Title: Are You Ready?
Chapter: 14 – Stalled
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 4,728
Summary: AU. Sakura gives up on Kakashi as a teacher after Team 7 falls apart. Too bad fate, enemy ninja, and sheer bad luck have other plans.
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. It's Kishimoto's and I just play with it. Part 14 of ? Unbeta'd.

Chouji hasn't yet gotten over the tide of humiliation at being tossed out of the library—they are, in fact, just heading down the steps away from the very same place—when a laugh rings out. He'd like to pretend that someone isn't laughing at him and Shikamaru (who is slumping along with him like a particularly angry shadow) but it's hard when it's Kiba laughing and he's leaning against the railing, Shino with him, and oh so very obviously waiting for them.

He wishes he could be angry about it—being embarrassed is quite literally the worst—but he can't because he'd told Shikamaru this had been a bad idea (or, well, a bad place to execute the idea, which he still doesn't think was a bad idea, exactly) and so, while he hates the laughter, he kind of feels they deserve it.

At least Tenten and Hinata hadn't laughed at them. It's always worse coming from girls for some reason and this is quite bad enough.

Shikamaru grumbles about them rubbing it in but they don't make an effort to avoid each other. It's still new enough to see all of them up and healthy that meeting up outside of the hospital is a novelty.

Without even talking about it, they fall into place, walking down the street together. It's nice, even though he doesn't miss the fact that they're being guided, quite deliberately, to where Kiba wants them to go.

And that Shino is going along with it, which means he agrees with whatever it is that Kiba has planned.

Selfishly, Chouji hopes it's not training. He's not permitted to train outside of his Clan yet, due to his injuries. He'd hate to have to turn it down. Or, worse, sit and watch as the others practice. He's heard through the grapevine that Team 8 has been called back to active duty.

He's glad.

And he's a little jealous.

He has no idea what the shape of the new Team 10 will be like when they go back to active duty.

"How have you been doing?" he asks Shino.

Shino adjusts his glasses. "I've been able to assist my father greatly."

Chouji thinks that Shino was pleased to have been asked, though he doesn't use many words to answer him. When Shino doesn't say anything further, Chouji allows himself to be drawn into a conversation with Kiba about the reconstruction going on in this part of town. It was only minimally impacted in terms of physical damage but…

"The lives lost can't be replaced," Chouji says, nodding towards one bookstore with all of the lights off and the door closed. "The family that ran that store… most of them passed in the attack. They were in the stands. I hear they've a young daughter who was with her grandparents who has survived but it will be years before she is old enough to handle running a store."

If she even wants to, after losing her family.

"At least she's alive," Kiba says with a grim, stubborn sort of determination. "That's the important thing. More than anything else."

Shino doesn't answer him and, on reflection, Chouji figures it's just as well. He understands Kiba but, while he considers himself a friend to Shino, Chouji doesn't really understand him.

The restaurant and the little girl aren't a new story. If they never open again, something else will open in its place. Konoha will grow strong once more. The Will of Fire can't be extinguished that easily.

He listens to Shikamaru quiz Kiba on his and Akamaru's recovery and abruptly asks, "What were you two doing outside the library anyway?"

"Training," Shino says.

Shikamaru scoffs. "At the library?"

"We were!" Kiba laughs. "Honest!"

"How?" Chouji asks curiously.

"Ah, just an exercise that Kurenai-sensei gave us to do in our free time," Kiba says easily and Chouji knows better than to push further than that.

So does Shikamaru, from his disgruntled grumble. Shikamaru likes to know things, especially interesting things, though he won't bother to look into it unless something comes up where he feels it might be useful to go through the effort of it.

"Where are we going?" Shikamaru asks, instead. "If we're going training, then no thanks."

"I'm still on medical," Chouji explains.

He doesn't add that he's not supposed to be alive right now. What he'd done had been designed as a suicide move and he'd known and accepted that.

"Nah," Kiba says.

"We're two blocks from a park," Shino says. "Will that do?"

"Yeah, that's fine," Kiba agrees. "I wasn't really thinking about where we were going anyway. Most of the training fields are booked this time of day anyway."

Shikamaru stops. "What do you want to say to us?"

"They could just want to hang out," Chouji says, tugging Shikamaru to the side of the street, so that he's at least not in everyone's way. Kiba and Shino follow. "It's nice to see everyone."

"The correct answer is that both of your expectations are accurate," Shino observes.

Kiba rolls his eyes. "This would be better somewhere more private," he says.

Shikamaru eyes them both. "I think we can stay right here."

Chouji knows it's Shikamaru's sheer, stubborn pride talking rather than his intelligence. They're already being talked about more than either of them wants to be.

