Hey there, my loyal readers! Thanks for being so patient, here is your update of Tales from Training! I decided that I'm going to mess around with the format and have a different character, Shikamaru, tell a story this week. Naruto will probably get back to it in the next installment. Until then, feel free to check out my other work! The Will of Fire just reach 17,000 words, and I feel pretty accomplished about it. Thanks!
Tales from Training 4
Treeborn Dreamer
Glass clinked on the hard wood floor as laughter filled the air of Naruto's living room, raucous noise reverberating through the entire house.
"Shikamaru, there's no way that would ever happen! Everrrr!" Sakura giggled and slurred her words, setting her empty cup on the coffee table in front of her and falling back into the overstuffed couch. Shikamaru, across the room in a rocking chair, nodded and laughed, taking a slow drink and trying his best not to spill any of his precious drink.
"Every word is one hundred percent true!" He assured them, resting his hand on Ino's head as she leaned back and rested her head on his knee. "When I arrived in the town, there was a big statue of me right in the center of the town square. I kept my head low, but someone noticed me and called me out. I got swarmed and thrown onto some guy's shoulders, and they all started singing a folk song about me." Kiba snorted, lying back into Akamaru's fur and scrunching his eyes closed.
"How'd the song go, genius? Surely you can tell us that, if you're telling the truth." Shikamaru laughed, then coughed into his hand as he stood up.
"Oh, Shikamaru was a man, was he; a shinobi great and strong! He rolled into our town one night; to right what was done wrong!' Ino giggled and clapped quietly as he bellowed the lyrics.
"The Daimyo was a cruel tyrant; taxed our town to the bone! Lined his pockets with our gold; stole our herds and homes! Shikamaru took one look at us; he got a clever grin. That night while the old Daimyo slept; he lost his life to sin. Shikamaru gave us back our land; he gave us back our gold! That's why the town of Nara sings; this ninja is our lord!"
Applause burst out around the room as Shikamaru took a bow and sat back into his chair, Ino laughing and pulling herself up to sit in his lap.
"Don't quit your day job, Shikamaru. Kabuki will never be in your future." Naruto laughed from across the room, reclining in a large armchair and sipping from a sake bottle. Shikamaru stuck his tongue out at Naruto, cleared his throat again, and started back into his story.
Well anyway, I'm feeling awkward because I killed the Daimyo on Tsunade's orders, and I really hadn't thought too much about the village. So they seat me at the head of a huge table in their town hall, and start bringing in plates and plates of food; freshly-harvested fruits and vegetables, tender cuts of barbecue, everything Chouji could ever dream of."
Chouji licked his lips and smiled dreamily, staring at the ceiling absent-mindedly.
I can't be rude, but my destination is another days travel to the east and I'm already behind schedule, so I start feasting with them, drinking with them, and toasting them twice as much as they toasted me, all the while wondering how I'm going to escape before I get trashed beyond my ability to function.
Well, after the food had disappeared, a band set up in the corner and started playing some dance music, and they insisted I lead off the dance with this particular girl with red hair, just a hair shorter than I am. And so I started dancing, and dancing, and dancing, for what felt like days. She was a very energetic dancer, or maybe I was a lazy one... Either way, after a while I lost track of time and we just kept dancing. At some point, she broke away for a split-second and grabbed a small wreath of cherry blossoms and laid it on my head. I'm pretty sure I was trashed by that point, so when they offered me a similar wreath, I laid it on top of her head without a second thought.
That's pretty much the last thing I remembered that night. The next morning, I woke up in a hotel near the edge of town. I got up, dressed quietly, and started for the exit when I heard something rustling behind me. I whip around, a kunai in my hand, and I see the redheaded girl from last night in a rumpled kimono with that wreath still on top of her head, rubbing her eyes and looking at me.
'Shika-kun, where are you going?' she asked me, and my heart froze; why was she being so familiar with me? Why was she still in her clothes from last night? Why was she in my hotel room at all?
As he asked these, Ino's smile quickly faded from her face, and everyone in the room aside from Shikamaru shivered; a massive wave of killing intent had washed over them like a typhoon, suddenly and unavoidably, the mood was darkened.
I asked her what had happened last night, and she started to cry, her tears welling up in her eyes and almost soaking her kimono. I felt kind of awkward, so I walked over to her and patted her on the back, asking her if she was okay and that kind of thing. She looked up at me and, I swear, she said 'how can you say such hurtful things to your new wife?'
Naruto gulped as he felt Ino's temper flaring near Shikamaru, and he tried to catch his attention subtly, but the combination of Shikamaru's helpings of liquor and his propensity to get lost in stories had left him oblivious to the world around him.
'My wife?' I was stunned, but my brain was running faster than the Yondaime Hokage, trying to come up with some explanation. And then it hit me; in the village now called Nara, but once called Akiza, there was a very unique wedding ceremony in which the bride and groom presented each other with wreaths of cherry blossoms and dance with each other, and that creates the marriage contract.
Naturally, I try to explain to her that, as a foreigner, I didn't mean to marry her as I was unfamiliar with their culture, but that just made her cry more, sobbing out words like "shame" "dishonor" and "disreputable," although that last one was a bit garbled.
