Tag: naruto

Oooh, maybe Lee’d have a rockruff? Because according to the Pokedex they need a dedicated trainer because the closer to evolution they get, the rougher and roudier they get? And then he’d have a midday lycanroc post-timeskip because they’re really fast & loyal?

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image

Hm… while I am fond of the Lee and Rockruff parallels (and the pun), I actually would rather lean into more of a taijutsu-only equivalent team for him. Meaning only Normal and Fighting types for Lee.

Neji and TenTen would also have Fighting types, but Neji would have a few Psychic types (which parallels the Byakugan sort of an the idea that even though Lee is faster than god, Neji consistently beats him) and TenTen a few steel types.

They would have Hitmonlee, Hitmontop, and Hitmonchan respectively–their Tyrogues were gifts from Gai-sensei.

Now that I think of it some more, I do kind of like Lee having an unevolved Eevee on his team as per @to-someplace-else’s suggestion. Because there’s something very sweet about Lee accepting his Eevee the way it is and not pressuring it into changing itself one way or another. But, of course, if it wants to evolve, he won’t stop it! But what he wants is for it to be happy. (And, also, Green’s Eevee is so powerful. So majestic and fluffy)

Which I guess brings us to the next point with Shikako’s Deerling. And I suppose the problem there is that I’m not sure why the Deerling wouldn’t want to evolve? In comparison to Eevee evolving into a different Type entirely (generally dictated by the trainer and what kind of team they’re trying to form) or a Pikachu evolving into a Raichu which needs a Thunder stone, as far as I can tell Deerling’s evolution into Sawsbuck is just a level cap.

And it’s a natural (or, at least, simple) process for the Deerling line to evolve into Sawsbuck. It’s basically puberty turning from a child into an adult. Whereas Eeveelutions and Pikachu turning into Raichu are more deliberate, like a medical undertaking…

Is there any benefit to preventing a Deerling’s evolution? More specifically, in this world of shinobi-trainers why would Shikako deliberately hamper her Pokemon’s growth with an everstone? She needs to be battle ready, and a Deerling doesn’t have anything over a Sawsbuck–unlike (and I don’t know if this is game canon or just cartoon canon) Pikachu being faster than Raichu.

Shikako’s told us a lot about what other people’s chakra feels like to her, but I was wondering (if you had any thoughts on) what her chakra felt like to other sensors?

jacksgreysonLeave a comment

jacksgreysays:

😀 Okay, anon, so in my completely non-canonical and outsider opinion on this, I actually headcanon that Shikako’s way of describing other people’s chakra is one of the few things that carry on from her previous life/“chakra hypersensitivity.”

The way she/SQ describes chakra in terms of sensations–warm sunshine, static and ozone, glowing embers, descending twilight, bubbling brook–it’s very much like someone trying to explain color to someone colorblind. (Or, at least, what I have been trained to understand in media as someone trying to describe color. I legit have no idea if that’s just a hollywood thing or an IRL thing. The only colorblind people I know have only mild forms of deuteranopia and it’s mostly a problem in trying to figure out where on the spectrum certain colors stop and others begin.)

What is green? It’s freshly cut grass and the calming scent of tea. What is red? It’s passionate like fire, the bright burst of sweetness of strawberries in the summer. Blue is the ocean, cool and deep, etc.etc.

So I always figured that chakra sense is literally another sense that we, as readers in a world without chakra, can only experience via the sensation-descriptions that Shikako/SQ give us.

Which, I think, is also kind of why Shikako is unprecedentedly keen at being a chakra sensor. Kind of like color blindness being able to see through camouflage? Most sensors cannot tell what jutsu was used in a certain place and how long ago and in what direction it went. It is, after all, why Shikako got that special jounin rank.

With other chakra sensors I think their abilities are very in the moment. They can tell you how many people are coming and how far away they are. They can tell you how much chakra a person has left (relative to their capacity) and how much chakra they themselves can exert.

Shikako doesn’t have this. Shikako is known to have a problem with… not controlling her chakra necessarily but… moderating it. Regulating it? If that makes any sense. She has and WILL use every last dregs of her chakra and think she’s still okay to walk around afterwards. She pulls her chakra in to the point where even non-sensor Kakashi gets alarmed, and doesn’t realize how weird that may feel to other people.

