Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ The Game ❯ The Game::Cheaters Never Prosper ( Chapter 2 )

The Fire Country's capital city is suffused with a tiger-lily orange, the cheerfully saccharine hue slathered on every facade and edifice by the outstretched arms of a dying sun. It's the end of a brutally humid day, and Ino has found it nearly impossible to breathe. The heat is oppressive, crushing her as she sits cross-legged at a tiny round table on the patio of a small but fashionably unnoticed cafe. Her fingers are sticking to the plastic lamination of the heavily overpriced menu, and she tries not to notice too much.

 

It still bothers her.

 

She feels strangely uncomfortable out in public, in this city. It's too...civilian. She misses the familiar bulk of her drab green flak jacket, the comforting weight of the kunai and her other tools. Without them pressing down on her, she feels too light, too awkward, and too vulnerable. Aimlessly, her hand wanders up to her forehead, brushing away a loose strand of her long blonde hair that has drifted over her pair of dark but delicately framed sunglasses, tucking it casually behind her ear.

 

There is something awkward about hiding in plain view to her, even after years of practice, of blending in. She'd much sooner be hiding in a tree, or a bush, enshrouded in leaves, dappled in shadow, but there is virtually no vegetation here, and what few trees there are are narrow and sickly, and do not afford any respectable cover. Out in the street is a vast, faceless crowd of pedestrians, all occupied with their own lives, and disappearing into the throng would be the easiest thing for her to do, but impossible since she is waiting.

 

She glances up, verifying for herself what her peripheral vision has told her, and she catches two men at another table glance away quickly, embarrassed at being found out. She smirks inwardly, to herself, condemning them for not having the balls to at least be honest about their leering. She tries to be inconspicuous, but she is undeniably beautiful, which makes it difficult to blend in. Her face is set in a tableau of studied boredom, letting everyone know the blonde goddess isn't waiting for anyone, but she's not taking applications at this time. Too bad for them.

 

The page makes an odd sound as she turns the leaf, moving on from the appetizers to the entrees with deliberate slowness. It's late for dinner, but who cares? She is comfortably, casually clad, the gray folds of her expansive collar bunched loosely around her neck. A crumpled backpack lies on the ground beside her, suggesting perhaps that she is a student, or perhaps even a tourist, but conceals a bundle of summoning scrolls and a handful of heavy kunai. A thin-stemmed glass of dark red wine casts a long, variegated bruise on the table cloth and an unfinished novel with a maroon bookmark, completing the image of a woman taking her time to enjoy what solitude she can away from her own personal rat race.

 

She glances from one page to the next, her long ponytail dancing sinuously across her back as she does so. She's not sure if she likes this restaurant yet. The food is a little pricey for her tastes, and not sufficiently sophisticated to justify the extraneous expense. Still, she thinks, idly grasping her glass and reveling in the cool condensation it imparts to her fingers, she's not paying for it, so it doesn't really matter. Maybe she'll get something chocolate for dessert, she thinks, something grotesquely sinful, just for her.

 

A wry grin threatens to crawl up onto her lips, and she wrestles it down after some deliberation. Yeah, maybe she will, she concludes, drinking in the sparkles of the falling sunset on her wine with her eyes before she looks around again.

 

Besides the two terrified but aroused men she'd caught out earlier, the restaurant is full. Most of the tables have finished their meals and are having conversations over tea, like the bald-headed businessman and his associate behind her discussing some new import fashion. A family celebrates an occasion, perhaps a birthday or an anniversary. One woman intrigues Ino in particular. She sits alone at a table for two, nervously fingering the edge of the table cloth in one hand while slowly reading and re-reading the menu over and over again. Perhaps she's waiting for someone, some significant other or a blind date?

 

Across the street, the sun looms large and yellow, banded by interlaced bars of withering clouds, hanging over the shadow-shrouded facade of the opposing hotel like a paranoid, cyclopean eye. She doesn't sit facing it, but at a slight angle, unlike most of the other patrons, who face away, avoiding its brilliant glare. If anyone is obnoxious enough to bother her and ask why, she'll reply that she likes watching the people on the street, who pass by busily, ignoring each other. She'll follow with any one of her standard retorts, unless something really creative strikes her fancy.

 

On her first visit to this city, she couldn't figure it out...this place is too different from the friendly, interconnected community that is Konoha. This place is too big, too impersonal, too conforming. The streets are laid out in a perfect grid, not the awkward, winding passages of her home town. It's eerily quiet, for all the people rushing around, because none of them are talking to each other.

 

Just like she had decided on her first visit, she just wasn't a big city girl, and nothing had changed.

 

OoOoOoO

 

The first thing Ino realizes when she drags herself out of bed is that she doesn't remember how she got into bed in the first place. Something about losing her keys, finding them, and then losing them. The walk from the front door to her bedroom is part blur, part induced amnesia.

 

With some trepidation, she swats at the lily-white bedding crumpled around her feet, ensnaring her legs together. When it becomes obvious that she'd somehow managed to use her sandal-bound feet to tie knots in her sheets while she was sleeping, she twists at the waist, reaching down to undo the damage with stiff, unresponsive fingers. Eventually, she manages to free herself. With no small degree of apathy, she gets her sandals off and chucks them at the doorway to her bedroom, promising herself she'll get them later and move them to where they're supposed to be by the front door of her modest apartment. Her mouth tastes like the end of the world, a global conflagration of ash and smoke, and she hopes she didn't puke.

