It was a wonder that Shikamaru could fall asleep at all the previous night, considering that last meeting with Kabuto kept replaying in his mind over and over.

'Leave it to me,' he had said. What could he possibly have meant? Who on earth could he possibly know that was high up enough to influence policy on the selection of teams?

Shikamaru sighed for a long moment as he stretched and got out of bed. I was all too troublesome to worry about. He'd have to just wait and see what happened at class.

On the way to class, Shikamaru decided to take a more scenic route, which took him nearby the massive Uchiha clan property boundaries. He walked along a path on the edge of the forest, right next to the high fence marking the edges of the territory.

Beneath him, some distance away, there was a lake with a dock going out into the middle of it. Shikamaru saw that hotshot in their class, Sasuke Uchiha, fill the lake with fire from where he stood on the dock.

Watching were a whole host of other Uchiha sitting in chairs and clapping. Some of them looked in Shikamaru's direction as he walked along the path and he distinctly saw some of them saying the word Gaijin or "foreigner", their eyes suspicious of him as moved along.

Shikamaru was taken aback.

Since when am I a foreigner in my own village? He thought. Something weird was going on with that clan. He'd have to make a note to ask Kabuto about it, but he was already running late. Shikamaru shook off the encounter and hurried through the forest to class where the post-graduation team assignment would occur.

He was burning with curiosity about what Kabuto was cooking up. That didn't mean that Shikamaru couldn't help but take one last furtive glance at the gathering of Uchiha with their suspicious eyes, however, even as he made his way down the path and out of the forest.

Shikamaru took his seat with Choji towards the back of the class right as it began. He had passed Kabuto in the hallway on his hurried walk-run through the building. Shikamaru had been so surprised by the encounter, however, that he hadn't actually said anything. What was Kabuto doing in the Academy building?

Kabuto had merely smiled at him and continued along his way, making Shikamaru's mind race. What had he been up to? What had he done to enact Shikamaru's changes? Maybe all of this had been a bad idea.

He gave a deep sigh and slumped in his chair. It was all getting to be a pain in the ass to think about.

Iruka, their teacher, went through the usual speech about graduation and being proud and blah blah blah. Shikamaru had trouble paying attention, to be honest. He wished he could just skip to the good part coming up at the end of all of this.

At one point, Iruka said he was going to go get the files that had the teams in them and left the room. Seriously, it was only a matter of seconds between the door slamming and Sasuke being quickly surrounded by half of everyone in the class.

He quickly launched into a speech about how great the Uchiha clan was. About what a great future was coming because of the Uchiha, and how you too could be a part of it if you were lucky enough to be selected as someone the Uchiha would find useful, basically.

"Well that's just a little creepy," Shikamaru said to Choji.

Choji stopped eating something from a paper bag long enough to look at the scene Shikamaru was pointing at.

"Why is he doing that? " Choji asked.

"Good question," Shikamaru said. He was going to go back to looking out the window when Sasuke turned sharply in that direction, beating him to it.

"What's wrong, Sasuke?" a bunch of girls all asked him at once. After a while, he shook his head.

"Nothing," He said. "As I was saying-" he continued on with the propaganda again. Shikamaru looked out the window curiously. What was out there? Had Sasuke seen something? Was it related to whatever plan Kabuto had? Or to why Kabuto had been in the building in the first place?

Just then, Iruka walked in carrying the files Shikamaru had looked at earlier.

Everyone instantly moved back into their seats and quieted down. That was a phenomenon born out of being glared at by Iruka one too many times.

Shikamaru only knew all of this from the sounds coming from the room of course, since he was still looking out the window. It was a nice day outside, he really wished he could go there instead of listening to more lectures before Iruka finally told them the teams.

Who even knew how much longer he was going to go on before-

"OK people," Iruka said. "It seems like the teams are-"

Shikamaru was about to snap his attention back to Iruka in anticipation of seeing whether Kabuto had gotten the team groupings Shikamaru had requested, when he saw movement in the vegetation outside the building.

Had that grass been that tall before? And also-

A glint of light! What was that?

Iruka frowned as he noticed the same light that Shikamaru had and stopped what he was doing, looking off in the same direction.

Shikamaru strained his eyes to try to see what was going on in that one patch of grass and then-

He suddenly felt woozy as he noticed that someone was hiding under some kind of Genjutsu there- an illusion. And that person had strange eyes- red with three curved teardrop shaped black spots in it.

The world swirled into washed out colors around him and he heard a dead sounding voice saying-

This was not intended for you, but as you saw my eyes I am having difficulty keeping you out of it. Please be more cautious in the future.

There were faint emotions pushing in at Shikamaru from all angles, tugging at him to do this or that, but he never got a sense of what he was supposed to do because they were all muted, and they all popped like bubbles before he knew what they meant.

