And so it is. [Kinshi Oneshot]

A lazy, slow morning was unfurling in the Abruame main house, dawning with the rare promise of no obligations. As was his custom, he rose before dawn, quietly padding down to the washroom to wash his face. He looked himself in the mirror, running a hand through his hair, and idly pondering shaving before giving it up as more trouble than it was worth. The stubble on his chin itched something awful, but who knows? Perhaps Kintsugi would find it appealing. She was so easily taken in sometimes when he would return from a long mission, running her soft hands over the unfamiliar growth on his chin, the tightness in his muscles, his scars—new and old.

Muse Profile (For Mobile)

Name:

Aburame Fumio | 油女 文雄 | Typically Male, lit. Scholarly Child

Gender:

Cis Female

Orientation:

Bisexual

Date of Birth:

April 8

Height:

5.4 ft. (Genin), 5.8 ft. (Chuunin), 6.1 ft. (Jounin)

Zodiac:

Rooster

Ethnicity:

Japanese-Analogous

Chakra Type:

Primary Earth, Secondary Fire

Specializations:

Kikaichu no Jutsu, Advanced Insect Clones, Taijutsu

Residence:

Konohagakure no Sato

Occupation:

Shinobi, Amateur Photographer

BIOGRAPHY

"Yesterday, I had the rare opportunity to witness the cicadas emerge. They're a full year earlier than anticipated, so I thought to document the event... and while I readied my camera, one of the freshly-moulted adults was caught by a wasp. The struggle went on and on. It was all quite natural, but for some reason, I just can’t stop thinking about it…"

Ill-tempered and argumentative, Fumio’s default mood is a kind of contemplative irritation. While generally respectful to strangers, it doesn’t take much for a conversation with her to turn to from polite to formally-worded-but-quietly-furious. Not at all loud by nature, the best warning you’ll get that a squabble is about to escalate into a brawl is her expression: when she reaches critical yankī, you’re about to get punched. While her demeanor is just a stone’s throw from Aburame standard chill, she doesn’t quite have the inner calm to pull it off, and her stillness and quiet comes across as tense rather than tranquil.

Peel away the chitinous outer shell, and you’re left with a core of vulnerability. While Fumio’s poor social skills serve to isolate her, she stews in loneliness and often craves companionship. Agonizingly self-sabotaging, she scares away potential acquaintances, alienates family, and back talks her superiors. Understandably, this behavior hasn’t left her with many friends. Once you’ve braved the worst of her attitude and gotten to know her, however, her fumbling attempts to keep your friendship will land somewhere between pitiful and heartwarming. Expect gifts of home-cooked food, teary existentialist talks that last long into the night, and routine offers to rough up your enemies.

A surprisingly sensitive person, Fumio spends her down time practicing photography with her late mother’s camera, trying out new recipes, and tending to the hoard of potted plants she keeps inside her tiny apartment. As though trying to recapture the abundance of nature she lost when she moved out of the Aburame clan compound, she plasters the walls of her room with nature shots taken throughout the Land of Fire. In contrast to the haphazard décor, she fastidiously keeps the rest of her space tidy and organized, an inclination that also applies to her increasingly desperate attempts to tame her unruly hair. If she could smooth back the issues in her life with the same ease that she gels her hair into submission, she’d still have a mess on her hands, but at least there’d be the comforting illusion of control.

Fumio’s life has largely been defined by two factors: loss, and abuses of power from authority figures. Often, she’s found, the two are intertwined. Her adoptive brother Tatsuma and cousin Torune, two children from a noble clan who ought to have been untouchable, were stolen away by ROOT. Her team placement and assigned Jounin instructor were sabotaged by a bitter teacher who was recovering from the death of his Uchiha fiancé. Her first Chuunin exam was punctuated by a near-death experience in which a medic attempted to force Fumio overdose on anesthesia, in revenge for having killed the medic’s brother in a traumatic struggle during the course of the third exam. These experiences have made Fumio suspicious, prickly, and defensive, but underneath the aggressive exterior is someone still trying to repair the damage.

Trying, however, is not always adequate.

