Along Came a Beetle [Tutor]

[Toraono Michino]

For Rei, learning that the Academy had very strict rules, came as surprise. Getting Keiko admitted into the Academy was next to nothing in difficulty, and really she should of just left it there…but something was drawing her towards the child. Interest? Study for a possible research? Watching a chakra-bug user grow into maturity would no doubt grant a host of ideas of her research, and if anyone asked why she was so gung-ho about Keiko, that would be Rei’s first response as it sounded like the most disarming; however she actually had no idea where her obsession was coming from. Perhaps because she wasn’t completely a machine? Some kind of motherly instinct? It was an ongoing mystery that the cyborg was trying to unravel.

But, she really wanted to be hands on for Keiko’s training.

The Academy went up and down with Rei on why it wasn’t permitted with only exceptions being given to ANBU or Medical branches, and even then it was only if their leadership deemed a Student worthy of grooming. Main Branch had far too much on their plate to also worry about specifically training a single student over an entire class. If Dr. Ryuu wanted to teach in the Academy, she would have to share her knowledge with multiple hopefuls, not just one. The idea that she would be forced to hand out the precious knowledge she had collected to a bunch of morons and one good student, was ridiculous. And she let them know that too, in a very, very, long well-worded letter sent to the Student Board of Review that, without a Headmaster to fully review and explain, they unfortunately had to accept. It was so well versed in Kumogakure Law that the entire council couldn’t decide what was stone-clad and what was just being used for a loophole. In her efforts to earn the right to personally train Keiko, Rei had managed to slip in a new ruling to the 1 Jounin to 3 Genin law that, in the absence of shinobi in their military, that it be reduced to 2 Genin, and that the Jounin could select which 2 Students they wished to train from the Academy, and then further mentor. The ruling it passed, but a lot were unsure if it was because Rei had so much pull with the Raikage’s office, or if the Student Council just flat agreed with her ideas despite how much she bucked the norm. The only issue remained that she would have to find a second Student eventually and couldn’t train Keiko until such a Student was found; or at least that was what they tried to tell her until she threatened to write another letter.

The classroom was on the ground floor and recently refurbished by Dr. Ryuu herself. It wasn’t overly large, about half the size of a normal gymnasium, and it was almost completely empty except for a single desk near the “front” of the room where a giant chalk board loomed behind an average looking mahogany desk. The cyborg was sitting in a rolling chair with a high cushioned back, leaning back with a pair of shades to dim the lights that were slightly brighter than the rest of the Academy. It was Keiko’s first day, and Rei was going to make sure it was a nurturing experience. Was she giving the child an edge over the competition? Yes. Was it incredibly unfair and kinda divisive? Also, yes, but she couldn’t help herself. The little girl had put some kind of bug in Rei’s steel heart, and couldn’t fight the overprotective emotions that swelled. Of course, it still didn’t deter Rei from what she was setting out to do and that was train a child to become a soldier. No matter how protective her heart beat, the steel cold reminder ever was that she was only able to do this if she successfully tutored the student into becoming what Kumogakure needed.

 

[Hanabi Aiko]

First day! She was up and active 2 hours before the class began, had showered and changed into her fresh new bought ninja attire. Tight fitting one piece black suit, with various garnishes such as a belt with pouches and a mask to cover her mouth. She sported no weapon, but that was alright as weapons for the most part, where much to big for her frame. She grabbed a back pack full of notebooks and various study supplies and headed out the door. It was a cool day as was most of the days, with a bite on the wind as she ran through it to make it to school. She was feeling a bit of fatigue from the run as she arrived, but it was nothing compared to what she was looking forward to becoming. It would take much more fatigue before she was truly strong.

As she arrived at campus, it looked like everyone was filing in to go at their own adventure, but she was getting some dirty looks. She looked pretty scary, emaciated some might say as she was rather thin with a very light complexion, so she often got those looks. Realistically, it's because she was getting special treatment. Somewhere along the chain of command and complaints, things got out and now she was the golden child, the one to be envious of. She had no idea why kids where giving her such glares, but nobody dared talked to her, just hushed whispers she couldn't make out as she sheepishly moved through the halls. There she finally was, and stepping into the class she was met with stoic silence and a single desk.

She walked across the small gym to her chair, the footsteps echoing through the mostly empty room. She'd slide her backpack on the chair, and then slid in and sat up straight, prim and proper, and waited for instruction quietly.

 

[Toraono Michino]

Rei’s fingers tacked against each other in rhythmic fashion as she waited on her student. A brief wave of sound containing the opening and closing of lockers, shouts of teenagers, and more than one authoritarian voice ringing out to reign in the chaos that was the Academy rolled into Rei’s classroom; quickly silenced as Keiko closed the door. Echoes of her shoes slapping the ground and the chair being pulled back solidified just how lonely the first class was going to be. The teacher behind her desk slowly removed her shades and focused on the girl with her eyes. Her ring finger curled back a little to tug a chakra string inside of the cyborg that activated a small dump of power into her eyes. They shifted from blue into a green color as Rei took in the girl’s chakra signature and scanned over her body for any malformations. Aside from the chakra signature that echoed off her from the bugs that were manifesting within, she seemed healthy.

