Fs

Of course, as soon as the medical-nin move on to heal Mister Groan Pitifully, he rats you out when they ask how his pain levels are. You get scolded for using an untested venom on one of their patients, making you glad that you didn't do the same for the rest. Pouting quietly, you obey after being ordered to provide a sample of the venom your kikaichu administered. It takes you a few seconds to change the payload of one of the lethal venom carriers, and then you have to order it to discharge into a test tube. The amount of venom from is pitifully small, and when asked for more you say that's all you have at the moment. A lie, but one you say without remorse as you are unwilling to completely divest a means to defend yourself.

(you could touch her and produce as much as you took from her, but no, you mustn't, remember Mom and Dad's warnings that you had to hide what you could really do)

You are asked to provide more when you can, to which you nod silently. The medical-nin proceed to treat Mister Groan Pitifully, and you breathe a quiet sigh of relief when there is no negative reaction between their chakra and the venom in his veins. That would have been bad and might have required you to step in, so you are glad that nothing happened.

You sit quietly as the medical-nin continue treating their patients. There is no clock and you don't have a watch, so you aren't sure how much time passes before Father comes back for you, but there is a noticeable decrease in sunlight. He finally arrives at dusk without a sound and you realize that the medical-nin have also been walking around without making noise. That seems like a useful skill to have, and you wonder if you will learn it too.

(they taught you, Mom and Dad, and she taught you, that girl turned woman who moved with grace, and he tried to teach you, that boy with green hair, you are sure of that, but you would trade it all to remember their names)

"Come, Kaiya."

"A moment, Aburame-san."

Your mouth twisted as one of the medical-nin called out to your father. As she told him about your actions regarding your kikaichu and Mister Groan Pitifully, you struggled not to fidget in place. Displays of emotion were frowned upon among the Aburame, and Mother and Father both had been trying to instill stoicism in you even at your young age. In the end, she showed him the tiny amount of venom she collected from your kikaichu, saying that she would need more from you as soon as possible. In the end, Father didn't answer her questions about why your kikaichu deviate from the common kikaichu most Aburame use, but he did say that he would permit the collection of the venom at a later date.

(your parents were paranoid, they moved for your sake, to ____ where you met ____, the boy with green hair)

Father left the tent and you walked beside him as best as your short legs would allow. He led you to a tent where you both received a meal of rations. You remembered that said rations tasted disgusting and you weren't looking forward to eating. Still, it was what everyone else was getting, so you would eat them without much complaint. Father stopped between two tents and knelt before he started eating.

Following his example, you sedately consumed the rations, not quite managing to keep your sounds of disgust to yourself. 'Choking down' seemed like a more apt description than 'eating' when it came to meals during wartime. Shifting through your memories—trying to separate them from the deluge of decades you got from your previous life—you recalled that you and Father have been out of your village for almost three weeks now. Three weeks of these awful rations with no idea when your next decent meal will be… you silently hoped that next time Father would be able to find a babysitter for you.

(you were never really alone for long, not after finding them)

Father finished first and he waited until you took a couple gulps of water from the canteen you hadn't really noticed on your person, being more preoccupied with your current development than with whatever was on your person. As you screwed the lid back on, he said your name and you looked up over at him. You silently begged him not to ask, but—

"Show me your kikaichu."

Learning 

You winced behind your collar, knowing that meant having to bring out at least one of the normal ones nesting inside your body. Biting your lip, you called out two kikaichu, flinching as the first broke through your skin. It was strange, because the wound itself barely bled before it closed up on its own, skin growing quickly over the exit point. Father didn't need to point out that you had to hide your pain better, not after both he and Mother had already pointed out that point to you once each before. Neither repeated themselves very often, trusting that you were smart enough to remember their words and take them to heart. Didn't stop it from hurting, though.

The drained kikaichu, the lethal kikaichu, and the two normal kikaichu skittered out from your sleeve and you directed them form a box formation on the back of your hand. Father leaned in closer to observe them and even though you couldn't see his eyes due to his dark sunglasses, you knew his eyes were focused on the two that you had altered.

(anything alive you could take and reshape, remake, control entirely)

He leaned back. "When did you notice that your kikaichu had changed?"

"Recently." 

True enough. Today was 'recently'.

"How did you become aware that your kikaichu's venom was primarily a painkiller and not of the lethal variety?"

You frowned. "Um… I just know." You pointed at the drained kikaichu and then at the lethal kikaichu. "The one with the shrunken abdomen had the painkilling venom. The one next to it has a lethal poison."

