SHINO

Shino wiped his mouth and fell back to the ground. He had just enough energy and control to make sure he didn’t fall into his own vomit. His bones hurt and his head felt like it was being cracked open. He could feel a thousand tiny legs crawling around inside him and he shivered, though it was hard to tell through how hard he was already shaking. 

He swore under his breath and tried to roll over. He managed to get sort of onto his side before he had to stop in order to breathe. He looked around and found nothing familiar. Which was sort of the point when he’d started running several hours ago, but now just left him even more scared than he already was. 

He opened his mouth and hacked up a few dead beetles. He spat them into his hand and looked at them with blurry vision. They shone in the minimal light with a metallic purple color. He tried to crush them in his fist but he was too weak to do more than lightly hold them. 

Would this be the strain that killed him? Alone in an alleyway he didn’t recognize, choking on spiny legs and poison. The sun, just visible over the nearest building, was shining right into his eyes and he wondered where his sunglasses had ended up. Without the dark shades the light pierced straight through his head and made his vision go white. 

A couple of plain black beetles fell from his cheek to the ground and he grimaced. If his colony couldn’t beat the new strain of parasites they’d injected into him, then he was good as dead. The thought was actually relieving. His muscles cramped up and Shino could feel the next fit coming. He tried to relax his jaw and kept his tongue pressed down to the bottom of his mouth as his muscles tensed and untensed in a painful half seizure. His body contorted and his head slammed into the concrete which left him seeing black splotches in the white. 

When his body finally relaxed again he took in deep breaths and glared at the wall in front of him. The last thing he’d see was garbage and brick. But at least the elders wouldn’t be able to ‘perfect’ him. Not again. 

He focused on his chakra and did a cursory medical scan of his body. The fight between the new parasitic beetle species and his own colony was still ongoing, winner as of yet unreadable. His own colony was already unstable. Made up of twisted mutations of different species, siphoning off chakra from him in sickening amounts to make up for their increased strength and number. 

He shakily lifted his wrist to glare at the tally marks there. Six plus the newest one, still shiny black with ink and swollen red around the edges. Seven. Seven times he’d been through hell and somehow lived. His hand fell back down and he closed his eyes. He could join his brother now, dead at Strain 3. His closest cousin, dead at Strain 5. All his other cousins dead as well. The clan’s obsession with creating the ‘perfect colony’ had ended with only a few remaining shinobi of his generation left.

He felt scraped raw from the inside out. Too many insects jostling for space. 

Shino hoped the Aburame died out. They’d been pushing too far already, the number of victims still available for their experimentations drawing incredibly low. If they killed all of his generation, then there’d be nothing for the clan to survive on. It would end with the elders, just as it began. He smiled at the thought. 

“Are you okay?” 

Shino scowled and blinked the white away with a concentrated focus. The sun had fallen mostly behind the building and he could partially see what was around him. There was the dark outline of someone standing at the mouth of the alleyway. He decided to ignore them. 

Soft steps made their way closer and Shino opened his eyes again to look up into the face of a small dog. “What?” he asked no one and nothing in particular. He groaned as a wave of pain moved from his calf up through his spine. The beetles must be fighting again. 

“I don’t think you’re okay,” the voice from before said. Shino, for a delirious moment, thought the dog was talking to him. But no, there was a boy at his side leaned over him. He smelled even more strongly of dog than the dog itself. 

“Dog,” Shino said. How eloquent he was, dying on the ground. 

“Ah, beetles,” the kid said with interest. “You must be Aburame.” 

Shino felt a pang of fear at the idea of being found by another clan. They could make things even more painful for him. They would if they managed to find him like this. He looked between the dog and the kid in rising terror. He didn’t want to be ripped apart by humans, the beetles were enough! 

“Wow, wow, relax, dude. I’m not about to try and… do whatever you’re thinking about. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on, so I can help you.” 

“Help me?” Shino asked skeptically. He belatedly noticed the two red fang marks painted on the other’s cheeks. “Why would an Inuzuka help me?” 

“Kiba Inuzuka, and you?” Kiba said cheerfully, avoiding the question. 

“Shino Aburame.” 

“Are your bugs supposed to do this?” Kiba gestured at Shino’s twitching body with a wrinkled nose. 

“No.” 

“Okay then,” Kiba trailed off. “Well, this is a terrible place to be in general, nonetheless when whatever this is is happening.” 

The dog above his head barked and Shino winced at the sound so close to his ears. “You’re right, Akamaru,” Kiba said. Shino wondered how he understood the dog. He didn’t know much about the Inuzukas, except that they were traitors to the clans. A point in Kiba’s favor there. 

