They say scary-looking fathers tend to have innocent daughters.

Personally, Aburame-san—Aburame Shino (the dad, not the daughter)—creeps the hell out of me. With that weird way he talks, and those eerie intervals of silence, and that creepy-looking incognito mode getup.

Based on my memories as a ten-year-old child, I remember Aburame Shino being about fifty meters tall and possessing an enslaved house-sized housefly, which he rode on every night to catch children out after dark and then liquefy them into digestible tissue to feed to his billions of mutant hexapods. Or at least that's where my imagination went when he came to pick up his daughter one day at our secret base, me just kinda standing there, looking up at that hoodied supervillain inert in front of the doorway.

The Aburame Clan doesn't really socialize with other villagers. And the rest of us don't really go out of our way to talk to them. They're headquartered in a giant subterranean hive underneath Konohagakure—a tunneling complex where all manners of creepy things cling to cavern walls and swarm freely in the air; occasionally landing on their human hosts so they can dig through the pores of the skin, every now and again a bug crawling up through the gaps between the eyes and the eyelids.

Or at least that's what I've heard about the Aburame Compound. Personally, I've never been. Have never wanted to. No one in the village wants to. The local bug people just don't give off that warm neighborly glow, you know?

As for what Aburame Shino is really like, I don't know. As head of one of Konoha's three noble clans, he comes over to the Hokage Mansion sometimes for council meetings. My own parents seem to be used to him, but I get the feeling that Aburame-san gives the impression that he gave to me to a lot of people—including kids that could have potentially socialized with his daughter when she was growing up.

Given the way that her dad is her father, and her clan is her family, I guess it makes sense that Shinoko is Shino-chan—

"—Yoooooo! My favorite runaway? Wherrre—arrre—youuu?" I shout my objective as I slide open a fusuma painted with a Koyoka-drawn picture of a giant slug fighting a two-headed demon. It led into our makeshift mission/war room in the Sarutobi Compound's far back corner—right between the empty washitsu where all of us used to lay out our futons as academy students and sleep together on the weekend, and the miniature library that we've stuffed bookshelves full of with ten years' worth of our favorite books and manga.

Back in our academy days, our War Room used to just be empty space with floorboards and a map in the middle. Koyoka would make us sit in a circle around it while she plotted missions for us to track down the summer ice cream stall or send scouts to scope out the playground.

We still have the map hanging on the wall, with all of our childhood scribbles intact, but thanks to a D-ranked recycling mission a few years ago we also have a used long table and some secondhand chairs. Another new addition is a big whiteboard that our leader likes to use to plan out our usual mischief or write random inspirational mission statements on…right now it just says 'Never Give Up!'

And lying down defeated in the corner is a curled up figure, wearing a hooded sea-green coat, with something black-and-red covering her up further. The hood of her coat is pulled over her hair, and overlaying her coat is that very unnecessary black-and-red thing. Namely, she's wearing a fake Uchiha Obito robe-and-mask (she got it at a novelty store for 190 ryou, in the smallest size that's still too big for her).

It's the same would-be missing-nin that I saw while working gate duty earlier today.

"Hey, Shi-no-ko." I nudge her with my foot, and she doesn't move. "Ohayougozaimasu. Moshi-Mossshhhhhhhh. A third phrase. Wake up."

She's dead silent, and doesn't move at all when I poke her in the side with my toe. She must've gotten a hard hour-long lecture from Ibiki-san about why going AWOL for fun is bad.

…Wait…

Could she have…collapsed from exhaustion? Did she faint…? What if she was dehydrated or suffering from severe chakra depletion…?

"Hey, Shino-chan." I say her name again, this time a little more bluntly.

Ah, no way…

"Hey, Shinoko!" I shout this time. Still no response.

I crouch down and check her pulse. About 65 BPM…good, that's a healthy resting rate. I take off her mask and check her airflow…why's she wearing sunglasses underneath her mask too? Whatever, I'll take these ones off too. Her breathing seems normal.

It's when I brush aside some of that scraggly hair, colored some unremarkable shade of light brown—she doesn't really take care of it, not really a priority when you cover yourself up all the time—and check her forehead for a fever that I notice…

"…Fwaaa…" She makes a mousy groan in her sleep from the feel of my hand.

