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Chapter 1: Spinning

Author's Note: This story is set in an alternate universe, based around certain conceits, the first among them being that a pairing so completely out of left field could be made to work in an emotional and logical context. It didn't work the first time, as a few of my readers politely and kindly pointed out. Hence, I've altered the pacing and rewritten everything past the initial Kidoumaru versus Shikamaru shougi game, hopefully with more believable and IC results and more realistic pacing. Immense gratitude to Kimi no Vanilla, Maldoror, and celerystalksatmidnight for your time and constructive reviewing.

The premise of the AU, built around a scenario where Kidoumaru, Kankuro, and Shikamaru would be able to meet without being expected to kill each other, is this: the Sound Four take heavy damage from the Konoha pursuit team, but survive and are rehabilitated by Kabuto. Sasuke goes on to become their default leader as well as Orochimaru's prize and future container; when Orochimaru is killed four years later by Tsunade and Jiraiya working in concert before he can transfer bodies, instead of returning to Hidden Leaf, Sasuke takes over Hidden Sound through a combination of guile and pure power, intending to use the position to gain further knowledge andstrength in his quest to destroy Itachi. Tsunade, crippled by Orochimaru, returns to Hidden Leaf and lays the mantle of Hokage on Naruto, much to the council's and local lords' dismay. Over the two years Naruto struggles as the Leaf's greatest warrior, Sasuke's rule over the Sound becomes less centred on his own desire for power and more focussed on building a real, viable hidden village with trade, agriculture, and a civilian population from the disjointed lair that it once was. Naruto, with his fellow Kage Gaara's encouragement, broaches diplomatic talks with Sound, and Sasuke warily agrees to cease hostilities, and perhaps even form an alliance. As the three villages begin their talks, around them another ninja world war is brewing...

It never should have happened in the first place. Events didn't usually run so drastically counter to the combination of circumstance and probability. A plus B equaled C, and this move would take that one of your opponent's pieces.

It shouldn't have happened, and it could only prove troublesome in the end. It was't supposed to happen, but it did, and it happened like this...

= = = =

The meeting between the Hokage, the Kazekage, and the leader of Otogakure was long, tense, drawn-out, and peppered with swearwords (the Hokage's, mostly), sneers (generally from Oto's commander) and bleak stares (the Kazekage's habitual domain). Oto needed food and medical supplies, and Konoha and Suna needed the assistance of Oto's terrifying arsenal of jutsus and skilled shinobi in the event of war against the Mizu-Kumo alliance.

The Hokage was not a skilled negotiator. He was of the opinion that the Sand-Leaf alliance should just give Sound whatever raw materials and medicine they needed, and in turn the shinobi of Sound would help them kick some ass when called on. The Oto commander, on hearing this particular summary of grade-two diplomacy, lost his acidic cool and referred to the strongest warrior of the Leaf as "dribbling moron", which prompted the Kazekage to dump half a ton of sand on the negotiating table and all over the treaty papers as a warning. The head of the Hyuuga clan, who had been speaking with Temari and Sakon of the Western Gate, had rushed in to calm matters down, and the proceedings had been put on hold until it could be assured that Naruto and Sasuke would not attack each other across the table, with Gaara possibly thrown into the equation.

Which was how Kankuro had initially found himself outside the Hokage's tower in the pale sunshine of Leaf's early spring, the lone member of the Sand delegation who wasn't trying to talk Gaara down. The three available members of Sasuke's guard were seated on the tower's first-level roof, talking quietly among themselves. Kankuro leaned back against the warm stone wall of the tower and idly tried to listen in. After about thirty seconds, he wished he hadn't; even five years with the jounin squadrons of Suna hadn't exposed him to the kind of verbal venom the sole female Oto shinobi was casually spewing in the general direction of her comrades, her commanding officer, and everything that was holding up the negotiation proceedings in general. He was torn between plugging his ears and trying to find paper and writing utensils so as to take notes and look some of the more choice vocabulary up later.

"Horrible, isn't it?"

Kankuro glanced over at the man who had spoken, who responded to the questioning look by leaning against the wall, plopping into a boneless seated position with his knees on the same level as his ears, and burying his nose in a book. Kankuro stared down at the top of his head; he'd talked to Nara Shikamaru occasionally in the past, but the lazy chuunin had always seemed to get along better with Temari, so the fact that he'd gone and sought Kankuro out was a bit surprising. "Yo. What are you out here for?"

"I'd rather listen to that foul-mouthed woman than hang around inside the tower and listen to Naruto froth, especially where there's a potential of someone pulling out an S-level technique and trying to kill someone else."

Kankuro eyed the seated man beadily. "Oh, so you're going to stay out here where it's safe and leave my poor sister and that insanely shy Hyuuga woman in the negotiating room to face any potential explosion?"

