What's up world? The fall semester is finally over so- in between dealing with family and trying to get laid while I'm at home for the holidays- I'll have a lot more time to write; HOORAY for ME! Anyway, here's a new chapters.

P.S. Thanks to everybody who has left a review, you guys are the balls!

Chapter 4

The right man for the job…

Just about everyone who knew Nara Shikamaru, from his colleagues to certain members of his extended family, reckoned him to be a patient man. Relatively few people- his father, his best friend, his second-best friend and his on again/off again girlfriend- knew that this wasn't exactly the case. Shikamaru had no problem waiting; it's just that that waiting had to have a purpose to it. He hated feeling like his time was being wasted.

Right at that moment, the shadow-user felt like that.

Upon receiving the urgent summons to the Hokage tower from the hapless messenger Shikamaru had- reluctantly- made his way to the monolithic building with all haste. Reaching the tower, he hurried up to the Kage's top floor office where he was unceremoniously stopped in his tracks at the door by the sunken-eyed secretary occupying the desk where Shizune once spent so much of her time. Grumbling in annoyance when he was told take a seat and wait until the Hokage asked for him, Shikamaru picked a chair and slouched down in it.

The shadow user crossed his arms across his chest and attempted to avoid the thought that the village leader was just making him wait in order to get on his nerves; that degree of casual pettiness wasn't typically in that idiot's character. But on the other hand Shikamaru wasn't exactly one of the Hokage's favorite people, and the feeling was very mutual. Abandoning that troublesome train of thought, the Jonin instead decided to kill some time by indulging in his third favorite game; watching people.

Straightening up in his seat, the young shinobi began scanning the bustling office space for a likely victim. After around half a minute of scoping out prospects, the young Jonin settled his eyes on a young couple- one of the male civilian staff and a kunoichi- who were chatting over by the water cooler. They were too far away for him to hear what they were saying over the general office noise and he purposely avoided reading their lips. Shikamaru started off by examining their body language; the girl's posture suggested that she was the aggressor in this situation. She was bent forward slightly and had an enthusiastic look on her face; he noticed how she kept edging closer him.

The male was the exact opposite; while the kunoichi was trying to edge forward, he appeared to be trying to edge away. It was subtle, but Shikamaru was able to pick up a sense of…nervousness?

No, no; it was more like apprehension. Now what would be the source of that?

Focusing in harder onto the younger man, Shikamaru ran his eyes over his face. The shadow user's sharp eyes noted the tenseness in his jaw, the way his eyebrows fidgeted across his forehead. That pathetically uncomfortable smile plastered across his face said it all; that was the face of a man who wished to be somewhere else. The young Jonin flicked his eyes towards the kunoichi; the flush to her cheeks also said it all.

Shikamaru smirked. 'Looks like somebody has a crush…'

Unfortunately for the girl, he didn't seem to be that into her judging by the way he was trying to pull away from her without being too obvious about it. Plus, the young civilian kept sending furtive glances towards someone over her shoulder. Curiosity piqued, Shikamaru leaned over in his seat and tried to see where the man was sending those looks. From his vantage point the Jonin could see a mass of assorted office staff, a mix of civilians and shinobi. Amongst the mass of anonymous faces one stood out due to the sheer amount of agitation that was radiating from it.

One of the shinobi staffers- one of the male staffers- was glaring holes through the girl. Well that was certainly interesting.

"Nara-san."

The unexpected mention of his name startled the shadow user enough to cause him to nearly fall out of his seat. He was barely able to right himself and preserve some of his dignity.

"Yeah?"

"The Hokage will see you now."

Muttering "troublesome" under his breath, the young Jonin heaved himself out of his chair and made his way to the heavy oaken door.

He could hear the faint sounds of laughter and lively conversation leaking out from the other side of the door. Seeing the knob turn, Shikamaru quickly stepped to the side to allow a pair of his colleagues who were exiting the office some room to pass.

"Oh hey Shikamaru-kun! I thought that you were on leave."

The shadow user gave his usual half-smile and shrugged half-heartedly.

"I was. But when duty calls, what're you gonna do?"

Stepping past the two exiting shinobi and into the Hokage's office, the smile on the shadow user's face faded into nothing; warmth and happiness giving way to cold neutrality. Shikamaru could practically see the easy atmosphere of camaraderie that had existed in the room a few seconds ago fading away upon his entrance. He stood and waited while Uzumaki Naruto, Seventh Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves and reckoned by many to be the strongest ninja in the world, idly picked through a stack of papers.