It’s also why Jiraiya is VERY CONCERNED that she can sense natural energy since that’s not usually something a non-sage can sense. Shikako perceives human/animal-produced chakra and natural energy with the same “sense” whereas other chakra-sensors can only perceive human/animal chakra. Shikako is using a different sense or is interpreting it in a different way.

So I guess in a very roundabout way I’m saying that other sensors are very baffled by Shikako’s chakra. She has a very active regulation of her chakra–I headcanon that the bouts of her passing out as a child as per Sunshine Sidestories Ch 17 is that she hadn’t yet figured out the trick to subconsciously producing chakra. Or rather, while she was still new to the Naruto world, she was too aware of it and kind of…

You know how when you realize you’re breathing and then you become too conscious of breathing and then your pattern gets all weird until you forget about it and then it’s just back to something you do normally? Yeah. Like, Shikako’s body subconsciously will produce chakra but in the early years she was too aware of chakra because of her “hypersensitivity” and so she had to manually produce chakra until it became (like the enhancing her muscles with chakra, like breathing) just something she could do without thinking. (Which is kind of the “epiphany” she has in the fifth installment of Flip To The Last Page)

Yeah. So, very strange for other sensors. If I had to attach normal chakra sense to a RL sense, it’d probably be sound. Which explains why most normal chakra sensors can’t perceive natural energy because it’s just always there and if you’ve always lived with natural energy then there is no change in “sound” for you to hear so it just gets filtered out. Either that or natural energy is at a “frequency” outside of normal chakra sense the way some sounds can be heard by animals but not humans.

So for these listening chakra sensors, Shikako’s chakra is kind of like listening to someone whose volume kind of jumps all of the place for no perceivable reason. Or maybe if its music then the tempo changes for no reason. With other people volume/rhythm corresponds to how much chakra they have left and how they feel emotionally, with Shikako it’s just kind of all over the place. Sense of hearing also goes with the whole “their sense helps in the moment and even at a range, but not after a period of time” since there’s no leftover sound for them to pick up.

Whereas Shikako’s chakra sense is probably more like RL sense of touch. It’s been said before with trying to follow the “heat” of the earth walking jutsu. And it would kind of explain how she can perceive natural energy even though it’s always around and (minus, perhaps the Dead Wastes of the Gelel shrine) her body has never been in a world without natural energy. Like… people who live in one place their entire lives know what humidity is (or lack thereof, for us desert peeps) and don’t have to know what a different humidity is like to know that the air is wet or dry.

If that makes any sense…

So yeah.

Other chakra sensors look for the changes in chakra around them (like sound is vibrations in the air) and to them Shikako is pretty much that one radio station that doesn’t know how to moderate their volume between songs and doesn’t have a set music genre either.

image

True, true. If it were actually “hypersensitivity” then Shikako really oughtn’t be able to use chakra, or she would have a more typical chakra sense but with a wider range or more accurate ability to tell changes in chakra.

“Hyperaware” does work better, but there’s an aspect of… consciousness? There that doesn’t quite explain the intrinsic difference between Shikako’s perception of chakra and other people’s. And, well, there was the whole arc where Kakashi-sensei had to train her to use her sensor ability to the fullest…

I’m actually not sure what term I’d use, @wildtabbykat… 

Chakra atypical?

Other chakra atypicals would include Lee (obvs), maybe the Aburame clan, and probably Naruto (although I’m not sure if that’s a side effect of him having the Kyuubi or he already was chakra atypical and the Kyuubi certainly didn’t help matters… how was Kushina with chakra control? It might be an Uzumaki clan thing).

Shikako’s told us a lot about what other people’s chakra feels like to her, but I was wondering (if you had any thoughts on) what her chakra felt like to other sensors?

jacksgreysonLeave a comment

😀 Okay, anon, so in my completely non-canonical and outsider opinion on this, I actually headcanon that Shikako’s way of describing other people’s chakra is one of the few things that carry on from her previous life/“chakra hypersensitivity.”

