All the Bees 5

All the Bees 5

Mitsu Akimitchi

Surprisingly, Asuma did not come to me for help. I had to remind myself that there wasn’t some narrative push that required me to meet the rest of the Konoha Nine.

I’d thought Asuma might seek me out to teach Choji, but that made no sense. Choji could learn our clan arts from Uncle Choza. My uncle, obligatory fat jokes aside, was far from lazy and I knew he worked my cousin to the bone when he got home.

In fact, upon reflection, it’d be weirder if Asuma did come for help. He was a proud and competent jounin who served as a personal guard of the Fire Daimyo for years. And unlike Kakashi or Kurenai, the man was neither cripplingly depressed nor green as grass.

It gave me plenty of time to practice. As much as I bitched about Kakashi and Kurenai, it wasn’t as though I met them every day or anything.

And, almost three weeks after getting turned into a glorified babysitter, I did it: I had a semi-functional sage mode… sorta. It was more akin to Jiraya’s imperfect sage mode.

I smiled contentedly as I sipped from a saucer of spirit mead. I was seated cross-legged on a stump in Seihachimori, the Spirit Bee Forest. I’d left one of the lesser bees behind in the Akimichi clan compound so that my clansmen could message me if there was an emergency. Otherwise, I wasn’t slated to see any of the brats until two days from now.

Seihachimori was a marvelous, verdant paradise. The trees towered over even Hashirama’s glorious work. But rather than blot out the sun, they were spread far enough apart that the canopy looked more like scaffolding. 

Crawling up each tree in thick vines and covering every inch of the forest floor were flowers that I couldn’t even begin to name. Some glowed in the dark. Others shimmered like sunlight rippling off a lake surface. Still others held orange embers within, as if they might ignite at any moment. Though the bees’ home plane was nominally a forest, it boasted more flowers than I’d ever seen in one place.

Here, the air was thick with nature chakra and pollen from countless flowers, each with their own dangers. My first test to become the bees’ contractor had been thus: Breathe.

A normal civilian, or even most ninja, would expire within minutes from a dozen possible poisons, the exact killer changing with the whimsy of the wind. I’d survived partially due to luck, there were flowers even I wasn’t immune to, and partially thanks to my mastery of my clan’s Butterfly Mode. It allowed me to exponentially increase my metabolism and convert my fat reserves into chakra. The caloric conversion burned away all poisons, giving me enough time to enter the Hive of Hives.

Now, I knew better. The trees looked like scaffolding because that’s exactly what they were. The bees had, over centuries, molded the trees themselves, encouraging them to grow in certain ways via careful implementations of wax bindings. The entire forest was essentially a gargantuan bonsai garden.

The trees directed air currents in certain patterns. This allowed the winds to carry the pollen towards the bees like rivers carrying sediment. So though the winds felt random at first glance, they weren’t actually. It’d taken me a while to memorize the patterns, but I could now safely enjoy the beauty of the forest by avoiding the most dangerous of the currents.

Despite the tranquil ambiance, there was a storm surging inside me. Nature chakra didn’t play nice with the human body and even after countless hours of practice, I still couldn’t maintain a perfected sage mode for long, forcing me to rely on Kuro and Shiro to assist me.

Part of the problem was the method by which bees learned sage mode. I learned from Sorabachi that all animal clans had their own unique branch of senjutsu.

Over time, each clan developed methods of storing and processing nature chakra that was best suited for the specific animals in question. So while these methods could provide a massive shortcut for any human contractors, they weren’t originally meant to be compatible with humans.

The toads of Mount Myoboku had their secret toad oil that made their already permeable skin hyper-sensitive to nature chakra. The snakes of Ryuchi Cave apparently had a venom that the White Snake Sage injected into prospective sages.

The bees? The bees had a special royal jelly that was fit only for Sorabachi’s table. She and her lesser queens dined on it every day, enhancing their sensitivity to nature chakra. They had honey imbued with nature chakra as well, but the trace amounts weren’t nearly as useful.

