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Ino was not in a particularly good mood. She and her teammates had just finished a five-day mission escorting some stuck-up noble through the Land of Mushrooms and the Land of Storms to the Land of Birds. It had been unbearably boring, the weather had been unpredictable, and the nobleman had insisted they keep a steady but incredibly slow pace. On top of that, he had had the gall to call her “pretty but nothing special”. She had been itching to encounter some enemy ninja so she could vent her anger in combat, but not even that had worked in her favor.
Asuma-sensei tried reminding her multiple times that an uneventful escort mission was the best case scenario, but they had basically taken a super long walk across three lands with the worst company she could imagine. That wasn’t exactly shinobi work. How was she supposed to come back to the village with stories of her skills to impress Sasuke if the only skill she used was walking? As far as she was concerned, this mission had been utterly useless.
“We aren’t too far from the village now,” Asuma-sensei announced. Ino rolled her eyes. She had recognized this part of the forest a while ago. He was just stating the obvious. “What do you say we grab lunch to celebrate a successful mission?”
“Yes!” Chouji whooped.
“Only if you’re paying,” Shikamaru agreed with a wicked grin.
“Uh…”
“You can’t propose lunch and then not offer to pay. That’s rude. Besides, we’re only genin. You think we walk around loaded with cash all the time?” Shikamaru was teasing him, but the logic held.
“Someday that brain of yours is going to get you into trouble.”
“Nah, it’s going to keep me out of trouble.”
“Fine, I’ll pay.”
“Can we get barbecue?” Chouji asked as they rounded a curve in the path. They could see the village gates up ahead.
“We always get barbecue. Can’t we go somewhere else?” Ino groaned. “Somewhere healthier maybe?”
“Barbecue is healthy! We need protein for energy, especially after all of this exercise.”
“Eating only one food group is not healthy,” she insisted. She turned to Asuma. “Sensei, please, I am not having barbecue again .”
“You could always just go home,” Shikamaru muttered. She shot him a glare. He had been perfectly content with their long but leisurely walk. They were starting to get on each others’ nerves.
“No, this is a team celebration, which means all four of us. We can go somewhere else this time. It’s good to try new things, right?” Asuma-sensei smiled in the hopes that this would diffuse the tension. Ino was still glowering, but she didn’t pursue the argument. Shikamaru, however, was less willing to let it go.
“What other restaurant would be both healthier and cheap enough to feed all of us on a jounin’s budget?”
“There’s Ichiraku,” Chouji offered. “Ramen has vegetables in it.”
“I don’t want ramen,” Ino whined. They were almost at the gates now, and she desperately wanted to go home, take a shower, put up her aching feet, and stew in her discontent for the rest of the day, but that would basically concede this argument to Shikamaru, and she was not going to let him win.
“Please choose some place with meat,” Chouji hummed. “I need something with substance.”
“Because you don’t have enough substance already,” Ino growled.
“Ino,” Asuma-sensei warned. Shikamaru shot her another glare, which only served to darken her mood. She didn’t see the point of coddling Chouji against a healthy dose of criticism over his weight. She was just looking out for his health (she told herself).
“Fine,” she snapped. “We’ll go to the bistro down the street from the Hokage’s offices. That has sandwiches and stuff for those of you who need substance.”
“I’m not sure that’s any healthier than barbecue,” Shikamaru said, eyes narrowing.
“Or particularly in-budget,” Asuma-sensei added gently.
Ino crossed her arms. Why were they putting so many limitations on her decision? Couldn’t she do anything without having to consider how it would affect them? It was bad enough that her parents insisted she share everything with her teammates--her childhood, her missions, her food… She’d never consented to being joined at the hip to Shikamaru and Chouji. They weren’t even related by blood! And yet they apparently had the right to weigh in on decisions as trivial as her choice in lunch. It was ridiculous.
“Either we go to the bistro or I’m not going anywhere,” she declared, halting right outside the city gates to emphasize her ultimatum. She saw Shikamaru open his mouth to come at her with some smart retort, but Asuma-sensei shook his head to silence him.
