[DVD commentary] Strange Kind of Sanity
Apr. 21st, 2007 07:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runespoorThis commentary was requested by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hello_scorpling.
The fic itself is here.
Title: Strange Kind of Sanity
Author:runespoor7
Rating: PG-13
Summary: post-345/346/347. Ino and Team Seven. Sanity and loyalty and departures. Actually, it's really just an excuse to get Ino and Naruto and Sakura as working partners.
Notes: Interesting fact: did you know how hard it is to type 'Sakura and Naruto' instead of the reverse? Like not thinking 'Harry, Ron and Hermione' in that order. As for pairings, I'll just put it this way; if you want to see it, it's there. Really. Kinda ran mad with the subtext, I think. (mentioned canon unrequited loves and various others. Only actual couples mentioned are AsuKure and TemaShika.)
Okay, first, the title. It refers to Ino's thoughts regarding Team Seven's lack of sanity, and, more worryingly, her own. More than that, it's the link between Ino, Sakura and Naruto. Leaving the village and risking becoming missing-nin only makes sense if you're not behaving on the same principle as the rest of the ninja world holds dear. The first rule is: you don't leave the village. The second rule is, you don't leave the village.
And people who don't function with the same set of values as the rest of the world? Are commonly thought insane.
Except that the reader's values are not those of the ninja world (kid soldiers, anyone?), even if he or she doesn't approve all the values of the Ino-Sakura-Naruto trio, and the different perspective hopefully helps to weave between the two groups.
Thus the title. It's not normal, but at the same time it makes sense.
I remember how I got the idea for this fic. I was playing Clash of Ninja on GC, and if you played the game far enough you know that there’s a ‘Team Battle’ option, where you choose three characters and play against three other characters. The characters I play most are NarutoSasukeSakura ( to the point where I make sure they always have the same percent use because I am that obsessed by Team Seven, but shhh) and Ino, because on top of being awesome, Ino according to Clash of Ninja is a tank, and there’s something extremely satisfying about kicking the asses of Gaara or Sasuke or Lee with Ino.
So I made a team with Naruto, Sakura and Ino.
I seem to have this defect where I can’t play with a ‘team’ if I don’t find a reason – any reason – why they’re together in this team. I mean, if I play Neji-Ino-Haku, I’m going to use the ‘they have purdy hair’ and leave it at that, but I need some kind of justification, and Naruto-Sakura-Ino demands a justification, and at the same time allows for it. (It’s easier to picture Naruto-Sakura-Ino on a team/mission together than Neji-Ino-Haku, isn’t it?)
And I was lucky, because it was around chapter 345, so the idea that Naruto and Sakura would hear about the Sasuke-Orochimaru stuff in Sound was right up the alley, and it made sense to have Ino join them to save Sakura’s skin.
Naruto, Sakura and Ino are also some of my favourite characters: Naruto and Sakura are my favourite characters, and Ino probably ranks up there in my personal Top Ten. Besides, I hold to the idea that the three of them on a mission would be hilarious, not to mention the fact that it would spell utter annihilation of the poor, poor people who’d think about opposing them. (Plus, it’s hot.)
So! Like the note said: this was just an excuse to get them on the same mission. Never mind that said mission will never get written.
Sometimes, Ino wondered about Team Seven's sanity.
Everyone does.
Not as often as she wondered about her own, though.
Yamanaka Ino, at age fifteen, had come to the conclusion that she was completely off her rocker. It didn't please her in the slightest, but it was alas the only thing that could possibly account for her current ailment.
The first lines of a fic. As a rule, I hate writing those with a passion, because more often than not they begin with a character’s first name (or observation on the weather), and I don’t like it. I always feel like I’m lacking in originality when I do that.
Here I wanted to show Ino as bratty, which she is, and easily annoyed, in this case with herself. Oh, and the time set. The sooner I get it out of the way the less likely it’ll confuse readers, and I like when I don’t need to put things like that in the notes.
Leaping through the forest, tree-branch-trunk-force-your-lunch-back-down-your-stomach-wish-you-had-wrapped-the-chest-bandages-a-little-more-tightly-this-morning-and-repeat, trying to keep up with both her partners, was definitely one of these occasions.
Ignoring the protests of her screaming muscles, she accelerated. Time was against them, as was space, but frankly what wasn't against them these days?
Cheap suspense about the names of her teammates. I thought about keeping it up for longer, but in the end it seemed artificial and pointless, so I cut it short. Here Ino is struggling to keep up with them and not saying a word about it, which is another important part of her character in the fic. Chest bandages: Ino is a girl. And easy melodrama/urgency which was actually intended as rather tongue-in-cheek.
They knew that most likely they weren't being followed, or at any rate not being followed by people against whom they wouldn't hold more chances than a snowball in Suna; as Naruto had pointed out, if Jiraiya was seriously on their track he'd just use a toad and the flight would be over before they knew it.
Of course there were also ANBU and rescue teams of any sort, and as a preventive measure Sakura had taken to use genjutsu to cover their presence. Ino did her half of the work, because too much genjutsu gave Sakura headaches – very typical of Forehead-girl, Ino had remarked when this particularity had been mentioned to her.
More of Ino-is-a-bitch-(and-hiding-her-anxiety), and general context.
That was primarily the situation.
My transitions suck, I know. But at least it’s one thing that won’t be confusing, so good for me!
That was also exactly why Ino was convinced she was certifiably insane.
I wouldn’t be too sure about how I ended up in this situation if I were Ino, either.
Which didn’t do, because as a member of Team Ten, Ino had a duty toward sanity.
Team Ten had prided themselves since That Chuunin Exam on being sane, and average, and annoyingly well-balanced. Before that, it used to be that this normality had grated on Ino's nerves, who was born for greatness and who would probably sweep genius Uchiha Sasuke off his feet if given the chance (and would smile nastily at Haruno Sakura when she did, too).
Emphasis on the brackets. Team Ten’s normality is the reason they rock the world.
Why did she have to get stuck with the dump? Shikamaru might think only 'Naruto's team' was weaker than they were, Ino knew they were by far the worst – hey, Team Seven had Sasuke and even Ino lost to Sasuke.
Reference to the beginning of Team Ten’s second test during the chuunin exam, back when Shikamaru still looked like an ape and Chouji was just the fat kid who ate chips.
Then, after witnessing Those Events, she changed her mind. Normal was good.
Normal meant your family wasn't trying to kill you, or had laws regulating what you could and couldn't do, you weren't cursed with unfortunate eyebrows and an evil fashion sense, you didn't have bugs living inside your body, and, most of all, you didn't flip out and betray the freaking village and – worse, much worse, though Ino kept her opinion to herself because she knew it wouldn't be widely accepted, your team.
Normal meant you didn't devote your very life to getting back one who was, quite clearly, out of his mind and very very dead inside.
Normal also meant not getting trained by a Sannin, but Ino had made chuunin before Sakura anyway, and she was well on her way to getting into ANBU by the time she was twenty, and the price was a bit too much anyway.
In order, that’s Hinata, Neji, Lee, Shino, Sasuke, and Sakura. I might’ve been able to go on with characters but that would just have been redundant. I’m conflicted about the ‘evil fashion sense’ bit; I spent way too long trying to decide whether I’d put ‘evil’ in italics or not. *wry smile* So, Ino in a nutshell; superficial, perceptive, devoted. And loud, but that’s a given.
I have a weakness for ANBU!Ino.
So Ino had planned on being both normal and great, and she had a history of getting what she wanted. It should really have been no trouble.
Except it had been.
This is one of the weakest sentences ever, and if the next two lines hadn’t popped up neatly in my head after I’d typed it, I’d have played deletedeletedelete so fast.
And – as usual – it was entirely Sakura's fault.
And Naruto's.
It’s an afterthought for Ino. Or maybe an admission of honesty, but in any case, unlike about everyone else in the village, she’s much readier to blame Sakura than Naruto.
But mostly Sakura's, because if Ino hadn't heard Sakura's name, and her voice, she'd never have got involved in the skirmish and she wouldn't be fleeing 7/7 at top speed from her home village.
Ino, after all, was not a straight fight specialist.
She was perfectly able to hold her own – and more than that, she did become a chuunin, in Cloud-organised exams, and only six months after her first try – against most chuunin and the occasional jounin, but her definite areas of specialisation were more the underhand kind of destruction, so to say. She could create havoc absolutely anywhere, provided she could grab a body and then hop minds between her enemies, but that did ask for more surprise effect and preparation on her part than the typical facing-down.
But she also had a history of getting involved in fights she couldn't possibly think she was going to win when Sakura was concerned.
It happened like this:
Ino was passing through the outskirts of Konoha for a walk, because Shikamaru had got on her nerves more than usual and she'd needed to calm down after she'd punched the living daylights out of him.
Watch how I fumble for an excuse for Ino to Just Happen at the right time at the right place. I like to think there’s some semblance of logic there, no matter how flimsy – that it’s not just ‘she Just Happened to be there at the right time at the right place’ without even trying to justify it.
She was still fuming. After all this time, he should know better than asking if it was her time of the month or something.
And they called him a genius.
Like I said, I pretty much needed a pretext, and I didn’t want to make it good (as in thought-provoking). If I made it good, it’d have required to be factored in with Ino’s leaving, which I didn’t want. This fic was never about Team Ten, it’s about Ino being ready to do pretty much anything for Sakura. Moreover, Ino had already established by that point that her tone would often be flippant, so… *shrugs* Flippancy is one of Ino’s defence mechanism as I write her, and it’s also my way of not taking my melodrama too seriously.
After a while she'd finally relented and given in to Chouji's pleas that she didn't bash the stupid's skull in – though it was thick enough that he wouldn't even feel it, probably. Now she felt she needed the walk.
Poor Chouji.
The whole thing was made worse by the fact that she was on her period. Of course.
The weather was nice, better for a walk than for training, really, warm and sunny and all, and Ino had felt her moodiness slip away. Whenever she felt she was getting carried away, she reminded herself of Shikamaru's drawl, and her anger came back full force every time.
The sole redeeming quality of the observations on the weather is how dismissive Ino is about it.
After a while she'd discarded the sulkiness but not the anger, and she was plotting how to Get Shika Back Good This Time, wondering if involving Temari might not implode in her face – Temari was a bit of a wild card where girl issues were concerned. Ino wasn't sure Temari wouldn't laugh in her face if she tried to recruit her in her vengeance plan, and not telling her meant that if either Temari or Shikamaru realised something was amiss, Ino wouldn't be able to get a peaceful night of sleep for fear of retaliation.
Yeah, my usual take on the so-called Tema-Shika-Ino triangle/jealousy/etc. (ie: ‘…Whut?’) I like to think Ino would try to team up with Temari against Shikamaru, but she’s a bit unsure about Temari.
She was perhaps not paying as much attention to her surroundings as she should have, but really.
Retrospectively of course, if Suigetsu didn’t realise Sasuke and Karin weren’t following him, maybe I didn’t need to write that. The ‘but really’ is part Ino putting an end to the subject part me being too lazy to spend any more time on it.
So, anyway, one moment she heard a great big shattering sound, a hundred meters away, and the next Naruto's voice was shouting, "Sakura-chan!"
Remember what I said about my transitions being beyond sucky? The excuse is that it’s IC for Ino to be snappish.
So how did Ino react? Well, obviously she had to run and see what it was about, and then she should have gone back to the village and get help if needed, and let the higher-ups know about whatever it was should it be warranted.
If you think I can convince myself to take Flying!To!The!Rescue! right at the good moment seriously, you have a lot more confidence in my writing skills than I do. The fic already plays with a number of layers, and flashbacks within flashbacks, and before I knew it, the ‘so how did Ino react?’ I was thinking had made its way to the monitor.
Only Ino wasn't really thinking one hundred percent straight at that time, because Naruto's tone had been totally unsuited for a spar or even a minor incident, and Ino was exactly the type of girl whose every thought left the brain of when she thought people she cared about were in danger.
It was a reflex no amount of training, emotional or otherwise, had been able to erase, but that was maybe because Ino only went at it half-heartedly at best.
Logically she knew she'd be more of help if she stayed cooler, and ultimately that a good ninja shouldn't ever lose control over her emotions, but deep down she couldn't help but doubt it. She wanted to be sure she wasn't going to be too late, and no waiting-for-the-opportune-moment would ensure that.
Beside, Ino wasn't going to be good. She was going to be great.
More of Ino as an ambitious kunoichi. (More of My Basis in Writing Ino.) I know I tend to view/write Ino as a bitchy, kinda manipulative female Naruto, up to the fact that I love both pimp!Naruto and pimp!Ino, and they’re the only ones, but here it’s also Ino trying to disband her doubts about herself. (See the second paragraph after this one.)
If the Third and Fourth Hokage found it okay to sacrifice themselves for their village, then who'd dare tell her she shouldn't take the same risks for her friends?
I remember having very good reasons for choosing Sandaime and Yondaime here instead of characters that’d be closer to Ino. I think it had to do with the fact that when Ino chooses those role-models for her actions, she can’t possibly be told she’s wrong. I don’t think anyone in the village thought that Sandaime and Yondy sacrificed themselves for wrong reasons, or at least such is the case in fandom.
Of course Ino’s course of action has very little to do with Sandaime/Yondaime’s sense of duty. It’d have been much more accurate to compare what she’s doing to pretty much any other character doing something foolish and admirable for their friends, but that’s the thing – Ino wants to be right. Told you I like her kinda manipulative. It’s a manipulation that’s easily recognisable, though, and that’s the other thing – she’s also a little desperate, and lying to herself.
Thus Ino rushed into the scene and attacked the closest person she knew for sure wasn't Sakura or Naruto due to his dark hair with a flying kick to the head that would've made Lee twinkle and beam if he could have seen it, and burst into a long-winded exclamation about the Passion of Youth, and would've dispelled the rumours that 'Ino sucked at taijutsu and so sucked as a shinobi' once and for all.
