Death of a Phantom
There is a thin line between love and hate, and one could say that they are the strongest, and in their true raw forms, they are even fatal.
Poison, even.
And Ino Yamanaka had poison running through her veins. Yes, she had loved. Truly loved. In past-tense.
Now she no longer had love. And no, she didn’t lose it; love was hardly lost.
It was brutally ripped away. And with love only existing as imprints on her beating heart…
All that she was left was with the solidity of hatred.
As a regular kunoichi, Ino’s body was auctioned off. Even her over-protective father knew it had to come. Thirty percent went to Konoha, like a good shinobi contributing to their village. She lost her first kiss and virginity on the same night, to a rich, pedophilic stranger at the age of 14.
At 15, she’d mastered the art of seduction, deception & persuasion techniques of the kunoichi and performed it flawlessly. Yes, and at 15, she also took away her first life, her first kill. She wasn’t careful enough to cut his neck at the right angle though, and came home with blood stains.
And bloodstains were such a bitch.
She held her head high, but inside; she envied the protection of Hyuga Hinata, heiress of the noble Hyuga clan. Of course she wouldn’t be put to trail of the simple customs of common kunoichi. Of course. Ino also envied the protection of Haruno Sakura from Tsunade-Sama, from the title of a blossoming medic-nin. Of course Tsunade’s precious and brilliant apprentice wouldn’t be put to the tests of what trivial, common kunoichi went though. No, of course not.
With no special treatment, she became closer to TenTen. They understood things on a level that neither Hinata’s intense empathy nor Sakura’s high intelligence could ever understand.
TenTen wasn’t the least surprised as she stumbled upon Ino one night, collapsed in the street. Uncharacteristically exhausted. Battered, bruised and bleeding.
Close to being broken. But not quite. At 16, she was used to the life, almost too used to it you could say.
She breathed unevenly, ragged wisps of air from her mouth. “Bastards. At least six o’ ‘em.” She spat out the words along with blood, and stretched her bloodstained lips in something twisted like a smile. “Took ‘em down, ‘course.”
Her clothes were ripped unevenly. Most likely by rough greedy hands. Fresh bruises blooming on her arms.
At 17, she was considered on of the most accomplished kunoichi, in their prime, multi-talented. A successful interrogator who knew the inner workings of the mind almost too well to known what sort of torture worked best with her victim.
Her style of murder was always left with the haunting feeling of the spiritual plane, intensifying the ghostly paranoia’s of shinobi. Shadows dancing in the corners of their eyes. A non-existent wind caressing your cheek. Gen-jutsu? Not impossible, but improbable. She gained the moniker of ‘The White Phantom,’ in foreign lands from her light hair that turn bone white in the moonlight.
She became an ANBU captain and a successful assassin with a failure rate of 6%, trainees looked to her to try their best and figure out her silent techniques, haunting signatures and disappearances. To vanish just before a warm body hit the ground lifeless.
She wore a blank mask, smooth and eerily less human than the animalistic masks that her team and comrades wore. She thought the others were simply too un-aesthetically pleasing to wear. Ino never did lose her superficial eye.
One time, a shinobi took her by surprise by suicide with numerous explosion tags set up around them. She ended up with second-degree burns on her arms and the slime and yellowish red gore of human innards delicately stuck on her form. Under the eyes of her mask were trails of blood as pieces of flesh oozed down.
A White Phantom whose tears were made of flesh.
And like a cheap parlor trick, when she took off the mask, the spell was cast off, she was no longer the White Phantom, but Ino Yamanaka once again, who laughed and smiled too freely for a shinobi.
At the age of 18, she had the unfortunate chance of running into the infamous Akatsuki returning from a solo mission barely 8 miles away from Konoha.
Her body was found fresh. Still warm. The cause of death could’ve been a combination of things.
Chakra depletion. ‘Hoshigake Kisame’s sword.’ Her wrists were blue and broken. Angry purples stained the pale skin of her arms. So did they on the insides of her thighs. A leg was broken. A dislocated elbow. It was brusied too. ‘She fought hard and strong.’ A fraction of her face was painted with her own cherry red blood. ‘Mild concussion. Major blood loss.’ More dark bruises circled her neck and her elegant collarbones like a morbid necklace. ‘Attempted strangulation.’ A criss-cross of cuts was found on the side of her temple, and her mask was found shattered. ‘Broken by force.’ So were her ribs. A chaotic seal where her neck met collarbone; a final pendant to the chain of bruises. ‘Unidentified sealing technique.’ Her smooth swooping features were frozen in their schooled composed expression. Bloodstained lips that glistened unnaturally. Her blue blue eyes were metallic and empty. ‘Dead. So very dead.’
