Title: Are You Ready?
Chapter: 34 – The Game of Faces
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 4,550
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 34 of ? Unbeta'd.
Okay, that's weird as hell.
Ino tucks that thought deep under the calm she's draped around her—don't notice her! She's a bee or a cricket or a squirrel in terms of energy—but she still thinks it because, well, it's true.
Followed on the heels of that thought is the one that:
I'm prettier.
No, it didn't matter that whoever it was had henged into a clone of her. She was still prettier.
Satisfied about this, the most petty of things that assured her that the world was in perfect order once more, Ino narrows her eyes at the imposter-her.
That looks like me but that's not my chakra signature, she muses thoughtfully, considering the way the other Ino shifts, looking left, right, up, and down in what's obviously a scan for being tailed. The false her doesn't seem to notice her though, while she allows a little bit of smugness at her skill, Ino doesn't let that make her get careless.
It could be that they did notice her and don't want to give that away. Maybe they want to lure her into a trap. After all, this whole thing seems like a set-up of some sort even though Ino doesn't know what it's all about.
But it involves my team and that means…
She's probably going to have to spring the trap at some point.
Ino considers that then mentally shrugs. Yeah, probably, but she'll worry about it later. Springing a trap is always safer than having it sprung upon you anyway. For now, though, she watches as the fake her looks again and then goes back into the room, shutting the door.
She doesn't even shut the door the way Ino would and that's, like, Henge 101: Impersonation for Beginners.
So they're either sloppy or want me to think they're sloppy.
Ino's eyes narrow speculatively.
There's still no other doors or windows in that room, according to the work she and Sakura have put in with memorizing this estate. Translocation is an option but Ino is close enough that there would be either a visual or auditory confirmation for that jutsu—smoke and leaves are hard to miss, if they're using Konoha-style translocation and the others are even more obvious.
So.
Absently, she murders a spider that crawls up on her knee, and considers her options.
I don't like this. Either they know I'm out here and are trying to bait me into attacking or they know I'm out here and know that by them staying here I can't go on because doing so would leave an enemy at my back. Or they don't know I'm here at all but I can't count on that.
Even before Hatake-sensei had begun drilling them on the real meaning of 'underneath the underneath' Ino had been good at this game. Now, now she's even better at it, but being better at it means the options are harder to decide between.
There's no good choices here. Either I approach and attack or I leave and have to watch my back. So what it comes down to is… what's more important to me, right here and now?
Straining senses she's unaccustomed to relying upon, Ino gingerly inspects the chakra signature of her imposter. It's not her chakra signature which is both obvious, since she's the one looking at it from the outside, but also good to know because—if someone was wearing her face and had her chakra signature, well, that would be a problem of a different sort entirely wouldn't it? That would make it a Clan problem, if the imposter left the estate.
And with my current inability to use my bloodline… if they managed to duplicate that, too, then…
She likes to think her dad would know her from an imposter but he's the one who first trained her in the fact that anyone, absolutely anyone and everyone can be fooled.
But it's not my signature, so I don't have to worry about that. Much. She'd probably keep worrying at it in the back of her head and that, Ino knows, is mostly because she's feeling a whole lot of ways about her lack of access to her bloodline. Daddy's not going to replace me with a fake just because I fucked up. We'll fix it.
Once she's fixed this.
I think it'll be smarter to leave—or at least, pretend to leave. If I try to get into that room, they'll be ready for it and I'll be at an immediate disadvantage. Since they're wearing my face I don't know who they are and can't make a guess at their skill level. I'm good but I'm not even close to Jounin good and that's a huge risk to take.
Leaving it is, then, and having made a decision, she immediately feels better about the whole thing.
Once I've 'left', I'll circle back around and see how they've reacted to that. If they haven't reacted, I'll know they probably haven't noticed me for real, and if they have, well… that tells a different story and I'll have to deal with that once I see what they do.
She's worried about Sakura and Hatake-sensei but she trusts them. There's no point in her rushing things here only to wind up in more trouble because of her impatience or, worse, actively hindering their own plans in her haste to be helpful.
Ino grins, then, a fey, savage sort of grin.
And they're not the only one that can wear a different face! And wouldn't that be a cat amongst the canaries?