Yet more of the ‘ClashofNinja!Ino is a tank’. (Besides, I can’t be the only one loving the image of DynamicEntry!Ino, right? Right?... btw, InoLee is a crackship I have recently discovered and which attracts me greatly, with the Power of Crack.)
After a few dumbfounded seconds during which everyone stared at her and she stared back, Ino realised she'd just laid one Raidou-san out cold, that there were two other persons aside from Naruto and Sakura who were both Konoha compatriots, and that she really had no idea what was going on except that it was probably bad.
She would definitely have started snarking and demanding an explanation in the most stylish, classy and I-saved-your-neck-didn't-you-notice-(peons) way she knew, had one of the remaining opponents (with-a-question-mark) (his name momentarily eluded her) not chosen to take advantage of the sudden lack of focus and played the most foolproof strategy of ninja history, attack-the-medic-nin. Sakura.
For the record, I really dislike having to state that it’s Sakura there. In my original draft, I hadn’t, but after debating with myself and cursing Kishimoto with all the strength of my ‘wryyyyyyyyyyyy’ might, I gave in, because it was otherwise unclear and could be construed as meaning Ino. I am otherwise amused with the rest of the sentence.
Ino let go of the questions. One might say her body moved on its own.
Yeah, unsubtle parallels ahoy. I hope you can stomach those, because you’re in for a lot more of those.
A few minutes later Ino was healing her various scrapes and wounds and feeling rather justified in her gloating still when Naruto blurted out, "Damn, Ino! What was that all about?"
Ino glared at him. With his arm in a sling which he hadn't used during the whole skirmish.
"Excuse me?"
Just so you know, I really liked imagining Ino’s tone at that. I didn’t add ‘she hollered’ or anything because it felt deeply unnecessary, but this is still one of my favourite reactions in this fic. (You think I’m playing with ValleyGirl!Ino.Buffy!Ino!!!! oh god no why no)
She was about to detail what she meant, but Sakura cut her short.
"That's not what he meant, Ino."
The absence of suffix effectively stopped Ino in whatever retort she might have lashed. She felt her eyes narrowing.
"We fought fellow Leaf-nins and you helped us." Sakura started biting on her lip. "Hm, we could knock you out – when you wake up you'll just have to explain why you helped out – and why the fuck did you help out anyway? – and you should get off easily enough. Naruto, what do you think?"
The other blond nodded, a small frown on his brow. "Yeah, we could do that."
Naruto and Sakura as a team. I could write tomes on their relationship, on how I think their ability to work together as a team as been insanely strengthened by Sasuke’s absence, and the 2.5 years they spent apart, and how driven they are, but that would be redundant.
Also, I love making TS!Sakura use curse words.
They’re several years ahead of Ino, there.
Ino's eyebrows were up to her hairline – which admittedly wasn't as high as Sakura's – and her hands were braced in front of her, getting ready for an attack.
You didn’t think I could miss an occasion to hit everyone over the head with how bitchy/obsessive Ino is, right? And at the same time, she acts like a ninja.
"Okay, mind telling me what the hell is going on here?... Like you could take me out so easily," she added as a second-thought with a knowing, sympathetic, condescending nod, though she was well aware that if they teamed up against her, in a straight fight, the best of her abilities would be nowhere near enough.
Like the previous sentence, there are two sides to this. I believe ninja must be good at multitasking, and if Naruto and Sasuke are allowed to insult one another while carrying on a fight in fics, I don’t see why Ino and Sakura couldn’t have something like it. Ino still tries to preserve a sense of normality. But it fails, because Sakura isn’t playing.
Sakura hesitated.
Naruto sent a glance in the direction of the village. "We need to get going, Sakura-chan," he said tersely.
"I know that!" Sakura snapped. "But unless you're suggesting we either kidnap her or fight her—we don't have the time for this," she interrupted herself in her mounting anger, with a surprisingly calm tone. It was another proof that things were grave indeed, when Sakura acted as if there were literally two sets of thoughts running through her head.
Ino is perceptive, or I’m unsubtle. You choose.
Ino took a deep breath to quell her nervousness.
"What. Is. Going. On."
*winces* Oh the bad…
So long as she stayed angry, she wouldn't be afraid.
Naruto and Sakura exchanged a look that Ino didn't like in the slightest.
It was a look that had years of a-common-goal behind it. Ino knew because Chouji and Shikamaru sometimes shared one of those, though theirs were based on the fact that they were guys and were suffering Ino's very femaleness. Ino could see through it perfectly well.
She chose not to call them on it – most of the time – because she wasn't quite as big a bitch as the rumour-mill had it, and she did like companionable afternoons with her team, from times to times. It was relaxing. Watching the clouds with Shika, chattering about girl things and smile secretly when the two boys just looked at each other.
Part of their team dynamic.
I love Team Ten. – Additionally, it’s also about how the public eye misunderstands everything that’s there to understand. In some cases, it’s tragic – cf Naruto. In others, in the petty sort of snap judgement people make. I think that Ino is a bit wistful about the view most people have of her, but she also takes satisfaction from playing with it. It’s not everyone’s business that Ino likes lazying around with Shikamaru and Chouji.
This one, Ino wasn't familiar with, but the fact that it went between Sakura and Naruto was enough to make her stomach clench with worry.
Because Sakura and Naruto had spent two and a half years apart, and they shouldn't be able to understand one another so well without words.
They didn't even have a prior bond to justify this closeness, to make it acceptable; before they became genin, Sakura hated Naruto, didn't she? So it wasn't even as if, say, Chouji and Shikamaru hadn't ended up on the same team; they'd still be able to get one another, they'd been best friends long before they formed Team Ten.
There was only one thing that could link Sakura and Naruto.
And it’s a cruel, cruel thing to say about them. But really, I think that’s why I write them as close as I do.
"We're leaving," Sakura finally dropped, looking back at Ino. "We're going to the Sound."
Ino swallowed. She tried to smile, but even she knew it looked fake.
"It's not a mission, is it?"
Of course it wasn't. She didn't even need to hear the answer. Of course it wasn't, why else would they fight Konoha-nins and leave them on the ground – healed, but unconscious and unlikely to wake up before a few hours after Sakura's ministrations – unless they weren't supposed to?
That sentence is awkward.
There was a lump in her throat.
Sakura looked pained. "No," she said softly. "It's really, really not."
This is the closest as Sakura goes to acknowledging Ino’s feelings.
During the eerie silence that followed, Ino thought about everything that had happened since she'd stood with Shikamaru and Chouji in front of three freakishly strong Sound-nins in the Forest of Death, and she'd ordered Sakura to let it go, Forehead, and the look on Sakura's face (and no-one would get to Sakura as long as Ino was there).
…Yeah.
She looked down at the three shinobi who had tried to prevent the two from leaving, two jounin and one chuunin, and admired distantly the differences between this and Sasuke's leaving of the Leaf.
"What happened?" she asked.
Sakura licked her lips.
"You know how Jiraiya-sama left the village yesterday?"
I debated how Sakura would call Jiraiya. ‘Jiraiya’, because she’s under that much stress, ‘Jiraiya-san’, or ‘Jiraiya-sama’? In the end I went with Jiraiya-sama because it was the one that was the least polemical. It’s also time for the Department of Backstory to show up, which I tried to do with as little pulp-SF discussions between-two-doctors/1st scene of classical French tragedies moments. I tried to justify it with the next few paragraphs, which show how Ino has other things on her mind.
It also shows that Ino and Sakura don’t see one another everyday.
Ino nodded. That, she knew.
I should have made that a paragraph break. It’d still have been monumentally pointless, but at least it’d have carried some sort of weight.
She hadn't thought it was anything to worry about, though; especially not when she had her own team problems. They hadn't been assigned a new team leader – or captain, or whatever – and Ino could only hope they wouldn't. Working with someone for one mission or two, or even every one of them would be fine; but not if it was made official, not if they weren't Team Asuma anymore.
The problem with Sai.
It'd be easier in a few months, when Kurenai's child was born. Sarutobi Kurenai.
That sounded so weird.
Asuma-sensei had never seemed to give a thought about getting married – hey, they weren't even living together – and now Asuma was dead, Kurenai got a post-mortem marriage. It was more or less customary in a shinobi village, especially when the woman was pregnant, but it still gave Ino the creeps.
post-mortem marriage for AsuKure is my pet theory.
She hoped fervently she'd never have to do the same thing.
(On a side note: when Shikamaru told Chouji and her that Asuma had whispered his child's existence into Shika's ear, he assuaged doubts she didn't even know she had about how Kurenai had stopped the contraceptives without telling Asuma.)
It’s something I can see a smart, practical female teenager thinking. You are welcome to read it as Ino being ever so slightly jealous of Kurenai. Asuma may be the most fatherly of the jounin-sensei we’re shown, he’s also emphatically not their father – not to mention the fact that all of Team Ten, ironically, still has a father.
Looking back, it was obvious that there must have been a pretty serious reason behind the Sannin's sudden departure.
"Well, I-I got into Tsunade-shishou's restricted files." Sakura paused.
Here I debated again whether Ino knew about Sakura’s habits – and whether Sakura had told her or not. The latter was easily answered, because for Sakura, nothing measures up to her team. Nothing. So she won’t tell Ino anything that could keep her (Sakura) from being the best she can be for her team – be it in strength, knowledge, etc. I make a habit of emotionally removing Sakura from Konoha and more specifically Ino’s grasp.
There are many reasons for this, a lot of which pertain to my love of cheap angst, and the other being that symbolically, Sakura needs to engage on a journey of her own. She needs to do the same as Sasuke and Naruto – except that the two of them physically leave Konoha. Thus I always have Sakura not being wholly in Konoha during the timeskip; and there’s also the fact that for Sakura, Konoha isn’t Konoha without the other two.
As to Ino’s awareness… Did it escape someone’s notice that I’m writing Sakura as Ino’s most important bond? Yeah, I thought not. Besides, going with the idea that Ino’s better at infiltration than typical facing-off type of fights, it stands to reason that she’d have picked it up.
And superficially, it was also done to avoid yet another “I know that you know that…” awkward sentence.
Ino raised an eyebrow. What else is new? On the side where he was kicking stones, Naruto snorted.
Just in case someone had forgotten Naruto was there. Plus Naruto and Ino being of a mind on the subject of Sakura looking through papers she shouldn’t have. (I serious!ship NaruIno as unrequited love on Sakura.)
"More restricted than usual," Sakura amended.
Note how Sakura isn’t actually surprised that Ino knows, and how she just accepts that the two of them will know. She’s estranged from Ino, but she’s not shocked that Ino would be able to see through her. Now, is that because she’s taking Ino for granted, because she trusts her, or because it’s so not the moment to worry about it?
There was a mess of contradictory emotions whirling on her face, too fast for Ino.
If there ever was an opportunity for me to plagiarise Elisabeth Culmer’s Tides, that was now, but look, I didn’t do it. (“a kaleidoscope of emotions flitting too fast for Sasuke to read”, I think it was.)
"There was word about Sasuke," Naruto said, shortly and grimly.
After two lifetimes of silence, Ino could speak again. "About Sasuke…" she echoed dumbly.
Two because Naruto+Sakura. Symbolically, Ino is shoved in the back, behind their concerns for Sasuke.
She felt as if the two of them, Naruto and Sakura, were shrouded in something that went far beyond her. Far beyond the luxuriant Konoha landscape surrounding them, far beyond the sunny weather and plump cheerful clouds.
I like that paragraph. It says exactly what I wanted to say, plus I get to play with pathetic fallacy.
Something twisted in her gut when she realised uncomfortably how outside of her reach they were – how plainly they didn't care.
If you care to count, that’s five ‘-ly’ adverbs in five lines, which even I’ll admit is a bit much. But as far as I’m concerned, adverbs are the best words out of any language, so…
Or maybe how little they cared, with the scraps of concern that weren't taken by the goal they'd spent almost three years pursuing. Looking at them, Ino was filled with the disquieting foreboding that they were taut like weapons – bright with hope and pain, taut like chakra-threads about to snap.
Wow, she'd never have guessed she could do melodramatic so well.
Lol. I really liked the comparison. I was happy I had found it, I thought it was beautiful, I was completely enamoured with the symbolism, what have you. Then I realised 1) that it didn’t fit the tone of the piece, and 2) that it was Ino.
In front of her, Sakura curtly nodded. "Him and Orochimaru. Something about the soul-transfer." Her lips were almost white, Ino noted.
Then she gaped, registering what she'd been told. She wanted to protest. But you told me Orochimaru wouldn't be able to do the jutsu for three years! It hadn't been three years since Sasuke had left the village! Even if Ino had been able to get her dates mixed up so badly, surely Naruto and Sakura would've grown restless if the three-year limit was anywhere near up.
The entire fandom’s been in uproars about that. Besides, it made sense that it was Ino raising that point, because Ino doesn’t care half as much about Sasuke as she does about her friend. You can bet that it wasn’t the first thing on Naruto and Sakura’s mind when they learnt about it. (chapter 350: point proven.)
Also a shout-out to Sakura and Ino’s relationship, because here Sakura did tell Ino about the soul-transfer. I’ll admit it was pure laziness on my part of not wanting to explain things the reader already knows. If I had wanted to write a fic, say, about Chouji joining Naruto and Sakura, he’d have nodded and said that it was Shikamaru’s theory. If it had been Hinata, she’d have found her own way of getting restricted information (this is a constant in my writing Hinata). And conversely, in this fic they’re not supposed to know.
Like they were now, a small voice whispered at the back of her mind.
Yeah.
But then it'd have been preventive.
