I don't own Naruto.
Tsukuyo yawned very unladylike as she made her way to the Academy as usual. It gained her quite a few looks on the street but it didn't mattered to her. She hardly had any sleep last night after her dream/memory.
The fact that she had met Shikamaru when they were young excited her. The little connection that she felt she had with him via this mere memory brought a wide grin on her face. She had replayed the memory in her head numerous times already since the starting of the day. She ambled down the street in her own bliss when something grasped her attention.
"…quite busy these days. I came down for a smoke actually."
Tsukuyo stopped on her tracks abruptly as a few distant words made it to her ears.
'Seriously… am I now imagining things or the voice I just heard was really Shikamaru's?' She turned on her spot a few times to locate the familiar face, confused.
Her eyes had not stopped searching for him. So do her legs. She backtracked her steps till the mouth of the smaller street she just came out of.
The street was an ordinary shopping street most of which were closed except for a few Bars and a Tobacco Joint. It was almost empty except for two to three civilians.
'…Maybe I am thinking way too much about him.' Tsukuyo concluded as she decided to give up on the search.
She still wasn't quenched with the thought of her being hallucinating any voices.
'Had I searched a bit longer, I would have found him. I'm certain he was there!'
The longer she thought about the topic, more she yearned to see him.
'That's it!' She slammed her hand hard on the table, making the class sit bolt upright due to its suddenness. 'After the classes, I'll go and meet him.' her hand made into a fist, reflecting her firm decision.
'...but you don't even know where he would be.' Her logic questioned her decision.
'He–' her firm decision faltered. '…could be at the training ground–'
'Who in the world trains in the afternoon these days? Not him of course! Maybe a person with a burning youth spirit– but definitely not him!'
'With Hokage…maybe? Working on some state affairs…'
'…or resting? Taking a day off, meeting with… friends or… perhaps…girlfriend?' the logic teased.
A sudden sinking feeling hit her straight in the pit of her stomach.
'No!'
'…'
'I mean…umm… I remember from today morning, he said something about being busy these days.'
'You are basing this on what, today's hunch that you somehow 'heard' him, soft enough to even confuse it with a hallucination?'
'I was… confused then but now I'm totally sure that it was really him.'
'…But even that's that, I can't believe how unreasonable you're sounding. You said you heard he is busy and now you are planning to go to him and disturb him?'
'It will just be "Hello –How are you? –Goodbye" meeting. It will hardly take ten minutes. I just want to meet him. It's been way too long –Six days seven nights…'
'…Now I know what case this is. Fine, go. You won't listen to logic anyway…'
Tsukuyo was thinking hard trying to come up with an acceptable excuse for a sudden visit to Hokage office. She was already inside the building, climbing up the staircase and had thought up nothing till now. She had scanned through the training areas and the meat Joint in her search for Shikamaru. The hokage office was the last remaining place she could think of for the probable place where he could be.
Her eyes automatically went up when she heard a low rumbling thunder. 'It's gonna rain…' She thought.
"Kagiri?"
She saw Kotetsu approaching her when she turned at the sound of her pseudo name. She smiled and nodded to acknowledge him.
"Fancy seeing you here! Here to meet someone?" he asked.
"Yeah, Tsunade san." She lied effortlessly.
"Oh, great. I'm heading there too." He gestured towards the files he was carrying, "I have to deliver these to her."
"Great…" she mumbled. 'Now I have to meet her for sure. This way I won't be able to find him here…'
They walked silently towards the Hokage office. Kotetsu, in order to subside the silence, initiated the talk. "So…are you meeting the Fifth for work related stuff?"
"No, no. It's casual. Haven't met her in a while." She answered.
The silence, again begun to descend between them. This time, Tsukuyo thought she was obliged to start a conversation too. "…I can't see Izumo san with you?"
"Aah… he was behind me." He turned his head automatically at her mentioning. "….maybe got stuck at something." His answer started to convert into rambling. "…perhaps got hold back…wonder if he finds the right documents…rather not disturb Nara…looked quite exhausted…"
God was helping her, was her first thought.
