Those gifts you left have become my enemies,
without them, there might have been a moment's forgetting.
-Ono no Komachi
After all, what was Shino Aburame to her now, but another mission?
And just like any other mission, all she had to do was breathe and concentrate on the buzzing flow of her chakra forming her honeybee jutsu.
If only her hands would stop shaking.
The same way they hadn't stopped shaking on the day she first met him in the Leaf.
How could she imagine back then that his steady hands cupping around hers, giving her throbbing wrists so much warm comfort, would belong to a boy she'd one day have to kill.
Was Shino being chosen as her target the very crux of her bad karma?
A cruel joke of her clan ancestors, punishing her for saving an Aburame boy back in the Hidden Leaf?
Or was he so completely mad as a bush cricket that he couldn't ever stop himself from getting caught up in the middle of Kamizuru politics?
By the weakness of her own stupidity, she'd saved him once.
And unlike him-obviously-she had learned too many lessons the hard way after calling him a friend.
Why then should she spare such a privileged Aburame from the full weight of his own penance, when she'd never been so lucky to escape hers?
If he was stupid enough not to take the hint when they were kids, refusing to go away quietly and stop interfering with the plans of the Kamizuru, then the beetle boy wasn't her problem anymore.
Except, of course, when he was aggravatingly right.
The despicable know-it-all already assuming that he'd won their fight, fully confident that the bee mistress didn't have enough chakra now to beat him in a second round.
Even if she could summon a few hives from the bamboo forest, she wouldn't be able to control them for long in her weakened state.
And she was already at a disadvantage, knowing that Aburame already carried all the insects he needed inside that annoyingly calm and collected body of his.
Not only would she be forced to restrict her jutsu, but any use of that jutsu would be delayed by merely a fraction waiting for her bee summons to join the battle. The slightest of fractions that gave Aburame just enough time to take her out before a bee ever touched him.
And with nothing stronger than her own maddening rage against him dragging her back into a losing fight, the only thing left to bury her after it all would be the Hidden Stone, savagely laughing her all the way into the next Shōgatsu.
Dammit.
There was no way she was going back to that.
Not without jarring this Aburame shrimp of an insect once and for all.
"You're trembling," Shino found her weakness quickly. "It will make fighting me that much harder for you, and what's more, I hate repeating the same thing twice. But for your sake, I will make one last exception...Accept my offer...The reason is because once I know your name, I will keep my promise to fight you when you are recovered. There is no reason to take things this far."
"Don't talk to me like you're something noble. You're not noble. Noble isn't like any of you Aburame," she declared. "And knowing my name won't matter to you in the end anyway."
"Then if knowing your name means nothing in the end," Shino said. "why are you fighting so hard to protect it?"
"Because you've taken everything else from me," she said darkly, charging at him again with shuriken crossing all her fingers. "And I won't let you take the last precious thing I have."
'It's just my luck then,' Shino couldn't believe his misfortune. 'The only girl who shows this much interest in me, and it's only because she wants me dead...Even so, it's stupid of her to try this same attack again. If that's where this is all going, then I'll just stand here and wait until she burns out.'
'I guess it's just my luck then, that he's so stupid like this,' the bee mistress couldn't believe her fortune. 'Because if he just stands there like that, killing him will be so much easier! Even so, it's just too-"
'-Embarrassing to watch,' Shino pondered with a sigh. 'But I can't seem to turn my back on her...Why?...I don't exactly know why...She's so damn reckless, it would be cruel to leave her out here in this forest alone. That's because I'm sure by now, she's too distracted with me to notice the angry Queen Bee behind her.'
And just as she went in for her glorious final attack, a rope of kikaichū whipped from around Shino, sweeping the untamed bee mistress right off her kicking feet and yeeting her most indecorously out of the Aburame's way.
She barely had enough time to realize she was beelining straight through the air before she hit the ground again, tumbling roughly-but safely-out of the battlefield.
Choking for want of the air knocked out of her lungs, as she shakily pushed back onto her palms. Her body begging her to withdraw from the fight, but her heart hellbent as ever to finish what she started with him.
'Get up,' she ordered herself. ' There are so many people depending on you. Giving up just because it hurts is not an option.'
