Once again I return with the newest chapter to my story. Now that all the others have done their part, it is finally time to let Shino make an appearance. I had thought of having his done as one of the first chapters, but as I developed the plot some more I changed my mind. Let me know what you think.

Chapter 7)

Neji, Sakura, Kiba, and Tenten all sat in Tenten's living room. They were having a meeting of sorts and Tenten had offered the use of her house since her parents were out for the day. Ino and Lee had been invited as well but she didn't want to set foot in the brunette's house and he was forcing himself to do double his normal training as a form of self punishment for helping Twisted. So it was just the four of them, sitting in Tenten's living room, talking about what to do about Twisted.

Neji currently had the floor. "Tsunade-sama has most likely been keeping an eye on him like she said she would. However we don't know whether anyone other than her and ourselves knows about Twisted. So the question is should we speak with our senseis about what's going on?"

They all thought in silence for a moment, Sakura being the first to speak up. "I think that telling them would be a good idea, but if Tsunade-sama has been keeping an eye on Twisted then some of them might already know."

Kiba nodded, "She's right. For all we know Twisted probably has Anbu black ops spying on him. But what about Naruto and Shino? Shouldn't we tell them too?"

Neji shook his head, "No. If Naruto knew what was going on, he'd most likely run off to find Twisted and confront him. We've all seen that odd jutsu of his; he could escape easily if he knew anyone was on to him. As for Shino, we should tell him but I highly doubt that we need to worry. Knowing him he'll probably want nothing to do with Twisted's ridiculous nonsense."

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"I want nothing to do with your ridiculous nonsense."

Shino Aburame turned to leave, Twisted quickly blocking him. "What are you talking about?"

"When you originally came to me you said you wanted to teach Naruto a lesson for what he did to Hinata. What you just asked me to do for you is nothing more than a waste of time and effort. Naruto would learn nothing from it. All you're doing is sinking down to his level with your pathetic attempts. I've seen what you've had Naruto experience so far and I refuse to be a part of it."

Shino walked around Twisted and continued to leave. He had been walking in the forest to observe the various insects that inhabited it when Twisted had found him. Shino had listened for all of two seconds to his plan and quickly disregarded it. Twisted watched as the boy left, an idea hatching in his mind on how to convince Shino to help him.

"Well if you really don't want to help me I suppose I can't stop you. It's just that I thought you'd want to help since Hinata is your teammate after all. But I guess you don't care about her."

Shino stopped. "That isn't true. I do care for her. She's my friend."

"So why don't you want to help me get Naruto back for what he did? Did you even see how badly Hinata was hurt by everything he did?" Twisted went over to the boy, pulling three photos out from his cloak. "Here, look at these."

Shino took the photos, looking at them. Each of them was of Hinata, showing her during different times when Naruto had been picking on her. The first one was of Hinata being scolded by her father after he thought she had gotten pregnant. The second one showed a girl throwing a rock at Hinata when rumors had started to spread about her liking other girls. The last one was the one that caught Shino's attention the most. It showed Hinata, running away from naruto and clearly crying very hard. Twisted noticed how much the boy was looking at that one and used it to his advantage.

"Ah yes, that was when Naruto pushed too far and finally broke poor Hinata's heart. Stealing her diary and reading it was the final straw. To think she was able to put up with him even after he spread those pictures of her all over the village, impersonated her and even tricking people into thinking she was pregnant with his child. Did you know that Hinata was confined to her room after that little mishap? Her own father wouldn't believe her and maybe even disowned her."

"Alright I get it already. What was it you wanted me to do again?"

Twisted went over his plans with the boy again. Shino asked no further questions and left to get started. Twisted left as well, he had to pay a visit to someone.

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Naruto rolled over in his bed, still asleep despite the fact it was almost noon. After his misfortune yesterday he hadn't been able to fall asleep until after midnight. Now something was disturbing him in his slumbering state. It felt like his sheets had just moved on their own. Only being half awake when he noticed this he ignored it, thinking it was just his imagination and went back to sleep.

