Ino, Saku, Chou

Akimichi Chouji ran through the forest.

It would perhaps be more accurate to say that Akimichi Chouji barrelled through the forest. Leaves, twigs, small branches broke themselves off in terror at his passing. Dirt churned in his wake. Even going straight ahead, Chouji gave the impression that he was rolling.

Without breaking stride, Chouji clasped his hands together, concentrated—and with a puff of smoke he was rolling, a ball of solid mayhem, knocking down saplings and smashing over boulders rather than turn. The target was on this trajectory; aiming was difficult once the technique was started, more so when he already had momentum to work with. If he could just get that one solid hit—

With a crash, Chouji caromed through the underbrush, across the training ground—and directly past the dummy with the red X. Slowing now, working against momentum, he wheeled, dropped the extra weight, and flopped the last few meters, coming to a final dizzy, supine stop against a tree stump.

"Nice," said Shikamaru, from atop the stump. "Now, a little to the left."

Chouji glared. "You moved the dummy, didn't you."

Shikamaru gave a long-suffering sigh. "Now, what am I supposed to do if even you won't trust me?"

Under his friend's watchful eye, Chouji pulled himself up—panting rather more than he'd have liked to—and walked back to the dummy. He knelt in the trench his jutsu had created, squinting. Shikamaru came up behind him.

"It went crooked again," Chouji said.

Shikamaru handed Chouji a bag of chips; Chouji began to munch, dejectedly. "I don't think it's your technique," Shikamaru said. "I've watched that enough to know when it's correct. But when you're sphere is oblate, you're going to roll crooked." He put his hands back in his pockets. "The trouble is that your double-weight can only expand you so far."

Chouji put a hand to the scar over his ribs; one of the last remaining injuries of his bout with Jiroubu, and no longer really tender, but the weight was slow returning. Even months after the curry pill, his metabolism was easily twice what it had been; the Nara clan's medicine had stopped it from eating his own body to death, but every morsel of food was consumed as soon as it was taken in, filling out his still-depleted chakra reserves.

"Wait until the next one." Shikamaru was looking away, and Chouji frowned, unable to figure out what his friend was talking about at first. "Wait until you're back in condition. You don't have to take the chuunin exam this time. There's plenty of time."

Chouji munched chips to fill the silence. "I promised Ino."

"Ino will understand."

Slowly, Chouji smiled. "Like I'm going to let you order me around any longer than I have to, anyway," he said. "Besides, wasn't there something about me being strong? Super strong? Strongest genin you knew?"

Shikamaru was grinning too, now, trying to keep serious. "Che. You better hurry up and get this vest, then, so you can protect me." His hands sprung up, suddenly, two fingers in the upper hand's fist, and Chouji jumped to the side. The Kage Mane leaped around after him, chasing him toward the edge of the training ground.

"You're going to have to walk forward sometime, lazy!"

"I think it can stretch far enough," Shikamaru said slyly.

"How far is that?"

"Mmm. Far enough for some hard training. How about... barbeque?"

oOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo

Sakura slammed her hand down on the Hokage's desk.

Since training with Tsunade, that act had gained rather more meaning than it once had; with the force of applied chakra, the desk shook. So did the office, for that matter; and the building. Only Tsunade, herself an adept at the uses of chakra, was unmoved by her apprentice's protest.

"I'm sorry, Sakura, but you know the rules as well as I do! It has to be a three-man team!"

"How can you say that? You were the one who mandated medical ninjas, bringing the number up to four. Well, I'm the closest thing to a medical genin we're going to find, and Lee—you know the way he's apt to push himself. After Sasuke, last time—after what happened to Sasuke—how can I let Lee go in on his own?"

"If Tenten and Neji are insufficient to take care of one stupid, overpowered..." Tsunade bit her lip. Sakura was unmoved, her face as red as her dress. From what little Tsunade had been able to glean, her apprentice had only been on a few dates with the Rock Lee kid—abominable taste, in Tsunade's own opinion, although it had to be considered preferable to her former object of affection—and they had all ended in disaster. It was a common clinicology in a new medical trainee; the desire to take a messed up thing, and messed up individual, and try to fix it. The trouble was that personalities didn't work that way; Lee was never going to be what Sakura wanted, and for every time he tried to protect her by fighting against imagined slights, she would try to protect him from his own injuries by attempting to force him to stop fighting. Violently. It was cute, but between the two of them trying to protect one another, Lee and Sakura would probably leave a trail of dust a village wide. The sooner they gave up, the better.

"Sakura," she tried again, "Konoha doesn't make the rules this time. The chuunin exam is in hidden mist. Do you want to take the exam or not?"

