It was disappointingly underwhelming, being stuck in Murderville for almost three years. I thought being Bike-chan would give me something to do, but nope. No amazing chakra powers, no whispers in my head to make deals with, not much of anything. I mean, I guess there was that time a couple of weeks after I was dumped here where actual Furry Satan decided to introduce himself for a couple of hours before Naruto's tummy absorbed him, but I guess you get what you pay for when you wake up as a baby in Naruto.

On another note, the stress of having a mind reader as a father was really getting to me. "Mommy, what's this one?" I hopped in her lap and shoved a children's book in her face. I needed to learn how to read, I could not keep up this façade anymore. I knew Inoichi was the head of the mind bender clan, I just hoped some of his human psychology knowledge translated to child development books conveniently scattered around the house. Otherwise, I'd have to find other three-year-olds in the wilds of Konoha to copy, and even ninja aren't *usually* that neglectful of their kids. They normally waited until four to do that. I think I got a pass because, one, I was expected to be more social and outgoing as a Yamanaka and two, I never really left the clan complex.

"Oh, sure sweetheart. In a minute." She was looking over a floral catalogue, probably deciding what to order for the flower shop. I slid off her lap, went around the table, climbed onto a chair and faced her. Mother, I request an audience. I stared at her and mouth breathed loudly until she finally glanced up at me with a sigh. "Alright, we can start now."

I wanted to take notes, but couldn't, for obvious reasons. Luckily, she pointed to each word when reading it, so I didn't have to verify which word was where. This was going to be a painfully slow process.

It was after my insistent reread that she decided to try to distract me before I could ask again. "Ino-chan, you're turning three soon. You'll be having a birthday party where you can meet new friends! Aren't you excited?" Hmm, I sensed a conspiracy here, but then again, I'd finally have some little templates to mimic. "Yeah! Who?"

She pretended to think a little bit, "A few of your cousins, and some kids you don't know yet." Yeah, they were definitely gonna find a way to get Ino-Shika-Cho together early on. "Kay!" I got up off her lap and promptly left to wander around the house. I could get away with that now, as a toddler.

God, I was losing my mind. I really needed to do something. I was getting restless.

I got to meet those two a little sooner than anticipated. My party was a week earlier than my actual birthday, and I was sharing it with Shikamaru. Apparently, he was just one day older than me, and they were feeling cheap. The original trio had already abandoned us to go play poker. Honestly, at this point, it was looking like more of an excuse for them to get together. After all, what were a couple of three-year-olds supposed to bond over?

I looked up at the mini-Nara and Akimichi clones. Shikamaru was already leaving to go sleep in the corner or something, but Choji looked friendly, if a bit shy. After a bit, he worked up the courage to speak. "Is there going to be cake?" "Yeah, it's over there," I replied, pointing to the cake. He looked much more interested now. "Really? What flavor?" "I don't know, we'll see I guess."

I did not know how to talk to them. I was just here to observe how other toddlers acted. There were more kids around, mostly from the Yamanaka and Nara clans. They were generally older though, ages four to five, but I supposed Kyuubi might have had something to do with that.

I gradually made my way over to Shikamaru while Choji excitedly listed his favorite cake flavors. I wasn't going to let Shikamaru get away. Maybe I could stick the two together earlier than in cannon. Although, the kid did look like he was a little past his nap time.

"Hey, it's your birthday too, right, Shika?" I shortened his name because it was a mouthful - especially so, due to my current lack of mouth control in this body.

He mumbled something incoherently back at me.

"Cool. Our dads work together, and we're born one day apart. And Choji's only a few months older than us. That's pretty weird, right?"

He became a little more conscious and mumbled something. I paused to decipher it.

He sighed before raising his voice a bit more. "I said, that wasn't on accident."

"Huh? How do you know?" I inquired.

"They play cards at my house a lot. They said they wanted us to be the same age so we could be a team too."

