How Troublesome

Chapter 18: An Exasperating Exit

Shikamaru shrugged into a jacket, patting the pockets to make sure that all of his exploding tags, kunai, and shuriken were in their places.

Everything that had happened between Shikamaru, Naruto, and Katsutoshi had supposed to be secret, kept from the population so as not to alarm them. So, naturally, everyone in the village knew what had occurred. Shikamaru wasn't even sure how everyone had found out, but they had, and now he and Naruto were known as shinobi and were the "heroes" of the village. Not only that, but two dozen people had tried to sneak into the jail and attempt to kill Katsutoshi, furious that he had plotted against Kotone and Takeshi. But now, even though he and Naruto had been invited to stay in the village for as long as they liked, it was time to return to Konoha.
He took one last glance around the room that he had been staying in, and then turned and walked out of the room, going over to Naruto's.

He cleared his throat, "Naruto, you in there?"

As much as he would have liked to simply walk in without announcing himself, hopefully while Naruto was changing, he wasn't going to. He didn't want to be a Kakashi or a Kazuo. Perverts.

"Yeah, come on in!" Naruto replied.

Shikamaru paused and frowned. What was wrong with her voice? It sounded distinctly off. He slid opened the door, and came face to face with Naruto, but it was a very male Naruto. He blinked. What the...

Naruto was standing in front of him, wearing a pair of standard shinobi pants and a short-sleeved dark orange shirt. She, no he... Was she a she or a he at this point? She smiled at him, and Shikamaru almost felt like bashing his head on the wall. What had happened to his Naruto? Naruto was so much nicer to look like when she was a girl.

"Naruto... Why are you dressed like that?" he asked slowly, hoping that this was just a nightmare. He considered pinching himself momentarily, but then dismissed the idea as troublesome.

"Huh? Oh, well... Now that the mission is over, I don't need to be a girl anymore."

There were so many things wrong with that simple sentence.

"But you are a girl," Shikamaru pointed out.

She, or was it he? Frowned at him and said in a low voice, "I know, but... Listen, back in Konoha, I'm a guy, right? Everyone knows me as a guy. Here, almost everyone thinks I'm a girl. I know it might seem paranoid, but I don't want the people here to think of me as a girl. I want them to think I'm a guy. Just so that if any of them come to Konoha, they refer to me as a guy." She sighed and rubbed her hand over her face. "Does that make any sense? I don't want any attention being drawn to my gender back there."

Shikamaru just stared. She was freaking out slightly. He could see her point, even if it was ever so slight. She was completely over reacting, and he wasn't just thinking that because he preferred to see her in her actual female form. "You do know that you're going to have to tell people eventually, right?"

She nodded. "Yes... Eventually." Naruto's face had that stubborn look that it got when the topic had to do with training, and he knew better than to argue.

"Fine... The guys are going to be disappointed, though," he muttered.

Naruto looked at him curiously. "What do you mean?"

He shook his head. "Nothing." Yep. The guys, and most likely some of the girls, were going to have a fit about this. Not that Naruto wasn't cute as a guy, but it just wasn't the same. He sighed. "Come on, we've got to meet Takeshi in his office. He has a message for us to take to Lady Tsunade," he said, turning and walking away.

"Okay!" Naruto bounded after him.

As they made their way down the streets, people were staring at them, open mouthed and gaping. Not at him, but at Naruto. It was easy to see the resemblance between girl-Naruto and guy-Naruto, so the people were probably wondering whether Naruto had a brother, if they were hallucinating, or... whether Naruto was actually a guy.