The Shinobi from Yugakure
Shikadai Nara wanted everyone to know he was nothing like his father.
Nothing.
Not his hair.
Not his scowl.
Not his propensity for saying everything was a drag.
He wasn’t as strong in his Shadow Possession and Shikadai knew it, and so did his father. He was much better at his mother’s Wind Scythe. He thought shogi was boring and preferred playing his ninja video game with his friends. He knew to get out of his mother's way when she was in a mood. He wasn't going to pick up his father's smoking habit either. In fact, Shikadai found it to be a dirty and disgusting habit and he despised the way cigarette smoke made his eyes water.
Why did he have to be named Shikadai, anyway? What was with the Nara clan and their tendency to name their kids variations of Shika? Shikaku. Shikamaru. Shikadai. Did the Nara clan's laziness run so deep they couldn’t even be bothered to come up with a different name? Why couldn’t his parents have given him a Suna name like his uncles and cousin? After all, he would’ve been the next Kazekage if Uncle Gaara hadn’t adopted Shinki and named him his heir. Although, if Shikadai thought about it, he didn’t want to be Kazekage anyway.
It’d be too much of a drag.
For all the people saying they were just alike, Shikadai didn't get his father. And maybe he never would. He couldn't understand him half the time. Shikamaru Nara spent a lot of his time in his own head when he wasn't busy with work, and what little he spent out of his head or the office he was spouting about the Will of Fire. Shikadai didn't care about a Will of Fire or whatever. Why should he? He just wanted his father to talk to him like any father would his son. To ask him how his day was. To find out his interests. To tell him he was proud of him. It’d been a while since Shikamaru had last told him he was proud of him.
And when his father wasn't doing that, he was waxing sentimental about his dead sensei. Shikadai tried to be respectful about it, he really did. After all, that was Big Sister Mirai's father. But after a while, it was kind of a drag.
Shikadai knew very little about his father's sensei. He never realized how weird that was, considering how much Shikamaru talked about him until Boruto pointed it out one morning. While Shikamaru frequently spoke of his sensei, he never said very much about him. Shikadai asked Inojin and Cho-Cho if their parents talked about Asuma-sensei but both responded with very typical answers and Shikadai wondered why he bothered in the first place:
"You mean the guy who used to take our parents' team to barbeque and let them get as much as they wanted?" Cho-Cho whined forlornly, "I wish Moegi-sensei did that for us!"
"Well, yeah, Mom makes me go with her to put flowers at his and my grandfather's graves," Inojin said with a shrug. "I don't get what a dead person needs flowers for but Mom says leaving them 'helps connect us to the past' or something."
All Shikadai and his teammates managed to piece together was Team 10’s leader was a jonin named Asuma Sarutobi, he was the son of the Third Hokage and Konohamaru-sensei’s uncle, he died sometime before the Fourth Shinobi War, he gave Team 10 their earrings upon passing the chunin exam, he always let Choji get as much as he wanted at the barbeque restaurant, he’d smoked and Shikamaru had his lighter, and he was Mirai’s father. Shikadai had a vague idea of what the man looked like, having seen the memorial set up in Auntie Kurenai’s home: a big guy with a beard and a cheeky grin. Shit-eating, almost. Shikadai thought Mirai looked more like her mom but he’d definitely seen that smile before.
Shikadai lay on his back beneath the kotatsu, the blanket up to his chest. He’d taken his coarse hair out of its ponytail and let it fan out around his head. It was thick enough that it padded his head from the tatami floor. He glanced over from his ninja video game and watched his mother prepare miso soup at the stove. He wondered if he could talk to her about his concerns. Sometimes he found her to be easier to talk to than his father, at least about things like this.
“Hey, Mom?” Shikadai lowered his gaming console.
She did not turn around as she chopped the green onions and hummed, “Hm?”
“Am I like Dad?”
“What kind of question is that? Of course, you are. Too much alike sometimes, if you ask me. I’m outnumbered.” Shikadai scowled at his mother’s back. She must’ve sensed his disappointment because she put down the knife and looked at him over her shoulder. “Is that not the answer you wanted to hear?”
“Well, not really,” Shikadai admitted.
