[Cross-posted from AO3; originally posted there on 14/7/2014.]
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Hey, Kisame, what's the deal with that Suigetsu guy?
Ah, I last saw him years ago... Cute kid, always smiling. A child prodigy in the art of murder.
- Naruto 353
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Kisame is introduced to the unfortunate fact of Hoozuki Mangetsu's younger brother only because Mangetsu's bragging tends to occur at a volume that makes it very difficult to ignore, and he's holding forth before this month's meeting of the Seven as he holds forth before every meeting, chair shoved back and ankles crossed jauntily atop the table. The story this time seems to involve an A-rank escapade starring him, his brother, and fifty Grass-nin, some of whom ended up with their heads on spikes along the perimeter of Kiri's southernmost cliffs and some of whom did not, thanks to a disappointing shortage of spikes—an issue which, consequently, Mangetsu has requested be raised at this very meeting. While not wholly plausible, the story is told with such enthusiasm and such lurid sound effects that at least half the room, despite their better instincts, seems to be absorbed in it.
"Basically," Mangetsu concludes, as he brandishes a ballpoint pen in place of his sword, "it was cool as shit."
And then there is an icy chakra presence at the door and the Yondaime Mizukage enters, expression as blandly, colourlessly grey as his robes. Hastily, Mangetsu removes his sandals from the table; immediately, the meeting enters session.
Shortly after, in response to an accusation of less-than-thorough minute-taking during last month's meeting, Kushimaru hurls himself at Jinin across the table with a guttural scream and intent to disembowel radiating from every spiny, paranoid angle of his body. Spontaneously attempted homicide is so much a part of everyday life in the upper echelons of Kiri's ninja ranks that Kisame only sighs, and links his hands across his belly as he waits for the fuss to settle; and when, several minutes later, Mangetsu leans across to Ameyuri and mutters conspiratorially, not quite under his breath, right into her bandage-draped ear: "Next time one of you lot drops dead—you watch, there's gonna be a Hoozuki takeover in here, that's all I'm saying—" it is comparatively enough of a non-event that Kisame pays it no mind.
He regrets this, in hindsight. In hindsight, it feels rather like this might have constituted adequate warning. But—Mangetsu appears before Kisame from a flicker of mist in the harbourside fog one morning, half-sized doppelgänger in tow, and Kisame ignored the warnings, and so Kisame knows no better than to offer the benefit of his doubt.
"His jounin sensei doesn't mind," Mangetsu announces, "and what the Mizukage doesn't know won't hurt him, if we just sorta leave Suigetsu out the mission report—and anyway, genin get shitty jobs. Minimal fighting. So it's valuable field experience. I'm building up his ninja résumé. This is my brother, by the way," he adds, unnecessarily, and shoves his lilac-eyed, lilac-clad doppelgänger forward.
Kisame peers down at the doppelgänger. The doppelgänger is peering up at him, smirking in a manner so uncannily like Mangetsu's own that Kisame finds himself fleetingly glad his own family have always preferred the intimacy of fish to the inbreeding of the grander, older ninja clans.
"And this is Kisame," Mangetsu continues. "You know Kisame. Everyone knows Kisame. Suigetsu, Kisame. Kisame, Suigetsu."
"Pleasure to meet you, kid," Kisame says, still studying him, and smiles his most terrible smile.
The kid appears unimpressed. "Hoshigaki Kisame?"
It belatedly occurs to Kisame that a mouthful of savagely jagged shark-teeth is unlikely to bother any Hoozuki, and so he flares his gills instead, and looms his full broad blue height over him. "They call me the Monster of the Mist," he says, voice threateningly lowered.
Suigetsu narrows his eyes. "They call Mangetsu the Devil of the Mist."
"They do not," says Kisame.
"They totally do," says Mangetsu, shit-eating grin firmly back in place. "You're out of touch, Kisame. I'm kind of a big deal nowadays."
"You know, it's not unheard of for the Seven Swordsmen to round on a particularly obnoxious teammate and slaughter him themselves," Kisame says, patting the hilt of Samehada where it lies holstered at his back. "Maybe I should put in a word for you, brat."
