Itsu woke to a large bug repeatedly flying into his face. He tried to wave it away, turning over to try and hide his face in his pillow. This didn't seem to dissuade the flying creature, who continued to slam itself into the back of his class.

"Tell Shino to piss off," Itsu slurred into the pillow, "I'm tryna get some sleep."

The bug seemed to not care for this response. Itsu realized this when it ceased to fly, landing on the back of his neck.

"Don't you— ACK!"

The damn bug had bitten him! Roused from his slumber by the stinging mandibles, he hopped out of his bed. This was a somewhat common occurrence, happening once a month or so, whenever Shino chose to wake him from a comfortable sleep with a malevolent messenger.

He had plenty of opportunities to get violently woken in the time he had spent here. The thought of how long he had spent in the Aburame compound flashed the potential reason why Shino would have woken him up today: The start of their final year in the academy.

That, or sadism. Shino had a well-hidden mean streak he liked to use to make others conform, especially in training.

Shino got dressed in his usual garb, which had shifted over the years. He used to dress in rather standard civilian clothes, but living with the Aburame clan for over a year had resulted in a shift. Their almost unanimous use of long, grey or green coats had somewhat transferred over to Itsu.

He didn't care for the uncomfortable high collars and so had removed those, but the number of pockets was far too convenient to not pick up. He wore the long coats open, exposing simple, black pants, and his main stylistic difference from the Aburame: brightly colored, vibrant shirts that he covered with his coat in scenarios where bright colors were disadvantageous.

These colors ranged from bright pinks to teal blues, combinations and mixes of these colors, and everything between, so long as it was eye-catching. Itsu got a glimmer of sick joy whenever the fashionista from his class, Ino Yamanaka, glared at his discordant color scheme.

Having gotten dressed, he wandered out towards the clan head's house. It was a short walk, five to ten minutes through the forest. Normally Itsu ate breakfast in his own small home in the woods, but if Shino woke him up, he was making the food. It was an agreement they had long since settled on.

Itsu quite liked the walk. It was a rough path, but hardly too difficult for a genin in training. The rising sun shone through the foliage, gently lighting the forest that seemed to burst with life. Trees, bushes, and various plans overtook everywhere except for the small path, and every surface seemed to have some sort of insect on it.

Bees took to flowers, ants had mounds, cicadas rested on trees, and dozens of other species made this land their home. Some even buzzed around him, inspecting him like curious puppies, before darting back to whatever they were doing. Ah, it was wonderful.

Itsu arrived at the clan head's house and immediately plopped onto the empty sofa. Shino would certainly have noticed his coming, though it was a toss-up between hearing the opening of the door or a bug scout being placed to notify Shino of his arrival. He was proven right when Shino walked into the room a few minutes later, with two plates in hand.

"Good morning, Itsu."

"Hey, Shino."

The bespectacled boy handed a plate to Itsu and sat down himself, beginning to chow down on his food. That was another thing that Itsu had tentatively adapted to, the strange eating habits of the Aburame. There were simple things that he quite enjoyed, and had come to look forward to, such as the large chunk of raw honeycomb that seemed to absolutely drip with the golden sweetness that rested on his plate.

There were a few things that were a little stranger to adapt to. The Aburame had an intensely symbiotic relationship with the bugs around them, relying on them for much of their food. Hives and nests had dedicated portions to producing excess food, with an obvious example of bees creating honey and honeycomb specifically for harvest by the Aburame.

Things like ants had less obvious routes of providing food and tended to offer, well, themselves. There was a distinct portion of the ant colonies that were bred specifically for large, meaty, and sweet abdomens that positively burst with juices when bit into, which were then 'removed'— read, ripped from the bodies of the ants— and gathered for the consumption of the Aburame. Insects were simple creatures, and more than willing to sacrifice for the hive.

The strange nature of the food didn't stop Itsu from chowing down into the pile of ant abdomens, nor the fire-roasted cicadas resting next to them. Itsu had experienced many strange foods on his travels, be it the absurd spiciness of the lightning country or the barebones vegetable dishes of the grass country, and while the Aburame cuisine was certainly high on the strange factor, he couldn't deny it was delicious.

"So, Shino, the first day of the last year, eh?" Itsu asked, crunching off the head of a cicada, chewing through the weak exoskeleton and squishy insides.

