The Girls

Ino Yamanaka woke from her slumber with a luxurious stretch. Her long, platinum blonde hair cascaded over her face as she curled herself into a ball, savoring the last few moments of bed time before she was forced to rise. The girl stayed in a rather decent sized room on the top floor of her parent's three-story house with one large window looking out toward the forest to the East so that she could always watch the sun-rise from her queen-sized canopy bed. She had recently convinced her parents into redecorating her room into what she thought was more sophisticated and lady-like then it's previous bright pink. Her walls were a gentle lavender with midnight-blue borders and a white ceiling decorated with pictures of tulips, blue poppies and white lilies. Her bed-spread was a subtle violet affair along with white sheets with the frame and over-head being pure white.

Ino often liked to fancy herself a princess from within the confines of this room and her full sized vanity made of pure ivory, an inheritance from her great-grandmother, made it all too easy to do so. Sleepily, she rose from her bed and made her way into her bathroom which was all black tile and granite floors and appliances with white walls and ceiling to get ready for the day.

After brushing her teeth, bathing, taking a shower, applying lotion to her entire body, doing her hair, re-doing her hair, then changing it back to the way it originally was, selecting an outfit, eating a few strawberries for breakfast, and carefully applying her makeup the Sun had completely risen and was basking her entire room with the soft light. Taking one last look into her mirror and giving her reflection a satisfied smile, the Yamanaka heiress headed off to the academy.

She wore a pair of short, black tights which ended just below her knee long under a slim-fitted purple dress which ended at mid-thigh and was bisected at her waist with a simple black, leather belt whose buckle was the very same shade of black. Her shoes were a normal pair of black shinobi sandals. Her lips were covered with a subtle, light pink lip stick, and her eyes had the faintest dusting of grey shadow to bring out her eyes. Even at this age, young Ino had style.

Her hair was growing longer and had reached to the middle of her shoulders, she preferred it short but the rumor was that Sasuke preferred long-haired girls and well, some things just had to be done in the name of Love.

'I wonder where Sasuke will be sitting today.' The girl wondered to herself as she walked along the village street. 'He's so unpredictable with the way he just sits wherever, like he won't even be controlled by habit. Oh my god he's so cute! But then, lately there's someone else who's not so bad...' Suddenly her thoughts wandered from the dark-haired, black-eyed Uchiha to a certain blonde-haired, blue-eyed Uzamaki.

'For a while he was just some pompous loser who tried to be cool. Lately though, he's become more interesting, and wayyyyy cooler!' Such idle thoughts drifted through the girl's mind until she was just about to enter the school house and a glaring shock of pink hair caught the corner of her eye.

'Tch, here we go again, I guess.'

"Good morning Ino-pig." The pinkette called in a falsley cheery tone. "Did you spend too much time gorging yourself on ice cream last night? You've got bags the size of your hips under those eyes."

A lie, as she was fully aware but it irked her nonetheless. "Oh hello, Forehead. I'd say that I hadn't seen you but with a dome like that they can probably see you in Suna. In fact I think we might have to do something about that, something like that is a threat to a hiddan village's security. I guss I can only hope the ANBU will "relocate" you one of these days."

Her tone remained carefully frosty as she said it but inwardly she sighed, it still pained her sometimes that the girl used to be her best friend, and that she threw her away for a rivalry over a boy really stung. There were plenty of girls that she knew who shared a crush and were still perfectly good friends. But then, she supposed that was the price of having a best friend who was completely insane.

The two kunoichi-to-be bickered continuously as they headed into the building, battling to be the first to enter the class where their beloved Sasuke was certainly waiting for them. As the duo busted into the room, both proclaiming themselves the "winner", Ino's gaze immediately fell on the two individuals who were already in the room. One was Ryo Hagase, the class rebel, a tall, dark skinned boy with wildly unruly blue hair which he wore in a shaggy mane down to his shoulders. He sat behind a desk, leaning casually back on a chair, he glanced briefly at the two girls before closing his eyes in disinterest. The other was Uzamaki Naruto the class...rival to Hagase? That seemed to be his only function within the class, when he and the Ryo weren't battling it out in some competition or another he blended almost perfectly with the rest of the class. That is, if one didn't pay too much attention to his eyes, which spoke of an indomitable strength one rarely saw in one so young. He was sitting quietly at a desk, taking notes from a large scroll which lay spread out before him. He didn't even bother to look up at the girls.