But Mangetsu just bursts out laughing, and then his brother does too, so that the usual half-manic cackle is doubled in volume and more obnoxious still; and Kisame rolls his beady eyes and turns away, toward the mission's designated departure point, off in the wet murk of the harbourside mist. If Mangetsu wants his brother messily dead by sundown, it's not Kisame's problem. The thin, perpetual rain that dampens Kiri in the mornings drizzles on.
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Their boat is moored up in a cove away from the harbourside, a fragile-looking speck in the mist curling in across the waves. They clamber out to it, across the rocks, single-file, until it becomes apparent that its original size was no trick of perspective: a two-man rowboat is tied before them, seawater sloshing in the body of it, hitched to a jut of rock and bobbing violently against the tide.
"Aren't we meant to be Kiri's most valued elite?" Mangetsu laments. He jabs at it with one of its oars. A barnacle skids from the helm. "This is not how I imagined the S-rank lifestyle."
Just behind his brother, Suigetsu is staring up at Kisame, his expression avid. "You can get in first, if you wanna," he informs Kisame. Entirely unsubtly, his hand rests on the hilt of one of the two longswords he's got slung crosswise across his back.
"Oh, no," says Kisame, and returns the stare with one of his broader grins, "genin and kunoichi first. Don't you know anything, brat?"
Suigetsu waves this graciously off. "No need to look so paranoid, senpai. All I'm thinking is you oughta get your old bones comfortable, know what I mean?"
"You're very considerate," says Kisame, "so I don't expect you'll last long in Kiri. If you don't get in first, we might just cast off without you."
"Just showing respect to my elders," says Suigetsu, virtuously, and then at the waterline Mangetsu flickers into mist and reappears behind his brother, kunai in hand; in one remarkably elegant move he drives it into his throat and wrenches, and kicks the kid's body into the boat the instant it splatters into water from the shoulders up.
"Quit stalling!"
"Efficient," says Kisame, without bothering to suppress his amusement.
The boat pitches when he clambers in. The seawater puddle slopping in its belly begins to congeal, but he makes as though to stamp on it and it sloshes away from his sandal in unusually sentient alarm for a puddle; moments later it reforms, sullenly, into the shape of a bad-tempered genin at the far end of the boat.
"That could have been a nasty accident," Kisame says amiably, to no one in particular, as he settles onto his creaking seat, adjusts his oars in their brackets. "You really have to be careful when you're that easy to overlook."
The bad temper brewing at the far end of the boat brews worse still.
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The mission destination is one of the larger islands in the outlying archipelago of Water Country, and the journey is what overseas journeys in Water Country always are: grey, and suffocated by an ocean mist so heavy and so close that every breath presses damply into Kisame's lungs. Wisps of bleached-white sky show through, now and again, and once there is the long, drawn-out blare of a civilian fishing trawler, far out from whatever island shore it calls its own, but for the most part it's a journey made in the isolation of the mist: just seabirds, and the rhythmic splashing of their oars.
Kisame has the bow bench, and Mangetsu has the stern bench, and Mangetsu's brother has fitted himself into the gap between Mangetsu's feet and the stern, from which position he has continued to spend the entire journey so far staring intently at Kisame. Time passes and passes and passes and it's not remotely threatening, that Suigetsu can imagine no more entertaining way to spend the time than this, but it does begin to grow mildly disconcerting: for Kisame to glance up and find himself, hour after hour, still trapped beneath that critical lilac gaze.
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The island's shore is remarkable only for its complete desolation, bare as though the land's top layers have been peeled away to show the bleached-pale rock beneath. By the time the rowboat has been dragged up the stony incline of the shore and shoved into hiding beneath the first dank curls of undergrowth, Kisame has already batted away one inexplicable shuriken zipping on course for his throat; by the time their party has trekked deep enough into the heavy, humid forest cover that the sweep of the island lighthouse through the gathering gloom can no longer be seen, Kisame has batted away another two shuriken plus a hook-handled Kiri-style kunai, one attempt to trip him on a particularly steep climb, and what is presumably intended to be an attack from behind with the Hoozuki water gun jutsu, which Kisame is familiar with in its deadliest form from fighting alongside Mangetsu but which in this particular instance feels hardly different from the rain, marked out as ninjutsu by chakra flare alone.