 

The second thing she realizes, in the process of standing, is that she is far too hung over to be allowed to stay in a standing position. She must be dehydrated, she thinks, because this is the almost the worst its ever been. The last time her morning-after headache was this terrible was immediately following her jounin promotion celebration. She still doesn't remember what happened that night, at all, except for the fact that she woke up vowing never to try drinking Chouji under the table, ever again. From the stories she hears, she spent the night alternately on and under the table herself.

 

As she stretches, first one lithe, sculpted arm, then the other, she looks around the room. It was pretty drab when she first moved in, but greenery dominates the room, counterpointing the otherwise bland pale yellow walls. A vine twists up the side of her dresser, unopened buds promising tiny white rosettes. On her night stand, a pot of pale violet mums shelters her tiny radio set. A riot of colour bursts inward through the glass pane by her bed, staged from a window box loaded with noisome impatiens.

 

The water takes a while to warm up, and she crumples onto the lid of the toilet and pulls off her sweater while the memories rush back to her, and a third realization hits her. There's no longer any point trying to drink Sakura under the table either, she muses grimly. Sakura must have learned something from a fellow medical ninja -- maybe even her mentor, Lady Tsunade -- about detoxification, because the grin her friend and one-time rival had been wearing all night was nothing short of malicious.

 

But there have been too many mornings like these, recently.

 

Shaking her head, she steps into the shower, letting the water wash everything away as it flows over her closed eyelids and beads off the point of her chin.

 

OoOoOoO

 

With a studied precision, Ino closes the menu, depositing it noiselessly on the taut serge tablecloth, unconsciously leaving it at a right angle to the set of cutlery that lies unwrapped at her right hand. The sun is still descending, vanishing, the shadows lengthening, consuming everything before them. Night is falling.

 

Directly above her, a waxing crescent moon hangs in the balance, static in a darkening sky, brightening by contrast. Pocked by the eons, it stands scarred watch over the cooling evening. The sky around it is indigo, fading across a long gradient into brilliant reds and pinks, smoky purple clouds counterpointing in their steadfast transit across the meridian.

 

The small, thin trees grow in olive rows at the street's edge, denied a chance to reach skyward by the concrete limitations at their roots. Still, they glow softly in the dusk, their dry, ochre-tinted leaves unmoving in the still air, and cast mottled felt shadows over the walls and front windows of the cafe, camouflaging its patrons.

 

The street traffic has started to change, too, no longer dominated by commuters heading home. Elegant and functional briefcases both give way to bulky shopping bags or lightweight travel kits. A man with a long bamboo pole balancing a pair of heavy crates navigates past, plying his way through a human river. The tourists are out in force now, as the attractions close and they begin to gravitate towards the city's nightlife.

 

Ino watches a couple standing by the patio through her sunglasses. They are wearing more traditional garb than she is sporting, and laughter drifts over to her as they peruse the menu posted outside. From the snippets of their conversation she picks up over the hustle, she understands they are locals out for a stroll, discussing their prospects for a quiet night on the town. They sound like they've been together for a while, and she is silently envious of their casual affection, their disregard for the details of the outside world.

 

She herself is immersed in the details. She is simultaneously monitoring no fewer than six pedestrians in detail, and is aware of another dozen or so who are suspicious to her. She's also monitoring the ninja standing on the balcony opposite the cafe, because she knows she's going to put him out of a job rather shortly. She has a remarkable sense of observation, honed to second or even first nature by a couple of years in Konoha's espionage department when she was still a chuunin. Her eyes dart surreptitiously, never staying long on any one person, but drinking in every detail. She keeps an eye on herself and anyone who might be behind her by studying reflections in storefronts across the street and in the hotel windows, not to mention surreptitious glances into the mirrored edges of the silverware.

 

She'd always been afraid she'd end up stuck in espionage on the basis of her family's reputation as excellent spies. After all, the mind-body switch jutsu they practiced and passed down from generation to generation had always been used to gather information, to steal documents, to eavesdrop. It was ideal because it never left evidence -- the victim of the crime became the perpetrator, when a Yamanaka took up temporary residence in their skull.

 

It was never enough for her. She'd always needed to prove she could do better, be better, without help, and build her own reputation for herself. And so she had, but she wasn't sure yet if she liked where it had gotten her.

 

Time passes slowly, creeping past as she places her order with her polite but none too attentive waiter, and continues her quiet stakeout of the street. He unobtrusively lights the candle at her table and vanishes into the persistent hum of the restaurant, but she never loses track of exactly where he is until the kitchen doors close behind him.

 

OoOoOoO

 

The morning air is crisp and clean in Konoha. The village's economy isn't based on anything as obviously vulgar or ugly as industry, and ensconced as it is in the heart of a massive, ancient forest, it is a pleasantly nice place for all the periodic violence it experiences. Ino is oblivious to this perhaps sobering thought as she drags herself step by step to the back door of the florist's shop where she works on her off days.

 

She doesn't work here for the money, of course. As a special jounin, she makes more than enough to support herself, sometimes more than she really knows what to do with, once danger pay and any number of other modifiers get worked into her salary. Since it's her mother's store, she refuses to be paid for the time she puts in here. The last time her mother had asked her, she lied and cited some lame reason like filial duty. Her mother doesn't believe her, she knows, but she stopped asking.

 

Compared to most others of her rank, she performs fewer missions, but the additional bonuses tacked on to her assignments tend to compensate for it. As a result, she ends up with considerably more free time than some of her peers -- and with most of her friends off working out of the city all the time, she finds she needs something to do to keep herself occupied. Besides, it's nice to have a regular place where her friends can find her if they want to chat.

 

Besides which, with her real job giving her awkward hours and a potential summons at any hour of the day, any day of the week, she'd never find a part-time job anywhere else. The regular workers at the store love her, because they can always call on her for an extra hand if they need it, and they can sic her on customers if they're too busy to deal with daily inanities and the time-consuming foibles of selfish visitors.