A moment later he felt it again, only this time it was more intense. He felt a tingling sensation as something ran up his shirt sleeve. Several more similar sensations occurred as he felt several tiny little things crawling over him. Unable to ignore it any longer Naruto opened his eyes. Sitting up he threw of his bedsheets…and screamed. He was covered in cockroaches. They were crawling all over his bed and many were currently in his pajamas.

Naruto reacted just as one could expect a person to react in his current situation. He screamed again, rolling off his bed and swatting the roaches off of him. He hastily took off his pajamas, shaking the articles of clothing out to get rid of the bugs inside of them. Thankfully none had ventured into his boxers so he kept those on. Naruto took a minute to regain his composure. Waking up covered in cockroaches was seriously unsettling for the nerves. Taking a couple of deep breathes he calmed himself down and looked over at his bed. The roaches were still crawling all over it, tons of them. Naruto knew that he had roaches in his apartment, but he had no idea how many there actually was. And he sure knew that the roaches had never all crawled on him in his sleep at once before. He was used to, on rare occasions, finding one in his mattress or pillow but never so many of them swarming his entire bed like that. He'd have to have something done about them, but first he needed to eat something. The scare he had gotten had really whetted his appetite.

Ignoring the roaches he got dressed, went into his kitchen and opened the cupboard he kept all of his instant ramen in. The second the cupboard door opened more roaches crawled out of it. Naruto pulled his hand back and watched the little creatures swarm out of the cupboard. Once they were all gone he looked inside and saw, to his horror, that every single package and cup of instant ramen in there had been torn open and partially eaten by the bugs. Naruto gawked at the remains of what had originally been his food supply. He closed the cupboard and went to the fridge. When he opened the door he was met again with the sight of roaches and partially eaten food. The little monsters had even managed to rip open his milk carton, the milk dripping out of it and collecting on the shelf. Naruto groaned in frustration and slammed the door shut. Now not only did he have no food, but he had to clean up this mess as well.

Between ten and fifteen minutes later he had thrown out all of the ruined food and cleaned his fridge. The roaches were still crawling around freely throughout his apartment, as though they were trying to mock him with their mere presence. Naruto made a mental note to definitely do something about them. In the meantime he needed to go out for food.

Hurrying out the door he made his way to Ichiraku's. At least there he wouldn't have to worry about roaches ruining his food. While he walked a wasp appeared and flew around him. Naruto swatted at the flying insect, trying to make it go away. It returned a second later, flying up to his face and hovering there. Naruto swatted at it again, only this time it didn't back off. It nimbly avoided the boy's hand with each swing it made, remaining close to Naruto's face. It landed on Naruto's nose, the blonde boy slowly raising his hand and then trying to swat the bug again. The wasp flew away just in time, leaving Naruto to smack himself in the face.

Naruto was starting to become severely agitated. He swung both of his arms wildly, trying to hit the bug. It kept dodging, but didn't move away from him. Finally, Naruto managed to get it, knocking it to the ground. The fallen insect struggled to get up, but was clearly hurt too much to do so. Naruto smiled down at it, raising his foot so he could stomp it and kill it.

A loud buzzing noise caught his attention. It was coming from behind him so he turned to look over his shoulder. There he saw an entire swarm of wasps, hovering above him. Naruto stood staring at the swarm in disbelief for a moment and then he remembered how to use his legs and ran away screaming. The swarm flew after him, hot on his tail. No matter how fast he ran or where he ran to, the wasps were still behind him. He didn't turn to look, he could hear them buzzing as they flew after him. His legs were starting to ache, but he didn't slow down. Adrenalin flowed through his body as he caught his second wind and kept running. He didn't know how long he was running for but at some point he ran out of the village gates, still being pursued by the swarm. Seeing a river nearby he was struck with an idea. He ran over to the river and dove in, letting the current help move him downstream. Naruto swam as far as he could underwater, using the flow of the river to push him along, until he had to go up for air. Thinking he had lost the swarm by now he broke through the surface of the water and inhaled deeply. He climbed out of the river and collapsed on its bank.

