Chapter 5

Author: Thank you for all of your comments and suggestions Tristan76, I'll be looking back at my previous chapters to make sure that everything seems in order. Also thanks to SIIKIH36 for all of your reviews so far. But no, Ino was not the one who died. I had a lot of hits for the last chapter. Over 1 thousand! Whoa.

Naruto smirked. He wiped away the steam that had fogged up the mirror in his small bathroom of the apartment. He adjusted the goggles sitting on his head and turned to leave the bathroom, but then he saw a tiny glimmer of steel sitting on the edge of the sink's countertop.

Setting down his green goggles, he picked up the headband and tied its blue sash around his head.

Smiling with glee, he jabbed his thumb against the leaf symbol for Konohagakure no Sato.

It's about damn time.

Naruto sat in Yamanaka-san's office, his eyes shooting back and forth with brows narrowed heavily underneath the headband that he washed and shined. He was happy to be a graduate from the academy, but also grumpy because he was waiting on his bi-monthly check up with Yamanaka-san. It was always a tedious thing these mental health examinations. The one reason why it was bearable was because from time to time he would get a glimpse of the blue-eyed Yamanaka girl, Inoichi's young daughter Ino. After all of this time, Naruto still had yet to really speak to her. Sure, she was in his class and he had ample opportunities to go up to her and tell her how he felt, but he always became so nervous and clammed up whenever he was speaking to her. Even worse, he noticed that she had taken a liking to Sasuke, and, still trying to maintain some sort of friendship with the dark-haired Uchiha, Naruto reluctantly backed off.

And what does that bastard do? He blows her off. No, not just Ino! Sakura and several other girls, too!

Naruto was furious the first time he gave them that disinterested glance and smirked, saying they looked like fools, all wasting their time on a foolish thing like love. And then the girls, instead of realizing he was acting like a dirt bag, they just fell deeper for his unintentional trap. Naruto couldn't believe how much of a moron the Uchiha was sometimes, but he figured maybe the boy was suffering from brain damage after the terrible loss he suffered at the hands of his own brother. The terrifying story made Naruto sort of glad that he had no family, sometimes. Only sometimes.

But if love was foolish, then Naruto was born a fool, because love was the only thing that was really important to him, though he wasn't sure he knew what it really was in the first place.

"Uzumaki. Come on out in the lobby, son." Naruto looked up when he heard Yamanaka Inoichi's voice call for him. He stood up from his chair inside of the office where he was waiting for Yamanaka-san again before they would head outside underneath a tree behind the complex. It was less private, but Inoichi insisted that they speak with plenty of air to breathe in to get their lungs going, saying that it was healthy for them.

Naruto stood up without saying a word and continued with routine. He would step outside, they would talk for about thirty minutes, he'd go inside and speak with the nurse and they'd run a few physical tests and he'd have to answer some more questions and then he'd have a five minute session with Ibiki, who now took to teaching Naruto short lessons that would better prepare him for any time he may one day spend under interrogation. Apparently there was a way of being able to tell if the person conducting the torture was serious about using various tactics or not or if he, was in, fact soft.

When Naruto stepped out, however, he saw that Yamanaka-san wasn't alone. Right beside him was his young blonde daughter.

"Ino-san." Naruto greeted, respectfully.

Ino smiled, as did her father. "Hi Naruto-kun." She always called him that.

They were friends. For Ino, the awe had worn off after she had become a shinobi. Sure, she had a little crush on him and she may have liked to get to know him better, but he was always so reserved. He kept to himself and spent most of his time training to become stronger or going through different evaluations here and there. It was odd, she thought, because the only other person who her daddy saw was Uchiha Sasuke, that cute boy from her class who lost his family due to his crazy brother who had apparently flipped and killed everyone but his little brother.

He gave off a bit of bad-boy vibe and Ino liked it, but the real reason why she had even sought any of his attention was due to a silly dispute between her and her friend Haruno Sakura several years ago. By now, it was a fuzzy memory, but from time to time Ino would look back on some things she wrote for herself to try and remember so that she didn't lose sight of where her own decisions came from. She kept a small diary hidden behind the headboard of her purple-colored bed.

Naruto, on the other hand, was a sunny ball of energy in the classroom that liked to play pranks and mess with people. But she knew from his visits with her daddy that he was so different outside of the class. He became seemed so dense and unaware in class, but outside of it he was sharp and intelligent, witty when he spoke rather than biting and sarcastic, and sometimes he even impressed her father enough that he would often praise the boy when they were sitting together with her mom for supper.