 

She loves the store; even though she is grown now, adult, this was where she grew up, before the academy, before training. She loves the quiet brilliance of the flowers, the unique conditions of care that each species, each finicky plant requires. She loves the feeling of cool earth crumbling beneath her fingertips, the soft, rough, hairy, smooth textures of leaves in her hands. The chaotic, turbulent beauty of hundreds of stems of flowers arranged haphazardly all around her.

 

She loves the smell.

 

It's pristine, floral. It screams life, rich in vitality and unconcerned with appearances or performance. She loves being here, because it relaxes her. With all the rest of the unpredictability her life affords her, the simple pleasures of the store she grew up in give her something to hang on to when she feels at her worst, and something to share when she's at her best.

 

She's pretty sure she's feeling pretty close to her worst right now. The murmur of conversation in the street is resonating in her head far too loudly, even as she passes through the back of the store up to the front room.

 

"Hey, Ino!"

 

And that gleeful shout, she thinks, cringing, is bouncing around the inside of her skull like shuriken in a tin can.

 

"How's the hangover?" Sakura is standing by the front counter, wearing a victor's grin on her face, a fanged, cat-like smile.

 

OoOoOoO

 

Ino is nearly done her meal when her target strolls up the avenue, attempting insouciance and performing rather badly. He's discreetly flanked on both sides by hired ninjas, from the Iwa village. They have disguised their appearances with illusionary selves, enough to fool just about any passer-by. She can tell from the way they walk, the soles of their feet brushing the ground noiselessly out of habit. They could be more discreet, more intentionally clumsy, but they aren't expecting trouble from a fellow ninja, not here, not in this unwitting city. Besides which, by advertising their presence, they warn any potential opponent that they will respond with competent force.

 

She can almost feel their boredom, tempered only by the knowledge that they are on enemy territory while their charge deals with business. Roughly estimating from their level of alertness, and the level of control they're exerting over their chakra output, she guesses that one of the two is a jounin, and the other a chuunin. The one on the balcony, she reminds herself, is probably a chuunin as well.

 

During the course of her meal, in furtive, innocent glances cast around between bites, she'd identified the man's six bodyguards as well. They're typical for mercenaries, although considerably better groomed. They're bulky, their posture rectangular and goonish, having built up sheer muscle strength without any knowledge of chakra or its use. Their weapons, the ones who carry them, are concealed beneath stifling looking jackets that are entirely out of place on a sweltering afternoon. That alone had made them stand out among the lighter summer fashions as pointedly suspicious.

 

They should start to feel better now that the sun has gone down and the air is cooling, she thinks, feeling oddly sympathetic for a handful of muscle-bound dunderheads with no real marketable skills.

 

Her sunglasses are off now, folded demurely on the table, next to her more or less finished meal. She's working now, and her appetite has vanished, sublimated to the concerns of the moment. Nevertheless, she has appearances to keep up, and she continues to eat, albeit at a slower pace. Her pale blue eyes rove along the street, looking for more, and she reaches out mentally, feeling for any other interlopers who might complicate her mission here. She doesn't find any.

 

She knows nothing about her opposing force. Until today, she wasn't even aware that her opponent had hired any ninjas from another village to protect him -- probably a last minute decision on his part. It leads her to conclude that he is frightened and nervous, paranoid. He's probably paying a lot for such short notice.

 

Under the too-bright, artificial moonlight of the street lamps, the target and his hired pair of ninjas pass by one of the goons camping out by the hotel's entrance. Her target is tense, she can tell. He's trying too hard to look casual, unable to affect the diffident slouch of his escorts. He walks stiffly, briskly through the elegant entrance of the hotel into the lobby, brusquely and pointedly ignoring the porter who holds the heavy door for him.

 

He looks like a hunted man.

 

Funny, she thinks, she doesn't feel like a hunter.

 

But hunted he is. Her target is a ruthless businessman-lordling by day, bloodthirsty power broker by night. A man who is so absorbed in the hidden, convoluted bureaucracies of the ninja world without being one himself that he has earned infamy in the world of the shadows. He's frequently the middleman in any number of shady deals and he finds no shame in playing the different ninja villages off of each other to further his own ambitions and those of his employers.

 

Until recently, he's been a pest, tolerated by the villages because he brought in missions, and missions brought in much needed funding. He is a cheater, bending the rules and the words of the contracts that are the lifeblood of every ninja village everywhere.

 

He must have hired these extra bodyguards when he realized he'd offended the Hyuuga clan more than anyone had in decades. As proud as Ino was of her own clan, the Hyuugas were not to be trifled with. She suspects, somehow, that the Stone ninjas accompanying the man are unaware of this fact. The last time she went on a mission using the information he'd provided, she'd spent two weeks in Konoha's trauma ward recovering.

 

Tonight, she teaches him that cheaters never prosper.

 

OoOoOoO

 

"What time is it, Sakura?" Ino asks, squinting as she slumps onto the front counter, supporting her chin in one hand. The headache is fading, slowly, she's sure, but it still throbs. The three glasses of water she forced down in short order just before heading over are starting to kick in now, and she's just starting to feel a little more like a herself again.

 

"Something like a quarter past noon," her friend says nonchalantly, running her fingers through her vibrant hair, pausing only to adjust the head protector she wears like a headband. Neither of them carries their village badge correctly; Ino typically wears hers more like a belt. Largely, this was due to an old feud they had tried to resolve at their first attempt to make chuunin. At some point later, they'd realized their competition could never really be resolved properly, they were too good at entirely different things. Still, neither of them had switched to the correct style, quietly acknowledging a mutual respect that they'd denied each other for too long.

