I Do Not Own Naruto
Chapter 21
Temari looked up from setting up the table, she and Sakura had sent Ino off to go get Tenten and Hinata, and now she was looking at those three.
"We're playing 'Have You Ever…'," she informed the girls. Hinata paled, Tenten perked up a bit, and Ino was giddy about this as they sat at the table.
"No, no Temari, it's I have never, not have you ever," Ino corrected her.
"So long as we drink I don't care," Temari admitted flatly. Sakura sniggered at that, but Temari was being very serious. She wanted strong alcohol in her system, and she wanted it now. Everyone gathered around the table and she smirked as Sakura poured the shots and everyone sat there.
"How about we have Sakura start," Ino decided.
"Alright," Sakura shrugged and they all took up their drinks. "Now the rules are simple, instead of lowering fingers people who have done the implied never done event take a shot, everyone has three 'I have never' and then we go around the circle, and on we go, round and round until we have our first pass out, or run out of booze!"
Temari chuckled at this childish game but it was all for fun at the moment so she sat back.
"I have never kissed a girl," Sakura started. Ino and Tenten both took a drink and she blinked at them.
"Sexual experimentation," Ino grinned.
"A dare from Neji," Tenten chuckled.
"I have never walked in public without my clothes," Sakura said. Ino drank again, but so did Temari reluctantly and every laughed. The game went on and on though.
Ino's questions were a bit slurred when they got to her, and Temari found it amusing as the blonde thought up raunchy, detailed events to have never done. It was hilarious to say the least. The Hyūga's questions were rather shy and rather prude, but the fact she was quickly turning red from her own shyness and the alcohol Temari just giggled.
After about two hours later and Ino was a bouncy, giggling drunk who was dancing to imaginary music and pulling Hinata along with her.
"You two are still sober," Tenten mutter.
"I'd be a shame to my master if I got drunk so easily on cheap rice wine," Sakura said indignantly but she was a bit red. Well, to Temari all three of them were a bit red.
"Please," hic!, "Suna alcohol stronger…" hic! She managed to hiccup then and they were all in a fit of giggles.
"Temari! Temari! Temari! Will you do that favor for me!?" Ino giggled and slurred for her.
"Swure," she hiccupped and everyone giggled again.
"Gweat! You'rwa taking Shikamura, I mean, Shikameru, no, Shikamaru! On a date!" Ino declared in a slur.
"Sounds," hic! "Good to me! He's got a cute butt," she admitted drunkenly and everyone was laughing hysterically, even herself as she fell back.
"This is," hic! "Good stuff, Sakura,' hic! "Buy more next," hic! "Time," she yawned then and hiccupped again before her eyelids were too heavy to hold up and she decided to take a nap.
Shikamaru woke to a hawk tapping his window at the break of dawn and he groaned as he rubbed his face. He didn't want to get up, it was a drag and he didn't want to have to get up and his alarm was likely about to go off. The hawk persisted it's perpetual tapping on the glass when his alarm went off. Groaning he moved to dampen the alarm and to get up to get the bird. He swore when he stubbed his toe and opened the window. The animal hopped in, he yawned as he pulled the pouch off of it.
The seal was from the Hokage, the Sixth Hokage to be exact and he opened the scroll. The bird just ruffled it's feathers and made itself at home on his makeshift desk.
Reading over the contents of the letter he groaned at the announcement. Sighing he decided he had gotten away with this project a lot longer than he had expected and wasn't that surprised that the council had finally noticed his absence and bother Kakashi about it.
He was due home in five weeks, by the end of September to be exact. According to the council they were still not going to fund his proposal, which was a drag because he was relatively certain that presenting it to the Five Kage was going to make their voices in the matter mute, and then he was going to have his plan in action. It was probably going to really piss them off, but there came a certain point where it wasn't about the profit, it was about the right thing. And his program was the right thing.
Also, according to this missive he would be spending the week of his return evaluating the Uchiha strenuously. The council, the Kage, and the Shinobi Allied Forces were all demanding to have this thorough evaluation before the decided the 'official' fate of the Uchiha. Shikamaru didn't like the sound of that, but honestly he didn't mind.
When he had last evaluated Sasuke he hadn't been all that bad, just a bit quiet and jumpy. However, he would admit that the last Uchiha had calmed down considerably.
Anyway, he sat down and started writing his reply to the Hokage. Once it was written up he rolled up the dried ink in the scroll, but his crest on it to seal it shut and then slipped it into the pouch on the hawk's back. The hawk flew out the window the moment he opened it and Shikamaru sighed. This was a drag, and now he was going to be dealing the the council, the Uchiha, and the Kage when he returned, not to mention the Shinobi Allied Forces duties he seemed to be accumulating.
Dragging a hand over his face he went for his vest and pulled out another cigarette, he was going to have to start cutting back on these things.
