Until We All Fall Down Chapter 6, Predictable, a naruto fanfic

Until We All Fall Down

XxMookinexX

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters, I only wish I did. Any and all unrecognisable characters and situations belong solely to me and are not to be touched without permission. I am not making any money off of this and I write with the soul purpose to entertain.

This story takes place when our characters are 18/19 and takes account of everything up to chapter 337 of the manga. Written in Ino's POV.

Hehe, I think my Math exam went really well… although I'm not entirely happy with this chapter itself. It's shorter than the other ones, but I don't really know what else to put in… Bleh, I feel like this one is very predictable – hence the title. Sorry, next week will be better – I promise.

(Blinks in surprise) wow, Turkish delight must be popular! Special thanks to RefusedAngel (who reviewed chapter 4 as well), ami, amwong88, Lori, egw, liltle, and Katar who all reviewed last chapter! Oh, and Cheese Maiden who reviewed chapter 4! Here is the Turkish delight I promised you last week! (Racks brains for other delicious food substances) You see, I'd say Chocolate fudge Cake, but I wanna leave that one until either the last chapter or Chapter ten – it really depends on how long this ends up being… SO! Maybe next week we can have… ice cream? Mint Choc Chip or otherwise. I should perhaps note, that the Special thanks are not done in order of preference, merely in the order of my reading them off the reviews list – although you're all clever enough to work that out on your own.

– Chapter Six –

Predictable

The wind tore at my hair as I ran, pelting full tilt into the forest and just barely missing the trees. Ahead and to my left I saw Shika. Suddenly he landed, light as a cat, on the tree branch ahead of him. He held up a hand, signalling for Chouji (who was further to my left since we were moving in a standard arrow-head formation) and me to do the same. I forced myself to halt without skidding, since skidding would have alerted our quarry to our presence. Soundlessly Shika gestured for us to look at the clearing about 20 feet in front of us and a little to the left.

An old woman was hunched over at the roots of a tree, gnarled and wrinkled hands tore at rare herbs, discarding them into the basket at her side.

Usually, I would think nothing of this. Old women often gather herbs in the forests – something to do with their stereotypical apothecary nature. However, since the attack on the Hokage many teams have been sent out to deal with the assumed mist-nin. We know he's a master of disguise, and recently we found out he's a master of poisons too, since anyone whose run into him has ended up with one of their number being infected. As a result, only teams with a medic-nin proficient in making antidotes have been assigned to missions involving him. Of course, it goes without saying that I've been practicing my medical jutsus like crazy during this last month. I didn't want to let my team down, and it's proved to be a useful distraction.

After all, if I get caught up in my medical jutsu training, how can I be thinking of Gaara? How can I feel my heart ache?

Ugh, that sounded lame.

I wonder if he ever thinks of me. I think he might… I hope he does.

He gave me a bracelet before he left, a glass-like band crafted from sand. I haven't taken it off since. I guess that makes me a fool, then, huh? Especially since all I want to do is see him when I should be focusing on capturing the mist-nin.

Part of me tries to be encouraging – it tells me that as soon as we catch him I can visit Gaara as much as I like… then my inner-cynic reminds me that there are always going to be threats. There will always be something that keeps me away from him. Eventually he might be led to believe that I'm not worth the wait. Which sucks 'cos I rather think he might be.

Are you feeling the one-sidedness?

"Ready?" Shika whispered. "Go." We jumped, Chouji hitting the ground first, Shika second, whilst I made sure to land a little behind them. If it was the fake-Sakura, he'd be likely to recognise me the most. The old woman glanced up, seemingly surprised at our appearance from nowhere. I saw her squinting up at us, her figure slightly hunched in the ways of old women everywhere. Then she stopped moving, Shika having already caught her in his shadow jutsu. I stepped to the front, secure in my belief that she couldn't get away, and approached. Resting my hands on both her temples I gave her a reassuring smile – just in case – then closed my eyes, slipping into my newly developed mental jutsu.

The recesses of her mind were dark – like an old forgotten room where the dust gathered to obscure the light. Careful not to disturb the bookshelves of her memory I made my way to an old rocking chair in the very centre of the room. Beside it sat a tapestry, one corner of which remained unstitched, leaving loose threads. This was the very essence of her soul. A familiar object from the present or the past which represented the life of the individual involved. I took a deep breath to calm my mind and reached out to it. With delicate touches born of a cautiousness instilled by too many red letter scenarios of what could go wrong I brushed away the webs of time, illuminating the most fundamental fragments of her mind.

In my shock I almost dropped and shattered the object. On the canvas in front of me was a hooded figure, robed in a shadowy substance crafted from the darkness that thronged around it. I'd seen this before. The last image of all those who had been put to rest by the world.

An unbearable sadness overcame me as I realised she was dying.

Gently, I put the tapestry back down and turned to leave, only to gasp as I realised I wasn't the only one in the room. Before me stood a young man with skin as pale as a ghost, dark eyes watched me with an amusement that was echoed on his pallid lips.

It wasn't possible. No one could enter the mind of another living being save for the individual concerned and myself. I should know. I was the one who made this jutsu, basing it off the teachings of my forefathers as the Yamanaka tradition dictates. It wasn't possible that anyone else could know how to use it. It wasn't possible for him to be here. Not unless…

An unpleasant feeling started to build in my gut.

… Not unless he was the individual who owned this mind – which could potentially make him the killer. Hell, it had to be – why else would he have taken on the appearance of an old woman in both body and mind? One thing was for certain. He was definitely a master of disguise. I hadn't yet met another person who could reshape their entire mind in order to escape detection. He was good – too good for a simple killer – which made me wonder just what his agenda was? Why had he killed the Hokage? Why was he encouraging war between Konoha and the sand? Who was he anyway? And how could he possibly be doing this when he was supposed to be dying?

