All the Bees 4

All the Bees 4

Mitsu Akimitchi

“Congratulations, Mitsu,” Kurobachi said as she flew circles around my head. Her wings buzzed merrily as sunlight rippled off her fuzzy, black abdomen. “You finally touched nature chakra!”

“Come on, he barely got a drop,” Shirobachi replied with a dismissive scoff. “Do you congratulate a man in the desert for catching a single drop of rainwater?”

“Why not? It’s a huge accomplishment for a human, sis.”

“I don’t know. It feels kinda insulting, Kuro. Like, what’s he gonna do with a drop of nature chakra? That’s like a man dying of thirst getting a drop of rainwater. Yay, you remember what water tastes like. Now dream about it while you slowly waste away, you fucking peasant.”

“That’s not what I meant at all! Mitsu! That’s not what I meant! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to make fun of you!”

I sighed as I allowed that tiny drop to trickle back into the forest. Clearly, I wouldn’t be allowed to focus anymore and trying to mold nature chakra while those two were up to their usual antics could be more dangerous than an S-rank mission. I’d strongly prefer my body to remain organic.

Kuro was flying around haphazardly now, having worked herself into an anxious mess. She did that fairly often; she was the kind, but socially awkward of the pair.

Unfortunately, her sister derived sadistic pleasure out of teasing her more timid counterpart. The two were as thick as thieves when it counted, but I was pretty sure bickering was how they bonded.

I reached up and snatched Kuro out of the air. After so long, my fingers positioned themselves perfectly, wrapping around her delicate wings and avoiding her stinger. That little motion took more practice than I’d like to admit. When bees were uncomfortable, they stung on impulse and spirit bee stings hurt like a bitch.

“Calm down, Kuro. I knew what you meant,” I reassured her. I prodded her sister insistently. “And you, stop it.”

“But I’m having fun,” the white bee said innocently. “Seriously though, you got your first taste of nature chakra. How’s it feel?”

“Tingly. Is it supposed to tingle?”

“Ehh, kinda? I mean, some bees say it makes their antennae tingle. No clue if that applies to humans.”

“Fair enough. I really need you guys to stop bickering while I meditate though.”

“You were reaching your limit anyway,” Kuro said, gently headbutting my hand. “It’s not safe to practice senjutsu while your chakra’s running low.”

I let out an exasperated sigh. I pulled out a small creampuff from my snack scroll and popped it into my mouth. “You’re right. I’m just frustrated. I’ve been at this for weeks and all I have to show for it is a few drops of nature chakra.”

“You can still use it when we filter it for you. And you haven’t had many chances to practice in Seihachimori because you were on missions when you were in ANBU.”

“Yeah, then you became a glorified babysitter,” Shiro snarked.

“Ugh, don’t remind me.”

“As kougou-sama says, the hive is everything and Konoha is your hive. Speaking of, isn’t it about time to go see the little larvae?”

“It is. Let’s go visit an old friend first. Then we can restock my snack scroll. If Kakashi can keep them waiting three hours, fifteen minutes won’t do any harm.”

“Seriously, how is that man a jounin again?”

“Guy’s a fucking legend. A depressed, off his game legend, but still a legend.”

“He’s a drone is what he is,” Kuro said with uncharacteristic derision. “He’s lazy, spends most of the day doing absolutely nothing, and doesn’t contribute to your hive. Worse, he’s even a lecher! Will your hokage use him to breed more females?”

I choked down a laugh at that. In a way, a kage wasn’t unlike a queen. “Are you saying Kakashi Hatake is only good for his dick?”

“I suppose? He may as well use his perversion for something productive. A bee that does not contribute to the hive is by definition unfit to be part of the hive.”

That was a funny thought. Technically, Kakashi was the very last of the Hatake clan. One could argue that he had an obligation to plow the fields, as it were. “He contributes, believe it or not. He’s more like an injured veteran than a drone.”

“Physically?”

“No, his injuries are of the heart. He lost a lot of important people in his life, people he wishes he could have saved.”

“I don’t get it, Mitsu. If he failed the hive, then he should work even harder to make sure that doesn’t happen again, right? A proper bee would work even harder to scrub away that dishonor, not wallow in her own disappointment.”

“I don’t disagree, but humans are a little more complicated than that, Kuro. I think that’s why the hokage gave him a teaching job, so he could recover.”

“He doesn’t even do that job though. He makes you do it for him,” Shiro scoffed. “If a bee slacked like him, kougou-sama would have ripped out her stinger personally.”

“Don’t bees die without their stingers?” I asked wryly. If I remembered right, stingers were adapted from the digestive system. Mundane bees literally left behind a part of their intestines in their victims. Sure, spirit bees were a lot more durable, but I doubted getting your stinger ripped off was any more pleasant.