Despite her elation, she removes herself from her hiding spot carefully, slithering out of the area as carefully as any of Shikamaru's shadows and hopefully as little noticed, before she gets far enough away to feel confident that, should she be pursued, she'll have some warning.
Once she's safely up in another tree, camouflaged by the leaves and the gentle breeze hiding any movement that might inadvertently show through, Ino flashes her fingers through the very basic, very simple seals of one of the earliest jutsu she'd learned.
Henge no Jutsu!
Then it's Sakura sitting on the branch, tucked up in the tree, and staring at the backside of the building where the fake Ino was.
See how they like it, with the wrong girl showing up out of nowhere, Ino thinks, the grin on her image of Sakura all edged and dangerous in ways Sakura, being a first generation shinobi, hasn't yet figured out the ins and outs of. Confusion to the enemy.
She closes her eyes, drawing her concentration tight around her, fixing the way Sakura moves and talks and is in her mind. She's not going to be a sloppy fake. She's going to show the imposter wearing her face how it's really done.
It's still a dangerous plan. She still could be overpowered or even killed.
But I don't think they will. They've gone through a lot of trouble to keep us alive so far and they're pretending to be us. That gives me a lot more leeway than they have, especially since I'm now a fake myself and they won't know if I'm the right fake or not.
For good measure, Ino concentrates again, this time thinking about Sakura's chakra signature. She can't imitate it, not the way she can do Hatake-sensei's—and she's not pulling her shell out here, not when it's still so new and she's at such a disadvantage with it when it comes to combat—but she can draw the seeming of Sakura's signature around her. Smooth out the edges where Ino's own signature is sharp and Sakura's is mellow, tweak the chakra 'scent' of it just slightly so that it's not quite right, until she thinks that if someone senses her, she won't be immediately recognizable as either herself or as Sakura.
Do I go in as real Sakura would or as false Sakura would?
Ino shimmies down out of the tree, landing in a flourish of a red dress and pink hair, her eyes the green of grass and new growth.
Like her actual body, this one wears the scratches of the day, and the dirt of it too. It's better to blend truth and reality as much as possible and this also covers any scents that might not make sense, if the enemy can sense that.
And enhancing senses in the field is common. So she allows for it.
Then she makes her way back to the room, this time not sneaking at all, just walking normally, in the silent way she's been trained to, casually alert but not obviously on guard. Hands away from her kunai, making herself remember that Sakura wears them differently than she does, and since the chakra signature is still there, that one that's not hers, Ino gives a bit of a shrug, casts a bit of a prayer up to for the Will of Fire to hear and hopefully protect her.
Yamanaka luck, she hopes, hasn't abandoned her with her bloodline.
Then she knocks on the door. Quick and staccato. The way Sakura does when she's annoyed by something stupid.
The door opens and Ino stands there. Even having known that it would happen, its still so weird.
Ino shakes that off. Focus. She's got to focus.
"What are you doing out there?" she demands. "You're going to mess up the plan!"
"Shhhhh," Ino hisses, dropping her voice and looking around. "Look, there's been an unforeseen complication and we've got to adjust with it. You knew that could happen."
The stranger makes a disgruntled noise of agreement.
Ino shoulders her way past the false her. "Can you just close the door?" she says half-apologetically, simply because Sakura would. "We need to talk."
I have five minutes, tops, to get out of here.
Sakura glances sidelong at the fake Ino, wondering who it is and why and also why there's a very definite push to get her to go along with all of this. She has a lot of questions and no time to get any answers. It's so frustrating.
I don't dare start a fight, not unless I have to. Not with the false Hatake-sensei so close by.
Though that gives her an idea. She's already gotten Hatake-sensei to go away. If she wants to put a little more distance between them, well, there's an easy way to go about it.
"Hey," Sakura says, leaning forward conspiratorially, "we're heading towards the private wing, right?"
Ino shrugs and it's just not Ino's shrug, no matter how good whoever it is at sounding like Ino. "That's my guess," she allows. "Hatake-sensei hasn't told me anything—I'd have told you, Sakura! You're the one that was left alone with him."
There's a beat of silence and then Ino grins at her. "Unless he told you something?"
