Mask Boy

exam

"I'm so tired of this..."

Today is the day, the final of the Chunin exam. Everyone seemed to be pumped to watch/experience the fights, all but Shikamaru.

"SoooOo loud..." Shikamaru thought to himself, obviously not wanting to be here.

Like why is everyone, these mostly being adults, so excited to see a bunch of underage kids fighting near to the death to just simply receive a title? The hell...

He was sitting on the ground, surrounded with familiar faces. Shino, Sasuke, Neji, those sand siblings, other irrelevant people. Most of them had finished their battles already, making him almost envious since Shikamaru had been praying that his just starts now and so he could get it over with.

"PSST!"

He looked down to find the source of the hissing. He saw all of his friends.. mostly teammates? who hadn't made it this far into the round. Ino, Sakura, Hinata, Choji, Tenten, Kiba, and Rock Lee.

"You better win this! Don't be slacking alright?!" Ino whispered-yelled at him.

"You're so close to becoming a Chunin!!"

Shikamaru just gave her a tired grunt.
He could honestly just call it quits and continue his life without doing such dragging things. Just lay under the warm sun, inhaling the fresh breeze of air, and with Naruto by his side.

Oh, Naruto.

He was scanned around through the crowd earlier but he couldn't spot his fox masked friend anywhere. Maybe he didn't show up? Maybe what happened a couple of days ago made Naruto uncomfortable to be around him.. but Naruto is not the type of person to just leave Shikamaru hanging, he's too nice to do something like that.

Examining around again, he kept looking around until the announcer started announcing the next battle.

"Next up, Temari from the sand vs Nara Shikamaru"

Damnit, the wind girl. Her fight against Tenten was brutal, very one sided. Full of taunts and brutal wind techniques that blasted Tenten around. She's also very cocky and it annoys him a bit whenever she opens her mouth.

"Eh? Another easy opponent? I'll blow him away just like the other girl, just like a leaf" Temari held a confident smirk on her face.

See, cocky.

"Come on already! Get on with the fight!"

"Yeah, what's the hold up?!"

"Booooo!!"

The hell? These people are so-

...

Shikamaru let out a sigh and pinched the center of his eyebrows before jumping his way down, slowly approaching the center of the battle field.

"Let's just get this over with" he said without much excitement.

"What's with that attitude? Not feeling confident?"

Shikamaru just turned his head away, almost scoffing at her but chosed to click his tongue from annoyance.

*RING RING*

The wind swirled past them as they both stared at each other, releasing a faint but yet familiar sounds of ringings.

Bells? Shikamaru immediately snapped his head around to find the source of the familiar sounding bells.

From the distance, a bundle of orange and yellow presented out and Shikamaru only knew one person who would wear such obnoxious color, Naruto. He was seated high up on one of the stadiums bleachers roof. Strange seating but whatever.
Shikamaru overall mood raised up, feeling better knowing the person he asked actually showed up.