A/N: Thank you for all of the reviews! Wow, I got a lot of them this time. I really liked hearing how well everyone liked this story and the characters.
No action this time, instead I realized that after every big speech or action from Naruto we see an emotional flashback of the other person's childhood. After Kayaku's speech to Shinobu, it is appropriate to show a little of Shinobu's childhood. Yet not knowing much about the Aburame, I've created my own realistic version of their background.
Chapter 05 – The Most Important Thing Part I
Looks like your talents are exceptional.
Kayaku smiled the memory from a moment ago, before all they all separated again. His teacher had praised him, a stark contrast to the number of bad things he called him earlier on. He hadn't been able to stay on the water for long, less than a few seconds really, but it had impressed his teacher.
Unfortunately, the reality of his claim, that he would get a bell, was sinking in. He wanted to prove to Shinobu that he could. That he was special, that if an orphan boy could be defiant to expectations of others, then surely she as a member of a noble clan could as well.
However, he was realizing saying it is different than doing it, but he hoped that he could, especially after that moment. After falling in the water, Shinobu actually offered a hand to pull him out. The memory of the touch of her cool, soft hand also made him smile, he thought perhaps he had made a friend despite the situation.
Yet, it was short lived as they spread out again, but this time he felt as if their second chance was a useless gesture. After her ordeal in the water he didn't think Shinobu would be up to fighting and Chouichi had remained used his secret technique for an extended period. He would no doubt be tired by now. By Kayaku's estimates, they would be tied to the logs too and that made him feel sad. They were on the same team and therefore teammates. Shouldn't he care about what happened to them?
The entire test was confusing. He guessed that there was no way to really beat Jiraiya, and merely trying to trick him into getting a bell hadn't worked for them either. At this rate, they would only win if he let them and that left a bad feeling in Kayaku. After all their hard work, at the top of their current abilities, to just be allowed to win didn't seem fair.
His feet itched to be on the water again. He wanted to master it, just like how he ran up the trees over and over until he got it. He didn't want to be hiding under some bushes again, but practicing on the water now would just place him out in the wide open.
Instead, he plucked a small green leaf by the tree was hiding against and placed it in the palm of his hand. He concentrated his chakra to that specific point and a blue glow surrounded the tiny leaf. The exercise was meant to use his maximum amount of chakra, but he lowered it, carefully controlling, remembering that maximum amounts on his feet made him fall in the water. The added bonus was it calmed him down, likely the reason the Academy teachers taught it to him, besides for giving him something to do.
He calmed his mind and defined his target. At first, he pictured Jiraiya, but then corrected himself. The target was the bells, Jiraiya was just an obstacle in getting them, which wasn't much different from his previous thought.
There had to be away of getting them. If only he could think of how…
Do you think being a ninja is easy?
Shinobu moved the hair of her bangs away from her eyes and gently caressed her cheek until she could feel the two holes bored into her skin. It still hurt and perhaps always would, making her realized why everyone in the clan spoke as little as possible as any movement of the jaw was painful. The children copied the cool attitudes of their parents, but now she knew the truth.
"I don't want it to be easy, but it shouldn't be this hard."
She removed her hand from her face and flung a closed fist into the air, in an unexpected bit of anger, but winced in pain as she carelessly hit the bush she hid beside, small thorns tore into her skin, leaving bloody flaps of skin even as she tried to pull away.
"Ow!" Shinobu quickly cradled her hand against her chest, gritting her teeth in pain and at her anger at herself. The bugs put enough holes in her body without her doing something so stupid to puncture herself.
The telltale itch across her skin alerted her to impending exit of a few bugs. She watched her bloody hand as she felt the bugs traveling under her skin and out of a hole on her hand. Her coat sleeves normally hid the hole, but the coat itself lost on the other side of the forest after she used it for a decoy. She was already missing it, after wearing it for so long she felt naked without it. Worse, was the impending disappointment from her father if he found out she lost her coat.
