"This could be very fortuitous," the Elder mused. "You should agree to participate and persuade your sounder as well."
"Not a sounder," she corrected on reflex. Ino quirked her head to the side and felt her ponytail swish behind her. "What do you mean, Elder?" She pushed that little bit further into her saddle stretch, forcing her spine to stay straight as she inched her torso to the ground.
Absently, the Elder put a cloven hoof on her back to help her down. He ignored her oof. "Contracts were historically made in the human realms. The original summons were visitors." He puffed out a snort. "We could make it appear that I was a denizen of the forest. If we merely met by chance, it is plausible that I would select you as a partner."
"And would account for why we know each other!" Ino's enthusiasm was muffled in the dirt. "If you came to help me in the middle of the examination, no one could prove that we'd met before."
"Indeed." The pressure on her back became uncomfortable. Then the Elder let up. "It seems likely that there will be some minor peril that I could assist with. That would smooth over the transition with your sounder."
Ino looked past the phrasing. She'd tried explaining the difference between a sounder of boars and a ninja squad, but the Elder didn't seem to be interested in the nuance. "It's perfect," she said, and grinned up at him. "Then you could start coming to team practices! We wouldn't have to hide."
"Although we could," the Elder said loftily. "In one of your clever underground burrows."
The acknowledgement of her abilities was a high compliment from him. She leapt up to wrap her arms around his neck in a hug, overcome with fondness. "How do we do that?" Ino asked. She frowned to herself. "I don't think I can summon you very far ahead of time, but it would have to be days, if I don't want to get caught... I can't approach the forest while I'm in other parts of the test. I need to find a way for maintaining the summoning to be less strenuous."
The Elder snorted and shook her off. "You need only focus on passing the initial selection," he scolded. He shoved a wet nose into her stomach and sent her tumbling backwards. "The solution for my summoning is simpler. You will summon me during the examination in such a way that no one knows you are summoning me."
Ino hesitated.
"If you can do your little digging jutsu with fewer hand seals, surely you can come to perform my summoning without moving your hands at all." The Elder snuffled. His voice was so stern. She was coming to know that he was forcing down any hint that he was proud of her. He didn't want her to get a big head. "You have time. You will master summoning me without using your hands."
"That's hard," Ino said distantly. She was thinking it over. She'd heard of it. She knew it was possible. "I have two weeks to prepare. You're right." She felt emotion choking her throat. That was the kind of skill that jounin developed, but the Elder had faith that she could master it. Ino felt her eyes threatening to water. She thought that she could do it, too. "We should start now, don't you think?"
The Elder's answer was to dismiss himself back to the boar realm. Ino sat cross legged and closed her eyes to feel her chakra as best as she could. One by one, she held the hand seals and examined how her chakra reacted. It was slow-going. She found more resonance with some than others. After about 20 minutes of this odd meditation, Ino carefully moved her chakra into the first position, then the second. She used her hands for the third, manipulated her chakra without hands for the fourth, and then needed her hands again for the fifth. She tugged- and nothing happened, because the sequence had been too slow to register as the jutsu. She did that again and again, faster and faster until there was a victorious poof of smoke.
Ino squealed and leapt to her feet. The Elder looked down on her with patient amusement. "How many hand seals were you able to eliminate?" he asked in his usual rumbling voice.
"Three." Ino bounced on her heels. "I'll work on the other two in team practice tomorrow and the day after, and then when I can sneak away to summon you I might be able to do it without any hand signs!"
"Very good." The Elder nuzzled her hair approvingly. "You are a clever squeaker. I regret that my past summoners were all adults. Had I known the possibilities inherent in working with a talented squeaker, I would never have needed to eat a summoner."
Ino felt her smile turn stiff. She never knew what to say when the Elder referenced eating a Yamanaka. It was an unpleasant reminder of exactly how angry her parents would be if they ever found out that she'd stolen a summoning scroll, and it raised a twinge of fear that they would be right to be angry.
'Boars will eat anything,' she reminded herself practically. 'And I don't plan to be a disappointment. So it's hardly relevant to me.'
She kept that determination up and carried it with her into the next day's team training, where she was greeted by an unusual sight.
"Kiba," Ino said with distaste.
The Inuzuka showed all his teeth when he grinned at her. "Ino-san," he crowed. "We're doing team training together." He leaned in. "I feel lucky."
She felt the muscle in her jaw twitch. Was that some kind of stupid reference to their last interaction? Choji clearly thought so. He gave her a look that implied he was a little afraid of what she might do to Kiba.
