Shikamaru Vs. the Appeal to Tradition (Bandwagon Fallacy)

Shikamaru snuck into the village of Konoha's Ninja Academy building where the files room was located the day before the teams were going to be picked. The guard on duty looked board out of his mind, and he'd known so little about modern technology that Shikamaru had lured him away from his post with nothing but a green laser pointer.

He'd even heard the guard mumbling something about "Green Light Ninja Technique" on his way chasing the thing into the distance. Shikamaru had tied the light to the back of a deer from his hiding place in the forest, so that should keep the guard busy for a while.

When he reached the files room, he took a deep breath. He could practically smell the choking dust from here. Did they just teleport files in and out of there with some Technique he hadn't heard of?

He looked around carefully to make sure that no one was watching, and then put his hand on the door.

Wait, he thought. How do I know it's not booby-trapped? Or that there isn't some detection, either chakra-based or mechanical?

"Oh you can go right in," a voice behind him said. Shikamaru nearly jumped out of his skin. He turned around, ready to run for it if he saw the guard there, but no-

It was just Kabuto. He was around 19, making him a full 7 years older than Shikamaru. Kabuto had white hair and big round glasses. His ear had a gadget on it, and his wrist had gadgets on it as well.

Instead of indicating how much Kabuto had gotten the drop on him, Shikamaru put his hands in his pockets, acting nonplussed.

"No traps?" He said, and Kabuto shook his head.

"Good, it would've been a real pain in the ass to find a way around them," Shikamaru said, sliding open the door. He immediately put a hand over his mouth as the cloud of dust billowed out, and Kabuto followed suit.

"Changing anything in the files is pointless you know," Kabuto said as Shikamaru made his way into the room.

"Why's that?" Shikamaru asked. He was still floored that Konoha was still using paper files and filing cabinets for most of their official documents. It was amazing that they even had computers here at all, really.

"They already talked about it, earlier today. Really, you should've acted earlier if you wanted a different team result," Kabuto said, matter of fact. "Why didn't you, anyway?"

"Too lazy," Shikamaru said. He headed for the cabinet marked "New Team Files," and marveled at how it wasn't even locked.

He found the tab for his graduating class, and dumped the files out on a dusty table between the cabinets.

"Why are you even here?" Shikamaru asked Kabuto as he flipped through the files, frowning at the pairings. "I thought you were at Fire University, taking your science and psychology classes today?"

"I skipped out early," Kabuto said. "I already knew all of the material in those beginner courses, naturally." He smiled, adjusted his glasses, and gestured a thumb at the door.

"You told me you had an idea about something involving the teams, so I figured I'd come by and help. I'll just wait outside and be your lookout in case the guard comes back."

Shikamaru thought about saying something, but he was far too lazy and then Kabuto was gone, sliding the door behind him.

Really he was going about laziness all the wrong way anyway. That's what Shikamaru had decided last time he'd talked to Kabuto as their impending team assignment loomed. He tried to sit around and be lazy, read interesting stuff, play games, look at the sky, but no matter how lazy he tried to be, people kept expecting him to do stuff, like all the time.

The laziest people find the most efficient way to do things, they don't just do nothing, because then they have to end up being bothered into doing things all the time anyway, Shikamaru thought.

It was during this thought he'd had, while sitting on a hilltop watching clouds with Choji, that he came up with his Big Idea. It really wasn't that big, really, and he'd had no idea whether it would even work or not. But he suspected that it would at least partially work, and if it did, they would at least be able to get soda and chips from their house a lot without having to always get up and go get them.

And really, that would be a good enough reason to try it, even if I don't end up with god-like power without having to expend a comparable amount of effort to get it, Shikamaru thought.

He stared at the groups of Ninja Academy graduates he was most familiar with from his class, now paired in groups of three. Now that they'd graduated, they were the lowest rank of Ninja: Genin. Also known as a field scout.

The groups of three new Genin were assigned to a Jonin, which were one of the highest ranked Ninjas besides the Hokage. Shikamaru immediately noticed something strange about the groupings though.

Why are they setting it up so there's exactly one girl in every group? Sure, if there's a shortage of girls signing up to be ninjas (kunoichi) then there will be less per group, but having exactly one per group presupposes that a girl shinobi should always occupy the same or similar roles in the group. So really, by messing up that dynamic, he was doing all of them a favor.