Her father was a distant individual, like all Aburame, but she had no doubts about his love for her. He was merely like all the other individuals born into the Aburame clan. They were a close-knit group, with the cooperation and synergy that rivaled an ant colony and yet just as silent. Yet, just like an ant colony there was a certain harmony, which even she enjoyed.
Once after a storm that damaged several buildings and homes in the Aburame district she watched several Aburame work together to repair them, each very quiet, but working together in ways one wouldn't expect from people who were so distant from each other.
She was reminded of that memory as the bugs that left the exit crawled over to one of the scratches. Despite the tingle of pain, she let them do their work as they weaved the flesh back together. As they moved off to the next scratch, she looked the remains of the first scratch with fascination. The bugs had sealed the scratch with hardly any visible marks to show its presence other than the remaining drying blood. Not quite the same as medical techniques, but it worked.
It made sense to her, the bugs were able to create tunnels and exits in her without her bleeding to death. Many bugs tend to use certain materials to build a nest like mud, wood, or wax. In her case, it was her own flesh. She wasn't sure if she were grateful or not.
Once upon a time, she wasn't like this. An individual doesn't born into the Aburame without knowing their nature as they grew up, but they were blissfully ignorant of the differences between themselves and everyone else outside the clan.
In another memory, already fading back into one of many forgotten childhood memories, she remembered a time years ago:
She was a little girl dress in a purple yukata with dark flower designs. She cradled on her arms with the other, blood was slowly dripping down her arm from where she scratched her elbow badly. In the hand of the injured arm, she held a broken pinwheel, the golden vanes rotated slowly through the soft wind.
It was nighttime in Konoha and a crowd of individuals flowed through the streets to enjoy the festival. There were paper lanterns suspended in the air, booths to the side of each street, and few curious fireflies flying about. The festival was far from the familiar streets of the Aburame district, which the girl rarely left, so she was completely lost and alone.
The crowd around her was oblivious to her tiny presence, the combined noise around them prevented many from hearing her cries, although she desperately wished for her parents or older brother to find her.
Her cries grew softer as she noticed the growing number of fireflies in the air and as sudden as they appeared, an old woman wearing a dark blue yukata was by her side.
The old woman was hunched over and leaning on a cane. Gossamer wisps of white hair glowed under the lantern light and eerie green light of the fireflies that followed her. Her wrinkled skin made her look positively ancient, yet the girl had a wide smile as she recognized the old woman. She was an elder of the Aburame clan and as such, the girl felt saved.
A reassuring hand caressed her cheek and wiped away a tear. The fingers were gnarled by old age and she leaned heavily on her cane.
The Aburame elder didn't wear sunglasses or an oversized coat like everyone else born into the clan. Yet, her eyelids were partially closed, under heavy wrinkles, and the girl couldn't see the old woman's eyes. The old woman had what appeared to be many dark liver spots, obscured by the night and her wrinkles, but the girl could see them on every piece of exposed skin.
"What happened?" the old woman asked, her voice cool and collected, but with a hint of grandmotherly concern.
"I fell," she sniffed. She held out the broken pinwheel for an example, the thin wooden stick was snapped partially in two and bent, but the golden vanes were undamaged and slowly turning in the light wind. The elder looked at her oddly, amused by the child's confusion of priorities. The girl was more upset by a broken toy than her bleeding arm.
"That's alright," he spoke. "It can be repaired, but we have to take care of your arm first. Hold still…"
The old woman took the girl's arm gently in hands and inspected the injury. The girl shivered as a surge of chakra flowed from the old woman's fingers and into the arm. Something started buzzing inside of her in response. It was a familiar feeling that came and went sometimes, something her father told her not to worry about.
"They're almost there," the old woman muttered to herself. "Perhaps I'll give them a boost."
Destruction bugs started marching out from underneath the old woman's sleeve and onto the girl's arm as the girl watched with innocent fascination.
"It tickles," she laughed. By now, she was no longer crying and comforted by old woman's presence. The girl was a member of the Aburame, thus destruction bugs were nothing to be afraid of, and she had grown up around them so they were normal to her.
