Chapter 7

Three minutes. She counted each second off and after a short walk to the great wall of the village she figured she had about three minutes left. There was no way she could go past three minutes. She'd run out of chakra then. She'd collapse from exhaustion or maybe even die if she tried to push it anymore.

Before Orochimaru opened up a secret entrance to the wall, she noticed that directly behind them was an old mural for the deceased from one of the earlier wars before the last one a little under twenty years ago.

As she and Orochimaru walked through the dark tunnels hidden within the wall of the village, they quickly came to a ramp which lead them straight down several basement levels deep into the ground. When they came out into the open, Ino saw a light at the end, dim and green, with a scent coming from deep within the abyss that reminded her of putrid waste like that of a septic tank.

At that moment, she saw Naruto standing in the middle of the darkness looking away from her with his left arm over his chest as he gripped his other arm with the tips of his fingers.

"Naruto?" Ino ran up to him in her own body and then began to walk around to try and see his face. She must have entered his mind's breadth.

He turned away, his head ducking down low. "No, don't..."

Ino furrowed her brows, but reached up to him and gripped his shoulders gently, pressing into his back to try and console him with there-there's and coos, but the young man only continued to watch his feet and the ground that was obscured by shadows.

At his reluctance, an idea came to her to get Naruto to look at her, but it triggered a memory earlier this month of some time spent together with her father and a story that, whether she knew it or not, would alter her path by a single degree and utterly morph her ultimate destination.

Three weeks ago, Yamanaka Ino sat together with her father as he showed her the potential of the Shintenshin no jutsu, or the mind-body-transfer technique, and other techniques of their clan. He snatched up the body of a red fox as it crept around their fence, searching for rabbit. Taking control of the small animal without leaving his body, Inoichi brought the fox up close and waved his fingers in front of it. At first it seemed tense and frightened, terribly confused about its current predicament as it had no say as to where it was heading. When it stood before them, as Inoichi poured some chakra into the small fox, it calmed and Ino blushed happily as she reached over and pet it, much to its delight. It mewled and yipped softly in her arms as she picked the small thing up to hold it close before her father took it and set it back down on the floor in front of them.

Afterwards, the young fox circled around the two playfully when her father let it go, no longer controlling the fox, and Ino enjoyed trying to scare it off only for it to return to them and edge in close as if it were going to pounce on them. Its hairs stood up on end on the back of its neck but its fangs were not bared and it pawed at them playfully.

When the fox finally left, ready to head home, the two Yamanakas were about to stand when Inochi suddenly had an interesting story and test for his young daughter. "Ino, Ino, hang on a second. Sit back down, please."

Ino nodded and sat down beside him, smiling with a confused look on her face. "Is there something else we need to go over?"

"Well, now that you see how powerful this advanced jutsu was, I want to just say that you should practice your Shintenshin while you're working your way up to the Shinranshin. Now, I want you to take a good look at this." He turned and reached into his kunai pouch and retrieved a folded sheet. It looked like a mirror shaped like a paper-fan.

Ino took a closer look when he handed the precious looking heirloom to her, and caressed it gently in her slim hands. "It's… a mirror? And a fan? Why? We're not Uchiha."

Inochi smirked, nodding in agreement. "You're quite right about that. No, Ino, we're not Uchiha but our roots are intertwined with theirs… kind of like a pair of plants growing too close!" He said, holding up one finger as he nodded, happy with his metaphor. "For the longest time, the Uchiha and the Senju have been rivals and even bitter enemies, and did very many terrible things to one another."

Ino listened intently, but her eyes were still focused on the glittering light of the beautiful fan in her hands. She couldn't believe he just had it in his kunai pouch, how reckless could a guy be? Worse off, it's my own dumb dad. She rolled her eyes at his carelessness.

"When the Shodai founded Konohagakure and gave four particular clans the honorable name "the four pillars" of the village, the wars were starting to die down compared to how vicious and useless they used to be. Battles were still fought daily, even among clans here in Konoha when there were disputes, but the Shodai was a strong leader and Konoha did not see much uprising back then."

"But a long time ago," said Inochi, reaching over and extending his palm outward. Ino placed the mirror back in his grasp and he immediately opened it in front of her and shined the light directly onto her face as it reflected off of the mirror. "A very long time ago, when the Uchiha were a travelling group of mercenaries that fought bitterly with their enemies while the Senju settled in various places throughout the shinobi world, the Yamanaka clan became a ward of the Uchiha."

Ino was taken aback. She had no idea that their Yamanaka and Uchiha clans were at once connected long ago. She found herself looking at the glass fan that was made with so many sheets of glass that it folded perfectly and somehow maintained a perfect surface, clear of any scratches. The reflective material almost seemed to be of something much more precious than glass, but it certainly had very similar properties.

