Yahiko
"Hey." Nagato nudged his arm to get his attention. "It's a little like old times with Jiraiya, isn't it?"
Yahiko nodded. Is my face red? Have I been looking distracted? Is he going to ask?
Nagato shook his head and looked forward again. "I hope he's alright, wherever he is. I'm going to ask what happened to her version of him sometime. Not today; I think tomorrow would be better. Or some time when she wants to talk more about our lives."
Oh, thank god. I honestly have no idea what I would do if he wasn't so nice… Yahiko's stomach felt strange, and he worried he might be sick. Guilty feelings were really starting to eat him up inside.
Why did I tell him that? I shouldn't even be afraid of him in the first place, but admitting it too? Why? I am such a terrible friend! Yahiko took a moment here to remind himself that Nagato was continuing to act perfectly friendly and comfortable with him, as always, so he could stop turning red. No. No, it's not that bad. I'm not really scared of him. It's just that if asking becomes a thing we can do, I'll drown! *mental image of floodgates opening* I just need time to sort things out. I'm allowed to take time. He understands. Everything's fine.
On that note… What did she mean, we can talk to her about anything? Is she saying she knows about things? Would that be good or bad? Do I want anyone to share my worries with?
Yahiko was walking while studiously studying his feet. It was his natural thinking position. He very carefully stepped over a patch of flowers as they passed a bench. Yeah, that's a stupid question. I guess, what I mean is, do I want her to be one of those people? She was Other Me's girlfriend, so it would make sense, but…
This question was giving him nothing more than confusion and a sense of shame, so he put it aside in favor of the much better-feeling question: What is Transformation Jutsu? Wondering about this sent his pulse racing, but in a good way. The name was very exciting, but in a terrifying way. Yahiko had never been so conflicted, nor enjoyed it so much, in his life.
I wonder if Other Me had more of a sense of self-direction. He would have had to, right? Maybe he had a better idea of who he was and what he should do. A ninja can't pay attention to what other people say as much as a normal person in this world can. If I take more ninja training, I'll probably become more self-confident. This hypothesis removed the redness from his face and sent his heart beating in a pleasant way. Being rid of his constant monitoring of what other people thought and the persistent feeling that he was never quite up to standards was, Yahiko realized, what he wanted more than anything in the world.
Konan led them down the park trail she had first followed over a week ago. The three of them noted with delight that the scent-filled flowers, which they all secretly thought of as moon flowers, were still on the bushes and looked capable of opening. Konan turned to look at her two most painful friends, glancing from one to the other and tilting her head towards the flowers. Yahiko nodded immediately. Nagato made sure there was no miscommunication - "Meet back here tonight?" He found that there was no miscommunication. That was good.
Konan hoped the scent and light would do something for her. This silent agreement they had just done, which should have been important, seemed not to matter at all. The winding-down feeling was back, or perhaps it should be called the tranquilized feeling. Physical action was becoming less and less appealing, which was part of the reason why she was far enough ahead that she could not be expected to talk with them. She had no trouble thinking, and using her chakra was still possible. For now.
The steady rhythm of walking helped keep the tired feeling at bay, so she kept walking for as long as she could, all the way to the shop at the end of the trail. There, she sat down and took her first in-depth look at the building. It was very small and square, like a converted one-room shack. She could not see the door from her position in front of the building, so it was probably on the opposite side. The "front" of the building was what she called the huge open window someone had taken out of the wall, so that it was more like a market stall in appearance and people could buy things from outside. Naturally, this was where the snacks were.
"Um…" Yahiko had some questions about her choice of training ground. What were they going to do in the midst of all of these benches and tables? What if anyone showed up? And, most importantly, was she really going to teach them new techniques in front of the middle-aged Latina woman behind the counter?
"Can I help you?" said woman asked. Her shirt was thick and purple, perfectly matching her heavyset figure. Looped earrings dangled from her rather large earlobes. She had three rings on her friendly-looking hands, two on her left and one on her right; none of them were wedding rings.
"How has business been today?" Konan asked.
The woman wrinkled her nostrils. "Not good. I gotta say, if there's not a rush before the weather turns bad later, the whole day'll be a wash. Might as well not have opened."
Yahiko inquired about the weather. She nodded and informed him, "Oh, yeah. Forecast is predicting some heavy rain, maybe a bit of thunder, starting in the late afternoon. You can see the clouds are already moving in."
Konan shook her head. "There will be moderate rain and no thunder. That can't reasonably be called bad weather."
"You sound awfully sure about that." The woman raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
"It rains often where I'm from, in all different ways. We know a lot about rain clouds," Konan explained.
The woman chuckled. "Really? You got all kinds of words for different types of rain, like Eskimos and snow?"
"Not words, but phrases, yes." Konan wondered who or what Eskimos were.
"Well, I hope you're right. Bad enough having to be inside, without having to keep all your electricity off too." She turned to Nagato and Yahiko. "You people going to buy anything?"
