A/N: Thank you for the reviews! I wanted to clear up some confusion from the previous chapters. I hope this helps.
Chouichi is an original character created by me, based on the picture from chapter 122/episode 72 and the names, personalities, and skills of Chouji and Chouji's father (Chouza according to the official Databook 2). Chouichi is as similar and unique to them as any family member might be. As a clan member, he shares the physical traits, skills, and the same first syllable of their names (like many father-child characters in Naruto). The same applies to Shinobu and the Aburame clan.
Kayaku is the young Fourth Hokage, but as a ten-year-old, he does not have the high rank techniques of his older self. Instead, in the story he uses or learns basic techniques that can be basic variations or inspiration for his signature techniques. Chakra control exercises for Rasengan and Body Flicker (Shunshin) for Flying Thunder God Technique (Hiraishin). A Shunshin is only a D-rank technique used by many ninja and was used correctly by Jiraiya in the last chapter, that scene only implied he would learn Shunshin, which would be a logical basic skill before creating Hiraishin one day in the future. The One Thousand Years of Death was also used just to show Kayaku could create his own technique (taijutsu move in this case). If there is a canon origin then I haven't found it…if there is…oh well, it's just a fan fic.
Chapter 03 – Next!
There's no use using normal attacks.
Aburame Shinobu watched the inevitable end to Kayaku's turn. As she expected he didn't fare well. She watched for some sign of weakness in her teacher, but in the end she only came to one conclusion…
"Idiots."
She had been hiding in the same spot for nearly half an hour. She had found an old tree near the river, its declining age obvious in its dark, rough bark, gnarled, and twisted limbs. Her tree had a great contrast to the majestic one Kayaku had chosen and she had to climb up it the old fashion way, but she told herself that the effectiveness of the trap was what mattered.
She knew she wasn't going to win by hand-to-hand combat, which she knew she had no talent in. However, she knew weapons would do little against a man who could easily block her incoming attack and figure out her position in the trees.
Basic Academy techniques weren't going to do it either. Shinobu was reluctant to admit that she would have to rely on them or else she would never get a bell.
Shinobu moved her fingers along her other arm, gently caressing her skin until she could feel a set of holes bored into her skin. They still hurt and perhaps they always would, making her realize why everyone in he clan moved as little as possible, not just to avoid disturbing the bugs, but to also avoid as much discomfort as possible.
She was only ten years old yet she already knew what her body really was, a mobile hive made of skin and bone for thousands of tiny dark bugs that lived and died within her. Ever since she had realized that, she hasn't been very happy. She was only thankful that so far the bugs hadn't bored their holes into her face, allowing her to hide what she was a little longer.
Shinobu moved her hand away from her other arm and pulled a kunai out. The kunai alone wasn't important.
She closed her eyes, pleaded with the bugs inside her, and waited for the itchy crawling feeling under her skin as a handful of bugs marched out from holes hidden underneath her sleeves and onto the kunai.
"You better hold on," she told them, although she knew they didn't need her words to know that. She sat and waited for the right moment, trying to remind herself that the Aburame were cool, collected, and not easily annoyed by the incessant buzzing underneath her skin and the never-ending movement she felt inside her.
"What kind of attack was that? Idiot!"
Jiraiya's ranting had gone on like that for quite a while. He was yelling at Kayaku, who had no choice but to listen, well mostly because he was stuck.
While his smoke screen was an effective trick to hide him, it worked too well. Jiraiya had disappeared again. He quickly turned around expecting another attack from behind, but he never expected it from below!
"Earth Element Double Suicide Decapitation Technique" had been the last thing he heard before being pulled into the ground with only his head sticking out. He thought he could pull himself out easily, but at the moment with an angry Jiraiya above him, he thought he was safer in the ground.
"You have no talent!" Jiraiya rubbed his head and sighed, "What did I do to deserve a student like you?"
Kayaku realized the situation had gotten out of hand the worse thing he wanted was to have disappointed his new teacher on the first day, but before he could get a word out he spotted something flying out of the trees near the river.
Jiraiya heard it rather than saw it and turned around quickly, drew a kunai of his own out of his hip holster, and blocked it on one smooth motion. "What, this again? Don't you kids have any other attacks?"
"AH!"