He wrote down everyone's names on spare cards, and set them up just like they were in the files. Then he did the first, crucial group change, switching two names from one group with the cards that had Choji's and his own name on them, along with the original Jonin assigned to the group.

Of course, he could hear his father's objection, that he was breaking up the Ino-Shika-Cho trio. Shikamaru guessed it was kind of neat that it spelled out a demon's name-although that was honestly kind of creepy too.

Besides, he wasn't changing it that much, and everyone would benefit.

Even Ino. If he'd told her what he was planning, Shikamaru was sure she'd be in favor of it.

I'm not breaking up the bonds of our parents, he thought. I'm simply adding more.

Picking up the files, Shikamaru dumped them back in the filing cabinet they came from haphazardly, and began to shut the drawers. Then he sighed, and was unlazy enough to fix them so it was slightly less obvious he had broken in.

He closed the drawer and scooped up the cards, grabbing a few rubber bands from his pockets in order to secure each new three man team together. He'd only made one or two switches, so he wasn't affecting every student in the class, which was good, since it was going to be hard enough to figure out a way to get their teacher, Iruka, to assign these teams as it was.

Shikamaru slid open the door to find Kabuto standing right in front of him, light shining off his glasses. Kabuto backed up before Shikamaru could react to his sudden closeness though.

"Have you decided what you want?" Kabuto asked, adjusting his glasses so Shikamaru could now see his intense gaze.

"Yeah," Shikamaru said. "But I still have no idea how to convince Iruka to do this instead of what they were going to do. I can't just rearrange the files, since it's not like he and whoever else helped him decide would just forget what they'd done previously."

Kabuto nodded reasonably at this.

"Plus they'd knew someone had changed them, and that'd be a real pain in the ass to deal with," Shikamaru said.

Kabuto was quite for a few seconds. Finally, without preamble, he said-

"Tell me on a scale of 1 to 10 how good your idea is," Kabuto said. "With 10 being an idea so game changing that Konoha would be able to use it to conquer the other Ninja villages combined."

Shikamaru said, "I'm tempting to say "11," but breaking your scale and inventing a new one would be way too much of a pain in the ass," He said.

Kabuto lifted an eyebrow.

"Troublesome," Shikamaru said in clarification.

Kabuto nodded. "Ah."

Shikamaru sighed again as they made their way quietly out of the building.

"And anyway, that would be too high, that is, to put it more simply, that would be the plan's potential. In its current form, it could be anywhere from 1 to 10 in magnitude, depending entirely on what series of events follows from the initial plan."

"Interesting," Kabuto said as they walked. "And why is there so much variation?"

"Because the plan is a non-traditional way to gather information, test hypotheses and learn exponentially more rapidly than what is normally possible. It's based on a rumor I heard recently."

"What rumor?" Kabuto asked.

Shikamaru told him the rumor, and how he'd used it to create his plan.

"Now that is interesting,"Kabuto said. "And much more interesting things would be to follow if you're right. I can confirm the rumor as accurate, by the way," Kabuto said.

"Is that right?" Shikamaru said. "Who would've thought? I guess I can understand why they would hide it all from us."

They reached a fork in the road, and Kabuto stopped. It was a cool night, and the moonlight filtered down through the trees, making Kabuto look dotted with glowing white specks. The light bounced off his glasses at their current angle, making them dazzle a bit to Shikamaru's eyes.

Finally, he held out his hand.

"I think your plan is worth what it will take to start off, and I know some people who can make it happen."

Shikamaru laughed with relief.

"Great, I really wasn't looking forward to figuring out how I was going to do it myself," He said, putting the cards in Kabuto's hand.

He made a helpless gesture with his hands, stretching them wide.

"To be honest, it was probably going to be way too much trouble, I'd probably have to just "give up" in the end."

"Leave it to me," Kabuto said with a mysterious smile. And with that, he moved away from the dazzling moonlight and into the darkness.

Note-Again, this is still pretty raw with only minor editing. For now I'm just trying to blaze ahead a bit. Also, I'm trying to write it in a way to be a bit more accessible to people brand new to Naruto, in case that happens, or people who are just really rusty with all of the world plot and lingo.

If you want more fiction in the meantime, try-reality-zero website