OTHERS

ABURAME HISAYO - Fumio’s late mother, an accomplished photographer who specialized in portraiture. Fumio wears a pair of her old glasses until they’re broken during her first Chuunin exam. Elegant but sickly, Hisayo draped her thin body in layers, and fluttered around the clan compound like a fabric ghost. After conceiving Fumio out of wedlock, her mental state began to gently deteriorate as she developed unhealthy fixations on both her ex-lover

"that awful man left us, he left us, babydoll"

and daughter.

"let mama brush your pretty hair, oh, hopeless child, what would you ever do without me?"

Fumio prefers to remember Hisayo as nurturing and kind. For the most part, that's even true.

YUTA - Assigned to the same Genin team as Fumio and fully expected to flunk out of the program, Yuta is only marginally more competent at physical feats than the average civilian. What he lacks in strength, size, courage, and ability, however, he makes up in being extremely ornery… and also by being the user of a vestigial bloodline limit. Brought over as an infant from Hidden Mist by his father during the Bloodline purges, Yuta has little to no sense of patriotic loyalty to Konoha, believing strongly that the village used up his father as an expendable asset, leading to his death. He may not be wrong.

MAEDA RYUTO - Unlike Fumio and Yuta, the village had high hopes for Ryuto. Lauded as a genius, sponsored by the Yamanaka, Ryuto spent his early years apprenticing under a little-known perfumer and ended up inventing a chakra-effused genjutsu perfume. Believing his skills would be largely wasted in the field, his instructors planned for his failure (and subsequent induction into R&D) by placing him on Team Loser. As fate would have it, however, they tragically succeeded, ruining his career. Ryuto was cool with that, though. Ryuto, the sole serene team member, is honestly cool with most things.

ABURAME SHIASE - Probably one of the oldest people in the village, Shiase is one of those rare few individuals who might be called sages. Eyeless, grumpy, and wise, she rarely leaves the clan compound, electing to send one of the various youngsters she raises as a hobby to do her dark bidding. Typical kids would probably find her creepy—to the Aburame, she’s just Obaa-sama. After the death of Hisayo, Fumio and a handful of other Aburame orphans (or kids whose parents were on long-term missions) were taken under her wing. There are three things Shiase won’t abide: whining, messy hands, and poor kikaichu control. Obey her, or perish.

ABURAME KAZUE - Born in secret to Oda Noriko outside of the clan’s knowledge, Kazue spent much of her childhood as Oda Kazue. When her father Aburame Asahi died in battle against the Kyuubi, her mother elected to not inform his clan of her pregnancy. Perhaps after Asahi's death, she wanted a normal life for Kazue, or she simply couldn’t stand the idea of Kazue being given kikaichu. Regardless, when the Aburame found out, they immediately made Kazue their ward. Safe in Shiase’s care, Kazue looked on her hived cousins not with revulsion, but a consuming jealousy—this resentment eventually poisoned her relationship with Fumio, who once considered Kazue an elder sister, to Kazue's great shame. She now apprentices with Aburame florists. 

Fumio took a few seconds to breathe, so she could begin her task with a clear head. Just another mission. Typical fare. ‘Escort a vulnerable target through a combat zone,’ but with home-terrain advantage. All told, it was hardly a cause for panic.

When she put it like that, she was almost convinced.

“With your permission,” she said, sliding out of her flak jacket and placing it around the Matriarch's shoulders. As far as armor went, the wire mesh in the weave and padding of the standard issue jackets could be counted on to stop or dampen a wide range of projectiles... up to a point. 

Better than nothing. 

Once that was secure, Fumio scooped Kintsugi into her arms, taking care that most of the woman’s body would be shielded by her own larger profile.

“Brace yourself,” she said, by way of warning, before body flickering several times in quick succession through the stands. Briefly, they acquired a pursuer—a Suna nin with a wicked-looking serrated blade—but he was quickly intercepted by a jounin of Konoha wielding a doton-forged hammer. Collateral to their fight, the area she and Kintsugi had just evacuated exploded into wood chips and chunks of cement. Fumio felt a few of them embed themselves in her right shoulder as she hopped into a lower section of the stadium, avoiding stray shuriken.

As was discussed, Fumio made a bee-line for one of the doors. To discourage enemy nin from engaging her, she shrouded herself and Kintsugi with a cloud of kikaichu, all buzzing threateningly. In the cramped space of the corridor, they made for a superb deterrent. But although the path forward was clear, the lights inside the building flickered ominously, before finally going dark. Blackout. 

