Chapter 5:

It was easy to get Shikamaru to sleep last night, allowing him to wear himself out. After running around with his arms spread like a bird, Shikamaru spun in circles to make himself dizzy and collapsed on the floor to watch the room spin. After doing this a few times, he decided to add the empty box to his fun, spinning and then putting the box over his head to see if anything would change when he got dizzy. Even the box spun though not as much as the room he saw peering out of the corner of the box. He kept the box on his head before attempting it again, alternating between spinning himself with and without the box on his head. He stood in place and spun the box to see if that would do anything. Then he removed the box, spun to make himself dizzy, then laid on the floor and put the box on his head, opening and shutting his eyes to see if he could control how quickly he recovered from his dizziness. They finally heard Shikamaru snoring and let him sleep where he was, covering him with a blanket.

He slept in, missing breakfast. He finally woke up, hearing the crinkling of their travel snacks. They still weren't eating any food from the village, just in case. Shikamaru sat up, box still on his head and looked from side to side, half his view covered. He removed the box and saw his friends finishing their food.

"How do you feel, Shikamaru?" Ino was hoping to see some signs of improvement.

Shikamaru reached for the snack in her hand. "Gimme." He was acting like a baby, which made no indication of improvement whatsoever.

Ino took out some food and gave it to Shikamaru. "Here."

Shikamaru dumped the food directly on the table and started to arrange it by size and shape. The dry, crunchy food now formed a perfect circle on the table. He looked at his creation in satisfaction, then slammed his face down upon it, eating like a dog from its bowl.

"I can't tell if he's better or not," said Naruto with a moan.

Shikamaru lifted his face, pieces of food sticking to his cheeks, nose and forehead. "It crunches."

Ino cleaned off his face and gave him some water to drink. He managed to drink fine on his own but then seemed to wonder if he could get the water into his mouth without putting his lips on the canteen. He pulled the water away slowly until he felt it dribble into his lap then abruptly stopped and held the canteen upright.

"Would you be careful?" Ino asked him.

Forgetting that the canteen was still in his hand, Shikamaru tried to clean himself up by rubbing the water away and ended up spilling more into himself.

"Just give me that thing." Ino took the canteen away and tried to mop up the spill with a cloth.

When she finished, Shikamaru picked up the canteen and started to dip it sideways, keeping the bottom of the canteen on the table. He kept tipping and tipping until he saw water start to come out the top and froze, seeing and measuring the position of the canteen. He drank from the canteen and did the experiment again only the water didn't come out until dipped at a lower angle. Shikamaru thought that was interesting.

"We have a few hours until the town leader shows up to give the test," Ino said to Naruto. "What's the best way we should handle this? Should I intercept him on the road to stall him or should we go with our original plan when he arrives?"

"Is there any way he can make it the village's fault if he gets delayed?" Naruto asked.

"If I use my jutsu and the people he's traveling with say he acted different, he might suspect we had something to do with it. In which case, he might."

"Should we scrap that idea?"

Shikamaru put the canteen on his head and sat there.

"Maybe using your clones to pretend to be bandits might be a better way to go," Ino thought aloud. "But if you're attacked and your clones vanish… But how's he to know that's us? I'm sure there's bandits all over the place."

"On the same day as the test might be a little suspect," said Naruto.

Shikamaru shook his head and caught the canteen as it fell. He did this a few times, seeing where the canteen would fall. He missed as it slid off behind his back and hit the floor. Ino took the canteen from him and told him to play with the puzzles. Instead of listening to her, Shikamaru played with her long hair. He made it dance and used the ends to tickle his face.

"We've got to come up with something. The test is in a few hours and Shikamaru is still in no condition to… Will you please stop that?" Ino said, turning to glare at Shikamaru.

Holding her hair over his upper lips, Shikamaru giggled stupidly and said, "Mustache."

She did her best to ignore him. "Maybe if I work with him more… But what's the point? I don't think we can make the drug wear off sooner than it's supposed to."

"We can try," said Naruto. "As a backup plan."

"Backup plan implies that we already have a set plan of action which we don't. We still can't decide what we should do to stall them." Ino rested her chin in her hands. "Oh, this is pointless without Shikamaru."

"Hey, we can do things ourselves," Naruto told her. "We don't need him for every single thing in our lives. Shikamaru doesn't remind us to blink."

"I know, but what can we do? Every plan we've come up with so far has the potential to backfire. We can't fight these guys because that's not what we were hired to do. Even if we did, what good would it do? They'd still have the same problem only now the town will be angry with them."

