Chapter One
Float On
"I backed my cop car into a cop car the other day. Well he just drove off, sometimes life's OK. I ran my mouth off a bit to much, of what did I say? Well you just laughed it off it was all OK. And we'll all float on OK. And we'll all float on OK. And we'll all float on OK. Well, a fake Jamaican took every last dime with that scam. It was worth it just to learn some sleight of hand. Bad news comes, don't you worry even when it lands. Good news will work its way to all them plans. We both got fired on exactly the same day, that we were gonna quit it anyways. And we'll all float on OK. And we'll all float on OK. And we'll all float on OK. And we'll all float on Ok. Alright already, we'll all float on. Alright already, we'll all float on. No need to worry. We'll all float on. Alright, I'm ready. We'll all float on. Alright, don't worry. We'll all float on. Alright, alright, we'll all float on. Alright already, we'll all float on. Alright, don't worry even if things end up a bit too heavy. We'll all float on. Alright already, we'll all float on. Alright already, we'll all float on alright. Don't you worry, we'll all float on. We'll all float on." (Modest Mouse, "Float On")
Shikamaru turned off his music off his radio that lay on the floor. He got out of his room by a sheet over his door frame that was pinned up with thumb tacks. He gathered his shoulder length black hair and put it into an elastic band. By the time he finished he was in the kitchen looking at the refrigerator. It had a note. "Things to do by the end of the year." It had ten items. He looked up at the ceiling and shook his head.
"1) Trim the yard."
This was the first order set out by the head woman in the household. It was stuck to the door with a yin-yang magnet. Such things like that existed in the residence of the Nara clan. Because, I'll tell you, they threw the most boring parties and had the laziest attitude towards conversation that dulled them; their vitality for life and small chat made it so that no one knew what to send them in the mail with a note explaining their absence of the party. As a tall tail, it is said that one person one requested a physician's letter of Tsunade so he could ditch the lackluster event. But these were the things that Shikamaru was pondered of why - holding up the list of chores - the magnet was so shoddy.
"How troublesome," he uttered his mantra. "And there I go wondering about the magnet when I have these chores to accomplish." He put his hand in front of his face as he had a mouth wide open yawn and afterwards his black hair that tightened up to top of his head spouted like the leaves of a pineapple was corrected. "There I go on about my hair."
He cupped his hands in front of his torso. In closed eye mediation, Shikamaru stood there for a good five minutes until his father, similarly dressed like him with an even dirtier and ripped up light brown colour, departed his walk to the backyard to speak to Shikamaru.
"I-I didn't hear," Shikamaru said in a drowse, "what is it, now?"
"What are you suggesting," said his father, Shikato, "that your old man's a moment to you that must be questioned? Well, think about it; there has to be some moral in that."
"I think I am, well what else would I do? Now, I think that I think too much." Shikamaru mentioned in a single tone. "Yeah, other people think too but not so much as myself but however, I think it is nothing good or bad or else I wouldn't be asking the question of thinking too much. I mean I think that I think too much so maybe I would like to change that. But, stop me if you've heard this joke before."
"I'm interested; you know that." Shikato responded wiping the orange juice from his mouth that he got from the carton. "Now what's the punch line?"
"I wasn't giving you a joke." Slouching low as he did he rolled his eyes is weariness.
"Laugh it up a bit, boy," Shikato padded his son on the shoulders and then shrugged his shoulders. "My by saying what's the punch line, it was meant to be in good fun. I was playing on your lines."
"Never mind," he walked away to the front door.
"We ought to, do the first task," his father mentioned following. "You're mom is not going to like our zeal in life."
"You were the one who was dragged into the Enjoy Your Life As a Ninja hosted by Gai," he muttered to his father's complaining and brought the rest as a thought. "You shouldn't be bitching about the lingo, if you were not to under thumb, but you are still in that class."
The day was beautiful and sunny. In the lethargic minds, the day mean that they would be lectured on any sun burning that may happen and audit every single sweat drop, because that would put her on shower patrol. She would sentence one of them to twenty minutes in the shower and the other right next to her on a chair that was positioned right in front of a window. Of course, the sun would be going through this window and burning them. She would be questioning them individually now and their story had to stick because one they changed places she questioned them about the other said.
"Not today," Shikamaru said, "so what did we do in the morning?"
"We were outside feeding our deer, and not sleeping in."
"Don't add that," Shikamaru warned him.
"I know that." Shikato snipped.