“The bistro sounds good to me,” Chouji beamed, ever the optimist and ever willing to overlook the current tension between his friends. “They have these stuffed meatballs that are really good.”
Ino rolled her eyes. Of course he had been there before. There were few food establishments in the village that Chouji hadn’t tried.
“Alright Chouji, lead the way,” Asuma-sensei agreed. She thought she heard Shikamaru mutter something about someone being “pig-headed” as she followed, but she knew any sort of argument she tried with him wouldn’t work in her favor. She was too high-strung at the moment to be able to counter his logic effectively.
They checked in with Izumo and Kotetsu inside the gate. Asuma-sensei would make their official report to the Hokage after lunch, but it was good to check in with the gate guards in case they were needed for an emergency or there was important news that they had missed while in the field. Apparently everything had been as uneventful in the village as it had been on their mission.
The weather, at least, was nice here. Sunny skies sure beat unpredictable storms. Many villagers were out and about running errands or visiting with friends. The sounds of excited children drifted on the air from the school yard. It would be a nice evening to work in the family gardens, though she hoped her parents wouldn’t expect her help since she’d just returned from her mission. She longed for rest and relaxation.
Probably due to the nice weather, the bistro was busy when they arrived. Still, it was a bit past the typical lunch hour, so they were able to find a free table outside on the edge of the patio. Ino kicked her pack under the table and relaxed into the chair as she browsed the menu. She and her parents had been here a few times, so she already had a good idea of what she wanted to order. She glanced at her teammates. Chouji seemed to be compiling a list of dishes, Shikamaru was flipping through the menu disinterestedly, and Asuma-sensei was pulling out a cigarette, forehead creased in a slightly pained expression as he looked at the prices. She rolled her eyes. This was so typically them .
Their waiter was a friendly young man, a few years older than her. He didn’t react when Chouji listed five different dishes, and he provided gentle recommendations when Shikamaru took his time deciding. He gave her an appreciative smile when it was her turn to order. It was nice to know she could still catch a guy’s eye after nearly a week of travel. She felt happier just from that.
“So when’s our next mission going to be?” Chouji asked, helping himself to one of the bread rolls from the basket on the table. Ino watched in mild disgust as he slathered it in butter and shoved half of it into his mouth.
“We just got back and you’re already looking forward to the next mission?” Asuma-sensei laughed. “It probably won’t be for a few weeks. The Hokage will want us focusing on training for a while since you’re still relatively new genin.”
“But we’ve done so much training already,” Ino sighed. “How are we supposed to test our abilities and find out where we need to improve unless we actually gain experience?”
“There’s always more we can learn without putting our lives at risk. I don’t know about you, but I’m in no rush to die,” Shikamaru declared.
“The only time you’re ever in a rush is when your mom is on your case,” Ino shot back. Asuma-sensei tried to hide his grin, but she saw it and appreciated it. Though to be fair, if Shikamaru’s mom was threatening retribution, she’d probably rush to obey, too. Yoshino-san could be scary.
“There were a few things we could’ve done better on this mission,” Asuma-sensei said.
“Like what?” Chouji asked, reaching for another bun. Ino thought about moving the basket out of his reach.
“Why don’t you guys tell me what you think you should improve on.”
“Do we have to talk about our mission now? It’s lunchtime,” Ino pointed out. She didn’t want to sour her appetite with a frustrating breakdown of the past few days. She could already sense Shikamaru preparing to call her out for her lack of cooperation.
“I do have to make our mission report right after this,” Asuma-sensei pointed out, tapping the ash off the end of his cigarette. She hated that he was smoking at the table. Her mother would have a fit if she saw him. How could he smoke before he ate? Would he even be able to taste the food? From the look Shikamaru was shooting his way, he was also disgusted.
She smiled apologetically at the waiter when he delivered their food, but he didn’t seem perturbed by their sensei’s bad habit. When he told them to enjoy their meal, he smiled at Ino.
