Excuse my over-use of the dash line. To me, it equals love.
Disclaimer: Hiss.
Dedication: To Les-y and Sonya. Uhm, can I say ILY TIMES A BAGILLION?!
P.S. I love rainbow sprinkles and cheap romance novels and purple vinyl and Death Cab For Cutie. Any combination of these aforementioned things, and I will be in heaven. Seriously.
P.P.S. I am listening to love songs and reading angst and crying. I am not to be blame for this chapter! (Or the KibaIno contained within, okay? I LOVE IT. SHUT UP.)

---

The alchemist was a mousy man; that was what the arrogant man had always thought. Like a mouse – pale reddish-brown hair that fell in a mop around the alchemist's face; a small mouth, with thin lips that were almost always pressed into a line. The man's washed-out blue eyes were nervous, flicking back and forth, up and down; they never stayed focused on one thing for then a few minutes.

Lord Uchiha Sasuke stared at him, apathy written on the boy's face.

And the arrogant man just smiled.

"–you must understand, there is no guarantee that this will work. My daughter–" Here, the alchemist paused, and winced; he'd lost a wife, and three children, now, to his life's work.

"My daughter helped me build the prototype. This is – this is only built off the blue-prints. I modified it, a little…" He paused a little again, and stared Sasuke hard in the face.

"Lord Uchiha, you do know what you're getting into, correct? You may never return."

Sasuke stared back at him. Yes, he knew – of course he knew. Uchiha Sasuke was a very methodical, very careful being. The dark-haired boy bowed his head in acknowledgement of the alchemists' words, and softly murmured a "Hn."

The alchemist let out a very tired sigh, and the arrogant man shot him a dark look of general doom. The boy had leave.

The arrogant man continued to glare, shifting his gaze to Sasuke, and the temperature of the room dropped several degrees.

The alchemist clenched his jaw. He did not want this – did not want it for the boy in front of him, marked to die; did not want this for his daughter, already gone; did not want this for the kingdom. But he had no choice.

And so he carefully slid his hand into his tunic pocket, and withdrew a thick, silver-coloured disk. Different, so different, from the prototype, and yet, so very much the same.

His fingers shook he proffered it to Lord Uchiha.

The boy took the silver disc from the alchemist with careful fingers, a strange curiosity lingering about his face.

"How odd…" Lord Uchiha murmured.

The alchemist's voice did not tremble as he said "Take care, Lord Uchiha. This Whorld-Chronometer is… different. Fickle, perhaps. It has a rather – special personality."

"Personality?"

"It will track the time-waves that the prototype gives off, but… it may be cruel, if only to spite you. It has a nasty personality."

"Why?" Sasuke asked. He had found the clasp that opened the Chronometer, and he was staring calmly at the angry violet light the thing gave off.

The alchemist pressed his lips together. This hit far too close to home, for the alchemist to want to think about. "Because I am not my daughter, and I do not have her talent," the alchemist said quietly. "With your leave, sire."

Without waiting for acknowledgement, the alchemist spun, and stalked out of the room.

The arrogant man smiled to himself, in the darkened, domed throne room. Now, the nobles closest to the throne would be heirless. There would be far fewer dissidents against his rule, now, as the peasants would only rally around one of the younger nobles. With those same, younger nobles gone…

All the better.

---

Ino's world was really very… sparkly, right at that moment. Everything was fitting into place quite nicely, and there were pretty clothes, and she got to dress her friends up. It was so exciting!

She stood in their drab little room, next to the bed. Said bed was laden with clothes; odd clothes, but lovely-lovely in their own right. Ino let her fingers drift to her favourite dress, the one she had worn the night they had… left. There was no other word for it.

The blue silk of the dress shimmered under the sick fluorescent lights. It was beautiful.

A sigh of regret escaped Ino's lips. It was too bad – this world had strange clothes; nothing like the pretty-pretty dresses from home. This world was all strange-soft fabrics, strange-bright colours, and strange-strange customs.

Ino kind of liked it.

She stood there, going through the clothes she had bought the previous day, humming to herself softly. As she did, Ino quietly wondered how they were going to survive this world. It was a cold world – Ino had seen no proof that this was a welcoming world.

But it was a new world.

Ino sighed. Temari was still curled up, asleep, in her little corner, and Hinata had left to get some food, Ino guessed. She had no idea where Lady Sakura or Karin was at, and Tenten wasn't even on her radar.

Part of Ino's soul convulsed and died. They weren't ever wearing the pretty-strange clothes she had bought for them! It was horrible! It was utterly bizarre!

"Blasphemy…" Ino muttered darkly to herself, her demeanor cranky. She glared at the clothes on the bed. This was ridiculous, she wasn't getting anywhere.

Ino set down the dress she was holding, the rustle of thick silk curling in her ears.

Fine. If she couldn't dress the others up, she might as well have fun playing dress-up on her own. She reached for the single, oddly baggy pair of breeches (the shop-owner had called them camo pants – what on earth was camo?), and blinked at them for a few seconds. The mottled green-brown-beige colour scheme was subtle. It was very opposite of her personality.

Ino wasn't sure what to think of it.

She stared at it for another moment, before Ino set her jaw. They were just clothes.

She shimmied out of the of the worn-in pair of breeches she was wearing, and tossed them onto the startings of a pile of dirty laundry; so far it only consisted of Temari's shirt, and Ino's own breeches.

Ino pursed her lips.

She hated doing laundry. But if it was a toss-up between doing laundry, and wearing dirty clothes, Ino had very little doubt about what she'd choose.

Dirty clothes were icky.

So Ino slipped the baggy, awkwardly comfortable breeches on, and let them hang on her hips. 'Hm,, she murmured to herself. 'Not so bad.'

