APPLICATION.
Your Name: Abigail
Your Age: 17
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Other Characters Played in Absolute Threshold: TYL! Yamamoto Takeshi (devaporated), Harry Potter (wizardlyangst)
Character: Nara Shikamaru
Series: Naruto
Timeline: During Pain's invasion of Konoha, just after he breaks his leg.
Wiki Us a Bio/History: NARUTO WIKIA.
Elaborate, if necessary: HISTORYIt's a long and convoluted story, so let's summarize it a little, shall we.
Nara Shikamaru was born into a secret hidden ninja village, to a ninja clan, and was supposed to go on to become a ninja. Hard as it may be to believe, he's actually not very big on the whole ninja-thing and didn't really want to become one at all. If he had the choice, he'd much rather have just spent his days somehow conjuring up food and whatever out of somewhere, maybe figure out a way to make a career of lazing about and staring at clouds. But well, his parents (mostly his mother) would insist, and they'd nag, and they'd continue nagging, and they'd nag some more, and then it became too troublesome to even bother to avoid the nagging, so what the hell. Ninja-school it was.
And at the Academy, Shikamaru quite honestly- sucked. He would always fail his tests and assessments miserably, and yet never seemed to be willing to put the effort in to improve- Shikamaru awake in school was a rare thing, and it was usually only during recess to get out of the class and stare at the sky for a bit. He waved off any attempts by the teacher to help him improve in his work, and frequently fell asleep just as he was being reprimanded for his poor performance. But (somehow) all the same, he eventually became a Genin. He became a part of the next generation of the Ino-Shika-Chou trio, forming a team with close friend Chouji and troublesome woman Yamanaka Ino, under the mentorship of one Sarutobi Asuma.
It was generally considered almost suicidal for first-year Genin to be submitted as candidates for the Chuunin Exams, but Asuma somehow thought they were pretty damn good, so they ended up going for them. And what the hell, it turns out he was kind of right. First stage was easy, second stage was troublesome, and he was on the way to winning his match with Temari in the third when he decided that- well. There were a hundred ways to proceed in the match, but they were all too tiring and he was running out of chakra, and so in an incredible anticlimax, he forfeited the match without much of a second thought.
It turns out that they were judged on aptitude rather than actual performance, and so despite having actually given up, he was the only one promoted to Chuunin that year. Go figure.
Soon after, this guy called Sasuke decided to leave the village and it was a pretty big deal, and Shikamaru was appointed to lead a mission to retrieve him because of the whole chuunin thing. The mission, essentially, had him up against yet another troublesome woman (he gets a lot of those), and ended in complete failure, with just about every one of his squad returning in critical condition. They all turned out alive, but really it was a goddamn miracle, and he couldn't handle that kind of responsibility. He had been the leader, his team had followed him through hell, and he'd given them nothing in return, and maybe he should just stop being a ninja at all. But then he got the sense kicked into him, and realized that: what if it had been someone else leading his friends? He brought them back alive, what if they couldn't? And then he made perhaps the biggest revelation of his life: that he had to do better. That he had to put in effort.
Two and a half years down the road, and Shikamaru's a changed guy. Well, not really- he's still a bit of a lazy ass, but he has a new outfit and he traded in earrings for ear studs, and he's definitely a much more capable person. Somewhere along the way he became a member of the Konohagakure Nijuu Shoutai, and he and his team, consisting of Asuma, Izumo and Kotetsu, were dispatched to try and track down and eliminate Akatsuki members. They did find one- two, infact, the immortals Kakuzu and Hidan, and to put it simply they screwed up, and Asuma was lost in battle. Asuma was of great importance to Shikamaru, and it changed him drastically. Almost immediately he's drawing up elaborate plans for revenge, even missing his mentor's funeral in the process, and they actually succeeded- he was able to help his team, along with Kakashi, killed Kakuzu, and he pretty much single-handedly (not so much killed, but close enough) took down Hidan.
And sometime after that, Shikamaru was put in charge of deciphering a coded message from the then-deceased Jiraiya-- and he did it, too, with Naruto's help. Konohagakure was however pretty much entirely destroyed before he was able to figure out what the message means, and while the battle raged on in the rubble. He found his father in the chaos and fought by his side, trying to save what was left of the village- and what he remembers is running through the streets, realizing one the buildings were falling, realizing the buildings were falling on him, not being quite fast enough, a blinding, searing pain in his right leg.
