Dessication

Waking up was something the swarm had only second hand knowledge of. Shattered memory fragments from splintered souls were not a substitute for the real thing.

It was strange, waking up in a comfortable cocoon, the entirety of its being working in concert.

Sensations were overwhelming and jumbled, and thoughts flowed extremely slowly.

The swarm could feel the insects it had stored in the woman's body all around, so it was most likely still in its larval state. So, it was permissible to let itself sink back into unconsciousness. The fact that staying awake was becoming increasingly difficult had nothing to do with it.

—----------

The tightening of its cocoon, heralded the end of its metamorphosis.

The swarm could feel that its time in the comfortable warmth was coming to an end. And wasnt that just amazing? Knowing what comfort felt like was thrilling. It couldn't wait to experience the other sensations humans normally felt.

Before its emergence could begin, it first had to finish its final preparations.

Bringing its will to bear, the swarm commanded the insects living in the woman's body to vacate their living space in the woman's chakra system.

Almost eagerly, the insects left through internal tenketsu, before crawling through the inside of the woman's body and arriving at the swarm’s. The only hindrance was the transparent membrane which had protected the vessel until now. The moment the first insects punctured the cocoon, it ruptured, initiating the final steps of its metamorphosis.

While the walls grew tight all around, the insects began to pry their way into its body.

The spiders entered through the tenketsu along the spine, their legs curling along the vertebrae, already spinning threads along the nerves.

The moth larvae, or caterpillars as the hive-bodies called them, entered through the tenketsu below the shoulder blades and the upper back.

The ants entered the most complicated network, entering through a tenketsu at the base of the skull, burrowing into the hindbrain.

The centipedes found their homes in all four limbs, coiling around bones and the long and narrow paths of the extremities.

Lastly, the dragonfly larvae found their home in the delicate tenketsu of the eyes and the optic nerves.

While the insects burrowed their way inside, the swarm was bombarded with interesting sensory information. Sharp sensations flowed into its brain from every different colony. The walls were closing in and it was time to vacate its cocoon.

As the hive-body it had used for its inception was practically brain-dead, its emergence should be fairly free of complications. The last of the hive-bodies chakra was concentrated around the womb anyway, which made the birth fairly straightforward.

While the sensations of its birth were certainly very interesting, they weren't very pleasant.

What also wasn't very pleasant, was the way its awareness was now confined to its vessel. It had wished for such an experience, but its body had yet to properly mature, so it could hardly make sense of the stimuli.

And what was that grating high frequency noise?

—-----------------------------------------------

Aburame Shibi wasn't having a good time.

The clan was in a time of great change, and he had just taken on the mantle of clan leader. Barely 16 years old and already a jonin, he was overwhelmed. The elders were taking a load off his shoulders when it came to external relations, but as the clan leader he was still one of the most important members.

Everything that was of importance inside the clan was something he needed to know.

And the fact that someone had finally succumbed to the curse, after it was absent for an entire generation was fairly important. The fact that she was pregnant when she fell to the curse was of even greater importance.

The elders had urged him to keep miori’s body alive due to the pregnancy, against the wishes of the large majority of the clan.

Usually he would have agreed with the majority of his clansmen, as that was what his position entailed. Sadly, he could not cave to their demands.

As the leader of the aburame, he had access to the personal scrolls of the previous leaders, ever since their founding. Many of these texts would be of great interest to the r&d division, but he could not live with himself if something were to go awry.

One of the greatest secrets the aburame clan leader kept was the existence of the mind behind the insects.

A few generations after the curse had appeared, an aburame healer had observed their colonies trying to overtake the body of one of the cursed.

Over the generations, the colonies had grown more and more successful with their attempts.

Until, in his generation none fell to the curse.

Or so everyone had thought.

When one of the elders, a very accomplished med-nin, had examined miori’s body, they had come to the conclusion that it was fully taken over. Despite the full take-over, Miori had remained brain-dead.

The elder had noticed the enlarged chakra channels across her abdomen and had come to the conclusion that the birth of Miori’s child was what had been the point of the curse all along.

And so, Aburame Shibi stood in front of the rapidly fading body of Aburame Miori, holding her wailing daughter in his arms.

The child was as healthy as it could be, except for 5 small puncture wounds, although these were quickly healed by the attending elder.

Shibi looked down at the child.

Aburame Mure stared back, all the while wailing her lungs out.

—-----------------------------------------------

Aburame Mure was born at an unfortunate time. Normally the strange circumstances of her birth would have kept the attention of the clan for longer. Sadly, only 5 months after her birth, the third shinobi war broke out, causing the entirety of Konoha to fall into military time.

Even the little bit of gossip about Mure and her strange behavior was overshadowed by the news of Kakashi Hatake and his graduation at the age of 5.

Noone noticed the strangeness of Aburame Mure, as most of the orphaned children were looked after by a rotating assortment of retired kunoichi. Those that did notice, went to the elders or the young clan leader, but were told not to worry about it.

And so, the strangeness surrounding Aburame Mure’s birth was forgotten, save by a select few.

—---------------------------------

The swarm was enjoying its time as a human larva.

Food was plentiful, the worker humans responsible for their early development were very efficient. Surrounded by other human larvae, the swarm looked around.

It had taken some time to grow accustomed to the strange vision of a human body, but it could tell that it was leagues above most of the insects of its swarm. The hearing was interesting as well. Shortly after its metamorphosis, it had been overwhelming, before its body could make sense of the input.

The only beings in its swarms with any comparable ability were the spiders and their sensitivity to vibrations, as well as the moths and their fine-tuned antennae.