“I’ll be right back,” Kiba said. “Akamaru, watch him while I’m gone.” Shino didn’t have time to reply or object before Kiba ran away and out of sight. 

He closed his eyes and focused on not vomiting again. He’d gotten pretty good at that over the years. He didn’t know how long Kiba was gone but he made quite the clatter on his way back. Shino sent a little chakra to his ears and could make out three sets of footsteps this time. That couldn’t bode well for him. 

“Shino!” Kiba said as he skidded to a halt by his feet. “I’m back!” 

“Okay,” he said. 

“I brought friends! They can help!” Kiba gestured to two other kids. “The blond demon is Naruto, and the pink obsessed girl is Sakura.” Shino eyed Sakura’s pink bat with trepidation. 

Naruto stepped up next to him and crouched down. Shino’s eyesight was getting worse and worse, but he could see blue eyes and scars. “What are you doing?” Naruto asked. 

Shino almost chuckled but couldn’t find the energy. “Dying.” 

“Sounds like a waste of time,” Sakura said distantly. She’d circled around to his other side and Shino couldn’t see both her and Naruto at once. He decided to keep looking at Naruto since it meant he didn’t have to turn his head. 

“Depends on who you ask,” Shino eventually replied. 

“So what’s wrong?” Naruto asked as he poked Shino’s side with a single finger. Shino wanted to smack the hand away, but he was distracted from the thought by the burning pain that radiated from the spot Naruto had touched. 

Shino opened his mouth and screamed. It was a gargled awful sound, Shino remembered his brother making a similar sound when he’d died. 

“What are you doing, Naruto?!” Sakura screamed. Shino’s body began to shake and seize once again. “Don’t hold him down, you’ll just make it worse!” His head jerked up and went crashing back down toward the concrete once again but landed on something much softer. A feverish glance at Sakura showed her arm reached out and assumedly cushioning his head. It was rather sweet. 

When his body relaxed once again he choked out, “Thank you.” 

Sakura removed her hand and replied, “You’re welcome.” Her hands then started flickering with green chakra and she moved them up and down his body, only an inch away from touching him. “His chakra is a mess. And his muscles are getting shredded.” 

“Can you fix it?” Kiba asked. 

Shino didn’t know why they would even try. 

“I can fix the damage to his physical body, but not whatever is happening with his chakra system. And if we can’t stop the muscle tearing then fixing him would be useless.” 

“What’s wrong with his chakra?” Naruto asked. Then Naruto’s face appeared directly in front of Shino’s. “What’s wrong with your chakra?” 

Shino coughed slightly and said, “Don’t know. My beetles eat chakra.” 

“So your beetles are eating your chakra, why don’t you just make them stop? They’re yours, right?” 

Shino scoffed and closed his eyes for a moment as his head throbbed so bad his thoughts were scattered. “Too much beetle,” he said. 

“Too many beetles?” Sakura asked and corrected as one. 

Kiba’s voice, “Look, guys. These are two different species.” Shino couldn’t see Kiba and wondered if he’d dug the bugs out of the vomit. Gross. “This one is purple and the thorax is spiny. The other is black and thicker.” 

“They look pretty much the same to me,” Naruto said. 

“Well, they aren’t!” Sakura shouted. 

“But which one is the right one? Or are either of them right?” Kiba asked. 

Three faces once again peered down at him. He blinked up at them trying to remember the question. “Black,” he said. 

“Okay, good, Shino,” Sakura said. “How do we get rid of the purple ones?” 

Shino didn’t have an answer so he stayed silent. He felt Sakura’s healing chakra brush over him again. “His chakra is getting weaker and weaker.” 

“How much chakra do the bugs need?!” Naruto demanded. 

“A lot, apparently.” 

“Well, I can’t heal him, but I have more than enough chakra to share, right?” 

Shino frowned. What? 

Naruto’s hand landed on his stomach and Shino screamed as the agony once again rippled through him, concentrated on the spot where Naruto made physical contact. 

The pressure and pain dissipated and he vaguely heard Sakura scream out a torrent of insults. She had quite the set of lungs. He wasn’t a fan of it. Loud loud loud. His ears rang and he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes open any longer. If the three fools would just let him die. 

“Shino? Shino!” 

He managed to squint his eyes open just a crack. “We have an idea, Shino.” It was Sakura. Big green eyes drilled their gaze into his. “It’s going to hurt and it might kill you.” Well, good. 

“What is it?” he asked, his voice was little more than a whisper. 