Of all the things I’d write differently if I could, that would be it. Why? Because two sentences in italics when in fact the second one isn’t supposed to have been uttered by the ‘small voice at the back of her mind’ – instead, it’s supposed to be Ino emphasising after her ‘Yeah’.
"We don't know who's – in charge," Sakura continued. She looked down and away as she hesitated on the last words, her voice trembling a little, but then she looked up straight in at Ino, her eyes slightly narrowed in determination. "It wasn't stated in the reports, but just that there was a report proves that it happened."
A muffled sound – half growling, half choking – came from Naruto's side. Ino glanced his way. He couldn't be taking this well.
Hell, she wasn't taking this well and she wasn't anywhere as involved with the Uchiha as they were, right?
I have no qualms about making Ino think of ‘Sasuke-kun’ as ‘the Uchiha’.
On some level, it was his fault that Shikamaru's first mission had failed and that he still took to guilt so badly, that Chouji had almost died.
And even if Ino accepted that he hadn't been the one fighting them then – wasn't even aware of it at the time, given how he was unconscious in a bucket (and as a side note, Ino had heard of a lot of ridiculous things over the years, but that one still stole the cake) – and even since Sakura had convinced her Sasuke mostly needed help, possibly in the form of a serious beating, she'd never be able to forgive him for the rest.
Because Shika and Chouji were her team, and in some ways were pretty much her brothers – not all ways obviously, because sometimes when she looked at Chouji what she was feeling was definitely not sisterly sensations and necessitated a cold shower or two, which was stupid – but Sakura was her best friend.
Yeah, so I like InoChou. Not fandomly kosher since I canonship TemaShika, but see if I care. I just kept that digression for the ‘which was stupid’ part – Ino being in denial and disgusted with herself. Not in an angsty context.
And for that – Sakura, and the whole mess with his team – Sasuke was definitely the one to blame.
There are things I think some of the rookies wouldn’t be quick to forgive Sasuke, provided they do forgive him, because it’s been drilled into us that they are Good Persons. That aside, Sasuke being tentatively accepted back by the Rookies – or not – is one of those potentially endless bunny that don’t get written a lot.
He was the one who'd knocked Sakura out and who'd made her cry again and again and again in front of the five boys who were to bring him back, until Sakura never cried anymore when Ino would've wanted nothing else than to be able to comfort her.
She wasn't stupid; she knew Sakura still cried, but nowhere where other people could see her now, because she thought they'd look down on her for it – for being emotional and thirteen and a girl and weak.
Now, all Ino->Saku aside. A girl knows her best friend doesn’t come to her with her problems, and there’s nothing she can do, and she blames herself for starting it (see next sentence)? Ouch. I don’t think Ino enjoys feeling powerless.
Ino had been the first – way back when chuunin exams were things that happened to other people and Sasuke was a glaring boy who never just walked when he could run and whom Ino had originally noticed because he was piggy-backing on the single most attractive coolest aloof-yet-gentle impossibly PERFECT boy Ino had ever seen.
Oh, Ino->Ita. :DDDDDD.
At first it was so far from the radar it could have as well been Kisame/Shino, and the next it was the one true reason how Ino had noticed Sasuke. Because Ino obviously is the type of girl who’ll go for the best (ValleyGirl!Ino, remember?) and Itachi, at that time, was pretty much every little girl’s ideal crush. It also gives Hinata!Ino.
The following flashback was originally neither in italics nor in a parenthesis, because I’m nothing if not good at starting something and then realising it’s five hundred words that have nothing to do with the rest of the story. I kept it because it turned out I had found a way to make it useful to the story, and specifically the trends of ‘Ino blames herself’ and ‘Ino feels left behind’.
(Her jaw had dropped and she'd felt a sudden warmth spreading all the way down to her toes, she'd violently shivered, and she'd accidentally broken the vase she was holding.
I had so much fun writing it as cliché as I could.
To make a couple of very long weeks short, she got over him because her knees went weak whenever she merely thought of approaching him, and she blushed and went mute and hid behind the closest grown-up when he got into the vicinity and her heart thumped madly in her chest and Sasuke – his little brother who was in her class – alternatively scowled at her, whimsically grabbed his older brother's hand, and looked like a kicked puppy when said older brother ignored him.
If you know a way I could have made the Sasu->Ita any more glaring, please tell me. I think Sasuke reads much younger than Ino there, but that may be just because my brain stops working when I’m confronted with Chibisuke.
Itachi was too impressive, and Sasuke, she found after watching him, was incredibly cute as well, plus he was in her class and he knew she existed.
Even at that age, Ino was practical.
Potentially he could see her as more than the-six-year-old-who-is-always-hiding-behind-her-father-when-I-cross-the-street Itachi undoubtedly thought she was – Ino knew he had to register her existence somehow, because she'd managed to learn he was a genius since she'd fell in love-at-first-sight with him, and a ninja genius would never let something like that elude him.
It was a great plan. Then she'd realised every other girl had a crush on Uchiha Sasuke, and concluded that the best way to win his favours was to become the most prominent among them.)
Due to my perception of Sasuke’s character, it was necessary that Ino not stand out and confront him. The realisation made me howl in frustration, it did. C’m’on, you imagine Chibi!Ino snapping at Chibisuke and pushing him and snarking at him and drawing herself up in a haughty ‘hmpf!’ and doing her very best to surpass him in every class? It’d be awesome, and I don’t even ship InoSasu. (Probably one of two Ino pairings I don’t ship.)
It was only years later, after her team had made it back from the fight against Akatsuki and after Ino had got that the reason behind Naruto's training and drive was Sasuke, just like it was for Sakura – when the tangled mess of badness that was Team Seven dawned upon Ino, that she started thinking that maybe she should've done things otherwise.
That maybe if she'd persevered in her original interactions with Sasuke, as a rival for his brother's attention and as a rival in class, rather than becoming Fangirl #1 and just accepting that he was better than her in ninjutsu because he was a genius like his brother, if she'd driven him mad like she'd done with Sakura after they broke they friendship up – then maybe things would've been different.
Maybe she'd be in Naruto's place now. Maybe she'd be the teammate Sasuke had tried to kill, and then hadn't, and couldn't dismiss quite so easily.
Just for the fun, that’s ItaSasu, ItaIno, InoSaku, NaruSasu, InoSasu, SakuSasu and NaruSakuSasu that I’ve hinted at over the last three paragraphs.
Maybe if Sasuke had had an aggressively in his face rival before graduating from the Academy, he wouldn't have been so removed, so soon.
The sad thing was that while she could imagine herself in that position, and while she could imagine Sasuke's reactions, she couldn't possibly picture Sakura and Naruto. Once their link with Sasuke was removed, they seemed to fit nowhere.
Again with how defined by their relationship to Sasuke they are. (For a comparison, take Itachi away from Sasuke’s character and enjoy.)
The persons they were wouldn't even exist.
Sakura'd still be a too-sweet, unassertive spineless pseudo-wimp of a girl, and maybe she'd have even given up on being a kunoichi – maybe Ino'd have lost contact with her, if she'd entered a rivalry with Sasuke.
Ino liked being the rival Sakura wanted to surpass. A lot.
Maybe she'd be married.
Yamada or Inoue or Random-Name-From-"Hi-I'm-Not-A-Ninja-What's-A-Pretty-Girl-(And-A-Sucky-Fighter)-Like-You-Doing-In-Such-A-Harsh-Life-Let's-Have-Babies"-Dom Sakura.
InoSaku.
As for Naruto…
Ino found – hi scales-falling-down-eyes have a nice day bye – that there just was no Naruto without Sasuke. Just…Blank. Utter, total nothingness. The idea of Naruto just needed a Sasuke; a rival-slash-best-friend-he-says-slash-weird-weird-thing.
The hyphen-full style seems to work for Ino’s character, when you stand on your head and close your eyes, but I had fun with it. Also – I started out in Harry Potter fandom, where you don’t say ‘yaoi’ or ‘shounen-ai’ but ‘slash’. ^^ It wasn’t meant that way in this sentence but it nevertheless made me quite happy. It’s not subtext if it’s spelled out, right? Like an image of two people kissing.oh wait… ;)
It was the biggest thing she knew she'd never forgive Sasuke.
How there'd be no Haruno Sakura or Uzumaki Naruto without him.
She looked at them more closely.
Me and my bad transitions and my never-ending digressions.
They reminded her of a tapestry fraying around the edges. This was bad.
Ino was a normal girl; she didn't have a bloodline and yet she came from a ninja clan, she hadn't been rejected by her peers or by the whole village as a kid. Once upon a time she'd been unrivalled among the kunoichi her age, and maybe she stood slightly out because of her blond hair and her loud attitude, but she'd never looked like much. She'd never been special.
Except that she had Sakura for a best friend.
For all Sasuke was a comrade (she'd go with it if it made Sakura happy), she really was upset for Sakura and Naruto. And okay, also a little for Sasuke, who was an asshole alright but didn't deserve that.
To quote, Ino is such a Leaf-nin.
She took a breath.
"I'm coming with you."
"What? No!" Sakura exclaimed.
Sakura’s world just went crash.
Naruto looked at her as if he thought she was mad-crazy-mad, which Ino ignored, and continued looking at her with an expression that was becoming less shocked and more considering with every second.
Naruto’s less shocked, because Naruto and Ino are in many ways more alike than Ino and Sakura (I know, I can’t believe I think that either), and he hasn’t been living in the same village as her for 2.5, and they’re not as close. He has less preconceptions about her, and he also views her in a more neutral way.
It’s a constant in my fics that the closer the person is to you, the more likely his or her judgement will be skewed, and the less likely they will be to behaving in a sensible, objective fashion. I’m not too sure what I feel about it, because it feels closer to Sasuke’s opinions on bonds making you weak than to Naruto’s assurance that bonds make you strong, but I choose not to torment myself with it, because I think that’s precisely the sort of strength Naruto had in mind. (Why hello, breaking-of-rule-25!)
"I'm coming," Ino repeated.
"You can't," Sakura shot back.
Naruto was still watching her, Ino saw out of the corner of her eye. She didn't pay particular attention to him, though, because she was busy trying to mulishly stare Sakura down.
I wouldn’t actually say that Naruto is being calculating, but...
"I'm going to."
"You're going to stay here and tell the Hokage that you stupidly leaped to help us before you'd realised what was going on, and then we knocked you out."
Ino smirked.
"Suppose you and the boy wonder over there do manage to get to Otogakure without blowing yourselves up. Suppose you find yourself right in front of Otogakure's wide open welcoming doors. Do you suppose you'll be able to help yourself and not rush in what'd obviously a trap?"
Sasuke’s circumstantial, Naruto’s circumstantial. For Ino, this is all about her and Sakura, here. Of course, she’s not entirely wrong, as proven by Naruto’s silence. Ino is also well aware of Naruto and Sakura’s occasionally rocky relationship.
Sakura bristled, but she didn't retort, and Ino knew she'd marked a point. She almost grinned, knowing her friend had understood what she'd left unsaid perfectly.
Since when has either of you been able to resort to logic when Sasuke's concerned?
Ino can be smart as a whip when I think it hurts. She’s also hurting herself there, coincidentally.
Even if Naruto lost his head less now and if Sakura was the analytical type, you only needed to hear half the gossip in Konoha to know that Sasuke was Naruto's weakness, and Ino knew it was also the case for Sakura.
"And even if you do, who's going to infiltrate the place for you? Pink hair? Whisker marks?" Sakura recoiled, and Ino felt her lips curl into a smirk again. She was winning. Her tone was so heavy with sarcasm even Shikamaru would've winced, had it been directed at him. "Wow, no-one's going to recognise you at all. You'll fit right in. Seriously, Forehead-Girl, you think that Oto's going to overlook how you're going to come crashing into their hideout as soon as you learn about it?"
She almost felt bad when Naruto looked away and turned to the side. Almost.
That was the obligatory reference to their last attempt.
Coincidentally, I realise that I made Naruto less blind than Sakura here. It’s because they’re facing Ino. Sakura cannot admit Ino’s right, even if she’s outgrown Ino.
"We'll find a way," Sakura said with absolute confidence. "And anyway, he's our teammate. It's our job to take care of him."
Ino refrained from shooting that so far they'd done a crappy job of it. It was annoying to be arguing over something she had no intention of letting go, but of course Sakura couldn't agree to things before she'd made them as complicated as possible. Naruto wasn't getting involved; she wasn't sure if she should be grateful or not.
Cue my snickering at Ino’s comment on how Sakura always makes things way more complicated than they should be. Ino, of course, never does.
She chose another angle.
"You remember I'm a Yamanaka? …Take me to Sasuke, and I'll tell you whose mind is moving his body."
I hadn’t thought about it before I wrote it, but it seems like an argument. As to whether Ino’s making it up, it’s up to you.
Her hands balled into fists at her side, her nails digging in her palms, when Sakura and Naruto looked at one another. She didn't dare breathing. They'd let her come now. She wouldn't hold them back; not only that, her abilities would be a great help in their mission.
At the same time, Ino wondered why it hurt that she was going to come with them for Sasuke's sake, and neither for herself nor for the two of them. Sasuke came first.
"We're… sorry, Ino," Naruto said slowly. His gaze was fixed on Sakura. "You can't come."
The point is that it’s not about Ino, so they don’t want to endanger her. Also, Naruto is reading on Sakura’s face what decision she’s taken, and he’s testing to see if his words are the right ones.
"Thank you for your offer," Sakura muttered. She'd dropped her eyes from Naruto and she wasn't looking at Ino either.
First parallel. Sakura thanks Ino. Sasuke had thanked her. That is why she’s not looking at anyone, she’s not exactly proud of it.
No.
She took in the finality, resounding in their voices, shadowing their stances. Eyes wide, she stared.
No.
Something snapped.
"And you think I'm going to let you knock me out like that?" she asked incredulously. "You think I'm just going to accept that? Well, what if I won't? Then what? Are you going to fight me?"
