Chapter Text
It will rain at some point during the day, or at least, that’s what it looks like based on the clouds. Their hues are more soft blacks and dull grays than its usual pearly whites. Not that the fact it will rain matters all that much, but it was an observation like any other. Although, if it was, truely, going to rain, it was safe to assume that Shikamaru’s first day at the academy would be spent inside. Again, not that it matters anyway, the first day was apparently just an overview of what is to come and what to expect. Just the usual indoctrinations.
Potential rain or possible but unlikely sunshine, either way, today is going to be a drag.
“Maru-chan! Have you gotten up yet?” His mother called from somewhere down the hall. It was most likely the kitchen she was calling from, since that was where she tends to hover around in the mornings and evenings, but there have been a few occasions where she was down the hall in the opposite direction, so who knows. “It’s almost time to go!”
With a sigh, Shikamaru looked away from the clouds, uncrossing his legs to stand up. He closed the shoji door and walked back across the hall and into his bedroom to finish getting ready. Although it only took a few minutes, his mom must have thought he had been taking too long and came to check on him as a knock rang through the otherwise quiet room, then the soft sound of the fusuma door sliding open.
“Oh good, you’re up. I thought you might have gone back to sleep.” His mom huffed, gesturing down the hallway. “Come along. Breakfast is ready.” With that said, she turned around and left, leaving the fusuma open as she presumably went back to the kitchen, if that was where she had been originally to begin with. Of course, wanting both breakfast and to avoid any and all early morning shouting, at least in his direction, Shikamaru obediently trailed after his mother after one last check that he had everything he would need for the day.
Arriving in the kitchen, he was met with an empty sight, meaning that his mother had disappeared off to somewhere else between the few moments it took to collect any stray items he needed for his first day at the academy. A moment later, there was the sound of a loud, sharp, yelp. It seems that while Shikamaru’s attempt to avoid getting yelled at was successful, the same could not be said about his father. The Nara head in question appeared from out of the hallway, rubbing at the side of his head, where he was most likely whacked for something he said or did that got on the Nara matriarch’s nerves. Either way, it isn’t Shikamaru’s problem, so he simply chose to take his seat at the chabudai, slumping his head against the cold wood.
“Sit up, Maru-chan! That is not where you sleep.” His mother chides as she enters the kitchen, grabbing a few bowls of food that she had made, bringing them over to the chabudai.
Eating didn’t take long, and was filled with little conversation, just the usual poking from his mother to see how he was feeling about something. In this case, to see how he was feeling about his first day at the academy, and if he was excited, or nervous, or something. This, of course, was met with his usual shrugs and mumbled neutral responses. Then they were cleaning up the dishes from breakfast, putting on their shoes in the genkan, and leaving the compound.
Shikamaru latched onto his parents the moment they were outside of Nara clan grounds, holding onto his mother and fathers hands like he’d seen other five-year-old kids doing. If Shikamaru, as clan heir, was indulging himself with this supposedly immature and childish action, as the elders call it, then it was no one's business but the head family’s own, seeing as the Nara clan head was allowing the action. That being said, this will be the only day that his father will be specifically walking him to the academy, unless Shikamaru wants to wake up at an ungodly hour of the morning to join him on his way to work. Although, if Shikamaru was being fair, his mother won’t be joining him for the walk to the academy very often either. Most likely, the Nara matriarch will only tag along when she has errands to run at the same time. Not that walking him to the academy is all that important. It is just a detail in their schedules that he had noticed, with his brain being overactive as it is. A bit of a drag to think about, making him already want to head back to his nice, comfy bed and sleep.
At least the walk to the academy was nice, if a bit chilly, which was expected with the growing coverage of the clouds overtaking the sun. It is definitely going to rain, but as long as it wasn’t during his walks to and from the academy, Shikamaru couldn’t be all that bothered by it.
A squeeze of his left hand drew the Nara heir’s attention out of the clouds and back down to earth. When he looked up to see what his father wanted, he was met with an eyebrow raised in a silent question. He looked away and over to his right to see his mom watching him with an amused, upwards, tilt of her lips. Looking back in front of himself, Shikamaru found that they had, sadly, arrived at their destination while he was stuck in his head debating the weather. Sad, because it meant that Shikamaru lost his excuse for holding his parents’ hands, so he lazily released them, said his tired goodbyes that were interrupted by a yawn, and walked inside his new school.
