Inhale, exhale.
If she just focused on that, maybe her hands wouldn't shake so much.
With her jutsu activated, all Hotaru had to do was buy time until her wasp swarm arrived.
A critical disadvantage.
Unlike the Aburame clan, who used their bodies to colonize their insects, Hotaru's bees were summoned from surrounding hives in the bamboo grove.
Mastering so many bees at once absorbed all the chakra Shino had given her.
Her last trump card.
"And judging by his bugs, his weakness is probably close combat taijutsu. Which means he's gonna try to keep me within the long range of his ninjutsu," Hotaru calculated. "Taijutsu might be the best distraction until my bees make it here...but still...he's fast...really fast...so, the less he expects from me, the better..."
"What is she doing? She can't be serious about fighting me like this," Shino thought. "I guess that's my luck. The only time a girl shows this much interest in me, and it's because she wants me dead."
"Close combat it is then. He's dead," Hotaru decided, charging at Shino with shuriken in both hands. "And lucky for me, he's an idiot too. If he just stands there like that, killing him will be so much easier!"
"So because I'm a bug user, she assumes close combat is my weakness," Shino observed. "A fatal mistake. Why? Because if I were truly fighting her, even my weaknesses can't be underestimated. It's just embarrassing to watch...but I can't look away from her...Why, you ask?..."
Just as Hotaru went in for her first move, a rope of kikaichū whipped from behind Shino, snatching her off the ground and tossing her out of Shino's path.
Hotaru didn't have enough time to react before she hit the ground again and tumbled out of the battlefield.
Coughing to regain the air in her lungs, Hotaru shakily pushed onto her palms, even as her body begged her to withdraw from the fight.
"Get up," she ordered herself. "I can't show him any weakness."
But as her head rose, Hotaru was stunned to find Shino now standing in front of her.
His defensive stance facing away from her toward something she couldn't immediately see beyond his shoulders.
Black flames of insects buzzing at his forearms as he sized up whatever had him so tense.
"Sorry that wasn't gentle enough. My bugs don't know their own strength sometimes," His calm voice sounded only sardonically apologetic. "Are you ok?"
After you threw me 20 feet?
Hotaru clenched her fists tighter, her hatred simmering for his arrogance.
How dare he treat me like his plaything! He didn't even give me the chance to finish my attack.
"This only proves my point. If you can't take a hit like that, then you should forfeit and withdraw," Shino said. "Why, you ask? Because taming a girl her size is gonna take more than a bug jar. This one likes it rough."
What's with this guy and his corny bug jokes? -Hotaru raised an uneasy brow at him. -What a honey-nut!
But moments later, Hotaru heard it too.
Battle drums of buzzing wings as five black eyes the size of moons ascended high above Shino.
And only then did she realize Shino's Insect Rope Technique hadn't actually been his way of humiliating her, but a quick attempt to save her from being mangled by a giant queen bee.
A feral, angry bumblebee towering as high as Akirabachi.
Is that what I summoned? Hotaru thought, horrified and wide-eyed.
"It's like dejavu," Shino muttered, his steady gaze calmly following the queen bee as her wings sent gale force winds around them. Exactly like that mission he led with Team 8 and Naruto in capturing the bikōchū beetle. "I kind of hate bees."
Hotaru steadied herself on her feet.
There's no way I had enough chakra to summon a queen bee like her. But if this isn't the bee I summoned, then who did? Hotaru mused.
Without warning, the queen bee darted around Shino, aiming her stinger for Hotaru first.
Hotaru dodged the attack quickly, leaping in the opposite direction.
The queen was a heavyweight, but it cost her agility.
Unable to stop her momentum in time, her striped abdomen slammed into the earth below her, carving new terrain into the bamboo grove. Hotaru jumped further out of the battlefield, narrowly missing being buried alive under the steep hills and cliffs left behind by the queen bee's crash landing.
Why is she singling me out? Hotaru wondered. Does she think I'm a threat to her territory or is she someone's personal summon?
But Shino wouldn't let the queen bee get far in separating him from his captive.
"Ninja Art, Insect Deception Jutsu."