"Actually," he says, a bit diffidently, "I wasn't going to say anything, but I wouldn't mind sitting down for a bit."

It's a lie, and Chouji doesn't like telling them, but it works. It's less the falsehood and more the play on Shikamaru's guilt for… the whole mission, which Chouji doesn't think he needs to feel guilty about, but… Shikamaru capitulates almost immediately and when they reach the park, finds a bench for Chouji to sit on and slouches off to get him a drink.

"Well played," Shino says. Kiba laughs.

They don't talk and, when Shikamaru gets back with drinks, which he shoves at Chouji, he gives Kiba a long, dark look. "So talk."

Chouji murmurs a thank you and pops a can open, eyes on Kiba.

Kiba grimaces, looking awkward, before he sighs. "You aren't going to like this… but look," he says briskly, as if ripping off a band aid, "I get that Ino talks a lot, but you guys are supposed to be her friends. And there's stupid shit we do and ignore about all of our friends because otherwise no one would ever be friends with anyone but—how could you ignore what she was saying to the point that she left? That's now how friends treat friends. Didn't you guys pay attention to her at all?"

"That's not fair," Chouji says. Shikamaru's expression has gone dark and closed off. Chouji wishes he hadn't wanted to talk to Shino and Kiba. "Things have been busy and—"

"Kurenai-sensei is quite firm on a problem of one teammate being a problem of all," Shino observes. "A one-off complaint is quite different from a persistently voiced problem."

"What he said," Kiba says. "It's not that we're saying you don't care or anything and we can't talk about how Team 10 was because we've been busy being Team 8, and yeah, all teams are different, but—aren't you guys the ones that are supposed to be good at teamwork? Are you guys the ones with the family background in working together? Hinata thinks that maybe that was the problem, that you both relied too much on family bonds and ignored that it takes work to be a good team."

"She didn't say that to us," Chouji says quietly.

"Yeah, well, she wouldn't, would she? It's not her place to tell you the things you ought to know." Kiba looks acutely uncomfortable. "And maybe we shouldn't be getting involved either, especially with Ino being happy on her new team. But you guys are our friends too and, yeah, we've all been busy but… friends pay attention to friends. So that's what we're doing."

Shikamaru still says nothing.

"It is unlikely that a transfer back to your team will be approved at this point," Shino says. "However, you were her friends prior to being assigned as teammates."

Chouji feels very tired. The very worst part is that they're right.

"If we can't get her back," he says, "then what do you think we should be doing instead?"

Kiba shrugs a little. "That's up to you. Do you still want to be her friend?"

"We are her friends," Shikamaru says, his voice low. He's angry.

Akamaru grumbles low in his throat. Not quite a growl but Chouji doesn't need to be good with dogs to know it's a warning. Kiba reaches down and rubs Akamaru's ears.

"If that's what you want, then act like it." Kiba's expression is frank and open. "If you need help with that, just ask, and maybe remember that it might not have been about the two of you."

"Is that something else Hinata said?" Shikamaru demands, as Chouji files that away into consideration for later. Later, when he feels less like he's been punched in the stomach again. "She says a lot to you, for someone keen to keep a friend's privacy."

"Lashing out at us and at Hinata, through us, isn't going change things," Shino says quietly. "For the record, Hinata has said very little about Ino, aside from where the question has come up about Hinata switching teams."

"What?!"

Chouji honestly isn't sure if he said that or if Shikamaru said that or if both of them did.

"She's not," Kiba says. "Also for the record. But she's had people asking, wondering if Team 7 is going to take from another team to make a new, full Team 7. Hinata's not interested. Ino hasn't mentioned it to her. Neither has Sakura. I don't think they're looking. They might not look at all, just open membership for their next Chuunin exams. But that doesn't matter—what I was saying, that's just what I've picked up. Not anything anyone's said to me. Just… maybe keep it in mind, yeah?"

Kiba exchanges a glance with Shino, then says, "We'll let you think about it. If you need us, feel free to hit us up. Friends help each other out."

Friends help each other out.

Chouji's manners mean he gets through wishing them well, and goodbye, and he knows he'll see them later, but Kiba's last words have an uncomfortable ring of truth to them.

When was the last time they'd helped Ino out anyway?

He doesn't remember.

When he asks, neither does Shikamaru.

It's a problem but maybe it's their problem, instead of one Ino caused.

I'm stalling.

And he is. He really should've stopped the lesson at least an hour ago, but he's been actually enjoying how well Sakura and Ino are coming along with the two jutsu he's shown them for sensing and finding things.

He wonders how they'd do with tracking jutsu. They're adjacent skill sets but not the same.