His first impression is that the class was far noisier than he would have liked, but he can’t really complain all that much when his clan’s not the one with enhanced hearing, and the Inuzuka seems to have no issue being just as loud as everyone else, if not louder. Not to say that Shikamaru wouldn’t be complaining, just that his complaints would lose any validation the minute someone else thought to point out the Inuzuka in the room. His second complaint was that there were far too many children in one concentrated space for his liking. It’s a complaint that wouldn’t last all that long, given what he knows about academy drop out statistics. Whether they drop out themselves, get pulled out by a parent, or simply don’t make the cut, the number of academy students slowly dwindles down to a much more serious and manageable bunch.
The third thing was more of an observation than anything else. There are way too many civilian children in the room, even taking the civilian dropped-out-pulled-out-kicked-out rate into consideration, there are far too many in comparison to the recorded previous five years he looked into, which can mean one of three things. Option number one, there was a war brewing somewhere with one of the other villages. Option number two, Konoha’s shinobi ranks took a major hit of some kind. Option number three, all these civilian children who usually only have enough chakra to live, tested with high enough chakra levels to pass the entrance exam. All the options are a bit odd, but this many civilian families having a random spike in chakra levels seems the most unlikely, so he’s down to two reasons. Either one of the two remaining reasons means the same thing, Konoha needs more shinobi within the next few years, and they need them quickly, with no regards to the canon fodder most will become.
Shikamaru sighed, it wasn’t his place to say anything. It’s their choice to make if they don’t end up being pulled or kicked out, so he simply shoved his hands into his pockets and walked to the desk farthest from the front, all the way into the far back corner. Taking a seat, he promptly laid his head down on the desk and proceeded to fall asleep. Although, it was more so dozing than actual sleep, and even then, those who aren’t from the Nara clan would probably consider it closer to meditation then anything else. Still, it allows him to rest his eyes, so he has no issues with it, just letting his body go limp, even as he continues to take in his surroundings via flickering shadows as best as he could. Shikamaru isn’t the best at this, his dad is far better, if not the master of this, but the Nara heir can still try to keep track of everything through their shadows, even if it was tiring.
Their sensei came into the classroom, calling them all to attention, and then proceeded to go over a list of rather basic things that they would be learning this year in the academy. Most of the topics would only be skimmed over, despite the fact that Shikamaru had to sit through multiple sessions with different elders to learn each of the topics in depth, which was rather unfair in his opinion. The other clan heirs, if not the clan kids, might have gone through the same thing, so it was going to end up just being a review year for them, but the civilians would end up learning nothing with how they would be going over the topics in class. It was a strange sort of middle ground that left Shikamaru wondering who exactly they were trying to cater the lessons to, because it looks like they are trying for the civilians but don’t want to bore the clan kids so they’re going through the topics in a fast manner. Trying to accommodate both, but succeeding in neither.
A bell rang, signaling the start of their lunch break, and the civilian children already started turning towards each other to chat and make friends. Then a whistle was blown, first in a low short tone, then sliding into a higher tone that was held out. All attention turned towards their sensei, the room falling quiet.
“Were you dismissed?” Kagawa-sensei inquired in a bland tone, practically telling them the answer. A round of No’s echoed through the class as their sensei had them sit in silence. This is the true first thing they were being taught today, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the first two things. That one, there will always be a commanding officer to differ to, and two, that actions have consequences. In this case, the ignorance of rank protocols, such as ignoring their sensei, means they will have less time during lunch to eat or mess around. Not that it matters to Shikamaru who had stayed where he was, with his head down on the desk; face buried into his arms. He had no plans on moving, not when it was finally quiet.
“Dismissed.” Kagawa-sensei called out, gesturing for the students to leave the classroom, and most of them did, not realizing it was more so a suggestion to play outside than an order. The ones leaving seemed all too embarrassed to do anything but leave the classroom, quickly and quietly.
Time goes by, and it, thankfully, stays quiet. Only the sound of pages turning, the scratch of a pencil to paper, and someone quietly eating could be heard. More time passes and the sound of footsteps reaches his ears, meaning it wasn’t their sensei, pulls him out of his dozing state, but not by much, seeing as Shikamaru didn’t care to interact with anyone today. Of course, that doesn’t mean that others won’t interact with him, as evident by the soft, polite, tapping on his arm, which he ignored. There was a pause, and then another set of polite but more insistent tapping. After the third set of tapping Shikamaru opened his eyes with a groan. Rolling his head to the side, the Nara heir blinked tiredly up at the nervous looking girl who has soft pink hair, dull green eyes, and is hugging a book to her chest.
“My apologies Nara-san, but lunch will be over in five more minutes, and you should really eat something.” The pink girl explains apologetically with a perfectly polite bow that he’s come to expect from the people who know of his clan status. Then, to his surprise, instead of continuing the conversation, she turned around and went back to her previous seat. Her book was placed down onto the desk and opened as she sat down and began reading as if the interaction didn’t happen at all. Interesting but overall unimportant.