But as she stood on her wobbling feet, holding her head high to face her Aburame opponent again, her honey eyes widened wonderstruck to find the agile Shino Aburame already in front of her.
His back turned to her in a defensive fighting stance, as he faced-off something she couldn't immediately see beyond his perked collar and devil-may-care hair.
"Stay behind me. I'll keep you safe," his quiet order stopped her from backing away from him. Leaving her staggered by how unexpectedly chivalrous he sounded speaking those protective words to her...Until he added in a dry mumble, "-From yourself."
"Bite me."
"You could've mentioned that earlier."
Horrorstruck, the kunoichi recoiled as he folded up the hem of his jacket sleeves for battle.
Her lips quivered. Her flustered strawberry-shortcake cheeks now turning white as her ghostly hair, when her eyes got an up-close and personal view of his Swiss-cheese, unnatural wrists and the very naked meaning of what he meant.
As nothing could ever make her completely get over that creepy-crawly way his bite-size black insects wiggled their little spider-butts out from under the tiny pores of his forearms.
But Shino Aburame was too busy sizing up their unseen threat to care that she was absolutely dying behind him at the sight of bugs popping out of his veins.
Was that really how the whole "human hive" thing worked?
Insect user or not, some things just shouldn't be!
But Shino assumed her barely contained squeaks of horror were just more fits of her womanly bickering, given her not-so-gentle landing.
"Sorry," his calm voice sounded only sardonically apologetic. "My insects don't know their own strength sometimes."
"You threw me 50 feet!"
"Which only proves my point. If you can't see a move like that coming, then you don't belong here," Shino held nothing back. "Forfeit and withdraw."
The bee mistress grinded her teeth down hard. Only because the kunai wound in her palm was still too tender to dig her fingernails into it. The same way she wanted to dig her fingers into his face.
Her loathing only simmering hotter for his dung-beetle grandiosity.
"I'm not going anywhere," she declared defiantly. "And we're not done here yet, no matter how many dog-flea cheap shots you throw at me. Which means I only got one more question for you." She balled up her tightened fists at his turned back in an offensive fighting stance again. "How do you like your grasshopper cooked, huh? Sweet...or spicy?"
"To tame a honeybee like her," Shino answered monotonally, without ever giving her the courtesy of acknowledging her fist-fight challenge. "You're gonna need more than just sweet-talk to win this battle."
The bee mistress rolled her eyes.
What was with this guy and all his corny bug jokes right in the middle of their duel?
'How in the pollen basket did I get stuck with such a honey-nut!'
And then...eventually...as the wind around her gradually grew stronger...the full enlightenment of their situation slowly caught up to her.
The battle drums of buzzing bee's wings artfully sweeping her snowfall tresses across her stunned face, as five black eyes, gargantuan as whole full moons, ascended in flight high above her and Shino.
"Holy Beekeeper," she cursed in a breathy whisper. "Is that the bee I just summoned?'
Realizing only then that Shino's Insect Rope Technique hadn't actually been another way of humiliating her, but had saved her from being mangled alive by a pair of blood-hungry pincers.
"Please tell me that's not..." she murmured uneasily.
"One pissed off, feral, nesting honeybee?" Shino guessed her thoughts.
"For the love of Shinchū, you couldn't just lie to me?"
"It's just like dejavu," Shino mumbled, as he watched the queen ascend, his steady gaze calmly tracking the matron bee as her wings sent gale force winds around them. Exactly like that mission he led with Team 8 and Naruto to capture the bikōchū beetle. "This is why I hate bees."
And his scrappy little captive was perfectly fine following Shino's order to stay behind him, using the Aburame as a willing human shield, while she stared back into the queen bee's eyes.
"There's no way I had enough chakra to summon a queen like her," she said.
"Then if you didn't," Shino answered. "Who did?'
Before the bee mistress could make her guesses, the queen zig-zagged around Shino, darting for what she deemed her weakest prey first.
The honey kunoichi dodged the queen's attack quickly, leaping in the opposite direction to avoid the matron's piercing stinger. The queen was a formidable heavyweight, but a tragic case for agility.