"Indeed. I hope the new classmates won't give us any issues."

Ah, yea, that was a thing Itsu had almost forgotten. Those who failed their genin exam would stay behind in the last year, joining up with the advancing class of the previous year. As a result, the academy became a bit more free-form than the basic education of the last three years, with the sole goal of training up the student's ninjutsu, taijutsu, genjutsu, and stealth up to what was deemed adequate. There were still generic classes, sure, but they had become the side focus.

"So why'd you wake me up early, then? I'd be up in time regardless, you know that."

"I woke you up early so that we could arrive early because I want better seating. I'm not sure how many people will be in the class, and I'd prefer to snatch our preferred seating before others do."

Shino had a somewhat odd preference, taking up the back leftmost seating he could. Itsu could understand picking the back rows, but the preference of left seating specifically was something he never quite got. Regardless, he was more than willing to acquiesce and take the back left with him.

Tossing the last bit of honeycomb he had saved for his final bite into his mouth, Itsu chewed and swallowed, savoring the bursting nodules of honey as his teeth slid through the beeswax.

"Still, it's a little early, even for that."

"I figure that we should both be fully awake. Would make a poor impression if we slept through class, after all. I was thinking of just waiting for a while, maybe have seconds," Shino's lips quirked up just ever so slightly, "There's a beetle harvest today that should be arriving soon, after all."

Itsu's eyes raised at the mention of his favorite bug, his mouth beginning to water imagining the nutty taste of the beetle meat. Beetle meat came only every couple weeks to a month or so, the lack of a centralized hive or anything of that sort impeding an easily obtained large harvest.

"Well, damn, count me in!"

The two arrived and took the seats they wanted, the leftmost back seating bereft of people. There were very few people in general, only a few people scattered around the room. There were a few new faces in that mix.

Slowly, people began to gather in the room. Not much of notice occurred, the usual people and a few new people slowly filed in. Shikamaru and Choji took their places near Shino's corner, Sasuke took his usual place in the middle of the class while Ino, Sakura, and other fangirls attempted to crowd around him, Kiba took his place at the front like the attention hound he was, and the rest mixed in as best they could.

The first disruption to the quiet murmurs between friends and the arguments of Sakura and Ino, whose friendship had long since devolved and turned into an aggressive rivalry, was the sudden introduction of a loud voice.

"Hey, new kids! I'm Naruto Uzumaki, and I'm going to be the next Hokage, believe it!" shouted a blond boy in a garish orange jacket that Itsu secretly approved of.

"Oh, god, there's another one," Ino looked between Naruto's jacket and Itsu's shirt, which today was a 'lovely' hot pink and dark green swirl, before burying her head in her hands with a groan.

The blonde used Ino's break in composure to careen through the small crowd of fanboys and sit down right next to Sasuke, who had a strange yet amusing expression of subdued surprise and uncertainty. Naruto did not seem to care that much, but then again, neither did Itsu. Itsu proceeded to ignore Naruto's loud introduction and light ribbing of Sasuke, turning to Shino.

"Looks like we might have someone here who Sasuke will let out his stress in spars instead of us, eh?" Itsu flicked his head in the direction of the pair, Sasuke's resting bitch face growing subtly more bitchy by the second.

Shino nodded almost gratefully. The bug-infested boy had received many beatings at the hands of Sasuke, who chose to take out his frustration at not having any opponents able to match him and a lot of irritating classmates in the form of crushing his opponents.

Itsu didn't mind fighting Sasuke all that much. Sure, it was a pain to get crushed by him, but Itsu was getting steadily better at taijutsu and enjoyed that growth. He hadn't used his mark, but that didn't stop him from theorizing about the utilization of his abilities in combat.

A blink timed right before a hit connects, transporting him to his side and gaining the advantage, or imagining a scenario wherein he used his vision to toss kunai predictively from behind cover. It seems he had taken to those combat strategy classes, as he often found himself contemplating clever and deceptive courses of action. Those ideas had certainly helped him pull some tricks in his fights with Sasuke, and were perhaps the reason he often chose to spar with him. Ironic, that he'd find himself paired off so often with a person who didn't care to speak to him much.

