Chapter 3:

Ino returned from her interrogation of the men to tell Naruto what she learned. "Those two villagers we saw arguing with the red-vested guy are in league with the town. They made arrangements to move there after the village broke their ties with the town. Hearing about this, the guys in the vests struck a deal with them; paying them to use that dart thing after staging a fake attack."

One of the two men had received combat training in his youth when he wanted to become a guard, so he was given the darts to use on the shinobi. When Ino confronted him, the man showed very little remorse. He said his loyalties always resided with the town and not the village he had lived in half his life.

When he said this, Ino wondered if the man was originally from the town and had moved here a few years ago. It would explain why he was so eager to move back to the town once their deal fell through and why he was willing to assist them in their endeavor to thwart the shinobi. Ino couldn't prove this and it didn't really matter at this point.

"They said the drug only lasts twenty-four hours. After that, he'll be fine."

"Twenty-four hours, huh?" Naruto looked over at Shikamaru doing handstands against the opposite wall, humming to himself. "Which means he'll still be like this when the town leader comes to give him the test."

"Maybe we can postpone the test," suggested Ino. "Stall for time until this wears off."

"We can't do that," said Naruto, getting agitated. "The test starts when the test starts. They said that was what the town leader told them. If they aren't ready when he gives the test, it's forfeit. Unless someone else stands in."

Ino fell to her knees on the floor with a moan. "We should have seen this. There are four guys in red vests. One stands at the gate and never moves. The other three go wherever they want. There was only one red vest guy around during the attack and two masked men. We should have known those two were just red vests dressed up to fake an attack. How could we let this happen?"

"How did they know to target Shikamaru?" Naruto asked. "We never said who would take the test and we did everything as a team. There was no way to know who it was. Even in the fight, no one was giving orders, no one was being guarded more than another. We did everything equally."

"I don't know. Maybe it was just a lucky guess. Or maybe they planned on using those darts on all three of us and chose Shikamaru first because he was open."

"That doesn't make sense," said Naruto. "What about me? I was right by those guys, holding them back. They could have used the darts on me very easily."

"But that was a clone. They must have known to attack your real body."

"I was standing right there with my back to them, looking at the masked guys. They could have taken the shot." Naruto frowned in thought, trying to figure out how they knew. "What gave Shikamaru away? Does he just look smart?"

"La-la-la. La-la-la," Shikamaru sang as he slowly rotated his hips from side to side, still doing a handstand.

"Well, not now, obviously."

"It doesn't matter whether it was a lucky guess or they knew. The point is it happened and now the whole plan's screwed up. Shikamaru can't take the test in this condition."

Shikamaru lost his balance and hit the ground with a thud. He proceeded to roll like a log across the floor until he hit the wall and couldn't go any further. He backed up and rolled into it again, seeming to try to push the wall out of his way.

"One of us will have to take the test for him."

"With those guys out of the way, it should be easier," said Naruto, thinking about the men who plotted against them. "They could have more weapons, and there's still that guy by the gate… Well, it doesn't matter. We have to do this and complete the mission. I'll stand in for Shikamaru."

Ino looked appalled but didn't say he was unfit for the role. "Maybe…" she said quietly. Perhaps Naruto wouldn't be targeted because they didn't consider him a threat. "It'll be up to the two of us. You can take the test and if there's a question I know the answer to, I can use my jutsu to tell you."

"How good are you at puzzles?" Naruto asked.

Ino frowned. "Mm… Not as good as Shikamaru."

"Same here…"

Ino hit her fist against her leg in anger. "Jeez, Shikamaru! Why didn't you want any backups for this mission? I know your plans often work, but I just can't follow your logic on this one. It seems stupid to have only one smart guy on the team so once he's compromised, you got no one else. Why did you do it like this?"

"I can't figure it out either, but he must have known what he was doing," said Naruto. "Maybe he thought all the smart guys would be targeted so it wouldn't matter how many he brought along."

"But that's like saying you know someone's going to steal your wallet so you put all your money in it. It'll be easier to keep track of but if it gets stolen, now you have no money at all. Dividing it up makes a lot more sense."

Shikamaru rolled away from the wall and started making snow angels on the floor, laughing blissfully.

"Let's face facts," said Naruto, watching him. "Shikamaru was our only hope. Without him, how can we pass this stupid thing?"

"He wanted us for this mission specifically. That means he knew we could handle it." Ino wasn't sure how or what they were supposed to do, but she was confident in Shikamaru's plans. He must have accounted for this.

"Maybe we can snap him out of it," Naruto thought aloud. "You know, jog his brain into thinking like he used to."

