More of the Ino thing. If I finish it, it'll be an extended one-shot, I think.
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"You're going to train me."
Ibiki looked down. He recognized the blonde from the disastrous chuunin exam a few years back- the one with the bad attitude and a big mouth, not to be confused with the other blonde with a bad attitude. This one hadn't actually advanced to the finals.
"Why am I going to do that?" he asked. Yamanaka, that was her name. Her family had a reputation for being stubborn and a little crazy. The determined look on her face reminded him of Anko, and wasn't that a frightening thought- he didn't need more than one of those in his life.
"Because you've got three spaces in your intelligence division that need filling, and right now you don't have anyone capable or willing to fill them. Train me, and I'll be both."
He took in her long blonde hair, and the way she'd combed it to cover half of her face, and wondered what had happened to all of the talent in Konoha's youth. The Hyuuga and Uchiha couldn't have taken all of it- that was statistically impossible. Ibiki did need those three positions filled- but he didn't need some upstart of a Yamanaka reminding him of the fact.
"I don't take on apprentices." He brushed by her.
She didn't try to stop him- she simply appeared in front of him again. That was good. She had some notion of finesse- and she wasn't stupid enough to attempt physical force on him. He kept moving, though, and she moved with him.
She crossed her arms and lifted her chin. "If you don't, the Hokage will assign you new personel- people who only know you by reputation and have no clue how to work with you."
"You only know me by reputation," he pointed out. "At least the people she'll give me will be fully trained."
"No one is fully trained these days. She'll give you whatever poor idiot she can pull in off the street and convince to work with you. You need me, if only because I'm not afraid of you."
He stopped and looked down at her from his considerable height. "You should be."
Her eyes didn't waver. He smiled, and pulled out a notepad and a pencil. "This is the address of a teahouse where you'll be able to find Mitarashi Anko. If she agrees to train you, I'll take you on when she thinks you're ready." He scribbled the address in a completely illegible code and handed the paper to her.
She folded it without looking at it and bowed carefully. "Thank you, Ibiki-san." She didn't make any pithy comments, either.
He watched her walk away. Better and better. Maybe there was some talent still hiding in the ranks of Konoha's shinobi. If she survived Anko, she might even be worth something.
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