Gargleblasted Application
OOC:
Name: Pi
Are you over 16?: I’m secretly 977… but I traveled back in time to March 2011 to relive my 21st birthday and figured I’d stick around.
Personal LJ: pi90katana
Email: tmntgoddess@yahoo.com
Timezone: Mountain Standard Time
Other contact: AIM: Pi90katana
Characters already in the game: N/A
How did you find us?: ATP, lots of stalking of Naruto characters on dear_mun …
IC:
Character name: Nara Shikamaru
Fandom: Naruto
Timeline: Chapter 515, as the Joint Shinobi Army heads out to war
Age: 16
~*Magical*~ abilities and strengths:
Ninjutsu
In Naruto, ninjutsu are techniques that utilize a person's chakra - the combination of mental and physical energies - and usually require a series of hand seals to help release the chakra so that they can use them.
As a member of the Nara Clan, Shikamaru has been trained to use his clan's secret techniques, all of which are focused on the manipulation of his shadow (the shape of which he can apparently control at will). Thus far, every ninjutsu technique he's been seen using is a clan move. Even so, he shows great ingenuity with them, and has even invented one entirely on his own.
Additionally, all of these jutsu have a time limit (five minutes) on how long Shikamaru can hold them in one go. He can use them again afterwards, but they get progressively weaker each time he does until he's able to recover his chakra. They can also be rendered all but useless with some bad lighting.
Genjutsu
Genjutsu are techniques that manipulate the chakra in the brain to disrupt a person’s five senses in some way or form, effectively casting an illusion. There’s several different kinds. Shikamaru has never used any of them.
Despite this, the databook still ranks him as being above average in skill with this in comparison to the ninja in his age group, surpassed only by Sakura and Sasuke in this. Indeed, Shikamaru does appear to have a knack for recognizing and breaking a genjutsu, as is seen at least twice in the series - first with an A-rank genjutsu during the Chuunin Exam arc, when only he and Sakura managed to release themselves on their own, and second when he was fighting Tayuya, from within a jutsu that made him think his arm was melting off. Yeah. He’s no Uchiha, but the boy has skill. This is likely due to how observant he is; as details are crucial to a genjutsu, being able to spot a change makes it easier to recognize and counter them.
Taijutsu
Taijutsu… yeah, Shikamaru kinda sucks at taijutsu, which is simply put physical combat. Pretty much very girl in the series can outclass him here, something he’s probably aware of but will never admit. But to give him credit, any full-fledged shinobi is trained hard in this before they even graduate. In conjunction with the ridiculous level of speed the average ninja must attain just to survive an encounter with a much more skilled opponent, this probably puts him on par with your more typical martial artists. Can he beat someone with that alone? Unlikely, unless they’re even weaker than he is. But he can keep up, and he’s superb at dodging. And to be fair - his fighting style makes it less necessary. If you’re fighting him, you don’t want to move in closer for an attack, lest you risk making yourself an easier target for his shadows.
General Ninja Skills
Like any ninja in Naruto, Shikamaru can perform several basic skills, like using chakra to walk up trees or on water. As it was also required to graduate from the Academy, he can also use three other techniques: Substitution, which switches a person’s place with another person, or nearby log object, Henge, which can be used to alter the person’s voice and appearance to match that of someone else, and a Clone jutsu, which can create a perfect visual double of the user, though these clones aren’t solid like the Shadow Clones Naruto makes. Shikamaru’s been seen using all of these at least once, but he doesn’t use them often.
Weaponry
What Shikamaru lacks as a physical fighter, he makes up for in his creative use of weapons. He seems to have a particular knack for these - I think the only person who’s seen using weapons more often than he does is Tenten lol, when she’s seen at all, and she’s a weapon’s specialist. He’s shown to have particular skill with projectiles, able to hit his mark even when he’s throwing a weapon from a totally different direction from where he’s standing with his shadow, as seen at least twice in the series.
Shikamaru doesn’t have nearly the arsenal that that Tenten does, and most of the weapons he carries are not suited for close combat, but he still comes prepared. Usually all of the following can be found on his person at any time.
Awesomeness In General
More so than any of his ninja skills, Shikamaru’s most dangerous weapon in his arsenal is his intelligence. His IQ is stated in canon to be over 200; highly analytical, he can create a hundred strategies at his disposal in a minute, and carry them out ten moves in advance. He’s been able to figure out the exact workings of an opponent’s technique and pinpoint the meaning and faults behind them just by watching, and then act accordingly. This makes him a threat no matter how strong his opponent is, as has been noted by the friends and enemies alike - most recently including Uchiha Madara, one of the most over-powered ninjas to exist.
Additionally, he appears to possess an excellent memory, as seen when he figured out the secret behind Tayuya’s musical attacks not by learning the song she was controlling her demons with, but by memorizing the pattern of her fingers’ movements on the flute, or when he brought to mind everything Hidan had said and done in his fight with Asuma in precise detail as just a few prominent examples. Whether this is an indicator that he possesses an eidetic memory or not is unknown, but it’s possible.
Oh, last but not least. TEAMWORK. Shikamaru can easily adapt his plans to work with just about anybody, including people he’s never really fought alongside personally before. So long as he has an idea of what they’re capable of, he’s good to go. His ability to work well in a team is only like, QUADRUPLED when he’s with his old genin cell teammates, Chouji and Ino. Ino-Shika-Cho is like a well-oiled machine - when they’re working together, shit gets done, bro. Their teamwork is flawless, as was recently commented on by some totally unimportant zombie guy in the war.
How would they use their abilities?:
For whatever suits him at the time, really. Which is usually how to get a job done with as little trouble as possible or getting himself and his friends out of a tight spot, as opposed to world domination. He’s a good guy.
Appearance:
Appearance-wise, Shikamaru is very lean. According to the third databook, released back in 2008*, he stands at 170 cm ( 5 ft 7 in ), though his hairstyle probably makes him look taller than he actually is by about a couple inches or so. The way he wears it is easily one of the most distinguishable features about him, as it makes his head look a lot like a pineapple. His hair is black and tied back into a spiky ponytail that sits high on his head; he’s never been seen wearing it down (even when he sleeps, ffff), but it’s obviously fairly long. Shikamaru’s eyes are brown and narrow, and his facial expressions are usually somewhere between bored or annoyed, though it’s not rare to catch him smirking when he’s amused. Like the rest of his team, both of his ears are pierced with studs given to them by their jonin instructor, Asuma. He’s lightly tanned, but his skin tone is still fairer than the likes of Naruto or his father - who, sans age, scarring, and facial hair, he’s the spitting image of.
He’s typically seen wearing the green flak jacket associated with the Konoha-nin. It has a lot of pockets because pockets are awesome. Under that, Shikamaru wears a long-sleeved black shirt, the plate of his forehead protector sewn into the left sleeve, and matching black pants and sandals. He may also be wearing a mesh undershirt beneath that like he did in his genin days, as the netting can be seen past the sleeves, stopping at the wrist. He wears similar mesh around the lower part of his legs. When not in shinobi garb, his clothing is simple - dark, solid-colored long-sleeved shirts and pants. It’s. Basically what he usually wears, just without the flak jacket and weapon holsters.
Have a link.
*approximately eight months or so within the series itself, going by Kurenai’s pregnancy, so he may very well be taller now
Background/Personality:
I’ll just. Split this up to keep myself from going off on a million tangents. I seem to have the inability to summarize anything to save my life. I’M SORRY. ;;
But yes, for sake of your reading - history first as straight as I can tell it, followed by some expansion on big events and their effect on him in the personality below it, along with some character quirks.
Background
Since Shikamaru was too lazy to get his own flashback, most of what we know about his childhood is what we see of cameos he has in other characters’ trips down memory lane, or what we’re told about him. Miraculously, in a world of ninjas where nearly every child has some terrible angst by the age of eight, Shikamaru was instead well adjusted. Born into the Nara Clan, so far he’s the only character who’s been confirmed to have two, living parents present throughout his life - both of whom are also shinobi, though his mother is retired. His father was often busy with work and a bit of a drunkard when he wasn’t, and his mother nagged him relentlessly, but both loved him all the same.
In school, he was shown to be a friendly child. He was nowhere near the top rung of the social ladder, of course, but he never wanted to be. In fact, he seemed content with the opposite, happy to hang out with the other ‘dead-lasts’ (the students with the lowest grades) of his class that no one else would play with besides to bully - Naruto, Kiba, and Chouji. Especially Chouji, who’s been his best and closest friend since they were six because of the kindness Shikamaru showed him.
…of course, this doesn’t mean he was an exemplary figure of good behavior, either. Oh no. Shikamaru hated school, and was more typically found sleeping in class if he wasn’t outright skipping. He graduated the Academy at the bottom of his class, and if it weren’t for Naruto he would’ve been the lowest scoring student period - Kurenai even makes a comment that some of his grades may have been worse. Nevertheless, Shikamaru did graduate, and was placed in Team 10, alongside Yamanaka Ino and his best friend Akimichi Chouji, under Sarutobi Asuma as their jounin instructor.
Ino wasn’t thrilled to be stuck with two dead-lasts, suffice it to say, just as Asuma was disappointed to be stuck with ‘a glutton, a loudmouth, and a slacker’. To get them to do what he wanted, he resorted to bribery - for Shikamaru, the promise of doing something he was actually interested in, such as games of shogi, which Asuma himself taught him how to play. Surprised by just how good he was at these games, Asuma decided to give Shikamaru an IQ test, disguising at as a bunch of puzzles and games so he wouldn’t catch on. It revealed Shikamaru to actually be a genius with an IQ over 200.
After their graduation, we see nothing of Team 10 until the Chuunin Exam arc rolls around. For all their bickering, something had obviously changed between the group. Even in such an early stage as a team and all of their weaknesses aside, Team 10 had the best teamwork of the bunch, and this is largely what got them through the first two stages of the exams. Shikamaru himself did little through these bits - relying on Ino to get him through the written exam, for example.
In the survival exam, he spent most of his time hiding in the bushes with his team, knowing his team was too weak to fight another for their scroll and win. When Ino insists that they can, and that they just have to find guys weaker than they are, Shikamaru points out that the only ones they’d probably have any chance against is Naruto’s team. It’s as they’re arguing over this (as Naruto’s team also included Sasuke) that they stumble across the badly injured Team 7 themselves, fighting against a team from the Sound Village. Rock Lee assisted for a time, but it wasn’t long before it was Sakura fighting alone. They continued to watch this from the bushes, trying to decide whether or not to leave and save their own skin or to help. Shikamaru leaves this decision up to Ino, asking her what she wants to do, since she and Sakura were friends once. When Ino does decide to step in at the last moment, Shikamaru doesn’t hesitate to go with her, even dragging Chouji out with him, making the comment that as men, they couldn’t stand aside while a woman fought for them. He’s quick to make his team bow out of the fight though after Sasuke woke up and things started to get ugly.
Despite the difficulties they had, Team 10 still managed to be one of the seven teams to pass the survival portion of the chuunin exam. Since that still left too many people for the finals, however, a preliminary round had to be held. Shikamaru was matched against Kin on the Sound Village, and had the disadvantage in that she had already seen how his jutsu worked when he’d used it on one of her teammates back in the Forest of Death.
He beat her surprisingly quickly, constricting his shadow enough that she didn’t notice it until he’d captured her, and using it to make herself knock herself unconscious against a wall. The easy victory surprised everyone but Shikamaru’s own team. He spent the rest of the prelims watching the other matches, and ended up being the only member of his team to make it to the final exams, which would take place a month later.