He was quite good in those classes too, only beaten by Shikamaru and Sasuke in scores. Shikamaru had one of those minds that just couldn't be beaten, and even the ever-competitive Sasuke was only mildly disgruntled at being in second place.

Speaking of classes, he had taken to shurikenjutsu. Shurikenjustu was the art of throwing things at people, be it shuriken, kunai, or rarely senbon. It was a technique equally reliant on chakra control and skill, where your body enacted the force and direction and a small use of chakra guided the edges through the air. Since it needed some chakra use, they hadn't started it until a few months ago.

Itsu was almost impeccable in accuracy, equal to Sasuke, though he was rather poor in speed. Speed of projectile, and speed of throwing. It didn't matter if the target was still or moving, he would hit it, but he'd hit less than his less accurate but still skilled classmates due to his slow draw and aiming and his projectile wouldn't sink quite as deep. This left him only slightly above average in the rankings, but personally, Itsu didn't mind too much. His accuracy mattered more, he'd develop strength and speed as he got older and stronger.

Huh, that was another thing he was often placed with Sasuke in. With the reminder of the Uchiha waking him from his thoughts, he refocused on the two boys in the middle of the classroom. Sasuke was as unresponsive and dismissive as usual, but instead of just being put off by his attitude, Naruto had assumed that this was meant as some personal slight instead of the boy's standard surly demeanor— albeit influenced by Naruto's loud temperament.

This led to Naruto beginning an offended, shouting rant towards Sasuke, whose narrowed eyes showed an intense dislike. This seemed to offend Sakura, who began her own shouting rant.

Eventually, Naruto interrupted her, "Why does such a pretty girl care about such a downer? You should try and go out with me sometime!"

Itsu's eyebrows rose substantially at the switch up. There were a few boys with crushes on the fangirls, but none of them had ever said something that direct to them. Perhaps for good reason, as once Sakura got over her shock, she slammed a fist into Naruto's face and sent him stumbling back.

While Itsu would smugly yet silently beat Sakura in most of their taijutsu spars, he had faced a few of her punches and was well aware of the "impact" that they had on people. That was why it was rather impressive to him when Naruto shot back up almost immediately and laughed it off as a good hit.

Sasuke had a strange expression on his face, clearly relieved to have Naruto finally stop talking to him, yet torn at having to feel gratitude towards Sakura. Before those feelings could be resolved, however, their instructor, Iruka, walked into the room, signaling the start of their instruction.

Yeah, Naruto was just as much of a tank as Itsu guessed from Sakura's hit. He wasn't particularly good, in fact, he was a rather average fighter. He was quite a pain for most to deal with, though, able to take a beating and a half and still be smiling.

Itsu wasn't sure if it was ungodly durability, or if Naruto was used to serious head trauma— it would certainly explain his willingness to entice Sakura into anger— but Itsu had faced Naruto multiple times in the couple of months since his final year began and it always took a few dozen hits more than usual to put the boy down. A lot of the class had taken to forcing a ring out rather than dealing with his insane stamina.

It was another one of those days, at the end of the academy day, where the final spar of the day was dragging on. The final spar involved Naruto, as per usual, being beaten on by Kiba before the blond managed to surprise Kiba with a flying kick to the chest, ringing him out.

"WHOO!" Naruto gave a celebratory cry, "I won! Who wants to get the food of the gods with me to celebrate?! Who wants to come to Ichiraku and get some ramen!"

Huh, that was pretty tempting. Itsu enjoyed the Aburame cuisine, but it was a little bland sometimes. He'd built up a thing for spicy food as a kid, and he could go for some spicy ramen, and Naruto had plenty built up his praise of the ramen place.. Moreover, Shino had to take the day off due to some family business, so his evening was free of training.

"Eh, sure, they have anything spicy?"

Naruto was taken aback visibly that someone finally took him up on his near-daily offer to grab food. The expression disappeared almost as quick as it came, reverting to his usual goofy smile.

"You better believe they do!"

A lot of his classmates looked at him strangely, but Itsu didn't particularly care.

Ichiraku was a nice place. It was a little less crowded than he expected the "food of the gods" to be, and otherwise relatively small and a little makeshift, but he found the place to be rather nice. Small, cozy, and a little cheap, but nice nevertheless.

