Professional Widow

Running in the family...

It did not take Ayame and Inoichi Yamanaka's combined mental powers to realise that Ino had been in a rotten mood ever since she had come back from Intel. She had barely exchanged a word with them on returning home, and now she was sitting at the table, morosely scooping up vegetables with her chopsticks.

"What's wrong, love?" asked Ayame. "You seem like you've got the hump with someone. Is it those team mates of yours?"

"It's Ibiki bloody Morino again," sighed Ino, chasing a stray piece of pepper round her plate. She popped it into her mouth and continued, "He won't stop giving me grief. Says I only got the job because of Daddy and he's not convinced."

"Well, he's right there," said Inoichi. "You did get the job because of me." Ayame sighed. Inoichi had been elsewhere when the gods had handed out tact.

"Oh, thanks," said Ino, rolling her eyes. "I know that. But what am I supposed to do about him? I can't just ignore him, I have to work with the guy."

"What do you think?" said Inoichi.

Ino looked at him. She wondered if her father was taking the piss. Even when her psychic powers were activated, it was difficult to tell.

"What am I supposed to do?" she repeated.

"Prove you can do the job," said Inoichi, and dropped a mushroom into his lap.

xxx

Two years had passed since Ino had swapped purple for grey. Although she had learned healing from Tsunade, and helped out at the hospital from time to time, she had chosen the path of interrogator, rather than medic. She had been dropped in at the deep end after the Akatsuki invasion, and ordered to execute a young female prisoner, one of her old crush Sasuke's team mates. She had not carried out any executions since – that job was left to Melon, a mute blonde Akimichi woman – but she had shadowed her father and his colleagues, and helped look into the minds of prisoners. Most of the interrogators didn't seem to have any problem with her. Ibiki was the exception. She was still in awe of him a little, remembering how he'd invigilated the Chuunin Exams, and her father had warned her that he wasn't an easy person to work with.

You could say that again. "I don't care who your father is," Ibiki had said to her after she'd killed Karin. "This is my territory, and you answer to me. Don't think you can go running to Daddy if you fuck up." It had been downhill from there.

After dinner, Ino went into the Yamanaka garden to train her mind. She sat under the willow tree and made the familiar seals as she entered the mind of a passing bird, and wondered when she was going to get the chance to show Ibiki she was just as good as her father.

The chance came sooner than expected; four days later, she was sitting at her desk, about to listen to a tape recording, when the man himself poked his head round the door and said, "Hey, you. Get in here."

Ino picked herself up, wondering what Ibiki had in store for her, and went into the room where the mindreading machines were. Inside one of them sat a man with an Amegakure forehead protector. Grouped around the machine were her father, Kurenai Sarutobi-Yuuhi – another recent recruit – Ibiki, Tonbo, and the group who had brought the prisoner in, which included Chouza Akimichi and Hinata Hyuuga.

"Hi, Ino," Chouza greeted her. "This fuck-I mean, this man is an Amegakure agent. Been hiding out in the Fire Country since the war."

"We think he's got contacts both here and in the Wind Country," added Inoichi. "One of Hinata's fellow clan members tipped us off. He's not been very talkative, I'm afraid."

"Get into his head," Ibiki said curtly. "Do whatever it takes to get information out of him."

"Don't blow those brains yet," Inoichi cautioned. "Be careful. You're going in alone. If it gets too hard, Kurenai and I'll put her hands on the seals."

Ino placed her hand on the man's head, shut her eyes, and began to concentrate until she had forged a pathway from her mind into his. To her relief, there were no traps, none of the mental blocks that she had been warned about. She floated through grey space, her ponytail streaming out behind her, until she found the gleaming hub of the prisoner's mind, and the scrolls of his memories. She began to unravel the scrolls.

Dig deep. Dig deeper. The scrolls were whizzing around, rolls and rolls of paper at Ino's feet. They took her through his childhood, through his own equivalent of the Chuunin Exams, his first mission, him fingering some girl in an alley, all sorts of insignificant memories – no, wait, these looked important – a meeting in a dodgy pub. A piece of paper passed from one hand to another, the address memorised. Aside glances. A code name for the Hokage – did the stupid arseholes actually think they had a chance at killing him? A bridge over a river, a rickety old bridge at that, and feelings of panic, vertigo, the fear of being dragged away and sucked down forever...

A wicked thought came to Ino, and she knew what she had to do. Her eyes snapped open, and she made the Yamanaka clan seal and said, "Shinranshin no Jutsu."

Get in there. Dig deep. Pull it out and shove it in his face. She took every memory she had of turbulent water, the story Chouji told her of how he and Hinata had had to hurry a group of kids out of a cave as water poured in; a journey on a ship where the sea had tossed and Shikamaru had vomited over the side; herself, aged five, shrieking as she slid down a muddy bank and fell into a pond; and her memories intertwined with the prisoner's. The prisoner's face contorted in fear and pain. Ino was up to her neck in his psyche, and she plunged her hands into a body of water that, she realised, was the sea his parents had drowned in, and she threw up her hands, spraying water everywhere.

"Stop!" the prisoner screamed. "Please! Stop!"

Ino conjured up a massive tsunami. She uprooted fears of choking and thrashing and trying to grab for an object that wasn't there. She made him remember his parents floating away in the rushing water.

"I'll do whatever you want me to," gasped the prisoner. He appeared to be short of breath. "Just...please...make that...bitch...stop..."

Chouza was smiling. Hinata looked as though she was about to be sick.

"Don't you dare call me a bitch," Ino snapped. "Or I'll go through every bad memory you have and make it ten times as worse. I mean it."

The prisoner whimpered. Ino flashed Ibiki a triumphant smile, thinking, I did it. How's about that, then? She could have sworn Ibiki looked – no, it couldn't be – was he actually impressed?

"Just like her daddy," she heard Chouza say to Kurenai.

Then she heard Inoichi's thoughts in her head.

Well done, Ino. That's my girl. I knew you could do it.