their networks to train her, Sakura to compete with, Shikamaru and Choji to complement her, her clan to support her.
Hatake holds the unique title of being the person to break her.
She hops into the rented room, scans for traps, and flops on the bed.
Hatake and she met most often in rooms like this one. Now she stops to think about it, it was a morally grey decision. But ninja are morally grey, and Ino has never sat well with Naruto's preaching about scruples. Ends justify the means for her.
She sighs, shifting on the mattress, absently winding blonde locks of hair around her fingers.
***CN: Really dodgy content here, read at your peril. If you want to skip, Tune back in at the next set of asterisks.***
Ino was 14, a newly promoted Chunin. Asuma had just put her through four weeks of apprenticeship with Anko. At that point, it was bog-standard interrogation and torture. In the afternoons, her father would come by the offices and give her Yamanaka tips.
She doesn't know when, but she remembers a conversation, standing a few feet away, watching the grown-ups discuss. She remembers Asuma's entreating tone of voice, Hatake eyeing her up and down. She wasn't paying attention then, but she reckons that's when Asuma proposed it.
Then, she knew Hatake only as Sakura's beloved 'Kakashi-sensei'. Anko had started to include diagrams and technicalities that moved to using arousal, and though Ino was perfectly okay with this new form of manipulation, if she was going to progress any further there was still the quiet elephant in the room that she had no personal experience.
Asuma had sat her down and said, "I've found you a practice partner."
Ino had froze. (She was still a brat back then.)
"I'll come with you, think of it like a training mission."
She had folded her arms and protested, because it felt like it wasn't fucking fair (Ino was just learning the power of swear words at this point) and she found castrating someone kind of icky and why weren't any of the other Konoha Twelve girls getting this training and why couldn't she be a medic like Sakura and-
"Because Konoha needs more than just medics, Ino-chan, and I believe you can do what needs to be done in ways that no-one else can."
Asuma had let her blow off her steam and then appealed to her sense of higher purpose. Ino knew she was being manipulated and molded but goddamn he was right. She was good with the T&I team. It didn't stop her feeling upset, feeling like her life was switching to a different path instead of staying in the light and happy with everyone else in her Genin cohort. (Now, Ino laughs. She has torn the same sentiment of 'it's not fair, you're putting me apart from them' at some point from every single head in the Konoha Twelve.)
That training mission had led to an inn in a Fire nation village, with a nice tea-lady. She had smiled obliviously and handed them a room-key. Asuma and Ino went in the room, dropped their bags, and then Asuma had knocked on the next door.
Hatake had been kind to her. Not gentle in bed, but kind to her. He kept his mask on the whole time. Afterwards he took a long shower.
She had called on him to practice several more times, in sterile isolated conditions. Asuma was discreetly encouraging. Ino's body needed to become used to certain things. And, as an adult, Ino is pragmatically thankful that Asuma didn't try to take on that task himself, or do something horrendous like suggest Shikamaru or Choji.
Her sensei found someone able to perform the duties required. The same person who was also professional enough to wrestle with the guilt and shame of the arrangement in secrecy, and never breathe a word compromising Ino. Hatake knew sacrifice like the back of his hand.
Now, Ino looks back on it, and sees a young man, 28 years old, with demons biting at his heels every step. What was one more sin to add to the tally? All he asked of her was to leave his thoughts alone. 'Kakashi-sensei' was a stranger to her. Hatake was not.
More bluntly put: as a fresh 14 year old, sore from being fucked into a mattress relentlessly by Sakura's sensei, Ino found it... awkward to hang out with Sakura. She quickly learned to compartmentalise her rival's sensei and her training partner as two different people.
Ino curls away from the dawn and drifts off. Memories of Hatake rutting into her, horrified with himself for enjoying his task, fade away into sleep.
**** SAFE TO RESUME****
As the afternoon shadows flicker across her face, Ino is awoken by murmurs.
She's unsure whether venturing too far afield in search of Miyaji/Tsubaki Moramito is a good idea. Rice is, as the name suggests, villages and paths carved around endless paddyfields. She's been here a couple of times before but a few clicks away.
Her stomach growling settles her indecision.
Tenten brought her sesame buns from somewhere nearby once. They were delicious and she can use them as a pretext.
And so Ino is just another midnight worker off-kilter going about her day. The lady on the street selling mangoes tells her where to find the lady with the sesame buns. The lady with the sesame buns tells her where to find the haberdashers'. The haberdasher's tells her where to find a good cloth merchant.
And so the trail goes, each point innocuous, innocent, completely plausible, but bringing her closer and closer to people who should deal with Miyaji. And so the nights go, Ino falling firmly into her mask. She carefully keeps track of shinobi presence. There's a Grass contingent who appear to be here as merchant protection. They spend most of their time being obvious deterrents, lounging alongside the wagons of stock.
She writes a weekly report back to T&I, as though letters to a grandma. She takes delight in adding in the details about the bird nest across the way, the stinky old guy who lives next to her- anything she reckons Anko or Houza will smile at.
The days drag on. She sees Cinnamon in daylight bartering over milk and they give each other an awkward smile, acknowledgement but nothing more. Ino doesn't need the friends here. She remembers Hatake's words and stays sharp instead.
Anko and Houza do indeed smile upon receipt of her reports. The stiff shinobi's eyes glitter with amusement and he carefully covers a chuckle as Ino narrates an afternoon spent comically avoiding an irate washerwoman. Anko snorts at her stinky old guy neighbour. They can't respond easily due to the messaging system. The messengers network across the Great Five nations have intelligence plants. If they see a certain name and location come through, they are instructed to carefully remove the addressing and replace it with official correspondence designations.
So Anko and Houza wait for news almost as patiently as Ino hunts.
Until the day her letter comes through, delicate handwriting:
Dear Grandma,
I know this sounds kind of silly, but- I met somebody. I think he's the one. So far I've been too shy to come clean, but he's seen me dance and everything. How did you speak to Gramps, I can't eve...
A/N: Wellp. Another chapter down. Thanks for sticking with it, and as always, anything you want to see- dm me/review/fav/follow etc. Y'all legends.
~featheredblades