 

Sakura, under Tsunade's mentorship, had found a niche not only as a brutal front-line brawler, but as an accomplished medical ninja above all else, something her superior control of chakra let her do with surprising ease. She was very different now from the vanilla trainee she'd once been. She still kept her hair short where she'd docked it during the chuunin exam ages ago, a memento and a reminder of why she'd done it, of the drive that made her the ninja she was today.

 

Ino's own niche, conversely, was something entirely different, but just as unexpected. Everyone had expected Ino to serve in espionage for her career, like her father, her uncle, and two of her aunts. The Yamanakas had never really been known for their fighting ability, though no one could deny that Ino was sufficiently competent to hold her own against anyone her rank.

 

No, Ino had found something slightly...different.

 

For lack of a better word, she found a place among Konoha's assassins. Men and women who operated alone, often in enemy territory, hunting down and destroying the few who threatened the always fragile peace or the interests of the Fire country. Most assassins had one job, and one job only, to eliminate the target. Sometimes they were given instructions to leave a mess, as a warning to anyone who might try the same offense.

 

But even that wasn't Ino's specialty. She had a tendency to get picked when the hit needed to be clean, quiet, and unobtrusive. Unsuspicious. Someone in the small fraternity of assassins had unofficially dubbed her 'the Cleaner', because she tidied up messes...especially political ones. Quite a few arrogant politicos and nobles who had tried to overstep their bounds had found themselves on the wrong end of Ino's personal brand of diplomatic expedience.

 

No evidence; that was the way of the Yamanaka.

 

Sakura giggles, pushing a chakra filled palm against Ino's bare forehead, purging the grievous headache smoothly, leaving nothing but a tingle and a glow.

 

"There you go," she says, before leaning on the counter herself, facing the woman who had taught her confidence long ago. "I hope you slept well after last night's fiasco. I hardly get to talk to you any more these days. Oh, and since you slept in, you missed Shikamaru, he left just before you got here." Sakura's voice bubbles non-stop, cheerful, as she brings Ino up to date. Ino's last mission had been apparently long enough for her to fall behind on the latest village gossip, one of her minor vices and guilty pleasures. One which she happens to share with Sakura.

 

Ino's jaw drops. Shikamaru almost never visited the store, she usually caught him in transit outside the storefront whenever it occurred to him to amble around the city like he sometimes did.

 

"You're kidding. What was he doing here?"

 

"Looked like he was carrying a potted cactus, but I'm not sure. It had little purple flowers growing out of it, though. Do cacti flower?" Ino grins. Sakura, in spite of her name, had never really gotten the hang of plants, with the exception of those herbs and sprouts utilized in poisons and their respective antidotes.

 

"Yeah, they do, depending on the species. We don't have too many cacti here, though, they're pretty expensive for us to import. Still, they're easy to take care of...maybe he figures he's going to try taking care of one and doesn't want to put too much effort into it." Her laughter is lilting. It sounds typical of Shikamaru to do something utterly incomprehensible. Usually there were two possible reasons for anything he did -- sheer laziness or subtle brilliance. In this instance, she wasn't sure what it could possibly be.

 

"Yeah, you're probably right," Sakura responds, dissolving into her own laughter. "It's hard seeing him getting sentimental about anything. I can't see it."

 

Ino waves off the comment with the back of her hand. "Eh, you just don't know him well enough. He cares, but he can't be bothered to let anybody know."

 

"Maybe it's for a girl," Sakura muses, absently.

 

"Yeah, real romantic, Shika. A cactus." The store rings with their snide chuckling. Day's looking up so far, she thinks.

 

OoOoOoO

 

From her post on the restaurant's patio, Ino finds her target's room on the front facade of the building, third from the right on the second floor. The chuunin has left the balcony, erroneously satisfied that nothing is amiss for the moment. Silently, the lanky ninja enters the room, sliding the door shut and locking it as he does so. While the guardian ninja gives away the room's location much as a flare would, Ino had already known which room was the target's owing to a little discrete detective work.

 

She waits, picking at the remains of her meal until the target appears in the window, discussing something with his bodyguards. The man is portly, almost rotund. If not for the cruel intensity of his face, he might have appeared harmless. As things stand, though, he is florid, overheated from the wretched heat of the day, giving him the appearance of one who is always angry. His black hair, slicked straight back in adherence with the most recent style among nobles, is severe, projecting an arrogance and haughtiness no longer found in his dark, frightened eyes. His hand rests uneasily on the hilts of his swords, swords of honor he does not deserve to carry, but does anyway. He must know he is marked now.

 

He lifts his nose, as though passing judgment on the throng below his balcony, but she can see him quiver, like a rat sniffing for a tabby.

 

Ino loses her line of sight momentarily as the waiter retrieves her plate and offers her a drink or the dessert menu. Politely, she asks for both, and unfolds her novel, folding back the cover and the first hundred or so pages, leaving it nearly flat on the table. It's an old book, one she's read countless times from cover to cover, but it's a habit she likes to keep on missions like these.

 

Besides which, the book is letting the waiter know that she will be taking her time with her after-dinner rituals. With any luck, he'll leave her be, at least long enough for her to deal with the matter at hand.

 

Her mission today was commissioned by the Hyuuga clan's elders in the interim absence of a house head. Ever since Hyuuga Hiashi had been murdered by his arguably insane second cousin Toyama, the clan had initiated a manhunt of a scale unseen since the Uchiha's fall. Anyone who knew anything about Toyama or his whereabouts had been tracked down and interrogated...where possible. A few unfortunate souls had tried to run or resist, and had been terminated with the considerable efficiency of the best that one could possibly hire from Konoha. Toyama, it was rumored, was being personally hunted by the clan heir.

