CHAPTER 2

Ino went to her first real team practice with high nerves and a higher temper.

Two lunch boxes were already waiting. Ino put hers on the stack and stretched her hands.

She had made it to the training field 10 minutes early. Shikamaru and Choji were already there. Ino might have been impressed by their timeliness if:

A. Shikamaru had been awake.

B. There had been any chance that he'd gotten himself there out of a sense of responsibility. Yoshino-san probably used a broom to push him out the door.

'Lazy!'

She fumed at the thought.

Choji looked up and raised a hand in greeting as she stretched a leg.

She nodded back, not feeling up to anything more cheerful but not quite gauche enough to ignore him. Choji laid back down, hand back in a snack package. It crinkled. At least he was awake, but why was he just lying down?

'He should warm up too. We can't expect that our sensei will carve out time for that.'

Ino scowled but she didn't comment. She set to some calisthenics to warm up, working on her muscles and being careful to protect the ankle that she'd rolled a week ago. It was mostly fine, but there was no reason to push it.

Asuma-sensei was on time- one minute early, perfectly respectful to subordinates. That was a point in his favor. Ino pressed her lips close together and reserved her judgment as he chatted. He didn't seem at all annoyed to find two of his students totally unprepared for their first day of work. In fact, he laughed and prodded Shikamaru with his sandal.

She glowered. "Asuma-sensei! What training are we doing today?"

The man looked at her and smiled. His fingers fidgeted at his side in a pattern that she didn't recognize. "Ino-chan, it's our first day together," Asuma-sensei said mildly. "We don't have to be so serious as all that. We can get to know each other."

"We know each other already," Ino said flatly.

"Fine, fine," he sighed. Asuma-sensei waved a hand at them. "Warm up, then."

Shikamaru groaned and levered his body up off the grass. He gave Ino a dark look, as if it was her fault that being a shinobi involved physical activity. She tossed her hair and didn't tell him that there was a twig caught in his ponytail. Choji stood without complaint but his eyes were grudging.

'Like any of this is my fault? If they don't want to do this job, they should just quit.'

She was different. She was motivated.

"I already warmed up," Ino informed her teacher, pertly. She put her hands on her hips. "Should I do some cardio or show you something?" She didn't hide the expectation in her voice.

Asuma-sensei made a face. "You can run laps around the clearing while you wait for your teammates to catch up."

'That's the kind of thing adults only suggest if they have no idea and want to keep you busy. That should just be part of our morning routine. There's no reason for him to stand and watch us run laps.'

She gave him a dirty look. "You're really phoning this in, huh." Ino turned on her heel and started the run. She ignored the sound of sputtering and sniggering behind her.

Shikamaru and Choji took their sweet time warming up. Ino was 6 laps in by the time they joined her. Begrudgingly, she slowed down to let them catch up to her. They were teammates. Shikamaru caught her eye, wrinkled his nose, and somehow started running even slower.

UGH.

So much for being nice! Ino gave up on him, and Choji too. Anger made her run even faster. Her heels pounded the dirt, kicking up dust and sending jolts through her abused ankle. Her breath started to come hard. She stole glances at her teacher every time that she passed him in the clearing. He seemed bored.

"Alright, kids," Asuma-sensei called.

Ino slowed her run to a jog and tapered her speed as she came back to her teacher. He looked over their faces- Ino, doubtlessly as red and sweaty as Choji, and Shikamaru huffing and pale. Asuma-sensei let out a hum and shifted in place. "I see," he said, and then didn't explain that at all. "Your teacher said that you can all do the standard academy jutsu. Choji, show me a transformation with a significant size element."

Choji looked alarmed. "Uhh…" he fidgeted and then took a deep breath. "Just a moment."

Ino looked at him out of the corner of her eye. This was a foundational skill for his family jutsu.

He made a face of utter concentration, paused, and then cast the transformation. Ino craned her neck up to look as Choji shot up whole feet to match Asuma-sensei. He hadn't tried to become the teacher exactly, but he had matched the wide shoulders, bulky muscle, and general frame. The transformation breathed heavily. It didn't look quite right.

'Center of balance is all wrong. Choji's center of balance is lower, but a man of that build would have his heaviest spot as his shoulders.'

"Hmm." Asuma-sensei took a walk around the illusion, a hand on his chin.

'That's not very good,' Ino thought critically. She crossed her arms. 'Doesn't he practice his family jutsu? He shouldn't have needed all that time to prep.'

"It looks pretty good," Asuma-sensei said. He nudged. Choji made a small sound of surprise and reverted to his usual form. "Is that one you've practiced before?"

"No," Choji said. He sunk back into himself, burrowing into his scarf. "I haven't."

Asuma-sensei made an impressed sound.

Ino felt her face go flat. 'Why would he show a form he hasn't practiced, unless there's none he's perfected?'

"Ino-chan," Asuma-sensei said. He was still smiling, but his eyes were a little sharp. He'd probably noticed that she wasn't impressed. "Show me a kawarimi without visual contact."

She didn't have to think about it or look around, because she had already cataloged the resources in the clearing. Ino raised her hands into the correct seal and tugged on the stack of lunch boxes.

Ino turned to look at her teammates, dissatisfaction pulling the edge of her lips down. Clatter. The lunch boxes had clattered when she'd moved them, which meant that her control was shaky.

'I need to work on that more. Tomorrow morning, in my early training.'

Asuma-sensei let out a whoofing exhalation. "Damn," he said. He cocked his head at her. "That was fast, Ino-chan, and with something so much smaller than your mass? Isn't the Academy requirement to be able to use something your own size?"

Matching Academy standards meant achieving the bare minimum. That was for losers who didn't care.

"My Dad can do it with a kunai," she said flatly.

