Summary: 1 year to graduation. Shikamaru drags his parents inot Naruto's life. How will this change the young Uzumaki? Will this influence Shika in any long term way? And what is this that's happening with our favorite leaders of the 'Sasuke-stalking' club? 0.o wanna know? well then stay with the story and find out eventually lol

Pairing: Nope, not even thinking about them at this point =)

Warnings:... emm... clueless Naruto? mentions of neglect.

P.S.: oooo review cookie, me love them.

TigrezzTail: thank you very much dear, i like u love it =) it really ain't healthy eating those amounts of ramen imo lol.


=may the plotting commence...=

While his wife was doing God knows what to his son outside, Shikaku made himself comfortable on the floor and looked closely at the child in front of him. Though he's met Uzumaki Naruto more than once during his visits with the Hokage, he had no personal experience with the boy. What his sharp eyes told him about the kid however, was not something he wanted to see. There were lots of small scars, not noticeable unless you looked really closely, but way more numerous than was normal for a wannabe shinobi. The horrible orange jumpsuit was one or two sizes too big for the kid and hang on him like on a skeleton, this indicated that Naruto didn't eat enough. He suspected that being the jinchuuki had some affect on the boy's health, but he wasn't about to actively look into that. He's heard from the Academy teachers that the blond an abysmal student and the total dead-last in his class. How could that be true he had no idea, but he would do his best to fix that... among other things apparently.

The whisker marks on the boy's sun-kissed face. Those were what identified him as a jinchuuriki and that was also how most villagers knew who the demon kid was. Shikaku would bet his next salary that if they were to disguise the boy, hide the whiskers, maybe teach him how to do a more advanced henge... though from what he recalled about the kid's anti-pervert jutsu, he had that down... if only he'd realize he could use it for more than pranks that is.

Naruto fidgeted. The silence was unnerving and the man's stare was a bit creep. The boy being who he was, he blurted out the first thing that came to his mind:

"Ojii-san... are you a pervert?" - he asked timidly, crossing his hands over his chest unconsciously.

Naruto stared. Shikaku's jaw dropped. Naruto twitched. Shikaku face-palmed... And then the man started laughing. Loudly.

The little blond scowled:

"Why you laughing at me mister?"

"Cause you're weird."

"I'm not the one staring at a little kid like that..." - mumbled Naruto.

"I wasn't trying to hit on you Naru-chan." - the man wiggled his eyebrows a teasing smirk on his lips.

"N...n..na...naru – CHAN?! - yelped Naruto - "what the hell old man?"

Shikaku chuckled and flicked the boy on the forehead: "I'm not that old. And the reason I was studying you is because you can find out a lot just from observing how a person dresses or how they behave."

The blond's eyes grew huge:

"Wow!" - he beamed at the Nara - "Mister, teach me! Please please please!"

The jounin commander chuckled and ruffled his spiky blond locks:

"hmmm I will." - the man gave him a grin - "if you get good marks at the academy for the next 2 weeks."

He then watched the boy loose all his enthusiasm. That was just plain weird. He saw Naruto's lips move, but he only barely caught the words 'never' and 'fair'. And that made his brain go into overdrive. 'Never fair'. He knew how the civilians treated the boy, or at least he could make a good enough guess judging on his clothes, hight, all those small scars and his ridiculous love of ramen. And he knew a lot of parents told their children to stay away from the young jinchuuriki. They couldn't tell them what Naruto was, but that didn't stop them from calling the boy names and telling their kids he was dangerous and to stay away. So it was really not all that big a leap to assume that there'd be teachers at the academy who'd enjoy sabotaging his education. He needed more information:

"What's with that face, Naru-chan?" - he teased gently - "It cant be that hard..."

Naruto gave him a small glare:

"They don't like me there."

Shikaku rolled his eyes, this was sooo troublesome. Getting the kid to talk about things he didn't want to say would require a LOT of patience.

"What makes you say that, little one?"

The boy scoffed and gave him a look. One that was quietly asking the man if perhaps he was an idiot. It was very out of place and didn't quite match with everything else he knew about the boy. And yet the words that came out were indeed very much expected:

"Cause no one else likes me."

That was a very sad way to look things, even if it did make a sort of sense... but that couldn't really be true. After all there was the Hokage, there was Shikamaru, Yoshino and himself even. And there were those people at the ramen stand. But compared to all the other people in the village, they'd have to show the boy heaps of love and affection to make him see that instead of everything else. In short – What. A. Drag.


At the same time at the Yamanaka clan compound one Yamanaka Ino sat on her bed staring intently at the huge picture of Sasuke that was plastered to the wall, as she tried to understand when exactly all her free time was consumed by this boy. What was it about him? The first answer was the obvious and over-used one: 'sasuke-kun is so cool!' And that was certainly true to a degree, but... no boy was worth losing friends, no boy was worth giving up her dream. Especially if said boy actually didn't give a hoot about you. With a sigh Ino pick up an orange from the plate on the bedside table and stretched out on the bed, looking around.

Not so long ago there were scrolls all over the place, spare training kunai here and there. Now all she could see was fashion magazines and clothes. She could barely recognize her room. And that … that was just so pathetic... and admitting that, even silently to herself, it hurt. It hurt to know that she wasted 3 years of her life. And it was indeed pretty much wasted. She wasn't in such a drastic situation as Sakura, or Sage forbid Amy... but that was a small mercy and no achievement of her own, no that was all thanks to the training her dad insisted on. But it wasn't all lost yet. She still had around 7 months before graduating. And she would use that time to the best of her abilities... and Sasuke would one day fall on his knees to beg for her attention. The picture her mind conjurer was a very appealing one, but that would have to be an added bonus, not the reason for her to grow stronger. No, she was Yamanaka Ino, heiress to one of the great shinobi clans of Konoha, and she would not let herself to be upstaged by civilian girls like Sakura.

With a quiet grunt Ino crawled out of bed and started throwing all the fashion magazines into an empty box under her table. She enjoyed looking good and all, but really, now that the Sasuke-induced haze was no longer obscuring her vision, she could really take a mental step back and see just how ridiculous she looked when she tried to dress like the models she saw in the magazines... girls that were at least 5-6 years older than her. Ino herself was much more lucky than her former best friend and even at the tender age of eleven, her body was slowly developing. But even so putting on clothes that just didn't fit her age... well, to be quite honest, she was very thankful no one laughed at her the way they did at Naruto's jumpsuit... the very thought of that ugly thing made her shudder.

Shaking off the nasty memory, Ino then pulled down the huge Sasuke picture and replaced it with the Elemental Nations' map that used to hang there a couple years ago. Just that small change made her room look more like a living space of an actually sane person and that was a big relief. Checking the alarm clock, Ino decided to go to sleep early, after all she'd have to go shopping tomorrow.


End Note: Hope this chapter made some sense and i'm sorry if u guys think i'm dragging it out lol. I shall do my best to try and have some stuff actually start happening x.x so have patience with me =) and as always - read and hit dat review button, you know you want to =)