 

In her case, this arrogant middleman had been responsible for arranging a meeting between some missing sand ninjas and Toyama regarding the sale of at least one of Hiashi's eyes. Presumably, they would have used this knowledge to duplicate the legendary byakugan themselves, and with such a remarkable sample to work with, there could be no doubt it might have worked.

 

At this time, no one knows if Toyama had both eyes with him, but it is a risk the Hyuugas are unwilling to take. They didn't even know if her target today knows anything more regarding the deal besides the players involved, but he had participated, so they didn't care. He needed to be removed.

 

Still, the man is a minor noble, and with some political weight in the Land of Earth. Outright assassinating him would not go over well, and had the potential to become the kind of destabilizing international incident that the village worked to avoid -- especially considering how unsteady things had become regarding trade rights and a long-stagnant border dispute that is only now picking up momentum.

 

War, it seems, is always around the corner. Mostly due to men like these.

 

No pressure, she thinks, smirking ironically to herself, as she finds the man again, his back to the balcony window. The chuunin she'd seen earlier stands behind him, shielding him from projectiles with his own body.

 

Linking her thumbs and forefingers together, she secretly forms the required seal for her family's infamous technique, and then stretches extravagantly. Her arms lift away from the table, long and pale under the street lamp's actinic gaze, and pass up over her head, freezing there as she dramatizes a yawn.

 

But the jutsu is already activated, undetectable, her mind leaving her body and flitting across the street, incorporeal. She is vaguely aware of her body slumping into a prepared position, with her elbows on either side of her book, supporting her limp body. To a casual observer, she is immersed in the text, absorbed by the intricacies of its prose and a prisoner to the story.

 

Her body is an empty shell.

 

Her ghost, however, is tense. If her target moves too much, or if the ninja completely blocks her line of sight, she'll have to start again, in five minutes or so. And in that time, her mind would be left to wander, incorporeal, until her body was ready to take her back. She hopes the ninjas are still just as unwitting as they were earlier; it wouldn't do to have them attack her now.

 

This is why she...dislikes these solo missions. She wants the security of knowing that someone will be there to back her up. She misses the days when she could launch into her cerebral strike, secure in the knowledge that Shikamaru's brain and Chouji's brawn were there to protect her, two amiable, shielding spirits that would keep her safe while she worked.

 

She misses, also, their company. Alone, in the field, she has no one to talk to, or talk at, in Shika's awkward case. At least Chouji knew how to carry on a conversation without being snide, but she'd come to appreciate the incisive commentary Shikamaru might make if a topic that piqued his interest happened to come up. Not for the first time, she realizes that she is lonely, in this incorporeal moment as her ghost self crosses the moat of humanity in the street below her.

 

Seconds pass like hours.

 

And then she finds herself, a hijacker behind a stranger's eyes, listening with ears that are not her own, familiarizing herself with a body too awkwardly heavy and disgusting for her tastes, although pleasantly wrapped in black silk. She suppresses the shudder as the tail end of the conversation reaches her consciousness.

 

"...so do you need anything else for now? Otherwise I'm going to secure the room."

 

That must be one of the stone ninjas. When she answers, her voice is gruff, slurred by unresponsive lips.

 

"No," she makes him say, curtly. He doesn't look the type for manners. "Leave me," her unnatural puppet utters, explaining. "I have some unfinished, private business to attend to."

 

She has him stay still by the corner of the desk, watching as the ninjas close the shutters and file out. When the door finally closes, she knows she has approximately four minutes to do what she's here to do. But that aside?

 

The Cleaner takes over. The Cheater is about to lose.

 

OoOoOoO

 

"...so then I overheard Kurenai say that Shino's actually getting married -- I didn't even know he was seeing anyone," Sakura says, recounting a conversation between the man that had once led her team and said kunoichi.

 

Ino gasps, for good measure.

 

"You're kidding. Anyone we know?"

 

"No, don't think so. Apparently she attended the Academy for a year or two before dropping out. Shino used to be friends with her, and then they met up again not too long ago."

 

"Wow. Go figure; Shino gets married, and Shika buys flowers. The world must be ending."

 

Sakura grins. "Anyway, my lunch break is over," she sighs, tossing her leftovers into her lunch bag. "I have to get back to the hospital. Hope you're feeling better."

 

They say their goodbyes with the casual familiarity that only old friends can share, and Ino returns her attention, most of it, to an arrangement sitting on the counter in front of her. Idly, she twirls a cosmos in one hand, trying to find a good place to put it, reveling in its sweet scent.

 

The news about Shino is a little earth-shaking, to be sure. The man rarely spoke, if ever, and was so steeped in the reticent way of the ninja it was hard to believe that he had taken such a drastic step off of the path, let alone found the time to do so. Furthermore, it punctuates her own condition: single. Even Chouji has on-and-off girlfriends these days, women drawn by his stoic pride, but the power projected in his strut. He was truly his father's son, a man proud of his bulk, of his strength, and the massive endurance represented therein.

 

The thing was, it wasn't that she'd never had a relationship. She had tried, several times before falling into her current drought. There just wasn't anyone who could keep up with her. More than once, she'd had to deal with jealous boyfriends who couldn't fathom that her job meant she wasn't always home at night, and that being a ninja wasn't a nine-to-five affair. This she did in her own, irrepressible way: by leaving all their stuff in a box outside the door of her apartment.