"Be careful not to squash them," she warned softly.
"What are they doing?"
The woman spoke in an instructive tone, but clear enough for the girl to understand. "They are stopping the bleeding, then weaving the bits and pieces of flesh back together to close the cut and not to leave a scar. A pretty girl like you shouldn't have scars."
The girl smiled at the praise and looked at her arm. It was now smooth and unblemished as if she hadn't fallen at all, but still covered with several of the bugs. "I didn't know they could do that."
"Of course, the bugs work together to do big things even though they are so small."
The old woman's gripped the arm tighter, but the flurry of fireflies did an aerial dance in front of the girl, distracting her from her arm.
"Ow!" she winced, but the old woman tugged her sleeve down over her arm before she could see.
"There finished," the old woman told her kindly.
The fireflies remained, one of them landed on the pinwheel and caught the girl's attention as the vanes slowly turned. She watched the green glow with curiosity.
"Why are there so many fireflies?"
"They are my friends," answered the old woman. "When I was young I used to dance among them in the moonlight."
The girl played with the fireflies, slipping the pinwheel between her belt so she could use both hands to capture a bug, letting her watch the green glow from the darkness created between her hands.
"One life is beginning as another is ending, like the life of a bug," the old woman remarked wearily and gave the girl a warm smile. "May the Aburame clan always have a kunoichi who is as skilled as she is beautiful."
The girl was so entranced by the fireflies that she hadn't noticed that the destruction bugs hadn't returned to the old woman.
Kayaku frowned at not reaching an answer and opened his eyes as he broke his concentration. Nothing he came up with worked. Jiraiya could outthink every trap, block every attack, the only thing Kayaku had was speed, but even that wouldn't work if Jiraiya's attention were on him. The big man could still block him before he his hands got anywhere near those bells.
"Are you asleep?"
He jerked at the unexpected sound, but the voice was soft, feminine, and irritated, thus definitely not his teacher sneaking up on him. To his surprise, there was Shinobu, still sans her coat, standing next to where he sat.
"Shinobu! How'd you find me!" he yelled in a rough whisper that was still loud due to his excitement.
"Quiet!" she snapped. Shinobu moved a hand closer to him quickly and he flinched thinking that she was going to hit him. Instead, her fingers raked through his still damp hair. He cringed at first, but it felt pleasant yet he couldn't fathom why she was doing it until she pulled back with a small black bug on the edge of a finger.
He looked at it curiously and realized it was the same type of bug that he saw fly out of Shinobu earlier.
"This is a female bug," she explained. "She emits a scent that only the male bugs can follow. It allowed me to track you down through them."
"Why was it in my hair?" he asked innocently, oblivious that Shinobu herself had placed it on him earlier when she helped him out of the water.
"I-I," she started. "I don't know," she lied.
She really didn't want to say why she went looking for him and she wasn't even sure why she had left the bug on him in the first place, instead she sat beside him, closer than she would have liked without her coat.
Shinobu turned and saw him looking at her arms, at the pale skin dotted with several holes. There were no bugs coming out of them now, but the holes were obvious this close, more than just dark spots. "Stop looking!"
"Sorry!" he flinched.
She watched his expression carefully, deciding he was just curious and there was nothing disgusted or hateful in his eyes. It bothered a little that he didn't act they way she thought he would, but Kayaku was definitely odd.
"What were you doing?" she managed to ask, trying to change her train of thought.
"This?" he asked as he raised his open palm with the leaf on it. "It's the leaf concentration exercise. The Academy teachers taught it to me, they say it's ancient chakra training."
"What's it good for?"
"By calming your mind and defining your target you can call up your maximum chakra at a specific point of your body." He plucked a fresh leaf from the tree and moved it closer to her hand. "Here, try."
Shinobu let him place the leaf in her palm. "This is silly," she told herself.
"Now focus your chakra on the leaf. Sometimes it helps if you close your eyes and only concentrate on the leaf."
