They weren't very far out of the gates before their teacher broke and told them what was going on.
"The thing about our mission…" Asuma-sensei rotated the cigarette in his mouth and gave them a smile. Ino did not like it. "We don't know yet if we have a mission."
Yeah. She hated that expression. She noted it for later reference.
"What?" Choji's tone was flat. "I could be in bed, sensei."
"It's training time either way," he pointed out, bemused. He let out an amused huff at whatever he saw on Ino's face. Shikamaru still hadn't reacted. Ino wasn't wholly certain that he was conscious. "If you get the mission, it'll be your first C rank, and paid accordingly. It's a courier mission."
"And what is the factor to see if we get the mission or not?" Shikamaru drawled. Ino cut him a sideways look. So he was awake, then.
Their teacher grinned at them and rubbed out his cigarette. "If you get there before Kurenai's team."
Ino felt her face go flat. That was her competition? "Hyuuga-san, Aburame-san, and Kiba?" She stressed the last name with disdain. Aburame-san, sure. He was competent. She could lose to him, if he was lucky. Hyuuga-san was so busy flinching from the world that Ino would almost be happy for her if she won a race against Ino. But Kiba?
Her teacher gave her a horrible little smile and deliberately misunderstood her. "Oh, are you two close?" he crooned.
"No!" Ino stamped a foot and whirled on her team. "If we lose to a team with Kiba on it, I am going to die of shame and haunt you two forever!" She pointed an accusing finger at the boys. "Sensei, where do we need to go? Did we all leave at the same time? Why didn't we see them?"
His smile got worse somehow. "Ne, Ino-chan," he drawled. "We decided it was only fair to give you three a thirty minute head start. Of course, we left nearly twenty minutes behind schedule." He shrugged, gaze drifting over to Shikamaru. The Nara shrunk in on himself just a bit. "Unfortunate."
A thirty minute head start? They thought her team was that pathetic?
She let out a scream of rage. Her teacher was outright laughing now, but he managed to point in a direction. Ino leapt that way, trusting that her teammates would follow. She sprinted at her top pace, face flushed with utter fury. She could not let that happen!
"Ino-chan," Asuma-sensei called out gently. He was running alongside her. "It's a team exercise. You can't arrive alone."
She hated the amusement in his voice, she really did. Ino shot a glance over her shoulder to gauge how far behind her male teammates were. It was far. Her eyes went hard. She stopped running to let them catch up.
Gratifyingly, she saw a flicker of fear of her in Shikamaru's eyes as he drew near. She started running again, this time in line with them. Her resentment was so heavy it was nearly a physical thing.
It was a pitiful few minutes later before their already terrible pace began to falter. "No way," Ino despaired, letting her own speed drop to match. They had no stamina. "Sensei, you have got to be kidding me! This is so unfair!"
"It's a team competition," he reminded her. "You can't accept the mission by yourself. By the way, team 8 is coming up behind us. At this rate, they'll catch up in 3 or 4 minutes. How do you feel about that, boys?"
Neither of them answered him. They were too busy breathing hard.
She felt tears of humiliation well up. She hadn't even run half the distance she did in her morning conditioning yet!
"This is pathetic," Ino said to herself, miserable and self pitying. "I'm going to die of shame."
When team 8 passed them with waves and a jeer from Kiba, Ino wasn't surprised. Just wounded. Shikamaru seemed to give up all steam after that and slowed to a walk. Choji valiantly kept up his jog for a while despite his ugly wheezing, but he got too far ahead of Shikamaru and had to wait up.
Ino stopped with them, silent and sullen. She crossed her arms and looked away.
"It's hard to see how we could win at this point." There was nothing mocking in Asuma-sensei's tone. He put a hand on either boys' head. "I hope you understand the point of this competition, boys?"
They both looked away in shame.
"We're going to have a survival exercise," Sensei said, moving on from the topic gracefully.
Choji didn't groan even though he definitely would have in the morning. The humiliation had worked. Ino looked away but wondered if this was worth it. If it made her teammates actually try, then maybe the mortification was a price worth paying.
"I will act as your client and only act as a civilian could." He pulled out a new cigarette and lit it. "I will also be wandering haplessly into danger, so please take good care of me. You're escorting me to the little village with all the persimmon trees, down the valley. It's looking like we'll have to sleep outside, isn't it?" He cast a contemplative look up at the sky. "If only we'd left a little earlier."
Shikamaru somehow went even redder. Ino looked at him, but she was too emotionally worn out to be angry again.
It wasn't even surprising.