Sakura cried at how frightfully beautiful Ino looked lifeless and still on the diagnostic table. Too beautiful.
Ino Yamanaka had a white funeral. Because Sakura remembered how after the Third’s, she told her how the black reminded her too much of an ending, and that she’d rather have white to remind them of a new beginning. And that there were to be brilliant colors of flowers of every kind, to remind them of the beauty in the world, against the constant ugliness they saw.
Each person gave a different flower. Sakura brought a Cosmos. TenTen brought the brightest bouquet she found. Hinata brought a flower blue enough to match the color of Ino’s metallic eyes.
She was honored highly with special mention of services to the good of Konoha. Her name was carved on the famous memorial of those who died “gallantly” in battle.
From the one of the best in her time, she was elevated to one of the best of all time.
Ino Yamanaka went down in history.
Because she brought down a man in history with her. She also took people’s fears, a man’s life and another man’s dream to the grave with her.
The body of Uchiha Itachi was found a mere few feet away from her. The two were found facing each other on their sides, giving an ironic illusion of fallen lovers.
While Ino died with a face that was least reactive, Itachi’s face broke it’s normal mask of apathy. There was a curious surprise lingering over his dead eyes.
The same chaotic seal was found on his chest. Inochi blankly confirmed that it was a forbidden Yamanaka clan. ‘Soul Capture: Call of the Reaper.’ Out the absurd situation that no one saw coming, the oddest of all was that...
Inochi had never taught it to her.
No one would ever know, but Ino died cradling hate in her loveless heart. A hate that curdled and burned as it sat rotting away her heart.
Itachi died learning that the rumors of the Yamanaka clan were true. “A gen-jutsu never worked longer than a second on a decent Yamanaka.” And Ino turned out to be one of the best.
Ino’s last thought was purely superficial, as she knew that Uchiha Itachi was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. And vainly wondered briefly how life would be for the two of them if they met under different circumstances, different lives and worlds.
The last thing Uchiha Itachi saw was the quelling calm in her blue metallic eyes die to silver.
The last thing she saw was his shocking red of his eyes fade into darkness.
And the one thing both of them knew was that they weren’t all the way alive to truly die.
A rumor would spread later over the months between the villagers as they claimed to see the apparition of two figures clash in the distance.
A white phantom of a fallen angel warrior fighting with a black spirit of a holy demon.
Never all the way alive to truly die.
Poison, even.
And Ino Yamanaka had poison running through her veins. Yes, she had loved. Truly loved. In past-tense.
Now she no longer had love. And no, she didn’t lose it; love was hardly lost.
It was brutally ripped away. And with love only existing as imprints on her beating heart…
All that she was left was with the solidity of hatred.
As a regular kunoichi, Ino’s body was auctioned off. Even her over-protective father knew it had to come. Thirty percent went to Konoha, like a good shinobi contributing to their village. She lost her first kiss and virginity on the same night, to a rich, pedophilic stranger at the age of 14.
At 15, she’d mastered the art of seduction, deception & persuasion techniques of the kunoichi and performed it flawlessly. Yes, and at 15, she also took away her first life, her first kill. She wasn’t careful enough to cut his neck at the right angle though, and came home with blood stains.
And bloodstains were such a bitch.
She held her head high, but inside; she envied the protection of Hyuga Hinata, heiress of the noble Hyuga clan. Of course she wouldn’t be put to trail of the simple customs of common kunoichi. Of course. Ino also envied the protection of Haruno Sakura from Tsunade-Sama, from the title of a blossoming medic-nin. Of course Tsunade’s precious and brilliant apprentice wouldn’t be put to the tests of what trivial, common kunoichi went though. No, of course not.
With no special treatment, she became closer to TenTen. They understood things on a level that neither Hinata’s intense empathy nor Sakura’s high intelligence could ever understand.
TenTen wasn’t the least surprised as she stumbled upon Ino one night, collapsed in the street. Uncharacteristically exhausted. Battered, bruised and bleeding.
Close to being broken. But not quite. At 16, she was used to the life, almost too used to it you could say.
She breathed unevenly, ragged wisps of air from her mouth. “Bastards. At least six o’ ‘em.” She spat out the words along with blood, and stretched her bloodstained lips in something twisted like a smile. “Took ‘em down, ‘course.”
Her clothes were ripped unevenly. Most likely by rough greedy hands. Fresh bruises blooming on her arms.
At 17, she was considered on of the most accomplished kunoichi, in their prime, multi-talented. A successful interrogator who knew the inner workings of the mind almost too well to known what sort of torture worked best with her victim.