“Just because you’re his son doesn’t mean you have to be just like him. You know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
Temari turned around, wiping her hands on her apron. “Come here.” Shikadai scooted out from beneath the kotatsu. Temari reached out and combed her fingers through her son’s black hair. The Nara genes were strong. “Why don’t you help me with dinner? That’s something you can do your father never does.”
Shikadai brightened considerably. “OK!”
“Would you mind setting the table?”
“Sure.” Shikadai stood and got out bowls and chopsticks. He went to open the refrigerator and retrieve his father’s nightly beer but Temari stopped him. “So Dad’s not coming home for dinner again, huh?”
“No,” she said slowly. “Something came up at the office.”
Shikadai rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why they don’t just tell Lord Seventh’s family that he’s sick.”
“How do you know about that?”
“Dad hasn’t been home all week. Last week he’d only been gone two nights, now it's four. Boruto said his dad’s been home more but he just goes straight to bed and stays there so it’s like he’s not even home. So Dad and Mr. Neji must be handling things at the office, right? And I saw Dad meeting with Sarada’s parents so it must be something serious.”
Temari shook her head. “For a lazy kid, you sure keep us on our toes, Shikadai.”
“Hey! I’m not that lazy.”
“You’re a Nara, of course, you are.”
Mother and son ate their meal quietly conversing about their day–Temari spent time with her mom friends and Shikadai gave up chasing after Boruto and opted to train on his own. Shikadai helped his mother wash the dishes and he watched as she set a plate in the oven for his father if he even came home that night.
It was three days later when Shikadai saw his father again. He was sprawled under the covers, his face lit up by the screen of his video game console, when he heard heavy footsteps from the hallway.
Shikadai slid his door open and peeked out into the dark hallway. The light in the bathroom was on, spilling out into the hall and casting shadows shaped like his father. Shikamaru stood shirtless at the door, one foot inside the bathroom, with a towel draped over an arm and his hair loose around his shoulders. He looked up at the sound of Shikadai’s door. “Oh, hey, Shikadai. What are you doing up? Did you need something?”
He needed his father but he wasn’t ready to admit that.
“Well, no, not really—”
“Ok. Well, goodnight then.”
“Hey, Dad—?”
“Don’t stay up too late.” Shikamaru waved over his shoulder as he shut the door to go take a bath.
Shikadai scowled and shook his head. “It’s already late,” he grumbled as he pushed off the door frame and slid the door closed.
The boy climbed back into his futon and lay atop the covers like a starfish in a tidepool, staring at the ceiling. How on earth did his mother put up with somebody like his father? Did anything truly matter to him, or was it all just too much of a drag? Anything besides his job and the Hokage that is, Shikadai thought bitterly.
As a matter of fact, his father had been distant towards him since that time he'd considered quitting being a shinobi and leaving the village. His mother had been the one most adamantly opposed to his plan while his father remained as stoic as ever and never brought it up again. He never told Shikadai what he thought about him leaving to intern with a politician, not even when he outright asked, but simply said it was Shikadai's decision. Shikadai wasn't sure if he wanted Shikamaru to be supportive or not but he at least expected his father to be a little surprised. But he wasn't. Not even a little bit. Almost as if he'd expected it. As if—
As if he thought Shikadai wasn't cut out to be a shinobi.
He hadn’t made chunin and he was still struggling with his Shadow Possession.
The Fifth Kazekage had gifted him an Iron Fan like his mom’s for his birthday and he thought his mom was going to cry. Uncle Kankuro found the whole thing uproariously funny until he earned a hard smack to the back of his head from the blond kunoichi. A warmth filled Shikadai’s chest and trickled down his limbs but it drained away when he turned to show off the fan to his father who peered at it with a mild expression and went back to his shogi game with Uncle Gaara.
He’d gotten into more trouble on Boruto’s account in the last year than he ever had by his own merit in his entire life.
Maybe he was so disappointed in Shikadai that he thought the best thing was to ignore him and pretend he wasn’t there.
Shikadai rolled onto his side with a grumbled, “This is such a drag,” and leaned up on his elbow to squish the pillow until it was fluffed the way he wanted and his cheek rested against the cool side. He laid back on it with a heavy sigh, tracing the ceiling beams with his dark green eyes until he eventually forced himself to sleep.
Shikadai didn’t see his father the next morning.
