Here's the next chapter!

Much thanks to Nazebaka for letting me bounce ideas around with her, and for her upcoming fanart. I'm greatly looking forward to sharing it with all you wonderful readers once she tells me it's done. :)

Disclaimer reminders: see CH 1.

P.S.- In case anyone is wondering, thoughts are in italics.

Chapter 11

Ino stood before the Hokage's desk, her body stiff at attention and her face clear of any expression. She had been summoned just moments ago to Tsunade's office with no explanation, and she had arrived to find, of all people, the one person in Konoha she least wanted to see.

Genma had glanced over to see the door open, and one eyebrow had risen ever-so-slightly when Ino came in. He'd watched out of the corner of his eye as she'd taken her place beside him in the room, both of them waiting for Tsunade to say something.

Tsunade sat with her eyes closed and her head propped up on her knuckles for several seconds, thinking about the copy of the mission scroll before her and the pile of personnel files pushed to the side of her desk. For 3 hours she'd been arguing with herself about the mission she'd just sent Kakashi on with his makeshift team, fluctuating between feeling confident in his team's abilities and feeling worried about the possibilities that awaited them at the end of such an obvious trap. Even now as her two subordinates stood waiting for orders, she wondered if she was making the right decision or being overly paranoid. The pile of "currently-on-mission" personnel files on one side of her desk and the unusually large pile of mission scrolls on the side table of the room reminded her that she really didn't have manpower to spare right now.

Finally, the Hokage shook herself from her thoughts. Gambling money was one thing, but gambling her people's lives was an entirely different matter. She would much rather err on the side of caution than take the risk of having some of her best shinobi killed or injured because she had sent them directly and knowingly into a trap, no matter how much confidence she had in their skills.

"Ino," she said abruptly, and Ino straightened up even more.

"Hai!"

Ino had been moderately surprised when Kotetsu had come to her family's flower shop to tell her the Hokage wanted to see her, and she had wondered all the way to the Hokage Tower why she'd been fetched just hours before her night shift was supposed to start. She'd found herself walking faster and faster, trying not to think about what might or might not merit a personal, immediate summon from Tsunade herself. She'd wondered if her team was alright; she'd wondered if her dad had returned early from his mission, and why; she'd wondered if there was an official rule she didn't know about forbidding romance (or one night stands) between shinobi of differing ranks.

When she'd entered the office to see Genma standing there, her mind had zeroed in on her contact with him over the past couple of days, and now, standing in front of the Hokage's desk, the question "does she know?" circulated in Ino's mind over and over. Ino tried not to let panic show on her face and forced her eyes to continue staring directly ahead.

"Your shift at the hospital is cancelled tonight. I'll find someone to cover it for you."

Ino swallowed. Punishment? she gasped in her thoughts. Was one night, when I was off duty, enough to suspend me from the hospital? Would she be that angry? Ino thought about the number of new replacement desks she'd seen in the Hokage's office in the past couple of years. I'm screwed!

Genma glanced between the young woman beside him and the Hokage, his neutral poker face still firmly in place. He'd worked under Tsunade long enough to know that the Hokage might scold him lightly for acting like Jiraiya if and when she heard about his flings, but any professional discipline would only be a slap on the wrist if any came at all. To be called to the office for something he'd done in his personal time would be a first with her, so he waited to see what she would say next.

"Genma, Izumo and Kotetsu will cover your shifts here for the next couple of days."

Genma blinked. They're never going to let me hear the end of this, he thought, at least until I buy them both enough sake… Outwardly, his head and the tip of his senbon both dipped slightly in acknowledgement.

He glanced over at Ino, noting the strained muscles in her neck and her carefully blank eyes. She's never been scolded for a fling, he realized with slight amusement, and she thinks that's what's happening here. She could be right, but meddling in her subordinates' private lives is not usually this Hokage's style. Unless I've actually crossed a line this time by going for one of her medic trainees... His lips tightened around his senbon as he waited for the Hokage to tell them what was going on.

"I'm sending you two as backup for Team Kakashi."

Backup? Ino blinked. I'm not suspended?

Genma felt his muscles relax at the thought of a mission and getting outside the village for the first time in a while, and relief that he did actually know the Hokage's tendencies as well as he thought he did.

Tsunade leaned back in her chair and continued. "Kakashi, Sakura, Shikamaru, and Chouji departed less than three hours ago on a B-rank delivery mission. They are almost definitely heading straight into a trap."