The female workers came and went, always clad in their long gray coats and artificial coverings over their eyes. They fed the swarm, removed waste products and kept it clean.

While not as organized and efficient as an ant or bee colony, the care was nonetheless adequate.

Interestingly, once the workers came close to the swarm's body, it could feel the kikaichu hives inside them.

Once they were in range, it could connect to the swarm like it used to be able to do, gaining an instinctive understanding of the hive's health. Hundreds of thousands of individual viewpoints bloomed in the swarms' awareness whenever a worker was in range.

Sometimes it had the urge to enact its will and rip the hive from the workers body, to add to its own swarm, but it suppressed that urge.

It wouldn't harm the workers and caretakers during its larva state. Not that it had any space for additional hives anyway.

The five separate colonies living in its body were constantly enlarging the chakra channels and tenketsu so the swarms' body could keep up with the hive's growth.

Maybe it could acquire some new hives once it had more space in its chakra network.

—---

Over the months, the swarm had come to the conclusion that the new hive-like structure it found itself in was very beneficial.

The decision not to rip the hives from the workers bodies came with the proper learning of language.

As a massive thought entity it had been vaguely aware of the concept of ‘the spoken word’ but abstract awareness was not comparable to actual understanding.

It took a while for its hearing to grow sharp enough to notice the individual syllables, but once the first hurdle of understanding was cleared, learning the language was surprisingly fulfilling.

Now that it could understand the basic sentences the workers spoke, it realized the truly massive amount of information it now had access to.

Not only the bare information its insects gathered, like ambient temperature, air pressure or the spatial position of other beings, but information on abstract things.

The ability to know the internal thoughts of another being, without shattering their soul.

If it left the soul alone, and just listened to the workers, they would generate new information all on their own.

Already its amalgam of souls was brimming with mental energy as it learned the basics of language, expanding its considerable mind in new ways.

The unprecedented expansion of its mind resulted in a flood of yin-chakra which at first negatively affected its vessel, causing muscles to develop slower. Luckily, it had foreseen something to that effect, so control over its yin chakra was given to the nascent hive of army ants living where its hindbrain was supposed to be. Thus the main mind of the swarm could devote its attention to the life of its larval state, instead of constantly worrying about chakra imbalances.

Gaining motor control was another new experience. Large unfocused movements were difficult at first, but with time and repetition it grew easier. Supporting its own head and crawling were the first serious milestones. Locomotion under its own power was incredibly exciting, even if taking control of so many muscles was a pain.

Since it had replaced its hindbrain with an ant colony, the vessel did not retain the methods of locomotion that would usually be instinctive at this point. Thus it dedicated another of its myriad souls to the control over its clutter of spiders and their place along the central nervous system.

The clutter of spiders acted as an extension of its soul, being granted control over the yang aspect of its chakra.

Since the colonies inside its vessel were specifically bred for the swarm, it had complete control over the insects, instead of occupying just a fraction of their mind.

With the addition of a separate soul, the colonies began to work instinctively, like the original organs they had replaced.

Once the spiders began to work in concert, with the greater whole, locomotion grew easier.

Six months after its first metamorphosis it began to crawl properly. It wanted to mimic the large workers and their bipedal gait, but its muscles were not yet developed enough. Even the spider's reinforcement with yang-chakra couldn't help, as the yang chakra only reinforced and strengthened newly building muscles.

So it had to contend with crawling.

The spiders were a great help with their instinctive grasp of horizontal movement.

And so the swarm spent its time, listening to the older larva or the workers to learn more of the language and the happenings outside of the nurseries, crawling after its caretakers with quickly developing speed.

—---------------------------------------------

Himari aburame suppressed a shudder as the child crawled behind her, keeping pace despite her comparatively miniscule limbs. Her odd scuttling motion dragging her across the floor faster than a babe of 6 months had any right of being.

Rumors had spread around the retired aburame kunoichi about the child. Aburame Mure, born from the corpse of Aburame Miori. With strange multifaceted eyes and a depthless hunger in her gaze.

Whenever an Aburame came closer than 5 meters to her, their hives would twitch in agitation.

Nothing would actually happen, but every Aburame came to the same conclusion. Their hives followed their will only because Mure allowed it.

Some had noticed the child observing them, while the hives inside their bodies prepared to vacate them, as if the child was a greater prospect than their longstanding symbiosis.

Yet, as soon as they left the child's range, their hives would return to normal.

To the caretakers' growing unease, the childs range seemed to slowly grow with every passing day. Sometimes little would change for a week, until the range was suddenly half a meter larger than before.

Himari let out a slow, calming breath, getting her racing heart back under control.

No matter how much the caretakers pushed for information, they were always rebuffed.

Taking a right through one of the adjacent rooms, Himari came to a stop. The room was pretty standard fare, multiple beds for children of all ages, from cribs for infants to normal beds.

Except for the bed which Mure usually slept in.

The child scuttled past her, crawling towards the wooden crib and gripped the surface of the spider web that was spun from the wooden supports of the crib to the floor.

With an ease that no infant should possess, the child scaled the massive web, until she softly lowered herself onto the mattress. Once properly in position, the child turned her expectant gaze to Miori, an eldritch intelligence seemingly peeling her apart layer by layer to look into her soul.

Despite the distance between the crib and the room's entrance, the colonies that had taken rest inside her chest and abdomen rippled once, before growing completely still.

Himari froze, as the child's expectant gaze met her own, despite her dark shades.

Then, the child opened her mouth and pointed inside.

Himari released a breath she hadn't noticed she'd been holding. Thank the gods, the child was just hungry.

Though, the spiderweb situation should be reported to someone.

Preferably the elders, if the young clan head was going to refuse their request for information.