15. Bump in the Night
Watch out. We have strong language.
The sudden wind blew the fog away from the mountains as he marched to the small cabin before him. Curiously, he scanned the surroundings, wondering if the Raikage already came out for his daily morning stroll, or if shinobi arrived to start the day's work.
No one.
Figures since the moon still illuminated the early morning sky, but in the distant horizon, he could see the rays of sunshine peeking over the hills.
"I know you're out there," a voice boomed from inside the cabin. "I have other chores to do, you know. So, please come in." His client annoyed him to no end. He was constantly busy and impatient, opposite of him, but his bitterness was probably due to the fact his client's life ticked away. Unfortunately, for himself, he had a longer lifespan, which allowed him to be carefree.
He hastily opened the door. His client sat on the couch with his bare feet propped on the coffee table. His head lolled to the side as he dozed off.
"What do you need me for this time?"
"Didn't I tell you the last time I summoned you?"
He cracked a grin at his client. For here on, there was no way he'd be bored.
The sun beat heavily on the Sakura's bare shoulders as she and her squad trudged through the Oto's deserts. Even for Oto's dry landscape and year round heat, the heat today was unnatural…being only the beginning of spring and all….
Sakura's skin burned and ached as sunburn slowly etched into her exposed skin. However, looking at Kakashi and Naruto, she believed the two men's misery bettered her own. Both were dressed in their usual dark, long sleeved shirts and their dark pants while she sported a tank top and shorts. Kakashi must be baking underneath his mask. Even though he did his best to disguise being uncomfortable and fatigued, Sakura noticed the perspiration soaking his clothes and a slight limp in his gait. Opposite of Kakashi, Naruto complained…loudly. He openly complained while everyone—being used to Naruto's loud mouth—ignored him and continued to walk.
"Kakashi, how much longer do we have?" Naruto bellowed as he scanned the landscape to find any source of shade or water. Sakura offered her canteen to him, which he rejected by shaking his head while mumbling, "Don't worry about me."
"Well, by the looks of everything…we have a while."
"I'm going to die."
"You're going to be Hokage soon. You can't die."
The fact of Naruto becoming Hokage still didn't click correctly in Sakura's mind. Or maybe the fact she, of all people, is the girlfriend of the future Hokage. Being in such close relations to the Hokage, the highest ninja rank, seemed unreal to Sakura. Well, the idea shouldn't be weird, considering she was the apprentice of the fifth Hokage, Tsunade, but being an apprentice differed from being the girlfriend of the Hokage.
"Holy! What the hell is that?"
"It's a mosquito, Naruto," Kakashi said in a deadpan manner.
"Who's been feeding them growth hormones?"
Sakura shook her head as she watched Naruto take off his left sandal and batted at the insect, which to Sakura's disbelief was half the size of her face. She could only imagine what a swarm of those mosquitoes would do to a person.
Anyway, with Hokages still as the topic, ever since the day Tsunade informed Sakura about her missing best friend, Tsunade gave her weekly updates with little to no information. Fortunately, Shikamaru found Ino. Unfortunately, his reports lacked in detail, which killed Sakura. She needed to know Ino's conditions. Was she hurt, mentally, physically, or both?
It was apparent that Sakura missed Ino. Her apartment's emptiness sent Sakura running to Naruto's apartment and crawling into his bed, despite him complaining he couldn't have sex, and he needed to wake up in the early morning. She just curled against his warm body and continued to think about her friend.
She truly missed coming home to hear Ino tunelessly singing along with the radio. She missed seeing the stove boiling water, or the microwave heating leftovers as Ino cooked dinner for the both of them. Really, Sakura missed Ino.
Sakura spotted a wooden sign with two arrows pointing in different directions. Kakashi began to walk in the direction of the left arrow, the arrow with "Iwakagure" carved into the wood. On the right arrow, Sakura read "Kumogakure". She glanced at the two men who walked several paces before her. Maybe…
"Sakura, you're not thinking about going to Kumo to find Ino, are you?" Kakashi gazed over his shoulder, catching the rosette in the act of stepping in the direction of Kumogakure. "If you go against Tsunade's orders, she'll beat you to death."
Naruto popped up—Sakura couldn't get over how fast Naruto has gotten—beside her and grabbed her wrist to pull her back to the group. "You're not going to find Ino. It's Shikamaru's job, remember?"
"Shikamaru will take care of it," Kakashi reasoned, still walking ahead of Naruto and Sakura, who tossed and tumbled through the dirt as they fought over Sakura's wrists. "He's a big boy; I'm sure he'll know what to do."
Sakura kneed Naruto in the stomach, but his grasp around her wrist only tightened. "You guys are horrible!" she cried, forfeiting the wrestling match and allowing Naruto to haul her body over his shoulder.