Still in his early twenties, Naruto had assumed the office around a year ago. The stress of his position had not yet taken a visible toll on him yet and he was- for the most part- still filled with the boundless energy and optimism that had carried him through his years as a shinobi. His almost messianic status in Leaf Village and the universal respect given to his abilities in the ninja world had made him an obvious choice to assume the mantle of Hokage when the position became open after Kakashi had stepped down.

After nearly a minute of this, the shadow user cleared his throat and the blonde Hokage tore his gaze away from the documents and looked up, as if noticing Shikamaru for the first time.

"Shikamaru-san," the Hokage said shortly.

"Hokage-sama," the Jonin replied hollowly.

Shikamaru helped himself to a seat, sitting straight and rigid in the chair in contrast to his usual slouch. The two young men eyed each other, an uncertain air of wariness hanging between them. The uneasy silence was finally broken by Naruto.

"You're probably wondering why you're here."

'Why my much deserved vacation was ruined? Gee, it hadn't even crossed my mind,' Shikamaru thought snidely.

He made sure to keep the sentiment inside of his head. Despite the... personal enmity that had developed between the two of them, Naruto was still his Hokage and Shikamaru had enough respect for the man and the office he held to not be blatantly disrespectful.

"I am," the shadow-user replied. "Whatever it is, it must be pretty important if you decided to call me in on this."

"It is. A few days ago, a Usagi family summon came limping through the main gates looking like he was about to fall over dead from exhaustion. He brought a report about one of our teams being down and dispersed in enemy territory and their need for immediate rescue."

Almost unconsciously, Shikamaru formed his hands into the sign that he usually assumed when he was recalling or analyzing information.

"Usagi family; those are the rabbits right? The one who has the contract with them is that kid…Umeko Udon, correct?"

The blonde Hokage nodded. "Yep; he was on a mission with Nagai Moegi, and Konohamaru. They were supposed to be returning from a mission through the Grass Country but apparently decided to take a detour."

"A detour through where," Shikamaru asked, not liking where this conversation was going.

"The Land of Rain."

The young Jonin groaned and buried his face in his palms. He was positive that this was somehow Konohamaru's fault; his late sensei's nephew had a bad habit of getting himself in scrapes. A glance across the Hokage's wide wooden desk showed Shikamaru that, for once, Naruto shared his sentiments; they both had experience with cleaning up the messes Konohamaru made.

"I'm not even going to ask what they were doing there," Shikamaru said in annoyance.

"It doesn't really matter at this point," Naruto said curtly, his own annoyance showing.

"According to the rabbit, Moegi has gotten a pretty bad injury and she and Udon have gone to ground somewhere. Konohamaru is MIA."

Shikamaru cursed under his breath. This was bad news. The young Jonin was already going over the prospective mission in his head; the risks involved, the unknown factors, the fallout from any screw-ups. This was definitely going to be a delicate operation- the Land of Rain was supposed to be off limits for shinobi from the Five Great Nations and Konoha had been the main proponent for that policy. To be caught violating it…

Shikamaru turned away from that thought for the moment; it would only give him a headache.

"So we need to mount a rescue and recovery."

"Yeah, that's the primary objective. But there's something else."

Shikamaru quirked a curious eyebrow, and looked at Naruto suspiciously.

'Something else?'

Wordlessly, the blonde Hokage reached to one side of his desk and pulled open a drawer, pulling a nondescript manila envelope out. He slid the folder across the desk towards the Jonin. Shikamaru looked from the envelope to the Hokage; Naruto's previously neutral expression had turned unusually grim.

"Go ahead. Take a look," he said.

Curiosity stoked, the shadow user tore open the envelope; it was filled with grainy black and white photographs. He grimaced; the pictures were of some kind of facility that looked to be in the heart of extremely rough and swampy territory. Flipping through the photos, Shikamaru looked for something that was significant enough to place a haunted look on his leader's face. As he thumbed through the photos the Jonin noticed that the photographer's focus had shifted from taking pictures of the installation, to taking pictures of the personnel.

Passing his eyes over several random faces, Shikamaru almost missed it when he finally came across the thing that had put that look on Naruto's face. The shadow user froze, his whole body tensing up, his entire being rejecting the possibility of what he was seeing.

'…Uchiha Sasuke...'

