Shikamaru scrambled out of his hiding place, face planting in the grass next to the forest as he did. The door to his hollowed out fake-rock had been surprisingly difficult to open. Just as Kakashi was taking a breath he would then let out to fry everything, Shikamaru ran sprinting across the tree line and into the open field just outside of the fog's reach, waving his hands dramatically.

"Wait! Hold on, stop! Battle Test over!"

Kakashi regarded Shikamaru in confusion as he held back on the fire technique, letting a little spurt of fire leak around the corners of his mouth instead of filling the whole foggy field with it.

He mashed at the off buttons for the pile of remote controls in his arms to turn everything off. The music cut out immediately. Some of the remotes were radio-based and wireless, but a lot of them were to machines that were so old that he'd had to literally bury wires in the ground with shovels to hide them.

Fortunately, Choji was a rock star at making holes in stuff, otherwise Shikamaru probably would've given up after about 5 minutes. Every once in a while a ninja had wandered by that was willing to help with a few shovelfuls too simply because they wanted Shikamaru to tell them what the hell he was doing.

Curiosity was a wonderful thing.

Now that he was running toward Kakashi with these things in his hand, a lot of the wires were ripping up the dirt in long lines leading back to where they were hidden.

Woops, Shikamaru thought.

"Ah," Kakashi said, watching the lines of wire that were now visible as the fog started dissipating. "Thought so. I noticed the displaced earth earlier. What manner of traps are those, though? And why do you think the battle is over?" Kakashi alertly looked from side to side, as if expecting a new coup de grace at any second.

Shikamaru noticed that Naruto was just pulling himself up out of the water at this point so he headed in that direction quickly.

"Where are you going?" Kakashi asked.

"I'll be right back, Kakashi-sensei," He said. He had to make this official before Kakashi decided to take it back somehow, or else ruined the moment in some other way. This moment right here was half the point after all.

Naruto was shaking off the water and looking around the dissipating fog and torn up training grounds with confusion.

"Number one most confusing Ninja, Shikamaru," Kakashi was saying as Shikamaru sped away from him.

"What happened? " Naruto asked. He looked from where Kakashi was perched on a tree, watching Shikamaru run away, to the approaching Shikamaru himself.

"You didn't win yet, did you? Because I'm just getting-"

"It was a tie," Shikamaru said emphatically.

He then tossed Shikamaru one of the two bells he'd covered in tissue paper in his pouch so they wouldn't ring.

It rang out now though, and Kakashi's mouth dropping open was visible even from back here, even though his blue mask.

Naruto grabbed the bell out of the air instinctively.

"What?" he asked again. "How? Why a tie? We should give it back to Kakashi! I can do it on my own, I don't need you!"

"Well I needed you to do it," Shikamaru said emphatically, holding up his hand with the other bell in it and stepping in front of Naruto when he went to throw the bell back.

"You did? How?"

"You helped me trick Kakashi by making all of those clones," Shikamaru said matter-of-factly.

"But you didn't even tell me you were going to do that!" Naruto said.

"Of course not," Shikamaru returned. "I had to prove to you that I could make use of your incredible power, even to trick someone as much of a genius as Kakashi."

Naruto looked between Shikamaru and Kakashi, and back to the bell in Shikamaru's hand with a growing kind of disbelief.

Kakashi leapt down from his tree as the fog continued clearing. He put his hands in his pocket and walked over to where Choji was laying on the ground amidst a large wooden plank with handles on the back that had been shattered into pieces.

The teacher focused his red Sharingan eye on one of the planks covering Choji.

"I can see his chakra beyond the plank. It's thin enough to allow my Sharingan to see through it but thick enough to block light. But why-"

Just then, a bit of a breeze came in from the lake, and the rest of the fog was blown away, revealing Shikamaru's ploy.

"I see," Kakashi said, his eyes darting from all of the film projectors buried in the dirt throughout the field, all close to the epicenter of a series of fog machines. Many of them looked ancient and barely functional with rust on them.

Shikamaru idly pressed one of the buttons, and an image of himself, reaching out as if to grab a bell, suddenly leapt onto the tree where Kakashi had been previously. He played with a joystick and a motorized base made the image move from side to side across the tree.

