AN: The "sara" in Shikasara is NOT pronounced like "Sarah". Try to keep that in mind. I ended up splitting what was going to be the second chapter into two separate chapters. I'm trying out shorter chapters to see how they are received compared to my usual 10k minimum.
The next several years were strange to say the least. I was now six years old. The first four were more or less normal, since you can't exactly expect such young children to start seriously studying to be ninja just yet.
Sure, we learned a few things here and there since we were a part of a major ninja clan in Konoha, but it wasn't extensive by any means. It mostly consisted of simple things like basic knowledge of how to handle a weapon, some light exercise, and extremely basic chakra theory. Of course, we didn't use real weapons or actually work with chakra.
Naturally, Shikamaru and I became rather close. It eventually became a lot more natural to call him my brother, much like I fell into the habit of calling Shikaku and Yoshino mom and dad respectively.
Over the years, I had started to develop an appearance that differed quite a bit from Shikamaru and dad. First off, I had pink eyes. Not some insane neon pink or something like that, but more of a light purple shade.
Next, I took after my mom in terms of hair, so I had brown hair rather than the usual black that you would see in members of the Nara clan. I didn't really have any particular style, but I generally liked to keep it at around shoulder length, usually with my bangs swept across my forehead to the left, covering most of it but still staying above my eyes.
Everything else just fell straight down on the sides or back. Nothing too complicated, but it worked with my usual style.
Other than that, I didn't exactly have any striking traits to speak of. Hey, I was only six so I get a pass. What really set me apart from my peers was my fashion sense. Of course I didn't exactly have complete control over what I wore due to certain clan outfits and ya know, being a child.
My outfits differed from other kids my age since I did actually have almost twenty years on them in terms of actually being alive, and I therefore had already developed certain aspects in my tastes.
That's not to say that I really cared all that much about my outward appearance, I hadn't in my past life. But I had developed a strange interest in wearing things that had some form of efficiency and comfort rather than pure aesthetic.
I had actually spent weeks planning out my outfit that I would wear one day, which was stored somewhere in a stack of my many notes and plans.
However for now, I usually donned some dull color of sweatpants, a simple black or dark green t-shirt, and sometimes a dark green hoodie if the temperature allowed it. I also tended to pick out things with as many pockets as my mother would allow.
Anyway, back to age and training. So for the next two years leading up to being six, Dad trained us in basic forms and sparring, actual basic use of chakra, and even started teaching the theory of our clan jutsu and their uses.
He didn't actually teach us the clan jutsu of course, but we learned things like exactly how the controlled shadows worked, how the jutsu affected our bodies and minds, and the dangers of using them.
For the most part though, our time was spent learning language and math, basic clan politics and other boring stuff like that, and playing like normal kids. Naturally those language and math classes were a tad bit harder than what normal kids were taught at that age, but since we were both expected to be ninja for the rest of our lives, it wasn't out of the norm.
I also did almost perfectly in them since I had already taken several years of AP calculus classes throughout my life. That isn't to say that I could still do complicated math like that, but I was easily able to complete anything that we were doing.
In fact, I occasionally tried to ask dad for even more things regarding more ninja related topics like chakra and jutsu theory. I had been doing my best to try and come up with ideas for jutsu, tactics, plans, and the like for years with my fragmented and highly incomplete knowledge of chakra and its applications.
Of course, even though they never actually taught us any jutsu and they told us not to try and use our chakra without supervision - which they refused to give outside of very specific training - I had already messed around with actually gathering and forming my chakra on a basic level, and I knew that even Shikamaru had as well.
Shikamaru was...less motivated. He had begun to take after dad fairly early on, and the only reason that I didn't was because I already had a developed personality, I had a goal in mind, and mom would never let her only daughter - and I quote - "Become a lazy, slothful bum who won't aspire to be anything in life other than average."
That wasn't to say that Shikamaru didn't try, he just didn't try very hard. He knew everything he needed to know, and probably even more. It was just that he knew exactly how much effort he needed to put in to prevent people from nagging him. In other words, he tried very hard to be average in academics.
Luckily for him, the people teaching us were either dad, people who had worked with dad a lot, or were the ones that taught dad, so they were used to it and figured that there wasn't much that they could do about it.
As for the playing part of our days, we were introduced to other main clan kids pretty early on. Obviously we mainly hung around Ino and Choji, who we had been playing with since we were babies, but we were naturally around other clan heirs and such a lot such as Kiba, Shino, and...Hinata.
Yeah, I never liked Hinata back in my world, bite me. In fact, she was always my least favorite character. Of course I didn't completely hate her with a passion now like I did back in the day, but now she was an actual character too. I no longer looked at her from a writing standpoint, but I still didn't like her much as a person.
