On their second week of being a team, Asuma-sensei started getting them missions. They were grunt work, the kind of thing that fresh genin had to endure. Ino sniffed as she sorted through the offered scrolls, picking out a mission cleaning a river. "Asuma-sensei," she said sweetly. She saw him note the mission in her hand and his eyebrows raised. "This would be a very good opportunity to work on water-walking, don't you think? We could get the bits of plastic tangled in the driftwood."
Shikamaru groaned.
"Do you know how to water-walk, Ino-chan?" Asuma-sensei grinned indulgently. He seemed more relaxed around them, although he'd been casual from the start.
"No," Ino said innocently. "How remiss of me. Could you give me pointers?"
"You just want to see us fall in the water," Choji accused ruefully. He flung a hand up over his face in misery. "Asuma-sensei, don't listen to her!"
'That would be a fringe benefit at best, dummy. I want to water walk. I've been a genin for nearly two whole weeks now.'
"If you fall in the water, clean behind your ears," Ino said sweetly. She blinked big doe eyes up at her teacher. "Littering is terrible. That's what I care about."
"Of course it is." Asuma-sensei plucked the scroll out of her hands and winked at her. "Return those others. We have to protect the environment. God forbid Kakashi was left to ensure the integrity of our waterways."
Who?
Well. She didn't care that much.
Ino cheered as she brought the rejected scrolls back to the left hand side of the mission desk. The chuunin accepted them as Asuma-sensei strolled over to the right side and started signing off on the paperwork. Ino went outside and bounced in place, stretching her arms one at a time. Her teammates slunk out to join her. Choji gave her a side-eye.
"Ne, Ino-chan," he started. She gave him her full attention. "Why do you push so much? Asuma-sensei is teaching us what he thinks we need to know." He looked away from her, uncomfortable with confrontation.
She hummed and interlaced her fingers. "I want more," Ino chirped. "I always want more."
"Pain in the ass," Shikamaru muttered. He leaned against the wall and looked up at the sky. "We could just not, you know. There's no reason to go harder than we have to."
"The reason is that I don't want to die as a genin," Ino said pleasantly. She gave him her sweetest smile. It was mostly wasted since he didn't look at her. "Don't you ever think about how fragile you are? You're very breakable. Anything could happen, you know."
Shikamaru scoffed. "We're twelve," he rejected. "They're not going to make us do anything dangerous for years and years. By then, we'll be better than everyone else."
"You can't just wait for skill to happen to you." Ino felt her eyebrow twitch. "It's not a prophecy. It's hard work."
Shikamaru gave her an infuriatingly superior expression and didn't answer. She felt her hands curl into fists.
'I want to smack the smug right out of him. I can't stand him sometimes!'
"Maybe it won't be that hard." Choji looked out into the city contemplatively. He pulled open a bag of chips without even looking. "If every average genin can do it, it probably isn't that hard. And once we have the foundational skills, we can relax more, Shikamaru."
"Once we have the foundational skills, we should-"
Asuma-sensei stepped out and cut Ino off mid-scold with a grin at Choji. "Once you have water walking down, you'll definitely deserve a treat!"
Choji beamed back. "Take us out for lunch!" he suggested.
Their teacher snorted. "I doubt you'll get it down before today's lunch. But eventually, sure."
Things started off fine. They got to the river. Asuma-sensei gave a demonstration and a short explanation about how water walking was different from tree walking. And then they were off!
By that, Ino meant that she walked in the shallows, occasionally managing to walk on the shallows, and picked up trash. Choji trudged dutifully through undergrowth and occasionally waded in for something. Shikamaru made a series of mournful expressions, put a foot through the surface of the water, and made a face like a wet cat. Then he sat down cross-legged.
Ino shot a glare at him. "Move it, lazybones!" She shook her trash bag at him. "The rest of us are working here."
"Ah, I'm not really working," Asuma-sensei said, amused. He ignored Ino's glare from his perch on a branch overlooking the river. "Mind your own business, Ino. He has time to work on his share of the job." He took another drag of his cigarette.