Her teacher snorted. "Your father is one of the elites of the elite," he said dryly. "You'll need at least a year or two out of the Academy to get there."

She sniffed and turned away. He…wasn't wrong. She felt the tension in her shoulders relax just a bit.

'This isn't the team I want, but it isn't all bad,' Ino reminded herself. Grudgingly. She didn't want to be fair, she didn't want to be reasonable. But as she watched Asuma-sensei coax Shikamaru to show off some proficiency, she had to admit that he wasn't a total disaster as a teacher. He had an impressive resume and he was picking apart aspects of their capabilities that tied into the roles they should one day inherit.

As for how he'd praised Choji… Choji had never been confident. He might have done better in front of someone like Iruka-sensei. Asuma-sensei had praised him for a mediocre job to nurture his comfort and confidence.

'He might do okay.'

"Asuma-sensei," Ino managed, near the end of practice. They had spent it reviewing Academy curriculum, answering questions on policy and history in between demonstrating shurikenjutsu and taijutsu. Her team all looked at her. "Are we doing our conditioning together, or are we doing it on our own time?"

Her teacher hummed. "For now, keep it up in your free time," Asuma-sensei decided. "With your family or by yourself is fine. I don't care if you do it in the mornings or evenings. Our team will meet at 10:00 6 days a week, and you can expect to be free by 4:00 when we're grounded in-village. I'm not managing your total professional development." His eyes wandered over to the boys. "So don't neglect whatever routine you have."

Shikamaru sighed, long and heavy. But he didn't argue.

"Great, thanks," Ino said. It was good to know expectations.

'I wonder what he considers his role? Is it more jutsu, or team dynamic development, or just preparation for specific mission subtypes?'

She went home in a subdued mood. Ino avoided her Dad's eyes when he tried to give her an encouraging look. Guilt churned in her stomach.

Had she overreacted?

Ino was extra solicitous at dinner, complimenting the food and leaping up to manage the washing before her mother could lift a finger. What she'd done… was wrong. Her stomach twisted in misery. She'd betrayed her mother's trust. It was one thing to try to sneak something past her father. He was a better shinobi than she was.

'It was wrong to do that.' Ino stared blankly into the soapy water and scrubbed that much harder. 'She couldn't have caught me. I took advantage of the fact that she's a civilian.' Shame sat heavily in her stomach.

She wouldn't even open the scroll, she decided.

'I'll find a way to put it back. Maybe I can sneak in, or maybe I can go there to return the earth scroll after I finish it.'

The earth jutsu… That cheered her up a bit.

'If I get really good at that, I could incapacitate people by myself, no Shikamaru necessary to hold someone down. I could just drag them down to their waist in the dirt and peruse their mind at my leisure.'

It had lots of general combat utility, too. Right now Ino hit like a baby horse and had proficiency in Academy taijutsu and a few supplementary kicks. But she was hardly on the level of the average shinobi, much less one of the monsters that she was born to be.

Ino scrubbed the dishes in a flash, full of the fire of determination. When she was done she dried her hands and ran to her room to pull out the earth scroll. She didn't feel bad when she removed the summoning scroll and hid it in her dresser, now that she'd decided what to do with it. She changed into training clothes and ran back to the genkan. Her mother watched her zoom past with a bemused expression.

"I'm going to train," Ino explained. She waved the scroll about her head theatrically. "I have an hour left of daylight!"

"Indeed you do," Mama agreed. The light glinted on the huge aquamarine gem at her throat as she turned to face Ino fully. "Do you want company?"

Ino shook her head. "Not while I first try," she said. "It'll be boring. But thank you, Mama!" She blew a kiss and pulled on her sandals. "I'll be at the forest-adjacent training field, the one with all the cosmos."

"I believe that specific field has a name," Mama said blandly. "You've probably heard it, once or twice."

"It's a bad name," Ino said. She was very firm in this opinion. Her Dad shouldn't be allowed to name things. If it wasn't for family tradition, Shodaime only knew what he would have tried to name her. She would have wound up named after some old legendary weaponsmith or a temple in Wind that no one had heard of for the last thousand years, something like that.

Ugh. Dour much?

She took the path at an easy run, delighting in the cool night air on her face. It whipped her ponytail around and tugged on her clothes. She was a little sorry to come to a stop and settle cross-legged onto the grass to unfurl the scroll.

Ino skimmed the explanation on molding earth type chakra, since she already had experience with that. She read the whole thing after that, noting the hand signs and the implied chakra manipulation and the list of utility. Then she backtracked to the first exercise for molding chakra to match the first hand sign. Ino burrowed a hand into the loose dirt, scratching and pulling to move it until she could submerge her hand to be in full contact. She kept the other hand on her lap, protectively holding the scroll in place. Then she started working on separating the tiny particles of dirt. It was nearly time to go back home by the time she had a reasonably competent understanding. She started the opposite- condensing it. That was much slower going and delicate work, considering that a failure would crush the delicate bones of her hand.

'I'm too inexperienced to do this safely without supervision,' Ino determined. Regretfully, she pulled her hand out of the dirt and shook it clean. 'Asuma-sensei is wind natured, but maybe he can monitor anyway.'

Briefly, she considered doing the lazy thing and simply trying the jutsu using the hand signs first. It was an accepted way of doing things.

'I hate shortcuts. I don't want to bother using something that I don't know in and out.' Ino shook her head and accidentally smacked herself in the face with her ponytail in the process. She spluttered it out and took a few minutes to run through a light stretching routine since she was already in the training field, and then she did a bit of conditioning. Her abdomen was aching pleasantly and she could feel a sheen of sweat on her face when she finished up and jogged back home for her second shower of the day.

...

If you want to see the posting schedule for this story, check my tumblr (electrasev5nwrites), where the post dates for all 4 of my Halloween stories for this year are listed in a graphic. :)