Your father's eyebrows rose.

(if they asked, you told Mom and Dad just about anything, and Father deserves the same because he is your father and even if he isn't Dad, you already love him from the four years you didn't remember there was anyone else that already had your love)

"Do you have an estimate of the lethality of its venom?"

You resisted the urge to shrug. "I think it would kill a normal person within approximately… a half hour, maybe less. Why? Because the venom will cause numbness, difficulty in breathing, and increasing muscular weakness."

"Progressive," he corrected. "'Progressive muscular weakness'."

You nodded. "Progressive muscular weakness." You pushed up your sunglasses. "The more venom that is injected, the stronger the symptoms will be."

"The more severe symptoms will be."

"Yes, Father. The more severe the symptoms will be, although the rate of death will vary depending on a victim's size, in addition as to whether or not they have sufficient poison resistance methods, and there is also the factor of medical-nin to consider. Therefore, I cannot give you a more accurate estimation of the lethality of the venom. Also, I may be wrong. Why? Because I have never used the lethal venom before."

(a half-truth, since you have never used it in this life)

Father nodded at your words. "I see." He stared at the larger kikaichu now scuttling around the back of your hand. "Am I correct in assuming that the growth of these particular kikaichu and production of their venom is currently slow?"

You nodded. "Yes. My hive numbers only twenty-three, of which there are only one each of the venomous varieties. I had two which could inject the painkilling venom, but unfortunately one was slain by a patient in the medical tent after receiving an injection via my kikaichu's stinger."

Father's glasses somehow managed to glint. "Did you ask permission prior to the injection?"

You hesitated. "…No."

"I trust you have learned a lesson."

It wasn't a question, but yeah, you've already made note about how to potentially avoid further deaths of your kikaichu.

"Yes, Father."

Dissimilarity 

The questions went on, eventually leading to the lie that you currently had only two mature venomous varieties but had others which were still growing. Truthfully, since mutating them didn't depend on chakra, you could remake them quickly, but since kikaichu have a maturation period (though it is a relatively quick one once a person has a more developed chakra system), coupled with the fact that you are a young child with an underdeveloped chakra system, it would be a couple days or so until you had more venomous kikaichu available to harvest from. Father didn't really seem to question that fact that you had unique kikaichu, and you wondered why, though mostly you were grateful you didn't have to come up with more lies on the spot.

(you lied and lead a double-life because it was easier to follow ____ and ____, but—)

Later, after taking care of nature's call, Father led you to a tent where a few uncomfortable looking mats were laid out. There were already a couple bodies lying down, and it became clear to you that this was where you were going to sleep. Thinking about it, yes, this was how you had been sleeping since leaving the village on Father's back. It wasn't comfortable, and Father had to leave you alone every other night or so in order to take a night watch shift, but you didn't complain because most everyone had similar sleeping conditions. At least Father was dangling you both from a tree using the Human Cocoon Technique.

Settling down on the same mat as Father, you felt somewhat awkward cuddling up to his side, but that was how Kaiya—that is, the you before your memories came back—slept whenever she could since they left the safety of home. Moreover, you did this sometimes even at home, especially after Mother died. And also…

Maybe it really was slightly comforting to be close to father, the only person you knew in this whole camp with any certainty.

(a spoiled child, a beloved child, an only child—only the latter two remain constant here)

You knew that if it got cold enough, Father's kikaichu would come out and spread across you, a creepy-crawly blanket that was somehow more comforting than it was disgusting. A swarm of anything crawling all over you would have made the old you screech in disgust, but here as an Aburame, you are only grateful for them.

As an Aburame…

(you will try to not be what you were before)

Reality 

You wake at dawn when Father's kikaichu are slithering off of you and the rest of the tent's occupants are getting up as well. This is normal, as is the routine Father escorts you through—nature's call, breakfast rations, checking that you have two days' worth rations on you in case of emergency, filling up your canteen, and dropping you off at the medical tent.

As Father disappears in a swirl of leaves, you can't help but think to yourself that the medical tent would be a priority target in case the camp was attacked. Father no doubt knows that, yet he chooses to leave you there anyway. It might be attacked, yes, but there is no room for a child in the other tents. You are tolerated most easily in the medical tent and the supply tents, but he hates the idea of leaving you in the supply tents even more. At least in the medical tent there is a measure of supervision.