Then he woke up, and he was here.
PERSONALITYShikamaru's a lazy bastard.
Well, he used to be. And that was because of one simple reason: it was all goddamn troublesome. He never saw the point of any of it, in doing work, in being a great shinobi, all that kind of thing. All he ever wanted to do was sit around in his home and play shogi and go, make a living out of... something, marry a nice girl, not too pretty, not too ugly, hopefully not too loud (but geez, all of them were), have two kids, retire, die of old age before his wife. That kind of thing. He never saw much value in working to better himself for the sake of being the bestest ninja around or the most powerful fighter or whatever, and it was all pretty useless to him- but then, of course, he got the biggest wake-up call of his life on his first mission as a chuunin, and on his first mission as a leader.
It wasn't just a team of random strangers, it was a team of his friends, his closest friends, and he failed them completely. Not only did they fail at the actual mission objective, but they came back- well, they didn't. Teams had to be sent out to recover their heavily injured bodies, and most of them were in critical condition- his own best friend, Akimichi Chouji, was as good as dead. It was nothing short of a miracle that they all made it out alive, and when he realized that it was all his fault, that maybe he just wasn't good enough to be a shinobi after all, and maybe he should just quit. But someone basically kicked him in the head, and then that was when it all clicked into place and he finally understood that he'd had it wrong all along. That he never was doing any of this for himself, not to become a great ninja or any of that bullshit- he was doing this for others. To protect the village, protect his family, protect his friends-- and if he wanted to protect them properly, he needed to train and become better, and yeah. That was what mattered.
Since then he's become one of the most dependable shinobi around- he'll probably complain about the job all the way, but he'll get it done, and get it done well. He's an extremely capable leader, because after that kind of a lesson, no one knows better than him about the ultimate responsibility of a team leader- not just a responsibility to complete the mission successfully, but to ensure the safety of his squad. He nearly cost them all their lives before, and he's determined to never, ever fail them that way again-- and while maybe he's not exactly the most determined sort of guy, he is pretty damn stubborn when he has his mind set on something. As a result a result, though, he tends to be particularly susceptible to failures- particularly, three years later, when he watched Asuma die in battle.
"You would think just this once, when it was life or death, I could pull through."
It was a hard blow, as Asuma had meant a lot to him, and well. He threw himself into vengeance with what only his friends would recognize as reckless abandon, and it well may have been his downfall, if not for his strategic brilliance. Though he remained outwardly calm, his moral compass went a little awry until he could right it again by finally taking down the Akatsuki who had killed his former mentor. He pulled through that once, but even he realizes that what he did was hardly the best choice- he really should've at least waited, asked for backup, something. Still, if he ever faces that kind of a loss again, he isn't sure if he'll be able to make the right decision.
Thankfully though he made it through, mostly thanks to his strategic brilliance. Other than his laziness, his intelligence is his defining trait, and is really the main reason why he's been entrusted with so much over the years. He's able to plan circles around his opponents and think very quickly on his feet, analyzing their tactics and abilities within seconds and developing maybe hundreds of countermeasures of his own and selecting the most effective with the highest possibility of success, all of this within seconds. He's said to be able to keep not just one step, but maybe ten steps ahead of his opponent at all times, and he does this all almost entirely effortlessly. He's always able to utilize all of his own abilities, as well as his teammate's, to their maximum potential. Because of his remarkable intellect, though, he's very much easily, easily bored. Cloudwatching is one of his favourite hobbies, and he spends most of his free time idling away in the training fields staring at the sky, or beating everyone in the village (except his father) at shogi. While maybe overly laid-back in everyday situations, his mind helps him keep calm and maintain a clear mind even in the heat of battle. He takes a very logical approach to just about everything he does- which means that of course, he has some difficulties in the emotional spectrum, which leads to one of his greatest weaknesses.
Women.
No, really. Shikamaru- as well as most members of the Nara clan, apparently- has a tendency to somehow find himself surrounded by women. And maybe because of how he grew up, he's always found women to be very, very troublesome creatures. As far as he's concerned they're annoying, unpredictable, high-maintenance and even though they seem to demand the world from you nothing you do is ever, ever right and yet they don't ever want to just tell you what the hell they want, always playing mind games, and then why bother trying to do what they want anyway? Regardless of this, he treats women very well, a true gentleman in many ways with a very courteous nature- well, not really. He'll complain about it all the way, but at least he does them favours and such. That doesn't change things, though: women are still domineering, bossy, overbearing things, who were downright scary at times. Never mind that his father was just like him and ended up marrying the most tyrannical woman he's ever known in his entire life, he's pretty sure he won't end up that way. He hopes.