"That's not what mom said," he said.
"She said she wouldn't tell," Shikato said and added with a head shake: "So wearisome."
"No, she didn't," was the admittance and the youth crookedly frowned. "It is just a trap that she is going to get you with dad. So we fed the deer and mowed the lawn."
"So we're going to let the deer out on the lawn." Shikato predicted, "Have you thought that through?"
"If it doesn't work out," Shikamaru said, "we tell her that this morning that we woke up early to feed the deer and left the gate open." And when they got to the tall chain link fence, Shikato pulled out a key from his vest pocket and unlocked the chain that connected the gate. Each one of them pulled back the gates, out towards them, and then Shikamaru wondered off up the path to the village. Before he reached the large wagon that they used to bring the supplies from their farm, Shikato looked up after he kicked a stone under the side that he opened.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"I need to think a while," Shikamaru said. And so he did, once he went to get his navy green Chuunin vest on which was puffy and so troublesome under the blistering heat of the sun. As the first in the class to get to the next rank of being a ninja – quite right that it is a slim probability that one's so lazy could get a mission, but not too much excitement – he was told my the Hokage, the hidden ninja village leader, to wear it proudly and it will inspire him to straighten up to the ethnics and the dedication that it took to become the Hokage some day. "No that would be too much for me. I'll be happy to remain a Chuunin. I already apply for a teacher once I do a few 'A' ranked missions but luckily I can do them with a team. I also wouldn't have to raise Genins to become Chuunins; damn Asuma."
Asuma had requested that Shikamaru wear it during mission. "Damn dad."
Shikato had wished to wear it anytime he was out in public. "This time mom's the least strict."
She wanted him to keep in a coat bag up in the attic until there is some company. Say, the Kage from each Country was to gather up to their residence, and then Shikamaru's mom would ask him to put in on, because it gets too dirty. But since he wore it, "I'll just float on; it'll be okay."
He found his thoughts drag him from his surrounding. Looking up, he said Hinata and Shino, two parts of the three person team of numerical value of eight. He duck under the bushes and looked through a clearing that shown the faces of Hinata and Shino.
"Isn't this fun Shino; I knew you would like it." With her round pale face, she smiled slightly with her pale pink lips.
"What are they doing?" Shikamaru thought to himself.
"You have a good hand work." Shino said.
"I used to practice with Neji." Hinata said.
"It must have trained her hands well for this type of job." Shino admitted and Shikamaru shot his head up from the bush.
"What are you two doing?" He said. "Oh. Mmmmm, sure that seems logical: cat's cradle."
Between them Hinata and Shino were working a loop of string and Hinata had used both of their hands to shape it into a web of a complicated pattern. Hinata pulled her hands away from Shino and up to her mouth that was chewing on the dark blue – the same as her hair – yarn. Shino rubbed off some bugs from his hands that were as black as his dark hair.
"It-it's just..." she shuttered nervously in her soft voice, "I told him that...it helps, you know. It helps..."
"I do it," Shikamaru didn't want to wait too long for Hinata's timid and unsure voice, "it is helpful to form hand seals as they can be show you were your hands are molding charka. With different sets of strings, you can map out the finish produce and from looking at the cross over, the angles, and the pattern, people can determine what it is likely to produce. Then they can see how much charka they have to put in it."
"To add as a footnote," Shino said, "the amount of charka in some jutsus is not know because they cause too much harm to be deemed useful unless in the greatest situation. Even then, there is a problem with the technique would do anything desirable in any situation. The mixing of different charkas, like adding different colours to the loop will create different effects so a sequence of hand seals can be the same but create different jutsus all together."
"How do you get to mold your charka to that colour your family uses, Shikamaru?" Hinata asked with general interest. Her solid pale blue eyes were wide open and her voice better that she was not the subject of attention, which she thought was more times than was true.
"Charka is energy and it is a link to our emotions what type of emotions we got." Shikamaru said. "A person holding energy of a bored person can create this colour, but the emotion of apathy itself does not seem so good as the technique."
"It is genetic and in a way determined." Shino added in his simple voice that was deep was it traveled over his high collar that went up to his nose.
"Don't say that, Shino," she pulled down on his large grey overcoat. "People can change."
"And when they have the emotional stance of a person would does not wish to hold any personal memories?" Shino asked of his condition (that frequently as his clan is propone to do) which caused him to lose his memories with the contract of the bug. "Genetically, my bugs and my clan have a connection to each other that allows the bugs to ingest charka. This permits a clan to have a genetic advance in the wild and reproduce. I really don't want to talk about it right now. It is that part of the day."
