Ino and the System: Trying her Hardest

This one was voted on by everyone! Because I messed up.
If you'd like to participate in future polls, feel free to join the $10 tier.
Now's actually a fantastic time to do that because I am behind and feeling good so I'm going to be doing like 3 to 4 polls in the next two weeks.

I have it on good authority - me, I'm good authority - that a lot of people are going to really like the second scene. It's also just a great break from the somewhat depressing current place in story.

Enjoy

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Ino’s never been this sweaty. She wasn’t aware human bodies could get this gross, even in the forest of death with Naruto and Sasuke no one got so tired that breathing felt like too much energy to expend. The air is heavy, taking instead of giving, and for the first time in her life she finds cloud watching doesn’t seem so bad. Shikamaru might be onto something, and she doesn’t like that. Even laying here in the dirt for several minutes now, she’d be surprised if she could get even one word to the surface. She’s overwhelmed, overburdened, and Lee using his extra energy to practice his dancing right beside her isn’t helping how she feels.

She figured it out, the answer to how to boost her team is to get team Gai and the hardest worker in Konoha, Lee, to teach them how to push themselves. Asuma’s great for techniques and stuff, but he sucks at pushing them and he’ll admit it with a smile. He’s a take it at your own pace guy, and believes they could just skip the exams if they’re not ready.

Ino doesn’t have that luxury. Just in case she forgets, the quest pops up like clockwork every single day to remind her that she’s not good enough and isn’t doing enough. On the bright side, the look at the stakes does remind her of what she’s working for.

Glancing over to the Genin with the bowl cut and the freaking maracas of all things, she does find with an admiring eye that she has a runner up if Sakura ever outright rejects her. There’s more man there than there is person, it’s ridiculous. She’s never been attracted to men before but she could explore… Nevermind that, she’s just doom spiraling because she doesn’t think she can succeed and Sakura’s going to die and the exercise chemicals are messing with her head. He’s insane and she’s going insane with him.

Sakura’s insane too, she’s not sure how to deal with all this.

Sitting up to pat her simmering face, she finds the pat is a lot harder than intended and she’s instantly back in the dirt clutching her nose. “Right, training weights.” It’s a miracle she even managed to pick her arms up in the first place. Her everything hurts and twice her body weight is on every limb. “Ugk, how do you do that? You’re ridiculous. I bet your weights aren’t even that heavy.”

“Do you want to switch?” For a single second she considers it, calling his bluff would feel good and it’d give her a good idea of just how far above her he is.

[Warning, if you continue this course you will die.]

She’s never seen that before, and the look on his face seems a little too proud of her. He believes in her, he’s sincere, there’s no way in hell he’s bluffing. “Hey uh, Lee, just how heavy are they?”

“They’re modified by chakra to be just what I need to stay at similar speeds while I continue to grow.” He explains while shaking the absolute crap out of his noise makers. Nope, she’ll stick with hers. She has a high enough charm to know an evasive answer when she hears one, and with that system message she doubts it’s evasive because they’re light.

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“You seem more distracted than normal, are you okay?” Sakura’s cool hand on her forehead tells her just how much she’s been overworking herself. Sakura’s got a hot touch normally, it brings flame to Ino’s skin and ignites her cheeks. All she feels right now is her best friend and crush sucking the heat right out of her with icy fingers and a fearfully tilted gaze that tries and fails to knock her off her feet.

Having Sakura worried about her during the start of their session is cute, it’s really cute, but it’s exactly what she doesn’t need right now. “Check your status page, make sure you haven’t been poisoned or something.” Her friend requests, her beautiful green eyes wide and filled with fear.

“I’m fine, Sakura.” She makes a show of opening it and looking, “full health, nothing to worry about.” That’s actually a lie, she’s at about half health and very little chakra and everything hurts, but Sakura believes her because Sakura would believe a Barnhouse if it told her it was a duck. Maybe that’s too harsh, but she can’t detect a lie for the life of her. “We need to visit Hunger today and see if any of our recent discoveries have altered him at all.”

“Nope.” Sakura grunts at her, and Ino finds herself a little taken aback. Before she can open her mouth Sakura continues, “we’re not doing anything until my hand isn’t burning up against your forehead. You have a fever.”

“Sakura, please don’t stop me from doing my job I-”

“Nope!” As unprofessional as it is, Ino can’t help the giggle that comes to her lips while witnessing Sakura so stubbornly go against orders for her sake. “I’m bringing you home and tucking you into bed, and you can’t stop me.”

“Sakura, you can’t just force people into bed-eek! Put me down!” Her legs kick, her arms flail, Sakura’s got her in her strong grip and before she can even force her brain to function long enough to argue, they’ve already left the interrogation room and started down the hall.

This sucks, Sakura’s carrying her in her arms and she’s not even coherent enough to enjoy it.
All she can do is puff up her cheeks, give her an indignant glare, and do her best to remember the date next week so that Sakura doesn’t notice she’s overworking herself.

At least Anko seems amused, the woman is waving at them as they pass. Ino quickly hides her flaming face into Sakura in response. “Oh no, you’re getting worse!”

Someone just kill her… or don’t, this is nice.

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“Don’t you think you should slow down? Sakura is going to notice.” Shikamaru joins her for the first two laps, but no matter how much she nags he sits down and only comments when she passes by after that.

“Only if I screw up and work out Saturday morning again like an idiot!” Ino huffs out as she passes, “get off your ass and do a third, come on, the exams are coming!” As she’s recently learned, Sakura spends a good amount of her nights with Lee and Gai, which means they’re revved and ready and without a training partner for the morning. A few smiles and being nice was all it took to get Lee to agree not to tell Sakura about helping her, and he’s scatterbrained so she makes sure to remind him at the end of every session.

Shikamaru waves her off of course, but she has to try, sometimes it gets Chouji in for a lap around the end. Maybe next week she’ll be used to these weights enough she can do a few more, but chances are they’ll just expand the area of the lap. Lee says Sakura goes around the entire village with him several times a night, and Ino's pretty sure that even without weights she would just die if she tried even one time around the entire village at two AM.

It’s not even a question, she’d curl up and die. Is Sakura using weights? She doubts it, the system probably gives an exact bonus when the weights are observed and it’s probably crap. Either that or it somehow slipped their minds to mention it to her.

Whatever the case- “oof!” She trips and her hand is already catching her fall and using chakra to reinforce her hand so she can slam it into the ground before she’s fully fallen. With the reflexes of a cat she pushes off the dirt and rolls once, twice, before she catches her footing just right and launches back up to continue in a sprint. She’s gotten so much better at being overwhelmed it makes her feel like she was pathetic before she started this. The numbers haven’t changed that much, which begs the question, are the numbers not linear?

She’ll have to ask her about it - and weights as well - once she has an excuse for being noticeably interested in the topic. She bets the exp bonus for weights is abysmal because twice her weight on each limb is kind of an absurd amount and her stats are still moving at a slog, which begs the question as to why Lee’s so strong and fast. Sure he does this all the time but…

Just how freaking heavy are those weights? If Lee fell on her would she explode?

Now that she thinks about it, for all the difficulty her own weights add to her movements, Sakura didn’t seem to notice them when she picked her up…

Maybe she’s just weak. “I’m doing twelve laps today!” She shouts, “believe it!” The words feel hot the moment they come out of her mouth, and somehow, somewhere, she can feel a thousand voices in the distance echoing her.

“That’s the spirit Ino, harness your youthful energies and believe in yourself!” Gai is of course on his hundredth jogging lap already, the monster. “Come punch the moon in the face with us!”

“Punch the what?”