Her style of murder was always left with the haunting feeling of the spiritual plane, intensifying the ghostly paranoia’s of shinobi. Shadows dancing in the corners of their eyes. A non-existent wind caressing your cheek. Gen-jutsu? Not impossible, but improbable. She gained the moniker of ‘The White Phantom,’ in foreign lands from her light hair that turn bone white in the moonlight.
She became an ANBU captain and a successful assassin with a failure rate of 6%, trainees looked to her to try their best and figure out her silent techniques, haunting signatures and disappearances. To vanish just before a warm body hit the ground lifeless.
She wore a blank mask, smooth and eerily less human than the animalistic masks that her team and comrades wore. She thought the others were simply too un-aesthetically pleasing to wear. Ino never did lose her superficial eye.
One time, a shinobi took her by surprise by suicide with numerous explosion tags set up around them. She ended up with second-degree burns on her arms and the slime and yellowish red gore of human innards delicately stuck on her form. Under the eyes of her mask were trails of blood as pieces of flesh oozed down.
A White Phantom whose tears were made of flesh.
And like a cheap parlor trick, when she took off the mask, the spell was cast off, she was no longer the White Phantom, but Ino Yamanaka once again, who laughed and smiled too freely for a shinobi.
At the age of 18, she had the unfortunate chance of running into the infamous Akatsuki returning from a solo mission barely 8 miles away from Konoha.
Her body was found fresh. Still warm. The cause of death could’ve been a combination of things.
Chakra depletion. ‘Hoshigake Kisame’s sword.’ Her wrists were blue and broken. Angry purples stained the pale skin of her arms. So did they on the insides of her thighs. A leg was broken. A dislocated elbow. It was brusied too. ‘She fought hard and strong.’ A fraction of her face was painted with her own cherry red blood. ‘Mild concussion. Major blood loss.’ More dark bruises circled her neck and her elegant collarbones like a morbid necklace. ‘Attempted strangulation.’ A criss-cross of cuts was found on the side of her temple, and her mask was found shattered. ‘Broken by force.’ So were her ribs. A chaotic seal where her neck met collarbone; a final pendant to the chain of bruises. ‘Unidentified sealing technique.’ Her smooth swooping features were frozen in their schooled composed expression. Bloodstained lips that glistened unnaturally. Her blue blue eyes were metallic and empty. ‘Dead. So very dead.’
Sakura cried at how frightfully beautiful Ino looked lifeless and still on the diagnostic table. Too beautiful.
Ino Yamanaka had a white funeral. Because Sakura remembered how after the Third’s, she told her how the black reminded her too much of an ending, and that she’d rather have white to remind them of a new beginning. And that there were to be brilliant colors of flowers of every kind, to remind them of the beauty in the world, against the constant ugliness they saw.
Each person gave a different flower. Sakura brought a Cosmos. TenTen brought the brightest bouquet she found. Hinata brought a flower blue enough to match the color of Ino’s metallic eyes.
She was honored highly with special mention of services to the good of Konoha. Her name was carved on the famous memorial of those who died “gallantly” in battle.
From the one of the best in her time, she was elevated to one of the best of all time.
Ino Yamanaka went down in history.
Because she brought down a man in history with her. She also took people’s fears, a man’s life and another man’s dream to the grave with her.
The body of Uchiha Itachi was found a mere few feet away from her. The two were found facing each other on their sides, giving an ironic illusion of fallen lovers.
While Ino died with a face that was least reactive, Itachi’s face broke it’s normal mask of apathy. There was a curious surprise lingering over his dead eyes.
The same chaotic seal was found on his chest. Inochi blankly confirmed that it was a forbidden Yamanaka clan. ‘Soul Capture: Call of the Reaper.’ Out the absurd situation that no one saw coming, the oddest of all was that...
Inochi had never taught it to her.
No one would ever know, but Ino died cradling hate in her loveless heart. A hate that curdled and burned as it sat rotting away her heart.
Itachi died learning that the rumors of the Yamanaka clan were true. “A gen-jutsu never worked longer than a second on a decent Yamanaka.” And Ino turned out to be one of the best.
Ino’s last thought was purely superficial, as she knew that Uchiha Itachi was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. And vainly wondered briefly how life would be for the two of them if they met under different circumstances, different lives and worlds.
The last thing Uchiha Itachi saw was the quelling calm in her blue metallic eyes die to silver.
The last thing she saw was his shocking red of his eyes fade into darkness.
And the one thing both of them knew was that they weren’t all the way alive to truly die.
A rumor would spread later over the months between the villagers as they claimed to see the apparition of two figures clash in the distance.
A white phantom of a fallen angel warrior fighting with a black spirit of a holy demon.
Never all the way alive to truly die.