“When Naruto touched you the purple beetles started to react. I think they want at his chakra.” Shino had a sickening realization. The pain wasn’t Naruto’s chakra at all, it was the beetles trying to claw their way out of his skin to get at it. Wonderful. “So, he’s going to draw them out,” her voice was shaky and he didn’t know if it was from disgust, shock, or something else, “and I’ll heal the holes they leave behind.” 

Shino was distantly impressed that she’d figured that all out in such a short amount of time. He also very much didn’t want to get eaten alive by Strain 7. Looking at her determined eyes it didn’t feel like he really had a choice. And maybe, just maybe, he didn’t want to die just yet. “They’re poison,” he whispered. “Bite you.” 

Sakura glanced away from him and over to where he could feel the other two at his side. “I can handle poison and Naruto’ll be fine. Probably.” Green eyes returned to his. “Hold on, Shino. This is gonna hurt.” And boy did he know it. 

“Are we doing this, Saku?” Naruto asked. Shino’s eyes closed. He was starting to feel buzzy and numb at the tips of his fingers and toes. It was pleasant. 

“Yeah. Kiba, I need you to hold Shino down but cushion his head. Tell me immediately if he vomits. Naruto, let’s start at his stomach.” 

Shino started screaming the moment they touched him. He screamed until he tasted blood. His body was on fire, his stomach felt torn open and he could feel blood pooling in his belly button and sliding over his skin to the ground. If he wasn’t screaming he bet he’d be able to hear the liquid hitting the puddle forming underneath him. 

Fuck Strain 7, fuck the elders, fuck being alive. 

Shino lost consciousness before they moved on from his stomach. 

He woke up in a bed. Or something sort of squishy but dry, at least. When he moved his arm slightly he hissed in pain. It wasn’t nearly as bad as when he was dying, but still highly unpleasant.

He cracked an eye open and was glad to find very dim lighting awaiting him. There was sticky crud stuck in the corners of his eyes and he braced himself for the pain as he moved his hand up to claw away the annoyance. 

His hand was shaking badly and he stabbed his fingernail into both of his eyes in his attempts to clear them. Eventually he succeeded and a pathetic pride made him smile. His arm fell back down to the bed and he looked at the ceiling for a while. It was dirty and metal. He breathed deeply through the twinges of pain the action caused and smelled rust and blood, though maybe they were the same. Beyond that he could smell… eggs? 

His chakra flashed out in an instinctive wave to check his surroundings. Three chakra signatures echoed back at him, and a much smaller chakra presence near his feet. 

He craned his neck to look down at said feet and found the white dog from before. The thing seemed to be asleep. 

“Did you feel that?” Naruto’s voice, though distant. 

The harsh sound of feet hitting metal grew closer and Shino moved to look to the side and watched Naruto’s blond hair appear above the edge of the metal floor. His head and body quickly followed as the boy finished climbing the ladder that led to the apparent lofted area he was laid out on. 

He could hear Sakura and Kiba below him now that he was focusing. And the sound of something sizzling in a frying pan. 

“Hey, how ya doing?” Naruto asked with a wide grin. Shino found the six perfectly symmetrical scars that he could now properly see to be very curious. Were they intentional? 

“I have been better. I have been worse.” 

“Yeah, that’s about what we figured. It was pretty touch and go there, for a minute, you know.” 

“I did not.” He paused. “Thankfully.” 

“What? Oh, right.” Naruto rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand and Shino found the gesture oddly cute. Very human. Naruto then hopped to the side and dragged a metal box over to the bed and sat down on it. Expectant blue eyes turned to Shino. 

“And where are we now?” Shino asked. 

“Oh! We’re at one of our bolt holes, this one is a little more presentable than the others though. And it has air conditioning which is a real treat.” 

“You should have seen the hole they dragged me into! You’re getting all the stops pulled out for you, you lucky lug!” Kiba shouted. 

Shino forced himself into a half sitting position, mostly held up by his shaking arms, and looked down over the edge of the loft he was resting in. The room underneath him was very large and had no separating walls. It was just a large blank perfectly square room. The walls were bare brick and the floors were pitted wood planking. A small kitchen was set up on the far wall and Shino spotted Sakura and Kiba bickering over three different frying pans that were haphazardly placed on a crooked stove. 

He fell back to the bed and categorized all the other details he’d seen. A weapon stash in the east corner with a pink bat set gently on top. A small rolling coat stand that had far too many mismatched clothes hung over it to be safe for the flimsy piece of furniture. The corner directly to the side of Shino’s lofted spot had a small table that held piles and piles of expensive looking scrolls and old books. Three different styled chairs surrounded the table and Shino guessed from the look of it, that that’s where the three spent most of their time. The rest of the place was fairly empty. It was grungy around the edges but not dirty, someone had clearly put the effort in to maintain the place. 

