Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

"Shintenshin no Jutsu."

She felt her consciousness leave her body, and enter something. The reason behind "something" being that she didn't know where she was. Usually, a person's mind was supposed to reflect the normal climate of their thoughts. If the person was depressed, it'd be a dark blue to black landscape, whereas if there were more anxious thoughts, there'd be more red and purple. She'd have seen thoughts floating around here and there, and she'd be surrounded by a large expanse of open space, spreading out in all directions.

But wherever she was was nothing like that. She was in a sewer of sorts. There were pipes running down the length of the hallway, and as she turned around, she saw them leading out into a room. If she stepped out into the room, she'd be ankle deep in pure blue water. It was slightly lit at the end of it, and she could see the Nine-Tailed Fox, resting his head on his paws. And in front of the cage stood a man with unforgettable blond hair. So she was in the right place; did Kurama make his mindscape so different?

She carefully took a step into the water, and to her surprise, it was warm, and actually quite pleasant. As her feet sloshed through the water and she walked forward, Kurama opened his eyes, and she saw a huge eye with red irises and slits for pupils locked onto her. Fear gripped her, and she stopped walking. Naruto walked over to her, and grabbed her hand. He pulled her the rest of the way, and they stopped in front of the cage. She was beyond scared, still, but it didn't faze her when she was around Naruto.

"Kurama, this is my best friend Ino." He said proudly.

"You're the one the boy's always talking about, eh?"

"Aw, you talk about me with your friend?" She asked Naruto.

"Yes, always going on about Ino this, and Ino that." Kurama responded before Naruto could deny it. He did his best to glare at the fox, and he thankfully stopped talking there. "So you're here to see his memories, correct?"

"Yes… sir?" She said, unsure of what to call him.

"No need for that." He said simply. "It's been a while since I've come across a mindwalker."

"When was the last time?" She asked curiously.

"When I attacked the leaf 18 yea—19 years ago." He said, remembering it was Naruto's birthday today. "Tried to stop me with their jutsu."

"But they didn't make it out alive?" Ino asked.

"No, I killed them. Sorry." He said, though he added the apology as more of an afterthought.

"Oh, uh… um… why is his psyche different from normal?" She asked, desperate to change the subject.

"He was too happy as a child. When he visited me, I took that chance to decorate."

"And now look at you," Naruto cut in. "The physical form of hatred and evil is now friends with humans."

"Shut up!" Kurama spat.

"You're not very demonic for a demon." Naruto said, ignoring the fox's threat. Kurama had spent too much time arguing with him, and knew he wouldn't be able to stay mad, so he simply let out a small breath, and rested his head on his paws again.

"Go look at his memories." The fox said to her. She pulled on his hand, silently asking him to come with her. He shook his head.

"I don't want to come with you." He said.

"Why not?"

"I don't want to see them. Plus, they're something you should see alone."

"Where do I go?" She asked.

He pointed back to the way she came from. "If you go down that hallway, you'll reach a room."

She gave him one last meaningful look, and dragged her feet through the water. She kept her eyes focused on the light at the end of the corridor, trying to keep herself calm as her surroundings got darker and darker the further she got from Naruto.

She stepped into the corridor that she was in when she entered, and her legs felt like jelly. She had no idea what to expect with his memories. Her parents, who were some of the most kind-hearted people she knew, told her not to associate with him, so she couldn't imagine what other people thought of him.

She got closer and closer to the light, and she was starting to see where it was from. There were little red lanterns strung from the ceiling, each of them presumably holding memories from different times within his life. She touched the first one, and her hand stuck to it. Her eyes were closed by an invisible force, and suddenly she was in a dark room.

She couldn't move, so it felt like she was watching a movie from the first person. His body wracked slightly, and she wondered why he was crying. As if her thoughts had been heard, another memory started playing.

