The Swarm

by Lord Dragon Claw

Disclaimer: Naruto was created by Masashi Kishimoto, who still owns the rights to it.

Not many people had heard of the name of Namikaze before Minato was born. His caretaker when he was little did recall meeting Minato's mother, however. She was named Namikaze. Apparently, the Namikaze were a small ninja Clan without a Hidden Village to call home. Due to persecutions from their homeland, Stone Country, the Namikaze family was nearly wiped out. Minato and his mother were the last two, and Konoha's medics were ill-equipped to keep the woman alive.

Sadly, she died of her wounds.

Autopsy showed that she was killed by multiple venom injections from the wasps used as weapons by the Kamizuru Clan of Iwagakure no Sato (Village Hidden in Stone). She seemed to have the same inner body cavities that the Aburame had for storing their insects, leading to an investigation of Minato's body. His body, though it had enough DNA to prove he was her son, did not have the cavities necessary for carrying and maintaining a hive. Additionally, his mother's body didn't have any evidence of a hive within it except for some dissolved paste that used to be insects. Apparently, the bloodline had skipped a generation with Minato, like it sometimes did amongst the Aburame.

Years later, the Kyuubi attack happened, leaving young Namikaze Naruto without a father or a mother, but with a Bijuu trapped within a seal on his stomach. The poor child had to be renamed Uzumaki for his own protection.

What everyone failed to notice was that Naruto had those body cavities necessary to house a hive.

Well, people didn't notice. Something else did.

There is one species of ant called a slaver ant, named as such because they sneak into hives of other species and kidnap their larvae to pressgang them into service. The Namikaze Clan took this to the next level by influencing the evolution of the slaver ants with their own chakra. Instead of stealing the larvae, the new slaver ants attach themselves to the queen's head and abdomen, possessing the body of the queen. The possessed queen still lays eggs, but the chemical signals she puts out are directed by her parasite, who in turn is directed by the slaver queen, who could be controlled by a Namikaze. A side-effect was that the lifespan of a slaver ant was extended; workers could live up to five years, drones up to seven, possessors up to eleven (unless their host died), and queens up to nineteen.

Since ants are found in every country in the Elemental Nations except Snow Country, this made it so that a Namikaze is never without their little allies. And because the Namikaze spread new slaver colonies wherever they went, nearly every ant colony was simply the extension of a nearby slaver colony.

The wood ants in the cafeteria in the hospital where Naruto was born picked up the chemical signals the boy's body unconsciously put out, informing the possessed queen that a new Hive Carrier existed. The possessed queen sent a signal to her closest neighboring hive. That possessed queen passed that signal on within moments. The next one passed the message along shortly thereafter. So on and so forth until the closest slaver queen was notified. She laid several hundred new eggs and directed that a queen was to be raised from among them, and twenty males.

Within a year, the new queen was ready to hatch. The new queen flew for a few miles, taking her drones and her workers that were raised alongside her closer to Konohagakure no Sato (Village Hidden in Leaves) until she was too hungry to keep going. They set up a new colony on the spot. Within a few months, her colony was stable enough for her to make a new queen to send to the new Hive Carrier.

When Naruto was nearly four, the Hokage found him within the hospital. The poor boy had begun to panic for some unknown reason and the owner of the orphanage Naruto lived at finally got fed up with the blond's hysterics and started beating him.

The owner of the orphanage had also been admitted to hospital due to the large volume of insect stings all over her body. She was shortly admitted to the morgue because she was allergic to whatever had stung her. Eyewitnesses to the beating claimed that she was swarmed by ants after she started to beat Naruto.

When the Hokage entered Naruto's room, he found the boy to be fairly nervous. The medic-nin who was in the room was writing things down on the boy's chart.

"Naruto-kun," began the Sandaime. "Please tell me what happened."

"Creepy-crawlies, ol' man," was Naruto's hesitant response. "Dey are in me..."

"I've already sent for an Aburame," the medic-nin said after a short silence. "I have suspicions as to what this is, so I have an order written out already for your signature to have certain sensitive records to be sealed away, as per one of your mandates pertaining to this sort of information."

The medic handed the clipboard over to the Hokage, who took it and began reading. After a moment, he signed it and handed the clipboard back.

"Wha's goin' on, ol' man?" asked Naruto.

When the Sandaime turned to answer the boy's question, he noticed a line of ants marching out of Naruto's left sleeve and over to the food tray in the blond's lap. A parallel line was marching back up the boy's sleeve carrying food crumbs.

"Something that will be very good for you, Naruto," responded the Hokage. "You may just get a family out of this."

Naruto's hopeful expression was charming, but the Hokage suddenly wished he hadn't gotten the boy's hopes up. Since the night he was reinstated as Hokage, he's had a rather cynical view of the world.