Eh…?

…She's perfectly fine. I'm being way too overdramatic.

That's right, she's been like this since we were kids. She's always been a deep, quiet sleeper, as if her body tried to subconsciously make itself small in presence as well as size.

The fact that I came to the early conclusion that she was in some state of medical emergency is, frankly, ridiculous. Guess I'm a little too invested in my position as the team healer.

"The embarrassment of being overcaring only lasts a minute, but the regret of being apathetic and thinking it's nothing can last a lifetime."

I brush off those words Mom once told me in her capacity as a medic-nin, ingrained in my body from the years of training under her. Luckily, there were no onlookers here to tease me about it.

"A-ahhh…" Shino-chan groans as I pull my hand away from her, my green chakra glowing for a moment at the points where my fingertips touched her forehead. It's not intentional, but as part of my 'defect' I can't touch someone without subconsciously healing them. Judging by her expression, it seems to have made whatever dream she was having better. Maybe she had a sore throat or something…?

Eh, let's not think too hard about it. Trying to shake her awake won't work thanks to the calming effect of my healing chakra, so I should try some other method.

Now, Inner Minato, how would a normal, non-introspective teenage boy—who doesn't have all this internal dialogue with his alternate personality like I do—handle this situation…?

I put a finger to my face and look up at the multiple choice question forming in my thought bubble—

A) Do something mean to her in her sleep.
B) Do something perverted (not interested).
C) Do nothing and come back later hoping the situation has resolved itself.
D) None of the above, be a decent and considerate human being instead.
E) Minato, this is your brain. I was just wondering if now was a good time to talk about that one time you walked into your parents' room a long time ago and they were—

Alright, I'll go with option A.

I place the icy bottom of the glass in my hand on top of her face, pulling it back just before she reacts, and—

"—!"

She bolts up off the floor in an injured panic. When she does, a swarm of Kikaichuu shoots out of her body like a black cloud and scatters to every corner and inch of the room we're in, trying to find the assailant who attacked their master.

A bunch of them land on me. They get on my face, on my clothes, in my hair, all over my arms and legs…

"Guah, you guys again…" I glare, annoyed at a thousand of her little bugs crawling all over me. "Listen, none of you bite me." I set down the glass of barley tea I brought for her on the table and start brushing them off my arm, her kikaichuu docilely falling off me like clumps of smoked bees being brushed off their honeycombs by a seasoned beekeeper.

Looking at them up close; kikaichuu have a long thorax with a ribbed exoskeleton, six pointed legs designed to pierce and anchor them to the skin when they bite, compound eyes, and a hidden proboscis that they uncoil out from between their mandibles to suck out the life from their target. To most people they're scary to look at and about as creepy as most Aburame Clan members are. I was pretty unnerved at first too.

When we were younger and Shinoko didn't have as much control over her hive, they would buzz around me all the time and bite and suck out my chakra because my hair made them think I was some kind of exotic flower. Nowadays, they can sense me through their chakra receptors as 'the guy who patches her up when she gets herself stupidly hurt', so they're a lot more accepting. The only reason they're swarming on me right now is because they're searching for the culprit who put something icy on her forehead and making sure he's not after me next—myself obviously being innocent of this crime, of course.

"—Sa, samui!" Shino-chan screeches and claps her black-gloved hands against her cheeks, her mouth turning into a confused sine wave. When you're used to wearing bulky clothes that trap heat (in the middle of May for some reason), naturally you're not going to be used to direct contact with something cold on your skin.

I think if I can describe Tsunako-san as being built like a stick, then it'd be accurate to say Shino-chan was a twig. I'm only about 170 cm tall myself, but she was a scrawny creature that barely came up to my shoulders. She always wore thick clothes that covered her from head to toe, so she had really pale skin underneath too.

—She keeps her eyes firmly shut as she comes to her senses, with no realization that I sneak-attacked her into waking up. Tch, and I was hoping I could finally see what color they were, too…

There are some sickly-looking dark bags underneath her lower eyelids. She must not be getting enough sleep. Or not enough vitamins, or maybe too much eyestrain from her obsessive reading habits. Some thing or another that I need to chastise her for.