"You used Naruto's real physical clones and your own illusionary clone to set me up," Kakashi said.

"Please don't burn me with fire," Shikamaru said, holding up his hands in surrender. "I knew I had no chance of beating you in a fight, teacher. My goal was always just to separate you from the bells."

Kakashi looked around the field in disbelief once more, taking it all in.

"You have a bias in your thinking, sensei," Shikamaru said. "I simply encouraged it by having you fight Naruto first, and showing you my clone as well. It's called Appeal to Tradition. Many ninja in this village got used to thinking of ninja tools like shuriken or kunai as the only things ninja can use in war. Ninjutsu, Genjutsu, and Taijutsu are all like that too. They are for war, and things like video projectors and fog machines are only toys for civilians. It's a gap in thinking you didn't even realize you had. By starting out the fight with clones, I was encouraging you to keep thinking that way, namely that the images I was showing you were some kind of Ninjutsu you hadn't seen before."

"Instead of just a projector image," Kakashi echoed, looking at the projectors.

"And the fog and the boom box-" Shikamaru began.

"Distractions," Kakashi finished for him. "I knew they likely were, but I thought it was to cover some other ninja technique you were hiding and not to cover the loud sound of the projectors and fog machines running."

Shikamaru flicked on a projector again and In image of him appeared unconvincingly flat on one of the pieces of wood that Shikamaru picked up off of Choji and held up in front of it.

"The fog covered for the fact that the images don't look real since I expected to only barely see them deep in the fog anyway, even with the Sharingan."

"If it wasn't for Appeal to Tradition-" Shikamaru began.

"I would've seen through all of it in seconds," Kakashi said.

"If you don't train specifically to pay attention to what bad ideas are passed down to you from your superiors or society, you often won't notice them at all," Shikamaru said.

"But when did you-" Kakashi began, looking over at the bells again.

Shikamaru pointed over to the fake rock that now was obviously hollow since it was now wide open. There were little holes all around it for seeing, and a few ont e sides and front where a hand could fit out.

On the ground in front was a wire with a hook at the end.

Instantly, Kakashi's gaze turned to Choji who was still lying on the ground smiling.

"You tricked me into thinking that Choji wasn't going to participate in the fight by letting me hear your bet with Naruto," Kakashi said. "Then you set me up into making me think that Choji wasn't worth paying attention to because he was just a bunshin like the one you made initially, and not a mysterious clone like the video projector images."

"Enough for me to get close," Choji said, grinning.

"Good job by the way Choji, that was brilliant."

"He got just close enough to land a glancing blow and hit me intothat rock," Kakshi turned again to look at the fake hollow rock.

"Same principle as a pickpocket uses," Shikamaru said. "While you were being knocked into the rock, you couldn't feel me yanking the bells off with the wire," He said.

"Where did you even get all of this stuff?" Kakashi said.

"On loan from Konoha store room," Shikamaru said. "So, it would be kind of good if youd idn't burn it all since it would have to come from my pocket," Shikamru said, putting a hand over one shoulder and scratching his back nervously.

"They gave you all of this?" Kakashi said.

"Most of it has been in mothballs for decades," Shikamaru said. "Fire University sends over extra tech they don't need any more every once in a while along with the other support the Fire Nation gives Konoha," He said. "As I said, Appeal to Tradition means that they dump it straight into the store room and forget about it, because why would ninjas ever need non-ninja stuff?"

"Huh," Kakashi said.

He looked down at Choji.

"And you're OK with this, being tied to a tree without lunch? They already have both bells. Why didn't you try to get one?"

"No problem!" Choji said.

Kakashi sniffed at the air.

"Is that, Korean barbecue I smell?" Kakashi asked, incredulous.

"No!" Choji said unconvincingly.

Meanwhile, Shikamaruw as talking to Naruto.

"So you think you're tougher than me?" Naruto said, throwing his bell on the ground. "Hah!"

"Of course not," Shikamaru said, holding his hands up. "Ask Choji, I'm the worst at hand to hand ever. I'm just good at figuring out how to use stuff no one else looks twice at. Like you're abilities."

"My abilities?" Naruto asked.

"You have no idea how powerful I can make you, if you listen to what I say.," He pointed at the bells. "Look what you and I did even when we weren't working together. We beat Kakashi!"