That was how the three of them enjoyed ice cream and introduced Konan to trail mix. The ice cream was a pleasant surprise; the woman implied that some admirer of hers had bought her some, but she hadn't wanted it right then so it'd been taking up space in an insulated container in the fridge ever since. She had many thanks for them for taking it off her hands, as it meant she could turn the fridge to a more moderate setting and not freeze her teeth off trying to eat.
As for the trail mix, Nagato had noticed Konan looking at it. Once she determined what it was for, she pronounced it an excellent idea. "Travel rations were notorious for tasting terrible," she explained. "If this could be reduced to a more compact form…"
Yahiko watched Nagato's serving of ice cream start to drip without its holder noticing. His own serving was already gone. His foot jiggered up and down. Calm down, it's just friendly banter, like you wanted, said one part of him. What is Transformation Jutsu, and when is she going to get around to teaching me?! demanded another. Despite his deep breathing, the impatient side was winning.
He was annoyed enough to seriously consider speaking up and interrupting Nagato when Konan stood up, interrupting Nagato for him. She laid the bag of trail mix on the table. "Transformation Jutsu," she announced abruptly.
Nagato noticed the ice cream dribbling over his hand for the first time and inhaled what was left, giving himself a bad case of brain freeze. He propped himself up on the table as he stood, his other hand massaging his face while he winced. Yahiko remained at full attention, as he had been ever since Konan started to get up. Konan kept her eyes on his feet. It was far enough from his face to be comfortable, but close enough that she could see his overall body language. His posture reminded her of Deidara, when she had first met him in this world. Yahiko must have been serious about getting serious. Her own chakra warmed as a result. He would need to be serious if he expected to get anything from her.
Nagato remembered to swallow and press his tongue to the back of his mouth. "What is it?" he croaked.
"Transformation Jutsu is a basic technique that provides a solid foundation for many more advanced strategies and techniques," Konan recited. She had several flashbacks to Jiraiya sensei giving them lectures like this in the very beginning of their training, when he spent a couple months catching them up to speed on what lifelong shinobi would have learned in an academy. "It can be used for deception, infiltration, giving yourself needed abilities in battle, pranks, and general entertainment."
Yahiko was badly torn between the magnetic draw of her words on his attention and the middle-aged ordinary person still watching them from the booth. Ignore her. Konan's decided to; if I'm going to be more of what I need to be, I need to follow her lead. He managed to mostly block the woman from his thoughts, with the help of moving behind Nagato to avoid seeing her.
"Sounds very useful," Nagato said admiringly.
"Indeed." Was Yahiko seeing things, or did Konan's eyes flick in his direction as she said that? All was as it should be when he looked again.
"Transformation Jutsu is, well, exactly what it says," she told them. "These are the signs for it. Make these signs and concentrate fully on your desired form before channeling your chakra."
Nagato grinned. He followed her instructions and thought of his most cherished memory, making a last-minute decision to modify it a bit. There was a puff of air, and a giant toad that looked exactly like the costumes he and Yahiko had worn that time sat on the ground. He managed a halfway decent ribbit, and hopped past Konan in one giant leap. He let go of his chakra and resumed his regular form, laughing and doing a little dance as he went back to his previous spot.
"Crazy people." The NPC shook her head. "Couldn't you have gone for something cute?"
Yahiko did not hear this. His mind was clicking along, going from transformation to himself to… Oh. Oh, that's what she… Oh. He slammed his throat shut before a whimper could escape, and suddenly found himself hyperaware of the normal lady watching them. Oh. It was difficult to move or breathe all of a sudden. OH.
Konan reached out and caught Nagato as he passed. "Excellent demonstration," she told him. "I expect you both will practice on your own time. Now, let's move on to the basic Clone Jutsu."
As she drew out their lesson with overly long descriptions of what exactly the Clone Jutsu did, Yahiko recovered from his shock and came to some important conclusions. There's no way that was an accident. She definitely knows something. And she's...fine with it? Dare I say supportive? I was right. She was definitely sending me a message in what she said earlier.
A flicker of a memory passed and was gone. Konan standing somewhere, walking away, firelight. A dream? It had the slippery feel of one. This memory only reinforced Yahiko's final decision.
If she wasn't so supportive, it might be fine. But this… It's too much. Too close. There's no way I can talk to her now.
Kisame
The shark man looked up at what little of the sky he could see through gaps in the treetops. He had a bad feeling about the incoming clouds. Something in the air felt like rain. I can give it a few hours, I think. He was no weather forecaster, but his instincts felt right.
Samehada crashed through a bush in his excitement to return. He opened his mouth, showing Kisame a piece of hair snagged on what had been part of a bush. "Nice," Kisame praised. Same spit it out and cheerfully wagged his tail. He's got tracking skills. Who knew?
"Where did you find that?" Samehada rattled loudly, and raced off. Kisame followed him several hills south. This poor bush. Looks like I've found a test subject for those pain relieving powers Yahiko has.