He was supposed to be dead; he was dead! He examined the picture closely, trying to spot any differences, no matter how minute that would prove that the person in the picture wasn't who it looked like. Height, build, anything and everything! But, the harder he looked at the man in the picture, the more and more he looked like Sasuke. He was perfect, right down to the scars a Kyuubi fueled Naruto had torn into his face.

"You saw him," Naruto stated, perceiving the shock that flashed across the shadow-user's face.

"I couldn't believe it either."

"It's BS; it has to be," Shikamaru said firmly. "Where did these come from?"

"The Usagi that brought us the information about Konohamaru's team also had a capsule with a roll of microfilm in it. Apparently our team took it off of a dead Grass ninja."

Shifting his gaze away from Naruto and back down the mystery man in the picture- he refused to even entertain the possibility that it really was the last Uchiha- the young Jonin spoke his mind.

"This guy, whoever he is, is a fake."

"And I agree with you, but it's not like we can just write this off though," Naruto responded snappishly, his voice rising in volume.

Anything having to do with Sasuke was a sore spot with him and it showed. Seemingly realizing what he was doing, the Hokage calmed himself back down.

"Look, your main objective is to find Konohamaru, Moegi and Udon and get them the hell out of that country. While you're there, I want you to look into the situation in the Land of Rain, do some intelligence gathering so that we have a better perspective on what's going on in that country. And if you get an opportunity, look into this other thing," he motioned towards the picture of the Sasuke look alike, "while you're at it."

Shikamaru nodded; he was going to have a lot on his plate for this one. Still, there was one more question.

"What about my team for this?"

The blonde Hokage rolled his eyes in what might have been either bemusement or annoyance- Shikamaru couldn't tell which.

"C'mon, I still respect you enough to let you handle that yourself. I'll approve whoever you want."

"You see any sign of him over there…"

Konohamaru needed to scratch his nose. He couldn't, of course, no matter how much he wanted to.

"Nothing; we've been at this forever. I bet that Leaf ninja is long gone by now; why can't we just get out of here? We're liable to bushwacked by Redeemers if we keep this up…"

Just a tiny little scratch; that was really all that he needed. A quick flick of a nail across the tip of his nose and all would be right with the world. Scratching, however, would require moving and moving would spoil the genjustu that he was casting that made him look like a nondescript gnarled tree branch on a lonely gnarled tree standing in the middle of an abandoned field. Kurenai had taught him this technique; as far as genjutsu went, it was pretty advanced, able to withstand most of the usual methods of dispelling illusions and took up a relatively small amount of chakra.

Konohamaru had been using it- off and on- for the past four days. That was the reason why he kept focusing on the itch in his nose; it helped him forget that he was dangerously close to chakra exhaustion.

"We're never going to find him; let's just go back to the Sanctuary…"

The young Leaf ninja felt like crying tears of joy. Finally, those persistent bastards were giving up and going home. Most of the other teams of Loyalist ninja- he had heard them refer to themselves as such- had already given up the search for him and retreated back into the wilderness for whence they came after two days of fruitless searching. But this group of hard-asses had decided that it would be fun to try to stick it out and try to unearth him.

Less people looking for him should have meant that Konohamaru could have escaped at his leisure but this last team had done an incredibly good job of keeping him pinned in place. But it finally seemed that they had gotten fed up. When he was convinced that his pursuers had really and truly gone, the simian ninja let go of the tree branch that he was clutching and fell gracelessly to the ground. Landing on his feet, Konohamaru slapped himself hard across the face a few times, literally beating the fatigue out of his body.

Now that he was free of his pursuers, he had to find a place to hide himself while he recovered his chakra. After that, he could start searching for his teammates. Looking around the desolate and rainy landscape for some sign of shelter, the filthy young shinobi spotted a ramshackle farmhouse in the distance. He had just started making his way towards it when he was stopped in his tracks by an unfamiliar voice.

"You did well to avoid them kid. Those Loyalist assholes were stumped."

All around the young Leaf shinobi, men dressed in old-fashioned ninja garb began sprouting out of the ground like so many weeds. On their foreheads they wore an emblem that the young Leaf ninja had never seen before; a stylized raindrop. Even as his stomach did nervous flip-flops, Konohamaru felt like smacking himself in the head on more time in frustration. How had he not sensed them before? The last of the Sarutobi ninja was surprised he wasn't more worried; he must have been more tired than he thought.

"We've got no plans to kill you kid," one of the surrounding ninja said. "But you start giving us shit, you're dead, you follow?"

Without a word, Konohamaru raised his hands above his head.

He didn't give them any shit.