Suddenly, she pounces for my kunai knife, and I start to strike at her before I see her turn the blade towards herself. I react as quickly as I can, hungover I may be, and stop her from stabbing herself, my mind racing again to try and think of an exit strategy that won't permanently break this girl and dishonor her in her village.
I decide to take her with me on my mission, and have her rest in a hotel while I make the exchange with the Kiri ninja, and on the way I could probably get her to recognize how much of a mistake this was for her.
After about half an hour, I manage to get her to stop crying and convince her to come with me; half an hour after that, we were on the road, headed towards the meeting point with the Kiri ninja.
We talked as we headed along the path, and I got to know more about her. She told me that her name was Anzu, she was fifteen and she had never left her village before. Her parents had died when she was five, and the village had raised her until she would get married and whatnot. She told me lots of stories about living in the communal housing of the village, how the old women of the village taught her how to sew, cook, clean, all of those womanly duties. But more than anything, she seemed interested in my life, and begged me to tell her stories about growing up in a ninja village. So I told her about playing shogi with Asuma-sensei, defending the village against Orochimaru, all the missions that we took and training exercises that we did, and even the tiniest thing seemed to enthrall her. She would just stare at me, open-mouthed and eyes twinkling, as I talked about anything I could think of.
After a long day of talking about each other, I was beginning to feel kind of bad that we weren't actually married. I mean, marriage is troublesome, but this poor girl was so sheltered her whole life, so innocent, I really felt awful about the entire ordeal she had to be going through, since her kinda-husband didn't want her. So, when we got to the town where the exchange was taking place, I gave in to her demand and only rented one room instead of two. She made me some dinner with food that I bought at the market, and that night was very nice; she was smiling and laughing, and the light flickered off of her in a way I had never seen happen to anyone before.
We set up for sleep early, since I had to meet the Kiri ninja at sunrise, and just as I was about to fall asleep, she kissed me on the forehead and said, "Good night, otto." And that word was the only thing on my mind as I slowly fell asleep: otto, husband...
Well, when I woke up, the Kirigakure ninja were standing over me, as was my blushing bride. They all had kunai and were grinning like an oni, and I cursed myself for not seeing this sooner.
'Well that was easier than expected. I thought you Nara were supposed to be smarter than that.' She gloated, her voice much harsher than it ever had been before. The Kiri ninja had bloodthirsty looks on their faces, and I knew it was going to be difficult to get out of this one.
'All I had to do was put on a sad face and draw up a tear or two and you were putty in my hands, Shika-kun.' She kept gloating like that for a while, but I stopped listening; I kept my eyes on her friends, all of whom were jonin-level according to the briefing I got. My mind raced as I tried to come up with a strategy that wouldn't get me killed.
Finally, I had it.
'Anzu-chan,' I interjected as she took a break from gloating over how she defeated me so easily, 'You got it, you've defeated me, a genius-level Leaf chunin. This is probably worth at least a promotion to your Mizukage, isn't it?'
'Very good point, Shika-kun.' She seemed very proud of herself, and I made a note of that. 'Mizukage-sama will be very grateful for me delivering a Leaf chunin to her on a silver platter. Now stand up slowly, and don't try anything.' I slowly stood up, my pajamas wrinkled and my hands behind my head, molding chakra as subtly as I could.
They took all my things and divided them up between them, and as they did I moved my hands closer together behind my head, until I could form a decent rat handsign behind my head.
'Kagemane no jutsu.' I whisper as they counted out my money, and I smiled as they felt themselves go stiff and immobile.
'Kagemane, complete.' I smirked and relaxed, feeling the four of them struggle against my technique. 'Tsuma-chan, I want a divorce.'
"After that, I used the Kage–Kubishibari no jutsu to knock them out, bound them up and took them back to the village for interrogation. And, as I learned it was an off-the-books mission on both sides, Kiri didn't, or couldn't, react officially, or even acknowledge that they'd sent them, since they didn't want a war anymore than we did." Shikamaru stood and took a bow, while everyone else looked incredulously at him.
"I find your story amusing, Shikamaru-san, but doubt its truthfulness. Perhaps you exaggerated a bit?" Shino stated, and Shikamaru waved him off.
"Every word is one hundred percent true, Shino. I was married, divorced, nearly killed, and completed an S-rank mission inside of 36 hours."
"Shikamaru... Can we talk?" Ino whispered, her voice crisp and low. The others all looked at each other and excused themselves from the room, clamoring one excuse or another.
"Ino? What's wrong?" Shikamaru asked, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. Ino clenched her fist and a tear rolled down her cheek.
"You said that you were married... You talked about how you talked with her for hours... That's not something we've even done, and we've known each other our whole lives!" Shikamaru blinked, and put his arms around Ino's shoulder, kissing her on the forehead.
"Ino-chan, please don't be like that. We've never had those kinds of discussions because we've known each other long enough that we've lived through each others stories. Every single thing I told that Kirigakure girl was something that we had done together." She looked up at him, smiling weakly.
"I'm sorry, I was being irrational-"
"And your irrationality is why I love you, you troublesome woman." Shikamaru pulled her into his lap and hugged her, and she buried her face in his neck.
"How long do you think we have to ourselves?" She whispered into his ear, and Shikamaru grinned.