AN: Welcome to part 37!

It took a little later to get out than normal, but school is really complicated for me, since we've just met Midterms. To make matters worse, 2 weeks ago I caught this very nasty cold that's kept me coughing, barely able to speak, and now might have given me an ear infection. Fun. But at least I get to write this awesome story, right?

The next little while is going to be very very hectic, but I'm going to do my absolute best to maintain my schedule and chapter length. I should also mention that I'm experimenting with improving my writing style, in other words I'm going to write and write more concise and to the point. You guys can let me know if you like it or not, and I'll decide if I still want to use it. It wont be a big change, but I'm going to try and keep the purple prose at a minimum. Once again, thank you all for reading!

I do not own Naruto.

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Gaara was running faster than he had in a long, long while.

Beside him, he could hear the sounds of a ninja hound sniffing as it ran, and after a few motions, it barked loudly to show that it had found something. The Kazekage slowed down, and so did the hound, pressing it's nose against the sane beneath it, and beginning to scurry around.

"What is it boy?" The voice was that of another shinobi, this one being a little bit older than Gaara was, wearing his Jonin vest, and with a head wrap covering most of his face, the exception being his dark red eyes. He knelt down to where the dog was sniffing, and watched as the hound began to circle an area. It wasn't marked at all, but the rain from the night before had likely hid any tracks that would have existed there, and the nose of a Sunan Bloodhound rarely told lies. Gaara watched the ordeal for moments longer, before the hound began to bark loudly again, looking towards the north. One of the four other shinobi that accompanied him gave out a shout.

"Alright! This way!"

The ninja hound began to rush out in the direction it had gazed before, and the other shinobi began to follow it in pursuit. Gaara ran amongst them, careful to make sure that he wasn't in the front nor back in case of an ambush or trap. As he travelled, he couldn't help but reflect upon his situation.

The moment that he had found out that Shikamaru escaped captivity, he had mobilized a force of his best, or rather, best surviving shinobi to join him in hunting him back down. He had left the village in charge of his best man, no, woman, and had assured, rather frantically, that he would take care of the rest of the damages, mostly structural, that the rainstorm had brought the moment that he had returned.

Although, even as he had said those words, he hadn't been thinking about it. No, the only thing that he was truly thinking about was the man that he was tracking down now.

Shikamaru... you son of a bitch.

The group he travelled in was silent, and the only other sound he could hear other than the sound of feet crushing the sand beneath them was the heavy panting of the canine. It was the only one that they had left in Sunagakure, the rest of them being assigned on missions, but they had made sure to save the best at their village in case of emergencies. In the few hours that they had been outside the village, the dog had found all sorts of clues towards Shikamaru's true whereabouts. It's accuracy was typical, however, and he could get a gut feeling that he was getting closer to his quarry. There was no way that the man he hunted could've gotten far from the village in the short while that he had been gone, and the man likely had no time to gather provisions for such a journey. There was no way that he could've gotten far away. The mantra replayed in Gaara's head over and over again.

He would find him. He would catch him. And he would get what he wanted from the man, or this time, Shikamaru would die.

His escape had been damaging and embarrassing to the man on many, many levels. The general had been offered a pardon from a Kage, and he had refused. He had been given a chance to give in, and he had ignored. He had been tortured to the point where he could barely stand, and yet his mouth had stayed shut. Beyond that, he had been responsible for-...

Gaara clenched his fists, and then continued to keep his eyes in front of him, looking towards the direction of the ninja hound. The four other ninja that were with him did the same, and the group of six rushed over the sand silently, the desert's harsh and unforgiving sun. Their feet made no sound as it clashed with the sand underneath, and their breathes were as steady as their eyes. Soon, Gaara reasoned, he would find Shikamaru. He would find him, properly punish him, and then things would get better. Things had to get better. No more dead brothers and sisters, no more crimes...

No more massacres.

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Shikamaru weakly rolled himself around in the sand.

Get up. Got to... get up...