He thought of his own home. Sterile and dark and smelled of rubbing alcohol. His room was small and had the bare necessities. The only clutter in the whole space would be his desk, stacked with mission scrolls and papers on papers of research notes. Himself being the experiment in question. 

“I think it looks quite nice,” Shino said. Naruto gave that eye scrunchy grin again and Shino felt proud of putting it there. 

“Oh thanks!” Naruto replied. “You should see Neji, or rather, you should hear Neji when he talks about this place. Always complaining about it and something about having low expectations for myself and blah blah--” 

“You do have low expectations for yourself!” Sakura shouted. 

“I mean, with like the little things,” Kiba supplied from his position where he was successfully snatching one of the spatulas from Sakura’s hand. 

“Whatever!” Naruto dismissed with a shake of his head. “Anyways, Shino... It’s Shino right?” 

Shino nodded. “Shino Aburame.” Naruto’s face contorted a bit at his last name and Shino smirked a little. He felt the same. “An unfortunate relation, yes.” 

“Are they the ones who did this?” Naruto waved at Shino’s whole body. 

Shino placed a very weak arm in Naruto’s lap with the inside of his wrist facing up. The neatly tattooed tally marks were stark against Shino’s skin. “What you saw was something called Strain 7.” 

“Strain 7?” Sakura asked and Shino jolted with a painful clench of every muscle in his body. He looked over to find Sakura clearing the top of the ladder and stepping onto the loft. She peeked over Naruto’s shoulder to look at Shino’s arm. Her eyes squinted and then widened and then went back to squinting. It was humorous to watch. “You’re saying this is the seventh time that you’ve gone through that?” 

“Yes. And my original colony, of course. Though that was before I could remember. They didn’t start the alternate strains until I was 8.” It felt good to talk about it all outside of the clan halls. And not in a whisper or paranoia. “I am one of the only surviving members of my generation. I do not know if the couple left besides me lived this time around, though with what happened to me, I very much doubt it.” 

Naruto and Sakura were both looking at him in horror and he just looked back. The light outside the window was slowly getting brighter as dawn appeared to approach. He wished he had his glasses to block it out. His eyes were starting to throb just from the weak uv rays. 

“That’s fucked up,” Kiba said. Shino wasn’t surprised this time. He looked over to the other side of the bed, the side opposite Naruto and Sakura. Kiba was crouched down next to Shino, his hand out to pet the waking dog at the foot of the bed. Shino glanced around but didn’t find another ladder. The boy must have jumped all the way up here, and silently at that. 

“Are you going to go back?” Sakura asked. 

Did he have any other options? Shino didn’t think so. He lost the elders’ beetles for a while, long enough to almost die alone in an alleyway, but they’d find him eventually. He voiced as much to the others. 

“They’ll only find you if they keep looking,” Sakura said. 

“What?” Naruto asked. 

She caught Shino’s eyes and said very seriously, “I think you’ll have to die.” 

For a second Shino was as baffled as Naruto. Angry too. If that was his only option then why did they stop him from doing just that? Then he understood. Evidently Kiba did as well since it was the other boy that spoke up. “We did leave a lot of blood at the scene. He woulda bled out if not for Sakura’s plasma pills and chakra.” 

“And you got rid of any trail we would have left behind, right?” she asked Kiba. 

He nodded confidently. “You betcha. Scent, sight, and chakra. Your beetles may be pretty smart but if a ninken can’t find you then they can’t either.” 

Naruto, finally having caught up, said, “But what if they just see him walking around some day?” 

Shino closed his eyes and tried not to let his hope suffocate him. They’d already given him more than he’d had since his brother’s death. A helping hand and a simple conversation. He really had low expectations, huh, just like Naruto. 

“Well…” Kiba started. Shino opened his eyes to look at him. “Do the Aburame ever go near the edges of the city? Do they monitor all of Konoha or just their little section of heaven?” 

Shino felt a lurch of something poignant and exciting in his stomach. “We don’t have the numbers to go much beyond our borders. Not for routine, at least.” His limbs were starting to stop their trembling and he pulled his arm back from Naruto’s lap. With a grunt and a few moments of pain, Shino curled up into a sitting position. 

“Well then! That’s easy!” Kiba crowed. 

“What is?” Naruto asked. 

“Bug boy can lay low here for a while, right? Let him get back to fighting shape and all that while the other buggy guys search for him. They’ll find the blood, the beetles, and the lack of a body and assume Shino died and his body was taken, right?” 

