Reincarnation of the Aburame God (Naruto Fanfic)

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one that best adapts to change."

- Charles Darwin

...

'The Infinity Gauntlet? Is that so?' I thought as a smile of disbelief formed on my lips.

The most important decision had just become much easier. Even though I had a lot more information about how my other system options worked, Essence Gacha was the system that anyone would want to have.

So, I didn't delay and said:

"I want the Essence Gacha System then."

[Talent "Essence Gacha System" acquired.]

[Now, Aiden, A New Chance awaits you.]

As this last message turned into glowing particles, the train door opened. It was a modern train, with automatic doors and even faint music coming from inside. I could even feel the chill of the air conditioning inside.

Everything inside the train was incredibly normal, but the high-pitched whistle from the front of the carriages — like a steam locomotive — reminded me that my mind was projecting all this.

'Okay, I think that's someone up there telling me it's time to go.'

As if it were one of my college days, I got on the train, sat down in a vacant seat — there were so many options — and waited.

After that, I don't remember if the train moved or left the station. Everything went white and then black.

Reincarnating was surprisingly peaceful. There was no color vortex, no memories of my old life, and, unfortunately, no giant pair of breasts near my face like Rudeus from Mushoku Tensei.

What I found at the end of the darkness was the calm sound of a thick voice.

"That's why you should pay more attention to what's in your mind than in your heart when you're wielding chakra. I'm serious, children. Controlling your emotions is essential."

I opened my eyes and saw a white-skinned man with a chubby face. He had a goatee with brown hair and a Leaf Village bandana sewn onto a blue wave cap.

As a fan of the world of Naruto, I quickly recognized this man as Daikoku-sensei, one of the oldest teachers at the Ninja Academy.

Daikoku was standing in front of what looked like a classroom. On the blackboard behind him, he had drawn a human body with various arrows and lines.

I was happy to see all this. The fact that I was in Daikoku-sensei's presence was great because it meant that I was where the main story unfolded, namely Konohagakure. However, he was much younger than I remembered seeing him in the anime. If in the anime he looked to be in his forties, the Daikoku in front of me looked to be in his early twenties.

Well, that meant I wasn't so close to the events of Naruto Classic and Shippuden, which was great.

Just as I was about to smile with excitement, I remembered Daikoku's words. I must control my emotions and not get carried away with this news.

"Aiden Aburame, can you hear me talking to you?" asked Daikoku, which made me turn my head in his direction.

"Is he listening to you, sensei? Look at him and ask yourself if he's awake to talk!" a boy behind me said.

When I turned around, I saw a boy with black hair and round cheeks. He was no fatter than Chouji, but he was close.

"In fact, with those sunglasses, it's impossible to tell if he's asleep or not." The slim boy with blond hair next to him said, in a more handsome pose.

These two comments made half the room laugh out loud, while the other half held back and sniggered.

"Humph. What a disappointment. He's an Aburame, but he can't manipulate any insects. He's talentless..."

Hearing all these insults in sequence made me confused, but a click happened in my mind at that moment. With that click, memories that I wasn't sure were mine or not came to mind. That's how I understood my situation in this world.

I didn't reincarnate as a baby. Instead, I was in the body of a boy who had the same first name as I had in my past life. I was Aiden Aburame, son of Shibi Aburame — one of his sons, in fact.

Although I was only a nine-year-old child and in the Ninja Academy, I was seen as a failure because my younger brother was Torune Aburame, an expert insect user and the one in the spotlight talent in my clan. No wonder he was adopted by my father, the head of the Aburame Clan, so that he wouldn't end up in an orphanage.

As for Aiden Aburame, since the offering ceremony, when the Aburame offer their bodies for the parasitic insects to make a colony, no insect has ever managed to get close to him, neither take shelter in his body.

In this way, Aiden was not only seen as a failure by the Aburame Clan, but also by the other people who knew this story.

The laughter around me at that moment in class, of course, meant that all my classmates already knew about it.

Fortunately, remembering all this didn't make me feel the pain that characters in novels used to say there was when getting memories from another body.