"Are you sure we can do that? We're not even sure what kind of drug this is. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, just…"

"If you knock someone out with a drug, you can still wake them up. A drug that makes you numb is the same way. You just need to work through it and it wears off faster."

"That might work…" Ino wasn't sure what else to do and could see no harm in trying. "Ok, we'll give it a shot."

They gathered as many puzzles and items as they could find and piled them by category. Naruto dragged the limp Shikamaru over to sit in front of Ino who selected the simplest ones first. Shikamaru looked vacantly around the room until he heard Ino say his name and looked forward.

"His intellect is in there somewhere. We just have to bring it out. If we start with familiar things first, it might get his brain working like it used to."

Ino put some flash cards into her lap and faced Shikamaru.

"Shikamaru."

"Huh?"

"I'm going to show you a picture and you tell me what it's a picture of, ok?"

"Ok."

Ino smiled. He seemed to understand.

She held up the first card. "What is this a picture of?"

Shikamaru looked at the picture of a comb on the flash card.

"Mustache," he answered.

Ino looked at the card and at Shikamaru who was using his finger to indicate a mustache on his face while puckering his lips. "Close enough," she said and held up the next card.

Shikamaru looked at the picture of ball.

"Bounce," he answered.

Ino went on to the next card which had a picture of a rake.

"Pokey," Shikamaru said and poked the image with his finger, his nail grazing the sharp parts of the rake.

Ino held up the next card of a child's building block.

"Roll," Shikamaru said and pantomimed rolling a pair of dice across the floor, making sound effects with his mouth.

Ino held up a card with the picture of a duck on it.

"Quack-quack!" Shikamaru started flapping his elbows up and down like a pair of wings and kept quacking.

"Shikamaru…"

He snatched the card out of her hand and tried to eat it.

"Stop that!" Ino pulled the wrinkled card out of Shikamaru's mouth, eyeing the teeth marks in disgust. Shikamaru chuckled stupidly and folded his hands in his lap.

"Try something else," Naruto advised.

Ino moved on to something else in the pile. "Here's something. I know he likes this."

She placed a child's puzzle between them on the floor. Each piece was irregularly shaped and colored coded with small wooden pikes sticking out of them to make the pieces easier to move in and out of the mold. It was a very simple puzzle with only five pieces.

Ino took the pieces out of their spots and told Shikamaru to solve the puzzle, leaving the five pieces on either side of the puzzle's mold.

Shikamaru looked at the pieces with curiosity. Perhaps he was thinking. This seemed promising.

He picked up the blue irregular triangle and declared, "Fish."

"Huh?"

He started to make the piece fly through the air, making whooshing sounds. "Flying fish. Whoosh!" He made it do loops in the air.

"Shikamaru, put the piece in the puzzle," Ino told him.

He looked at the mold she was pointing to and he looked at the piece in his hand. He picked up another piece, a red one, and gave it a hard look. This one was a different shape and color. A red half-moon.

"Tomato," he said, looking at the red piece.

He put both pieces into the mold but not to place them where he thought they should go. He rammed the two pieces into each other, making them battle on the board.

"Shikamaru, will you focus?" Ino told him, starting to get frustrated. "Here, I'll help you."

Ino gathered four of the five pieces and put them into their molds in a matter of seconds while Shikamaru watched with interest. She held up the final piece, a yellow one and held it out for Shikamaru to take.

"Now, where does this piece go?" Ino asked as if speaking to a toddler.

Shikamaru looked from the mostly solved puzzle to the yellow square in Ino's hand. He took the piece from her, eyeing the square hole in the corner of the board.

Shikamaru stuck the puzzle piece in his mouth and started to gnaw on it.

"For crying out loud," Ino complained while she wrestled the piece out of Shikamaru's mouth.

"Cheese," Shikamaru said, pointing at the yellow square. "Nom-nom cheese."

Ino smacked herself in the forehead. "I don't know if this is going to work." Two attempts in and she was already exhausted.

"We have to try," Naruto urged her. "Shikamaru's intellect isn't gone, just locked up in his head somewhere. We have to bring it out."

Naruto flinched, feeling two hands along his waist. He looked down and saw Shikamaru grabbing the hem of his jacket and pulling it down to hide inside. With the hem over his eyes and forehead, Shikamaru giggled happily with his tongue lolling out of his mouth.

"We have to fix this," Naruto said slowly and emphatically.

"It will wear off by tomorrow afternoon," Ino reminded him.

"Never mind the test. Can we wait that long?"

Shikamaru slumped to the side, dragging Naruto by his jacket with him. Shikamaru tried to crawl inside Naruto's shirt but Naruto wouldn't let him.

Ino sighed. "I'll keep working with him."

"Good. Meanwhile, there's something I've got to take care of." Naruto helped Shikamaru sit up then left the room.