Jiraiya turned and noticed the kunai he blocked had landed dangerously close to Kayaku's head. "Oops, sorry," he chuckled, but turned serious again. "I'll deal with you later," he told the boy before disappearing with another gust of wind and leaves.
"Hey wait a minute!" the boy yelled, but it was too late. He looked at the kunai glumly, but then he noticed something.
"Bugs!" With a kunai covered in bugs less than a foot away from his head, the boy started squirming as much as possible to escape his earthy prison.
Jiraiya calculated the origin of the kunai just like before with Kayaku's shuriken, but this time he was taking his time. He didn't expect the same trap like Kayaku's clever tree attack, but he knew with Kayaku out of the way it meant the kunai came from one of the two from the noble clans.
After Kayaku's idiotic perverted attack, he quickly decided the boy couldn't have been the genius no matter how high his scores were. Surely, the Akimichi boy or the Aburame girl was the genius and thus the most dangerous of the three.
He passed by the river and remembered falling in it himself due to one of Sarutobi-sensei's traps. Maybe later he would torment Kayaku some more before tying him the log after he took care of the rest.
A thoughtful smile left his face as he saw the old tree from which the attack came. He could see the side of a purple sleeve of a coat sticking out behind the tree.
What a disappointment, did she throw the kunai and hide hoping I wouldn't see her?
He made his way around the tree and the bushes around it. He prepared himself, deciding that perhaps a simple genjutsu would be enough to teach her a lesson.
"Shinobu—" There was nothing there but an empty purple coat pinned to the tree by a kunai. "What?"
Jiraiya looked around wildly, she had actually surprised him, he never once imagined Shinobu, an Aburame, would be willing to take off her coat. In fact, he had never seen an Aburame without their oversized, tall collared coats. He suspected it was to hide the bugs constantly moving over and under their skin. The few he had met absolutely refused to remove them, especially the women even after his not so subtle and perverted attempts at asking them. That had earned him more than a few bug bites.
He didn't have long to think about her location as a rope yanked his feet into the air, causing him to release an embarrassing yelp over the initial discomfort of having his feet pulled above his head.
Damn, I fell for this stupid trap! He thought as the blood rushed to his head. The tree branch the rope was tied to creaked under his weight. He wasn't as small as he was back when he fell for the trap over and over during Sarutobi-sensei's bell test and the last thing he wanted was to fall and land on his head.
"Is this the best you could do?" he asked stoically, hiding the humiliation of being caught in a simple snare again.
"I'm not finished," said her soft, passionless voice as Shinobu slid out from under the bushes she had been hiding under. Without her coat, she wore a simple black top, which was sleeveless, no doubt to allow easy exits for her bugs. From this height, they looked like ordinary arms, covered with a few dark spots, like birthmarks, but he knew differently.
She formed her hands into a hand seal and closed her eyes in concentration.
buzz
Jiraiya wasn't surprised to hear the sound of bugs. He looked around, but couldn't see them yet. However, it was a common Aburame strategy, one attack to distract to allow the bugs to attack from behind.
He calmly looked up at the rope that around his ankles and led up the tree branch. He expected to see black destruction bugs marching down it, but he saw nothing. He wasn't afraid, he knew he was large for the average sized man and had lots of chakra to match. The basic use of destruction bugs was to eat their opponent's chakra, but with only thousands that could fit inside the ten year old girl, it wouldn't be enough to slow him down.
buzz
The sound was getting closer yet he still couldn't see them. He knew the bugs could fly, they could swarm around the Aburame's body as they released them, but typically when they attacked they marched toward their victim.
buzz
The first bug flew in front of his vision and Jiraiya's eyes widened or horror. It wasn't a dark destruction bug, but a black and yellow bee! "Now wait a minute!"
"Aburame can also communicate with insects and control them," she told him. "I choose this tree specifically because it had a beehive."
"Ouch!" he yelled after the first bee stung him. He swiped at them, but it only caused the rope to swing back and forth and the tree branch to creak even more.
He looked down at her in irritation. He had said to come after him with the will to kill him, but this abuse was going to far! He looked down and noticed she was underneath him with her hand outstretched. He severely doubted she intended to catch him when the branch broke above him, but she looked like she expected something to drop.
The bells!
