Broken Cycles: Hive of Body & Spirit 2 (Patreon)

“Excuse me Mr. Smith?” a faux cutesy voice asked.

I glanced up from the papers I was grading, meeting the pouty face of Madison Clements. I kept the irritation off my face as I waited for her to say what she wanted. When she didn’t respond, merely staring at me while waiting for a verbal response, I turned my gaze back to the papers in front of me. The silence took a stunned, surprised air, and I could hear the  idiot girl shuffling in front of my desk.

“If you have something you wish to say, Miss Clements then stop wasting both of our time and do so,” I told her, marking down the mistakes and faulty research notes on the assignment.

“I was wondering why I was listed as having a zero on the last assignment,” she said after a moment. “I handed it in.”

I wrote the grade on top of the paper I’d been grading, set it aside, then moved onto the next as I answered, “You may have handed in an assignment, Miss Clements, but you did not do the assignment. Do not insult my intelligence or powers of observation by erasing the name of the assignment’s writer and replacing it with your own. As this was your first case of plagiarism, you received a zero on the assignment, as per school policy.”

This paper was much better than the previous, so I marked it with a C- and set it aside. There was no response from Madison for a moment, though there were snickers from the other students in class and I could practically feel the surprised stare from Taylor. After a moment, she stammered, “But… I didn’t…”

Starting on the next assignment, I pointedly stated, “You would do well to return to your seat Miss Clements.”

There was a stifled shuffling as she made her way back to her seat. Her face was undoubtedly red, but I paid her no more than the minimum attention. Mentally, I considered my steps moving forwards. I had a significant amount of leeway, considering how the first thing I’d done upon arriving at Winslow for my first day of work was place a number of seals on Blackwell.

I wasn’t sure how I’d arrived in this weird version of Earth Bet, but when I woke up in another man’s body with an intimate understanding of the hive of bugs within me, in front of seven very familiar orange orbs, I’d had a bit of a freak out moment. It had taken me a little bit to calm down, and figure out what had happened to me, but I’d managed to do so after a few minutes.

I was clearly an off-brand Aburame, I had the memories of a schmuck who’d just gotten hired to a shithole school in a shithole city, and there were seven dragonballs in front of me. Which meant I had chakra and in a few years Scion was going to go kill crazy. So, with the magic wish granting orbs that were sitting in front of me, I summoned the dragon and promptly made my two wishes: a chakra equivalent of the infinite ki reactors that 17 and 18 had from DragonBall Z, and a mental archive of every chakra-based technique that had ever or would ever be developed in the world of Naruto.

The result: infinite chakra and every form of chakra technique ever. I still had to practice and train, but that’s why I had Shadow Clones in the Boat Graveyard every day. Sealing was surprisingly the easiest, since it turns out that most of the difficulty in them was figuring out shortcuts and ways to get the seals to work with less chakra. But because I had limitless chakra, I could use the Tim Taylor Approach and flood them with chakra.

Turns out that if you took several different seals (such as the secrecy one used by Danzo, Orochimaru’s Curse Seal, the Caged Bird, and a few others) then combined elements from each of them you had what amounted to the ultimate obedience seal. That was what I applied to Blackwell when I arrived the second week of the semester. It was shortly before that time that I learned that my biggest concern about Bet was apparently already dead and gone.

That was a shock, that Scion was just gone. It was too early to know if the Endbringers were still a thing, or if they’d stop attacking. In the meantime, I had to focus on my current position. In the week between my waking up on Bet and starting at Winslow, I’d done some research. Specifically about the PRT.

Turns out, despite what I’d been led to believe, there were more classifications as far as the bureaucracy was concerned than “Affiliate Hero”, “Rogue”, and “Villain”. There was a “Civilian Cape” classification as well. It was just that no one ever used it, because it basically meant that I had no intention of using my powers. With the way that Shard powers worked, specifically the conflict drive, the thought of continuing a civilian life without using powers was anathema to them.

But since I had chakra, not a Shard, I didn’t have that compulsive need to use my power. More than that, with Scion dead I didn’t have the urgent need to become as strong as fast as possible. I still wanted to, because being powerful was cool, but the all consuming need wasn’t there.

The ringing of the bell signaling the end of the period pulled me out of my introspection, and I turned my focus back to the students as they put away their books and papers and headed to lunch. Which was why I was able to see Madison time swinging her bag onto her back to hit Taylor’s face as she bent down to grab her own.

The hit was accompanied by a loud crunch, either Taylor’s glasses or her nose, and her instinctive flying back caused her chair to fall backwards, throwing her into the legs of the desk behind her. I took note of the subdued, satisfied smirk on Madison’s face which dropped as she saw me standing up.

“One week’s detention, Miss Clements,” I said as I made my way over.

“It was an accident!” she insisted, her face paling and her eyes wide.

“I was watching the entire time Miss Clements. It most assuredly was not. Your detention will be starting after school today,” I snapped as I knelt in front of Taylor, gently peeling her hands away from her face to inspect the damage. Her glasses were broken, most of the glass having fallen out of the frame, but it didn’t look like any had gotten in her eyes.

“It’s Friday!”

“Two weeks, any more and I will upgrade it to a suspension,” I said as I helped Taylor stand. “Miss Hebert, do you need to go to the nurse’s office?”

“No, no,” she said. “I’m fine, I have an extra pair of glasses.”

