I do not own Naruto that is the property of Masashi Kishimoto.

"I am big" God, biju, summon talking

"I am normal" Human talking

"You can't hear me inside my mind" Inner thoughts of a person

This would have been out earlier but during the thunderstorms that hit my hometown two things happened. One, we lost power when a tree hit the power lines. Two, and the one that pissed me off, I lost my entire chapter for the festival, all of it. So I kind of rage procrastinated. So for now enjoy this short chapter and interlude.

Chapter 10: The rival

There are many forms of power in the world.

Martial power, where those who are strongest lead. Originally the samurai fell under this category but today they contend with the shinobi sect, showcasing their prowess in the fields of open battle.

Monetary power, where those who are the wealthiest control all. Merchants, guilds, and others compete heavily for this, sometimes squabbling to the point of conflict over meaningless pieces of paper or shiny baubles that the government has declared to have value.

Political power; where politicians and those of a more charismatic persuasion compete to control the mob. These people use the weight of their supporters to perpetuate and spread their beliefs.

Some even use divine right, the belief that the gods or even the Sage of Six Paths himself have declared that they and their family have been blessed with the right to rule.

There are many more, cults like the cult of Jashin that prey that use religion, the power of the scholar, even the power of writing and song.

All of these powers have rivals. For those of the martial belief they find rivals in other warriors while those who derive power from money find it in another merchant. Even the nations themselves have rival lands.

However there are more subtle avenues of power, the paths of information and perception. People from this path use information to spark wars, overthrow kingdoms, and ruin politicians. Information, facts, it effects all other paths to power.

Perception, opinions, viewpoints, all of this makes up the path of perception. They use rumors, tall tales, even bards. They generate a story and they get people to believe. With it they can make heroes and create villains. The path of perception is to control the beliefs of their fellow man.

And like all other paths to power, those who follow the paths of perception and information have their rivals, sometimes in each other.

She was a young girl when she first saw the power simple gossip could hold. Her mother had simply been speaking with her friends when the latest rumor had come up. Something about a woman rising to the top off of the virtue of her looks and the scandal she was having with her boss, a leader of one of Konoha's merchant guilds.

At the time she had thought little of it, not understanding what the big deal was or even what the supposed scandal was. But as time passed she watched as the rumor grew and became more sordid with each telling. Eventually both the woman and her boss were affected. The woman would be fired while her boss would be labeled as something called a sexual deviant and blacklisted by his own guild.

The most stunning aspect of this was that the rumor had been false. The rumor that the public had so readily taken to had been started by the person that took the man's former position as guild leader and despite being proven innocent people remembered the rumor, no legitimate business would hire him.

As for the woman, she was labeled a strumpet. 'Civilized' businesses did not want to be associated with those of her 'ilk' while others in the marketplace mentioned hiring her if she would perform certain duties for them afterhours.

It had been disgusting to the young girl but also fascinating. A simple rumor had brought down one of the power elites. On that day she unknowingly began to realize the power of simple words and perception.

As the girl got older she discovered her first bully. It was simple, an older kid picking on those younger than them, pulling on pigtails, pushing others down, rude jokes, etc.

The girl didn't like him but didn't know how to handle it. She was only seven while the boy was a thirteen year old boy that had dropped out in his first year at Konoha Academy. She couldn't overpower him, she didn't know any jutsu to scare him with, and she didn't want to be a tattle tale.

It was as she debated with herself that she remembered the rumor from when she was younger. The rumor had been powerful, a weapon that she could wield. The problem was wielding it. She wanted to get rid of her bully but she remembered the girl in the rumor had also been negatively affected by it. She didn't want to get in trouble.

Still her mind was set. The plan had been simple and using words that at the time she didn't completely understand.

When the boy once more visited the park and picked on the girls, she approached one that had had her hair pulled and filled her head with words she heard from the rumor. She told the other girl about how the boy was touching her inappropriately, that it was a weird touch as her mother had called it when she asked about the details of the past rumor.

Once she got the other girl to tell a couple of the other female bully victims about the boy's inappropriate touches in their special places, again a description the girl's mother had used, before having the first girl tell her parents. Meanwhile her excuse for not telling was simply that she was too scared of the boy to tell her own, before reassuring the first girl that she could be a hero if she did.

After that she didn't go to the park. Every kid knew not to go back to the scene of the crime; she didn't want her scapegoat to point her out as the real instigator of the rumor. Still that did not stop her from listening to her mother and her friends to see if her efforts to create a rumor had bared fruit. She didn't even consider it a lie, her mother said that she shouldn't allow anyone to touch her in her 'special' places and her hair was a special place.

It didn't take long for a rumor about something called a pervert was preying on young girls at the park she used to go to. It took even less time for a cry of outrage to come from the public when multiple girls around her age said that they were touched in their special places or weirdly by the bully.

The bully himself would disappear from the park, going to someplace called a prison. When she asked her father about what a prison was he simply said it was a place where bad people go to be punished before telling her to be a good girl.

The truth did eventually come out after one of the girls let slip that the boy had been touching her hair. Sadly by then it was too late. Prison is not kind to child molesters and the boy had been killed sometime during his stay.

As for the girl who started the rumor she would not know of the consequences of her actions, all she would know is that the bully had disappeared. Though she did not know it at the time this would be the start of an ambition to control all aspects of her life. She would desire to become the architect of rumors, the keeper of secrets, and the kingpin of blackmail.