Despite his will, his sides still ached. He tried his best to reach his hands above his head to begin to move again, but he felt a shock in his arms again. And so, realizing that all of his struggling would only cause him more pain, he slowly returned his arms to his side, and then began to take a few, slow breathes, making sure to keep himself calm. On his back, he could feel the sand shift and shake with his lungs, and then, after a few minutes of rest, he tried to raise his hands above his head again, and this time he succeeded.

...Alright then... now stand up...

He hadn't expected to still be weak from the night before, and the fact that he still was now rocked him to his core. The desert's sun threatened to swallow him up and destroy him if he didn't' get up, and he could already predict that Gaara was at least aware of his disappearance. To add to matters, the trading group he had been travelling with was getting ready to go. He had to come off as healthy, alert and strong like the others, lets his cover be blown.

So even as his chest began to burst into a flame of pain, he moved his hands to his sides and slowly pushed himself up to his knees, continuing until he was standing again. He reached up into the sky slowly to stretch, before pausing quickly as he heard a crack go off in his right arm. He cringed for a moment, before taking in a deep breath, and then finishing his warm up. He then turned himself around and slowly knelt to the ground to roll up his bedroll, before standing up again, and moving towards his camel.

He and the rest of the Trading group had ridden well into the night, getting a good distance away from Sunagakure before they had allowed themselves to rest. They had slept in the morning and well through the afternoon, or at least that was from what Shikamaru could guess, looking up into the sun high in the sky. Their camp had been small and simple, each man had a bed roll on the back of their camel, and so each had simply found a dune to set their things on, and then found rest.

Thinking of the men he travelled with, Shikamaru slowly began to walk towards the camel that he had "been given" the night before, and then slowly mounted it, getting a better view of the small "camp". Everyone else that was with him, 4 men of alternating sizes, weights and heights, all wearing white turbans and long, white robes as he was, all had their own individual camels, although theirs were more stocky, and held more things. One man even had a giant box on the back of his, and behind his camel guided a desert mule along with a robe, the mule also having it's own overburden of storage. It was a trade caravan if he had ever seen one.

Once he was fully settled, he heard a whistle from in front of him. He was positioned at the back end of the 5 man caravan, so the man who had whistled towards him was directly in front of him. The brown skinned man turned his head around to look Shikamaru in the eye, and then nodded and smiled.

"Ready for another day of travel?" At this, Shikamaru nodded. For a moment, he nearly forgot that he still wore a full head scarf over his head, completely making him anonymous to everyone else in the area.

"Of course I am. Let's go."

The men in front of him all kicked their heels into heir camels, and the great beasts began to make their way forwards. Shikamaru did the same, and his camel began to prance forwards as well. Eventually, he'd slip away from the group, and quickly head back to his village in the usual path He took a deep breath of the clear, clean desert air, and then breathed in deeply.

...Almost there Shikadai. Hang on.

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For all her life, Shiho had always wanted to be this close to Shikamaru Nara.

As a young girl, she used to fantasize about him. Back then, she was the only woman in the village with a similar intellect to his, and with him being the dashing young man he was, she used to dream of marrying him. The two would have been a perfect team, in her eyes at least, the two strategists amongst the ninja world. They did have decent chemistry, and he was quite kind and polite once he tried to care about such things. In her eyes, the two were meant to be together.

That all changed when Shikamaru began to date Temari.

For the first three years, she hated her. In her eyes, some bitch from the desert had come out without any warning, taking her future husband within her winds. She used to cringe hen she saw them walking down Konoha's main street, she used to jeer behind their backs and avoid the two when she could. It wasn't fair. He was supposed to be her knight in snarky armour. Her own failed love life without him only aggravated her into outright hating him, her, and the very fabric of their union.

But one day... her dislike of them simply ended.

In hindsight, she couldn't remember the true reason why she stopped hating the fact that Shikamaru and Temari were together. Perhaps it was the fact that her own ninja career began to pick up steam, leaving her less time to complain about such trivial things. Perhaps it was the fact that she made more friends on that year, and would meet her future husband mere months after she realized that she no longer cared. But, all in all, it was probably because one day she looked into the union without noticing Temari, without noticing her taking him away from her...

