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Chapter 72 - Arc 4.5 - Brawling in the Streets: Ino Learns
🕑 Added 2024-08-17 05:44:06 +0000 UTCIt's still technically Friday for me, so like, I'm not late!
Been having serious sleeping issues lately, this sucks. Guh.
We wrap up the Ino/Naruto/Sasuke bit. Enjoy.
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Her body moves on its own. Her hand whips down and pulls a kunai out from her pack, and her hands fly up to block an attack. Her feet plant themselves in front of a Naruto who was off balance half a second ago, and she glares defiantly at his attacker. Almost imperceptibly, she notices Kakashi slow himself down at the sight of her well cared for blonde hair replace Naruto’s unkempt blond mane as his target. This attack would be worse if it was for Naruto, which means she can handle it. She holds her ground as Kakashi’s hand forms a sword-like chop and flies directly towards her chest. She lifts the kunai with confidence, and finds the next flash doesn’t compute.
His hand goes through her Kunai like it’s butter, and the pain rings through her like a song sung entirely by her nerves. Red flows out of her mouth and nose, sent upwards from the force of an attack she’d blocked. Her legs give out, and she falls to her knees. A single bleary look down reveals that her life force is quickly pooling onto the dirt beneath her, turning it into an acrid mud.
He did it, he followed through. She’d thought he’d hesitate a bit more, or maybe she could use her immunity to his lesson as some sort of shield, and yet-
She finds his foot in her face a second later. The crunch of her nose is loud enough to stir her thoughts, but not enough to stop her shaken brain from shutting off. The pain of her chest having been cut through and her face being smashed is too much for her to comprehend.
She crumples to the ground, discarded and forgotten as their sensei moves on and attacks the others. Her last thoughts are simple yet elegant in their own way.
“How is Naruto handling a stronger variant of that?”
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“Hey, dummy.” She finds herself rousing from a kick in the ribs. It’s oddly gentle, but it’s more than enough to aggravate her wounds and make her eyes shoot open. Her scream is ignored by the cyclops standing ominously above her. “There’s no rule against killing the support, if you do that in the field, you’ll definitely die. The enemy doesn’t slow down, they go through you.”
She knows that, she just, she didn’t think he’d… “I’ve had permission to hurt you since you first arrived here, or did you think Asuma just wasn’t aware of what you were doing? Jonin talk, Ino, especially about their students. He’s not that dumb.”
Her chest is on fire, but a look down reveals she’s been fully bandaged. “You helped me?” She asks.
“I said I have permission to hurt you, not kill you,” he grunts at her, “this is training, not the field, you’ll learn the difference with experience.”
She feels cold, she definitely lost a lot of blood. In fact, a look over there shows just how much. The entire ground is changed, dirtied with her loss. There are wild animals sniffing at what she bled out and lapping at the drying mud, trying to get any nutrients they can out of her wound’s left-overs. She shouldn’t be conscious, he did something, but then he is a legendary ninja. It’d be weird if he didn’t know some way to recuperate a fallen genin.
“Don’t do that again. Ever.” He kicks her again, gentle still this time, but the message gets across regardless.The enemy won’t care about how much it hurts, they’ll torture her while she’s down to mess with her team and destroy morale. She could get everyone killed because she didn’t think. “Leave that kind of dumb to brawlers like Naruto, he’d already be back on his feet if he’d taken that hit.” He disappears like he was never there, leaving her to her thoughts, unable to argue with him. She picks herself up crudely. A look to the side reveals a gruesome sight she didn’t want to see, but is now glad she did. The other two boys are badly injured and still bleeding out into the mud themselves. It’s then that droplets of cleansing rain fall from the sky, and she looks up to take in the oddly timed phenomenon.
“Oh, you asshole.” He prioritized her so that she could do her job in the pseudo team, instead of caring for them all. At least they’ll all be fine with a bit of rest… Hopefully about two hours of it.
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“Why are you still here?” Sasuke’s words rouse her from a state of half sleep. It’s so cold with everything she lost, and she can’t help but feel like a burden. Still, they need her, and it was her mistake which put her in this state. “You can go home, and you’re hurt, neither of us want you here like this.”
