Reincarnation of the Aburame God (Naruto Fanfic)

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step."

- Lao Tzu

...

On my second day in this new life, I knew that I would have to go to the Ninja Academy like everyone else my age.

However, I chose not to go on this second day for three reasons.

1 - I wasn't someone patient enough to deal with bully-type people, and some classmates mocked Aiden for not being able to do Aburame Clan jutsus.

2 - One of the people in the class who made fun of Aiden was Masayuki Yamanaka, a random boy from the Yamanaka Clan. Although Masayuki wasn't going to become better than a random Jounin or Chunin in the future, because I had never met him in the anime, he was still a Yamanaka. This meant that he had a mind transfer technique and many other mind-related jutsus. Being around him was a big risk, considering that he could enter my mind and end up seeing things I didn't want him to see.

3 - The Genin test. This would take place in a week. Yes, the training age before the third war was nine. And although it was a simple test, Aiden didn't want to become a shinobi and he hadn't prepared. I wanted to become a shinobi, so I needed to prepare.

Those were the three technically easy problems to solve. But first, to solve them, I needed a place to think in peace and train my chakra control. Mastering my chakra was the key to success.

As a kid with 9 years, I couldn't just wander around Konohagakure during academy hours. Besides civilians, I could run into superiors in the village chain of command, like jounins, who would ask questions and tell my father that I was skipping school.

I needed a place that was away from the eyes of the village officials, but that still had a forest for me to train my relationship with insects and wasn't dangerous for a child to be in, like the outside of the village. It took me a few seconds to find the answer, so I started using the alleyways to get to the place I had in mind.

Konohagakure was much bigger than the anime or manga showed. There were as many lanes and alleys as a large neighborhood in a metropolitan city.

Also, these alleys were much darker and busier than I had imagined them to be. I don't know why I was surprised. Many of Tokyo's alleys have restaurants, bars, and other shops like bookstores and flower stores. It was almost intrinsic to the architecture of Japanese cities.

That is why I used what manual agility I had to climb on the roofs. I wasn't fast or strong, because Aiden wasn't even good at taijutsu, so to climb the roofs I had to demand more from my body than I would have liked. I did it acceptably, though.

To do this, I ran up the wall a bit, grabbed onto a window ledge, and reached for a pipe, where I turned my whole body twice and propelled myself upward.

Arriving at the top of a building, I could see that the Hokages' Monument was not far away. It was to the area above their heads that I intended to go. It was a place inside the village where there was forest and not as much supervision as there should have been. I knew this because Naruto always went up there.

Jumping from building to building and then up a steep staircase, it didn't take me over fifteen minutes to get there. And, as I expected, the place was empty.

I took off my oversized jacket because it was so hot, folded it up, and sat on it with my legs in a lotus position.

Why was I doing this? Well, because my chakra control was not yet at the point I would have liked.

Yes, I had made significant progress on my first day. I got my chakra stable enough for the insects not to fear me. Yet, there was a problem with that. I had diluted my chakra by letting a little leak out. That amount was just enough for me not to die. Having made some progress didn't mean I was finished.

People considered chakra the bridge between life and death. The anime showed this several times. Like the Seal of the Grim Reaper and even the Edotensei.

With this in mind, I deduced the insects were afraid of me because they knew my chakra could kill them. It was the only plausible reason.

An ant doesn't fear a large bag of sugar, but it fears an abundance of water, even if it knows it needs to drink water to survive.

If that were true, no matter how much I put insects inside my body by diluting my chakra with Momo's technique, at some point, when I needed to use all my chakra, all the insects inside me would be killed by the intensity of my chakra.

'Perfect control... perfect control...' I mentally repeated to myself as I meditated.

The clue for me to control my [Divine Chakra] was something I had already seen in the anime. And no, it wasn't when Naruto had to control Kurama's chakra. It was when he needed to master natural energy to enter sage mode. In theory, it was the same path as mine.

