Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto in any way and make no claim on its copyright or any characters from the series. Original characters are my own property.
Author's Notes: Let there be freakiness! With this chapter things get even stranger (something that may continue for a while). Still, I believe it's a good kind of freakiness, besides this story is about breaking barriers.
Anyway, please leave a review if you read, it's a very simple way to do a nice thing!
Other Gifts Continues
Having used the arrival of the sun to make a dramatic appearance leaving Suzumebachi momentarily stunned, the Tsuchikage did not pause, but strode purposefully into the meadow. In his right hand he held the same brass bound scroll he had possessed the day before. Standing within one of the streaming bands of sunlight he placed the scroll at his feet. A tiny needle appeared in his hand, pricking his right palm to draw a single drop of red blood, obvious to the eye with its dark coiling color.
The old man's hand slammed down to the grass covered soil, the motion backed by the force of his whole body bending so the ground shook with the force of his blow. "Konchuu Yobidasu no Jutsu! Vesp!"
Suzumebachi had barely any time to consider the unfamiliar technique's name, and the strange, foreign word that followed it, before a flurry of disrupted grass stalks and flowers were thrown into the air, forming a brief whirlwind of verdant torment before the Tsuchkage, and them coalescing into a single thing.
Black and yellow it stood in the morning sun, a creature almost as tall as a man but with length stretching out far behind it. Six legs it possessed, supporting a tripartite body neither slender nor bulbous, but stocky and powerful, with four clear wings above. An insect master and wasp specialist, Suzumebachi recognized the creature instantly as a yellow jacket, but there was something off. She had summoned mighty insects of this great size before, but this one had slightly different form than a true yellow jacket, its head and thorax were tilted oddly, facing more upward than they should, and the forelimbs projected forward, not down, serving more as arms than legs. These were further modified to form something that could only be called hands, though they bore little resemblance to those of humans, they suited well enough to hold tools no normal insect could possess, a broad curved single-edged sword and a round shield.
The great black eyes of the eerie insect peered at Suzumebachi, and she felt drawn to the unmoving gaze, seeing there something different than the normal perceptions of a simple worker wasp, something far wiser, and a thousand times more dangerous. Though a summoned insect might have great intelligence due to its spiritual nature, this creature had an intelligence that came from no spiritual source, but from itself alone. Fear bled deep into Suzumebachi from that realization, a cold leaking fear, spilling through her core as she tried to recognize just what this creature might truly be.
The yellow jacket's gaze lingered on Suzumebachi for only a moment. Its mandibles opened and closed repeatedly, and to her everlasting shock it spoke. "Not you, it's not you," the words did not match the motions of those chewing structures, but they combined together with a combination of other sounds somehow produced by the complex mouthparts taken together to form a rough approximation of human language. It was not spoken in any way a human might speak, and the sounds cracked against each other, as if a drum had been made to speak human words, but they were comprehensible.
With its exclamation the yellow jacket thing spun about, moving with the terrible jerking speed of insects. Non-fluid motion, but in stop and go sequence with no intervening parts it turned, and then was not facing the direction it had been the moment before. Nerves in Suzumebachi reacted with the instinctive panic at such unpredictable motion she had long thought eradicated from her, even from insects of great size, but there was something far more dangerous embedded in this encounter, something to wake fear from its slumber and give it new hooks into her mind.
Only quelling that momentary fear did Suzumebachi observe the new situation, having missed how it had occurred.
The Tsuchikage had not moved, seemingly, but now that curved sword lay at his throat. Suzumebachi's eye fixated on that blade. It was different from any weapon she had observed before. The blade was not long, perhaps only a few inches in length greater than a wakazashi, but it was far broader than any sword of the katana class, a massive thick blade and curved smoothly all down the length, again to a degree much greater than could be seen in a katana. Suzmebachi could not place the style at all, though she had heard some Mist ninja might use greatly curved swords. Beyond the odd construction the blade had one other frightfully shocking feature. It was not made of steel. Glisten brightly though it did, and with an edge as sharp as any on a metal sword, it was clearly not of metal, but some other substance, crystalline like clay. A quick twitch of the eye confirmed the rounded shield was likewise made not of metal, but of this unusual material instead.
The Tsuchikage made no motion whatsoever regarding the sword at his throat, meeting the great black eyes with his own. It was a mismatch in size. The yellow jacket creature's head was not much bigger than a man's, and its height roughly matched the Tsuchikage's wizened frame, but its eyes encompassed a massive portion of that head, their size might match a human's clenched fist or more. Nevertheless the Tsuchikage never wavered, nor did he say anything.