"Yep, that's about the size of it," Shikamaru said coolly. "Especially considering you've also left your 'poor sister' down there and snuck off same as me."

Kankuro had to grin at that. "Alright, so you caught me out. Is it just me, or did it suddenly get quieter around here?"

His question was answered when he looked back up at the roof and found himself staring into an amused face that was less than eight inches above his own. Kankuro was trained enough that he didn't actually respond by poking the other guy's eyes out with a kunai; instead, he frowned slightly. This seemed to strike the intruder as highly entertaining, as he indulged in a badly-hidden snicker, which allowed Kankuro (and as the Sand jounin noted out of the corner of his eye, Shikamaru had closed his book as he was eyeing the newcomer as well) to identify the drop-in visitor with dark skin, six arms, and a Sound forehead protector. Kudamaru? Keidamaru? Something like that. He was hanging from the gutter of the roof by two thick white strings of webbing, gymnast-style: Kankuro mentally pegged the guy as a bit of a show-off, and waited.

The Sound guy stopped snickering long enough to grin widely at his two-man audience. "Heh, sorry, I just can\'t believe there's still someone out here. All the other Sand and Leaf guys covered their ears and left pretty much as soon as Tayuya opened her mouth. You guys must either be deaf or masochistic."

"Tayuya," Shikamaru said calmly, as if he had conversations with upside-down easily-amused enemy ninja twelve times daily. "How appropriate. I'd be surprised if such a brutal woman was named something like 'Hanako'."

"Oi, do you two know each other?" Kankuro asked Shikamaru, because he still wasn't sure what to make of this new guy, and anyways that creepy grin was starting to get on his nerves. Shikamaru sighed and put his nose back in his book.

Spider-guy, on the other hand, was not so uncommunicative: with a flick of his wrists, he turned a backflip at the same time as he let go of his threads, landing lightly on the balcony railing in a crouch, four arms settling crossed over his knees, the other two knotted behind his head in a stretching gesture. Right-side-up, he looked a little more normal as he eyed Kankuro and Shikamaru speculatively, but by this time the former had crossed 'a bit of a show-off' off his mental notes and replaced it with 'serious show-off, potential to be a dick-head'. "Yeah, we know each other; I tried to kill him a couple of times when I was fourteen." He grinned. "Never worked. Who would have thought a complaining, theatrical guy like that would survive more than five minutes in a real fight?"

Face still mostly covered by the book, Shikamaru waved vaguely in the spider guy's direction. "I guess I have to introduce you since I know you both...man, what a pain. Kankuro, this is Kidoumaru of the Sound, he likes to drop out of nowhere and creep people out. Kidoumaru, this is Kankuro of the Sand, okay guy, used to date his older sister. Don't kill each other any time soon."

"Not unless somebody tells me to," Kidoumaru said cheerfully. \"Hey, are you reading porn?"

"No." Shikamaru directed the cover of the book, Early Shinobi Education, in Kidoumaru's direction. The Sound ninja looked mildly disappointed. Kankuro just rolled his eyes.

"Juvenile."

"Funny comment coming from a guy who wears makeup and plays with oversized dolls," Kidoumaru answered, and this time Kankuro didn't bother to suppress his urge to deck the guy one, or attempt to, because the damn bug bastard simply flung himself backwards off the balcony and hung off in space, dangling by a thread as he smirked cheerfully up at Kankuro. "Man, that was pretty lame. I was hoping you'd be more fun in a fight, but if that's all you've got..."

Whatever Kidoumaru's assessment was, Kankuro wasn't about to find out: the balcony railing that the thread was anchored to was old and rusty. He braced his hands on either side of the thread and leaned most of his weight on the bar, which shuddered and bent with a squeal of protest, whereupon he went back to the wall and sat down beside Shikamaru, not really interested in how his nonverbal warning had been taken. The chuunin sighed and put his book away.

"I was hoping for you two to be a bit less adversarial."

"Hey, you're the one whose team the bastard tried to take out. Shouldn't you be a little less, I dunno, amiable?\"

"It's hard to really hate the guy once you've played Shougi with him a few times, even if he is a bit troublesome."

"Once you've what?"

= = = =

"Played Shougi," Shikamaru said mildly as Kidoumaru sat down cross-legged on the opposite chair and started picking the pieces onto the board with thirty careful fingers. Kankuro stole a chair from one of the other tables, ignoring the dirty look from the salon proprietor, and spun it around backwards so he could sit and easily rest his arms on the back and his chin on his hands. "You know, nine by nine board, nine pawns, that sort of thing?"

"I know what Shougi is, I'm not an idiot," Kankuro grumbled. "I'm also not sure why you wanted me to come along and watch this crap. I don't even like board games."

"Well..."

"Think of it as an apology for trying to bang my skull against the tower yesterday," Kidoumaru said casually, setting the last silver in place. "By the way, I stick to walls, you know."