Questions filled me. Questions to which no one knew the answers save for him, and he delighted in not telling. Or rather, he couldn't tell seeing as speech was impossible in this area of the brain.

Still, all this left me in a somewhat difficult situation – he was between me and my exit, and I hadn't ventured into enough minds to know yet whether I could be hurt in here… I snatched up the tapestry again, watching as his eyes darkened visibly and a sneer appeared on his face, but he stepped back. Using it as a shield I managed to navigate so that the door was at my back and he was no longer baring my way. Slowly, I put the tapestry down and jumped back to my own body, knowing full well that if I tried to remove it the shock could kill him and we still wanted him for interrogation, though I believed he deserved to die for all he'd put us through.

As soon as my consciousness returned to my body I gave a start and took a deep breath of fresh air, as though surfacing after a very deep dive.

"You alright, Ino?" Shika questioned as Chouji helped me to my feet again.

"That," I said pointing at the old lady. "That's him."

I could sense the surprise in my companions, then Shika swore and everything went straight to hell.

Faster… I need to go faster…

I bit my lip, hard. Time… I need time, and it's feeling indisposed to listen to me at the moment. God damn…

Angry tears formed behind my eyes but I forced them back. Time enough for grief later. I've been training especially for things like this. Keep your cool Ino, and focus.

I took a deep breath and assessed the situation rationally. Right. Okay then.

Wiping the sweat from my forehead and pinning back my fringe so I had a clearer view of the situation I focused on Chouji's face, trying to ignore how pale he looked – how fragile. No one should have to see the ones they love look like that. Chouji's been a brother to me all my life… and if I don't get this right… if I'm not as good as I think I am… I could lose him for good.

With slow, deliberate movements I reached out, starting my medical jutsus.

I reached out with my chakra, following his own chakra systems and letting them tug me to where I needed to go - downwards, to his stomach. I frowned in concentration, my eyebrows knitting together and then – there. Something… foreign and strange. A thick black substance clogging the pathways, starting to spread but not beyond repair as of yet… Okay, water. My left hand shifted to the bowl beside me, picking up the water so that I could move it and shape it as I pleased. Slowly, drip by drip I managed to coerce the blackness to shift, to be absorbed harmlessly into the water, then finally, after what seemed like days I pulled the water out, taking the blackness with it. I quickly dropped it into the bowl and took two seconds to breathe again, exhausted.

Then a twig snapped behind me, making me go rigid in horror. Before me Chouji was still unconscious and I was too tired to defend either of us properly.

"How is he?"

I allowed my shoulders to sag in relief as I recognised the voice.

"Shika…"

He took more steps into the clearing, coming to stand beside me – his face was a rictus of pain.

"Is he…?"

I smiled, "He's going to be just fine. But I need some things… medicines I don't have with me. There may be remnants of the poison in his system – not enough to be lethal, but the sooner we remove it the better. Unfortunately, my jutsus just not as good as Sakura's."

Shika sank to the ground, putting his hand to his head, then he smiled at me.

"I once promised Temari I'd never mess up another mission again."

"It wasn't your fault," I whispered, pain lancing through me at the pain I heard in his voice. Too slow… I had been too slow in making my discovery and returning to my body again. Shika had still had a limited amount of Chakra, and by the time I managed to point it out, he'd lost his hold on the mist-Nin. Chouji, poor brave foolish Chouji, had sought to pin him in with his arms, expanding them to the size of walls to block the intruder's escape, but by then it was too late. Moving with a speed that was nothing short of impossible for one so old – although, I had to remind myself, in truth this was the work of a boy, someone maybe even younger than me – he spun and shot a poison needle straight into Chouji's stomach.

There was nothing I could do.

Instantly, Chouji collapsed to the ground, his jutsus cancelled out by whatever had entered his systems. The mist Nin took off, and Shika, still weary from his exertion of Chakra, took off after him, leaving me to cope with Chouji. I'd have thought his disregard for his friend was heinous if I didn't already know that he assumed I'd know how to deal with it. We were a good team, after all. We trusted one another not only with our lives, but with the lives of each other as well.

"Shika – it was no one's fault," I repeated harshly. "What happened?"

He gritted his teeth and looked down at the forest floor.

"He got away…" The admission killed him, I could tell.

Grimly I looked down at Chouji's sweating face and placed a cooling hand on his forehead. I swore.

"He's burning up. Where's the nearest town with medical supplies?"

"We've crossed the border," Shika said, looking up to the sun as if to calculate our exact position. "From here… the nearest Village would be Sunagakure."

My heart leapt into my throat.

How ironic.

Only this morning I'd been thinking how much I wanted to visit him…

But right now I'd give anything for it to be for a different reason than this.

"Let's go," I whispered. Together we pulled Chouji to his feet, supporting him with one of us under each arm so that we could carry him to Suna. "I don't want to waste any more time than necessary."

He nodded, "I second that… especially since, thinking back on it, I think he was headed in the direction of Sunagakure himself."

My heart plummeted another notch, filling me with unease at what may await us there.

If only things could be simple for a change…

We should be so lucky.

Chapter six… (makes unhappy noise) no Gaara! (sobs). But!! SET UP! A.k.a. this was a filler chapter, but we learnt about the strange Mist-Nin dude… and there's gonna be more Gaara Ino fluff next chapter – there'd better be else this'll reach chapter 15 and they won't have gotten anywhere yet. Please review people! I love knowing what you think.

To be continued HOPEFULLY next Monday. Again, cos I'm in the middle of my AS exams – only 3 more weeks!! YES! Geography exam this Friday – must go cram for it!

Luv ya

XxMookinexX