Chapter 2: A Girl Named Ino Yamanaka

A young girl was currently playing with her best friend in the park.

They were just having basic kid fun, pushing each other on the swing sets, playing tag, and more.

The girl was currently play-choking her best friend, as they were now just playfully wrestling.

"Whacha gonna do, heh, Sakura-Chan?" She asked her friend.

Her friend just tried pushing her off but was too weak to do so, so after a little more time had passed, she tapped out.

After feeling and hearing the tap, the young girl let go of her friend and then both just dropped down and sat on the ground.

As they were sitting down, the young girl's best friend, Sakura, told the young girl

"You've got quite a strong grip there."

"I know" the young girl replied with a smile.

The name of this young girl, was Ino Yamanaka.

(Ino age: 5)

After telling Sakura this, Ino just laid down on the ground and started looking at all the clouds that were forming. After a good minute or so of watching the clouds, Ino, without turning her attention away from the clouds, asked Sakura

"Sakura-Chan, do you think we'll be friends forever?"

Sakura just looked at her friend, smacked her forehead, and yelled

"Of course you dummy!"

Ino simply rubbed the spot that Sakura smacked and with her head still turned towards the ground, she smiled.

"Great!" She shouted before standing up and turning to look at Sakura. "Then that means we're best friends no matter what!"

Sakura simply stood up and loudly replied to this with

"You bet!"

And like that, both embraced before playing a game of tag together again.

(Two Hours Later)

After two hours of playing tag, both Sakura and Ino were tired and were about to head home, when something else caught their attention.

It happened right as soon as they left the park, Ino saw the boy she liked, just walking through the streets, only problem that she didn't know at the time was that Sakura liked him too. She learned this the hard way when she heard her best friend shout

"Sasuke-Kun!" While waving her hand back and forth,

The boy who she shouted at paid her no attention at all and kept walking throufh the streets.

As soon as the boy left their line of sight, Sakura's hand fell to her side, upset and down, as the boy she had a crush on still didn't pay any attention to her.

"Well... that's sucks" Sakura said before dropping her head in sadness.

When she raised her head up again though and turned to look at her friend, Ino, she saw that the young Yamanaka had a strange look on her face.

She looked both hurt, bothered, and confused.

So Sakura asked her

"What's wrong Ino-Chan?"

"Y-you like Sasuke, Sakura?" Ino asked her best friend.

"Yeah, why?" She asked.

"No reason" she replied before looking at the ground and thinking this through. 'Me and Sakura, my best friend, like the same boy, what do I do?'

Sakura easily was able to realize that Ino was lying and that she was hiding something, so she told her

"Come on Ino-Chan, you know you can tell me anything. So tell me, what's really wrong?"

"But that's the thing, I can't tell you, because I don't know how you're gonna take it, and what's worse, you might hate me because of it."

Sakura just walked up to Ino, hugged her, and then told her

"I could never hate you" before separating herself from Ino and then again, asking her "So tell me, what's really bothering you."

"Okay, fine" Ino replied before taking deep breaths in order to compose herself and get it off her chest. "So, Sakura-Chan."

She paused after this.

"Yes" Sakura responded after Ino's sudden pause.

"Okay? Well Sakura-Chan, I really like Sasuke too" Ino confessed.

Just hearing this caused Sakura's initial smile to turn upside down and then turn into a scowl before angrily saying

"What?"

"I know, you like him too, but so do I and I just don't know what to do right now."

"Well sorry to say it Ino, but there isn't anything you can do, because he's going to be mine and that's final"

Ino gasped at what Sakura just said, not that Sasuke would be hers, but the fact that Sakura no longer added the honorific of -Chan- to her name.

"Sakura-Chan."

"Don't say that. Don't call me Sakura-Chan, don't call me Chan, don't call me anything."

"But Sakura-Chan, we just said we wouldn't let anything get in the way of our friendship" Ino pointed out.

"That was before I knew you were crushing on my future husband you... Ino-Pig!" She yelled angrily.

Ino was clearly very hurt by this and so she angrily replied with

"Fine then... Forehead!"

The second that word left Ino's mouth, Sakura yelled out

"That it, I don't wanna be your friend anymore and from here on out, we're rivals!"

"Alright then, that's fine with me!" Ino replied with an equally loud yell.

Sakura just gnashed her teeth at this, but then ran off.

Once Sakura left her view, all Ino had to think was

'It's best that happened, she would've only gotten in my way of me getting with my Sasuke-Kun anyways.'

She shook off the initial feeling of anger and replaced it with determination, determination to get with her Sasuke, and prove to Sakura that she was the better girl.

So she rushed home as fast as possible.

(One Hour Later)

Ino's father, Inoichi, was currently about to set up the closed sign for his family's flower shop and then head to his room in the shop when he heard what sounded like his daughter shout

"Daddy, don't lock the doors yet!"

And turned to see his young daughter sprinting as fast as possible to get inside the store before he locked the doors.