Shikamaru has one brief appearance before the exams themselves begin, visiting Naruto when he was taken to the hospital. He was originally there to visit Chouji, who was admitted for stomach problems, and the two went to give him a fruit basket he couldn’t eat because they’re boys, and boys show their friendship with one another by being jerks. On their way, however, they caught a then still-psychotic Gaara in Lee’s room, and together stopped him from murdering their friend. And then Gai showed up and took care of things and they got the hell out of dodge, because damn that kid was nuts.
After a little more time had passed, the Exam Finals eventually rolled around. Originally, since there was an odd number of final participants, Shikamaru was supposed to have an extra match right off the bat with Dosu. Luckily for him, the guy couldn’t show up to fight on the count of being murdered. Unluckily, Sasuke had yet to show up for his match with Gaara (on the count of being just plain late, instead of dead this time) and since that was the fight everyone in the stadium had come to see, it was postponed and the other matches started earlier, one of which pitted Shikamaru against Temari of Suna.
Before Shikamaru could fully consider the merits of forfeiting, his good buddy Naruto gave him a hand in decided by pushing him over the observing deck and into the arena. Since he was kinda just content to lay where he’d landed, Temari finally had enough and started the match by trying to club him with her fan. Shikamaru dodged and antagonized her some, avoiding her next attack and hiding in the shadow of the trees. There he waited for her to make her next move, musing to himself that while - in his opinion - a man can’t lose to a woman, they shouldn’t hit one either.
The fight that follows is long and drawn out, with the two trying to avoid one another’s attacks while simultaneously creating openings for their own. It was a good match up, on their part, in that both were fighting more with their heads than their jutsus. It’s here that Shikamaru is finally revealed to be a master strategist, each one of his moves merely setting Temari up and into position for him to finally capture her shadow. In the match before theirs, a tunnel was left underground from when Naruto beat Neji. When she wasn’t watching, Shikamaru ran his shadow through that tunnel and out from the other side, connecting his shadow with Temari’s while her back was turned and essentially defeating her.
And then he forefeited. Much to the disgust of his opponent and pretty much everyone watching who’d slowly found themselves interested in the match. He had a good reason, however - he’d used too much chakra fighting her, so he wouldn’t have been able to fight anyone well in the next round. The Third Hokage was impressed by both his tactics and this foresight, though it turned out to be unnecessary anyways. Sound’s attack on Konoha began during Sasuke’s match with Gaara, effectively stopping the Exams before they could be completed anyways.
Sasuke went after Gaara and his siblings (who were allied with Sound and were supposed to play key roles in the attack) as an A-rank genjutsu fell over everyone in the stadium that put them to sleep. Sakura was seemingly the only one of her age group to release herself from the jutsu, and was instructed by her sensei, Kakashi, to break Naruto and Shikamaru out of it and go after Sasuke. Upon going to do just that… she quickly realized that Shikamaru wasn’t really asleep, he’d just been faking. He too had released himself from the genjutsu - he just figured it’d be less troublesome to pretend to be unconscious like everyone else and not get involved. Kakashi’s nin-dog, Pakkun, bit him to help get him a little more motivated and dragged him along for the ride anyways.
Eventually Shikamaru relented and fell into the mission. As they were following after Sasuke and Gaara, however, the group realized they were being tailed by a team of Sound chuunin. Shikamaru pointed out that their best bet would be for someone to stay behind and ambush them, while the rest of the team went on. Of course, he also added that whoever did stay behind would surely die.
Pakkun wasn’t an option, since they were using his nose to track them, so that left the three genin. Both Naruto and Sakura seemed ready to take the job when Shikamaru cut them off, saying that the only person who had a chance of pulling it off successfully was him. His clan’s jutsu was designed to hold back the enemy, after all.
This is Shikamaru’s first major point of development in the series, as even at twelve, he really was prepared to die to give the others time to get ahead. He successfully held the Sound chuunin back, but due to being exhausted from his fight with Temari, he couldn’t do it for long. Had Asuma not shown up in the nick of time, he would have died.
But Asuma did show up, and Shikamaru lived. And not long after Tsunade was appointed the Fifth Hokage, he even got a promotion. Though the chuunin exams could not be completed, the comments of the Third hadn’t been forgotten, and all of the exmainers had agreed with him. Thusly, Shikamaru was the only person out of not just his peers, but 153 participants to make the rank of chuunin that time. Which was awesome, because he was probably the only person there who hadn’t even been interested in the position. Tough luck.
A mere day after this, Shikamaru was given his first command mission. Sasuke (because it’s always Sasuke) had gone off to join Orochimaru, and due to Konoha recovering from Sound’s attacks, so despite the seriousness of the mission there was no one else readily available to send to get him back. Shikamaru was given thirty minutes to organize a team of genin and set out, which stuck him with Chouji, Naruto, Neji, and Kiba and his dog, Akamaru. Before they left, he came up with the best possible formation for them to travel right off the top of his head, and even got to have a Big Important Speech.
Whiiiich was quickly forgotten by the likes of Naruto and Kiba as soon as Jirobo had them trapped in this big, chakra-draining cell when it looked like Shikamaru was willing to throw them under the bus to save his own hide. Fortunately Neji and Chouji could tell he actually had a game plan with that, keeping Jirobo talking while he figured out how to get them out. With the help of everyone but Naruto, they bust out of the dome and the battle resumes, though it nearly ends with them all getting curbstomped again. Ever the well-mannered fellow, Jirobo repeatedly insults and places the blame of this on Shikamaru, having singled him out as the leader. While he doesn’t so much as react to it, it actually pisses Chouji off a lot more, to the point that when the group recognizes that someone would have to stay behind to deal with this guy so the rest could catch up to Sasuke, it’s him that volunteers to handle him, just for insulting his best friend. Shikamaru briefly loses some of his Cool Leader face here at this prospect, but it doesn’t last for long. He shows confidence that Chouji will win and catch up to them and goes on ahead.
One by one, Shikamaru is forced to leave a member of his team behind with an enemy so the rest can go on ahead, until finally it’s he himself that stays to fight to let Naruto go on ahead, leaving the entire squad separated and at their worst advantage. When his opponent, Tayuya, points this out to him, telling him that he might've just gotten his entire squad killed all to save one guy, he confesses that he doesn't think any of them are dead. He says he believes in his friends, and that they aren't the kind of people that would just abandon a comrade like that.
With the pleasantries out of the way, the fight begins. A member of the Sound Four, Tayuya could cast genjutsu with her flute - she could even control three demon summons with it. Shikamaru gives her a good run for her money, outwitting her at every turn by figuring out the nature of her jutsus and setting her up to fall to his own. While he put the best of his strategies to work with her, eventually the battle became one dependent on pure strength and stamina, something Shikamaru was completely outclassed in.
Unexpectedly, right as Tayuya was about to finish him, Temari of all people showed up to save his ass, amusingly reducing Shikamaru to a reverse damsel-in-distress. Temari knocked a forest down on Tayuya, killing her, and then accompanied Shikamaru back to Konoha’s hospital. He waited there as every single member of his team trickled back in, each one of them in far worse, if not critical, condition than him. Both Naruto and Kiba had returned with serious injuries; Neji and Chouji nearly dead.
While waiting outside of the operating rooms (along with his father, Chouji’s father, and Temari), this had Shikamaru briefly deciding that he would quit his career as a shinobi. As he was about to walk away, however, his father spoke up and called him on his cowardice, harshly lecturing him on the facts of life for a ninja and telling him that if he really cared about his friends, he should want to be there to help them someday. It’s a lesson that struck very deeply with Shikamaru, and as it was finally confirmed that all of his teammates were back and would live despite the mission’s failure, he finally broke down crying, with the promise that his next mission would be perfect.
Two years later, it seems as if Shikamaru really took that and his father’s words to heart. In his first appearance after the timeskip, he’s seen escorting Temari (who has since become a jounin and a diplomat) as her guide around Konoha though Naruto suspects they’re on a date. He’d also been working with her over the Chuunin Exams, as he had helped proctor the most recent one.
After Naruto gets back to the village again after rescuing Gaara from the Akatsuki, Shikamaru is again seen briefly when his friend tries to recruit him to fill a missing spot on his team, though he couldn’t because he already had one of his own. He does help Naruto out along with Chouji when Sai sics some ink lions on them however, showing off his Shadow Sewing technique.
And then several chapters later, in a surprising turn of events… Shikamaru actually gets to be the star of a story arc for a while. Yes, while Naruto was off doing things away from the village in the first several storylines of Shippuden, apparently there was a group of ninja back in Konoha training to be part of a special task force called the Nijū Shōtai. All of Team 10 were members of this group, though Chouji and Ino were in a different platoon than Shikamaru and Asuma.
Their job was to hunt down and bring in (or kill, if live capture was impossible) members of the criminal group known as the Akatsuki should any pass through the Land of Fire. One day, two such members, Hidan and Kakuzu, just happened to be passing through the country when they took a vacation to slaughter a monastery full of monks. One of these monks was a man named Chiriku, who had been a close friend of Asuma’s. They had both at one point been a part of the Twelve Ninja Guardians, serving under the Daimyo before their disbandment, and both had large bounties on their heads for this status. Asuma was understandably pissed to find our Chiriku had been murdered and his body taken upon their arrival at the monastery.
However, it did make it easier to track them down, as to collect the bounty on Chiriku they would have to take his body to a black market exchange point. A four-man platoon was sent to every exchange point within the area and by the magic of plot-no-jutsu, the one that they happened to show up at was the one that Shikamaru’s team (led by Asuma, with two chuunin, Kotetsu and Izumo, included) were staking out. While Kakuzu took care of the money indoors, Hidan decided to wait outside, and the platoon wasted no time in attacking him. Asuma got him into position, Shikamaru captured him and held him in place with the Kage Mane, and Izumo and Kotetsu stabbed him through with sharp pointy things. VICTORY.
Or rather it would’ve been if Hidan wasn’t a freaking immortal. Balls. To make matters worse, Kakuzu showed up the minute they realized this, coming from behind Shikamaru and revealing an impressive ability to smash walls of stone by punching them, though he really wasn’t aiming for that. Shikamaru had to release the Kage Mane to get out of the way, which of course just meant Hidan was able to move again. Now as mentioned before, Asuma also had a bounty on his head. Recognizing him, Kakuzu thought it would be a good idea to kill him and take his bounty as well. These two guys were both ridiculously strong, and with no idea how their abilities worked, taking them on at the same time was gonna suck. But luckily, Hidan was a complete idiot and demanded that Kakuzu stay out of his fight, so they only had to deal with one.
Asuma took the lead in fighting Hidan, ordering Shikamaru to stay back and for Kotetsu and Izumo to guard him while he used the Shadow Sewing technique as support, forcing Hidan to have to avoid both him and Asuma at the same time, a good tactic. As Asuma battled Hidan, Hidan eventually drew blood and ingested it, beginning a ritual that caused all damage (ie. third degree burns, stab wounds, etc) done to him to be inflicted on Asuma as well. Because of Hidan's immortality, he was able to use this to his advantage, giving himself injuries to harm Asuma with little effect on himself. To keep him from doing worse, Shikamaru used his Shadow Neck Bind technique to hold him in place, and took to analyzing all of Hidan’s actions and words up to that point to figure out how his technique worked.