And instead of seeing two conspiring snakes... she saw two young shinobi truly in love, despite their circumstances. Shikamaru was still a knight in shining armour, but it was for a different woman, not her.

And now, she was tasked with seeing and documenting how the fairy tale ended. With the princess dead, and her knight dying soon after.

Naruto had tasked her with inspecting and preparing the body for a cremation mere hours ago, and the moment she had been given the job she had gotten right to emptying the body fluids, and cleaning any of the exterior wounds. In her lonely laboratory, the man was under her scalpel, still and silent. She pushed herself up from the body, and then looked at it, going over the work she had done earlier. The man's face was closed with a towel, but the rest of him was definitely Nara. Slim physique, a narrow chest with his upper left portion open, open palms on both of his hands, and a cut just above his right thigh.

She sighed.

Of course the time I get to be close to him is when he's dead.

She shook her head in embarrassment, and then moved to look at the clock on the wall. It was time for her to open up the cloth that covered his face and see his face for the last time.

She shook her head again, before slowly beginning to take the bandages offf of his head...

When she saw the man underneath it, she knew that it wasn't Shikamaru Nara.

From the top of her head, Shikamaru's head a little more Narrow, and Shikamaru definitely didn't have a moustache. The man's hair was long and black, yes, but it was in a ponytail, while his hair showed no signs of actively being in a hairstyle like that. Shiho blinked, and then left the operating table for a few minutes longer, returning when elsewhere in the room she found what she was looking for.

A book on measurements.

When a Jonin or Chuunin wanted to keep his or her level, it was mandatory that he or she underwent a check up. A Psychological one, and a physical one. During the physical exams, Konohagakure collected records of height, weight, measurements and overall flexibility. It was good to know what condition a shinobi was in, the practice was introduced during a war where such things were needed, and the information collected was also used to identify corpses.

She paused. It was a little bit depressing that it came to this.

With a heavy heart, she slowly flipped the giant record book to the point where the Nara clan's statistics were, and then opened it up to Shikamarus' page. The man in front of her looked so similar, and yet so different. Slowly, she reached into a table drawer to take out a small ruler, using it to measure his chin to forehead...

To find that it was not a match.

She sucked in a breath, but then calmed her emotions. It was just a jaw sampling. The real measurements were just about to begin...

But as she went on and on, she found that none of the measurements were matching at all. The hair was too long, the beard wasn't quite like his. His hands were too big, his feet were too small. And at each reveal, each mismatched limb and/or appearance...

Shiho could feel a giddy feeling take over her.

On one hand, the man in front of her was dead.

But, on the other hand, the man in front of her was not Shikamaru.

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"You know, I'm beginning to think that the adults are lying to me."

From his position beside him on the open field, Inojin Yamanaka sighed pitifully, and then raised his arms so that they were behind his head. He then leaned back further into the beanbag chair that he sat in, and shook his head.

"You've been saying that for a while man. Give it a rest."

Shikadai looked over at him. The two of them were in the living room of the Nara Head's residence, and Shikadai was lying on the floor reading over his homework for the day as Inojin sat in a bean bag. Earlier, he had tried to draw his surroundings, the Nara residence was always well maintained and he always found it fascinating, but eventually Shikadai's sluggishness had seemed to rub off on him, and he had joined the boy in lying back. Considering how the boy had been acting with him all night, his awkward statement was really out of place. But he had brought it up in the days before, ever since it became a week since his father had gone.

"No, they really have to be lying. I mean, why else would they be so tight lipped about everything all of a sudden?"

Inojin sighed again, and tried to bury his head into his sketchbook in front of him.

"I don't know, maybe they're just tired of you complaining all the time," he snapped. Idly, he began to trace over the lines he had drawn with a spare pencil, and tried to figure out a way to move past this topic.

"...It's been a hard year for everyone, right? They probably just don't want to talk about anything relating to war, right?"

"Yeah, but... they haven't even told me where he's gone, or what he's doing? And what kind of solo mission takes more than two weeks-?"

"I don't know. But... maybe you shouldn't worry about it. I mean... they're older than us, right? They probably know what they're doing-."