It wasn't before long before the newest Clan Head of the Aburames showed up. Shibi was a practical man, like much of the rest of his clan. But when he entered Naruto's room, his hive began to buzz with warnings of a predator, causing Shibi to raise an eyebrow.

"Hokage-sama," greeted the usually stoic head of the Aburame Clan.

"Aburame-san," returned the Sandaime.

"My colony tells me that there is a predator in the room."

The Hokage gave a short laugh before gesturing to the boy. "That would be Naruto-kun-" This caused Shibi's other eyebrow to raise. "-or rather, his colony."

"Wha's a call-umy?" the blonde asked nervously.

Shibi gave a slight tilt of his head, which the Hokage and the medic-nin interpreted as amusement.

"A colony is like a city of bugs," began Shibi, who had explained the word to his own son, Shino, recently. "I have one of my own inside me."

He put his hand forward, palm up to show that it was covered with little beetles.

"These are the kikaichu, and my Clan uses them as weapons and scouts when we are on missions as ninja."

"Huh," Naruto responded intelligently. At the very least he had calmed down some because an adult seemed to be the same as him. "Dose don't look like da ones I got."

Naruto lifted his right arm to show that his hand was covered in ants.

"Those are ants," Shibi explained. "And I've never heard of ants being used... I have heard of wasps..."

The Hokage cleared his throat, gaining the attention of both Naruto and Shibi. "Regardless, Naruto needs to learn how to coexist with his hive."

The Aburame's brow furled slightly, before returning to neutral. "I believe my Clan can help with that. In the interest of efficiency, I request that he live on the Aburame Compound."

That request would make Naruto just short of being a member of the Clan and would not change his family name, due to various laws. Also, as Shibi wasn't actually adopting the blond, the Village Council couldn't move to stop Naruto from living with the Aburame nor could they remove him from their custody. Attempting to do either would weaken the political clout that the Clans had and would therefore be shot down by every Clan head within Konoha. The only reason Shibi had not done this before was that he hadn't had a solid purpose in making such a move - but now he had one that would measure up to scrutiny.

A larva, especially one as precious as Naruto, was supposed to be protected and nurtured, was it not?

The Hokage smiled knowingly. "Request approved."

Shibi had to soothe his hive to let them know that Naruto's hive was not supposed to be a threat. He also sent out scouts with a message to his wife to prepare the spare room for the blond's arrival. Another message was sent to his son and heir, Shino, that a surprise was coming home with his father.

"What is your surprise, Father?" asked the three-year-old Aburame.

The blond was confused by the question posed by the sunglass-wearing boy when they arrived at the manor.

"It's name is Uzumaki Naruto," Shibi said by way of introduction, gesturing towards the blond boy. "He is to be considered a cousin and a friend."

Shino cocked his head slightly, requesting elaboration.

"He's got a hive like we do, but with a different kind of insect."

"Ants!" Naruto declared proudly, putting his hands forward to show that they were covered in the members of his colony.

Shino's response was to adjust his sunglasses. "Interesting."

It took a few months to get Naruto to learn how to communicate with his ants. During that time, the Aburame Clan had to deal with the difficulty of trying to keep the soldier ants out of their spare colonies until Naruto could command them to stop attacking the kikaichu. Luckily, the Aburame were a practical and long-suffering bunch, especially since they had to deal with complaints against their children all the time whenever a civilian was accidently attacked by kikaichu in the marketplace.

Additionally, Naruto had to be taught how to control his emotions better because, like the kikaichu, his ants responded to his emotional status. When he was happy or neutral, they went about their business. When he was sad, they searched for sugar and chocolate. When he was angry or afraid, they began to go on the warpath to eliminate the threat.

Since Naruto shared with his new "family" that he wanted to become the Hokage, they began to train him in the ninja arts.

Years passed by. Naruto had a fairly logical outlook like the Aburame had, but he was still more animated than they were. Since Naruto's ant hive did not rely on chakra alone for sustenance, the majority of his massive reserves was still useable for ninjutsu, which helped him out greatly - the kikaichu could fly but Naruto's ants could not. Naruto could use wind-element ninjutsu and most Aburame could not use elemental jutsu.

Something that annoyed Naruto was the isolation and scorn he received outside of the Aburame Clan compound. Shopkeepers and regular civilians tended to treat him like he had the plague, and many children, though ignorant of the fact that Naruto was the Kyuubi jinchuuriki, refused to play with him because of the hatred of their parents. Some of that hatred got associated with those of the Aburame Clan simply because they frequently stood up for the blonde - the civilians rationalized it away because they thought that the kikaichu-using ninja were "creepy-ass robots anyway".

Still, Naruto had the Aburame, the Hokage, and this small ramen restaurant run by a couple of open-minded civilians - the Ichiraku family enjoyed frequent patronage from the bug-using ninja. All of the hateful instructors at the Academy couldn't ruin his education with so many intelligent people around.

