Kisame
Time to get you out of my head, you annoying traitorous weasel.
Kisame bared his sharp teeth in a snarl. Anger was good. It helped him greatly to view his current journey as a mission to prove his original wrong, rather than a dangerous gamble he was making on little more than a hunch. He could easily see his too-reflexive paranoia tripping him up if he dared think the second. It was better to be mad. Either this world is like that, or it's not. Either way, I'll have the information to make up my own damn mind, instead of having to be jerked around like a doll.
Samehada curled up in the backseat, lolling his tongue out of his mouth. He didn't seem bothered or upset at all, so Kisame guessed that his favorite shark knew and understood. The shark draped himself over the back of the passenger-side seat and stared out the windshield. Kisame wondered what he thought of the view. He also wondered what the tongue-lolling-out meant. For some reason, he couldn't stop seeing the gesture as: Is he laughing?
Samehada began to wiggle back and forth and make high pitched frantic noises as they got nearer. When they arrived, he was flopping up and down and wiggling in every conceivable direction in the backseat. Kisame was glad he'd chosen to give his shark the backseat instead of asking him to wear a seatbelt. It would not have gone over well.
Kisame parked, forced the snarl away from his face, opened the door, forced it away again, and opened the door to the backseat. By the time Samehada tumbled out and climbed on his back, his teeth were bared again. He slammed the rear door shut and took several moments to collect himself. Samehada licked his hair to maximum spikiness and chirred soothingly.
Kisame fought to relax the hand that he was propping himself against the car with. "I don't like it," he growled to Same. "It's wrong to be freaked out for no reason like this. What am I, a kitten? I know I won't let you be taken away from me if the absolute worst happens, so why do I care? There's no excuse for this."
Samehada bit his upper arm, clamping his teeth just hard enough for Kisame to wince. "Thanks," he muttered. Strangely, the pain helped. He was expecting there to be some pain today, so maybe it helped validate his instincts and made them feel less ignored? Sakumo had said something related to that. He said he knew about "working with" instincts. So maybe I shouldn't just throw them away? Kisame wished he could have learned even one tip or strategy for doing so before today. Oh well, too late now. He removed his hand from the car and petted Samehada with it as they walked inside.
Samehada understood that Human Cousin had learned bad things from his Original and was nervous, so he wriggled backward until his head just barely peeked over Kisame's shoulder and clamped himself tightly to Kisame's back. Having made himself no more visible than he needed to be, Samehada proceeded to sample the air with numerous quick flicks of his tongue. He'd forgotten how good it tasted! The blend of humans was much greater than what he'd gotten used to over the past week, and peppered throughout was the smooth, salty undercurrent of chakra from the sea life residing here. He turned every signal up to eleven so that Human Cousin would be unable to miss how absolutely, incredibly happy and grateful Samehada was to be brought back here. This was not a bad, scary place.
He would make a good masseuse. Kisame felt every tense muscle in his back relax from the force of Samehada's rumbling. He briefly wondered if this was why cats purred to heal themselves. Samehada was no cat, but his deep rumbling felt like it was healing something all the same. He reached back to pet Samehada on the snout. I hear you loud and clear.
Thus fortified, he decided to immediately find some excuse to be in the vicinity of someone with authority and an interest in the exhibits. If Kisame didn't see how they reacted now, he knew he wasn't going to be able to focus until he did.
Kisame helped himself focus as he searched for a supervisor by recalling everything he remembered thinking while he had been under the influence of the false memories. As he searched for the octopus exhibit, which usually had one or, more commonly, multiple handlers present, Kisame remembered what he had already remembered the last time he was here with Samehada. I thought I might get in trouble for slacking off, as if I was some kid chatting away with their friends while on the clock. I didn't think of what Same is at all.
He found the octopus exhibit closed, as it sometimes was on Monday mornings. There was a member of staff present, but he was young and had no real authority. His only job was to tell people, "Our apologies. The octopus got up to some tricks over the weekend, so we need to search his tank and get him back in confinement. It'll take two hours." He also gave directions to the gift shop.