Shikamaru quickly figured out that what was linking Hidan and Asuma in the jutsu could only be maintained while Hidan was standing in a diagram he had drawn on the ground for his ritual. Forcing Hidan to copy his movements with Shadow Imitation, Shikamaru dragged him out of the diagram and held him in place with Shadow Sewing so that Asuma, temporarily free of the ritual’s effect, beheaded Hidan. VICTORY. /o/
Or not. Even without a head, Hidan was still cussing up a storm. Kakuzu finally got annoyed enough and stepped in, picking Hidan’s head up and reattaching it to his body with some sort of tentacle stitching that came out of his wrist. The others were too busy going WTF to really stop him. Which was a shame too, because now they had both of them to fight. Kakuzu took on Izumo and Kotetsu, while Asuma resumed fighting Hidan, who bound Asuma to the curse of his ritual once again when he stepped back into the seal - his own scythe through his gut while he did. Shikamaru was so exhausted from the previous use of his jutsus that he could barely stand, much less fight, and when he tried to run to Asuma’s aid he was easily knocked aside by Kakuzu. Then Hidan speared himself in the chest, delivering the final blow to Asuma.
Backup came a moment later from one of the other Nijū Shōtai platoons, the ranks of which included Chouji and Ino. Before another battle could break out, Hidan and Kakuzu were called away be Pein, the Akatsuki’s leader, for important Akatsuki business so they left. Ino tried to heal Asuma’s injuries right away, but quickly realized there was nothing she could do to save him. Knowing this himself, Asuma took the time he had left to speak his last words to his students; to Shikamaru, Asuma told that he had great sense as a shinobi - maybe even enough to become Hokage one day, though he acknowledged that Shikamaru was too lazy and probably wouldn’t like the job. He also took him aside to quietly tell him that Kurenai (Team 8’s sensei and Asuma’s lover) was carrying his child, requesting that Shikamaru protect it.
After that, Asuma smoked one last cigarette and died in Shikamaru’s arms. As his teammates cried over their sensei’s body, Shikamaru picked up Asuma’s fallen cigarette and started smoking it, blaming its smoke for his tears as he sobbed.
When they returned to Konoha, it was Shikamaru who broke the news of Asuma’s death to Kurenai, and he’s seen trying to comfort her as she breaks down on the floor and cries. He didn’t attend Asuma’s funeral, something the anime draws out to much better effect, where his father made an attempt to comfort him with a game of shogi, tearing down Shikamaru’s defenses and encouraging him to grieve. Afterwards, Shikamaru begins plotting revenge against the two Akatsuki members, and is seen training for and setting his plan into motion.
When the preparations were complete, he set out with Chouji and Ino, though they were stopped by Tsunade at the gates. At first she tried to stop them, convinced they were throwing their lives away and insisting that they couldn’t leave unless they were part of a four-man team. They probably weren’t going to listen anyways, but as it turned out Naruto and Sakura’s sensei, Kakashi, was hanging out just around the corner and volunteered to go with them, promising to keep an eye on them and make sure they didn’t do anything stupid. Shikamaru stated that he’d already had a plan for just his teammates and him, but he quickly modified it to include Kakashi.
Once the team found Hidan and Kakuzu, Shikamaru quickly pinned their shadows with Asuma’s trench knives, holding them in place as if he had used Shadow Imitation on them. With them still, he went to do just that, actually, but Kakuzu managed to escape from the jutsu’s hold before he could fully capture his shadow. With Hidan still under his control, Shikamaru used him to attack Kakuzu, forcing him into a corner where Kakashi took out his heart with his Lightning Cutter.
In a surprising turn of events, Kakuzu revealed that he was part-zombie too, and that he in fact had five hearts - only one of which had Kakashi destroyed. And, uh, apparently all of his hearts could come out of his body in a really nightmare fuel-ish sort of way and fight with elemental jutsu too! To this end, Shikamaru figured that in order to defeat either of them, they would have to be fought separately. After recapturing Hidan’s shadow, he proceeded to lead him away from the battle and into his family’s forest… which I guess was conveniently nearby or something… and left Kakashi, Ino, and Chouji to take on Kakuzu while he fought Hidan alone.
Once they were in the forest, Shikamaru surrounded the area with explosive tags, criss-crossed through the trees with wire to keep Hidan from leaving, even when he reached his limit on Shadow Imitation and had to release him. Hidan didn’t really care about that, he was just happy to move again and have the chance to kill Shikamaru. He attacked him, drew some blood, and started his ritual - stabbing himself through the chest and Shikamaru fell to the ground, dead. VICTORY. /o/
Yes, victory. FINALLY. Because Shikamaru wasn’t dead, he was just acting - the blood Hidan had used for his ritual hadn’t been his at all, but Kakuzu’s, gathered earlier when Kakashi had stabbed him in the chest and filled a vial with his blood, which he’d then given to Shikamaru. Elsewhere, this took out another one of Kakuzu’s hearts (and would have killed him, if he still didn’t have three more to spare).
Back in the forest with Hidan oblivious to this, Shikamaru came up from behind him and attempted to decapitate him with his tanto (short sword), but the cut was too shallow. It definitely surprised Hidan, however, and Shikamaru took the opportunity to bind him with his shadow, though it was weaker since he’d used up so much chakra before. Hidan could still move, albeit slowly, and he drew closer to Shikamaru, intending to attack him and make sure he killed him for real when he did. Again, all according to plan. Once Hidan was close enough, Shikamaru used his shadow to grab and wrap the explosive tags hanging around them to Hidan’s body, suspending him in the air thanks to the wires still attached to the trees. With him tied in place, Shikamaru activated a mark that caused the ground under Hidan to collapse away, revealing a pit in the middle of the forest that he’d had Chouji dig before they’d left.
Seeing his plan, Hidan told Shikamaru that someone would free him eventually and come to kill him when he did. Shikamaru informed him that the forest actually belonged to his family, and that no one could come into it without their permission. So yeah, no. No one was going to find Hidan ever - that hole was going to be his grave. Shikamaru took a drag on one of Asuma’s cigarettes, then flicked it at Hidan, setting off the exploding tags and dropping his body, now in pieces, into the pit. Since Hidan was immortal, this didn’t kill him, and he continued swearing up at Shikamaru from the bottom of the hole. Shikamaru silenced him once and for all, however, when he set off another explosive that forced the pit to cave-in on itself, burying Hidan alive.
From there he regrouped with the rest of his team, who had been joined by Team 7 in his absence, with Naruto defeating Kakuzu, and then they all went back home. Shikamaru is seen meeting Kurenai at Asuma’s grave later on, and tells her of his new ambition to train and protect the next generation of Konoha’s shinobi, such as her and Asuma’s unborn child.
A lot of time passes in-universe before Shikamaru shows up again, following Jiraiya’s death. Before he died, Jiraiya had sent a coded message back to Konoha with important information about something he’d learned in his fight with Pein of the Akatsuki. Shikamaru was charged with decoding this, with some help from Konoha’s Cryptology Division - or rather, a girl from this division named Shiho, who was the only one to provide actual aid. She is also notable for being his first canon fangirl, and in true shonen fashion, he appears to be oblivious to it. Way to go, tiger.
They were still making little progress on the code between the two of them, however, so Shikamaru decided to question friends of Jiraiya to see if any of them could make out a key from the code. After speaking with Kakashi about it, the only people left to ask were Tsunade and Naruto - both of whom were still grieving. By Kakashi’s request, as he was concerned about him, Shikamaru went to see Naruto. Who was pretty much a zombie and no help at all.
Putting aside the situation with the code for a shirt while, Shikamaru took Naruto to the hospital, just in time to see a very pregnant Kurenai walking out of the building. Shikamaru explained to Naruto that that child - Asuma’s child - is going to be his apprentice someday. Using his own experiences with Asuma's death, he pointed out to Naruto that they would both have students of their own someday, and that if they wanted to be as cool of shinobi as Asuma and Jiraiya were, they couldn’t afford to still act like kids when there was important work to be done. This helped bring Naruto out of his funk, and with his assistance and some porn novels... they were the key, okay… the Code Breaker Squad was finally able to decipher Jiraiya’s code - “The real one is not among them.”
Shikamaru continued to work on the meaning of this code in the days that followed, but was interrupted before he could complete the assignment when Pein invaded Konoha. The attack utterly decimated the village in just a short time period, buildings reduced to rubble and the village virtually unrecognizable. Shikamaru was among those injured by this attack, and with a broken leg was forced to sit out on the action. It doesn’t stop him from celebrating Naruto’s victory over Pein alongside the rest of the village, however.
But celebrations never last long, and with Tsunade in a coma, it was decided that a new Hokage be elected to take over her duties. One of the first actions of this new Hokage was to finally declare Uchiha Sasuke a missing-nin, after receiving intel from Kumo that Sasuke had joined that Akatsuki. While Naruto went looking for the Raikage to plead on Sasuke’s behalf, Shikamaru and the rest of the Konoha 11 (sans Team 7) decided that Sasuke was their responsibility, and that in order to prevent a war with Kumo that they would have to kill him. It was left to Shikamaru to break this news to Sakura, and to ask for her permission though he told her that they would do it with or without. He also wanted to speak to Naruto about it, but Sakura said that she would be the one to do that herself, a point Shikamaru didn’t argue with her on. After she and Naruto get back from their encounter with Sasuke in the Land of Iron, Shikamaru is seen with the rest of the Konoha 11, skeptical about Naruto's decision for dealing with Sasuke. While deciding to give Naruto the chance to handle it, he’s still prepared to kill Sasuke should the need arise.
There wasn’t a lot of time to consider this, of course, as the other thing to come back from the Land of Iron was the word that war was about to break out between the Great Ninja Countries and Uchiha Madara. Konoha holds a war council to discuss this and Shikamaru is seen in attendance, his presence requested by the council. While his father Shikaku, who was also there, voiced that he personally thought his son was both too young and inexperienced to be there, Shikamaru resolved to take everything he could from the meeting to make up for it.
When the war itself is finally started, Shikamaru is assigned to the Fourth Division of the Joint Shinobi Army alongside Chouji and Temari, with Temari’s younger brother, Gaara, as his commander. However, since Gaara is also the Commander in Chief over the entire army, Shikamaru is made the commander of the Fourth Division by proxy, and he’s seen being scolded by Temari to look like it. Unsurprisingly, Shikamaru finds the entire situation to be troublesome.
And then a lot of other stuff happened, but this history section is already long enough. /DECLARES THIS CANON POINT
Personality
Shikamaru is the very definition of the ‘brilliant but lazy’ trope. As a student at the Ninja Academy, he fell into the group of dead-lasts: the poorest ranking students of his class. He spent the majority of his time sleeping or ditching class with his friends, lacking the motivation to do much else. This coupled with his blatant lack of ambition gave the many the impression of Shikamaru as a lazy bum who would never do anything with his life. Even his own father seemed to have given up on him amounting to anything, genuinely surprised when Shikamaru told him he’d made it to the finals of the Chuunin Exams.
The picture this painted of Shikamaru was that of a rude, useless slacker who would never amount to anything. It was exactly how he wanted them to be seen, as he had nothing to live down to when no one had any expectations out of him. Because of this, the first person to see through him and encourage him to his full potential was Shikamaru’s sensei, Asuma. Upon realizing his genius, the man started pushing Shikamaru harder to do his best, his teammates following step behind him.
To reach his full potential, Shikamaru has had to have been nudged most of the way, and his progress is largely attributed to the situations that he’s been placed in, and the people he’s been with. It’s debatable if he would have even made it that far in the Chuunin Exams if he hadn’t originally been a part of a team, with two teammates that wanted to see how far they could go in the competition.
Even so, Shikamaru had never wanted to do anything more with his life then become an average ninja and live his life as normally as possible. Later on during the tournament portion of the exams, when advancement was broken down to sole participants, he ended up forfeiting a match he had by all means already won, uninterested in continuing any further in the rounds.
