Room 504, Sunday Evening

[intraspective]

Ino had been planning on getting back from her scroll work, out in the preserve, showering, and flopping out on her bed with the very boring book of history she had to read. (Okay, it wasn’t that boring, but it was history and therefore she pretended it was. It made sense to her, honest.) What really happened, though, was that she got back from her shower, wriggled into her pajamas and found a letter from her dad saying that she was to resume taking missions back home, starting soon, and she’d get more information about when and where she was to be when it was necessary.

So, now, she was standing in front of the full length mirror she’d hung on her closet door and staring at herself contemplatively. Was she ready for a mission? She didn’t know. Man.

[Door and post are open.]

Comments

[intraspective]

"We have civilians," she noted, "and they seem to live okay."

If it had been solely based on her world, she'd have said weak, but he didn't have to live in her world so... he wasn't. "Maybe," Ino said thoughtfully. "Though I'd feel more confident in that if there wasn't fact that, if I'm not strong enough, there's a good chance of death, you know? So I've got to be, and I don't know what our missions will be like now. Chouji made Chuunin--that's the next rank up--so I'm the only one with the lowest rank now. But that means our team'll be on harder missions too 'cause we'll be expected to handle more."

[withoutverona]

"And you don't want to drag your friends down."

Romeo fell thoughtfully silent after that. He didn't have good advice, and he couldn't tell her she was wrong to worry.

[intraspective]

"I mean, I know they'll look out for me 'cause it's my first time in over a year and a half out on a mission but... they'll expect me to take care of myself too, 'cause if they worry too much 'bout me, something worse could go wrong with them."

She sighed. "I don't know. Chances are it won't be anything super awful right at first 'cause Hokage-sama knows that I've been off active duty for so long, but it won't be easy either, and I just don't know enough right now to not worry or anything."

[withoutverona]

"They won't even tell you what you'll be doing, so you can train before you go home?" Romeo asked, sounding worried himself. "Or is it that they don't know?"

[intraspective]

"I don't even know when I'm going home," she confessed. "Just that I could be called back whenever. And no, we never know our missions before they get assigned. So I've just... got to hope I'm good enough as it is."

[withoutverona]

That sounded too much like Reno's old job for Romeo's comfort, and he couldn't hide his grimace.

Impulsively, he slid forward to give Ino a hug. "I have faith," he told her. "You'll get through it."

he couldn't know that, but he didn't have a better idea for what to say.

[intraspective]

She hugged him back, and smiled against him. "I'll do my best," Ino promised. "Thank you."

And, really, the only thing different from her job and Reno's was that she wasn't ranked high enough to do as much dirty work as he had done.