Hanako groaned. Her head pounded and her stomach roiled in protest to her overuse of chakra, her fingertips burning oddly. She threw herself back onto the grass, spread eagled.

"Why isn't anything working?"

Momiji said nothing, snoring lightly where she slept beside her.

Hanako had spent the last...however long trying to figure out what her tattoos meant, if anything. She'd tried shoving chakra into them, but so far all she'd managed to do was make them glow in a move reminiscent of Aang's avatar state. While that was cool, it wasn't what she'd been going for. She rolled over and dragged a book on seals over to her. Her tattoos could mean anything, but seals made the most sense in her mind, so she was starting there. Everything she read had suggested that filling the ink with chakra was the right thing to do, though some seals required a vocal release or a hand sign. Without either of those, she was stuck.

"Argh!" She sat up with a yell, running her hands through her hair in a frantic motion. "Why is this so hard? Aren't kekkei genkai supposed to come naturally?"

Momiji said nothing.

Hanako huffed in annoyed frustration. Her head hurt, her stomach hurt, her skin hurt, her pride hurt. What was the point of maintaining her adult mind when it didn't do anything?

An insect landed on her knee, its shiny carapace catching the light.

"Hello, bug," she said with a smile. "Do you have any ideas?"

The bug said nothing.

Oh, well, it was worth a shot. You never knew which animal might talk in this weird ninja world, but sometimes a bug was just a bug.

Hanako held out a finger to the beetle and it crawled happily onto her nail, little feet tickling her chakra sensitive skin.

"How lucky you are, Mr. Bug," she sighed. "I bet you don't have to worry about things like kekkei genkai, huh?"

The bug said nothing, crawling its way across the back of her hand. She twisted her hand as it trekked over her palm—and into her tattoo.

Into her tattoo.

Into. Her. Tattoo.

!?!

She leapt to her feet, shaking her hand wildly, absolutely positive she could feel little buggy feet underneath her skin. She poked at the ink on her palm, moaning in distress when her fingers hit flesh. Momiji watched her with obvious concern, awakened by her human's distress.

"Miji!" Hanako exclaimed, tears streaming down her face. "D-do you know where the Ab-burame live?"

Shino Aburame watched as his father struggled to keep his composure. Well, Shino knew he was struggling. To anyone else he likely looked as stoic as ever, face hidden by a high collar and dark sunglasses.

"Did you say there is an insect inside your tattoo?"

The little girl who'd barged her way into the Aburame compound nodded desperately, tears falling freely from dark eyes. Her face was also hidden by a mask which was quickly becoming soaked by her upset. "I-I don't know h-how it happened! I was t-trying to figure out my t-tattoos and then—." She clutched at her wrist, holding her hand to her chest as if she'd injured it.

Shino's father, Shibi, sighed and turned to him. "Do you know her? She's around your age."

Shino shook his head. "I've seen her at the academy, but she isn't in my class."

The older man sighed so quietly, it was unlikely the girl could hear it. The dog she'd brought with her, however, had no such handicap. The fancy looking thing yipped indignantly, calling attention to itself as it began dragging its paw across the tatami floor in squares.

Shino's father stiffened beside him. "Hatake? This is Kakashi's child?"

The dog yipped in affirmative. The little girl, however, looked terrified.

"Daddy isn't here," she said with a sob. "He's on a mission."

Shibi sighed. "Child, you need to calm down. Why? Because I can't help you if I don't know what happened."

She sniffed, rubbing at her eyes roughly. "I-I'm sorry. I j-just—I don't know if there's oxygen in there." She looked up at Shibi with imploring dark eyes. "The b-bug might d-die! I d-don't want to k-kill it!"

Shino felt his eyebrows rise. A girl who didn't want to kill an insect? Who rushed to his clan for help in order to keep from doing so?

How strange. How...novel.

Shibi reached out a hand to the girl. "Give me your hand. Why? So I may see this 'tattoo."

She did so, without hesitation. From his place beside his father, Shino could see a bold black mark on her palm which flowed down the inside of her wrist and disappeared into the sleeve of her pale green haori. The tattoo was rounded, with swirling symbols dancing along its edges. It almost looked like text, of some sort, but Shino couldn't read it.

"Hmm," Shibi pressed his fingers against the tattoo. "You say it went inside?"

The girls had calmed significantly from her previous hysteria, but she was still sniffling. "Mhmm, like—like it walked over a corner." She used her other hand to demonstrate vaguely. "Like the e-edge of the tattoo was the l-lip of a b-bowl, or something."

Shibi hummed again. "What were you doing when it happened?"

She took a deep, shuddering breath. "I was trying to f-figure out what my tattoos are f-for. My m-mom died before she c-could tell me, so I..." She shrugged. "I thought they m-might be seals, or something, s-so I tried putting chakra in them."

Shibi nodded along as she spoke. "Can you do it again? Why? So we may see it for ourselves."

The girl hesitated before nodding. "I can try. I'm not very good at chakra manipulation, though."

Shino watched as the girl scrunched her eyes shut. The kikaichu inside him buzzed in response to her use of chakra, and his eyes widened at the spectacle.

Her tattoos were glowing.

Light was shining from beneath her clothing, going all the way up her arms and along her legs. Shibi kept his eyes trained in the hand he held, but Shino couldn't take his eyes off the girl. As if she could feel the weight of his stare, her eyes snapped open. Shino gasped.

Her black eyes were glowing the same bluish off-white as her tattoos, her pupils barely visible under the light. She held his gaze for a moment then looked to his father.

"Is it working?"

Shibi placed his hand against her glowing palm and then into it. The girl's expression twisted into something akin to pain and the glow began to fade. Shino watched, fascinated, as his father pulled his fingers from the glowing ink, an iridescent beetle clinging to the fabric of his glove.

The girl's eyes locked onto the beetle, her expression slowly morphing from pain to joy. "That's him! You saved him!" She leaned forward onto her hands and knees, bringing her face right up to Shibi's hand. "He's alive!"

Shibi chuckled. "So he is."

Shino didn't notice his father's sidelong glance. If he had, he might have had the wherewithal to be embarrassed by his obvious staring. He didn't, though, and the girl didn't notice him, either.