They stop for the evening in a rocky clearing where the forest ends and the shelter of a cave begins, swathes of dark wet greenery slung heavy and dripping across its mouth. The rain is hammering down, now; the mist has grown so heavy that the forest is hardly more than a smear of green within it.
Kisame settles into first watch. The rain continues.
Some twenty minutes pass in peace. Then Kisame gets to his feet and steps outside, and releases a suiton jet into the matted, overgrown ferns above the cave's mouth.
"Shit—"
It's spluttered, muffled. A longsword falls out of the ferns and a moment later so does Suigetsu, who lands very hard on the rain-slick stone and tries to jump instantly back to his feet. Kisame is faster, though: he plants the sole of his sandal against his chest and pins him. He could lower Samehada to his throat, but at this point Kisame feels like that would do nothing but unnecessarily inflate the kid's already thoroughly inflated sense of self-importance.
"Mangetsu," he says instead, wearily.
Mangetsu glances up. His expression turns at once far too mirthful for someone whose brother is currently stuck at the untender mercies of Hoshigaki Kisame, Monster of the Mist. "Well, he's better than that usually."
"Fuck yeah I am," says Suigetsu, despite all present evidence to the contrary, and grins up at Kisame.
"Better watch your back, Kisame," says Mangetsu, and joins in the grinning. Filed teeth are nothing remarkable in Kiri, but the Hoozuki clan have, as ever, managed to take things far too far: and whether by design or genetic defect, this latest batch have teeth enough that physically shutting their mouths around them seems to cause them difficulty. It's like looking into the maw of something that tried and failed to eat a sea urchin.
"There are ways to kill a genin that involve a lot less paperwork than forcing me to do it for you, you know," Kisame points out, but despite himself his mood is rising. What with the years of bleakly covert operations, it's been a while since he spent time with kids—longer still since he spent time with Kiri genin, and the uniquely suicidal brand of conceited self-assurance they need just to get themselves up and out the house in the mornings. There are worse things to bring along on a mission than a single overambitious genin. There are worse ways to pass the time than indulging the attentions of this one.
Suigetsu is attempting to surreptitiously melt out from beneath his sandal. Kisame grins, broad and savage and cheerful, and lets him.
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He's woken that night by the feel of someone sneaking in toward him. Their chakra signature is semi-suppressed, their footsteps very nearly soundless on the slimy cave floor; he keeps his eyes closed and his breathing steady, and waits for it.
The kid goes for Samehada. Samehada goes for the kid. There's a yell that turns very fast into a gargle, and then there's a splash, and then there's silence.
Kisame soothes his sword back into smooth, flattened calm. Up on watch at the mouth of the cave, Mangetsu's doing a poor job of muffling his laughter.
After a little while, the miserable-looking puddle on the cave floor pulls itself together.
"Better luck next time," says Kisame, in a tone that could be consoling if it weren't for his grin, wider than usual.
Unexpectedly, Suigetsu returns the grin, apparently unashamed to have been outwitted by an inanimate object. There's a certain hungry gleam in his eye that could almost be threatening, under the right circumstances; those circumstances do not involve pre-pubescence and at least a two-foot height difference between him and Kisame, however, and as it is he looks more like he's on the verge of attempting to steal an entire fresh tuna from the harbourside fish market.
"You can keep your luck," he says, generously. "I won't need it when I actually take you down."
Kisame wraps his hand round Samehada's grip, radiates suffocatingly lethal intent in Suigetsu's direction, and lowers his voice to a dangerous, ominous politeness. "Is that meant to be a threat, brat?"
"It's a guarantee, senpai," says Suigetsu, blithely unaffected.
Kisame is so taken aback that it's a moment before he even laughs: but then he does, and even Suigetsu has the grace to look alarmed by the sound, low and rumbling, echoing from the cave walls like heavy thunder rolling in.
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The rain has stopped by morning.
"So," Kisame begins, and pauses to tear open a rations packet of dried fish with his teeth, "this mission."
"Gonna be a good one," Mangetsu agrees. He forms a seal above the scroll spread out flat before him on the stony ground, and claps his hand to the centre of its inked fuinjutsu design.
