There is something inside of her, clawing away at her insides with the sharp teeth of misplaced guilt. It eats at her soul, leaving nothing but a hollow place and a dull, reverberating ache that makes her feel sad and stupid and angry and used.

She feels dirty most of all, with unfamiliar fingers combing through her blonde hair (there is blood underneath the fingernails and she doesn't know if it's hers or someone else's) and foreign lips tracing dizzying patterns across her skin. There is a certain disgust that rears up inside of her, becoming bile before she chokes it back down stubbornly. The man on top of her grins slyly, leaning forward to give her a crushing kiss.

Her hands shake only very slightly as she wraps her long fingers around the hilt of a dagger. She had picked it out earlier—pale silver blade a good few inches longer than a kunai, and much thinner—, having loved it immediately for the whimsical butterflies engraved into it. There is not a single second of hesitation before she thrusts it forcefully upward, catching the man right through the throat at a slightly awkward angle.

She closes her eyes in the brief moment before the blood spray, feeling crimson warmth spurt out from the long, crude diagonal slash across his windpipe.

(It's in her hair and on her eyes and in her mouth and trickling down her breasts and oh god—oh god, oh god, ohgod)

They snap back open—the two brilliantly blue eyes that were the last thing he ever saw before his death—regarding the body expressionlessly. She pushes him off of the bed, watching him roll to the ground with a loud thumping noise.

Mechanically, she steps into his washroom, bathes, and dresses herself once more. Pausing at the mirror briefly, she reapplies her dark red lipstick.

Ino is numb. And she has another mission in an hour.


Insert standard disclaimer here.