Start of Chapter 2 –

It's been a few days since Shikamaru had left the Hokage's office. A new year had already started at the Academy, having two runs of school each year had its advantages, the children could either choose to immediately start their new school year or have a long holiday then start again. This meant that the classes were different every time and the age groups weren't necessarily that similar either. Coupled with how easy it was to need to repeat a year, everything was always mixed up. But since this was the case, it allowed people to work together more easily, simply by just knowing more people could increase your people skills a lot, whether it is to befriend, lead or trick them, having extra skills never hurts.

Since their new school year the three of them have been receiving missions, they usually only received small missions that only brought them a day or two outside of Konoha, however since they were all still living under their clan and they still hadn't spent all of their pay from their most recent S-Ranked mission, just some random delivery of a small piece of diamond jewellery.

It was laughable how some of the simplest missions that could almost rival C-Ranks could be raised by so many ranks. And it was all because of how much money some people could fork out.

Time passed quickly, the week flew by quickly and the date of Shikamaru's classified mission arrived, much faster than anticipated.

Neji's POV

I watched as Shikamaru ate his Ramen, it was always like this before he went out for another of his missions. He knows that both Hinata and I understand that he can't tell us anything about it. If we weren't told there will always be a reason for it, and since it was kept by both Sarutobi and Shikamaru, it must be a very valid reason. Not that I wouldn't be much better for the job, no matter what it is, but S-Class secrets or missions only involve people who were directly involved or people who are absolutely need in order to succeed. He's got to stop beating himself up. I was just going to say something, but Hinata spoke up before me.

"Shika-kun, stop it." She said

"Huh, stop what?" He said, startled and staring at the both of us when I sighed at his answer.

"Taicho, we know what you're thinking about, you think about it every time you receive another mission related to it." I said

"Mataku, can't hide anything from you can I. I know that you guys understand why I can't tell you but sometimes I'm just not rational enough about it" Shikamaru said, staring into his now empty bowl.

"Taicho, you need to go now, but we want you to promise not to think badly about the mission, you already know that we know and understand what your responsibility is. You shouldn't make an even bigger problem out of it by worrying about something that you can't change." Hinata said, walking over and hugging him from behind.

"Thanks Hinata" Shikamaru said turning on his stool and returning the hug, he then reached down and pulled his dark green pack up from underneath the table. He walked over to me and we instinctively raised our hands and slammed them into the middle. It wasn't quite a high-five, it was similar but we ended up holding hands at eye level for a while.

"You too Neji" He said, waving to us and shouting "I'll see you tomorrow!"

He turned away from us, sinking as he walked casually into his own shadow.

"Now" I said turning to Hinata.

"What?" She said. I just stared, hoping that she'd remember what we'd talked about just before this meeting. My hopes were shot down as her questioning look continued.

"Hinata-sama, you have a clan meeting now." I said in exasperation.

"Eh-heh, oh yeah. Um, I forgot?" She said, stumbling over her words.

I sighed as I dragged her towards the compound. Mataku, will she ever remember….Kuso, Shikamaru's rubbing off on me.

End POV

Warm wind swept past Shikamaru as he skipped from tree to tree, it was common for Fire to have strong, but warm winds at this time of year. It was what the weather would be like for most of the year until winter came, by then it would turn slightly colder. It'd be cold enough to warrant thicker coats but not enough to expect snow.

As Shikamaru ran through the forest, he began to think, remembering the last time he'd had face to face contact from his trainer and fellow student, they still keep in touch with him through the communication seals they had, disguised as a tattoo symbolizing their element. Shikamaru's own seal showing three tendrils of shadows curling and interlocking. They also had passed information between them through scrolls, giving to each other through more discreet means. That they were to meet face to face this time showed just how important it was. Even though the risk of their cover being blown was much higher, this meant that the information was urgent and had to be gotten through to the Hokage quickly, without having to break a code or riddle that was usually used on any information place on scrolls.

The three of them had used the seals during their missions before, it allowed them to speak to each other through the seal, and it also allowed them to transfer chakra, usually in the form of chakra pulses. Pushing chakra through the seal was only a small ability of the seal, it only allowed for small amounts of chakra to pass through, but it allowed the other users to feel the pulses. They utilized that to their advantage since using the seal for speech would use chakra, although not many people would be able to sense the minute amount leaked, the missions we went on guaranteed that they'd meet high classed ninjas, this meant that anyone they chanced upon, however low that possibility was, could be good enough to be able to sense it. They couldn't take the chance so they created a code, basing it on the Morse code so it was quite similar, they just rearranged the number of dots and spaces for each letter. Therefore since it proved so useful, chakra pulses became a regular thing between them.

