So this is based off of Dreaming of Sunshine chapter 95, Ino's reaction to Shikako's fight. It's AU and based off of what Ino said at the end of the chapter. You see I read her comment and thought to myself, "what if there was another reason she said that" and thus this was born.
If you don't know what D.O.S is then where have you been living? No but seriously it is an amazing Naruto self-insert by Silver Queen and I highly recommend you go educate yourself on the wonder that is her story.
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Ino's reaction to Shikako's match was not like the majority of the crowd's or in fact her fellow comrades.
She didn't watch it like Lee and Kiba, full of disbelief and blind excitement.
She didn't watch it like Choji and Tenten who while equally excited were more reserved about it and full of awe.
She didn't watch it like Neij, with a focused assessing gaze and slight respect.
She didn't watch it like Hinata, silent admiration and well wishes.
She didn't watch it like Sasuke, wry almost exasperated humor mixed with subtle hints of envy and fondness.
And though she could not see them she did not watch with the pride she was sure Lady Hokage and Kakashi San were watching with.
That is not to say she didn't feel all of the above. She was after all a Yamanaka and therefore found it almost natural to categorize and acknowledge the various parts of herself. After all how can you expect to understand some one else's mind if you can't understand your own?
In truth she had struggled with this ever since that incident. Sometimes she'd look in the mirror and be uncertain of who was looking back. How much of her was being influenced, corrupted?
Her dad had helped. Her team had helped. Taking missions and training had helped. It had been hard going but she had slowly regained her confidence.
She had improved, made herself stronger and changed her fighting style. She figured if she couldn't recognize who she'd been and she didn't like who she was then she would change once more but into something better.
Something she could choose and have control of.
So although she still wasn't certain she was one hundred percent herself she did understand where her mind was currently at and so she was able to easily distance these emotions and focus on her most pressing one.
Ino watched Shikako's match with a slowly dawning dread.
Her insides squirmed with her worry and she felt a little nauseous.
Watching Shikako fight she did not focus on the wow factor of Shikako's achievements but rather why the girl had made them.
Shikako had always been motivated and eager to learn but the Shikako she grew up with didn't like attention. She must have known the moves she was pulling off would give her nothing but that.
So why?
Why had she learned them?
Even though she wasn't as accomplished at sealing like Shikako she could still recognize a high ranking technique when she saw one. It was the implications of this that unsettled her.
High ranking techniques take time to learn, they can't just be mastered say in time for a Chunin exam. This meant Shikako had been training in such dangerous techniques way before she knew she was going to face Gaara or even join the new exam.
Yes she knew the girl's history. The rather shocking list of A ranks, her run in with missing nin but it still didn't explain it.
Shikako wasn't the only one to have been affected, they'd all taken on A ranks and had their eyes opened. They were all training but no one was pushing themselves to the extent Shikako seemed to be.
Didn't she know she could slow it down, that the adults in her life would protect her until she was ready?
Had she really been so shaken that she felt Konoha no longer offered her protection, to the point she had to go to such extremes?
Or was there something else?
Shikako always seemed to just know stuff. Most people wrote it off as the Nara being perceptive and quick to catch on but what if… what if just this once she actually knew something.
What if Shikako suspected something?
Something that was a threat to those important to her because even though this was all speculation if in fact Shikako was motivated by something she knew it would be for such a reason.
The one thing she knew for sure motivated Shikako like no other was the protection of her precious people.
It was only by seeing Naruto be more vocal about it that she'd realized they shared this similarity.
Still the question remained, why was Shikako a mere genin so obsessed with getting stronger?
The spike of fear shot through her again.
Just who was she expecting to fight?
The absolute worst thing about the girl wasn't that she could fool you into believing nothing was wrong it was that she could fool herself.
After all, it is ten times harder to recognize a problem in someone that they themselves can't even see.
She still remembered Shikako's words to her that one time, Shikako had admitted that being under the Sharigan had affected her more than she let on. Until she'd verbally confirmed it Ino had been oblivious to the extent of the after effects that lingered on the girl and she had a feeling that the rest of her comrades were still as fooled.
There in lay her current problem.
