AN: Another chapter guys! Especial thanks to Zerojackson for helping me work out through my little writer's block mid-way into the chapter.

Dark Waters

Chapter 4 – The Shark Boy and the Spring Girl

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When Kurai opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was a shark trying to kiss her.

Wait… what?

Her eyes widened and she screamed like the little girl she was. At the sudden noise, the shark-boy (was his skin really blue?!) snapped his own eyes open, displaying small dark pools that stared at her in clear surprise before he himself screamed and fell on his back trying to get away from her.

Meanwhile, Kurai had gone on all fours, dropping any pretense of gracefulness and decorum her father had tried to teach her in order to get as far away from the two-legged shark as her legs could possibly take her.

Unfortunately, her legs couldn't take her much farther, which made Kurai wonder for just how long she had been unconscious for. Judging by the burning in her lungs and the headache making her dizzy in pain, it was a rather long time.

"Wh-wha- You're alive!" came the shout behind her.

Kurai turned her head sideways, glaring at the blue finger pointing at her. "Of course I'm alive! Why wouldn't I be?!"

"You weren't breathing before! I thought you were dead!"

"And because of that you thought you could kiss me?!"

An affronted look crossed the boy's face. "I wasn't trying to kiss you!"

"Then what the hell were you trying to do?!"

"I was going to give you CPR! Besides, I don't swing that way!"

"Huh? You don't like girls?" she asked confusedly. Wasn't he a bit young to have a preference?

"I don't like BOYS!"

Kurai raised her eyebrows expectantly. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Shark-boy looked at her confusedly. "You ARE a boy, are you not?"

Wait. Did he just say…?

WHAT?!

Kurai couldn't help it. It was just too much. She exploded. "YOU IDIOT! I'M A GIRL, A GIRL!"

The volume of her shout was enough to make the blue-skinned boy yelp and jump backwards in his hast to get away from her. "Yeep!"

"ARE YOU BLIND?! CAN'T YOU SEE THAT I AM NOT A BOY?!" Kurai followed her crawling and clueless victim, flames in her eyes and a dark and red aura around her that sent shivers down the boy's spine.

"Wha-what?" he stammered from the rocky ground. "Y-you're a g-girl? A-are you sure…?"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN WITH THAT? OF COURSE I AM SURE!"

"But I always thought that girls have… ya know…" he trailed off, uncertainty clouding his features.

"What?" she hissed through clenched teeth.

"… Pillows? I heard some of the men in the bar talking about them, they called it… Melons? Bobs…? Boobs! Yeah, boobs! Shouldn't a girl have boobs?"

The flames around Kurai withered and died away in the wake of her shock, leaving her to stare at him incredulously. "… You haven't been around the fairer sex much, have you?"

"Nope!" he chirped happily, sitting in the ground now that the Flames from Hell had gone away. Kurai noted, annoyed, that even while he was sitting, the boy was still taller than her. That just wasn't playing fair.

Kurai sighed. "Alright, I will give you a free crash course on the feminine world. These," she pointed at her bare chest. "are not called 'pillows', 'melons' or 'boobs'. The correct term is 'breasts'. Every girl has them, and as their body evolves through puberty, the breasts also change. In time, my breasts will grow to a decent and respectful size that matches the ones of an adult woman the men you overheard in the bar were talking about."

The shark-boy stared unabashedly at her flat chest. Then he opened his mouth. Kurai should have known that nothing remotely intelligent would come out of it.

"They are a looong way from being considered a 'decent and respectful size', aren't they?"

It took everything and a little more of her non-existent self-control not to punch him in the face. She managed it, by the skin of her teeth. Otou-sama would be so proud.

"You know what? I'm done with this. With you. I knew I should have stayed in bed while I had had the chance," with that, Kurai turned around, gathering her clothes in the way, and began to walk towards the village's gate.

"Hey! Wait, squirt!"

A thick mark appeared in her brow. "Don't call me that!" she snapped behind her.

