Disclaimerage: So not mine. Written for fun, not profit.

Five Truths:

Ino

1.

The Yamanaka flower business began as a front for an espionage team. Ino's mother is the one who took it into her head to make it legitimate. All the same, Ino learns the flower language long before she forms her first handseals, and even her most innocent bouquets contain secret messages - a particular arrangement, chosen to suit whatever she feels each customer's situation requires.

The first bouquet she ever makes for Asuma means (more or less) "ask her out you jerk" - because she knows he's getting it for Kurenai and also that boys are hopeless in matters of romance no matter how old they are.

The one she puts on his grave means something between "thank you" and "I'm sorry."

2.

Everyone forgets that she was near the head of her class. If she had been born in a different year, with less flashy or brilliant or just plain peculiar agemates, she would have easily been the center of attention.

Sometimes she remembers to be annoyed about that.

3.

Her family's jutsu is intended for intelligence and espionage. Ino has no interest in that sort of thing - she is too straightfoward, too flashy, too blunt - and so she takes up the role of medic-nin as a way to make herself useful.

When asked, she says it's because she refuses to lose to Sakura.

4.

She falls in and out of love easily, depending on her mood and the weather and how desirable the boy (and occasionally the girl) in question is to other people - and sometimes how much it makes Shikamaru roll his eyes and Chouji laugh.

Friendships are another matter entirely. She selects them carefully and is terribly picky about them, to the point where she can count her real friends on one hand, with two fingers left over.

5.

The flowers she arranges for Sakura would look like this: "you're my best friend" and "you surpassed me a long time ago" - with a little bundle of "I'm still prettier than you" sitting smugly in the middle of the bouquet.