With all these memories, I understood that I had undergone a reincarnation not of body, but of soul, merging directly with the mind and memories of Aiden Aburame. I was now nine years old and in the training year of the Ninja Academy.

"All right, everyone. That's enough! Masayuki and Komoda, I've told you to stop it!" exclaimed Daikoku, calming the class down. "As I just asked you, Aiden, answer me: what is the best way to concentrate chakra and perform ninjutsu, genjutsu, or taijutsu?"

The answer to Daikoku's question came so easily to my mind that I didn't even realize when it left my mouth.

"Making hand seals...?"

Daikoku smiled out of the corner of his mouth at my answer. "That's correct, Aiden. Guys, hand seals are very important for most jutsus, from the simplest to the most complex. Now, turn to page forty in your books and check out some of the basic seals."

This lesson turned out to be very interesting for me. I could get information about hand seals that I didn't even remember whether I had seen in the anime or not.

During the class, I also realized that I had a pair of glasses on my face. They were black-rimmed, identical to the ones Shino wore in the anime, but it didn't hinder me at all in seeing things in the exact shade I always did.

It made me think a little about why all the Aburame hide their faces. At first, it might have seemed aesthetic, it could be to intimidate the enemy or to protect the Aburame from accidental contact with the kikaichuu — the parasitic insects with whom all the Aburame have a symbiotic relationship. However, I could see the real reason for this when I went to the bathroom.

Facing the mirror, I lowered my glasses for a moment and saw that my irises were a different color. Instead of my usual black, I saw an intense yellow, and their shape was different, like thousands of geometrically perfect honeycombs.

Through my memories, I found an explanation for this hue in a conversation with Aiden Aburame's father a few years ago.

Shibi wasn't the most loving of fathers, neither with Torune nor Aiden. He was equally strict, as you would expect from one of the most exceptional clans in Konohagakure. Shibi showed no signs of favoritism, even though his youngest son had enormous natural talent.

Scouring Aiden's memories, I saw the day Shibi explained why the members of the Aburame Clan didn't show their special eyes to the world.

"Why do we do that? Um... Why are you asking me this now?" Shibi asked as he brought a glass of green tea to his mouth.

The young Aiden Aburame was only six years old at the time, so he also had a curiosity that was hard to quell.

"It's because you've always told me not to take my glasses off in the presence of anyone, including my family. But you never told me why."

Shibi sighed. "All right, I think you're big enough to know... Son, do you know the Hyuuga?"

"Yes, of course I do."

"And the Uchiha?"

"As well."

"We're not like them. Our eyes don't allow us to perform genjutsus, like Sharingan users, nor do they allow us to easily see things that other ninjas can't, like the Byakugan. Basically, what we have is not a dojutsu, but a Kekkei Genkai. We can't deactivate it. It's part of our biology."

Aiden scratched his head, confused. "Dojutsu? Kekkei Genkai?"

Shibi almost laughed, but continued explaining for a few minutes. It took years for Aiden to understand everything Shibi had said that day, but as it was the longest conversation he'd ever had with his father, he remembered the details, and that meant I did too.

The special eyes of the Aburames were called Meikyugan, which means Eye of the Labyrinth, and were unique to the Aburame Clan, but curiously only appeared among the male members of the family.

Unlike the dojutsus, the Meikyugan did not offer offensive abilities but acted as a sensory and mental amplifier, allowing users to see the world from the perspective of their insects and also to talk directly to them. When activated for the first time, between the ages of two or three, users' eyes would gain a honeycomb-like pattern, with multiple structures, and a different color.

The color of the Meikyugan could vary from shades of amber to a bright yellow, like mine.

This Kekkei Genkai gives us many disadvantages. High Chakra consumption was one of them, as was sensory confusion. However, it allowed us to have exceptional abilities such as Chakra Detection, Chakra Cancellation Field, Multispectral Perception and many others.

High chakra consumption made us terrible in long battles, so the Aburame Clan's style was to plan as much as possible in advance and carry out missions with maximum efficiency, which is why it was considered the clan with the highest mass mortality potential in Konohagakure and also one of the Four Noble Clans.