Chapter 20 – Chou
"Tao, open it."
He stared at the sealed scroll.
Jima stared at him.
After a good amount of time,
"Just OPEN it," she raised her voice a bit, smoothly pulling it from his hands. She unrolled it and read. Tao watched expectantly, but did not look over her shoulder. After a moment, her face did not show signs of favorable news. Her full lips turned downwards behind the translucent veil strung across her hood. Tao turned away, planting his cane into the ground.
"It's another rejection isn't it?"
Jima sighed, pausing. Then she replied, "Yes."
"…"
"Well…that's every adoption group in Konoha."
"Time to try other villages?" He turned back around.
"Do you really think if our own village wouldn't let us adopt that another village would be more forgiving?"
"…Good point."
He walked up so he could hug her from behind. Jima had her gourd on one of the kitchen chairs making this possible. 'She' churred with disappointed displeasure, a discontenting wave surging through her veins like a wave of heavy liquid iron.
"It's alright," He said softly, "We'll work it out somehow."
She sighed again, "We're not getting any younger…if we are going to adopt it should be soon." She thought of how her 40th birthday just passed in October, "It wouldn't be fair to our child to not make it to their academy graduation."
"Oh shush, look at Shen. He's 56 and still going stronger than ever."
"You just never know with being a ninja. Look at Genjo, I was left to take care of him after his parents were both killed on duty when he was just ten years old."
"Times were harder back then. There are not any major wars anymore."
"That's true…" she leaned her head against the dark hazel fabric of his sleeve, nuzzling, feeling her insides cool. Then she got a thought, "What if we found a surrogate?"
He loosened his grip on her, "What?"
"It's me who can't have kids…you're perfectly capable."
"…you mean find a surrogate mother."
"Yes. Then the child would be half you at least."
"…" He adjusted his rectangular amber sunglasses with a grimace, "Jima, I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be…with being with a random woman."
"Let's talk to the doctors at Konoha hospital, you might not have to." She turned around and put her hands in his coat pockets, pressing against him. She looked about as hopeful as Tao had ever seen her.
Just then there was a knock at the door.
They released each other and Tao called, "Enter."
Sakuya walked in, looking worried, but then startled seeing them, "Am I interrupting?"
"No, no it's fine Sakuya."
She tilted her head down in her collar and looked at Jima, "I need your help."
"What is it?"
"It's my mother."
…
"Sis…do you need to be playing that music?" Tesuro broke out of his Tai-Chi.
"It helps me focus." She continued with her own methodical movements.
Tesuro stared at the cassette boom box that was playing some kind of dance-rock like music.
"I'm sure you're bothering the whole clan."
"I'm not the only Aburame who likes to listen music."
"Only one who listens to that kind…" Tesuro muttered.
"Since when were you so serious?" She stopped her tai-chi and turned, grabbing her coat from its place folded on the ground, before clicking the music off. She looked at him with a frown, "Ever since I got back you've been all catty."
He stared at her, "Catty?"
"I had to drag you out of your room when I returned, you looked like the walking dead."
"I was just tired…"
"Did something happen while I was gone? You've been avoiding father."
He blushed subtly, making his tattoos blend in more with his pale skin tone.
Yusuro's tone changed, and she smiled a smirky grin, throwing her coat over her toned shoulders, "Oh, I see."
"See what?" He snapped.
Yusuro was about to retort with another repartee, but Sakuya follow by Tao and Jima caught her attention in her peripheral vision. They darted into Sakuya's house. She looked up like an alert tiger, "What's going on?"
Tesuro looked up in the direction she was.
"Come on, I can tease you later."
He furrowed his brow, but then ran after her, "Wait!" He grabbed her arm.
She stopped, "What?"
"We shouldn't run into other people's business."
"Maybe they need help!"
"Maybe they don't."
"…" She sighed.
"…"
"…"
"Well, I guess you're right…we should at least go check…" He said.
"You mean spy on them?" She punched her younger brother.
"Observe sounds so much better."
She shook her head.
She threw on her coat, adjusted her high collar, and they darted off.
…
Jima spoke up as the ran across the clearing between houses, "Sakuya, I thought your mother was…"
"We assumed that because she disappeared."
Saki, Sakuya's mother, left on a personal mission to seek a valley in the faraway Lightning Country. She heard about from a traveling merchant from the Cloud Village. Apparently rare medicinal herbs grew there, and were fed on be an even rarer type of insect that has special properties because of the nectar and pollen they absorbed from the flowers. Being a medical ninja, and the linage in the Aburame clan in charge of medicines, she had a strong desire to seek it out, and left her 22-year old daughter and brother-in-law (Sakuya and Shen, brother to her then-dead husband) to do so.