He was walking down the street, people giving him nasty glares and moving their kids as far as possible from him. She had no idea they blatantly bullied him. She thought that maybe they'd refused him service at their shop, or charged him slightly higher, but never this. Her disbelief only grew, however.

He stopped walking to look at the masks of a shop. The shop owner turned around, and, upon realizing just who was thinking about doing business with him, shoved Naruto to the ground. Anger filled Ino at the words that were spilling out of the shop owner's mouth. Naruto tried to reason with him that he simply wanted a mask, and the shopkeeper grabbed a mask and chucked it at Naruto's face. Her heart hurt seeing people be so cruel, especially to an innocent little boy. He looked around, and a crowd of people had gathered to see the commotion. He picked up his mask and ran home.

Then the memory changed, of one to him hopping through the trees. He started speaking in a low voice, obviously to himself. He was talking about how if he brought something back from one of the corpses, he'd finally have friends. She didn't know what that meant, but her heart broke even further hearing that he thought he had to go to these lengths to have friends. He found a knife, and took it. Soon a group of ninja found him and tried to get the knife from him. He refused to give it to them, and they tried to kill him. Heroically, Iruka-sensei came to save the day, and picked up Naruto, slinging him on his back. They were in even more trouble, and it seemed Iruka wouldn't be able to handle it, but Kakashi arrived and took care of the problem.

Another memory started playing, and it was inside a classroom. She was afraid she'd see her stupid self in this one, and, in all honesty, she wanted to stop watching his memories altogether, but she steeled herself. If Naruto had to experience all of this adversity without a shoulder to cry on, the least she could do was simply witness it without any ramifications.

The bell rang, and a few stragglers entered. Iruka walked in, and greeted them like normal. He told them to pull out a piece of paper, and asked them, if the moon were to crash into earth, who would they want to spend their last day with. He watched as other people began writing. He looked at his neighbor's paper, reading "my family". He looked down at his own paper, and still wrote nothing. He began folding it into a paper airplane, and Ino changed the memory, not wanting to watch anymore. She remembered when he did that. She thought he was being irritating as always, but she was wrong. He was hiding his pain with humor, hoping to get a laugh out of his classmates through a paper airplane. The first tear made its way down her cheek, and she asked to be expelled from that lantern.

Her eyes opened, and her finger was released from the lantern. Her breathing had become a little ragged, but she wouldn't let herself back down now. She moved onto the next lantern.

The first memory was outside. He was sitting on a swing, hanging from the branch of a tree. His gaze was on the large crowd of people standing by the academy. It looked like it was graduation day, and she remembered that he was the only one that hadn't passed. She never actually knew how he became a ninja, so she'd find out today.

Mizuki came up next to him, and she was immediately on her guard, remembering what Kakashi said all those years ago, about how he tricked Naruto on this very day. They went to a secluded spot to talk, and Mizuki told him that Iruka was hard on Naruto because he wanted Naruto to become strong, that he didn't want to see him fail.

He then told him about an alternate test, and told him where to find the scroll. The precision with which Naruto planned his burglary amazed her, as she hadn't known him to be someone who paid attention to details. His theft went flawlessly, until a guard was tipped off of his presence. He fled the scene before they could get a hold of him, but he was clearly seen taking the scroll.

He ran and ran, and found the spot where Mizuki sensei told him to meet him after stealing it. She wanted to scream at him, to tell him that their sensei was lying, but she couldn't. At least she had the comfort of knowing he came out of this alive. He learned Kage Bunshin no Jutsu surprisingly quickly, and he got the hang of it in less than an hour.

Iruka ran into the clearing that Naruto was reading the scroll in. She saw clearly the anger in his face upon seeing that the claim of his student being a felon was true. But it turned from anger to confusion when Naruto acted as if he did nothing wrong. But when he said Mizuki told him it was another way to pass, he went back to angry, though she knew it wasn't directed at the blond.