Unfortunately for him, between that incident and a later situation in which he nearly sacrificed his life to give Naruto and Sakura a better chance at completing a mission, he ended up gaining the attention of a lot of Konoha’s more powerful people. Recognizing his potential, he was promoted to chuunin - the only one from his graduating class to make that rank. Once more, this put him into a situation where he couldn’t afford to slack off as he would like. Despite his lazy attitude, Shikamaru has a strong sense of duty when it comes to his friends and his village, a fact which was proven when he was assigned the task of bringing Sasuke back to Konoha. While he mentioned not even liking Sasuke, he promised to give his all to get him back just on the grounds of him being a Konoha shinobi alone.
While this mission was unsuccessful, it did showcase his skills as a rational and level-headed leader, as well as a cunning tactician. More importantly, it was also a serious turning point in his outlook on life. While there was little he could have done to change the outcome, Shikamaru took it badly. Despite being trained from youth on what is expected of a ninja, Shikamaru is ultimately afraid of losing the people he cares about. While he himself came out of the mission relatively unharmed, two members of his team had been hurt badly while the other two had nearly died, including his best friend. He nearly quit his career as a ninja right then and there because of this, only changing his mind after his father called him out on his cowardice. From there Shikamaru resolved to improve himself as a shinobi, so as to never fail his friends like that again.
As a result, he’s matured after the two year timeskip. At the beginning of the series, he was very sexist. One of his most notable personality traits is how ‘troublesome’ he finds women, considering them to be too bossy and hostile, and sometimes scary - which is exactly how he describes his mother, who’s apparently the key figure responsible for this. Despite this, he is generally courteous to women (which hasn’t changed), doing small favors for them like holding open doors for them, or helping Kurenai out with her pregnancy.
His view of women has been slowly altered over the years, thanks to the likes of women like Ino and Temari even if they’re still troublesome, especially on the battlefield stance. For a long time he was of the opinion that while as a man he couldn’t lose to a girl, he couldn’t really hit a girl either. Having almost exclusively female opponents in every battle has about taken care of this, and he has since come to respect women as equals in battle - Temari, in particular, who not only saved his life on one occasion, but proved herself to be a strategist on equal terms with him. Though he still finds women frustrating to deal with at times.
However, the biggest change in his life came after the mission in which Asuma was murdered. Because you know. Nothing makes character development like a little angst and loss! As mentioned before, the two spent a lot of time together outside of training and missions, playing shogi together. Over the years, Asuma had acted almost as a secondary father to him. Shikamaru had grown to admire Asuma more than any other person, and his death was a crushing blow.
It’s notable to mention here, however, that during the first encounter with the Akatsuki, Shikamaru had what he considered to be a better strategy for fighting them with, but that Asuma didn’t consider it because it put Shikamaru closer to the battle and at risk. While he later came to understand and accept why he did it, right after Asuma’s death it was a major point of guilt for him, and it took him a few days to get his head on straight and stop blaming himself for what happened.
When he finally did, it was to place the blame rightly on the shoulders of his sensei’s murderer. This… actually revealed a bit of a dark side to Shikamaru, though it's only seen briefly when he and his team go out to avenge Asuma. When his plan for beating Hidan is finally fulfilled, Shikamaru shows no mercy. It helps that Hidan was an Insufferable Bastard™ and didn’t give him much reason to, but even so he basically gave the guy a fate worse than death and did it all in a cold and clinical manner. It didn’t make him feel better, but for whatever reasons he chose to do it it was something he felt had to be done. Lesson of the story: Don’t screw with the people Shikamaru cares about, and for god’s sake, don’t kill them. Justice will get served, and you’re not going to like it. At all.
After this, Shikamaru returns to acting like his usual self once again, albeit taking his role as a ninja much more seriously. He’s promised to train up his sensei’s unborn child someday, and to do this he knows he has some growing up to do. He’s just finally at the point where he’s ready to do that.
This has brought along a few gradual changes. Much like when he was a kid, he’s easy enough to get along with. He’s still friendly and laid-back, but as a result of seeing the fruit of his career choice, he can also be disconnected at times. He has no problems maintaining the strong friendships he has with people like Naruto and Ino and most notably Chouji, who’s been his closest friend since he was a toddler. While some people might manage to worm their way into his life on that level, Shikamaru no longer goes out of his way to create new friendships. He knows that he is first and foremost a soldier now, and that duty sometimes has to come before these things.
This is where it’s awesome to have friends like he does. If left to his own devices, he would happily spend all day playing games of shogi or watching clouds, so sometimes it takes someone with the enthusiasm for the other joys in life like Chouji or being nagged by a person like Ino to draw him out and be social and get him to do something with his life. Naruto is also good for this, taking a look at Shikamaru’s outlook on life only to go ‘screw that’ and dragging him along for the ride anyways. Somehow this guy became Shikamaru’s closest friend outside of his teammates.
Anyways, where some people would just further distance themselves, Shikamaru embraces this. Even knowing that someday he could lose all of his friends and family one day as with Asuma, he knows that he needs them, and that he wouldn’t be the person he is today without them. He trusts them to get him back on the right track when he can’t manage to do it himself. Likewise, they trust him to do the same for them - like when he told Chouji that he didn’t need to compare himself to others when his friend was having issues with his self-confidence, or when he spoke to Naruto after Jiraiya’s death. Same as anyone, Shikamaru needs help too sometimes, but’s also become someone both his friends and village can rely on.
Going off of that, according to the databook, during these two years Shikamaru was assigned to over a dozen A-rank missions as well - missions typically given to jounin instead of chuunin. Since the beginning of Shippuden, he’s been a proctor for the Chuunin Exams, a member of the task force, the chief code breaker, and most recently, the stand-in general for the Joint Shinobi Army’s Fourth Division. That his village, and people outside of his village, are willing to trust him with so much responsibility is really a testament to how dependable of a shinobi he’s grown to be.
Despite all of the progress he’s made and his newfound ambition, Shikamaru still seems content live the rest of his life as simply as possible. In the earlier chapters of the timeskip, as Temari leaves for Suna, she makes the comment to him that if he weren’t so lazy, he could’ve made jounin by this point, to which he just shrugs and looks away. Even after everything he’s gone through several hundred chapters later, he’s still seen complaining briefly when made proxy general.
To summarize finally, Shikamaru is the person he is now largely because of his experiences. He’s gone from being the lazy twelve-year-old he was to an easy-going but dependable shinobi with a strong moral compass. While he’s incredibly clever, he doesn’t show it off - to him it’s just another tool… one he’s still not above using if it means less work on his end.
The way he acts depends on the people he’s around - he’s more professional with the Hokage or his superiors, laid-back with strangers, and a little more relaxed and open with the people closer to him. He’s a lot like his father, in that he’s not very talkative, but he still appreciates companionship. He’s just the kind of a guy who would prefer to watch the clouds or play shogi than talk about something trivial. Asuma describes him as being more like an old man than a teenager because of this.
Shikamaru has a dry and sarcastic sense of humor, and can be blunt at times - the only tact he knows seems to be reserved for diplomacy. This rubs some people the wrong way, but it’s just the way he is and he’s not apologetic about it. He’s very much a ‘just be yourself’ kind of guy, and that’s something he holds his friends to as well - a good person will have qualities that make up for it.
He knows how to value the things he has going for him in life, and experience has taught him how to man up to protect them, but Shikamaru is still young with a lot of growing to do. A self-proclaimed coward, he’s still learning how to face these things. On the other hand, he’s a lot braver than he thinks he is. While sometimes he might not like it, he’ll be the first to realize when he has something hard to do, and more importantly, take the steps to do it. Whether that be in killing a man or putting his faith in one who’s striving for a more peaceful path is beside the point.
Have you read up on how the game works?: Yup. The name of the plug-in is FlamingFerret, and characters can get money by bumming off a friend, stealing it, or contributing to society by completing missions, but pfft. Who wants to do that one?
1st person sample:
[So it wasn’t just a book then, it was… a computer? Shikamaru turned his Guide over in his hands, continuing to examine it.
There weren’t a lot of computers back home - most of them belonged to the Cryptology Department. Shiho had shown them to him a few times, but they weren’t as complex as this. Meant for different functions, most likely - this one looked like it was designed for communications. That was handy.
He takes some time working out how to use it properly, switching it on to the video function when he thinks he has it and sets it down on a table as he works. Only his hands are visible, drawing something quickly on a piece of paper with a black crayon. Shikamaru drops it down when he finishes, turning the paper so the drawing is facing the screen.
It’s a leaf - or at least it should be recognizable as a leaf, if you’ve ever seen a Konoha forehead protector.] Lemme know if that looks familiar.
[With that he switches the Guide off and goes looking for his cabin. What - were you expecting an introduction?]
3rd person sample:
“‘Don’t panic’, it says,” Shikamaru muttered, glancing at the back of the odd book he’d be given. “Sure. What reason would I have for that? I have a towel.”
Lacing his fingers behind his head, he leaned back in his seat and turning his attention back to the form in front of him. It was blank; he’d been sitting here for thirty minutes. A few years ago, he might have just found it too troublesome to fill out. The corner of Shikamaru’s mouth quirked up briefly in a smile at the thought before fading.
Paperwork didn’t seem so troublesome today. Okay - scratch that - no. It did. He doubted there could ever be a situation where paperwork wasn’t at least a little troublesome. But after all the times he’d been sent back to the end of the queue, he saw no reason to rush with this form. He had bigger problems on his mind right now.
“Your home planet has been destroyed.”
He couldn’t believe it. No seriously - he couldn’t believe it. “Bowling accident… what a load of shit.”
…what about everyone else? What had happened to Chouji and Ino - his parents? Were Naruto and Sakura and everyone else okay? And Kurenai and the baby…
Shikamaru closed his eyes. When he opened them, he leaned forward to grab the pen and began filling out the form. First things first, because he wasn’t going to answer any of his questions by sitting here.
Questions?: ARE YOU STILL ALIVE. I mean. Yeah, again, sorry about that tl;dr. >.>;;
Did you put your characters name and fandom in the subject: Yup!
Name: Pi
Are you over 16?: I’m secretly 977… but I traveled back in time to March 2011 to relive my 21st birthday and figured I’d stick around.
Personal LJ: pi90katana
Email: tmntgoddess@yahoo.com
Timezone: Mountain Standard Time
Other contact: AIM: Pi90katana
Characters already in the game: N/A
How did you find us?: ATP, lots of stalking of Naruto characters on dear_mun …
IC:
Character name: Nara Shikamaru
Fandom: Naruto
Timeline: Chapter 515, as the Joint Shinobi Army heads out to war
Age: 16
~*Magical*~ abilities and strengths:
Ninjutsu
In Naruto, ninjutsu are techniques that utilize a person's chakra - the combination of mental and physical energies - and usually require a series of hand seals to help release the chakra so that they can use them.
As a member of the Nara Clan, Shikamaru has been trained to use his clan's secret techniques, all of which are focused on the manipulation of his shadow (the shape of which he can apparently control at will). Thus far, every ninjutsu technique he's been seen using is a clan move. Even so, he shows great ingenuity with them, and has even invented one entirely on his own.
- -Shadow Imitation (Kage Mane no Jutsu): The signature move of the Nara Clan, Shikamaru manipulates and stretches his shadow to connect it with another person’s (or several, if he wants to capture more than one in the jutsu). When the shadows are connected, it forces the other person to mimic his movements. Alternatively, they can also be frozen in place.