And once again, the ground shook like an earthquake under Hotaru's feet as lavafalls of Shino's insects expelled from underground. They leeched onto the queen bee and quickly began feeding on her chakra to subdue her.
But it wouldn't hold a creature like her down for long.
These kinds of summons were fought with teams for a reason, and Shino knew his bugs alone wouldn't be able to devour the massive chakra reserve of this rampaging queen.
He only hoped to buy Hotaru time to retreat and find a safe place off the battlefield.
With the matron bee stalled, Shino ordered Hotaru, "Go. I'll take care of this."
Sorry, bug boy. This isn't a job for an Aburame show-off.
Hotaru roughly bumped Shino's shoulder as she charged the queen bee head on again.
The only way to solve a big bee problem is to go back to the basics.
Shino watched as Hotaru sprung into the air with only a smoke bomb playing defense between her and the rampant queen bee.
The smoke bomb detonated just as Hotaru landed on the bee's fury head, making the queen sway dizzily in the mesmerizing clouds.
A special smoke formula passed down from the beekeepers in her village.
A token of the Kamizuru clan. Hotaru smiled smugly.
"Of course. The smoke will calm the queen and weaken her attacks. She can be tamed without us inflicting unnecessary damage on her," Shino observed. "Who is this girl? Even without chakra, she knows enough about bees to improvise in battle. Impressive."
But Shino didn't have time to entertain this living fantasy of a girl who knew as much about bugs as he did.
Sedated and desperate, the matron bee's body jerked violently, throwing Hotaru off her back.
Shino thought the bee was gonna be sick, but Hotaru-knowing better-scrambled to her feet and sprinted as far as she could away from the queen.
Then a wave of fire release with boiling regurgitated honey erupted from the bee's mandibles, rushing after Hotaru.
"She's can't outrun that," Shino observed.
And he automatically stepped forward, pushing his arms out to form a solid Beetle wall, blocking the sickeningly sweet, hot tsunami from swallowing Hotaru.
Panting, Hotaru was able to reach Shino's side unharmed, both of them now shielded by his wall.
But then, the queen bee snapped her mandibles shut, and the honey river ignited into a honey bomb, stretching Shino's beetle wall to its limit.
Shino pushed back at the explosion, sweating from the exertion of keeping his bugs steady as they absorbed the power of the blast.
And just when Hotaru thought his wall had reached its breaking point, an army of vengeful bees charged through the fog, finally answering their mistress's call.
Hotaru's white hair blew like snowfall over her shoulders as her bees swarmed in from behind her and Shino.
At last, she remembered to breathe, relieved that her bees had finally come.
And now she had a critical decision.
To follow her original plan and take the now vulnerable Shino out with her hornet swarm. Or redirect her technique to reinforce the bug wall Shino had built to protect them from the explosion.
And with Shino now seeing what she was capable of in battle, it was unlikely that she would ever get a chance at this surprise attack again. He would never fall for the same attack twice.
With only seconds to spare, Hotaru executed her move.
"Ninja Art, Honey Bee Jutsu!"
Hotaru's bees obediently entwined with Shino's kikaichū, sealing their bodies together by expelling their own honey to strengthen the weakest parts of Shino's wall.
A combined bug user jutsu that caged the wild queen bee and her explosion off completely.
When they both felt the bee's attack withdrawing from the wall, Hotaru glanced over at Shino, who couldn't take his eyes off of her.
"Bees?" Shino thought, stunned. "She's a bug user too?"
Hotaru's lips parted into a soft smile, as if to say to him-We did it.
But that smile would be her last move, as her chakra was now fully exhausted.
Shino watched as her honey golden eyes fluttered closed, and her hands slipped away from the wall, fainting in exhaustion.
Then bug by bug, the wall they had created together withered away in the absence of Hotaru's chakra.
Falling apart too soon to stop the last violent aftershocks of the explosion.
Shino sprinted to catch Hotaru, knowing that his body would take on the last hit of the dying blast if he didn't save himself.
But knowing still that he would likely recover, while she would succumb to damage in her fragile condition.
By the time her last bee fell away from their protective wall, Shino had Hotaru in his arms, shielding his body over hers to guard her from the aftershocks of the explosion.
Until there was nothing left in the aftermath, but the silence of the bamboo grove around them.