"Next time maybe I'll just find a largish toilet and flush you down that," Kankuro muttered, before pointedly directing the next question to Shikamaru. "So you're telling me you can stand this guy because you've been playing some old man's game with him for the whole week the Sound delegation's been in town?"

"That, and complaining about the combined pig-headedness of my Hokage and his Uchiha," Shikamaru said, adjusting a pawn past a lance for his first move.

All subsequent conversation was pretty much killed by the intensity of the ensuing game. Kankuro hadn't been lying much when he said he wasn't too fond of board games, but when he and Temari were younger and had a minute, they'd spent occasional afternoons kicking each other's butts via their father's ancient Shougi set (and if the results were in question due to some of Temari's pieces disappearing during her bathroom break, butt-kicking was often taken to a more literal level), and neither of them were actually bad. But he'd never seen a game played at this level or degree of seriousness. Kidoumaru's obnoxious grin had vanished totally, his eyes clocking and carefully analyzing every move of Shikamaru's, while the Konoha chuunin's expression tensed slightly, his gaze alert, a small smile beginning to form on his lips as he took one of Kidoumaru's rooks with a bishop.

Kankuro's attention turned eventually from the players to the board: human expression was of interest to him, but as a puppeteer, he wasn't one to totally ignore the plot of the play in favour of the minutiae of the actors' movements. What he saw there was of considerably more interest anyways: their styles of strategy were telling. Kidoumaru was approaching the game as one would a full-scale war, conducting maneuvers and responding to attacks with quick defenses, probing weaknesses and tearing them open, and he had taken more of Shikamaru's pieces than the other had of his. The shadow-user, on the other hand, was playing very differently, eyeing every one of his opponent's moves, then laying his own pieces as if they didn't matter...but the pattern that was beginning to emerge...

Kidoumaru took one of Shikamaru's golds with a satisfied expression. "Gotcha. I can win this one in three more moves if I like: what do you think of that?"

Shikamaru stayed silent, staring at the board.

Kankuro wasn't good on silence. "Whaddaya mean, 'gotcha'? Look closer: he can crush you in two moves. He's got your king."

Kidoumaru looked at the board once more. Then he looked at Kankuro, eyes narrowing slightly. "I'd call you a bald-faced liar, but you're wearing too much makeup for that."

"It's kabuki paint," Kankuro said with a grin. "And now you're just being a sore loser."

"Me?" It was disconcerting watching someone point to themselves with three arms. "No, I see where he\'s got me, that's not what I meant: the fact that Mr. "I'm not much for board games" noticed a critical hole in my strategic defenses before I did, on the other hand..."

"It is kind of funny, isn't it?" Shikamaru said, that odd little not-exactly-a-smile still on his lips. "Well, do you give up?"

"Until next time," Kidoumaru said with a grin. Then he turned to Kankuro. "And I expect you'll join us then, right?"

"I'll think about it," the puppeteer said with as much nonchalance as he could muster. He posited briefly that if Kidoumaru and Shikamaru had been born in Sand, old Chiyo wouldn't have hesitated to teach them the kugutsu craft, and he entertained notions of what it would be like to fight side-by-side with either man or both before dismissing them out of hand. "Bet this gets boring after a few run-throughs, though."

"What, with /him/?" Kidoumaru gestured at Shikamaru as he got to his feet, still smiling. "Shougi's never boring if I'm playing against him. Might get bored with you, though. We'll see."

He was out of the salon before Kankuro could throw a retort at his back. Shrugging, the puppeteer turned to say goodbye to Shikamaru, who was still staring intently at the board. Shikamaru noticed Kankuro's expression and covered for himself by rolling his eyes. "That guy...he overestimates me, you know."

"Yeah, well, like he said, we'll see," Kankuro said with a lackadaisical half-salute at his Leaf ally. "Jan."

He heard Shikamaru's short, soft "cheh" as he left.

= = = =

Shikamaru had been lying to Kankuro when he said that all he and Kidoumaru talked about was annoying village leaders.

The first time the two of them met directly under circumstances where they weren't expected to kill each other was on the first day of Leaf and Sound's negotiations, when Kidoumaru had invaded the corner of the Village leaders' conference room that Shikamaru had claimed as his own, and proceeded to hang upside-down from the ceiling in a most disconcerting manner, watching the proceedings with a particularly odd smirk, which only got wider as Sasuke butted heads with Naruto.

It finally got a bit much for the chuunin. "Oi, could you move or something? Only it's distracting having you hanging off the rafters like that right over my head."

Kidoumaru looked up-or rather down-at him, as if just noticing him. "You're Tayuya's shit-rat, right?"

"And you're the sick bastard whose idea of fun is playing carnival games with pointy objects and live targets," Shikamaru said archly. "Yeah, I remember you pretty clearly."