-Shadow Neck Bind (Kage Kubi Shibari no Jutsu): After capturing an opponent with Shadow Imitation, Shikamaru can then extend his shadow further up their body in the shape of a hand and strangle them with it. Alternatively, it can be used to bind and restrain a person if they’re too strong to be held by Shadow Imitation alone. The closer Shikamaru is to them while using it, the stronger it is.
-Shadow Sewing (Kage Nui no Jutsu): This jutsu materializes Shikamaru’s shadow, separating it into sharp, needle-like threads that can be used to attack an opponent. It’s his most offensive jutsu, but can’t be used to attack someone without injuring them. Stabbing is kinda messy like that.
-Shadow Endgame (Kage Yose no Jutsu): An interesting technique - unlike the rest of Shikamaru’s jutsu, according to the databook this one doesn’t have any hand signs to perform to use it. Like Shadow Sewing, it also employs materialized shadow threads, the difference is that these ones are smaller and blunted. Each tendril can be controlled individually, with enough dexterity to pick up and handle small objects like kunai and enough force to restrain a person.
-Shadow Imitation Shuriken (Kage Mane Shuriken no Jutsu): This is a jutsu of Shikamaru’s own invention. Using a pair of chakra enhanced trench knives, Shikamaru can channel his chakra through the metal. He then throws these at a person’s shadow and can immobilize them without capturing their shadow with his own. It’s less taxing on him than the Shadow Imitation, but requires either a really good distraction or excellent aim (as the knives could just be deflected), and can only hold on person with each blade.
Additionally, all of these jutsu have a time limit (five minutes) on how long Shikamaru can hold them in one go. He can use them again afterwards, but they get progressively weaker each time he does until he's able to recover his chakra. They can also be rendered all but useless with some bad lighting.
Genjutsu
Genjutsu are techniques that manipulate the chakra in the brain to disrupt a person’s five senses in some way or form, effectively casting an illusion. There’s several different kinds. Shikamaru has never used any of them.
Despite this, the databook still ranks him as being above average in skill with this in comparison to the ninja in his age group, surpassed only by Sakura and Sasuke in this. Indeed, Shikamaru does appear to have a knack for recognizing and breaking a genjutsu, as is seen at least twice in the series - first with an A-rank genjutsu during the Chuunin Exam arc, when only he and Sakura managed to release themselves on their own, and second when he was fighting Tayuya, from within a jutsu that made him think his arm was melting off. Yeah. He’s no Uchiha, but the boy has skill. This is likely due to how observant he is; as details are crucial to a genjutsu, being able to spot a change makes it easier to recognize and counter them.
Taijutsu
Taijutsu… yeah, Shikamaru kinda sucks at taijutsu, which is simply put physical combat. Pretty much very girl in the series can outclass him here, something he’s probably aware of but will never admit. But to give him credit, any full-fledged shinobi is trained hard in this before they even graduate. In conjunction with the ridiculous level of speed the average ninja must attain just to survive an encounter with a much more skilled opponent, this probably puts him on par with your more typical martial artists. Can he beat someone with that alone? Unlikely, unless they’re even weaker than he is. But he can keep up, and he’s superb at dodging. And to be fair - his fighting style makes it less necessary. If you’re fighting him, you don’t want to move in closer for an attack, lest you risk making yourself an easier target for his shadows.
General Ninja Skills
Like any ninja in Naruto, Shikamaru can perform several basic skills, like using chakra to walk up trees or on water. As it was also required to graduate from the Academy, he can also use three other techniques: Substitution, which switches a person’s place with another person, or nearby log object, Henge, which can be used to alter the person’s voice and appearance to match that of someone else, and a Clone jutsu, which can create a perfect visual double of the user, though these clones aren’t solid like the Shadow Clones Naruto makes. Shikamaru’s been seen using all of these at least once, but he doesn’t use them often.
Weaponry
What Shikamaru lacks as a physical fighter, he makes up for in his creative use of weapons. He seems to have a particular knack for these - I think the only person who’s seen using weapons more often than he does is Tenten lol, when she’s seen at all, and she’s a weapon’s specialist. He’s shown to have particular skill with projectiles, able to hit his mark even when he’s throwing a weapon from a totally different direction from where he’s standing with his shadow, as seen at least twice in the series.
Shikamaru doesn’t have nearly the arsenal that that Tenten does, and most of the weapons he carries are not suited for close combat, but he still comes prepared. Usually all of the following can be found on his person at any time.
- -Chakra Enhanced Trench Knives: Originally belonging to Asuma, Shikamaru inherited these after his sensei’s death and invented a new jutsu utilizing them (see Shadow Imitation Shuriken). He’s since made them a regular part of his arsenal. Asuma also used these knives in combination with taijutsu, but it’s not yet been seen if Shikamaru can do this as well.
-Projectiles: IE. shuriken and kunai. For reasons mentioned above, Shikamaru is skilled with both of these, and usually uses them as tools to set up his strategies.
-Exploding Tags: Shikamaru loves these. Basically, they’re an explosive made out of a special sheet of paper. They can be charged with chakra; a lot will make them explode, while a little will leave them intact and ready to be detonated at a better time.
-Wire: Typically used in combination with the exploding tags; Shikamaru will string several along wire, for example. He’s also seen using them as trip wires for other kinds of attacks.
-Flash Bombs: Since Shikamaru’s shadow attacks depend heavily on light sources, he can use these to extend his shadow for a better reach.
-Tanto: All chuunin are given one of these, apparently, but Shikamaru has only been seen using his once. At that time, he was nearly capable of beheading a man with it, but not strong enough to completely sever it. It’s unknown if he’s got any better with it over time.
Awesomeness In General
More so than any of his ninja skills, Shikamaru’s most dangerous weapon in his arsenal is his intelligence. His IQ is stated in canon to be over 200; highly analytical, he can create a hundred strategies at his disposal in a minute, and carry them out ten moves in advance. He’s been able to figure out the exact workings of an opponent’s technique and pinpoint the meaning and faults behind them just by watching, and then act accordingly. This makes him a threat no matter how strong his opponent is, as has been noted by the friends and enemies alike - most recently including Uchiha Madara, one of the most over-powered ninjas to exist.
Additionally, he appears to possess an excellent memory, as seen when he figured out the secret behind Tayuya’s musical attacks not by learning the song she was controlling her demons with, but by memorizing the pattern of her fingers’ movements on the flute, or when he brought to mind everything Hidan had said and done in his fight with Asuma in precise detail as just a few prominent examples. Whether this is an indicator that he possesses an eidetic memory or not is unknown, but it’s possible.
Oh, last but not least. TEAMWORK. Shikamaru can easily adapt his plans to work with just about anybody, including people he’s never really fought alongside personally before. So long as he has an idea of what they’re capable of, he’s good to go. His ability to work well in a team is only like, QUADRUPLED when he’s with his old genin cell teammates, Chouji and Ino. Ino-Shika-Cho is like a well-oiled machine - when they’re working together, shit gets done, bro. Their teamwork is flawless, as was recently commented on by some totally unimportant zombie guy in the war.
How would they use their abilities?:
For whatever suits him at the time, really. Which is usually how to get a job done with as little trouble as possible or getting himself and his friends out of a tight spot, as opposed to world domination. He’s a good guy.
Appearance:
Appearance-wise, Shikamaru is very lean. According to the third databook, released back in 2008*, he stands at 170 cm ( 5 ft 7 in ), though his hairstyle probably makes him look taller than he actually is by about a couple inches or so. The way he wears it is easily one of the most distinguishable features about him, as it makes his head look a lot like a pineapple. His hair is black and tied back into a spiky ponytail that sits high on his head; he’s never been seen wearing it down (even when he sleeps, ffff), but it’s obviously fairly long. Shikamaru’s eyes are brown and narrow, and his facial expressions are usually somewhere between bored or annoyed, though it’s not rare to catch him smirking when he’s amused. Like the rest of his team, both of his ears are pierced with studs given to them by their jonin instructor, Asuma. He’s lightly tanned, but his skin tone is still fairer than the likes of Naruto or his father - who, sans age, scarring, and facial hair, he’s the spitting image of.
He’s typically seen wearing the green flak jacket associated with the Konoha-nin. It has a lot of pockets because pockets are awesome. Under that, Shikamaru wears a long-sleeved black shirt, the plate of his forehead protector sewn into the left sleeve, and matching black pants and sandals. He may also be wearing a mesh undershirt beneath that like he did in his genin days, as the netting can be seen past the sleeves, stopping at the wrist. He wears similar mesh around the lower part of his legs. When not in shinobi garb, his clothing is simple - dark, solid-colored long-sleeved shirts and pants. It’s. Basically what he usually wears, just without the flak jacket and weapon holsters.
Have a link.
*approximately eight months or so within the series itself, going by Kurenai’s pregnancy, so he may very well be taller now
Background/Personality:
I’ll just. Split this up to keep myself from going off on a million tangents. I seem to have the inability to summarize anything to save my life. I’M SORRY. ;;
But yes, for sake of your reading - history first as straight as I can tell it, followed by some expansion on big events and their effect on him in the personality below it, along with some character quirks.
Background
Since Shikamaru was too lazy to get his own flashback, most of what we know about his childhood is what we see of cameos he has in other characters’ trips down memory lane, or what we’re told about him. Miraculously, in a world of ninjas where nearly every child has some terrible angst by the age of eight, Shikamaru was instead well adjusted. Born into the Nara Clan, so far he’s the only character who’s been confirmed to have two, living parents present throughout his life - both of whom are also shinobi, though his mother is retired. His father was often busy with work and a bit of a drunkard when he wasn’t, and his mother nagged him relentlessly, but both loved him all the same.
In school, he was shown to be a friendly child. He was nowhere near the top rung of the social ladder, of course, but he never wanted to be. In fact, he seemed content with the opposite, happy to hang out with the other ‘dead-lasts’ (the students with the lowest grades) of his class that no one else would play with besides to bully - Naruto, Kiba, and Chouji. Especially Chouji, who’s been his best and closest friend since they were six because of the kindness Shikamaru showed him.
…of course, this doesn’t mean he was an exemplary figure of good behavior, either. Oh no. Shikamaru hated school, and was more typically found sleeping in class if he wasn’t outright skipping. He graduated the Academy at the bottom of his class, and if it weren’t for Naruto he would’ve been the lowest scoring student period - Kurenai even makes a comment that some of his grades may have been worse. Nevertheless, Shikamaru did graduate, and was placed in Team 10, alongside Yamanaka Ino and his best friend Akimichi Chouji, under Sarutobi Asuma as their jounin instructor.
Ino wasn’t thrilled to be stuck with two dead-lasts, suffice it to say, just as Asuma was disappointed to be stuck with ‘a glutton, a loudmouth, and a slacker’. To get them to do what he wanted, he resorted to bribery - for Shikamaru, the promise of doing something he was actually interested in, such as games of shogi, which Asuma himself taught him how to play. Surprised by just how good he was at these games, Asuma decided to give Shikamaru an IQ test, disguising at as a bunch of puzzles and games so he wouldn’t catch on. It revealed Shikamaru to actually be a genius with an IQ over 200.
After their graduation, we see nothing of Team 10 until the Chuunin Exam arc rolls around. For all their bickering, something had obviously changed between the group. Even in such an early stage as a team and all of their weaknesses aside, Team 10 had the best teamwork of the bunch, and this is largely what got them through the first two stages of the exams. Shikamaru himself did little through these bits - relying on Ino to get him through the written exam, for example.
