•Shackles of Time•

Chapter 5: I Call It Troublesome

Shikamaru nara was a smart kid, smarter than most. Heck, even smarter then the great sasuke uchiha himself. The only people who could possibly have a higher intellect then him is the nara clan, who is praised for being complete and utter smartasses, and even then he was quite the pridogy. Not much know about this particular piece of information though since he rather spend his time blissfully sleeping and clamly watching the clouds float by rather than flaunting his superiority to the world.

He also loves shogi, most nara do really. The game tests their strategical thinking, which, mind you, helps a lot, most nara are destined to be strategists, but its mostly because playing with other naras are the only things that can remotely give them a challenge. He plays with his father, shikaku, who is incidentally the clan head.

His father is very smart, enough for him to become the village's head strategist, and so, when playing with a twelve year old in shogi, it is only expected that he could beat shikamaru, other than him the lazy heir has yet to find someone who could best him in the game.

That is, until his sensei had said that they were training with team 7 the next day. He had expected it to be like every other day; troublesome.

When the time came, it was indeed troublesome, he stated his thoughts which his female teammate, ino yamanaka, berated him for. He was glad she was cut short due to the distraction of mr. duckbutt pridogy uchiha coming on that day.

When the three arrived it was troublesome. They were troublesome.

Their female kunoichi then decided to ask her teammate a question, an insult you could say. None seemed to think that though, even the blonde idiot she had asked.

Shikamaru had always found naruto uzumaki to be the most troublesome. He shouted a lot and was always annoying, constantly playing pranks that looked tiring. But those aren't the main reasons that the nara found the blonde troublesome; it was because he smiled.

Naruto uzumaki is what people would call an enigma for shikamaru. Why did he smile when everyone hated him? its clear that he is sad so why pretend not to be? were the questions shikamaru always asked himself, it made his mind spin which was troublesome. So, the nara heir tried to be friends with the blonde, along with his other --best-- friend, choji.

He was so happy.

Genuinely happy, and the nara who was a genius in the making, couldn't understand why. And that's why he had given up, the blonde was interesting but far too troublesome.

"when you think about it, nothing can be considered weird, because nothing is normal, and so weird is normal and since it is normal, it isn't weird. In fact, normal, if that even exists, should be considered weird since no one is normal anymore"

The answer was quite unexpected, the though was simple yet the way he worded it was so repetative that most minds would label it as too complicated and so stop trying to understand. But shikamaru wasn't most, he had an IQ higher than a normal adult's and so he easily figured it out. It was even more surprising that naruto had said it, the naruto uzumaki, deadlast of their class and idiot who couldn't even pronounce chakra.

He knew that the blonde was hiding something, even if he himself didn't know what that something is. Shikamaru never thought, though, that the something would be his intelligence, and he still didn't think that.

The blonde never hid his IQ, he just knows it, especially coming from someone who does exactly that himself. So he questions when the blonde had gotten a tongue  transplant for him to be able to pronounce the same words correctly multiple times.

It just made him all the more interesting for shikamaru. And at the same time-

Troublesome

So, finally having enough, he challenged the blonde to a shogi match. It was the first thing that came to mind. He had planned to ask some questions since he didn't really need to focus in order to win. Alas, he was proven wrong and was forced to pay closer attention when he noticed he was about to lose.

And yet another troublesome surprise.

It had been quite the match, lasted for hours, in the end though he lost. Which has never happened before, he was so surprised that he couldn't help but review their match, looking for the reason on how. He didn't even notice the last person they were waiting for arrive, nor did he notice how his shogi partner stood up.

He did notice, though, when choji nudged him which caused the nara to blink back to reality and look to see everyone waiting for him.

"troublesome"

And that was an equal of eleven troublesomes. Before you ask, yes, he counts how much he says it. What can he say, he trully has nothing better to do with his life.

That is, before he had discovered the puzzle that is naruto uzumaki that was hidden under his bed, dusty and forgotten.

862 words

I know, short, but I felt this was a good place to end it. I had nothing else to add. I wanted this to be a shika-thoughts chapter.