Ino

Ino was never quite right. Between her cosmetic obsession, dieting, and being a kunoichi, she was spread pretty thin. I always thought she was a little psychotic.

But only a little bit, 'cuz really, we were all a little off up there in the head.

The Yamanaka's can all use their mind technique, but Ino was something else. Beyond the superficial issues she had, she was a little too good with her family technique.

When Ino was in others' minds, she picked up memories.

Poor Ino used it on Shikamaru once when they were sparring and picked up a few abusive childhood memories. She picked up a few of mine once, too. That must have sucked for her. It wasn't only us Konoha nin she got memories from, either. Outside of Konoha in the Ino-Shika-Chou formation so many memories brushed off on her she couldn't keep track of them anymore.

Ino spent a lot of time with her flowers. She was a little too... attached.

She believed they spoke; "Hanakotoba no kazukazu", the many words of flowers.

I once caught her talking to them. It was after the first chuunin exam and she was kneeling in the shop, picking out different colored flowers. Not for the life of me would I have approached her, but I listened.

She named them. She named them and crooned to them.

A flower for each memory, because she was having trouble sorting her memories from her acquired memories.

I guess it made a little sense to do that, but a week later when I walked by again they were in a vase and she was crooning to them again, babbling about something I know never happened to her. She didn't see me, but I saw her, and she poured something into the water and they wilted.

"Erase the memories, erase them all," she cooed as they crumbled, "All gone, all gone."

Ino was a little crazy.

The moment she made Chuunin, Tsunade-baa-chan started sending her on missions accompanied by ANBU operatives. No-one was supposed to know, but I keep those mission files in my drawer, now. I know.

More flowers from the Yamanaka shop disappeared.

Ino was never good enough to make ANBU, but she had an ability that would indefinitely help them. She was perfect for assassinations, because the way she did them, they really were suicides, no questions asked.

That was when she really cracked.

Because every time she killed herself (because really, it felt like she was killing herself even if it wasn't her body) those were the memories she dragged back to her real self, all the way back to Konoha. After three missions, she wasn't dragging herself back, anymore; the ANBU operative was dragging her back.

She thought she could culture her flowers into the memories, and she would nurture them until she knew they were (but really, they weren't). Then she'd kill them with poison.

"Erase the memories, erase them all.

All gone, all gone."

Her dad yelled at her for all the wasted flowers.

I've got the report in my desk, somewhere, and it's sickening that Tsunade-baa-chan accepted such a mission and gave it to someone like Ino.

Everyone knew she wasn't sane, flowers and such.

Assassinate an innocent toddler, only because the dad didn't want his wife to know he'd had a baby with a prostitute. Make it look like an accident, the report said, so Ino-toddler waddled into the kitchen and grabbed the handle of a pot of boiling water and dumped it on herself.

That night, sitting in her room in front of a large selection of flowers, she tore open the package of weed killer.

"Erase the memories, erase them all..."

And swallowed it.

"All gone, all gone."