The light… it was evil, she groaned as she covered her splitting head with her arm then dared to crack open an eye to look at the carnage around her. Sakura and Tenten were chatting quietly as they ate breakfast. Ino was sprawled out on the couch with her bra in her fingers. And Hinata was curled up under the table.
"Ow," she groaned.
"I have to admit, you are serious competition to my drinking title," Sakura informed her.
"Not so loud, it echos," she muttered as she rubbed her temples. Her mouth felt as if someone had let her sleep with cotton balls in it, and her body felt unbelievably heavy as she slowly sat up, to squint at the girls.
"Here, this is what Neji made me for hang overs, works miracles," Tenten said as Temari crawled to the table and sat there. The tea was poured and slowly she brought it to her lips since it didn't feel as if she were about to lose her stomach she decided to just down the concoction at her lips. It was unbelievably bitter as she downed it and put the dup down.
"Did I do anything I should regret?" Temari asked. She had a vague reloclection of agreeing to a favor from Ino, and something about Shikamaru's butt. Odd, she knew, but it was all blurry and vague.
"You agreed to Ino's favor to go on a date with Shikamaru, and apparently he has a cute butt, according to you," Sakura filled in for her as a heaping plate of deliciously greasy food was placed before her.
"I said what!?" she shrieked then grabbed her head as it split in half from her splitting headache and her stupidity.
"Yup, and giggled," Tenten confirmed for her. "Oh, and Ino had me promise to remind her that she got your agreement to go on the date, so just know I'm honor bound to inform her truthfully that you agreed to go on a date."
"Damn," she hissed as she took a tentative bite of her food. "Can't you lie to her?"
"She's essentially a telepath, no," Tenten said.
"But I could," Sakura giggled.
"According to her your head is defective," Tenten snapped and Temari rubbed her temples as she cursed herself for letting her guard down for a night of fun when Ino was rather like a wolf in sheep's clothing.
"Don't worry Temari, I bet the date will be fun," Sakura smiled.
"He's my little brother's age," she sourily pointed out. now, if his age didn't happen to be a gap of three years between her and him, and he happened to be her age, she'd have jumped his bones. Face it, he was attractive, extremely smart, didn't bore her half to death and he did not treat her like a damsel in distress. What wasn't there to like?
Well, there was that three year gap making him seventeen, almost eighteen and her twenty, almost twenty-one.
"Is it true you've slept with a troglodyte?" Tenten asked her.
"Uh…"
"Hey, boss man! There's a huge storm rolling our way!" Konohomaru shouted down at him as he helped teach a group of kids the basic self-defense.
"Why kind of storm?" he asked, for there wasn't a single cloud in the sky as he dismissed the kids and walked over to the little tower that Konohomaru had constructed for himself to be a look out.
"The kind with arrows," the boy answered as he yelped and dove out of his tower, they crashed together then.
"Ow," he grumbled. However, he saw the arrow where the boy's head had been.
"I counted fourteen of them," he said as they both scrambled to their feet. Shikamaru cursed not having Ino there then, her sensory skills would have alerted them to the coming threat much quicker than he anticipated.
"What do we do?" the genin asked him and he thought quickly.
"Get Karui and Chōji, then you take the villagers into the mansion at the north end and you, Mogei, Udon and guard the civilians," he said and they parted. Shikamaru took a steading breath and he stood in the village gates then. The dust kicked up from the coming shinobi spoke of their arrogance and he felt two presences on his left and his right.
Karui wasn't Ino, and she didn't know how Ino-Shika-Chō worked but he wasn't going to bitch about it since they were drastically outnumbered and Karui was pretty good with that blade she carried around on her hip.
"Chōji," he said when there was an incoming fire animal. Chōji just expanded as he intercepted the fire. Karui leapt forward as she raised her blade and he let the shadows become his to command as they sprung to life for him.
Temari sighed in content bliss as she sat in the hot spring and decided that for as much as she disliked water she could get used to this. Also, this was exactly what her dehydrated, hung over body needed.
"Hey Temari," Ino smiled.
"I still hate that I have somehow been suckered into date by you with a guy, three years my junior!" she informed the silver girl flatly.
"Ah, come on, I'm sure you two will have a lot of fun!" Ino pointed out. Temari didn't dare say she was inclined to agree with the younger woman because that would give up her right to be mad rather than giddy. At least, she thought it was giddiness which had her stomach in a fit of flutters. She wasn't entirely certain having never been on a date that wasn't mission set up or political and honestly, they all bored her.
"He's three years younger than me." She stated again.
"Psht, you two will have fun, besides, please do this," Ino pleaded.
"I said I'd do it, so I'll do it," Temari sourly assured. "But I expect a detailed, thorough reason for me having to do this date!"
"Fine!" Ino rolled her eyes then.
That's all for now folks!
Enjoy Until the Day I Act! =)