"Bu-."

"And you're going to hurt yourself if you worry so much. At least, that's the type of stuff my Mom would say."

Shikadai paused, and then Inojin slowly pushed himself further and deeper into the beanbag.

"You know..." He said. "Maybe you should get into one of these? It might help you with your stress-."

"No thanks," Shikadai spoke. "I need to figure this out. Why would everyone be avoiding me now? Why would-.:

"Shi-."

"No. I need to figure it out. I need to know for sure."

Shikadai leaned back onto the ground he sat on, and then fell silent. In the days that had passed, he could increasingly feel himself become more and more jaded bout his father's disappearance. Eventually...

"...Do you think he might be dead-."

"Don't be dumb!" Inojin scolded. "Your Dad might be... 'sick'... now, but he's not that careless. Besides, if anything major, I'm sure that the adults would at least tell you something, or maybe some other people from your clan would figure it out..."

Inojin's voice trailed off as he continued to re-trace his lines, making sure that they were the correct look and texture. Meanwhile, Shikadai was given another opportunity to brood and complain.

Before he could do such a thing, however, he heard the front door open, and then raised his head up from the floor to see who had entered.

"Shikadai! You home?"

Shikadai rolled his eyes at the familiar voice.

"Yeah Mirai, I'm over here."

Mirai met the two boys sitting in the living room, then raised a hand to greet them. Shikadai raised a hand in response, but said nothing, while Inojin let himself wave back and forth happily. Mirai nodded, and then moved into the kitchen area, holding the stack of pizza boxes she had brought home and bringing them with her.

"Sooo... Mirai's your Nanny now...?" Inojin asked, confused. Shikadai shook his head.

"Naa. My Old man just asked her to look after me while he was gone. She's pretty cool, actually."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Shikadai looked up into the ceiling again, and this time found himself continuing his scepticism and worry. Mirai once claimed that she would have never lied to him, but the circumstances of the now were making it hard for him to believe in her. As each day without his father went on and on, he began to increase his suspicions...

"By the way, I brought back some Pizza! You did good work yesterday, so feel free to take some."

"Yeah! Thanks."

Well, sitting around and brooding isn't going to fix things...

Shikadai rolled himself over so that he was lying on his stomach, and then placed his hands together, imitating his own father's "thinking" pose. There were many ways to find out where his father was, and it was time that he began to exhaust some of them. There was the Hokage, the man was known for his honesty and would likely give him a more relateable story than anyone else wou-.

"I can promise that everything's going to be alright. And I can promise that you'll be just fine, Shikadai."

Shikadai grit his teeth. He had lied before, he would likely lie to him again.

There were other members of the higher echelons of the Hidden Leaf's government that he could ask, he supposed. The former Hokage Kakashi usually was friendly, although he might be suspicious due to the circumstances of their last meeting. Sasuke would likely be the same way. Sakura was out of the question. Come to think of it, most of the elders he knew would likely turn him away at the door.

That left records of his father's passing. If there was anything amiss, there'd likely be some sort of account of it in the newer archives. The only problem was that ever since he had been there, there had been heightened security in the area. The amount of ways he could find out the truth about his father were getting slim...

"Shikadai! You might want to come get something before it gets cold!"

He rolled his eyes. She wouldn't be a good idea either, as the last time he had asked she had asked her she hadn't given him a clear answer. It was beginning to seem as if none of the adults would ever tell him the trut-.

Unless of course, he spied on them.

"Shikadai? Come on, let's go get some food."

Shikadai smirked to himself, and then slowly got off the ground. He was a Genin-in-training, after all.

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As night came upon the desert travellers, Shikamaru quickly realized that it was his time to leave.

From his estimation, he was half way towards Konohagakure, and halfway away from Sunagakure. For him, it would be best to get away from his current group and go the rest of the journey alone, lest his cover be fully revealed. The men he had rode with were friendly enough, but he was sure that the moment they found out who he truly was, that those jovial and open grins would turn into looks of hatred and jealousy.