Naruto visibly winced. "No, it's not—" he began.
Second parallel. The fight between Naruto and Sasuke. Naruto remembers it, and this is why he winces.
She turned a withering look towards him. "Are you going to tell me I'll just be in your way? It's not my place, maybe?"
"Look, Ino, you don't underst—" Naruto abruptly cut himself off, colour draining from his face.
Third parallel. Sasuke shouting at Naruto that he doesn’t understand. And a character conveniently interrupting another character, as neither I not Naruto knew what he intended on saying.
"I don't understand? What's there to not understand? That you're going to get yourselves killed? When Naruto can't use his arm?" Her voice rose to a screech. "WHY DO YOU THINK I WANT TO BE THERE, YOU MORONS?"
Ino makes remarkable points while completely failing to get Naruto and Sakura’s points, which is that they love Sasuke. That’s my point.
Sakura was shaking her head. "No, we—"
"And you!" Ino whipped her head to snap at her, her hair swishing. "Do you think I'm just going to let you go? That I'd be able to live with myself even if you do fight me and you do knock me out, that I'm not going to follow you once I wake up?"
"I'm trying to protect you!" Sakura protested.
"YOU'RE LEAVING ME BEHIND!"
It was very pleasant to write this sentence.
Sakura stopped, stricken.
She hadn’t actually voiced it to herself.
"I'm coming with you. I'm able to help and I will help so don't even try to stop me. I'm coming."
Now the Big Scene is done, I can tell you that as I was writing it, I was constantly fearing that I was dissolving into Mary Sue territory, with Ino being too right. That’s why I tried to still keep her blatantly unfair on a few issues, and still bratty, and have her misunderstand things. The next part – Ino’s pain at leaving her team behind (always, always an issue, the more well-meaning the person who does it, the less easy to bring it up, but still; pot, kettle?)– also helps with that.
For a few seconds they were silent.
"Sakura-chan… She's got a point."
Technically, I could – maybe even should – have left at least the second part unsaid, but I figured the fic was already so much about things left unsaid that I wasn’t going to make things any more difficult to follow that they already were.
"I know," Sakura whispered; she still looked shaken, though she was looking at Ino again. "But – what about your team? Shouldn't you – be with them?"
"Aren't they going to follow us?" Naruto asked with a raised eyebrow.
Again with the role-reversal between Naruto and Sakura compared to the way I usually write/imagine them. Again with the idea that they’re acting this way because Ino’s strong link is emphatically with Sakura.
Ino closed her eyes and swallowed the knot in her throat. Chouji, Shikamaru… (Don't lose to Sakura… Either in ninjutsu or in love…) She pressed her lips together to forbid any sob to wreck through her. Don't cry. Don't fucking dare crying.
When she opened her eyes again, after only a moment, she found both Sakura and Naruto still regarding her, their expressions serious, waiting. Without a trace of concern, though. They trusted her to take the right decision, she realised with a flash of insight that caught her unguarded. They expected her to know her team.
She wanted to cry again, for everything that had gone so wrong with Team Seven, and for her own team whom she didn't feel so great abandoning, but it was Sakura. If Ino could help Sakura, then she'd always do it, no matter the price.
It was moronic, she inwardly raged, suddenly furious, because nowadays she could promise Asuma she wouldn't let herself be surpassed by Sakura and she wouldn't give up training or anything all she wanted, that didn't change the fact that Sakura was stronger and Ino knew it. Stronger, and brittle.
Not much to say about all this. I’m happy with how it turned out.
But where she'd trust her teammates to take care of themselves and where she'd be able to turn her back on the fighting zone to find a better attacking angle for her own techniques, she wouldn't if Sakura was there.
It was pathetic, she thought with scorn.
Senseless and pathetic, which was somehow even worse.
Ino is confused, and it’s driving her mad. :3
…So why did it feel like the only domain in which she could still try to equal Sakura was loyalty? Even if it made no sense? Because what Sakura felt for Sasuke – and Ino had no idea what it was, none; you don't go so far for a crush, and was Sakura in love with Sasuke (in love? the word almost choked her) – was nothing like what bonded Ino to Sakura, nothing.
It was team against friendship and love (a jolt for a word she hadn't planned on using) against rivalry and even then there were so many things that didn't fit, such as Sakura's increasing closeness with Naruto which Ino felt so excluded from she had no idea what it could be, if Naruto was getting to be Sakura's best friend or if Sakura was falling in love with him, if they were siblings-in-team (Shikamaru and her?) and it always all went back to Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke.
I love NaruSaku because it’s really Naru->Sasu Saku->Sasu. Because of this, I have few qualms about calling Naruto Sakura’s best friend or Sakura Naruto’s best friend. Yes, I got the memo about Sasuke being Naruto’s closest friend-almost brother and Ino and Sakura having the same type of relationship as the two boys, but there has been 2.5 years which have passed during which the two of them have had more or less one thought on their mind (Sasuke Sasuke Sasuke).
You know the saying about love, about how it’s not looking at one another, but looking in the same direction? I don’t think it’s particularly accurate, but it does imply tremendous closeness, and it describes what Naruto and Sakura have very well, IMO.
And Ino would probably have done for her teammates what Sakura was doing for Sasuke, except that neither Chouji nor Shika would've done something like that, ever.
Shikamaru always planned for his team as a whole and the idea of Chouji betraying Konoha for Orochimaru was the most cracked-up piece of crack she'd heard in ever. And that was counting the 'Iruka-sensei dresses up as a dominatrix on his days off' thing and the 'Kyuubi didn't actually die on that day' crap.
I’m twelve and consequently liked marking those two things as being equally ludicrous to Ino.
(And god, sure Naruto was annoying as hell, but couldn't people give him a break? She didn't even know if that bullshit was more heinous or just plain preposterous, and she was nowhere near as fond of him as Sakura, but even she had been offended on his behalf. The nerve of some people. Oh, so he'd pulled a prank on the man half a decade ago, and that civilian couldn't let go? She'd been speechless for a good ten seconds. Then she'd made sure he'd never want to badmouth Naruto so vilely again.)
Ino abuses italics and maybe Sandaime’s law didn’t work out so bad, in a roundabout way. (If only because: a lot of teenagers question what they’ve been told by their parents. It’s not that big a leap in logic to think that Naruto has turned really popular among the younger generations of Konoha since he’s left, even those who weren’t part of the Rookie Nine and Team Gai.)
If she'd been in Sasuke's team… Well, obviously it hadn't happened so she couldn't know for sure, but she didn't think she'd have gone as far as Sakura. Try to help him, to save him, sure; but devote her life, her whole being, to him? Not freaking likely.
And if it'd been Sakura…
In a heartbeat.
If it'd been Sakura putting Chouji at death's door and Shikamaru through hell, yeah, Ino would've done exactly what Sakura was doing. Training to get stronger and save her and kick her ass.
It’s probably awkward, but I like the ‘putting at death’s door and through hell’ construction. Ino is quick and prone to making snap judgments.
…Thank god Naruto was ready to do that for Sasuke as well. Otherwise Ino would've really doubted her sanity. (Why ever did she compare herself more readily to Sakura-to-Sasuke than Naruto-to-Sasuke anyway?)
If you can’t tell, this was the part where I was starting to confuse myself.
To answer Ino’s question, it’s because there’s a non-one-sidedness to Naruto and Sasuke’s relationship which is no longer present in Ino and Sakura’s. In that way, Ino->Sakura->Sasuke is more similar to Sakura->Sasuke->Itachi (and this time I don’t mean the arrows as necessarily indicating romantic/sexual feelings).
Trying to steel herself, she shook her head.
"No. Once they learn what happened, they – they won't go against Godaime-sama's orders. So long as she gives them something to do with themselves, and so long as I'm not dead-" she expected them to flinch, to acknowledge somehow the sheer craziness of what they were getting into, but they didn't seem perturbed at all "-they won't try to leave."
So long as we aren't around; so long as they don't know exactly how to catch up with us; so long as they don't hear about Sasuke acting up. So long as Tsunade-sama doesn't get them with a third and fourth member to run behind us.
Team Ten aren’t pushovers and I think that they know exactly how to stay within the rules and still get their way, unlike Team Seven which shatters through the rules until you start wondering if those even existed in the first place, and if they did what they had to do with Team Seven.
And wasn't Team Seven conveniently leaving half of its members in Konoha?... She couldn't believe it'd taken her so long to notice his absence.
I was so happy when Ino thought that. There was my opportunity to explain where he was! (Plus we get the obligatory bit of Ino going, ‘where is the prettyboi?’)
"By the way, what happened to Sai?"
She was curious. The dark-haired boy had been inseparable from the two of them recently.
Their relationship isn’t exactly equal, even if Naruto and Sakura like him now. I wanted that to come across, even though it’s unlikely that Ino is aware of the casual cruelty of this sentence. (What do you mean, I’m modelling Ino after Sirius?Hello, James/Sirius is one of my squicks.)
A quick smile crossed Sakura's face. "He agreed to stay behind. I have honestly no idea what he'll tell the Council when they ask him about us, but…" She shrugged.
"We trust him to thoroughly confuse the issue," Naruto explained with a grin.
That would be an interesting scene in itself. Tsunade would end up with so many homicidal urges.
"Oh."
"We can't stay here," Sakura reminded them.
Another example of my fabulous transitions.
Ino nodded, trying to pretend her heart wasn't ramming madly in her chest and she was in no way reeling. An hour ago she was with her team, with nothing more urgent on her mind than not permanently mutilating Shikamaru. Get a grip.
She looked around briefly to regain her composure (she hated feeling that clumsy; where was her confidence when she felt like using it?); her eyes fell on the unconscious trio, suddenly reminding her of something she needed to make sure.
Ino is confident; thus the verb ‘using it’, meaning that it’s not so much that she’d like to hide her discomfort, but to dispel it. It meant to show that Ino’s not thinking about appearances there.
"They know where you're going, right?"
Covering up for this, because I’d forgotten to mention it before. I thought about going back and editing it earlier in the story, but it feels more natural this way, so I kept it like this.
Because if Shikamaru and Chouji thought she'd vanished and they had no idea where to or how or why, there was no predicting what they'd do.
Remember how we said Team Ten aren’t pushovers? I tried to be fair to Ino’s relationship to her team – that was difficult, because it wasn’t the primary focus of this fic at all – but occasionally I didn’t even have to try because they told me exactly what would happen in what case.
"Everyone'll know where we're going," Sakura said tiredly, without looking back from the limit of the newly-formed gap among the trees, where she was now standing, her back to the village.
And that allowed me to write this. I especially like it because of the adverb – Sakura knows what figures of authority think about her and Naruto’s obsession with Sasuke, she knows about the whispers in the village.
Ino paused. Of course; once word got back to the Hokage, anyone who knew about the events in Sound would be able to articulate Sakura and Naruto's disappearing act.
Naruto's teeth gleamed into a harsh grin.
Rule of thumb: never miss an opportunity to point how potentially ruthless running after Sasuke has made the two of them. (yes, I enjoyed Sakura more or less promising Sasori she’d keep him alive so he’d tell her everything he knew about Orochimaru, thank you. ^^)
Sasuke first.
She shook her head elegantly, shedding the tension and hesitation as her hair rippled, before following her pink-haired friend into the branches while Naruto leaped past her and Ino started, not having expected it. But of course neither Naruto nor Sakura would want to waste time. It was then Ino realised their hurry to get away from Konoha's outskirts was much less due to fear of getting caught, as she'd originally thought, and actually revolved around their goal.
She should have known.
I should have known, really, but I only realised their real reason for hurrying when Ino did.
Sasuke first.
The repetition is an echo, and it’s also how it goes for Naruto and Sakura – it’s their leitmotiv. Additionally, she thinks it twice. In context of Sasuke, two = Naruto+Sakura again. But this is also a pattern I use to obtain an echo effect.
But then – she reflected – she was also there, with them; and for her Sasuke definitely didn't come first. It was just as well; they needed someone to make sure they'd be alive to enjoy the afterward of having saved him. And they couldn't do that if they put Sasuke's life above their own. Particularly Sakura, who had none of Naruto's weird recuperative powers, prodigy medic-nin or not.
The teaming up of Naruto-Sakura-Ino in this is fundamentally skewed, since Ino is so much more about Sakura than she is about Naruto, but I don’t think it’ll come as a big surprise if I say that’s the reason I like it. It’s also, ultimately, the reason why I think they could work together.
And that was how Yamanaka Ino volunteered to become a missing-nin.
She, personally, blamed Sakura.
The wrap-up. Ties in with the beginning of the fic.
Well, it was fun. Probably not very informative, and I don’t doubt that tomorrow I’m going to hit my forehead and curse myself for not speaking one aspect or another, but I hope you enjoyed it all the same. :)
hello_scorpling.The fic itself is here.
Title: Strange Kind of Sanity
Author:
runespoor7Rating: PG-13
Summary: post-345/346/347. Ino and Team Seven. Sanity and loyalty and departures. Actually, it's really just an excuse to get Ino and Naruto and Sakura as working partners.
Notes: Interesting fact: did you know how hard it is to type 'Sakura and Naruto' instead of the reverse? Like not thinking 'Harry, Ron and Hermione' in that order. As for pairings, I'll just put it this way; if you want to see it, it's there. Really. Kinda ran mad with the subtext, I think. (mentioned canon unrequited loves and various others. Only actual couples mentioned are AsuKure and TemaShika.)
Okay, first, the title. It refers to Ino's thoughts regarding Team Seven's lack of sanity, and, more worryingly, her own. More than that, it's the link between Ino, Sakura and Naruto. Leaving the village and risking becoming missing-nin only makes sense if you're not behaving on the same principle as the rest of the ninja world holds dear. The first rule is: you don't leave the village. The second rule is, you don't leave the village.
