Disclaimer: Mm-mm, nope, sorry, I don't own Naruto. Now if you'll excuse me I've gotta go make sure Sasuke doesn't insult Leo's katana again... last time he ended up with a concussion. ;; On a brighter note, Lee's getting his butt kicked by Mikey on the gamecube.
CHAPTER 3: NOT-SO-COMFORTING BEST FRIENDS
INO'S POV:
Slam! I shut the door behind me and leaned on it, panting not because I was tired but because I was still so embarrassed. What was the matter with me? Why couldn't I just face him like normal?It should be nothing! I was Ino, the one who shouldn't have any trouble at all especially when it came to the male species. I brought a hand up to my face and felt that I was hot. Maybe I had a fever... a fever yeah that's right...I mean I was sitting in the middle of a rainstorm yesterday right I mean how could you not get at least a cold it's totally reasonable... aw who am I kidding there was absolutely nothing wrong with me. But, then again, why couldn't I face Shino?!
EVERYBODY ELSE
Everybody else skidded to a stop in front of the huge Yamanaka estate (it's huge 'cause I think Ino is a spoiled prep OK) and started forward but suddenly Tenten flung her arms to the side to prevent anyone from going any further. "Stop!" she shouted impulsivly.
"WTF?" said everybody. Neji continued, "What's going on Tenten?"
"Nothing! It's just..." Tenten hesitated. "Well, I want to make sure she's okay. I think it's better if only the girls talk to her."
Pause. Everybody nodded and expressed their acception of the idea. Hinata and Temari walked up to the welcoming mat (which, ironically, was shaped like a pig) next to Tenten and prepared to knock on the door.
"Aww," complained Naruto loudly, "But I wanna see what's up too!"
"Hehehe come here Naruto old buddy!" chuckled Kiba holding Naruto in a headlock. As soon as they were facing the opposite direction of the girls he hissed in his ear, "Naruto-baka trust me you don't want to get into this. I mean it's...it's...!"
"--youthful female business," finished a very serious Lee. Naruto's eyes widened.
W/ INO
I'd let myself flop to the floor with my back against the door hugging my knees, shutting out the world, when my meditation of what had just occured was interrupted by voices outside...annoying voices that sounded like all the people I had just attempted to ditch. "Go away!" I shouted, but it came out like a croak and made me slap my hand against my mouth.
"No way Ino!" came the muffled voice of Tenten. She sounded peeved. "Let us in or we'll get in our own way!"
"P-please Ino-san..." said Hinata, her voice even more hard to notice through the door. "We j-just want to help."
"I don't need your help!"
"Ino, you asked for this," came a threatening voice I reconized as Temari's. "Now I'm gonna ask nicely one more time, and if you say no or if you don't say anything at all I'm breaking the door down."
"I-it's for your own g-good."
"NO!!" I screamed. "If you break the door down, YOU'RE fixing it!!"
"I DON'T CARE!!!"
BOOM!!
Luckily I had enough sense to duck out of the way of my door and roll to the right of the doorway. Temari stood in place of my door, leg outstretched for dramatic effect and looking highly po'd, almost as much as I was feeling right then. Tenten was right behind her with her arms crossed, and I could tell that she was annoyed with me and with Temari for her brash nature and my indigance. Hinata was, well, being Hinata, with her hands brought up to her lips and her face displaying her standard worried look.
Temari grinned and brought her leg down after about five seconds. "Hiya Ino-chan! Sooo..." She crouched down to my level. "Care to explain why you ran out on us at Ichiraku's?"
"Yeah," said Tenten, "and what's the deal with you and Shino?"
"Nothing!" I assured them not as confidently as I would have liked. "He's just a world-class jerk is all."
"P-please don't say that about Shino-san," said Hinata. "He may be quiet, but he really is nice. He is my teamate after all, so I would know him better than all of you."
I raised an eyebrow, hatching an idea. Maybe she could tell me why he was acting weird! "Tell me, does Shino just come up to people randomly and hug them from behind?"
She looked shocked. The others mirrored her expression. "N-no, of course not! He would never do that to somebody!"
"Mm-hm," agreed Tenten. "Too reclusive."
"Bug-boy gots some issues," commented Temari. Then she turned to me with her eyebrows arched. "Wait a minute, are you actually saying that he really did that? To YOU??"
Reluctantly I nodded, which triggered the return of shocked looks. I became indigant. "What? It's not like I flirted with him or anything! Or like I wanted him to!"
"Did you?" said Tenten, who was busy getting the door upright and nailing it back in with a hammer she produced out of nowhere. I'd thought she only hid weapons down there..."I dunno Ino, lately you've been seeming kinda down."
