Chapter II – Nani? A party?!
[Indeed, everything is troublesome. Thanks for the reviews. I already have vague ideas for later parts in the story but I gotta get this chapter
done, obviously. Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.]
"Shikamaru." His father said through the door for the sixth time.
"Mhm..." Shikamaru simply rolled over, half covering his face with a pillow.
"Get out of bed." The door got pushed open.
The morning routine was mostly the same and was left unchanged for so many years, especially during the wintertime. Shikamaru was either told to get out of bed for at least fifteen minutes before his father walked in or Asuma was there to get the lazy boy out of bed. Sighing, Shikamaru opened one eye from beneath the pillow and saw his father leaning against the doorway lazily. Hey, laziness was perhaps the Nara family trait.
He caught Shikato's look and sighed heavily, pulling himself up from the warmth of the blankets. "I'm up..."
He looked out the window and groaned at the frost on the windowpane. He had a dreaded feeling in the pit of his stomach as he walked over to it and glanced out. The village streets and buildings were covered in a light layer of snow and had little children running around, playing. Shikamaru muttered under his breath as his father went back downstairs, leaving the boy to clean himself up for the day and get dressed. After getting dressed in his normal clothing and tying his hair up in a very tight ponytail, the lazy boy made his way downstairs, finding his sensei already sitting at the table and drinking a mug of coffee.
"Oi." Shikamaru merely blinked lazily in reply from Asuma's greeting.
"Since when were you living here..." He asked boredly.
"Since you decided not to get out of bed. Don't worry, today isn't going to be that hard." Asuma took a sip of the coffee. "There's actually a change in plans..."
Shikamaru raised an eyebrow, staying quiet as he actually started to wonder what his sensei was talking about. He shrugged it off and grabbed a slice of toast, automatically getting a slap upside the head from his father.
"What was that for?" Shikamaru asked his father, holding the toast away with two fingers.
"You're old enough to make your own damned toast..." Shikato replied.
"There's another one there..." Shikamaru muttered, knowing that the argument would end soon anyway. "How troublesome..."
Shikato shrugged and grabbed the other slice of toast, sitting back in one of the kitchen chairs. Shikamaru seemed to glower out the kitchen window, eating his breakfast as he saw small snowflakes fall onto the ground still. Apparently, it had been snowing since the previous day and it wasn't looking like it was going to stop anytime soon. It wasn't a heavy snowfall... it was just a slight falling of snow that couldn't do any harm. After breakfast was finished, Shikamaru walked with his sensei to their team's usual meeting spot, close to the academy... but the spot wasn't empty.
"Feh..." Shikamaru folded his arms behind his head as he looked at the scene before him.
Ino and Sakura were arguing over the mostly levelheaded Uchiha boy, Sasuke. It was a usual scene... and very, very troublesome in Shikamaru's words. Sasuke leaned against the wall with his hands in his pockets, seemingly not aware of the snowball that was being rolled up in Naruto's hands. Chouji was there... eating a bag of potato chips, hungry as usual.
"Ano... Sasuke-kun..." Ino said in her most pleading voice. "Do you want to walk with me through the park and watch the snow fall?"
Shikamaru almost snorted from Ino's words. There was no way that Ino would stand around and watch snow. Just another scheme she was attempting to pull off...
"Oi! Heads up, Sasuke!" Naruto yelled before throwing a snowball.
Sasuke raised his hand and slapped the snowball away so it wouldn't hit his face. "Once a deadlast, always a deadlast..."
"Urusai!" Naruto pointed at Sasuke, his temper showing. "That was just a warm-up for what's going to happen next!"
Shikamaru found this very, very irritating. First, it was snowing the other day... Now he was stuck outside in the snow, listening to Sakura and Ino fight over Sasuke and Naruto's shouting of pummeling the Uchiha heir with snowballs. He regretted even getting out of bed that morning but thought of what would have happened if he didn't... His dad would do the usual routine and almost flip the mattress over so the lazy boy would get up. His thoughts were interrupted quite rudely:
"Oi, Shikamaru! Heads up!" THWACK!