And people who don't function with the same set of values as the rest of the world? Are commonly thought insane.
Except that the reader's values are not those of the ninja world (kid soldiers, anyone?), even if he or she doesn't approve all the values of the Ino-Sakura-Naruto trio, and the different perspective hopefully helps to weave between the two groups.
Thus the title. It's not normal, but at the same time it makes sense.
I remember how I got the idea for this fic. I was playing Clash of Ninja on GC, and if you played the game far enough you know that there’s a ‘Team Battle’ option, where you choose three characters and play against three other characters. The characters I play most are NarutoSasukeSakura ( to the point where I make sure they always have the same percent use because I am that obsessed by Team Seven, but shhh) and Ino, because on top of being awesome, Ino according to Clash of Ninja is a tank, and there’s something extremely satisfying about kicking the asses of Gaara or Sasuke or Lee with Ino.
So I made a team with Naruto, Sakura and Ino.
I seem to have this defect where I can’t play with a ‘team’ if I don’t find a reason – any reason – why they’re together in this team. I mean, if I play Neji-Ino-Haku, I’m going to use the ‘they have purdy hair’ and leave it at that, but I need some kind of justification, and Naruto-Sakura-Ino demands a justification, and at the same time allows for it. (It’s easier to picture Naruto-Sakura-Ino on a team/mission together than Neji-Ino-Haku, isn’t it?)
And I was lucky, because it was around chapter 345, so the idea that Naruto and Sakura would hear about the Sasuke-Orochimaru stuff in Sound was right up the alley, and it made sense to have Ino join them to save Sakura’s skin.
Naruto, Sakura and Ino are also some of my favourite characters: Naruto and Sakura are my favourite characters, and Ino probably ranks up there in my personal Top Ten. Besides, I hold to the idea that the three of them on a mission would be hilarious, not to mention the fact that it would spell utter annihilation of the poor, poor people who’d think about opposing them. (Plus, it’s hot.)
So! Like the note said: this was just an excuse to get them on the same mission. Never mind that said mission will never get written.
Sometimes, Ino wondered about Team Seven's sanity.
Everyone does.
Not as often as she wondered about her own, though.
Yamanaka Ino, at age fifteen, had come to the conclusion that she was completely off her rocker. It didn't please her in the slightest, but it was alas the only thing that could possibly account for her current ailment.
The first lines of a fic. As a rule, I hate writing those with a passion, because more often than not they begin with a character’s first name (or observation on the weather), and I don’t like it. I always feel like I’m lacking in originality when I do that.
Here I wanted to show Ino as bratty, which she is, and easily annoyed, in this case with herself. Oh, and the time set. The sooner I get it out of the way the less likely it’ll confuse readers, and I like when I don’t need to put things like that in the notes.
Leaping through the forest, tree-branch-trunk-force-your-lunch-back-down-your-stomach-wish-you-had-wrapped-the-chest-bandages-a-little-more-tightly-this-morning-and-repeat, trying to keep up with both her partners, was definitely one of these occasions.
Ignoring the protests of her screaming muscles, she accelerated. Time was against them, as was space, but frankly what wasn't against them these days?
Cheap suspense about the names of her teammates. I thought about keeping it up for longer, but in the end it seemed artificial and pointless, so I cut it short. Here Ino is struggling to keep up with them and not saying a word about it, which is another important part of her character in the fic. Chest bandages: Ino is a girl. And easy melodrama/urgency which was actually intended as rather tongue-in-cheek.
They knew that most likely they weren't being followed, or at any rate not being followed by people against whom they wouldn't hold more chances than a snowball in Suna; as Naruto had pointed out, if Jiraiya was seriously on their track he'd just use a toad and the flight would be over before they knew it.
Of course there were also ANBU and rescue teams of any sort, and as a preventive measure Sakura had taken to use genjutsu to cover their presence. Ino did her half of the work, because too much genjutsu gave Sakura headaches – very typical of Forehead-girl, Ino had remarked when this particularity had been mentioned to her.
More of Ino-is-a-bitch-(and-hiding-her-anxiety), and general context.
That was primarily the situation.
My transitions suck, I know. But at least it’s one thing that won’t be confusing, so good for me!
That was also exactly why Ino was convinced she was certifiably insane.
I wouldn’t be too sure about how I ended up in this situation if I were Ino, either.
Which didn’t do, because as a member of Team Ten, Ino had a duty toward sanity.
Team Ten had prided themselves since That Chuunin Exam on being sane, and average, and annoyingly well-balanced. Before that, it used to be that this normality had grated on Ino's nerves, who was born for greatness and who would probably sweep genius Uchiha Sasuke off his feet if given the chance (and would smile nastily at Haruno Sakura when she did, too).
Emphasis on the brackets. Team Ten’s normality is the reason they rock the world.
Why did she have to get stuck with the dump? Shikamaru might think only 'Naruto's team' was weaker than they were, Ino knew they were by far the worst – hey, Team Seven had Sasuke and even Ino lost to Sasuke.
Reference to the beginning of Team Ten’s second test during the chuunin exam, back when Shikamaru still looked like an ape and Chouji was just the fat kid who ate chips.
Then, after witnessing Those Events, she changed her mind. Normal was good.
Normal meant your family wasn't trying to kill you, or had laws regulating what you could and couldn't do, you weren't cursed with unfortunate eyebrows and an evil fashion sense, you didn't have bugs living inside your body, and, most of all, you didn't flip out and betray the freaking village and – worse, much worse, though Ino kept her opinion to herself because she knew it wouldn't be widely accepted, your team.
Normal meant you didn't devote your very life to getting back one who was, quite clearly, out of his mind and very very dead inside.
Normal also meant not getting trained by a Sannin, but Ino had made chuunin before Sakura anyway, and she was well on her way to getting into ANBU by the time she was twenty, and the price was a bit too much anyway.
In order, that’s Hinata, Neji, Lee, Shino, Sasuke, and Sakura. I might’ve been able to go on with characters but that would just have been redundant. I’m conflicted about the ‘evil fashion sense’ bit; I spent way too long trying to decide whether I’d put ‘evil’ in italics or not. *wry smile* So, Ino in a nutshell; superficial, perceptive, devoted. And loud, but that’s a given.
I have a weakness for ANBU!Ino.
So Ino had planned on being both normal and great, and she had a history of getting what she wanted. It should really have been no trouble.
Except it had been.
This is one of the weakest sentences ever, and if the next two lines hadn’t popped up neatly in my head after I’d typed it, I’d have played deletedeletedelete so fast.
And – as usual – it was entirely Sakura's fault.
And Naruto's.
It’s an afterthought for Ino. Or maybe an admission of honesty, but in any case, unlike about everyone else in the village, she’s much readier to blame Sakura than Naruto.
But mostly Sakura's, because if Ino hadn't heard Sakura's name, and her voice, she'd never have got involved in the skirmish and she wouldn't be fleeing 7/7 at top speed from her home village.
Ino, after all, was not a straight fight specialist.
She was perfectly able to hold her own – and more than that, she did become a chuunin, in Cloud-organised exams, and only six months after her first try – against most chuunin and the occasional jounin, but her definite areas of specialisation were more the underhand kind of destruction, so to say. She could create havoc absolutely anywhere, provided she could grab a body and then hop minds between her enemies, but that did ask for more surprise effect and preparation on her part than the typical facing-down.
But she also had a history of getting involved in fights she couldn't possibly think she was going to win when Sakura was concerned.
It happened like this:
Ino was passing through the outskirts of Konoha for a walk, because Shikamaru had got on her nerves more than usual and she'd needed to calm down after she'd punched the living daylights out of him.
Watch how I fumble for an excuse for Ino to Just Happen at the right time at the right place. I like to think there’s some semblance of logic there, no matter how flimsy – that it’s not just ‘she Just Happened to be there at the right time at the right place’ without even trying to justify it.
She was still fuming. After all this time, he should know better than asking if it was her time of the month or something.
And they called him a genius.
Like I said, I pretty much needed a pretext, and I didn’t want to make it good (as in thought-provoking). If I made it good, it’d have required to be factored in with Ino’s leaving, which I didn’t want. This fic was never about Team Ten, it’s about Ino being ready to do pretty much anything for Sakura. Moreover, Ino had already established by that point that her tone would often be flippant, so… *shrugs* Flippancy is one of Ino’s defence mechanism as I write her, and it’s also my way of not taking my melodrama too seriously.
After a while she'd finally relented and given in to Chouji's pleas that she didn't bash the stupid's skull in – though it was thick enough that he wouldn't even feel it, probably. Now she felt she needed the walk.
Poor Chouji.
The whole thing was made worse by the fact that she was on her period. Of course.
The weather was nice, better for a walk than for training, really, warm and sunny and all, and Ino had felt her moodiness slip away. Whenever she felt she was getting carried away, she reminded herself of Shikamaru's drawl, and her anger came back full force every time.
The sole redeeming quality of the observations on the weather is how dismissive Ino is about it.
After a while she'd discarded the sulkiness but not the anger, and she was plotting how to Get Shika Back Good This Time, wondering if involving Temari might not implode in her face – Temari was a bit of a wild card where girl issues were concerned. Ino wasn't sure Temari wouldn't laugh in her face if she tried to recruit her in her vengeance plan, and not telling her meant that if either Temari or Shikamaru realised something was amiss, Ino wouldn't be able to get a peaceful night of sleep for fear of retaliation.
Yeah, my usual take on the so-called Tema-Shika-Ino triangle/jealousy/etc. (ie: ‘…Whut?’) I like to think Ino would try to team up with Temari against Shikamaru, but she’s a bit unsure about Temari.
She was perhaps not paying as much attention to her surroundings as she should have, but really.
Retrospectively of course, if Suigetsu didn’t realise Sasuke and Karin weren’t following him, maybe I didn’t need to write that. The ‘but really’ is part Ino putting an end to the subject part me being too lazy to spend any more time on it.
So, anyway, one moment she heard a great big shattering sound, a hundred meters away, and the next Naruto's voice was shouting, "Sakura-chan!"
Remember what I said about my transitions being beyond sucky? The excuse is that it’s IC for Ino to be snappish.
So how did Ino react? Well, obviously she had to run and see what it was about, and then she should have gone back to the village and get help if needed, and let the higher-ups know about whatever it was should it be warranted.
If you think I can convince myself to take Flying!To!The!Rescue! right at the good moment seriously, you have a lot more confidence in my writing skills than I do. The fic already plays with a number of layers, and flashbacks within flashbacks, and before I knew it, the ‘so how did Ino react?’ I was thinking had made its way to the monitor.
Only Ino wasn't really thinking one hundred percent straight at that time, because Naruto's tone had been totally unsuited for a spar or even a minor incident, and Ino was exactly the type of girl whose every thought left the brain of when she thought people she cared about were in danger.
It was a reflex no amount of training, emotional or otherwise, had been able to erase, but that was maybe because Ino only went at it half-heartedly at best.
Logically she knew she'd be more of help if she stayed cooler, and ultimately that a good ninja shouldn't ever lose control over her emotions, but deep down she couldn't help but doubt it. She wanted to be sure she wasn't going to be too late, and no waiting-for-the-opportune-moment would ensure that.
Beside, Ino wasn't going to be good. She was going to be great.
More of Ino as an ambitious kunoichi. (More of My Basis in Writing Ino.) I know I tend to view/write Ino as a bitchy, kinda manipulative female Naruto, up to the fact that I love both pimp!Naruto and pimp!Ino, and they’re the only ones, but here it’s also Ino trying to disband her doubts about herself. (See the second paragraph after this one.)
If the Third and Fourth Hokage found it okay to sacrifice themselves for their village, then who'd dare tell her she shouldn't take the same risks for her friends?
I remember having very good reasons for choosing Sandaime and Yondaime here instead of characters that’d be closer to Ino. I think it had to do with the fact that when Ino chooses those role-models for her actions, she can’t possibly be told she’s wrong. I don’t think anyone in the village thought that Sandaime and Yondy sacrificed themselves for wrong reasons, or at least such is the case in fandom.
Of course Ino’s course of action has very little to do with Sandaime/Yondaime’s sense of duty. It’d have been much more accurate to compare what she’s doing to pretty much any other character doing something foolish and admirable for their friends, but that’s the thing – Ino wants to be right. Told you I like her kinda manipulative. It’s a manipulation that’s easily recognisable, though, and that’s the other thing – she’s also a little desperate, and lying to herself.
Thus Ino rushed into the scene and attacked the closest person she knew for sure wasn't Sakura or Naruto due to his dark hair with a flying kick to the head that would've made Lee twinkle and beam if he could have seen it, and burst into a long-winded exclamation about the Passion of Youth, and would've dispelled the rumours that 'Ino sucked at taijutsu and so sucked as a shinobi' once and for all.
Yet more of the ‘ClashofNinja!Ino is a tank’. (Besides, I can’t be the only one loving the image of DynamicEntry!Ino, right? Right?... btw, InoLee is a crackship I have recently discovered and which attracts me greatly, with the Power of Crack.)
After a few dumbfounded seconds during which everyone stared at her and she stared back, Ino realised she'd just laid one Raidou-san out cold, that there were two other persons aside from Naruto and Sakura who were both Konoha compatriots, and that she really had no idea what was going on except that it was probably bad.
She would definitely have started snarking and demanding an explanation in the most stylish, classy and I-saved-your-neck-didn't-you-notice-(peons) way she knew, had one of the remaining opponents (with-a-question-mark) (his name momentarily eluded her) not chosen to take advantage of the sudden lack of focus and played the most foolproof strategy of ninja history, attack-the-medic-nin. Sakura.