As Naruto caught up with Kakashi, with Sakura still over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, Sakura heard Kakashi chuckle and mumble, "It's amazing how much they rubbed off on each other."
For the past few days after her mind blowing "dream", Ino couldn't fathom how her throat remained smooth and unscathed. The texture of her throat—much less, having her throat intact—had Ino believing nothing happened that night, but she knew she saw him and felt his presence hovering over her. She felt that cold blade press against her skin. She felt the stinging burn as the blade sliced her skin, but…there was nothing.
Because she took a week off from the restaurant, Ino had more free time on her hands than she liked. Ino spent her time in her bed, rubbing her throat. Shikamaru came to visit her a few times, but after a few moments of being unfocused and unwilling to hold a conversation, he left shortly after coming. Sometimes, he came back from the market with fresh fruits for everyone, or maybe Ino's favorite soda.
"Ino, are you feeling all right?" Minako asked as she plopped a cherry into her mouth. "You haven't been the same since the festival." She paused for a moment to chew her cherry and allowed Ino to respond. Ino just took a cherry and popped it into her mouth, unwilling to answer her friend's question. "Is everything all right between you and Shikamaru?"
Shikamaru and her, all right? Ino nearly laughed at the concept of her and Shikamaru being "all right." Ever since he stepped foot in Cloud, they weren't "all right." Ino—assuming it was safe to say—hated him. She hated him for getting in her way of total oblivion from the Konoha world.
"Did he do something to you during the festival?"
During the festival, she didn't know what went through Shikamaru's head when he decided to allow her to pulverize him. He said she was frustrated. Ino thought she did a decent job trying to mask her frustrations towards her situation. Minako and Sachiko seemed to think her being jittery and paranoid was normal. Well, Minako and Sachiko didn't matter in the subject of Shikamaru, and they definitely didn't matter when it came to the topic of knowing who Ino was, which was also a subject Shikamaru excelled in.
The attitude Ino put forth the past few months wasn't Ino. Even before a certain night, Ino acted bitter towards the crew. Minako and Sachiko, especially Minako who tried to befriend Ino when she first arrived, grew accustomed to the animosity that was Ino. Shikamaru, however, knew the confident, out spoken woman that really was Ino. Ino couldn't imagine what he thought when he first saw her. He spent the last few weeks with the Cloud Ino, who was miserable and mentally beaten into the ground. By his questioning gazes and the occasional look of disappointment, Ino knew Shikamaru couldn't adapt to the new Ino.
"So, what'd he do?"
"Nothing," Ino mumbled.
"So, he didn't confess his love to you, did he?"
"Excuse me?"
The words "Shikamaru" and "love" couldn't be in the same sentence. He hated most women because he believes they're tyrannical, and he detests most men for being asses to the said women. The only thing Shikamaru loved would be being lazy and playing his stupid game with Asuma.
"He was supposed to confess his love to you at the festival."
"We're talking about Shikamaru."
"Shikamaru is a loving person."
"You don't know him like I do, Minako. Shikamaru doesn't love anything besides being lazy and shogi. Occasionally, he'll like sex, but that's only because he's a man."
"I don't see what you're complaining about—shogi is a very fun game."
"You're missing the point."
Minako ate another cherry and offered Ino the bowl of cherries. She took two and popped one into her mouth. "What you're saying is that Shikamaru can't love another person?"
"Physically impossible."
"He loves you doesn't he?"
"Did he tell you this?" The thought of Shikamaru loving Ino did send her pleasant vibes, but only because she, for once in a long while, felt important and wanted. If anyone told Ino they needed her or loved her, she'd feel what she felt at this moment.
"Duh, or I wouldn't be telling you this."
"Right. Anyway, I'm going to go get dressed."
The hallway was abnormally busy when Ino ascended the stairs. She heard rushed footsteps and hurried voices along with slamming doors. Takao flashed by her whilst slipping on a shirt. Ino had to resist tripping him. There'd only be hell to pay afterwards, which Ino wanted to avoid.
"Excuse me, Ino," a shirtless Konan mumbled as he squeezed past Ino. "Please excuse Takao and his rudeness. We're in a hurry." With that, he hurried down the stairs, trying to slip on his shirt while trying not to fall down the stairs.
Ino's room was silent when she closed the door behind her. Jin forced Sachiko to go grocery shopping, which left the room eerily silent.
The room didn't have a closet, so Sachiko and Ino were forced to fold their clothes and stuff their belongings into one drawer of a tiny dresser. Ino, after trying to strategically placing her clothes in the drawer so everything fit but eventually giving up, decided to throw her clothes in a corner of her side of the room or on her bed, and sometimes, she stuffed clothes in her pillowcase. As a gift, Ino gave her drawer to Sachiko.
Ino snagged clothes off the floor, taking a sniff of each clothing and tossing the clothes on her bed if they didn't smell clean enough. For those that smelled decent, Ino hung them on her shoulder and continued her search for clean smelling clothes, just in case she found a shirt that smelled a bit better.
