A Shard Among Leaves: Intrusion (Patreon)

Very sorry for the lack of updates! I was almost completely through a chapter of Burn The Ashes when I realized I wanted to take the story in a different direction and knocked this out instead! Please Enjoy!

[Intrusion]

One day into the exam, Team Eight was doing better than most. 

“You bastard, I'll get you for this!”

“Yeah yeah. Just hold still, will you?” Kiba grunted as he tied the last knot binding the Kiri girl's hands together. She was covered in scrapes and one of her fingers was purpling and broken, but she still found the power to snarl at him, baring her sharpened teeth in his direction.

The rest of her team was similarly tied up nearby and being watched over by Shino. One of them was knocked out and the other was keeping quiet, glaring just like his leader. The three of them had fought pretty hard; Kiba had the cuts to prove it. Too bad for them that mist didn’t do a thing to hide them from his nose. 

He reached down, ripping the armband off of her bicep and holding it up to the light with a grin. “Nice, this is the last thing we need. Looks like we’re moving on to the next round, you guys!”

“Enjoy your win while you can, you damn treehugger.” His hostage scowled at him. “You’ve still got two whole days to go and there’s a bunch of other teams still running around. There’s no way you’re making it out of this forest.”

Kiba grinned, bending down to poke her in the forehead. “We kicked your asses, didn’t we? At least we’ll do better than you.”

She lurched up, biting at his hand which he pulled away before his fingers got caught in her teeth. Akamaru yipped on his head as he stepped back, eying her warily as she glared. “We’ll get out of here and find you. You won’t get the drop on us again.”

Kiba rolled his eyes. “Sure you will.”

He turned the armband over in his hands, grinning widely, before it faltered. His nose wrinkled and he slowly brought the armband up to his face.

He immediately recoiled, his nose burning. “Ugh, what the hell?” He squinted at it, holding it at arm's length. “This thing reeks!”

A spot of red came to the Kiri  nin's cheeks as she glared. “You saying I stink?”

“Well either that, or you rolled this thing around in a pile of shi---”

“K-Kiba!” Kiba paused at the shout, turning to look at Hinata who was staring off into the distance with her Byakugan active. She had a scared look on her face, pointing off into the distance. “Something's coming!”

Kiba's grin dropped and his face became serious. “What is it, another team?” “Another team? How many?”

Hinata shook her head. “N-No… there's too many. It can't be another team.”

Kiba's brow furrowed. “Huh? What do you mean?””

“It's those damn bugs!” The Kiri girl  startled him as she began thrashing against her bonds. Her awake teammate stirred to, finally dropping the scowl to instead look around in terror. “Hurry up and let us out of here! We can't fight them like this!”

“What are you talking about?” Kiba demanded. “What bugs?”

The moment the question left his lips, the brush to his right suddenly burst open and a tide of black and glossy brown poured out onto the dirt. Team Eight whirled around to find a herd of monstrous looking beetles stampeding toward them through the undergrowth. Akamaru barked from his place on Kiba's head, while Kiba stared in confusion and fear.

“What the hell!?”

The tide approached, and Team Eight quickly got out of there by leaping upwards and into the treetops. The beetle swarm skittered along the dirt, quickly sweeping up the bound Kiri team and dragging them along through the forest.

“NO! LET ME GO! LET ME GO YOU BASTARDS!”

The leader's cry faded away as she and her teammates disappeared from view. Kiba and his team watched, stunned, as even more beetles emerged from the forest around them. To the Genins' horror, they didn't go after the Kiri team. Instead, they shifted direction and began scaling the trees, heading straight towards Team Eight.

“We need to go,” Shino urged. Kiba and Hinata nodded, following his lead as he leapt through the forest, jumping from branch to branch to outrun the swarm. It followed after them from below, a tide of blackened chitin and malice, but they slowly but surely left it behind until eventually, there was nothing but the forest around them.

But Shino still didn't stop. Kiba called up to him, “Hey, Shino! Slow down a bit, will ya?  we need to take a break.”

“That would be inadvisable because we are not safe yet,” came the Aburame's response.

Kiba shared a look with Hinata. The girl's face was pale and slightly green. She must have been thinking about the team that got swept away back there. That, or running with the Byakugan activated was making her a little motion sick.

“What do you mean? Can we at least slow down?”

Shino turned to him, pausing for just a moment so that Kiba's next jump landed him on the same branch, and then continued beside his teammate instead of in front of him. Shino held his hand out, and it took Kiba a second to realize he was asking for the armband. Though confused, he handed it over.