Ino felt her hackles go up at being told to mind her business, but the stern quality that Asuma-sensei inserted into his voice at the end reassured her that he wasn't going to let Shikamaru do nothing.
She focused on her own work, balancing the actual mission and water walking. She was getting it! Her steps were getting steadier and breaking the surface less. Ino started to feel confident. She grinned as she speared a floating bottle and shook it off the stick into her trash bag.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Shikamaru suddenly stand. She watched him walk into the river- no. Onto the river. He didn't so much as make a splash or falter. He walked into the center, made eye contact with her, and smirked. Then he made an unenthused attempt at picking up something floating in the water.
'He let us pick up the slack with the actual job and just thought through how to water walk based off of one failure? It's not fair. It's really not fair. I've been actually working.'
She remembered their conversation earlier, where she'd tried to convince him that he would actually have to work hard.
This was why he thought he didn't have to. He was so insufferably smug because things were just that easy for him.
Ino felt irritated. She acknowledged it. And then she pushed it down and away because it was unhelpful. "Good job," she said magnanimously. "You can get the things in the middle, then." She stabbed her next target that much harder. This was fine.
"Feh." Shikamaru dismissed the idea, but he kept at it. The hint that sensei would disapprove if he slacked too much apparently held some weight for him.
'He never cares about what I have to say.'
At the end of the day, they had roughly even bags of trash. Ino had a shaky mastery of water-walking, and a hefty amount of poorly disguised irritation that Shikamaru had gotten it down so easily. He hadn't stumbled once.
By contrast, poor Choji hadn't gotten very far. His ankles were soaked and his body language was morose as they went back to the tower to report their mission completed. "I didn't get it at all," he groaned. His sandals made wet slaps against the pavement. "Why are you guys so good at things?"
Ino blinked and frowned. Why was he including her in that?
"They're ahead of the curve," Asuma-sensei reassured. He put a hand on Choji's shoulder. "It takes most people a few days to master water walking. And even then- once you have it, it won't make any difference if it took you one hour or one week to master."
"...I understand." Choji held himself a little bit higher.
Bemused, Ino tilted her head and examined her teacher's back. Was that right?
'It's probably true,' she thought. It mollified her bruised ego a bit. 'Shikamaru is a genius, and I have really good chakra control.'
"Sensei, do you have time today to supervise me?" Ino asked. She tapped her fingers against her hip, full of unspent energy. "I want to work on that earth jutsu." She ignored the way that both of her male teammates rolled their eyes.
"Ino-chan, I need to rest sometimes," Asuma-sensei said. He reached back to ruffle her hair. Ino dodged expertly. He laughed at her under his breath. "Tomorrow, okay? I have other commitments tonight."
Ino pursed her lips. "...Thank you," she said, a little grudgingly. She really wanted to work at it. She was so close to working through the fundamental logic of the technique. There were no other options for appropriate supervision, though. Daddy was too busy with work.
She went home, dissatisfied with her day and the progress she was making in her career. Ino flopped down on her bed and looked up at the ceiling. "It's not enough," she muttered. She dragged her pillow onto her stomach and hugged it. "I'm not improving enough. I want to be a department head in a decade. I don't have time to do anything but excel."
Without her conscious thought, her gaze drifted over to her dresser. Her eyes glazed without focus, boring through the thin panel of wood hiding the secreted scroll from sight.
"Would it really hurt to look?" Ino asked herself. She tightened her grip on the pillow. Summons were a huge boon. She might learn something just from reading the scroll, she told herself. Ino levered up to a seated position and fought to balance logic and her desire. She wanted to- she really wanted to read the scroll.
'I will," she decided. Her chest fluttered with excitement the instant it was decided. 'If it was in the clan library it has to be useful for Yamanaka. And besides, it's clan history! That's worthwhile on its own merits.'
"Ino!"
She nearly jumped out of her skin. "Yes, Mama?" she called back. Ino tried to calm her racing heart.
"Dinner is ready! Could you get your father?"
Ino tossed the pillow aside and stood up. "Okay," she hollered back. "Love you!"
She would look after dinner.