Speaking Volumes
Nara Shikamaru was renowned for his brilliant mind and genius military strategies. He was also renowned for being a lazy arse. Naturally, such drastically different characteristics led to quite a lot of debate on what was and wasn't safe to gossip about in his presence, particularly if that gossip involved himself or his friends. He kept his head in the clouds most of the time, but that didn't keep him from noticing when conversations dropped to soft whispers. In fact, he took more notice of what people didn't say than what actually came out of their mouths.
Lazy he might be, but he was anything but inattentive. As he stood in the Houshukage's office along with the remnants of the Mt. Oinari Twelve (minus two, plus one), he couldn't help but wonder: Did Tsunade honestly believe that his head was in the clouds he so liked to watch?
Even Ino knew better than that. Telling them all that Naruto had left the village of his own volition was like trying to convince them all that the sky was green. Naruto would never get up and decide to work as an outside agent, no matter who he knocked up—further observation confirmed the rumor that said blonde had indeed been messing around with Sai and Uchiha Sasuke, and managed to get them pregnant, if their unusually curvy physiques were anything to go by—he was too determined to become Houshukage and, to be brutally honest, simply not thoughtful enough to consider something as childish as running away. Even in their childhood, Naruto had never run away from his problems; Shikamaru wasn't entirely sure if the blond actually knew how.
The real "silver lining," though, was that Houshukage or no, Tsunade was a woman and women were bundles of trouble gift-wrapped with pink lips, sparkling eyes, silky hair, and breasts. They were lovely, but they were all full of nasty surprises. When males fought, there were always unspoken rules. Girls had no such rules; they clawed, bit, scratched, pulled, poked, slammed, smashed, called names, and blackmailed. Guys would kick you while you were down, but things like crotch kicking, eye poking, bashing faces against brick, and using blackmail as leverage when you were losing were just outright taboo.
Women had no such qualms, and from the look of the two weeping males that Naruto had discarded like cigarette butts, Tsunade was no different. Shikamaru had no way of knowing what Tsunade might have said, but Sai and Sasuke, who usually would have been shouting along with everyone else, were silent. Silence spoke volumes.
End