"This politically delicate, top secret, officially nonexistent, restricted S-rank mission," says Kisame.
"Gonna be a really good one," Mangetsu agrees. The seal on his scroll shifts beneath his hand. One after the other, four full water bottles are spat out of it.
"Which you've brought your kid brother on."
"He's nine," Mangetsu says, after a moment of apparent bewilderment that Suigetsu's company might be in any way a problem. He tosses two of the bottles across to where he's sitting. "C'mon, you think he gives a shit about the details? I brought him along to kill people and have a bit of fun."
Kisame, chewing at a strip of dried mackerel, lifts his eyebrows.
"But if you insist," concedes Mangetsu, clipping the remaining two bottles to his own belt, "I guess he can wait outside when we actually bust into the place. If you insist."
"That is not fucking fair," Suigetsu begins, outraged, and then a neatly-skimmed shuriken hits his ear and whatever else he was preparing to say is lost to the splash of very hasty liquefaction.
"Keeps him on his toes," Mangetsu explains—but then, more seriously, and before Suigetsu has reformed enough to be capable of eavesdropping: "Don't worry about it, old man—I've taken him on my A-ranks before. He knows what's what."
"I see," says Kisame. He twists shut his rations packet and doesn't tell Mangetsu that the alternative to his brother's obedience will be his brother's execution, because he is quite sure Mangetsu already knows. A murky dawn is breaking across the mouth of the cave. Fog strains the daylight into something weak and pale. "Better get moving, then, hadn't we?"
"Wait—wait, hang on a sec—oi, Suigetsu—"
Departure is delayed for as long as it takes Mangetsu to detach the empty water bottles from his still semi-conscious brother's belt; then he reseals them, along with his own, back out of the way inside his scroll, and then they get moving.
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Rather more noise than usual for ninja is par for the course on any mission involving Mangetsu, but after an hour and a half of putting up with the usual threats, brags, and intermittent manic laughter in energetic stereo—and, now, the unmusically tuneless humming coming from Suigetsu's direction, where he's scrambling up a mossy fall of rocks—Kisame is beginning to regret the impulse—partly charitable, mostly sadistic—that led to him ever agreeing to this arrangement.
Kisame clears his throat. Suigetsu glances back. A kunai glints between Kisame's fingers. The humming cuts off into belligerently scowling silence, and Mangetsu snorts laughter.
The kunai gets tucked back away. "Are you sure his jounin sensei wouldn't rather he'd stayed home, brat?"
"I wouldn't know," says Mangetsu, "since the Mizukage personally rejected me from holding the position." But then he grins, with far too many teeth, and cuffs his brother round the back of the head in the most unsuccessful imitation of wounded, lingering rejection Kisame has seen in quite some time. "Didn't he, brother?"
"Yeah," Suigetsu says at once, and it's clear from his voice that the recovery of his good mood has been rapid, and that he's grinning just as much, "yeah, yeah—so I got a different sensei—"
They're picking a steep path between vast, sagging ferns, the dark dank leaves heavy with moisture, steadily dripping onto the saturated ground. Kisame trudges on, keeping up the rear. It's wholly clear that both of them are desperate for him to ask: so he doesn't.
Suigetsu breaks first. "I got Takizawa-sensei—"
"Impressive," says Kisame. They trudge on. The levels of barely restrained mirth in front of him are rising. He isn't a merciful man, but the fourth time they share a jittery glance and then immediately, hastily stifle bursts of laughter, he rolls his eyes and decides he may as well indulge them. It's not hard to see where this is going. "Especially impressive, given how long he's been dead."
"Anyone who lets himself get killed that easily was never good enough to be a jounin sensei in the first place," Mangetsu says, virtuously, and his brother chokes on the mouthful of water he just took and spends the next thirty seconds in a fit of coughing and muffled, hysterical laughter, splashing over the marshy ground with his chakra control significantly impaired.
It's true that Kisame had wondered about the shortage of applicants for the tougher A-rank missions lately; a majority of eligible jounin having been removed from commission by Kiri's latest insane prodigy would certainly help to explain it. "And I suppose you'd know he was killed easily, would you?"
