DAYBREAK
PROLOGUE
It was a warm, summer day, perfect for training outdoors or shopping around the village. But Ino wasn't the type of person who would go out on such a hot day and risk damaging her skin and drying her perfect light-blond hair. No, it was better to stay in the flower shop, surrounded by blooming flowers of all colours and sizes. They looked like multi-coloured lights in her peripheral vision. She was sitting on a stool, filing her nails to perfection. Ino cared more about her looks than most kunoichi do, and she was very proud of the fact that she was the most good-looking kunoichi in her graduating batch. Ha. She knew it. Billboard Brow Sakura never stood a chance against her, no matter how long she grew her hair.
A tinkling sound suddenly filled the entire shop. Ino looked up from her nails. As expected, the door was open and there was a customer. What she didn't expect was the customer himself. Neji Hyuga always carried himself in a way that seemed to intimidate others. Ino wasn't intimidated in the slightest. She still had a small grudge on that Hyuga boy for dismissing her beauty and seduction skills in the Forest of Death during the Chunin Exams.
"Good noon, Neji-san," She said in a saccharine voice. "May I help you?"
He simply handed her a scroll, in that no-nonsense way that was purely Neji Hyuga. She blinked twice, "Is this…a mission scroll?"
"Why don't you open it yourself and find out?" He replied in a tone that ticked her off. Neji Hyuga never did like associating with girls. Especially girls like her and Sakura. Ino reckoned he had a sort of superiority complex, akin to that of Sasuke's. Hell, he even tried to kill his own female cousin in the Chunin Exams back then.
When Ino snatched the scroll from him, he simply turned back the way he came and exited the shop without as much as a single glance back. A vein on Ino's forehead ticked, but she slowly counted from one to twenty and backwards to calm herself down. She pried the scroll open, careful not to damage her newly manicured fingers. She recognized the Fifth Hokage's messy handwriting. It was a mission scroll alright. She was assigned to go on a C-Rank mission the following day, along with the one and only Hyuga Neji.
Briefly, she wondered why the Hokage would even send her on the mission. She hated to admit it to herself, but her fighting skills were pretty weak, and if they needed a Medical Ninja, they could simply just send out Sakura, who was more advanced than Ino. She quickly assumed that they probably needed her Mind Techniques. She tucked the scroll into the pocket of her apron and continued working on her nails, mentally counting the minutes before she's supposed to close the shop.
A/N: This isn't a romance fic xD I just wanted to write a story with Neji and Ino as the main characters. They hardly interact in the actual series, which makes this more fun for me xD
'Daybreak' is set between the two and half years time interval between the first series and Shippuden.