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Shino Aburame prided himself on his adaptability. A ninja battlefield was a mad eruption of deadly, constantly shifting conditions even at the best of times. The abilities that shinobi could bring to bear were often strange and ubiquitously dangerous. One of his very best friends, a quiet and unassuming girl to the average observer, had a vision technique that could pierce solid matter and had a range that numbered in kilometers. Combined with a dexterity that boggled the mind, she and those of her family line used their kekkei genkai to attack the very chakra network of their enemies. The ease with which they could shut down their opponent’s bodies was, frankly, frightening.
And that was simply one jutsu, of an innumerable count. Shino was well aware that at any moment, even seemingly feeble opponents might pull a trump card and swing the flow of battle in their favor. It needn’t be something as dramatic as a flashy technique, either—there were hardened professionals who built their careers on nothing but the mastery of the basics, who nevertheless came out on top, despite deviating little from what might be considered “academy level”. In the right hands, a well-placed kunai was just as treacherous as a fireball. His was a volatile, unpredictable profession. Even the best laid plans must account for that fact.
Shinobi that couldn’t adjust to the situation as required simply weren’t suited to the career. He believed this firmly, and without malice. Just as he believed that with his temperament and intellect, he was well-suited.
But this…
Only his reflexes were saving him now.
“Losing focus? I know I taught you better than that, Rolypoly,” the woman said, launching herself forward. He dodged backwards, out of her range, and found his back planted against a large outcropping of stone, nowhere to go. Sloppy.
His environmental awareness had taken a toll. No, that was inaccurate. He was devastated… on all fronts.
In an instant, his assailant was upon him. Her heel came down with a crack like lightening, and Shino substituted himself for an insect clone he’d placed at the start of the confrontation. The woman’s kick passed through the clone’s throat, and a black spatter of kikaichū erupted from his double’s wound. Even though it wasn’t really his body, the image was like something from out of a nightmare. The entire situation was.
“You cannot win if you do not even try, Shino. You must fight back.” She drew a knife from a pouch, and twirled it in her hand, just as he’d seen her do a thousand times. His heart seized. Once, when he was just four or five, Shino had gotten into her weapons pouch and accidentally cut himself trying to replicate that trick. Kintsugi, seeing how he had managed to gouge his foot, kept her weapons sealed away at all times from then on—and continued to do so, well past the point where such precautions were necessary, long into his academy years.
Such a foolish child he had been. Shino still had the scar.
“Eyes forward, now. You will beat this,” she said.
He wasn’t so certain.
On those long nights where he could do nothing but stare at the ceiling and stew in the memories of Kintsugi’s death, he tried to imagine her at peace. That his mother was happy and whole, in some distant place. It was a thought that brought him some modicum of comfort. But there was no sense in avoiding the reality of the situation. This really was his mother, resurrected by the foul crime against nature that was Edo Tensei. She should be at rest, not dragged into a war by a traitorous psychopath.
And yet here she stood, revived, enslaved. A tool in the arsenal of a megalomaniac, forced to fight against the very nation she had lost her life defending. It was a despicable tactic, but he couldn’t fault its effectiveness.
He was falling all to pieces. This was agony.
She was almost exactly as he remembered. Beautiful, and so, so strong. He hadn’t seen her since he was a child, and… and he was grown now. She had always towered in his memories of her, but now she seemed so small.
“Mother,” he choked out, before his vision went white. Someone had struck a blow to his head from behind. Shino avoided the following blow, which might well have proved fatal.
It was Torune. Kintsugi had cloaked the sound of his approach with genjutsu.
“You must be more careful, Shino. My rinkaichū can make even a glancing blow deadly.”
Shino was well aware of that—had always been, even before his attempts to interbreed the rinkaichū with his own kikaichū, a task he had approached with the utmost care. Before his brother was taken—before Shino had a brother—when father first came home with a boy in a strange mask and declared that cousin Torune would be living with them from now on, the announcement had come with a great many warnings. Be careful not to touch his bare skin, Shino. Be careful not to handle his clothes or toys—not until he learns better control. He could recall how mother’s face would tense when he and Torune stood too closely for her liking, how father would gently separate them. But Torune had won them all over in the end, with his endless patience and gentle spirit.