A couple minutes passed and Naruto just lay there, catching his breath. All the running followed by his sudden swim had really taken it out of him. He sat up, having caught his breath and smirked to himself in triumph. It was short lived as his ears picked up the sound of buzzing once again. The swarm of wasps had somehow followed him and found him again. Forgetting about his fatigue and sore muscles, Naruto got up and ran again.

"Why is this happening to me!?"

The only answer he received was the sound of the swarm closing in on him; he could feel some of them getting into his hair. Naruto clawed at his head, trying to get them out. While he did this he wasn't watching where he was going and crashed into a tree. The good news, it got the wasps out of his hair. The bad news, the tree had a hornet's nest that he knocked loose when he crashed into it. The nest fell to the ground, breaking on impact. The entire colony poured out of the remains of their destroyed home and in seconds Naruto was covered with them.

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A little over an hour later, Naruto left the hospital. He had bandages on his hands and face, thankfully the stings he received on the rest of his body weren't as bad. His clothes had helped to cushion them so they were minor at best. What's more it seemed that only the hornets had stung him, not a single wasp. Naruto just guessed that they all took off to avoid the hornets. He'd seen colonies of ants fight each other, maybe different colonies (or species in this case) of bees did the same.

Naruto walked down to his team's training grounds. He had been told to get some rest after what happened, but being Naruto he didn't listen. Arriving at the training grounds he sat in a meditative pose. He had been told time and time again that he needed to work on his chakra concentration so he decided to do that. He closed his eyes, trying to focus. Focusing always seemed to be the hardest part of doing this. He couldn't help it, stuff just kept distracting him. Like right now he felt something crawl onto his leg. It was probably just a spider or something. He brushed it off, only for it to crawl back on his leg. He pushed it away again and it came back, trying to get Naruto's finger with one of its claws.

Wait…spiders didn't have claws. Naruto opened his eyes and looked at the little creature on his leg. It looked like a spider except it had two extra legs in front with claws and a tail ending in a curved stinger.

'Weird, I didn't know there were scorpions around here…Scorpions!?'

Naruto stood, knocking the scorpion off him and onto the ground. He backed away from it. The scorpion didn't move at all, but what did happen was more of them crawled out of the surrounding foliage to join it. Naruto groaned as he felt a weird déjà vu.

"Why me!?"

He looked up to the sky as though he would receive an answer for his question. Something fell from a tree branch above him and landed on his face, it was another scorpion. He let out a scream and smacked it off. The scorpion fell to the ground, landing on its back. The little creature struggled back onto its legs and joined the rest of its kind as they advanced on Naruto.

While Naruto dealt with the oncoming arthropods, not to far off Sakura Haruno was heading in his direction. She had been at the hospital when she heard about Naruto having been treated for numerous stings from hornets. She didn't know why but she had an odd feeling about that, call it her woman's intuition. So she made up an excuse to leave for a little while and set off to find her teammate. She knew that he'd probably be ignoring doctor's orders and go out to train. She was pleased to see she was right. But she wasn't pleased to see what else was with him.

Sakura started to look around, hoping that her hunch was right. A wave of relief washed over her when she saw Shino standing on a tree branch not too far from where Naruto was. She rushed over to the boy.

"Shino! If you're doing this please stop!"

Over where Naruto was the scorpions halted their advancement. Naruto stared at them all, remaining perfectly still. Sakura breathed a sigh of relief, "Thanks Shino."

"Why did you want me to stop? I was busy."

"Shino, Twisted is just using you. He's the one who made Naruto do everything he did to Hinata. I don't know why he did it, but he is the one responsible."

Shino stared off in to space, deep in thought. "How long have you known this?"

"For a few days now. Neji was the one who figured it out and we told Tsunade-sama. She's apparently keeping an eye on Twisted."

Shino said nothing; he just kept glaring at the empty space in front of him. Sakura could tell he wasn't happy with this and could sympathize. She had felt the same way when Neji and Tenten had told her the other day.

"Shino, it's okay. You didn't know."

"Why wasn't I told sooner?"

