Ino screamed.

She screamed for her teacher, for her teammates, for anyone to hear her. She was still falling. Air whooshed past her face and blew her hair back. She twisted mid air like a cat to aim her feet in the direction that she was falling. Her pen was gone to the wind, but she was clutching the scroll in her left hand.

No one answered her.

Ino hit the ground on three limbs. She had the benefit of a lifetime of training in how to mitigate the force of impact. That meant that she didn't break anything on the fall except thick blades of grass that whipped across her face. "Hell!" Her eyes watered over.

In the second after impact, her awareness kicked in. Her joints were hurting- ankles, knees, the small bones of her feet.

"Owww," Ino whined. She put the scroll into her hip pouch to free up her hands. Then she gingerly lifted her feet once at a time and checked the range of motion. As far as she could tell, the impact hadn't seriously harmed her.

Inventory done, she raised her head to confront the situation.

It was still dark, but there was no tent. The grass was all the way up to her thighs, and there were huge rocks spotted around. Instead of black and the dim orange light from a fire, the area seemed cold and blue tinted. She blinked, but the film over everything didn't disappear.

"Well." Ino blinked. "I am officially not in camp."

"Derelict in your duty, it would seem."

She screamed again. She jumped a foot in the air and then craned her head up.

One of the rocks was moving, turning. A huge jaw became visible in the dim light.

"Hello, Boar-san," Ino said weakly. As the animal turned she could see that it had been sleeping curled up. One of its fellows raised a sleepy head and snuffled the air, catching her scent.

She felt sharp and unexplainable fear. Ino knew with a dreadful certainty that it would kill her. Her body froze in the useless reaction of a prey animal.

"This is mine," her boar said sharply.

The other boar snorted and then tucked their face back into their body. The deadly aura subsided.

"Yamanaka," the first boar greeted. Slowly, it swung its great head away from its fellow to pin her under eerie yellow eyes. She felt her own eyes widen at the sight.

Like her, the boar had no pupils.

She had a sudden premonition- no, a deeper understanding. Ino knew in her bones that the reason for the distinctive Yamanaka eyes was connected to the boars. She felt the weight of history on her shoulders and she trembled in delight and fear.

"Oh, wow," Ino breathed. She ducked her head in a bow. "Are you… an elder?" She ventured.

The boar snorted. A long and awkward moment passed as it leveled her with the full force of its disapproval. "Yes. Too old to be up at this hour." That rumbly voice was openly irritated. "Call me to your world at a better hour. And go to bed, small thing." It reared up.

That was her only warning before the boar kicked her in the chest.

The air was gone from her chest. Ino choked, a hand to her throat. She belatedly realized that she was on the ground.

'The boar didn't say no.'

"What is it?" Asuma-sensei emerged from his tent in absolute silence. He was tense but controlled. For the first time, she saw the danger present in a Jounin.

Ino blinked up at him, disoriented by her sudden return. She was back where she'd started, splayed on the ground by the log she'd been sitting on. Her face probably had minor irritation on it from the blades of grass that she'd whapped into. Would that be visible in the dim light?

Her teammates burst out of their tent a second later. Choji was bristling with weaponry. Shikamaru was wreathed in darkness.

Did they know? She wondered hysterically. They'd known her all their lives. If they saw her, would they realize that she was hiding something?

She had to hide this. If they knew, they'd report her, they would stop her before she came to an agreement with the Elder and she wouldn't get a chance to prove herself-

"Nothing," Ino said. Her voice came out much smaller and higher than she wanted it to. She didn't have any air. She scrambled to her feet and turned her face away from the fire as casually as she could. Surely any redness would be subtle. It would be obvious in a few minutes, but long gone by morning. She just had to get away from their notice quickly. "A spark from the fire hit my foot and I was surprised. I'm sorry."

There was a long moment. Then Shikamaru scoffed. "I'm going back to bed."

Asuma-sensei put away a kunai that Ino hadn't even noticed. "Nah," he said lightly. He reached out and ruffled Ino's hair. "It's basically your turn to watch anyway. Ino-chan can go lie down."

Shikamaru sighed loudly and dramatically.

"I can finish my shift," Ino argued, because that's what she would have normally said. Actually, she desperately needed to lie down. She shook her head in defiance. "I'm sorry I woke you, but it's fine." Her chest hurt so bad. It felt like- well, it felt like something kicked the wind out of her. She didn't wince.

"Your teacher-client says that I want the little boy on watch. Now go to bed, you two."

Asuma-sensei's voice brooked no argument. So Ino and Choji went to bed. He gave her a questioning look in the dim light. It made her heart jump, but he wasn't the observant one.

"Are you actually alright?" he asked quietly.

She managed a smile. "Of course," Ino promised just as softly. "Good night, Choji." She snaked into her bedroll and only then detached the hip pouch with the scroll in it. Her hands were shaking.

'That was close. That was really close. Did Asuma-sensei buy that?'

Probably. Or if he knew she lied, he would think it was to cover up something embarrassing.

'That's what I should do,' Ino realized. She closed her eyes and let her mind work furiously. 'I need to contrive a more embarrassing explanation for him, and let him come to that conclusion on his own.'

The obvious answer was that it should involve the earth scroll. If Shikamaru mentioned seeing her with a scroll, then Asuma-sensei would assume that was what he'd seen.