—I closed one of my own blue eyes and leaned forward with a smile; one hand behind my back, and one forming the Seal of Confrontation against my lips.

"Morning, Princess—" I said with a grin. "—Escape from the castle didn't go so well?"

"Ah, Mina-chan…?" Hearing my voice, she finally recognizes me. "Ah!"

Touching her face, Shino-chan finally realizes that I took off her mask and her (two pairs of) sunglasses.

Normally she talks a big game about learning 'mysterious SSSSS-Rank forbidden jutsu' or running away from the village and coming back ten years later to overthrow my Dad, but she becomes really meek whenever a bit of her face or body is exposed.

"Mina-chan—no, my—give it back, give them back!" Her closed eyes become a pair of arrowheads pointing at each other as she stretches out her short arms to try to take back her cosplay mask and multiple pairs of sunglasses.

"Only if you can beat me in a height contest. I win." I hold them above my head as she feebly reaches, hopping up and down. You know, she could just focus some chakra into her legs and make herself jump higher…wonder if all the sudden switches between her two contrasting personalities has caused a spike in blood pressure above the circulatory system's tolerable limits in the past, popping a vessel to her brain's frontal lobe…?

"Guuuuu." She turns on her 'pity me, I'm a girl' face. I am proud of her for garnering enough personable skills to learn this basic level of manipulation.

"How 'bout this then?" I slip my ring finger through the single eyehole on her replica Uchiha Obito mask and spin it in the air like a kunai. "Why don't you tell me why you tried to become a criminal missing-nin today? I'll give you these back then."

"I wanted to…" she covered up her face with cupped palms and used the gaps between her gloved fingers to look at me. "…Um, but, Akatsuki, forbidden ninjutsu, ah, ah, the world—take over—and stuff…" She tries to muster up one of her usual maniacal rants about wanting to join Akatsuki (an organization that has been extinct since the end of the Fourth Great Shinobi War almost twenty-five years ago), but can't.

Well, shinobi of the Aburame Clan typically don't expose their eyes to anyone but their family and loved ones, so I might be teasing her a little too much here…

"Alright, alright, hehe…" I snicker a bit and settle for something easy: "Here, you can have this back—" I gave her back her sunglasses with one hand. "—just call me 'Minato' instead of 'Mina-chan' and I'll give you back your mask too." I winked and lowered down my other arm down with my final offer.

"But…I've always called you 'Mina-chan'…" She looked down at the floor as she pressed her sunglasses tight to her face, clearly attached to her habit of sticking girly nicknames onto all of her friends…is it really that hard just to say my first name one time?

"Yeah. I know." My voice drolls out.

I used to have a very effeminate face as a kid, and my hair back then didn't do me any favors either. The first time I met Shino-chan at the academy, she mistook me for something I'm not, very shyly walked up to me, and asked:

"Um, Mina-chan, how did you become the prettiest girl in the whole school?"

I am a male, dammit. Even if I don't always seem like it.

"But you always let Nami-chan call you 'Mina-nii'…' she protests, dropping the 'ha' off of Hanami's name like we all do.

"Nami gets little sister privilege. Besides, at least she puts the '-nii' part at the end. It's bad enough you have to shorten my name to 'Mina' to make it sound like a girl's name, but the '-chan' part pretty much seals the deal."

"But I…want…" She forms a sad knot in here eyebrows, like she's afflicted by some great moral dilemma.

"…Okay…" After some time, Shino-chan puts on her warface, hyping herself up with a sudden sense of resolution. "Okay! I'll do my best! I just need to call you Mina-chan…to. Mi-cha-na-n-to, mi-cha-to-na-n…" she repeats a strange combination of sounds a few times like she's warming up to sing.

"Nnnng." She squeezes her eyes shut really hard and tries to get the idea into her head.

"Nnnng!" She tries as hard as she can, the skin around her eyes wrinkling from squeezing them so hard.

"Nnnng!" She starts vibrating like her whole body is fighting against her efforts to say my name properly, before she stops and opens her mouth—

"Mi-chan." Shino-chan finally says, after pouring her soul into attempting to rewrite her brain. We lost a syllable.

"…"

"Sorry, Mina-chan, I couldn't do it…" She looks away, unable to face the shame of her defeat.

