Hivemind, rewritten, remastered, and hopefully better.

Alrighty. It's been an ungodly long time since I updated this. This is the rewritten version I was thinking about, but decided against doing. At least, until now.

This will be less cracky than the earlier version…I think. It will still have humour, but…we'll see how much.

Second author's note: this has been edited slightly for reading improvement as well as clarification of certain points. Major plot points have not change as of this update.

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Prologue - The Queen's Will

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Naruto ran. He ran as he had never run before, his mind lost though his steps were confident. They had to be. Behind him, chittering and scurrying over the uneven surface, flooded a dark tide of insectoid creatures, near invisible in the lightless gloom. The blond eight-year old had yelled his throat hoarse while running away, but no one had come. That was really his own fault, though.

"Maybe…ditching my ANBU…wasn't such…a good idea…" Naruto gasped, as the strange creatures surged after him. He could see the light of the crevice he'd entered the catacombs through, but with the...things…right behind him, he wasn't sure if he could reach it and squeeze through in time.

Even as the first beams of sunlight touched the fleeing boy, one of the pursuing creatures let out a piercing shriek and lunged at the back of his legs. With a nasty squelching noise, it slammed mandibles first into the back of his calf.

"Aagh!" Naruto yelled in pain, reached down, and yanked out the insect, hissing in pain as the thing came free along with a chunk of flesh. Hurling it back at the others, he limped towards the light once more, striving with everything he had. The insect hit the side of the tunnel with a crack, and the whole swarm stopped for a moment at their injured fellow before washing over him in a wave. Hundreds of tiny daggers stabbed into him, burning with something that slowed the world around him. He kept dragging himself towards the light, thinking that everything would be alright if he reached it. Slipping on the hard carapace of one of the larger insects, he smacked his head against the hard stone before slipping into blessed unconsciousness.

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Ten minutes earlier, outside the crevice, two ANBU looked at one another over the small scrap of orange cloth that had torn off on the edges of the opening. Taking a close look at the hole, which was large enough to admit a small child with a bit of a squeeze, the taller of the ANBU looked at his partner.

"…Do you know any Doton jutsu?"

"No. You?"

"Nope. Figures."

"Well, excuse me for being a fire specialist. Not everyone can be like Sharingan Kakashi."

The taller of the two ANBU sighed.

"I guess we'd better go find one of the Aburame, since this is their property. And next time, the kid gets a leash. Damn brat is far too good at getting into places he shouldn't."

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He awoke in darkness and pain, head spinning and vision blurred. Something that felt like a feather was tickling the inside of his head, but when he stirred, it turned into a voice of disjoined and jarring echoes, wispy and difficult to understand:

*destroyer* *threat*

"W…what? I did what? I can't hear you very well, my head hurts…"

*danger* *you will be food*

"Hey, wait! I didn't mean to do any of that, I was just-aaaah!"

A burning sensation on his stomach, as hard, moving things landed on him. A lance of white-hot pain stabbed into him, a roar of rage echoed in the back of his mind, and the wispy voice gave a squeal of agony. Naruto passed out again.

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"What the? What the hell happened here? I'm glad we went to the Aburame first."

"Indeed, you should be. There are dead kikaichuu everywhere, but it appears they managed to implant a queen into the child. The queen and his body will begin to destroy one another if we do not hurry."

"He is still alive then? How interesting."

"If we wish to keep him that way, I shall have to bind it to him."

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He awoke in a hospital bed, a numb feeling all over his body. Against the wall, in a rickety looking chair, the Hokage sat, nursing an unlit pipe.

"Feeling better, Naruto?" the older man asked quietly, his eyes full of relief at seeing Naruto awake and functioning.

"Jiji?" Naruto croaked, his throat dry and scratchy feeling. "What happened?"

Sarutobi's eyes clouded over for a second, and he gave a small sigh before answering.

"You avoided your ANBU long enough to get yourself injured. They found you out cold in the catacombs under the Aburame's compound. Which, by the way, is private for a reason, Naruto. You should be glad that the ANBU who had you under their care for the day saw you squeezing into that hole and immediately went for the Aburame. Otherwise, you might not have simply gotten off with…"

He frowned and fell silent.

"With what, jiji?" Naruto prompted.

Sighing again, the Hokage continued. "You were surrounded by dead insects, of a type we call the kikaichuu. It looked like one of the queens had planned to use you for food, to start a colony…"

Naruto blanched, gulping visibly. "They…they tried to eat me?"

"Yes…Aburame-san here-" the Hokage gestured to a man standing in the corner of the room "-saved you by binding the queen to you."

"Wha...binding? What do you mean?" Naruto asked, completely lost.

The man stirred, pushing up his dark glasses slightly; He stood much taller than the Hokage, with a high-collared jacket, obviously a ninja from the way he carried slid into the conversation smoothly, his deep, calm voice easily heard even though he was speaking quietly.

"Do you mind, Hokage-sama?"

Sarutobi made a dismissive gesture. "By all means, Aburame-san, go ahead and explain it to the boy. You likely know much more than I do about it anyways."

The man nodded and bowed slightly, and turned to Naruto.

"Uzumaki Naruto. I am Shibi. How much do you know of my clan, the Aburame?"

Naruto blinked, nonplussed.

"Uh…not much. You…use bugs, right? Kinda like Kiba uses his dog?"

"Hmm. It is somewhat like that, yes. Unlike the Inuzuka's dogs, our…partners, for lack of a better word, live both within our bodies as well as in special sea-."

"Wait…inside? You mean, you've got BUGS inside you!?" Naruto openly gaped, prompting a wince at his manners from the Hokage. The Aburame merely sighed and continued speaking, ignoring the interruption.