 

Then there were those that couldn't keep up with her, couldn't demonstrate the kind of energy she had, even if she wasn't tapping her reserves of chakra. Then there were those that she frightened with her blunt honesty and the spectre of death that lived in the corners of her brilliant blue eyes. And that one weirdo that was attracted to it; he most certainly didn't warrant the second date he'd requested.

 

And then there was the occasional ninja who got it -- but they never had the time to sit it out, to make it work. They all live on borrowed time, she knows, but Ino is too much of an optimist, she knows, to forego planning for the future.

 

She's pathetic, and she knows it. Pathetic and lonely. Thank goodness for distractions.

 

"Oi, Ino, how are you this morning?"

 

It's Kiba, standing there in the doorway, hands in his pockets, slouching casually against himself. His untidy hair is slick with sweat, and if not for the legions of flowers surrounding her, Ino is sure she would be able to smell him at this range. He's still breathing a little heavily, no doubt from the regular Saturday morning game of basketball he hosts with his fellow genin-leader TenTen.

 

"Better, at least since Sakura visited. I definitely shouldn't have drunk nearly that much last night," she sighs, slumping forward on her elbows, propping her cheek up with the flat of one hand.

 

"I'll say," Kiba grins sardonically, as Akamaru makes his appearance, "I had to drag your sorry butt up two flights of stairs before throwing you into bed. Nice place, by the way."

 

Ino blushes involuntarily, she'd been under the impression that Sakura had promised to carry her home. Then again, she wasn't sure she trusted any memories of the night whatsoever.

 

Akamaru takes this opportunity to be tickled by one of the flowers in a plastic bin outside the shop, sneezing violently as a result. There is no pretense in the sneeze, no human attempt to stop it. His entire body convulses with the force of the expulsion, his eyes screwing shut and all four paws leaving the concrete as he jerks backwards three inches.

 

He's no longer the awkward, vivacious puppy he once was, though he preserves a sense of mischief in equal proportion to his master. Which is not surprising, considering how profoundly bound the Inuzuka are to their animals. He's a tall dog, with long legs that put him at thigh height on Kiba -- relatively impressive for a hound-something mutt, considering that Kiba is probably one of the tallest ninjas in the village these days.

 

Kiba offers his eternal companion an indulgent glance, then goes on, innocently relating the rest of his sordid tale as thought it were completely inconsequential.

 

"And then you thought you lost your keys, even though you were holding them in your other hand..." Kiba dodges a lethally aimed flower stem, which lodges in the hood of his black sweatshirt. "Oops," he says, grinning.

 

OoOoOoO

 

Ino, and her prey by extension, kneel on the familiar texture of the tatami mats. She keeps an eye on the clock. Everything needs to be timed perfectly, now. If she rushes, she won't be able to do it right; if she takes too long, everything could fall apart. Still, she takes a moment to breathe slowly, heavily, gathering herself.

 

In one hand, her captive lordling holds a single sheet of rice paper, translucent against the harsh interior lighting and glowing with the intricate, unique fractal pattern belonging to each sheet of the expensive paper. In the other, she deftly, almost daintily holds a brush tipped with camel hairs, soaked in black ink, opaque as blindness.

 

With a gentle, firm touch, she swiftly begins the calligraphy she has practiced so long; forgery become art. She has studied his hand for days, hours, practicing secluded at her desk at home, then on the floor, writing, matching, comparing her product to his unhurried writing, secure in its unchallenged superiority.

 

No longer.

 

She flicks her wrist silently, bending a joint that does not belong to her, and there is no mental struggle. He is strong willed, but he does not yet realize what is happening. Nor will he ever, if things go her way. She concentrates on the form, the message, its content is burned forevermore on the back of her consciousness. She cannot forget it, and her hand lifts away, completing another word. It's a race against time, against perfection, against error. One more line, three and a half minutes remaining.

 

Above her, the crystalline stalactite of a chandelier glitters down at his unwary body, kneeling, writing in its septic light. Blood from the sun's dying rays paint themselves over the eastern wall, in a thin slash, silhouetting his head against it like a puppet behind a curtain. Irrationally, Ino thinks that it is good that the wall is not transparent.

 

This isn't even the hard part. Her own nervousness is taking charge of the man's body. His heart beat accelerates, thumping, unaware that it will cease shortly. Sweat beads from the oily promontory of his forehead, and she uses his sleeve to wipe it clear. One more word, two minutes, twenty seconds.

 

Her silent work continues, her mind the puppeteer, guiding him with his own myelin-sheathed strings, playing him with his own nerves. She is his unspeaking mistress, and he does not even know that the impersonation that will claim him is studied, perfected, learned.

 

The brush rounds the final curve of the last character of his name and she examines her work, brushing away yet another tide of worrisome drops threatening to fall from his forehead. Vestiges of the day's crushing heat, tolerable in her own body, are impossible in this fat-insulated walking corpse, she thinks, muttering in her mind. Or is it his?

 

She doesn't concern herself, and hopes no one has noticed her inert form in the cafe across the way. What if those two uneasy admirers she'd disdained earlier notice something is wrong? What if they get help? Can she pass it off as a fainting spell? Or is that too obvious?

 

Where the hell are her friends when she really needs them?

 

She stops herself then and there. Two steady breaths. Just under a minute remaining.

 

No. She doesn't need the help. The mission above all. The mission over everything. She is, and will be when this is done. The cheater will not.

 

Slowly, deliberately, she moves his gnarled hands away from the single, elegantly filled page of calligraphy. It is balanced, planned. Just like everything else he has written. The margins are even, the words centered in straight columns, pictograms conveying his unspoken shame that he, no doubt, does not feel.

 

"Forgive me, for I have brought dishonor to my nation, my clan, and myself."