Shikamaru stood silently, bits of the snowball falling off of his face as he glared at the giggling vulpine face a few meters away from him. He found something else to hate than the cold and the snow... the cold, the snow and Naruto's immature games involving both. Shikamaru muttered as he wiped off the freezing snow that had been plastered onto his face. He was not happy, not in the very least. A normal person would plot their revenge and get back at the rambunctious blond-haired boy... but that took effort to actually think of a plan and carry it out. So the Nara boy decided not to waste his time and energy. He heard Kiba's snickering from beside him and he decided to actually look. No doubt about it, the dog lover was there with the rest of his team; the always-shy Hinata, the mysterious bug-user Shino and their sensei Kurenai.
"Ne... What is this about..." Shikamaru asked Asuma. "Shouldn't we be doing some D-rank missions... or sleeping..."
"It's something very special." Kakashi said as he read from the infamous perverted book 'Icha Icha Paradise'. "At first, we weren't going to do anything at all but... we changed our minds..."
"Ano sa! Ano sa! Kakashi-Sensei, what's the surprise?" Naruto asked, getting excited and left the snowball forgotten in his hand.
"Ah, you kids have worked pretty hard lately..." Asuma bit lightly on the cigarette in thought. "Since it's snowing out and the holidays are a few weeks away, we thought we'd throw a little party."
"Sugoi! A party!" Naruto cheered.
Sakura and Ino almost squealed for joy at the mention of the opportunity to steal Sasuke from the other. Hinata stayed quiet and twiddled her thumbs nervously, watching Naruto while Kiba seemed pretty excited and talked to dog companion Akamaru.
'Naruto-kun...' Hinata thought quietly.
"Oi, Akamaru! Looks like this isn't gonna be too bad!' Kiba smirked at the dog on his head, getting an excited bark in reply.
'Forehead-girl doesn't have a chance with Sasuke-kun! I obviously have more taste to get Sasuke-kun the best gift and he'll surely like me more than her!' Ino thought, clenching a fist.
Inner Sakura flashed the victory sign. 'Hell yeah! Sasuke-kun is mine and that Ino-pig won't be able to do a thing about it! I'll get something special for him and he'll have to go out with me! All my patience has finally paid off! This can't fail!' Then the inner voice proceeded to laugh in triumph with her hands on her hips.
'Ne, this is the perfect chance!' Naruto thought gleefully. 'I'll get the best present for Sakura-chan and she'll have to go with me! Not even Sasuke can beat me at that! This can't fail!'
Shikamaru folded his arms behind his head, glancing off to the side boredly. "Oh great..."
"Of course, you all will have to still train during today... It'll be held tonight say around..." Asuma paused. "Say around six or seven..."
"At Kakashi's house, of course." Kurenai added.
"Hm?" Kakashi looked up from his book, his attention finally caught. "Why mine?"
"There is not enough room in my apartment and we had already discussed this earlier." The raven-haired Jounin replied.
The silver-haired Jounin blinked calmly at her, not remembering when he had that conversation with the other two Jounin before. Asuma and Kurenai sighed and sweatdropped slightly.
"Oh. That." Kakashi nodded, finally remembering then went back to reading. "My place... Right."
"Alright, I think that's about it for now." Asuma crossed his arms. "Let's go, we have missions to do today."
As Team 10 was leaving, Ino looked back at Sakura and smirked knowingly. Sakura did the same thing right back, knowing that she would beat her childhood friend at finally getting Sasuke. Shikamaru almost growled in annoyance as Ino started going on and on about the holiday party and what she was going to get for Sasuke.
Sighing heavily, Shikamaru continued walking. "Ino... urusai..."
"Nani?!" Ino yelled, causing the other to tense immediately.
Shikamaru was so annoyed at the idea of a holiday gathering, he just forgot to keep his comments to himself. It was a first but he ducked down at Ino swung a hard punch at him.
"Oi! Stop that!" He warned before his earring was tugged roughly. "Itai! Ino!"
"Shikamaru, you apologize and take that back!" Ino scolded.
"Oi..." Asuma glanced back at the fighting pair. "You two quit it, we're meeting the client shortly..."
Shikamaru grumbled to himself as he thought bitterly how the day kept going downhill fast. Why did she –always- have to grab his earring and give it a harsh yank? Why did she –always- have to yell at him for leaving her with Chouji? Why did she –always—
"Heads up!" THWACK!
Shikamaru hunched his shoulders slightly, feeling the bits of the cold, troublesome and horrible plastered snowball fall down the back of his sweater. His eyebrow twitched in annoyance and he pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes as he continued to think how bad a day it was.
"Oi! You stupid kid! Get over here!" Ino yelled, holding a fist up at the kid down the street.
"No way!" The kid yelled back.