Kisame approached the kid anyway. He tapped Samehada on the snout twice to tell the shark it was time to come up. Samehada wriggled upward to his accustomed position, where he could settle his head comfortably on Kisame's shoulder. In this position, he made short warbles of greeting as they approached.
"Hi." Kisame realized he didn't know how to go about approaching people he didn't know very well. What the hell do I say? Small talk? What counts as small talk around here? "Does the octopus have a name?" If that doesn't make me sound like an idiot! I have always wondered, though.
"I think so." This was the same junior staff member who had been called out to stand here the previous three times this had happened, Kisame realized. It had to be, unless the aquarium had more than one friendly, round-cheeked, Asian man in his twenties with short black hair. He was pretty sure this was the only Asian staff member, period. Isn't that discriminatory. The kid scratched one side of his chin next to a mole. "I don't work very closely with the full-time octo handlers, but I've heard them talk. His name is something unusual, like Harbi or something similar."
Samehada wriggled back and forth and chirped. Kisame laid a hand on his snout protectively. "I don't think an octopus and a shark would make good friends," he told Samehada. His eyes stayed within peripheral sight range of the young man's face as he said so.
The young man shrugged. "Don't some sharks eat octopus?" he asked.
"Yeah…"
"Then probably not. He's smart, so he'll know to avoid something with that many teeth." The young man smiled sadly at Samehada.
Samehada continued to make cheerful sounds, though more subdued. It was true that he might scare Harbi, but if the octopus was that smart, he'd probably be smart enough to know he was safe behind glass! They wouldn't be able to talk through smell, but Samehada remembered things he'd overheard from children who had yet to get over previous exhibits. They spoke of color changing. Samehada wagged his tail back and forth. Whatever an octopus was, surely they could figure out a way to talk through sight and sound alone. He wanted to meet Harbi!
"Thanks." Kisame lowered his hand. He treated Same just like a person I'd brought with me. Then again, he doesn't know Same as an attraction. I need to see what someone who cares about money would think. "I'll come back later and ask someone full-time." He departed. Samehada wondered if he should wriggle back down, but was happy to observe that Human Cousin did not tense up again as they left. He celebrated by licking Kisame's hair into shape again.
"Not in public," Kisame admonished. His feet turned toward the shark exhibit. They're pretty tolerant of the octopus' antics, but he's an octopus. Octopi are known to be tricksters. They probably factored the extra trouble in when deciding to give him a place here. It has to be different when the most popular shark goes missing. How different's the question.
It wasn't the only question, but Kisame sensed he was out of time. The flow of people around him was increasing, and something had to break or require cleaning sooner or later. He needed to return Samehada to the tank soon if he was going to do so at all.
Ugh. There were already two people in the room. And, of course, the ladder leading up to the top of the tank was gone, and the top was probably sealed shut. Never before had Kisame regretted so much that he was basically an adjunct handler. According to his actual job description, he needed to be there in the morning to set up some things that didn't have to do with any animal in the place, then he would have the middle of the day free while being on call for emergencies, and then at the end of the day he would check things and take stuff down if need be. If there was one thing the aquarium's managers were good at, it was placing people-oriented and socially awkward staff where they belonged. This was an essential skill to have when running what was basically an aquatic-themed community center.
This same organizational genius was the reason why Kisame had extra responsibilities related to the sharks, and a boosted salary to go with. Sadly, it was not the salary of two full positions. He could be the unofficial liaison, checking the sharks over for signs ordinary humans might miss, but he was not the one to stay with them regularly throughout the day. It was one of the regular folks who pulled out the ladder and unlocked the feeding platform sometime shortly before closing. He didn't know how to do those things.
"Same," he whispered. The shark stopped moving and listened. "You know how the people that normally check on you open up the tank before I come by?"
Samehada nodded.
"That means I don't know to do that," Kisame finished. "I haven't looked around for a possible mechanism when I've been up there with you, either. The missing ladder isn't a problem, but I can't believe I've been stupid enough not to look for how it's opened! If you want to meet your old friends, you'll need to figure it out." He ground his teeth together. I've had a lot of distractions, one part of him argued. And people who work jobs while taking care of their grandmothers have distractions too, but they get it done, argued another part. That's not a reason to let someone down. What, now that you have other friends, the sharks you called "family" are less important now? How much of Original Kisame's traitorous weasely ways did you inherit?