The boy continued following her regardless of her protests. "So, what is your name, squirt?"

"Stop calling me that!"

The boy grinned at her, displaying slightly sharp teeth that unconsciously made her mind flash back to the Sandaime, and the way he would smile at her, with an almost predatory expression on his face. She took a step away.

Her unwanted companion must have noticed the movement, for he scowled deeply at her. "I was asking your name for a reason squirt. Or should I start calling you scaredy-cat? It may fit better, don't you think?"

He smiled at her again, but this time it had lost its previous warmth and friendliness. Had she hurt his feelings when she stepped away from him? It was possible. The boy couldn't have many friends, if any at all, looking the way he did. She wouldn't be surprised if she had been the first child younger and smaller than him to dare shout at him.

Puffing out her now clothed chest, Kurai looked at him in the eye with what she knew was a brave and prideful expression on her face. "My name is neither squirt nor scaredy-cat. I am Kurai, daughter of Yagura, and someday I will be one of the strongest shinobi of Kirigakure."

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"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" the blue haired boy exploded in laughter, desperately clutching at his stomach, with tears trailing down from his black eyes. When it proved too much effort to stay standing, he collapsed once more in the ground, rolling around trying in vain to stop his hysterical laughter.

Kurai stared at him. Then she turned around, picked up a rather large-sized pebble and threw it at the boy's head. His laugh stopped immediately and gave room to a pained groan.

"Why did you do that?!" he exclaimed, gently massaging the side of his head where the pebble had hit him.

"If you have to ask, I should just do it again." Said Kurai, another small rock innocently laying in the palm of her hand.

The Shark-boy glowered darkly at her, his big blue arms already blocking any attempts from her at hitting his head.

Satisfied that her threat had been received and understood, she let the rock drop harmlessly to the ground. "As I said, my name is Kurai. What about you?"

Still warily eyeing her hands for any sight they might chuck anything else at him, the blue boy replied. "Kisame."

What a fitting name. Demon shark, indeed.

"Well, Kisame-san. Am I right to assume that I own my life to you?"

"Err… Yeah?"

She stared at him flatly. "Did you, or did you not, rescue me from the river?"

He better have, for if Kurai discovered that he had just stayed apart instead of trying to save her, the next border patrol would discover a drowned shark in this river.

"Yeah, yeah. I did. It's not like I could have just left you to die, right?" the Kisame boy asked her with a great dose of annoyance in his voice.

He could have, Kurai thinks to herself, in a sudden realization. He could have just walked by without even sparing a disinterested glance in her direction, continued with his life, uninterrupted and unchanged. She would have drowned if he hadn't dragged her out. He was even trying to give her CPR when he thought she was going to die.

She would have, if it wasn't for him. He had saved her life.

And she had gone all 'demon from hell' over him with that entire 'gender-confused' situation. She had even offended him, unintended, of course, but still. Now Kurai felt guilty. It wasn't an emotion she had felt before and she swiftly decided she didn't like it one bit.

So, time to make emends.

"Look…" Kurai hesitated, uncertainty holding her tongue. What was she supposed to say in a situation like this? "I'm… sorry if I have offended you in any way. It wasn't my intention. I'm just… tired."

Instantly, Kisame was back on her face. "It's alright squirt. I forgive you!"

The hell?! One minute he was depressed and angry and the next he's smiling brighter than the freaking sun?! Was he bipolar or something?

Putting her hands firmly on his chest (because, to her eternal annoyance, she couldn't reach his shoulders even on her tiptoes), she pushed him away from her. Just because she had decided to apologize and be nice, did not mean she had to have him invading her personal bubble.

Kisame didn't even budge. It was like he hadn't even felt her push at all.

Frowning to herself, Kurai directed a little of her chakra to her hands, just like her Otou-sama had demonstrated, and this time, when she pushed Kisame, he moved.