'Nothing that I'll get caught doing,' Ino promised herself.
Calm. Ino took a deep breath. "Good morning, Hinata-san, Shino-san," she greeted. She turned away from Kiba with a hair toss. "How are you?"
"I'm fine," Shino said into the stilted silence. "That is because this is an unusual event. I am looking forward to seeing what our sensei have planned."
Ino nodded at him. "It is rare." She eyed them and wondered, "Do you ever do team training with anyone else? How about team 7?"
Hinata shook her head. "K-kurenai-sensei says that their teacher prefers to work in a smaller group." Her voice was so quiet that it was hard to hear, but Ino was kind of impressed that she'd spoken at all. She offered the other girl a grin.
Asuma-sensei snorted. Ino jumped and she saw the other genin do the same. Her asshole teacher was leaning against a tree as if he'd been there the whole time. He let go of the grip he had on Shikamaru's scruff. "What Kurenai-san means is that Kakashi is a reclusive jack-"
"Asuma-san," the other jounin said primly.
He grinned slyly and inclined his head in a respectful nod. "Good morning, Kurenai-san."
All the genin echoed that, appending sensei on instead. Asuma gave them an aggrieved look.
"Good morning, Asuma-sensei," Ino said, rolling her eyes. How pathetic was it that he felt left out? He had to be, like, 25. He was ancient. She wouldn't be that sensitive by the time she was that old. She would be collected and mature.
"Good morning, children." He winked at them.
'Hate him. Hate him so much.'
Ino was a young professional, so she didn't let her anger control her. She simply sniffed and tossed her hair. "You're having us work against each other in a mock chuunin exam scenario?" She looked at her teacher through her lashes. "That's why we're here, right?"
"Chunin exams!" Kiba whooped. He fist-pumped and then held the fist out towards Shino for a bump.
The Aburame turned his face away. Kiba aimed his fist at Choji instead.
Choji looked at Ino as if asking for permission before he hesitantly reached out and met Kiba's fist with his own.
Ino sighed.
"For the first part of today's lesson, your ability to silently communicate is being tested." Kurenai-sensei looked at each of them in turn. Ino felt her posture straighten under that cool red gaze. "I will tell one genin from each team a string of numbers. You six will stay together for the duration of the exercise. You may not approach one another. The first team to communicate the information is the winner." She held up slips of paper. "You'll write the information down and give it to me when you're done. You lose a point for every number if the other team gets information from you. Points will be tallied when the first team finishes writing every pair of numbers."
Shikamaru sighed and sat down on the ground.
Ino kicked him lightly and then moved away to the spot that Asuma-sensei indicated for her to stand. "Can we choose who gets the information first?"
Kurenai-sensei eyed her silently for a moment. "No. I've already picked."
Her smile turned into a grimace. Great.
"Choji-san and Kiba-kun, please step over here." Kurenai-sensei flickered and was suddenly on the other side of the clearing. Her genin was already on his feet and jogging. Choji hesitated a moment, gulped, and then followed.
Ino narrowed her eyes. She focused on them. She couldn't hear, no, but she could see Kurenai-sensei's lips moving.
"Here you go," Asuma-sensei said, blocking her view.
Ino curled her lip into a sneer. She accepted the paper and pencil that he gave her. She pretended that she wasn't waiting for him to move so that she could read Kurenai-sensei's lips.
"Ino-san," Shino-san said disapprovingly. "We are waiting."
Ugh! She pointedly turned away and crossed her arms. She heard Asuma-sensei move behind her, handing out the papers to the others. She glanced over at Shikamaru, hoping that he was cheating. …His eyes were closed. He was laying down. He might, in fact, have been asleep already. Asuma-sensei put the paper on his head.
"Wake up!" Ino barked.
Shikamaru opened one eye to glare at her. "We haven't started yet," he complained.
If he was closer, she probably would have kicked him again.
"Ah, actually we have." Choji gave them both a nervous smile. He stayed on his end of the clearing but he began writing down his chain of numbers.
Kiba crossed his arms and looked at his teammates. "I don't know how long I'll remember this," he said thoughtfully.
"Write them down immediately!" Shino-san ordered. Ah, she'd forgotten how competitive Shino was.
"Okay, okay," Kiba said. He scribbled at a pace so quick that Ino knew it had to be shorthand. He looked up and caught her staring. He winked.
She clenched her jaw. "What's that smile for," Ino said through gritted teeth.