Kisame examined the area around the bush for any sign of where the wolf that left the fur had come from. Damn. If I had a more general sense of smell, I might at least be able to tell how old this clump is. The lack of tracks in the dirt nearby seemed to indicate that it was a little too old for him to use.
Kisame looked around for his shark. The odds were very long, but desperate times… He spotted Samehada a short distance away, licking the air. "Hey, Same, can you taste any chakra around here?"
The shark whined and continued licking the air. He turned in circles as he did so. Kisame stayed where he was so as not to contaminate the scene and watched.
Samehada whined uncertainly. He wasn't sure how to answer his Human Cousin. Was it chakra, or wasn't it? It tasted like it might be edible, but not like any chakra he'd ever tasted on any of the Red Cloud People. It didn't taste like any animal chakra either, so that ruled out everything he knew.
Of course, Samehada remembered, they weren't looking specifically for chakra. They were looking for fun and interesting things. So as long as Same could taste this strange stuff and follow it, it didn't really matter if it was chakra or not, as long as it was something interesting to follow. He started to circle the spot in ever-widening spirals, looking for the direction it went.
When he was done, he slapped his fins on the ground and raised his tail to point in two directions. One direction was south, towards town. The other was east, the way they were going. Same had more than enough brains to start nudging his head east, which Kisame agreed to. They set off, with Same running as far ahead as he could to taste the trail. He soon discovered that this was going to be very hard. Apparently whatever had stood in that spot had stood there for some time, leaving a stronger impression. It took all of Same's concentration to pick up on the very, very, very faint traces left from when the strange thing was moving.
"We could just head in that direction and hope to get lucky. That's what the point was," Kisame offered. Same felt bad, but was forced to agree. This trail had to be at least a day old, probably more. That was much too long in a forest crawling with new life.
His disappointment didn't last. The forest was crawling with new life, after all. Kisame sighed as he watched his shark race into a thicket, frightening several well-hidden birds. I'm almost envious. He doesn't have very big problems to think of. Then again, the problems don't stop existing just because he can't see them, so it means he can't do much to fix them. Is ignorance bliss?
In this way, an hour passed. Kisame figured that logically, it was better to be able to face problems than not, but emotionally the idea of just not seeing them continued to be very appealing. The appeal only got stronger as he and Samehada continued through the forest, with Same very obviously loving this little adventure. I should have taken him before. Great, I have to deal with guilt now? Unfortunately, yes. It was true that previous days had been rain-free, with evidence of overnight spritzes showing in the morning but nothing during the day. It was a fact that if he had taken Same out for exploration before, the shark could have spent hours and hours frolicking in the woods. But he is a water creature, so maybe…? Kisame realized, to his further shame, that he did not know how Samehada felt about rain.
"Hey, Same." The shark stopped growling at a squirrel and came back. The squirrel took this as a reason to make the smuggest, most egotistical sounds Kisame had ever heard. Shouldn't a squirrel in dog territory know better? Kisame figured it was his moral duty to teach it a lesson, so he picked up a small rock and threw it at the squirrel.
He hit the squirrel on its fragile head, causing it to fall off the tree trunk and lie stunned and confused on the ground below. Some lessons are fatal. Tough luck, you little bastard.
Samehada lolled his tongue out of his mouth and imitated laughter. Right. What did I call him for? Oh, yeah, shame. Kisame pointed up at a gap in the treetops. "It's gonna rain. How do you feel about rain?"
Same tilted his head to one side, then the other, before shaking himself. Rain was okay. It made everything go into hiding and covered up all the interesting noises with its sound, but on the other hand, it made everything wet. It ranked a solid Okay for these reasons.
"Eh." Well, if Same didn't have any strong objections, Kisame supposed he had no reason to. "Personally, I'd rather be inside somewhere warm. I'm planning on turning back if we don't see any sign of people soon."
Fifteen minutes later, Kisame was ready to do just that when he heard Samehada go silent behind him. Before he knew it, he was turning and reaching for something he didn't have (a weapon? The shape of my fingers suggests a knife of some kind). Fortunately, it was just a wolf, alone and already carrying prey in its jaws. It had long, smooth, dark fur consisting of mingled dark brown, black and dark grey. Its tail was confidently up, indicating a wolf of some rank. It stood still, its ears twitching as it looked from Samehada to Kisame and back. Kisame noted that the squirrel in its jaws looked an awful lot like the one he'd injured with the rock.
Samehada was still trying to decide what to do. His first inclination was a friendly greeting, but he knew rushing up to it might not be taken as friendly. He settled for slapping his fins on the ground and making his best impression of a bark, which for all his doglike mannerisms wasn't very good. The wolf just looked at him some more.
The silence was drawing out too long for Kisame's comfort. "Hello," he offered. "We're looking for some people who smell like wolf. Do you know where they are?"