Oh, that's where Inoichi goes when he's not at work. "Really?"

"Yeah, but they think it's funny that you're a girl."

Yeah, the team was just three dudes, even though there was usually one kunoichi to a standard team. "I guess we'll see who's laughing later," I murmured.

"What?"

"Oh, I said this is Choji. He likes cake. You two can talk about it." I sat beside them and watched their behavior, pretending to be part of the conversation. Choji was definitely a better template of a standard three-year-old, so I tried to study his speech patterns and interests.

After a while, I decided to break up the tedium with a gift. "Hey Shika, here's my present, you can open it now if you want."

He pulled the box over to himself and tore it open strip by strip, slowly. Kids usually gleefully tore apart wrapping paper and adults would sometimes carefully pull apart the tape so they wouldn't damage the gift wrap, but this was a new one.

"Oh. A shogi board. Thanks."

Although he hid is reaction, I could guess this wasn't his first time getting a shogi board as a gift. Well, whatever. I turned to Inoichi, he picked it out after all. The three clan heads had turned to watch us from the other side of the room. Inoichi was suppressing an amused grin while Shikaku was shaking his head at him tiredly. Probably some running joke.

"Well, do you wanna play?"

"You know how to play?" Shikamaru glanced up in surprise.

"Uhhh, no." I responded awkwardly. I didn't think that far ahead.

Choji shook his head. "Me neither."

"Oh, well I can teach you two I guess."

And so he explained the intricacies of shogi, while Choji and I nodded like we were listening. I sort of put bits and pieces together and concluded it was basically just chess. But some main differences were that it was 9x9 instead of 8x8, black started first, there were 20 pieces on each side instead of 16, and some of the pieces moved weirdly. Also, they were just normal, flat wooden pieces with their titles written on them, meaning I would have to remember what each title looked like, since I did not get that far ahead in my literacy.

We played half a game, before Shikamaru decided it would be a better idea to restart from the beginning. I guess he didn't like losing. Or, it might have been because of how many times he corrected me or told me I was breaking the rules.

In any case, round two was a little less hectic. I lost. I looked up to find Choji munching on some popcorn he got from God knows where, because I sure didn't see any being handed out at this party.

In round three, I opted to continually make random and unexpected moves, just to see what would happen. Shikamaru would cup his hands sometimes like he was holding something round, and close his eyes. During one of these long pauses, I snuck away to grab a rice ball before gingerly plopping it into his hands and sitting back down again. I nodded my head with confidence. It fit perfectly. He quickly opened his eyes before looking irritatedly at the rice ball and then back at me. I just shrugged like it had simply decided to come into existence on its own. Choji ruined the effect by failing to hold in a snort. With an even tone, I suggested, "I don't know, maybe you summoned it, like Choji did with the popcorn."

He just sighed before biting into it, then took another move. He was clearly playing like he would against his father. That was most likely the only other person he'd ever played against. He didn't have the scope to imagine that some people would just make random and stupid moves sometimes, with no ulterior motives. He was overthinking it, and I was taking advantage of that.

Every time he started looking confident again, I would move some random pawn or other piece from its starting position that had nothing to do with what was happening on rest of the board. Then he'd get confused. I'd make my king square dance for no reason. Sometimes, I'd place a powerful piece in an important position, then go back to focusing on random, minor pieces. He may have had a few of my important pieces, but I had most of his pawns. At some point, I thought I saw his face form into one of realization that I might actually just be an idiot. Then I'd make actual, strategic moves.

He might have thought it was just random chance that I made a good move at that point, so he'd ignore it and make his own. I ended up winning that match.

Afterwards, I refused to have another one, taking my victory and running away before he could do anything about it. Get rekt scrub. He whined in exasperation, holding back tears while he crossed his arms. "Troublesome."