"A bowl of miso ramen, and keep it coming!" Naruto excitedly chittered to the stern-looking man running the bar, hopping up on a barstool.

Itsu sat next to Naruto on a barstool of his own. The stern man's face broke out into a kind smile at the sight of the orange-jacketed boy.

"Ah, my best customer! And who is this?" The man eyed Itsu, smile unfading.

"He's from my class! He said he wanted something spicy, so get him your best spicy ramen, on me!"

Itsu loved free food, so he didn't complain about the order.

"Hmm," The man smiled, "Very well. Ayame! One miso, one spicy tonkotsu!" Turning back to Itsu, he said, "It's a pleasure to meet you. I am Teuchi, and my daughter back there is Ayame."

"Ah, I'm Itsu. A pleasure to meet you as well."

"So, what brings you here?"

"Naruto's been praising this place for a while, and I had some spare time today. Been missing spicy food, so I figured I'd come along."

"Hmm, then I suppose I have our best customer to thank once again. I do appreciate you referring our shop."

"Not a problem!" Naruto cut in, "This place is the best, it's only right that I'll tell everyone, believe it!"

A brown-haired woman, presumably Ayame, walked to the bar, two bowls of ramen in hand.

"There you go, you two. Hope you enjoy!" she said, placing the two bowls down in front of them.

"Thanks, Ayame! Itadakimasu!" Naruto cried, beginning to shovel the noodle dish down his throat.

Itsu pulled his own large bowl of ramen towards him, pulling up the noodles with his chopsticks. They looked rather good, so he brought them to his lips and pulled them in with a slurp. Oh, yeah, these were good. The pork bone broth-bathed noodles had a rich taste with a pleasant burn of spice that had him slurping up more.

He got through about a quarter of his bowl, adding the bits of pork and egg to his bites before he noticed another bowl placed down and snatched up to be devoured by Naruto. He was a machine of consumption, a voracious creature who devoured noodles with no end. It was almost terrifying, where did he put all that food? It took about fifteen minutes for Itsu to work through his bowl, in which time Naruto had blown through four bowls and managed to have a coherent conversation with Teuchi and Ayame.

Itsu slurped up the last of his noodles when Naruto broke from the conversation to speak to him, asking, "So, what do you think? How does it feel to taste the food of the gods?"

"Pretty damn good," Itsu admitted, "I'll have to come back here sometime. This place is better than the ramen I had in the Land of Lightning."

Naruto's smile was blinding.

"Believe it! Ichiraku is the best."

Yeah, it was pretty great. Friendly staff, strong spice, delicious food, and a quaint space. He'd have to see if Shino would try it.

"I'll take another bowl, spicy miso this time."

Shino did indeed want to come. About a week later, both Itsu and Shino delayed their usual training to go and join Naruto and had become nearly weekly customers as a result. There was a rather amusing start to the habit, with Shino not having much experience with spicy food and deciding to just copy Itsu's order despite his warning.

Naruto was extremely pleased by this development and had taken to talking to the two rather often. For all his brashness, he was a decent conversationalist, though admitedly Shino stayed rather quiet with Naruto. Despite that, Naruto hadn't stopped sitting next to Sasuke, seeming to have grown fond of— or at least used to— their bouts and his flirting with Sakura.

Itsu frequently got into arguments with Naruto about battle strategy. The blond had no sense whatsoever. It was always "just throw a flashy ninjutsu and overpower them" or "punch them and then use a ninjutsu on them." Where was the deception? The tactics? It was blasphemy to Itsu. Though, the boy was surprisingly capable when the diplomatic approaches were examined.

Classes in their last year were very simple. There was still a vestige of their formal education left, but it was rather clear that this was more of a formality than the focus of their schooling. The academy was largely a training center for final years, and Itsu and Shino made full use of that.

The final genjutsu assessment mandated the ability to identify and throw off a D-ranked genjustu, which Itsu could do since his first month of genjutsu training. He had even gotten to the point where only needed a half seal to flare his chakra, and could tell he was swiftly approaching the control needed to do it without a seal.