The way she/SQ describes chakra in terms of sensations–warm sunshine, static and ozone, glowing embers, descending twilight, bubbling brook–it’s very much like someone trying to explain color to someone colorblind. (Or, at least, what I have been trained to understand in media as someone trying to describe color. I legit have no idea if that’s just a hollywood thing or an IRL thing. The only colorblind people I know have only mild forms of deuteranopia and it’s mostly a problem in trying to figure out where on the spectrum certain colors stop and others begin.)

What is green? It’s freshly cut grass and the calming scent of tea. What is red? It’s passionate like fire, the bright burst of sweetness of strawberries in the summer. Blue is the ocean, cool and deep, etc.etc.

So I always figured that chakra sense is literally another sense that we, as readers in a world without chakra, can only experience via the sensation-descriptions that Shikako/SQ give us.

Which, I think, is also kind of why Shikako is unprecedentedly keen at being a chakra sensor. Kind of like color blindness being able to see through camouflage? Most sensors cannot tell what jutsu was used in a certain place and how long ago and in what direction it went. It is, after all, why Shikako got that special jounin rank.

With other chakra sensors I think their abilities are very in the moment. They can tell you how many people are coming and how far away they are. They can tell you how much chakra a person has left (relative to their capacity) and how much chakra they themselves can exert.

Shikako doesn’t have this. Shikako is known to have a problem with… not controlling her chakra necessarily but… moderating it. Regulating it? If that makes any sense. She has and WILL use every last dregs of her chakra and think she’s still okay to walk around afterwards. She pulls her chakra in to the point where even non-sensor Kakashi gets alarmed, and doesn’t realize how weird that may feel to other people.

It’s also why Jiraiya is VERY CONCERNED that she can sense natural energy since that’s not usually something a non-sage can sense. Shikako perceives human/animal-produced chakra and natural energy with the same “sense” whereas other chakra-sensors can only perceive human/animal chakra. Shikako is using a different sense or is interpreting it in a different way.

So I guess in a very roundabout way I’m saying that other sensors are very baffled by Shikako’s chakra. She has a very active regulation of her chakra–I headcanon that the bouts of her passing out as a child as per Sunshine Sidestories Ch 17 is that she hadn’t yet figured out the trick to subconsciously producing chakra. Or rather, while she was still new to the Naruto world, she was too aware of it and kind of…

You know how when you realize you’re breathing and then you become too conscious of breathing and then your pattern gets all weird until you forget about it and then it’s just back to something you do normally? Yeah. Like, Shikako’s body subconsciously will produce chakra but in the early years she was too aware of chakra because of her “hypersensitivity” and so she had to manually produce chakra until it became (like the enhancing her muscles with chakra, like breathing) just something she could do without thinking. (Which is kind of the “epiphany” she has in the fifth installment of Flip To The Last Page)

Yeah. So, very strange for other sensors. If I had to attach normal chakra sense to a RL sense, it’d probably be sound. Which explains why most normal chakra sensors can’t perceive natural energy because it’s just always there and if you’ve always lived with natural energy then there is no change in “sound” for you to hear so it just gets filtered out. Either that or natural energy is at a “frequency” outside of normal chakra sense the way some sounds can be heard by animals but not humans.

So for these listening chakra sensors, Shikako’s chakra is kind of like listening to someone whose volume kind of jumps all of the place for no perceivable reason. Or maybe if its music then the tempo changes for no reason. With other people volume/rhythm corresponds to how much chakra they have left and how they feel emotionally, with Shikako it’s just kind of all over the place. Sense of hearing also goes with the whole “their sense helps in the moment and even at a range, but not after a period of time” since there’s no leftover sound for them to pick up.

Whereas Shikako’s chakra sense is probably more like RL sense of touch. It’s been said before with trying to follow the “heat” of the earth walking jutsu. And it would kind of explain how she can perceive natural energy even though it’s always around and (minus, perhaps the Dead Wastes of the Gelel shrine) her body has never been in a world without natural energy. Like… people who live in one place their entire lives know what humidity is (or lack thereof, for us desert peeps) and don’t have to know what a different humidity is like to know that the air is wet or dry.

If that makes any sense…

So yeah.

Other chakra sensors look for the changes in chakra around them (like sound is vibrations in the air) and to them Shikako is pretty much that one radio station that doesn’t know how to moderate their volume between songs and doesn’t have a set music genre either.