Breakfast was a silent affair before Shikadai grabbed his Iron Fan from his room and headed out to the training grounds. When he got there he discovered all the training grounds were either in use or washed out from all the recent heavy rains. He muttered, “What a drag” to himself and crossed the village to the Eastern gate. After walking the familiar path, Shikadai stepped off the dirt road and into the grass, passing beneath low-hanging spruce branches. His clan’s forest was mostly quiet, only the sounds of birds occasionally piercing the air. The wind tossed his hair.
Shikadai trudged up the small rise in the earth and looked down where the embankment sloped away. The dense trees gave way to a small clearing. It would be the perfect spot. Shikadai descended, his sandaled feet bouncing slightly on the spongy earth. He touched the trees as he passed, bark flaking away and sap staining his fingers and the edges of his sleeves. A tree stump stood across the glade, its gnarled roots digging deep into the forest floor. A new tree had begun to grow from the hollow where the tree’s heartwood had rotted away. A tanto blade glinted from the trunk of the newer tree. It would make a perfect target.
Shikadai unfolded his Iron Fan and braced his feet in the soft grass. For forty minutes he spun and pivoted and lunged the way Temari had shown him. The Iron Fan was heavy and proved to be somewhat unwieldy for Shikadai who was used to the lighter heft of a kunai. He slashed at the tree across the clearing in an arc that caused him to lose his footing and he wanted to scream in frustration.
Something whacked Shikadai on the shoulder and he peered down at whatever the object was as he stepped to the side. His stomach flipped and threatened to toss up his breakfast as his piercing gaze landed on the severed arm lying on the mossy forest floor. Shikadai knelt to inspect the arm at his feet—a finely muscled forearm, dark green nail polish chipped away at the edges, and a tarnished ring worn on the index finger. He retrieved a kunai from his pouch and poked at the face of the ring. The blade clinked gently against the pale glass gem.
Where was the owner of the arm?
Shikadai looked around at the tumbled earth and started. He froze in place at the gruesome sight of mangled limbs amongst the rubble he’d unearthed with his Iron Fan. Did he just hurt someone? Or worse, unearth an unmarked grave? Shikadai set aside the arm and scrambled to find the other pieces of the body. He'd found the matching arm but a couple of fingers were missing. The left shin and foot still wore what Shikadai assumed was once a white and black shinobi sandal. The toenails were painted the same color as the fingers. Bits of singed black fabric, some with red swirling designs, had melted to most of a trim torso that was littered with burns and thin scars.
I need to find the head but, man, this is gonna be such a drag…
Shikadai leaned his Iron Fan against a tree and carefully dug through the soft earth, moving rocks and clumps of clay aside with his hands. Some more shredded black fabric and shattered pieces of twisted iron appeared. Shikadai plucked a fragment of iron from the ground and lifted it into a beam of light to get a better look at it. It appeared to be part of what was once a kunai. Shikadai shifted another rock and loosened the packed clay beneath it by tugging another strip of black and red fabric out. He unearthed the lower half of a body that was thankfully mostly intact other than everything below the knees. An animal had chewed on it. His fingers sank into another clump of dirt and his knuckles brushed against something soft and twitching. Shikadai’s hand shot back and he cradled it against his chest. A mumbling sound hit Shikadai's ears and it only became more frantic as the Nara boy dug around in the tumbled earth.
Clay soon gave way to what appeared to be a mane of silver hair, similar to Lord Sixth’s. Clumps of dirt clung to strands of it, cracking and flaking off as Shikadai brushed it away. He noticed patches were stained brown from dried blood. Shikadai grimaced and unearthed the rest of the head, gingerly lifting it from the hole. The hair was quite long and probably would have gone past the man’s waist if the head was still attached to the rest of a body. It was a young man's face, maybe in his early twenties, so about Konohamaru-sensei's age, Shikadai thought. A chunk of the head's left ear was missing.
The eyes popped open and Shikadai saw a flash of magenta before the mouth spat out dirt and broke into an unhinged grin. “OH THANK THE LORD JASHIN! FREE AT LAST!”
Shikadai stumbled back in shock, tripping over his own feet and landing on his rear in the grass. The head rolled slightly where Shikadai dropped it and cursed. “What the–? Is that–?”