I tried my best not to let my pre-formed hatred of her show when we were around each other. To be honest, she wasn't as bad as she was later on in the story quite yet since she hadn't met Naruto and become obsessed. But hey, that's in hindsight and not what I was thinking then.
Most of the time, I tried my best to either stay away from her entirely or just block out her speaking when I was forced to be around her.
She may have become a little less shy from my presence over time, but that was probably wishful thinking. Unfortunately helping her out in becoming less shy and all that wasn't exactly one of the things on my list. Things like taking out the insane killing machine with plans to sacrifice the world came first.
As for Sasuke, I only ever really saw him from afar a couple of times in passing. Oh so surprisingly, his father didn't approve of things like mingling with kids his age.
The point is, here I was. Six years old now.
"Come on Shikamaru, you've gotta wake up so that we can get to the academy on time! Mom is ready to go!" I yelled as I shook my brother back and forth, trying to get him out of his bed. "Come on, I know you can hear me!"
His hand came up to lazily swat me away. "Stop being so troublesome Sara, it's just the first day. Besides, isn't dad still asleep too?"
He sorta had me there. Mom was in another room trying to wake up dad too. "That's no excuse! Dad doesn't have to be at school in twenty minutes!"
He tried to push me away as best as he could in his half asleep state. "Okay, okay, fine. Just go and I'll be ready in five minutes you troublesome sister."
I huffed powerfully and walked out of his room, closing the door behind me. I leaned against the wall and waited, fully prepared to march back in if I didn't hear movement.
Mom walked out with dad trailing behind her tiredly, deer skin coat and all. She sighed and placed her hands on her hips. "Well at least you managed to get him moving, that's the best I can hope for. I swear, if you had the same attitude as these two I would never get you three anywhere."
That was true. Even with just the two of them it was pretty hard to get them moving. I wasn't anything even remotely close to a morning person, but I could still actually get up at a reasonable time.
A few minutes later, Shikamaru emerged from his room, yawning as he skulked over to us. "I don't see why we need to get up so early just for school. So troublesome."
Dad yawned in unison. "Agreed. I'll make an official request to lord third to see if we could move that time up to about noon."
Mom lightly bopped him on the head. "You'll do no such thing. Now come on, we need to leave now if we want to get there with a few minutes to spare." She said as she lightly dragged them out of the door and made them start walking.
Walking as fast as we were able to get dad and Shikamaru to, we managed to get to the academy classroom that we were assigned to with just a couple of minutes to spare.
Mom leaned over, reaching her hands out to try to fix my hair and Shikamaru's outfit. "Are you OK? Are you nervous? It's OK to be nervous, everyone feels that way at first. I'm sure you'll both fit in just fine."
I put my hands up in defense and tried to block her. "I'm fine mom. Besides, you know that neither of us actually fit in with everyone else, it's fine. Shikamaru doesn't care and I'm just not nervous."
Apparently that wasn't enough for her. "Oh but honey, you've never been in a real classroom before. It'll be so different and there are bullies-"
I rose my hand and stopped her. "Mom, it's fine. I'm sure we'll figure it out eventually. We need to get into class."
Ordinarily mom was a fairly trusting person, and she knew that we could handle ourselves. But when it came to things like this, she started to worry way too much.
She sighed and gave a worrying look, but rose up and opened the door, letting us walk in. Iruka was standing at the front of the class, telling students where to sit. Most of the seats were already filled up by people that actually showed up at the recommended time.
Iruka turned to us and bowed towards dad. "Lord Nara."
Dad nodded slowly back. "Umino-san. I assume that you know who these two are?"
The young teacher rose and looked at us, nodding. "Yes of course, these two must be Shikamaru and Shikasara, correct?" He said with a smile.
He lowered down to our eye level. "Nice to meet you, I'm Iruka Umino. You can call me Iruka-sensei."
Shikamaru lazily raised his hand up. "Hey. Shikamaru."
I just nodded and grinned. "Likewise. I'm Shikasara, the younger twin sister of this lazy bum." I said, pointing back at a yawning Shikamaru. I wasn't the most formal person, but I could at least introduce myself well enough.
Iruka nodded and stood back up, looking at his clipboard he had in his hand. "I see. Well you two can go ahead and sit in those two empty seats right up at the front." He stated, pointing at a desk at the bottom of the stairs, closest to the front.
The classroom was set up just like every other classroom in the academy. There was a single podium up at the front of the room with a chalkboard behind it. The desks all had three seats and were on a riser sort of system, with each row of desks back getting higher up.
Before I could go to our desk, dad put his hand on my shoulder and leaned down to whisper to me. "Just...hang in there kiddo. I'm sure it'll get harder eventually...probably. Oh, and look after your brother."