The range was almost infinite anyway, since it was self sustained chakra, all it needed was for its surroundings to have a chakra system, and since technically everything had chakra, then everything would have a chakra system, even if it was dead. This pretty much meant that the pulses could get anywhere, the ground had its own system, metals came from the ground, wood came from the trees. Everything had its own chakra system, the only things they could speculate on was the air itself.

Throughout the day, just as he'd hoped, nothing had happened. Shikamaru had almost reached Waterfall by eleven in the morning, having left at around six thirty, since he was almost there he stole into the thick undergrowth and changed into some civilian clothing he'd brought, he now wore a simple but too-restricting tan colored T-shirt a pair of less restricting pants called track-suit bottoms and some very uncomfortable close-toed black and white "trainers" How could these uncomfortable things do anything to further your training? He thought to himself incredulously. Looking at his watch he saw that it was still quite early, plenty of time to get to the meeting point.

Remembering the message he'd received through the seal, he thought. Mataku, why couldn't he have been more direct with his message. Hmph, since I was told to collect it on the fifteenth, that means that he should be able to stay around up till fifteen hundred hours if he didn't tell me anything else. Now I need to get a map.

Shikamaru looked around, he was in a small town near the border of Waterfall. The town he was in was mostly made up of merchant and other traders, it was logical since a lot of the trade routes passed through here. It seemed to him that most of the buildings in town were hotels or inns to accommodate the large amount of people that came and went throughout the days. Practical, no one would suspect another random civilian roaming the streets.

He walked up to one of the rare local stores and purchased a standard map they'd had of their town, these maps were widely sold all over town, especially targeting the merchants and traders.

The map, like all others, was separated into a grid. Taking a turn into a less crowded alley, he jumped casting a genjutsu along the way up, he landed on one of the lower roof tops. Utilizing the genjutsu to its full potential, he headed for the highest building he could find. Once there he dropped the genjutsu that had been helping him redirect the crowd's attention.

Immediately casting another genjutsu to replace the last, his appearance slowly changed to match that of the floor, a mixture of brown and grey slowly crept up his skin and clothing to camouflage him into the cement floor beneath him. This jutsu was very useful, but it did have certain requirements, your movements had to be quite slow or else it wouldn't camouflage quick enough, so in short if you moved too quickly you'd show up even more. However in his situation, since the background was so similar, he could move relatively normally without caution.

He pulled the map out and took out a pencil, since the town wasn't very big the grid reference only went up to sixteen by seventeen. Shikamaru took his piece of charcoal and crossed out the outer two rows on the north and south side, doing the same to the two columns on the west and east side as well. Because the three of them, his teacher, his fellow student and himself, agreed that having meeting points in the outer ring of towns would seem too suspicious, they would always rule out the outer two sections on the edges.

He then renumbered each of the grid references to make up a new map in the middle with the section he hadn't crossed out. Then taking the number fifteen he split it, making a one and a five. This meant that the meeting point would be in the new coordinates of (1,5).

Then applying six figure grid references, he added a fifty one, just an inverted fifteen, to the end of the one and a fifteen to the end of the five. Thus making (151,515) following his coordinates, found that it pointed to a small park next to one of the bakeries down at Koshu street.

His lips quirked upwards when he saw that it wasn't very far from where he currently was. It didn't take long for him to reach it.

POV

Aah, he's finally arrived.

I watched as he leaned against one of the bigger trees in the more secluded area of the park, I almost immediately felt the three quick chakra pulses through the seal that was the code to say I've arrived. I sent two back to him, each pulse lasting up to a second to tell him that I was already there. Seeing no reason to dawdle any longer I checked my henge and walked out to meet him. Heh, I wonder if he'll recognize the henge. Said henge was the one I used to use on our missions together as jounin instead of ANBU. I was too well known to be able to not attract attention outside the walls of Konoha. The henge was male, of course, had light brown hair and dull green eyes, he was about half a head taller than Shikamaru but his pony tail pretty much guaranteed you wouldn't notice. Like Shikamaru, the henge also wore casual civilian clothing consisting of a bland blue shirt and some pants called 'jeans'. How anyone can fight in any of these civilian clothes is beyond me. But no matter how restricting they were, just wearing them kept lots of unwanted enemies away.