"So, we were mercenaries together with them?"

"Yes. Our clan was small compared the Uchiha's, which grew to the tremendous size of nearly a hundred separate families that all travelled together. The Yamanakas were much fewer… there was probably around six or so families and our blood was always mixing and people were often leaving the group to stay in various places, but the few that stayed with the Uchiha were loyal, but relatively weak when compared to their powerful masters."

Ino looked back into the fan and saw her eyes staring back at her, pupil-less and strange. She sometimes felt self conscious about them simply because they were so different from anyone else's. The only other group of people that she could relate to was the Hyuga, and maybe that Yuhi Kurenai who was a new jonin instructor this year.

"So what happened? I know that there's only Sasuke left here in the village, but before the murders how did the Uchiha and the Yamanakas drift apart."

Inochi grinned. "Well, that's another story altogether! But first, let me finish this one and maybe we can move onto that when you understand why I'm showing you this fan."

Ino looked at the fan and nodded slowly. She was curious too, especially because she was so enthralled by it.

"The glass fan is an heirloom that was passed down from Yamanaka to Yamanaka and sometimes not only to one's offspring. It's travelled a long way for it to come to me. I earned it on a mission together with Shikaku and Chouza when I was younger, and my great uncle who was about seventy at the time passed it down to me instead of my older brother or one of his own sons or grandsons."

Ino raised her eyebrows, "So this might have ended up with our cousins who moved to the capitol?"

"Hah, well, probably. But they aren't shinobi, so I might have been able to bargain for it."

Ino rolled her eyes. Her father would, too. "So, anyways, where did this fan come from? And why is it made out of glass?"

Inochi folded up the fan and then flicked his wrist out and opened it up once more in a swift, fluid motion. "The Uchiha often used their eyes for very twisted and devilish things, and as their wards, oftentimes the Yamanakas would feel the brunt of their anger whenever they lost out to the Senju. We had become something akin to slaves for a time, and the violent, particularly morbid ways of the Uchiha left our numbers dwindling."

"But just as it seemed like our own masters and allies were through with us and were ready to be rid of us, the strongest Yamanaka to ever be born became a shinobi."

Ino was quiet, waiting for him to say more.

"So many generations ago. I would have to go get the scroll with our family tree on it to explain just how far it goes back."

"Who was he?"

"She was a woman named Inotsuyoi."

Ino's eyes seemed to sparkle then, much like the glass. "She was… a woman?"

Her father smiled. "A very beautiful, darling woman if any of the old stories are to be trusted. And she was known to be very tall and very kind."

"She sounds great… wait, why did such a beautiful woman have to become a shinobi?"

Inoichi arched a brow, smirking. "Well, why are you doing it, pumpkin?"

The young girl blushed, "I… uh. I'm still trying to figure that out, I guess…"

Her father leaned in and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "Ino, don't ever limit yourself. Yes, you're beautiful… no, gorgeous, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't do something that doesn't "seem to suit you", ok? I'm a grown man and I have very long hair, in a pony-tail no less, and I love gardening... You know how hard it is for a young man to grow up being called the sissy who likes to play with daffodils and sunflowers?"

Ino chuckled, "It does make you sound like a total wuss!"

Her father gave her a playful scowl, "Well, I'm not, you hear! Now, as I was saying, Inotsuyoi, who had developed her Yamanaka abilities and jutsu at a very young age, had become a shinobi and spent most of her time on missions that helped to extend the Uchiha's reach in the land. The Uchiha had even recruited the very large Inuzuka clan at the time and they would go and collect taxes from various settlements, as well as sign contracts to take down particular people or groups. One day though, the Uchiha's strongest warrior confronted Inotsuyoi, who he had only met that same day, and said that he had picked her to marry him. She smiled gracefully and gave him a soft look and told him 'no', and it made the Uchiha furious that the lesser of their two wards would dare deny any of their requests."

"When the Uchiha came back to Inotsuyoi and repeated his offer, this time as a harsh demand, she stood up and faced him."

Ino gulped, listening intently as she leaned forward. "Where does the fan come in?"

"I'm getting to that… and so, she stepped up to him and looked down into his eyes and said clearly, I will not wed you, and then began to turn away, but immediately afterward he activated his powerful eyes and went in for his attack, intending to kill her if she wouldn't give herself to him."

"What, why?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe the man was mentally imbalanced, although sometimes I felt like a lot of Uchiha were due to their very volatile blood. They haven't changed much since when I was a kid, and I bet that even Sasuke is very much like his old ancestors in that he is very violent and without restraint somewhere deep inside."