Kiba just looked glad that she was talking to him. "Want to know a number?" he asked. He gave her a sharp, toothy grin.
…What?
"Kiba-kun!" Hinata cried out.
"Unacceptable!" Shino-san said. There was an angry buzzing. "Please focus on the test, not your girlfriend!"
There was a pause while Ino expected Kiba to declare that she wasn't his girlfriend. He didn't say that.
Ew.
"Ugh!" Ino shouted, and threw her hands up in disgust. "I hate boys. Choji, do you have a plan?"
Ino glared at him, wondering what he meant to do. He'd finished writing. There was probably a lot that he could do. "Yeah, I have a plan," he said mildly. Choji looked over at her with expectant eye contact.
Ah. Okay then.
Asuma-sensei groaned. Kurenai-sensei laughed.
Ino made the cross hand sign and took over Choji's body. She looked at his numbers, memorized them, and then went back to her body. Choji immediately ambled over to Kurenai-sensei and handed in his paper.
Shino-san was writing now at a furious pace. Hinata had activated her byakugan and was squinting at Kiba's paper with an expression that was probably despair.
"Shikamaru!" Ino barked. He looked up with a sigh and didn't fight when she entered his body and puppeted him to write the answers. She left him and immediately started writing her own copy of the paper in fast, neat letters. She raced over to hand it to Kurenai-sensei and saw that the jerk was still on the forest floor.
"I will kill you!" Ino threatened.
He let out a heavy sigh. He stood. Hinata was writing her last answers now, clearly torn between doubt and desperation. Kiba was standing by his teacher, having already given her his paper. Ino stole a look at it over Kurenai-sensei's shoulder and then shot Dog-Boy a look of incredulous disbelief. His handwriting was probably a finable offense.
The smile died on his face when he saw the way that she looked at him. Kiba let out a nervous little laugh.
Hinata leapt up and lunged to Kurenai-sensei, arriving just in time to slap her paper on top of Shikamaru's. The timing was so close that their hands touched.
Hinata squeaked and pulled back as if she'd been burnt.
"Troublesome," Shikamaru repeated vehemently, and collapsed again.
"Team ten gets a point for time," Asuma-sensei said smugly. He ignored whatever look Kurenai-sensei gave him. "Now let's check for accuracy." The two teachers flipped through the papers.
"Hinata-chan, you missed 3, and Shino-kun, you missed 2." Asuma-sensei seemed sympathetic as the two shrank back. "However you're both very impressive, as the only reason I know what Kiba-kun wrote is that I know what the answers were meant to be." He squinted at the paper. "And I'm pretty sure that the second to last one is wrong, actually. Is this a 7? I think it's a 7."
"Who knows," Kiba said cheerfully.
…'My team could have been worse,' Ino took a moment to acknowledge. 'Not by much, but definitely worse.'
Granted, Kiba wanted her approval so badly that he would probably have been easier to manipulate than her boys. Huh. She pursed her lips. Maybe that would have been a better team, then.
"Ino-chan, you have lovely handwriting," Kurenai-sensei said. "But you should use a different handwriting when you are using someone else's body. Two identical papers in this handwriting would be very memorable, if I wasn't meant to know about the cheating." Her voice was amused. Ino privately acknowledged the point was fair. "Choji-san, you were a little sloppy but it's all legible and correct."
"We win!" Choji crowed. Ino whoo-hooed along with him. Shikamaru raised one finger and moved it in a circle in the smallest concession possible to cheering.
"Boooo," Kiba called cheerfully, hands cupped around his mouth. "Booooo."
"I do not understand you," Shino-san said stiffly. Hinata stifled a giggle.
"Well, that was interesting," Kurenai-sensei said diplomatically. "We were hoping to test your creativity, but there's nothing wrong with leaning on your strengths."
"Sparring now, team on team," Asuma-sensei added. "The only condition is that you can't use any strategy that you've gone over in team training. You have ten minutes to talk about strategy. Team ten, this way."
Everyone groaned.
"And team 8 with me," Kurenai-sensei said gracefully.
That part was less fun. It would have been easy to capture someone with Ino's possession technique and Shikamaru's shadow binding. But since it wasn't allowed, things devolved into a cat and mouse game where team ten was the one on the run from a team of tracker ninja.
Internally, Ino realized why they had been given that limitation. It was to challenge them, yes. But it also showcased an important weakness in team ten's formation. It wouldn't do any good to possess one member of team 8- Ino could only possess them for so long, and Shikamaru couldn't hold forever. It would just become a waiting game while Choji was stuck fighting whoever they didn't have a hold on. At the end of it, Ino and Shikamaru would be tired and the two that they'd been holding captive would be fresh.