Unable to stop her momentum in time, the queen's bulging abdomen slammed into the earth below her, carving new mountainous terrain into the bamboo grove.
The bee shinobi leapt further out of the battlefield, narrowly missing being buried alive under the steep hills and cliffs left behind by the colossal queen bee's crash.
'Why is she singling me out?' she wondered. 'Does she think I'm a threat too because I'm with Aburame, or is she someone else's personal summon?'
But Shino wouldn't let the queen bee succeed in her mission to separate him from his captive.
'Ninja Art, Insect Deception Jutsu.'
And once again, the terrain shook like an earthquake under their feet as lavafalls of Shino's insects expelled from underground.
They leeched onto the queen bee and quickly began feeding on her chakra to subdue her into surrender.
But for one Aburame, the technique couldn't hold her down for long.
A summon of her size was usually fought by a team of insect users for a reason, and Shino knew his bugs alone wouldn't be able to devour the massive chakra reserves of this rampaging queen.
He only hoped to buy them time for his captive to retreat and find a safe place to hide out of harm's way off the battlefield.
And with the matron bee stalled, Shino commanded the bee mistress, "Go. I'll distract her."
But reckless as the girl he once knew as Firefly, the honey-scented kunoichi wouldn't be caught dead taking anymore orders from an Aburame ninja.
"Sorry, bug boy. Beekeeping isn't a job for a Beetle user."
And pushing Shino aside, she charged ahead of him to take the queen bee head-on.
Leaving her rival behind to watch as she sprung into the air with only a balled collection of smoke bomb tags playing defense between her and the rampant queen bee.
The smoke bomb detonated just as she landed on the bee's furry head, making the queen sway dizzily in the mesmerizing, sedative clouds. Succumbing sleepily to a special smoke formula passed down from the beekeepers in the Hidden Stone.
Compliments of the Kamizuru clan.
She smiled back smugly at the Aburame, daring him to one-up her.
'Impressive,' Shino observed. 'The mother bee can be tamed without us inflicting unnecessary damage on her. The reason is because the smoke will calm the queen and weaken her attacks...I almost underestimated this girl...Why? Even without chakra, she seems to know enough about bees to hold her own in this battle.'
But Shino didn't have time to reconsider this alluring fantasy of a female insect user after his own buggy heart.
The real battle had just begun.
Dizzy and infuriated, the matron bee's body jerked violently, throwing the bee tamer off her back.
Shino guessed the queen was just sick from the disorienting power of the smoke bomb, but his captive-knowing better-scrambled to her feet and started bolting from the battleground. Desperate to get as far away from the convulsing queen as she could, before a wave of fire-release turned the fog into boiling steam in her path.
A river of blistering red-hot, regurgitated honey erupting from the bee's mandibles, and racing in a tidal wave after the frantically fleeing bee user.
Knowing she'd never be able to outrun it, Shino pushed his arms out to form a solid bug wall, blocking the sickeningly sweet, hot tsunami from drowning his 'accidental comrade' in its simmering depths.
Panting to catch her breath, the bee user finally reached Shino's side unharmed, falling behind his kikaichū wall that shielded them both from the fiery storm around them.
Until the queen bee snapped her mandibles shut, igniting the honey river into a giant honey bomb explosion that stretched Shino's insect wall to its greatest limit against the hellfire.
Shino pushed with all his strength to keep the explosion back, the ends of his bushy hair singed, and his heavy brow sweating from the exertion of keeping his bugs in formation, as they absorbed the chakra behind the harrowing blast.
'Come on, bees. Any moment now,' the honey-eyed kunoichi bit her lower lip nervously, as she watched the Aburame's wall crumble. 'Bees' Tinderbox! Where is that hive I summoned? Why is it taking so long?'
And just when she knew Shino's wall had reached its breaking point, and that they were both about to become deep-fried Katsu-Karē, an army of vengeful honeybees calvaried their way through the fog, finally answering the call of their waiting bee mistress.
Her white hair blowing like snowfall over her shoulders as her bees swarmed in from behind her and Shino.
Only then did she finally remember to breathe, as her bees dived into action just in the nick of time.
Though not without leaving her in a rather sticky spot of dilemma.