Mangetsu hears his tone and glances back, grinning. "I've got a duty to my family to make sure his sensei's up to the job. Turns out, Kiri had a load of jounin sensei who weren't up to the job."
"How very public-spirited of you," Kisame says dryly. It does nothing to affect the self-congratulatory flurry of laughter that ensues.
The problem with kids is they all think they're innovators. Admittedly, in a village where a stillborn twin is considered an omen of great future strength and success for the surviving child, it's rare for this particular brand of murderous loyalty to occur between brothers: but even sharks fail to eat their siblings sometimes.
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The hideout, when they reach it, is guarded in almost insultingly predictable style: a patrolling rabble of Mist-nin doing their best to conceal a clan alliance that the shared coral-pinkish colour of their hair obviously betrays, bristling with bladed weaponry and armed to the razored teeth. Bloodline clans largely learned their anti-insurrectionist lesson from the purges, but years later the dull embers of rebellion still burn, with remarkable persistence for a country as damp as Water. Kisame and Mangetsu are here to help douse them.
"Always with the hordes," Mangetsu says, almost fondly, squinting out from the fern thickets they've set their stakeout in. He watches the horde a moment longer, then glances round—catches Kisame's pointed glare, and sighs, turns to his brother. "Okay, ground rule. Suigetsu, if you follow us in, I'm gonna have to kill you. Confidentiality, blah blah—you know this shit already."
"Sure, whatever," Suigetsu says impatiently, which does nothing whatsoever to reassure Kisame that he understands the political importance of secrecy when it comes to the details of missions assigned to the Seven Swordsmen remaining within the Seven Swordsmen. But he hasn't tried to attack Kisame even once since Mangetsu told him there would be a large group of shinobi they would be required to damage as much and as lethally as possible, fidgeting nearly out of his skin with anticipation, and Kisame supposes, resignedly, that this is about as good as it is likely going to get.
He unholsters Samehada. Its chakra melds into his own and its bloodlust rears—its huge and endless hunger opens wide—and he feels it, in a humming, tugging pressure against his palms.
"Can we go yet?" demands Suigetsu, more impatient still.
Kisame glances round at Mangetsu—who is feverishly bright-eyed, strung so keenly tight his hyperactive brother looks nearly listless beside him—and grins, halfway. "We can go," he agrees.
The horde is, fairly speaking, too small to truly be a horde. There are only ten of them out there, though by the look of it they've got weapons enough between them to equip at least another twenty, and though Kisame recognises most of them as jounin there's only a couple he knows from the bingo book: technically missing-nin, unmasked now and apparently skulking at the island fringes of Water Country in preparation to rekindle civil war—apparently. Probably, anyway. According to the mission briefing, at least. It's hardly as though the Mizukage and his advisors are without secrets of their own—but Kisame is here to kill, and not to wonder. And so, efficiently, he kills.
The horde may not be a horde but its members fight like devils all the same, with some kind of clan jutsu that magnetises their weapons and allows them to wield far more blades at once than should be possible. The early morning sun casts a thin, weak light across the clearing; it glints from blades and when water splashes it fragments through it, splinters as though through a prism. Metal against metal, metal against water, flesh against the sodden dirt—the blood is loud in Kisame's ears but his mismatched team is louder still, hollering to each other across the yard with vocal enthusiasm for prolonging the experience of bloody death as long as possible for everyone involved.
Bodies are falling. Bits of bodies are falling. Mangetsu's brother appears to have inherited Mangetsu's fondness for competitive dismembering, and between the three of them—the four of them, including Samehada, which Kisame can hardly disinclude—the exterior of the hideout is getting messy.
"We can go—" Mangetsu, sprinting away from his brother, "we can go—it's cool, Kisame, trust me—"
There's sheet metal screwed into place across all the windows of the lower floor; there's a row of heavy steel bars in the entranceway and a padlocked steel door behind it. Mangetsu dives for a window, and Kisame charges for the door, and though their entrance is perhaps not as subtle nor as stealthy as it could have been, it'll have set the fear of death on anyone left in the hideout who hasn't found themselves already consumed by it. Mangetsu reforms, dripping wet, from a puddle on the kitchen's linoleum floor; Kisame shakes out the shredded steel from Samehada's bristles in the wreckage of the entranceway. They meet in the hall, and a pathetic array of exploding tags bursts open into sparks and smoke around them.