"Why did you bring me here, hu-man," the voice, so odd and impossible, could not be read for emotion or tone, save in that last word, deliberately divided into two incomplete parts. Hearing it Suzumebachi could not interpret it as anything but a scorn-filled insult. The yellow jacket was surely hostile, and threatening her leader, but she did not move. She could not find her place in this encounter, and she did not think she could bring her to attack this creature, no matter how hostile it might appear, until ordered. For there was a great majesty she saw in it, and it was not in her to strike first without cause. So she waited.
"I require a service of you," Tsuchikage answered levelly, his voice firm as ever, un-intimidated by the appearance or the blade.
"Too bad, hu-man," the answer was swift and immediate. "No bonds have you to command me."
"Yet you will obey me Vesp," The Tsuchikage returned, naming its nature with the foreign word. "You will train the girl behind you, for I require it."
"I care not, hu-man," the reply was swift and firm, and the Vesp, though it could not alter its tone for human speech, increased the volume of its voice to underscore the point. "I need not obey you. She has the bonds to command me," the massive insect did not look or point to Suzumebachi but she knew it referred to her, and somehow she knew the words to be true, a dark knowledge bubbling up from inside her, but she could not know why those words were true. "But I why should I teach another to control my kind?" the Vesp asked. "Am I a fool?"
"No," The Tsuchikage replied. "Yet still you will do it. It is in your own best interests."
The Vesp's long full abdomen twitched up and down, thrumming with something that could not be known. Then, without warning, it pulled up its sword and spun about again. As it moved its wings snapped up, and legs powered forward, propelling it in a sudden leap that brought the creature's face to within arms reach of Suzumebachi.
Up close the Vesp's alien, frightful nature was all the more potent, the massive eyes and powerful, toothed mandibles, so unlike anything any mammal held in its face, the long antennae snaking upward to overtop Suzumebachi that never ceased slow twitching. She was too awed and frightened to move before that creature, even as she inspected it with a ruthless fascination, the inherent curiosity she held for all insects and wasps in particular rising high in her senses.
The long antennae slid about Suzumebachi's head, occasionally brushing her hair, touching off an unusual sensation from the soft caress, something unfamiliar and yet very potent. She shivered with the touch, but did not take her eyes off the Vesp, now looking over the whole creature, memorizing every inch of it.
"You have the bonds hu-man, strength, and will, you could," it paused, and slashed its mandibles through the air once more, spewing forth a stream of crashing, clacking sounds unfamiliar to the human ear, but Suzumebachi, hearing them, heard more than bare noise. There was a cadence to the pace, and she was certain, words. This was the language of the Vesp, she was utterly sure of it, and suspected she might in time understand such speech. Such thoughts seemed flights of fancy, but there was something in her that recognized those stressful sounds, and more to this creature, something she wondered at. "But why should I submit, for what?" The Vesp opened its mandibles and lunged, snapping the vise closed within a hair's width of her face, the blast of air streamed across her flesh with the speed and power of that motion. "You must offer me something hu-man." It spoke. Then it spouted a foreign word, clearly stressing it and speaking slowly. "My name," the Vesp spoke the word again, and a third time, and quickly Suzumebachi caught the strange pronunciation.
"Chul'To?" She attempted to pronounce the strange word several times, striking her tongue against her teeth in experimental fashion until the Vesp nodded that she had gotten it close enough for use.
"Yes, hu-man, what will you give Chul'To in exchange for the bond?" Chul'To demanded.
Suzumebachi was fully unsure of what was being offered. She did not know if the Vesp would train her to summon it as the Tsuchikage apparently had, or something else. Regardless, she hungered with flaming desire to learn everything this creature would deign to teach her. She could sense its power and skill, and fervently desired to make them her own. Yet, no matter her desire, she had no idea what the Vesp could possibly want. What did a furious female warrior, for the Vesp was yellow jacket enough that it must be such, desire? And from a human? Suzumebachi had no idea. With no other choice, she was forced to ask. "What do you want from me?"
There was no way to gauge Chul'To's reaction, the insect face was largely expression less, with immobile eyes and mandibles able only to open and close no human expression would have any meaning. Suzumebachi guessed motions of the antennae and the slender palps, extensions of the mouthparts vaguely whisker-like in form, held much expression, but she had no hope to read such things.
"A good question, hu-man," Chul-To replied. "What could you give me of use? Most things of human nature are pointless, and I need no favors from your kind." She fell silent for a long moment, and the head moved slightly, as she appeared to look over her body, and the few things she carried, tied to straps on the thorax. "Metal," Chul'To said forcefully, the word very clear so as not to be mistaken. "A weapon. Forged by your hand and melded to your essence by much use. While you live it will be yours, but you will swear it passes to me upon death. This is my price to teach you to use your bonds to our world. Are we agreed?"