Yawning, Shikamaru did as the girl had suggested. Sitting up fully, he pulled his lunch out and began to eat. Five minutes went by, and just as the other student said, the bell rang and everyone started coming back to the classroom. Once they were settled, Kagawa-sensei called them back to attention, then began handing out a packet of tests to each student. It was just a placement test to see who knows what and who to partner with who in the future. Shikamaru debated whether it was even worth wasting effort on, but ended up doing it because Kagawa-sensei called him out for trying to sleep through it. Only after making direct eye contact with Kagawa-sensei, who looked just about as bored as the Nara heir felt, did he actually sit up, for the second time that class, to take the test. He flipped open the test packet and began working his way through it, marking down his answers to each question as they came up, so it was a rather boring affair.
Overall, it was a fairly simple test about some extremely easy concepts so it didn't take all that long to finish the test. Since he had been able to nap for the first portion of the test, the assumption would be that everyone else would be done either before him of around the same time. Except, a glance around the room showed that most of his classmates were still working on their tests by the time he had finished his. The struggling ones were, unsurprisingly, civilian born children, while the ones that seem confident in their answers where unsurprisingly clan born children. And so the pattern he had seen in the previous entrance exam testing continued, uninterrupted.
Or at least, the pattern would have continued uninterrupted had he not caught a pair of jade green eyes scanning the room in the same manner that he was, assessing the group population to see who was done and who was not.
There is an outlier this time.
Obviously there must have been outliers during the other exams as well, but when it came down to the actual grading of the exams, everything was in their self-assigned places.
She’s a civilian born. A merchant one at that. Shikamaru recognises the clan crest on the back of her red qipao dress when she had walked back to her seat after lunch. She’s a civilian, but she’s confident in her answers on the test, and was able to finish before the rest of their classmates. Either she’s very book-smart, or guessed on all of the answers. Given that she was reading a book during lunch, Shikamaru is willing to bet that she is in fact book-smart.
What the book was about is something Shikamaru would like to know. It wasn’t a book on the basics of anything they tested on. No, it was something about something, something, chakra points, something protection and prevention. So a medical textbook then. What kind of five-year-old girl reads a medical book for fun?
Jade green eyes blinked at him slowly, head tilting to the side curiously, but shoulders curling in on themselves self-consciously. Right, he was staring, the Nara heir realized and promptly turned back towards the front of the class and laid his head back down on the desk for another nap.
Someone burst into the classroom yelling and the rest of the class went quiet. At least, they were quiet until the new kid that had entered the class yelling introduced himself. Then there were attempted whispers and hushed conversations about the monster and demon fox, and how everyone's parents seem to have said to stay away from the kid. Out of curiosity, Shikamaru looked up just to see what the kid looked like, and there, in the front of the classroom, yelling at the kids who were being incredibly rude, stood the spitting image of the Yondaime Hokage.
Now wasn't that interesting? From what Shikamaru could remember, there was nothing about the Yondaime Hokage being married or having a kid, but here stood the mini replica of their former Hokage. He'll have to look into that when he gets home. It could just be a coincidence after all, but something told him that his first guess was right on target.
Their sensei ends up giving the Uzumaki kid detention and sends him to the principal's office, so there was a possibility that this was the first and last they would see the mini Hokage, but something was telling the Nara heir that he would definitely be seeing more of the blond in the future.
Academy got out a few hours later, and unsurprisingly, all they did today was paperwork and introductions. Who could have guessed that's all they would do on their first day? Oh wait, he had guessed exactly that, so all in all, it was an incredibly boring day, with the exceptions of the Uzumaki mini Yondaime Hokage and the civilian merchant's daughter who was reading a medical book for fun.
Yoshino met Shikamaru outside the academy gates with her arms full of grocery bags. His father was nowhere to be seen, which means that his earlier hypothesis was correct. His mother would go with him if she has errands to run and his father probably won't walk with him to or from the academy unless something was going on.
"How was your day?" Yoshino asked as they began the walk back home.
"It was all review and placement tests," Shikamaru answered with a shrug, unsure what else to say. He had technically slept through the majority of it.
"Oh? And how do you think you did on the test?" His mom asked, beginning what was most likely going to be a full-on interaction about everything that happened today.
The question and answers continued back and forth until they got back to the compound and his mother allowed him to escape. The first thing he did with his 'freedom' was head over to the library to see what was going on with the Uzumaki kid.