He also seemed rather surprised that she managed to make him move at all, if his wide eyes were any indication.

"How did you do that?" he asked, amazed.

"What?" Kurai repeated. "You mean push you? Because I just had to use my h-"

Kisame shook his head, cutting her off. "Not that! I meant how you, a three years old toddler, have the necessary strength to push me! Boys four years old didn't manage it!"

… He thought she was three years old?...

More importantly, he could take on boys' years older than him in a fight?

Now that was more interesting.

She considered him through narrowed pink eyes, before announcing with a careful voice. "I think, Kisame-san, that I know the perfect way to repay you by helping me back there in the river. Tell me, have you ever heard of chakra before?"

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"Am I doing it right?"

"You aren't if you keep stopping your meditation to ask me that," came the exasperated reply.

A huff. "This is boring."

"This is training. Now go back to it."

"For you is easy to say. You're doing the most cool stuff."

"You will be doing it too, as soon as you master this exercise first. And we don't say 'the most cool', the correct term is 'the coolest'." She absent-mindedly corrected his grammar, while running up and down from the tree.

They were still outside, a little ways from the river Kurai had almost drowned in, but far enough from the village's gates not to be noticed by the guards posted on the walls. She had just introduced Kisame to the wonders of chakra. After being certain that the six years old boy had completely understood the concept behind it, she had helped him make his first connection with his own chakra. It took some minutes, because, as Kurai was quick to discover, Kisame was definitely not the type to sit still for more than one minute, if even that. Eventually, she finally convinced him to stay still long enough for him to grasp his chakra, and Kurai wondered with the same expression of absolute awe in Kisame's face was on her own when her father taught it to her the first time around. Somehow, she doubted it.

Currently, Kisame was struggling to make one small pebble stick to his forehead using only his chakra, while Kurai, that had already mastered that exercise some time ago, was training her tree-walking. Had she been a better person, perhaps she would have given him some pointers and clues. She knew from experience how absolutely frustrating that exercise was, but as she was not a better person, Kurai left the shark boy figure it out on his own, like her father had done to her. And truth be told, she was getting quite the kick out of seeing someone else struggle with his own chakra. Call it sadism or whatever; she was enjoying herself too much to care.

"I did it!" the triumphant cry broke her out from her concentration and she would have fallen from the tree had she not grasped at one of the branches to stop herself from falling. Swinging her body down from the tree in an almost graceful fashion that spoke of many hours of intense training, Kurai glared at the pebble sticking to Kisame's forehead like it had been super-glued on it, willing it to fall with the intenseness of her gaze. After a few seconds of constant staring, Kisame finally snapped.

"Are you done staring?"

She looked at him, expressionless. "Hai."

Then she gave her back to him, intent to return to her own exercise. Of course, it wasn't mean to be, as Kisame followed hurriedly after.

"What do I do now?" he asked eagerly, pebble still sticking to his forehead.

Kurai merely pointed at the farthest tree away from her own and shooed him like one would a particularly irritating pet. "Go climb on that."

The boy scratched behind his head, mussing up his spiky dark blue hair that was almost crying for a brush. "Why so far away?" then an evil glint appeared on his shark-like eyes. "Are you trying to get rid of me, Sukoshi?"

Kurai stopped mid-step, one foot still hanging on the air and a thick mark making another appearance on her brow. What was with that boy and his incessant nicknames for her? She was short, alright. Must he rub it in her face every few sentences?!

"Don't call me that" she said as calmly as she possibly could.

"Ah, I don't think so, Sukoshi. If you are so hell bent on trying to get as far away from me as you can, than is only fair that I get to call whatever I like."

She couldn't beat his logic. Fortunately for her, she could beat him.

Charging chakra to her hands for the second time that day, Kurai swung a fist at Kisame's head. It was through pure instinct and sheer dumb luck that he managed to avoid the surprise punch that would have knocked him out for a few minutes at least. To Kurai's surprise however, Kisame didn't seem angry that she had tried to take his head off in a fit of rage. In fact, the boy almost seemed… Excited.