“Hey, brat! Was it you?” The head laughed maniacally. “Did you dig me up?”
“Uhh…what…?”
“You seem familiar. Have I threatened you before?” the head said, squinting his magenta eyes at Shikadai. “What's wrong with you, kid? Cat got your tongue?”
“No?”
“Oh, I get it. Silent brooding type, huh? Yeah, I've had my fair share of those. I miss those fuckers. Even Uchiha-brat.” The man paused and gagged. “Did I just say that?”
Uchiha-brat? The only Uchiha Shikadai knew was Sarada but surely this man wasn't talking about her. Perhaps he meant Sarada's father? “How do you know Mr. Sasuke?” Shikadai asked slowly.
Those magenta eyes whipped around to look at Shikadai. “Huh? Sasuke? Sasuke." The head said it like he was rolling the name around in his mouth, searching through memories to match. "Uchiha-brat’s little bro? He didn’t kill him yet? Damn. Gone, too. Guess that cough finally got him.”
What the hell? How could this guy talk so casually about something like that? Never mind how could a head not attached to anything be talking in the first place? This morning had just been too weird.
Shikadai hesitated. “You look like you could use some help.”
The magenta eyes narrowed sharply. “Yeah, no shit. I can’t feel my ass. Actually, where is my ass?”
“Uh…” Shikadai had no idea what to say to this strange man.
“Man, he really fucked me up, didn’t he? Dammit, Kakuzu, you would be so helpful right now!”
“Who's Kakuzu?”
“My partner. He’s…well if he’s not here then I guess that fucker went and died on me.” The silver-haired man chuckled weakly. “Shit. They really got him. Well, since I guess all I got is you, can you find the rest of me?”
“Y-yeah. I guess so.” Shikadai moved the man’s head and set it down in the grass with the other parts of his body. “What’s your name?”
“Name’s Hidan."
“I'm Shikadai.”
“Shikadai.” Hidan rolled the name around in his mouth. “That sure sounds familiar. Are you sure we've never met before?”
Shikadai nods. He would definitely remember meeting Hidan before, he was quite the character.
“Huh. Weird.” Hidan turned quiet, his eyes looking around the Nara Forest. He noticed the tree grown around the tanto blade and his expression morphed into one of serious contemplation.
Shikadai retrieved the med kit Inojin insisted he carry with him at all times from his pouch and searched it for a needle and thread. It had been a while since the medical training course at the Academy so Shikadai wasn’t too sure how good of a job he’d do stitching Hidan back together. But he’d watched his cousin Shinki practice embroidery and Uncle Kankuro putting his puppets together since he was a baby so it couldn’t be too difficult, right? Besides, Hidan was in literal pieces and still somehow alive so at this point there was probably little Shikadai could do to make the situation worse. “Sorry,” Shikadai said, threading the needle and beginning to attach Hidan’s head back onto his shoulders. “I’m not a medic-nin so this might hurt.”
Hidan snorted. “It’s fine. Couldn’t be any worse than getting blown up and dropped in a hole.”
Shikadai wasn’t sure what to say to that so he remained quiet while he worked on sewing up Hidan’s flesh. He’d finished with Hidan’s throat and managed to not gag when Hidan’s torso started twitching. Hidan didn’t seem to notice Shikadai cutting the thread and moving on to stitching Hidan’s left arm back on.
“Were you a shinobi?”
“Hell, yeah! I was fucking great at it, too!”
“Except when you were getting your head chopped off?” Shikadai supplied. He’d spotted at least two horizontal scars overlapping each other across Hidan’s throat.
“Shut up, you,” Hidan snapped but his fingers went to the scars across his throat. He idly wondered where his old headband had disappeared to. Maybe that dipshit took it as a prize all those years ago. If it had been left behind it was probably all rusted and useless now. “If Kakuzu was here he’d tell me what an idiot I was, acting like a bigshot and egging on an opponent ‘cause I underestimated the kid.”
“Wait, a kid did this to you?” Shikadai’s hands froze mid-stitch across Hidan’s thigh.
“Damn smart-ass chunin,” Hidan grumbled, raking his fingers through his grimy hair. His ring caught on the tangles and yanked at his scalp. “Hey, you got a knife or something?” He flapped his hand at Shikadai to get the boy’s attention.
