Bamboo Hearts Firefly

The Kill

In this world love has no color,

Yet how deeply my body is stained by yours.

--Izumi Shikibu

_____________

Drawing two forefingers together, she formed the hand seal for a Beekeeper's Gathering Technique. Beckoning the wild bees of the forest to join her in battle.

The flow of her chakra running like warm honey from her body to the kunai sliding up her wrist into her palms.

Each kunai looped with smoke bombs imbued with her disorienting poison.

Shino's insects sensed her chakra activation intensify. His Kika bugs hungrily anticipating the curry of a quick Chakra snack, as she took a basic fighting stance against him.

"You seem determined to make me your opponent," Shino unraveled her true intent. "Or maybe you have mistaken me for someone else. The reason is because I have no reason to accept this challenge. So, why take it this far to fight me?"

And that was just her luck.

That he'd be the intellectualizing type, but not in the useful way.

Because how could he really be so ignorant of the reason why they were both there?

How could he not recognize his own enemy, when she had spent her whole life training to master everything Aburame about him?

Was he mocking her clan by failing to respectfully acknowledge her in battle?

Her hands unsteady with rage, she squeezed her kunai so tightly that her own blood tickled her palm, staining its knife edge.

By guess or by good fortune, she'd make sure he never made the same mistake about her again.

And with a fanning sweep of her hand, Shino faced a handful of hidden kunai darting his way. Their hilts flapping with the classic tell-tale tags of paper bombs.

Shino preferred not to take on a girl without a good reason for it, but it seemed he had no choice but to oblige her.

Strays of black insects crawled up from behind his coat collar, scattering across his jasmine-white face.

He wouldn't underestimate her.

Nor would he let her understate him.

"If you fight me," Shino warned her to withdraw. "I will not lose."

Then why wouldn't he shut up and get it over with already?

She went in for the kill, charging across the tree limb that had become their battleground.

Shino's brow arched.

Did she really mean to take him down with just a kunai and a fit of rage?

She must really be pissed off.

Growing up around types like Yoshino Nara, Sakura Haruno, and Lady Tsunade, he knew no jutsu could ever do more damage than a scorned woman and anything close at hand she could make into a weapon.

Shino ordered his insects into action, surrounding her paper bombs and numbing the explosions.

Only to be engulfed by the suffocating toxic smoke that choked out even the fog around him.

The familiar burn of vaporized Wolf's Bane leaving a bitter taste on his lips.

Had it not been for his bugs and their adaptability to quickly absorb poison in his bloodstream, Shino's cells might've bursts from the toxic smoke filling his lungs.