Shino held the piece of cloth up to his face, staring at it. He shook his head after a second or two and said, “We won't be able to outrun them.”

Kiba's face scrunched. “What? What are you talking about; we already left them in the dust.”

“The armband is coated in pheromones. They will be able to track us as long as we have it.” Shino turned the cloth over in his hand. “The proctor applied it before he exams began. It's soaked into the fabric.”

Hinata's eyes went wide. “S-So that's why those things came after us instead of some other team?”

Shino nodded and Kiba spat. “And here I thought the armbands were supposed to be an advantage.”

“Good things rarely come without consequences. We were stupid to take her words at face value.”

Just as Shino handed the band back to Kiba, a low droning perked their ears. It quickly grew louder and Hinata gasped, drawing the boys' attention to the sky above, which began to darken into an unnatural night. A dozen giant bugs pierced through the gloom above. They weren't the beetles that had been chasing the group before, but their intentions were clearly the same. 

“Aw, come on!” Kiba's hands balled into fists as he watched the swarm approach.

Screw this.

Kiba dropped to all fours, his nails lengthening into claws and his canines extending past his lip. Akamaru leapt from his jacket and landed beside him on the branch, shaking out his fur as chakra poured from his master's body. Kiba inhaled, the technique heightening his senses and bringing every smell of the forest into perfect view.

“Wait here, Akamaru!” He growled, before launching himself off of the branch. He began to spin in midair, rotating so fast that the world around him blurred into a point.

“Passing Fang!” He shouted the name of the technique as he passed through the first row of bugs like a giant screaming buzzsaw. He felt their shells try to stop him and fail as he tore through their ranks. As he came out the other side, he landed on a tree, crouched, and launched himself right into the next group.

He passed through them again and again, his technique not losing power as he decimated them. He finally stopped as the last of them fell to the forest floor below, breathing heavily. 

“That's how we do it in Konoha,” he said, flicking a wing off his shoulder as he straightened. “You see that, Akamaru? Nothing we can't handle!”

The dog yipped in response, tail wagging away. Shino landed beside him on the branch, his hands shoved into his pocket as he stared at the carnage below.

“That was a poor decision.”

Kiba's grin vanished at his teammate's words. “Huh?”

“All you did was waste chakra.” Shino said bluntly “There will be more coming shortly because the pheromone trail is still active.”

Kiba's eye twitched and he turned, face screwed up as he prepared to argue, but the sound of even more wings in the distance cut him off. He growled, digging into his pouch and chowing down on a soldier pill, before grabbing Akamaru and putting the ninkin in his jacket.

“Alright, genius,” he said in a frustrated tone. “What are we supposed to do then?”

Shino gave the armband a searching look. “We need to find a large body of water to wash the pheromones from the band and our clothing. It won't eliminate the scent completely, but it should lessen it enough that we won't have to worry about them tracking us across the forest. Just close by.”

Kiba groaned, slapping a hand to his forehead. “So we're basically walking targets for the next two days because some proctor decided to lace our prize with bug perfume?”

“That is an accurate summary, yes.”

Hinata landed beside them, her Byakugan still active. She was steadier now, the green tinge to her face having faded. “I-I can see a river,” she said, pointing northeast. “It's not far, but there are more bugs between us and it.”

Kiba stared down at the beetles below and huffed. “Right. We've got this.  Yeah, this'll be easy.”

“Please do not jinx it,” Shino sighed as they set off.

Hirari observed the results of her test from the roof of the observation post situated in the center of the forest.

Forty-three thousand, six hundred and twelve kikaichu patrolled the land sprawling before her, taking in information and returning to relay it shortly after. Not a single section of her colony was unknown to her, nor were the teams within it.

A kikaichu drifted down through the still air and landed on her outstretched finger. It relayed what it had found and she lifted her eyes to the edge of the forest.

“Another team has ben eliminated. Sector thirteen, subsector three.”

She felt as a form detached itself from the shadow of the stairwell and vanished. The Anbu would retrieve the team and return them safely to the village, assuming they were still alive. Despite what she said, the subjects of Colony Forty-Four would not kill indiscriminately.

Hirari lifted her finger, allowing her kikaichu to find its way back into the forest. That was the sixth team to be disqualified. The exam was proceeding well. By her estimates, they would have just enough to continue to the final phase in thirty-six hours. 

“Anko will be disappointed,” she noted aloud as another of her colony returned with a curious bit of information regarding a  team from Suna. She sent it along with an order to keep a closer eye on that particular group, before moving on.

