Hello and Happy 4th! I'm so sorry that you guys were confused about Shikamaru, but it is indeed Shikatema. Also, there may be some slight oocness in this chapter at the end, so if you are against it, you may not like this chapter, but it's not that bad. So enjoy chapter five.
I don't own Naruto.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
We walked through the trees to find the hustle and bustle of our camp.
Shikamaru came over and yelled at us. "Where have you been?! We've been frantic looking for you!"
This I couldn't understand. Shikamaru? Frantic? It didn't seem to fit him. Could it be that he was nervous too? But it was highly doubtful that he was marrying today, it was mainly just the rest of us. He would most likely do it tomorrow
"All right! Who's first?"
It's weird, the way he automatically asked us who wanted to lose being single, as if it was asking who wanted to be punished first and get it over with.
"Do you want to send Ino and Choji on their way before starting?" Neji suggested.
"Why?" he snapped. Wow. He really was out of it.
"No," Choji said, "That would be a good idea; we could get Temari here as fast as possible."
Shikamaru was silent, but we all knew what he was doing in his mind: blushing.
So I got together the last of the food and gave it to them, they'd need it for the rest of the trip, while we'd be going back vary soon.
"Goodbye!" I said, the only one seeing them off, except of coarse everybody else who was standing behind me, not saying anything.
"Whoohoo! Have fun on your journey to the sand!" There goes Miho.
"Um, thanks, we will," Ino said, not sure how to react.
To make a long story short, they went off with a weird look on their faces from the goodbye kisses from Miho.
Kiba wasn't embarrassed, but I sure was.
"Yahoo!" That's Kiba for ya.
"Why do we even have to do this?" Naruto asked.
"Do what?" I questioned.
"You know, get married like this. Why don't we waltz back to the village and say we eloped?"
"That's a good question," I thought out loud.
"No," Shikamaru shot out. "We need proof, don't we? It won't be formal; we'll just have to sign a fake marriage license."
Sasuke shrugged.
It still felt too weird to me. I can't believe how casual Sasuke looked.
"So where do we get the licenses?"
"Um," Shikamaru said, "I got one of those things that say I can marry people. It turns out I had some extra slips in my packing bag when I left, how convenient is that?"
I did a raspberry…as inner Sakura of course. Shikamaru would kill me if I really did that.
He pulled out several pieces of paper, and they were covered with hand-written words by Shikamaru. It was obvious he made them not too long ago. He handed me one. It was just a bunch of garbled-up letters and words. Only one sentence made sense: "I, the signed person, agree to marry my partner for a limited time. P.S. It' fake!"
He handed one to each of the couples, then passed around a fancy pen. I looked down at the paper, and in the nicest font I could, I signed.
Sakura Haruno
Sasuke took it from me and signed.
Sasuke Uchiha
Then he had a strange look on his face and he handed the license back to me.
"What?" I said, confused.
"You spelled your name wrong." And he crossed out 'Haruno' "I'll spell it for you this time, correctly."
Next to the crossed out Haruno, he wrote 'Uchiha'
I looked at those words, felt a pang in my heart, and felt like Hinata, poised and ready to faint.
Dizzily, I watched everyone else except Shikamaru sign their own license.
"Oh, almost forgot," Sasuke said. He reached his hand into his pocket…and pulled out a ring. "I think you'll need this."
He slipped it on my finger.
This time, I really did faint.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I woke up, a little woozy. I put my hand on my forehead to stabilize my brain. I heard voices. They were scattered and whispered.
"…do that?"
"…worry…tri…"
"…what….Sakura…?"
"…love…react…trick…"
"Ev…else…too."
I moaned, not because I hurt, but because I wanted attention.
All the heads huddled looked up and saw me awake. There were three people there. Shikamaru, Temari, and…Sasuke.
Seeing his face made me realize what happened. I held up my hand to look at it.
The ring was gone.
It was then that I found it was dark. Everybody else was asleep, and I noticed that each had a ring on their middle finger.
I looked at Sasuke, and he had a guilty look on his face. He held out a palm, and there was my ring. I could see it better now. It was quite beautiful, something I didn't know Sasuke was capable of appreciating.
It had a diamond on the middle, with emeralds surrounding it. The band itself was black, and had pearls dotting around it.
I couldn't help but look at the others, and their rings. They were exactly identical to the one in Sasuke's palm.
"Here, I'm sorry I took it from you, I had to look at it for a second."
Why did he have to look at mine in particular, everyone else had one? Why didn't he ask for one from a person who wasn't unconscious?
"Hello Temari. I see you got here safely, and swiftly, too. It's only been…what?" I said.
"Six hours." Sasuke finished my sentence.
"How did you get here so fast?" I asked.
"Oh, well, Miho sent one of her tigers with a message after you went unconscious to get me her faster. Obviously, tigers are faster than Ino and Choji. I met up with them after I left the village while riding Kuna-Kenta, her tiger." She explained.
I also noticed she had an identical ring.
"What's with these rings?" I asked Shikamaru.
It was Sasuke who answered. "Oh, uh, um, well, it's the wedding rings, to…you know… make us seem like we're married."
"Gosh," I thought out loud again, "This certainly is a big deal, but, how did you get these rings if we haven't been in town since we formed this idea?"
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Okay, now what's with the rings? Is there a story behind them? What about the plan? Will it even end up working? Or will Tsunade's brains be too smart for them? Tune in next time for the next installment of "Let's Play Pretend!"
Okay, sorry about that, I just love sounding like a phony radio announcer, and the fireworks show I saw yesterday was totally lame. It was like, across the bay so we could barely see it, and we waited two and a half hours for the thing! How much does that suck?
Just to warn you, next week I'm going to my grandparents, and my grandpa will never let me use his computer, besides, I'm making my costume for Sakura-Con with help with my grandma, so don't expect an installment from Wednesday to Monday, okay? And once again, thank you so very much for your support!
I'm-actually-quite-sincere-this-time,
S.A.Hikari