Flip To The Last Page, 5/? (2017-02-06)

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The heart of the issue is that, in order to best utilize the bond between the Nara twins, they have to be separated.

Synchronized battle rhythms could be trained; compounded shadow jutsu, while impressive, cannot compare to the strategic value of instantaneous intel.

For the benefit of Konoha, the twins would have to be separated.

More than that, one of them would have to be on a frontline team.

The question is which one?

—

Their first two years at the Academy, very few adults think Shikako will make the cut.

She is certainly intelligent enough, unusual determination aside, and that’s not even including her bond with her brother. The problem, of course, is the seemingly insurmountable obstacle of her atypical chakra system.

Chakra exercises don’t come up until third year, but already the side affects are seen. Physically, she can’t match her classmates. Every so often, her coils burn or her levels drop worryingly low with no real predictable pattern.

Absences from classes aren’t a problem–twin bond keeping her up to date on lessons–but it’s a not a promising trait in a potential soldier. Unreliable and sickly and unable to keep up.

Perhaps its for the best, though, some of the teachers think, a future Jounin Commander who can be in two places at once–on the field and in the village both–relaying information and troop movements in real time.

A glorified messenger hawk.

Fortunately for Shikako, she has an epiphany on her chakra.

Unfortunately for Shikamaru, his sister has an epiphany on her chakra.

—

The twins are tested.

Or perhaps that is not the correct term.

They are assessed and observed accordingly to properly place them into teams.

Which is not to say the rest of their Academy class–or, at least, the elites of the class–do not also get the attention of the teachers. Genin team formations are not something to be taken lightly.

But for the twins, extra care is taken. Or perhaps extra criteria are considered.

Ino-Shika-Cho of course, but for which twin? And what to do with the other twin…

A support team or a heavy hitter combat team? Maybe a revival of the apprenticeship system: but with a jounin firmly grounded in the Intel Division or one who travels to foreign lands?

What should be done with the Nara twins?

~

A/N: Some more based on @donapoetrypassion’s response for what the adults think of the Nara twins’ genin team placement.

I don’t think I’ll stray too far from canon!DoS since… well… why would I? But I kind of like to bring up the possibilities of different avenues.

Can you imagine Shikako having a formal apprenticeship with Aoba (he is a jounin, after all)? Or, Shinigami forbid, Ibiki?

And, you know, it’d be pretty smart to keep one of the twins in the village at all times if they’re really going to lean into the twin bond. Either medic nin or intel nin could work for that…

Flip To The Last Page, 4/? (2017-02-03)

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For Nara, school tends to be easy.

For Nara twins, school is hilariously easy.

For Nara twins in which half of the set is reincarnated with an entire adult experience, it’s almost disgusting how easy school is.

Still, at least Shikako pretends to pay attention. Shikamaru doesn’t even bother.

Then again, she knows even without their telepathy he’d be the kind of student to sleep in class.

In his defense, it’s the kind of day for it–warm but not sweltering, Iruka-sensei’s lecture just the right level of monotonous–and she’d be tempted to do the same if she wouldn’t also feel guilty about it immediately.

As it is, she can still reap the benefits, enjoying the secondhand nap from her twin. The way their bond becomes a little muddled; not blocked off, but slower and stickier, like sweets being stretched apart or the slow drip of honey. The contents of her brother’s dreams flutter to her, fat friendly bumblebees with pollen on their fuzzy legs, and she wonders what’s filtering back to him from her end.

The topic of today’s class is Fire Country geography, political system, and civics–redundant for any clan kid but especially so for one part of the Akimichi-Nara-Yamanaka alliance. Her book, thankfully, is more interesting.

For her, at least. She’s sure her classmates don’t find the Analysis of Theoretical and Experimental Ninjutsu by Tobirama Senju particularly interesting. Or much of anyone else in the village, actually.

According to the check out card on the front cover, the last time this book was borrowed was before she was born.

Still, maybe the fun parts are flowing to Shikamaru. The exciting possibilities of new jutsu, of flying on wind currents or bending light around oneself–superpowers in a world of shinobi.

She hopes so. Shikamaru deserves to be a child while he can.

—

It only happened the once, when both of them were coming off of an awful cold, heads still muzzy but no longer feverish and ill. They woke up, got dressed, went to school.