Those precious few years where they had all been together, as a family, were his very happiest.
Shino whirled around, deflecting a knife thrown by his mother as he weaved through Torune’s guard, delivering a half-hearted blow with the blunt end of his kunai. He disengaged as quickly as possible, back on the defensive, and continued his retreat. It was like a parody of the spars they had done in the past—play-fighting, really. His mother always knew how to make a game of training.
A fire jutsu cut off Shino’s exit, and he body flickered up the rock face, taking a handful shuriken in the back as he ran—the metal mesh woven into his thick jacket absorbed most of the damage.
It wasn’t fair. He knew how pathetic that sounded, but this absolutely wasn’t fair. Bad enough to have lost them both once already—now he was to take their lives a second time, by his own hand?
This was too much to ask of anyone.
…and he only had one seal.
Shino cleared the ledge, vaulting over the rocks at the top and breaking into a sprint. Distance, he needed distance. As it was, the two of them were keeping him in the middle as they attacked, blocked his exits, and whittled away at him. His mother had been a jounin, and Torune, part of a branch of ANBU. In a way, it was impressive he had survived this long. If he didn’t know better, Shino would think they were holding back… but that simply wasn’t possible.
A wall of rinkaichū rose up in front of Shino, herding him to the left, into an obvious ambush. The rocky plateau seemed to warp under his feet, becoming the path leading up to their home, and the scent of some delicious home-cooked meal was in the air no no it was an illusion—
The kikaichū shocked him out of the genjutsu before it could take, but even that short glimpse had him hesitating long enough for Kintsugi to close the distance between them. She slashed up at his cheek, going for his eyes, and out of surprise from the sheer viciousness of her strike, he retaliated with an absolutely brutal kick. He could feel her ribs snapping. She smiled proudly at him even as she slid backwards. Had she been trying to goad him into such a counterattack?
“A few more blows like that, and this will be over. I know you can do it, Rolypoly.”
Why did she keep saying that? Didn’t she see that he couldn’t?
Then Torune approached from behind, and Shino was trapped all over again. At least until a bright yellow flash appeared, grabbed him under the arm, and hauled him away—just as Kintsugi and Torune’s attacks converged, where he had been standing a moment before. Shino peered at the figure, glowing with a familiar chakra.
“Naruto?” he asked. The boy shook his head before setting him down.
“A shadow clone,” his classmate explained.
Shino came shakily to his feet.
“I sensed your chakra and it felt like you were in trouble, so I came running,” the clone of Naruto said, grinning. “Looks like I came just in time, huh?”
Shino grimaced. He was exhausted, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Still, some part of him wanted to smile—Naruto coming to his rescue, remembering his chakra signature… it was a far cry from the boy who didn’t even remember his name, let alone the prankster he’d been in the academy. Shino was glad his friend was here, even if it was only a shadow clone.
“Those reanimated guys… they looked a little like you,” the clone said. Shino nodded grimly.
“It would be odd if they did not. Why, you ask? Because they are my family.”
The shadow’s clone’s slight smile faded. The look he gave Shino then was sad and understanding, full of empathy.
“The woman… my mother, is a jounin level combatant, specializing in ninjutsu and genjutsu. The other is Torune. The jutsu he’s preparing, a poisonous cloud of insects, will devastate our forces if it is allowed to trigger—these same insects cover his body as well, so you must be careful not to touch him.”
The clone rubbed the back of his head, as if pondering the situation.
“Well, I go poof if I get hit anyway, so all I have to do is not get hit, ya know? Not too different from normal. And, hey, Shino. How about I distract the purple one for a while? Buy you a little time?”
Shino would never admit this out loud, but Naruto had developed some measure of… emotional perceptiveness. He was deeply grateful.