"Why were you running so much?" Inoichi asked.

"B-because" Ino stammered with pants. "I, w-was running f-from."

"Okay stop right there" Inoichi told her. "Sit down and take a breather, then you can explain everything to me."

"Okay" she replied before sitting down and catching her breath.

After about five minutes, she caught her breath and explained everything to her father, and after she did, all Inoichi could do was shake his head in disappointment.

Ino could see the disappointment in her father's face and so she asked him

"Daddy, why do you look so disappointed?"

Inoichi just stopped shaking his head and just told her

"Because I am disappointed, for more than one reason."

"In who, me or Sakura?" Ino asked.

"Both of you" he replied. "I mean for starters, you both stopped being friends over a boy... a boy."

"She was the one who wanted it not me" Ino reasoned.

"That may be true, but it's to be expected, her parents are both drama queens with nothing else better to do in the world. You on the other hand, I was expecting for you to find a way around that, a way to stop her from acting like that around you."

"I tried daddy, believe me. She and I were friends for a whole year, how was I supposed to know that today, I would find out that we were both crushing on the same boy?"

"Which leads me to the second reason I'm upset in both of you" Inoichi started.

"Huh? What do you mean?" Ino asked.

"I'm upset that you guys stopped being friends over a boy, but even more upset that it was over the Uchiha of all kids" Inoichi said.

"What are you talking about?" She asked. "There's nothing wrong with Sasuke?"

Inoichi just facepalmed at this and said

"I can already tell from that simple response of yours that you don't know the kid, at all, because if you did, you'd know that he's bad news."

"How, what could he have done?" She asked him.

"Oh boy, where do I start?" Inoichi began with a starch and a sigh, knowing that the long list of horrible things the Uchiha had done was going to take a while to list entirely.

He didn't get to explain though, because as soon as Ino heard her father, she sighed and went to her room not interested in what he had to say.

"What's the matter, you don't wanna hear what that little devil has been doing all this time?" He asked his daughter.

"No, I'm just not interested in hearing the many pointless lies that you're gonna say about my future husband!" She shouted before going into her room and slamming her door.

"Can't say I didn't expect that" Inoichi said before sighing at how arrogant and stubborn his daughter could be. "She's still young, so I hope she gets over this little crush on that Uchiha, because if she doesn't, I worry for her."

Inoichi was then about to walk over to his own room and rest for the rest of the day, even though it was still 5 PM.

However, Noriko, Ino's mom, wandered into the room and asked her husband

"What were you going to say?"

You see, Noriko wasn't a ninja, she was a regular citizen who fell in love with and married one of the elite ninjas in Konoha. So she was completely oblivious to the many horrible things that Inoichi was gonna say, which is why she wanted to hear it.

Inoichi realized this and knew that Noriko had a right to know, as she was his wife and Ino's mom, so he let out a deep breath started to speak.

"The kid is obsessed with power" he started. "He wants to grow stronger and stronger, and I didn't realize just how badly he wanted to, till a couple of weeks ago."

"What do you mean?" Ino's mom asked.

"One day I was just walking through Konoha when out of the corner of my eye, I saw that boy accidentally bump into another boy. As soon as he bumped into the other boy, he immediately apologized and bowed his head. However, as soon as he did that, the boy just out of pure anger, pushed him to the ground and yelled at him for being an idiot. Sasuke got back up and again, apologized to the boy and tried to de-escalate the situation, but before he could, the boy went for a punch, which landed directly in Sasuke's chin, and knocked him down. As soon as he got hit, Sasuke got back up, and hit the boy back, which led to a fight between the two of them, which Sasuke won."

Noriko so far didn't sense anything bad about Sasuke and was about to ask her husband what was so wrong about defending himself, when he continued on.

"After he won, he had this strange look in his eyes. I don't know how to describe it but it was as if he had an epiphany, but I didn't know what about. That was until literally just a day later, I understood that the look he had on his face and the epiphany he had, was because that one encounter made him realize how much he loved hurting others."

Noriko's eyes widened at this.

"What are you talking about?" She asked.

"You see, just a day after his victory over that little kid, I saw him intentionally picking fights with other kids, some smaller and some bigger, and beating them badly with every time worse than the last."

Noriko was shocked to hear this, but her husband continued on.

"In short, that one fight turned the kid into some sort of psychopath, and I don't want Ino anywhere near him, for fear of how he will treat her if he does happen to accept her" Inoichi continued on. "As long as I'm alive, I'm gonna do anything I can to protect my little girl, and if that means distancing her from that kid then so be it."

After saying this, Inoichi walked out of his house, just to clear his mind from everything he told his wife.

'I really hope she gets over this little crush of hers, because if she doesn't, I'm afraid of what will happen to her' he thought while walking.

To Be Continued...


Author's Note:

Is this modified chapter two better than the original? Cuz to be honest, I was just trying to rush through it the first time and wasn't very proud of it myself, so please give me some feedback.