"I don't know, he seems pretty level-headed to me for someone who just lost his whole clan overnight."

Inoichi nodded. "Right… I suppose you're right."

He grinned, "Anyways, the Yamanaka never beat the Uchiha's eye. No matter how good they became, that eye always left them in a tight spot. It could capture each of their movements, copy them, anticipate their next ones, and figure out counters before the rest of their bodies could even react. The Uchiha were the strongest clan within the three of their nomadic group because of the higher advantage of their kekkai genkai, though there were often better fighters or sneakier sneaks within the Inuzuka and the Yamanaka."

"But Inotsuyoi developed a powerful ability that since then has not shown up in any other family within the clan since. She never used it offensively, but whenever an Uchiha tried to use his powerful eye genjutsu on her, she was able to trap them in their own technique and then immediately use a variation of shintenshin that would allow her to control the Uchiha's dreams as their own powerful eye techniques forced them to immediately fall asleep. Using him in his dream state, the beautiful Inotsuyoi proposed to the ugliest woman in the Uchiha clan using her would-be suitor's body and even sat through most of the brief wedding ceremony a few weeks later before finally freeing him."

Ino stared on in disbelief. "That is so messed up… so she made him marry a really ugly person?" She started to laugh.

"Well, honestly, ugly Uchihas are few and far in between, but I guess she was more plain than some of the rest of them." Inochi chuckled, "But that's not what is important. Humiliated, the most powerful of the Uchiha at that time and the leader of their clan went into hiding with his blushing bride and fathered several children as a farmer in a small community in the Uchiha's territory."

"Inotsuyoi became known as the woman with no eyes. In fact, it was said that she had only a pair of small mirrors that resembled them, because when an Uchiha looked her in the eye it was always the Uchiha who felt the effects of the clan's powerful dojutsu, and never she. Her talents and abilities didn't end there. Becoming a great blacksmith and studying in one of the sacred places under the cobalt tarantula summon's guidance, she made this glass-like mirror out of the tarantula's silk and handed it down to the youngest Yamanaka child that was traveling with the Uchihas at the time. In fact, a close niece of hers..."

When Ino tumbled out of the dream scape and stepped through a narrow doorway behind Orochimaru, she stood and looked up into the glass of a full-sized incubation pod. Confused, she tried to peer inside, but Orochimaru chided her as she possessed the boy's body and told her to keep walking.

When Orochimaru turned around, Ino had just finished the two minute mark and she could feel the incredible drain of her chakra on her system. It felt like her spiritual body was detaching itself from Naruto, but she held on. As she continued to follow him, he suddenly turned and told Naruto to wait there, and stepped through a door on one of the sides of the long hallway. Ino immediately withdrew a kunai from Naruto's kunai pouch, glad he was carrying his with him, and after squashing away any killer intent she might've emitted she turned Naruto's body around before digging the kunai into the skin of his left arm and drawing directions with it using the tip of her knife. All the while, she grit her teeth and lowered her head, trying to ignore the pain as she listed them as specific as possible.

Not sure if it was going to work, Ino's etching on his skin wrought an incredible amount of pain. When she heard footsteps, she stopped and turned her head to look at Orochimaru who glared, seeing the glint of the kunai and the blood dripping from it.

"What are you doing, gaki?" Orochimaru spat, demanding an answer from Naruto.

In Naruto's place, Ino just shook her head, "Nothing."

"Let me see. Turn around."

Ino smirked, turning Naruto's body around and showed him the bleeding arm.

"What the hell is that, paint? Don't fool with me, you ugly little brat."

Ino looked confused and looked down at Naruto's arm, only to see that the directions were no longer there. In fact, there were no cut marks whatsoever.

"Who are you calling ugly. Apparently you spend a lot of time in the mirror."

Orochimaruto turned back around after taking a few steps away and crept up to Ino, glaring at her suspiciously. "You have been speaking strangely ever since you came back... I wonder why that is?"

"You must be a great listener."

The sannin snarled.

When Inoichi and Oroi stepped into the house, the last thing they expected to see was Ino bleeding on the sofa as lines began appearing mysteriously on her arm. He sent his wife after some bandages, a cloth and some disinfectant while he pulled his shirt up to wipe away the blood and get a good look of the map which was drawn to lead him to her.

After memorizing the map, he immediately ran outside when Oroi returned and left her to tend for their daughter while he ran as fast as he could to the Hokage's office to inform their leader of the word written at the very bottom in very large print: Orochimaru.

tbc

Author: Thanks for reading. Review if you liked it! If I get enough reviews, I may make changes to the story or cover more about a particular part of it that might not be given enough time normally. Just let me know, and Happy Easter!

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Mos