Her assessment was proven right when she heard Kisame's loud laugher fill the quietness of the forest around them. He was enjoying this. He liked fighting her.

But why?

Soon, they had fallen on a pattern. Kurai would strike at him for some time and he would do his best to evade her blows, only succeeding a quarter of the time, and when Kurai showed sights of boredom, Kisame would make another insulting remark about her height, or lack thereof, and she would be charging at him again in a matter of seconds with all the indignant fury her four year old body could handle.

And on and on it went, with the two trading blows and insults, with Kisame in the end of one and Kurai suffering from the other, until the forest grew dark and cold and they laid sprawled on the ground, gasping for breath and (in Kisame's case) nursing painful bruises.

"That," Kisame gasped out. "was the best fight of my life." Then he laughed, long and hard, and it was so contagious that Kurai found herself laughing too.

Why wouldn't she laugh? She had almost died early today but survived with the help of a shark boy and had finally confronted her fear, like her father told her to. She had managed to find the cause behind it and beat it. She didn't fear drowning anymore, or at least not more than she would fear being stabbed to the death. Kurai was free of Elyse! No more nightmares, no more fear, no more weakness. She could go back home and show her father what she managed to accomplish in one day and maybe, just maybe, he would be proud of her.

And of course, seeing Kisame's skin painted all the colors of the rainbow helped too. The sight was just way too funny not to giggle. Who knew that so many shades of purple, black, red, green and yellow existed?

"You should see how my Otou-sama spars. Then you will have the best fight of your life." She told him, far too drunk in her happiness to notice or care that she and Kisame were almost touching, such was their closeness.

Kisame slowly turned his head to stare at her, mindful of his injuries. "Yeah, I remember you told me his name was Yagura? Is he a shinobi?"

Kurai nodded her head. "The strongest in the village."

The boy raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "Heh? But I thought that the strongest shinobi in our village is the Mizukage. Are you the Sandaime's long lost daughter that no one knew about, by any chance, Sukoshi?"

That damned nickname. She scowled at him, previous good mood forgotten. "Of course I'm not his daughter." The mere idea of sharing a blood relation with Kaguya Hiyasu made her skin crawl in a completely unpleasant way. She was going to have nightmares about this now, she just knew it. And she had just rid herself from the old ones too… It was all Kisame's fault. "But I know my Otou-sama. He will be Mizukage one day."

She said that with the unshakable belief and complete trust only a child can have for their parent, but that made her words no less true. She knew that, if her Father so wished, he would become Mizukage, even if he had to take the Hat from Hiyasu's cold dead hands. Kurai also knew that maybe her Father would even prefer it that way. There was some kind of story between Yagura and Hiyasu, and it wasn't a fairytale where dreams come true. Rather, it was probably more of a bloody horror story.

Kisame continued to stare at her face for a few more seconds before turning his gaze to the sky above. That night, the sky was surprisingly clear, free of the usual storm clouds that would cover the entire island with its grayness. They could even see the stars twinkling merrily down at them, like they held untold secrets about times of Old and lands long forgotten by humans.

"You seem to trust you dad very much." Kisame finally spoke, breaking the brief silence that had fallen over them as they watched the sky together.

"With my life," was Kurai's prompt reply, with no hesitation or doubt in her voice.

"What about your mom?"

Kurai shrugged, a little unconcerned. "I never met her. I don't think she's even alive anymore. Otou-sama never speaks of her."

"Well then, if you have no mother, how is it, having a father?"

The question took the young girl by surprise and she wrenched her eyes away from the stars to stare at the boy lying down next to her. But Kisame was still watching the sky intently, as if it was holding the answer to all of his questions.

"It's… hard to explain." She said pathetically.

Kisame's jaw unclenched in what might have been disappointment. The four years old girl felt rather disappointed with herself as well. So she tried again.