The wolf tilted its head. Does it understand me? Kisame had thought it might. He was not, however, prepared for it to carefully place its prey on the ground and bark at them once before running off. The hell? Maybe it's fetching someone. Kisame beckoned Samehada to his side. There was a squeak, and the badly traumatized squirrel thrashed its way upright before running off. Huh. Maybe some lessons don't have to be fatal after all. That has to be a good sign about the temperament of these wolves, right?
The wolf came back soon with two other wolves and a guy. Kisame noticed right away that all three wolves maintained some distance from the guy, who looked distinctly out of place among them. He might just have been the first they could find. Kisame saw all this before he noticed what normal people would have considered to be the guy's most distinctive feature, which caused his mouth to fall open in astonishment.
The man with the orange and black hair was similarly taken aback at the sight of Kisame, but much more so. His mouth fell open all the way and his eyes got a strange look in them, as if he wasn't quite seeing Kisame, but rather something else. Samehada crawled up Kisame's back to get a better look, and chirred at the man. He blinked, but did not stir. Tiger Person was strange, Same decided.
Kisame recovered himself quickly, and muttered, "I heard there were wolf people around. I didn't hear anything about, uh, other people."
The man swallowed. "Um, uh…" Finally, he mustered the self control to look away from the gill marks on Kisame's face. He immediately leaned forward just a little to take a closer look at the rest of Kisame. The wolves wagged their tails and relaxed. "Sorry, sorry," the guy apologized as Kisame reflexively leaned away. "I just have a lot of questions, and...and… Wait…"
He looked at Kisame with recognition in his eyes. "Are you a friend of Hidan's? He said he knew someone who was half shark."
"Huh?" said Samehada. Huh is a very versatile word. It is considered to be the best candidate for a universal word - a word that is found in all languages - because some approximation of it is what all humans vocalize when confused and surprised. Samehada wasn't human, and didn't have human vocal cords, but what he did have worked well enough. This was one word that he could say with no problems, although it did come out sounding more like "Ra?" than "Huh."
"Seconded," Kisame agreed. "Hold on, you've met Hidan? When?"
"Yesterday," the guy answered. "He was out in the forest, said that he wanted to meet the neighbors. He dug up a lot of dirt outside the front door."
Well, he did have better things to do after we got back than share that bit of news, Kisame reasoned. "Uh-huh. So what's your name?"
The tiger man extended a hand. "Hatake Mitsuki. I'm half-tiger, which is probably obvious."
Kisame shook with him. "Hoshigaki Kisame. I inherited this from my dad's side of the family; they might have a shark in there somewhere. This is Samehada." Same waved at Mitsuki, warbling cheerfully as well.
Mitsuki stepped back and waved. "So, ah, let me show you where we're staying. It feels like it's going to rain soon."
"Please." This guy seemed pleasant enough. Kisame was more than happy to follow him somewhere dry and hopefully warm. The wolves were very well-trained; they obviously trusted Mitsuki's opinion of Kisame, because they allowed him to go alone. They disappeared off into the trees, already back to pack business. Even the smartest domestic dogs don't do that. I think. At least, Kisame had never heard of any dog leaving to attend to its own business when its master didn't need it. They acted more like coworkers than dogs. They probably are like coworkers. The line between human and animal was obviously blurred around here.
The two humans came to a small wooden cabin, which had other buildings beyond it that Kisame only caught glimpses of. Voices came from inside. Mitsuki turned and asked Kisame to stay outside on the porch. "It's just, there are some things… We have family stuff. It has to do with sharks and other animals like that, so, anyone else would probably react like I did. I'll just prepare them, okay?"
Kisame obligingly leaned against the wall to the side of the door. "I will have so many questions," he warned.
"Yeah, of course." Mitsuki nodded, and went inside. It sounded like he was interrupting the beginnings of a party. Kisame looked up at the clouds, which had turned an ominous shade of blue. It was already darker than it would have been on any other cloudy day. There are many worse places to be at than a party, he decided. They're just going to have to go without me for a while.
Oh crap, Deidara! He remembered that there were people who wanted to talk with him, and sent Deidara, Kakuzu, and the group chat a quick message. To Deidara and Kakuzu, he explained he'd found shelter from the rain and was going to be staying instead of going back to the lake. To the group chat, he elaborated: Went out today to see more of the forest and hopefully find our neighbors. I did. They work with wolves, at least some of them are half- other animals that aren't wolves, and they seem nice. Ask Hidan for further details. Then he turned his phone off to conserve battery, and listened.
The cabin had gone quiet in the minutes he'd spent on his phone, although not entirely silent. There was the occasional one or two voices from inside. Kisame pressed his ear against the wood, but couldn't hear what they were saying. That "family stuff" sounded much too interesting. Mitsuki wouldn't have said that if he didn't want Kisame to be curious, right? The one time I really want to be eavesdropping, and I can't… Kisame cursed his bad luck.