Rei pushed the chair back with her legs as she stood up once Keiko was settled and went right into the lesson. She started picked up a piece of chalk and lifted her arm up to the gigantic chalkboard. Invisible chakra strings shot out from her right hand and attached to the chalk board before it detached from the limb on a chakra wire and zipped across the board back and forth like a printer, slowly drawing up the perfect diagram of a chakra coil system.
“Today, you’re going to learn about chakra, the base of every shinobi. Without this power, you cannot become a full fledged soldier of Kumogakure. Without mastering it, you cannot become a Genin. So we will be going over 3 key principals of chakra throughout the course. The First Principal of Chakra is Molding.” Rei’s floating hand moved over and tapped the center of the drawing of a person and their chakra coil,
“Everyone has a chakra coil. It is the base of our life force, directly tied to our cardiovascular system. In laymen’s terms, without chakra, you’ll die. Everyone, even someone who’s chakra cannot be detected, has a little bit of it running through them and keeping them alive. Remove this and it almost always results in death. What makes a shinobi special is that we have an abundance of chakra, and can use it to manipulate raw power. In order to that though, you most learn to Mold, first. So, when you’re ready, stand up and come to the front of the classroom.”

Before her student could get up, Rei reattached her hand and moved to the front of her desk and placed her hands together in a seal with a wooden clack,
“This seal is known as Sheep or Ram, based off of the 12 Zodiac in the stars above. This hand sign centers our chakra and makes it flow faster. After you hold this seal, you’ll begin to feel your body get warmer and warmer. At first it will be very gradual but once you get to my levels, the heat comes fast. Once you start feeling warm, you think about the heat in your hands. With enough practice, the heat will move from your whole body and into your hands. This is called Molding.”

 

[Hanabi Aiko]

As her teacher got up and began to...write? Write...on the board, she would remove pencils and a notebook from her backpack. She took to drawing, trying to make the prowess of the printer of a woman in front of her. It would look, let's say, juvenile at best. However, with a bit of time she could become quite an artist, as the foundation was already there. Her new sensei talked, and she wrote notes. "Chakra...everyone...coil...first...moulding. Everyone has it, or die...abundance..." She would continue on as the lady spoke until she was forced to get up out of her chair. She was nervous, but excited. She could feel the slightest bit of adrenaline course through her as she was about to do her first cool ninja thing.

“This seal is known as Sheep or Ram, based off of the 12 Zodiac in the stars above. This hand sign centers our chakra and makes it flow faster. After you hold this seal, you’ll begin to feel your body get warmer and warmer. At first it will be very gradual but once you get to my levels, the heat comes fast. Once you start feeling warm, you think about the heat in your hands. With enough practice, the heat will move from your whole body and into your hands. This is called Molding.”

She stepped up in the empty space between desk and chalk board, took in the handseal as it was presented. They seemed to be a twist of the fingers in a certain pattern, she tried for a moment to make it stick the way she had, perfecting it would take time. Once it was locked in, she could feel something stirring inside, but it wasn't heat.

"M...my body feels all wiggly inside, is that the same?"

She was exciting the kikai by allowing her energy to flow around, so instead of a heat feeling she was feeling the excitement of a moving hive about to deliver on some orders.

[MFT - 325]

 

[Toraono Michino]

Rei released her hand seal and allowed the chakra to rotate back into her circular system as she approached the apprentice. Wiggly? That was indeed not what she was supposed to be feeling right now. Immediately the Jounin’s mind leapt back to all the knowledge she had on shinobi who used insects with their techniques. Mentally, her mind was a like row after row of filing cabinets, and she just needed to find the right one. Her brain located the knowledge, and pulled open the metaphorical metal drawer to reveal a single folder. Rei’s mental projection of herself reached into the cabinet, opened the folder, and began to recall everything she knew about the special type of shinobi she was training.

Woefully, it wasn’t a lot. Kumogakure had very little information on the clans who traded their body cavities for power, only that there was a major clan known as the Aburame who did so. They was a majority based out of Fire Country and not for the first time did Rei silently curse the last Raikage for his disappearing act. The rest were branches of the clan that lived mostly in Konoha, but a few had spread their roots out to Lightning a few decades ago; the scientist believed that Keiko was a cousin of that said branch. Yet her history did little to help with the current situation. The cyborg continued to scan what little info she had and found that the insects were from a family of beetles that naturally fed on multiple types of chakra and that the Aburame specialized in taking out high-chakra capabilities and creations; not unlike herself. Rei came to the conclusion that Keiko was molding chakra just fine, probably even better than she should be for her age/training, and that insects inside of her were waiting for an order. What struck the scientist as odd and perhaps a little frightening was that Keiko already had enough of these “kikai” to feel them moving around inside of her.