In fact, whenever it was decided to raise up a new queen, they began feeding the larvae this substance. The queens grew up with nature chakra in the same way I’d grown up with my clan’s multi-size jutsu. So in a way, though the queens were not warriors, every queen was a “sage” by human standards.

So were many of the oldest and strongest bees from the various castes, but to far lesser degrees. By consuming nature chakra-imbued honey, they gradually developed a minor affinity for senjutsu, even if they hadn’t been raised on royal jelly.

Yet, rather than learning to fight or kill, most of them pursued the absolute pinnacle of their respective castes’ discipline, whether that be as construction workers or pollinators. As always, the hive above all.

They oversaw the construction of new wax scaffolds, directed their countless pollinators, kept the hives clean, and in the cases of the queens, laid new eggs. Though it looked very different, I couldn’t deny that the bees had utterly conquered their environment, just as we humans had.

I took another sip of my mead. Sorabachi had not been thrilled when I expressed my interest in senjutsu, not because she thought I was unworthy, but because she considered it suicidal.

She’d been absolutely right. The honey only contained trace amounts of nature chakra. For me, as a human, to properly conduct my training, I would have required barrels of the stuff, enough to feed half a hive. That was incredibly inefficient, a waste of resources she wasn’t willing to tolerate. So, my only option was the royal jelly, which had the opposite problem.

Royal jelly was made from a cocktail of various pollen, too many to list. Though some were not poisonous, many were. Those poisons exacerbated each other until the final product was a fermented, chaotic substance that was more “toxic nugget of condensed nature chakra” than “food.” Anyone who consumed it, even her children, would likely die an agonizing death before turning into a statue.

And so, to discourage me without outright prohibiting me, she presented me with a challenge:

“Show me something I’ve never seen before,” she said. “Present to me a product made from Seihachimori’s bounty, a gift to the Hive of Hives. Then, and only then, will you have my blessing, Mitsu.”

So I did. I toured the many hives, sampled the products made by the bees, and noticed something missing. I returned home for a moment to grab a big, clay jar and a bag of bread yeast from mom’s bakery. And, a month later, I gave the bees mead.

Sorabachi had… mixed feelings… about it all.

On one hand, her carefully constructed paradise of efficiency experienced its first disruption in centuries. Half the workers got drunk. Nothing got done that day and they had to push back a few orders from other animal clans.

On the other hand, she really liked mead. She herself did a drunken wobble and recited horrible poetry she swore me to silence over. And when she learned that we could deepen the flavor by letting it sit longer, or adding flowers and berries to it, she was hooked.

I tried to take my mind off things by reciting one of Sorabachi’s god-awful poems under my breath. The mead had proven to be a greater boon than I’d first realized. Because while the royal jelly was lethal on its own, it could be mixed into spirit honey mead. I could dilute the royal jelly this way, enough that it wasn’t immediately fatal to me, whose poison resistance was already considerably higher than most others.

I felt a pair of small pricks at the base of my shoulder blades. By linking themselves with me, Kurobachi and Shirobachi could use their own venom and chakra to help regulate the toxic compounds and nature chakra ravaging my body. It wasn’t too different from what the toad sages did for Jiraya, though my pair were cuter in my opinion.

I stood slowly. It hurt. It felt like my every nerve was on fire. I felt high and drunk. I saw an entire spectrum of colors that I didn’t know existed. Literally, because my eyes became compound eyes and bees could see ultraviolet light.

Antennae sprouted from my forehead, giving me insight into the way my little friends perceived their environment. I could smell new scents; I had no idea that these pollen could smell so distinct. I could taste each air current; I was sure I could navigate Seihachimori blindfolded now. It all felt overwhelming.

“Mitsu? Are you okay?” Kuro asked, her antennae gently brushing my shoulder.

“I’m fine,” I gasped. “I’m just… getting used to the new senses. The first moments after I use sage mode are always disorienting.”

