The Sharpness (or lack thereof) of an Strategist

Shikamaru chooses Team 7 (and everything goes downhill after that)

A One-Shot of this particular pairing I've been growing into lately.

It's focused in Shikamaru's perspective, no POV though.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did writing it, I really had a lot of fun doing so.   

-o-

Shikamaru stared long seconds at her friend, trying to find at least a miniscule flicker of hesitation in the turquoise colour.

Naturally, he could not.

He crossed his arms tightly over his chest, brow furrowed.

"Can't someone else do it?" He asked at last.

"No, no if results are required," she answered, voice serious.

He inhaled deeply, the mesh armor beneath his vest was becoming more and more suffocating.

"Ino..." he looked her in the eyes, and she could see the momentary, supplicant edge. "It's too dangerous."

"I know, Shika," she only said, exhaling tiredly.

They remained several minutes like this, cold wind made his friend's platinum hair oscillate, as if it was a continuous wave of an almost white colour.

"Be careful," his pupils intently nailed to hers, worried.

"I'm always careful," she smiled at him, but the rare absence of confidence in her gaze chilled the man's blood.

She palmed his knee once before rising to her feet.

Her nail polish was a violet hue.

Disappearing, she left the shinobi sitting under the vast shadows of the Nara forest, and the whispers these returned to him were quieter than usual.

It was a bad omen.

-o-

The third day no report came, he presented before the Hokage.

Demanding would have been a more accurate description than asking, barely holding the strain in his voice as he solicited the search-and-retrieve permission.

It was just the two of them in the office, and Kakashi would have had to be blind not to notice the strange, determined fire that shone in the brown irides.

An unusual sight in any man of the Nara family, definitely.

His trained intuition murmured him that his counselor would find nothing pleasant of his search.

"You need a team," he said from his heavy chair, behind the precarious piles of papers.

"I can do it m-"

"No, you can not," he interrupted him bluntly the same extent that kindly.

Something only Kakashi could pull off.

The shadows user pressed his lips into a line, feeling an unstoppable wave of imprudence escalating his esophagus.

He swallowed it with saliva.

"Sakura and Naruto," he finally answered, his breathing agitated.

The veteran reacted by raising his eyebrows, evaluating the strange team's chemistry.

Two shinobis that knew NO moderation, one that exuded it though the pores.

It could work.

"Why them?" He had to corroborate.