It was the first time the question had been so bluntly stated, but Kisame wasn't surprised. In some way, he had always wondered, ever since he had been told about his original. Would I ever betray my friends? It was a question he did not have an answer for.
Not yet. If there is no answer yet, I'll make one. He backed out of sight and bared his teeth again. Samehada crawled over his shoulder to face him, whining. He could probably figure out a way into the tank, but what was wrong with Human Cousin?
Kisame knelt down to scratch near his dorsal fin. "Same," he said, "I'm sorry I didn't think to look for a way in. I'm sorry I didn't ask you what you wanted. I want to be a good friend. I don't want to be the same kind of backstabbing bastard she said Other Me was. I won't let down my friends or family."
Samehada licked the tip of his nose. He already knew that.
Kisame sighed. "Curse my poor people skills," he muttered. Full-time handlers were the people who had to know their animals inside and out in order to explain them to the customers all day. That's why he wasn't a full-time handler. "If you can't get in, I'll stay near the octopus exhibit where that guy was for the next half hour. If I get called away before then, I'll tell him you might want to ask me about something and give him directions."
Samehada made a low sound of happiness and awe. It was more than he knew how to explain, but he could identify at least some portion of this feeling as pride. To be tasked with a mission based on intelligence and figuring things out, to have Human Cousin look at him with the faith that he had just the same chance as Human Cousin himself would have…
Kisame glanced around the door to see a third person had joined the room. This was nothing compared to the assembled crowd at peak hours. "Go." He passed his hand over Samehada's head in one last pet.
The shark snapped a confirmation, and immediately started up the wall. He would prove Human Cousin right!
Samehada
He flattened his belly as much as he could to minimize noise, and made his way up the wall with little more than a quiet rasp. From there, he crawled onto the ceiling, and raised himself over (or under) the top of the doorway to crawl directly onto the ceiling of the shark room. Samehada made his way all the way up before proceeding toward the tank. From some of the things Human Cousin said, he had realized that Human Cousin worried about how other humans would see him. They couldn't see him at all if he was up here where they didn't look, could they? There would be no worries up here.
Samehada made sure he was behind something (a pole) and in a relatively shadowy corner before descending the wall onto the feeding platform. It was closed, like Human Cousin had said. Samehada looked around, but did not see much in the low light. The shark exhibit was not brightly lit, like some of the others were. Most of the light came from the tank. Samehada understood that because he had amazed children before by waiting until another cousin swam overhead and suddenly swimming out from whatever rock he was under. They thought he was a shadow. They liked shark shadows.
He crawled over to where the lid would normally be pulled back. It really made no sense, what the humans did with this lid. Sometimes the top was left open for a while without feeding, sometimes it was closed almost all day. Samehada thought it might have to do with the bubble machine, which often made fewer bubbles when it was open, but sometimes the bubble machine made just as many as normal. The only thing which kind of made sense was that there were never very many humans when it was open, and if one of the Tank Cousins was angry or sick, it never was. Why not let sick cousins splash? Splashing is fun. Splashing means something interesting is there. Sick cousins sometimes didn't swim right though, so if there was splashing they might bump their nose on the edge as they came near. Samehada felt injured when he thought of that. He wouldn't splash so carelessly, and he was the only one that ever splashed. The other Tank Humans did not trust him like Human Cousin did.
Same tried to push the lid open. No good; there was no handle or other sign that it was supposed to be pushed, and sometimes he knew there was no Tank Human around when the lid opened. So who opened the lid? Samehada looked around, again to no avail, and tried to remember. He didn't hear much when the lid opened, so there probably wasn't a little metal arm to pull it open. There was sometimes a funny burst of water where the lid pulled back. The lid was thin and pulled back like a shirt where some of the sleeve stuck to a human's arm, so it folded and went back into the rest of the sleeve, and then the human had to pull it out again. Maybe there was a little arm inside the thick part that the lid went into. Samehada went over to the thick part and quietly asked any little arms in there to pull the lid back so he could get in. Nothing happened.