And just like that, before he knew it, someone was shaking him. It was Choji.

"Shikamaru, come on, class is over," He was saying. Shikamaru blinked in confusion and looked around. What had happened? He turned sharply towards the window, but he didn't see those red eyes there, or even the distortion that had been there before.

"What just happened?" Shikamaru said, feeling pretty lame the second the words left his mouth.

"You stared into space like a zombie during class, even when the names were announced," Choji explained cheerfully.

The crushing need to hear what teams had been announced filled Shikamaru's brain, but strangely, he cared about something else even more.

"What happened to Iruka?" He asked. "What was he like, what did he do right before and during announcing the names?"

Choji took some more Korean barbeque out of his pack and answered Shikamaru in between mouthfuls.

"Huh? You mean you weren't even paying attention to that part Shikamaru? Wow, you were pretty zoned out huh?"

He nodded and remained quiet.

"OK, well I was eating my first Korean barbeque portion when Iruka came back in. And you were staring out that window, and then Iruka started doing that too."

Shikamaru leaned forward a bit despite his best efforts to slouch.

"And then?" he asked.

"Oh, then he got real weird," Choji said matter-of-factly, taking a big bite. "He was really like totally gone. Some students had to say his name like 5 times before he turned back to the room. And then-"

Choji said, pausing to swallow his bite, "He got even weirder. He started looking down at the files and folders he was holding and like mumbling to himself."

"What was he saying?" Shikamaru asked.

"It was like he was all conflicted or something," Choji said lightly. "He started saying that Naruto was on a team with Sasuke and Sakura," Choji began.

"Bet Naruto liked that," Shikamaru said with a smile. "The Sakura part," Choji agreed. "Not so much the Sasuke part."

Shikamaru snorted at that, but made a note of it. Could be useful.

"Naruto was complaining that he had to be on a team with such a loser as Sasuke, and then Iruka started saying that Sasuke was paired with him because he was best in the class and Naruto was the worst, but-"

"But?" Shikamaru asked, doing his best parrot impersonation.

Choji frowned, looking confused.

He threw up his hands, waving his barbeque around in the process. His words were echoing in the empty classroom now, giving them a surreal additional sense of import.

"I don't know Shikamaru, he was all mumbling something about how what he just said wasn't really true anymore, grades or no grades, because Naruto had learned some really high level technique."

"That's a good point, actually," Shikamaru said.

"Naruto? Really? What technique?"

Shikamaru waved his hands. "Nevermind, not important. What happened next?"

"Well, everyone asked what he meant, and he didn't answer them, just said that he'd thought it over and was making some changes."

Shikamaru really wanted to ask what the teams were then, but he was still more curious about other things. Strange, really.

"He didn't say anything else about why he'd changed his mind?" Shikamaru asked.

"Nope," Choji said. "He did get into a really loud argument with some other people out in the hall afterwards though, come to think of it," Choji said, looking thoughtful.

"They didn't seem too happy that he had changed all of the teams around, but Iruka-sensei was defending Naruto like crazy, said that he didn't count as bottom rung anymore so the teams should reflect that. I don't think he was supposed to tell us about the forbidden technique either.

Shikamaru nodded, taking it all in.

What he had seen, there was no doubt-it was a sharingan. Shkamaru had no idea that Kabuto had connections like that. Who's sharingan had it been?

It looked like he used some kind of illusion on Iruka, and I just got sucked into it. Shikamaru thought. But whatever it was, it was subtle. From what Choji said it sounds like the Sharingan user just amplified Iruka's own pride for Naruto just enough to make him sufficiently bold to make the changes. Clearly, whoever he is, he doesn't want his involvement known. That's certainly interesting.

"So the teams are," Choji was saying. Shikamaru snapped his attention back into the present. "You, me and Naruto," Choji said. Shikamaru let out an inward sigh. Wouldn't due to let his minion see that his plan had succeeded.

Not a minion, Shikamaru chided himself. You read too many supervillain novels. Still, his first idea had actually worked, thanks to Kabuto, although the implications of that help were already starting to really worry Shikamaru.

"What are the other teams?" He asked faintly, his mind already thinking to his next several moves.

"Shino, Sasuke and Ino," Choji said, looking up and saying "uhhh" a lot while he tried to remember. "Right, and Sakura, Kiba and Hinata. "

"Interesting," Shikamaru said, hoping he hadn't given anything away. He suspected, without even ever intending to, that he had already started playing a much more dangerous game than he had intended.

"What does it all mean, SHikamaru?" Choji asked him

"It means I'm going to need your help with something, and we're going to have to move pretty fast to make it work," He said.

Choji nodded and smiled.

"OK!" He said cheerfully.