Sakura looked sulky now. "Let me go and get Naruto then," she said. "I don't know if I can face those memories with strangers. At least let me take it with team seven—what's left of team seven."

Tsunade raised three fingers. "One," she said, ticking down the thumb. "Two." The pointer. She scrutinized the remaining digit.

Sakura whitened.

"Akimichi Chouji recently asked my medical permission to take the exam," Tsunade said, lowering her hand, "and I have given it to him. Since Nara Shikamaru was promoted last year, that leaves an absense in their team. You and Ino are friends again now, aren't you?" She dropped the registration file in front of her recalcitrant student. "Isn't that convenient?" Tsunade attempted to force a smile through her frustration. It came out more like a grimace. Having gotten at least that far, though, she kept the teeth firmly clenched, let the expression really sink in there. If she opened that mouth, she might start chewing up the ledgers.

Sakura looked ready to sink behind the desk.

"Now sign," Tsunade forced through her teeth.

Really, there was nothing like a properly cowed apprentice.

oOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo

Hidden Mist was a few weeks' walk away for a normal man, but without the civilian diplomatic entourage that would have to accompany them for the finals, the ninjas could travel fairly light. Perhaps because of the international pressure on Konoha in the wake of Orochimaru's attack, Tsunade had sent any genin who was anyone out to assemble for the journey to the chuunin exam. There was practically a battalion of genin. Hinata, Shino, and Kiba were at full strength, Shino having been reassigned from field duty; but Neji still looked slightly emaciated, and Chouji was eating constantly. His pack was three times the size of anyone else's. No-one was certain whether Lee's training regimen was wildly successful or whether it was doing him more harm than good; certainly Tsunade's screaming carried even farther than usual when she did his check-ups. Ino and Sakura bickered happily. There were no genins younger than they, although there was one older team; a fact that had not escaped the new Hokage's notice. Sarutobi had done a wonderful job, true, but there was some force in the air around this year's students, something that made them exceptional. If she hadn't met Naruto, she would have looked at their roster and assumed that that factor had been Sasuke; always ahead of them all, always excelling, with that cold charisma of competence pulling them along behind him, pressuring them to excel. But she had seen the effect Naruto had on people—on herself, even—and although none of them had really been his friends, that infectious spirit had, perhaps, influenced all of them. Pushed them to new heights from under them, supporting them without their realization even as Sasuke inspired them from his cold height.

Neither boy would be travelling with their classmates to Hidden Mist. Tsunade wondered, for the first time, what that meant—what their absence would be for the rest. With Sasuke's departure, would they lose heart, no longer blind to the vagaries of high ambition and the chasing of shadows? Without Naruto's energy, would they have the inspiration to overcome? Would Jiraiya be able to fix the boy himself?

She would have to leave it to him. Naruto was currently not under her auspices as Hokage. Only these were hers; and now she had to set them off.

Tsunade nodded once, curtly; and Shizune sent the jounins in. Asuma and Kurenai looked as insouciant as ever; Gai, however, stood at attention.

Tsunade surveyed the room. Everything looked ready; all that remained was to give the order for departure. "Any q—"

"Hokage-sama! It has come to my attention that my rival, the too-cool Hatake Kakashi, is not accompanying his kawaii student on this mission!"

Tsunade sighed. "Gai... for the last time, Haruno Sakura is currently my student. MINE."

"Hokage-sama! Surely Kakashi..."

"Kakashi failed," she snapped. All the eyes were suddenly on her; Gai looked like she had slapped him. "Team seven was disbanded," she went on, stammering under the sudden pressure. "As I expected, Kakashi failed to adequately train his students. He will not be training another genin team."

"H- hokage-sam—"

"Count yourself lucky, Maitoh Gai, that Rock Lee recovered from the forbidden technique he was taught by his instructor."

Gai blanched. That got their attention, thought Tsunade, inwardly cringing. May as well hammer it for what it's worth. "The three of you are all I can send to Mist under the treaty for the purposes of the examination," she said. "What's more, you are certainly all I can spare. Kakashi's not disgraced, merely otherwise assigned. I'm sure you all remember the events of last year's exam." General eye shifting. "That I can send this many jounin is a concession against Orochimaru's particular grudge versus Konoha. I know you want to protect your students—" glaring at Gai—"but please make sure that you do so only as it fails to interfere with the exam, and with Mist's own security. We don't want another embarrasment for Konoha, and we don't want to risk being seen as aggressors. Got it?"

"Hai!"

Tsunade allowed a smile to twinge the corner of her lip. "Guard your charges well, jounin. Move out!"

Three shadows down the hallway; then fifteen shadows away into the forest around Konoha, away.