She followed his instructions, which weren't hard, concentrating on a specific point was a basic of communicating with the destruction bugs with her chakra.
They sat under the lantern light on the edge of the festival. The old woman used her authority as an elder to send a young Aburame out looking for the girl's family.
"Why don't you wear sunglasses?" asked the curious girl.
"Because I'm too old for such nonsense," said the old woman sternly. "I am what I am. I'm too old to have enemies to hide my abilities from, besides, its all unnecessary motions to me anymore. Even hiding these," said the old woman as she caressed her own cheek with their fingers. Underneath brighter lantern lights, the girl could see that it wasn't liver spots on the woman's skin, but numerous holes, exits for the destruction bugs.
It wasn't an unfamiliar sight, she seen her father use his bugs before, the holes on his cheek would close up and disappear when not in use. Back then her young mind assumed they just appeared, but now looking at the old woman she started to understand they were a bit more permanent. The old woman was riddled with holes, the result of a long life as an Aburame.
Despite her new discomfort, the little girl still enjoyed the old woman's outgoing nature. Her father and older brother were so distant, to her, to her mother, and to each other. They hid what they were even from each other, using sunglasses to emulate the emotionless eyes of the dark bugs they carried. The old woman's warm personality outweighed any fear the girl had about her holes, it reminded her so much of her mother's personality, a beautiful woman who married into the clan and didn't have bugs like the rest of the family.
"Shinobu!" yelled a woman wearing a purple yukata of the same flower design as the girl's yukata. She rushed forward and quickly pulled the girl away from the old woman.
"Mom!" Under the glow the paper lanterns the flawless pale skin and beautiful features of her mother were a start contrast to the old woman's old skin riddled with holes.
Her mother hugged her tight while sending the old woman an accusing glare.
"How dare you!"
"She was lost in the festival, would you rather I left her?" said the old woman in her cool voice while folding her hands in her lap.
"I don't want you near Shinobu," the girl's mother argued. "Not after what you did!"
The woman looked the girl over, as if checking for injury, but her panicked eyes frightened the girl a little.
"What I did? I upheld Aburame traditions. You are the outsider who tried to defy our ways. You should have known better, this is the Aburame way."
"She healed my arm," said the girl proudly, hoping her mother would see the old woman as kind as she did, but she lifted her sleeve to show her and paused, "What?"
There were three holes in a line on her forearm.
"She's my daughter!" yelled her mother after see saw the holes. Tears were in her eyes now, " You didn't' have a right!"
"Yes I did, as elder of my clan," the old woman answered. "I suspect you've convinced your husband to give her more time, but the health of the nest must be insured. You have only done her a disservice by keeping so much from her, the bugs have already built a strong foundation. She will only be frightened later on because of you."
"Mom?" cried the girl, confused and frightened, perhaps more from the emotions being flung about the two women. The buzzing inside her grew, perhaps fed by her growing panic.
"But she's just a girl," her mother said weakly as her arms fell limply away from her embrace.
"She is Aburame, as I was. I was considered beautiful even after the days when I'd mastered my bugs and I was still able to bear healthy children that I loved. The bugs didn't change those parts of my human life. If you can't see past them then perhaps you married the wrong man!"
The girl could see the old woman's words hurt her mother terribly. "Just look at you now, your nothing more than a dried up old beehive. Filled with holes and tunnels all over, your bugs are the only things supporting you anymore. That's the fate you gave Shinobu!"
"Stop it! Stop it!" the girl screamed. Her emotions flew out of control as well as the buzzing inside of her. Destruction bugs that she didn't know she had flew out of the new holes in her arm and into a swarm that flew toward her mother.
In a flurry of movement her mother jerked away from her with a scream, her eyes looked at the girl with a mixture of fear and disgust, and a larger shape in a red coat moved between them a moment too late. The girl was just as afraid of the bugs as her mother, but conforted by the stoic presence of her father. He grabbed her wrist gently and with a surge of chakra, he ordered the swarm to return to their nest.