"He was right behind you?"
He nodded absentmindedly instead of a reply.
"Which way is it?"
"Lower floor, left side. Maybe I should…"
"– I'll go and see if he needs something and send him to you at once." Tsukuyo said almost instantly. She turned on her spot and headed downstairs without waiting for his reply. "You go ahead!" she almost yelled.
Tsukuyo was back on the street, dejected at her small quest. Before, at the Hokage's building, she found Izumo in an empty office, Shikamaru had left the building moments ago due to some work.
'Maybe today's not the day…' She wondered. She looked up at the sky. It had grew dark as if it could rain at any moment. 'He could be anywhere now…'
She looked at her surroundings with a heavy sigh. The pitter patter of the rain had nearly started. Most of the civilians had already gone inside to take shelter from the coming rain except for one frantic guy with square glasses, running in a hurry, most likely to escape the rain.
Her eyes returned back to her front. Screw the rain. She was in no mood to quicken her pace.
It was a mundane week for Shikamaru. He had been sorting the papers for the monthly meeting of the five countries' kage representatives for the past five days. He considered those papers to be dull and just for the sake of courtesy. But it still needed to be done and that was what kept him going to complete his work by the end of the week.
He scanned through the document for the last time as he put the other four on the table with a swish. Few seconds later the last document joined the stack of paper with a similar motion. An audible sigh left Shikamaru's mouth as he stretched his arm above his head. His chair squeaked a little when he leaned backward with his hands resting at the back of his head.
A low rumbling of thunder reached his ears. Weather was doing quite a good job at imitating his mood- dull and bleary. He hardly restrained a yawn that came with it.
He reached for a fresh pack of cigarette from his bottom drawer, tapped gently at the top of the packet to extract a single roll. He lit it in no hurry whatsoever.
"…that was a long week of paperwork." He murmured to himself, exhaling a puff of smoke. "It's a good thing that I managed to complete it before the start of the meeting."
A smallest of frown crept up on his face as he remembered his last conversation with Shizune. She was the one who transferred the completion of document responsibility on him saying that she had to head a research team on something important.
He was not complaining though. He knew he had come a long way from his complaining younger self. He long had accepted the meaning of being adult, importance of his work, and what was beneficial for the village. It was his way of paying tribute to his father and his teacher.
He very well knew how busy an important research can get when it involves Shizune, acting directly under Hokage's orders, so he decided to deliver the news of completion with the documents personally to her office or the research lab (wherever he found her first).
He found her in the research lab.
"Shizune san, someone is here to see you." One of her subordinates informed her.
Shizune, whose nose was buried into a big, almost tattered old leather bound book, lifted her head and gave him a quizzical look. The sheer intensity of her gaze left him flushed.
"Umm… Shikamaru san is here to see you." He replied almost instantly, avoiding her gaze by adjusting his square shaped glasses. As his words finally got registered in her mind, she nimbly gestured to bring him inside.
She saw Shikamaru amble over to her desk as she marked her current page. Her focus shifted on the folder he was carrying. It made her eyes look more exhausted than she already was.
"Aaaah! The documents… you finished it already, didn't you?" She huffed exasperatedly.
Shikamaru raised an eyebrow at her reaction. He didn't expected her to be that disappointed or frustrated, to be exact, on hearing the news.
"…Yeah. And it took me a full five days to finish it." He said as he forwarded the folder softly on her table. "Are you not happy about it?" he added teasingly.
"Of course I am happy. Greatly relieved in fact, that you took half the workload off my shoulder. It's just that your completion of the work reminded me of this dreaded meeting that I have to attend to." Shizune said as her fingers combed through her hair in frustration. She was in the middle of her research. The research which will finally shed some light on the bizarre chakra behavior that was found infecting Kiri's system. Even if the research was the Hokage's order, as a doctor she herself was totally invested into this case and was aching to unveil it.