"He might've thought you were desparate," added Temari helpfully. "Easy prey."
"Well so is Hinata, but you don't see Naruto or Kiba trying to make out with her." Instantly I regretted saying that. The said Byakugan user blushed and looked away, and I could tell she was beginning to regret going to the ramen shop in the first place. "Aw, Hina-chan..."
"Shuddup," snapped Temari. "That was over the line."
"N-no, it's okay." Hinata was playing with her fingers again and attempting to smile. "She's right, after all..."
The guilt was too much. Silence was seeping into the room like a stink bomb in a bus: overpowering. "Sorry Hinata, I guess I'm kinda being weird right now." I had to find a way to make it up to them. "Um, you guys wanna help me make cookies?"
Everyone brightened and instantaneously whipped their heads around to Hinata, who, still getting over her initial blush, had no time to recover and thus blushed her signature SUPA-BLUSH. By now, everyone but Naruto knows about Hinata's special Valentine's Day cookies, which she makes not only every Valentines Day by the dozens with her recources, but any time she feels like you're looking out of it and need cheering up. They're famous among the Konoha Eleven for bringing the most stoic arrogant prick (cough Neji cough) to his knees. When I had my bullimic phase, I was coaxed into eating soley for the promise of half a dozen after a balanced meal. Temari grew the most attatched; upon her first taste, she'd begun bawling, with actual TEARS, and declared Hinata a saint. A culinary saint and genious. Hinata fidgeted. "A-alright, I'll make my V-Valentines cookies...but only for Ino's bad d-day!"
"YATTA!!!" burst Temari. "This time I'm gonna find out what that secret ingrediet of yours is! Count on it!"
Hinata nearly smirked. (But Hinata Hyuuga does not smirk, as she lacks a single grain of ill will, so we must settle with an all-too-innocent smile.)
Twenty minutes and a food-fight later, we were all licking our wounds (or rather, trying to get at the sugary stuff on our elbows) and they were too happy to persecute me (and to catch sight of Hinata slipping crushed herbs genjutsu-fied to look like sprinkles in the dough). Which was all right, as long as the topic didn't come up again.
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Shino, however, was far from content. There was absolutely no logical explanation for why he had done that to Ino, unless... had the mating season finally gotten to him? In the Aburame clan, there were sometimes cases of the male beetles affecting the mood of a male member, and even horomones. Shino had never thought it would happen
to him, judging his own character and morals to be too stable for that kind of nonsense, but hadn't his Tou-san mentioned once that these things were indiscriminate (sp?)?
The same sort of thing happened with the Inuzuka clan, he was sure. During that season, his teamate had been acting very peculiar around Hinata, normally slit pupils dialating and fingers twitching. Shino had noticed his breathing change also. Akamaru seemed to have nothing to do with this, but that was understandable because he was just a puppy and that sort of thing would come in the next year. Kurenai-sensei had also sensed the change in Kiba and in a subtle way put distance between him and Hinata by pairing him up with Shino individually for sparring more often. After the season was over they resumed training as before, Kiba's glances toward Hinata now chagrined. Sheepish was too mild a word for it; he looked downright ashamed. Thankfully Hinata remained blissfully unaware of the whole thing, probably because she was so innocent in anything involving relationships.
If he was right, then it must have been simply instinct and he just needed to excersise something he'd always taken for granted: his self-control. It just meant that he needed to become even more detached from the world than before.
He was still at Ichiraku's. He hadn't bothered to follow everyone else as his presence would only lead to an interrogation, an event which would sooner or later require speech, which would require the use of his jaw muscles, and that made him sore. He glanced up at the man the stand was named after and was met with a cold and annoyed expression quickly forced back for manners' sake. "Sumimasen," said Ichiraku, scrubbing away at a ladle nervously, "But loiters are not welcome here." He looked down at his ladle to escape the awkward-ness. Shino nodded and began to turn around slowly on his seat, but stopped cold when he caught sight of the person least expected to come here.
Sabaku no Gaara was slumped over the counter of the ramen stand, and he was slurping nearly as quickly as Naruto.
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Temari belched. Tenten shot her a disapproving look. "Whoops."
"Whoops, and what?"
"'Whoops' and hey, it's a complement in my country."