“Thank you,” he said, and Naruto flashed him a grin and a thumbs up before taking off in Torune’s direction.
He was alone for only a short while before Kintsugi appeared.
“Was that the Uzumaki boy? It is good to see he made something of himself.”
Shino almost laughed at her conversational tone. She sounded as if— as if they just happened to not have seen each other in a while, and she had stopped by to catch up on gossip.
“He is surprisingly formidable,” he replied. It wasn’t quite as convincing. There was too much pain in his voice.
“Then he should have no trouble holding Torune off, for a time,” she said, running through a blindingly quick series of hand seals. “You must finish this now.”
She was right, he knew.
Shino took a deep breath, and steeled himself. His kikaichū were an ineffective countermeasure against Torune, but his allies would have no such trouble facing Kintsugi.
The fire jutsu his mother unleashed, a white-hot whip that snaked along the ground, found no target but the open air. Shino practically flew past her, scattering kikai to dampen his chakra signature, utilizing every stealth technique he had ever learned as he hid himself among the rocks and crevices of the uneven terrain. As he darted through cover, insect clone after insect clone emerged, forming a rough circle around Kintsugi. Her fire whip crackled, slicing through two of his clones, then three, leaving the air stinking of burnt chitin. The beetles unharmed by her attack swarmed her, draining her chakra in tiny increments even as she fled faster than they could follow.
Fled, right into his hastily constructed traps. Most of them she managed to avoid. Some misfired, sending their projectiles sailing harmlessly into the distance. But a handful successfully ensnared her, and that was enough.
Here, a length of razor wire cut into the flesh of her calf. There, a kunai buried itself deep into her shoulder. She seemed to be trying to suppress her cries of pain, all for his sake. It was astonishingly difficult to watch.
Not as difficult as it would be to inflict such damage with his own hands, however. And as his supplies rapidly depleted, he knew he would soon have to do just that. He only had the single sealing tag, and it must be applied manually.
But first, he had to disable her.
His chance came when his mother stumbled, the injury to her leg finally catching up with her. He tossed his last knife at her uninjured leg, giving away his position to hopefully immobilize her.
“Please forgive me,” he muttered, as his remaining clones burst, sending their payload of destruction beetles ripping and tearing their way into Kintsugi’s limp form.
“Oh, Rolypoly,” she said, right behind his ear.
She had substituted away—
A knife buried itself in his gut, and twisted.
“There is nothing at all to forgive. Do what you must to this resurrected body. But no matter what, you must live, Shino. Do you understand?”
He only had a moment.
There was no time to say any of what he wanted. No time to tell her how much she meant to him. No time to tell her about his team, about his accomplishments, about how Father was faring, about the state of her jewelry store. There was so much he wanted to say. So much to discuss, from petty little topics, to the most profound.
But he only had a moment.
He turned and wrapped his arms around her, pressing the red seal into the small of her back. He could feel blood oozing from his wound, but didn’t let go of her, not even to apply pressure to it. For a moment, Kintsugi grappled with him, and Shino could almost trick himself into believing she was returning his embrace.
Almost.
Then, travelling outwards from the seal, white script began to rapidly cover his mother’s body, and she went limp his arms. Suddenly, he couldn’t support her weight. When he released her, she crumpled, and was still.
There was nothing but the sound of his own labored breathing.
He clutched at his jacket.
His mother didn’t move. She— she wasn’t moving anymore. He was shaking.
Shino fell to his knees and let out a low, distressed noise—even to his own ears, he sounded like a wounded animal. Gently, he touched his mother’s face.
“Mother?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
She was unresponsive, her eyes glassy as she stared through him.
“M-mother?” he repeated. “Can you hear me?”
…
There was no time for this now, he knew.
Sparing Kintsugi one last glance, Shino Aburame ran—either he would help his friends put an end to this war and succeed, or he would join Torune and his mother.
No matter how it ended, there was no room in his hearts for regrets.