He wonders if that's something Sakura might be good at, something that Ino can't follow even though she hasn't had any problems picking up the sensing jutsu. Neither has Sakura. Their inexperience in the new jutsu shows in different ways: Sakura's control is too fine, she's holding the strings of the jutsu too tightly, leaving it overly tense and fragile as a result—even knowing they're there he barely notices them, but they're too easy to break once he finds them; Ino's problem is almost the opposite, her strings are too thick, too easily noticed by any enemy sensitive to chakra. Still, her maneuvering and handling of them is exemplary given that she's a novice.

I don't want to go into the main house.

Hence the stalling. He wants his dogs back but the memories of his childhood (early childhood) home are…

A formidable foe.

"Alright," he says, noticing that Sakura is getting tired (her chakra stores are still abysmal, though they're slowly growing now that she's getting proper training). "That's enough." As he speaks, he slices through both of their strings, noting the strength it takes to do so.

Sakura sighs, rubbing at a smear of dirt on her knees, while Ino rolls her shoulders and shakes her hands out.

He smiles faintly at them. "Good first tries," Kakashi says, and means it. He can never let himself forget that these two girls could have been so much more by now—and that he's got a chance to make it right. "Sakura, we need to work on you relaxing into the jutsu. You're holding it too tightly, which makes it easily broken by disturbances. Ino, we'll have to refine your control—you're using too much chakra in each string. Think whisps of smoke instead of lines done by a pen."

Ino nods firmly, her blue eyes distant—already, he thinks, trying to decide how to do what he's ordered her to.

Sakura is frowning slightly.

"Sakura?" he prods.

She snaps back to attention and he's relieved to see that, while she's still frowning, it's confusion in her eyes rather than upset. "Sorry, Hatake-sensei," she says. "It's just… what do you mean by relax into the jutsu? The Academy teaches that we're the ones that control the jutsu, so how do I…?"

"Good question," he says, though he does catch Ino's expression of bemusement at it.

It's something Clan children learn long before they graduate, though the Academy isn't wrong. Just simplistic. He thinks at her, a firm, directed thought, for her to not say anything right now.

Ino doesn't, though she listens, and that's fine.

"Have you ever seen a movie with horseback riders?" he asks, guessing that neither of the girls has ever actually ridden horseback. And Rin always liked going to the theatre. He hopes he's guessed right that Sakura and Ino would as well.

He doesn't know what teenage girls do for fun these days.

"Yes," Sakura says slowly, her frown going nowhere though it's clear that she's willing to follow his lead.

"Alright," Kakashi says mildly. "Now tell me which was in control? The horse or the human?"

"The human?" she tried. "There's the reins and the saddle and everything, after all."

He smiles, dipping his head in agreement, then asks, "And if you don't have any of that?"

She hesitates for a moment. "There's bareback riders," Sakura ventures. "But most people can't do that…"

"That's right," he says. "Do you see what I'm getting at?"

"Not really," she admits, after a puzzled moment. "Do you mean I'm holding the reins too tightly?"

The thing is, she is, though he thinks that's a symptom of the idea that he's trying to bring her around to considering.

"I want you to view your jutsu as the horse in this scenario," he explains, "and view yourself as the rider. Together you can do anything, but if you're fighting against each other… what happens?"

"You go nowhere fast or easily," she says, grimacing.

"That's right. When you're riding, you want to be in control and the reins—the hand seals you go through—are what let you decide which way to go, but the horse is still there. And your chakra has it's own ideas of how to move and flow and…?"

"I have to work with the way it moves, for each jutsu, instead of against it," she finishes, green eyes going thoughtful before she glances up again. "But why wouldn't they cover that in the Academy?"

"It's not generally needed for the jutsu and theory taught at the Academy-level," he explains. "Especially with things like kawarimi and bunshin no jutsu. The charka usage is minimal and abrupt, not a journey. There's no flow to follow, just an order to give."

Sakura nods and doesn't ask any further questions so he orders them both to stretch out and then run through a few basic taijutsu drills. Less than they usually would but, then, they'll be spending the rest of the day cleaning.

He doesn't need to exhaust them quite yet. The main house will do that for him.

Once they're done, and cooled down, Sakura speaks again, with another question, "What about the bareback riders?"

Kakashi smiles.

"That would be the bloodline limits. They don't need the reins as their connection with the horse they're riding goes deeper than that."

He allows this to stand as is while getting to his feet. With a nod, he orders them to do the same. "Come along," Kakashi says. "The house won't clean itself."

Though he does wish it would.

If this gets him his dogs back, though, it will be worth it.

It's taken days to get a meeting with Tsunade-sama.