 

The fingers of his right hand fight the wakizashi in his sash, closing around its leather-wrapped hilt. She revels in the sensation, it is a fine weapon, no doubt a heirloom, and so symbolically appropriate. It comes free slowly, inching smoothly from the scabbard, bathed in red light, preemptively bloodied by the vanishing sunlight. She closes his other hand over the fist clutching the handle, closing her eyes.

 

For a fleeting instant, she is unsure if she can do it. Even though it isn't her body, she still needs to win a battle with her own sense of self-preservation, to fight the instinct to stay alive at any cost, to put down anyone that tries to stop her. The first time she tried something like this, she almost couldn't do it. It wasn't until she realized she'd had less than five seconds remaining that she ended it and snapped backwards into her self again. She can't mess this one up, though, the stakes are too exaggerated, the mission too delicately balanced against its consequences.

 

When this ends, there will be no evidence she was ever here. No evidence she was ever nearby. No one will know, or remember. Even now, even as she forces him to hold his blade before him, someone in Konoha is burning the mission order.

 

So much easier to frame someone. The last time, she was a homeless vagrant armed with nothing more than a shattered blade of glass wrapped in a dirty rag, tearing apart her nameless target with animal fury. Investigators, she found out later, reasoned that her tool was under the influence of drugs at the time. They were half right.

 

Even that isn't the easiest way. Using different family members to bring poison into the house, move it from place to place, or even self-administration. Men directed to slaughter their entire families, while an anonymous tip from a stranger brings in the police just as they put their wife or children to the blade.

 

Ino is always nearby, but never seen. She is the puppet mistress. She is the Cleaner.

 

Is she a cheater too?

 

OoOoOoO

 

"So," Ino asks, casually, casting her own grin into the room, "who's the flavour of the month?"

 

Kiba groans, rolling his eyes, as he steps up to the counter. Akamaru stays outside, stretching out on his side next to the threshold. He knows that Ino's mother doesn't like dogs, much less dogs in the store, tracking in dirt and lord-knows-what-else and eating the flowers, not that he would.

 

"Nobody," Kiba says, trying vainly to cast off his admittedly deserved title of one of Konoha's most prolific playboy-ninjas. He'd never talked to Ino much before they were jounins; they'd been on separate teams, and interacted rarely if ever. They'd chosen different paths, too. Ino had chosen to specialize with a specific department, and Kiba had continued to take general missions with no specific life goal in mind.

 

It was his sister, Hana, who'd suggested maybe he should try teaching the next generation. Ten Ten had convinced him. He was currently into his third year with his first team of genin, and his first year not spent complaining that they just didn't understand what he was trying to impart to them.

 

Of course, because he was a teacher, it was easy to assume he was good with kids. Akamaru himself was utterly irresistible. No surprise that Kiba quickly attracted one hell of a lot of attention to himself and suddenly found himself having to deal with problems he'd never anticipated, and needing flowers and female advice to solve.

 

Ino cocks an eyebrow.

 

"Nobody? I find that hard to believe." She doesn't give Kiba a second to reply, and launches her already soprano voice into a painfully ear-grating falsetto, folding her arms over her chest in a false swoon. "Oh, Kiba, you're so handsome! And a ninja too! What's it like?"

 

He cringes, withering under her karmic retribution for daring to recount her twilight misadventures the night before.

 

"They never know," he grumbles, slumping onto the counter and punching her in the shoulder.

 

Ino can't help but commiserate. "I know. There was this one guy that dared to tell me I smelled funny when I came back unshowered from six days in the forest and collapsed into bed."

 

"Seriously," he says, grinning, "I had one bitch that I'd forgotten her birthday when I was out escorting some VIP with the kids. What, I'm going to kawarimi myself two hundred miles?"

 

Her laughter is contagious, and shortly Akamaru is snorting in a canine approximation of mirth from his recumbent position in the doorframe. "Yeah, I think I remember that one. You wanted a bouquet to make it up to her. Not that she lasted long anyway."

 

"Hey, quiet, Akamaru," Kiba shoots back at the sudden bark from his symbiotic pet, "even if that was true."

 

The curious link he has with his dog is beyond her, and she finds herself suddenly and inexplicably envious. It would be nice to always have someone along with her, some kind of company on long lonely, paranoid nights in some darkened forest in the middle of nowhere, while waiting to die. Another moment where Kiba and Akamaru stare at each other, oblivious to the world, sharing an unheard conversation. She wonders if they're conducting it at high frequency, above the range of normal human hearing, or if it's a telepathic bond they share.

 

"Must be nice," she says under her breath, "never being alone."

 

"What is?" he asks, startled by her intrusion into his private canine world. His head tilts slightly, like a confused puppy.

 

"Never being alone. You know, you and Akamaru," she chuckles.

 

"Ha, yeah. I guess. He's a good guy; it's too bad you guys can't get to know him better. Still, you know, he's not a person, no offense."

 

Akamaru lets out a soft, growled sigh, his expansive ribcage flattening out against the tile.

 

OoOoOoO

 

The blade flashes once more in the sunlight.

 

Then agony, as its flame-hardened tip effortlessly parts the skin, plunges through fat and lashes into a band of muscle. Ino forces herself, forces the man to keep his face still. She's giving him far more credit, far more honour than he deserves. He should have a second here, another with a katana at the ready to behead him should his face betray his pain. But he doesn't.

 

The letter she has forged and his peculiar behavior these last few days, running scared, should be enough to make any investigator dismiss these oddities.

 

Her eye, his eye, twitch synchronically as she fights back a wave of nausea and focuses on the pain. She needs the pain to keep her focused, on target, on time. She has forty seconds left. She needs the blade to go deeper; the wound is not fatal yet.