"Good to see you made it Shika." I said, walking out from the foliage in front of him. I brought my hand up to my seal, the communication seal I had was on my back, at the top left, like it was just behind my shoulder. My seal was designed to look like a flame, none of us really bothered to think of something for it to look like so we all just made it show our main element.

He looked up, seemingly surprised for a moment. "Good to see you too, sensei." He said, smiling as he subconsciously returned the gesture by moving his left hand up to his right bicep.

I smiled, watching him. "I told you to stop calling me that. I swear the both of you do that on purpose to make me feel old."

"Hey, she does it out of respect and habit. I on the other hand, do it for that very reason… sensei." He said laughing.

We shared greetings for a while, but there was a reason for the meeting, I was just about to interrupt but it seems that Shikamaru had beaten me to it.

"So, what is so important that it brought up a face to face meeting instead of the usual walk-past-each-other-and-crash-while-passing-info-through-a-scroll." He said, through the seal. "Anyway sensei, how are you these days?" He said continuing the rally of small talk verbally.

I chuckled at his direct approach. "We do not do that, it's a much more delicate process in which we plan where we crash, when we crash, how we crash and how the scroll gets passed between us." I said back, once again through the seal. "I'm fine thank you, it's been ages since I've seen you, how're things back home? Anything changed since I left?" I said, answering his verbal question from before.

"No not much…"

There was a moment of silence before I finally said.

"They've almost found it."

Shikamaru's head flinched, almost as if concealing a jerky movement.

"Oh" Shikamaru said, not even bothering to say that through the seal.

Shikamaru's POV

Kuso! And I was hoping that we'd have at least a year more to prepare the village to protect Naruto. We haven't even started on making alliances with the villages that have jinchuuriki. Naruto doesn't even know that he's a jinchuuriki yet. He hasn't had the time to prepare! Heck, the village hasn't had the time to prepare.

Okay, calm down, we just need to reorganize the schedule. Naruto's training needs to be fast-forwarded, the village security needs to be raised steadily, the council needs to be subdued before Akatsuki starts to collect jinchuuriki, the spies need to find out where the other villages stand in this situation a lot quicker, we also need to create solid allies quickly, other jinchuuriki also need to be trained and informed of their situation, we also need to put more effort into finding the bijuu medium. Argh, I can't think of this now.

I took a step back, leaning on the tree behind me for support. "Fuck" I said.

His eyebrow rose "Since when did you start swearing Shika?"

"Sensei, we were behind schedule even before you told me that, this just pulls us back even further. Now that we have even less time I really don't know how I'm going to organize everything to be done on time! You have no idea what kind of stress that puts me through." I said, careful to use words that could be easily misunderstood.

I sighed as I slammed my head into my hands, staring ahead of me, my eyes finally showing the stress I was under.

"Damn it, Sensei, I've already broken down twice, once in front of my new friends and once in front of the Hokage. Both times I've had to cover it up with worry over my teammates, both times I've had to pretend to think irrationally! They do not need to know that what I am doing is causing me so much stress, they need not to be put in any more unnecessary danger!" I shouted through the seal.

"I know that Shikamaru!" He shouted back, equally loudly.

I winced at the volume, stabbing right through my mind. Head back into my hands, I told him quietly, once again through the seal. "That's three times now. Heh, what a life we have, ne, sensei."

"And this life can be amended and improved once this is over." He replied "Shikamaru, we did not choose this path for ourselves, we were also not chosen because of our skills, we were chosen because we were at the right place but at the wrong time. We were all content in our positions in both life and rank. But we need to be strong now. It is up to us whether or not the fourth shinobi war shall come to be or not, be strong Shika."

"Like it is as easy as you say Sensei, you don't have to constantly hide what you're doing from the people around you. You just have the Akatsuki who are, as I quote 'Completely uncaring as to whether or not there is any loyalty in the organization, there is only the promise of power that keeps them around'." I said, staring at the ground. "But I will do my best, I may have to be taken off active duty though. Mataku, this is going to be such a drag."

He smiled at me. "There's the Shikamaru I know, uncaring to everything in the world."

"Hey, like you have any room to talk, you were as anti-social as a person could ever be when you first became our sensei, sensei." I taunted, making sure to pronounce every single syllable on the last 'sensei'.

"I told you to stop calling me that, it really makes me feel far too old."He said, mirth dancing in his eyes.

I smiled back as I started to walk away.

"Hai, hai." I said, looking back over my shoulder.

"Itachi."