"You better say you're sorry or you WILL be sorry for even doing that, you little brat!" She threatened.
"I'm sorry-"
"That's better..." Ino turned back to her team, about to walk with them again.
"-that you're so ugly, you old witch!" Ino took a step forward but it was more of an angered stomp.
Shikamaru had stopped walking, glancing back at Ino as she looked furious. 'Here we go...'
Ino angrily grabbed a handful of snow, rolled it quickly into a ball then whipped the snowball with so much force, it would have broken through a fence somehow. The kid got pegged in the face with the snowball and was knocked right off his feet, causing Shikamaru to look a bit surprised.
'Who knew she had an arm like that...' He thought, making a mental note to himself.
Dusting the snow off of the back of his neck, he continued walking. Why did Ino bother to defend him? It wasn't like he was going to do something about it anyway. It was too troublesome to do anything about it. His team had an interestingly... boring job as usual. An elderly woman had them go to the grocery store with quite a large list of items. Asuma didn't help so that left Ino, Chouji and Shikamaru to take care of the shopping. Shikamaru was lazily looking along the shelf putting a few things in the basket then he stole a calm side-glance at Ino. She had decided to take charge of the list and split it three ways, and took charge of the money, but that wasn't on the lazy Nara boy's mind.
Why did she get so offensive for him? It wasn't like the kid threw the snowball at the back of her head. He could have told the kid off... if it didn't take so much effort... But since when did Ino start caring about some stupid kid throwing a snowball at him? Why now? Was she going to ask him for something? Sighing, Shikamaru muttered how troublesome the day was getting and then found Ino watching him. He looked back at the shelf, wondering how long she was actually planning to drag the D-rank mission on for... and why she was watching in the first place. What was going on here?
"Shikamaru, are you finished yet?" Ino called down the isle... how troublesome...
"Hai..." Shikamaru muttered, lazily trudging over to the other. "I hope that's it..."
"I think so..." Ino looked over the list then glanced around. "Where's Chouji?"
Shikamaru shrugged. "Let's just get this finished..."
The two looked around the shop until they found the third member of their team. He was eating again and the other two hoped that it wasn't from the shelf... otherwise, they'd have to pay for that using their own pocket money. After getting the groceries paid for from the elderly woman's money, the team started walking back towards her house. No more snowballs being whipped at Shikamaru out of nowhere, no annoying little children running past their legs almost tripping one of the genin and no lectures by Ino. Perhaps that day wasn't going to be as bad after all.
'I wonder what Sasuke-kun would like...' Ino thought to herself. 'I don't think he likes flowers much... It has to be something special...'
They made it back to the woman's house in one piece and took her groceries inside. She was very thankful for them doing the little chore and offered them a few cookies.
"You three are so helpful." She said, offering the plate towards them.
"You're welcome, ma'am." Ino said politely then sharply nudged Shikamaru hard in the side.
Grumbling, Shikamaru said nothing still even as they left. She was her old scolding self again and everything was back to normal... expect for the troublesome snow and their sensei waiting for them.
"Well, that didn't take as long as I expected." Asuma said with his arms crossed. "There's one more thing about the party tonight... I know it's a little soon for the actual thing but a little late for saying this..."
"What is it..." Shikamaru asked boredly.
Asuma held out his hand with three pieces of folded paper in it. "This idea came from one of Kakashi's students... You all get a name and you buy them something for the party. It's just a little game to make things more fun, I guess."
"I love doing this!" Ino squealed, grabbing a folded piece of paper. "I bet Sakura-chan thought that up!"
"Do we have to..." Shikamaru grumbled.
"It's for fun." Asuma watched the Nara boy reluctantly take a piece of paper.
He looked at the paper, not even wanting to bother with the whole idea but he opened it anyway. He looked at the name, nearly slapping his forehead in frustration.
"Kuso..." How the hell was he going to pull this off?
'Stupid snow, stupid cold, stupid winter...' He thought bitterly as he looked up at the sky for some sort of answer. 'This... is so troublesome...'
The inked name was...
Yamanaka Ino.
[Sorry for not updating in a long while... I had been busy for the past month or so with Track & Field and school... which sucks a lot and I haven't really felt like writing for a good while but I think I'll have more time this summer so I don't think I'll make the wait so... uh... troublesome, I think. Anyway, I typed most of this at two in the morning and there are probably errors. Ah well. Just think of poor, poor Shikamaru...]
