Title: Paradise Lost

Style: Oneshot, crackfic.

Characters: Chouji, Ino, and Shikamaru.

Team 10 had had a long, tedious work-filled week in Kumogakure. It was about time that they had left the village and returned to their own.

Ino, Chouji and Shikamaru were having an early lunch in a little barbeque restaurant Chouji had discovered, before they had to leave. It was an outdoors type of restaurant with lots of merry people eating and chatting away. Chouji inhaled all the food on the table, as Ino munched satisfyingly on her broad bean salad. Shikamaru propped his head up on his hand, looking at the marvellous sky of clouds, as he blindly poked a chopstick here and there, and placing some food in his mouth.

The sky (for the whole week that Team 10 were there) was so cloudy that Shikamaru couldn't bare being indoors when he had the time off. They weren't your usual white puffs of cotton you would see in Konoha, no. These Kumo clouds where something of wonders. The colours. The shapes. The magnificence. The dark hues of grey all the way to the purest of whites. The sunset colours of yellows, pinks, blues, reds, golds. Shikamaru could name all the types of clouds, alto, cirrus, cumulus, nimbus, stratus... he could go on forever. He heaved a heavy sigh at the thought of leaving.

****

"You guys ready?" Ino asked as she opened the door to Shikamaru and Chouji's shared bedroom at the Inn they stayed at.

"All done!" Chouji replied stuffing the lasts of his little snacks into his backpack for the journey back.

Shikamaru on the other hand had been sluggish with his packing and still had his things sprawled all over the bed, and his empty backpac had yet to be filled. Ino cocked an eyebrow, widened her eyes, and pursed her lips. Shikamaru turned to her and saw her expression and closed his eyes to calm himself as he mentally said 'troublesome'. When he opened them Ino's outstretched arm was pointing at his possessions.

"Get a move on, I can't stand being here anymore," Ino said with authority in her voice.

"Yeah, yeah... this is so troublesome," Shikamaru muttered to himself.

He reached ever so slowly for the documents, the weapons, the-- everything. Ino was leaning on the door frame and was mentally counting to ten, although she passed that number ages ago, and was screaming in her head the numbers fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-ei--

"SHIKAMARU! HURRY UP! You're taking your sweet time!"

She stomped her foot on the ground, and marched over to him, throwing all his things in the backpack and forcing it onto his shoulders. She grabbed Chouji by the wrist, dragging him to the doorway whilst pushing Shikamaru forward with the other.

His plan to delay their departure had been classified as a failure.

****

Ino inhaled deeply as she stepped out the gates of Kumogakure, as if that one step had determined the change in air as a whole, like it was final that she had left the village. With a spring in her step, it seemed as though her protective sheath would break out and leak happiness all over. Chouji joyfully picked up pace and walked aside Ino.

"It feels good to be going back home!" Ino almost sang.

"Yeah, I can't wait to get back home, my mum will be waiting with a mouthwatering feast!"

Ino looked over to him and could swear his eyes were sparkling with delight, she couldn't sigh or frown at it, her happiness on going back home was suppressing her urge to tell him 'you should really watch yourself'.

A few moments later as they walked along the path back home, Chouji pulled out from his backpack one of his favoured Barbeque flavoured crisps. He ripped open the pack and munched on them happily. He stretched his arm over to Ino (to his right) offering her some, she joyfully obliged and took a handful of the crisps nibbling slowly on them savouring the sweet taste.

Chouji then stretched his arm to his left and found no response. He stopped in his tracks and finally looked over and saw that their party of three was lacking. Ino had kept going and was seemingly talking to Chouji, but he hadn't heard a word.

"... I can't believe how..."

"Ino."

"... and then I told her to-- what?" Ino stopped and turn to find Chouji stretching his arm to nothingness looking confused, his expression mirrored on hers, "where's Shikamaru?"

"The best explanation is that he's still in Kumo..." Chouji grinned at Ino sheepishly.

