Chapter 4: In Which A Plot Appears

Inoichi and Chouza rolled in about two a.m., Shikaku who had not been sleeping anyway, heard them come in and left his room to see what had happened with the ANBU. Chouza was taking a plate of leftover chicken out of the refrigerator and Shikaku saw that Inoichi was drinking milk out of the carton. Again. Shikaku just rolled his eyes and called him a slob, never noticing it was his own pile of assorted clean and dirty laundry he was stepping over as he walked into their small living room.

"So, how'd it go?" he asked cautiously. Something wasn't making sense here. The three of them had certainly screwed up on missions before, but he had no doubt that if it had been anything worthwhile his two friends would have told him about what fun he'd missed. He couldn't conceive of them getting into any truly ANBU-worthy level trouble. Certainly not if he'd heard nothing about it straight from his two best friends.

Inoichi answered first, shaking his head, "It was the damnedest thing, I don't think they were actually after us for any particular reason, just had something to do with us being in Rain."

Chouza chimed in, "Yeah, what streets we were on. Who did we see before and after meeting our contact. Did our contact see us with anybody. Just tedious, relentless boring questions over and over again. I can't tell you how many times they covered the same ground in…" he looked over at the clock, "shit, in four hours."

Shikaku sat leaning forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, thinking about what his friends were saying. "So, nothing else?"

"Well," Inoichi grinned sheepishly.

"Inoichi…" Shikaku hissed out having a bad feeling that he knew this was not going to be good.

"They took the weed he had on him, got the name of our seller, told us both we'd been bad boys and said we'd have our pay docked fifty percent for the mission," Chouza finished, joining in the conversation since there was no chicken left.

Now it was Shikaku's turn to scowl. Inoichi was right, this was odd.

"You told him who we buy from in Rain?" Shikaku snapped at Inoichi.

"No way, man, they already knew. They just showed us his picture, they had a mind jutsu member on their team. Just put the picture in front of us and that's all he needed – he knew we knew. "

"So then what happened?"

Chouza had gotten up and retrieved a bag of chips from the cabinet. Either he was actually getting full or the meeting had rattled him so much he was losing his appetite – he actually waved the bag toward the two others, offering them some chips first.

The red-head munched on a few chips then mumbled, "They took his grass."

"Yes, but, shit, since when does ANBU care anything about a little grass?" Shikaku asked. "Hell, half the time you can smell it on them anyway."

"I don't know," Chouza mumbled thoughtfully through his chips. "It almost seemed like having the meeting with us was more important than whatever it was supposed to be about. Like they just had to file a report or something. Dunno. Maybe they're on a quota system now and have to get their reports in by the end of the month."

Shikaku was trying to process all that his friends had just told him. They were right – this was damned odd. ANBU were, well ANBU, what the hell were they doing caring about something as penny-ante as this.

"Are you sure you guys didn't do something boneheaded in Rain? Piss off anybody while you were there?"

Chouza shook his head. Inoichi piped up, "Swear to god, Shikaku, it was boring as ever there."

"Inoichi, did you try to get a sense of what they…"

"Oh, no," Inoichi held up his hand, interrupting Shikaku. "No. Those guys are freaking spooks. No fucking way was I going to go snooping around in any of their heads, no matter how lightly I tiptoed. No. Fucking. Way. I value my own ass too much. And I do mean that literally."

Shikaku thought about this some more. Whatever the picture-wielding guy had done had certainly spooked Inoichi. He sighed, maybe his friend was just embarrassed about being tripped up so easily into giving up their seller. Whatever. He yawned and stretched, standing up. "C'mon guys, what's done is done. Probably nothing more to it. Betcha Chouza's right. They've probably got some quota of forms to fill out this month."

Although, Shikaku didn't believe one damn word of what he'd just said. The three friends said good night and went to their respective rooms. Shikaku lay awake for the longest time alternating between thinking of the deep warm pools of Yoshino's eyes and the brief flicker of fear he'd just seen in Inoichi's clear blue ones.

The next morning came far too soon for the three. There was the general scurrying around, bumping into each other and cursing the fact that someone had finished off the last of the milk. Add to that the fact that the laundry had once again refused to put itself away so that they were scrounging through assorted piles sniffing to find the least recently worn articles of clothing. All in all it made for not a very good start on the day.

By the time they got to the mission room, it was packed. Normally they wouldn't have cared one way or the other. But Chouza and Inoichi were grateful that they were in the back of the room and could nod off, leaning against the wall until their names were called. Shikaku usually preferred the back of the room, too. But today he was dismayed to to find Yoshino all the way across from him in the crowded room. Assignments were already starting so he couldn't work his way over to her, at least until it thinned out some.

Damn! It just occurred to him that the lower ranked missions were usually handed out first, quicker way to thin out the room, plus leave only the more senior jounin in the room as more sensitive missions were discussed. There was a very good chance she'd be called out for the day before he could work his way over to her. He saw her look over her shoulder at him and smile when she saw him. He caught himself before he actually waved at her. God, Inoichi and Chouza would never let him live that down. He simply nodded back at her.

Names were called out, people began to file to the exit, mostly genin, the majority of the brats cleared out in very short order. It looked like there was enough space for him to begin to weave his way through the remainder of the shinobi over to where Yoshino stood. "Look, I'll catch you guys later," he mumbled to Inoichi and Chouza. He rolled his eyes as he thought he heard Inoichi whisper 'whipped' behind him.

He hadn't gone more than two steps in her direction when Tsunade entered the room. "Excuse me, Morino-san," she called out to the administrator at the front of the room. "Have you given Shikaku Nara an assignment yet?"

As the older gentleman checked his list, Tsunade scanned the room. When her gaze landed on Shikaku, she brightened. "There you are Shikaku! I'm glad you haven't left yet. I need to ask you to come with me for the next few days. I've got a project that I'm going to need your help on."

Shikaku stopped dead in his tracks. On the surface, Konohagakure functioned as a fairly egalitarian society. However, if they did have anything close to royalty Tsunade was it. Granddaughter of the founder of the village, one of the three prized students of the current Hokage, world-renowned for her prowess in fighting and drop-dead gorgeous to boot. Yes, Tsunade was the closest thing Konoha was likely to see to a princess for some time. And although she didn't flout or abuse her position per se, she was still accustomed to getting her way.

"Oh, well," he started then paused, looking over at Yoshino, "sure." Really, it only made sense. Tsunade was a medical expert. He was an expert in his clan's encyclopedic knowledge of herbs, extracts and chemical compounds. He'd worked with her before on a lot of projects in the past. Of course Inoichi and Chouza knew all this. Unfortunately they also knew that she had been his first crush.

The dynamic duo were giggling behind him. Tsunade knew them as well, since she'd worked with Shikaku off and on the last couple of years. She leaned around Shikaku and waved at the two of them, "Hi guys," she said. Whether she intended it or not, her shift in position gave an even better view of her cleavage, to both Shikaku and his friends. Fortunately this shut Inoichi's whispered 'woot'. And fortunately too, it made a great view even greater.

Unfortunately, Shikaku caught sight of the expression on Yoshino's face from across the room. It was hard to categorize it, not mad, not sad, just somewhat…resigned. Which made it kind of sad in its own way.

Shit! First she had to run into Chouza and Inoichi in full-bore, head-on jerk-mode yesterday at the barbeque restaurant. Now Tsunade was hauling his ass out of here and he hadn't even gotten a chance to say good morning to Yoshino.

Sheesh. What did a guy have to do to spend time with a girl around here?