Asuma supposes that he ought to take that, all by itself, as a clue. It's unsettling how much it discomfits him. He'd hated being the son of the Hokage but it's strange, now, to have to wait just like any other shinobi.

Heh. I'm never happy.

Dwelling on that is easier than dealing with the rest of it. The side-eyed looks he gets from shinobi whose names he doesn't even know. The way that he is equal parts ignored and avoided. The shame that already slips around the cracks in conversations.

Asuma ignores it.

He's dealt with all of this before, when he'd left the village originally, wanting to get out from under his father's impressive shadow.

Honestly, so far the fallout of Ino's choice just means more of the same and he can and will weather this storm.

But I will get to the bottom of this.

Kakashi hadn't been Kakashi. For the hundredth time, Asuma replays the conversation at the restaurant. It had been like talking to a near stranger, an acquaintance at most. Familiar but not familiar enough.

That Ino had left Team 10 to join Sakura… well. That was one thing. Before this, he'd already quietly started putting together plans under the assumption that when it came to the next Chuunin exams that Sakura would be joining his team and taking them with Ino and Chouji, since she and Ino were friends and both teams would need additional members in order to have three people to take the exam.

It would have been good for Shikamaru, too, to get that experience in leading his peers in a less fraught, less perilous situation.

He hadn't considered that Ino would choose to leave Team 10 and join the shattered Team 7. It hadn't even crossed his mind in his wildest dreams. Asuma is a good shinobi, a good Jounin. Ino had been incredibly vocal about her distaste for Kakashi.

It just didn't make sense for Ino to join Hatake Kakashi's Team 7, no matter how close her friendship with Sakura was.

And even that, he had to admit he didn't understand it. They had seemed to be both friends and enemies during the Chuunin exams and the boys hadn't seemed any wiser about what was going on between them. If anything, Asuma had thought they were rivals. Some odd Academy holdover.

But there's no Academy holdover that would be strong enough for a Clan heir to just up and shatter a functional team to prop up a broken one when there were alliance ties with her teammates that went back centuries.

Ino's a traditionalist. He's known this since he read her Academy profile, the very start of her shinobi file.

The worst part is, if I follow that thought to the logical conclusion…

Then the answer lies in that, for both herself and her Clan, Ino had come to the conclusion that Sakura's broken Team 7 was a better fit. That Yamanaka Inoichi had signed off on the transfer meant he agreed with her.

There's no girlish friendship, no matter how powerful, that would have swayed Ino's father, the head of ANBU Intelligence, if he'd thought it would be bad for his Clan and his heir.

Ino was impetuous and reckless and had the devil's own luck. Inoichi was like ice.

He dotes on his daughter but it's nothing compared to keeping his Clan strong. Asuma knows this.

Which brings the fault of it all right back around to Asuma, where it sits uneasily on his shoulders. He hasn't yet decided what his flaws were.

And now, with her out of the village, I can't even ask…

Though asking straight out… that would have been difficult in any case. He knows that Shikamaru and Chouji have been having trouble getting to talk to her alone—she's always with Sakura or her father—and without the title of sensei to back him, well, it would be strange for Asuma to talk to her privately.

People would talk.

And they're already talking enough.

And, oh, Asuma hates that. Whispers follow him and so do eyes. Some sympathetic but more just wondering, judging, trying to figure out what had gone so very wrong. It would be easier to cope with if he knew, but he doesn't.

"Sarutobi-san," one of the Chuunin guards says. "Hokage-sama will see you now."

It's a strange thing, having been forced to wait. He'd hated being the son of the Hokage—Asuma has never wanted to aim for that but it was expected, almost demanded, of him until he left the village for a few years—but he's never had to wait.

Yet another reminder of how things are different.

He misses his old man. There hasn't been time to really mourn. A funeral and then back to running missions, back-to-back, trying to put the village back together and finding out that while he'd been doing that, his team had gone and fallen apart on him.

Asuma pushes himself off the wall he'd been leaning against and murmurs a thanks as he walks past the Chuunin and into the Hokage's office.

Every Hokage has done it differently.

Gone is the smell of smoke, the wild stacks of clutter, papers that his father always meant to read and maybe got around to now and then. He remembers how the Yondaime's office had been, for the short period of time he'd held the office. It had been wild, then, a frenzy of work that was organized in such a way that only the Yondaime had been able to find anything.

Now, it's almost painfully neat. There's a stack of paper on the desk but nothing like what he's used to seeing. The room is scoured clean, smells faintly of the same cleaners they use in the hospital, and the windows are wide open.

Defiantly so.

There's been additional storage added in the form of shelving and drawers.