Ino's eyes widened exactly as much as Genma's eyes narrowed.

"You two are to catch up to them if you can, and back them up under Kakashi's command whenever you reach them. Until then, Genma is the team leader."

"H-hai!" Ino answered, still absorbing the fact that her two teammates were already headed toward danger.

Genma shifted his senbon to a more comfortable position. "Only the two of us, Hokage-sama?" Ino tensed at his choice of words, but his voice was level and serious.

Tsunade sighed. "Everyone else is out on missions, or scheduled to be out on missions in the next day or two. Or training outside the village. Or recovering from training," she added, thinking of Naruto's bad habits of pushing himself too hard and picking fights with Sai—she wasn't entirely sure which one to credit his current condition to. "I'm sending Ino because it's Shikamaru and Chouji that are already out there, and an extra medic on hand is never a bad thing. And I'm sending you, Genma, because I want at least one more jonin backing them up. You have no other missions coming up and I know you've been working pretty closely with Kakashi and Shikamaru recently." And because you were already in the building, she thought to herself.

"Any questions?" Tsunade asked as she tossed the scroll to Genma, who caught it and opened it. He skimmed it, then passed it to Ino without making eye contact. She accepted it stiffly, and then scanned it for herself.

"Do we have any intel on what kind of trap it might be?" Genma asked.

Tsunade shook her head. "We don't. The destination is near the border of Rain Country and we had some threats from them recently, but there's no solid link between those threats and this mission. Kakashi can brief you on the details of that if it turns out to be connected."

"I understand."

The Hokage crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm praying that I'm wrong and that this will be a boring, pointless mission for the two of you, but I have a bad feeling about this. I want you both to be on your guard at all times."

Genma and Ino both chorused "hai," then Tsunade nodded.

"Pack your gear. You leave immediately."

Tsunade paused before dismissing them. She glanced between the two of them standing so formally.

Genma looked almost as relaxed as he usually did, but she noticed that he was not looking at his freshly assigned partner at all. Ino, however, looked notably more tense than usual. The Hokage's eyebrows drew towards each other and the pitch of her voice dropped. "Is there a problem I should know about for this mission?" she asked.

Genma watched Ino from his peripheral vision. This was probably not going to be the most pleasant mission he'd been on, but he wasn't going to create any issues as long as she didn't. If things did go bad, it would be good to have an extra medic around as Tsunade had said, and the increasingly famous Ino-Shika-Cho formation was worth the effort of bringing Ino along even if it meant he had to stay on his toes even more than normal to watch her back and his own.

Ino fought the urge to swallow. I'll prove that I do take my duty seriously, she thought vehemently, and if he doesn't believe it I know right where he can shove his opinion. "No ma'am," she said with finality, and Genma agreed with a twitch of the senbon.

Genma, you and your damn flings, Tsunade thought, resisting the urge to roll her eyes in exasperation. You're going to hear about this when you get back. She glanced between them once more. "Ino, grab a full med kit in addition to your normal field kit, just in case." She looked to Genma. "Catch up with them if you can, but take no unnecessary risks."

Both nodded.

"Dismissed!"

Genma and Ino both exited her office quickly and silently. Once they were outside the door, Genma broke the silence. "Pack to run hard, necessities only. Meet at the west gate in 15 minutes."

Ino met his eyes barely long enough to nod. "Hai," she said flatly, then she was off running to collect what she needed.

Genma watched her disappear around the curve of the hallway, then his eyebrow twitched in amusement even as his mouth settled into a grim line. The image of Shikamaru's henge impersonation of Ino during that very first simulation flashed through his head, when Kakashi had given Ino (who was secretly Shikamaru) an order she didn't like. Her formal "hai" had been very similar to the one he'd just received. Kid knows his teammate, he reflected wryly, then jogged off to collect his own gear.

. . .

Shikamaru absorbed the scene before him as a crack opened the wall before him. He was crouching on the ground closest to the western wall of the building with the sun still high in the sky but slightly behind him, and Sakura's "hell yeah!" was still resonating around the building and through the trees that surrounded it.

As the ground rumbled and shook and broke, the wall before him also began to split to reveal the inside of the building. The basement was built mostly below ground level, with the basement's ceiling only being about a foot higher than the grass. The makeshift "window" opening before him showed a different kind of light than his eyes were accustomed to. It was dimmer than outside, but notably brighter than most basements, lit with electric bulbs like a normal office or laboratory rather than with wall candles and oil lamps like a standard office basement.