"I wish," Sakura says, entirely honest on that point, though she's starting to suspect that Hatake-sensei had been compromised before she and Ino had been separated. It would be the most sensible way to go about it, getting rid of their Jounin-sensei first off. "But I did have a thought…"
"Oh?"
"I mean, like, maybe it's not a good one," Sakura says, feeling nervous sweat build between her shoulder blades and praying that her anxiety doesn't touch her face. "But don't you think it would serve him right if while he was out there dealing with whatever it was, if we went and… took a peek in the wing before he got back?"
It's almost counterproductive, going where she doesn't want to go in order to not have to be a hostage, but Sakura's done this sort of thing before. It works all the time on her parents, which makes it a child's game, really, but the psychology of it is the same.
By seeming to eagerly go where they're leading her, she is reclaiming a bit of control and giving herself additional wiggle room. People who are braced for an argument are more vigilant than someone who is confident that they're getting their way.
And are more willing to make concessions.
"I like it," the fake Ino says, with a tilt of her head that's almost perfect, the dissonance of it sending an eerie twinge of unease through Sakura. She hopes with everything she's got that Ino, the real one, is okay.
"You do?" Sakura asks, glancing at the window, where Hatake-sensei had gone. She makes sure to sound startled and a little gratified. "You don't think he'll be mad?"
"We're just being proactive," Ino says, which is… yeah, alright, Ino would say that.
But Ino wouldn't disobey orders this way, not for a lark in the middle of a mission. And she'd never just ditch Hatake-sensei when there was a potential for a fight to break out and he might need back up. As far as the imposter knows, the monster could be out there, right now.
Sakura knows that these mistakes are so minor that most people wouldn't ever notice them but, to her, they're plain as day, screaming warning signs that this isn't right.
But it's working in her favour, for the moment, so she doesn't dare point out or draw attention to it by asking if anything is wrong. It's more evidence for her to catalogue and she's an avid reader who keeps excellent notes.
"Then let's go!" Sakura says, with another quick glance at the window. She giggles a little. She feels a little weird but puts that down to the stress of everything. "Before Hatake-sensei comes back!"
Ino grabs her wrist and tugs her into the next hallway, both of them giggling a little as they make their 'escape'. "I think it's this way," Ino says, letting go once they've gone through another room and are out into another hallway, one that Sakura doesn't know and Ino would have no reason to know.
"It's the right direction anyway," Sakura agrees, since that's true enough. "Do you think the halls go all the way or will we need to head out through a courtyard?"
That's happened a few times in other corners of the estate where they had all but tripped over tiny little gardens tucked away into the labyrinthine design of the Hatake estate and no way to get around them but to go through the open spaces. Which Sakura feels is pretty silly—what had they done when it rained?—but now, now it could give her a chance to actually get away.
It'd give me more room to maneuver, in any case, and a chance to make a break for the wards, if I need to.
Ino considers this carefully. "I'm not sure," she says. "I think the map Hatake-sensei drew showed there were both options."
Sakura frowns slightly. Hatake-sensei's map, the one he'd drawn her and Ino, hadn't shown anything like that, but he'd avoided most talk of this part of the Main House, giving them the bare bones of the outside structure and… they hadn't really had the heart to push him.
So, I think they're working with a different map than I am, she realizes, which is both unsurprising and yet somehow disconcerting. But that's okay. She just gave away information I don't think she was supposed to.
"Right," Sakura says, nodding. "I remember now—sorry, I just got turned around a bit. Do you remember which way was shorter? We won't have much time before Hatake-sensei catches up and you know what they say, that it's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission!"
Which isn't something she'd ever do to her actual sensei, not for something like this, but the fake Ino doesn't seem to find it weird.
"Outside, I think," Ino says, frowning. "I didn't really pay attention, honestly, not when there was the rest of the Main House to care about."
"Then it's a true adventure," Sakura decides, setting decisively off down the hallway, keeping her eyes peeled for the next courtyard. "Like one of those cheesy action flicks Dad likes watching. You know, where the bad guys are chasing the good guys who're chasing treasure?"
Ino hurries after her. "Those movies are terrible," she says, a laugh that Sakura thinks might be genuine in her voice. "I don't want to be the heroine of one of those!"
"Too bad," Sakura says. "You are now!"
They squabble good-naturedly through the next hallway. Sakura is keenly aware the whole time of all the tiny differences to their rhythm and back and forthing that make it impossible for her to pretend that this really is Ino.