That was 8 years ago.
Her regular communication stopped after about a year. The messenger bugs just stopped coming (Aburame equivalent of messenger birds). They tried to send bug scouts to find her, but with the lightning country so far and expansive, it was not easy to search it thoroughly. With no word after 5 years, she was presumed dead. How much it affected her was something Sakuya kept to herself.
Sakuya showed them inside her house. There they found Ussa sitting across from a very odd looking butterfly on the kitchen table. Its wingspan was almost 12 inches, and the wings seemed unreal, iridescent and translucent, as if combined with the properties of a dragonfly's wings. It had a slight sheen to it as if it was glowing. It's colors were mostly of royal blues and lime greens with some yellow.
Jima began to say, "Ussa what is-"
"Shhh! Don't disturb him."
Ussa's already striking green eyes were glowing, he seemed to be in some kind of genjustu-trace; he was sitting perfectly still, hands on the table.
"Tell us what happened," Tao said in a low voice.
Sakuya nodded, "We were just sitting and going over mission reports, when out of nowhere this butterfly appeared, as if fazing into existence; like a summon. I knew at once it was from my mother…because it had this around its thorax," she held up her mother's wedding ring, "We tried to talk to it but just this unbearable noise came out, it's speech was not understandable. Not insect or human. We figured if we couldn't hear what it wanted to tell us, it could show us, so Ussa preformed his technique on it. However…"
She motioned her hands through three seals and touched Ussa's forehead. He opened his mouth and out came an unbearably loud, high-pitched jumble of sound. Tao and Jima covered their ears. She released him and it ceased.
"However we didn't expect the butterfly's language to cross over to him as well."
"Can't you release the Jutsu and have Ussa tell you what it showed him?"
"It's not that simple it seems. We tried that, but he retained no memory of what occurred, what it showed him remained forgotten like a dream fading after you wake up. When the source is a human or typical insect, he doesn't have that problem." Sakuya looked at them, "That's no normal butterfly."
"What can I do?" Jima asked.
"You're a sound expert. I need you to interpret."
"I'm not a language expert-" but then she stopped, getting an idea, "AH, I see what you mean." She took her gourd off her back, and her wooden bachi pick from her pocket.
Jima's gourd doubled as a Biwa lute. Its elongated pear shape resembled a biwa physically, making it possible that she turned it into an instrument. She developed techniques based on sound waves alongside her kikaichu in her gourd. Depending on how she resonated her chakra and the sounds of the string chords, the kikaichu inside could vibrate to the same frequencies allowing them to precipitate in her various devastating genjutsu/ninjutsu attacks.
This time, she was going to change the frequency manually of what the strange butterfly was trying to communicate, hoping it may tune into a range they could hear and understand – in human or insect.
"Sakuya," Jima looked at her, and she preformed the seal on Ussa's forehead again. Tao winced and covered his ears.
Jima concentrated. She had to make everything except that sound disappear. The world around her went away, and she closed her eyes. Lifting her bachi pick slowly, she twanged down on a single resonating note, attempting to match the frequency. Her kikaichu from the gourd flew out, moving with the sound waves, making them 'visible'. They latched onto her sound waves and the butterfly's. They did not match – yet.
She adjusted her tone, hitting another string. Her 'song' was very much like the slow, single note hitting Japanese songs played at shrines and tea houses. Very purposeful.
After a few tries, she was able to match the sound waves of the butterfly.
Her insects flew together, matching up, grabbing the butterfly's sound waves, using chakra to morph them. Jima sang out a few notes – just to produce the sound waves a human voice makes. The insects shifted, moving them to match her, morphing the waves from the butterfly. When she was done, she stopped. And listened.
With every word and sound the air, filled with kikaichu and glowing chakra, moved and shifted like bars on an equalizer.
"I speak on behalf of the ichizoku of Chou (family of butterflies). Sakuya - I come with a message from your mother. She needs your help in order to return to this world. She ventured into our old homeland, and was accidentally sucked into a freak temporal jutsu, bringing her to our plane. In order for her to return to you – you must summon her, I bring to you a contract for our family's realm she helped us write – for we never had a contract with a human before. But Saki was different than other human's we'd met. She could speak our language and shared our love of healing. Please, if you are her daughter please help her come home."
The butterfly, knowing he was understood, whipped out a scroll. Sakuya starred in disbelief of what she was hearing.