Shino left out of the forest.
"Do you wish to watch the clouds with me?" Shikamaru said to Hinata and they both agreed without words to sit against a tree. The stream in front of them was almost calm. Up ahead, there was a small cliff to go over.
"What do you see in that one?" Hinata asked and pointed up to a heart shaped (in that symbolic form of love). Shikamaru gave a lazy smile and pulled out a home rolled cigarette that he got from Ino, his long blond female partner, who in turn got them from Asuma. He lit it up and blew some out.
"I'll tell you, since you're a girl who doesn't like destiny." He released some smoke rings that he learned from his father following his movements. "I don't believe in the stars so I don't look at them. They give me the directions, but they are too boring. Looking at the stars is something that Shino's clan does. I'm a cloud watcher."
"Shino doesn't like to look at the clouds." Then Hinata laughed with her hand in front of her face. "He can't keep his eyes of the ground of else, in his words, 'a poor unfortunate bug" would be stepped on. His chivalry is so humble that it is funny and too gentle."
"For a guy who caused a boy to blow off his arm," Shikamaru sniggered. "But I see this in any cloud. Unlike how the stars are over us when we are born, I think we are like the clouds that we were born under. I was born on the harsh rain fall because of Kyuubi's attacks on the village. They were dark and depressing. But now, they are calmer. There are problems with calm clouds and there are problems with dark clouds, but we since the moment we were born, the weather was the first way we were handled. Maybe it would be good to be a real cloud. They are so much more natural to it. You were born on the clearest skies Hinata. I can tell they were as clear as your eyes, like the sky was so happy to see you and granted its lovely image into your eyes. But what people don't see is that without the shitty clouds, we have less shade and more sunburns, and you're very pale in skin."
"And that says that in the face of glorify that am the most sensitive to it." Hinata nodded and looked up at the sun.
"Nah, it just says that we all have are problems and you should get into the shade." Shikamaru suggested. She got up and sat closer to him, about enough for a glass to go in the middle of them with their hands next to them. But Shino only spoke about partial determinism. In that way, us two were both to live in the shade, and out of the spotlight. The only light we get is for you, too harsh, and the only light I get is a flash of lighting never to hit the same spot again."
"That was very wise of you to think of that." Hinata said and she raised her hands up in the air without any motivation. "How did that happen?"
"You're within my shadow," Shikamaru said with his hands up as well. "Shadow bind no jutsu; it makes so that I can control what the person's movement within my shadow by them follow me."
"Could you get this left off me?" Hinata requested as a left fell down on her inside shoulder. Shikamaru over to Hinata, as she did to him. He flipped off the leaf and received a shock to the shoulder. He rotated his shoulder, which Hinata did not. "Now do you like that?" She laughed. "I can still control my charka when I am under your jutsu and the Hyuuga clan can send charka through our palms to another person."
"That was a hard hit you received from Neji." Shikamaru said. "Have you gotten back to training?"
"Just in practical research." Hinata said. "I am learning more about medicine before I am healed."
"Yeah, I think you're a member that a team would miss," Shikamaru glanced into the cloud he identified earlier. "It looks like a duck now (the rubber type)."
"What do you suspect Ino's clouds were like when she was born?" Hinata threw out there.
"Fluffy, white and snowing in a fun filled day of making snow men, snow angels, and snow forts." Shikamaru said.
"That is pleasant." Hinata reflected to herself.
"It is a troublesome day of putting on snow pants, snow boats, and getting frost bite from staying out too much from all of the excitement." Shikamaru said. "It had to be snowing somewhere that day."
"You know a place that has a lot of snow?" Hinata asked cheerfully.
"Nope," Shikamaru got a bit excited.
"The Snow Country." She said seriously and with speed.
"Of course," Shikamaru said and rolled his eyes. "There's no such place."
"I'm not joking," Hinata said. She pointed at his shoulders and acted tough and said in a loud voice, "Don't offend me with not knowing about Snow Country."
"Are you joking there?"
"I don't know." Hinata and Shikamaru nodded. "You know what else I don't know?"
"Is this going to have a punch line?" he asked.
"Yeah," Hinata said, "what is in what you smoked?"
They exploded into laughed and leaned against each other with their arms going over the other's shoulder.
"I'll take that." Shikamaru said and the relaxed to a point where they doze off.