Author's Note: This is a teensy one-shot I wrote for a prompt challenge. Decided to put it here, because why not? Enjoy.

Receiving a message from the Turtle King was rare in Maito Gai's experience. Even more unusual, as he stood before the titanic reptile days later, was learning that the message had actually been given to a sea turtle by a shark.

Strangest of all was reaching a remote island village on the eastern edge of the Land of Water weeks after that and discovering an elderly, ailing widow caring for a blue-skinned baby girl with sunken eyes and gills splitting her cheeks.

"He said that his sharks would find someone…" Those were the old woman's last words to Gai before she died.

"That child doesn't belong here, Gai. You know that," Tsunade said quietly.

Gai glanced out the window of the Hokage's office, where Kivi was sitting on Shizune's lap and giggling as the medic played some nonsense game with her. "Nonetheless, this is where she will live."

"She'll never be accepted in Konoha," Tsunade warned. "One look at her is enough to know where she comes from."

"Would you have me send her back to 'where she came from'?" Gai demanded. "I can feel her chakra from here, and I know you can too. She's not even three years old yet. Kiri would mold her into a monster and she deserves better than that."

Tsunade sighed. "Why did you even go, Gai?" she asked quietly. "It's not as though you owed him anything."

"I went because he was an honorable man," Gai replied simply, "and I returned because I do not believe the child should bear the sins of the father."

Tsunade watched Gai leave, collecting his newly adopted daughter on the way. "Children always bear their parents' sins Gai," Tsunade said sadly. "Always have, always will."

The sniffling Gai heard behind the closed door cut off as soon as he knocked on it. "May I come in Kivi?"

"…okay."

Gai opened the door to his daughter's bedroom. The eight year old was sitting on the edge of her bed hugging the stuffed dolphin she'd named Whistles. The walls of the room were blue and covered with painted underwater scenes.

Kivi had quickly dried her face, but even though her prominent cheeks and recessed eyes made it harder to see, Gai could tell that she'd been crying. "Do you want to talk about it?" Gai asked, crouching by her bedside to be at her level.

"They won't stop, papa," Kivi said quietly. "Every day at the Academy it's the same thing. I'm a fish-face, I'm a freak, and I'm a Mist spy. That doesn't even make sense! I know I'm ugly, but Konoha is my home!"

Gai hugged his daughter, his heart aching. "You're not ugly Kivi," he said immediately.

"You have to say that because you're my dad, but I know what I look like," Kivi retorted. "I can live without being pretty. Pretty seems to be pretty useless as far as the kunoichi in my class are concerned. That's not what bothers me."

"Then what does?" Gai asked.

Kivi looked away. "I don't think any of them will ever accept me," she admitted quietly. "It doesn't matter that I'm stronger, or faster, or that I master the new lessons first. They're always going to hate me."

Gai bowed his head, because he didn't know what to say to his daughter.

"Were my parents bad people, papa?" Kivi asked.

Gai looked up. "Of course not," he replied immediately. "Why would you think that?"

"It's the way the teachers at the Academy act," Kivi told him. "They're scared sometimes. I can see the fear; I can even smell it. But they're not really seeing me when it happens; they're looking right through me. I'm not all that scary, papa. Why are they afraid?"

"I don't know, Kivi," Gai lied. "If they can't see the sweet little girl right in front of them, they must be blind."

"Three other genin, Gai," Tsunade fumed. "One of them is still in surgery. Facial reconstruction is not something I should ever have to perform on a twelve year old girl!"

"Hokage-sama-" Gai protested.

"It was a training exercise!" Tsunade shouted over him. "'Wilderness Recon and Evasion'; you've taught it a few times as I recall. Tell me Gai, is one of the two teams supposed to come back on stretchers?"

"…"

"The answer you're looking for is 'no, Hokage-sama, both teams are supposed to walk back to the village under their own power'." Tsunade ran her hands through her hair in frustration. "This isn't Kiri, Gai. We don't pit our young shinobi against each other to see which ones survive."

"My daughter has been fighting for her survival since the day she walked through the Academy's doors," Gai replied bluntly. "Her peers couldn't take her one on one, so they started jumping her in groups on her way home. You knew about it and did nothing. I tried talking to the other parents, and they ignored me. My daughter is a warrior, not a sheep. Are you really surprised she finally pushed back?"

Tsunade looked away. "I told you a decade ago that girl didn't belong here, Gai," she said at last.

Gai took a deep breath, choking down an angry retort. "Are we done here, Hokage-sama?" he asked with cold formality.

"Get out."

Gai stormed out of the Hokage's office. There were several other people in the waiting room, and all of them were either looking at or pointedly ignoring Kivi, who sat alone to one side of the room, staring at her hands. At twelve, Kivi's navy blue hair fell past her shoulders, caught in a single, tight braid. She wore light armor, and a two-handed sword was sheathed across her back. Gai tried not to notice that a few bloody fingerprints lingered on the brown boar hide wrapping of the hilt. He gestured and Kivi rose from her seat, falling in step beside him silently.

"I'm sorry, dad," Kivi said quietly once they were outside on the street. Word spread quickly in a Hidden Village, and the looks Gai saw directed at his daughter were even more dire than usual.

"What are you sorry for?" Gai asked in response.

"I got you in trouble. I disappointed you," she said.

"You're not sorry for injuring your comrades?" Gai asked neutrally.

"They're not my comrades," Kivi replied in a tone that sent chills down his spine. "Never were, never will be."

"You are a shinobi of the Leaf," Gai protested.

"You believe that," Kivi murmured, glancing around at the other people on the street, "but they don't."

Gai walked in silence with his daughter until they were almost home. "I'm not disappointed in you," he said at last, "and I'll survive the Hokage's displeasure."

Gai was rewarded with one of his daughter's rare smiles, and an even rarer hug. "Love you dad," Kivi whispered.

Running down the road leading away from Konoha in the dead of night, Kivi skidded to a halt, her strong, slender blue fingers wrapping around Samehada's hilt and drawing it forth. Her nostrils and gill flaps flared, carrying to her the scent of the presence she'd sensed.

"I didn't kill any of them," she said to the quiet night around her. "They'll all recover."

"I know," Gai replied sadly, stepping out of the shadows. "Please don't leave."

"It's too late to turn back," Kivi said, looking between her father and the living blade she'd stolen from the village's secure vaults. "You don't seem very surprised to see Samehada in my hand, dad. You've always known who my real father was, haven't you?"

"I was the one who killed him," Gai said heavily.

Tears glistened in Kivi's eyes. "Why did you lie to me? You're the one person I always trusted."

"I wanted you to have a better life than he did," Gai answered. "I wanted you to be free of his sins."

"Maybe if more of them were like you. But I'm done with Konoha," she said firmly, tearing off her hitai-ate and hurling it into the grass on the road's margin. "So what now; will you stop me?"

In answer, Gai stepped aside from her path silently. "I will always love you," he said as she stepped past him.

Kivi's eyes burned and her cheeks were wet as she ran, far from the village where she'd grown up.