Chapter Text
One thing they don't tell you about reincarnation: whether it's this world or the next, everywhere is the same when it comes to the rat race. A wise man once said, in life, only two things are certain: death and taxes.
He was right, so Chiyo quit her job crunching numbers in the big city, and returned home to the small town where she was raised to help out on the family farm.
The country was a lot different from the capital. For one, her small town wasn't quite as small as all those Hallmark movies would have liked you to believe. And second, unlike the capital, in the country, the ninja were visible.
It was pretty convenient, actually.
They were sort of like super-powered errand runners, and were down to do pretty much anything as long as you paid enough and put in the proper request through the missions desk. The ninja equivalent of door-to-door takeout delivery was a whole lot cheaper and faster than the same-day delivery services of certain online shopping companies from another life, and the best part was, you could really order just anything from them as long as it didn't overly threaten the stability of the government.
Like, for example, a shipment of approximately 65,000 bees for the beginner beekeeper and occasional apiary enthusiast (though not without the proper certification, of course).
...On some occasions Chiyo has perhaps been accused of maybe abusing this service, possibly.
Just a little.
Definitely not to the extent to where a notice ended up being pasted at the missions desk to forbid her from sending in requests more than three times a week because she was clogging up the system with really "cheap" and "pointless" missions.
This was only a distinction of note because Chiyo's town is notorious for accepting a lot of really random, pointless missions for piddling allowances. Like that one mission they keep accepting about the stupid cat.
At this point, they can only still be issuing it out to haze the baby ninja. A little cruel of them, but what can you do? Frat houses definitely do a lot worse during Rush week, if you think about it.
A little something you might want to know about the town where Chiyo lives: it's called the Hidden Leaf Village.
It might sound a little familiar to you if you watch a certain genre of anime.
Chiyo certainly did.
Before she got shucked here, anyway.
But that was a long time ago. Maybe about seventeen or so years ago? At the very least. Out of all things about the human body, memory probably ages the worst of them.
So maybe at most she can recall something about fishcakes? And the power of friendship, or whatever. Also nothing really significant of note has happened in the Hidden Leaf Village for YEARS. Like, three or four whole years about-ish. No need to mention anything before that. Maybe except that they were going to be getting a new mayor or something? Like, a seventh one, which in the grand scheme of things, really isn't a very large number of mayors. It is a lucky number for mayors though.
—Apparently they call the position "Hokage" here. Kind of a weird title. But clearly, nothing to worry about in-terms of life-changing super mega dangerous plot events. Clearly nothing too important about this anime.
So anyway, Chiyo quit her awful, soul-sucking, corporate job in the big city and went home to do farm stuff in a little village and maybe harassed the retired war vets working the missions desk three times a week as per her ninja-mayor mandated quota, and lived a pretty regular, fulfilling life.
This was, of course, until she bought the bees.
They were pretty cheap for bees. Not that Chiyo was ever particularly informed on the average price of roughly 20 pounds of bees. But like. They cost less than one would expect for so many productive, fussy little live creatures. Especially given the money-making potential of those hard earners.
Chiyo was definitely, absolutely going to perpetuate the cycle and exploit all of her vulnerable 6-legged workers for their labor for all the hours and precisely zero wages. Oh yeah, capitalism, baby!
Except.
The problem actually began when the bees arrived.
Like every other delivery she had commissioned thus far, the bees were delivered á la ninja.
The ninja who delivered her bees looked pretty much the same as the many of the average citizens she'd seen walking around the outskirts of the town, past her farm. You could only really tell he was a ninja by the headband and the totally weather-inappropriate clothing he was wearing. (A winter coat? In this heat? Really?)
The ninja stopped at the gate of the farm, carrying very gingerly a large crate that was filled with the bees, probably, and then did not advance any further, likely because there were laws in place about ninja on civilian property. They had to do with privacy or something like that.
"Another delivery?" Her father asked, from where he was sitting at the dinner table, nursing a cup of tea and doing that weird, absurdly loud throat-cleaning thing that seems to come naturally to men who are married with children and over fifty years old.
He didn't really seem to mind that she commissioned special deliveries very often. This was because in his youth, he'd apparently had his own special "fascination" with ninjas, because they'd sort of been at war and the ninja had sort of been saving everyone's lives big time.
Chiyo could appreciate that. People were entitled to their war hero hero-worship especially when your government functioned in a way suspiciously similar to that of a military dictatorship.