It's a good enough attempt at her, though, that I… I need to think about this…
Because it's a very good attempt at being Ino.
And there aren't that many people who know Ino well enough to not skip a beat when Sakura follows up the teasing about her Dad's movies with commentary about what her mom feels about it and the fake Ino follows the conversation. She knows things she has no business knowing, not when she's not real.
Sakura shoves those thoughts to the back of her mind, burying them under a grim sort of determination to get out of here and promising herself that she'll think about it later. Later. Later, she can dwell on the fact that either she's been spied on for a lot longer than she's been within the Hatake estate's wards—or whomever is wearing Ino's face is someone she knows.
"Here," she says, grateful for an excuse to get out of her head and focus on more than a conversation that's making her a little nauseous. "I think this is the quickest way—just through this courtyard and then to the left, right?"
"That seems right," Ino says, her eagerness unsettling, given what Sakura knows. "And he hasn't caught up with us yet!"
Still no concern for Hatake-sensei.
"He's probably going to kill us when he does," Sakura says, deciding that she can't express any concern for having left the fake sensei behind, not when it had been her idea to ditch him in the first place.
"Too late for second thoughts," Ino crows, stepping out into the courtyard and Sakura follows, taking a breath and shielding her eyes from the light. It's not that bright, but it's brighter than it had been inside.
"He'd never believe we just got lost anyway," Sakura agrees. "So we might as well just own our disobedience."
"He'll forgive us, I'm sure," Ino insists.
Sakura dawdles, not much, just enough to give her a few paces of space, her fingers sliding into one of her pouches. She's only going to have one chance at this and she's going to have to be fast. As fast as she can be.
Wait, what? Her fingers have grazed not one of her smoke bombs, but what feels suspiciously like an explosive note. But I didn't-
There's no time to question this.
That thought seems a little—
But there's really no time to question it. There's just not. Sakura rolls with it.
I'll use it, add it to the plan, that way I won't have it on me for them to detonate if the fake's the one that planted on me. Okay. Okay, so that's settled.
But when had it been slipped into her pouch?
Okay, here… we… go…
"He probably will," Sakura allows, since Hatake-sensei really probably would, once he'd gotten done pounding the reasons they'd been wrong into their heads and settled on a suitable punishment. "Hatake-sensei's like that."
She takes a quick breath, shallower than she'd like, and continues with, "But, you know, I'm not nearly as forgiving."
Then, even as Ino frowns at her, confused, Sakura sets off the smoke bomb and, while getting away, follows that with the explosive note she's not even supposed to have, that she's pretty sure isn't hers in the first place.
That doesn't stop her from detonating it the moment she judges she's out of immediate range. The explosion it makes is larger than she'd guessed, not having had a chance to look at it prior to use.
It sends her flying.
Sakura ducks and rolls, allowing the momentum to fuel her spins and ignores the splinters that slam into her arms and legs. Her torso, too, though none of them hit anything important and, once she's regained her footing, Sakura doesn't stick around to properly judge her injuries or to see if the fake Ino had gotten caught in the explosion.
Instead, she gets onto the nearest rooftop and then she runs.
Do I go after Ino and find out what's going on from her—or do I pick up Sakura's trail and see where she's gone?
It's a surprisingly difficult choice to make but, in the end, he makes it and he:
Kakashi chooses to go after Sakura.
He needs Ino's intel and wants badly to know what's upset his more emotionally stable student on such a visceral level but Sakura's in the more precarious situation and, well, if he can't handle the situation long enough to get one Genin out of immediate peril then he doesn't deserve to be a Jounin-sensei—especially one that was in ANBU literally two months ago.
Channelling chakra to his senses, primarily his nose and his hearing, to give him an extra edge, Kakashi darts through the halls of his childhood home, the memories blurring together with the new ones he's been making.
Past the bathroom where Ino had been so very distraught, through the kitchen, though he lingers there, for a few moments because—
I don't recognize every scent here.
They're mild. Suppressed by chakra mild, which concerns him as that's a skill not generally taught early on in training. It's useful, terribly so, but the level of chakra control it takes means that very few Genin and most Chuunin don't bother with learning it, unless they're recruited into ANBU, where it is mandatory, or are primarily covert operatives.