Shikamaru sat with his back against Ino's and pulled her long hair over his face like a curtain. He did this repeatedly, highly amused. When he finally got sick of it, he tried pulling himself up using Ino's hair, yanking her head back and causing her to yell.

"Shikamaru, please!" She pulled her hair from his hands and hid it over her shoulder. "Are you too dumb to know that hurts?"

He poked her in the face with his finger. "Boop."

Ino frowned.

Shikamaru started doing his caterpillar crawl again, sliding across the floor making motorboat sounds with his mouth.

Ino moaned loudly. "I wish this stupid drug would wear off. Forget the mission. He's annoying."

Naruto knew he had to do something. "I'll send a couple clones out to scout and I'll think of something to do in the meantime. They said there was no cure for this and that it would wear off on its own, but… There's got to be something more we can do. Maybe if we knew the kind of questions he would ask, we can cheat and plan ahead that way."

Ino nodded, getting an idea. "If he doesn't have them written down, I could go inside his mind and try to find them that way. But that jutsu is difficult to do and requires me to make physical contact with him. I won't be able to do it at a distance."

"Then my clones will scout ahead and see where they are. Then I'll tell you what they found out and we'll make a plan from there."

"Sounds good. Let's hurry."

While Naruto's clone scouted ahead for the town leader, Naruto and Ino tried to keep Shikamaru distracted so he didn't accidently hurt himself.

At one point, Shikamaru took a drink of water then held it in his cheeks, slowly letting the water stream out like a water pistol. When he did this again, he felt how puffed out his cheeks were with his hands, inadvertently pressing them and making the water shoot out even faster. He took a big swing of water, sat next to Naruto and forcefully pressed both hands against his cheeks quickly and had the water shoot out and soak Naruto's face.

"Hey!"

Shikamaru fell back, roaring with laughter.

"Keep the water away from him," Ino told Naruto.

However, Naruto saw something that she didn't. Shikamaru had made a discovery. He showed the process of learning.

"Wait," said Naruto as realization struck. "I think he can be educated. I mean, he just learned something right there. Maybe he is getting better."

"What do you mean? He was being an idiot."

"But he figured out that pushing his cheek like that would make the water shoot out of his mouth. He discovered something. Let's work with him again. Maybe this time he'll show progress."

Ino didn't want to but the prospect of improvement to Shikamaru's condition convinced her.

Before Shikamaru knew it, he was sitting in front of the puzzles and flashcards again.

"Shikamaru, I know you're in there," Naruto told him, looking Shikamaru in the eye. "So, let's draw you out."

Naruto placed six cards face-down on the floor in front of him, turning one over at a time and then over again to hide the image.

"Each of these cards has a picture on it," Naruto explained slowly. "They come in pairs. That means two cards have the same picture on it. Your job is to find the matching pair for each card. Like this."

Naruto turned over one card and flipped over another, revealing matching blue stars. Naruto turned them back over without rearranging them.

"See? Now you try."

Shikamaru sat there and stared at the cards.

"Do it just like I did," Naruto urged him gently.

Shikamaru still sat there.

"It's not that hard. I just showed you where one pair was. Find it again."

Shikamaru sucked on his fingers.

Naruto was already losing patience. "Where are the blue stars, Shikamaru? Turn them over. I just showed you where they were."

"Uh…"

"Where are the blue stars?" Naruto said slowly.

"He's not going to get it," Ino told him. She had been skeptical about this from the start. "This puzzle's too hard for him."

"It's a memory test puzzle with six cards. He only has to match three. How hard is that?"

"For him?"

Naruto peered into Shikamaru's face. "I have faith in you, Shikamaru. Come on. You can do this. Where are the blue stars?"

Shikamaru looked up at him with round, curious eyes.

"The… blue… stars." Naruto pointed at the cards. "Show me with the cards where the blue stars are."

Shikamaru flopped on top of the cards, spreading his arms and legs out like a starfish. "Star!"

"Not with your body. With the cards."

Shikamaru started making snow angels on the cards, spreading them around with his arms and legs. "Stars! Stars! Whee!"

Naruto held his head in his hands. "No!"

"I told you he wouldn't get it."

Naruto picked Shikamaru up and sat him on the floor. "Listen to me. Look what I do."

He picked up three cards and showed all three of them to Shikamaru. Two were the same and one was not. He put a blue star face-down on the floor, then a red heart, then a blue star. He held up the two blue stars at the same time and put them back down where they were, then held up the red heart, put it down, then the blue stars again and put them back down.

"Now… Where are the blue stars?"

Shikamaru stared at him blankly.