"Saaa, sign." The butterfly beckoned.
Sakuya hesitated, then bit her finger and wrote down her name.
"Sakuya," Ussa spoke – still in the jutsu – but this time he rang though in English, "I can see into the butterfly's memories, from where he comes from. Your mother is there. If you picture in your mind her image, and channel enough chakra, you should be able to summon her."
"He's speaking English!" She looked at Jima.
Jima released her jutsu.
"Now that you are linked with our rhelm we can understand each other…" the butterfly surmised. He no longer seemed ghostly, now he seemed like a physical being, albeit a still very strange looking butterfly.
Sakuya smiled.
"We can all understand….interesting," Tao said.
"That is interesting," Jima mused.
Sakuya preformed a 'kai' release and brought Ussa out of his jutsu.
He shook his head, "Did it work?"
"Still can't remember anything?"
"Like I said it's not a normal butterfly."
"We know."
"Are you okay?" The butterfly asked Ussa.
"HEY we can understand you!"
"We know," They all chimed lowly.
He put up his hands, standing up, "Hoy hoy I surrender."
Sakuya smirked at him.
Jima and Tao gave them a nervous look.
"Please Sakuya, try to summon your mother," The butterfly urged, and told her the hand seals appropriate to do so.
She nodded seriously.
"I've only ever used basic summoning, I hope I can do this…" Sakuya muttered. She had no contracts with any animals, she put multiple objects on summon like some ninja do – extra brushes, medicines, weapons, etc…objects on call. But she had never done it with a living being.
Her finger was already bleeding (a kikaichu crawled out of the wound and she shooed him out of the way), so she put it to her palm and whished through hand seals with lightning speed.
"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" POOF!"…"
They all stared at a 4 foot tall butterfly that appeared in the room.
"Ehh…" Sakuya slouched.
"Well, it was the appropriate amount of chakra at least," the butterfly 'smiled'. At least an Aburame could probably tell when it was smiling.
They heard a stifled chuckle outside.
Tao body flicked outside and behind the two darkly clan Aburames peeking in through the kitchen window. He'd have been more intimidating had the two young Aburames not been taller than him thanks to Kuroji's genes.
"Tao!" Yusuro grinned behind her collar innocently, "We were wondering if you needed help! We saw you all run into Sakuya's and were worr-"
"Spying is very impolite."
"Observing please, Tao, observing." Tesuro 'corrected'.
He took his cane up in his hands.
"Hai hai!" Yusuro laughed gently, inching away.
They turned serious again as Sakuya dismissed the large butterfly, a large swoosh of smoke filling the room, "Let's go outside and try again."
Now outside in the tree grove, with Ussa, Tao, Jima, Tesuro, and Yusuro watching, Sakuya tried again. She had to go through 3 more very exotic looking butterflies before…finally…
POOF!
"cough cough!" A figure fanned away the smoke.
"…!" Sakuya's face brightened into an unbelievable look of disbelieving joy.
"cough Well that took you enough tri-" She was tackled with a hug, soon to be toppled over by Ussa.
The others stared and blinked, while Yusuro smiled and laughed. They'd have been more shocked but they knew this was Sakuya, she was a fairly open Aburame.
Saki gave in and hugged them both, she was ridiculously happy to be home. However, "Okay okay, get off before I smack both of you."
They complied.
She got up and dusted off her crocheted poncho and fixed her long curly hair (much like Sakuya's). She looked around at everyone, and then saw the unusual butterfly fluttering nearby, happy to see the plan was successful.
"Choupuchi, you did it!" She smiled, holding out her arm, which he came to like a parrot.
"So that's your name," Sakuya nodded to the butterfly, who waved his long antenna, "Thank you…thank you so much.
"Mommy!" Yesetteru came up carrying Uschi, she was still small (at age 7 and 6 years older than her brother) but was able to just about hold him well, "We're back! I went down the BIG slide!" They had been at the playground in the park with Shino and his parents.
Shibi and Kaho walked up with lil Shino by their side. And instantly stopped to stare at Saki. It was like seeing a ghost. They were dumbstruck not quite knowing what to say. Saki looked and saw lil Shino, as well as Yesetteru and Uschi. She blinked, "Who is this?" She asked.
Sakuya smiled, realized she didn't know she HAD grandkids, as Yesetteru was conceived after she left, "Mother, these are your grand kids, Yesetteru, and Uschi," She nodded to them, they came over and clung to her long sleeves.
"That's….that's impossible," Saki grew pale, "How old are they?"
