Hello! I started watching Naruto a little while ago, and man is this fandom addicting. XD Shikamaru is easily one of my favorite characters. His laziness is rubbing off on me... at least that's one excuse I can use from now on. XD

Anyway, this random little thing was born because of it. I hope you enjoy! :D

Whatever Takes Less Work

An entire game of chess could be determined in the first few moves. He was a strong believer of that theory, in fact, he thought that a game could be determined after three moves, and could be predicted with one hundred percent accuracy.

The first was a normal move, pawns against pawns, most likely. The second determined the audacity of the player. Would they continue with pawns? Or would they be bold and find their knight or bishop to be helpful? And the third, and most important move, would determine the game. Between analyzing his opponent's second move, and their third, along with their facial expression, he could easily tell who would win.

He was for safe moves, usually. Predictable and sure. They were tried and true; why would you change that?

He'd eventually adopted the same outlook on life's events. Life as a Shinobi, relationships both friends and otherwise, everything. They could all be determined in the first few moves. And if they couldn't… he'd move on. If some person was too unpredictable, he'd move on and try to avoid them. He didn't like unpredictability. It was a liability.

But one thing he hadn't accounted for was apparently something called "situational diversity" or some crap like that. That maybe sometimes he would want to avoid some unpredictable person, but he also wouldn't. That maybe he unfortunately was stuck with that unpredictable person.

She was that person. He'd been assigned to her, and it sucked. He couldn't just walk away. He couldn't walk away because she couldn't be predicted. He was stuck with her.

That was the first problem. The second was that maybe he didn't want to get away from her. Yeah, she was so off-the-wall and loud and obnoxious, but he didn't… dislike her.

He liked his chess boring. He liked it predictable. He liked his life boring and predictable. He liked everything to be splayed out before him, no secrets, nothing hidden, everything out in the open to be analyzed.

But not everything could be that dull and easily maneuvered. Chess sometimes went awry if he played a rather boisterous opponent. They could make a move that would throw him off. She was that player.

She'd sacrifice her own ever-important piece, only to take his pawn. She'd act as if it were the biggest victory in the world, when in all reality she'd lost more than she'd gained. She'd move a piece to an open area for seemingly no reason, and it'd throw him off.

He didn't like having to recalibrate his thoughts, but with her… he had to refocus every few seconds. She threw him for a loop more times than she didn't. She was too confident and too unplanned for her own good. He disliked people like that… but he didn't dislike her.

He figured life had a way of throwing irony at people that had a distaste for it. Because even though he hated people like her, the people that made life less boring, he didn't hate the feeling her presence gave either. Conundrum? Maybe. He didn't like those either.

But if irony had it out for him, he really figured he couldn't fight it. It'd be more work to fight it than it would be to try and familiarize himself with her.

The less work the better, as he always said.

The Mega-Prompts Challenge - word prompts #127 - lackadaisical

So there it is. Still new to drabbles and the like. I hope you enjoyed it, and as this is my first little shot at the Naruto fandom, I'd love any feedback! :D I find ShikaIno to be weirdly cute. XD

~Foxtail-chan