Shikako had shown her she was good at lying. At portraying one emotion and showing another…which led to her current predicament.
What really concerned her in all this wasn't the improvement itself because honestly she would love to just write it off as a reaction to the constant trauma team seven seemed to suffer.
However she knew better than to take the simpler, more convenient, wrong answer.
What worried her most was when it started.
Because looking back Shikako's leaps of improvement only really became noticeable after graduation.
The change didn't seem suspicious only because she had lived it alongside Shikako but from an outside perspective it really hadn't been that long since they had left the academy.
Shikako had gone from being Shikamaru's second shadow to a focussed highly skilled shinobi in no time at all.
She had done this by being motivated but the motivation upon looking back seemed to have been there long before any logical cause.
This scared her.
It scared her because it wasn't just a change in skill level but also personality.
She hadn't noticed since she was too close to the situation. It was only after digging she realized if someone were to get Iruka's opinion of the girl's character it wouldn't match the one currently fighting in the ring.
This change worried her because she'd not long had her own mind probed at her insistence as well as ANBU's encase she got more than a cosmetic job after her tussle with the mind snake so she was more than familiar on what signs to look for in a sleeper agent.
A part of her vehemently rejected this idea, that it couldn't be true, that any and all change was a result of trauma.
Wouldn't you become manic in training after literally dying more than once?
Wouldn't you want to get stronger after being caught under and S rank criminal's Sharigan?
Wouldn't you want to get stronger after having your home invaded?
Yes, this all fit as good excuses but as she had just established the real change was already in place before then.
The forest of death, three bodies and there in the center of destruction, the cause of the destruction, stood Shikako…
At the time she had been concerned about her but looking back…
Where had the sudden skill come from? She grew up with this girl, surely she would have noticed? If it was a recent development why was she training that hard even back then?
Wouldn't you want to get stronger after just graduating?
Well yes, naturally but to the extent Shikako had?
It wasn't like she could have known she would face an S rank nin before then.
Had that been the first time she'd caught a glimpse of the real Shikako? Had the rest been a lie? A false show of emotion just like she had proved she could in the hospital.
She really wanted to deny her suspicions…but if she is a sleeper agent…
She was a Yamanaka.
A ninja of Konoha.
Her loyalty is to her village and she has a duty to take action against potential threats.
Even if they come from her friends.
Even if she'd rather ignore it.
The more she thought about it the worse it got.
Even her excuses for the girl had holes in them.
At best she was the paranoid one and Shikako was just suffering PTSD.
Semi worst it's a mixture of both, she's paranoid, projecting her own self-doubts onto her friend and Shikako is also hiding something.
At worst…a sleeper agent.
A Spy.
A spy who is close to not only the last Uchiha but all of the future clan heads, with influence to two other villages through her ties to their genin.
A spy who is gradually becoming a skilled powerhouse and no one seems to care or find it unusual.
When Shikako's fight finishes she tries to act like nothing is wrong and greet her normally. The girl is mainly out of it so it isn't hard and she's yet to get any solid proof at this point so she's willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
That doesn't mean she'll do nothing.
The use of Shikako's title as Shikabane-hime is spoken purposely loud. To most people it will sound like a light bit of teasing between friends.
To others it is a warning.
A warning that this girl is a threat, that she is not what she seems, a warning to please, please look into her and see what you make of her sudden progress.
To please let her know her suspicions are unfounded.
To please let her know she does not have to tell her teammates (Shikako's twin) her suspicions.
To please let her know that they do not have a spy who not only has them all wrapped around her little finger but is also very hard to kill.
The title which started out as a joke is suddenly more ominous.
Ino watches Shikako stumble alongside Kiba with barely suppressed caution.
Ino had been anxious for Shikako's safety before the fight.
Ino had watched the fight with fear...but not for Shikako.
...
Yes I know, the horror of Shikako being seen as anything but our golden girl but that's what it makes a good AU. The fact a needless drama wrench that not even Miss Reincarnated see's coming enters the picture is something that amuses me so tada this was born.
Seriously though chapter 95 was beyond epic so I had to do something to show my appreciation so even though it's not the exactly the best piece of writing I hoped you enjoyed it.