In the survival exam, he spent most of his time hiding in the bushes with his team, knowing his team was too weak to fight another for their scroll and win. When Ino insists that they can, and that they just have to find guys weaker than they are, Shikamaru points out that the only ones they’d probably have any chance against is Naruto’s team. It’s as they’re arguing over this (as Naruto’s team also included Sasuke) that they stumble across the badly injured Team 7 themselves, fighting against a team from the Sound Village. Rock Lee assisted for a time, but it wasn’t long before it was Sakura fighting alone. They continued to watch this from the bushes, trying to decide whether or not to leave and save their own skin or to help. Shikamaru leaves this decision up to Ino, asking her what she wants to do, since she and Sakura were friends once. When Ino does decide to step in at the last moment, Shikamaru doesn’t hesitate to go with her, even dragging Chouji out with him, making the comment that as men, they couldn’t stand aside while a woman fought for them. He’s quick to make his team bow out of the fight though after Sasuke woke up and things started to get ugly.
Despite the difficulties they had, Team 10 still managed to be one of the seven teams to pass the survival portion of the chuunin exam. Since that still left too many people for the finals, however, a preliminary round had to be held. Shikamaru was matched against Kin on the Sound Village, and had the disadvantage in that she had already seen how his jutsu worked when he’d used it on one of her teammates back in the Forest of Death.
He beat her surprisingly quickly, constricting his shadow enough that she didn’t notice it until he’d captured her, and using it to make herself knock herself unconscious against a wall. The easy victory surprised everyone but Shikamaru’s own team. He spent the rest of the prelims watching the other matches, and ended up being the only member of his team to make it to the final exams, which would take place a month later.
Shikamaru has one brief appearance before the exams themselves begin, visiting Naruto when he was taken to the hospital. He was originally there to visit Chouji, who was admitted for stomach problems, and the two went to give him a fruit basket he couldn’t eat because they’re boys, and boys show their friendship with one another by being jerks. On their way, however, they caught a then still-psychotic Gaara in Lee’s room, and together stopped him from murdering their friend. And then Gai showed up and took care of things and they got the hell out of dodge, because damn that kid was nuts.
After a little more time had passed, the Exam Finals eventually rolled around. Originally, since there was an odd number of final participants, Shikamaru was supposed to have an extra match right off the bat with Dosu. Luckily for him, the guy couldn’t show up to fight on the count of being murdered. Unluckily, Sasuke had yet to show up for his match with Gaara (on the count of being just plain late, instead of dead this time) and since that was the fight everyone in the stadium had come to see, it was postponed and the other matches started earlier, one of which pitted Shikamaru against Temari of Suna.
Before Shikamaru could fully consider the merits of forfeiting, his good buddy Naruto gave him a hand in decided by pushing him over the observing deck and into the arena. Since he was kinda just content to lay where he’d landed, Temari finally had enough and started the match by trying to club him with her fan. Shikamaru dodged and antagonized her some, avoiding her next attack and hiding in the shadow of the trees. There he waited for her to make her next move, musing to himself that while - in his opinion - a man can’t lose to a woman, they shouldn’t hit one either.
The fight that follows is long and drawn out, with the two trying to avoid one another’s attacks while simultaneously creating openings for their own. It was a good match up, on their part, in that both were fighting more with their heads than their jutsus. It’s here that Shikamaru is finally revealed to be a master strategist, each one of his moves merely setting Temari up and into position for him to finally capture her shadow. In the match before theirs, a tunnel was left underground from when Naruto beat Neji. When she wasn’t watching, Shikamaru ran his shadow through that tunnel and out from the other side, connecting his shadow with Temari’s while her back was turned and essentially defeating her.
And then he forefeited. Much to the disgust of his opponent and pretty much everyone watching who’d slowly found themselves interested in the match. He had a good reason, however - he’d used too much chakra fighting her, so he wouldn’t have been able to fight anyone well in the next round. The Third Hokage was impressed by both his tactics and this foresight, though it turned out to be unnecessary anyways. Sound’s attack on Konoha began during Sasuke’s match with Gaara, effectively stopping the Exams before they could be completed anyways.
Sasuke went after Gaara and his siblings (who were allied with Sound and were supposed to play key roles in the attack) as an A-rank genjutsu fell over everyone in the stadium that put them to sleep. Sakura was seemingly the only one of her age group to release herself from the jutsu, and was instructed by her sensei, Kakashi, to break Naruto and Shikamaru out of it and go after Sasuke. Upon going to do just that… she quickly realized that Shikamaru wasn’t really asleep, he’d just been faking. He too had released himself from the genjutsu - he just figured it’d be less troublesome to pretend to be unconscious like everyone else and not get involved. Kakashi’s nin-dog, Pakkun, bit him to help get him a little more motivated and dragged him along for the ride anyways.
Eventually Shikamaru relented and fell into the mission. As they were following after Sasuke and Gaara, however, the group realized they were being tailed by a team of Sound chuunin. Shikamaru pointed out that their best bet would be for someone to stay behind and ambush them, while the rest of the team went on. Of course, he also added that whoever did stay behind would surely die.
Pakkun wasn’t an option, since they were using his nose to track them, so that left the three genin. Both Naruto and Sakura seemed ready to take the job when Shikamaru cut them off, saying that the only person who had a chance of pulling it off successfully was him. His clan’s jutsu was designed to hold back the enemy, after all.
This is Shikamaru’s first major point of development in the series, as even at twelve, he really was prepared to die to give the others time to get ahead. He successfully held the Sound chuunin back, but due to being exhausted from his fight with Temari, he couldn’t do it for long. Had Asuma not shown up in the nick of time, he would have died.
But Asuma did show up, and Shikamaru lived. And not long after Tsunade was appointed the Fifth Hokage, he even got a promotion. Though the chuunin exams could not be completed, the comments of the Third hadn’t been forgotten, and all of the exmainers had agreed with him. Thusly, Shikamaru was the only person out of not just his peers, but 153 participants to make the rank of chuunin that time. Which was awesome, because he was probably the only person there who hadn’t even been interested in the position. Tough luck.
A mere day after this, Shikamaru was given his first command mission. Sasuke (because it’s always Sasuke) had gone off to join Orochimaru, and due to Konoha recovering from Sound’s attacks, so despite the seriousness of the mission there was no one else readily available to send to get him back. Shikamaru was given thirty minutes to organize a team of genin and set out, which stuck him with Chouji, Naruto, Neji, and Kiba and his dog, Akamaru. Before they left, he came up with the best possible formation for them to travel right off the top of his head, and even got to have a Big Important Speech.
Whiiiich was quickly forgotten by the likes of Naruto and Kiba as soon as Jirobo had them trapped in this big, chakra-draining cell when it looked like Shikamaru was willing to throw them under the bus to save his own hide. Fortunately Neji and Chouji could tell he actually had a game plan with that, keeping Jirobo talking while he figured out how to get them out. With the help of everyone but Naruto, they bust out of the dome and the battle resumes, though it nearly ends with them all getting curbstomped again. Ever the well-mannered fellow, Jirobo repeatedly insults and places the blame of this on Shikamaru, having singled him out as the leader. While he doesn’t so much as react to it, it actually pisses Chouji off a lot more, to the point that when the group recognizes that someone would have to stay behind to deal with this guy so the rest could catch up to Sasuke, it’s him that volunteers to handle him, just for insulting his best friend. Shikamaru briefly loses some of his Cool Leader face here at this prospect, but it doesn’t last for long. He shows confidence that Chouji will win and catch up to them and goes on ahead.
One by one, Shikamaru is forced to leave a member of his team behind with an enemy so the rest can go on ahead, until finally it’s he himself that stays to fight to let Naruto go on ahead, leaving the entire squad separated and at their worst advantage. When his opponent, Tayuya, points this out to him, telling him that he might've just gotten his entire squad killed all to save one guy, he confesses that he doesn't think any of them are dead. He says he believes in his friends, and that they aren't the kind of people that would just abandon a comrade like that.
With the pleasantries out of the way, the fight begins. A member of the Sound Four, Tayuya could cast genjutsu with her flute - she could even control three demon summons with it. Shikamaru gives her a good run for her money, outwitting her at every turn by figuring out the nature of her jutsus and setting her up to fall to his own. While he put the best of his strategies to work with her, eventually the battle became one dependent on pure strength and stamina, something Shikamaru was completely outclassed in.
Unexpectedly, right as Tayuya was about to finish him, Temari of all people showed up to save his ass, amusingly reducing Shikamaru to a reverse damsel-in-distress. Temari knocked a forest down on Tayuya, killing her, and then accompanied Shikamaru back to Konoha’s hospital. He waited there as every single member of his team trickled back in, each one of them in far worse, if not critical, condition than him. Both Naruto and Kiba had returned with serious injuries; Neji and Chouji nearly dead.
While waiting outside of the operating rooms (along with his father, Chouji’s father, and Temari), this had Shikamaru briefly deciding that he would quit his career as a shinobi. As he was about to walk away, however, his father spoke up and called him on his cowardice, harshly lecturing him on the facts of life for a ninja and telling him that if he really cared about his friends, he should want to be there to help them someday. It’s a lesson that struck very deeply with Shikamaru, and as it was finally confirmed that all of his teammates were back and would live despite the mission’s failure, he finally broke down crying, with the promise that his next mission would be perfect.
Two years later, it seems as if Shikamaru really took that and his father’s words to heart. In his first appearance after the timeskip, he’s seen escorting Temari (who has since become a jounin and a diplomat) as her guide around Konoha though Naruto suspects they’re on a date. He’d also been working with her over the Chuunin Exams, as he had helped proctor the most recent one.
After Naruto gets back to the village again after rescuing Gaara from the Akatsuki, Shikamaru is again seen briefly when his friend tries to recruit him to fill a missing spot on his team, though he couldn’t because he already had one of his own. He does help Naruto out along with Chouji when Sai sics some ink lions on them however, showing off his Shadow Sewing technique.
And then several chapters later, in a surprising turn of events… Shikamaru actually gets to be the star of a story arc for a while. Yes, while Naruto was off doing things away from the village in the first several storylines of Shippuden, apparently there was a group of ninja back in Konoha training to be part of a special task force called the Nijū Shōtai. All of Team 10 were members of this group, though Chouji and Ino were in a different platoon than Shikamaru and Asuma.
Their job was to hunt down and bring in (or kill, if live capture was impossible) members of the criminal group known as the Akatsuki should any pass through the Land of Fire. One day, two such members, Hidan and Kakuzu, just happened to be passing through the country when they took a vacation to slaughter a monastery full of monks. One of these monks was a man named Chiriku, who had been a close friend of Asuma’s. They had both at one point been a part of the Twelve Ninja Guardians, serving under the Daimyo before their disbandment, and both had large bounties on their heads for this status. Asuma was understandably pissed to find our Chiriku had been murdered and his body taken upon their arrival at the monastery.
However, it did make it easier to track them down, as to collect the bounty on Chiriku they would have to take his body to a black market exchange point. A four-man platoon was sent to every exchange point within the area and by the magic of plot-no-jutsu, the one that they happened to show up at was the one that Shikamaru’s team (led by Asuma, with two chuunin, Kotetsu and Izumo, included) were staking out. While Kakuzu took care of the money indoors, Hidan decided to wait outside, and the platoon wasted no time in attacking him. Asuma got him into position, Shikamaru captured him and held him in place with the Kage Mane, and Izumo and Kotetsu stabbed him through with sharp pointy things. VICTORY.