For the record, I really dislike having to state that it’s Sakura there. In my original draft, I hadn’t, but after debating with myself and cursing Kishimoto with all the strength of my ‘wryyyyyyyyyyyy’ might, I gave in, because it was otherwise unclear and could be construed as meaning Ino. I am otherwise amused with the rest of the sentence.
Ino let go of the questions. One might say her body moved on its own.
Yeah, unsubtle parallels ahoy. I hope you can stomach those, because you’re in for a lot more of those.
A few minutes later Ino was healing her various scrapes and wounds and feeling rather justified in her gloating still when Naruto blurted out, "Damn, Ino! What was that all about?"
Ino glared at him. With his arm in a sling which he hadn't used during the whole skirmish.
"Excuse me?"
Just so you know, I really liked imagining Ino’s tone at that. I didn’t add ‘she hollered’ or anything because it felt deeply unnecessary, but this is still one of my favourite reactions in this fic. (You think I’m playing with ValleyGirl!Ino.
She was about to detail what she meant, but Sakura cut her short.
"That's not what he meant, Ino."
The absence of suffix effectively stopped Ino in whatever retort she might have lashed. She felt her eyes narrowing.
"We fought fellow Leaf-nins and you helped us." Sakura started biting on her lip. "Hm, we could knock you out – when you wake up you'll just have to explain why you helped out – and why the fuck did you help out anyway? – and you should get off easily enough. Naruto, what do you think?"
The other blond nodded, a small frown on his brow. "Yeah, we could do that."
Naruto and Sakura as a team. I could write tomes on their relationship, on how I think their ability to work together as a team as been insanely strengthened by Sasuke’s absence, and the 2.5 years they spent apart, and how driven they are, but that would be redundant.
Also, I love making TS!Sakura use curse words.
They’re several years ahead of Ino, there.
Ino's eyebrows were up to her hairline – which admittedly wasn't as high as Sakura's – and her hands were braced in front of her, getting ready for an attack.
You didn’t think I could miss an occasion to hit everyone over the head with how bitchy/obsessive Ino is, right? And at the same time, she acts like a ninja.
"Okay, mind telling me what the hell is going on here?... Like you could take me out so easily," she added as a second-thought with a knowing, sympathetic, condescending nod, though she was well aware that if they teamed up against her, in a straight fight, the best of her abilities would be nowhere near enough.
Like the previous sentence, there are two sides to this. I believe ninja must be good at multitasking, and if Naruto and Sasuke are allowed to insult one another while carrying on a fight in fics, I don’t see why Ino and Sakura couldn’t have something like it. Ino still tries to preserve a sense of normality. But it fails, because Sakura isn’t playing.
Sakura hesitated.
Naruto sent a glance in the direction of the village. "We need to get going, Sakura-chan," he said tersely.
"I know that!" Sakura snapped. "But unless you're suggesting we either kidnap her or fight her—we don't have the time for this," she interrupted herself in her mounting anger, with a surprisingly calm tone. It was another proof that things were grave indeed, when Sakura acted as if there were literally two sets of thoughts running through her head.
Ino is perceptive, or I’m unsubtle. You choose.
Ino took a deep breath to quell her nervousness.
"What. Is. Going. On."
*winces* Oh the bad…
So long as she stayed angry, she wouldn't be afraid.
Naruto and Sakura exchanged a look that Ino didn't like in the slightest.
It was a look that had years of a-common-goal behind it. Ino knew because Chouji and Shikamaru sometimes shared one of those, though theirs were based on the fact that they were guys and were suffering Ino's very femaleness. Ino could see through it perfectly well.
She chose not to call them on it – most of the time – because she wasn't quite as big a bitch as the rumour-mill had it, and she did like companionable afternoons with her team, from times to times. It was relaxing. Watching the clouds with Shika, chattering about girl things and smile secretly when the two boys just looked at each other.
Part of their team dynamic.
I love Team Ten. – Additionally, it’s also about how the public eye misunderstands everything that’s there to understand. In some cases, it’s tragic – cf Naruto. In others, in the petty sort of snap judgement people make. I think that Ino is a bit wistful about the view most people have of her, but she also takes satisfaction from playing with it. It’s not everyone’s business that Ino likes lazying around with Shikamaru and Chouji.
This one, Ino wasn't familiar with, but the fact that it went between Sakura and Naruto was enough to make her stomach clench with worry.
Because Sakura and Naruto had spent two and a half years apart, and they shouldn't be able to understand one another so well without words.
They didn't even have a prior bond to justify this closeness, to make it acceptable; before they became genin, Sakura hated Naruto, didn't she? So it wasn't even as if, say, Chouji and Shikamaru hadn't ended up on the same team; they'd still be able to get one another, they'd been best friends long before they formed Team Ten.
There was only one thing that could link Sakura and Naruto.
And it’s a cruel, cruel thing to say about them. But really, I think that’s why I write them as close as I do.
"We're leaving," Sakura finally dropped, looking back at Ino. "We're going to the Sound."
Ino swallowed. She tried to smile, but even she knew it looked fake.
"It's not a mission, is it?"
Of course it wasn't. She didn't even need to hear the answer. Of course it wasn't, why else would they fight Konoha-nins and leave them on the ground – healed, but unconscious and unlikely to wake up before a few hours after Sakura's ministrations – unless they weren't supposed to?
That sentence is awkward.
There was a lump in her throat.
Sakura looked pained. "No," she said softly. "It's really, really not."
This is the closest as Sakura goes to acknowledging Ino’s feelings.
During the eerie silence that followed, Ino thought about everything that had happened since she'd stood with Shikamaru and Chouji in front of three freakishly strong Sound-nins in the Forest of Death, and she'd ordered Sakura to let it go, Forehead, and the look on Sakura's face (and no-one would get to Sakura as long as Ino was there).
…Yeah.
She looked down at the three shinobi who had tried to prevent the two from leaving, two jounin and one chuunin, and admired distantly the differences between this and Sasuke's leaving of the Leaf.
"What happened?" she asked.
Sakura licked her lips.
"You know how Jiraiya-sama left the village yesterday?"
I debated how Sakura would call Jiraiya. ‘Jiraiya’, because she’s under that much stress, ‘Jiraiya-san’, or ‘Jiraiya-sama’? In the end I went with Jiraiya-sama because it was the one that was the least polemical. It’s also time for the Department of Backstory to show up, which I tried to do with as little pulp-SF discussions between-two-doctors/1st scene of classical French tragedies moments. I tried to justify it with the next few paragraphs, which show how Ino has other things on her mind.
It also shows that Ino and Sakura don’t see one another everyday.
Ino nodded. That, she knew.
I should have made that a paragraph break. It’d still have been monumentally pointless, but at least it’d have carried some sort of weight.
She hadn't thought it was anything to worry about, though; especially not when she had her own team problems. They hadn't been assigned a new team leader – or captain, or whatever – and Ino could only hope they wouldn't. Working with someone for one mission or two, or even every one of them would be fine; but not if it was made official, not if they weren't Team Asuma anymore.
The problem with Sai.
It'd be easier in a few months, when Kurenai's child was born. Sarutobi Kurenai.
That sounded so weird.
Asuma-sensei had never seemed to give a thought about getting married – hey, they weren't even living together – and now Asuma was dead, Kurenai got a post-mortem marriage. It was more or less customary in a shinobi village, especially when the woman was pregnant, but it still gave Ino the creeps.
post-mortem marriage for AsuKure is my pet theory.
She hoped fervently she'd never have to do the same thing.
(On a side note: when Shikamaru told Chouji and her that Asuma had whispered his child's existence into Shika's ear, he assuaged doubts she didn't even know she had about how Kurenai had stopped the contraceptives without telling Asuma.)
It’s something I can see a smart, practical female teenager thinking. You are welcome to read it as Ino being ever so slightly jealous of Kurenai. Asuma may be the most fatherly of the jounin-sensei we’re shown, he’s also emphatically not their father – not to mention the fact that all of Team Ten, ironically, still has a father.
Looking back, it was obvious that there must have been a pretty serious reason behind the Sannin's sudden departure.
"Well, I-I got into Tsunade-shishou's restricted files." Sakura paused.
Here I debated again whether Ino knew about Sakura’s habits – and whether Sakura had told her or not. The latter was easily answered, because for Sakura, nothing measures up to her team. Nothing. So she won’t tell Ino anything that could keep her (Sakura) from being the best she can be for her team – be it in strength, knowledge, etc. I make a habit of emotionally removing Sakura from Konoha and more specifically Ino’s grasp.
There are many reasons for this, a lot of which pertain to my love of cheap angst, and the other being that symbolically, Sakura needs to engage on a journey of her own. She needs to do the same as Sasuke and Naruto – except that the two of them physically leave Konoha. Thus I always have Sakura not being wholly in Konoha during the timeskip; and there’s also the fact that for Sakura, Konoha isn’t Konoha without the other two.
As to Ino’s awareness… Did it escape someone’s notice that I’m writing Sakura as Ino’s most important bond? Yeah, I thought not. Besides, going with the idea that Ino’s better at infiltration than typical facing-off type of fights, it stands to reason that she’d have picked it up.
And superficially, it was also done to avoid yet another “I know that you know that…” awkward sentence.
Ino raised an eyebrow. What else is new? On the side where he was kicking stones, Naruto snorted.
Just in case someone had forgotten Naruto was there. Plus Naruto and Ino being of a mind on the subject of Sakura looking through papers she shouldn’t have. (I serious!ship NaruIno as unrequited love on Sakura.)
"More restricted than usual," Sakura amended.
Note how Sakura isn’t actually surprised that Ino knows, and how she just accepts that the two of them will know. She’s estranged from Ino, but she’s not shocked that Ino would be able to see through her. Now, is that because she’s taking Ino for granted, because she trusts her, or because it’s so not the moment to worry about it?
There was a mess of contradictory emotions whirling on her face, too fast for Ino.
If there ever was an opportunity for me to plagiarise Elisabeth Culmer’s Tides, that was now, but look, I didn’t do it. (“a kaleidoscope of emotions flitting too fast for Sasuke to read”, I think it was.)
"There was word about Sasuke," Naruto said, shortly and grimly.
After two lifetimes of silence, Ino could speak again. "About Sasuke…" she echoed dumbly.
Two because Naruto+Sakura. Symbolically, Ino is shoved in the back, behind their concerns for Sasuke.
She felt as if the two of them, Naruto and Sakura, were shrouded in something that went far beyond her. Far beyond the luxuriant Konoha landscape surrounding them, far beyond the sunny weather and plump cheerful clouds.
I like that paragraph. It says exactly what I wanted to say, plus I get to play with pathetic fallacy.
Something twisted in her gut when she realised uncomfortably how outside of her reach they were – how plainly they didn't care.
If you care to count, that’s five ‘-ly’ adverbs in five lines, which even I’ll admit is a bit much. But as far as I’m concerned, adverbs are the best words out of any language, so…
Or maybe how little they cared, with the scraps of concern that weren't taken by the goal they'd spent almost three years pursuing. Looking at them, Ino was filled with the disquieting foreboding that they were taut like weapons – bright with hope and pain, taut like chakra-threads about to snap.
Wow, she'd never have guessed she could do melodramatic so well.
Lol. I really liked the comparison. I was happy I had found it, I thought it was beautiful, I was completely enamoured with the symbolism, what have you. Then I realised 1) that it didn’t fit the tone of the piece, and 2) that it was Ino.
In front of her, Sakura curtly nodded. "Him and Orochimaru. Something about the soul-transfer." Her lips were almost white, Ino noted.
Then she gaped, registering what she'd been told. She wanted to protest. But you told me Orochimaru wouldn't be able to do the jutsu for three years! It hadn't been three years since Sasuke had left the village! Even if Ino had been able to get her dates mixed up so badly, surely Naruto and Sakura would've grown restless if the three-year limit was anywhere near up.
The entire fandom’s been in uproars about that. Besides, it made sense that it was Ino raising that point, because Ino doesn’t care half as much about Sasuke as she does about her friend. You can bet that it wasn’t the first thing on Naruto and Sakura’s mind when they learnt about it. (chapter 350: point proven.)
Also a shout-out to Sakura and Ino’s relationship, because here Sakura did tell Ino about the soul-transfer. I’ll admit it was pure laziness on my part of not wanting to explain things the reader already knows. If I had wanted to write a fic, say, about Chouji joining Naruto and Sakura, he’d have nodded and said that it was Shikamaru’s theory. If it had been Hinata, she’d have found her own way of getting restricted information (this is a constant in my writing Hinata). And conversely, in this fic they’re not supposed to know.
Like they were now, a small voice whispered at the back of her mind.
Yeah.
But then it'd have been preventive.
Of all the things I’d write differently if I could, that would be it. Why? Because two sentences in italics when in fact the second one isn’t supposed to have been uttered by the ‘small voice at the back of her mind’ – instead, it’s supposed to be Ino emphasising after her ‘Yeah’.
"We don't know who's – in charge," Sakura continued. She looked down and away as she hesitated on the last words, her voice trembling a little, but then she looked up straight in at Ino, her eyes slightly narrowed in determination. "It wasn't stated in the reports, but just that there was a report proves that it happened."
A muffled sound – half growling, half choking – came from Naruto's side. Ino glanced his way. He couldn't be taking this well.
Hell, she wasn't taking this well and she wasn't anywhere as involved with the Uchiha as they were, right?
I have no qualms about making Ino think of ‘Sasuke-kun’ as ‘the Uchiha’.
On some level, it was his fault that Shikamaru's first mission had failed and that he still took to guilt so badly, that Chouji had almost died.
And even if Ino accepted that he hadn't been the one fighting them then – wasn't even aware of it at the time, given how he was unconscious in a bucket (and as a side note, Ino had heard of a lot of ridiculous things over the years, but that one still stole the cake) – and even since Sakura had convinced her Sasuke mostly needed help, possibly in the form of a serious beating, she'd never be able to forgive him for the rest.
