AN: well, it's a little longer than the last chapter...heh heh. I have to say that once again this did not turn out as I had expected. I had planned on going into much more detail about Ino's day to establish her character (and flaws) right away. All well, it's done. I think I'm going to blame my lack of inspiration on the fact that my laptop broke just over a month ago. I was using my cousins, as she has microsoft word on her laptop (even if it is a mac) but she's on vacation right now... so all I have is the main computer, which is a mac. I hate macs. I loathe them with a fiery passion. Seriously.
and guess what, this one doesn't even have word! so forgive any errors please, I'm once again uploading without much proof-reading (because I wanted you to know I am continuing this story) and I didn't even have my beloved Microsoft word (tears).
Chapter Two:
Looking back at her life, Ino was quite proud of herself for how far she'd come. Actually, all of the former rookie 9 had done quite well for themselves, as well as Team Gai – rookie 8! Why did she always want to say 9? He had left along time ago, and Ino was convinced that he no longer deserved (or even wanted to be) associated with Konoha in any way. So she called them the rookie 8, and although many people looked at her like she was crazy, the rest of the group understood her need to block him from her life, as though he had never existed. Unlike Sakura, Ino had never had any closure, and so it wasn't something she could easily deal with. Besides, the one thing Ino hated above all else was traitors – ironically this hatred had started when Itachi's betrayal had broken Sasuke…
Cutting her wandering thoughts short Ino began to mentally and physically prepare herself for a long day. She was head of the Torture and Interrogation Department now – Ibiki had retired the previous year. Shikamaru had done quite well for himself and was her immediate superior – he was head of Intelligence and Foreign Affairs. Neji was the ANBU captain and Sakura was the head medic at the hospital.
Of course Naruto had gone and proven himself right, and was training under Tsunade to be the next Hokage.
She quickly ate some breakfast before pulling her long hair up into it's traditional pony-tail and heading out to work, already trying to remember who she was seeing today and how best to break them down.
"Good morning Shikamaru!" she said cheerily as she breezed past his office to head into her own special domain.
"Ino," he acknowledged. "Could we try that herbal mixture out today?"
Halting her progress down the hall Ino swerved into his office. "You know it's probably not ready, right?" she reminded him.
"We'll never know unless we try," he shrugged. "Plus, Choji needs to see the reaction if we're going to rework the quantities."
Ino nodded. "Is he here today?"
"He gave his team the day off, said he'd drop by this morning."
"Alright," Ino decided. "I've got some guinea pigs. Meet me in my office in about half an hour." And then she was gone, already moving her schedule around in her mind to accommodate this last minute change.
Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji had been working on a mixture that was basically a sort of mental 'relaxant.' It caused the taker to fall into a mental stupor that basically made him (or her) to stupid to realize they needed to lie. Ino supposed you could refer to it as a truth potion. All three of them were convinced they could get it to work – with Ino's knowledge of plants, Shikamaru's access to the Nara clans records, and Choji's knowledge of food and the human body their endeavor was bound to succeed…eventually. It just hadn't yet.
Their last test subject had fallen into a mental stupor so deep her brain had forgotten to tell her heart to beat, and the one before that had had an allergic reaction that caused all his skin to fall off. It wasn't pretty, but they had all seen worse.
Ino occupied herself with paper work and meeting with various subordinates until Choji arrived.
"Have you picked the subject?" Shikamaru asked her.
Ino nodded and waved a file in the air as she hastily downed a final sip of coffee before leading the way out of her office and into one of her cells which were hidden deep in the earth below the main building.
"Arakida Reizo," she said, waving the same file she'd held earlier at the one-way window. "A shinobi from the land of lightning. Male, seventeen years old, six feet tall and a hundred and fifty pounds. The specimen is in perfect health and a prime candidate for our tests. He was a chunin of next to no importance, and we've already extracted all the information from him. He isn't likely to be of value to the Raikage, so there is no possibility of exchanging him for any prisoners of ours they may have – so it's okay if we kill him."
Shikamaru and Choji nodded their understanding, and Choji began preparing the mixture in accordance with the subject's vital statistics.
When he was finished he gave it to Ino. "This time it will work more effectively if he digests it," he warned. Their previous experiments at intravenous solutions had all failed miserably.
Ino nodded dumped the solution into a glass of juice – it wasn't quite tasteless, so water didn't work, but cranberry juice hid the flavour quite well and the acid acted as a catalyst and hastened the subject's reaction (at least that's what Choji theorized).
Previously Reizo had been interrogated by one of her junior staff members, who had used standard techniques to gather information – Reizo had been an easy nut to crack. So as the twenty-two year old blonde slipped through the door she adopted a more seductive sway and girlish tone of voice.
"Hi," she said a trifle shyly as she moved to sit on the floor in front of him.
Reizo didn't respond, but she caught the way his eyes flickered across her form and hid a grin.
"My name is Ino," she offered.
Her test subject only grunted.
"Look," Ino offered, letting her voice reflect empathy and sorrow she didn't feel. "I'm really sorry about what my boss did to you, he's a cruel man. You didn't deserve that."
Now Reizo raised his head to meet hers. "So now you're going to pretend to be my friend and try to get more information out of me? Well to bad, I'm not telling you anything."