If the little arms didn't open it, who did? Samehada saw no humans around, but sometimes humans looked at things that were far away through glass screens. Samehada crawled around the top of the tank looking for a glass screen. Can humans understand? Human Cousin wouldn't be on the other side of a glass screen if he found one, so how could Samehada hope to ask? The shark whined. It was not a good question because he didn't even see any screens.
He took a brief rest to figure out what to do. He had to prove Human Cousin right to look at him in that way. Samehada sighed in awe again. He didn't think anyone could describe the size of this feeling. It was Very Very Large. Maybe Curious Tiger Person could; nobody else even had a chance. Humans looked at other humans and saw themselves, and of course they trusted themselves, so why would they not trust other humans? It was not important for humans to look at each and think that the other had thoughts and could do things. They were much more surprised when other humans couldn't do things, like if a small human couldn't understand an idea. Humans had to earn distrust; he had heard a Tank Human say once that everyone knew if there was a warning sign for something, it was because a human had actually done that thing. Before then, the one who made the signs would not have expected other humans to make mistakes, would have expected them to know better. Nobody expected that from Samehada, except for Human Cousin and the Red Cloud Humans and the Animal People. Even then, Human Cousin hadn't finished teaching the others. They didn't really expect it yet. How could a human know how Very Very Large it felt? It was like water. They swam in a whole vast lake of being expected to be smart and do things.
Samehada whimpered. He didn't know if one of the Tank Cousins was sick today. Maybe the lid would never open. Then he wouldn't be able to meet the Tank Cousins and he wouldn't be able to do anything.
Defiance! Samehada shook himself and snapped at the air. Curiosity? Why should the lid open on its own? If it did Samehada wouldn't have made it and Human Cousin would think he was right, but he wouldn't really know. Samehada had to open the lid on his own, before it opened itself. Was he really like Human Cousin? He had to know if it was true. If he really was like Human Cousin, then maybe…
Samehada went back to the part the lid crawled back into. If there were little arms in there, there might be thin muscles to tell them what to do. He stuck his tongue out and kept very still, not wanting to cut any thin muscles with his scales. They were very thin, so small most of them could fit inside a pencil. Despite this, they were very strong. He'd found a thin muscle that helped lamps make light and licked it once, and then Nice Human had told him to please not to because it would hurt him if he chewed it. It didn't look like it could attack anything, and never seemed to want to. But it made light, and that meant it had to be very strong so Samehada left it alone. He still hadn't figured out how it could hurt him if it did attack, but it would not be good to find out here on top of the tank where Human Cousin was far away.
Samehada's tongue bumped into a clump of things that felt smooth and long. He crawled over very slowly and felt them with his tongue, hoping they wouldn't get angry and attack. Did all thin muscles feel the same way? Maybe the ones in Nice Human's room were nice like he was and that was why they would never attack unless they were hurt. The ones here could be angrier. They were certainly thicker and there were few of them, so they had to be powerful.
To his joy, they did appear to be thin muscles. Happy! Joy! He had demonstrated smartness like Human Cousin. Now he had to get the tank open somehow. Samehada tried asking the thin muscles very nicely if they could make the little arms pull the lid back so he could get in. After a pause, he even nuzzled them, making sure not to break them. Maybe that was the wrong thing to do. The lid did not open.
Samehada shrank back and tried to get them to forgive him. It was a mistake; he wouldn't nuzzle again! Still nothing happened. Were they still angry? Samehada couldn't tell, because they had thick shells. He thought it might be the shells that kept him from tasting any chakra. They had to have chakra because they made light like the sun, which had chakra, and they could hurt him like other animals, who had chakra. Samehada wondered what kind of shell could be chakra-proof. It must be very special.
Just then he realized something that left him soundless, unable to even wag his tail. Things that didn't have chakra were like stones or dead things, not living. Suppose that the shell was like a stone, and the real thin muscle was hidden inside like a worm beneath the stone? Then the shell could have no chakra for him to taste, and yet the thin muscle would be able to travel through the shell and make light or whatever it wanted! Was that why it would attack if he chewed through the shell? Because it felt scared and vulnerable?