It didn’t become apparent until kunoichi class that something might be… off.

“Shikamaru?” Sakura asks oddly hesitant. She’s still somewhat shy and soft spoken, but Shikako thought, as friends, they’d progressed beyond that.

Confused, Shikako turns around looking for her brother.

Ino yanks her sleeve before she can embarrass herself further, “Shikako?”

“Yeah…” she says slowly, skeptically. Pranking isn’t really how the three of them get along, and she’s not exactly seeing the humor of this prank besides.

The sudden realization of what is going on makes her glance at her hands, but that doesn’t tell her much.

Thankfully, Sakura pulls out a little pocket mirror from her bag.

In the reflection, Shikamaru looks back.

‘Ah,’ the both of them think, and the sense-feeling of stopping mid stride flashes to Shikako from her body.

“I know this happens with Yamanaka twins,” Ino says, “But I didn’t know it happened to Nara twins, too.”

“Hmm,” Shikako responds noncommittally, absolutely bewildered.

“You’ll go back to normal after you both sleep for a bit,” Ino says matter of fact, doling out her expertise benignly. “At least,” she adds a little sheepishly, “that’s what Dad told Minako-oba when my cousins switched for a day.”

Sakura, far less hesitant now that she knows it’s Shikako–albeit in Shikamaru’s body–asks, “Should we tell Suzume-sensei that you’ll be absent today?”

Both of them consider it and Shikamaru–still in Shikako’s body–shrugs.

“No,” Shikako says, shrugging Shikamaru’s shoulders as well, “I can learn like this, too. I’ll just tell her what happened so we don’t get in trouble.”

Which is how the twins–and everyone else in kunoichi class, for that matter–learn that Shikamaru is absolutely tone deaf.

~

A/N: Second section for @donapoetrypassion who wanted Shikamaru going to kunoichi lessons 😀

Flip To The Last Page, 3/? (2017-02-01)

jacksgreysonLeave a comment

‘Don’t do that,’ Shikako thinks at him pointedly even as he climbs over the fence to where the fawns are held.

‘Don’t do what,’ Shikamaru thinks back at her, tinged with denial and guilt and envy over her being allowed to sleep in.

‘I’m not sleeping in today because I want to,’ Shikako shoots back at him along with, ‘Don’t scheme against me. You’re supposed to be on my side’

Shikako coughs, lungs rattling and nerves zinging, both overflowing with chakra. Mum presses a hand to her cheek, careful and gentle and afraid.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” she says, “Breathe with me, Shikako. Breathe with Mummy.”

This is one of the worst attacks she’s had in a while, but at least it’s not bad enough to send her to the hospital.

Yet.

‘You don’t have to go to the Academy,’ Shikamaru thinks at her, mutinous, lining up the bottles of formula for the fawns who need nutritional support, ‘You don’t have to be a shinobi.’

‘You forgot a sixth bottle,’ she thinks, even as she tries to take deep breaths alongside Mum, ‘Dad said there was a late birth yesterday.’

In the deer pen, Shikamaru’s breathing syncs up with hers. He pulls out another bottle.

Mum relaxes, presses a kiss to Shikako’s forehead and pulls the blankets up to her chin, “There we go. Sleep well, Shikako.”

‘You’ll be in danger,’ one of them thinks, as Shikako’s eyes flutter closed and Shikamaru starts feeding the first fawn, ‘Why won’t you let me protect you?’

—

Dreaming is strange for them. Well, stranger than dreaming already is. Stranger than what Shikako thinks she remembers.

Shikamaru has never dreamed without her.

He claws his way out of a deep, oppressive miasma of hatred, red on the back of his eyelids. He doesn’t remember this night from his own point of view, but Shikako’s memory of it might as well be crystal.

The village around him is warped. Caught between a hyperreal reflection of what he’s experienced–every pebble and crack in the road standing out–and the bright cartoony visions that come from his sister, everything flat and jarring.

“Shikako,” he calls out, looking behind him. Tonight his shadow is just a shadow, dark and unsmiling.

It used to be that Shikako would be there, looking back up at him. Or a blurry presence more heard and felt than seen.

Now, more often than not, her inner self matches her physical self.

