CHAPTER 7
The sun was close to setting by the time Ino reached the remote training ground that she wanted to be at. It didn't leave her much time, but she was 12. Her free time was fairly limited by the demands of the adults in her life. The Elder Boar would understand, right?
There was additional writing on the scroll now that she had signed it. It detailed how to perform the summoning. That must have meant the boar had accepted her at least preliminarily, right?
Ino arranged her apology gifts and then ran her hands through the listed seals. As she did, she was mindful to the twists they manipulated her chakra into. With enough practice, she should be able to eventually replicate those chakra shifts without the hand seals.
poof
Ino was already bowing when the cloud of smoke dissipated. "Good evening," she greeted.
The same rumbly voice as before responded. "Good evening, little Yamanaka. This is a much better time."
As she straightened, her heart fell.
"Disappointed?" the elder said. It huffed a great hot breath in her face that blew her hair back. "This is because of you, I'll have you know."
"Because I don't have enough chakra to support your real body size?" Ino said with a wince.
The boar shook his head. "No, that's not it." He snorted. "It's more of an issue of temperamental compatibility. You're young, you could grow to suit me. But now, you are not very fierce." He seemed amused by this.
"Per-personality?" Ino spluttered. "I- I thought that if anything my inexperience might be the issue."
"I would enjoy molding you into a deadly warrior," the elder dismissed. "If you are too soft of heart, however, we cannot be good partners." It snuffled again and dug its nose into the dirt. A great clod came up. The boar snuffled it and then reluctantly raised his great head. Even like this, he had to weigh more than Ino. It was at least 50 kg, she thought. That was pretty scary!
"I'll get scarier, then," Ino said brightly. She would make it so.
The boar gave her a look that was somehow skeptical even without human facial expressions. "You were clearly not briefed on the details of my contract," he said. He seemed bored by it. "My last summoner was clear about her intention to hide the contract where it would never again be used." He huffed in disapproval. "So I will tell you. If you disappoint me, I will warn you once."
"That seems fair," Ino said. "Hardly worth hiding your contract away."
"If you disappoint me after that without redeeming yourself, I will kill and eat you," the boar clarified.
Ino shrugged. "There's no gain without sacrifice and risk," she said philosophically.
The great elder stared at her for a moment in silence. Then he let out a braying laugh. To her absolute delight, he grew. Slightly. She was pretty sure! "Perhaps we can make good partners, little squeaker," he mused.
She grinned. Yes! All she needed was a chance- "Squeaker?" Her voice went up in pitch in an extremely unfortunate manner.
"Yes," the boar said. He nudged her with his head. Ino fell over and scrambled to her feet a little further away. "Small, young, with no tusks grown in yet."
"I'm afraid that I will never grow tusks," Ino said. Her smile felt a little brittle. 'Squeaker' was not a dignified form of address. But on the other hand- who would know? She wasn't exactly going to introduce the Elder Boar to anyone soon.
"Don't be too hard on yourself,' the boar soothed. He nudged her again, more gently this time. "My tusks didn't come in until I was 48. You have time."
She didn't laugh. She didn't want to offend him. "Thank you," Ino said gravely. "I also need to apologize to you." She bent into a deep bow. "I disturbed your sleep and came into your home without notice. It was inexcusably rude of me. I have prepared some tokens to show my sincerity."
"Chestnuts," the boar said, in a tone of surprised delight. "I thought that I smelled- yes, that will do." He walked right past her to the presents without waiting for her to formally give them to him. His nose disappeared into the bag with no further ceremony. She started to hear cracking.
Ino blinked. "And walnuts," she added, a little unsure. "I wasn't certain about what you would like. I also composed that floral arrangement," she added on.
The boar paused in snorting up chestnuts in order to nose at the flowers. She got the feeling that he was making a polite sort of gesture of interest. Ino suppressed a grin when the boar bit off the head of a rose. "This is new," he said gravely. With visible reluctance, the boar pulled his head out of the sack of chestnuts. "Thank you for your apology, squeaker. I see that the Yamanaka have not changed so much. I admit that decades without contact had lowered my opinion. But…" he snuffled again. "Manners count. Your apology is accepted."
"Right," said Ino, who had no frame of reference for this situation. She blinked. "I appreciate that. What should I call you?"
The boar sniffed at her. "Why?" he asked suspiciously. "What have you been calling me in your head, little squeaker?" There was a threat in that tone.
"Elder Boar," Ino said. She hoped that was an acceptable answer.
The Boar tilted its great head. "Acceptable," he said. "Although it is a little startling to be called an Elder for the first time."
Oh no. Ino's jaw dropped open in mortification. "I thought only because you were knowledgeable," she said, and then realized that she could dig a deeper hole by talking. So she shut up.
He laughed at her. "That title is acceptable. It will remind you that I am big and you are small, even now when I am… smaller than I was as a child." The boar lifted one hoof and examined it, a bit confused. "How disorienting."
"I'm sorry," Ino apologized. "I'll become meaner as soon as possible."
"See to it that you do," the elder said gravely. "Now. Tell me why you have stolen my scroll. Is there an internal struggle in the clan?"
