Pairing(s): ShikaIno

Realizations

Now they can see

It was a normal day in the fairly dangerous Konoha village, with a normal fairly dangerous joint training session under Kakashi, and the normal gang. What was not normal, is that Ino seemed to be glowing with something no one could quite pinpoint.

"Ino-pig!" Sakura yelled, she was hanging onto Sasuke, and obviously trying to invoke jealousy.

"Hey." Was all Ino said before returning to the mostly one-sided conversation she was having with Shikamaru.

Needless to say, everyone in the room was puzzled when their ears weren't ringing a few seconds after Ino saw Sasuke. They all happened to be expecting her screeches by now.

"Ino-pig, what's wrong with you?" Sakura asked. "You smart enough to accept defeat?"

"No." Ino turned to Sakura, still clinging to Sakuke, evidently annoyed her conversation had once again been cut short. "Smart enough to know what I want."

"Hi!" Kakashi exclaimed.

When no one scolded him for being incredibly late, he knew something was up.

"I'll be assigning your partners."

Kakashi eventually did notice that Ino wasn't hanging allover Sasuke, and that she seemed to be exceptionally happy today, but he didn't see that as the cause for everyone's temporary stupidity, so his dismisses their dumbstruck looks for something else. He didn't really care so much to find out.

Ino was with Sakura. Chouji Was with Naruto. Shika was with Sasuke.

"Let the games begin!"

Sasuke was strong, but let's all face it; Shikamaru is smart. Much smarter than Sasuke, otherwise Sasuke would've let bygones be bygones instead of wasting his life. So, even though Shika gave up, Sasuke knew in terms of the battle, Shika had won.

Naruto was having a hard time with Chouji's attacks, but in the end, when nothing else could be done, he used the Rasengan and, well.

Ino and Sakura had the most interesting match. Sakura had been trained by the Hokage, and had improved very little aside from her ability to heal herself, but Ino was a fighter to the very core of her essence, and landed some unintentionally damaging blows. Ino won. Right after she figured she'd deplete Sakura's chakra by attacking her from all angles and having her heal herself, after all; everyone knew it took more chakra to heal than to attack. They had both gotten better, and everyone was surprised.

By the time they were all finished, it was dark.

Before anyone could comment on how she had changed, Ino took to leave.

Wordlessly, Shikamaru had gotten up alongside her.

Once they were out of the sight and hearing range of the others, Ino spoke up. "What are you doing?"

"Walking you home."

"I'm Jounin, I think I can handle walking home"

"I know."

"But…"

"But it's dark."

"You don't have to you know." Ino said, slightly exasperated. "I live alone, my dad won't go and tell yours if you didn't watch over my every move."

"I know." And then, figuring it was too troublesome to have to argue with her about this the whole way, he asked, "You're over Sasuke?"

"About time, right?"

"No, way past time."

Ino laughed, and he smiled with a look in his eye that he always saved just for her. "He started to bug me actually. When I got over him. He's very full of himself. You can tell."

There was that look again, the one with the glint of happiness, and the peace he wanted as he watched the clouds. Shikamaru was glad it was dark. In that look there was the most touching love, the kind that drives people to do crazy things, like what he did just then.

"Do you want to go have dinner? At the Ichiraku." He asked.

Ino smiled. "Yes."

'What did I just get myself into?' He thought.