The plants were starting to make noise, and a fine drizzle just barely showed on Samehada's scales as the shark sniffed around the dug-up patch of dirt. It tasted a lot like Big Person's chakra. He wondered if that was from being in one place for a long time, or from it only having been a day. Samehada was starting to wonder about his own tracking abilities. His Human Cousin liked it when he could find people's traces and follow them. How long ago could people leave traces before Samehada lost the ability to follow them? He wasn't sure. Speed of movement probably changed things, too. He wagged his tail and thought about following people's traces around the house sometime when he didn't have anything else to do. He really needed to know what he could do.
Kisame gave up on trying to eavesdrop just as Mitsuki came back outside. He was smiling and his eyes were bright. "They're really interested to see you," he told Kisame. "We've got water in case your friend would like some, and Sakumo's here. Hidan said he already knew about Sakumo when he came by."
Kisame nodded. "Konan met him on her first night in this world. That's how we know about you guys."
Mitsuki opened his mouth, and closed it. "Nope, not gonna ask now. You should get inside first so everyone can hear. I hope you don't mind, but we do have a lot of questions."
"I know that feeling." They are very kind. I guess I can try to answer as much as I can. Samehada rattled happily at Kisame's feet. He looked down at his favorite shark, then up to see a wolf standing at the edge of the trees. It looked over the cabin, and its tail wagged like it wanted to join the party. Or maybe it was just happy to be looking after its people. Kisame looked down at Samehada again. The shark rumbled a question at him, ignoring the open door.
A wave of awfulness passed through his body again. It was familiar this time. Kisame recognized it from when he had rescued Samehada from the aquarium and briefly suspected himself of being lonely. Unlike that time, he was very conscious of the feeling easing, of feeling the urge to smile. Same...the wolves… He understood what they were now.
Maybe I was a little bit lonely, he conceded for probably the first time ever. But these people would get me. They would understand. They already do - they got water for Same. The relief was almost painful. It had been a relief to have others around who were strange, but it was a whole other level of relief to meet people who were strange in the same way as him. It seemed incomparably precious.
Kisame growled at nothing just to keep himself from surrendering to soppiness, and walked inside as if nothing at all was special. Samehada knew that was a lie. Human Cousin would probably tell him the truth later, when they were alone, after water and a good petting and talking. Same was very patient under those conditions! He raced inside, startling Mitsuki. The tiger man's head was already bursting with questions about what Samehada was, and this speed was one more to add to the pile. He resolved to lie down and take something for his oncoming headache as soon as possible. After hearing what Kisame had to say, of course.
General
The wood creaked invitingly, the warm air folded around him like a giant hug, and the lighting resembled firefight, though Kisame did not hear a fire. His chest squeezed again. What were these pangs for?
"Hi!" waved a man with long white hair tied back into a ponytail. He got up and went to shake Kisame's hand. "Hatake Sakumo."
"Hoshigaki Kisame," Kisame replied. "So you're that guy Konan met. She mentioned you."
Sakumo's eyes widened. "You know her? Well," he continued as he led Kisame over to a comfy chair, "did she tell you about our deal?"
Same raced into Kisame's lap as soon as he had finished sitting. He was expecting that, and already had his fingers ready for scratching. "No. Feel free to elaborate," he muttered. Samehada's tail swished, and the shark's head bumped against Kisame's ribs as he purred.
"Um." Sakumo took a few seconds to recover from his surprise. "She asked me several questions about what was happening and how things were. Or, she didn't ask, really; I just ended up telling her. In exchange for that treatment, I asked that she tell me anything she discovered about what's going on."
Someone brought over a plate of whatever they were having for dinner before Kisame could ask just what the hell he was being so evasive about. It smelled good, although Kisame didn't recognize it. He let the plate cool on the end table next to him and looked around to see who was here, instead.
The chair he sat in was next to two sofas arranged facing each other. Both were occupied, fortunately by people who knew to look completely disinterested around a stranger. A couple wore masks, although Kisame could plainly see others that tore into their food with the same teeth that he had kind of seen poking out from under Mitsuki's lips. Seeing them in action, he saw that they were additions to a normal set of teeth, they were very sharp, and it would be very bad to be on the receiving end of them. Not so different. The same could be said of his own pointed teeth.
Samehada lifted his head onto the arm of the chair to get a better look. He licked the air, and found it delicious. He let out a loud cheerful whine, and started panting while waving his fins and looking up at Kisame.
"No," Kisame decided. "This place has a kind of...atmosphere of people. It's part of the homey feeling. You get fed perfectly well; there's no need to mess with the atmosphere here."
Same sighed and gave the air just one more lick, before settling back down. He saw more wolf people (who stood out with their wolfish body language), tiger people (who looked only a little more comfortable than Human Cousin, and had strangely colored hair), and what he guessed were snake people, from their lack of hair and dark scales. Although, when one of them looked up at Kisame for a moment, Same saw that something in the way it looked at him was different from any snake he'd ever seen. The guy sitting next to that one looked like a real snake, though.
