-Shikamaru-

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Shikamaru eyed the trio in the middle of the playground warily. Normally, he wouldn't be bothered to pay attention to the world when he would be napping or cloud watching right now, but the scrutiny is certainly justified right now. Naruto skipped out on class (as usual), but showed up at recess to promptly drag his two friends to the middle of the playground with a deck of cards. Anyone would be suspicious that Naruto, of all people, wanted to play cards, and it's just common sense to be generally wary of Naruto. Shikamaru's pretty sure that Naruto actively encourages and revels in that idea, which just makes it even more concerning that he's here for such a seemingly innocent reason as playing a game with his friends.

"MAO!"

Naruto shrieks in victory and cackles gleefully as Sasuke gives him the stink eye and Hinata looks away nervously. What game even is that? Shikamaru's never heard of a game that has you call out "mao" when you win. Usually he doesn't even bother with most games (outside of Shogi), but now the stupid troublemaker has gotten Shikamaru curious. He ambles over lazily as Naruto wastes no time "persuading" his friends into another round. Unfortunately, Naruto notices Shikamaru walking over and deals him in without even asking if Shikamaru wants to play. Shikamaru eyes his pile of cards and sits down with a resigned sigh. Even more annoyingly, the two cursed fanclubs seem to realize that Naruto might deal them in if they approach, and they end up dragging most of the class into the game. Ugh.

Everyone who speaks up for any reason, even just to ask about the rules of the game, is immediately penalized by getting another card. Or maybe that's a good thing? Naruto still won't explain the rules. No one really has a clue what's going on.

Although, it's fairly easy to figure out the rules just by watching Naruto play and seeing how he penalizes people for making wrong moves. The problem is that Naruto adds a new rule every time he wins a round. Actually, that's probably the main draw of this game. Huh. Shikamaru can see some merit to using a game like this to teach observational and memory skills, although it's somewhat limited in the actual experience it can give. Either way, it's an interesting premise. Plus, it's awakened Shikamaru's usually hidden competitive streak.

Shikamaru yawns and lays down his card.

"Mao."

Naruto gawks for a second, then grins viciously at Shikamaru.

The game is on.

The two of them practically leave everyone else in the dust, making new rules left and right as they win round after round. Some people are observant enough to catch on, but as most of this game consists of deranged fangirls, and Sasuke left to bring Hinata (who had fainted halfway through when Naruto flashed her a bright grin. The brat totally knew what he was doing.) to the nurse's office, so it was pretty much just a match between Naruto and Shikamaru. The recess bell rang and the teachers started to usher kids back inside, but Naruto was completely undeterred. He grabbed Shikamaru's arm, gathered up the cards, and promptly pulled on his weird red chakra to launch the two of them across the village.

To be honest, Shikamaru kind of expected worse. They continued their game without incident once they found a secluded spot. Kiba and Chouji even found them later in the day and joined it, although they had some difficulty keeping up with the myriad of new rules that Naruto and Shikamaru had added. While this game was no Shogi match, it presented a whole new angle to psychoanalyze an opponent through the rules they add and the way they play that Shikamaru actually enjoyed quite a bit.

Naruto showed up at the playground to play again the next day.

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-Iruka-

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Iruka knew he was rather unlucky. Naruto would target his favorites more often when he was playful (the ANBU were definitely some of his favorites), and he'd target others more when he was vindictive. But he was playful more often than not, so his favorites tended to be the targets of his pranks fairly often. Iruka considered it both a blessing and a curse, as it made him relatively popular with other people (who were very grateful that he took more pranks than most) and brought him friendship with the most lively student he'd ever had the pleasure of teaching. But there were limits to how much he could take before wondering what god he'd angered to bring this torment upon himself.

Two days in a row of Naruto showing up at recess to rally the fangirls and trounce everyone at some card game called Mao? Iruka was questioning how he ended up the butt of the universe's unfortunate joke and had to watch both recesses.

Shikamaru and Naruto were both really going at it, but as the game wore on Iruka realized that the other students were actually catching on. Perhaps all that training in observational skills was finally starting to pay off? Either way, Naruto's unfair advantage of being the only one who knew the rules was rapidly dwindling. In fact, a few students were taking a sort of morbid pleasure in bullying him as much as possible in his own game. It was few and far between that someone beat out both Naruto and Shikamaru, but every time they'd add a very unfortunate rule that applied only to Naruto.

Iruka is supposed to stop bullying, but this one's probably very well-deserved at this point. He can turn a blind eye, just this once.

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A/N - a beautiful game, where the only true rule is that you don't tell anyone the rules. Therefore, I will not explain the rules because that violates the rules. You can probably find all kinds of variations of the base rules online, though. It gets absolutely chaotic pretty fast, especially with a large group. Totally the kind of game that Naruto would absolutely love.

Also, I revisited this chapter as a reference for the next one and realized that I totally forgot to fix the formatting. Welp. That's kinda embarrassing. Moving on to more important things: I skipped ahead just a bit. Naruto's nine, as of just before the Turkey Day chapter.