As she watched the whole scene, she realized that Kakashi left out some parts, like how Iruka actually put his life on the line to save Naruto. She got irritated hearing what Mizuki had to say about Naruto, and her ire grew to new heights until Iruka efended Naruto.

When Kakashi said Naruto produced "hundreds of clones", she was thinking it was sub-500, but she was sorely mistaken. She obviously couldn't count them all, but it was way past 500, and it seemed to be closer to a thousand. Her vision was obscured when they all charged at him, but she knew he was getting what he deserved.

She went through all his core memories until the present moment. At that point, the lanterns changed from red to multicolored. There were many different sized lanterns, but there was a row down the middle that was significantly larger than the others. She touched the first one, and received memories, and the feelings associated with them, of Teuchi, Ayame, and the Third; she touched the second, and saw memories of Sakura; then Sasuke; Kakashi; Shikamaru; Choji; the next one was the color of her hair, and she could only assume it was hers, so she skipped it; Asuma; Kiba; Shino; Hinata; Kurenai; Lee; Neji; Tenten; Gai; Kankuro; Temari; Gaara; Jiraiya; Itachi; Tsunade; Shizune; Minato; Nagato; Killer Bee; Naruto's mother; Obito; some old guy with eyes like Pain; and finally, her mother.

She knew she hadn't seen hers, but she wasn't ready to discover how he felt about her. She was at the end of the hallway, and began on her way back out, having intruded enough on his memories.

She walked through the water, and Naruto's head turned at the noise. That daunting red eye also found her, but she didn't let it stop her this time. He smiled as she reached him at the cage, and he noticed the tear streak on one of her cheeks.

"Crying?" He asked, teasingly.

"Your life wasn't sunshine and rainbows." She returned. He nodded with a faraway look in his eyes. Kurama snorted, and he was brought back to the present.

"Do you want to go now?" He asked. She nodded. "Kurama wants to try something."

"What?" She asked.

"Just say bye to him, and stand there."

She gave him a quizzical look, but obeyed anyway. "Bye Kurama." She said to the eye beyond the bars.

"Bye, blondie." He growled. An orange wave of chakra flew at her and she was thrown out of his body. They both woke up with Naruto still lying down on the couch, and Ino laying on his stomach. She sat up.

"What was that?" She asked.

"He wanted to see if he could expel people. He prevents genjutsu, so he was curious about this too."

She simply nodded. They sat in silence for a couple seconds before she got up, holding out her hand to help him up.

—

He was climbing onto his couch, getting ready to sleep, when she entered the living room.

"Oh, you're taking the couch?" She asked.

"Yeah. I'm not going to make you take it." He said.

"It's your bed, so why shouldn't I take the couch?"

"You're my guest."

"So I still hold the title of guest?" She teased.

"Well, no, but I'd take the couch for anyone who sleeps over. Even Ero-sennin." He said. He smiled at the thought of his late sensei, until Ino's complaints interrupted him.

"I don't want to take the bed." She said firmly.

"Why are you so set on taking the couch? You were like this at Teuchi-san's too."

"I don't know. I can't have someone else suffering at my luxury."

He sighed, knowing she wouldn't back down. He simply wanted to go to sleep, and he wouldn't complain if he got to sleep in his bed. He'd been contemplating asking her to share the bed with him, but he thought she wouldn't agree; but now it seemed like a great idea, considering neither wanted the other on the couch. "How about we share? Like at Teuchi-san's." He suggested.

Her face lit up, and she leaned down to grab his arms and drag him off the couch. "Yeah, that's a great idea."

They headed to the room together, and got in his bed one after the other. She arranged them in much the same way as when they were at Teuchi's, except her head was closer to his nose. He could smell her shampoo, identifying a mix of lavender and coconut. All he wanted at that moment was to kiss her head, and he realized it was much like the way she kissed his forehead. He closed his eyes, analyzing all of their interactions from that day, and he began to question his earlier assessment. Maybe he did have a chance.