Maybe

Interlude : Shikamaru

Shikamaru considered himself a rather laid back person. He didn't like confrontation; mostly because most people that had a bone to pick with him were complete morons. But also, and he wouldn't lie, because he liked watching the chaos from an... outside perspective.
It was both entertaining and useful to see how his peers reacted while under pressure: the way they thought and the decisions they made were absolutely fascinating and very telling of their character.

It was also completely hilarious to see them struggle when the answer to all their problems was clearly right under their noses but they were too stupid to see it.

What he hated the most, however, and perhaps a bit ironically, was a problem he couldn't solve.

He knew, logically, that all problems could be solved, and that if it truly couldn't then it was because there were no problems to begin with.
But one so twisted and convoluted that he was unable to unravel it at first glance? A mystery so thick and opaque that he couldn't see the barest hint of an answer even after hours of conspiring and methodical thinking.

Those drove him mad.

Maybe it was his ego talking, that he was too self-absorbed and confident in his extraordinary intelligence to accept failure.

Shikamaru was at least enough self-aware to know he was arrogant and slighly condescending towards others.
And an increadibly sore loser.
He also knew that being constantly surrounded by blundering fools didn't help with his superiority complex. But, honestly, he didn't care.

Some days, he dreamt of finally matching wits with someone, of facing down a person he could call a rival... It seemed thrilling.

seemed being the key word.

But now, faced with an issue too big to turn away from, a riddle delivered on his very doorstep by someone who trusted him to solve it... He hated it.
Loathed it with every cell of his being, with every atom of his body and every part of his soul because god fucking dammit!

He couldn't afford to let his petty, childish urges compell him to ignore it. Oh! but how he wanted to...
He sighed, again, and turned back to his notes. They were all carefully written in a code of his own design that had taken him months to craft, and he wasn't even sure it was enough to protect the dangerous information it held within.

While it was mostly hypothetical information and seemingly wild conjectures, there was a reason why he had given in so quickly when Sakura had revealed her theories.

And that reason had nothing to do with the flimsy arguments and facts she had oh so carefully presented.

Nara Shikamaru was lazy, entitled and had a problem with authority figures. He didn't listen to people he didn't respect, and respected next to no one. He was a selfish brat with a budding god-complex and an ego so big even the Hyugas would be jealous.

However, he was not blind.

Shikamaru might not have been as nosy as Haruno Sakura, but he was just as observant, a talent honed after years of absolute boredom. And he had known, or suspected at least, that something was afoot for... some time now.

And done absolutely nothing about it.

At first, he'd told himself it was because it was normal. What military dictatorship that built it's economy on killing people didn't have it's dark secrets?

Then, he'd just continued on ignoring it; all the small hints and rumors, all the hushed whispers between clan heads and lingering jonin when they thought no one could hear them.
The horror and pure fear that had saturated the air for months when news reached the Nara that the Aburame's second heir had gone missing.

It was all those little things that Shikamaru had deseperatly tried to push down and bury; to dismiss as an intricate fantasy he'd come up with to fill the void of nothing that haunted his mind. (because longing for a challenge and being faced with a heinous threat that lurked around every corner were two entirely different things.)

And now everything came violently bursting out and he was faced with a problem... not that he wouldn't be able to solve, but that he feared he could.

And he hated it all the same.