'Our team technique is only really useful if we have more backup or if we're willing to use lethal measures,' Ino realized.
That was a very good point to drive home right before the exams. Of course they'd kill people one day, but in the exam? That was ridiculous. People didn't die in tests.
So team 10 got their asses handed to them. Ino fought Hinata first with straight taijutsu, but when she was gaining too much ground Shino used a substitution jutsu to tag her out and leave Hinata to fight with Shikamaru. That ended pretty fast with Ino screaming and running away from bugs. She didn't want to lose, and she definitely didn't want to hurt Shino's feelings, but she just could not cope with insects.
Shino turned away stiffly and helped Hinata. Shikamaru gave a surprised curse and ended up caught between the two while Ino was still shuddering away her nerves.
Neither teacher was overly critical after the session was over. Ino's eyes wandered guiltily over to Shino while Kurenai-sensei analyzed what everyone had done well and where they could improve. Shino wouldn't look at Ino.
Asuma-sensei clapped. "That's it for us, then," he declared. "Practice is over! Easy mission tomorrow, and then more prep for the test the day after. Don't do anything too strenuous." He winked, and then he and Kurenai-sensei were both gone.
"Wanna come to my house for dinner?"
It took Ino a moment to register that Kiba was talking to her, not his teammates. "Don't you have to ask your parents permission to bring someone over," she asked flatly. Rude. He was so rude.
Kiba shook his head, sending his shaggy hair flopping. "My Mom already knows that I like you," he said with baffling honesty. "I can bring you over any time."
"Yeah, well, go talk to your Mom!" Ino blustered, confused by this whole interaction. Where was the weird hostility? They never got along. He was always such a rude jerk.
"I will!" he said cheerfully. "She thinks you're great, too."
"I've never met your Mom!" Ino argued. She poked Kiba in the chest. "You haven't been telling her anything weird, have you?" She fumed at him.
"Ino," Shikamaru said dryly. "You are fanning the flames."
…She pulled her finger back. She took a deep breath. "Goodnight, Inuzuka-san," she said stiffly. "Hinata-san, Shino-san."
"We are so sorry," Hinata murmured, grabbing at Kiba's coat.
"I am not very sorry," Shino muttered, but he helped manhandle Kiba away.
"Ah, I'm hungry," Choji said, and left at a fast clip.
That left Ino and Shikamaru alone for a few moments. She took a few deep breaths to calm down and then wondered why he wasn't leaving yet.
"Did you want something?" Ino nudged her teammate with a shoulder. "It's not like you to linger in the training field, lazybones." Her tone took the sting out of her teasing.
"Yeah." Shikamaru looked up at her through his lashes. "I want to know why you lied to Asuma-sensei."
Ino just looked at him. She kept her face blank even as her mind raced, trying to figure out what he was talking about. "You're nuts," she said bluntly. Ino sniffed. "Why would I lie about anything? Besides." She shrugged and put her palms up as she turned away. "We barely talked today. I really have no idea what you're talking about." She moved to go home.
"Not today, no," Shikamaru mused.
She didn't like his tone. She didn't like it at all. He was insinuating something. Ino felt her shoulders tense and her hackles go up. She didn't turn to look, but she stopped walking.
"You let him think that you were messing around with your doton jutsu that night in the woods."
She hated how calm his voice was. Ino balled a hand up into a fist and then released it just as quickly to hide the tell.
"But I saw you."
Ino flinched. She finally turned around and plastered a smile on. "Shika-kun, you're such a paranoid old man," she complained. She patted his shoulder.
"I saw the scroll you were holding."
The smile slid off her face.
He looked her right in the eye and raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know what kind of scroll it was then, but I knew it wasn't doton. So I knew you lied to him." He tilted his chin up at her. "That's interesting."
'I didn't know what it was then,' Ino mentally repeated. 'Meaning that he knows what it is now. Or he wants me to think that and then let information slip.'
"What's your point?" All pretense of friendliness slipped out to leave her voice cold and hard. "Get to it or I'm going."
He huffed out a laugh and a mean little smile cut across his face. She bristled. "Maa, Ino-chan," he drawled. "Just make sure you know what you're doing."
"I always do," she said tightly. "Have a good night, Shikamaru." Ino turned on her heel and left without waiting for an answer. He didn't respond, but she could feel his gaze on her back as she left.