I nodded, not really understanding what he meant. What did he mean by "it'll get harder eventually."? Why didn't he say it to Shikamaru too? I thought as I watched him stand back up and turn to Iruka-sensei.
Shikamaru and I walked over to the desk and sat next to each other, leaving the far right seat empty.
Iruka-sensei talked with mom for a minute before she and dad left to allow Iruka-sensei to start class.
Looking around the room, everyone that I would have expected to be there were seated around the room, along with other people that I didn't recognize. Naruto was also seated in about the middle of the room, trying to chat it up with some Civilian kid that was, surprise, trying his best to ignore him.
I had no doubt that I would start talking to him eventually and bring him into our circle of friends but...not right away. I knew that there was a cause and effect to everything. I knew that as a result of being desperate for attention and loud, Iruka-sensei would eventually start to sympathize with him, which would bring them closer and make Naruto into the person I knew him to end up being.
Not only did I not want to throw away that relationship that they had, but I also knew that if they never bonded like that and Naruto instead found friendship early on, he would turn out drastically different. And although that doesn't sound like a big deal, it also meant that it would probably lower my ability to predict the future.
I already knew that my mere presence would end up changing quite a few things, but I figured that I would try to keep things as similar as possible in terms of events. And I certainly wasn't about to try and mold Naruto into some overpowered god early on. The track record showed that doing that usually didn't turn out all that great.
Also...I wasn't even a genin yet. If Naruto started to stand out for his ability and raw talent rather than just being him so early on, there wouldn't be anything that I could do to do prevent someone like Danzo getting to him early too.
I was cut out of my thoughts when Iruka-sensei clapped to get our attention. "OK everyone, welcome to your first year in the academy. As I told each of you, you can just call me Iruka-sensei. I presume that you've all properly had the proper etiquette of the classroom explained to you during orientation day, so we'll jump right into some learning for today then we'll move onto physical evaluations."
Shikamaru groaned quietly next to me. "Actual class and exercise already? Troublesome."
I held in a chuckle. He really did describe everything as troublesome.
"OK, we'll start off with some chakra and jutsu theory."
My eyes lit up and my interest was suddenly peaked. This was exactly what I wanted to pay attention to. It was exactly what I needed to learn if I wanted to get stronger. This was it.
It was a step closer to my goal. To take out Obito, Kabuto, Black Zetsu, and all of those assholes.
Iruka-sensei wrote the word "Chakra" in big letters up on the board and underlined it. "Okay everyone, let's begin. First, does anyone here know what chakra is? It's OK if you don't, not many new students do, and we'll work upwards slowly."
A little part of me broke inside. Oh. My.
Okay, so maybe I asked dad for extra lessons a little more than "Occasionally". What was I supposed to do, just sit there and learn at the pace of a snail? I was invested in learning as much as I could about ninja related topics, and I learned fast when the topic was something that I was interested in.
But THIS?! Shikamaru and I learned what chakra was almost as soon as we could speak semi-coherently, which for me was very early. Very early.
Rough calculations although they may have been, I figured that with where I was right now, I was fairly far ahead of my peers.
And if you factored in the fact that I would still be doing everything I could to learn outside of class too, it might take quite awhile for the academy to actually catch up to at least my theoretical knowledge.
The physical aspect wasn't all that much better. Granted, my theoretical knowledge of both chakra usage and physical fighting was leagues ahead of my actual fighting ability since it was only a few months ago that dad actually had us start with that type of thing, but I doubted that there were many who could keep up with me right now, especially the civilians who had probably barely exercised in their life.
I couldn't blame them of course, I hadn't exactly been the most active person back in the day either. But then again, I also never really had the option of becoming a ninja at a young age.
Sasuke would probably be the closest, but who knew? It was likely that some of the other clan kids such as Kiba, Choji, Ino, and Hinata would either surpass my skill level or at least match me. That probably placed me somewhere in the top five in the class. In terms of taijutsu.
My only real hope was that my level of actual chakra usage wouldn't be too far ahead, since it was what I had the least experience in. Not to mention there were plenty of other clan heirs in the room that probably were taught some form of chakra manipulation, even if it was just basic. Although my theoretical knowledge would greatly boost my progress in actual chakra usage once I was allowed to freely practice.
Freely practice meaning practice under strict supervision and authorization of course, which sucked since eventually I wanted to venture into more dangerous usages of chakra which would either take way to long to be approved officially or would be flat out refused.
Not that there was anything wrong with being ahead, and I knew that if I wanted to get strong enough to accomplish my goals I would have to stand out eventually, but I could recognize that there are certain downsides to being the number one student in everything this early on.
One of the largest problems in my mind was that I didn't ever want to be considered for early graduation. I needed to be here, in this class.