Shikamaru's absence had definitely tarnished Ino's happy mood. She rolled her eyes, the annoying and bitchy Ino we all know resurfaced. She trudged all the way back to Kumogakure. Chouji had to jog to keep up with her pace.

Shikamaru stood outside Kumogakure's gates, facing them. He had been standing like that ever since his team got there, staring at the sky laden with all forms of clouds. The peace and pure bliss of it all was slowly slipping away. Slipping away from his grasp. The cause of the slipping? He heard violent thuds, coming closer and closer, louder and louder.

The sheath that covered Ino had broken long ago and her angered spilled out in raging currents and waves, it made Chouji stay a safe distance away from Ino. Shikamaru was in view, his stature was slumped, and his head was tilted up looking at the sky. He could easily be mistaken for a standing dead person. Ino stretched out her arm and dug her fingers into Shikamaru's left shoulder and she turned him around.

The pain of her grab had caused Shikamaru to blink hard and grunt. His eyes had previously been watery, so his hard blink had forced the tears out.

"You! You made me come all this way back here to--" she let go of him like he was poison and her eyes slowly widened in amazement, "Shikamaru. Are you crying?"

"What?" he asked trying to throw in a scoff, but his voice cracked so it failed him.

A look of disgust flashed quickly on Ino's visage, she took both of Shikamaru's shoulders and shook him hard.

"Shikamaru! Snap out of it!" she ceased the shaking and gave him a light but sharp smack on his cheek.

His eyes watered up again. But this time, not from the thought of leaving this paradise, but at the sharp pain he felt on his left cheek. Ino misinterpreted the watery eyes for the first reason so her face became neutral again. That type of neutral face people put on before they're about to burst out laughing.

"You've gotta be kidding me!" she threw in between laughs, "Nara Shikamaru is crying!"

Shikamaru hastily blinked back his tears, but it really was no use. The image of his previously tear-stained face had burned itself into Ino's memory for as long as her life would last. So instead he settled in giving her a look that screamed pure loathing.

Chouji had finally reached the two breathing heavily. He rested both hands on his knees as he tried to regain his breath. After a short moment he straightened up and adressed the two.

"Phew!" he looked quizzically at Ino, but recieved no answer (mainly because she was going on a laughing rampage), so he turned to Shikamaru, and Shikamaru just turned away in shame, "what's going on guys?"

Ino was too busy laughing and Shikamaru too busy being ashamed and trying his best to telepathically send hate to Ino.

Chouji was smart and caught on, "oh c'mon Shikamaru, there's always gonna be clouds in Konoha."

"Buh-thers-ner-ga-b-sm-ike-ese..." Shikamaru's incoherent mumble sounded.

"What?" Ino and Chouji said in unison.

"Troublesome," Shikamaru breathed, and repeated, "I said... but there's never gonna be some like these..."

The extreme melancholy in his voice was almost visible. Like an acidic puff of pure black steam; wilting and killing everything in it's path slowly, creeping, passively.

Ino's mood had drastically changed since her little encounter with Shikamaru, and she had returned to her perky mood. Every time Shikamaru and her caught eyes, she'd give him a mischievous smile, and he'd narrow his eyes at her in a I'll-kill-you-if-you-say-anything-about-this sort of way.

Chouji clapped both of them on the shoulder, forcing both Shikamaru and Ino to sink slightly under that force.

"Come on guys, let's just go home."

Author's Note: I have ALWAYS wanted to put Shikamaru in this type of situation, and only today did I feel the need to start typing away. Anyway, I really enjoyed writing this, so I hope you find reading it just as enjoyable :D Reviews are pretty much appreciated, but are not mandatory (no they actually are)... ANYHOO. Thanks for reading! :D Oh, and for the record the line segments won't let me leave space between them and the words, so I have to settle with this being smushed up.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, but if I did, Shikamaru would wear glasses.