“Take your time. We’ll keep your body stable.”

“Can’t. I won’t have the opportunity to get my bearings on a mission.”

“That’s why this isn’t battle-ready, dumbass,” Shiro said.

“What my sister means is, slow is fast. Fast is perfect,” Kuro translated.

“That’s not how the quote goes.”

“He knows what I mean.”

I stood and began to practice. The sisters’ bickering became background noise. I’d gotten used to them over the years. It was almost soothing how rhythmic they sounded.

I moved with deceptive fluidity for my body shape, going through the Akimichi family kata one by one. It was a mix of grappling, karate, and what I could only assume was sumo. Or maybe not, but that was the only equivalent I could think of in the world I’d known to the palm strikes my clan favored

I found that being the bee sage was nothing like being the toad sage as depicted in the manga. There was a fundamental difference in societal structure and worldview.

For whatever reason, the toads were basically funny-shaped humans. Kishimoto had written them into the story as though they were another human village, albeit with giant-sized members. Sure, they had strange dishes made from insects, but they were more or less a yakuza clan.

The bees were producers. There was the Empress of All Hives, Sorabachi, and her queens. In a sense, they were a corporation, with Sorabachi as the CEO and her queens as her department heads. Each hive, or sometimes several in tandem, was a department, responsible for producing an exacting quota of goods, either to be consumed or sold to other animal clans.

Because of this, the bees placed an extreme premium on those who were expert artisans, producers, or craftsmen. Soldier bees existed of course, Kurobachi and Shirobachi were both soldiers who’d transferred from different castes, but they weren’t exalted in bee society as they were among ninjas or toads.

That meant there was no “bee kata” that had been honed and practiced for generations. No combat style existed to take advantage of sage mode because most soldiers weren’t true sages. At best, they had a slight affinity for nature chakra and used it to amplify their senses or increase the potency of their stings. Only the queens consumed royal jelly, and so only the queens ever became masters of the art. And the queens, as “department heads,” were focused on production.

It was unfortunate. I’d been looking forward to a cool taijutsu style, not unlike Naruto’s frog kata. Then again, the bees didn’t have humanoid shapes. The toads stood up on their hind legs and wove hand seals. Gamabunta was a phenomenal swordsman in his own right.

The bees… didn’t have the fingers for that, nor were their forelimbs designed to handle that kind of strain. Even if a “bee kata” existed, it probably wouldn’t have translated well to my dumpling-like figure.

I wasn’t sure how long I practiced but soon, I was interrupted by the buzzing of wings. I glanced up to find a bee as large as my torso. She was a queen, a fact that was easily determined by her longer abdomen. I recognized her immediately: Yumebachi, Eldest Daughter of the Empress, Queen of the Second Hive, and the closest thing I had to a senjutsu tutor.

“You are as strange as ever, Mitsu,” she mused as she hovered before me. Her butt wiggled in a pattern I recognized as both a sign of respect and a dance of greeting. Bees were like that; they had a language all their own even as they spoke the human tongue. “You produce mead, yet you are also a soldier, a sage, yet also a killer.”

Seeing as I lacked the ass to wiggle, I dipped my head in a respectful bow. “Hello, Yumebachi. I serve my village in many capacities.”

“And what a waste that is. How much more could you contribute to your hive if you did not need to learn to do battle? To think the descendants of the Sage understand so little of the benefits of specialization and burdens of opportunity cost. Perhaps I ought to go lecture your queen. She could clearly use a few pointers on proper hive management.”

I snorted at that. She would, too. Yumebachi had zero chill. If I summoned her in Konoha, she’d be appalled by the inefficiency of human society and go off to lecture my “queen,” that is, the hokage. “You know that the hokage is a man, right?”

“Well, no wonder your hive is a mess,” she sniffed imperiously. I still had no idea how a bee managed to make that noise. “You’ve allowed a drone to take over.”

