“Now, Shikamaru.” Gengo pushed his hand forward, almost up against Shikamaru’s nose.
Things would be easier if he accepted it. He could forget about all these hassles.
Shinobi ruled this world. That was how the world should be.
Everything would be easy if he took that hand. He wouldn’t have to struggle anymore.
“Let’s go together.” Gengo’s voice pushed at his back.
Shikamaru’s right hand slowly pulled itself up from his side, nearly sucked into the extended palm.
At the moment the tips of their fingers were about to touch, there was some kind of commotion from behind him.
Shikamaru’s body shot up and danced through the air. As he flew along with incredible force, thrown almost to the ceiling, Shikamaru saw Gengo standing with his legs braced. The revolutionaries surrounding the throne at the top of the stairs were also holding fast in the face of the sudden gust. The only one in the air was Shikamaru.
He crashed into the ceiling, and an intense pain coursed through his body. In the next instant, the wind stopped, and he started falling.
“Ngah!” Unable to even roll into the fall, his back slammed heavily into the floor, knocking the wind out of him. He had been blown away from Gengo, farther away than the still-imprisoned Soku and Ro.
“Shikamaru!” From the entrance, a giant roar shook the room.
A woman’s voice. A familiar voice.
“What are you doing here?”
Clutching his back, Shikamaru turned his eyes toward the voice.
A woman with a sharp gaze and golden hair tied into two bundles stood there, holding a giant fan in both hands. And that fan had no doubt created the wind that had knocked Shikamaru flying.
Temari…
“So you’re just gonna skip out?! You’re gonna do whatever he tells you to? That’s not like you at all! I expect a lot more from you! Get it together, you idiot! I mean, I know you actually think this guy’s boring! His stupid lecture’s total garbage! Am I right? Say something! Shikamaru!”
His ears, now accustomed to Gengo’s weighty tone, took in the screeching, loud voice, and his eyes flickered with pain. “Ah!”
The haze blanketing his head vanished cleanly and completely. The thing squeezing his heart was gone; it was as if a hole had popped open in his chest. But it felt amazingly good. He inhaled deeply, down to the bottom of his stomach, and slowly let it out. A laugh naturally followed.
A single blow to pull him out of the genjutsu…
“So you show up out of nowhere to badmouth me?” He put a hand on the back of his head, eyes fixed on Temari as he stood up.
“I came to save you. Quit grumbling and thank me.” She rammed the end of the folding fan into the ground, rested her right elbow on the pivot, and puffed her chest out. Behind her stood a line of ninja. They all had the mark of Sunagakure carved into their forehead protectors. “I can’t exactly go letting you die now, can I?” She grinned.
Her smile, glittering like the fire of the desert sun, cleared Shikamaru’s heart. Her earlier words came back to life in his head.
This guy’s a drag! His stupid lecture’s total garbage!
“A drag…huh?” He turned around and looked at Gengo.
The leader of the Land of Silence was turned around, speaking to his aides at the top of the stairs, whose faces were stiff at the sudden upheaval. When he was done, the aides streamed past Shikamaru and turned toward the sand shinobi. They might have been stunned at the sudden attack, but the speed with which they still managed to switch from standing beside the throne to racing toward the enemy showed their worth as vassals for the independent master of this land.
Behind him, Shikamaru heard the clang of blades crashing against each other. It was strange how calm he felt. He took a light step forward.
Gengo stood before him, shoulders squared, ready to fight.
Shikamaru kept moving forward, silently. When he reached Soku and Ro, he put a hand on each of their shoulders. “It’s okay now,” he said, and started walking again.
They both leapt up and stopped barely centimeters away from him.
Shikamaru stared at Gengo with serious eyes. “Haaaah…” A yawn slipped out of his mouth. Tears popped up in his eyes, blurring his vision slightly.
“Oi.” Gengo pointed at Shikamaru. At his face…
“Hmm?” Shikamaru brought his own hand to his nose.
It was wet. At some point, blood had started coming from his left nostril.
“That Temari…” The only cause for the nosebleed he could think of was that she had slammed him up against the ceiling with that sudden gust.
“We seem to have been interrupted. Now, where were we again?” Gengo asked, his voice smooth.
Shikamaru put his right hand on his head and shook it broadly from side to side. The bones in his neck crackled.
“Simply because reinforcements have arrived—”
“What?! Reinforcements? Where?” Shikamaru raised his voice in surprise, interrupting and stunning Gengo. He watched Gengo’s eyes opening wider and realized how crazy his own words sounded. “Oh, you mean them? You got it all wrong. They’re not reinforcements.”
“Then what would you call them?”
“Dunno. They came on their own.”
Gengo was dumbfounded and unable to hide his surprise at how different Shikamaru was now from mere moments earlier. “Fine,” he said, finally. “A surprise attack on this level cannot shake our land or our will.”
“Pfft!” Shikamaru snorted, unconsciously.
A blue vein popped up on Gengo’s forehead.
“It won’t shake your land? Even though they made it all the way into your castle?” Shikamaru said.
“Don’t underestimate my aides. There are very few ninja of their caliber.”
“Well, I’m looking forward to it.”
“Listen, Shikamaru,” Gengo said.
“No thanks,” Shikamaru said, decisively, shoving his right hand forward. “Listening to what you have to say is what gets me stuck in your genjutsu.”
“Hngh!” Gengo’s right eyebrow trembled slightly.
“Thanks to her, I managed to get out of it finally. And I’m not falling for your tricks twice.”
“Soft… You’re soft, Shikamaru.”
“You put your chakra into your voice and cast your genjutsu on your opponent with your tone and your words. And y’know, that jutsu suits you, with all your pretensions of being a revolutionary. You really thought this through, huh? The reason my shadow lost power during your lecture was because you already had me in your jutsu by then.”
“Genjutsu? Ridiculous. My words are volition, intention. I truly believe everything I told you before. And those words were not just my personal beliefs; they are fact. Ninja are the ones who should rule this world. This is a definitive fact. You are the one who does not understand.”
Gengo’s words made his earlobes shudder. Shikamaru could feel chakra flowing in, but he wasn’t particularly interested in trying to avoid it.
He was totally fine.
His heart, which had been roiling like a stormy sea, was now so calm it was strange. He wasn’t afraid, no matter what happened. Or rather…
“It’s all, I dunno, it’s all such a drag.” Another yawn forced its way out of his mouth. “Why do you get tears in your eyes when you yawn, anyway?”
Gengo didn’t answer. He seemed to be thoroughly rattled.
Shikamaru wasn’t doing it on purpose. This wasn’t a strategy. He had simply returned to his most basic self. Temari’s rebuke had made him remember.
He was not a king; he had never been one for grandiose thinking, for contemplating the entire world or anything. He was a person who tended to find things annoying, who wanted a just-right life. The world depending on what he did was basically the ultimate hassle.
I can’t take on a burden like that. You wanna change the world, you get in there and do what you gotta.
But wait. If Gengo changed the world, then what would happen to Naruto and everybody? What would happen to Temari, after she went to the trouble of coming to rescue him?
“Y’know, leaving you to do your thing is actually not gonna work.”
“W-where did all that ambition from only moments ago disappear to? What are you thinking, Shikamaru?! Open your eyes, Shikamaru!”
“What’re you even talking about? My eyes are finally open now.” A languid smile spreading across his lips, Shikamaru took another step closer to Gengo. “The real me, y’know?”
He was already close enough for the two of them to cross blades.