Apparently no one had volunteered to answer, and apparently Iruka-sensei thought that I was the perfect scapegoat.
"Shikasara, what about you? Even just a guess is fine."
I narrowed my eyes and looked at Iruka-sensei. What? Why me? Why, out of everyone in the class you would- Oh, thanks dad. I really would have been fine if you hadn't tipped off my teachers that I was ahead. Now I'm being used to teach everyone else. I thought in annoyance.
I sighed and began to speak in a tired and bored tone. "Chakra is created when two other forms of energy, known as physical and spiritual energy, are molded together, both of which every person has inside of them. Physical energy is collected from the body's cells and can be increased through training and exercise. Spiritual energy is derived from the mind's consciousness and can be increased through studying, meditation, and experience." I explained lazily with a basic textbook answer.
I couldn't have just played the fool and acted like I didn't know the answer. If I did, Iruka-sensei would've questioned dad about it, which would have led to Iruka-sensei knowing that I was holding back. Not only would that kinda ruin the point of hiding my knowledge, but he might confront me about it and I wasn't really interested in doing that whole dance and song.
Not to mention I wasn't the type of person to purposefully get the wrong answer on something. If I knew something, I would answer.
"Very good Shikasara! If I didn't know any better, I would say that you already took this class!" He exclaimed, obviously over-exaggerating. It wasn't actually that impressive for a clan heir to know the textbook definition of chakra, but I knew that he just wanted to use me as an example of someone who studied.
I rolled my eyes and let out a little bit of a smile. It was rather funny to see Iruka-sensei being so dramatic.
Actually, how long has Iruka-sensei been a teacher? He still looks pretty young now, in his teens maybe. Weird.
•
•
"Dad, what am I gonna do?" I groaned as I lounged in a chair, tired of sitting around all day every day at the academy for the last two weeks with little to do. The sessions that I actually got the most out of were the physical training classes and the history classes, the latter simply due to the fact that it was one of the subjects specific to Konoha, and therefore I hadn't had years upon years of taking classes for it.
Dad looked up at me questioningly. "About what? There are a lot of things that you could do, but don't have to."
"I already know a lot of the stuff that they're teaching that they're teaching in class since I had you tutor me so much beforehand. I need some other way to get more info so I'm not wasting my time after I finish my work." I complained.
Dad raised an eyebrow at me. "You know, normal six year old kids aren't normally concerned about wasting their time, and they especially don't want to fill that wasted time with learning more theory."
"Oh come on dad, you know I'm not normal. Besides, that doesn't answer my question. What can I do?"
He thought for a moment before responding. "Well you could always go to the Konoha ninja library."
I gave him an unimpressed look. "Dad, I'm not a ninja. I can't use that."
"Sure, but you're an academy student, so you're technically a ninja in training. You know that ID card that you got at orientation with your information on it? You can use that to get in and check things out. Although the books and scrolls available to you might be somewhat limited since as you said, you aren't actually a ninja. I don't know how much information you'll be able to get your hands on that you don't already know, but it's something." He explained to me.
My head rose up and my eyes widened. "Really?" I said hopefully. "How long is the library open?"
He looked over at a clock on the wall. "Hmm. About four more hours. Just be back before your mother does, since I can't cover for you very well."
I immediately shot to my feet and started getting my stuff together. "I'll be back soon dad, don't catch the house on fire while I'm gone. I'm off to study!" I said as I closed the door behind me.
•
•
It turned out that dad was right, the books and scrolls that I had access to were extremely limited, and I already knew a fair bit of the material or at least could understand it easily. However there were still plenty of things there that I didn't know, which gave me a renewed sense of hope.
I spent the next couple of hours figuring out exactly what I needed to start with. It wasn't as if my learning had halted completely since I could still ask dad about stuff and I did still learn some things from classes, but since the academy took up a good chunk of my day, these books would be something good to have temporarily that I could use when I had nothing to do during school.
I supposed I could always ask Iruka-sensei for help as well. He was a chunin, so he had to know this kind of stuff to a certain extent right? Well, plenty more than I knew anyway. I decided that the next time I finished all of my work early in class, I would start asking him about things that I was studying.
It wasn't perfect, but it was a start. I was still only a beginner, and barely one at that. I may have known quite a bit for a student of my age, but I was years, decades even from knowing everything that I needed to know. Unfortunately I didn't have more than about one decade, so I would have to work insanely hard to get to the point I needed to be at.
Not to mention all of the other areas of training that I would need to cover as well.
Overall, this was probably going to be a very long and difficult trail. Hell, it would be near impossible. Maybe that was one of the things that made it so attractive. Either way though, I was dedicated to walk that trail, and hopefully do a bit of construction on the way.