Suzumebachi had never made a weapon in her life, and had no idea how to go about such a thing, but she did not for an instant hesitate. "Agreed," her reply was firm as she stared deep into the great black faceted eyes.
"Very well hu-man," Chul'To answered. "So it is agreed. Here is how to use the bonds within you: the scroll holds the ritual to bridge boundaries, but only through commonality can you command. Our kinds are very different, what is most in common?"
Suzumebachi thought for a moment. In truth, there was little in common between insects and humans, almost all things, even the most basic, where different, everything functioned different, from skin to blood to nerves. Still, she had not studied and lived with insects her whole short life for nothing. "The throat," she chose.
"Clever girl," Chul'To no longer used her derogatory pronunciation of human on Suzumebachi. "Hold our name in you throat while your project your power and the bond will be invoked. It is simple." With yet another sudden motion Chul'To turned away from Suzumebachi, flipping back to face the Tsuchikage. "There hu-man, it is agreed," the snapping voice was loud and clearly hostile. "When her weapon is made she may call upon me, now send me back or I shall take you as prey!"
The Tsuchikage made a single dismissive seal with his right hand, and in a whirl of wind and dust the Vesp vanished, leaving no sign that it had ever been present.
For a single moment only Suzumebachi stared into the empty space in the air, but only for a moment. Then her head snapped back to the Tsuchikage, still standing still on the meadow. The tension skittering through her for the long encounter now broke free, and converted itself to wrath. "What is going on?" she screamed the words, a bare faced demand, not caring whether or not she had the right to make it.
"Calm yourself," the Tsuchikage replied. "Even I could not have predicted how the meeting would go."
Suzumebachi regained a little control after that rebuke, but bitterness still seethed within her. "What did she mean, about bonds and everything else? What is happening?"
"I told you yesterday, your essence had been changed, it has been transfused with an alien being, but one that serves to bond you to an alien world," his voice was steady, patient. "One of the consequences is that you may command such creatures as the Vesp."
"One of the consequences?" Suzumebachi could tell the old ninja was hiding things from her, and she felt violated and betrayed. Something had been done to her, something she had not asked for and did not understand. It was not right, and she would not accept it meekly.
With a calm, deliberate motion the Tsuchikage retrieved the aged scroll from where he had left it on the ground. It was undamaged; Chul'To had not stepped on it. "The full explanation is in here," he explained, taking a long cylinder of porcelain, with cone-shaped ends, and placing the scroll within. He walked slowly over to Suzumebachi, and held out the scroll. "I needed to make use of this to remake your future into something useful. Now you have proven a worth suitable to possess it. So it is your inheritance."
Suzumebachi reached out and took the heavy, solid cylinder of yellow and black. She recognized those marks now; they had the same pattern as Chul'To's abdomen, the fierce warning pattern of a yellow jacket. She also knew that pattern was a symbol long used by her clan. A possibility exploded into her mind with shattering force, and she wrenched open the case hurriedly. The scroll spilled out into her hands, and discarding the case to the grass beneath her feet she pulled free the ties and unfurled it.
Only a glance was needed to confirm her suspicions. "This is my grandfather's forbidden scroll…" she breathed. Suzumebachi had sought this precious object ever since becoming a genin. The hidden knowledge her clan had lost, the powers that had once made the Kamizuru insect masters feared throughout the shinobi countries, all these things were contained in here. It had been in the hope of finding this scroll that she had gone away, breaking rules and orders, knowing this document could be the redemption of her life and the salvation of her hopeless, weakened clan. "Where did you get this?" Suzumebachi demanded it of the Tsuchikage with a force she should not have used, but did not regret it.
"It was recently placed within headquarters," he informed her, accepting her excitement. "Only a few days ago. I do not know where it was found." Such an admission was strange, for the Tsuchikage always seemed to know everything that happened in his village.
Shocked, Suzumebachi looked at his aged face, searching for a lie, and then back to the scroll, seeing once more her grandfather's neat and tiny characters, reading the words she knew came from the forbidden scroll, and then back to the Tsuchikage again. "But how can that be?"
Tsuchikage shook his head, revealing nothing, but the answer was to become clear immediately thereafter.
- Konshou Yobidasu means something like "Invoke Insect" the procedure is effectively the same as a summoning, but the implications are rather different.
- Vesp, from Vespula, the genus to which Yellow Jackets belong.
About Chul'To's Voice: This is difficult to describe, so I thought I should try to make it clear. Chul'To, like all insects has neither lungs nor vocal chords, making speech as we understand it impossible. She therefore produces sound by forcibly sucking air into her throat via muscle action and expelling it over her mouthparts while moving or striking them together in various ways, producing something that can, with difficulty, be considered human words. It is not pleasant to the ear and cannot produce tonal variation.