"No," Ino squeaked. Her eyes went wide. Technically, legally she could challenge her Dad in the succession, but it seemed like a spectacularly bad idea at this point in her career. "I got put on a genin team that really is not good." Was it bad to whine to a man-eating boar? She didn't want to bore him or seem petty, but- "They're so lazy," Ino complained.
"Oh?" The boar leaned forward slightly. "Do go on."
YES.
Ino warmed to her topic quickly. The Elder Boar was an excellent listener, who made empathetic sounds in all the right places. When she was finished, he paused and then gravely said, "It is unfortunate. You will not blossom with them."
"That's exactly what I'm saying!" Ino cried, delighted that someone else got it. "I'd have to drag them kicking and screaming to any kind of success. And I don't hate that our team is designated for information gathering rather than heavy combat, but I think they're using that as an excuse to avoid preparing for combat." She fixed her hands into fists. "That's backwards!"
"There are such designations now?" The boar seemed appalled. "Does your squeaker year have a heavy combat sounder?"
"Uh-" Ino had to pause. Kiba, Hinata, and Shino were definitely not designated for heavy combat, but- "Yes, team 7 is." The realization was… odd. Sasuke for heavy combat? It made perfect sense. He wasn't going to grow up to be a big meaty heavy hitter, but he was fast and had mean jutsu. Naruto worked in the role as well. Sure, he was thick as anything, but he had ridiculous endurance and he liked to fight.
"Sakura shouldn't be there," Ino grumbled. She tugged at her ponytail. "The female spot on the team should have been mine. I have the best combat rating from our graduating year. But I'm the Yamanaka heir, so they put me with the Nara and Akimichi." Her shrug was bitter.
"Why are you more suited?" the elder prodded.
"I'm faster, stronger, and my weapon technique is more well-rounded," Ino counted off. 'But mostly, I actually care!" She blew her bangs out of her face. "Sakura is just trying to impress a boy, and she doesn't even realize that he's a shinobi boy." There was a bit of a sneer there that Ino distantly recognized was ugly of her. "He might like her more if she was better at fighting. But she's wasting her time trying to look pretty and make him food."
"Food is important," the elder boar said gravely. "Perhaps if you ate more you would be bigger."
"She's the same size as me, so that's not the strategy she's taking," Ino said wryly. She collapsed on the grass with a dramatic sigh. "Whatever. I don't care about her. I can't change the teams," she explained bitterly. "I already checked."
"Surely there are some circumstances in which teams are rearranged." The boar came to lie down next to her. His bulk was warm and appreciated.
Ino made a face. "Only if people die," she said. That didn't seem likely. Well. No, it was pretty likely that some of their graduation year would die before too long, but- "It seems unlikely that I would be free of my team and they would need a new member at the same time. So it's not worth hoping for."
There was a long silence. "Yes," the boar agreed. "Not worth hoping for at all." He let out a gusty sigh. "Hope is fragile, squeaker. Action speaks louder."
"Okay, honored Elder." Ino agreed absently. Old people were always saying wise things like that. "I'll work on the things that I can affect."
"Good girl," he said in appreciation. "What can you do?"
Ino blinked. "I'm learning a doton jutsu," she said.
The boar leapt to his feet with surprising grace. "Digging holes is a very important skill for a squeaker!" He sounded delighted. "Show me your progress!"
An adult wanted to help her. Ino nearly teared up in her excitement. An adult was excited to help her! She vaulted to her feet. "So, obviously I started by analyzing each part of the technique and breaking it down to see the exact purpose of the instructions and what specific benefit the chakra manipulations have," Ino started.
"Obviously," the elder agreed.
She started to tear up again. This was great. She was so happy. "I'm confident about the conditions and I think I'm ready to move onto actually trying it, but my teacher and my Dad don't have time to supervise for safety."
The elder moved his weight side to side in a ready fashion. "I am prepared to dig you out if you dig yourself too deeply," he vowed. He jabbed his snout at the ground and tossed aside a huge bit of topsoil in one easy motion. "We will dig, squeaker!"
"Yes!" Ino crowed, and started running through the 32 hand seals of the basic version of the jutsu.
The weeks went by much faster with the Elder Boar. She could only manage to sneak away and summon him maybe once every other week, but it was still so much more personal attention from an adult than she'd had before. Training with her genin team was also less bad after Shikamaru and Choji had gotten that painful lesson. They were hardly on her level, but they were trying. Ino threw herself into what Asuma-sensei asked them to do, and gradually her trust that Shikamaru would hold down targets and that Choji would try to watch her back built up. It wasn't perfect. They were still just baby genin, and she could feel herself pulling further and further ahead of them. But the crucial difference was that they had begun to try.
'This might work out,' Ino realized once after a practice where they had worked as a team against Team 8 and she had managed to extract the 'secret information' from Shino. She wasn't going to tell her Father that, because he wasn't quite right. 'If I get strong enough, it won't matter that they aren't as good as me. They just have to be good enough that they don't hold me back too much. And they are better now, even though they're still lazy.'
That was the only reason that Ino had confidence when in late summer, Asuma sensei showed them signup paperwork for an examination.