So, the cyborg held out her wooden arm and pulled a trigger inside of it with a chakra string that altered the course of her chakra to begin pulling a lot of energy into the offered arm. It was a specific trigger she had built in to allow her the ability to operate a certain flamethrower that normally required multiple people to charge, aim, and fire.
“Okay, now keep your hands in that seal and continue to focus your Chakra, but I also want you to look at this arm, and think about attacking it. Think about hitting it, stabbing it, cutting it off - anything violent.”
In theory, the insects moved towards the direction chakra told them to go. With her chakra already moving, Rei could now experiment a lot sooner than she had planned on how Insect Shinobi ticked. If the bugs lifted from the girl’s skin and attacked her, then she’d have a new note to write down in that mental folder and would no doubt make Keiko’s training a little easier.

 

[Hanabi Aiko]

The sensei who often made weird pops and clicks, put her arm out and it was glowing slightly, she could...taste it? It was an odd sensation in her mouth anyways, the bugs were symbiotic with her, so she could basically taste chakra, and hers tasted...bland. Like a mouth full of water. It was a bit distracting, and the bugs were beginning to quiet down until sensei chose to speak.

“Okay, now keep your hands in that seal and continue to focus your Chakra, but I also want you to look at this arm, and think about attacking it. Think about hitting it, stabbing it, cutting it off - anything violent.”

She wasn't a very violent person, it would take some digging into her psyche to pull out a violent thought like that, it would be easier for some other people in this village who are more prone to violence. She closed her eyes and concentrated, her chakra sort of leaked out of her as she began to summon the violent thoughts. She dug into a part of her she often ignored, the part of her that hated how her parents always pushed her to be their messiah, how kids always looked at her weird because of her small, ugly frame, and how she was disappointing herself right now by not being able to perform. Her chakra was like a visible cloak around her, and as she opened her eyes, she opened her mouth to scream and release the rage.

As she did, fire shot out of her mouth and immediately her rage turned to panic as she dropped her hand seals, stumbled backwards and began to fall backward. The bugs nesting within her shot out of her and swarmed around her, slowing her to a stop mid air, pushing her upright and putting her back on her feet. She blinked for a moment, quiet and unmoving as they retreated back inside her. Then a tear rolled down her face, and she quietly whimpered.

"E..ew bugs!"

 

[Toraono Michino]

Rei watched with excited eyes as the girl closed her eyes and continued to focus. Would the bugs be able to devour her arm? Would they explode out and injure Keiko's skin? Perhaps nothing would happen at all; the scientist couldn’t wait to find out. However, instead of any of these things happening, a burst of flame shout out of the child’s mouth instead. It caused the cyborg to hop back naturally and attach herself to the chalkboard behind like a human spider as she watched the girl panic from the sudden burst of flame. Who wouldn’t? It wasn’t like the fire that came out wasn’t hot either and it was very likely she just burned her lips a little, however the fact that she showed a change in chakra nature this early in training was telling. Then, her stumble and near fall brought forth an even greater change.

A Kekkei Genkai.

Bugs appeared from seemingly nowhere, all rushing out from her clothing to form a cloud of assistance to keep the child from falling before moving themselves back into their host. Rei’s very real heart was pounding with excitement as she released the chakra holding her to the blackboard to drop down and carefully approach the clearly terrified Student,
“No, no…not ew, but wow. I’ve never actually seen that kind of power before, only heard of it! Keiki-chan, you…you’re going to be very, very, very strong, and it’s all because of those bugs,” she said with a little bit of an excited laugh. The scientist had expected it to take a few classes, a lesson or two in advanced molding, but nope! Here they both were, on the cusp of a Student baring their fangs at the world before they even knew what it meant to do so. There were still questions to be asked before moving on, but the cyborg really wanted to already move into the next phase of testing.

“Are you hungry? Do you feel tired yet? Chakra is tied directly to our stomachs, and when we become hungry or tired from using too much Chakra it can be very dangerous to continue to do so,” Rei explained. She wasn't going to push it, though, despite her own impatience. She could only imagine what the little one had to think about to bring about such a large burst of chakra that it changed in forms. Pushing too hard could easily result in a mental illness down the road and there was enough sociopaths currently in the military.

 

[Hanabi Aiko]

“No, no…not ew, but wow. I’ve never actually seen that kind of power before, only heard of it! Keiki-chan, you…you’re going to be very, very, very strong, and it’s all because of those bugs.”