[Indeed, everything is troublesome. Thanks for the reviews. I already have vague ideas for later parts in the story but I gotta get this chapter
done, obviously. Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.]
"Shikamaru." His father said through the door for the sixth time.
"Mhm..." Shikamaru simply rolled over, half covering his face with a pillow.
"Get out of bed." The door got pushed open.
The morning routine was mostly the same and was left unchanged for so many years, especially during the wintertime. Shikamaru was either told to get out of bed for at least fifteen minutes before his father walked in or Asuma was there to get the lazy boy out of bed. Sighing, Shikamaru opened one eye from beneath the pillow and saw his father leaning against the doorway lazily. Hey, laziness was perhaps the Nara family trait.
He caught Shikato's look and sighed heavily, pulling himself up from the warmth of the blankets. "I'm up..."
He looked out the window and groaned at the frost on the windowpane. He had a dreaded feeling in the pit of his stomach as he walked over to it and glanced out. The village streets and buildings were covered in a light layer of snow and had little children running around, playing. Shikamaru muttered under his breath as his father went back downstairs, leaving the boy to clean himself up for the day and get dressed. After getting dressed in his normal clothing and tying his hair up in a very tight ponytail, the lazy boy made his way downstairs, finding his sensei already sitting at the table and drinking a mug of coffee.
"Oi." Shikamaru merely blinked lazily in reply from Asuma's greeting.
"Since when were you living here..." He asked boredly.
"Since you decided not to get out of bed. Don't worry, today isn't going to be that hard." Asuma took a sip of the coffee. "There's actually a change in plans..."
Shikamaru raised an eyebrow, staying quiet as he actually started to wonder what his sensei was talking about. He shrugged it off and grabbed a slice of toast, automatically getting a slap upside the head from his father.
"What was that for?" Shikamaru asked his father, holding the toast away with two fingers.
"You're old enough to make your own damned toast..." Shikato replied.
"There's another one there..." Shikamaru muttered, knowing that the argument would end soon anyway. "How troublesome..."
Shikato shrugged and grabbed the other slice of toast, sitting back in one of the kitchen chairs. Shikamaru seemed to glower out the kitchen window, eating his breakfast as he saw small snowflakes fall onto the ground still. Apparently, it had been snowing since the previous day and it wasn't looking like it was going to stop anytime soon. It wasn't a heavy snowfall... it was just a slight falling of snow that couldn't do any harm. After breakfast was finished, Shikamaru walked with his sensei to their team's usual meeting spot, close to the academy... but the spot wasn't empty.
"Feh..." Shikamaru folded his arms behind his head as he looked at the scene before him.
Ino and Sakura were arguing over the mostly levelheaded Uchiha boy, Sasuke. It was a usual scene... and very, very troublesome in Shikamaru's words. Sasuke leaned against the wall with his hands in his pockets, seemingly not aware of the snowball that was being rolled up in Naruto's hands. Chouji was there... eating a bag of potato chips, hungry as usual.
"Ano... Sasuke-kun..." Ino said in her most pleading voice. "Do you want to walk with me through the park and watch the snow fall?"
Shikamaru almost snorted from Ino's words. There was no way that Ino would stand around and watch snow. Just another scheme she was attempting to pull off...
"Oi! Heads up, Sasuke!" Naruto yelled before throwing a snowball.
Sasuke raised his hand and slapped the snowball away so it wouldn't hit his face. "Once a deadlast, always a deadlast..."
"Urusai!" Naruto pointed at Sasuke, his temper showing. "That was just a warm-up for what's going to happen next!"
Shikamaru found this very, very irritating. First, it was snowing the other day... Now he was stuck outside in the snow, listening to Sakura and Ino fight over Sasuke and Naruto's shouting of pummeling the Uchiha heir with snowballs. He regretted even getting out of bed that morning but thought of what would have happened if he didn't... His dad would do the usual routine and almost flip the mattress over so the lazy boy would get up. His thoughts were interrupted quite rudely:
"Oi, Shikamaru! Heads up!" THWACK!
Shikamaru stood silently, bits of the snowball falling off of his face as he glared at the giggling vulpine face a few meters away from him. He found something else to hate than the cold and the snow... the cold, the snow and Naruto's immature games involving both. Shikamaru muttered as he wiped off the freezing snow that had been plastered onto his face. He was not happy, not in the very least. A normal person would plot their revenge and get back at the rambunctious blond-haired boy... but that took effort to actually think of a plan and carry it out. So the Nara boy decided not to waste his time and energy. He heard Kiba's snickering from beside him and he decided to actually look. No doubt about it, the dog lover was there with the rest of his team; the always-shy Hinata, the mysterious bug-user Shino and their sensei Kurenai.