"I showed you and showed you again. Where are the blue stars?" Naruto used his hands to point at the cards, giving Shikamaru a very broad hint.

Shikamaru looked around the room, not picking up on the hint.

"Where are…" Naruto held up the two cards in his hands. "… the blue stars?"

Shikamaru looked at the cards in Naruto's hands, blue stars staring back at him. He then picked up the only card remaining on the ground, the red heart, and held it up high over his head.

"Point at the blue stars, Shikamaru," Naruto told him, exasperated. "Just point at the blue stars."

Shikamaru studied the red heart in his hand. He scratched at the red heart as if to peel it off the card. When he looked up, he saw two blue stars obscuring his view of Naruto.

Holding the cards just inches from Shikamaru's face, Naruto said again with anger in his voice, "Where are the blue stars? Point at the blue stars."

Shikamaru ducked underneath Naruto's arms, popped up between the cards and Naruto's face and gave him a kiss on the end of his nose. "Peek-a-boo."

Dropping the cards, Naruto wrapped his arms around Shikamaru and tackled him to the ground. Ino had to pry the two apart before Naruto could beat Shikamaru in anger.

"Would you just stop?" Ino said, dropping Naruto on the ground. "That puzzle's too complicated for him."

"I've dumbed it way, way down for him and he still doesn't get it!"

"Exactly!"

Shikamaru arranged the cards on the ground to form a star formation. Neither of his friends noticed.

He took a puzzle from the pile and opened it above his head, letting the cardboard pieces rain down on him like a prickly shower. He found all the blue pieces he could and used them to fill the star formation until it looked like a star with blue spots.

"He can't do these puzzles, Naruto. They're too hard."

"I saw potential in him. I think he's just being silly."

"He's not thinking clearly."

"Fine. If the memory puzzles won't work, then…"

A crash sounded and the two looked over to see a big mess from where Shikamaru had tried to stack all the puzzles and games into a tower. When it fell over, he was left standing with the last object in his hand. Seeing the toppled mess of boxes and puzzles resemble stairs, Shikamaru tried walking on top of the fallen mess, slipped and fell onto the puzzles.

"Forget the puzzles. He's going to hurt himself." Ino stepped over the mess to help Shikamaru to his feet.

They tried to pick up but Shikamaru kept taking everything they had cleaned and scattered it around the room while they worked on another section. When they gathered one puzzle into a box and put it aside, he took the box, opened it and dumped the pieces on the ground. When they gathered the flashcards into a stack and set it aside, he took them and threw them into the air and watched them fall like autumn leaves.

After a while, they just gave up.

A short time later, Naruto discovered what his clones had learned.

"The town leader's convoy is on its way here," he told Ino. "It's a small group, but they have armed guards and a wagon the leader's riding in. They're only an hour away."

"Did you see anything useful?" Ino asked, hoping there was some hint of what the leader had planned."

"He didn't have anything on him that I could see," said Naruto. "The wagon's small and only one horse is pulling it. Looks like the only thing it's pulling besides the leader is their food and water. Not much else. And I didn't get a single clue as to what they'd ask."

Ino nodded. "Ok, I've got an idea. You make a clone to escort me. We'll hide somewhere and I'll use my jutsu on a guard and have them ask the leader questions. Maybe he'll say something to a guard."

"And Shikamaru?"

"The real you will stay here and keep an eye on him."

Rather than argue, Naruto agreed to her plan. They were pressed for time, after all.

Their path was lined by a forest, so Naruto's clone and Ino could easily hide as the convoy came by. Ino took aim and beamed herself inside one of the guards walking beside the small wagon.

"Sir," the guard said, stepping closer to the well-dressed man in the wagon. "This test they will be given… Are you sure about it?"

"What's not to be sure about?" asked the well-dressed man.

"What if they have some sort of advantage? If they know what the test will be before it is given and had time to prepare?"

The man chuckled and pointed to his skull. "That's why it's all up here. No one knows what will be asked but me. There is no preparing for this test."

"Very good, sir." The guard stepped back into place and Ino released her jutsu.

"It's all in his head," Ino told the Naruto clone. "He never wrote anything down."

"It might be a verbal test or a task," said the clone. "Get in his head and see what he has planned."

"I already told you the issue with that jutsu. A human mind is very complex. I'd need time and direct contact…" Ino looked at the ground. "Besides, it might not work."

"Your jutsu?"

"Looking in his head," she clarified. "The problem with only him knowing what he'll do is that he can change his mind. If we learn what he plans on doing and come prepared, he might change up the test last minute."

"That's not fair."

"Neither is what they did to Shikamaru."