"I'm flattered," the darker man said, the smirk not leaving his face. "So, who do you figure's going to be the first one to pull a Super-S-ranked technique because he didn't get his way? My money's on Sasuke-sama, but then your boss seems like a pretty big hot-head as well..."

"I suggest you consider carefully before speaking so freely about my Hokage," Shikamaru told him, voice level.

The Sound jounin cocked his head with slight interest, his eyes dispassionate. "Hou? You sound cranky. Did I kick your puppy or something?"

"If you're not going to go away, I'll move myself." Shikamaru pushed off the wall and nodded acknowledgement to Genma, who was guarding the conference room door, before exiting the room and pulling a confused Ino off her smoking break. The blonde wrinkled her nose at her old friend when he explained to her that it was "getting too damn noisy" in there.

"You're so full of it sometimes. So what is it, really?"

"It's this troublesome bastard from Sound hanging off the ceiling and acting like a..." Shikamaru stopped himself, briefly surprised at his own vehement annoyance. Ino raised her eyebrows.

"You're letting some guy from Sound get to you? Shikamaru, you're the guy who napped right through one of Suna no Temari's temper tantrums! I'm kind of unimpressed that one jerk can throw you off."

"He's the Eastern Gate of the Sound Four."

Ino went very quiet for a moment or two, as the specter of broken bodies and a beloved comrade turned into a skeletal shadow of his former self passed between them. Then she puffed herself up a bit as she usually did and gave him that big, smug 'I'm so much cooler than you' grin. "Well! If that's the case, I'd be happy to take over in there so I can ogle the Sound's cute boss and some of his sexy bodyguards. Your loss, as usual. Anyways, I think Chouji's off guard duty in half an hour and he'll want some lunch, so maybe you can catch him on the way and get yakiniku, right?"

Shikamaru had to smile a bit, though he covered it up quickly. The woman could be impossibly troublesome, but at times like these she made up for it with that annoying emotional radar of hers. "Yeah, yeah, trust you to take the option that lets you look at something pretty."

"Oh, get going!" Ino gave him a mock shove and sauntered off towards the conference room, dropping her cigarette and crushing it underfoot.

Shikamaru's half-smile disappeared as he watched her go; he didn't address the ceiling until he was certain she'd gone in and shut the door with proper accompanying seals.

"Didn't anyone ever teach you that it's rude to eavesdrop? More to the point, shouldn't you be inside taking care of that damn Sasuke guy?"

The wooden timbers of the hallway ceiling rippled and realigned themselves into a twenty-one-year-old male shinobi in a loose, dark sleeveless uniform, all six hands braced against the rafters on either side of him and an expression on his face that was resolving itself from sneering into calculating. "So you knew I was here all along, then? And what's this about eavesdropping? I'm a ninja, of course I wasn't taught not to eavesdrop. I wanted another word with you."

"Did my actually bothering to get up and walk away not give you enough of a clue that I don't?"

"Hey, you should be a little more receptive. I don't usually get interested in boring trash, but you've developed a bit of a reputation over the years, Nara Shikamaru, and naturally it got back to me."

"I'm honoured." Shikamaru made a show of looking at his non-existant watch. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm meeting a friend of mine for lunch."

"You mean that fatass guy."

"Don't call him that."

Kidoumaru blinked, obviously caught by surprise. For his part, Shikamaru sighed and cursed himself inwardly for snapping at the guy. This sort of scene only generated problems.

"Look, I don't care what you do, I'd just prefer that you either talk to me briefly, or leave me alone and quit following me around on the ceiling like some kind of deranged beetle. That's it." Shikamaru held up both hands in a placating gesture.

Kidoumaru continued to examine him as if just seeing him properly, with an intensity that was almost unnerving. Shikamaru dropped his hands and turned to walk away.

"Hey, hold on a minute. Do you play games?"

Shikamaru paused, almost unwillingly, and turned to look up at the Sound ninja, whose expression was surprisingly serious. "Yeah, once in a while."

"What kind? Board games, tabletop RPGs...?"

"Shougi's favourite, usually, but I'll play Go once in a while if there's an interesting opponent. Why?"

"Pay me back."

Shikamaru blinked. "What?"

"Pay me back for calling your friend names," Kidoumaru suggested cheerfully. "Play a game of shougi with me and beat me, if you can."

"Chouji doesn't need me to defend his honour," Shikamaru retorted.

"Or maybe he just doesn't have any worth defending," the Sound shinobi replied casually. Shikamaru felt the dull stirrings of anger begin to roil in his gut.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a really unpleasant bastard?"

"Yep." Kidoumaru pushed off the ceiling and landed in an artlessly graceful tangle of limbs in front of Shikamaru, rocking to his feet with every extremity under his perfect control. The Leaf chuunin was a bit surprised to note that the Sound shinobi was only an inch taller than him; he projected greater stature through his posture, an interesting physiological trick that Shikamaru often employed the reverse of. Kidoumaru seemed to be sizing him up as well.