“Come on, you guys,” Asuma-sensei prompted as they began tucking into their food. Ino had chosen the healthiest thing she could--a spring salad--in part to make a point to Shikamaru, but also because it was fresh and different from their travel rations. Her Nara teammate was picking at his sandwich and taking bits from Chouji’s plates. “What are some of the things you could’ve done better?”
“We could have packed more supplies,” Chouji said around a mouthful of stuffed meatballs. They smelled really good. Ino almost wished she had ordered them instead.
“We packed more than the usual supply of food,” Asuma sighed. “What we could have done was ration it better. If we hadn’t been travelling through fertile land with a nobleman’s caravan, we could have been in serious trouble. You can’t adequately protect people if you’re famished.”
“That’s true,” Chouji agreed, taking another bite of his lunch. Ino wasn’t sure he understood their sensei’s point, but now wasn’t the time to get in an argument over his eating habits (again).
“What else?” Asuma-sensei pulled the toothpick out of his sandwich and fiddled with it between his teeth.
“We should have focused more on the mission itself than the people we were stuck with,” Shikamaru muttered, glancing at Ino.
Here it was. He was trying to call her out for being angry at the nobleman, as though that had somehow affected her work ethic. Just because he didn’t care about his reputation didn’t mean he was somehow better than her.
“Our mission was all about the people we were stuck with,” she shot back. “We had to pay attention to them.”
“You both have good points,” Asuma-sensei intermediated. “Whenever you’re working with people of power, you have to be aware of their expectations. You don’t want to offend them and lose a potential ally to another nation. But you also can’t let them get under your skin. Sometimes you’ll have to deal with unpleasant people, but you have a job to do. The objective of the mission is paramount. This is why we talk about keeping our emotions detached. Taking things personally can complicate the completion of the mission.”
Neither she nor Shikamaru met their sensei’s eyes. Now that she was more comfortable--sitting down, enjoying the sunshine, eating food that was fresh, exchanging smiles with their waiter--it was easier to see that she had probably overreacted.
“Other than that, I thought it was an excellent mission. The nobleman and his retinue arrived at their destination safely. You conducted yourselves professionally and kept the complaining to a minimum. You fulfilled the contract and can add another mission to your resumes. Well done.”
“Alright!” Chouji whooped. “Can we get dessert to celebrate?”
“They have a really good custard pudding,” Ino chimed in. Custard pudding was her favorite. Secretly she had chosen the bistro in hopes they’d be able to order dessert. She waited for Shikamaru’s eyeroll and his comment on the lack of nutritional value of the pudding, but he just shrugged. The tension between them had left.
“Alright,” Asuma-sensei sighed. “But you’ll have to share.”
“Then we’d better get two,” Shikamaru mused, watching Chouji mop up the last of the sauce from his meatball dish with a bun.
Their sensei signalled to the waiter and requested the dessert. In the span of a short wait and some pleasant conversation, two plates of custard pudding had replaced their empty lunch dishes. Ino could already feel her mouth watering, and the sweet smell of the caramel sauce flooded her senses as it dripped down the sides of the smooth custard.
She held the first spoonful on her tongue for a moment, letting the sweetness of the caramel and the smooth, soft custard sink onto her taste buds. She loved how simple it was. Egg, milk, sugar, water--four simple ingredients coaxed into cooperation to make something transcendent.
Not unlike her and her teammates. She looked at them as she took another bite, thoughtful. Chouji had nearly eaten all of the other custard already, humming happily. Shikamaru had managed to grab a few bites, but he was now using his spoon to draw designs in the caramel sauce pooling on the plate. Asuma-sensei had also eaten a chunk from her serving, but had popped an unlit cigarette in his mouth while he searched his wallet for the required funds to pay the bill. They each had their strengths and weaknesses, and their personalities varied, but they were on the same team. They were ingredients in a single recipe. Maybe, she mused, taking another bite of dessert, they would come together to make something amazing.