Jiraiya quickly looked up or rather down from his perspective and saw the bells dangling from his belt by their white strings. Except one of the strings was completely covered by dark destruction bugs, chewing on the strings!
How did they get there so fast. I didn't see any of them craw down the rope! Jiraiya quickly searched his memory. The kunai! I thought it had been rather useless to throw a kunai after I showed I could block Kayaku's shuriken so well. She had the bugs on it and they must have jumped off and onto me as I blocked them!
"A pretty good trick, the bees are only a distraction," he managed through gritted teeth. He might have been pleased if it wasn't for the pain. The bees had already stung him several times. "But you are going to have to do better than that!"
Body Replacement Technique.
Shinobu quickly back stepped out of the way, as a figure made of mud dropped down to the ground into a thick puddle, nearly covering her. The bees dissipated now that their target was gone and Jiraiya had disappeared.
Body Replacement Technique, she thought to herself as she inspected the puddle. A technique that allows the user to quickly replace themselves with another object. I've seen other Aburame do it with bugs, but mud is a little strange.
She paused as she noticed something gold shining in the sunlight, nearly covered by the mud.
"A bell!" She reached down with smile. "So my destruction bugs worked after all!"
"Not quite."
She turned and saw Jiraiya standing there with a smirk on his face despite the new welts. "Don't fall for an obvious trap."
Shinobu didn't have time to comprehend the words as a rope yanked her into the air upside down. The snare had been hidden in the mud and her fingers never even had a chance to touch the bell. "Ah!"
Jiraiya reached down, picked up the bell, and reattached it to his belt after carefully checking more destruction bugs. "That was a good trick. I never expected you to use your coat as a decoy. You're different than I expected. I've met a few Aburame women in my day and never managed to convince them to reveal their pretty faces."
"Pervert," she managed calmly while the rope still managed to swing her a little back and forth.
"Hey! It's not nice to call your teacher a pervert. Especially when I haven't done anything perverted yet!" To be honest he was trying hard to be on his best behavior the whole time and not to, as Tsunade would have put it, to corrupt their fragile young minds.
She looked down, and saw the edge of the river that the old tree stood near. The branch itself leaned a little too far over the water itself, with the swing of the rope she sometimes hovered over that edge. Her eyes looked at the water nervously. No…fearfully, Jiraiya thought to himself.
It was the same branch he hanged from, but he guessed she hadn't picked the tree by planning to end up upside down it herself. He hadn't been afraid of the nearby water when he hanged from it, but he felt a little concerned over the look in her eyes.
My only weakness is women.
He moved forward, prepared to cut the rope and lower her down. He decided he would tie her to one of the logs before he took care of the last one.
CRASH!
Nearby small trees and branches flew into the air into splintered pieces. Jiraiya looked up above as a giant spherical shape smashed right through them in midair and was flying toward him like a cannonball.
What a guy! That's a C-rank technique, not something a ten year old graduate of the Academy should be able to do. I guess that makes the Akimichi kid my genius.
Jiraiya just barely had time to think all this as the giant ball came crashing down with the entire momentum gather from being launched from one of the taller trees.
However, as impressive as using the momentum of the height he jumped from, if I dodge now he'll hit the tree and Shinobu. It's possible he could even kill her with this amount of force. I'll lecture him on that later.
Jiraiya tried to anchor his feet to the ground with his chakra, as if he were walking up a tree, and lowered his defensive stance. With no time for anything fancier, he prepared to catch Chouichi.
With a boom that traveled through the forest area and a cloud of dirt that rose into the air, Chouichi finally hit ground. Despite being anchored to the ground, Jiraiya was slammed backwards, with the ground underneath him. He slammed into the tree behind him and heard the slow sound of a tree cracking and splitting as it was now unable to support itself.
He heard Shinobu scream.
Jiraiya looked back while pushing Chouichi back. The rope was swinging wildly now, back and forth like a pendulum, moving her over land and over water, repeatedly. Worse because the tree was leaning closer and closer to ground, eventually she was going to hit one of them.
"Shinobu! The water is softer to hit than the ground, get ready to swim!"
"No! Wait!"
Jiraiya couldn't. He swiftly pulled a kunai from his holster and threw it with perfect, calculated aim. By time it reached her, it cut right through the rope around her ankles. Not only letting her fall, but also freeing her feet so she could swim.