He looked up the name Uzumaki first, tracing it in the Konoha clan archives; there were two names listed. The first, surprisingly, was the Shodaime Hokage's wife, a woman named Senju Mito, formerly Uzumaki Mito, one of Uzushio's princesses. (He makes a note to look at Uzushio next.) The second name was Uzumaki Kushina. There was nothing notable about the second Uzumaki. She had the traditional red hair and large chakra stores that made her a tank during the war, but that was all so he moved on to find records of Uzushio.
It took a bit, but he eventually found the book containing Uzushio's history. Apparently, the Uzumaki originated from Uzushio and were both the Daimyo and Uzukage of Uzushio. They were known for their fiery red hair, their longevity, their seemingly bottomless pit of chakra, and their mastery of fuinjutsu. However, it had been their mastery of fuinjutsu that led to them being targeted and ultimately, their demise. Interestingly enough, while Uzushio had been Konoha's ally and sister village, Konoha hadn't gone to aid Uzushio against Kuno and Kiri. Even more surprising, the Uzumaki had a kekkei genkai. Using their never-ending charka, the Uzumaki could form it into chains, which could be used for restraining opponents or killing them.
A folder fell out of the large dust-covered book, drawing Shikamaru's attention away from Uzushio's history. Bending over, he picked up the folder and luckily, right before he opened it, he noticed the seal placed on it.
Fuinjutsu wasn't Shikamaru's best subject but from the looks of it, this was a blood seal, and seeing as the Nara crest was mixed into the seal, it would only open for his family. Weighing his options of, stopping here and having a constant itch of never knowing, or opening the folder and satisfying his curiosity, his curiosity won out, so without any hesitation the Nara heir bit his thumb, swiping the blood over the seat, and opened the folder. When nothing disastrous happened he began reading over the papers inside the folder. One of which was Uzumaki Kushina's marriage record, which clearly names Namizake Minato as her husband, and a birth certificate naming Uzumaki Naruto her son.
Well... that's that solved... except- why were these files hidden away, and why was Uzumaki Naruto called a monster and a demon fox when he's the kid of the Yondaime Hokage and Uzushio royalty.
Looking through the files he found the answer surprisingly fast. The word jinchuriki was written on three files. One for Senju Mito. One for Uzumaki Kushina. One for Uzumaki Naruto.
But why were they labeled human sacrifices?
A few more minutes, maybe an hour or so more research, and Shikamaru found out what a jinchuriki's job was, and that a certain blond Uzumaki child had been born on the same day as the nine-tails attack on the village. The same day the previous jinchuriki died.
With that, all his questions about the mini Yondaime Hokage were answered for the time being, so he resealed the folder and hid it back between the pages of Uzushio's history. If something else pops into his head, he can always come back to look up the answer, but for now, his curiosity was sauteed... on the Uzumaki at least. The pink-haired girl was still a mystery and he really wanted to know the answers to all his questions.
Peeking outside the Nara archives, Shikamaru found nothing but a burning sky and rain. Even with the sun covered by stormy gray clouds, you could still tell that it was sunset by what little color bled through the clouds. A drop of water hit his nose so he ducked back inside, deciding that he had enough time to find his answers.
First things first, finding out the family history of the Haruno clan, was way too easy given that the clan was rather small, with only one child per generation. All of them are born with pink hair, interestingly. They're a merchant family with no history of shinobi anywhere in their bloodline, so definitely civilians. There's no history of anyone in the Haruno family being anything but merchants, so why the medical book?
Sure, children could technically pick a different career than their parents. It happens, rarely but it does. Except, looking back at the text in front of him, there are only three Haruno clan members left in Konoha. A small family, the same size as his immediate family. A mother who had married into the clan, a father, and a daughter. There was no one to take over the family business but the daughter, so at the very least, her parents wouldn't let her switch careers without a fight. Hell, it was surprising that they let her join the academy. Maybe they thought she would take over if she retires? Though that was pretty arrogant of them to assume that their daughter would be one of the few shinobi that were actually able to retire and not die out in the field.
Flipping a few pages, he finds out that the Haruno's are originally from Kiri, while Haruno Mebuki, formerly Ishioka Mebuki, had been a war orphan and an immigrant from Iwa, making their daughter, Haruno Sakura a mix of Kiri and Iwa, so the likely hood of her chakra being earth based or water based are higher than the other elements. Both types are considered incredibly common but are also fairly useful for combat-nin.
There wasn't much else. In fact, there wasn't anything interesting in the Haruno family's file, making the most interesting thing about his classmate her reading habits. The only real question he had about the pink girl, was whether or not the habit would continue, and only time could tell.
Yawning, Shikamaru rubbed at his tired eyes and let his head fall against the wall, content to take a short nap before his mom hunts him down to eat dinner.
Decision made, the Nara heir let his eyes blink slowly shut, falling fast asleep.