He sorts through the miasma of smells, separating Ino and Sakura's and his own from the mess, though there are some strangenesses in some of the newer trails left by Ino and Sakura—and himself. He frowns, commits the differences to memory, and narrows his focus on the one he doesn't recognize at all.
There's only the one that's completely new to him and that's interesting but could simply be a by-product of the layered jutsu. Henge is known to interact oddly with jutsu to enhance or supress the senses of the original self under the disguise.
He makes note of it and then continues on. His unease grows as they head towards the only wing of the Main House that neither Ino nor Sakura would know like the back of their hands and that he knows only through old memories.
It is nothing but sheer dumb luck that means the imposter wearing his face climbs in through a window just as Kakashi passes by the door.
He stops. The fake him stops.
For a moment they're both frozen, barely breathing, as tension strains between them, rising to a fever pitch just under the surface.
"Yo," Kakashi says, breaking the silence. He curves his eye into a smile that's more menace than delight. "What a funny thing, meeting you here."
His doppelganger finishes climbing through the window with a certain grim resignation about him. "Not what was planned," he says. "How did you get out of that closet?"
"You lot were careless," Kakashi says, though he still suspects he was meant to get out, that his incarceration wasn't meant to hold him for long, just long enough.
"Well," drawls the other him, "that happens sometimes. Unfortunate, but it is what it is."
He doesn't pull a kunai, though his hands are ready to do at a split second's notice. Kakashi knows this because so are his. They're both radiating killer intent.
"The thing is," Kakashi says, "is that I can't figure out why. If it had been a matter of getting rid of us, we'd all be dead. That means this elaborate game is for a reason."
That earns him an insolent head tilt. A silent 'oh really?' that sets Kakashi's teeth on edge.
Kakashi glowers at his fake. He doesn't make the first move, busy gauging the other's stance, readiness, even their killing intent.
They're good, he decides. I'm better. I don't think they're a Jounin, though they're good at acting like me. If I were grading this henge, it'd be full marks and I'm not an easy grader. They've managed to strip their chakra signature of anything that would give away their individuality. Most people are too attached to how their chakra signature feels to bury it so completely.
So. He has a Chuunin—possibly a Special Jounin, though he suspects Chuunin is more likely simply because they're far more common; Special Jounin is a rare rank—who has some excellent skills at subterfuge.
Kakashi doesn't say anything, just attacks. The Chuunin meets his blow with one of his own and they tangle in the dance that Kakashi is the best at, briefly, before they separate, both of them with a narrowed eye.
The room is barren and filthy, covered in a thick layer of dust. Their prints are a dizzying mess across of it.
I'd eat my hitae-ite if they're not usually an infiltrator. And they know my style well enough to follow it—not copy it, but parry it.
He doesn't like that but it's not unusual. He's a wanted man in most of the shinobi countries. Has been since he was younger than Sakura and Ino.
But I'm better. The next round will go to me.
The Chuunin flings a kunai at him and while Kakashi is deflecting that, an explosion rocks through the building—but not the room. It's not him or his foe that have ignited that.
Which means it's either my team or—his.
And if explosives are being used, it's likely that—
Shit. One of my girls has entered combat. Followed on the heels of that thought it: Neither of them had explosive notes. I haven't cleared them for that, not yet.
Neither of them are good enough to take on the Chuunin he's staring at. The Chuunin, he realizes, who has put his weapon away.
"By my reckoning," the Chuunin says conversationally, "you might want to get going. Sakura's going to need your help."
What?
"What the hell do you mean by that?!" Kakashi demands, but the Chuunin doesn't answer him, just flies through a set of seals and disappears in a swirl of smoke and leaves even as Kakashi brings a kunai down in the middle of it all.
"Fuck," he spat, then Kakashi was gone, bolting towards where the explosion had come from.
Behind him, the Chuunin wearing Kakashi's face reappears in the empty, dust-strewn room. In one of his hands is a walkie-talkie.
"Yeah," the Chuunin says, leaning against the wall nearest the window and peering out of it. "He's coming your way. Be careful, he's pissed."
He listens and then nods.
"You bet." Then he grins. "It's all going according to plan. See? Just like I told you. I'm right, aren't I?"