"Having a father… is like having a hero, trainer and supporter, all in one. He is your role model, someone you strive to be like in any way you can because you know that you can't be wrong if you choose to be like him. He will be there with you during all of the way –and it's a long one, I tell you, - dragging you forward by the scruff of the neck even if you don't want to move, guiding you when you feel like you have become lost in the road and offering help when you still can't do something in your own, fully expecting that the next time you will do it in your own or Kami may help you." She chuckled softly at that, and so did Kisame, a low, comforting sound in the back of his throat that was strangely warm. "He will be there to critique all your efforts and belittle you because he knows you can do so much better than that. And he knows all of that, will do all of that, because he is your Father."

Kurai stopped talking abruptly, suddenly ashamed of her own words. Her Otou-sama was all these things for her, all right. But he was also so much more than what she could ever hope to express with only words…

"Your dad is a lucky man for having you as a daughter."

She glanced at him by the corner of her eye to see if he was joking, but he only grinned down at her with his eyes closed. And hesitantly, unsteadily, clumsily...

She grinned back.

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By the time Kurai stood in front of her house's door, night had already fallen over Kirigakure, sending the ugly stone buildings in total darkness that only made them appear yet more terrifying in the shadows of poorly-lit paper lanterns that were the only source of light. The mist filling the empty streets, added a touch of suspense and terror around the area, making everyone hold their breath to avoid making any unnecessary noise and attract the wrong sort of attention.

Kurai was almost knocking on the door, eager to get out of the streets when it suddenly opened itself alone.

Her Father stood on the doorway glaring at her with one hand gripping the door. Kurai's words were frozen on her throat.

"Well? Did you do it?"

She didn't ask how he knew what she was planning to do when she left the house earlier. She just gave a happy, triumphant, and just a tad little prideful, nod in confirmation. In return, her Father's lips quirked up and he beckoned her inside.

Their house's warmth invaded her senses and brought her a state of peace she didn't know she could feel in this life. Everything seemed sharper, brighter, and more alive. She had to wonder if it was because of Elyse's banishment or simply the euphoria of defeating her that hadn't dissipated yet. Either was, she didn't care much. She was in her home with her Father, so all was well in the world.

They ate together in a comfortable silence until Kurai decided, in a rare state of recklessness, that, since everything had been going so well today, she might as well go for it.

"Otou-sama, is Sakura the name of my mother? You know, the woman that Sandaime-sama mentioned a few weeks ago during our visit."

Her father's chopsticks had frozen mid-way to his mouth during her question and Kurai bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood. What the hell was she thinking?! She had never cared about her mother before, so why now? It was probably that Kisame boy's fault, asking her about her family and-

"Sakura isn't your mother."

Kurai snapped away from her self-punishing thoughts to look at her father. He was staring back at her serenely with a neutral expression.

"Izumi Sakura is the name of my mother, your grandmother. That is our family name. I am Yagura Izumi and you, as my daughter, are Kurai Izumi. I have never told you that, have I? It must have slipped from my mind."

The four years old girl stared at her father in shock. She had never even known they had a family name! She had been so ecstatic about having one name at all that she had never asked for another one. And since her Father had mentioned growing up in the Orphanage as well, she had just assumed that he himself didn't know who his parents were. But now…

Izumi. Their name meant spring, something Kirigakure would never experience with its perpetually cold, misty and cloudy weather. And still, it sounded so right in her mind. So fitting, like the final missing piece of a ridiculously hard puzzle.

A smile bloomed in her face and a happy giggle left her mouth. For the first time in her life, Kurai studiously ignored her Father's disapproving looks (even because she could see the slight half-smile on his face) and spent the rest of dinner begging Yagura to tell her if he had any photos of her grandparents. She wanted to know if she looked anything like them.

Kurai Izumi.

She decided that she really loved her name.

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AN: Well, what do you guys think? Don't forget to REVIEW!