With Samehada's familiar weight on him and everyone else pretending to be interested in their food or each other, Kisame was able to relax a little. He balanced the plate on Samehada's back, nestling it between his chest and the dorsal fin so it would not move, then stuck his left arm out for the shark to nibble on.
A little relaxed did not by any stretch mean fully relaxed. He was very, very conscious of the occasional glance in his direction, and of one person watching him openly. Sakumo soon went into another room, though. That still left the people who were trying, and failing, to have a separate discussion on the couches.
The guy to Kisame's left, who the end table rightfully belonged to, cleared his throat. "Hello," he greeted them awkwardly. "I'm Satori. Snake branch." He had hair, but it didn't shine right in the soft lamplight. His green eyes were soft, like moss, and flecks of green made patches across his otherwise pale skin.
Kisame grunted. "How many branches are there?"
Satori shifted in his seat. "In general, we're just now learning more about that. We're really spread out; we've lost track of some things like that. I know, sounds hard to do, but it really is not in this family. In this room, we have four: Snake, Wolf, Tiger, and Desert Lizard."
Kisame stopped eating. "Desert Lizard?" There are a bunch of lizards that live in the desert. Does he not know the species name? Or… None of the desert dwelling lizards Kisame knew of *ahem* were the right size. It would have to be one giant lizard, the size of a monitor or more, to have half human kids. He deftly avoided that mental image, and concentrated on his question.
The guy who had the unsnakelike look in his eyes nodded. "Isn't supposed to exist, but somehow does. At least, we think it does. It exists in our memories (but who knows how trustworthy those are). Anyway, it's a kind of giant predatory lizard that hunts in the desert."
"Hunts what? Camels?" Kisame's disbelief was stretching. Could he be talking about an animal that only exists in her world? But how could an entire species be displaced here? We don't even have any deserts! And if her world has species that don't exist here, I have so many questions.
The lizard man shrugged. "Probably, if camels were around. They're more generalist than that. You have to be willing to eat anything to survive in the desert."
Samehada warbled. Whatever Kisame might have said to continue this conversation fell by the wayside as he realized that Samehada didn't fit the description of any shark in this world either, and he ate chakra, which only existed in Konan's world. What species is he? Did he have a species? Konan had said Samehada was a sword. What the fuck? So he could be an otherworldly species of shark, or else a sword that's somehow been given a soul and a personality and… What the fuck is going on over there?
"Are you all right?" Satori asked.
"Get Sakumo back here. I have way too many questions about everything," Kisame growled.
Sakumo was back very shortly. "Masume says you have questions about everything. Is that good or bad?"
Kisame snorted. "It doesn't matter whether it's good or bad. All that matters is that it's how things are. You never actually said what you wanted to talk to her about, but I'm gonna guess you were referring to our general existence. Why we're weird, why we have the abilities we do, that sort of thing?"
Sakumo nodded.
"Well, get used to your head hurting. The more you learn, the more questions you have. That's how it works." Kisame groaned and returned his mostly empty plate to the table, freeing Samehada to lick his face in concern. He patted his shark, absorbing himself in the feeling of scales against his skin. I have no fucking clue what I would do without him. No idea at all. If Same was the whole world, life would be a lot more pleasant. Kisame resolved to tell Samehada how valuable he was as soon as it was quiet.
Sakumo was unsure what to make of this. Did only Kisame think like this, or was it really true for everyone? He looked around at the rest of his clan that was assembled. They looked faintly anxious as well, until Chiki, sole representative of the Desert Lizard branch, shook his head and crossed his arms. He looked around defiantly, and shrugged at Sakumo as if to say "So what if that's true? So?" Sakumo nodded. They couldn't exactly back out of knowing what they were, could they?
"I take it that means you've learned a lot from knowing her," Sakumo surmised.
Kisame lowered his hand from his face. "If by that you mean had my entire world shattered and rebuilt backwards, then yes."
Samehada twisted to slap Kisame's nose with a fin. Human Cousin was being overly dramatic. Why did humans do that? Same didn't know, but it had to stop. Do humans like being scared or sad? That was the only hypothesis that could explain it.
Kisame rubbed his nose. Same's right. I'm starting to sound whiny. He shook his head. "But I do have to say, it makes for some interesting discussions. Should I start at the beginning?"
Sakumo nodded. Kisame took a minute to remember and finish his food, then began with what Konan had said on that first night. He stopped at the end of the previous weekend to see how his audience was taking this information.
The room was silent. Some of it was angry silence, some of it was baffled silence, and the rest was good ol' fashioned "get me out of here" silence. The angry ones were the first to speak.
"So we're, what, fakes?" was the lizard guy's interpretation.
Kisame shook his head. Before he could explain anything, a baffled tiger person asked, "We can do magic? Like...whenever? There have to be limits, right? When? How? How long? What kinds?"