We were right; it is a bunker, he thought. And the light from all around is going to make it hard for me to find any shadows strong enough to use. At least Kakashi tried to give me the sun at my back…damn. If only it were a little later in the day. As his eyes adjusted to the unnatural light, he reached for the chakra blades in his hip pouch and started analyzing the room, the enemies, and the best place to jump in.

The room itself was huge. The whole basement was a single unit, it seemed, because he was seeing streaks of daylight from the other three walls before he was even inside. There were six long metal tables lined up side by side in the center of the room, and there were countertops and cabinets lining the walls with glass bottles and jars and tubes arranged on them—or rather, those things had been arranged on them, but now that the building was under such a forceful attack, they were shaking off the counters and into the floor, shattering the glass item by item as each piece hit the stone floor.

The contents of the cabinets were also shaking out, but it was unclear at a glance what was inside them. There were small boxes tumbling out, some landing with the sound of more breaking glass, some with a solid 'thud,' and some with the light tap of hollow cardboard or thin wood. There seemed to be an assortment of research equipment. Or possibly medical equipment, depending on the type of research being done, Shikamaru thought. But why 6 tables if they requested a team of 4 shinobi for this mission?

Aside from the inanimate contents of the apparent lab, the much more problematic factor in his analyses were the enemies inside, crouched and ready to spring in spite of the shaking ground and shifting items in the room. The tables aren't shifting, the genius realized, then stored the fact away and quickly counted. There seemed to be between fifteen and twenty enemy shinobi scattered around the tables, and it was almost too many to fit in the room. They would have to be careful not to get in each other's way. That gives us an advantage.

There also seemed to be an inner group and an outer group, he noticed, and the outer group looked slightly older on average, and steadier on their feet. Those must be the stronger forces, he guessed. They guessed we would be sending our strongest people in first, but they don't know our numbers either. One of the groups is going to try to break past us to engage anyone left outside and then try to close in on us from the outside…but which group will stay and which will go? The outer group will probably engage us, and the inner group will take the opportunity to slip past us.

He noted the distinct lack of forehead protectors on the enemies, but a few had creases in their hair where their hairstyles were normally arranged around the identifying accessory. They've been ordered to hide them?

Then he saw a flash of pink to one side of him and a flash of spiky red to the other, so he took the opportunity to jump in about halfway between where the wall was and where the outer ring of enemies was gathered. As Shikamaru had predicted to himself, the outer, more experienced opponents quickly moved into close combat with whichever Leaf ninja was closest, and the battle was underway.

As soon as each of the four Konoha shinobi was engaged in fighting at least one opponent (though Chouji started with about three, probably because of his size, and Kakashi with two), ten of the inner group jumped out of the room through the holes left by the Konoha team members.

As Shikamaru continued to survey the room between his movements, he saw adversaries becoming suddenly clumsy and disoriented around Kakashi's position. He's probably casting genjutsu on any of them who look into the Sharingan. Shikamaru's stomach tightened even as he tried to focus on the clanking of his own blades with enemy kunai and the reverberations from the blows travelling through his knuckles from his own fight, and he threw himself harder into his taijutsu battle. He glanced at the light fixtures every chance he got, waiting for chances to fire kunai or shiruken at them to give himself some angled light for his shadow techniques, and started to plan which bulbs to leave intact or destroy in order to have the most options.

. . .

Genma and Ino landed inside the bunker through the largish round opening Chouji had made to the south of the building to immediately find themselves confronted with three adversaries, who all attacked simultaneously. One went for Ino and two went for Genma, and instantly they were engaged in the battle.

These guys are stronger than those two scouts we ran into outside, Genma thought with a scowl, then bit down on his senbon to hold it in place for combat. He looked for Kakashi and saw him to the left, and between throwing punches and blocking blade strikes, he finally caught the team leader's gaze.

Kakashi nodded a greeting between ducking one punch and jumping over a leg sweep, and glanced around to see who else Genma had brought. Kakashi's view of Ino was blocked by a couple of opponents across the width of the room, and upon not seeing anyone immediately, Kakashi spun and stabbed one of his opponents in the shoulder and then looked back to his friend for information. Genma threw his fist into one man's ribs hard enough to knock the wind out of him, then wrenched the same man's arm to dislocate his shoulder and hold him in place as a living shield for a moment. Holding him captive with one hand, he used his other hand to throw Kakashi the hand signal for a two-man team, then gestured to himself and Ino, who was now back in Kakashi's line of sight.