Inoichi smiled and pat his young daughter on her shoulder and pressed her forward gently. "I know you both have met, but the two of you haven't really gotten to know each other, have you?"

Naruto nodded, "We are…" he laughed, "Well, we were classmates."

Ino smiled hesitantly. Naruto caught onto the awkward smile and gave a knowing smile back. "We didn't speak much in class, but you know, I was so busy trying to graduate this year since I failed the past two exams that I really kind of became a shut-in in class."

Inoichi nodded, the look on his face giving something away, but what Naruto wasn't quite sure. Maybe he was giving less info than he let on about his intentions for bringing his daughter in today.

"Perhaps the two of you can spend some time together training? I know that Ino is looking for a test subject for the new jutsu she just learned," At this, Ino looked up immediately and smiled softly at the young blond boy in front of her, while Inoichi continued speaking, "And you could probably use some experience with the mind of a kunoichi so that you're better prepared when you encounter one."

Oblivious, Naruto furrowed his brow and asked, "There's a difference between facing a Kunoichi and a male ninja?"

Inoichi's smile grew wide, and he shook his head yes and began walking back toward his office. "Your check up is cleared until October 11th. Have fun you two."

They watched him as he shut the door behind him and Ino immediately turned back to look at Naruto and a weird silence crept over them as Naruto tried to fish for words to say in his flip-flopping memory bank. Something about a black cat crossing his path made him think of Kakashi briefly, so he just asked the first thing that popped into his head after that.

"So how's your jonin sensei?" Naruto asked, grinning.

Ino shrugged, "He's pretty annoying, but so are Shika and Chouji."

Naruto nodded as he thought of all of the quarrels he had with not only Sasuke but Sakura as well. The two of them were insufferable sometimes and when they were both angry with him it was even worse. Neither one of them wanted to train with one another, so Naruto had to try and learn what he could from the brief lectures that Kakashi gave and the multitude of D-rank missions that they were completing. Even worse, Naruto had only learned the first jutsu in the scroll of sealing, which he still carried around with him every day.

Kage bunshin no jutsu was an interesting technique that allowed him to produce clones that could attack and take a hit before being expelled. He was only able to summon sixteen clones, meaning that he was nowhere near the Taju Kage bunshin no jutsu, which was the one actually sealed into the scroll. Supposedly, one was capable of summoning a thousand clones that could attack simultaneously, on their own, with the caster of the jutsu able to sneak in and conceal himself within the clones to get the hits that mattered while his clones peppered the target. Naruto, unfortunately, could not gather enough chakra and after the twenty-fifth seal performed, he noticed that his chakra was suddenly being zapped with no explanation. Whatever it was, he only ended up unconscious once. After that first time, he learned from his mistake and stopped pushing so hard after he felt that strange pulling sensation at the pit of his stomach.

"So you learned a new jutsu?" Naruto asked with sincere interest.

Ino nodded. "Yeah, it's a Yamanaka style technique that takes over the body of another person. My dad was joking about me needing a test subject. I can't possibly ask you to let me use the jutsu on you."

Naruto smirked. "Will it kill me?"

The girl looked at him in surprise. She never thought anything like that could happen. Was it possible that the jutsu would mess up and he would die from it, or worse yet, both of them would? Ino shook her head slowly, not totally sure when she said, "I don't think so."

He stifled a chuckle, "Well, then maybe it'll do me some good. C'mon, we should go to one of the training areas. There a place that you feel more comfortable with?"

Ino shook her head, "We can go wherever. It doesn't matter."

They left the interrogation department where Yamanaka-san's office was and Ibiki's sadistic self worked, and it took them both about thirty minutes to make the walk from the building to training field number four, which was a little further away from the main roads of the village, actually nearer its outskirts than anything else. As they were walking, the noticed a small white snake making a hole underneath a rock as they walked into the forested area. Naruto stopped for a second to look, then smirked when Ino made a face.

On their walk, Naruto looked around and couldn't see them, but he knew the usual small group of shinobi were constantly keeping tabs on him and they followed him even though there hasn't been a single attempt on his life. He wasn't scared of anything happening anymore, because he felt relatively safe in the village with all of the protection that it offered. Heck, his sensei was one of the strongest ninja around, and he knew that he was always keeping an eye on him. So, again, Naruto felt he had nothing to worry about.