Unlike chakra, which is only in living beings or chakra-infused objects, natural energy is everywhere: in the soil, the air, in plants, and in all living beings. It connects everything. When combined correctly with a person's internal chakra, it forms Senjutsu.

My goal, however, wasn't exactly to master Senjutsu. I didn't even know the way to it, nor was I in the right place for it. I just wanted to understand and harmonize my chakra as if it were something 'natural', as Naruto did to master the natural energy of the world.

This would require three things: absolute focus, total control, and a deep understanding of my energy. At least that's what I theorized, considering how cultivators from various novels I'd read did this kind of spiritual energy control.

Sitting in the lotus position helped stabilize my breathing and body, reducing distractions.

To begin, I did the same as the day before. I focused on my chakra's most intense point: my core, just above my stomach. Again, I imagined the chakra pathways as many rivers and streams flowing independently.

'Concentrate... keep the flow...'

After doing the same as yesterday to contain the flow, I spent a few seconds on this divine chakra.

Once I felt confident that the flow was regular, I moved on to the second stage: letting small portions of chakra escape and run through the body. This was the critical point. If I released too much at once, all the chakra would flow as usual, and that would be a failure.

As I released the chakra, I opened one of my eyes and checked to see if there were any insects nearby. After a minute of waiting, not even a mosquito appeared, and this place should have plenty of them.

'Still too aggressive.' I thought and took a deep breath to get started.

For the next few minutes, I repeated the same steps exhaustively. I concentrated on the core of my chakra, containing it with imaginary hands and then dragging them apart, releasing small amounts throughout my body. The process seemed simple, but it was actually frustrating.

My chakra insisted on escaping uncontrollably, like a river breaking its banks after a torrential downpour.

The feeling of constantly failing was a blow to my pride as a reincarnate who wanted to change everything in this world.

But even though I found myself in my own Dante's Inferno, I focused on my goals.

After some time that I couldn't measure, something unexpected happened. A tingling sensation ran through my arms, and my breathing became erratic for a moment because my stomach rumbled. This caused my chakra to leak suddenly out of my body, like a gas leak. A small circle of leaves around me flew into the air.

When I breathed normally again, my chakra returned to normal too.

Part of me wanted to drop everything and try my luck at Panorama Roulette. Maybe I'd get lucky and get something that would help me. But another part of me refused to be an Aburame without being able to control insects.

After a few minutes, I started again. This time, I visualized my chakra as flowing in a different way. Instead of rivers, I imagined it as the electrical wires of a house. The aim was not to dam up the energy, but to make it something natural for the insects to live with.

The method of visualizing chakra as electrical wires seemed to work a bit better than the previous approach.

'Wires don't flow like rivers. They transmit energy from one point to another in a controlled and unaltered way.'

That's what I thought, but it wasn't true. Electric currents are quite complex too, with powerful overloads.

Even so, I didn't abandon the idea. Time passed strangely while I was doing this. It could have been minutes or hours; I didn't know. But my body had become a city mapped in my mind, with poles, transistors, and transformers.

Suddenly, I felt a soft touch on my nose. I opened my eyes and squinted as I looked at a butterfly resting on the tip of my nose. It was small, delicate, with blue wings that shimmered in the evening light — had it really been that long?

For a moment, I felt paralyzed, unsure of what to do. The butterfly was so beautiful, so... calm. It was the first insect to approach me on its own, without me offering something like I did with that ant.

I tried to move my hand so that it could go for it, but before I could do that, the butterfly took off.

I stood watching as it flew around in a circle, sometimes coming closer to me, sometimes moving away.

"You're not afraid of me..."

The butterfly landed again, this time on my right shoulder. It stayed there for a few seconds before taking off once more and disappearing into the trees. I bent down, picked up my coat, and was about to leave for home because it would be dark soon. Then, I looked into the forest and saw the butterfly approaching.

It stopped halfway between us and went back into the forest.

"Is it calling me?" I asked myself.