Or rather it would’ve been if Hidan wasn’t a freaking immortal. Balls. To make matters worse, Kakuzu showed up the minute they realized this, coming from behind Shikamaru and revealing an impressive ability to smash walls of stone by punching them, though he really wasn’t aiming for that. Shikamaru had to release the Kage Mane to get out of the way, which of course just meant Hidan was able to move again. Now as mentioned before, Asuma also had a bounty on his head. Recognizing him, Kakuzu thought it would be a good idea to kill him and take his bounty as well. These two guys were both ridiculously strong, and with no idea how their abilities worked, taking them on at the same time was gonna suck. But luckily, Hidan was a complete idiot and demanded that Kakuzu stay out of his fight, so they only had to deal with one.
Asuma took the lead in fighting Hidan, ordering Shikamaru to stay back and for Kotetsu and Izumo to guard him while he used the Shadow Sewing technique as support, forcing Hidan to have to avoid both him and Asuma at the same time, a good tactic. As Asuma battled Hidan, Hidan eventually drew blood and ingested it, beginning a ritual that caused all damage (ie. third degree burns, stab wounds, etc) done to him to be inflicted on Asuma as well. Because of Hidan's immortality, he was able to use this to his advantage, giving himself injuries to harm Asuma with little effect on himself. To keep him from doing worse, Shikamaru used his Shadow Neck Bind technique to hold him in place, and took to analyzing all of Hidan’s actions and words up to that point to figure out how his technique worked.
Shikamaru quickly figured out that what was linking Hidan and Asuma in the jutsu could only be maintained while Hidan was standing in a diagram he had drawn on the ground for his ritual. Forcing Hidan to copy his movements with Shadow Imitation, Shikamaru dragged him out of the diagram and held him in place with Shadow Sewing so that Asuma, temporarily free of the ritual’s effect, beheaded Hidan. VICTORY. /o/
Or not. Even without a head, Hidan was still cussing up a storm. Kakuzu finally got annoyed enough and stepped in, picking Hidan’s head up and reattaching it to his body with some sort of tentacle stitching that came out of his wrist. The others were too busy going WTF to really stop him. Which was a shame too, because now they had both of them to fight. Kakuzu took on Izumo and Kotetsu, while Asuma resumed fighting Hidan, who bound Asuma to the curse of his ritual once again when he stepped back into the seal - his own scythe through his gut while he did. Shikamaru was so exhausted from the previous use of his jutsus that he could barely stand, much less fight, and when he tried to run to Asuma’s aid he was easily knocked aside by Kakuzu. Then Hidan speared himself in the chest, delivering the final blow to Asuma.
Backup came a moment later from one of the other Nijū Shōtai platoons, the ranks of which included Chouji and Ino. Before another battle could break out, Hidan and Kakuzu were called away be Pein, the Akatsuki’s leader, for important Akatsuki business so they left. Ino tried to heal Asuma’s injuries right away, but quickly realized there was nothing she could do to save him. Knowing this himself, Asuma took the time he had left to speak his last words to his students; to Shikamaru, Asuma told that he had great sense as a shinobi - maybe even enough to become Hokage one day, though he acknowledged that Shikamaru was too lazy and probably wouldn’t like the job. He also took him aside to quietly tell him that Kurenai (Team 8’s sensei and Asuma’s lover) was carrying his child, requesting that Shikamaru protect it.
After that, Asuma smoked one last cigarette and died in Shikamaru’s arms. As his teammates cried over their sensei’s body, Shikamaru picked up Asuma’s fallen cigarette and started smoking it, blaming its smoke for his tears as he sobbed.
When they returned to Konoha, it was Shikamaru who broke the news of Asuma’s death to Kurenai, and he’s seen trying to comfort her as she breaks down on the floor and cries. He didn’t attend Asuma’s funeral, something the anime draws out to much better effect, where his father made an attempt to comfort him with a game of shogi, tearing down Shikamaru’s defenses and encouraging him to grieve. Afterwards, Shikamaru begins plotting revenge against the two Akatsuki members, and is seen training for and setting his plan into motion.
When the preparations were complete, he set out with Chouji and Ino, though they were stopped by Tsunade at the gates. At first she tried to stop them, convinced they were throwing their lives away and insisting that they couldn’t leave unless they were part of a four-man team. They probably weren’t going to listen anyways, but as it turned out Naruto and Sakura’s sensei, Kakashi, was hanging out just around the corner and volunteered to go with them, promising to keep an eye on them and make sure they didn’t do anything stupid. Shikamaru stated that he’d already had a plan for just his teammates and him, but he quickly modified it to include Kakashi.
Once the team found Hidan and Kakuzu, Shikamaru quickly pinned their shadows with Asuma’s trench knives, holding them in place as if he had used Shadow Imitation on them. With them still, he went to do just that, actually, but Kakuzu managed to escape from the jutsu’s hold before he could fully capture his shadow. With Hidan still under his control, Shikamaru used him to attack Kakuzu, forcing him into a corner where Kakashi took out his heart with his Lightning Cutter.
In a surprising turn of events, Kakuzu revealed that he was part-zombie too, and that he in fact had five hearts - only one of which had Kakashi destroyed. And, uh, apparently all of his hearts could come out of his body in a really nightmare fuel-ish sort of way and fight with elemental jutsu too! To this end, Shikamaru figured that in order to defeat either of them, they would have to be fought separately. After recapturing Hidan’s shadow, he proceeded to lead him away from the battle and into his family’s forest… which I guess was conveniently nearby or something… and left Kakashi, Ino, and Chouji to take on Kakuzu while he fought Hidan alone.
Once they were in the forest, Shikamaru surrounded the area with explosive tags, criss-crossed through the trees with wire to keep Hidan from leaving, even when he reached his limit on Shadow Imitation and had to release him. Hidan didn’t really care about that, he was just happy to move again and have the chance to kill Shikamaru. He attacked him, drew some blood, and started his ritual - stabbing himself through the chest and Shikamaru fell to the ground, dead. VICTORY. /o/
Yes, victory. FINALLY. Because Shikamaru wasn’t dead, he was just acting - the blood Hidan had used for his ritual hadn’t been his at all, but Kakuzu’s, gathered earlier when Kakashi had stabbed him in the chest and filled a vial with his blood, which he’d then given to Shikamaru. Elsewhere, this took out another one of Kakuzu’s hearts (and would have killed him, if he still didn’t have three more to spare).
Back in the forest with Hidan oblivious to this, Shikamaru came up from behind him and attempted to decapitate him with his tanto (short sword), but the cut was too shallow. It definitely surprised Hidan, however, and Shikamaru took the opportunity to bind him with his shadow, though it was weaker since he’d used up so much chakra before. Hidan could still move, albeit slowly, and he drew closer to Shikamaru, intending to attack him and make sure he killed him for real when he did. Again, all according to plan. Once Hidan was close enough, Shikamaru used his shadow to grab and wrap the explosive tags hanging around them to Hidan’s body, suspending him in the air thanks to the wires still attached to the trees. With him tied in place, Shikamaru activated a mark that caused the ground under Hidan to collapse away, revealing a pit in the middle of the forest that he’d had Chouji dig before they’d left.
Seeing his plan, Hidan told Shikamaru that someone would free him eventually and come to kill him when he did. Shikamaru informed him that the forest actually belonged to his family, and that no one could come into it without their permission. So yeah, no. No one was going to find Hidan ever - that hole was going to be his grave. Shikamaru took a drag on one of Asuma’s cigarettes, then flicked it at Hidan, setting off the exploding tags and dropping his body, now in pieces, into the pit. Since Hidan was immortal, this didn’t kill him, and he continued swearing up at Shikamaru from the bottom of the hole. Shikamaru silenced him once and for all, however, when he set off another explosive that forced the pit to cave-in on itself, burying Hidan alive.
From there he regrouped with the rest of his team, who had been joined by Team 7 in his absence, with Naruto defeating Kakuzu, and then they all went back home. Shikamaru is seen meeting Kurenai at Asuma’s grave later on, and tells her of his new ambition to train and protect the next generation of Konoha’s shinobi, such as her and Asuma’s unborn child.
A lot of time passes in-universe before Shikamaru shows up again, following Jiraiya’s death. Before he died, Jiraiya had sent a coded message back to Konoha with important information about something he’d learned in his fight with Pein of the Akatsuki. Shikamaru was charged with decoding this, with some help from Konoha’s Cryptology Division - or rather, a girl from this division named Shiho, who was the only one to provide actual aid. She is also notable for being his first canon fangirl, and in true shonen fashion, he appears to be oblivious to it. Way to go, tiger.
They were still making little progress on the code between the two of them, however, so Shikamaru decided to question friends of Jiraiya to see if any of them could make out a key from the code. After speaking with Kakashi about it, the only people left to ask were Tsunade and Naruto - both of whom were still grieving. By Kakashi’s request, as he was concerned about him, Shikamaru went to see Naruto. Who was pretty much a zombie and no help at all.
Putting aside the situation with the code for a shirt while, Shikamaru took Naruto to the hospital, just in time to see a very pregnant Kurenai walking out of the building. Shikamaru explained to Naruto that that child - Asuma’s child - is going to be his apprentice someday. Using his own experiences with Asuma's death, he pointed out to Naruto that they would both have students of their own someday, and that if they wanted to be as cool of shinobi as Asuma and Jiraiya were, they couldn’t afford to still act like kids when there was important work to be done. This helped bring Naruto out of his funk, and with his assistance and some porn novels... they were the key, okay… the Code Breaker Squad was finally able to decipher Jiraiya’s code - “The real one is not among them.”
Shikamaru continued to work on the meaning of this code in the days that followed, but was interrupted before he could complete the assignment when Pein invaded Konoha. The attack utterly decimated the village in just a short time period, buildings reduced to rubble and the village virtually unrecognizable. Shikamaru was among those injured by this attack, and with a broken leg was forced to sit out on the action. It doesn’t stop him from celebrating Naruto’s victory over Pein alongside the rest of the village, however.
But celebrations never last long, and with Tsunade in a coma, it was decided that a new Hokage be elected to take over her duties. One of the first actions of this new Hokage was to finally declare Uchiha Sasuke a missing-nin, after receiving intel from Kumo that Sasuke had joined that Akatsuki. While Naruto went looking for the Raikage to plead on Sasuke’s behalf, Shikamaru and the rest of the Konoha 11 (sans Team 7) decided that Sasuke was their responsibility, and that in order to prevent a war with Kumo that they would have to kill him. It was left to Shikamaru to break this news to Sakura, and to ask for her permission though he told her that they would do it with or without. He also wanted to speak to Naruto about it, but Sakura said that she would be the one to do that herself, a point Shikamaru didn’t argue with her on. After she and Naruto get back from their encounter with Sasuke in the Land of Iron, Shikamaru is seen with the rest of the Konoha 11, skeptical about Naruto's decision for dealing with Sasuke. While deciding to give Naruto the chance to handle it, he’s still prepared to kill Sasuke should the need arise.
There wasn’t a lot of time to consider this, of course, as the other thing to come back from the Land of Iron was the word that war was about to break out between the Great Ninja Countries and Uchiha Madara. Konoha holds a war council to discuss this and Shikamaru is seen in attendance, his presence requested by the council. While his father Shikaku, who was also there, voiced that he personally thought his son was both too young and inexperienced to be there, Shikamaru resolved to take everything he could from the meeting to make up for it.
When the war itself is finally started, Shikamaru is assigned to the Fourth Division of the Joint Shinobi Army alongside Chouji and Temari, with Temari’s younger brother, Gaara, as his commander. However, since Gaara is also the Commander in Chief over the entire army, Shikamaru is made the commander of the Fourth Division by proxy, and he’s seen being scolded by Temari to look like it. Unsurprisingly, Shikamaru finds the entire situation to be troublesome.