She paused and looked directly at him across the table. It clicked to her like a light bulb- the solution to her problem.
"You attend the meeting."
'What?'
Shikamaru stared at her for the longest time. He must have heard her incorrectly. There was not a single sound between them except for the slight buzzing noise coming from the adjacent laboratory.
'Is she serious?'
He was waiting for her to suddenly crack up and say that she was joking.
But she did not.
"You are serious." He finally stated when he saw no sign of her contradicting her declaration.
"Of course I am."
There was a pause. Again.
"You do know the weightage of your statement, right?" Shikamaru said. His relaxed posture had straightened somewhere in the middle of their conversation. "You are making me attend this important meeting on your behalf."
Shizune stood up from the work bench and crossed the desk to face him directly. "You will be the perfect person for this job. You are already the face of our village when it involves business with Daimyo. This meeting is very similar to that, minus the arrogant Daimyos."
She once again looked straight into his eyes. "Handling complicated situations is one of your forte. If it's not me, it has to be you."
'This is troublesome. Seriously.' He sighed audibly. On some level, he had the inkling that things could turn out this way. He had no choice now.
"How much of the work is left with your research?" He asked instead.
The small twinkle that got lit when she saw his resigned, accepted face, got wiped off almost instantly. "Not much. We are stuck midway." She turned to tap onto the big, old book that she was reading prior to his entrance. "That's why I have been researching it continuously for almost a week."
Shikamaru could see the dark bags under her eyes. She was indeed exhausted from this research. Probably spending nights too judging by the books stacked on her desk and the nearby floor. His eyes then fell upon the title of the book that she bookmarked before the start of their conversation. 'Forbidden chakra and infecting kekkei genkai'.
"…It's making it difficult to dig further into the topic since we are not sure if it's a disease infecting the body chakra or if it's a rare kekkei genkai."
"Rare kekkei genkai?"
"We are still investigating it." Shizune added. "If we could just get our hands on some more information…"
The assistant from before appeared once again in front of them. He softly knocked on the door to make known of his presence before addressing. "Shizune san, the samples from the centrifuge tubes are out. You should take a look at the results."
The new progress in the research halted their conversation. Shikamaru excused himself to leave first as Shizune too headed for the adjacent laboratory.
At the door, Shikamaru however, paused for a few second and addressed her one more time. "Well, I don't know if it would be of any help but why don't you start from a different perspective. Go to the source of the problem and start digging from there. Maybe then you'll get the information that you are lacking now."
'Swapping place with Shizune for a meeting…huh… I need to inform the Fifth about this.' Shikamaru continued down the path leading to his house as he mentally added the thing to his To-do list.
The anticipated rain felt refreshing on his already exhausted skin. He stood still to take in the soft thrumming made by the droplets of water. It felt like a lullaby.
'A cup of tea would be great in this weather.' He wondered with a deep sigh. And with that thought, he continued again towards his home.
Not long after, he found himself to be the only one walking on the street in the rain except for one other person.
Tsukuyo stopped when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She was so engrossed by her thoughts that she didn't even realized the presence of another person and that someone had sneaked up on her.
She turned on her spot as she felt the person's hand retracting.
In that one millisecond of recognizing the face of the very person she longed to see, her face lit up like a firework in the night sky.
"You are drenched." Shikamaru stated. His face showcased a warm smile despite of the weather.
"So are you." She retorted.
From a third person perspective, they looked like a strange pair, halfway in a street, in the middle of the rain, laughing, without a care of the world.
The last few words of Shikamaru left Shizune stunned for a moment. It hit her like a bus that the most basic thing to start an investigation, she hadn't contemplated till now.
'I need to question Kiri. I need to know exactly what or whose demented chakra she came in contact with during her mission that had affected her so gruesomely.'
I really appreciate those who read my story and points out my grammatical mistakes. It really help me in improving my English. Thank you JUSTSAYIN