There's the sound of panicked footsteps on the floor above. Kisame lifts his head, sniffs the air.
Mangetsu watches, his grip shifting, restlessly, minutely, on the hilt of Hiramekarei. "Anything good?"
"Oh, you know," says Kisame, and doesn't bother to suppress his grin. "Blood. Fear. The usual."
"What else is a shark good for scenting?" says Mangetsu, but he's grinning too. He jerks his head in the direction of the staircase. "After you, old man."
They don't conceal their approach. The stairs creak beneath Kisame's weight. Samehada is hungry: he can feel its chakra seething, feel its appetite's demand. It wants satiation—and events unfold upstairs, in the manner such events tend to, and it gets satiation—furls its own skin down appreciatively flat so that Kisame can bind it in the aftermath, blood sliding from the bristles as easily as water from plastic.
"You reckon that's enough?"
Kisame glances up from his task and finds Mangetsu surveying the damage, expression dubious. "Of what?"
"Like—making an example. Scaring the locals. That's what the Mizukage wanted, right? You reckon this is scary enough?"
The walls of the second floor have been knocked through, at some point in the hideout's history, and the single large room seems to have been put to use as an impromptu, low-roofed training hall. Kusarigama hang from racks down one wall; assorted broadswords are propped against a second wall. Along the length of a third wall is laid a row of recently decapitated heads—from Mangetsu's kills—and various body parts Mangetsu judged likely to be heads—from Kisame's kills, since the nature of Samehada's attacks tends to make it difficult to distinguish one bloody lump from another. The floorboards are sodden with gore. There's something slung from the slowly-turning ceiling fan, long and ropey and dripping.
Kisame considers the scene. "You don't think it's enough?"
"Wouldn't give me nightmares," Mangetsu says.
Kisame considers this, too. Then: "All right," he says, and hoists Samehada to his shoulder once more, "what d'you think it needs?"
Satisfying Mangetsu's desire for finishing touches delays their exit from the scene by another ten minutes or so, but this slaughter was tactical as much as it was political: there's a reason the two of them were chosen to perform it, and a mutual flair for terrifying, ostentatious violence certainly doesn't hurt.
Suigetsu greets them cheerily when they make it back outside. He seems to have been occupying himself in their absence with a single member of the horde, whose chest still rises and falls, though the motion is nearly too shallow to see. There's a lot of blood in the general area, of course, and butchered chunks of ninja mean nothing on their own, but there's a particular pattern to the carnage at his feet; the limbs of the shinobi before him, currently irregular stumps, would seem to have been getting shorter in increments for quite some time.
"When'd you start on this one?" Mangetsu asks, and nudges the ribs of Suigetsu's new friend with the toe of his sandal. "How long's he stayed alive?"
"However long I've been out here," Suigetsu says, exasperated, "—obviously," and he lops off the potential rebel's head with what could be an executioner's strike, one day—when he's older, and has more strength to go behind it—and when his brother doesn't choose to clap him on the shoulder in exultant congratulation at the precise moment he swings, so that he misses the first time and has to wrench the blade out from where it lodged, deep in the man's collarbone, and go again.
Still: as technique goes, for a genin it's remarkable.
"Precocious brat, aren't you?"
Suigetsu jolts round, instantly suspicious. Kisame smiles—shows his teeth, at least, and Suigetsu's glare narrows even further with mistrust. He jerks his blade free and buckles it back into its harness beside the other one, still glaring, wholly oblivious to the sincerity of Kisame's approval: which is exactly how Kisame prefers it, and exactly how he intends to keep it.
"It's cheating if they're dead before you cut their head off," Mangetsu announces, with the finality of a Kage's pronouncement, still studying the corpse.
Attention diverted, Suigetsu whirls on him at once. "He wasn't fucking dead!"