He turned his attention on Chouichi, not even watching her as she splashed in the water, trusting that she could swim out of the river.
Chouichi popped his head and limbs outside of the round shape. Instead of reducing to his normal size, the round shape form changed back into his normal shape, only now he was as tall as Jiraiya and much wider.
The Multi-Size Technique not only allows them to grow into a round shape, but also let's them grow, but still retain their natural shape. However, this form can't be used for the Human Bullet Tank. What does he intend to do now?
The boy moved his feet in a wide stance with his knees bent. There wasn't much room between Jiraiya and Chouichi or Jiraiya and the remains of the tree behind him. When Chouichi suddenly extended both arms with his palms open, striking Jiraiya in the middle of the chest, it sent the older ninja flying into the tree, finally breaking and sending its remains into the river.
"Damn," he said as he got up and brushed off the dirt on him.
Impressive, using his strength, momentum, and a combination of moves he can become a dangerous opponent while in that larger form. I can do hundred different things in this situation if this were real combat. This is just a test and despite his new size, he's still just a ten year old. I could end up seriously hurting him, however, this test is more to see their abilities than mine. He's still young, he'll run out of chakra and stamina fast in that form, but lets see what he can do.
He formed a defensive stance, but looked back noticing he was closer to the edge of the river than ever. He noticed the old tree with the beehive had finally fallen into the river now, its trunk floating on top, he was glad that he had cut Shinobu loose when he had, or else she may have drowned while tied to the rope.
buzz
Jiraiya turned quickly, a little nervous about that sound after his recent ordeal, but it was only bees desperate to escape their hive as it sank into the water. He sighed in relief that they weren't interested in him.
An awful shriek filled the air, hurting his ears. He turned around in concern, ignoring Chouichi. He hoped to have seen Shinobu pulling herself out of the river by now, but he saw nothing, but the beehive slowly sinking.
The beehive…hive…Shinobu!
His stomach felt like it dropped as he realized in horror what he had done. He had essentially thrown a hive of destruction bugs into the river, to be completely engulfed by water. Like the beehive, he imagined the bugs desperate to escape, fighting their way out, but worse because their hive was a human being made of flesh and blood and the destruction bugs weren't ordinary bugs.
For the second time in the day, he feared he had accidentally killed one of his students.
Next Chapter: Think Beyond the Normal
A/N: In this story, especially this chapter, I've tried to keep in mind what techniques and abilities Jiraiya, Chouji, and Shino have ever used and when compared to the techniques and abilities of Team 7 during their bell test. As new Genin, Team 7 all had the techniques taught to them at the academy, but little else. Naruto had his forbidden technique and Sasuke had his fire technique (but it was also a C-rank technique that Kakashi said he shouldn't have been able to do…which goes along with Sasuke's genius status). Since we didn't see Chouji and Shino abilities until during Chuunin exam after months of training, I assumed most of their skills were a bit advanced for a new Genin. However, by making Chouichi the genius, I gave him Human Bullet Tank, which is also a C-Rank technique.
We have seen variations of the basic abilities of the Aburame and the Akimichi, which leads to some questions about the differences, but I've taken some artistic license and gone in certain directions. The Multi Size Technique can inflate an Akimichi into a round shape (Chouji) and it can make them grow while retaining their human shape (Chouza). I've seen Chouza's version being called Super Multi Size, but I assume the super is more for the fact he was taller than a building. I decided there is no reason why the normal Multi Size couldn't allow him to grow taller a little bit while keeping his shape instead of transforming into a ball. As for the Aburame, the destruction bugs can fly, but prefer to march toward their victims.
We have also seen variations of techniques. Kakashi and Team 7 seem to prefer using logs in their Body Replacements, but both Sandaime and Orochimaru have used mud. Their replacements for near copies of them before quickly losing its form into a mud puddle and even Sandaime used it when no mud was near him. Figuring it was a teacher-student thing, I had Jiraiya using mud too, which also helped hide the second snare in the story.
Also, I was inspired by the fate of the beehive guy from Ninja Scroll. I wondered what would happen to an Aburame if they were submerged in water, but don't worry. Someone will rescue Shinobu in the next chapter.
Version 1.1
1.0: Original
1.1: Corrected the Author Note's about Sasuke's technique.