“Yeah, sure.”
Shikadai tossed a kunai to Hidan and the man began hacking away at his silver hair, sheering it unevenly at the shoulders. He set the knife aside, his ring glinting in a patch of sun. Hidan scowled at it and twisted it off, peering at it silently for a moment. He tucked it away in the remains of his pocket. “Blood on my hands, they said,” Hidan said wistfully, holding up his hands and inspecting them in the beams of sunlight seeping through the trees. “As though it stops there, at your wrists. As though you could do what I did and there’d be any part of you that wasn’t stained.” Hidan looked down at the neat, even stitches Shikadai had sewn his right hand back on with. “Hey, these are pretty good. Not all slap-dash like I thought they’d be. The scars’ll be nice and even. I think I’ll like ‘em better this way.”
Shikadai shook his head slightly. “You collect scars the way most people collect trading cards or rocks.”
“Huh?”
“You have a lot of scars,” Shikadai remarked. “Almost as many as some of the old guys in my dad's generation. Did you fight in the war?”
“Nah.”
“Where’d you get them from, then?” Shikadai asked with equal parts concern and the nosiness of a child.
“Me. I did that.”
“Why?”
Hidan blinked at him with a look of disgusted confusion. “Why do you think I do this shit?”
Shikadai considered for a moment and replied, “Because you want proof you’re paying for whatever you did wrong.”
Hidan blinked blankly at Shikadai and smirked but his face twisted into one of annoyance as he spoke. “Pfft. That’s…that’s not…Stop looking at me like that. What is that, pity? All I am to you is a fucking tragedy, right? Stop it. Stop fucking looking at me like that. You hear me? I hate that. I don’t need to be saved or redeemed or whatever the fuck good people like you want bad people like me to do.”
“So is that what you want? Do you want redemption?”
Hidan scowled. “Know what? I'll tell you what I hate about your redemption. To reach a hand down to somebody, they have to be beneath you! And I am beneath no one !"
Shikadai gave Hidan an extremely exasperated look, almost identical to the one Temari gives when she's mildly miffed about something. “Yeah, ok. Forget I asked.”
Now that Shikadai had a chance to really look at Hidan, the man didn’t appear much older than his parents, perhaps only twenty-five maybe thirty. Hidan was probably the same age as Konohamaru-sensei which would have made him too young to participate in the Fourth War. Was he older? Shikadai noticed a patch of scar tissue on Hidan’s belly beneath his ribcage that had been reopened and scarred over repeatedly and the boy wondered if Hidan had been tortured. He could clearly survive being chopped into pieces so could he even…die?
“Are you from Konoha?” Shikadai asked. He knew a little about Anbu’s shady past and had seen T&I’s chief interrogator Ibiki Morino around the village so part of Shikadai was curious if maybe Hidan had been involved with them somehow.
“Pfft. No. I’m from Yugakure.”
Yugakure was the Konoha of the Land of Hot Water, a neighboring country to the Land of Fire. The village was surrounded by hot springs and many resorts had been built there, attracting tourists from all different nations. Shikadai’s parents had even visited during their honeymoon. If Shikadai remembered correctly from his geography class at the Academy, Yugakure had officially transitioned away from typical shinobi missions; Yugakure shinobi worked almost exclusively within their borders, keeping the roads safe for travelers and performing odd-job D-ranks. They were by far and large a pacifist nation, not one producing shinobi as young and scarred as Hidan.
“Will you go back now that you’re out of that hole?”
Hidan paused his hands raking through his uneven silver hair. He stared at a point in the distance wordlessly before turning back to face Shikadai. “Nah. They don’t want me back.”
Shikadai sat in silence for a minute longer. His parents had always taught him to be kind to others and it was his duty as a shinobi to help people in need. So before he knew what he was doing, he was inviting Hidan to come back to Konoha with him and get help from Temari…and Hidan agreed.
“Hm, we should probably get you a shirt or something,” Shikadai said, eyeing the shredded remnants of Hidan’s melted clothes. “Here,” the boy said, tossing his oversized jacket at Hidan. Hidan put it on and it looked…ridiculous. The size was fine however the sleeves were significantly shorter than Hidan’s arms. But at least it covered most of his bare chest. It would have to do.