"He fucking was," says Mangetsu, but it has the tenor of a familiar argument, and while the bickering lasts for as long as it takes them to make their way back down into the steep, humid undergrowth it subsides immediately after, and the atmosphere between the two of them begins to feel a little like the rare days Kiri experiences when its perpetual rainfall falters: lighter, fresher, as though rejuvenated by the water. There's a spring in Mangetsu's step. There's a jauntiness to Suigetsu's.
Kiri has always done its level best to remove the risk of sane, compassionate ninja in its ranks. Kisame, riding a mild post-slaughter euphoria of his own, finds that it's almost refreshing to see it done so well.
.-.-.
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Their hurried downward journey returns them to the deserted strip of greyish sand where they arrived. Mangetsu gets busy dragging their beached, upturned rowboat back down to the water; his brother jumps about at the waterline, apparently absorbed in fantasy, slashing invisible strike sequences against an invisible opponent—an opponent who, from the style of his defence, would seem to wield a longsword, and who, from the frequency with which his gaze flicks back to Kisame, would seem likely to be Kisame himself. Kisame can't say the ceaseless, devoted attention isn't flattering—or unexpected, or remotely undeserved—but he can't say it's going to make the upcoming several-hour boat trip any more tolerable, either.
Kisame props his folded arms on Samehada. "I knew one of your lot back at the Academy," he remarks, for want of a distraction. "A Hoozuki kid. Exactly as irritating as you two, for what it's worth."
Invisible opponent abandoned for a real one, Suigetsu abandons the imaginary swordfight. "Yeah? Which one?"
"Sengetsu?" says Kisame. Suigetsu shrugs, shakes his head. "Didn't think so. I killed him during graduation."
The look that gets him is withering. "That doesn't count, then."
"No?" says Kisame. He's genuinely interested.
"We're a ninja clan," Suigetsu says, as though this explains anything at all—but then Mangetsu calls them into the water and so they go, where he's waded in, waist-deep, without bothering to just walk across the water's surface, rowboat bobbing violently at his side with its rope wound around his hand. The ocean is a bleak and endless grey, cold enough to strip bones. The first stroke of the oars pushes them into the mist; the chill sets into rain-damp clothes, lines them leaden, makes them heavier still.
"Well, we are," says Mangetsu, once Kisame has explained, between pulls of the oars, the dilemma. His tone is reasonable. "A ninja clan, I mean—so if this Sengetsu kid didn't graduate, then he never made ninja, did he? So he's not in the clan."
"We'd cut him off the family list," Suigetsu interrupts. He has fitted himself once more into the stern, content until now to trail his fingers in the water and ignore them both entirely, untroubled by the cold. His swords are still in their harness, jutting up behind his shoulders. "Chop him out the pictures. And," he adds, suddenly enthusiastic, "pass out his shit to everyone who wasn't dumb enough to get killed—that's pretty good. You get some decent stuff, usually. I got a harpoon last time."
"Makes sense," says Kisame, amiably. There's more to it than that, but neither of them seems remotely fazed by the practices of their clan, and his own thoughts on the matter are entirely irrelevant. And it does make sense, in a ruthlessly practical kind of way: that a family should continue to devour its weak, no matter how long it's been since they survived the womb. He was something of an anomaly for the Hoshigaki, choosing the Academy rather than the travelling sideshows, so he has no direct point of comparison; if shinobi life has taught him anything, though, it's the necessity of eradicating weak points, no matter how much those weak points may have trusted you.
Mercifully, though, neither seems keen to talk, and so the journey is made once more in the quiet and the suffocating dampness of the ocean fog—the splash of the oars—the long, far-off sound of a fishing trawler's horn.
.-.-.
.-.-.
It's evening by the time they're back in Kiri harbour. Noise has begun to spill from the inns on the waterfront, their light glinting on cobblestones damp from ocean fog. The water of the harbour is black and depthless in the misty night. A band of chuunin burst noisily from an alleyway and into Kisame's path—then, recognising him, flee in gratifyingly instantaneous panic. He bares his teeth after them, his mood upbeat.
The first heavy spatters of rain are running in the gutters when they reach mission headquarters. Suigetsu's been sticking close to his brother, as though the glow of Mangetsu's celebrity extends only a foot on every side and he wishes to bask in it as thoroughly as possible; he moves away now, though, and squints up into the rain in the general direction of Kisame's face. "I'm gonna fight you," he announces. "One day."
