Title: BLUE SAVANNAH
Disclaimer: Boruto exists.
Summary: in which eye contact is finally made
"Am I friend, or am I foe?"
She was young with a slender neckline, cupid lips, and skin paler even than the little street rat Zabuza had picked up all those years ago. Her hair was at a hue just a few shades off from his own locks, with such a shine that it seemed to hold a perpetual halo effect. And though more noticeably pigmented, her large doe eyes shared the same color as little not-Miru. The strange blue and white civilian uniform she wore was unfamiliar, but the yukata resting upon her shoulders was identical to what the boy wore.
Her beauty was both ethereal and plain.
A very nice face to match a very nice voice.
Now, he wondered, who might you be, my accidental angel?
Kisame didn't know much about the Hyūga family, but he did know the little basics about how they had a branch house and a main house, and that the head of the family had two daughters to compete for leadership. The information had come up automatically back when he'd been researching about Madara, Itachi, and the Uchiha family in general.
As connected families, a person could not dig up one without finding information on the other.
Their eyes, the byakugan, was also just as coveted as the sharingan, but fell below the radar of interest thanks to the curse seal the family had devised. He suspected Ao had somehow gained possession of one though. Kisame had seen the veins.
Seeing as Hyūga Neji existed here, Kisame could only conclude that he'd wound up in an alternate reality. Assuming such, (and remembering how the boy had addressed the younger of the girls,) he ventured to guess that the young woman before him was the heiress to the family, elder sister to the little princess behind him.
Your name...had something to do with the sun, he thought. Your father is Hiashi if I recall correctly, so you must be.. Hima, no.. Hi..nata. Kisame blinked. Yes, Hyūga Hinata. A sunny place. That was it.
How ironic, to be named for the sun when she looked like a daughter born from the moon.
Even more ironic, was how he'd lost the company of one heir of a clan of eyes to wind up in the lap of another.
Itachi-san, I wonder what you would think of this situation I've found myself in.
Hinata felt an involuntary shiver zing up her spine at the sight of those gold-dusted yellow irises. He had a stare that made her feel as if she were prey and he, predator. It was like a rabbit cornered by a lion, and just thinking of that analogy made Hinata want to smack herself, seeing as the cat (while quite large) was still a cat, and therefore smaller than her, and he was sitting on her lap (But sitting up made him eye-level with her own eyes, he really was very big) and so really she was just being silly...
But Neji wasn't kidding when he said such eyes were disconcerting on a cat. They certainly didn't seem to dilate from slits like feline eyes, (or even shark eyes, if she were to follow Hanabi's thought process). Really, Kiba had more feline-like eyes than this cat.
Breathing out, Hinata slid her hands off furry blue shoulders and retrieved the small towel she'd placed aside earlier. She was being extra careful not to bring attention to Neji. Her dear cousin was still frozen in his position between halfway kneeling and halfway pivoting toward the open hallway.
He was always humorously dramatic at the oddest times.
Meanwhile, Hanabi was silently inching her way back closer.
With a glance to her little sister and a gentle smile, Hinata carefully brought a corner of the towel to the cat's face. "Kisame-kun, was it?"
His ears twitched in response, and Hinata was certain Hanabi couldn't look any more pleased.
In what she hoped was a soothing manner, she pet the small tufts that stubbornly stuck up from the top of his head with two fingers as she began to softly dab the cloth to his muzzle.
"I forgot to dry your face, forgive me."
Kisame stared at her hand as the cloth rubbed at his muzzle, uncertain on how he should be reacting to the onslaught of physical touch. With a glance back to her eyes, he found himself wondering what the real circumstances would have been had he met her before, met the konoha shinobi version. Did the other Hyūga Hinata hold onto this innocence he saw currently? How strong was she?
If they had ever met, he would have tried to kill her, most certainly.
Would it have been exciting? He would never find out now.
Closing his eyes and coming to a decision, Kisame pressed further into the hand rubbing his scalp. A life for a life. I'll stick around for a while princess, until I find a reason for landing in this strange world of yours.
Unbeknownst to him, Neji had gone pale, and seemed to be having a conniption, while Hanabi was torn between staring at her sister in awe, and silently laughing at her cousin.
Neji couldn't help it. But he found it quite a bit uncanny how the cat responded so instantly to its new name. One would think Kisame had already been its name with how used to it it seemed to be. Though he, Neji, in his petty dislike refused to call it anything other than "cat." Or "it."
The cat hadn't shown any signs of aggression since their initial "meeting," and had in fact not shown any signs of interest in him since then. It acknowledged Ko more in fact, ever since its discovery upon the fact that Hinata packed tempura ebi in the older male's bentos.
Obviously, Hyūga Neji still had a problem with holding grudges. But that was a tale for another time. Long story short, things happened, Hinata's father, his father, Hinata herself, Neji getting his rear handed back to him thanks to that idiotic red-head from Hinata's year...and yeah.
Unsurprisingly, the cat had become attached to his gentle cousin (though his mind still boggled over how she hadn't been harmed, touching the animal so suddenly like that). But it was an odd sort of attachment. The blue creature never openly sought her out for affection, but still it followed her, like a dog that lacked blind adoration, or was simply averse to touch. Though that wouldn't explain why Hanabi and Hinata were able to pet and coddle it.
A week after Neji had fished her out of the river, Kisame the cat had developed a routine.