"Yesetteru just turned 7." Sakuya looked at her sideways.
Saki let her arm down, Choupuchi flew up and hovered around. Shino called out to him and he came over to sit on his head, much to Shino's silent delight.
"But I was only in the Chou's realm for a year. That's how long it took us to figure out how to get me home…" She looked again at Sakuya, "I thought you looked unusually older….but then again ninja life can be taxing, one can age more quickly…but are you telling me it's been over 8 years?"
"Yes…it's been 8 years since you left home. After your communication stopped coming, and five years of sending scout bugs…we…assumed the worst…" She looked down.
"Saki, how is this possible?" Shibi finally spoke.
"We'll explain everything Shibi-sama, trust me," Ussa said.
"You're my grandma?" Yesetteru came up to Saki, not understanding the full gravity of the situation.
"Yes my dear," She nodded still in shock.
She hugged her leg. Saki kneeled down so she could hug her properly.
"I think we all need a strong cup of tea," Kaho blinked.
…
…
They went to grab Shen, whom Saki was eager to see as well. Upon answering the door he swore it was Ussa playing a henge jutsu on him…once he realized it was for real he said, "I KNEW you were still alive!" He ran off inside, and came back with a small ceramic lidded bowl, "Saki would never let tieguanyin go to waste…so I knew you must me alive and would come back so I could make this for you!"
…
A cup of the brewed tieguanyin tea was placed before Shino, he watched as Kaho and Shen poured it properly for everyone, as if they were at a tea house.
"I'm almost afraid to drink it with how you talk about it," Ussa moaned.
"You must! It's the best there is," Saki smiled at Shen, who couldn't help but smile back, he was just so happy to see her alive!
"None for me," Tesuro held up a hand, "I don't like Oolong." (tieguanyin is an oolong type).
"Your loss," Yusuro unbuttoned her collar and smelled the tea with a sigh.
Jima loved the smell of the oolong tea and was about to reach for the sugar cubes when she turned to se Tao there holding one for her. She put her hood down and nodded to him graciously. Uschi grabbed for her exposed very Aburame-floofy golden hair.
Shino called on a pair of large Pegasus beetles hanging out on some of the house plants to get him an ice cube. It wasn't uncommon for beetles to hang out in Shibi's house all winter. Little Yesetteru and Uschi watched as they flew it over in their fuzzy little legs and plopped it in the molten hot tea. Shino glanced at them, and smiled impishly.
When everyone was settled, Sakuya asked her mother about where she'd been all these years. She had been, as they knew, in the realm of the Chou, which would be a similar place to where Kaho's Kamakiri (praying mantises) lived – most large summoning animal families had special, hidden valleys they resided in, although the Chou were previously unknown before this to anyone. She explained how the valley was not where it was described to be, and she searched for it all over in the nearby area's to find nothing. However, in her searching, she encountered the temporal jutsu that sucked her accidentally into the Chou's realm.
She said time must have passed slowly there, because it only FELT like a year to her, but had been 7 to everyone else. She discovered the Chou did indeed have healing properties and was eager to share her medical findings with everyone. Sakuya was especially interested of course, but Shibi took interest cause she mentioned some of the butterflies had the ability to neutralize poisons, and Shibi's kikaichu were known for being interested in that area.
"You'll have to tell Fu too – she is training to become a medical ninja." Tesuso spoke up.
"Fu?"
"That's a long story too…" Yusuro grumbled.
"Fu is Fujita-san's daughter…she was…'discovered' and adopted into the clan at age 4, right after you left." Shibi replied.
"Oh, that does sound laborious, tell me about it later," Saki waved her hand.
Three more empty teapots later…they talked long into the night. When Kuroji came home to an empty house, he looked across the courtyard to see the lights on at Shibi and Kaho's…the shadows of many could be seen sitting inside talking. He figured everyone was over there, so he opted to avoid the crowd and go to bed…
"You can't avoid me forever," he thought to himself.
…
…
…
Just a hello from the author! :P Thanks for reading and I hope you are enjoying some of the recent developments with the Aburame family. :) Please leave a comment if you have been reading, I always like to hear from the fans/readers of the story!
Character Sheet 4 is out, Saki, Genjo, young Uschi/Yesetteru are on it:
(remove spaces!) www. deviantart. com/view/72677535
I also wanted to apologize for the slowness of some of these chapters – I've was busy with college graduation and now have had a crazy summer. I have certainly not forgotten about the Aburames, just been busy. :) Thanks for your patience!