Because Shika and Chouji were her team, and in some ways were pretty much her brothers – not all ways obviously, because sometimes when she looked at Chouji what she was feeling was definitely not sisterly sensations and necessitated a cold shower or two, which was stupid – but Sakura was her best friend.
Yeah, so I like InoChou. Not fandomly kosher since I canonship TemaShika, but see if I care. I just kept that digression for the ‘which was stupid’ part – Ino being in denial and disgusted with herself. Not in an angsty context.
And for that – Sakura, and the whole mess with his team – Sasuke was definitely the one to blame.
There are things I think some of the rookies wouldn’t be quick to forgive Sasuke, provided they do forgive him, because it’s been drilled into us that they are Good Persons. That aside, Sasuke being tentatively accepted back by the Rookies – or not – is one of those potentially endless bunny that don’t get written a lot.
He was the one who'd knocked Sakura out and who'd made her cry again and again and again in front of the five boys who were to bring him back, until Sakura never cried anymore when Ino would've wanted nothing else than to be able to comfort her.
She wasn't stupid; she knew Sakura still cried, but nowhere where other people could see her now, because she thought they'd look down on her for it – for being emotional and thirteen and a girl and weak.
Now, all Ino->Saku aside. A girl knows her best friend doesn’t come to her with her problems, and there’s nothing she can do, and she blames herself for starting it (see next sentence)? Ouch. I don’t think Ino enjoys feeling powerless.
Ino had been the first – way back when chuunin exams were things that happened to other people and Sasuke was a glaring boy who never just walked when he could run and whom Ino had originally noticed because he was piggy-backing on the single most attractive coolest aloof-yet-gentle impossibly PERFECT boy Ino had ever seen.
Oh, Ino->Ita. :DDDDDD.
At first it was so far from the radar it could have as well been Kisame/Shino, and the next it was the one true reason how Ino had noticed Sasuke. Because Ino obviously is the type of girl who’ll go for the best (ValleyGirl!Ino, remember?) and Itachi, at that time, was pretty much every little girl’s ideal crush. It also gives Hinata!Ino.
The following flashback was originally neither in italics nor in a parenthesis, because I’m nothing if not good at starting something and then realising it’s five hundred words that have nothing to do with the rest of the story. I kept it because it turned out I had found a way to make it useful to the story, and specifically the trends of ‘Ino blames herself’ and ‘Ino feels left behind’.
(Her jaw had dropped and she'd felt a sudden warmth spreading all the way down to her toes, she'd violently shivered, and she'd accidentally broken the vase she was holding.
I had so much fun writing it as cliché as I could.
To make a couple of very long weeks short, she got over him because her knees went weak whenever she merely thought of approaching him, and she blushed and went mute and hid behind the closest grown-up when he got into the vicinity and her heart thumped madly in her chest and Sasuke – his little brother who was in her class – alternatively scowled at her, whimsically grabbed his older brother's hand, and looked like a kicked puppy when said older brother ignored him.
If you know a way I could have made the Sasu->Ita any more glaring, please tell me. I think Sasuke reads much younger than Ino there, but that may be just because my brain stops working when I’m confronted with Chibisuke.
Itachi was too impressive, and Sasuke, she found after watching him, was incredibly cute as well, plus he was in her class and he knew she existed.
Even at that age, Ino was practical.
Potentially he could see her as more than the-six-year-old-who-is-always-hiding-behind-her-father-when-I-cross-the-street Itachi undoubtedly thought she was – Ino knew he had to register her existence somehow, because she'd managed to learn he was a genius since she'd fell in love-at-first-sight with him, and a ninja genius would never let something like that elude him.
It was a great plan. Then she'd realised every other girl had a crush on Uchiha Sasuke, and concluded that the best way to win his favours was to become the most prominent among them.)
Due to my perception of Sasuke’s character, it was necessary that Ino not stand out and confront him. The realisation made me howl in frustration, it did. C’m’on, you imagine Chibi!Ino snapping at Chibisuke and pushing him and snarking at him and drawing herself up in a haughty ‘hmpf!’ and doing her very best to surpass him in every class? It’d be awesome, and I don’t even ship InoSasu. (Probably one of two Ino pairings I don’t ship.)
It was only years later, after her team had made it back from the fight against Akatsuki and after Ino had got that the reason behind Naruto's training and drive was Sasuke, just like it was for Sakura – when the tangled mess of badness that was Team Seven dawned upon Ino, that she started thinking that maybe she should've done things otherwise.
That maybe if she'd persevered in her original interactions with Sasuke, as a rival for his brother's attention and as a rival in class, rather than becoming Fangirl #1 and just accepting that he was better than her in ninjutsu because he was a genius like his brother, if she'd driven him mad like she'd done with Sakura after they broke they friendship up – then maybe things would've been different.
Maybe she'd be in Naruto's place now. Maybe she'd be the teammate Sasuke had tried to kill, and then hadn't, and couldn't dismiss quite so easily.
Just for the fun, that’s ItaSasu, ItaIno, InoSaku, NaruSasu, InoSasu, SakuSasu and NaruSakuSasu that I’ve hinted at over the last three paragraphs.
Maybe if Sasuke had had an aggressively in his face rival before graduating from the Academy, he wouldn't have been so removed, so soon.
The sad thing was that while she could imagine herself in that position, and while she could imagine Sasuke's reactions, she couldn't possibly picture Sakura and Naruto. Once their link with Sasuke was removed, they seemed to fit nowhere.
Again with how defined by their relationship to Sasuke they are. (For a comparison, take Itachi away from Sasuke’s character and enjoy.)
The persons they were wouldn't even exist.
Sakura'd still be a too-sweet, unassertive spineless pseudo-wimp of a girl, and maybe she'd have even given up on being a kunoichi – maybe Ino'd have lost contact with her, if she'd entered a rivalry with Sasuke.
Ino liked being the rival Sakura wanted to surpass. A lot.
Maybe she'd be married.
Yamada or Inoue or Random-Name-From-"Hi-I'm-Not-A-Ninja-What's-A-Pretty-Girl-(And-A-Sucky-Fighter)-Like-You-Doing-In-Such-A-Harsh-Life-Let's-Have-Babies"-Dom Sakura.
InoSaku.
As for Naruto…
Ino found – hi scales-falling-down-eyes have a nice day bye – that there just was no Naruto without Sasuke. Just…Blank. Utter, total nothingness. The idea of Naruto just needed a Sasuke; a rival-slash-best-friend-he-says-slash-weird-weird-thing.
The hyphen-full style seems to work for Ino’s character, when you stand on your head and close your eyes, but I had fun with it. Also – I started out in Harry Potter fandom, where you don’t say ‘yaoi’ or ‘shounen-ai’ but ‘slash’. ^^ It wasn’t meant that way in this sentence but it nevertheless made me quite happy. It’s not subtext if it’s spelled out, right? Like an image of two people kissing.
It was the biggest thing she knew she'd never forgive Sasuke.
How there'd be no Haruno Sakura or Uzumaki Naruto without him.
She looked at them more closely.
Me and my bad transitions and my never-ending digressions.
They reminded her of a tapestry fraying around the edges. This was bad.
Ino was a normal girl; she didn't have a bloodline and yet she came from a ninja clan, she hadn't been rejected by her peers or by the whole village as a kid. Once upon a time she'd been unrivalled among the kunoichi her age, and maybe she stood slightly out because of her blond hair and her loud attitude, but she'd never looked like much. She'd never been special.
Except that she had Sakura for a best friend.
For all Sasuke was a comrade (she'd go with it if it made Sakura happy), she really was upset for Sakura and Naruto. And okay, also a little for Sasuke, who was an asshole alright but didn't deserve that.
To quote, Ino is such a Leaf-nin.
She took a breath.
"I'm coming with you."
"What? No!" Sakura exclaimed.
Sakura’s world just went crash.
Naruto looked at her as if he thought she was mad-crazy-mad, which Ino ignored, and continued looking at her with an expression that was becoming less shocked and more considering with every second.
Naruto’s less shocked, because Naruto and Ino are in many ways more alike than Ino and Sakura (I know, I can’t believe I think that either), and he hasn’t been living in the same village as her for 2.5, and they’re not as close. He has less preconceptions about her, and he also views her in a more neutral way.
It’s a constant in my fics that the closer the person is to you, the more likely his or her judgement will be skewed, and the less likely they will be to behaving in a sensible, objective fashion. I’m not too sure what I feel about it, because it feels closer to Sasuke’s opinions on bonds making you weak than to Naruto’s assurance that bonds make you strong, but I choose not to torment myself with it, because I think that’s precisely the sort of strength Naruto had in mind. (Why hello, breaking-of-rule-25!)
"I'm coming," Ino repeated.
"You can't," Sakura shot back.
Naruto was still watching her, Ino saw out of the corner of her eye. She didn't pay particular attention to him, though, because she was busy trying to mulishly stare Sakura down.
I wouldn’t actually say that Naruto is being calculating, but...
"I'm going to."
"You're going to stay here and tell the Hokage that you stupidly leaped to help us before you'd realised what was going on, and then we knocked you out."
Ino smirked.
"Suppose you and the boy wonder over there do manage to get to Otogakure without blowing yourselves up. Suppose you find yourself right in front of Otogakure's wide open welcoming doors. Do you suppose you'll be able to help yourself and not rush in what'd obviously a trap?"
Sasuke’s circumstantial, Naruto’s circumstantial. For Ino, this is all about her and Sakura, here. Of course, she’s not entirely wrong, as proven by Naruto’s silence. Ino is also well aware of Naruto and Sakura’s occasionally rocky relationship.
Sakura bristled, but she didn't retort, and Ino knew she'd marked a point. She almost grinned, knowing her friend had understood what she'd left unsaid perfectly.
Since when has either of you been able to resort to logic when Sasuke's concerned?
Ino can be smart as a whip when I think it hurts. She’s also hurting herself there, coincidentally.
Even if Naruto lost his head less now and if Sakura was the analytical type, you only needed to hear half the gossip in Konoha to know that Sasuke was Naruto's weakness, and Ino knew it was also the case for Sakura.
"And even if you do, who's going to infiltrate the place for you? Pink hair? Whisker marks?" Sakura recoiled, and Ino felt her lips curl into a smirk again. She was winning. Her tone was so heavy with sarcasm even Shikamaru would've winced, had it been directed at him. "Wow, no-one's going to recognise you at all. You'll fit right in. Seriously, Forehead-Girl, you think that Oto's going to overlook how you're going to come crashing into their hideout as soon as you learn about it?"
She almost felt bad when Naruto looked away and turned to the side. Almost.
That was the obligatory reference to their last attempt.
Coincidentally, I realise that I made Naruto less blind than Sakura here. It’s because they’re facing Ino. Sakura cannot admit Ino’s right, even if she’s outgrown Ino.
"We'll find a way," Sakura said with absolute confidence. "And anyway, he's our teammate. It's our job to take care of him."
Ino refrained from shooting that so far they'd done a crappy job of it. It was annoying to be arguing over something she had no intention of letting go, but of course Sakura couldn't agree to things before she'd made them as complicated as possible. Naruto wasn't getting involved; she wasn't sure if she should be grateful or not.
Cue my snickering at Ino’s comment on how Sakura always makes things way more complicated than they should be. Ino, of course, never does.
She chose another angle.
"You remember I'm a Yamanaka? …Take me to Sasuke, and I'll tell you whose mind is moving his body."
I hadn’t thought about it before I wrote it, but it seems like an argument. As to whether Ino’s making it up, it’s up to you.
Her hands balled into fists at her side, her nails digging in her palms, when Sakura and Naruto looked at one another. She didn't dare breathing. They'd let her come now. She wouldn't hold them back; not only that, her abilities would be a great help in their mission.
At the same time, Ino wondered why it hurt that she was going to come with them for Sasuke's sake, and neither for herself nor for the two of them. Sasuke came first.
"We're… sorry, Ino," Naruto said slowly. His gaze was fixed on Sakura. "You can't come."
The point is that it’s not about Ino, so they don’t want to endanger her. Also, Naruto is reading on Sakura’s face what decision she’s taken, and he’s testing to see if his words are the right ones.
"Thank you for your offer," Sakura muttered. She'd dropped her eyes from Naruto and she wasn't looking at Ino either.
First parallel. Sakura thanks Ino. Sasuke had thanked her. That is why she’s not looking at anyone, she’s not exactly proud of it.
No.
She took in the finality, resounding in their voices, shadowing their stances. Eyes wide, she stared.
No.
Something snapped.
"And you think I'm going to let you knock me out like that?" she asked incredulously. "You think I'm just going to accept that? Well, what if I won't? Then what? Are you going to fight me?"
Naruto visibly winced. "No, it's not—" he began.
Second parallel. The fight between Naruto and Sasuke. Naruto remembers it, and this is why he winces.
She turned a withering look towards him. "Are you going to tell me I'll just be in your way? It's not my place, maybe?"
"Look, Ino, you don't underst—" Naruto abruptly cut himself off, colour draining from his face.
Third parallel. Sasuke shouting at Naruto that he doesn’t understand. And a character conveniently interrupting another character, as neither I not Naruto knew what he intended on saying.
"I don't understand? What's there to not understand? That you're going to get yourselves killed? When Naruto can't use his arm?" Her voice rose to a screech. "WHY DO YOU THINK I WANT TO BE THERE, YOU MORONS?"
Ino makes remarkable points while completely failing to get Naruto and Sakura’s points, which is that they love Sasuke. That’s my point.
Sakura was shaking her head. "No, we—"
"And you!" Ino whipped her head to snap at her, her hair swishing. "Do you think I'm just going to let you go? That I'd be able to live with myself even if you do fight me and you do knock me out, that I'm not going to follow you once I wake up?"