In any case, when Naruto got particularly pissed off at the way he or one of the Aburames had been treated...

"Holy sh-aaaargh!" the baker screamed as a young blonde boy kicked him in the balls, preventing the civilian from getting his bug sprays.

To test his infiltration skills, he decided to sneak into the bakery several hours before it opened. His ants had a field day on the various confectionary delights while Naruto sprayed all manner of pink and purple graffiti all over the ceiling - those colors specifically chosen to cause people to question the owner's sexual orientation. Unfortunately, Naruto hadn't taken into account how early the baker went to work - the doughnuts had to be ready before the store itself was open for business, after all.

"Discovered so early..." grumbled the blonde, before taking out a permanent marker and kneeling next to the unconscious man. "Well, maybe this will teach him for spraying Shino with bug spray just to get a laugh out of his clientele."

After marking the man's face up - complete with moustache and glasses - he turned to a green tree ant that was sitting on his shoulder.

"(What do you think?)" he asked, speaking in chemical signals.

It inspected the strange markings on the baker's face with it's excellent eyesight. It supposed that the markings made the man look ridiculous.

(Nice. We eat more, yes?)

"(Just the sugar. No meat.)" Naruto's hearing picked up some faint noises. "(Change of plans: retreat!)"

As one, all ants in the bakery turned to the shortest trail back to where Naruto was, regardless of whether or not they had food in their mouths. Within thirty seconds, all of his hive (and subservient ants from foreign hives, like the green ant) was hidden on his person. Naruto picked up his two cans of spray paint when the back door was kicked in.

"Freeze! Police!"

All that the civilian police officers found was the baker and the graffiti on his face and the ceiling as well as the mess of sugary goodness all over the floor. What they did not notice was Naruto slowly and silently closing the vent from the inside.

The Chuunin assigned to the detail both saw Naruto leave the roof of the building, however. One of them was faster than the other, and he felt it was his duty to catch the "demon brat". He ran an intercept course and caught the boy by the hood of his dark brown jacket...

SPHESSSSHT! "AAAARGH! MY EYES!"

... only to get pink spray paint in his face.

The other Chuunin was laughing too hard to bother with pursuing the young prankster.

Needless to say, Naruto was a prankster at heart, much like his deceased mother, Uzumaki Kushina.

Much like Shino, Naruto kept his grades in the Academy at a middling ground. Shibi had explained to them the importance of hiding their skills - Naruto was especially supposed to hide his status as an ant-user. Not only was it an effective strategy for personal safety for the both of them, but it helped out the Clan in political matters.

As a Clan, the Aburame typically hid amongst a crowd and didn't call attention to themselves. They stayed away from becoming a target and didn't do any major moves until it was guaranteed that they could strike without retaliation. Hence why they tried to teach their children to hide in the middle of the grading roster - too low or too high and attention would be called to them and their skills would be scrutinized. It was also tactically sound as deep cover agents from enemy villages tended to go after the school records to determine who needed to be killed before they could constitute a threat.

"Welcome, class, to the day of the finals!" greeted Umino Iruka, the one and only Academy instructor whom a certain blonde actually respected. "I will be administering them by myself today as Mizuki was reassigned."

Shino and Naruto noticed a slight hesitation before the word "reassigned" in Iruka's speech. They figured that something had happened the night before.

"SHIT!"

SQUELCH!

"Tell the Hokage that we have killed the traitor and that the Forbidden Scroll is back in our custody."

"Understood," responded the voice over the short-range radio.

The team assignments were interesting, to say the least. Apparently the Hokage wished to reform the Ino-Shika-Chou team that had performed so well during the previous war and gave Nara Shikamaru and Akimichi Chouji, two parts of the trio, to a fairly new Jounin named Yuuhi Kurenai as Team Eight, with the Hyuuga Heiress, Hinata, rounding off the lineup for some reason. Team Seven, led by the famous Hatake Kakashi, was comprised of the "top" of the class, Uchiha Sasuke, the bottom, a goof-off named Inuzuka Kiba, and the "top" kunoichi, an unrepentant fangirl named Haruno Sakura.

Shino and Naruto were pleased to be on the same team - Team Ten - as they worked quite well with each other. Both of the boys recognized Yamanaka Ino - kind of difficult not to when Shibi impressed it on them that they know all the major players in any given clan. She was the third member of their team, and they were to be led by the older of the Hokage's two sons, Sarutobi Asuma.

Kurenai, being a new Jounin, wished to impress her Genin team and showed up at exactly the same time that Iruka left. Two minutes later, Asuma sauntered in.

"I'm Sarutobi Asuma. Which three brats are mine?" he asked around his cigarette.

Without responding, Naruto, Shino, and Ino simply stood up and began walking towards the door.

End.

Author's Notes

Just an idea.