From what he's heard, and knows, he suspects that most of the order here is brought about by Tsunade's assistant, Shizune.

But thoughts like that fly out of his head as he meets Tsunade-sama's brown eyes. "Hokage-sama," he says, and the title feels strange on his lips.

He'll get used to it. Right now, though, it reminds him of his father.

"Sarutobi Asuma," the Hokage says, a faint smile on her lips. "How can I help you?"

Just like that, if the fact that he'd been forced to wait days hadn't been enough of a clue, he knows that he's got to tread carefully here. Tsunade-sama is not on his side and she will not entertain returning things back to the way they had been simply because that was how they'd been.

He'll have to pick his words carefully.

"As you know, Yamanaka Ino has recently chosen to leave Team 10, led by myself, to join Hatake Kakashi's Team 7," he says, keeping his voice level and his tone even. He must stick to the facts. "When I requested to see the paperwork detailing the change, specifically her reasons for doing so, I was informed that I would have to speak with you in order to access the same."

Which is unusual.

He's checked the laws, had once he'd been turned away, and discovered that under ordinary circumstances a former sensei has always had the ability and the right to the paperwork filed in regards to a transfer.

"Furthermore," he says, in the face of Tsunade's silence, "when I went to look at the mission logs, I discovered that everything pertaining to the new Team 7," Asuma had been able to look at all of the mission specs for the original Team 7, comprised of Haruno, Uzumaki, and Uchiha without issue, "has been blacked out."

For a Genin team that's incredibly unusual.

Even the C-rank mission that had turned into an A-rank job for the original Team 7 had had some information available to him, as a Jounin of Konohagakure no Sato.

In fact, everything about Hatake Kakashi and his new team, with it's stolen member, was locked down. It was… concerning. And, as the sensei missing a team member, it was frustrating. Team 10 was going to struggle now and he didn't even know why—nor did he have the information at his disposal to make a more educated guess.

"Sarutobi," Tsunade-sama says, leaning back in her chair. "The information you're looking for has been classified for good reasons."

"As Yamanaka Ino's former sensei, traditionally I should be able to access her reasoning, in her own words, for leaving," Asuma says. "Additionally, Hatake Kakashi was not acting as himself and that concerns me."

Especially with Ino having left to join a team under this different Hatake.

"I'm aware that her leaving was signed off by her father," he adds. "But I'm concerned and confused as to why I cannot access anything about her."

Then, feeling he's said enough, Asuma waits.

Patience is something he was terrible at, as a child, but as an adult, he's able to wait without obvious discomfort, no matter how much it grates at him.

"Access to Hatake Kakashi's current status is restricted as per my orders," Tsunade says finally, once she's looked her fill at him.

Asuma has no idea what she's seen in him, though he's refused to look away, meeting her eyes steadily. He feels lost and off-put and wonders how many shinobi felt this way around his father. He's never considered his father as someone to be uneasy around. Feared, yes, should they be anything but loyal but…

That was different.

"As such, most of the current Team 7's information is also restricted on a need-to-know basis."

Asuma does not need it to be spelled out to him that she feels he doesn't need to know. He nods, slightly, still standing at attention and feeling like a scolded schoolboy.

"That being said, you're correct that as Yamanaka Ino's former sensei, you are entitled to read her exit thoughts," Tsunade-sama says. She picks up a thin folder and he realizes that she's known what he'd come for this whole time. "Some minor modifications have been made, as per the current information blackout, but I believe you'll find her reasoning to be clear enough all the same."

She holds out the folder.

Asuma takes it carefully, like it might bite him.

Given everything these days, he almost expects it to.

"This is a copy," Tsunade-sama says. "Once read, it will immolate itself. I suggest you commit it to memory. No further copies will be provided until the blackout has ceased."

"Thank you, Hokage-sama." Asuma nods slowly. He's never felt like more of a stranger in his own village than now. "And my concerns about Hatake?"

"I assure you, those have been heard," Tsunade-sama says. "And taken under advisement. You're dismissed."

He bows and, rather than leaving through the door, he disappears in a swirl of leaves and smoke, landing a few rooftops over.

Asuma glances back at the Hokage's office. Then, with a deep breath, looks down at the folder he's carrying gingerly.

That… could have gone better. It's not a good sign that the Hokage holds him in such low esteem (and that was it, mingled with nearly unreadable sympathy: she disdains him) but she had given him half of what he'd come for.

With knowledge, he can figure out where it all went wrong.

It could also have gone worse.

Asuma doesn't kid himself. There's little chance he can fix this, especially with so many secrets wrapped around Hatake Kakashi, but at least… at least he'll know a little more.