She was being praised for what was the grossest thing she's ever seen or felt. A swarm of bugs touching her with their filthy little feelers. She was trying to hold back a sob, even as she was being praised. She, suddenly being very aware of the creatures inside, could feel them wiggling about. She had the sensation in her head, and now it wouldn't leave her.

“Are you hungry? Do you feel tired yet? Chakra is tied directly to our stomachs, and when we become hungry or tired from using too much Chakra it can be very dangerous to continue to do so."

She briefly snapped out of it in confusion, hungry?

"N-no, I ate before I left, I feel just fine. I have a question though! Why does the air around you taste so bland?"

She didn't feel fatigued at all, it was as if nothing had happened, energy wise, which could elude to her sizeable chakra pool. She was describing a bland, water like texture she could taste in her mouth, basically tasting Rei's chakra. She wanted to know why this taste was in her mouth since she got close to Rei, and why it wouldn't go away.

 

[Toraono Michino]

Taste? Chakra had taste? It really shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to Rei as the world of Ninjutsu and Chakra was one of mysteries and secrets still left unknown to the wide world, but never had she imagined that chakra would have a taste. Of course, who else would know but the very people who could host the very insects that ate said chakra? A genuinely warm smile crossed Rei’s face as she held out her wooden arm that appeared to be made of real flesh and blood. Gripping the socket where her arm attached to shoulder, she gave it a tight squeeze causing the socket to artificially open up. The arm simply dropped off, right out from beneath her jacket sleeve and hit the floor with a hollow wooden clatter.

“The only answer I have to that question my dear Keiko is that I’m not entirely human. You’ll find as you go through the Academy and eventually begin working in the field that there are all kinds of shinobi from all walks of life. There is a reason we’re feared. I have seen people who house impossibly powerful creatures inside of them and use their power. Shaken hands with swordsmen who could cut steel with steel. However, someone like myself, is even rarer still because I decided one day that the meat adhered to my bones wasn’t strong enough…so I had the Raikage replace it with,” she rapped on her wooden arm with the other hand’s knuckles before scooping it back up off the floor, “Improvements. Thus, my chakra probably doesn’t have much of a taste at all, since I also never learned how to create a change in Chakra Nature - a lesson we’ll segway into right now since you just literally spit fire.”

Invisible chakra strings shot out from Rei’s jacketsleeve to attach themselves to the socket end of her fake arm. It zipped back into the loose sleeve and reattached with a hollow ‘clack’. Rotating her arm a few times to see if it was still in working order the scientist turned from the girl and picked up the chalk to write a few extra notes and diagrams over the one already there. They explained that every person had the ability to naturally gain a single element in their life, and usually a few more by the time they were Jounin. At the end of the lesson she placed the chalk down and turned back to the lone Student in her class,

“Now, for homework, I suggest you practice the Fireball Jutsu at least ten times a day, or, until you’re hungry. Never, ever ignore that hunger. Class dismissed!”

[I think you're just like, 3-400 wc short of the Tutor if you'd like to end the class here!]

 

[Hanabi Aiko]

She popped her arm off, she popped her arm off! What a marvel to behind, detachable limbs.

She flailed a bit as her arm fell to the floor, making a hollow thud. It was explained to her that some people where different.

"However, someone like myself, is even rarer still because I decided one day that the meat adhered to my bones wasn’t strong enough…so I had the Raikage replace it with improvements. Thus, my chakra probably doesn’t have much of a taste at all, since I also never learned how to create a change in Chakra Nature - a lesson we’ll segway into right now since you just literally spit fire."

Her chakra? She was tasting her chakra? That's a...development to her, something that would need to be taken into consideration in future meet ups with other humans, as she has tasted some bad chakra in her life, thinking she was just really sensitive to smells and tastes. It was definitely something to think about. At any rate she wrote down some more information, Keiko returning to her seat to write the notes. She also thrust her arm out while she wrote, as if trying to make her own arm fly off, typical kid stuff.

“Now, for homework, I suggest you practice the Fireball Jutsu at least ten times a day, or, until you’re hungry. Never, ever ignore that hunger. Class dismissed!”

She nodded, it was time to go and she packed everything up. She waved to the teacher and began to walk out as the bell rang. Before she left, she turned around and imparted some childhood wisdom nobody ever asked for.

"Your parts aren't stronger, wood is weak against fire and termites, I had a room in my house that needed fixed when termites ate the wood!"

Before the teacher could respond she was gone, you could interpret it as changing your body doesn't make you stronger, or you could take it as a kid with literally no filter, letting a dumb thought out. Once she was out the door, she froze in the middle of the hallway. Had the room got ruined because she had fostered termites in her body? Is every bug in the village her fault? She walked out of the school spiraling about it, but she had something to focus on, fireball. She was happy this was what she was learning, because at the end of the day the town was mostly snow, so she couldn't hurt it like she could say...with bugs. A fire had lit under her, and not just the one she created.

[WC: 425]
[MFT]
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