Hinata looked over from where she was picking up unused napkins. "Really? In the Kaze country? W-well thank you v-very much." She bowed to hide the color in her cheeks; she couldn't stand to be complemented. Composed, she put a free finger to her mouth. "How very strange. But it would be a very bad thing if we went on a mission some day to your country, Temari-nee-san, and people thought us rude. Oh no!" She gasped. "What if something I have said is impolite in your country? How would I know?" Thus, Hinata went on another fuss fest right where she stood. Sakura began to pick up the remaining napkins in her stead. She'd gotten here about ten minutes after the break-in, because Naruto hadn't wasted any time to share the latest news of Konoha.
And that left me to my own dark emo thoughts. Well, all right, I'm not emo, that would be Gaara and Sasuke-kun's department. Instantly my mood darkens. Sasuke-kun...
I spy from the corner of my eye Sakura Haruno, and suddenly feel posessed by an emotion akin to Scorn, but not quite Envy. For simplicity's sake, let's go ahead and dub it Spite. I commence it in my mind, the...what's the right word for it? Bitching. That's it. She must think she's so great, with that pink hair of hers and her-- her-- um... feet! Yes, that pompous foot girl. With elbows. It's not called an elbow anyway; everybody knows those are weenises. And who told her she got to have a bigger forehead than everybody else, huh? What, normal-sized foreheads aren't good enough for ya, eh? Eh?
Wait.
"..."
Ino cannot be jealous of Sakura's forehead. Why?
Because it's MADNESS!
The next few minutes are spent clutching my head and rocking back and forth in the corner while shooing off a concerned Hinata. I tell ya. These are strange days. I wanna watch Toy Story. Haha.
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"Why are you here, anyway?"
Yes, it was true. Shino Aburame was willingly speaking without prodding from team members. The incessant stoic-ness built up all those years was finally crumbling, along with his dignity. And for some reason, Gaara was cooperating. It must be in the ramen.
"-slurp- Well, I'm off duty."
Shino raised an eyebrow. "But... you are the Kazekage. Shouldn't you be in your own village, even if you are off duty?"
"I guess so." Gaara motioned for more ramen. Ichiraku complied disbelievingly. Was this fetish for ramen some sort of Jinchuuriki thing? Ayame scrubbed the pots hurredly and piled ready bowls high. If this dude was anything like Naruto... She shuddered and hoped this guy wasn't here to stay for long.
"I wasn't aware that Kages were even allowed to take breaks."
"They aren't.-slurp-" Gaara was enjoying his ramen. Why hadn't anyone informed him of this stuff? All the wasted years (and yen)!
There was a breif pause. Normally Shino would have absolutely no need to fill in silence with polite conversation, but this was the kazekage of his village's ally, even if he wasn't acting like it. He glanced at the tomato-topped former maniac: with the perfect posture and straightest face anyone could possably hold while eating, Subaku no Gaara guzzled down the remaining broth with unheard of gusto. And no noise. That was the strangest thing about it. His -slurp-'s weren't audible, they were simply gulps--again, with no sound attached.
Speech, Shino, manners. Say something.
"I've hugged a girl I hardly know from behind in a somewhat creepy fassion," blurted Shino in a very un-Shino-like manner. Sure, why not start with the recent events?
Gaara blinked. He looked up from his ramen and into Shino's souless shades briefly. "Good for you." Then he focused on the important item in life.
Behind the shades, Shino rolled his eyes in frustration. "I don't know how to put it behind."
"I'm not the best person to ask about love troubles."
"This isn't something like that." He pulled up the gawdy trenchcoat collar to hide the twin dabs of pink on his cheeks.
"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."
"But--"
"Look," Gaara sighed, standing slowly and having to stop momentarily to catch his balance. Maybe there was such thing as too much of a good thing. "I'm a busy person, even off duty." Temari-nee-chan hasn't quit blabbing about some girl named Hinata and her soon-to-be-famous cookies. Hmm... And in that moment, Rokudaime Kazekage of Sunagakure hatched a brilliant beyond brilliant ideo of how to make things convenient. He turned to Shino. "I help you out with this fling--"
"It's not--"
"--and you show me the way to a person I need to meet."
The look in his eyes was slightly frightening, but not in a psychotic mass murderer kind of way, Shino decided. He took a moment to stand (have you ever tried to stand up with a sprained dignity?) . "Deal," he grunted.
Gaara nearly smiled. (But Gaara doesn't smile, as he lacks a single grain of pure kawaii-ness, so we must settle for a creepy smirk.)
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A/N: I started this chapter about three months ago and NOW i post it. Kinda sad. And the quality isn't that good either. I would like to say that I made up for it with quantity, but I'd be lying, and that goes against my policy, so... um, the best I can offer is an apoligy. -cringes in absolute defeat- Don't clobber me!