And that was how Shikadai Nara found himself walking alongside Hidan down the main road towards the gates of Konoha.
Shikadai turned to say something to Hidan but the man had wandered off and was peering up at the massive A-un gates.
So this was the Land of Fire’s Konohagakure. It looked loud and busy, with bright lights of signs and boards with colors and words scrolling across the bottom of the screens. People were flitting about going about their days—doing their shopping, talking with friends, going on a walk. A few chunin on guard duty were milling around the guard station. It seemed to Hidan that shinobi were everywhere.
“C’mon,” Shikadai said, starting towards the gates.
“The fuck you mean we gotta walk through that?!” Hidan demanded, pointing at all the people wandering about.
“That's the road to my house.”
“Then I'll just shunshin us there—!”
“Ok, ok, chill. We’ll go the back way,” Shikadai rushed, realizing that Hidan was a bit antsy around crowds. Understandable, considering Hidan had been in a hole for who knew how long without any human contact.
Hidan seemed to visibly relax at this suggestion so Shikadai led the silver-haired man down a quiet alley and up a building’s utility ladder. They would just have to go over the rooftops. Hidan seemed a little shaky at first, like he hadn’t used chakra in a while which only reinforced Shikadai’s curiosity of just how long Hidan had been in that hole. Shikadai was surprised he managed to get Hidan to the quiet street where he lived without another outburst and he jumped down from the top of the bento shop at the corner of his street. Hidan landed next to him. Shikadai pointed him along the street, coming up to the gate of Shikadai’s house.
“Shikadai!” Boruto's voice called from across the street. He bolted out of the game shop, waving. “I've been looking for you all over, ya know!”
One side of Hidan's mouth quirked up in a look of confused disgust and he leaned down to say quietly to Shikadai, “Who’s this twerp?”
“That's Boruto. He's one of my friends.”
Hidan watched on with a curious expression as the boys talked. Boruto’s blue eyes landed on Hidan and he tilted his head to the side, folding his hands behind his head. “Who’s this guy?” Boruto asked.
Hidan opened his mouth to loudly introduce himself but Shikadai beat him to it. “That's my new friend, Hidan.”
Boruto eyed Hidan warily, his bright blue eyes narrowing as he scrutinized Hidan’s visible scars. “He's not another terrorist, is he?”
“No!” Shikadai said defensively. He paused and his gaze slid to Hidan. “At least, I don't think so.” But now that Boruto had mentioned it, Hidan’s body was littered with scars but the man claimed he never fought in the war.
“Ok, whatever you say, I guess,” Boruto shrugged as he trailed after Shikadai and Hidan into the garden. Shadows waved and stretched across the mossy rocks, casting the koi pond in stripes of darkness. Speckled koi weaved through the clear water, swimming up to the surface to bite at a leaf bobbing on the surface of the pond. The deer scare clacked in the shade of a cedar tree.
Shikadai kicked off his sandals on the porch and slid the door open, calling into the empty house. He padded inside. Hidan cautiously poked his head inside the doorway.
“You comin’ in or what?” Boruto said, clasping his hands behind his head and depositing his shoes haphazardly in the genkan.
Hidan side-eyed the blond boy with an uncharitable look but brushed him off with a scoff. “Pfft. Yeah.” Hidan stepped over the threshold onto the wood floor of the hallway. The house was built in a traditional style with smooth wooden floors and rooms of tatami mats. A shogi board sat on the floor in one of the tatami rooms. It was a nice house, much nicer than all the places Hidan had ever lived; his shack in Yugakure, the Akatsuki hideout which was just a cave with rooms carved out of it in god-forsaken Amegakure, and, well, the hole he’s been stuck in for who knew how long. This would’ve been considered a rich man’s mansion back in Yugakure when he was a kid. Boruto and Shikadai disappeared around a corner and Hidan wandered after them, taking the stairs two at a time. The three entered Shikadai’s bedroom and Hidan peered inside curiously.
The room was spacious with all the typical items a teenage shinobi would have in his bedroom. Hidan noticed a desk littered with kunai and shuriken, jutsu scrolls, and a weird-looking device sitting in a soft-shell case. Shikadai leaned his Iron Fan against the wall by the bed. Hidan looked out the window that gave him a view of the garden and the street. Kids darted past the garden gate, playing a game of Ninja War. One of the children hollered to their friends that they didn't want to play as ‘the ancient guy with the tattoos’ anymore and wanted their turn as the Seventh Hokage.