"Yes, we do. And…you do as well now." A grim expression crossed the man's face, unnoticed by Naruto.

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"Something is wrong with the binding, his own seal is doing something strange to ours…"

"It can no longer be stopped, Shibi. If we do not link the queen to him, she will devour his internal organs for nourishment, rather than relying on his chakra."

"True. That would certainly displease the Hokage…Wait... Look, his seal is absorbing the binding seal! Fascinating…it appears to be creating an amalgam of the two."

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"Huh? What do you mean? I'd think I'd know if I had bugs…in…"

The boy's face paled at the expressions on the two older men's faces, a strange feeling going through his body and mind, as if there was something…different inside of him. A sensation akin to what he had felt in the caves tickled in the back of his consciousness, as if something was attempting to whisper into his mind. Naruto shuddered and shook off the feeling, ignoring it for the moment.

"Wait, did something happen while I was down in the caves? Jiji, what's going on?"

The Hokage let out a heavy breath. This was not going very well at all. It looked as if Naruto would require some prodding to recall what had occurred.

"Naruto…what do you remember? Of what happened in the tunnels, I mean."

The blonde shook his head, swallowing nervously before he replied.

"I…I don't know, all I remember was this voice in my head…she was saying something about my killing her children…it felt like my stomach was burning, and then there was this roar, and the voice sounded like it was hurting. That's it…"

The Hokage frowned. A roar? The Kyuubi? Had it responded to a threat on its host?

Shaking his head, he motioned the Aburame to continue the explanation.

"All right, Uzumaki-san. This is what happened down there. You stumbled across a…renegade colony of our special insects, the kikaichuu; a colony that escaped when the Kyuubi attacked the village. We have been allowing its existence to continue, as a fully functioning but unbonded hive of kikaichuu is rare in the extreme. In fact, this past year, we have…"

Shibi cut himself off as a glaze began appearing in the boy's eyes and continued as if nothing had changed.

"We are not sure what exactly happened, as the kikaichuu are normally not hostile to humans; something you did agitated them and the hive queen attempted to implant one of her daughter queens into you. Something happened, though, and when we finally found you, the only kikaichuu still alive was the one implanted into you. We had to bind her to you using our family seals, ones usually used upon birth to bind a kikaichuu queen to us. There were…complications in the sealing, and we're still not totally sure of what will happen."

"So…what's going to happen to me, then?" Naruto asked, fear evident in his voice. "Don't tell me I have to leave the Academy…"

Sarutobi shook his head, a relieved smile crossing his face. Heh. Naruto can't have been that badly affected, if he's worrying about not becoming a ninja…

"No, Naruto. You won't have to leave the Academy, it's just we're not sure how this will affect your chakra. Kikaichuu often have a lasting change on their bearer's chakra control and amount, and because Shibi-san here had to seal the queen into you on such short notice…"

His voice trailed off, and he frowned.

"You'll be out of the hospital later today, Naruto, so just take it easy until then, alright?"

The boy smiled weakly back at the old man, before falling back onto the pillows with a sigh.

"Okay, jiji…I'll just…sleep some more, I guess…"

The Hokage finally gave a full smile, standing up and motioning the Aburame to follow him.

"That's good, Naruto. Get some rest; I'll come back when they release you, alright?"

He left the room quietly, followed by the silent Aburame.

The two ninja began walking through the quiet halls of the hospital, the Hokage deep in thought. Shibi was silent for a time, but he spoke up as they made their way down to the first floor.

"Hokage-sama…did the others already brief you on what happened?"

Sarutobi grimaced, a pained expression crossing his face.

"Yes…you say the Shiki Fuuin actually absorbed this binding seal?"

"Indeed. I don't know how, but it somehow incorporated the kikaichuu binding framework into its own matrix."

"And what do you think that means, Shibi?"

The Aburame shrugged. "Honestly, sir? I have no idea. I consider myself to be moderately skilled with fuuinjutsu, but this Shiki Fuuin of the Yondaime's is so far beyond my abilities that I am entirely unable to even see what it will end up doing to the binding seal."

"Give me your best guess, then, will you?"

Frowning, Shibi thought for a few seconds before answering. "Even at a guess, it is impossible to say for sure. Some of those seal lines looked almost like a second kind of storage seal, besides those that usually store the excess kikaichuu in our seals; though I have no knowledge of just what they would be storing. Also, the seal looks like it will be nourishing them with…that chakra. So his kikai will be…different. I cannot say just how different, but…"

He shrugged once more. Eloquently.

"Damn…" Sarutobi mumbled. "Minato…what did you do that day?"

"Hokage-sama?"

"No matter, Shibi-san. Tell me, will you at least help the boy learn how to reach his queen? I won't order you to teach him any clan secrets, but…I ask you to help him as much as you can."

Shibi took a deep breath before he answered.

"In a sense, the clan will likely be more interested than angry over the loss of the hive, as it has simply change location…but he still destroyed a valuable asset of our clan. We can help him a bit, Hokage-sama. However, he will have to earn more than that…"

"I understand. All I ask is that you help him in any way you are able."

"Hai, Hokage-sama. Perhaps…my son Shino, he may profit from teaching the Uzumaki boy the basics."

Sarutobi nodded, smiling thankfully. "Thank you, Shibi. It really does mean a lot to me."

Nodding politely, they parted ways as they passed through the doors of the hospital, Shibi heading for his home and Sarutobi for the Hokage's tower. The old man mused to himself as he strolled back to his paperwork, worry for Naruto predominant in his thoughts.

"So…a surprise in your seal, eh, Minato? I wonder how this will end up changing the boy's life…"

~Prologue 1 finis~