As time passed the girl acquired more friends, more secrets, and learned the meaning of more words. Words like money, honor, fear, even hygiene all words that can change the perceptions of society. No longer did she rely on sexuality when she spread rumors, now she had begun to develop a subtlety to it; a skill that she got a lot of practice with as she managed the day to day rumors and gossips of her friends.

More importantly she learned the value of her own name and clan. She was Ino Yamanaka, the heiress of the Yamanaka Clan, one of the moderately smaller clans of Konoha and she began to learn their history.

She learned that while her clan wasn't famous for their strength they were feared for their mind jutsus, that the members of her clan typically were interrogators or infiltrators. She also learned that while their positions in the modern shinobi world had changed them that her clan still remained a low casualty rate in the field. This lead her to wonder why her clan was so small compared to others when other clans fought on the front lines.

This question would lead to her learning her family's darkest secret, a secret known only to her clan and select members of the government. Members like the Hokage. The Yamanaka clan also made up most of the traitors of Konoha.

The mind jutsu of her clan allowed the Yamanaka to experience the memories of others from their perspective, with their feelings, they were for those moments both one person and two people. It was the drawback of the clan's jutsu, if a memory or emotion was strong enough and the Yamanaka in the person's head didn't have strong enough emotions or willpower to overcome the other consciousness, it infects them, changes them. It's why the Yamanaka don't start interrogations with mind jutsu unless it's a last resort and why they didn't waste their time on civilians. The Yamanaka were also very self-policing of their members, preferring to kill their own and keep their secrets.

To protect themselves Yamanakas typically have strong personalities and loyalties, sometimes going to the extremes to express themselves. Yamanakas also usually have large families, as deaths amongst their members because they visited the wrong memory or even went mad were not quite common but not exactly rare. Ino herself actually had an aunt at one point that used to babysit her before she had been killed.

Still Ino was confident in herself and once she learned the basic mind jutsu she began to practice. At first she would dive into animals to spy on others and partly to enjoy the feeling of flight when she took over a bird. Later she would dive into people and inspect their memories. Occasionally she would use these memories to blackmail others.

When she entered Konoha Academy her personality could be out there at times and even demanding, but retained curiosity. Still when she entered she continued her habits and found incriminating information on some of the teachers. Part of this she found out was because of an old policy the second Hokage had put into the academy as putting in fake evidence for students to blackmail teachers with. It was a hidden lesson in the academy for the more covert types that hadn't been phased out with the advent of the modern shinobi.

However not all of the evidence was fake and she found herself blackmailing several teachers, learning when pop quizzes would happen and what they would be on, setting up matches for sparring practice, and sometimes to set herself up for failure to throw off suspicion.

Once her class hit puberty she even found that she could use her looks to get what she wanted. During survival training when they had to cook with ingredients they find, she wasn't sure if what she made had poisonous ingredients, yet a bat of her eyes and a slight glimpse at the opening of her shirt in the hopes of sneaking a peak when she bent over slightly and she had some poor boy test her food for her. It had actually been poisonous and she was able to save her grade. It was amazing what she could get just by flirtation and subtle glimpses. She didn't reveal anything but boys had no trouble letting their imagination attempt to fill the blanks

It was also during her beginning years at the academy that she encountered Naruto Uzumaki. The boy had been buying various poisonous plants all over town, she might not have noticed it if he hadn't come to her shop several times over multiple weeks to buy several of them while she was there. She would also admit that her natural curiosity had also caused her to look into it.

Naruto was descended from giants in the shinobi world. His father, a Hokage who could kill dozens in a flash with his hirashin while his mother, Kushina Uzumaki was a legend in and of herself, a Hokage candidate and said to be able to be nearly undefeatable with her chains, healing, and seals. She could not understand how a boy from that parentage could embrace the subtle arts and it drew her.

Over time she actually found herself becoming his friend and she could say she genuinely liked him, though she retained her curiosity. It was actually why she gave him azaleas for his garden since they were a poisonous flower and why she said he wasn't a rose person. She wanted to see if her friend followed the Clan Wars Era ideals over that of the modern shinobi.

Now she had an in to see Naruto's garden and test her theory on the poisons it held. It wouldn't confirm if he followed the old ways but it would be one step closer to solving the mystery of Naruto. After that she would kick back and enjoy the festival with him and Hinata. She would make sure to tease the young Hyuga as well.

She wasn't just a nosy blackmailer or gossip; she could have fun as well. Plus teasing was part of her personality; it helped her come back as herself whenever she made a mind dive.

That's right Ino is the rival in this story. I couldn't actually use Sasuke since I can't imagine him being subtle, even the one in this story. So the task fell on Ino, yeah Shino probably could have done it but I wanted Ino.

Before anyone asks, no, Ino and Naruto don't know about each other's extra-curricular activities. Naruto doesn't know Ino's a blackmailer or her control of secrets while Ino doesn't know about Naruto's underworld activities. Also Ino for now is only based in Konoha and does not have subordinates.

I hope you liked the progression of Ino's character through this chapter and that you will enjoy the unique rivalry I plan to create between the two.

Also I gave the Yamanaka clan a weakness that I haven't seen done before so lets see how that works out (the weakness is not a guarantee that Ino will go rogue). I kind of plan to give each of the clans their own weakness, some might be cliché but I hope others are unique like the one I plan to give the Uchiha (who very much need a weakness, what can't the sharingan do again?).

For now I hope you enjoyed this latest chapter. Also please review.