Sakura hesitated, "Well Neji didn't think it was necessary. He thought that you wouldn't do whatever Twisted asked you to do anyways."

"Then it looks like he and I were both wrong in that matter." He raised his arms, hands outstretched and palms facing downwards. All of the scorpions over where Naruto was retreated back into the foliage. Moment's later they had all crawled over to Shino. Each of them was enveloped in a puff of smoke and returned to their true forms as Shino's parasitic beetles. They swarmed their host, returning to the familiar surroundings of his body.

Sakura looked on the scene in awe, "You can make your beetles use the transformation jutsu?"

Shino nodded, "It isn't something my clan uses that often, but it is possible. After all they do eat my charka. Now, what about Naruto? Does he know anything?"

Sakura shook her head, "Neji felt it would be best to keep him in the dark. You know how Naruto can be."

"Good point. Where's Neji? I want to speak with him."

Sakura led Shino back to the village. Back over in team 7's training grounds Naruto looked around to make sure the scorpions were gone. Not wanting to take any chances he high tailed it out of there. He planned on going back home and staying there after the insanity he dealt with today. He'd take the roaches over scorpions and bees any day.

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Meanwhile Twisted was currently sitting in an armchair. He was inside an apartment, having snuck inside while there was no one at home. He kept the lights off and just sat in the dark, thinking over his next move.

He heard the sound of the front door opening. A woman entered the apartment and walked past the living room where Twisted was sitting. He reached out and turned on a lamp on a table next to him. It wasn't that dark in the apartment, he just did it to catch her attention. He did blend into the shadows after all.

The woman immediately noticed him. He gave a small nod to acknowledge her, "Kurenai Yuhi, so very nice to finally meet you."

Kurenai pulled out a kunai and took a defensive stance as she eyed the man intruding her home. Twisted held up his hands, gesturing that he meant no harm to her in any way.

"Now is that any way to greet a guest?"

"A guest doesn't just let themselves into someone's house when they aren't home!"

"Ah, touché. But I assure you that despite sneaking into your apartment I mean you no ill will. I'm here to discuss a rather important matter with you. How would you like to teach that Naruto brat a lesson for what he did to your student?"

Kurenai's eyes narrowed, "How is that any of your concern?"

"I have my reasons. But you don't have to do it. It's just that I thought that since you're Hinata's sensei and was asked personally by her father to watch over her that you might want to do it."

"How do you know all of this? Who are you?"

"I'm sorry, where are my manners? Allow me to introduce myself. I am Twisted, at least that is that what you may call me. Everyone else I know does. As for how I know what I know, well let's just say I excel at reconnaissance."

Kurenai lowered her kunai, but still remained wary of the man. "And why is it you want to teach Naruto a lesson?"

"Do you honestly need me to answer that? You know better than I do why the boy needs to be taught a lesson. After everything he did to Hinata, you must feel that way."

Kurenai hesitated, "Well…"

"Good, I'm glad you think so. Because I for one think that he didn't receive enough punishment for what he did. Seriously, the worst he got was doing a bunch of d-rank missions and a few scoldings. Now does that sound like an appropriate punishment for what he's done?"

"Well, not really."

"Then you'll help? Good. I assure you that this is all for the boy's own good. With any luck it'll knock some sense into that thick skull of his and he can patch things up with Hinata. Now if you'll excuse me I need to take my leave. Farewell."

Twisted shut the light and started to melt into the shadows. Kurenai watched him for a second in awe and then suddenly thought of something.

"Wait! What exactly is it that you want me to do?"

"You're skilled with genjutsu are you not? Try using that seeing as Naruto has trouble with that area. And if you like I'll throw in a little tip. Did you know that Naruto is afraid of ghosts?"

Twisted vanished into the shadows, leaving Kurenai to stare at the spot he had once stood. After a moment her thoughts turned to what the man had asked of her.

TBC

So, left you with a bit of a cliffhanger there. Wanted to build up a little interest now that I've finished with the characters I started with. Yes, Kurenai will be having a turn as well and I have something planned for the last two chapters as well. Reviews are appreciated.