"Ne... What is this about..." Shikamaru asked Asuma. "Shouldn't we be doing some D-rank missions... or sleeping..."
"It's something very special." Kakashi said as he read from the infamous perverted book 'Icha Icha Paradise'. "At first, we weren't going to do anything at all but... we changed our minds..."
"Ano sa! Ano sa! Kakashi-Sensei, what's the surprise?" Naruto asked, getting excited and left the snowball forgotten in his hand.
"Ah, you kids have worked pretty hard lately..." Asuma bit lightly on the cigarette in thought. "Since it's snowing out and the holidays are a few weeks away, we thought we'd throw a little party."
"Sugoi! A party!" Naruto cheered.
Sakura and Ino almost squealed for joy at the mention of the opportunity to steal Sasuke from the other. Hinata stayed quiet and twiddled her thumbs nervously, watching Naruto while Kiba seemed pretty excited and talked to dog companion Akamaru.
'Naruto-kun...' Hinata thought quietly.
"Oi, Akamaru! Looks like this isn't gonna be too bad!' Kiba smirked at the dog on his head, getting an excited bark in reply.
'Forehead-girl doesn't have a chance with Sasuke-kun! I obviously have more taste to get Sasuke-kun the best gift and he'll surely like me more than her!' Ino thought, clenching a fist.
Inner Sakura flashed the victory sign. 'Hell yeah! Sasuke-kun is mine and that Ino-pig won't be able to do a thing about it! I'll get something special for him and he'll have to go out with me! All my patience has finally paid off! This can't fail!' Then the inner voice proceeded to laugh in triumph with her hands on her hips.
'Ne, this is the perfect chance!' Naruto thought gleefully. 'I'll get the best present for Sakura-chan and she'll have to go with me! Not even Sasuke can beat me at that! This can't fail!'
Shikamaru folded his arms behind his head, glancing off to the side boredly. "Oh great..."
"Of course, you all will have to still train during today... It'll be held tonight say around..." Asuma paused. "Say around six or seven..."
"At Kakashi's house, of course." Kurenai added.
"Hm?" Kakashi looked up from his book, his attention finally caught. "Why mine?"
"There is not enough room in my apartment and we had already discussed this earlier." The raven-haired Jounin replied.
The silver-haired Jounin blinked calmly at her, not remembering when he had that conversation with the other two Jounin before. Asuma and Kurenai sighed and sweatdropped slightly.
"Oh. That." Kakashi nodded, finally remembering then went back to reading. "My place... Right."
"Alright, I think that's about it for now." Asuma crossed his arms. "Let's go, we have missions to do today."
As Team 10 was leaving, Ino looked back at Sakura and smirked knowingly. Sakura did the same thing right back, knowing that she would beat her childhood friend at finally getting Sasuke. Shikamaru almost growled in annoyance as Ino started going on and on about the holiday party and what she was going to get for Sasuke.
Sighing heavily, Shikamaru continued walking. "Ino... urusai..."
"Nani?!" Ino yelled, causing the other to tense immediately.
Shikamaru was so annoyed at the idea of a holiday gathering, he just forgot to keep his comments to himself. It was a first but he ducked down at Ino swung a hard punch at him.
"Oi! Stop that!" He warned before his earring was tugged roughly. "Itai! Ino!"
"Shikamaru, you apologize and take that back!" Ino scolded.
"Oi..." Asuma glanced back at the fighting pair. "You two quit it, we're meeting the client shortly..."
Shikamaru grumbled to himself as he thought bitterly how the day kept going downhill fast. Why did she –always- have to grab his earring and give it a harsh yank? Why did she –always- have to yell at him for leaving her with Chouji? Why did she –always—
"Heads up!" THWACK!
Shikamaru hunched his shoulders slightly, feeling the bits of the cold, troublesome and horrible plastered snowball fall down the back of his sweater. His eyebrow twitched in annoyance and he pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes as he continued to think how bad a day it was.
"Oi! You stupid kid! Get over here!" Ino yelled, holding a fist up at the kid down the street.
"No way!" The kid yelled back.