Now that they had come, what was she to do?
Finish her original mission and use her last bit of chakra to kill Aburame at last, now that he was distracted?
Or redirect her chakra to reinforce the crumbling bug wall Shino had built to protect them?
With only seconds to pick her side, the bee mistress made a split-second decision on gut-feeling alone, and executed her move.
'Earth Style, Beeswax Fortress Jutsu!'
The honeybees obediently followed her command, entwining their wings and legs side-by-side with Shino's kikaichū. Expelling their tacky honey to strengthen the weakest parts of Shino's protective wall and crystalize it into honey cement that fortified the wall solid around them.
A combined bug user jutsu that caged the wild queen bee and her explosion off completely.
At last, the queen's attack fell in submission against the honeybee-beetle wall.
The bee mistress glanced over at Shino, who stood completely moonmoth-struck as he gazed back at his unintended comrade, unable to take his sunglasses off of her since the moment her bees came charging into battle for them.
Her lips parted into a soft weary smile at him.
"We did it," she panted excitedly.
Just the same way Firefly had smiled at him long ago.
But that admittedly pretty smile of hers would be her last move in this fight, as Shino watched her honey golden eyes flutter faintly closed, and her hands slip away from their insect wall in exhaustion.
The last gift of chakra he'd given her finally extinguished.
And bug by bug, the wall they had built together unraveled and withered away.
Her abandoned honeybees whizzing around in confusion as they searched for their mistress's lost chakra, leaving the two insect shinobi vulnerable to the final violent aftershocks of the queen's honey bomb.
But Shino hardly heard the thundering explosions around him.
All he could think about in that moment was that night Torune held him back.
How he was never strong enough to take his older brother on, as Torune blocked him from leaving their house and escaping the Aburame compound.
'Let me go, Torune. Please call off your insects. I have to stop dad before it's too late,' Shino had protested at the door, small and powerless against his brother's venomous rinkaichū insects sealing off all his exits from their house. 'The reason is because dad is making a big mistake. Why? Because it wasn't her who attacked me in the forest. She was just trying to protect me. Why won't anyone listen to me?'
'Go back to bed, Shino. Dad told me not to let you leave the compound. So, you must stay."
'But she's my friend! I made a bond with her, Torune! A bond is something a friend cannot break," Shino cried. 'Why her? Because she's the only one who doesn't treat me like a disease! If anyone knows what that's like, why isn't it you, Torune? Please, I have to find her before dad does! She's not like the others! She doesn't deserve to die like this!'
'Remember this, Shino. You are an Aburame, and you must learn to master your feelings. To be a great shinobi is a dangerous and lonely life. To protect the ones you love, no one must know what it is you truly feel, including your own brother. It is clear now that you have become too attached to this girl. And so, you must accept her fate. Why, you ask? It's because it is better that you let her die than allow this friendship to become more dangerous for you both in the end,' Torune warned him quietly. ''Never mention the Kamizuru girl again. Go back to bed, Shino.'
'But why?' a broken-hearted Shino questioned his brother over the swelling lump in the back of his throat. 'Why would you tell me to make friends, and then force me to do nothing when they're ripped away from me? Why would you ever ask me to try, if this is what losing a friend feels like in the end?'
"I'm sorry, Shino," Torune had answered. "If I knew my advice would lead you to such a painful path, I would have never given it. If you're going to hate anyone for that, you can hate me. But it was never up to us. You could never keep this friendship. The reason is because she is and always will be an enemy to our clan. Therefore, you must forget about her...Absolutely forget."
And with no one as strong as Torune to hold him back anymore, Shino gave in to what he wished he had done so many years ago.
Ripping himself away from his collapsing bug wall, as he ran to catch "Firefly" from her fall. Knowing that only his bugs could shield them both now from the crumbling world on fire around them.
And by the time the bee user's last bee fell away from their insect wall, Shino had her in his arms.
Shielding her body with his, as the Aburame scattered his swarming kikaichū into an Insect Dome that blocked out the swan song fury of the bee bomb explosions.
Holding the lifeless Kamizuru safely against him, until there was nothing left in the aftermath of the devastation, except the silence of the settling fog in the bamboo grove.