Third Person POV
The new children started at a strange point in the semester. They were smaller than everyone else and Tadasuke wasn't quite sure what to make of them. He knew who the blonde brat was, more or less. He knew that he was supposed to stay away from him. No one had apparently told the girl that, but when one of the girls in the class had tried to help her it was met with eyes like a pit that saw straight to hell and killing intent that did not belong to a child.
Tadasuke was able to comfort himself with the thought that they were both demons of some sort. It only made more sense as the days went on and the two settled into classes with them. The instructors didn't help them, either of them, but they still kept up in class. The girl always knew the answer, even if she'd been blatantly staring into space rather than paying attention. Tsubaki-chan whispered the theory once that Asuka was communing with spirits, but this was met with general doubt.
At least, until she yanked Naruto back from troublemaking just before the Chuunin Instructor entered the room. Who else could have warned her but spirits? He kept carefully away from both of them, writing off those who were determined to start fights as a loss. He took note that none of the clan children had even attempted to approach them. They'd known better from the start. Tadasuke is a bit ashamed of how relieved he is when the demons are kept back a year and don't advance with them. A few people mutter about how strange it was that they didn't pass, especially the girl, but it never goes further than muttering.
Shikamaru POV
He'd known that Asuka was smart, for a civvie kid. He'd known she was uncommonly bold for one as well, but he'd put that down to Uzumaki Naruto's influence. Both of those points had to be re-evaluated when one day she sat across from him during their lunch hour. He'd been absently playing a game against a reluctant Chouji, and the Akimichi immediately surrendered so he could watch someone else lose drastically. Except that it wasn't a drastic loss. Oh, she still lost, but it wasn't the landslide it should have been against some civvie kid, too clever or not.
He had to think about some of his moves. She made obvious mistakes, but they were from lack of experience with the game not due to some error in her thought process. But more important than that was that when she lost, she was pleased. Shikamaru knew all too well what it was like to waste away without a challenge. There was a reason Nara tended to stare up at the sky for hours on end, and it wasn't all meditation for shadow reasons.
Asuka continued to put up 3x the amount of fight he would have expected, and it dawned on him that he'd underestimated her. Being in the shadow of someone as loud and bright as Naruto meant that she had been more or less hidden in plain sight, despite her sky-high grades. Shikamaru knew a little something about hiding in shadows, even if he was only on the theory portion of the Nara Hiden.
They continued to play matches during their lunch hour, with Naruto and Sasuke flitting in and out of their orbit, and sometimes she would vanish to drag one or the other of those out of trouble. Chouji visibly had some sort of revelation, but Shikamaru left him to it. He'd bring it up when and if he felt it was relevant. For the time being he basked in having a shogi partner who wasn't his dad, uncle, or cousin.
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Short, but they're omake, that's the point, little bites of behind-the-scenes shit. Not necessarily in order, I'll jump back to earlier times as we get further in and I remember to post shit.
~TimeLordOfPie
