Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

Summary: What happens when the boys of the rookie nine and team Gai switch places? This is a companion piece to my first story What Sakura found out. My apologies if it's a little OOC…

THE BET

Why am I here? The white eyed prodigy wondered to himself. It wasn't an existential question; no, he wasn't wondering about fate or destiny or his existence in the universe, he was merely asking himself why he was, at that moment, gathered around team 7's old training grounds with all the male members of the rookie nine and Lee. He couldn't quite figure it out though.

Over the last few years, since the first chunnin exam took place and his team had met the rookie nine, the four kunoichi had become close friends, as a result, the guys often found themselves together participating in some social activity or another. Most of the guys were close friends with their other male teammate, so for a time, they rarely engaged much with the other guys. Except for Naruto who seemed to feel comfortable with just about everyone, regardless of whether the others wanted to be around him at all.

While Neji had always been more distant then the other guys, Lee had immediately taken it upon himself to get to know each of the other guys. Neji, on the other hand, would usually just sit and watch as Tenten and the other girls had their fun. Sometimes he would talk with Lee or Naruto, and on the rare occasion that Shikamaru wasn't sleeping or cloud watching, Neji would play a game of Go or Shogi with him. He didn't mind Shikamaru much. He was clearly very deserving of his genius title, and he was generally quiet, finding it too troublesome to talk, which suited Neji just fine, since he was never much of a talker himself.

Still, though he was slowly beginning to accept the rest of the rookie nine, even so much as to consider them friends, he always felt more comfortable when he was training with Tenten. But lately Tenten had been feeling sick, and growing tired rather quickly. Neji knew why, and so he had been ending training early lately, so that she could rest and recover. As a result, Neji found himself hanging out with the guys more often. It was on one of these occasions that Naruto had come up with this bet idea.

"That's a stupid idea dobe." Groaned the raven haired Uchiha.

"You're just saying that because you know you can't do it Sasuke-teme." Naruto exclaimed.

"Shut up dobe!" Sasuke replied.

"I think it'd be fun, I'm in!" exclaimed Kiba

"YOSH! ME TOO!" yelled Lee.

"This is troublesome." Shikamaru groaned.

"So is everyone in?" asked Naruto

"Hai," shouted Kiba, Lee, and Choji. Neji, Shino, and Sasuke remained silent, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, while Shikamaru found the whole thing too troublesome to really care either way. But eventually, even the reluctant four ninjas agreed to the ridiculous proposition made by the blond haired loudmouth.

"This is going to be troublesome." sighed Shikamaru.

"So how are we going to do this? whose going to be who?" asked Choji (1)

"Well…" thought Naruto "I don't know. What do you think Kiba?"

"Why are you asking me? It's your idea." stated Kiba.

"I'LL BE MY ETERNAL RIVAL, NEJI!" exclaimed Lee.

"…" Neji arched an eyebrow.

Kiba snickered, a visible smirk appeared on Sasuke's face; even Shino was amused by the thought, though no one could tell behind his high collar, but the bugs inside him were even giggling.

"Maybe it's better if we make it a rule that no one can play the part of his teammate." suggested Shikamaru.

"HUH? WHY?" asked a rather confused and disappointed Lee (as disappointed as a Lee could get).

"Because the game would never end." explained Shikamaru.

"What do you mean?" asked Naruto.

"Meaning that because each of us know our teammates the best, anyone who was pretending to be their teammate, would be the winner of this game, dobe." replied Sasuke who caught on to Shikamaru's reasoning.

"So if we all switched places with our teammate, no one would lose, or it would take too long to play this game, right?" asked Choji. (2).

"Exactly." answered Shikamaru.

That was exactly what Shikamaru had been trying to say. He suspected that anyone playing the part of such a close friend would have an unfair advantage over the others. Secretly, however, Shikamaru deduced that if certain people switched personalities, some of them might make each other look like baka's and he didn't want to make this 'game' any more troublesome then it already seemed it was going to be.

After much debate, it was decided; using Henge no Jutsu (3), Shikamaru would switch places with Kiba, Sasuke with Choji, Shino with Lee, and Neji with Naruto. The rules of the game where simple, they'd each transform into the other and pretend to be that person, who ever stayed in character the longest won the game, and got to lord it over the others. And the Prize? … Well that was what convinced everyone to join in the little bet.

TBC...
First up: SHIKAMARU

(1) I know in the original story, it was Shikamaru who asked this, but since he's the one who comes up with the basic guidelines, I figure, I would let someone else ask this question.

(2) hey, he's Shikamaru's best friend, of course he gets him… I mean, he was the only one who knew that Shikamaru would quit during his fight with Temari right from the start… I bet that if he wasn't always eating, he'd probably say a few smart things here and there

(3) Henge no Jutsu is the transformation jutsu.

A/N: I wasn't actually thinking about breaking this up into chapters, but I figured, why not? They're probably going to be kind of short chapters (like 600 words maybe, most likely less then 1000), just some funny or amusing little stories about one or two crazy things that happen to each guy, or maybe to each pair. We'll see.