Konoha's Own Blue-Eyed Puppeteer

The Free Clouds

"COME ON! UP! BACK TO CLASS!" Iruka's voice was extremely over whelming and he had a large pulsating vein popping out on his forehead. That might have been a larger vein than when he's chasing after that one blonde. I let out a small sigh, this was bound to happen sooner or later. We do skip class quite often.

I dragged myself up and grabbed Choji's hand to help haul him up too. A sweat drop fell from my forehead, seeing the lazy Nara turned to his side, sound asleep. I nudged him with my foot, looking from the expecting Iruka back to him. "Hey, now might be a good time to wake up." A certain urgency to my tone. 

His eyelids opened up, a tired expression hung on his facial features. His sights crossed from me to Iruka, a wheel of thought starting to spin in his head. It's like he was debating his options, but I could never tell what Shikamaru was really thinking, he's a hard guy to figure out.

Finally, he dragged himself up to his feet, stretching his arms and yawning. Iruka turned around for us to follow him to the academy. I took one step in Iruka's direction before Shikamaru grabbed my wrist and ran away pulling me with him. "Choji! Come on!" Shikamaru yelled, making Choji's hestitant feet snap into motion, running right behind us.

"HEY! HEY! WHAT-" I tried finishing my sentence, yet my words wouldn't keep up with my mind as he tugged me through Konoha. "STOP!" All of us could hear Iruka yelling the distance, none of us dared to look back at the angry man though. "Shikamaru!!" I hissed, him still tugging me along.

Suddenly he stopped, almost making me crash into him. He looked back at me with a plain look. "Do you really want to go back to class?" I scoffed at him, however, I was unsuccessful at hiding my tiny smile. "No, not really."  He nodded affirmatively. " That's what I thought." He stared on behind, then turned back, starting to run again. He stopped running, turning back again to grab my wrist and pull me along again. "Agh! Seriously!?" "You weren't running."

He made a sharp turn and ran into an apartment building, I knew it to be the one where he and Choji often hung out, I never really watched the clouds here, I preferred the grassy hills. He continued pulling me along up the stairs, much less fast than when we ran through Konoha from Iruka. My wrist was starting to ache in pain from the constant tugging. He couldn't have grabbed my prosthetic arm, could he? That would have been much less painful.

Eventually he stopped tugging me along and we were at the roof of the building where anyone can see the puffy clouds fly on by, no care in the world.  "Did you really have to tug me so hard?" I asked with a small whine while rubbing my now red wrist. My face slightly scrunched up in pain.

He sighed over dramatically. "Troublesome girl... Let me see your hand." 

My eye twitched in annoyance. "How does this make me troublesome? You did it! ...Couldn't you have grabbed the hand that can't feel physical pain?" I murmured the last part but he heard anyway. He got out a roll of bandages that us ninja mainly keep on us from his pouch and continued to explain how I'm troublesome, "Because whenever a guy hurts a woman, on purpose or not, the women always has to hold it against him, or he's the bad guy, or-"  

He stopped when he saw me rolling my light blue eyes in a circle. "Seriously, you should know me by now, I don't care about those things or however you wanna describe them. Although your sexism does get annoying from time to time." My last sentence came out like a belittling observation to him.

Now his eye twitched. "Just let me see your hand." 

I stuck my injured wrist out for him and looked around, a sweat mark appeared as he wrapped up my hand. The realization built up in me and so did the little guilt. I cleared my throat gaining his attention. "Uhm, Shikamaru?"