Trial Passed

"Wait!" Hana suddenly let out a shriek and looked pitifully at Yuun. "I don't want to fight..."

"..." Faced with Yuun's somewhat helpless, pleading gaze, Shibi Aburame sighed and waved toward the side. "Then step aside for now. I'll find a way to solve your problem."

Hana breathed a sigh of relief and retreated dozens of meters in one go. At this distance, the smell of the insects on Shibi Aburame was no longer so unbearable. Besides, with her eyesight, the Kikaichū only looked like tiny black dots from here, not disgusting enough to make her sick.

"Then it's just the two of you." Shibi Aburame stared at Yuun and Itachi. "Even if there are only two of you, I won't hold back. You'll have to make up for the gap left by your teammate yourselves."

Yuun and Itachi exchanged a glance and stepped forward together. After two years together, they had developed excellent teamwork. A mere exchange of looks was enough to decide that Yuun, with his Byakugan, would take the offensive, while Itachi, skilled in Fire Release and long-range attacks such as throwing ninja tools, would keep their opponent occupied.

"It's starting." The Kikaichū covering Shibi Aburame's entire body surged toward Yuun like a cloud of black smoke.

"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique." Itachi's hand signs had already reached a respectable level. While he could not yet match his strongest speed of six signs per second, he was barely between four and five. Drawing in a deep breath, he launched a blazing fireball straight at the massed Kikaichū.

"Heh..." Shibi Aburame chuckled softly as even more Kikaichū streamed endlessly out from his body.

"Rotation." Seeing Shibi Aburame ignore the Kikaichū that were about to be swallowed by flames and instead send even more insects flooding toward Itachi, Yuun immediately rushed in front of Itachi. He spread his arms and spun at high speed, his rapidly rotating chakra barrier effortlessly smashing the approaching Kikaichū to dust. Even those that had not yet reached him were scattered by the airflow generated by the spinning chakra barrier.

Yuun's efforts were not wasted. Hidden behind him, Itachi continuously flung shuriken. Seven or eight shuriken curved through the air as if guided by an invisible hand, bypassing Yuun and flying straight at Shibi Aburame.

"Insect Wall Technique." Shibi Aburame showed no intention of dodging. Countless Kikaichū swarmed around him and gathered into a thick insect wall that blocked the shuriken. "No, this is—" Shibi Aburame's pupils suddenly contracted when he saw the shuriken caught in the insect wall.

"Fire Release: Dragon Flame Technique." Itachi abruptly leaned backward. When he straightened again, he was clearly biting down on a steel wire, its other end connected to Shibi Aburame's insect wall. Flames suddenly ignited along the slender wire, racing directly toward Shibi Aburame.

"Insect Clone." Though the insect wall blocked his vision, Shibi Aburame somehow seemed able to see Itachi's every move outside. He calmly formed a hand sign, and the clustered insects suddenly scattered, allowing the rapidly approaching flames to swallow Shibi Aburame behind them.

"Byakugan!" Although he watched Shibi Aburame get swallowed by the flames, Yuun knew it could not be that simple. He hurriedly activated his Byakugan, only to find that the one consumed by the flames was not Shibi Aburame at all, but a pile of things resembling insect shells. "Itachi! He's behind you!" The moment Yuun realized Shibi Aburame was not in the flames, his first thought was that Itachi would be ambushed. His Byakugan saw through the area around Itachi and spotted a mass of chakra rapidly closing in from behind him.

"Water Release: Water Formation Wall!" Whether someone had warned Itachi or not, he seemed unwilling to keep hiding his abilities. With Itachi's astonishing hand-sign speed, the signs were completed in an instant. He opened his mouth and spat out a mass of water, which struck the ground and raised a small hemispherical wall of water around him.

Only then did Yuun realize that the gathered mass of chakra was clearly a huge swarm of Kikaichū. With Itachi's pitiful amount of chakra, if that many Kikaichū landed on him, the battle would probably be over within minutes.

"Earth Release? That won't work on me." While Itachi was under attack from the swarm of Kikaichū, Yuun had already discovered Shino Aburame hiding underground. Without hesitation, he retreated more than ten meters. With the Byakugan's three-hundred-and-sixty-degree field of vision, there was virtually no chance of being ambushed. "Come out, Teacher Shibi. You can't catch me."

"That Byakugan really is troublesome." A hole suddenly split open not far from where Yuun had been standing, and Shibi Aburame jumped out. "It seems I can only declare that you've passed..."

Before Shibi Aburame could finish speaking, Yuun, who had kept his Byakugan active, suddenly changed expression. "Rotation!" Without the slightest hesitation, he used the technique he had trained most diligently in. The rapidly spinning chakra barrier repelled everything that tried to approach him.

"So it didn't work, huh? It seems your Byakugan has developed to quite a high level. You can even see insects that small." Shibi Aburame did not seem surprised by Yuun's reaction. Once Yuun stopped spinning, he nodded. "Not bad. To reach this level at your age, even among the Hyuga, you'd be considered quite outstanding."

"Thank you for the compliment, Teacher..." Yuun said with dark lines across his face. "But it would be even better if you could remove these insects crawling all over me."

"Heh... It seems the insects like you very much." Shibi Aburame extended a hand toward them. A dozen or so insects flew off Yuun's body, landed on Shibi Aburame, and crawled into his collar. "They are my companions, my eyes and arms. They are tiny, but you must understand that even small insects possess great souls."

"You're all quite good, though only good for Genin." Shibi Aburame looked at Yuun and Itachi with slight regret. "If this were wartime, throwing you onto the battlefield for a few months should let you grow to Chunin level." Judging from his expression, he seemed to be waiting for war to break out so he could toss Yuun and Itachi straight onto the battlefield.

"As for you." After lamenting over Yuun and Itachi, Shibi Aburame turned his attention to Hana, who had been standing idly to the side the whole time. "You're actually afraid of insects. How will you face enemies with unknown abilities when you go onto the battlefield like that?"

"I was wrong." Faced with a teacher covered in insects, what else could Hana do but obediently admit her mistake?

"..." As a first-time instructor, Shibi Aburame did not know how to discipline such a little girl for a moment. Perhaps he could release insects to scare her? But thinking of the battle-loving woman behind this girl, Shibi Aburame abandoned that tempting idea. "Go back and think it over carefully. If you can't adapt soon, I'll have no choice but to take compulsory measures."

"What compulsory measures?" Hana had to ask just when Shibi Aburame was in a bad mood. Seeing his expression suddenly darken, even someone as slow on the uptake as her immediately realized she had asked a very stupid question.

"I'll lock you in an insect nest where insects are hatched," Shibi Aburame said calmly.

"No, no, no..." Hana let out a miserable wail.