“Over here,” she calls back, a flashing image of the Academy building.

Not always, though, he sees. Tonight she is more amorphous than not, unfamiliar height but familiar colors. A vague adult version of herself, perhaps.

“I am an adult,” she says from in front of a lone wooden swing.

“I’m not,” he says, waiting.

Between one thought and the next, a boy appears in the swing. Blonde and pouting and important.

Tomorrow is the first day of Academy–for the both of them, a matter long argued and only recently settled.

They’re meeting Naruto for the first time tomorrow.

Change is inevitable.

~

A/N: Thanks for reading, @flyingisthewaytotravel 😀

While I do think it’s in character for Shikamaru to want to keep Shikako out of the Academy, I don’t see how he would be able to go around her without her knowing and resenting him for it. And, as far as he knows, her going to the Academy doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll end up on a team or anything–she might end up a paperwork nin due to her chakra hypersensitivity. (Won’t he be unpleasantly surprised.)

Flip To The Last Page, 2/? (2017-01-31)

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They are far from the first twins born in Konoha–far from the first twins born in the Nara clan even–but it is the first time that twins have been born to the clan head’s family.

The last time something similar happened was a generation ago with a different clan entirely.

And so it is only somewhat a surprise to the Nara twins that the first move is neither theirs nor any enemy’s, but that of Hiashi Hyuuga.

—

It is not only unusual but also, somehow, simultaneously presumptuous and deferential for a clan head to seek a private audience with a different clan’s heirs.

And yet…

Hizashi Hyuuga has been dead for less than a year.

Shikaku is not unkind.

(And if this will in any way help his children, well.)

—

Hiashi knows better than to underestimate the Nara twins, for all that they are only children. The Nara are not a threat because they choose not to be, not because they are incapable.

The children are silent.

That means nothing.

Hiashi remembers what it was like to be a twin.

In battle, he and his brother were unstoppable: overlapping Byakugan and a complete sphere of divination, constant fluid shared knowledge.

The strategic mind of a Nara with double the capacity–no, the ability squared–a seamless loop of thoughts, instantaneous infinite computations.

Hiashi will not underestimate them.

—

He does anyway.

(In his defense, the truth is beyond what anyone could possibly imagine on their own.)

—

“Does Neji have the cursed seal?” The girl child asks, gesturing to her own forehead in a disturbingly accurate portrayal of the Hyuuga clan’s Caged Bird Seal.

A lesser man may have flinched–at the audacity of the question, at the viscerally horrifying idea, at the clear yet inexplicable leak in clan secrets and to a child at that–but Hiashi is no such thing.

As is, perhaps his own brow furrows, jaw clenching for a moment before he answers, “No, of course not,” he says and does not clarify.

Clarification is not necessary–or at least, not from him–for the girl child turns to her brother with a look that no doubt has an accompanying mental gloat.

Before too long, the boy child shoots an unrelated, yet equally concerning question of his own, “Have you had any dealings with Councilman Danzo?”

His answer is the same as before.

Bizarrely, this seems to make the children smile.

—

Hiashi misses his brother keenly, fiercely, mind both loud and lonely, his own thoughts echoing back to him without Hizashi’s presence to temper them.

But he thinks, even with his twin, this meeting would still have been confusing.

~

A/N: … still not entirely sure where I’m going with this, but it’s definitely not headed in the original direction I thought it was so…?

Flip To The Last Page, 1/? (2017-01-30)

jacksgreysonLeave a comment

In a world where twins are born with the ability to read each other’s minds and telepathically talk to each other no matter where they are…

… Shikako’s biggest secret isn’t.

Her first thoughts in this new world are–where am I? What’s happening? Who are these people?–and so Shikamaru’s first thoughts, infantile but still keen, are full of curiosity and confusion.

—

It changes, when they grow. Both of them learning enough of the language to organize their thoughts. Streamlined into sentences and ideas instead of the burbles of emotions from before.

Shikako has come to accept her new place in life. Shikamaru has always known his.

Until she recognizes the faces carved into the mountain.

—

There is no hiding from your own thoughts.

You can deny things. You can compartmentalize. You can even forget, for a time, what it is you were thinking.

But there is no hiding from your own thoughts.