Ino gave a disappointed sigh when she failed to spot the Uchiha prodigy before making her way resignedly to a random seat and waiting for the arrival of her friends...or Sasuke.

Class went on as usual that day until the third hour when Iruka-sensei announced that day would be a taijuitsu placement tournament, the class reacted with mostly excitement, some trepidation, and just a little bit of indifference, depending on which shinobi hopeful one was paying attention to.

Ino, who had once been ranked number two in the class when it came to hand-to-hand was now ranked number ten, a fact which she insisted to herself that she did not mind, there was only one girl over her in that area after all and she was a Hyuuga, taijuitsu was pretty much all they had going for them.

Her opponent, was the number nine ranked in the class, Uzamaki Naruto, they were the lowest ranked in their skill class so were the first seeded to fight, it was an upwards climb. The ranking bouts were fought from the highest order down so that the ones who did better from the lower seeds would fight from the losers from the upper seeds. It was all quite convoluted but it seemed to make sense to the sensei.

"Yamanaka Ino and Uzamaki Naruto, please approach the sparring ring." As they both made for the ring and faced each other, Iruka explained to them the rules. "This is an 5 minute spar, it will be point scored so even if you can't knock your opponent out, points can still earn you the win. This is a taijuitsu only fight, no ninjuitsu, genjuitsu, kenjuitsu, or fuinjuitsu will be permitted. That means no kunai or shuriken either. We got that?" He asked looking to first Naruto then Ino to witness their respective acknowledgement of the rules which they were already entirely familiar with.

"Alight then," the chuunin instructer cleared his throat and spread his his arms out to each side in front of the competitors before quickly snapping his arms down and jumping back quickly. "Begin!"

Before the match had ever even started, Ino had decided that she would probably lose. Naruto's skills had been increasing at an alarming rate for the past few years, he had gone from the skill level of the average civilian kid, his skill with kunai not counted, to being second only to Sasuke and Hagase in most fields. He was still ranked as sixth place over all but if he did well in this he would probably shoot to either third or fourth place.

'Hmmm, well I haven't practiced my taijuitsu in what feels like ages, and everyone knows that Naruto-kun trains harder than anyone!' The blond girl thought to herself as their sensei explained to them the rules. 'Even so, I am Yamanaka Ino, I'm only in tenth place because I didn't really feel like breaking a nail. As long as I keep him moving and don't let him score any big hits I should be able to get in enough points to not lose too badly.'

"Begin!"

'Guess it's showtime. I'll charge him in order to take him out of his rhythm from the start. Hmmm, so he's just going to stand there and let me charge him, huh? Alright then then, how about we get this started with a right hook to his kidneys? He still isn't guarding? Oh well, here goes!' Ino felt a sharp pain in her head for a split second before her world went black for what felt like an instant. Next thing she knew, she was looking up at the sky and thinking that the Sun felt delightful on her skin before remembering what she was supposed to be doing and bolting up into a sitting position.

"Oh! She's awake, Shikamaru."

"Tch, troublesome."

The girl's gaze focused on her two childhood friends, Nara Shikamaru and Akimichi Chouji, though she never admitted to such a connection to the two as they were renowned as the laziest, most good-for-nothing students in the entire academy. "Shikamaru-kun, Chouji-kun, what happened?" The answer came as a lazy drawl from the Nara.

"Naruto kicked you in the jaw when you swung at him. You should remember to clench your teeth next time... I guess you're lucky that he didn't break it though." The last part Ino was barely able to catch as the two boys had already started walking away before he had even finished his sentence.

"Lazy ass-holes," She muttered to herself as she rose unsteadily to her feet and headed towards the crowd of students where the tournament was still clearly going on. "they could have at least asked if I was ok."

It turned out that she had only been out for a few minutes and Sasuke was currently occupied with the number two at taijuitsu, Ryo Hagase. Though he was a rebel who seemed to dislike any and all forms of authority and had abysmal grades due to never doing any actual work in class, most people were of the opinion that he was a genius on the same caliber as Sasuke. Hagase came from a mysterious clan which had apparently been destroyed when he was very young and Konoha had taken him and his mother in as the only survivors. Exactly what his clan did, none of the students but Naruto had any idea, but it was clear for all to see that he excelled at taijuitsu as well as ninjuitsu despite never really seeming to try. Except for against the Uzamaki.

The fight between the two boys seemed to be almost entirely even, with neither able to gain any real advantage but when the time was called, Sasuke was reveiled to be the winner by a paper-thin margin. To the surprise of the croud, it was Sasuke who looked the most annoyed, Hagase seemed almost indifferent to the results of the match and headed off to sit under a nearby tree.