"Ino," Asuma-sensei prodded. "What are you thinking? You could have beat team 8 without the head start, I think. It would have been a competition, for sure."
At least he had actually seen her from the start. Reluctantly, she respected him. This was a hard lesson for the boys and it wasn't nice for her either. But it was a lesson that they needed.
She ran her tongue along the inside of her teeth because her answer didn't want to come out. It felt cruel. It felt mean and small to actually say. But her teacher did ask. "This is why I begged to have a different team," she said, both flinching away at the flash of hurt in her teammates' eyes and feeling meanly satisfied to finally get through their thick heads. They were listening to her for once.. "I knew they'd hold me back because they don't take things seriously." She took a ragged breath. Ino wanted to cry. She wanted them to cry, too.
Asuma-sensei only hummed in response to that. There wasn't really a good response to that, because she was right but no one was going to free her from her teammates.
The training mission was… not good. No one argued when he finally told the team that they were on a survival exercise. The team had a subdued air.
Asuma-sensei took them back to basics. He had them set up camp, make and snuff a fire, and forage for dinner. Then he told them what they did that was amateurish and had them do it again, his way. At least no one complained, but morale was shot. Before too long, Ino had the distinct feeling that Asuma-sensei realized that he'd messed up. He eyed them mournfully. A hand drifted to his hip pouch. He fiddled with it.
Ino visually tracked the motion without pausing in her attempt to master a trick for smokeless fire.
Her teacher seemed to decide something. He unzipped his pouch and pulled out a cigarette.
She felt her expression flatten. Gross.
Something inside of her burst like a dam. She had to get away from this stinking mediocrity. Ino clenched her jaw so tight that she knew it would hurt later. At least it kept her from screaming.
Asuma-sensei assigned them watch shifts for the night. He wasn't on it.
Did that mean he wasn't going to sleep or that he was going to sleep all night? Ino didn't get her answer until it was time for her to go to sleep. Choji stayed by the fire and cast a mournful look at her and Shikamaru as they went into the tent.
Ino didn't say a thing. She kicked the edge of her bedroom flat, crawled in, and faces away from him.
There was a soft "tch". She bristled, but he didn't say anything to her.
She woke up three hours later. She brushed Choji's hand off her shoulder, muttered, "thanks," and went outside. At the last second she grabbed her full bag. She didn't want to leave the scroll alone.
Her shift passed slowly. She waited, looking around into the darkness. The fire flickered and popped quietly beside her. Ino didn't look at it because she knew it would blind her to anything that moved in the forest around them.
She waited a good hour after Choji had gone to bed. Then she pulled the contract out and unraveled it to start reading the details.
Ino had never seen another summoning contract before, so she didn't have much to judge by. It seemed reasonable on its face. The summoner would receive the services of one partner, who they would repay for their time in chakra and opportunity for battle. She squinted at that line.
'Boars are aggressive… I guess it makes sense that they'd consider a chance to fight part of their payment.'
She sighed and thought it over. Could she really promise that? Her team was geared towards information gathering, and useless besides. If they ever got into a fight, it would probably be through sheer bad luck. Would a warlike summons ever accept her?
'I could try anyway.' Ino breathed out in a huff through her nose. 'If they don't like my situation, they can just say no.'
"What's that?"
She jumped. "Shikamaru," Ino hissed. "Don't creep up on me like that!" She hurriedly rolled the scroll back up.
It was impossible to see the darkness of his eyes, but she felt sure the pupils were tracking her hands as she put away the summoning scroll. She bristled.
"How could I sleep with you huffing and puffing like that?" He sounded bored.
Ino rolled her eyes. "Go back to bed," she snapped quietly. "You still have time to sleep. More than an hour."
"I just meant…" Shikamaru hesitated. "What was that scroll?" He changed the subject.
It was a tell. She knew it. But Ino lifted her shoulders defensively.
There was a pause.
"Go to bed," she spat. Ino turned away. Her heart thudded wildly in her chest. If he'd seen- if he had recognized that it was a summons contract, he could tell someone that she had it. He could get her in so much trouble. And he was probably really annoyed with her because of the stunt Asuma-sensei had pulled that showed how much he was slowing her down.
She kept her panic off her face. Ino could look stubborn and keep her chin high. Go away, she willed. Go back to bed and leave me alone.
After several long, painful seconds she heard faint rustling. Shikamaru went back to bed.
She waited a while to take the scroll out again. Her heart was up in her throat now.
'If I don't do it now I'm going to lose my nerve.'
So Ino took out a pen. She wrote her name in the clear, beautiful characters that she'd perfected in the Academy.
And the world fell out from underneath her.