A team from Kusa had bested another from Oto, taking their item and map in the process. Unsurprising given the infancy of the latter village. It seemed their ninja weren't quite as capable as they would have hoped. Their sister team had already been eliminated from the exam entirely.

Team Eight from Konoha had managed to acquire both of the needed items but strayed too close to a colony in the process. They would have a difficult time shaking her swarm, but it wasn't impossible. She'd give them better odds than most.

Speaking of Konoha teams, Team Seven was...

“Hm.” 

Hirari paused, pouring over the information her kikaichu was feeding her. Team Seven had been making steady progress through the forest. Their trajectory consistent with a team heading toward one of the marked retrieval points which meant that they had likely acquired a map recently. Not entirely unexpected as they seemed rather competent.

What was unexpected was the chakra signature that had appeared alongside them roughly four minutes ago. It was far too large to be a Genin, surpassing most Jonin in the village. The taste of it agitated her kikaichu. That was concerning. Her colony did not frighten easily.

Hirari reached up, allowing another kikaichu to land on her fingertip. This one had been closer to the incident—close enough to acquire an image of the interloper, as well as a sample of their chakra. 

Hirari straightened and turned in the direction of the incident, a thrum of something novel passing through her as the sickly chakra slithered its way into her coils. It was greasy and malicious, offending her senses in every way imaginable, to the point where it spent perhaps a single second within her before she forcefully expelled it back into the kikaichu that had given it to her and sent it away again.

Breathing deeply, Hirari turned to the ninja waiting in the shadows. She picked one out, pointing at them. “I need your assistance.”

The shadow did not move for a moment. Hirari was certain she heard snickering coming from the direction of the others, but ignored them as a figure clad in grey stepped into the light.

“What do you want, kid?”  A gruff voice came from underneath the visage of a salamander. His tone indicated he was displeased with her. She did not care.

“Inform Hokage-sama that there is an intruder in the forest. Their chakra indicates that they are a high-jonin level threat, possibly higher.”

The  Anbu stiffened, turning to the forest. Annoyance sparked in Hirari's chest at the delay, but before she could speak, he turned and disappeared in a swirl of leaves. 

Hirari watched him go, then turned back to the forest. The strange chakra still lingered in her memory like oil on her tongue. Her kikaichu shifted restlessly beneath her skin, and she found that she shared their unease. A scenario like this had not been planned for, and she found herself reacting to unexpected variables for the first time in quite a while.

This incident needed to be taken care of, preferably in a quiet manner. The exam was well underway and could not be stopped now. As well, if this person was indeed a threat, then it would take far too long to find nearby teams and ensure their safety. It would be best to contain and deal with it immediately.

“You two,” she said, selecting two more shadows from the stairwell. “I require your assistance.”

Anbu, by their very nature, answered to the Hokage and the Hokage alone. Even so, the two of them---a man in a bird mask and a woman donning a hawk---melted out of the shadows at her call. “We're under orders to maintain observation of the test,” the bird said.

“Your orders have been superseded by the presence of an unauthorized threat operating within the examination zone.” Hirari replied. “If you refuse, I will investigate alone. I am uncertain of my ability to engage a threat of this magnitude without sustaining significant injury, but I will do so if necessary.”

There was a pause during which the two operatives shared a glance. After a second, the one in the hawk mask shrugged and the bird sighed. “Yeah, alright. Lead the way, kid.”

Hirari nodded and set off in the direction of the malignant chakra signature. As she moved, she reabsorbed whole swarms of kikaichu back into her body, refilling her nearly empty colony for the possible fight ahead. 

She wondered how it was possible that such a threat hid itself from her senses for so long. A full day into the exam, she had cataloged nearly every living thing in the forest at least once, yet she hadn’t caught a whiff of this chakra until now. She didn’t know of a single technique that would allow someone to hide from a surveillance net as wide as the one she’d been maintaining.

If they are capable of that, what else could they be capable of? She wondered, a trickle of unease sliding down her spine. She would have to proceed with caution. 

With that thought in mind, Hirari repurposed a large portion of her colony and used them to form a clone. Insects coalesced between her and the empty air beside her, quickly morphing into her likeness. The Anbu exchanged glances but did not comment as the forest blurred past them in a wash of green and brown.

Hirari’s colony told her where to go and soon enough, she was upon the malignant chakra signature. She stopped on a high branch, the Anbu settling in beside her as they gazed into the clearing below. 