Shikamaru made himself calm down. All this guy wanted was a game with him, even if he was going about it in probably the most roundabout way Shikamaru had ever encountered. Still... "Just so you know in advance, I don't like you much, and I probably never will, especially if you keep making remarks about Chouji. I'll play one game with you, but don't get mad and start summoning tarantulas or something when you lose."

Kidoumaru's eyes narrowed. "Aren't you a cocky little fuck."

"Not cocky, just speaking from experience," Shikamaru informed him. "And there probably won't be a Game #2, especially considering you're one of the most troublesome people I've ever run across, and that includes everything with ovaries."

"Hey, I know you're a super-genius and all that, but don't predict a game's outcome before you're even certain what you're up against," Kidoumaru warned him with a nasty little smirk. "I'll meet you at the shougi salon just off that pokey little ramen stand down the street tomorrow morning. Don't show up late, we value punctuality in Hidden Sound.

"Really? I thought arrogance and a bad attitude were the favoured traits over there."

"In that case, you'd fit right in. Time for me to get back to the conference and make sure Sasuke-sama doesn't paste that loud-mouth Hokage of yours in the chops." Kidoumaru phased out with a little wave just as Shikamaru glared at him.

The Leaf shinobi settled down quickly as soon as the source of his tension was gone. Okay, so this guy was an asshole, but what of it? He wanted one game of shougi, one of the few things in life Shikamaru really took an interest in. Worst-case scenario was, the guy would be a dud and he'd end up destroying him quickly and Chouji's honour would be vindicated.

Speaking of Chouji, he needed to go meet him for lunch. Maybe the Korean place they liked would have the outdoor tables set up by now, so they could eat and watch the clouds at the same time.

The best-case scenario was...what? Asuma-sensei was a more than decent shougi player, and he'd never even come close to beating Shikamaru. A visiting grand master of the game had given Shikamaru a bit of trouble one afternoon, but he'd ended up beating the guy anyways (and man, that had been embarrassing and long-winded, and he'd desperately wanted to throw the match in the other player's favour and go home, but Ino and Asuma had been watching him intently for any signs of chickening out, so he'd had to play it through). What if this guy was pretty good? He'd read some of the reports on Sound's military and political ascension, and they included some canny tactical maneuvers. Sasuke's doing, or this guy's?

He'd find out tomorrow. Maybe he could make the game more challenging by trying to last the whole time without seeing his first and most overwhelming failure as a leader, as a strategist, and as a friend staring him in the face.

...

He ended up besting Kidoumaru by what felt like a hair's breadth. Really, it was by three pieces, but as Shikamaru examined the board and then his opponent's face, he felt as if it had been...closer. Kidoumaru eyed his lost game for a moment or two, flexed his shoulders back, cracked his knuckles, and sighed.

"Huh, no exaggeration, you are good." He looked up at Shikamaru with a slow smile. "So...rematch?"

Shikamaru agreed, but only just.

= = = = =

As it turned out, Kidoumaru mopped the floor with Kankuro's proverbial ass during their first game. He really was very good, the puppeteer admitted grumpily to himself (although he'd eat Kuro-ari before admitting it to anyone else), but the bugger wasn't making matters better by staring across the board at him like that. Shikamaru was across the salon, playing against a particularly ancient codger who kept darting suspicious glances in Kankuro's direction. Kidoumaru proceeded to clear off the board and reset the pieces with aplomb.

Kankuro raised an eyebrow at him. "Hey, what makes you think we're going on to round two?"

"You're not completely boring," Kidoumaru said calmly. "Your moves are unconventional and that's enough to keep me on my toes, although," and here he looked up at the older man with a knowing smirk, "you made some pretty stupid decisions when I cornered you, here and here. Now why is that, I wonder?"

"Because I'm not a super-genius, nor am I obsessed with board games," Kankuro said coldly. "And quit smiling like that, it's really starting to get on my nerves."

"Aw, am I creeping you out? So sorry, Kankuro-/sama/, I promise to behave myself from now on."

Kankuro resisted a very strong urge to take the shougi board and thump Kidoumaru over the head with it, because he'd been acting like that the entire game; bully tactics weren't his style, hadn't been since he was fourteen years old, and he suspected that demonstrations of physical force wouldn't intimidate the spider-nin in the least. He made himself relax. A puppeteer's greatest attribute is the ability to mirror what his audience is thinking and feeling. So, asshole, what's on your mind?

"You? Creep me out? I got over thinking extra limbs and a weird expression were scary when I was about four years old," Kankuro sneered across the table at him. His hand hovered over the laid-out pieces for a moment before settling in on the seventh pawn. /Click/. "Funny, but you kind of remind me of Karasu, actually," Kankuro went on, "scary as hell until you figure out how it works and where the traps are, and then...well, it's just empty threat, a wooden doll. Someone's toy."