"Whenever you want, by using chakra, for however long your chakra lasts, and -" Kisame counted in his head "- at least 6 kinds in four categories. We've got elemental jutsu, like earth and water. We've got really specific jutsu that is probably unique to a single person, like Konan's paper and Deidara's clay. And we've got illusions that Itachi can cast through his eyes, and Sasori has a thing where he makes chakra itself into a substance and shapes it. There's probably way more of each category, and probably more categories."
"...Oh." The tiger guy's eyes were starting to widen. Kisame thought that he was probably the kind of guy who liked to organize Pokemon by element and purpose. He seemed like the type to categorize. Kisame liked him already. We could really use someone to make sense of all this. I'm gonna talk more with this guy.
"Hey, what's your name?" he asked.
"Ruta," the guy answered.
"Nice." Kisame grinned at him. "I just now remembered that there's a lot more, too. Nagato has purple eyes with rings in them, and Konan implied that all of the really weird powers he has come from those. We're talking manipulation of physics, something about reanimating dead people, summoning animals, you name it. Itachi's illusion stuff also works because he has weird eyes. Looks like there are some powers that only individual body parts have, that don't belong to people at all."
"Woah," Ruta swooned. "Awesome." His mind was being blown open and it was fantastic.
"You," Kisame motioned at him," are about to become one of, if not the, most popular guy around here. Seriously."
"How soon can I meet Konan? There must be a system in place to understand all this in the world she comes from. It would be so helpful," Ruta gushed.
"Y'know, I always wondered why he didn't go into the sciences," a half-wolf whispered to his half-snake neighbor.
"God was just saving him for his true calling," the half-snake whispered back.
The half-wolf hesitated. "Y'know, all this stuff about magic and worlds is making me really hesitant to question your insistence on God."
The half-snake was disappointed. He actually enjoyed their little arguments. "Aw man…"
"Relax. You know I'll be happy to talk about how this affects our understanding of God, or whatever," the half-wolf reassured.
His serpentine friend hissed. "I haven't even thought about that. This is a theological nightmare."
Kisame thought, Now would not be a good time to blab about her personal life. Not that he had ever been in the mood for gossip, but this was a particularly bad time to have loose lips. "Konan's busy dealing with a lot of other things, but I'm sure she'll love to talk to you when she has spare time."
"Great!" Ruta's eyes were wide. Kisame could almost see his tail swishing. "Do you have anything else to talk about? Hold on, I'll get my computer. Give me a sec!" He jumped up and ran like his life was on the line.
Another one of the half-wolves cleared his throat. It was the same one who had gotten Sakumo earlier. Masume. "We got water earlier," he reminded Kisame.
Samehada squealed, and looked up at Kisame. His entire body trilled with joy. Kisame stared back at him. "Seriously?" You think you have to ask?
Samehada squealed again, and leaped off Kisame's lap to race after Masume. Water and petting and good things! This was the best day ever.
"What is he?" Mitsuki asked. It seemed finally safe to do so.
"Well, there are two options," Kisame replied. "The first is that he's a kind of shark that's not supposed to exist in this world. The second is that he's a magic sword that's somehow been given a soul, a personality, etcetera etcetera. Maybe both - in her world, he was a sword, and she looked surprised to see that he's a shark over here. How much further do you want me to go?"
"This is far enough." Mitsuki looked like he'd just chugged a gallon of ice cream continuously.
"Oh, that's why you looked weird earlier," Satori realized.
Sakumo started shaking his head violently, flinging his hair out in all directions like a dog shaking out his wet fur. "Okay," he gathered himself together. "Okay." He turned to Kisame. "What about now? Let's just avoid the existential questions and stick to the here and now. What's going on right now?"
"Back!" Ruta returned with a laptop computer. "Did I miss anything?"
"Samehada's either a magic sword with a soul, or an otherworldly shark like your desert lizards. I don't know which," Kisame told him.
Ruta said nothing. It would have taken needed energy away from his fingers, which were already typing at speeds that made Kisame's fingers threaten to cramp. He left him to that and turned back to Sakumo.
"Bad news." He shrugged at the wolf ninja. "We know almost nothing about the why or how. We have learned a lot about what is going on, though. One of us, Yahiko, actually had his original die years ago. So did your original. We have no idea why you two exist now, when this cloning phenomenon wasn't even happening then.
"Secondly, we're not the only strange things around here. We're starting to get suspicious about this portion of the 'real world' we're supposedly in." Kisame accompanied that sentence with finger quotes. "Namely, we're starting to think it isn't the real world, but actually a bubble world or something. Deidara thinks it might be a video game, based on the fact that there is only one of every kind of building in town and they all have exactly what we need. Hidan says it's not a video game, but he has something wrong with him that prevents him from having information like that all the time or from knowing where it comes from, so he can't confirm shit. The demon kid down the street probably knows a lot of things, but he's not telling anyone because he likes to watch us figure things out for ourselves."