So in the morning, Ino wound her fingers together and held them behind her back. She waited to approach until the boys were gone on an errand. "Sensei," she sang.

"Who are you," he asked. Asuma-sensei flicked the senbon around his mouth but he was smiling. "I, a humble silk merchant, certainly have no ninja students. I'm terrified and confused in the woods, you know."

"I was wondering what my client might think," Ino switched tracks. She tilted her head to the side prettily. Just the right amount of bluster to cover brittleness. "What do you think could go wrong with a doton jutsu?"

The look he gave her was way too amused.

Ino forced her smile to keep up. It felt more like she was baring her teeth at him.

"Saa," he drawled. "I suppose that you could get stuck in the ground." He was obviously suppressing a laugh. "Or make a big jolt underneath yourself when you're trying to sink down into the earth. Either one is fairly plausible."

"How interesting," she said through gritted teeth. "How would you ensure that neither of those things happened?" Keep him guessing, don't say one or the other. Just let him come to one conclusion.

From the way that he talked about adjusting your surface chakra to resonate with the soil, Ino had to assume that he thought she'd gotten her ankles stuck in the soil and wrenched one. It was a pretty good cover for her careful steps and could even explain how breathless she'd been last night. She'd just been in pain, that was all, nothing to see here.

Ino did not rub at her chest. Firstly because it would draw attention, and secondly because she could tell that her breastbone was going to be a mottled mess of a bruise, probably in a huge and incriminating hoof shape. Breathing hurt.

Well, tough. She just had to wait it out. There was no way to get healing for that even when she returned to Konoha. If there was no record of injury in her mission report, the hospital visit would be flagged as suspicious.

Ino toyed with the idea that it was part of the boar's assessment of her. A boar would probably value stoicism, right?

…More likely, it had just been a crabby old man who didn't know or care how fragile she was.

If she'd shown up in Elder Kumiko's house at 4 am, Ino would probably have gotten worse than a kick. She stifled a giggle at the thought of how that bizarre bit of disrespect would be received.

'Do I owe the elder boar an apology?' Ino wondered. 'Or should I only focus on meeting more warlike expectations?'

Her father's oft-repeated refrain that manners cost nothing drifted across her mind.

That was a nice sentiment, but it wasn't true at all. Technically speaking, manners cost nearly as much as she'd gotten paid for the training mission. Ino converted that money into an apologetic floral arrangement and an assortment of unsalted nuts. If it was autumn she would have gone and harvested them herself to save on money, but there wasn't much to gather in summer.

It took two days after the mission to find a place and time where she could be alone and summon the elder boar. Ino avoided her mother's eyes when she could and was extra solicitous with chores in a silent apology. She wasn't going to confess. She wasn't going to return the scroll. Not when she'd come so far and seen hints about her family's legacy.

'It's too late now anyway. I signed it. Even if they took the scroll back, no one could stop me from using it. The only real barrier is whether or not a boar will agree to work with me. And the Elder claimed me so fast. Maybe it was just to protect me from being eaten, but maybe not.'

The thought gave her a naughty thrill. She had something of her own, that no one could take away.

…Of course, she could get criminal charges for it. Technically she'd committed theft and undermined the will of her Clan Head, even if Daddy was usually really permissive with her. And she could get pretty severe disciplinary action for leaving her post mid-mission, even though it had been an accident.

'They could actually forbid me to use a summons,' Ino realized. Her hands started to shake. 'If anyone found out, they could tell Daddy. The Hokage wouldn't care, but my Clan Head could forbid me from using it since I got it in our archives.'

"Are you done eating, Ino?"

Daddy's voice cut into her thoughts.

She pulled her face into a reflexive and expressive pout. "Sorry, I was thinking." She picked her chopsticks back up. "I'm going to go work on my doton jutsu tonight. Don't wait up, okay?"

"I see." Her parents exchanged amused glances. "I hear from your sensei that it's going well."

Ino stabbed a bit of roasted sweet potato. Her eye twitched.

"Better than most," Mama continued. "He said something about poor Sakura-chan's team, didn't he? They didn't get to participate in your group training exercise. I bet Sakura-chan is in the village."

'I didn't realize they were all going to gossip. Or does this mean that Daddy is making Asuma-sensei report on me in specific?'

"Training is going fine," Ino said stiffly. She still hadn't actually tried the earth jutsu. She'd picked the scenario of having flubbed the jutsu for the exact reason that it would be embarrassing if true. It turned out to be pretty embarrassing even when it wasn't true.

She endured a bit of subtle ribbing and much less subtle hints about reinstating her friendship with Forehead Girl before Ino rose with towering dignity to clear her plates. She washed her dishes as well as the cooking ones and then left her parents to figure out their own plates. They were still talking in the dining room, soft voices that she couldn't quite pick out. The tension began to wind out of her body.

There were days that Daddy might take it upon himself to join her training. But today was her parents' usual date night, and it was one of the lucky days where neither of them had particular obligations. They would be busy with each other.

So Ino made her escape and then gathered her bouquet and nuts. The nuts she had truly kept hidden. Her parents probably assumed that the flowers were for Sakura.

They really didn't get it. It wasn't Ino who needed to apologize. She wasn't the one who had ruined their friendship by turning it into a competition. And Sakura wouldn't apologize, because she was so high and mighty about her undeserved victory of being placed with Sasuke-kun.

Well. To hell with Sakura. Ino didn't need her anyway. She had something much better now.