Our note: Oh, heh heh, yeah. We spelled Heimlich Maneuver wrong. Whoops. I guess we're idiots :P Thanks for being the first to point that out encyser. If you'll let us make an excuse, we originally used the correct spelling but the computer kept on changing it, and we kept on changing it back, but it's an automatic thing, so we gave up and decided to change it back later, but we forgot. Anyways, onward with the story!
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Shikamaru walked down the street with a magazine buried in his face. The magazine was a shade of hot pink with black letterings, 'What girls like.'
"Hmm, girls like pink gifts…I never knew that," he mumbled, nearly walking into a pole. "Maybe I should get her something like that."
He thought of Temari and pictured what her face would look like if he ever tried to give her something pink. She would punch him for sure. He quickly abandoned that plan and moved to the second tip.
"Writing a romantic poem for your special girl is just the thing to win her over," he read. "Yeah. I could do that. It's not too troublesome."
Shikamaru rolled up the magazine but held on to it so he could consult it later, and sat under a large shady tree in the park with a notebook and pen at hand.
He sat like that for a while, pen posed over the clean white sheet of paper, but nothing came to him. And he found himself getting constantly distracted by the clouds floating overheard. Finally, he admitted defeat and looked to the magazine for a suggestion.
"My dearest love, your eyes twinkle like the morning sun…" he copied from the page. Then rolled it up tightly again so he wouldn't copy down the whole poem. He wanted to write it down himself.
"What rhymes with sun? Crun? Nun? Bun?" he muttered.
He added another line to his poem, and read it out loud. "My dearest love, your eyes twinkle like the morning sun. Thank goodness you are not a nun. Someday let's go and have some buns...I think that's enough."
Carefully, he ripped it out, folded it in half, and stuffed it in his pocket. He checked back to the magazine list. "Pink stuff…poem…rose. No, I don't have a rose, I should get her a rose."
Shikamaru ran all the way to Ino's flower shop.
"Ino! D'you have a rose?"
Ino didn't look up from her own magazine, and just pointed to thick bunches of roses in colorful vases off to the side.
"So, can I have one red rose?" he asked, checking his magazine.
She sighed and eased one red rose from one of the bouquets, smacking her gum loudly. "One dollar please." (Yeah, we're using American money since we don't know how yens work)
Shikamaru dug through his pockets, only to find ten cents. "Hey Ino. Can I have a discount?"
"No."
"Why not? I'm on your team aren't I?"
"N-O."
"Oh come on Ino!"
She didn't respond and only blew a large pink bubble.
"Okay. Fine! What can I buy for ten cents?"
Ino put down her magazine on the counter and bent over to shift through the large trashcan behind her. She pulled out a single wilted red rose and waved it in front of his face.
"Don't you have anything better?"
"Nope."
"God damn! You're so troublesome woman," Shikamaru grumbled. But he gave her his money, and she wrapped the rose in tissue paper.
"So who's this for?" she asked, showing interest in him for the first time.
Shikamaru gazed at the gossip-queen doubtfully. If he told her, then Ino would tell everyone. But if he didn't tell her, she would make something up and still tell everyone.
"I -uh- this is, for...a friend? Yeah! For a friend! That's it! He wants to give his girlfriend a flower, but he didn't have time to come here himself," he said nervously.
"Oh. So what's your friend's name?"
Damn you Ino!
"Uh..." Shikamaru looked around for something and his eyes landed outside of the window behind her where the heads of all the hokages' were. "Naruto," he invented, thinking about his dream to become the next hokage.
"I see."
To his relief, Ino picked up her magazine, and did not question him further. He let out a long breath, and got out of there.
Once outside, he looked to the magazine again. "Oh crap!" he groaned.
The magazine read, "Kneel down and place the rose in your mouth. Wait five seconds and then hand the rose to your special girl. Then read your romantic poem out loud to her."
There were even several colorful illustrated pictures demonstrating each step. With a different boy and girl in each box. But the animated characters all seemed be in some sort of seashore scenery under the moonlight.
Damn they look stupid!
But he was Shikamaru Nara, and he was not going to back down from a dare. He may be lazy, but he had his pride after all. But it took all he had to walk over to Temari's place and up her porch.
He rang the doorbell two times, and got on one knee waiting for someone to come. He unwrapped the rose and tried to put it into his mouth. Shikamaru cried out in pain as the thorns cut into his lip.
"Ow! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!" he yelled, dropping the rose and poem instinctively. Blood trickled down his mouth as he ran for it.