“Hashirama Senju, our founder, was a man.”

“Even worse! You clearly need a feminine touch. A good drone knows to sit back and let himself be milked like the sperm pump he is.”

“Male humans are not as useless as male bees.”

“Yes, yes, you’ve done very well, dear. Humans are such baffling creatures. So unspecialized, yet I suppose you have your own charms.”

I rolled my eyes. It was like Thanksgiving dinner with my racist grandpa again. “Of course, Yumebachi. Now, did you come to teach me something?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. Have you memorized the architectural manual I gave you last time?”

“I did. It was… informative.”

And it was. Once Yumebachi found out I could sustain an imperfect sage mode with Kuro and Shiro’s help, she took it upon herself to give me a series of scrolls with construction designs. The scrolls contained the various chemical and physical structures of wax honeycombs, scaffolding, and everything else the bees used.

This was what the sage-queens did. Rather than combative jutsu or kata, they used sage mode to generate and manipulate massive quantities of wax, paper, honey, and venom. One of the conditions for learning sage mode from the bees was that I shore up my education to a “minimum acceptable standard” for a fledgling queen.

“Good,” Yumebachi said. She gestured for me to sit and promptly nestled into my lap like an oversized cat. “We’ll begin by reviewing the benefits and downsides of each wax construct. Should your memory prove to be adequate, we’ll move on to the construction and use cases of paper in the hives.”

“Yes, Yumebachi,” I replied. “Hexagons are the bestagons.”

“That is correct. All other shapes are imperfect. Everything in nature seeks to form the hexagon, for it is the most stable, in the most directions. If you truly wish to craft this ‘ablative armor’ for yourself, you must understand this principle. Now, let us begin…”

Sage mode turned out to involve a lot more studying than I’d expected. I wasn’t complaining though. Wax created using nature chakra was as durable as chakra steel and had a much higher melting point than normal wax. Once I learned to freely manipulate it, it would easily replace my earthy style jutsu for barriers and other mid-fight constructs.

Not to mention, the venom and honey both had medicinal properties. I wasn’t a true poisons specialist, nor was I a medic, but I could easily prepare a few tools before a mission. Besides, I knew plenty of medics from my time in ANBU who’d love a share.

I was admittedly less thrilled about the paper. Some mundane hornets made nests of paper instead of wax, and my little friends picked up on the art for other reasons, but I didn’t think chakra paper made using nature chakra would be any more effective than the kind we already had. It wasn’t like we used it for anything other than to determine a genin’s affinities.

Or, maybe not? Perhaps it had properties I hadn’t considered yet. I resolved to give Jiraya a stack once I could make my own. If anyone could figure out what to do with it, it was the fuinjutsu master who was also a sage.

Author's Note

Training chapter, though I guess all chapters have been training chapters. Even Mitsu needs training, is what I’m saying. I always found it a little funny that “sage” means “punches shit real hard” in Naruto. It would’ve been nice to see a bit more of the intelligence and wisdom that’s implied by the title.

I like the thought of bees having a complex society that’s similar yet different from our own. Also, casually misandrist bees are funny because they flip the script.

Fun fact: There are multiple types of yeast. There is brewer’s yeast, wine yeast, bread yeast, etc. They each have a different flavor profile and have been selectively bred for the purpose. Mitsu has easy access to bread yeast because his mom is a civvie who owns a bakery.

You can still make mead with bread yeast, but I’m told it doesn’t taste as good. If any of you know what difference it makes to the flavor, let me know.

Animal Fact: Bee stingers are evolved from their lower intestinal tract. This is why bees die when they sting, because they literally tear open their assholes and leave bits of their intestines behind. I think I’ve used this one before.

What I didn’t mention was that they can change their minds. Once one stings, a bee might decide she doesn’t want to die yet. She’ll turn in circles, gently prying the stinger from your skin until she’s free to go.

Also, bee venom has been used on occasion to treat inflammatory variants of arthritis. Further testing is required.