Naruto and Ino spoke with one another about their annoying teammates and some of the missions that they had done. They also started talking about Ino's family and what they did on the side when her father was not in the interrogation department, and Naruto was surprised to find out that her family was the one that owned the one story flower shop with the greenhouse next door to it. Apparently, the family had a long tradition of floral arrangement, and everyone, whether they married into the family or were born into the family had to learn how to develop the skill. Inoichi met Oroi, Ino's mother, during a civilian class that he was brought on to teach about floral arrangements. They argued over the correct arrangement to use when celebrating a baby's birth, and very soon after that, young Oroi became pregnant with Ino.

Naruto sat down on the grass as Ino explained how her parents met. He pulled the large scroll from its place, slung on his back and placed it on the ground before him.

"… you know, so they didn't get to marry until I was two years old. I'm in their wedding pictures that they took. I was wearing a real pretty purple kimono that was a smaller duplicate of my mom's."

"Do you still have it?"

"Not all of it. We scrap-booked it last year, actually."

Naruto blinked. "Huh. So you cut it up?"

Ino nodded. "Yeah… so anyways, do you want to do some training?"

Naruto smirked, nodding affirmatively. "Hit me with your best shot. Let's take a look at this new jutsu."

"You know, you spooked me when you asked me if you could die from it… I'm really not sure. I've never heard of that happening to anyone unless the user forced the body that's taken over into a dangerous situation… like maybe jumping off the faces of that mountain over there." She pointed up to the Hokage monument.

Naruto gulped. "Well… don't do that to me, promise?" He looked warily at the blonde who just grinned mischievously, making Naruto nervous while he sat there to just take the jutsu.

"Are you ready?" She asked, but before Naruto could back out of it, she formed several seals and then ended with the Yamanaka special seal which looked as if she were using her hands to frame a picture for a drawing.

"Uh… Ino, hang on!" Naruto said, starting to stand when he saw the flare of chakra lick the grass around them.

Suddenly, Naruto's eyes closed and his head was unable to keep itself up. He stayed like that for a few moments when a soft thud was heard as Ino's body slumped lifeless to the ground. Naruto's eyes opened then, and he looked up.

Ino used Naruto's eyes to look at his palms up close. "This is always so crazy… wow, I can't believe I'm actually controlling him."

Ino smirked and looked over at her body as it lay in the grass. She looked at it inquisitively and began walking over to it. She knelt down beside her body and pulled her head into her lap and stroked away a few strands of hair from the front of her body's face.

She didn't know why, but she found the concept of this out-of-her-own-body experience as something miraculous. In fact, how was it even possible? She now knew that she wanted to learn more about her lineage and the techniques, chakra and customs that came with it.

As she sat there on her knees, looking down, she heard a small rustle behind her and turned just as two wet-sounding splats reached her ears. On the floor lay masks smeared with blood with lifeless bodies attached to them, necks contorted sickeningly like a wet rag that was twisted around over and over again.

Ino shook in Naruto's body, but she instinctively held onto her own little shell as a disturbingly wicked presence appeared before them.

At first, Ino thought she saw the eyes of a snake. She shivered when a hissing laugh broke the silence that came after the death of the two ANBU shinobi that were on watch. Holding an umbrella in the middle of the day was a man wearing a jonin flak vest with long black hair and sharp cheek bones. He looked like he was made out of scales made out of ivory. His eyes were lined in purple with paint running down the sides of his nose in sharp points that gave him a very serpent-like appearance.

"A Namikaze and a Yamanaka. And the scroll of sealing… how… ridiculously convenient."

He cackled throatily, crouching down until he was at eye-level with Naruto. Ino looked into his golden eyes with those snake pupils and her jutsu suddenly dispelled. When she woke up, Naruto was holding her body away from the white-skinned man and was fixing him with a dangerous looking glare of his own as he sat there on one knee, his whole body defying the demon that had happened upon them.

Orochimaru's smile widened slowly, sinisterly as he laughed in a strange way. It made Naruto's nose wrinkle as he seemed to begin to snarl. "Huhuhu… How interesting this has become. Normally the prey doesn't have eyes like these." He said in his self-indulgent voice while Naruto's scowl deepened.

Clouds had begun to swirl around the area and a trickle of rain fell upon them as the man neared them. Looking at his umbrella as she lay back against Naruto's chest with her arms tucked in, she thought, Looks like he knows something we don't.

Ino closed her eyes and prayed that lightning wouldn't strike with the rain.

tbc