Desperate for pants, Ino rummaged through her pile of dirty clothes that nestled behind the door. She sorted through Sachiko's and her own clothing while searching for bottoms to wear for her shift. As she threw her clothes onto her bed, a kunai flew out from underneath her shirt and clattered on the floor.
"What the hell is a kunai doing in here?" Ino pondered, picking the weapon up and inspecting it.
Tsunade clearly instructed Ino to limit her weapons on this mission. The weapons she brought were hidden in one of Jin's cabinets in his office, so what was a kunai doing in her room? Unless she happened to sleep walk downstairs and grab one of her kunai, Ino couldn't figure out how a kunai showed up in her dirty clothes pile.
With closer inspection, Ino looked for an "IY" inscribed into the handle of the weapon. Nothing.
If the kunai wasn't hers, then who the hell—
"Ino?" Minako knocked on the door. "You need to clock in soon!"
"I'll be there in a sec." Ino grabbed her backpack from underneath her bed and pulled out her holster. She wrapped the belt around her waist and tucked the kunai into the pouch. She changed her plain T-shirt and yoga pants into a tunic with leggings just so she could hide the small bulge at her hip.
Then, she went downstairs to clock in.
On the weekends, the pub filled up fast. On this particular night, Jin dragged spare tables from storage, set the tables up outside and lit lanterns to light up scene. Minako volunteered to serve the customers who sat outside with the condition Ino take out the trash after their shift. Ino agreed bitterly.
As her slow shift ended, Ino grabbed the overflowing trash bag and hauled it to the dumpster, carrying disgusting sack on her back.
"This is the last time I'm ever going to take out the trash," Ino muttered as she flipped the garbage bag over the rim of the dumpster. As the bag crashed at the bottom of the dumpster, her ears perked at the quiet tapping creeping towards her. She noticed a shadow engulfing her own as the tapping grew louder and louder, closer and closer.
"What the fuck?" the man exclaimed as Ino whipped around with her weapon pointed at the man's face. He stepped back. "Where the hell did you get that? I must've dropped it."
"You did come to the pub the other night," Ino breathed, tightening her grip around the weapon. The narrow handle felt awkward in her hand. What was the proper way to hold a kunai? "You really did try killing me."
"Nah, Blondie. I wanted to scare you. You didn't hear me explain how I'm going to kill you, did you? Cause that's what I was fucking doing, you know. I didn't really cut you, obviously, you dumbass. Anyway…do you wanna know how I'm going to kill you?" An insane grin slowly played onto his pale face as he stepped toward Ino, causing her to take a step back.
Ino's knuckles turned white as she tightened her grip on the kunai handle. For the first time since that night almost three months ago, she gazed at this man face-to-face, and this time, he wasn't going to let her go until she was dead. She had nightmares about the same maniacal grin he had on his face as he stood in front of Ino.
He shifted the giant three-pronged scythe on his shoulder as they stood there in the silence. During this time, she racked her brain for the proper grip of the kunai, and she tried to steady her hands from shaking.
The man grinned wider as he noticed the kunai shaking violently. "You're scared?"
Damn it. Could she defend herself with just a single kunai? Yes, all great shinobi had the capability of killing a hundred men with a single weapon. Ino spun the handle between her fingers, holding the weapon properly in her hand with the readiness to finally fight. "Nope."
"You're a kunoichi, eh? I never realized….This will be interesting." The silver haired man unsheathed his scythe and whipped it past Ino's face so fast; she felt the wind blow her hair away from her face. "You're a lot cuter with your hair out of your face."
"Why are you back?" she mumbled. Ino blocked the oncoming attack with kunai and pushed the scythe back to his owner.
"Letting you live cuts my payment down by half…that fucking bastard. So, I need to kill you to earn my payment, and my client just can't fucking stand that you're alive. So, I just have to try to kill you until, you know, I kill you. First, I'll cut your throat." He swung his scythe at her. She moved to block the blades, but from the corner of her eye, she noticed him pulling the scythe back and going in for a punch. With a slight adjustment of her head, his fist connected with the dumpster. Ino crouched and swept a leg around, sweeping him off his feet. As he began to fall, Ino pushed off the ground with her kunai erect and aimed for his face.
"Then, I'll let you slowly bleed." He blocked the kunai with the handle of his scythe. In the same move, he pushed Ino away. "For a woman, you're strong, I supposed. By the way, before I kill you, my name is Hidan."
Pardon the language in this chapter, but it is Hidan we're talking about. I almost lost motivation in this chapter, but I think it turned out better than I thought it would.
Anyway, thank you to those who reviewed, favorite, and all that good stuff. Also, thanks to those who just read.
HAVE A GOOD DAY.
Muffin enjoys the reviews.