Something flickered in Kidoumaru's eyes. "You know, if you hadn't obviously intended that as an insult, I'd accuse you of hitting on me."

Kankuro blinked as Kidoumaru prodded his own pawn into the open field of the board. /Click/. "Oh yeah?"

Kidoumaru responded with a very slow smile. "Of course. Comparing me to a legendary kugutsu ningyo renowned as the most dangerous walking trap machine in existence? That'd keep me warm on cold nights, except," and here the smile made the full twist from mockingly sensual to predatory to nonexistent, "you called me an empty threat, and that just pisses me off."

"Aw, did I hurt your feelings? So sorry," Kankuro purred across the table, deliberately mimicking Kidoumaru's earlier tone. Click. Inside, he wasn't allowing himself to feel triumph; he was allowing the reflection, playing off the ego, oh and it was there, it had to be, the Four may have matured and learned but they were still Sasuke's living armor and that bespoke a certain...arrogance of status.

"Yeah, you will be." Click.

/Click/.

This game was shorter. This time, Kankuro lost by less, but he and Kidoumaru spent the whole time they weren't tracking the board staring at each other, analyzing. This time, Kidoumaru set the pieces aside entirely instead of replacing them on the board, propping all six elbows on the table and regarding Kankuro coldly. "You know, it took some doujutsu kid with girly hair nuking my internal organs like so many fried eggs to get me to realize that it's a shitty idea to underestimate your opponents. Maybe I should teach you the same lesson, since you obviously didn't grasp that when they were teaching you to apply all that cute face-paint."

"Oh, I've had that one," Kankuro drawled, mentally supplying on the wrong end of Sasori of the Red Sand's stinger. "But I'm sure a refresher course wouldn't hurt you. What were you thinking of?"

Kidoumaru told him. Kankuro considered it.

"I'd suggest going further out. The training areas are going to be full of incompetent genin and mildly suicidal Academy brats. How does the Forest sound?"

Kidoumaru's smile came back. "That sounds just fine."

"I've seen that smile," Shikamaru said, raising his voice a little to be heard from his table. "That's the 'I'm going to disembowel someone' smile. What are you up to over there?"

Kankuro called back before Kidoumaru could answer. It wasn't that he felt mildly protective of Shikamaru in this instance, hell no, but he suspected that the Leaf shinobi would object to his two foreign acquaintances breaking into a restricted area of Konoha for a weaponized version of a very nasty pissing contest. "He's just being a jerk, is all. Mind coming over and kicking him around some for me? I can't seem to get him, I'd swear he's sneaking my pieces when I'm not looking."

"Really?" Shikamaru enquired, rising and bowing briefly to his aged opponent, who muttered something at the younger man and began putting his board away. "Funny, Temari always said that was your bad habit."

"So she's still ratting me out, huh?" Kankuro said with a weak grin as Kidoumaru stared blankly at him, before hastily changing the subject. "So what's up with the geezer? He's been staring over here all afternoon; does he want to ask bug-boy here out on a date or something?"

Shikamaru shrugged. "Um, that's Mr. Oyagi. He's kind of senile..."

"So?"

"He says he doesn't mind a few extra extremities, but he thinks I should avoid men who wear lipstick."

Kankuro blinked. "He-what? It's Kabuki paint, for the love of all that's holy!"

Shikamaru shrugged again. \"He's a Noh aficionado. He thinks Kabuki's uncouth."

"Oh, that's it!" Kankuro got up so fast his chair clattered, ready to defend his favoured art form.

"Hey, careful, you're showing soft underbelly there," Kidoumaru remarked, not bothering to hide a little semi-smile as Kankuro shot a scowl at him.

"Later." The Sand jounin stalked over to the table where Mr. Oyagi was still sitting and started to explain how it was not lipstick; the oldster shook his head disparagingly and began a counter-lecture on how people were going to get the wrong idea about Kankuro's sexual orientation if he ran around in all that heavy eyeliner and blusher.

Shikamaru smiled, just a little. "He's a bit blind as well." He took Kankuro's seat without a hint of embarrassment. "I'm not, however, nor am I deaf. You two were baiting each other."

Kidoumaru contrived to look innocent. Shikamaru just looked at him. The Sound jounin conceded after a moment. "Alright, so what if we were? If I thought you'd give me a better fight outside of a shougi board, I'd try to get under your skin, too."

"You think I'm weak?" Shikamaru pulled the pieces out of their box, toying with them idly. "You're right."

Kidoumaru frowned. "Maybe I should try to piss you off more often."

"I'd prefer you didn't, although I'd like to know why you're trying to set Kankuro off while walking softly around me. You haven't said anything about my team mates, for instance, since that first time."

"Well, why should I? Your fatass is still fat. The blonde chick who harasses you two periodically is still unreasonably hot. Why expand on that?"