Ino, however only scoffed in slight exasperation, "Tch, that damn Hagase, he only has the courtesy to take a match seriously when he's going against Naruto. How dare he take Sasuke-kun so lightly!" For not the first time, the girl found herself wandering exactly what was between them that made the typically aloof Hagase so competitive when it came to the Uzamaki.

"I don't remember it always being this way..." she thought to herself with a thoughtful frown forming along her brow. "it seems like over-night that they suddenly became rivals. Maybe something happened between them outside of class? That seems like the only reasonable explanation. Not that it really matters though, in the end, everyone is inferior to Sasuke."

With a small sigh, Ino absently observed the next bunch of matches while allowing her mind to wander around various topics, most of them having to do with the young Uchiha. Eventually she found her gaze drawn to the boy who had just defeated her with a rather frustratingly small amount of effort, who was rather intently watching the current fight going on between the number six, Hyuuga Hinata, and the number seven, Akimichi Chouji. This made sense as the loser would be his next opponent.

She felt rather complicated towards the boy at the moment, on the one hand, he was well known as the hardest working student in the entire class, even more so than Sasuke. On top of that, he had been steadily working his way up the class rankings for some time now. And yet, there was something profoundly annoying about being so completly surpassed in what seemed to be every shinobi aspect by someone she recalled being significantly better than not long ago.

Ino attempted to justify this by telling herself that it was only natural for boys to make better shinobi than girls did, or that the amount of training required to stay at such a level would make her no good as a bride. But somehow neither of these really satisfied her. "It's fine." the girl told herself, not very convincingly "as long as I remain the top female...it's fine."

In the back of her mind however, the Yamanaka began to wonder when it was that she began to think like that. The had once been a time when she had allowed herself to lose to no one, she had seen even Uchicha Sasuke as a rival, someone she would definately not lose to. Somewhere down the line she began making concessions, excuses,somewhere down the line, she had become okay with being weak.

With a shake of her head, Ino dislodged such unpleasant thoughts from her mind and chose instead to dwell on more agreeable topics, such as the how strikingly Sasuke's hair danced in the wind when he was fighting.

Hinata's POV

"Next up for the top seed, Hyuuga Hinata vs Akimichi Chouji!"

The small, timid looking girl visibly flinched when she heard her name being called. She already knew how this fight would end, without question, she would lose. It seemed like no matter what she did, every time they had a placement test she fell further and further down in the rankings. The Hyuuga heiress just couldn't handle the stress that the tests put her under, every time her mind would go completely blank, her entire body would shake and it would take all of her control to keep from fainting.

With the dejected air of one approaching the execution block, Hinata made her way to the fighter's ring to face her opponent. The girl did not know much about the young Akimichi, only that he was rather chubby and had the tendency to win his fights with one-hit ko's. In terms of physical strength, only Ryo was even capable of competing with him but he was also rather slow and lacked much of a killer instinct. Even so, Hinata found him rather intimidating as they stared each other down from opposites sides of the ring.

"Begin!"

Chouji rushed straight in, deceptively fast for someone of his size, he threw a devastating right hook directly at the much smaller girl's temple, which said girl neatly dodged. Having dodged purely on instinct, Hinata danced around the larger boy, creating distance between them once she was facing his back.

"That was scary! That punch would have killed me for sure if it had hit me! I don't want to do this! It's scary! Mother! It's scary! Please, help me! Im afraid!"

Hinata waited in a panic for her opponent's next onslaught as he changed tactics and began slowly stalking her as she tried to keep as much distance as possible between them. Unfortunately, all of the boy's attempts at cornering seemed her to be entirely futile as the Hyuuga would jump nimbly around him if they ever got close to a corner. Finally Chouji lost patience and began charging at the girl, only for her to swiftly dodge his every attack and create a comfortable distance between them once again.

"He still hasn't hit me yet! Maybe I can win this? But if I fight him he might hit me with one of those terrifying punches! If I come back with a black eye father will know that I lost! I don't want to do this. I want to quit! I want mother to comfort me!"

As the Hyuuga heiress continued her inner monologue of terror, the five minutes concluded with one severely out of breath Akimichi, panting on his knees and marveling at his inability to lay so much as finger on his opponent.

"Winner, Hyuuga Hinata!"

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Sorry for the abysmal shortness of this chapter. I wanted to turn SOMETHING in! I promise a proper chapter turned in by this weekend!