Cap2:)

Let me explain my story from the beginning.

My name is Shikamaru Nara, as you may have deduced. I am the son of Shikaku Nara and Yoshino Nara, formerly Yoshino -, of an insignificant bloodline, and heir to the Nara clan of Konohagakure no Sato. I am an only child, though I probably have some distant cousins from my mother's side living elsewhere. I won't be speaking of them much, which I think will suit them well, as they are civilians who would prefer a peaceful and quiet life far away from all the treachery and cruelties of the shinobi sphere. I do not blame them for this take on life, and I don't think they will be very offended at me, either, when I say that I consider my comrades-at-arms more of my brothers and sisters than blood will ever be.

Blood traits seem to run strongly in shinobi families. Take me, for instance. At first glance I am exactly like my father. The spiky, dark hair, the lazy, hooded eyes, the shapes of our faces and noses, the facial expressions we make in every situation, the uncanny intelligence only befitting of a Nara – even our usual habits, from how we yawn to the way we tend to roll our eyes in exasperation, coincide exactly, though that might be more due to how I was raised (children, after all, do imitate their parents) than genetics.

But for the Academy teachers who were unfortunate enough to suffer through more than one generation of my family, aunts and uncles and distant cousins included, they will tell you right away that in my heart I am my mother.

It is said (sometimes affectionately, and sometimes in complaint) that the Nara suffer an affliction of too much yin. From our minds to our bodies, and even in the signature shadow techniques that we use, we are the quiet, pondering types; intelligent, but not prone to action. Too intelligent, perhaps, and so Nature had to balance out the playing field by reducing something else of ours.

At least, that was how it was, until I came along.

Hokage-sama blames my mother. He never says it out loud, but I can tell, because every time my father decides to participate in Konoha Command Central's "Take Your Child to Work Day", the Sandaime will furrow his old brows and pinch the bridge of his nose and sigh a quiet "Oh, Shikaku, why did you marry her of all people?" each time he lays his eyes on me.

Of course, it was said in jest, not actual anger, so maybe I shouldn't complain so much.

My mother was not a Nara by birth, although she definitely looks the part – she, too, has that rather oval face so prominently displayed when her hair is pulled back. But that is neither here or there. She came from a civilian family – perhaps I had a grandfather who was a Genin on her side; I do not know – and thus she had had to fight and claw and scream her way up to her rank as Chunin, among the rest of her average peers, unlike those "special" teams composed solely of clan children (speaking of which, pretty much every heir to every clan that matters happens to be in my year…). She probably could have made it further, but then I was born, and so she retired.

That is, on paper. In spirit she has always remained a shinobi, and every morning without fail she proves it by faithfully dragging me out of bed at the crack of dawn to do our exercises. (She gave up on trying to get my father to wake up that early long ago, because by the time she finally manages to get him out of bed the allotted time is already over anyway. Although, she still nags at him once he's finally awake.)

Had I been my father, she would have given up on both of us.

But I was not like my father. I was my mother, and for once, the yin of the Nara were balanced out with the yang of my mother – new, fresh blood, born from the natural social injustice of the established clan system, bred out of nothing but sheer will and determination, hot and eager and ready for action. Yes, I was born with my father's brain, but I had my mother's heart, a heart carved out from the trials and tribulations, not only of shinobi life, but of the shinobi political world in general, with little more than an average instructor, a mediocre family name, and all of her courage and fierceness.

I started the Academy at the age of six or so, just like everyone else in my year. And at first, the difference between my classmates and me hadn't really been that bad or obvious. The first few days were mostly theory, so the civilian-born children at least wouldn't kill themselves when they finally tried to pick up a kunai the wrong way, so I didn't have much opportunity for demonstration other than answering basic questions. Sure, I got them right, but so did most of the other kids who had bothered to crack open a textbook the day before. Even one of the civilian-born girls - Sakura Haruno - could answer those types of questions perfectly.

Even after the basic training finally started, I seemed perfectly normal compared to the other clan children. Sure, thanks to my practice sessions with my mother, I could throw my weapons and execute all my katas perfectly, and rank relatively high in spars, but that was to be expected from someone of my background. There were many other students, like my friends Ino Yamanaka and Choji Akimichi, who had also received clan upbringings and therefore did just as well.

Our class that year had had the most number of clan children for a long time, and all of us happened to be clan heirs. Something like this must have been planned, since to me there was no way this could happen at random, but I said nothing since it was a useless fact anyway, and my father always told me to never waste time on useless facts.

The point was, for the first few weeks, there was very little to distinguish me from the rest of my classmates, especially since a third of the class was working with the same advantages I had. In fact, had it not been known that I was a Nara who didn't spend half the day napping, I would have been one of the less significant clan heirs, classified right in that same group that Shino Aburame was in, given that there existed kids like Sasuke Uchiha and Kiba Inuzaka, both of whom were much more prone to showing off than I was.

But I couldn't hide forever. Though my father had tried his hardest to instill in me a strong sense of modesty – mostly through the doctrine that good shinobi should neither be seen nor heard – my mother had sort of cancelled that and ideal out with her own doctrine – of always trying your best and giving everything your all.

Given my natural-born intelligence, that meant I had a lot to give.

In the end, that had ended up manifesting itself in a compromise. I never volunteered to do more than was asked of me, unlike Sasuke who took to demonstrating complicated taijutsu takedowns in front of the instructors with every chance he got, but everything that was asked of me was finished in such a way that proved beyond any reasonable doubt that I was clearly capable of much, much more than what I was showing. So I fulfillled both of my ends of the bargain. I hid 75% of my abilities, just as my father wanted me to, but damn if I hadn't held back on the other 25%.