 

She has no idea why this is so difficult, why it is always so unforgivably difficult in her mind. It's not her body, she reminds herself, it's not hers, it's not her that is dying...but every time...

 

The pain surges up, stabbing sharply, brutally through the shuddering body that she has appropriated, and in a moment of clarity, she knows why. She knows that she is afraid, in spite of all her training, in spite of all the preparation and her own irrational desire to excel, to be the best, to overcome -- she knows that she is afraid of dying alone. She is afraid of being expendable, of being forgotten, of being unnoticed.

 

But she is a ninja.

 

She breathes in, once, sharply, and is gratified to see that that alone has plunged the knife another half inch through her target's flesh. Further, she thinks, further. She needs to hit the artery, to guarantee a kill before any aid can arrive.

 

His breathing, her breathing, is shallow now, quickened with the pain as the wakizashi passes into a coil of intestine. Shock is starting, and she fights the grey seeping in at the edges of her vision. His eyes are starting to roll back into his head, and she forces them to stay locked forward. She needs something to look at, something to see through glazed eyes. She picks a tree in a landscape painted on a screen at the far side of the room, a beautiful, willowy tree.

 

Resistance greets the blade again as it presses into the muscle backing the man's abdominal cavity. Runnels of blood flicker down through the black silk, dribbling into splotches on the woven bamboo floor, a viscous black creek of life, ebbing outwards on a gravity-driven tide. Death swims upstream.

 

She closes his eyes, and jerks the wakizashi from left to right, in one smooth, uninhibited motion. It is so sudden, so unannounced, that she surprises even herself. She doesn't have to open his eyes to know she's won. She cheated, like usual, and won. She doesn't have to see the vermillion peacock's tail spraying out across the room as his lower aorta is split, she doesn't have to see the severed ends of his intestine uncoiling into the humid room, doesn't have to see the black silk growing inexplicably darker in the fading sunlight.

 

Her elastic consciousness snaps back into her body, pulled. Time's up, and the meaningless words of a book with a maroon bookmark stare up at her. She can feel the ghost of a sword in her belly, and the angry specter of pain slashing through her mind.

 

She leaves an uncounted denomination of bills on the table and leaves before anyone notices how pale she is. Yes, she thinks, the cheater won again, as she darts into an alleyway and vomits.

 

But it's over. Tomorrow, she will be in Konoha. She will be with friends. She won't be lonely any more.

 

OoOoOoO

 

"Believe it or not," Kiba says, perusing through a bucket full of roses with their thorns trimmed off, "I came to see how you were doing. I mean, you were a wreck last night, and I was probably too drunk to take care of you properly."

 

"That makes two of us," she says, grinning from where she's sitting on the counter. Akamaru snorts, clearly amused. The damn dog's never been drunk in his life, as though he could understand, she thinks. Akamaru snorts again, as if he heard her thinking.

 

"Anyway, I'm glad to see you're not too badly off," he says, standing straight again. He hesitates momentarily, and she's sure she'd have never noticed if she hadn't gotten to know him as well as she did. "Look, actually, I've got something I should ask you."

 

Ino's voice rings out in triumph.

 

"Knew it! Who is it?"

 

And now she's the one with the malicious smile.

 

"As if I'm telling you; the whole village will know by sundown."

 

"Ouch," she recoils, pretending to pout. Akamaru snickers -- no doubt, he must know. Too bad the dog can't be pumped for information.

 

"Anyway, I've been watching her for a while, and we're pretty good friends, but I don't know if I should bring her flowers or whatever." Kiba is oddly sheepish, a boy overgrown to ridiculous proportions, with his arms crossed behind his head. He does this all the time, when he's at a loss, and it's adorable, as far as she's concerned. Off the top of her head, she rattles off a bunch of different flowers which should go well together. Instinctively, she coordinates scents and colours, her finger guiding his attention around the room.

 

"You should probably throw in one rose. Maybe not a red one, especially if you don't know how she feels, but something to let her know that you're not just being friendly. I'd think it was pretty classy."

 

Kiba nods, pretending he really understands what she's talking about.

 

"Cool," he says, finally, putting his hands back in his pocket. "Well, if I make up my mind, I'll come see you for the flowers," he says, a small smile lighting his face.

 

"You're just a big cheater," she says, sticking out her tongue, "using me to spy on my gender."

 

"Yeah, I know. But when you're playing to win, sometimes you have to cheat."

 

He pauses by the door on his way out, his foot idly kicking the door frame, before turning to look her in the eyes.

 

"Hey, I'm taking Akamaru out to the field for a walk. Wanna come? I know you're bored."

 

She thinks about it. It's been a quiet day. But it doesn't have to be a lonely one.

 

"Sure," she says, and vaults the counter like only a dirty cheating ninja can.

 

OoOoOoO

 

Author's Notes:

I always thought that Ino was a heavily underused character, especially once you find out what she can do. She's a monster, or has the potential to be one. She's a bit of an attention hog, yes, and I think that speaks of her insecurities as much as the rest of her rowdy character, only I don't think she necessarily realizes it.

 

Sakura, too, was brutally underused in the opening story arcs. I despised her because the artist gave her such intelligence and raw talent with her chakra and did nothing with it, surrendering her to the weak-willed female archetype, although I always enjoyed the idea of Inner Sakura. I don't mind her any more since she's a wicked bitch with a worse punch these days...and I figure that her relationship with Ino has smoothed out significantly, especially since that pissant Sasuke is out of the picture.

 

Oh, and Kiba? He's probably the most balanced, unpretentious character in the series. His wardrobe was outright ridiculous for a while, but it's good to see he's diversified somewhat since.