I took her at her word, letting the rest of the class leave now that the excitement was over. When the door closed and Taylor put her spare glasses on her face, I told her, “If you wish, you may eat lunch here Miss Hebert.”

Taylor stared at me in surprise. I don’t think she knew how to handle a teacher who actually seemed to be on her side, even if I presented myself as the stern disciplinarian. She finally nodded, pulling her lunch out of her backpack and sitting down at her desk. I pulled my own lunch out, a tupperware container of jambalaya, and ate as I continued to grade papers.

After a few minutes, I heard a soft, barely audible, “Thank you.”

[hr][/hr]

I let out an explosive, frustrated sigh as I got home. I’d been spoiled by Taylor in detention, Madison took nearly an hour to shut up and stop trying to talk her way out of it. I could feel my swarm buzzing in my body, reacting to my emotions, before I forced myself to calm down. There was a reason the Aburame were infamously so stoic, if their hives were anything like my own.

Turning to the other person present, I asked, “Any troubles?”

“Nope,” my Shadow Clone said with a grin before disappearing in a cloud of smoke.

I winced as the deluge of memories flooded into my head. At least it was only a single clone instead of the batshit insane hundred plus clones you saw in most fanfics. I was starting too late to do that, my brain didn’t have the neural plasticity that was needed for that sort of thing, assuming it would work in the first place.

Shaking my head to clear my mind, I walked over to the kitchen and started preparing a cup of tea. It was my usual routine after a long day of teaching and dealing with troublesome students. But as I reached for the tea leaves, my hand brushed against a small slip of paper on the counter.

Curiosity getting the better of me, I picked up the slip of paper and read the neat, precise handwriting on it.

“Meet me at the park by Broadway, 10 PM. Or your job is done and you’ll be locked away.”

I raised an eyebrow, a touch amused at the sloppy attempt at blackmail. I was a little surprised at seeing it, partially at the fact that it had gotten placed in my kitchen without my Shadow Clone noticing.

With a sigh, I finished preparing my tea and headed to my room to change into something more presentable. As I slipped into a clean shirt and jeans, I couldn't shake off the feeling of unease that settled in my gut. But I pushed it aside, focusing instead on the upcoming meeting. I honestly expected the Trio to have tried something with Blackwell, hence my using the seal on her at the beginning of my employment.

But if they were getting desperate enough to try and blackmail me, then maybe they were branching out to other targets. That couldn't be allowed to happen. The thought of innocent people getting hurt because of my job made my blood run cold.

I took a deep breath and tried to calm my nerves. I had to be smart about this. I couldn't just rush in blindly and hope for the best. I needed to plan, gather information, and be prepared for anything. Fortunately, there was something in particular that would let me do just that.

As I made my way to the park, I kept my senses on high alert. I scanned the area for any suspicious activity, any signs of danger. But the park was quiet, almost eerily so. The only sound was the rustling of the leaves in the gentle breeze.

I reached the designated meeting spot, a bench near the center of the park, and sat down, waiting for whoever was behind the note to show themselves. A number of bugs from my swarm began flying about, not enough to be noticeable, but enough to serve as an early warning system.

Sure enough, a few landed on a body right behind me, despite not having made their way through the adjacent space. Moments before I felt something sharp and pointed pressed against the back of my head.

Closing my eyes, I let out a small huff, “Really, all of this over a high school teacher?”

“What’s your interest in Hebert?” the electronically filtered voice demanded.

“She’s one of my students. It is my job to see that she has the opportunity to excel,” I answered.

“There’s more to it, no one gives a shit about a weakling like her. What about her makes you so interested?” my ‘blackmailer’ demanded.

I chuckled again, a small smile on my face, “You really don’t understand, do you Miss Hess?”

One, two, three…

“What makes you think my name is Hess?” she demanded, pressing the crossbow bolt harder against the back of my head.

“It is quite simple, Miss Hess,” I said. “When I was in the process of completing my Civilian Cape forms, a rather sloppy worker let slip the presence of a Ward at Winslow. It took time, but after considering your public appearances along with your choice of weapon, it became obvious. If you wanted to disguise your identity, you really should have gotten a gun instead of your old crossbow.”

The bugs that had landed on Sophia Hess all bit down, triggering the thing that separated them from the chakra consuming bugs of the Aburame. Volts of electricity shot through her, making her scream in pain, her muscles contracting and sending the bolt through my Shadow Clone. From the bushes, I approached her collapsed, writhing form and leaned over her. Pulling out a sharpie, I pulled up the back of her shirt and started drawing on the small of her back.

I had a bug land on her nose, a jacob’s ladder of tiny arcs running between its antennae as a wordless warning. She held still as I finished drawing the same seal I’d used on Blackwell with a single tweak, before I pushed a surge of chakra into it, causing it to flash before binding to her skin. The bug flew under my shirt, crawling into one of the openings in my skin to return to the hive, as I stood up and stepped back from Sophia.

“What did you do?” She asked as her hand flew to the small of her back where I’d drawn the seal.

“A small bit of insurance, to keep you from misbehaving like this again and to make sure that you’re a good girl,” I said, the last two words sending a jolt through her.

The one tweak to the seal had been the words that triggered the jolt as well as the response of said jolt. In Blackwell it was pain, in the young, fit, and athletic Sophia? I’m a disciplinarian, not celibate.