“I don’t care,” she mumbles under her breath, knowing damn well he can hear her, “about what you want.”
“This isn’t your mission,” Sasuke grunts at her, glaring her down with a look that would have sent quite a few of his fangirls screaming and running away. Unfortunately for him, she’s never truly been one of them. “I’m not going to like you if you get hurt for me, that’s stupid.”
“I don’t want your love.” She grumbles, picking herself up a little so her place resting on a branch and against a tree feels just a little more comfortable. She’s been sleeping in such odd places recently, she misses her bed.
“Then what do you want?” Sasuke huffs, a scratch against wood catches her eyes, and she looks over to see him shaping sharp sticks with rocks again, he’s been doing that to fill in Naruto’s traps. They’ve been working very well, she has to say she’s rather proud of how well they’ve been working together the last few days. When they first got here they were a mess, and she witnessed at least the latter half of it. It was horrible.
“I want my friends to be safe.” She says, and when he doesn’t immediately respond, she lets her head fall and her world drift away again.
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At some point, she stopped going home.
She’s not sure when it was, she’s not even sure if it was a choice, but she’s spent the last two days here in the forest without leaving. Sakura’s been gone a week, and Ino’s so tired. These boys have been here the whole time without breaks, how could Kakashi force that on them?
It’s not so dangerous to her, she knows the area, she knows the creatures, she’s familiar with the herbs and makes great use of hiding places; but there’s a difference between sleeping here and visiting. The Forest of Death is named that for a reason, and sitting around waiting for Kakashi to show up and beat them senseless again is harrowing.
Specifically, beat them, she’s been left untouched for the most part. Kakashi’s not saved her from attacks that would hit her in the crossfire, and she’s taken a few wounds, but he’s left her alone. She’s watched him torture her friends, and she has to wonder if he’s this brutal when Sakura’s around. “He’s coming,” she hears through a miniature Naruto on her shoulder, and she readies herself to intercept them when they get injured and drag them to safety.
Her nerves are active, her sluggish body is running on adrenaline, and she’s ready.
“What?” Kakashi lands in the middle of a clearing they can all see, and waves at them individually. This reveals to them that he’s always known where they were, and their attempts to hide were secretly worthless, but he let them stay in hiding at times so maybe they were good enough for the exercise?
More importantly, it reveals he wants them to approach. She moves in first, he’s less likely to take her out instantly if it’s a trap, and the two boys could use another moment to recover if he is planning something devious.
Her feet hit the dirt in front of him, and she has to stop herself from falling over. She still hasn’t completely recovered from losing so much blood the other day, and the wounds she’s gotten since haven’t helped. She’s on shaky feet, and her toes still feel numb. “What’s going on?” She asks, watching the cyclops shrug for a moment before looking right into her eye with his own.
“Sakura’s back.” Those words shake her a little, for a lot of reasons. Excitement swirls through her, affection, relief, it’s all so raw and fresh and eats at her in wonderful ways. She lets out a long cool breath, and smacks the Naruto on her shoulder to dispel him, so he knows it’s safe to come out.
Then Kakashi says something she really didn’t want to hear. “You’re to report to the Hokage, he has a private mission for you.”
“Uhhh, could you repeat that?” A private mission? What could possibly be-
“Bring a change of clothes, food, and a chakra pill. Take an hour to get a shower and center yourself first, you’ll need to be in a good state of mind or you’ll regret it.” She nods to herself, panic has invaded her blood but she’s dealt with bigger scares. It doesn’t seem to be that big a deal if she’s allowed to rest a bit first.
Naruto arrives a moment later, Sasuke on his heel. “So we get to go see Sakura?” Naruto asks, “it feels like it’s been years. I can’t wait.”
“You’re going to have to,” Kakashi says, a hand on his hip and a wistful tone to his lips, “Sakura’s being interrogated.”
“Don’t you mean debriefed?” Sasuke asks.
“Nope.” Suddenly, Ino’s pretty sure she knows what her mission is, and she kinda wishes she didn’t.
Comments
Dopplerdee
Wow thats a shitty mission to give her.