Sakura smiled and nodded her head, “I’ll scope the place out later, make sure there’s nothing that would point to him being alive, but yeah. Bodies of shinobi go missing all the time.” 

“That doesn’t help that he could be spotted at any time,” Naruto pointed out. 

“He’ll come with me,” Kiba said. “There’s those empty apartments near the Inuzuka compound. That building where you guys store all your scavenged stuff.” 

Naruto snapped his fingers and pointed at nothing. “Oh! That place! Yeah!” 

“I can’t bring you home with me,” Kiba said seriously to Shino. “But no one but civilians really go out to the edges of Konoha by my clan compound. Only if missions bring them ‘round. So you should be safe to set up shop and stay clear out of the way.” 

Shino stared into not quite human looking eyes. Shino was not a talkative person but he never had trouble finding words and using them. His tongue felt stuck to the top of his mouth though and he had to cough weakly before he could respond.  “I don’t have money for an apartment.” His mission wages went almost exclusively to the elders and medications. “And I need access to my medications.” 

“You don’t need money for the apartments, the building is literally standing empty.” 

“Why?”

“Konoha’s numbers have never recovered from the clans during that initial battle. You don’t really notice until you get to the edges.” 

“And we can help you scavenge everything you need!” Naruto said. “I’m sort of an expert at that!” 

“And anything he can’t find, he can just ask for,” Sakura said. “This smiley doofus is one of the most connected ninja in Konoha.” 

“That’s not true!” 

“Yes, it is.” 

“No--”
Kiba interjected, “Yes, it is.” 

Sakura steamrolled over Naruto’s half hearted protests, “And as for your medication…" she tapped her chin thoughtfully for only a moment. It was more of a show of consideration than actual thought. Her smirk already told Shino that she had something in mind. “Well, I am a genius at medical jutsu. Tsunade-sensei and I can figure something out.” 

“And until then, we can go and grab your stuff. Anything you need,” Kiba said. 

Shino shuddered at the idea, “The Aburame clan lands are not an easily infiltrated area, you can’t just--” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Naruto dismissed. “Kiba and I can get anywhere we need. We’ve already broken into every clan’s buildings at this point.” 

“What?” Shino glanced between Kiba and Naruto and then finally to Sakura. She just shrugged and nodded her head. “Why?” Why risk it? 

“Know thy enemy, right?” Sakura said. 

Naruto said, “We have to know everything we can, or else I’ll never become hokage.” 

“H-hokage?” Shino asked. He looked at Naruto in the increasing light, sun hitting him from behind and setting his blond hair aglow. 

“You heard it right, Shino! And don’t you doubt it! I’m gonna be hokage someday and I’m gonna make Konoha into something to be proud of. And to do that we’ve gotta start with the clans, fixing them, punishing them.” Naruto's eyes blazed and Shino had trouble looking at him directly because of more than just the light hitting Shino’s burning eyes. His beetles moved restlessly inside him and it all felt so surreal. “I’m making some really cool friends along the way too.” Naruto slumped back into his slouch and rubbed the back of his neck. 

Shino smiled weakly and said, “I will not insult you by doubting you.” He closed his eyes and said, “There are a few things I would like. My medicines are in my room in the desk drawer. In my closet are a collection of sunglasses and coats that I need to live comfortably. And of course, you may take all the notes I have on the clan and the Strains, they’ll be on and at my desk. Whatever can help, I will provide.” 

“Will they be noticed if they’re gone?” Sakura asked. 

Shino shook his head, “No one goes in my room. Just leave some clothes behind and the mission scrolls on the desk. That should be enough.” He looked at Kiba, because he wasn’t in front of the window and was easier to see, “Don’t get caught,” Shino warned. 

“And mess up your dramatic death? I would never,” Kiba said. 

Shino sighed out a breath that felt like it could collapse his lungs. He felt… invigorated. Terrified. Exalted. Very tired and very sore and so very thankful. “Thank you,” he said softly to the room. 

A strong but gentle hand on his shoulder pressed him down and into the bed again. “Rest, Shino. Your body is still recovering. We’ll have everything done by the time you wake up again,” Sakura said equally as softly as Shino.

“Of course we will! We look out for our friends, Shino! Don’t you worry ‘bout a thing!” He could hear the smile in Naruto’s voice and he reveled in it and the protective energy around him. His beetles settled in his muscles and organs and Shino wondered if that feeling of relief and gratefulness was what peace was supposed to be.

“Thank you,” he said again a moment before he slipped back into sleep. For the first time in his life, he was excited for the next time he would wake up.