Shikamaru tilted his head to one side slightly, considering. "I'd like to know what you're trying to hide."

"You and half the kunoichi ANBU corps..."

"Kidoumaru."

The Sound ninja looked up at him, face for once totally inscrutable. "You first."

"I'm not hiding anything. What you see is what you get: a lazy-ass bastard with no guts."

"Or a fairly decent liar."

"Eh?"

Kidoumaru leaned in over the board slightly; Shikamaru leaned back. "Me and the rest of the guys, we have a-a theory, for lack of a better word, about our curse seals, although you might call it a superstition. We figure, the seal doesn't turn you into a monster, it just brings out the monster that was already in there...which is why Jiroubou's Level Two form looks almost normal, whereas me 'n the twins won't ever win any beauty contests when we take that form. You know what I think I see? I think," and here he jabbed his finger to within a hairsbreadth of Shikamaru's chest; it paused there only because the Leaf shinobi clapped both hands around the digit to capture it and gave its owner a singularly bleak look, "that there's a very nasty monster somewhere in here, too."

Shikamaru continued to eye Kidoumaru dubiously; an aggravated Kankuro, meanwhile, had finally explained his "lipstick" to Mr. Oyagi to the oldster's satisfaction, and announced his return to the table by exploiting his slight weight advantage on Kidoumaru and muscling the Sound shinobi bodily out of his seat, unrepentantly taking the chair for himself as soon as Kidoumaru was obliged to rise.

"Oh, please, feel free to take my chair like I wasn't trying to have a discussion with Nara here. You know, we stopped doing that to each other back in Sound when we were /ten/," Kidoumaru growled at the puppeteer, obviously annoyed.


"Well, he took my seat, so I'm taking yours. Go get your own or something."

Kidoumaru fixed Kankuro with a level glare that was pure threat, before shrugging and turning his back without a word to saunter out of the salon. Shikamaru watched him go; Kankuro pretended not to.

"What a Grade-A asshole that one's turning out to be."

"I wouldn't be so sure," Shikamaru said calmly, as if mentioning the weather.

Kankuro blinked. "What?"

"Never mind. I'll let you go first this time."

= = = = =

It was raining when the two of them left an hour later.
Shikamaru had come prepared with an umbrella; Kankuro, too proud to ask if he could share in the benefits of his shougi partner's foresight, walked beside him exposed to the elements, looking for all the world like some large, cranky, soaked black cat.

After half a block of Kankuro making sour faces as his hood was plastered flat to his head, Shikamaru sighed and held the umbrella over the older Sand shinobi nonchalantly. Kankuro glanced over at his new gaming partner and smiled faintly.

"Hey, thanks."

"Don't mention it. Temari liked walking in the rain, but I figured you guys had different preferences. Here, hold this," Shikamaru added, passing the handle over to Kankuro. The puppeteer watched, bemused, as the pouring deluge began to plaster Shikamaru's dark ponytail flat against his scalp.

"I thought it was for you...?"

"I wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of checking weather reports and dragging the damn thing around with me if I didn't think either you or Kidoumaru would need it. I don't mind getting a bit wet. It's like recompense for the good cloud-watching you always get after these storms."

"Uh huh," murmured Kankuro, whose experience with clouds came mostly from the occasional freak flood-storm suffered in the desert, when observant Sand shinobi took cover as thunder breakers boiled on the red evening horizon. Shikamaru did, indeed, look as contented as Kankuro had ever seen him. Kankuro had known the younger man for some time, and considered him a shinobi worthy of respect (not least because Shikamaru had not only survived dating Temari for about a year, but managed to remain friends with her after they'd broken it off, a boon Kankuro's merciless older sister had granted none of her other ex-boyfriends), but he hadn't spent much time alone with him before this last week, and found himself rather liking the guy. At the very least, Shikamaru's legendary laziness made Kankuro, the least ambitious member of his family, feel like Maito bloody Gai by comparison.

"How is Temari, by the way?" Shikamaru asked after a moment's silence. "I haven't had a chance to talk with her yet, the negotiations seem to be running her ragged."

"She's doing well; I think she's still dating that jounin kunoichi from Ops, and she's sleeping more, which was probably your bad influence. Oh, and Suna council tried to get her into an arranged marriage with some guy from Hidden Palm last week, and she destroyed the grand chamber during their sojourn as a warning. Good times."

"Yes, that sounds exactly like Temari," Shikamaru said with a smile that was only half humourous.

"How about your team? Since you, lucky bastard, are lacking in the sibling department..."

"Yeah..." Shikamaru trailed off briefly, his gaze distant for a moment. Kankuro looked again and wondered if he had imagined it. "Chouji and Ino are getting married next month. Chouji wants me to be the best man."

"Huh, congratulations. Or should I be saying sorry, since you didn't get the girl?"