And so there is no hiding from your twin’s thoughts.

—

Shikako sees it as a story she can change. Edit particular sections and completely rewrite certain chapters. Characters and themes and plot points that can be adjusted, improved.

Shikamaru sees it as a game, of course. Pieces and set moves, rules and strategies. An ultimate goal, with acceptable losses in exchange for necessary gain.

Sacrifices must be made, but they have different definitions for it.

—

There is a delineation made, subconsciously or not, of what is most important at any given time.

A fork in the road. The known–with the costs and benefits tallied, just enough to be deemed acceptable–or the unknown, with all the risks and rewards that entails.

How do you decide which path to go down?

—

Shikamaru wants to play it safe. He is only a child, with childish strategies–one day he will beat his father at shogi, but that is many years from now–and he thinks that they have been handed the key to success.

Why diverge at all?

Shikako knows they must. Her existence, her knowledge, means they already have.

If they play it safe, they would need to remove her from the equation.

—

There is more than one way to take a character out of a story.

The problem with games is that there’s always someone playing against you.

~

A/N: … to be continued?

No but seriously, where should I go with this? Because I have some ideas, but I realize that they’d mostly just end up pale imitations of @donapoetrypassion‘s In Which Someone Attempts to Kidnap Shikamaru, Instead

Maybe this could be like a choose your own adventure type fic, where I try to incorporate reader suggestions?

I can kind of see passing down jutsu = passing down pokemons? I was looking at Sasuke’s Luxio, and I just got a specific Chidori vibe from it. I mean, not everyone’s going to get a Luxio/Shinx, so I guess it’s more like exclusive move tutoring? (Which is kind of cool, cause that means you’ll have ninjas creating moves, aka different combinations/techniques of pkmn abilities (Shikako tinkering with this is cool af to think about)). I love Arm in Arm, by the way! <3

jacksgreysonLeave a comment

Thanks! 🙂

Luxio/Shinx was definitely meant to be Sasuke’s version of Chidori, but I kind of figured it was more Kakashi brought him to where the Shinx were and it was up to Sasuke to catch it.

Because Kakashi is very hands off like that.

And I kind of figured, since Shinx evolves into Luxio pretty early, then that level up would during the Paw Print Encyclopedia mission which isn’t too long after the Konoha Chuunin Exams and kind of has a thematic “Sasuke gets (some) closure on the matter of Itachi via cats”

Team seven is kind of team nightmare. Beyond miss living shadow the facehugger the deathless who kills ruthlessly while being from treehuggerville, you got the living human sacrifice powerhouse possessed by the most destructive of tailed beasts whose very chakra is corrosive, who has an uncanny resemblance to Minato of mass destruction, Sai who does not human, and treeman like 1st hokage. “Face him and lose” Kakashi and “my revenge>your life” Sasuke are pretty normal, compared.

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jacksgreysays:

Oh, god, yeah pretty much! The most recent chapter is just… a lesser shinobi than Neji (and, let’s be real, many shinobi are lesser than Neji) would have screamed when a flying cloud of shadowy death flew towards their face.

I screamed when I was reading it, and I’m not even there.

Obviously any team that Kakashi “casually invents an one hit kill jutsu as a teenager” Hatake got his hands on would be a bunch of over powered juggernauts. I mean, not even considering Team Seven’s respective backgrounds. No wonder Yamato/Tenzou is constantly exhausted if that’s what he had to put up with.

And Sai, oh that poor sweet baby has no idea what befriending Team Seven will do to him. He can’t even human properly and now he’s being thrown into the deep end with a bunch of weirdos. It’s like Aggressive Friendship 101… except maybe not 101, because that would imply its an introductory course. There is no introductory course. In the Game of Friendship you play to win or you die. >:D

Hahaha, yeah. Team Gai are suitably bewildered by Shikako. Then again, TenTen knows that the kind of mind that can just produce the seals Shikako does is probably a frightening place. Impressive, but frightening.

I wonder if each member of Team Gai is most afraid/intimidated by different members of Team Seven? TenTen is like: oh no, Shikako is just socially awkward, but she’s a nice person. And Lee and Neji just have horrible flashbacks to the Forest of Death. And now eldritch horror no jutsu. O_O