Kakashi gave a curt nod of acknowledgement before his own opponents doubled their efforts and he had to return his focus to his more immediate surroundings.

Genma swung the man he was holding by the arm he'd twisted from its socket, and the man screamed as he collided with Genma's other opponent. Genma then sprinted for Shikamaru, who was defending and attacking his way over toward Chouji but seemed to be having a more difficult time than Kakashi or Sakura since taijutsu wasn't normally his preferred combat style. He noted a couple of busted light fixtures and wondered if it was the Nara heir's doing.

Genma slid between the legs of a particularly large enemy who was lifting a heavy-looking fist to bring down toward Shikamaru, jabbing senbon deep into both of the man's calf muscles as he passed between them. He was back on his feet in an instant as the man dropped on his knees, back to back with Shikamaru just in time to block two shiruken with the kunai he'd drawn. "What do we need?" he shouted to make himself heard over the large opponent's howling.

"We need to find the researchers!" Shikamaru shouted back, "and a couple prisoners!"

Genma glanced quickly at Kakashi for either a confirmation or a different order, but seeing that the Copy Ninja was fully occupied with three new opponents at the moment, he nodded. "You good here?"

Shikamaru looked to where Ino was sidestepping and slashing the two who were now attacking her. As soon as he made it to Chouji, he'd finally be able to use some of his Shadow Justu with Chouji's shadow and the key lights he'd knocked out, and then the Ino-Shika-Cho formation would be back in business despite the enemies that seemed to be multiplying from nowhere.

He crossed his arms at the wrists so that his chakra blades could double-block a tanto that was coming toward his face. "Yeah, we got this."

Each one traded a couple more blows, then Genma ducked a punch to sweep someone's feet out from under them. "How many more?" he asked, referring to the rest of the building.

"No clue," Shikamaru answered, sounding just a tad bit strained. "There are probably at least half this number somewhere else, and I think the scouts are filtering back in!" He braced his elbow at an upward angle so that the enemy jumping in from above landed with his throat directly on the point of the bone. "Don't go alone!"

Genma nodded again absently and looked over at Kakashi's location. The older jonin looked like he was struggling quite a bit, but it was probably because of the restraint he was using—nobody who knew Kakashi would doubt his ability to destroy the whole room (or building) in a single jutsu if the situation got truly desperate, but he hadn't even summoned his hounds yet. He'll be fine, Genma decided, and the why of this whole mission must be the crucial objective, since everybody's sticking to hand-to-hand combat. A team of 4 and a team of 2 makes the most sense here, he mused between a hook and uppercut combo.

He alerted Shikamaru that he was going, and then used a brief moment between opponents to sprint toward the northeaset corner of the huge room in the direction of the only door leading out of the room—presumably to a narrow stairwell, since each of the four walls had gaping holes right in the middle of them that revealed nothing but dirt on all sides.

"Ino, with your team," he ordered, then raised his voice again to be heard across the room. "Sakura! With me!"

Ino glanced at him long enough to acknowledge that she'd heard him, then sprinted in the direction of Shikamaru and Chouji. In her haste, though, she left one opponent half-neutralized, and he flung three kunai in her general direction once she was several feet from him. Two of the weapons were poorly aimed, but one of them was heading straight for her back. Ino became aware of it too late to do anything about it, but she realized it just in time to see a shiruken from Genma's direction knock it off course. It thudded harmlessly into a table she had just passed, and when her eyes shot over to Genma, he was already drawing more weapons and watching the room as he waited tensely for Sakura.

Sakura, over on her side of the basement lab, punched one enemy shinobi in the face and knocked him to the floor, then lashed out behind her to sink her foot into the stomach of another that was trying to come up on her from behind. "Hai!" She answered, already trading blows and blocks with another opponent. As he lunged toward her with kunai in each hand, she summoned her chakra to her legs to jump over his head, striking at him with her own kunai from above as she flipped over him. The force he used to block her strike gave her an upward push, and she landed on her feet on the other side. Then Genma was through the door a few steps ahead of her and she was sprinting behind him.

Please leave me a review! They make me smile so much. :)

I have about half of another chapter written, but I think it might be chapter 13, not 12. (See? Progress!) I think the next chapter is going to be the rest of the battle and possibly the beginning of Shikamaru's interrogation practice, depending on how long each of those things become.