The coffee was hotter than the devil's underwear and Shikamaru Nara, Private Investigator, regretted not letting it cool before drinking. He could feel it, the horrible raw feeling at the top of his mouth that would last all day. As if this day wasn't bad enough already.
She had already won. They both knew it. She could see everything he was going to do before he did it; he half suspected she was manipulating him into playing every move, that her invisible hand was always on his shoulder, guiding him through a trap that he had walked into a long time ago. Things were getting desperate.
Her crystal blue gaze, knowing and smug, made him want to shudder. He was the smartest man in the city, the number one Private Investigator, yet he had come undone so easily. Low lifes everywhere feared the day their name crossed his lips, and yet found himself here…
Yes, Ino knew she had won alright. The Shogi board between them was proof enough. And as a real man of the mean, grim streets of Konohoa he had only one recourse. He could knock over the table. She'd complain that she was going to win, but she would say that, wouldn't she? No proof. He nudged a table leg experimentally, but it seemed to be attached to the floor. Probably after last time.
It was time for plan B. He would have to start moving his pieces like checkers piece and pretend he had been playing that all along. 'Every time,' she said with unnecessary smugness, 'every time you do that.'
'It would help if you had just brought a normal checkers board,' said Shika optimistically, 'then maybe we could have a fair game once in a while.' He adjusted his trilby, just to draw attention to the fact that he was wearing a trilby.
But his clever ruse had failed: he could see that now. Before she could call her bluff, however, his keen young apprentice, a mere year older than him, burst through the door.
Lee was a lanky, bowl haired boy with almost as much idealism as he had energy. The poor little, slightly taller than him, guy. He had yet to really see the ugliest that Konohoa had to offer, although he admittedly wasn't too far off every time he looked in the mirror.
'Shikamaru senpai!' he cried. 'Pakkun sensei says we're needed back at the station!' You could practically see the exclamation marks forming in the air around him.
'I'm sorry little lady,' said Shika. He tried to put his hat on, realised he had it on already, then took it off so he could put it back on. 'Maybe we can have a rematch some other time. I guess we'll just have to call this one a draw.'
As he left, he got the impression that he had not made himself any friends. On the sidewalk outside, waiting for Lee to fetch the Van of Mysteries, he reflected that was the sort of life he had chosen for himself. Having integrity in a town like Konohoa was never going to earn a man friends, and if a man wants to walk same path he was walking he'd have to be ready to take on the world.
Welcome to
Shikamaru: P.I.