Stealth was a joke. The assessment required the most basic stealth skills, to muffle your footsteps and avoid a routine patrol. Itsu was at the point where he could do all but run silently and he was beginning to practice the chakra control exercise to muffle his noise further, making him functionally audibly unnoticeable to all but sensors and the most skilled. He still needed a bit of work on avoiding visual notice, but he was more than above the standard assessment by the time the genin exams rolled around. Shino was still better than him, of course.

Shurikenjutsu was much the same, he was deathly accurate with shurikens and kunai, and had begun to practice with senbon. The reduced size of the small needles compensated for his poor speed and strength with the other heavier projectiles and combined with his budding pin-point accuracy at moderate distances he was set to become one of the highest scorers in this assessment as well. He was still rather slow on the draw, though.

Ninjutsu was a solid class as well. He could use the clone, transformation, substitution, cloak of invisibility, and rope escape jutsus with ease, all of which were the academy jutsu required to pass the genin exam. Admittedly, the cloak of invisibility jutsu took a bit more chakra than he'd like. It was strange, actually, as Naruto was generally better than him in ninjutsu despite his inability to perform the clone jutsu being the reason he was unable to pass the genin exam. He could just keep tossing out jutsus like it was nothing, and his impressive stamina and durability almost made Itsu consider that his usually poor battle strategies might be effective if he utilized them.

Itsu was forced to confront that he was not the best at taijutsu. He was somewhat strong and rather skilled, but he was just not quite able to match up to a lot of people. Through ring outs and tricks he was still able to win more often than not, but it was rather obvious that when confronted by a significantly superior combatant, such as Sasuke, Itsu was very reliant on tricks and his success in spars would quickly drop to around a quarter or less successful victories. At least he was passable, he supposed.

There were also some written portions of the genin exam, but they were supposedly rather easy. That wasn't the end of it though, as Shino had mentioned in their training at one point. Shino had explained to him the process of genin teams. The top performers of the graduating class, usually about thirty to forty students, would be picked for genin teams. It wasn't guaranteed that you'd stay in one, though, as supposedly there was another test by the jonin instructor that most failed.

It wasn't explained what the test was, unfortunately. Shino wasn't certain either, as it was apparently to be kept secret from even the clan students. Most students didn't even know there was a test.

With all these things in mind, it wasn't a surprise that Itsu passed the genin exams when the day finally arrived. He excelled in most assessments and was at least passable in others. The written portion was so absurdly easy that he had to double-check that there wasn't a second test and a half.

Shino passed by a wide margin, as did the others that Itsu interacted with. Shikamaru had similar scores to Itsu, though his taijutsu was abysmal, mainly due to his unwillingness to put in any more than the bare minimum. Choji did surprisingly excellently, as well. Sasuke was at the top of the class, of course. Surprisingly, Sakura was the top kunoichi of the class, not that Itsu talked to her much.

The exception was Naruto. Shino and Itsu had even tried to help the boy learn the clone jutsu, but for some reason, it simply wouldn't form for him. He seemed to appreciate the effort at least, a lot more than Itsu would have expected. They had gone out to commiserating ramen afterwards, before the boy split off to do his own thing. Itsu hoped he'd see him in the future as a genin with the rest of them.

That same night, Itsu sat with Shino to eat a late-night snack. On the ever-comfy sofa, of course, and they talked.

"Well, I guess we're genin, eh?" Itsu broke the silence, "Real ninja."

"That's right," Shino tossed a roasted cricket into his mouth.

"We'll probably be chosen for genin teams too, that's pretty impressive."

"Maybe we'll be on the same team. It's unlikely, but possible."

"Ah, now that you've said it, you've cursed us! It'll never happen now!"

Shino's lips quirked up, "My apologies. Maybe we'll end up in the genin academy together, then."

"That's not how it works! You can't break a curse by wishing worse on us!"

"Forgive me, I had to try, at least."

"Ah, fine," Itsu lightly laughed, "I'll let it slide."

A comfortable silence settled over the two. It was a big day today, and an even bigger day tomorrow. Itsu was glad that his best friend was along with him for the ride.

"I should probably get some sleep," Itsu told Shino, "You too. We need to be at our best tomorrow."

"You're right, it is getting rather late. I'll wake you up tomorrow?"

Itsu glared lightly.

"Only if you're making the food."

It's my birthday today :D
Sorry that the chapters have slowed down, been busy with classes and an addiction to the actual dishonored games.