"You better say you're sorry or you WILL be sorry for even doing that, you little brat!" She threatened.
"I'm sorry-"
"That's better..." Ino turned back to her team, about to walk with them again.
"-that you're so ugly, you old witch!" Ino took a step forward but it was more of an angered stomp.
Shikamaru had stopped walking, glancing back at Ino as she looked furious. 'Here we go...'
Ino angrily grabbed a handful of snow, rolled it quickly into a ball then whipped the snowball with so much force, it would have broken through a fence somehow. The kid got pegged in the face with the snowball and was knocked right off his feet, causing Shikamaru to look a bit surprised.
'Who knew she had an arm like that...' He thought, making a mental note to himself.
Dusting the snow off of the back of his neck, he continued walking. Why did Ino bother to defend him? It wasn't like he was going to do something about it anyway. It was too troublesome to do anything about it. His team had an interestingly... boring job as usual. An elderly woman had them go to the grocery store with quite a large list of items. Asuma didn't help so that left Ino, Chouji and Shikamaru to take care of the shopping. Shikamaru was lazily looking along the shelf putting a few things in the basket then he stole a calm side-glance at Ino. She had decided to take charge of the list and split it three ways, and took charge of the money, but that wasn't on the lazy Nara boy's mind.
Why did she get so offensive for him? It wasn't like the kid threw the snowball at the back of her head. He could have told the kid off... if it didn't take so much effort... But since when did Ino start caring about some stupid kid throwing a snowball at him? Why now? Was she going to ask him for something? Sighing, Shikamaru muttered how troublesome the day was getting and then found Ino watching him. He looked back at the shelf, wondering how long she was actually planning to drag the D-rank mission on for... and why she was watching in the first place. What was going on here?
"Shikamaru, are you finished yet?" Ino called down the isle... how troublesome...
"Hai..." Shikamaru muttered, lazily trudging over to the other. "I hope that's it..."
"I think so..." Ino looked over the list then glanced around. "Where's Chouji?"
Shikamaru shrugged. "Let's just get this finished..."
The two looked around the shop until they found the third member of their team. He was eating again and the other two hoped that it wasn't from the shelf... otherwise, they'd have to pay for that using their own pocket money. After getting the groceries paid for from the elderly woman's money, the team started walking back towards her house. No more snowballs being whipped at Shikamaru out of nowhere, no annoying little children running past their legs almost tripping one of the genin and no lectures by Ino. Perhaps that day wasn't going to be as bad after all.
'I wonder what Sasuke-kun would like...' Ino thought to herself. 'I don't think he likes flowers much... It has to be something special...'
They made it back to the woman's house in one piece and took her groceries inside. She was very thankful for them doing the little chore and offered them a few cookies.
"You three are so helpful." She said, offering the plate towards them.
"You're welcome, ma'am." Ino said politely then sharply nudged Shikamaru hard in the side.
Grumbling, Shikamaru said nothing still even as they left. She was her old scolding self again and everything was back to normal... expect for the troublesome snow and their sensei waiting for them.
"Well, that didn't take as long as I expected." Asuma said with his arms crossed. "There's one more thing about the party tonight... I know it's a little soon for the actual thing but a little late for saying this..."
"What is it..." Shikamaru asked boredly.
Asuma held out his hand with three pieces of folded paper in it. "This idea came from one of Kakashi's students... You all get a name and you buy them something for the party. It's just a little game to make things more fun, I guess."
"I love doing this!" Ino squealed, grabbing a folded piece of paper. "I bet Sakura-chan thought that up!"
"Do we have to..." Shikamaru grumbled.
"It's for fun." Asuma watched the Nara boy reluctantly take a piece of paper.
He looked at the paper, not even wanting to bother with the whole idea but he opened it anyway. He looked at the name, nearly slapping his forehead in frustration.
"Kuso..." How the hell was he going to pull this off?
'Stupid snow, stupid cold, stupid winter...' He thought bitterly as he looked up at the sky for some sort of answer. 'This... is so troublesome...'
The inked name was...
Yamanaka Ino.
[Sorry for not updating in a long while... I had been busy for the past month or so with Track & Field and school... which sucks a lot and I haven't really felt like writing for a good while but I think I'll have more time this summer so I don't think I'll make the wait so... uh... troublesome, I think. Anyway, I typed most of this at two in the morning and there are probably errors. Ah well. Just think of poor, poor Shikamaru...]