He expresses a very mature interest in wanting to settle down with a wife and start a family and all that, though, despite the face that he's just sixteen. All women are far too troublesome for him now, but eh, maybe sometime- for now, he has something else to stand for. He's a strong, devout believer, thanks to Asuma's teachings, in the Konoha "Will of Fire"- the idea that this will of fire is in every member of the village, and passed down through the generations. The most important thing in life- the "king" of the shogi game- was the future generation and the hope it brings. Before Asuma died, he entrusted Shikamaru with his own secret, and his own Will of Fire- his unborn child. And since then Shikamaru has promised the mother, Kurenai, personally: that well, Asuma was a cool guy. One of the guys he's looked up to most in his life, and he wanted to make sure that Asuma's child would have someone like that, too- so he'd grow up to be a cool guy himself. He'd do for the kid what Asuma did for him: teach him, watch over him, and make sure that nothing ever comes to harm him while he can stop it.
And he won't fail again.
ABILITIESHis greatest asset, above all, is that he's smart- very, very smart. Shikamaru is highly intelligent, a genius in many regards- when he was about twelve, his IQ was estimated to be at the very least over 200, and it's only improved ever since. He makes heavy use of this prodigious intelligence in battle. His number one advantage in combat is the ability to quickly process his opponent's skills, tactics and weaknesses, and he is able to properly make use of his own skills and assets to create a strategy best suited to the situation. He's able to predict opponents and keep himself maybe even ten moves ahead, and is capable of thinking up an almost countless number of possible outcomes and tactics in any given fight and then selects the best one. He's not quite the best fighter, but if he's given the opportunity to think and time to prepare, Shikamaru would be able to overcome just about any possible obstacle. Other than his strategic brilliance, Shikamaru has also proven to be an excellent leader, always thinking up plans appropriate to the individual abilities of each of his team members and always making sure to come out with the least possible danger to them all.
In terms of his actual fighting ability, though, Shikamaru is a member of the Nara clan, and hence inherits their special brand of ninjutsu: shadow manipulation. That being said, he is able to actively control and reshape his shadow however he wishes, and can even attach his shadow to his opponent's. His signature technique was Kagemane no Jutsu, or the Shadow Imitation Technique, that allowed him to disable his opponent by attaching his shadow to theirs, and forcing the opponent to copy his movements. The technique had clear disadvantages, though, and over time he's expanded that into a vast repertoire of shadow-manipulation techniques- he's capable of giving shadows actual real physical form and using them to strangle an opponent, for example, or create multiple tendrils with which to bind opponents or even handle and use weapons. The main disadvantage of the Shadow Imitation technique was that he would have to be stationary while using it- he's even been able to overcome that with a technique that enables him to essentially "store" some of his shadow in Asuma's chakra-absorbing trench-knives. By targeting his opponent's shadow with the knives, Shikamaru can remotely trap them in the Shadow Imitation technique. The "charge" on the knives can be recharged without physical contact, as long as his shadow somehow makes it over there.
His strength comes from the shadows, but there's one limitation to his abilities: the area of his shadow. He can stretch and adjust it as much as he wants, but ultimately that is limited by how large his shadow is in the first place. He is, however, able to make use of any other shadows that his own is in contact with. For this reason he tends to try to keep to shaded areas for combat, where he his techniques have the most potential, and hence he has the upper hand.
His somewhat lazy, off-handed demeanour may cause some to underestimate him, but he's proven time and time again to be able to rise to any challenge. He is, after all, one of the only three known shinobi to ever have single-handedly taken down a member of the Akatsuki, and can be pretty damn dangerous when he wants to be- that is, when he isn't dozing off somewhere.
What are they bringing to Nuadoria?: His clothes, Asuma's trench knives, a tanto, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and all of the equipment he carries around in his hip pouch. That includes some kunai, shuriken, exploding tags, flash bombs, makibishi, and reels of metal thread. He's very well prepared.