There was a good chance he would have beaten me if we'd played again. That was kind of absurd to think about. Maybe that big brain, 200 IQ stuff Asuma mentioned in the Chunin Exams wasn't just the anime exaggerating. Then again, there were some chess prodigies that started out that early in my old world, so it wasn't like it never happened. But the fact that his intelligence was tactical in specialty would undoubtedly have some interesting results later on. I was at least sure of that.

I went to get some food and ended up getting lost in my own thoughts. That was when I heard a quickly suppressed cackle from across the room. I turned to find Choji attempting to console a sulking Shikamaru. I guess Shika's mood alerted his father because he was crouched down in front of him. Actually, it looked like he was the one who cackled.

I made my way over to the scene. My dad blinked at me in surprise, while Shikaku quirked up his lips and looked over at me, then at Inoichi. Shikamaru clearly didn't want any attention on him at the moment and was hurriedly drying his tears. It was Shikaku that spoke. "So, Choji-kun tells me you beat Shikamaru at shogi. Is that true?"

"Yup!" I chirped with pure innocence.

All three teammates choked at that.

It was Choji who spoke up now. "Yeah, but she lost the first two times."

"Yup!"

Shikaku snorted, then winked at me before turning to face Inoichi again. "Well in that case, I guess maybe we should adopt Ino-chan and train her in the ways of shogi too. That would be fine with you, right Inoichi?"

"Nah, I'm sure it was just a fluke this time. If not, I think I'll just bring Ino-chan with me every time we play shogi instead," Inoichi retorted with a smile.

Shikaku laughed at that. "Shikamaru, he just insulted our family honor. What are you going to do about that?"

At this point, Shikamaru had put on a convincingly nonchalant mask. He shrugged like he didn't care one way or another. With a shake of his head, he got up. "Troublesome. I guess I'll have to beat you next time, Ino," he said, with a quirk of his lips.

I nodded while chewing a slice of cake, then paused to swallow. "Yup."

Choji got up the second he noticed I had cake.

The trio of clan heads laughed as they returned to their table. Choza shook his head. "Like father like son," he chuckled, before heading over to get cake. Shikaku looked incredulous, turning to him and then quickly over to Inoichi, checking to see if he'd caught on to the irony of that statement.

Nothing too interesting happened for the duration of the party, but now I could ask to play with them more often, hopefully just not shogi matches. Anything was better than being stuck in this house. And now I could just base my behavioral development on them. All in all, it was a productive evening.

The three of us alternated between whose house we were brought in for play dates. It was like the households took turns babysitting after they saw how swimmingly we got along the first time. It was usually the mother of the household or some other family member who would have the privilege of watching us though.

Not too long after this arrangement, I noticed something. Shikamaru could read. At a pretty high level. This was fantastic. I was getting impatient, and I didn't want to have to match my learning rate to adults' expectations, but if I could get him to teach me, then nobody would suspect a thing.

"Hey Shika, you're good at reading. Can you teach me how to read?" Might as well get straight to the point.

"Hmmm. Maybe if you play shogi with me."

"What? But Choji's right here. He already plays with you. And how would I play him? He's not an instrument."

"Not Choji, shogi."

"But still. He can play shogi with you instead."

"I already play against him, and besides, he doesn't like playing it."

"What a coincidence."

"That's why it's a deal. So you have to play against me. It doesn't matter if you like it."

"Alright, fine. Deal."

I internally cackled. He never said how many times I had to play.

I thought about deliberately losing quickly, so I could get it over with, but I already felt bad for skimping out on my end of the deal based on a technicality and I was pretty sure he'd realize I was losing on purpose anyway. Ok, I guess it was time to get serious then.

I was proud to say I made a three-year-old almost cry again.

This was not gonna last long. I knew this pattern before, having had younger brothers in my previous life. This traumatic moment would kickstart a training montage that would end with me never being able to beat him again. I was going to take advantage of this while I still could.

I browsed a bookcase and pulled out an exciting looking text. I shoved it in Shikamaru's face. "Shika, what's this one about?"