"I'll go pick it up," she said, setting down her own cup of tea.
Her father grunted and then sneezed into his newspaper. It sounded at precisely the decibels of a jet plane engine starting.
“Bless you,” she said, absentmindedly, a holdover from having lived somewhere else much much much further previously, and one that quite a few villagers (including her parents) thought was a little odd.
Her father just waved her off so she took off and went on her way through the house to the outdoors.
Another thing about reincarnating in to a different world: tipping culture manifests itself in different ways and will sneak up on you if you're not prepared.
Especially in a small town where everyone knows everyone, you definitely don't want to be known as the only house that doesn't give oranges to the nice, friendly ninja delivery dudes who take the time out of their very busy days to do dumb menial tasks like deliver your bees to you.
So, on her way out, Chiyo swung by the fruit basket and picked up three of the most mid-tier looking oranges--not so ugly that the family be deemed uncharitable for dumping their leftovers on unsuspecting ninja, and not so nice that she'd actually regret giving them away. Just the right amount of squishy and bruised.
And then she was ready to head down the path to the farm gate where the ninja waited with her fresh, new bees.
Here's where the problem started.
Chiyo walked down the path to the ninja.
The ninja nodded in acknowledgement and very carefully put down the crate of bees.
He pulled a clipboard and pen out from his very heavy winter jacket and extended them to Chiyo for her to sign and confirm the delivery.
Then approximately three hundred million trillion bug-fuck ton of tiny little beetles burst out of the ninja's jacket and descended upon Chiyo with avenging fury not seen since the last Great Plague.
In slow motion:
The ninja's eyes widen behind his glasses and his mouth opens, a little in shock.
Chiyo drops the oranges and they fall to the floor with a sad thunking noise.
The beetles make this sort of shrill, very scary humming noise in unison and hover in a dense, shifting cloud above her face. Some very brave few land on her sleeves and skin and begin to crawl frenziedly about her body.
Chiyo keeps her mouth closed very very tightly and does her level best not to scream.
Luckily enough, someone else does the screaming for her and stops the slow-motion replay.
"CHIYO!"
That's her older brother.
"What the hell?!" He screams and waves his dirt-covered pitchfork around in the air in indignation, or at least she hopes he does. "Turn off your fucking ninja shit right now, or I'll report you to the Hokage!"
Ma never really was able to clean up his language after he had that brief stint with the local gangs...
"I can't," the ninja says somewhat stiffly, no doubt very swiftly dodging the clumsy civilian rake-shots aimed at his torso. "Why? Because I am not controlling the kikaichuu at this moment."
By now the beetles have cooled down a bit with the ominous humming. They're still blocking out Chiyo's entire range of vision, though. And making some very unwanted overtures on her personal space.
Actually, some of them seem to be...chewing?! On the air above her forearms?!
Totally weird.
"Well, you have to be able to do fucking something about them!" Her brother's arms should be getting tired about now, if he has been swinging the rake as he should, since out of the three of her siblings, he has the least muscle mass. An unfortunate fact of life.
"...I am trying to," says the ninja. "Why? Because the kikaichuu are my responsibility to take care of."
There's a short pause, while the ninja presumably does his best to get back his bugs and Chiyo's least muscular brother stops swinging the rake to let the ninja do his thing.
Chiyo listens to the beetles continue to hum. It's not so bad the longer she listens to them.
And...some of them are actually kind of cute?
Just as she comes to this realization, with great effort, the swarm of beetles suddenly collapses on itself and begins to fly back into the sleeves of the ninja in what looks to be a very dejected spiral of bug.
Her field of vision suddenly 10 times clearer, Chiyo observes the ninja more carefully up close.
The ninja is actually...kind of cute? In like, a sort of dorky, awkward way. Definitely a fashion criminal, for sure.
"Apologies for the inconvenience," the ninja says. "Why? Because the kikaichuu have been bred for many generations to feed solely on the chakra of the Aburame line. They should not be targeting civilians for any reason."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," her brother says. "Just give her the papers to sign and fucking get away from here."
To her utter disgust and disappointment, he does not have their father's favored pitchfork in hand to defend her honor and instead has only armed himself with a cheap looking garden hoe. Useless.
"I'm so sorry about his lacking manner, it's like he was raised on a barn," Chiyo says with a completely straight face and does not look back behind her to their family's very neatly maintained farmhouse.