Yesterday's tent had been one of the makeshift barracks, and you had ended up there after wandering away from the medical tent. It had seemed quiet enough, but then the forest had exploded in noise, and soon after an enemy had dropped into camp. His metal forehead protector had had lines that could generously be described as boulders. Father's metal forehead protector has a leaf with a swirl in it. Father told you about those symbols, how you had to be extremely wary of anyone who lacked the symbol of the village.

"Konohagakure," you murmured quietly, as though you've never said it before, though you know that you have. Remembering the name of the other village, you murmured its name next, "Iwagakure."

You looked out the tent entrance and remembered more of Father's words. There was a name for what was going on right now, for the bloody battles that have been happening for years, for the conflict that took your mother away.

"The Third Shinobi War."

You huffed and headed further into the tent.

You have never lived through open conflict like this. Vaguely, you recall some of history, how there was upset in the advent of Quirks, but that had been before your time. Even after you were leader of the ____ __ ____, you were rarely involved in confli—

(fibres trapping your limbs against your body, glass and rubble on the floor, ____ tied to a chair, invaders lined up at the entrance, blurred faces—)

You stumbled slightly, and mask it by abruptly sitting down and scuttling closer to the tent wall. Your left eyelid twitches at the sudden and incompletely memory. This… would be annoying, if it went on for much longer. What if Father asked you about your strange reactions to seemingly nothing? You certainly won't tell him the truth. Stifling disgruntled grumbling, you hugged your knees and glowered at nothing.

You didn't like being out here, or the fact that you now have all these half-forgotten memories, but there isn't anything you can do about either of those things. The memories are here to stay, and war doesn't end just because someone wishes it.

You're stuck, and you know it.

(you hate it)

Arachnid 

There are no further battles close to camp in the next couple of days. 

(the memories do not become any clearer)

While Father is gone, you spend your time trying to rifle through your old memories, but the names remained blurred and no names came to you. Only the title 'the greatest healer in the world' was clear, and it made you feel uncomfortable because even at four, you knew of Tsunade-sama. She was hailed as the greatest medical-nin in the world, ergo, she was the greatest healer, not you. Plus, she was acknowledged as the strongest kunoichi too, and from what you can recall of your old memories, you were never physically strong. The doubts you have make you wonder if you ever really were acknowledged as 'the greatest healer in the world' in your previous life.

Sitting alone near the base of a tree, you idly pulled at some grass and melted it into your body, using it to reform two more kikaichu in addition to the six you already had. When the time came, you could only bring out four, two of each variety, but the other two would remain with you, and these new two would be something slightly different. Instead of a painkiller venom or a lethal venom, the venom in these two would attack the lungs, bursting millions of air sacs, eventually leading the victim to drown on land. It was from… erg, a spider.

(shrieking before you even touch it because it's huge and ugly and you have to touch it with your bare hands)

A shiver ran down your back as the memory of a funnel-web spider from... from somewhere. Apparently even the names of places escape you, but that's not news to you at this point.

Fear 

Rubbing your arms to chase off the chills from thinking about huge spiders, you stood up and decided to report back to the medical tent with the four kikaichu you planned on showing. Currently they were handing around in your wide collar and had been since you called them out a day and a half ago. As much as you didn't like spiders, you didn't like the whole bursting from your skin thing your kikaichu did every time you summoned them out. Mother had reassured you that it wouldn't hurt as much after you acclimated to it, but that still entailed having it happen repeatedly, which you weren't looking forward to.

"Medical-nin-san," you soon greeted, stopping a couple feet away from the first available medical-nin in the medical tent. Your kikaichu had migrated down to your forearm by then and you called them out onto the back of your hand. "I have more kikaichu ready."

"'Medic-nin' is the more common term," she informed you. She nodded at the kikaichu crawling on your upheld palm. "Ah, good. Hold on a moment."

As the medic-nin went to fetch a vial, you realized that they hadn't asked for a sample of the lethal venom. You said as much to the medic-nin when they waved you over to a table, but she perked up and said she would like to collect a sample of that as well. Mentally shrugging, you decided to let her.

Watching your kikaichu deposit their venom into the two separate vials gave you a niggling feeling. You supposed it was the waste of it that was bothering you, so you told yourself that you literally could just make more right away. Something else you noted was that the lethal venom was just slightly darker than the painkiller venom. Not of much interest to you, but the medic-nin took special note.

Once the venom was depleted, she told you to come back when there was more. She returned to her work, leaving you standing there, so you turned and went back outside where there was grass you could fiddle with. Returning to the tree, you sat back down and idly ripped up grass and melted it into you. It was strange, because even though it went 'into' you, you couldn't use it on yourself. Also, while you could save it in some parts of your body for future use, that part confused you because why could you keep it inside if it wasn't part of you? Why didn't it hurt traveling through you?