She stripped off the shift she'd been wearing, and tossed it, too, among the pile of the other dirty clothes.

There was purple… something staring at her from the bed.

And it was so pretty.

It was sparkly and bright purple, and made of some thick, almost-like-leather fabric. And it was purple. Purple!

Without further ado, Ino tugged the purple vinyl tube top on – glee crinkling her face, when she realized that it showed off her stomach. She grabbed the khaki-green jacket that looked like an army uniform jacket -patched holes and all- and threw it on. It settled comfortably around her shoulders, and Ino raised her eyes to the mirror hanging on the wall.

She stared at herself, that mirror-on-the-wall reflecting a very odd-odd image back at her – Ino wasn't sure she knew the girl in dark pants and a bright purple shirt, with blue eyes and long-long blonde hair that fell around her face in stark, almost-white sheets.

Ino stared at herself for a long, long time.

And then she shook her head furiously, her loose hair whipping around her face. No, that Ino wasn't the Ino that she had known her whole life; they looked nothing alike, thought nothing alike – and the old Ino didn't have a strange tinge of fear in her eyes. The new Ino did, and the blonde girl hated herself only a little.

Her hair was all wrong. It was too… flowy. Too free.

Ino went straight to Temari's bag. The girl always had hair ties in there, there had to be at least one extra somewhere

She finds it, orange and sitting at the bottom of the bag, all innocent-looking. Ino smiled to herself, and pulled it out. She stretched, and when it snapped against her fingers, she winced a little.

It was kind of painful.

But not bad-painful. She walked back to the mirror, and stared at herself for another minute. The wheat-blonde hair shimmered, a little, when she moved. Ino wound her hair up into a high ponytail without thinking much more about it.

It would be easier this way; it was mostly out of her face. Her bangs – well, they never obeyed when she wanted them to. But they could hang in her face, it was fine.

Ino looked over at Temari. The girl was still out like fire in the rain, and she didn't look like she was going to be waking anytime soon.

So Ino decided there was only one thing to do.

And that was to go out, and test these new strange-strange clothes on the general population. Ino kind-of smiled as she left the room, her fingers lingering on the switch which controlled the light.

The light flickered off, and she was gone.

---

Blending in was easy – almost too easy. Ino smiled to herself. This was easy, and it felt- well, not right, but not bad.

She blurred into the rush of people like she'd been born there (because she was Ino, and if there is one thing that Ino has mastered, it's the art of adaptation), and simply wandered, her hands fisted in the pockets of the army jacket she was wearing.

She raised her face, and let the artificial touch her cheeks. It wasn't the warm, inviting light that came from the sun – the light was neon, alien, and cold. Ino was a sun-child, with blue eyes and blonde hair and–

–And Ino didn't want to admit that she missed the sun.

She sighed, and kept staring at the purple-bright skylight. There was something so obnoxious and pretentious about it, Ino almost felt a little sick inside.

She didn't just miss the sun. She missed home.

She missed the feeling of being cared for. She missed dancing until her feet hurt and her eyes were drunk on candlelight and beautiful people. She missed teasing the stuffy old nobles and wearing pretty-pretty dresses. She missed flirting with the stable boys and the silent giggling late at night with the maids and – and god, she missed everything.

But Ino was not a child.

And this was just something else she'd have to learn to accept. It was… irritating.

Ino wasn't ready to grow up. Not yet. But now she had no choice. Because dead princesses were never very pretty, and broken promises were even worse – and Ino would never-never forget the Queen's tired-sad eyes–

Ino doesn't even realize that she had run into someone until they were both on the ground, whoever it was groaning like the there was no tomorrow, their things spread around them both.

No one even stopped to help, and Ino's lips took on a bitter, cruel twist to them. She got up, on her knees, and helped the boy (he looked like a boy, with messy brown hair and pretty brown eyes and weird red tattoos and-and-and-) up.

He stood almost a half-head higher then her, and part of Ino mentally cheered. She didn't like her men short. And this one was really pretty…

But then she remembered about dead princesses, and Queens with soulless eyes and broken promises, and Ino realizes that she can't.

Not now.

Not anymore.

She carefully helped him up. She ignored the flash of heat that hit her somewhere near her stomach when he kind-of grinned. "Hey," he says. But when his voice hit her ears, Ino lost all sense of reason. She needed something that would let her let go.

And, apparently, he was it. Because Ino never really could help herself, and this isn't just a game anymore, she thinks.

Her voice was only a little bit low when she said "Hi," in a return, a dangerous, sultry smile on her lips.

"Thanks," he said. "You okay?"

She nodded at him. She didn't even know his name, and she didn't particularly care. "Yup," she chirped. "I'm fine. Want some help with that?"

She was indicating the boxes he had been carrying – they were still strewn about all over the shimmery sidewalk. He grinned outright at her, a fang protruding over his lip (Ino figured it could be way worse – and the fangs were actually kind of hot). "I'd love some. Name's Kiba."

Ino smiled big for the whole world, and graced him with her name (because no matter what she looked like, inside she would still be a Lady and that was never-never going to change). "I'm Ino."

"Cool," he said. The tattoos on his cheeks pulled upwards when he grinned like that. Ino was momentarily stunned by his over-all prettiness. Not many boys could pull off that rugged prettiness look.

Ino decided that she mostly liked him. But even as they gathered up his things together, part of Ino was still wary. Well, at the very least, if something was not-so-cool about this situation, she could always just beat him over the head with whatever blunt object was closest.

Tenten's teachings had to be good for something, right?

And Ino had never really had good sense when it came to boys. Her mother had always said that– But it always came back to dead princesses with soulless and broken promises made by Queens (or was it the other way around?).

But Ino had never been good at writing happy endings.

They walked off together, the purple sky-cover glowing dully, and Ino didn't realize that she was falling in love.