By now, however, Shikamaru wondered if he really did deserve those looks and their hatred. But for now, he couldn't let himself become slow.

The group of five were readying themselves to stop, and he slowly gathered his wits. Earlier, he had mentioned to them that there would be a time that he would have to leave them a bit earlier than their own destination, but he hadn't exactly told them when that time would be. All of his earlier conversations with them had been civil, so as the sun began to finally set in the sky, he was sure that he would be able to make a clean slip away.

So when the rest of them began to stop, he kept going, slowly moving himself to the front of the mini caravan. Once he was in front, with all of their eyes on him, he cleared his throat, and then began his speech.

"It's time for us to go our separate ways."

As he has expected, none of the group in front of him gave much of an objection. It was the way of many travellers in the desert, he supposed. Most "alliances" only lasted for little whiles.

With that, he turned himself around to leave, but before he could, a voice from the travellers came to him.

"Wait... you're heading that way?"

Shikamaru turned his head. The man who had spoken up was much older than the others, he could tell by the grey in his beard. He nodded.

"It's where my contract needs me to be."

The other man shook his head.

"Some contract you've got," he muttered. "Konohagakure's hard to trade with nowadays. They're too fortified, you know, really suspicious of Sunagakure traders because of the war and all..."

Shikamaru raised a brow behind his head wrap, curious to how the man knew that he was going to Konohagakure specifically. Nonetheless, he had to get far away from the group before it was too dark for him to see anything.

"I'm not heading there directly. I think first I'll see to some of the river towns, and then maybe head to some other forest villages for provisions..."

The old man in front of him seemed to suspect nothing, and simply nodded.

"Just make sure you keep yourself warm and safe out there. What do they say... the desert is a cruel mistress?"

Shikamaru smirked. You could say that, I guess.

"Thanks for your kindness."

Shikamaru turned his camel and then began to go down the sand dune that he was on, and rode on in the direction of Konohagakure. He didn't stop nor turn back until a long while, when he was sure that the men who had accompanied him were gone and out of view. Once he was sure that they were gone...

He dismounted his animal.

The camel paused for a few moments, not sure what to do without a master, before Shikamaru harshly slapped it's rear. When the animal cried out and began to run in another direction, Shikamaru ran in a different one, rushing towards a different part of the desert. As he ran, he looked down and onto the sand.

Like he had predicted, the beast was making tracks in another direction. He was rushing on the sand light enough that he made no footprints. If anyone were to try and follow him, they would likely end up following his camel instead. Once his camel was out of view, he began to move ahead, trying to find any source of shelter.

His walk was long and hard, and the coldness of the desert's night wasn't making it any easier. Eventually, however, with shivering hands and shortening breath, he made his way into a rocky part of the desert, full of dunes, small cliffs and shallow caves. His feet began to drag as he found a cave that was small and well hidden from a random, wary traveller, he made his way in, and kept on dragging his feet until he found a piece of the cavern that was dark enough.

And that was where he collapsed.

He let out a growl, and then placed his hands to his sides. The torture from earlier was coming back to him, and he feared that whatever aches he had felt earlier were much worse than simple pains. If it was something internal, then he had no doubt that he wouldn't be able to get back to Konohagakure without any other method of help.

He longed to stand up again, but it was dark, and he couldn't find any supports in the cave with him. His lighter had been confiscated the day that he had been taken captive, and the only things he had with him was stolen clothes. He remembered now, even his headband, and not to mention Temari's, had been taken from him. His ninja tools, his special kunai, everything. And he barely still had his life.

But he had to calm himself, taking deep breathes, and focusing on keeping the pain within him. He was always home, halfway back to his Kage, his friends, his son. Once he was home, he would be able to fix everything. He would be able to tart fixing everything that was broken. He could do it... that was what he believed.

He felt another pain in his chest, and let out a soft groan, beginning to close his eyes to welcome sleep. Maybe that was all he had left, now. His beliefs.

It would have to be enough for him, just for now.

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Once again, thank you all for reading! Next chapter should be out by November 23rd, and it's going to be a complicated one. You'll see. Remember to R&R if you can!