"I'm trying to protect you!" Sakura protested.
"YOU'RE LEAVING ME BEHIND!"
It was very pleasant to write this sentence.
Sakura stopped, stricken.
She hadn’t actually voiced it to herself.
"I'm coming with you. I'm able to help and I will help so don't even try to stop me. I'm coming."
Now the Big Scene is done, I can tell you that as I was writing it, I was constantly fearing that I was dissolving into Mary Sue territory, with Ino being too right. That’s why I tried to still keep her blatantly unfair on a few issues, and still bratty, and have her misunderstand things. The next part – Ino’s pain at leaving her team behind (always, always an issue, the more well-meaning the person who does it, the less easy to bring it up, but still; pot, kettle?)– also helps with that.
For a few seconds they were silent.
"Sakura-chan… She's got a point."
Technically, I could – maybe even should – have left at least the second part unsaid, but I figured the fic was already so much about things left unsaid that I wasn’t going to make things any more difficult to follow that they already were.
"I know," Sakura whispered; she still looked shaken, though she was looking at Ino again. "But – what about your team? Shouldn't you – be with them?"
"Aren't they going to follow us?" Naruto asked with a raised eyebrow.
Again with the role-reversal between Naruto and Sakura compared to the way I usually write/imagine them. Again with the idea that they’re acting this way because Ino’s strong link is emphatically with Sakura.
Ino closed her eyes and swallowed the knot in her throat. Chouji, Shikamaru… (Don't lose to Sakura… Either in ninjutsu or in love…) She pressed her lips together to forbid any sob to wreck through her. Don't cry. Don't fucking dare crying.
When she opened her eyes again, after only a moment, she found both Sakura and Naruto still regarding her, their expressions serious, waiting. Without a trace of concern, though. They trusted her to take the right decision, she realised with a flash of insight that caught her unguarded. They expected her to know her team.
She wanted to cry again, for everything that had gone so wrong with Team Seven, and for her own team whom she didn't feel so great abandoning, but it was Sakura. If Ino could help Sakura, then she'd always do it, no matter the price.
It was moronic, she inwardly raged, suddenly furious, because nowadays she could promise Asuma she wouldn't let herself be surpassed by Sakura and she wouldn't give up training or anything all she wanted, that didn't change the fact that Sakura was stronger and Ino knew it. Stronger, and brittle.
Not much to say about all this. I’m happy with how it turned out.
But where she'd trust her teammates to take care of themselves and where she'd be able to turn her back on the fighting zone to find a better attacking angle for her own techniques, she wouldn't if Sakura was there.
It was pathetic, she thought with scorn.
Senseless and pathetic, which was somehow even worse.
Ino is confused, and it’s driving her mad. :3
…So why did it feel like the only domain in which she could still try to equal Sakura was loyalty? Even if it made no sense? Because what Sakura felt for Sasuke – and Ino had no idea what it was, none; you don't go so far for a crush, and was Sakura in love with Sasuke (in love? the word almost choked her) – was nothing like what bonded Ino to Sakura, nothing.
It was team against friendship and love (a jolt for a word she hadn't planned on using) against rivalry and even then there were so many things that didn't fit, such as Sakura's increasing closeness with Naruto which Ino felt so excluded from she had no idea what it could be, if Naruto was getting to be Sakura's best friend or if Sakura was falling in love with him, if they were siblings-in-team (Shikamaru and her?) and it always all went back to Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke.
I love NaruSaku because it’s really Naru->Sasu Saku->Sasu. Because of this, I have few qualms about calling Naruto Sakura’s best friend or Sakura Naruto’s best friend. Yes, I got the memo about Sasuke being Naruto’s closest friend-almost brother and Ino and Sakura having the same type of relationship as the two boys, but there has been 2.5 years which have passed during which the two of them have had more or less one thought on their mind (Sasuke Sasuke Sasuke).
You know the saying about love, about how it’s not looking at one another, but looking in the same direction? I don’t think it’s particularly accurate, but it does imply tremendous closeness, and it describes what Naruto and Sakura have very well, IMO.
And Ino would probably have done for her teammates what Sakura was doing for Sasuke, except that neither Chouji nor Shika would've done something like that, ever.
Shikamaru always planned for his team as a whole and the idea of Chouji betraying Konoha for Orochimaru was the most cracked-up piece of crack she'd heard in ever. And that was counting the 'Iruka-sensei dresses up as a dominatrix on his days off' thing and the 'Kyuubi didn't actually die on that day' crap.
I’m twelve and consequently liked marking those two things as being equally ludicrous to Ino.
(And god, sure Naruto was annoying as hell, but couldn't people give him a break? She didn't even know if that bullshit was more heinous or just plain preposterous, and she was nowhere near as fond of him as Sakura, but even she had been offended on his behalf. The nerve of some people. Oh, so he'd pulled a prank on the man half a decade ago, and that civilian couldn't let go? She'd been speechless for a good ten seconds. Then she'd made sure he'd never want to badmouth Naruto so vilely again.)
Ino abuses italics and maybe Sandaime’s law didn’t work out so bad, in a roundabout way. (If only because: a lot of teenagers question what they’ve been told by their parents. It’s not that big a leap in logic to think that Naruto has turned really popular among the younger generations of Konoha since he’s left, even those who weren’t part of the Rookie Nine and Team Gai.)
If she'd been in Sasuke's team… Well, obviously it hadn't happened so she couldn't know for sure, but she didn't think she'd have gone as far as Sakura. Try to help him, to save him, sure; but devote her life, her whole being, to him? Not freaking likely.
And if it'd been Sakura…
In a heartbeat.
If it'd been Sakura putting Chouji at death's door and Shikamaru through hell, yeah, Ino would've done exactly what Sakura was doing. Training to get stronger and save her and kick her ass.
It’s probably awkward, but I like the ‘putting at death’s door and through hell’ construction. Ino is quick and prone to making snap judgments.
…Thank god Naruto was ready to do that for Sasuke as well. Otherwise Ino would've really doubted her sanity. (Why ever did she compare herself more readily to Sakura-to-Sasuke than Naruto-to-Sasuke anyway?)
If you can’t tell, this was the part where I was starting to confuse myself.
To answer Ino’s question, it’s because there’s a non-one-sidedness to Naruto and Sasuke’s relationship which is no longer present in Ino and Sakura’s. In that way, Ino->Sakura->Sasuke is more similar to Sakura->Sasuke->Itachi (and this time I don’t mean the arrows as necessarily indicating romantic/sexual feelings).
Trying to steel herself, she shook her head.
"No. Once they learn what happened, they – they won't go against Godaime-sama's orders. So long as she gives them something to do with themselves, and so long as I'm not dead-" she expected them to flinch, to acknowledge somehow the sheer craziness of what they were getting into, but they didn't seem perturbed at all "-they won't try to leave."
So long as we aren't around; so long as they don't know exactly how to catch up with us; so long as they don't hear about Sasuke acting up. So long as Tsunade-sama doesn't get them with a third and fourth member to run behind us.
Team Ten aren’t pushovers and I think that they know exactly how to stay within the rules and still get their way, unlike Team Seven which shatters through the rules until you start wondering if those even existed in the first place, and if they did what they had to do with Team Seven.
And wasn't Team Seven conveniently leaving half of its members in Konoha?... She couldn't believe it'd taken her so long to notice his absence.
I was so happy when Ino thought that. There was my opportunity to explain where he was! (Plus we get the obligatory bit of Ino going, ‘where is the prettyboi?’)
"By the way, what happened to Sai?"
She was curious. The dark-haired boy had been inseparable from the two of them recently.
Their relationship isn’t exactly equal, even if Naruto and Sakura like him now. I wanted that to come across, even though it’s unlikely that Ino is aware of the casual cruelty of this sentence. (What do you mean, I’m modelling Ino after Sirius?
A quick smile crossed Sakura's face. "He agreed to stay behind. I have honestly no idea what he'll tell the Council when they ask him about us, but…" She shrugged.
"We trust him to thoroughly confuse the issue," Naruto explained with a grin.
That would be an interesting scene in itself. Tsunade would end up with so many homicidal urges.
"Oh."
"We can't stay here," Sakura reminded them.
Another example of my fabulous transitions.
Ino nodded, trying to pretend her heart wasn't ramming madly in her chest and she was in no way reeling. An hour ago she was with her team, with nothing more urgent on her mind than not permanently mutilating Shikamaru. Get a grip.
She looked around briefly to regain her composure (she hated feeling that clumsy; where was her confidence when she felt like using it?); her eyes fell on the unconscious trio, suddenly reminding her of something she needed to make sure.
Ino is confident; thus the verb ‘using it’, meaning that it’s not so much that she’d like to hide her discomfort, but to dispel it. It meant to show that Ino’s not thinking about appearances there.
"They know where you're going, right?"
Covering up for this, because I’d forgotten to mention it before. I thought about going back and editing it earlier in the story, but it feels more natural this way, so I kept it like this.
Because if Shikamaru and Chouji thought she'd vanished and they had no idea where to or how or why, there was no predicting what they'd do.
Remember how we said Team Ten aren’t pushovers? I tried to be fair to Ino’s relationship to her team – that was difficult, because it wasn’t the primary focus of this fic at all – but occasionally I didn’t even have to try because they told me exactly what would happen in what case.
"Everyone'll know where we're going," Sakura said tiredly, without looking back from the limit of the newly-formed gap among the trees, where she was now standing, her back to the village.
And that allowed me to write this. I especially like it because of the adverb – Sakura knows what figures of authority think about her and Naruto’s obsession with Sasuke, she knows about the whispers in the village.
Ino paused. Of course; once word got back to the Hokage, anyone who knew about the events in Sound would be able to articulate Sakura and Naruto's disappearing act.
Naruto's teeth gleamed into a harsh grin.
Rule of thumb: never miss an opportunity to point how potentially ruthless running after Sasuke has made the two of them. (yes, I enjoyed Sakura more or less promising Sasori she’d keep him alive so he’d tell her everything he knew about Orochimaru, thank you. ^^)
Sasuke first.
She shook her head elegantly, shedding the tension and hesitation as her hair rippled, before following her pink-haired friend into the branches while Naruto leaped past her and Ino started, not having expected it. But of course neither Naruto nor Sakura would want to waste time. It was then Ino realised their hurry to get away from Konoha's outskirts was much less due to fear of getting caught, as she'd originally thought, and actually revolved around their goal.
She should have known.
I should have known, really, but I only realised their real reason for hurrying when Ino did.
Sasuke first.
The repetition is an echo, and it’s also how it goes for Naruto and Sakura – it’s their leitmotiv. Additionally, she thinks it twice. In context of Sasuke, two = Naruto+Sakura again. But this is also a pattern I use to obtain an echo effect.
But then – she reflected – she was also there, with them; and for her Sasuke definitely didn't come first. It was just as well; they needed someone to make sure they'd be alive to enjoy the afterward of having saved him. And they couldn't do that if they put Sasuke's life above their own. Particularly Sakura, who had none of Naruto's weird recuperative powers, prodigy medic-nin or not.
The teaming up of Naruto-Sakura-Ino in this is fundamentally skewed, since Ino is so much more about Sakura than she is about Naruto, but I don’t think it’ll come as a big surprise if I say that’s the reason I like it. It’s also, ultimately, the reason why I think they could work together.
And that was how Yamanaka Ino volunteered to become a missing-nin.
She, personally, blamed Sakura.
The wrap-up. Ties in with the beginning of the fic.
Well, it was fun. Probably not very informative, and I don’t doubt that tomorrow I’m going to hit my forehead and curse myself for not speaking one aspect or another, but I hope you enjoyed it all the same. :)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Late reply, didn't see this until now. *fails*
Date: 2007-04-29 01:07 pm (UTC)Putting Naruto, Sakura and Ino on the same team is such a wonderful idea. I think that despite evrything they'd work well together. Their jutsus could easily be combined to a very effective attack, even though they'd probably be bickering the whole way through.
So! Like the note said: this was just an excuse to get them on the same mission. Never mind that said mission will never get written.
I often think that it's what happens before and after certain events that's the most interesting. Like here. it shows their emotions so well, much better than if you had tried to bring it up during the mission.
And, mm, the InoSaku hints. ♥ And you really managed not to turn Ino into a Mary Sue, which could have happened so easily. But she's Ino through it all; bratty, self assured and brash.
Anyway, it was fun to see what you yourself think about this. Haha, unlike me you seem to actually put some real thinking into what you write and plan things out. I admire that.
Re: Late reply, didn't see this until now. *fails*
Date: 2007-05-02 10:50 am (UTC)The Naruto-Sakura-Ino team has so much potential for utter insanity of destruction, but I can't really imagine it without a very good explanation for Sasuke's absence.
even though they'd probably be bickering the whole way through.
<- truer words never were said. And it would be awesome.
I often think that it's what happens before and after certain events that's the most interesting. Like here. it shows their emotions so well, much better than if you had tried to bring it up during the mission.
That, plus it's easier for me to write it than come up with a plot-line, and action scenes, and everything. Though a Naruto-Sakura-Ino/Hebi team confrontation in that context would be fun too! :)
I'd OTP InoSaku if not for Team Seven and the fact that I like it even more when Ino is unrequited. So so glad you think Ino isn't too perfect in this! We love her because she has faults, it'd be tragic to find out she's just a generic Mary Sue instead of her abrasive self! *relieved again, because damn the Big Scene still creates worries when I reread it*
Generally my thinking is along the lines of 'how can I find a way to marginally justify this?', but it's fun, even if sometimes it's frustrating to spend one hour worrying about details. My fic-planning skills, otoh, are pretty much inexistent, I just have a very rough idea of what I want to happen (Ino runs into NaruSaku who are leaving Konoha, confronts them, and manages to convince them to take her with them) and then I go with the flow. >_>