And then a lot of other stuff happened, but this history section is already long enough. /DECLARES THIS CANON POINT
Personality
Shikamaru is the very definition of the ‘brilliant but lazy’ trope. As a student at the Ninja Academy, he fell into the group of dead-lasts: the poorest ranking students of his class. He spent the majority of his time sleeping or ditching class with his friends, lacking the motivation to do much else. This coupled with his blatant lack of ambition gave the many the impression of Shikamaru as a lazy bum who would never do anything with his life. Even his own father seemed to have given up on him amounting to anything, genuinely surprised when Shikamaru told him he’d made it to the finals of the Chuunin Exams.
The picture this painted of Shikamaru was that of a rude, useless slacker who would never amount to anything. It was exactly how he wanted them to be seen, as he had nothing to live down to when no one had any expectations out of him. Because of this, the first person to see through him and encourage him to his full potential was Shikamaru’s sensei, Asuma. Upon realizing his genius, the man started pushing Shikamaru harder to do his best, his teammates following step behind him.
To reach his full potential, Shikamaru has had to have been nudged most of the way, and his progress is largely attributed to the situations that he’s been placed in, and the people he’s been with. It’s debatable if he would have even made it that far in the Chuunin Exams if he hadn’t originally been a part of a team, with two teammates that wanted to see how far they could go in the competition.
Even so, Shikamaru had never wanted to do anything more with his life then become an average ninja and live his life as normally as possible. Later on during the tournament portion of the exams, when advancement was broken down to sole participants, he ended up forfeiting a match he had by all means already won, uninterested in continuing any further in the rounds.
Unfortunately for him, between that incident and a later situation in which he nearly sacrificed his life to give Naruto and Sakura a better chance at completing a mission, he ended up gaining the attention of a lot of Konoha’s more powerful people. Recognizing his potential, he was promoted to chuunin - the only one from his graduating class to make that rank. Once more, this put him into a situation where he couldn’t afford to slack off as he would like. Despite his lazy attitude, Shikamaru has a strong sense of duty when it comes to his friends and his village, a fact which was proven when he was assigned the task of bringing Sasuke back to Konoha. While he mentioned not even liking Sasuke, he promised to give his all to get him back just on the grounds of him being a Konoha shinobi alone.
While this mission was unsuccessful, it did showcase his skills as a rational and level-headed leader, as well as a cunning tactician. More importantly, it was also a serious turning point in his outlook on life. While there was little he could have done to change the outcome, Shikamaru took it badly. Despite being trained from youth on what is expected of a ninja, Shikamaru is ultimately afraid of losing the people he cares about. While he himself came out of the mission relatively unharmed, two members of his team had been hurt badly while the other two had nearly died, including his best friend. He nearly quit his career as a ninja right then and there because of this, only changing his mind after his father called him out on his cowardice. From there Shikamaru resolved to improve himself as a shinobi, so as to never fail his friends like that again.
As a result, he’s matured after the two year timeskip. At the beginning of the series, he was very sexist. One of his most notable personality traits is how ‘troublesome’ he finds women, considering them to be too bossy and hostile, and sometimes scary - which is exactly how he describes his mother, who’s apparently the key figure responsible for this. Despite this, he is generally courteous to women (which hasn’t changed), doing small favors for them like holding open doors for them, or helping Kurenai out with her pregnancy.
His view of women has been slowly altered over the years, thanks to the likes of women like Ino and Temari even if they’re still troublesome, especially on the battlefield stance. For a long time he was of the opinion that while as a man he couldn’t lose to a girl, he couldn’t really hit a girl either. Having almost exclusively female opponents in every battle has about taken care of this, and he has since come to respect women as equals in battle - Temari, in particular, who not only saved his life on one occasion, but proved herself to be a strategist on equal terms with him. Though he still finds women frustrating to deal with at times.
However, the biggest change in his life came after the mission in which Asuma was murdered. Because you know. Nothing makes character development like a little angst and loss! As mentioned before, the two spent a lot of time together outside of training and missions, playing shogi together. Over the years, Asuma had acted almost as a secondary father to him. Shikamaru had grown to admire Asuma more than any other person, and his death was a crushing blow.
It’s notable to mention here, however, that during the first encounter with the Akatsuki, Shikamaru had what he considered to be a better strategy for fighting them with, but that Asuma didn’t consider it because it put Shikamaru closer to the battle and at risk. While he later came to understand and accept why he did it, right after Asuma’s death it was a major point of guilt for him, and it took him a few days to get his head on straight and stop blaming himself for what happened.
When he finally did, it was to place the blame rightly on the shoulders of his sensei’s murderer. This… actually revealed a bit of a dark side to Shikamaru, though it's only seen briefly when he and his team go out to avenge Asuma. When his plan for beating Hidan is finally fulfilled, Shikamaru shows no mercy. It helps that Hidan was an Insufferable Bastard™ and didn’t give him much reason to, but even so he basically gave the guy a fate worse than death and did it all in a cold and clinical manner. It didn’t make him feel better, but for whatever reasons he chose to do it it was something he felt had to be done. Lesson of the story: Don’t screw with the people Shikamaru cares about, and for god’s sake, don’t kill them. Justice will get served, and you’re not going to like it. At all.
After this, Shikamaru returns to acting like his usual self once again, albeit taking his role as a ninja much more seriously. He’s promised to train up his sensei’s unborn child someday, and to do this he knows he has some growing up to do. He’s just finally at the point where he’s ready to do that.
This has brought along a few gradual changes. Much like when he was a kid, he’s easy enough to get along with. He’s still friendly and laid-back, but as a result of seeing the fruit of his career choice, he can also be disconnected at times. He has no problems maintaining the strong friendships he has with people like Naruto and Ino and most notably Chouji, who’s been his closest friend since he was a toddler. While some people might manage to worm their way into his life on that level, Shikamaru no longer goes out of his way to create new friendships. He knows that he is first and foremost a soldier now, and that duty sometimes has to come before these things.
This is where it’s awesome to have friends like he does. If left to his own devices, he would happily spend all day playing games of shogi or watching clouds, so sometimes it takes someone with the enthusiasm for the other joys in life like Chouji or being nagged by a person like Ino to draw him out and be social and get him to do something with his life. Naruto is also good for this, taking a look at Shikamaru’s outlook on life only to go ‘screw that’ and dragging him along for the ride anyways. Somehow this guy became Shikamaru’s closest friend outside of his teammates.
Anyways, where some people would just further distance themselves, Shikamaru embraces this. Even knowing that someday he could lose all of his friends and family one day as with Asuma, he knows that he needs them, and that he wouldn’t be the person he is today without them. He trusts them to get him back on the right track when he can’t manage to do it himself. Likewise, they trust him to do the same for them - like when he told Chouji that he didn’t need to compare himself to others when his friend was having issues with his self-confidence, or when he spoke to Naruto after Jiraiya’s death. Same as anyone, Shikamaru needs help too sometimes, but’s also become someone both his friends and village can rely on.
Going off of that, according to the databook, during these two years Shikamaru was assigned to over a dozen A-rank missions as well - missions typically given to jounin instead of chuunin. Since the beginning of Shippuden, he’s been a proctor for the Chuunin Exams, a member of the task force, the chief code breaker, and most recently, the stand-in general for the Joint Shinobi Army’s Fourth Division. That his village, and people outside of his village, are willing to trust him with so much responsibility is really a testament to how dependable of a shinobi he’s grown to be.
Despite all of the progress he’s made and his newfound ambition, Shikamaru still seems content live the rest of his life as simply as possible. In the earlier chapters of the timeskip, as Temari leaves for Suna, she makes the comment to him that if he weren’t so lazy, he could’ve made jounin by this point, to which he just shrugs and looks away. Even after everything he’s gone through several hundred chapters later, he’s still seen complaining briefly when made proxy general.
To summarize finally, Shikamaru is the person he is now largely because of his experiences. He’s gone from being the lazy twelve-year-old he was to an easy-going but dependable shinobi with a strong moral compass. While he’s incredibly clever, he doesn’t show it off - to him it’s just another tool… one he’s still not above using if it means less work on his end.
The way he acts depends on the people he’s around - he’s more professional with the Hokage or his superiors, laid-back with strangers, and a little more relaxed and open with the people closer to him. He’s a lot like his father, in that he’s not very talkative, but he still appreciates companionship. He’s just the kind of a guy who would prefer to watch the clouds or play shogi than talk about something trivial. Asuma describes him as being more like an old man than a teenager because of this.
Shikamaru has a dry and sarcastic sense of humor, and can be blunt at times - the only tact he knows seems to be reserved for diplomacy. This rubs some people the wrong way, but it’s just the way he is and he’s not apologetic about it. He’s very much a ‘just be yourself’ kind of guy, and that’s something he holds his friends to as well - a good person will have qualities that make up for it.
He knows how to value the things he has going for him in life, and experience has taught him how to man up to protect them, but Shikamaru is still young with a lot of growing to do. A self-proclaimed coward, he’s still learning how to face these things. On the other hand, he’s a lot braver than he thinks he is. While sometimes he might not like it, he’ll be the first to realize when he has something hard to do, and more importantly, take the steps to do it. Whether that be in killing a man or putting his faith in one who’s striving for a more peaceful path is beside the point.
Have you read up on how the game works?: Yup. The name of the plug-in is FlamingFerret, and characters can get money by bumming off a friend, stealing it, or contributing to society by completing missions, but pfft. Who wants to do that one?
1st person sample:
[So it wasn’t just a book then, it was… a computer? Shikamaru turned his Guide over in his hands, continuing to examine it.
There weren’t a lot of computers back home - most of them belonged to the Cryptology Department. Shiho had shown them to him a few times, but they weren’t as complex as this. Meant for different functions, most likely - this one looked like it was designed for communications. That was handy.
He takes some time working out how to use it properly, switching it on to the video function when he thinks he has it and sets it down on a table as he works. Only his hands are visible, drawing something quickly on a piece of paper with a black crayon. Shikamaru drops it down when he finishes, turning the paper so the drawing is facing the screen.
It’s a leaf - or at least it should be recognizable as a leaf, if you’ve ever seen a Konoha forehead protector.] Lemme know if that looks familiar.
[With that he switches the Guide off and goes looking for his cabin. What - were you expecting an introduction?]
3rd person sample:
“‘Don’t panic’, it says,” Shikamaru muttered, glancing at the back of the odd book he’d be given. “Sure. What reason would I have for that? I have a towel.”
Lacing his fingers behind his head, he leaned back in his seat and turning his attention back to the form in front of him. It was blank; he’d been sitting here for thirty minutes. A few years ago, he might have just found it too troublesome to fill out. The corner of Shikamaru’s mouth quirked up briefly in a smile at the thought before fading.
Paperwork didn’t seem so troublesome today. Okay - scratch that - no. It did. He doubted there could ever be a situation where paperwork wasn’t at least a little troublesome. But after all the times he’d been sent back to the end of the queue, he saw no reason to rush with this form. He had bigger problems on his mind right now.
“Your home planet has been destroyed.”
He couldn’t believe it. No seriously - he couldn’t believe it. “Bowling accident… what a load of shit.”
…what about everyone else? What had happened to Chouji and Ino - his parents? Were Naruto and Sakura and everyone else okay? And Kurenai and the baby…
Shikamaru closed his eyes. When he opened them, he leaned forward to grab the pen and began filling out the form. First things first, because he wasn’t going to answer any of his questions by sitting here.
Questions?: ARE YOU STILL ALIVE. I mean. Yeah, again, sorry about that tl;dr. >.>;;
Did you put your characters name and fandom in the subject: Yup!