Well, I'm back. I can't say I wasn't slightly disappointed with the lack of reviews…Thanks to sugar cookie for reviewing! And there will be a bit of ShikaIno, but they're not one of the main pairings. If you noticed, I sort of made up parts for them so I could get that in there. Anyways, I do agree last chapter was sort of boring. It was a lot of exposition and getting the different characters into the storylines. This chapter is a bit funnier. And crackish…Lol.

Please, please review! I'm still going to post the whole thing because I already have it written. And I worked really hard on it, rereading Midsummer Night's Dream and doing the outlines. ::puppy face::

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Act I; Scene ii

"I can't believe this is our punishment." Kankuro whined as he gazed at the stack of very embarrassing scripts.

"I don't know why I'm here." His terrifying younger brother said.

"Hey, you helped destroy the academy too!" Kiba accused, suddenly falling quiet at Gaara's murderous look. "Anyways, Tsunade-sama is not going to ease up, so let's just get it over with." He said, inching away from the quite frightening demon vessel. "I'M in charge!" He declared.

"Excuse me, but you're the one who bright idea it was to challenge Kankuro so close to the Academy." Shino said quietly. His dark hazel eyes flashed above his glasses as he cast a sidelong glare at Chouji, who was chomping down on chips.

"But Chouji was the one who knocked down the wall when he tried to stop us!"

"You guys would have destroyed it if you had kept fighting! Especially with Gaara making all that sand move around."

"Both of you…SHUT UP!" Shino's eye twitched. The two sand siblings just watched as the genin from Konoha began to argue.

"This. Sucks." Kankuro said with a sigh.

"Again you master the understatement." Gaara growled. "But we should stop this, before we destroy another building. I could crush them all…" Kankuro felt a shiver pass down his spine.

"No, no, no Gaara." He said frantically. "Death bad, life good." Gaara nodded with wide eyes.

"Death. Bad." He mumbled. "Life. Good."

"Okay!" Kankuro said. "Like Kiba said, there is no way we're going to get out of this, so stop screaming at each other." He sighed. "Shino's in charge. He's the only one who seems to have any sense in this village." Kiba growled. Shino nodded, picking up the stack of plays, flipping through them.

"These plays are awful." He said at long last. "This one seems moderately okay. There's no humiliation…if we play our cards right." The others looked at him strangely as he pulled out a copy of Pyramus and Thisbe. "The only thing is…"

"What!?!" Kiba shouted, grabbing the script from him. "Give me that!" His eyes widened. "This…this is a ROMANCE!!!" He shouted, throwing it across the room as if it were made of fire.

"What else are we supposed to do?" Kankuro said, flipping through the rest of the plays. "Do you really want to put on a rendition of Little Bo Peep? Or…The Happy Sunshine Adventures of the Happy Sunshine crew." Kiba shook his head.

"Well, we need a girl." Chouji declared through a mouthful of food.

"Of course, that's why I said we need to play our cards right. We need a girl."

"We need a girl!" Kiba shouted, as if he hadn't heard his teammate. "Okay, everyone split off and find the kunoichi on your team! Meet back here when you find them." Shino glared at him.

"I thought I was supposed to be in charge?" He said quietly as they exited the house and started off towards the Hyuuga complex in search of Hinata. Kankuro shook his head at their retreating backs.

"I hope they don't destroy anything else today." He said, sighing heavily. "Come on, Gaara. Let's get THIS over with." He said, putting a hand on his brother's shoulders and leading him towards their impending doom.

A little while later Shino and Kiba found Gaara and Kankuro, the latter nursing a gushing nose.

"She punched me in the face." He answered the other's questioning looks. "My own sister broke my friggin' nose."

"That means no." Gaara clarified. Kiba nodded.

"We couldn't find Hinata ANYWHERE!" He said. "We even asked Neji, who is supposed to know where she is. And we asked him if we could borrow Tenten, but when we told him what it was for he suddenly got mad and stormed away. I will never understand that guy…" Shino sighed at his oblivious teammate.

"Sakura's also disappeared." Shino said in an undertone.

"I guess our only hope is that Chouji." Kankuro said. Chouji chose that moment to walk down the street.

In his wake, walked Ino.

"Thank God." Kankuro said. "If Ino didn't do it…one of us…would have to play…Thisbe." He shivered at the very thought.

"I cannot believe you would tell my father that!" She said, repulsed. "Fine, I'll be in your stupid play!" She said to Kiba.

"I'm in charge." Shino said quietly.

"I can't believe I agreed to this!" Ino complained as they walked back to Shino's house. Her very voice grated on the five boys' ears.

The real fun started when they were sitting in a circle, attempting to cast the play.

"I want to be the lion! No, I want to be Thisbe's father! No, I want to be Pyramus's father!" Shino's eye twitched.

"You know what? You're so great, be Pyramus." Shino said, with the proper dose of sarcasm. Ha, my master plan has worked. Kiba thought with an evil grin. Shino sighed.

Arguments raged. Finally, after what seemed hours, all the parts were cast.

"Okay, Ino's Thisbe, Kiba's Pyramus, I'm Thisbe's father, Kankuro is Thisbe's mother,"

"NOT FAIR!! NOT FAIR I TELL YOU!!!" He yelled, indignant.

"You want to go ask your sister to be in it again? Hell, you could ask my sister. She might eat you…" Kiba said with a smirk.

"I SAVED YOUR LIFE!" Kankuro shouted. "NOW I'M BEGINNING TO REGRET IT!"

"Quiet…" Shino said, restoring calm with a little help from Gaara who merely cast a glance in the arguing two's direction. Ino rolled her eyes with a sigh. "Anyways…Gaara is Pyramus's father and the wall, and Chouji is the lion."

"I'm not going to be a very good lion." Chouji moaned. "I'm never going to remember my lines." He said with despair. That's surprising you sure eat like a lion. Ino found herself thinking. But she had a soft spot for her less than skinny teammate.

"Aw, it's going to be okay, Chouji." She said with a smile. "There's only one line. All you have to do is growl. Unlike me." Despair flooded her as she thought about her own role. "I'm going to have to kiss KIBA!"

"You think I want to kiss you!?" Kiba retorted. Yes, yes he did.

"Would you both stop complaining?" Gaara said in a very scary voice. "It's beginning to get on my nerves…" The arguing ceased, reaffirming Gaara's strange power over the group.

"Okay…" Kiba said authoritatively. "We need to find a place to practice where no one can see us." Shino didn't even bother pointing out the fact that he was in charge.

"How about we go into the forest?" Ino suggested. "Later on tonight. No one is crazy enough to be out there at night."

"Except us…" Kankuro pointed out. He was still quite wary of the dark, tall forests. He didn't like not seeing the sky. Ino ignored him.

"So are we in agreement." It was suddenly clear who the new leader of the group was. "I said ARE WE IN AGREEMENT!" The five boys had no choice but to nod, terrified of the blonde that reigned over them. Oh, God. Kankuro thought. She's worse than Temari!