Kisame decided to be merciful and stop there. "On the plus side, we have found some patterns. We all have the exact same abilities as our originals, we all have the same basic temperament and similar features as our originals' personalities, and we even have similar relationships to each other. From what Konan can tell, there was no significant delay between their death and us showing up here. So the way it works is that they die, we show up, and we are exactly like them in every way except for the ways that would be changed by having different memories."
Sakumo fell down, going to his knees and falling backwards, so that he ended up sprawled against the corner of the couch. Kisame winced. And that's not even close to everything. Hostile demons, gods, whatever the hell was happening with the lake earlier… I'm actually very up to date and having remarkably little trouble digesting all this. And here he'd thought he was one of the most skeptical people in the group.
"Woah, whoa, woah." A half-tiger was shaking his head. "Are you even serious? This sounds like complete crap. It's totally unbelievable."
Kisame nodded. This guy's reasonable. "Yeah, it is. It completely is. I would love to not believe it. Hold on to that for as long as you can; trust me. It's so much more comfortable than having to deal with all this."
Kisame was being very serious. He really did envy this past version of himself. Unfortunately, his encouragement was having the opposite effect from what he wanted. The guy looked shaken. Oh crap. I should have pushed him more if I wanted him to buckle down. This poor guy…
"Who wants painkillers?" Mitsuki held up a bottle of ibuprofen he'd gotten for his headache.
Kisame got up and silently edged around the gathering of people who crowded around Mitsuki, heading in the direction Masume and Samehada had gone in. What have I done? He wondered if Konan had felt like this.
Masume met him at the beginning of a hallway. "Hey! He's really friendly. I had a lot of fun showing him what we have, and he splashed all over me." The half-wolf indicated his soaked clothing. "How are things?"
"Not good," Kisame replied darkly. "Ruta might like his systems, but everyone else is more interested in their real lives. Maybe I shouldn't have told them so much. Gods… I don't think this was as good an idea as it looked like."
Masume scratched behind his ear. "Can you give me a one sentence rundown?"
Kisame obliged. "There are some people who don't belong and we don't know why, reality might not be real, the gods are real and they're messing with us and we can't do anything about it, but at least we can know for certain that we're almost identical to our originals who were a bunch of bastards."
"Ah." Masume looked back down the hallway. "That sounds hard."
"Yes."
"It sounds like when you're chasing after something in a dream, and suddenly it disappears and turns into something else, and you're climbing a mountain now instead of running, and you don't know anything except that you have to climb, and you're afraid because climbing is much harder than running," Masume thought aloud.
Kisame took a second look at him. "Philosophical, are we?"
"I think differently." Masume smiled proudly. "I think it'll be okay. That kind of dream isn't a nightmare. It's a dream where everything's changing, but somehow Dream You is always perfectly able to keep up. Nightmares are dreams where things aren't changing and you can't get them to, so this is actually the opposite of a nightmare. It's like dancing; you always have to keep up with the beat. This sounds fun, actually!"
Kisame was reminded strongly of Hidan. Just like with Hidan, he felt like he could almost understand, like this guy's logic was only a step ahead and if he could just reach, he'd understand perfectly. I'm surrounded by freakin' Buddhas, or something.
Masume shrugged. "Of course, that's how I think. Just because I think differently doesn't mean I feel differently. Just give me a few days to catch up, work all the shivers out, that sort of thing. But I think it'll ultimately be okay." He took a deep breath, held it, then let it out. His breath trembled on the exhale. He wriggled his shoulders, whispered, "Okay," and went to join the others.
"Oh, thank god," Kisame muttered to nobody. I was starting to get worried there. One Hidan is enough. I don't think it's possible to have two without going a little insane over time. He continued down the hallway in search of Samehada.
A cheerful warbling, interspersed with the occasional roar, guided him to the exact room. He stood outside the door and looked in. It was a bathroom with a nice, rounded tub taking up half the floor space. Another quarter of the floor around it was now soaking wet. Samehada trilled a happy tune as he nudged a rubber ducky around the tub. It sounded like he was singing to it.
The singing and the nudging reminded Kisame of something he had learned about killer whales. They used their noses to push their babies to the water's surface for their first breath. Sinking beneath the water for minimal surface disturbance, Same swam to the opposite side of the ducky and nudged it gently away from the edge of the tub, guiding it to a more open area. He continued making low sounds that sounded like singing the whole time. The ducky rolled from side to side as little fishbones of water crossed the surface below it, and obeyed.
Kisame swallowed past a sudden tightness in his throat. He stepped back beyond the doorway, careful not to draw attention. Silently, he watched Samehada care for the rubber ducky. His chest ached.
Yeah. He was right. Everything really will be okay. Watching his shark guide and play with a rubber duck like it was a child convinced Kisame that, as long as this could happen, the world had to be all right. Sometimes, once in a while, Same could be the whole world.
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