The majority of Team Seven was missing. Sasuke was the only one present, and he was currently using an extraordinary amount of chakra to expel fire from his mouth onto the branch in front of hum. 

The firestorm was impressive for a Genin, but it was also clearly draining, as evidenced by the fact that Sasuke only managed to keep it up for a few scant moments before releasing his hold on the technique. He fell to one knee, panting and sweating as the flames roiled in front of him.

The fire died after a moment, leaving behind a landscape of ash and smoking earth. Sasuke kept his eyes on the smoke, gritting his teeth as a chuckle sounded from within, alongside the sound of footsteps.

Hirari’s eyes widened as she recognized the girl who emerged from the smoke. It was the same Kiri Genin who had managed to startled Anko. The girl walked through the carnage without a care, her clothes barely singed. The chakra signature that had offended Hirari's senses emanated from her in waves.

“That was disappointing,” the girl hissed. “Your brother was magnificent at your age, yet you have yet to unlock a modicum of his potential.” She sighed, shaking her head. “How unfortunate.”

As Sasuke grit his teeth in a mix of anger and frustration, the Anbu beside Hirari made their move. They dropped from the tree and into the clearing, drawing their swords as they went. They landed on either side of the girl, steel pressing into her pale neck with blindingly-fast movements. 

“You are under arrest,” Bird said in a low tone. “Cease your hostilities and surrender to our custody and you will not be harmed.”

Sasuke recoiled at their sudden appearance, his eyes going wide, but the girl didn’t seem surprised in the least, her eyes flicking between both operatives.

“You responded faster than I anticipated,” she said, her tone mildly intrigued. “It seems I've grown sloppy.”

Hirari barely saw what happened next. There was a blur of movement—a flash of grey against brown and then red bursting from white. Both Anbu stiffened as a pair of kunai found themselves slotted neatly in the back of their heads, the tips just barely emerging from the front of their masks in a shower of red. Their bodies stood frozen for a single moment before they slumped forward, hitting the ground with twin thuds as the girl they had trapped dissolved into mud.

At the same time, a shape pulled itself from the earth a few feet away. The Kiri girl rose to her full height, a pleased smile on her face as she stared at the carnage.

Hirari frowned. Two Anbu dispatched like Academy students. This girl was more dangerous than she’d first assumed. That did not bode well.

“It seems we are out of time,” the girl said to Sasuke who had gone pale and rigid at the sight of the murdered Anbu. “You've been a disappointment, Sasuke-kun. Honestly, I'm not certain you would even survive my mark. Perhaps I should seek out a more suitable host...”

Understanding that whatever the girl had planned for Sasuke would certainly be for the worse, Hirari did something that was rather uncharacteristic of her and threw caution to the wind.

Her clone dropped from the tree, landing between Sasuke and the enemy in a crouch. The girl reeled, confusion flashing across her face moments before she was completely obscured from sight by a cloud of kikaich. The sound of a thousand droning wings filled the area, alongside a wall of insects so thick it seemed a black fog had suddenly fallen upon the battlefield.

Sasuke stumbled backward, slapping at the insects that landed on his arms and face. “What the—”

“Run, Sasuke.” Hirari’s clone responded as the enemy jumped back onto a low hanging branch, gazing at the curiously.

“What’s this?” She muttered, staring at the cloud of insects. A smile formed on her face. “How interesting. There were more of you hiding?”

Hirari responded to her question by separating her swarm and sending a portion of it directly towards the girl.

The enemy jumped away as the bugs crashed down upon her, but wasn’t quite fast enough to dodge all of the kikaichu. Her chakra was consumed and fed back into the swarm. The full kikaichu discreetly circled back to Hirari up above to bolster her own chakra, no matter how much her body disliked the taste.

The girl continued to evade, showcasing an astonishing amount of athleticism as she jumped between trees and around thick branches.  From her place on high, Hirari noted that she did not ward the swarm away with a technique or a paper bomb, nor did she leave. That, alongside her earlier words, told the Aburame quite a bit.

She wants Sasuke, Hirari thought. She shifted the bulk of her swarm, centering it around Sasuke in a protective dome.  

The boy flinched, slapping at the bugs as the clone turned to him and said, “I told you to leave. You are her objective.”

To his credit, she did not need to tell him a third time.

The girl watched him go, her smile fading just a bit.

“That was rude,” she said. “You've cost me quite a bit of time.”

