The world rushes on, and now spring is over...It seems only yesterday, everything I saw was in full flower.
-Izumi Shikibu
Nobody said anything about taking on a dog handler too.
But even so, Leaf Ninja liked to roam in 3's.
And no matter how many bodyguards the bug user brought with him, she welcomed the challenge.
How could she respect her opponent as her highest prize if he merely surrendered himself to her without putting up a good fight?
Was he really a worthy match for proving her skills as a kunoichi without the foreplay of these complications?
She knew what she was getting herself into by accepting this mission.
He was a Leaf ninja, a shinobi of the most powerful of the Five Great Nations.
And they had warned her, after all, that an Aburame wouldn't be an easy target.
"Never let your guard down against an Aburame," Hachimitsu Sensei had reminded her. "They may not appear tough at first glance, but they are masters of strategy. They are highly trained in espionage, which means unlike bees, their insects hardly make a sound in battle. Let your guard down once, and you will surely be defeated."
But Aburame was hers to claim, no matter how artfully he played hard-to-get.
Her orders were clear.
Kill Shino Aburame or never return home again.
An ultimatum about as impossible as a hoverfly in a honeybee's nest.
Because even if she defiantly chose the latter by finding a new home somewhere outside of her clan, how could she bear the shame of losing to an Aburame, every waking moment of her damning existence?
Had there ever been an alternative to her impending duel with Shino?
Maybe there might've been a path outside her clan's cycle of suffering and hatred.
Maybe she could've left her village on her own terms, learning about peace in small acts of kindness that didn't involve this endless insect war.
Like a butterfly, filling the world with the color she always felt was missing from it, and bringing good and beauty to the life of everyone she met.
Regardless of whether they were Aburame or Kamizuru.
But she was a daughter of War.
And somewhere, deep down, the idea of peace scared her more than facing Shino Aburame in battle.
What was peace, really? How does one master it?
How does one keep it from turning against you in the end?
War was much easier to control than peace.
The rules of war were simple: Kill or be killed.
Measurably more mathematical than ambiguous questions like, 'Will a day ever come that I lose everything I love?'
And for a Kamizuru, that question was not a matter of if, but a when.
Wars were fought with hopes of peace...but peace? The only thing that comes from peace is war, and losing everything she loved all over again.
And so, peace couldn't be trusted.
She needed to know that protecting the things she loved was completely in her control, and peace could never guarantee that.
No matter how sweet of a fairy tale it sounded.
Still...sometimes she wondered about the peaceful lives of other clans...what it might've been like to be born in the Aburame clan, whom fortune always smiled favorably upon?
Might peace have meant a normal life beekeeping in a quiet forest somewhere, falling in love with her soulmatch, and sharing her wisdom with a small face resembling hers, that made her heart explode like a bee bomb?
No...indulging in her meaningless daydreams was selfish, if they did not benefit the good of her entire clan.
How could she daydream about peace when she had done nothing to obtain it?
The goals behind this mission were far more complex and important than her petty self-centered indulgences.
After all, the honeybee does not claim her honor by working for herself, but by what she sacrifices for others.
And now more than ever, her clan needed her most.
That being the case, she may not have had the training of a powerful Leaf shinobi. In fact, she could very well lose this fight because of that.
But nothing is stronger than the will of one who protects those who mean most to them.
And so, there was no alternative, but to prevail.
A pacificist's life in her village was a delusion now.
The Aburame Clan had taken that from her.
And now her only reason for living was to kill him or die honorably trying.
But it wasn't just a corpse she was interested in.
It was her name.
The name she had lost before she could ever live up to it.
And being unable to claim that name was exactly the same as being dead.
Why push herself to come this far, if her name wasn't the last word whispered on Shino Aburame's lips when she defeated him?
Kamizuru, my one true opponent.
It may not have been the official goal of her mission, but it was the one thing that always made her brave enough to never stop hunting the beetle user.
This one glimmer of hope she could hold onto when she faced Shino, forcing him to recognize that her clan's hidden jutsu was always worthy of respect in the insect world.
And that if she died first in their battle, restoring her name would bring more meaning to her death than she could ever honor her clan with in her life.
And so, there was no alternative, but to prevail.
But how to deal with all these annoying little plot twists that came between her and her battle with Shino?
The Kamizuru Hidden Art of Beekeeping was still an underling to the advanced jutsu of the Aburame Clan's parasitic insect techniques.
And that dog-boy's sense of smell was good. Too good.
Taking them both on in a fight would turn into a stickier situation than a housefly to honey.
Aburame was powerful enough without allies.
And she'd seen firsthand what his insect style could do, if she failed.
Even so, this fog is too erratic to be coincidence, she thought suspiciously, watching the heavy mist descend around her. Could this be genjutsu baiting me into his trap?
And then she froze, her hand trembling slightly over the kunai hidden in her ninja pack.
Even if she never heard the quiet fall of his footsteps behind her, she felt the presence of another.
A strange buzzing connection, unique between bug user and bug user, that recognized their sister chakras crossing each other's path.
Tangled in his waiting web long before she realized it.
His ambush against her came quietly, in the form of a single tiny black insect, humming gently in her ear.
The dark eyes of her Kitsune mask followed it as it fluttered into the bamboo-tops.
But she knew the bamboo forest was too wet for beetles, and the season was still too early for mating during the Cherry Blossom Festival.
If these beetles were ignoring their natural instinct to shelter from the cold, it could only mean one thing.
I've finally found him.
Or rather, he'd found her.
"I'm usually never this forward," he spoke quietly from behind her. "But my insects seemed to lead me straight to you."
That voice...his gentle mumbling of every word...where had she heard someone else speak the exact same way?
She couldn't remember the face it belonged to.
And she stopped herself from trying.
If turning to face him directly caused her to remember why her heart ached with remorse, she didn't want to put a face to his voice.
She just needed to be quick.
One bee sting.
That's all it would take.
One injection of chakra-paralyzing bee's venom, and she might have a chance at slowing him down long enough to deliver the fatal hit.
A window of seconds, and no more.
"The Aburame Clan is your enemy. Compassion will not be a weapon to stop them. Expect no mercy from him either," Hachimitsu Sensei's training came back to her. "You haven't trained long enough in Beekeeping ninjutsu to challenge him to a direct fight. His chakra will outmatch yours. But you might have an advantage in taijutsu. Therefore, if you're going to kill him, you'll need to weaken him first by disabling his insects. I know this because I fought the Aburame clan in the Iwa-Konohagakure war. They are likely aware of our mastery of the poison arts. And a little honeybee like you won't stand a chance against him unless you can perfect your poison formulas and catch him off guard, debilitating his chakra. Once you do that, he will have no choice but to resort to his weaker fighting style. Only then will you have half a chance at killing him."
Which meant no more room for her careless mistakes.
If she was going to win this fight, she needed to stay alert, one step ahead of him at all times.
The kikaichū beetle buzzing bellicosely in her ear, reminding her again why they could never be anything more to each other, except enemies.
Because even if he is the same boy I met in the Leaf so many years ago...I always knew the next time we crossed paths, our only choice would be killing each other.