"Are you kidding me? Ino's Ino, and thus the most troublesome woman ever born to pester a man. Chouji's about the only one good-natured enough to deal with her. Besides, this wedding nonsense...troublesome beyond belief. Of course the two of them are having fun planning it, Ino's micro-managing everything and driving Sakura and her father nuts, and Chouji wants to invite half of Fire Country...gods help us, he suggested putting Sasuke of all people on the guest list," Shikamaru added with a thin smile. "Asuma-sensei and I have it the easiest. I just have to remember to show up dressed decently and bring the rings and ceremonial Nara bell."

"And Asuma?"

"Ino's mother is long gone, so Ino asked him to be the honourary Mother of the Bride. That's the first time I ever saw him swallow one of his cigarettes. I swear I saw smoke come out of his ears."

The mental image, combined with the thought of a dramatically sobbing Asuma in the traditional maternal kimono, made Kankuro guffaw out loud. After calming himself down (and getting stared at by Konoha civilian passersby), he looked up at Shikamaru again. Nope, he hadn't imagined the distant look, it was there again. "So...you worried about being the third wheel?"

"Not too much. It's just that once they're married, their concerns will be different, and I might not see them as much outside of missions and such. Especially considering I've changed my plans about getting married myself."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I've figured out by now that it's not going to happen. The ironic thing is, the realization came right on the heels of figuring out that women aren't as troublesome as I used to think."

"Huh." Had Shikamaru just admitted that he was interested in men? Huh boy, the chuunin should have been more careful about that. Kankuro went both ways himself and lived by the "anything goes in the sack so long as you don't do it in the street and scare the kids" philosophy of life, but some shinobi, especially the older ones, could be close-minded, although the worst (ahaha, and it really was the worst) they'd do is shun the outed man or woman; good shinobi were not so thick on the ground that you could be stupid enough to kill one just for being fond of same. Shikamaru cut a glance sideways at Kankuro just in time for the Sand shinobi to catch the edge of it. "So, what do you think you'll do, then?"

"I'll go to the wedding, wish them the best, try to get 'em both drunk enough to be cheerful and relaxed but not stupid. Then I'll go home and grade papers." Shikamaru shrugged; he seemed calm, although his words struck Kankuro as morose. "That's my problem, you see: I don't like change too much. I suppose that's why I'm stuck where I am, but I'm okay with that. I can't ask other people to stay stagnant for my sake, though."

Kankuro considered this. "You had an okay childhood, didn't you?"

"Pretty good, yeah. My mother nagged and my father got soused occasionally, but I probably had it better than most kids. Why?"

"It probably makes me a twisted fuck, but I like it when the dynamic shifts. Except for when Gaara was born, every time there's been a major upheaval in my life, something good came out of it. Even that time when Akatsuki came for my brother...that time, it really hammered home to the village how much Gaara wanted to protect all of us."

Kankuro trailed off; Shikamaru winced and looked away. "You must think I'm a fool."

"Fuck no. The exact opposite. All I'm wondering is, would you be, you know, averse to hanging out more often while I'm in town?"

"With a boring bastard like me? You must have too much time on your hands."

"Well, maybe. Or maybe I think you're interesting. Call me perverse for it. Is it yes or no?"

Shikamaru blinked. "Well...no, I guess I wouldn't mind."

"That's all I was wondering. Now if you'll excuse me, this is my stop."

Their conversation had taken them to the doorstep of the Suna delegation's embassy building, and the rain was beginning to let up. Kankuro took the first step up, then passed the umbrella back to Shikamaru; his gloves interfered, but he felt it when he accidentally brushed the back of Shikamaru's hand, cool and wet, with his fingertips. The chuunin took the umbrella, despite the fact that he was soaked through anyways; his smile was faint.

"You're not much like your sister, you know, Kankuro."

"Oho, insults now?" The puppeteer made a mocking grimace, aware that his face paint had probably started to run by now, as prolonged exposure to water tended to have that effect.

"Not at all. You two have some good things in common, but you're very different personalities. It's kind of...nice, actually."

Kankuro stood and considered this as Shikamaru folded the umbrella and turned away to leave. Then he called after him. Shikamaru turned to look at him. "Yes?"

"I don't think you're a fool. All that time ago, when we almost lost Gaara...I think you of all people might understand what it was like. Akimichi won against that Jiroubou guy by taking cyanide pills, right?"

Shikamaru's face clouded. "...yeah. That's right."

"Well, then." Kankuro shrugged expressively and turned back to the door; but he snuck a glance back over his shoulder when he heard the squelch of Shikamaru's sandals in the fresh mud, and got a look at the chuunin's retreating back, ponytail and clothes plastered almost flat against him and slick with rainwater, his left hand raised in a casual goodbye wave without looking.

= = = = =

It wasn't supposed to happen...

TSUZUKU