The clone responded by sending another wave of insects. But this time, there weren't just kikaichu. Beetles and mantids crawled up the trunk of the tree, drawn by the pheromone signals Hirari had been broadcasting since her arrival.

The girl grinned and reached up, pressing her finger to a canine and swiping it sharply. Blood flowed, and she pressed a hand to the ground, flaring her chakra. 

Smoke burst from the point of contact, an ocean of snakes slithering from under the tips of her fingers to meet the swarm.  There were dozens of them, hundreds, even. A writhing mass of scales and fangs that intercepted the beetles before they could reach her. The mantids fared slightly better but there were simply too many.

The clone was running low on chakra. The stolen reserves from the enemy were substantial, but the bug clone's structure was consuming more than it could take in. Knowing that it wouldn’t last much longer, Hirari formed a second one, depleting her swarm to the dregs in hopes to occupy the enemy for just a bit longer.

Unfortunately, the clone barely had the chance to drop into the battlefield before it suddenly dispersed, the illusion of its physical form broken by a length of steel bursting straight through its forehead. Hirari threw herself to the side to avoid the blade, and a pale hand closed around her throat through her scarf.

Hirari's back hit a tree trunk with enough force to rattle her teeth. The hand around her neck squeezed, not enough to choke, but enough to pin her in place. She found herself staring up into a pair of yellow eyes that glinted with amusement and admiration..

“My, my,” the girl said, her voice soft and almost paternal. “To think a Chunin could coordinate an attack of this magnitude. You’re quite skilled for an Aburame. You’d make for an excellent test subject.”

“I have no interest in participating in any tests,” Hirari managed, snaking a hand around to the box on her back. The girl chuckled.

“That’s probably for the best. I’ve found members of your clan quite difficult to work with. The symbiosis between your bodies and your insects is fascinating, but it doesn’t appreciate being modified in most capacities.” A pink tongue darted out to wet blackened lips. “Best to do away with you now before you have a chance to grow.”

The hand around Hirari's throat tightened, fingers gripping hard against her carotid arteries, depriving her brain of precious oxygen. The girl was intending to kill her slowly, she realized.

Luckily, that would work in her favor. Hirari couldn’t reach the box on her back; the position wouldn’t allow the panels to slide open. Such a slow method of death would give her just the amount of time she needed to adapt to such a situation.

She sent a mental signal to the insects in the box, lifting a restriction that had been placed there for her own good. A portion of the colony within the box answered by crawling into the hive in her body. She felt their intrusion acutely—a disease spreading through her, damaging her from the inside out. She dimly noted that she would have to take some time to repair her internal colony after this. Assuming she lived through it.

The girl tilted her head, studying Hirari's face with those unnerving yellow eyes. “What are you planning?”

To answer her question, Hirari lifted her mouth above the edge of her scarf and opened it, releasing a cloud of black insects into the girl's face.

She reeled as the bugs stuck to her skin and burrowed into her pores with claws like razorblades. The areas of entry immediately turned black, veins and blood vessels popping beneath the surface as the modified insects forced their way into her chakra network.

Hirari’s opponent released her, staggering backward drunkenly as she clawed at her face and neck. “What have you done?” She demanded in a hoarse voice, her throat scraped raw in moments. 

Hirari remained slumped against the tree, unable to move as she watched her enemy writhe in pain. She knew exactly what was happening beneath the girl’s skin, had felt it herself just now. The insects burrowed inside of her consumed her chakra bit by bit, shifting its nature, its very essence, before expelling the mix back into the coils that it came from. She was being poisoned by her own body.

It hurt quite a bit, too. The girl fell to her knees, her body hunching and undulating as if she were seizing. Black lines crawled down her hands, staining them just like her face and neck as her yellow eyes stared at the ground before her in disbelief. Her chakra reserves must have been vast for it to be taking this long. At this rate, it would take minutes for—

Hirari's eyes widened beneath her goggles as the girl’s mouth suddenly opened far wider than any human should have been able to manage. Her jaw dislocated with a sickening crack, her skin stretching and splitting as a pale white hand thrust itself through the opening, followed by another. 

The husk of the Kiri girl sloughed off like a shed skin, collapsing to the forest floor in a wet heap of flesh as a figure emerged from her mouth, climbing onto shaky hands and knees.

Hirari stared as slime dripped from jet black hair and skin far paler than the girl’s original had been. The figure slowly stood to an intimidating height, and turned to regard Hirari with slitted yellow eyes rimmed by purple.

“Now that,” the figure said, their voice distinctly different from the girl's. “was quite unpleasant.”