The seventh?
That couldn’t be right. Uchiha-brat said the fifth Hokage was an old lady.
“Hey, what number Hokage are you on?” Hidan called over to Shikadai and Boruto.
“The seventh,” Shikadai said.
Boruto scoffed and put his hands behind his head. “Yeah, my stupid old man. Speaking of, has your dad said anything about mine?”
“No,” Shikadai said. “I haven’t seen him much lately. Why?”
“Our dads are both too busy for either one of us,” Boruto said casually, flopping onto Shikadai’s bean bag chair.
“Man, what a drag,” Shikadai muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.
Hidan's head snapped up. “What did you just say?”
“I said ‘What a drag’. Why?”
“Fuck! I know who you remind me of! That Shikamaru brat!”
‘Shikamaru brat’? No one had ever had the gumption to call the Hokage’s advisor a ‘brat’ to Shikadai’s face before. He was about to ask Hidan what connection he had to his father but Boruto beat him to it.
“You know Mr. Shikamaru?”
Hidan snorted. “Mister? The hell is with that? That little shit. You tell him we have a score to settle. He owes Lord Jashin a payment in his blood!”
The boys gave Hidan a strange look.
“Jashin? Wait, I remember Big Sister Mirai mentioning that name before. Wasn’t your dad’s sensei killed by a crazy guy who worshipped Jashin?”
“That was me! ” Hidan puffed out his chest proudly. His grin faltered. “Wait. DAD?! Oh, fuck! No fucking way! That brat spawned? Just my fucking luck!”
A door slid open somewhere in the house and the three froze instantly. “Oh no, Mom’s home early.”
But the voice that called ‘Tadaima,’ wasn’t Temari.
“You stay here!” Shikadai shoved Hidan back into his room and slid the door closed. Shikadai slid the door open again and added, “And be quiet.” He closed the door once more and clambered down the stairs, meeting his father at the bottom.
Shikamaru eyed his son’s smudged shirt and pants. “Where have you been? Out training with Boruto?”
“Uh, yeah, kind of? Hey, Dad, can I ask you—”
Something clattered to the floor in Shikadai’s room. Shikadai glanced upwards at the ceiling, resembling a man praying to God for the last bit of patience available.
Shikamaru lifted his head from where he’d propped it against a gloved hand. “What was that?”
“N-Nothing! It's nothing!” Shikadai waved his hands in front of his chest.
Shikamaru’s eyes narrowed. “Shikadai.”
“Well…there was this guy in the Nara forest. He was all mutilated and he said he’d been caught in an explosion and needed help so I—”
“What guy?” Shikamaru cut him off.
“He said his name was Hidan—” Shikadai trailed off when he noticed how pale his father had gotten. “Dad?” he asked slowly.
“What have you done? Oh, Kami, what have you done?” Shikamaru buried his face in his hands and scrubbed at the edge of his hairline. Shikamaru started out of the chair.
“Dad? Did…did I do something wrong?”
“Where is he, Shikadai?” Shikadai fidgeted. “Where is he?”
“He's upstairs in my room–”
Shikamaru tore out of the kitchen and bounded up the stairs. Shikadai was hot on his trail.
“Dad, wait! He's–”
But Shikamaru wasn't listening. Shikamaru skidded to a halt just outside the bathroom when Hidan slid Shikadai's bedroom door open with a sheepish expression. Shikamaru let out a snarl and his shadows shot down the hallway wrapping around Hidan's limbs and throat, pinning him in place. Shikadai took the opportunity to dart past his father and closer to Hidan.
Hidan's expression was one of surprise but as soon as he recognized the cold feeling of the shadows wrapped around his body, his grin morphed and his broad smile showed all his teeth. "Hey, dipshit! Long time no see!" Hidan chirped.
Shikamaru was seething, his shadows separating Shikadai from Hidan and depositing his son behind himself. His blood boiled in his veins and rushed in his ears, drowning out Shikadai's attempts to get his father to release Hidan.
"Get away from my son."