ᗰOᑎᔕTEᖇ [🧡 ᑎᗩᖇᑌᕼIᑎᗩ 💜] [Ɱҽէąʍօɾքհօʂìʂ] Bσσƙ Oɳҽ

Jubokko

Chapter Seventeen

Jubokko

May 25, 2009

Sakura watched the blonde quietly, a small tape recorder in hand. Ino had given her the device two days ago, instructing her to record the information that flowed from the Yamanaka directly after the purge.

Ino sat crisscrossed several feet away, her eyes closed, sweat slipping down her temples. The telepathic kunoichi looked worlds better, the smudges gone from her eyes, her purple halter top and ankle length skirt neatly pressed. Her blonde hair was loose, flowing down her shoulders and pooling on the grass below. Her fingers were arranged in the seal for Shintenshin no Jutsu, with the exception of her ring and pinkie fingers. The two digits pointed down rather than out, resulting in a jutsu the Yamanaka Clan used to "purge".

The Yamanaka heiress had been purging for the past two days, spending several hours a day removing the dark build up locked in her psyche. After mucking around in the mind of the beasts, she'd been on the verge of a melt down. Thoughts and memories were directly and heavily entwined with raw human emotion. Touching the minds of others was hazardous, and even a brief interaction had the potential to cause significant mental damage to those that dabbled in the heads of other individuals. Emotions, negative and positive latched on to the invading telepath, sticking like glue to the interloper and breaking down their psyche over time.

Sakura had seen her friend that way once before; a week after the war ended, when the consequence of connecting so many minds at once had finally taken a toll. Ino had been weighed down with the pain, sorrow, anger and even hatred in the minds of the Allied shinobi she'd touched, drowning in the well of negativity she'd inadvertently collected.

It was then that she'd explained purging to the pinkette, describing the process in the simplest terms she could.

Purging drained the dark "energy" contained within the memories and emotions acquired from others, nullifying the effect it had on the telepath. Ino described it as turning the emotional chaos of a memory or thought into a file in her mind, where she could access the information contained, and "read" about the emotions associated with the information but in a way that was detached, on the outside looking in.

It allowed her to keep the contents of the memory without being driven to insanity by its negative energy.

To initiate the purge, Ino went into a meditative state that forced the damaging energy trapped inside the thoughts and memories plucked from someone else's head from her own cranium, leaving them decontaminated and tucked safely behind a compartment in the mind of a Yamanaka. The discarded energy manifested physically, appearing as black smoke, excreted from the temples and forehead. The scent it carried varied, the strength of the odor dependent upon the severity of negativity.

Ino had been on her way to purge when Sakura had knocked on her door.

Sleep deprived, despondent and in need of support, the weepy kunoichi had jumped at the solace her pink haired friend offered. Sai had left mid week, busy with his new position and had yet to be heard from. Shikamaru was swamped in his role as adviser and buffer between Konoha and Myoku's harmful edicts, while Choji was again away in Kumo. With the majority of her lifelines unavailable, the people she felt comfortable purging with was limited. After a successful purge, Ino often felt empty, exhausted and in need of comfort.

There were only a few people she trusted to fill that role.

Sakura was one of those people.

The two kunoichi had walked a distance from the village, selecting a soothing clearing near a cheerful stream, returning to the secluded spot for the next two days.