Still, the passage was thick with beetles, and navigating it with their assistance took only marginally more effort than it would have with sight. Swallowed up by the darkness of the hall, there was nothing but the slap of her sandals on tile, the muffled noise of distant battles, and the chittering of insects. Then, as they turned a corner, sunlight. A window, large enough it could serve as their exit. 

Fumio sent her swarm ahead to shatter the glass, and leaped through it, out into the open air, perhaps five stories above ground level. She pumped her legs with chakra and braced her ankles for impact. As she landed on one of the red clay roofs below, it erupted into terracotta shards. Whoops. Well, she was sure they could chalk the damage up to an enemy shinobi. What was one more rooftop?

As smooth as their egress had been, however, it was overshadowed by the stunning appearance of a gigantic snake in the commercial district.

The situation was more dire than she had feared.

For an art trade with @goldenscribe / @iron-loaf

Summary: Shino fights both Torune and his mother during the Edo Tensei event, and it is incredibly traumatizing. 

Word Count: 2507

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.

@goldenscribe

Fumio, vaguely pleased at being recognized by name, gently pried the matriarch’s hands off her shoulders. If they were discovered, she’d need full mobility.

“Kintsugi-sama, please keep your head down. The village is under attack, and there’s fighting going on in the stands. The enemy used a genjutsu to knock most of the spectators unconscious, and I’ve just woken you up.” She didn’t want to frighten the woman, but there was no sugar-coating it. This was a shinobi village. Everyone knew the risks of living here. She just hoped the civilians knew where the shelters were—really, they ought to be drilled on this sort of scenario.

That was something to bring up with a superior, provided the village was still standing at the end of all this.

And here she was, ready to avoid her duty to the village to protect a single woman.

She was a jounin now. By field promotion and circumstances beyond her control, fresh blood and untried, but still. Evacuating civilians was chuunin work at best, and she knew she was needed elsewhere. But abandoning Kintsugi—abandoning the clan—was absolutely out of the question. Fumio was torn, her body rigid and tense, her kikaichu churning nervously beneath. She looked at Kintsugi, still the very picture of noble elegance despite what terror she was surely feeling, the Aburame clan sigil dangling in gold from a chain around her neck. Their eyes met behind dark and rose glass, and Fumio made her choice. She would get Kintsugi to safety, so she could join the defenses as soon as possible. The resulting calm was immediate. She had an objective now—there was no room for hesitance.

The mission parameters thusly defined, she raised her head a fraction so she could gather intel while she debriefed Kintsugi. Most of the skirmishes were too far away for her to get a good look at the invaders, but what she could see was consistent with Suna’s uniform. It certainly explained the oddness of Shino’s opponent’s behavior, if the boy was aware of what was going to happen. Even now, supposed merchants were shedding their garb and revealing themselves as enemy shinobi. Was Konoha really so careless? Or had those Suna dullards just become clever?

“We suspected that someone might make trouble while we were stretched thin for the exams. It would seem Suna betrayed us. There are contingencies in place for such an occurrence, so please try not to worry.” Fumio hoped this information was reassuring. She was using the voice she normally reserved for scared and difficult clients. They tended not to act in their own best interests, to put it lightly. What she knew of Kintsugi’s character didn’t suggest she was given to fits of panic, but she needed the woman to trust her.

Across the stadium, the Kage’s box was empty… had the Kazekage attacked? It was brazen, but the Hokage wasn’t called the God of Shinobi for nothing. The old man could hold his own, even against the likes of Subaku no Rasa. Ah, there was ANBU now, flitting over the roof! This area was about to become even more dangerous in short order.

“I’ve sent a beetle after your son. He doesn’t seem to be in the immediate vicinity, so it’s probable he’s evacuated already. As it isn’t safe to linger here, I suggest we head into the building and out the nearest window, avoiding enemy engagement. If we’re spotted, I promise I will defend you with my life.”

As if to illustrate the immense risk of the endeavor, an errant kunai plunged into the seat where Kintsugi had been sitting a minute before, and embedded itself so deeply that an inch of the blade was visible from their side of the wood.

Fumio held out her hand and tried to project… if not confidence, then at least resolve. Fumio’s death, before any harm came to the Aburame matriarch. Her life was all she had to offer.

“Is this plan acceptable, Kintsugi-sama?”