If that was true then it must be even thinner than it looked! Maybe it was only as big as an ant? Samehada looked closely in the low light. Yes; if it was only as thick as an ant, the long shell could be thick enough to absorb chakra. That would explain why it was so long, too, and disappeared into the wall! The shell could be made of a special material that could carry chakra away and send it somewhere secret in the wall where no predator would ever be able to find the chakra and trace it back. That was why Samehada couldn't taste anything! Was it the same material that Red Claw Person had used in the fight with Bird Person? Maybe the humans harvested it from these thin muscles.
If so, there had to be a way to take part of the shell off without being attacked. Samehada studied them to find the best place. There was a place where the very end of the thin muscle had nested in the top of the tank. Even the humans didn't touch their nests, so Samehada settled for somewhere away from the nest. The thin muscle looked thicker as it got closer to the nest. Maybe the shell was thicker there, and good for harvesting. Samehada curled up into a position that was uncomfortable even for him, and wished he had a form like a human's. Humans were able to do stuff and look at what they were doing at the same time because their eyes were very far away from their hands. Samehada normally did stuff with his mouth, but that was too dangerous now. He had to be able to see if the thin muscle inside was going to attack. He wished he had a very long snout or something so his mouth could be far from his eyes.
Slowly, he sawed at the thick shell with the edge of the largest exposed scale on his tail. It was very difficult. Samehada's tail did not have many exposed scales; they were small and smooth and hard, good for a human to hold. His scales got more bristly on his body, but he wasn't flexible enough to see those. He whimpered. Was proving Human Cousin right worth the risk?
Yes. It was and always would be worth any risk. The feeling from being trusted was so large, it had to be able to protect Samehada from anything, even the bite of a light-maker. He growled softly, and held the rest of the shell with his tongue while he caught one tooth on the place where he wanted to cut it open. Slowly, Samehada bit down.
The shell resisted at first, but couldn't bend away from a slicing attack. Samehada knew he was making progress. He continued sawing very, very slowly, while paying a lot of attention to his tongue. If the thin muscle suddenly moved to attack, he would feel it.
Samehada felt nothing, so he continued, until something bit at his tooth! He dropped the thin muscle and retreated. How? He hadn't felt it move at all! According to his tongue, his tooth was not injured. The attack had been weak. Samehada crept up to investigate.
He licked around the very edges of the gap in the shell, ready to pull his tongue back at the first attack. He needed his tongue; he couldn't let it get hurt. Huh? He licked again. Chakra?
It was! Samehada rattled happiness. He had done it! He'd broken through the shell to reach the real thin muscle beneath! He sampled the air above the cut shell to finally find out what kind of chakra a thin muscle had.
Uh oh. Samehada put the thin muscle down and backed away, less happy now. He knew that kind of chakra. Bitey sharp fast-attack chakra. Not good! Worse, the chakra didn't taste like it normally did. Chakra was normally delicious and tasty and peaceful, but sometimes when angry it could transform into something completely different, and then it was no longer tasty. That was how the chakra was now. It was already angered, so it had already transformed, and that meant he couldn't eat it.
Samehada stayed back and tried to think how he could get past the attacking chakra. If he could protect himself from the biting chakra, the thin muscle was thin enough that it could not attack him any other way, so he would be safe. Samehada thought, and thought some more. He kept thinking of one thing, but it was something he really didn't want to do. Yet no matter how much he thought, he couldn't think of anything else. He would have to do it.
Samehada twisted from side to side, at first gently, then with more violent thrashing. He shivered, squeezing his insides violently. When something inside felt empty and he grew sleepy and hungry, he knew it was working. Samehada licked all around his mouth with his tongue, resisting the urge to swallow. When he had gathered enough on his tongue, he pressed his tongue against the split shell and spit.
