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Temari Retrieval Mission

Chapter 1: Not your Ordinary Mission

Shikamaru woke up to the alarm clock that he usually didn't want to turn off, but, as he says, he "can't live with this annoying sound forever." Today was no different, and he sat for several minutes before deciding to finally get up and slap his hand onto the "OFF" button.

He came downstairs lazily, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, collapsed into one of the stiffening wooden chairs next to the table, and yelled through the opening to the kitchen, "What's for breakfast?"

"Nothing," he heard his father's gravelly voice. The rough, scarred face appeared in front of him as he, too, took a seat at the table. "Hokage-sama made sure that you were on time this morning for the mission she's assigning."

Shikamaru sighed. 'Missions are so troublesome. And I'm always assigned the hard ones...' he thought, obviously disappointed.

"Wake up, son." Shikaku said strictly. "You better get going or Hokage-sama will... you know..."

"I know..." He responded gingerly, "Like what happened to... yeah." He stood up and headed for the door. A slight groan arose in his stomach, but he banished it quickly. 'I don't have time to waste energy on hunger...' he thought. '......AAAH, what's the point? There's no use in trying to dominate passive instincts.'

He continued his walk down to the Hokage's office. He opened the door and cleared his throat, gathering the blonde Hokage's attention, along with another girl with brown hair up in a side pony-tail's and Aburame Shino's

"Shino-kuuuuun, is this your friend?!" The girl shrieked. Shikamaru already didn't like her.

Shino just sighed in return.

"What's all this about?" Shikamaru asked, still sounding lazy, though I suppose he always does.

"You'll be off on a mission today. You'll most likely be gone for at least a week."

Shikamaru was a bit more alert, now. 'If it's going to take a week... it must be urgent.'

"May I ask who I'm working with?" Shikamaru said, now fully "in the game".

"Aburame Shino will be joining you," she responded.

"Hey," said Shino coolly.

The girl seemed love-struck, just by hearing Shino's voice.

"And this is Yanimaka Kyoku, all the way from the Sand."

"Hiya!" Kyoku said, obviously a phyco-path...

Shikamaru glared at her. 'The Sand Village... why would I be doing a mission with a ninja from the Sand ?'

"What's the mission?" Said Shikamaru, the only one actually concentrating on work. Kyoku was jumping all around Shino and Shino himself was consumed in attempting to get her to stop.

"You need to retrieve Temari of the Sand. As Kyoku probably knows," still no attention from Kyoku, "Temari has gone missing from the village."

This really struck Shikamaru. 'Temari-chan...' he thought, hopelessly, 'Please don't say you've left, just like Sasuke!'

"She was captured by a group of rogue ninja--"

Shikamaru couldn't stand in now. He interrupted her and blurted out, "AND THEY'RE POWERFUL ENOUGH THAT SHE COULDN'T TAKE THEM HERSELF?!"

Tsunade looked insulted. "Yes."

Shikamaru grimaced. 'We're doomed.'

"They took her fan-- one of her only weapons. She was knocked out and carried out of the village against her will. Everyone there thought the men were just ordinary guys taking and injured woman to the hospital." She said all of this calmly, as if she had told the story quite a few times. Which, of course, she had.

"I was the only one who knew that they were not 'just ordinary guys,'" said Kyoku, now sober and calm, as if grieving. "I sent my snakes after them, but they all mere thrown off course immediately by... a sort of genjutsu. They were all confused and slithering around in circles like they had just fallen off a merry-go-round. So I ran as fast as I could to the Head Office. They sent me here because all of the ninja were in the Chuunin exams... except me, of course."

This aroused Tsunade's interest a bit. Her eyes shone as she said, "Tell these young Shinobi why you weren't in the Chuunin exams, would you?"

"Oh, that. Well I thought they might have been able to tell..." she trailed off a bit, trying to add to the drama. "I'm already a Jounin!"

The two ninja sat speechless with their mouths wide open. Although, you couldn't really tell in Shino's case, for his head was billowed underneath his jacket and shadowed by his hood.

'Her?' Shikamaru thought. He may have been speechless, but he was the exact opposite of thoughtless. 'But... she...'

"That's right!!" Kyoku gleamed. Shikamaru took that moment to examine her now. Her eyes were two different colors: her left green, and her right brown. She wore the traditional headband over her head. Her brown waves were pulled back into a side ponytail. His eyes followed it down all the way to the ruffled waist of her shirt. Her shirt was, not only ruffled and torn, but seemed to have distinct bite-mark on it. The net placed over her chest underneath the blue shirt was also torn and bitten. This puzzled Shikamaru.

'Been through a lot, maybe?' He guessed.

Her pants were a faint green, stained though years of wearing. they were rags at the bottom, which only came just below the knees. Though they were short, they came almost all the way down to her jet black cargo boots that elevated her a few centimeters off the ground. Despite the stilts, she still stood a mere 4'8 tall.

They were looking down on her... literally.

"Do we know which direction they went?" Shino said, relieving Shikamaru of the awkward silence he beheld.

"They were headed towards the Land of Rice Patties... we're guessing Orochimaru's lair."

Again, Shikamaru grimaced. "Well, we better be going..."

"WAIT!! I wasn't done yet," interrupted the Hokage, fiddling with a pen on her desk. "You are the leader of the mission... I.E., no sensei. You may choose two more Shinobi to accompany you... but I"m afraid your choices are limited. You may have to cut yourself down to only one more...."

"Understood!" exclaimed Kyoku and they strolled out the door with ease.

Tsunade sighed. "They don't don't know what they're in for..." she mumbled uneasily.

Shikamaru paced outside of his door as he scanned through his mind who he could bring. The others were getting packed up, but he had finished early. 'Chouji... no he's out on a mission, Ino... YUCK*... Sakura... possibly... Hinata might be good, though I don't know whether she's available or not... Naruto is gone with Jiraya-sensei... well, there we have it.'

"Shikamaru!" He heard Shino yell from behind him, "Decide yet?"

"Let's go get Sakura for our healing; and brute strength... and Hinata's coming, too."