"Shibi, take care of your mother," her father said. The girl turned and saw her older brother walk toward their mother, the woman flinched from his touch, but her face twisted in shame.
He examined the girl's arm and turned to the old woman, his frown partially obscure from his coat. "You gave her some of your bugs?"
"I had to ensure her nest was strong. Several generations without a new strain of bugs will make the nest weaker, you know that. The Aburame have to remain strong. Besides, her own were close to breaking out anyway, mine are a bit better at digging through flesh. It was less painful and less frightening for her. You should be thanking me."
"Caretaking my child's nest is my responsibility," he said as he picked up his daughter and set her protectively in his arms. "If you interfere with my parental duties again, we'll have more than just words between us."
Her father left the old woman with his family following. The girl clutched at his coat and looked around for her mother. What she saw haunted her.
Her mother looked at her with a distant expression.
Kayaku gasped and Shinobu opened her eyes to see her hand covered by destruction bugs that she hadn't even felt leave. Her stomach felt like it dropped as she realized once again she had exposed her true self to him.
"Cool," the boy said as he leaned closer to get a better view of what the bugs were doing to the leaf. His eyes contained no fear or disgust. In fact, he was moving closer just to get a better look. "Instead of your chakra lifting up the leaf your bugs are."
"S-Sorry, I must have gotten confused," she said. She was mental berating herself for screwing up, but she couldn't help to be caught up in Kayaku's excitement. "I can communicate with them through chakra, tell them to do things, but they don't always listen."
"Maybe they can't hear," he said. "Just by concentrating chakra to your foot doesn't mean you'll stick to a tree, but by focusing your chakra to the maximum amount they not only heard but because you were concentrating on the leaf on your head that's where they went."
Shinobu listened to Kayaku's analytical explanation, it made sense, but it was too weird to hear him say anything smart, he acted too goofy and cheerful at times.
"They healed my hand earlier," she told him, not sure why she brought it up. She rubbed her hand while she spoke, "I cut it badly, but they stitched it back together. There isn't even a scar."
"Together?" the boy asked with a quizzical expression.
"Of course, idiot," she told him with a frown. She repeated the old woman's words from long ago, "The bugs work together to do big things even if they are so small."
"That's it!" he yelled. The big smile forming on his face frustrated her more. "That's how we can get the bells!"
Next Chapter – The Most Important Thing Part II
A/N: I am fascinated by the Aburame even though I don't like bugs, the idea of them living in me is horrifying. I am curious about what their clan is really like and frustrated that we haven't seen some Jounin-level action yet.
In writing his chapter, I made a few assumptions. One is destruction bugs have the lifetime of an average bug. Thus, an Aburame will have generations of bugs living and dying inside him. Another was the Aburame only use one species of destruction bugs, but the bugs are like humans in that some are better at certain tasks than others. A single Aburame may have several different bloodlines, each good for a different task, running around him at all times. New abilities maybe gained when a new bug is introduced to the nest and creates several bugs with its traits every generation. However, an Aburame needs the skills to use the new abilities and bond with any new bugs, which would make it harder for them to put a super bug of every kind in a person at once. Since from what we've seen, Shino relies more on the abilities of his bugs mixed with ninjutsu then more advance techniques would require better bugs. My assumption is they wouldn't want to put an Olympic bug in a baby that couldn't handle it, instead they start with Average Joe bug that gets the ball rolling, getting the body adapted for more bugs. Then when they are ready they can start taking on Olympic bugs, all this explains what the old woman did.
And for those who noticed, yes, I used the name Shibi (the name of Shino's father) for the name of Shinobu's brother, which makes her Shino's aunt. I decided to tie that in. Assuming the Fourth was 25 when he died, that makes Shibi a year older than Shinobu. The original InoShikaChou is 38 each, when they were introduced their kids about 13 each, so that would make them 25 at the time of the Fourth's death. That gives me some canon characters to be friends with Team Jiraiya for the second arc.
Version 1.0
1.0: Original