The biting chakra tried to bite, but it couldn't go through the chakra Samehada was spitting against it. The biting chakra relented suddenly, and all the chakra Samehada was spitting out went into the thin muscle. He tried to stop before the thin muscle was killed, but he'd been expecting much more resistance. A pulse of chakra went into the thin muscle and traveled down it, directly into the nest.
There was a sound of releasing air, and a very quiet hum. Samehada jumped back, cringing. Then the lid opened. That hum… So there were little arms pulling the lid back after all!
Samehada raced forward and leaped into the water before something could go wrong. He shivered at the wonderful goodness of having water between his scales. Good good right yes love water. He drove his tail from side to side and started swimming. Swimming! Moving is good! Like swimming. The Red Cloud Humans were nice, but he had spent far too long dry! Samehada swam in circles through the tank in joy.
The lid did not close. Either Samehada had only given it enough energy to open the lid but not close it, or he'd accidentally killed the poor thin muscle before it could close the lid. Hope it isn't dead. Dead is no good. Dead things did not have chakra, and not having chakra was not good. At the end of the day when Human Cousin was near, he promised to remember to check on the poor thing, make sure it still had chakra.
A promise… The tank… Was this familiar? Samehada stopped and wondered if he'd promised something before. Thinking Human! Promised to tell Human Cousin about Thinking Human giving chakra. Samehada snapped his teeth and promised not to forget this time. He would remember to tell Human Cousin what Thinking Human had done.
Right now, he had cousins to greet! Samehada swam down to a spotted Cousin and waved his fins in greeting. She changed course. Greeting accomplished. Samehada wished they could have more complex conversations than just sharing greetings, but he didn't hold it against her. How would she understand his thinking? She'd never been out of the tank since he'd known her.
He exchanged greetings with the other Tank Cousins, swimming alongside them and waving fins before changing course. He was surprised at how good it felt to greet them this way. He greeted all the humans with noise, never with swimming. Samehada wondered how he could invite Human Cousin to swim with him. Maybe if they swam together…
A sound of joy echoed through the water. That sound! It was a small human, grabbing the hands of two larger humans and pulling them up to the tank. Her eyes were glowing and her mouth was wide open, even as she huddled against the legs of her two guardians. She hid her smile and looked shy, but never stopped looking at him. She said some things that Samehada couldn't make out, then "Shadow." The shark lolled his tongue out of his mouth. She had dark hair that the light reflected off of, and dark skin so that she always appeared to be in shadow. They looked alike.
Samehada swam closer as if he recognized the name, turning away before he got too close so she wouldn't be scared. He went to a rock and hid himself under it, checking to see if the little human was still watching him. She was. A large cousin passed overhead, and Samehada came up from the rock as if he was emerging from its shadow. The little one made more joyful sounds and stopped acting shy. She held her guardian's leg with one hand and reached out as far as she could with the other. Samehada swam close to the glass some distance away and turned to pass by right in front of her, a very small distance away from where her little fingers ended.
She gasped and pulled her fingers back, as if she had felt his scales brushing against them. Her guardians smiled and talked to each other, saying something about "Shadow." Samehada liked his new nickname. He swam directly beneath a larger cousin for a while until the larger cousin grew annoyed, then started swimming acrobatically. The little one kept her face pressed against the glass, fear forgotten.
Another little one arrived, this one loud and fearless enough to scream "SHADOW!" at the top of his lungs. Samehada thought back to before Human Cousin had taken him from the tank. Had little ones called him this before? Don't remember. He hadn't been paying attention. Samehada opened his mouth wider. Now that the tank was no longer a bad place to be, he would pay a lot of attention.
The little one's cry brought other humans into the big room, and Samehada swam more and more enthusiastically. This feeling was Very, Very Large, just like the other one had been before. It was mostly joy. Samehada had done it. He had made his way into the tank and proven Human Cousin correct to trust him and think of him as being the same. And now, these little ones were looking at him with shining eyes, trusting him just the same. Same was smaller than most of the other sharks, and he was darker, and he liked to hide away in their shadows. Maybe these little ones saw themselves in him.
With his choice and his strength deciding Samehada's place in or out of the tank, the tank was a very good place to be.
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