"Ahhhh, it's fine. I don't really care." I sigh. Looks like I'm stuck as 'Mina-chan' with her, til death do us part. "Here, you can have this back." I hand her back that weird mask of hers, modeled after the one of an infamous S-class war criminal.

"Ah, Arigatou Gozaimasu!" She says excitedly as she tries to put her mask back on, getting it upside-down on the first try. I'm not sure why I'm being thanked when I was responsible for taking it away from her in the first place, but alright.

"Oh, and here, drink this." I grab the barley tea from the table and hand it to her while she's trying to fix her mask back in place. Should help her cool down from all the extra clothes she always wears.

"Doumo, Doumo! You always make the best tea, Mina-chan!" Her volume suddenly rises a good tenfold from what is was a minute ago. I think her confidence is coming back.

"But Inoi made it, I just—"

She takes a second from her frantic attempts to cover all of her skin up and gulps it down, obviously not paying attention to my explanation.

Look at me, taking credit for other people's hard work and solving problems I created in the first place…I might just have a political career in my future.

She slams the glass back down on the table in dramatic fashion, and—

—I hear her mask click in to place, signifying the psychological switch to her other self.

And then, the lights dim.

A sole conic illumination shines down on a single figure, our main antagonist taking center stage. The fog machines around her give off an ambient smoke that enhances her enigmatic aura…

"Mufufufu…" She cackles softly, some of the kikaichuu still on my body twitching and flapping their wings when she does.

She begins her speech, pouring her heart out to the audience, to this school auditorium that seats over five-hundred people…

…There are actually only three people in the stands. I was dragged here against my will and am sitting in the back, closest to the exit.

"Mwahahaha—AHAHIIHIIHIIHIIhahahahahHAHAHAHEEEEEEE!" She cackles likes a mousy witch. "My final form is complete again! I am Aburame Shinoko, master of the Aburame Clan's parasitic swarm and the future master of a thousand forbidden ninjutsu! Soon, the whole world will be under my grasp!" She strikes out an open hand at the world, as if to signify her goal to hold everything within it in her palm.

The other two people in the stands are parents of the next kid who's coming up, they're looking down at their camera really excited for the part when Shino-chan leaves.

…On the way in, I think I saw the other dad arguing with the drama club student working the concessions stands about how salty the popcorn was…also, I might just be making up all of this stuff in the bolded text…

"Um, why a thousand forbidden ninjutsu, exactly?" I ask nervously as I feel that parasitic swarm of hers vibrate all over my body, signaling the arrival of her chuunibyou personality.

"Because they're forbidden ninjutsu!" She raises one arm up like she's giving a salute to her invisible dark army. "The most mysterious, powerful type!"

…Remember what I said when I was walking with Tsunako-san earlier, about all the girls my age…?

"Uh, yeah, that's cool and all, but…" It's making me feel really uncomfortable now. "Could you get your insects off of me, please?"

All of the kikaichuu on my body are excitedly dancing and spinning in circles at their Queen's speech. She has a really strong connection with her hive, so they can sense and share her emotions...ah, no, please don't go up my nose, bug-on-my-face, there's nothing up there…

"Ah!" Our miniature Akatsuki mastermind yelps in embarrassment and pinches the edge of her mask with both hands, like she's punishing herself. "Ah, ah, Mina-chan, sorry! Um; Ami-chan, Kajikaji, Buzzy-kun, Miminari-chan, Ichigorabu—" She starts calling back her chakra-eating bugs one-by-one. It's really impractical, but she's given every single insect living inside her body a name.

It'd take all day for her to name every single one, but luckily the rest of them get the idea and start flying back inside her body.

All except one, anyway.

"Huh?" I notice a fat bug on my hand, clearly spoiled by the bits of food Shino-chan sneaks from her meals to her hive.

"Oh, that's Minato III!" She said really happily. "He's my favorite!"

I narrow my eyes, really annoyed, and flick him off my hand with a curled up finger.

"MINATO THE THIRD NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Shino-chan screams in despair after I fling the son I didn't know I had off to the wall. Why does that thing get the 'to' at the end of its name?!