“Yup! It’s an especially painful execution method,” Shiro buzzed happily, far too upbeat for the subject. “It’s supposed to remind us that even us chakra bees aren’t too far removed from our normal cousins. We should be just as diligent.”

“Sorabachi is brutal.”

“She is. There’s a reason she’s the Empress of All Hives.”

X

“Yuna-chan!” I yelled happily as I rolled into the hospital lobby at a sedate, non-building-collapsing force. It was still enough to make half the people here jump out of their skins, and the other half to pelt me with sharp implements.

I came to a slow stop, with just enough rotation to deflect said pointy implements away from the panicking civilians.

Ninja hospitals were loads of fun. If they didn’t need anxiety meds, they did now. Truly, I was a wonderful friend for giving Yuna more business.

“Mitsu? For fuck’s sake! I told you to stop doing that!” one of the iryonin yelled. She stalked over and began to smack me with her clipboard. “Why are you like this?”

“Ow! Not the edge! Not the edge!”

Yuna, an orphan with no last name, was a friend from my academy days. She had long, light-brown hair and striking, heterochromatic eyes, one a deep, ocean-blue and another a pale-green.She also preferred flowy, long sleeves that trailed down to her mid-thigh even when she held her forearm at chest height.

It was baffling. For the longest time, her mixed eyes and impractically long sleeves made me think she was part of canon. The laws of anime made me paranoid around everyone whose style of dress stood out to me. By the time I’d stopped subtly questioning her to try to figure out who the fuck she was, I’d somehow made a new friend despite my general misanthropy.

Well, at least mom was happy.

Yuna was, to put it bluntly, the Sakura of our year: small reserves, excellent chakra control, and on the brainier side, albeit not quite as bright as the pinkette in terms of booksmarts. I was the one who’d nudged her towards iryojutsu, though I didn’t have to push too hard.

She wasn’t Tsunade or anything, I’d been led to believe that her talent was fairly middling, but she was dedicated and determined to make a better life for herself than that of the typical orphan. By the time I’d joined ANBU, she was a recently promoted chunin apprenticed to a senior iryonin at the hospital.

She’d gotten what she wanted out of life. She had a safe posting in the village with good pay and stood comfortably up the ninja ladder, not high, but high enough that she was out of the official “This one’s expendable,” list.

Eventually, her arm got tired and she stopped trying to cut me in half with the edge of her clipboard. She eyed my flak jacket with a studious gaze. “So, you really did get promoted.”

I deflated back into my regular, manju-ish shape so I could nod happily. She still had no idea I’d been ANBU. As far as she knew, I was a chunin who took a lot of field missions alongside my clansmen. “Yup. And you’re assaulting a senior officer, chunin.”

“Really? You’re pulling rank on me, Anpan-man?”

“Oof, that’s low. You don’t get to throw my youthful indiscretions in my face.”

“Is that what we’re calling it?”

“Yup. The legacy of a misspent youth.”

“Of course. Why are you here, Mitsu? Some of us have work to do.”

“Actually, it’s about iryojutsu. Do you still have your old apprentice notes? Any of those introductory textbooks on human anatomy or poisons would be nice, too.”

“I should still have them in my apartment somewhere, why?”

“One of my students should be a good fit for iryojutsu so I want to start her early.”

She looked at me in shock. Then, when she’d picked her jaw off the floor, she burst into laughter. “Hahaha! You? Mitsu Akimichi, a jounin-sensei?”

“Hey, that’s kinda hurtful, Yuna,” I drawled sardonically. “I have loads to teach the young’uns.”

“Yeah, but you hate kids. Even when we were kids, you hated them. I remember you making four of our classmates cry because they called you fat once.”

“They shouldn’t have started shit they couldn’t finish.”

“You’re serious? You’re a sensei now?”

I shrugged. “Kinda? I’m a supplemental sensei for the various jounin squads. The hokage’s trying something new, I guess.”

“Huh. Okay, sure. Come by my apartment after work.” So saying, she gave me her address on a sticky note. Her writing was almost illegible, as was proper of a medical professional.

X

“You’re lat–Ack!” Naruto shouted, only to nearly choke to death on a hard candy. One of these days, he’d learn. Maybe not for a while, but eventually…

And then, one day, I’d tell Boruto and Sarada that I made the hokage deepthroat my balls.

Okay, maybe not… It’d depend on how much I wanted to traumatize them. If they happened at all in this timeline.

“I was getting assaulted by a hot nurse,” I replied dryly.

“Is… Is Kakashi-sensei contagious?” Sakura whispered, aghast at the idea. I tossed her a storage scroll full of Yuna’s old books. It konked her on the head because she hadn’t figured out how to catch things yet. “Ouch! Why?”

“That’s for you. I was serious about the nurse. An old, iryonin friend of mine gave me her entry-level notes on the subject. Read them.”