A bit of silence, save for a few daytime crickets. Tough crowd, eh?
"Would you mind waiting here for a few seconds while I retrieve my documents?" Then she leaves for the house before her brother can wrap his pea-brain around what she just said.
"Hey, wait a minute--"
The front door slams shut behind her, leaving behind the ninja, her brother, and the fallen oranges. And the bees.
Chiyo looks around the house for maybe about two minutes, max? Before she gives in and does what any self-respecting young adult still living with their parents does when they can't find something and opens her mouth wide to holler:
"MA?"
"YEAH?" Comes back after a few seconds from somewhere deeper inside the house that Chiyo has not yet bothered to search.
"I CAN'T FIND MY BEE DOCUMENTS."
"WHAT?"
"THE BEE PAPERS. THE CERTIFICATES."
"CHECK THE TOP DRAWER OF YOUR DESK."
Chiyo checks the top drawer of her desk.
"THANKS, MA."
Then she returns to the site of the beetle insurrection, after having picked up three new oranges on the way out, even though the ninja probably doesn't really mind dirt on his fruit.
When she arrives, two of the old oranges have disappeared and her brother is peeling the third one.
"Here you go." She hands the ninja the documents approving her to own about two hives of bees. "Do I need to sign anything?"
She sort of remembers a clipboard.
"Yes," the ninja nods. "Why? To confirm you have received the delivery."
Her brother snorts, clearly about to say something rude, but the threat of 65,000 live bees and Chiyo's very sharp left elbow prevent him from opening his mouth.
The ninja holds out the pen and clipboard once more, which she takes, signs, and quickly returns with some trepidation.
"Will that be all?" Chiyo asks, for formality's sake. Now would be about time to hand off the oranges, once she sends the ninja on his way.
Once he's gone, she can finally take a look at her brand new bees...
But instead of saying some variation of 'yes,' and then going on his merry ninja way like a polite person would do, the ninja fidgets a little.
"Actually..."
She catches a glimpse of one brave little beetle struggling out of the outer edge of his sleeve, making it as far as the ninja's mid-wrist before it is sucked back into the depths of his seasonal clothing by a mysterious invisible force.
The ninja grimaces, or does the equivalent of a ninja-grimace from behind sunglasses and a very tall collar.
"I would like to extend you a formal invitation to the Aburame clan compound. Why? Because I have never lost control of my kikaichuu before and it would be prudent to investigate this phenomenon."
"Uh..."
Chiyo and her brother exchange a glance. Before, during the earlier beetle panic, it sort of hadn't registered, but now that they're paying attention, they recognize the name.
Or at least Chiyo does. Because she paid attention in school. Unlike somebody.
Apparently their backwater little town Hidden Leaf Village of whatever is home to some pretty important people.
Some of these people include very old noble families, from times as far back as...like, a while ago.
The Aburame family happens to be one of these families.
"Uh, dude, are you sure it isn't just, like, an issue with you?" Chiyo's brother asks, like a moron, likely blacklisting their produce from every noble Aburame household for decades to come.
The ninja shakes his head.
"I am certain. Why? Because when the kikaichuu attacked your partner, I sensed their sudden desire to feed."
EW. On multiple levels.
"I'm his sister," Chiyo says.
"My apologies," the ninja bows. He doesn't offer an explanation this time. Must be embarrassed.
"It's okay." It really isn't. "So then, does that mean there's something wrong with me?"
At this, the ninja hesitates. He does the ninja equivalent of a shrug.
"I am not sure. Why? Because I cannot recall any similar instances in the past years," the ninja says. "However you should still visit the Aburame compound regardless. Why? Because I believe it could be detrimental to the bees in the case that there is a chakra abnormality."
Well, if he puts it that way then...
Chiyo looks once at her brother, who is polishing off the last of the fallen orange while she makes one of the most important and nerve-racking decisions of her life. Could change the entire scope of her future, even.
"Alright, I'll go," she says.
The ninja dips his head again.
"Please let the gate guards know you are there by invitation of Aburame Shino."
And then, without another word, he takes off and disappears in a cloud of smoke and leaves, completely orangeless.
"No," says her brother. "He took two of the oranges that fell on the floor."
Chiyo rolls her eyes.
She stomps back into the house to eat the good oranges and complain to her nicer brother about the beetle cloud and the sort-of-cute ninja before she takes out her new bees.
Ugh!