"Calm down." I say to both of us, my eyebrows furrowed a little in frustration. "I always heal things when I touch them, remember? Look—" I point my thumb out at where that abomination of my grandfather's name ended up. 'Minato III' is buzzing happily through the air, drunk on my green chakra.

Her attitude does a quick 180 when she sees the kikaichuu she named after me land on her pointer finger.

"Ah, you're alive, I was so worried…" she strokes the fat-bug with one of her pinkies, carefully brushing against its wings so it doesn't get hurt.

I can't really tell how bugs feel, or whether they have a CNS that is complicated enough to feel emotion at all for that matter, but it seems to be twitching its legs very happily to Shino-chan's motherly care…I don't get how a girl can be so loving to a bunch of flying parasites…

"[Soon, Minato III, soon…the whole world…all of it…ours…heeheehee…]" She whispers something else under her breath.

…Actually, is she being loving or diabolical right now? I can't tell…

…Probably best I don't think too hard about it. I should take a deep breath and calm myself down.

Shino-chan really doesn't have a bad bone in her body, she's just…weird. She had a lot of trouble making friends back in the Academy. Other girls were always been creeped out by the human hive thing, and other guys treated her like she was invisible (they didn't think she was cute, which equaled no interest in talking to her). All the solitude kind of pushed her in the direction of acting crazier and crazier until she was on a completely different wavelength than everyone else. She got bullied a bit by other kids who saw her as an easy target. Mostly, though, everyone just ignored her.

I guess at this point in the story, you'd probably expect me to say I swooped down and rescued her or something like that—but I didn't. I was self-obsessed with getting stronger back then, so I was one of the guys who treated her like she was invisible. If anyone 'saved her', it was our leader—Sarutobi Koyoka. One day she noticed a bug girl muttering to herself on top of a swing outside the Academy, and—after many failed attempts at communication—she ended up forcibly dragging Shino-chan over to the Sarutobikai base to play with the rest of us. We've been stuck with her ever since.

Childhood friends…as far as Shino-chan and I go, I don't think you can really call us that. Childhood acquaintances, more like. I guess you could kind of say we're childhood friends in the same way everyone in Sarutobikai is to some degree, but if anything, I know about her the least. I only really started to talk to her when we graduated from the academy together and ended up on the same team with Inoi and Shikamaru-sensei, even then I mostly ignored her up until I got promoted and our team disbanded last year.

Most of the adults in the village tend to push off the responsibility of keeping her out of trouble onto everyone else in Sarutobikai, since we're the only ones who really know how to handle her. Which brings me to the entire reason I came over here today—

—I'm talking to her right now, because I want to ask her why she tried to run away from the village again today. Right now she's successfully avoiding the topic by making me keep pace with her eccentricity.

I'm technically a Chuunin, so I should probably try to show some kind of leadership skill here…let's think for a moment…

If I'm going to scold her, then I need to take a step back and think about her feelings and why she did it before I do. Which also means I should probably not interrogate her first thing off the ground, seeing as how she probably just heard a lecture by another shinobi today after she got caught (the contents of their said lecture likely being 'Becoming a missing-nin is bad, you shouldn't become one because it's bad' about 100 times over).

Usually a conscious effort at being direct and upfront solves most of the world's communication issues, but I think in this case I can save whatever words I have for her for later—

"Shino-chan."

"Haa!" She straightens up like she's standing at attention.

—And next time we talk, I need to get her to open up and not just automatically default to her crazy mode if I want to have a serious talk. So…

"Err…" I think for a bit. What's something that she likes…?

…Wasn't she always sticking her nose into weird books with dark-colored cover art and creepy titles, back whenever we had those two hour waits for Shikamaru-sensei to show up? I think that's an 'in' I can use to talk to her about something that makes her seem a little more human.

"…read anything good lately?" I ask after looking stupid for a few seconds.

"Ooo, I've been reading Cask of Amonchiryado, The Demon-King on My Violin, Deathly Notebook…" She comes down immediately from her faux-evil insect queen persona and starts naming a bunch of her favorite stories.