You never got answers, not really, because you refused the more invasive tests the _ _ _ group wanted to do on you. You only let them scratch the surface of your Quirk and that has finally come back to haunt you. Perhaps you would have understood this power more if you had let them… oh. Oh no.

You paled as sweat formed on your brow.

(your freedom)

In your previous life, your word was law. But here? Here, there was no guarantee of your rights, no guarantee that you wouldn't be strapped down to a table and cut open to examine. Would the village breed you if they found out your Quirk was passable to your children?

(a warmth in your arms that you resented)

Wait, was it passable in this life? There was a chance it was, and if that was discovered…

No. You won't go quietly. You won't go meekly.

You refuse.

(some things are too ingrained)

Renamed 

You clenched your small hands as your stomach churned. No. No, you won't let them get away with that. You know that you're weak, that you're small, that you're young and under your father's care, so it's entirely possible that you could be forced to do something against your will. You don't want that. You hate the thought of it.

But you don't have any friends or subordinates. There were… two of the blurred faces in charge of that, weren't there? And one of them had more responsibilities when it came to the… the ____, the diseases you made to keep yourself and the rest of them out of captivity.

Your fingers twitch against the grass as you remember the ____ and what they did, but not what they were called.

One made the infected euphorically happy until they dropped dead.

Another attacked the body's organs for each Quirk use, which may be useless in this life as you can't recall enough of a diversity in powers to be certain that Quirks existed here as well.

The third marred the victim's skin and made the body reject oxygen, drowning them on land.

Another deformed its victims, resizing random body parts until the heart gave out, but you remember seeing at least one shinobi who could do something similar, so maybe that disease was also useless.

One hardened the victim's body from the outside in, turning them into statues not unlike that mythical monster with snakes for hair.

Yet another liquefied the body's organs until the victim spewed or leaked blood from all body orifices.

The last deteriorated the brain starting with memories before moving on to motor function, eroding a victim's dignity as it inexorably ruined the brain beyond repair or saving.

Slow in comparison to how quickly these shinobi killed, but all were contagious. Mentally, you struck the Quirk inhibitor and the limb resizer from the list of possible use. That left you with five, two of which could theoretically be overlooked until it was too late, those being the ones that made the victims happy or attacked the brain. Of the five, the one that hardened people was slowest as it takes the body up to four to five weeks to kill the infected. The one that drowned victims on land was fastest, and the one that liquefied organs was the messiest.

The one that made victims nearly delirious with joy was directly injected into a body and transferred via saliva. You modified a single kikaichu to have a stinger that would deliver the bacteria to multiple people. Since you couldn't remember its original designation, you renamed it 'Joy'.

The disease that attacked the brain was airborne, so you made a kikaichu that held a minute amount of what you knew was a smoke-like substance that was yellow in color. This one you would call 'Decline'.

The one that turned people to stone… ah. It starts as a liquid, harmless, thus it requires fire to become active and is then airborne. A kikaichu is made, one you know that, if you need it, will die as it finds the nearest fire source with people nearby. This one you will name 'Harden'. 'Stone', your first preference, would just make people think of Iwagakure.

(moving images of faraway places, a match, someone trying to apologize—)

As for the disease that suffocated people, it was meant for delivery via water, and you remade three kikaichu to carry it. They would separate and expel their payloads in the nearest water sources and die. This one you would call 'Drown'. No, wait, the one that fills the body with blood could also be called that, so instead… 'Block'.

The last, the one that would liquefy organs and fill the body with excess blood, this too was one that needed fire as a catalyst. Two kikaichu would be assigned this task. You would call it 'Blood'. 

Okay, so you weren't imaginative when it came to naming things, but the names aren't that important.

Closing your eyes, you sensed the newly remade kikaichu scuttling beneath your skin in different parts of your body. Seven different kikaichu, plus the four venomous ones… almost half of your living kikaichu were now mutated.

You really hoped Father wouldn't ask you how many kikaichu you had.

Oh, wait, speaking of him, what will you do to make him immune to the Sev—Five, the Five. More importantly, since kikaichu help remove poison from an Aburame's body, will you even be able to make Father immune without his hive and thus himself noticing? You have to, somehow.

Because you don't want Father to die.

(not like them, like Mom and Dad, like Mother who isn't here anymore)

You don't want him to die.

(it's too late and you already love him)