“Eh? Iryojutsu, sensei? I’ve never thought about it.”

“Why not? You have great chakra control. You’re good at book-learning. And truthfully? You’re painfully weak. You provide zero offensive presence to your team. Naruto has his clones and monstrously large chakra reserves. Sasuke has his fire and will eventually get his sharingan. You… You’re just kinda there.”

“I… That’s…” Sakura looked down at her hands. Over the past week, I’d endeavored to highlight the differences between the classroom and the field. She wasn’t quite over her nonsense, but she had a more realistic outlook than she did at the start of canon.

Naruto jumped to her defense. “Hey, Sakura-chan’s gre–Ack! Will you quit it?!”

“No, Naruto. That wasn’t an insult; that was an honest assessment from a senior officer,” I said plainly. “If Sakura goes out into the field as she is, she’ll likely die. Or, best case scenario, she’ll be an anchor around the squad’s neck, making every mission harder than it needs to be.”

“That… What do I do, sensei?” she asked quietly.

“You train. You specialize. You pick up a valuable skill that others lack the time, finesse, or booksmarts to learn. There have been others in your situation who’ve become fantastic shinobi in their own right.

“Usually, people like you go for iryojutsu, genjutsu, or dokujutsu, that is, meds, illusions, or poisons.” I took out a lollipop, neapolitan ice cream flavored, and stuck it in my mouth. The three of them instinctively flinched, before letting out small sighs of relief. I ignored them and continued talking. “I suppose fuinjutsu would also be an option, but finding a competent seal master in that field is even harder than finding an excellent medic.

“Oh, there’s also puppetry, which revolves around chakra strings. It’s a ninja art found in Suna, our treaty-allied village. They’re very secretive about the specifics though, so I doubt you’ll get far unless you want to try to recreate that entire discipline from scratch. Even then, puppets are best used alongside poisons anyway.

“In any case, your main options boil down to genjutsu, iryojutsu, or dokujutsu. Genjutsu requires a certain flexibility of the mind and a natural ability to deceive that I think you lack, Sakura. If you still wish to learn it, I’ll convince a friend I know to give you an introduction, but I think you’d be better served by getting good enough at breaking the basic ones. You can pick up more nuance when you’re a chunin.

“Dokujutsu is nice and it can help you bridge the gap between stronger opponents, but I think it’s the worst when it comes to diminishing returns. Ninja who specialize in it are rarely as impressive as masters of other disciplines. It also requires a certain sadomasochism that I think you lack.

“Which leaves iryojutsu. Unless you’ve got a phobia of blood, or some other reason you absolutely refuse to touch this discipline, I think you’d be a great fit. When you’re out there, there might come a time when you are separated from your jounin-sensei. In that case, keeping the team in combat-ready shape could be the deciding factor between successfully completing your mission and you all dying.”

Sakura stared down at her scroll. Right now, she was a Sasuke fangirl, a net negative to the team. She was currently fragile, yet with the potential for real strength. I couldn’t press too hard, or she’d shatter, but I had to pressure her enough to bring out that strength. 

It wasn’t enough to tell her that she was terrible. All she’d get out of that would be that she ought to quit being a ninja. Nor could I simply demand she picked up an entirely new discipline. Even if Kakashi okayed it, forcing it on her had the potential of making her resentful of the discipline. She needed to be fully committed or she’d never keep up with her teammates.

No, she had to believe that she was in control of her own development, that she’d made the choice to study iryojutsu after being presented with a list of possible options. Sure, I literally threw the scroll in her face. Yes, I was saying that she might one day hold “Sasuke-kun’s” life in her hands while he was sitting right next to her. But, at least from her perspective, the choice had to be hers.

“I… I’ll give it a shot, sensei,” she said softly. Then, with more iron in her voice. “I’ll become a great iryonin.”

“I’m sure you will,” I said, offering her a calm smile. I then turned to the two boys. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten you two. I’ve decided that we’re going to do some individualized training to better augment your talents.”

I brought out two shadow clones and motioned for the boys to follow them. Separating them would make my life easier, and a lot less noisy. At least those two didn’t have a crush as their driving motivation.

Author’s Note

The bees hold diligence to be the highest virtue. From their perspective, Kakashi is the human equivalent of a pump-n-dump drone.

Senjutsu is going to take time. Mitsu has the advantage of knowing it exists so he could ask his summons for that training. Most people wouldn’t even know it’s an option.

That said, even after almost seven years with the bees, he’s only recently received permission from the empress to practice it and he’s still not able to process nature chakra on his own. Right now, he’s like Jiraya in that he can use it, but only with help.

“Kougou” means “empress.” Sorabachi, boss summon of the bees and hornets, is called that to distinguish her rank from “joubachi,” or “queen bee” as she is the “Empress of All Hives,” not just the queen of a singular hive.