"What, do you have something else to tell us?" Ino asked, raising an eyebrow in obvious disbelief.
Reizo remained silent, and Ino sighed. This was a normal reaction for his type. He had obviously already told everything he knew, but was afraid of being seen as worthless and killed. At the same time he was scared of them interrogating him for more information. It was pathetic really.
"Sorry," Ino said softly. "I didn't mean to sound so sharp…it's just that my boss is very thorough."
Reizo nodded his head in agreement before he caught himself and glared at her.
"I can see you don't want me here," Ino said with a sigh. She raised the glass to her lips as though taking a sip and then put it back down on the table. Noticing the way Reizo's greedy eyes followed the glass she wordlessly offered it to him.
He froze for a moment, torn by fear and indecision, before he snatched the glass from her hands and downed the drink in one gulp. Ino grinned at him and then left the cell before he realized what was going on.
On the other side of the wall Shikamaru, Ino and Choji all gathered around the one-way window to watch his reaction.
Reizo looked from the door to the empty glass of juice in front of him in obvious confusion.
"Wait for it, and 3 – 2 – 1," Choji whispered. All of a sudden Reizo started clawing at his own skin and screaming, but they couldn't hear what he was saying through the sound-proof walls.
"Is that hallucinations or pain?" Shikamaru.
Ino shrugged and looked at Choji.
"Hallucinations," Choji clarified before mumbling to himself about too much of this or that.
When the boy started shredding and tearing off his own skin, Choji looked away with a pained expression on his face. Even Shikamaru looked a little green. Ino kept watching with a slightly bored expression on her face until the writhing, bloody mass stopped moving.
"Interesting," she noted before saying farewell to her friends and leaving to find someone to clean out the cell – sooner or later (probably sooner) someone else was going to need it.
"Do you think she'll ever get over it?" Choji asked a little sadly. Shikamaru could only shrug, and the two friends followed their blonde ex-teammate out of the cells.
The rest of the day was fairly straight-forward and passed by in a blur. She used seduction techniques on one prisoner and learned about a spy in the ranks of those responsible for assigning missions in time to prevent him from causing any serious damage. She got to work out some latent frustration she'd been carrying around by physically torturing a shinobi until he revealed some incriminating evidence against Iwagakure. She even got to use her shintenshin (although this was never a pleasant experience she felt like she didn't have enough people to train it on, so she relished the opportunity) to extract the layout of a building that the Hokage was planning on sending assassins to - and then erased the memories and planted new ones so he would go back and report false information to the grass leader's advisor. All in all a good days work.
It was a busy day, even for Ino - she often only had to supervise - but she felt well-worked and contented as she headed home for a shower, a quick meal, and then sleep. Ah, sleep, what a blessed thing.
--
The Hokage was working late in her office, as usual. She was just considering a sake break when she sensed something...something off.
"Who are you and what do you want?" Tsunade asked, in no way looking forward to dealing with whoever it was. She channelled chakra to her arms in preparation for smashing the hiding nin to smithereens.
"I know you're there! Show yourself!" It was actually a little frightening. They weren't many people who could hide themselves this well from the Hokage of the leaf village.
Suddenly an unfamiliar dark-haired man stepped out of the shadows, the spinning red eyes informing her immediately of his identity.
"Uchiha Sasuke," Tsunade gasped, shocked. What could he be doing in her office?
"I've come back," he said clearly, although his voice was rough from disuse.
"You know I can't just take you word on that," Tsunade shook her head in disbelief. Arrogant brat. Yet she got the feeling he was telling the truth, there was a sort of wild, desperate look about him... besides, if he'd been trying to kill her he would have done it right away, while he had the element of surprise.
Sasuke wordlessly threw a bag on her desk. Eyeing it warily Tsunade opened it - revealing the blood-drenched heads of Orochimaru and Itachi Uchiha.
Holding back the urge to vomit, Tsunade quickly shut the bag. Attempting to maintain her Hokage-like calm she looked at the Uchiha levelly. "I guess the rumours were true. Why did you come back?"
"There's something I need to do," he said evasively.
"Very well, before you can re-enter the village you will be held for questioning." Rising abruptly she advanced on the dark-haired avenger.
"I can't," Sasuke said, a trifle desperately. "I need to see Ino."
"Yes, I think you're right," the Hokage said with a grin before knocking the Uchiha unconscious and calling some ANBU to take him to a holding cell.
Alright, Ino and Sasuke meet in the next chapter. I had up to chapter three plotted out before I started writing this, but after that I'm going to be completely lost... so just a heads up, I may write myself into a corner. I've been known to do that if I'm not careful, as I sort of let the characters take control of the story. No worries though, I always work it out...eventually.
On a completely unrelated note, I was watching Death Note (I've never really been into anime/manga until recently so I constantly discover 'new' things. I'm going to stop now though. I only watched it because I loved the displays of genius between L and Kira...without L... Needless to say I was horribly upset. At the same time though, I greatly admire the writer. You could see that they gave their characters complete free reign, not trying to force them into a set plot - so we got to see very interesting battles of wit. The result was tragic (L! sob) but I'm completely in awe of their ability. Sigh. It only makes me feel more inadequate, but at the same time, it was incredibly inspiring. And maybe I'll learn from it and be able to do better.
Anyways, catch ya next chapter!