"I look forward to it," says Kisame—and realises, in some surprise, that he's telling the truth. Shinobi life is rarely dull, but it's just as rarely enjoyable. A break would be welcome, whenever it comes—whenever the kid decides he's on Kisame's level. Two weeks' time, probably. Flattening him in thirty seconds would still be thirty seconds of fun. "Let me know when you've got a date in mind," he says, and shows several viciously serrated rows of teeth in his most terrible grin.
"It's a deal, senpai," says Suigetsu, and returns the grin. It's nowhere near as terrible as Kisame's, but maybe, with practice, it'll get at least a little more alarming. With the family dentistry, it'd almost be a shame if it didn't.
And a shinobi must have iron self-control, must wield his own will with the ruthless violence of a weapon, and Kisame does—has proven it, many times over. He ruffles the kid's hair anyway. It's worth it for the stark horror at being so shamelessly patronised that immediately bursts across his expression, and Kisame's still laughing when Suigetsu scowls, makes a gesture considered inoffensive in exactly none of the shinobi countries, and departs.
"Use your shunshin!" Mangetsu hollers after him. Near the dockside warehouses the fog thickens, briefly; when it clears, Suigetsu has been swallowed up by it. "Good," Mangetsu says, satisfied, and shoves back the door to headquarters.
The floor inside is already sodden, filthy with footprints made in mud and rainwater. Kisame wiggles his fingers at the chuunin on the front desk, who flinches and hurriedly averts her gaze, and they make their way across the lobby to the stairs.
Somewhere between the second floor and the third, Kisame becomes aware of yet another lilac gaze fixed on him.
He looks down, and down, and meets Mangetsu's eyes. "Is something the matter?"
"You ever thought of getting yourself a genin team?" Mangetsu says, speculatively. "Because I happen to know there's a vacancy for a good jounin sensei—since yesterday morning, actually—and I'd be happy to stick in my recommendation for you, if you're interested—"
"No," says Kisame, with feeling.
"I've never offered to recommend anyone before," says Mangetsu, and sighs. Then he sighs again, even more heavily, even more meaningfully, as though Kisame has no idea how incredible the privilege he's rejecting here could be.
"Brat, have you ever considered that you might be too invested in his training?"
"Course not—blood's thicker than water, after all," says Mangetsu, and though Kisame considers pointing out the obvious problem with that as applied to his own situation Mangetsu gets there first—and continues, pragmatically, "unless you're Hoozuki, in which case all we've got is water, so we've just gotta make sure we spill a lot of blood, since it's stickier than water, and if we're covered in it it'll keep us together. You mind if I sign in first?"
As mottos of familial loyalty go, it's a particularly deranged example. Kisame's not even touching it. "Feel free," he says, and waves him forward.
.-.-.
.-.-.
A few days afterwards Kisame hears his name hailed across the market square, and a moment later finds himself unexpectedly once more in the company of Mangetsu, who has a remarkably oversized scroll wedged beneath one arm and looks like a ninja in a hurry.
"Suigetsu thinks you're cool," he announces, without greeting or warning or preamble.
Kisame's eyebrows lift.
"He thinks I'm cooler," Mangetsu hastens to clarify, "but I am cooler, so that's fair. Just a mission update for you, old man—thought you'd appreciate it."
"Of course," says Kisame, whose eyebrows have not yet lowered from their incredulously-raised position. "You can pass on my thanks. And my apologies, since I can't say the same of him."
"Oh, you don't mean that," Mangetsu says, cheerily and only semi-incorrectly—and then he's gone, with as little warning as he came, a leap to the nearest roof and from there into the thin, pale haze of the pre-dawn mist.
Kisame's day is likely to be complicated, and quite probably bloody, and the prospect of it has had his spirits buoyant since he woke. He would have entered the mission building grinning already; now, though, he finds a marked spring to his step—which, even from a distance, indicates that his good humour is both terrifyingly genuine and genuinely terrifying. Pre-genin scatter in terror from his path. It's a good day.