On school days, according to Hinata, the dog-sized feline would be up and about before any other member of the household, (missing and doing who-knows-what while the cousins got ready for classes). He'd later be found lounging beside his uncle's seat (that instant friendship had been a shocker, they'd just stared at eachother and that was that,) at the head of the breakfast table. Then he would follow Hinata (specifically his cousin, Neji suspected he himself could do backflips while singing the nation's anthem and the cat would acknowledge him with nothing more than the flick of an ear,) from the moment she got up to set her dishes into the sink, to the moment she stepped foot past the school gates. From that point, it was anyone's guess what the blue animal did, but it would consistently be found waiting just beyond the gates once the final bell rang to follow Hinata back home.
Upon returning home, (after Hinata's customary glomp from Hanabi,) the creature would then engage his younger cousin in what seemed to be a game of hide and seek tag, before retiring to Hinata's desk as she completed her homework. Curiously, despite his obvious favoring of Hinata, the cat refused to engage in play with anyone other than Hanabi. If it didn't make him sound crazy, Neji would lean to say that the cat humored her because of her young age.
Around dinner time, usually before, the cat would then reappear near the main house kitchen (The estate boasted four separate kitchens, the main house one actually being the oldest and smallest and only called such because it was located where the current head of the family decided to reside). Hanabi said it had grown a habit of idly watching Hinata prepare dinner.
Luckily for the creature, the Hyūga household fed strays with nekomeshi made from the kitchens' leftovers. Hinata mentioned that it seemed to get moody if seafood wasn't part of any of the meals though. So she'd begun a habit of putting a slice of naruto (the food product, not the obnoxious Namikaze from school, not that Neji would mind if it was the latter) into its dish for those days.
It was irritating.
Just a couple days and the cat was already beginning to act entitled. Neji's thoughts were subtly (Actually, everyone knew but Neji didn't have to know that. The family all found his discomfiture entertaining.) kept hidden though. The rest of the family had accepted the blue thing quite easily upon the realization that it seemed to belong to Hinata, and it wouldn't do for him to get called out for being jealous of a cat.
Not that he was jealous. Neji was just peeved that despite being the prodigy of the family, and getting along quite well with all the stray cats over the years, more so than even Hinata was with the feline animals, this one cat dared to threaten him, then ignore him! It didn't deserve Hinata-sama's pampering!
Yes, he could admit he still had a problem with holding grudges.
He didn't really understand his own ire entirely, to be honest. Despite its size, color, and certain menacing features, it was still a cat. Just an animal. However every time Neji looked upon it, a chill would go down his spine and he'd automatically get the urge to whisk both his younger cousins away from it, as if it posed a danger.
It didn't help that he was the only one to seem to feel this way.
"For such a fearsome looking animal, it's quite docile," He'd overheard a distant aunt say.
"He's really intelligent," her son, Neji's cousin Tokuma, had replied. "I believe the cat understands spoken tongue. I overheard Hinata-sama ask him to retrieve something from the koi garden, and the next thing I heard the cat had jumped straight into the pond!"
"My my, it already obeys young Hinata-sama's commands?"
"So it would seem."
It obeyed Hinata, yes. It even obeyed Hanabi, sometimes. And his uncle seemed to get along with the cat as well. It was almost hilariously terrifying how the cat had conveniently picked the three members of the family guaranteed to ensure the rest of the family did not question its prolonged presence and access to the interior of the homes (granted, Hinata was the one to rescue it). And it even got along with Ko, because of tempura ebi, who was the only other member of the family to have a persona similar to Hinata's.
And Neji would sometimes wonder if Ko was the reason his cousin had turned out so gentle and patient, with him being her guardian before Neji was old enough (mature enough and taken down a few pegs, actually) to steal the role, or if memories of her late mother were entirely to blame. But then he would remember that Ko was actually her late mother's first-removed baby cousin and therefore closely related so it didn't matter as it was clearly a recessive trait thing regardless. Obviously recessive, seeing as the rest of the family (including himself) were quite sadistic in their natures.
So the cat was automatically granted pardon, seeing as it was friends with both the male and female sweethearts of the family.
Such connections really worked in its favor, especially since the cat deemed Hinata's room its personal sleeping quarters. Stray cats were one thing, but pets were actually forbidden in the family, a rule Neji's grandfather, the prior head (now retired with a tendency to go on tea-tasting journeys) had placed due to an incident from when Neji and Hinata's fathers were still infant boys. Doves and songbirds used to be the common pet for many in the family, along with the occasional dog, (usually gifted from an Inuzuka in a gesture of gratitude for whatever friendship was forged or deed was done) until the day one of Neji's aunts had taken in one of the stray cats. A bloodbath was to be discovered the next day after what supposedly sounded like a war between hell-risen beasts.
Tokuma's father had described it as a massacre. According to him, out of twenty-eight birds, all but three and a half had been reduced to bone and feathers, the cat had lost its tail and broken one leg thanks to the protective dogs, and the dogs had destroyed approximately three hundred thousand yen worth of family heirlooms.
Neji found it hard to believe, but if that's truly what had happened, he couldn't fault his grandfather for banning pets altogether.
When Neji had questioned his uncle why Hinata was allowed to keep the cat, his uncle had replied, "Kisame obeys her commands, and we do not keep birds anymore to have to worry of such things."
"But, what would Ojii-sama think of this?"
"Your grandfather is away on another of his tea excursions. What he does not know of immediately will not hurt him. ...if you are so worried Neji, you may speak of the matter directly with my daughters."
Well, there went that.
His uncle knew very well how weak Neji was to Hinata's wishes. It takes one to know one, after all.
And so, Kisame the cat was there to stay for the indefinite future.
Or until his grandfather returned home.
...
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