"If we did work together…"

"Hmmm," Naruto said. "You could show that to me too, what I'm missing just like you showed Kakashi what he was missing?"

"I'll help you breakout all the stop," Shikamaru said, giving the thumbs up sign.

Naruto rested his chin in his hand, thinking about it.

Kakashi and Choji began walking over to where Naruto and Shikamaru were at the edge of the lake.

Kakashi pointed a finger accusingly at Shikamaru, holding his other hand in a fire seal.

"You broke the rules! You told Choji to eat lunch even though I expressly told you not to!" Kakashi said. "I should fail all of you."

"A ninja needs to see underneath the underneath, sensei," Shikamaru said. "How did that go again, 'A ninja who breaks the rules is trash, but a ninja that doesn't look out for his comrades is worse than trash.'"

Kakashi sighed.

"I probably shouldn't give that same speech to 20 groups of people and expect it to not eventually get out what I'm doing," He said sheepishly.

"Probably not," Shikamaru agreed.

"But we showed that we could work together to accomplish a common goal," Shikamaru said, pressing on. "Believe me, without Naruto and Choji, we would've had no chance of pulling this off at all. And we showed that we valued each other over passing."

"Only because you knew what I valued," Kakashi said. "You found a way to get both, you didn't really value one over the other."

"You could still fail us," Shikamaru said, spreading his hands. "We didn't just obey your orders like the other students did, we thought for ourselves."

Kakashi sighed again, hanging his head. "Alright you have a point. You pass," He said.

Naruto was brought out of his reverie.

"we pass? Yeah!" He jumped up, becoming instantly exultant. Then he looked over at Shikamaru.

"Ok Shikamaru, I will let you make me all powerful," He said.

Minion acquired? Shikamaru thought.

"I know your type," Kakashi said, giving Shikamaru a long look. "Don't get cocky."

"Look at Naruto," Shikamru mouthed to Kakashi.

"Alright, team 7, we beat Kakashi!" Naruto was saying, some of his painful insecurity ebbing away.

Kakashi didn't look especially mollified though.

With Naruto's many multiple extra clones, they were able to clean up and return all of the equipment back to the storage room after saying goodbye to Kakashi.

"I'll see you all for our first mission tomorrow," Kakashi said.

After profuselt thanking Naruto for his help and fantasizing a bit about how those abilities were going to make for some amazing new things, Shikamaru was left alone with Kabuto as they labored to get all the equipment back in the proper shelf.

"Have you noticed that the Uchiha seem kind of weird lately?" Shikamaru asked. His brain had been mulling that point over for a while.

"Hmm? Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. It's just-didn't they have a failed coup like 10 years ago or whatever? What happened after that?"

"You're not worried are you?" Kabuto said, laughing easily. "OK. Well, if it'll make you feel better I'll tell you. This isn't common knowledge, but after the failed coup attempt, the Uchiha were forced to use one of their members to create something they call the "Capitulation Curse. Basically, it's an oath of fealty to the village. Anyone trying to do anything against the village that's under the Sharingan Capitulation Curse will instead act in its interests before even realizing what they're doing."

"OK," Shikamaru said. "You've tested this, of course?"

"Test it for yourself," Kabuto suggested as they walked together away from the storage building. Shikamaru thanked Kabuto as their paths went in different directions and they bade each other goodbye.

He wandered close to the Uchiha grounds again, and saw one with the unmistakable eyes walking in the other direction finally after minutes of walking.

Shikamaru offered him a ridiculous amount of Ryo if he would just say "Konoha sucks."

"Konoha…doesn't suck that much actually," The young Uchiha stammered out. He then looked embarrassed and ran off.

He didn't seem like he even knew what was happening, Shikamaru thought. As if all new Uchiha are hit with the curse without even being told about it.

Well, OK. But the Uchiha were still acting weird. Shikamaru never remembered so much preaching from people like Sasuke before. So what did that mean? If the Uchiha weren't behind this new behavior, then who was?

It's possible I made Naruto a bit too annoying. This is still a little raw-again, hopefully, I'll come back to it. That ends this arc. I may need to do a little thinking before the next if it's deemed worthy enough to keep going.

Thanks for reading and stuff.

More stuff at reality-zero dawt cawm as always.