"The Woman of the Bird's Shell, The Blue Fruit of the Tree, Tanjou to Shibou; Guree Uooden…" she keeps rattling off titles of books that I know nothing about…uh, I think I might have heard of that last one, one time…

Geh, on second thought, I might have set her off on an inescapable tangent…

"Oh, oh! And there's these new books that are really good called A Whirlpool of Lightning, and—"

A Whirlpool of Lightning? Wait, isn't that the hot new series that's taking bookstores right now by storm? I heard it's the second best seller, right underneath the new Icha Icha books…what the heck, that sounds like she's actually reading something halfway normal.

"The A Whirlpool of Lightning Books? Isn't that 'that' one series that's super-popular with girls right now?" I ask.

I've overheard a bunch of the kunoichi that I work with at the hospital talk about it…don't think I've ever seen anyone read it in public, though.

"It's the best thing of all the things! They're like…like three-hundred times better than all of the other books!" Shinoko nods her head really vigorously. "It's about a Whiskers-sama who falls in love with an Uchiuchi and runs away with him to take on the great Uchiuchi Patriarch. I'm on volume four."

…Well, I have no idea what the hell she just said, but it's nice to know she has at least one hobby that she can talk about with other girls. I'd still like her to socialize with more people outside of Sarutobikai and learn how to talk a bit more like a normal person, though.

"Huh, to be honest I don't know what it's about, but I'm kinda curious." I put a hand to my chin, "you wouldn't happen to still have the first book, would you?"

"I have all twelve in our library!" She exclaims…think whoever's writing these things has to be pretty crazy in the head for them to churn out so many books in such a short time span. Maybe that's what she relates with.

I'm not really much of a reader, but it doesn't hurt to step out of your comfort zone every now and again. Besides, I like to think I'm pretty open-minded. I'm sure it's not that bad…right?

"Do you, now…? Say—"

It doesn't take much after that to convince her. After some overenthusiastic urging on her part, she lends me the first volume and we form an impromptu book club with its first meeting sometime tomorrow night. We can have a drawn-out heart-to-heart then.

For now, I should probably just get home before it gets too dark.

A/N: Winter has returned to the great state of Ohio, and the iced-over country roads with it. My puny Hyundai is snowed in with me here at the farmhouse. Time to write. You can skip this A/N section like always.

Should probably mention again that the story's more about their kids than Naruto and Sakura themselves, or any other canon characters. You probably remember me saying this in the Ch1 A/N, but might as well say it again. You're cool to drop the story if that doesn't appeal to you.

Next up in the exposition's onslaught of OCs is Shinachiku and Hanami (i.e. the other two Narusaku kids). Had a huge holdup in figuring out how to fit all my ideas together, but I think I get the general idea on how to write it now. It'll probably be around 30,000-40,000 words before I'm finished with Shinachiku+Hanami's intro chapters. This kills the pacing.

In case you're the type to scroll until you see Naruto and Sakura interacting with each other (they're verrrry briefly in the next one, with no physical descriptions yet), you can go ahead and skip the next dozen chapters or so. Current roadmap is Uzumaki Siblings - Interlacing Shikamaru-centric flashbacks and present-day chapters - Introduce Naruto w/ full description and by having him show up on top of Hokage Rock and giving a speech that'll set up the main conflict - Introduce Sakura w/ full description and a slapsticky moment with Naruto - Have a sweeter Narusaku moment a couple chapters later - Have some Narusaku family moments, probably explore protag internal conflict - Main conflict, probably fit another OC introduction or two somewhere before this too.

There'll be a serious lack of an overarching external conflict for a nice while. Wanted to build up the world, Naruto and Sakura's family, and some of their kids' friends before actually showing the characters doing anything exciting. A big consequence of this is a bunch of random OCs, but kinda necessary in a next-gen Naruto fic with none of the Chapter 700 pairings. Fic would definitely be a lot quicker-paced and easier to write if I could just pluck characters out of Boruto, but I've never read/watched it and I have practically no idea what goes on in the canon Naruto universe these days, so a bunch of OC kids from non-canon pairings it is.

The upcoming slow pacing would go a lot quicker if I put the OC kids in more action-orientated introductions and cut down the word count, but I have a lot of fun trying to make mundane things come to life and writing slow burns, so I get a little carried away. Besides, I got a personal love for sloppy writing that can justify itself despite its flaws. Don't know if I can pull it off myself, but I can always try. Talk to you later.