A/N: *sniff* I just finished writing the end of this chapter, and therefore all my thoughts are about it. I have nothing to say up here.

I really need to start finishing chapters before Sunday just so I can have things to say up here.

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Samehada

It felt good to dance! Dancing was just what Samehada did, flicking his tail as he dove through the water. He was not a great swimmer compared to other sharks, yet he swam easily. It felt like the water was helping him move. Human Cousin was right about the lake; its water was different from the water in the tank. It did not have any more chakra in it than the rest of the forest did, but it had something else. Samehada felt more alive just swimming through it. The water must be alive! Samehada rumbled in gratitude as he swam through it.

He opened his toothy mouth wide as he approached the top of the lake, where light shone down. Here, he was not a shadow! Here, light shone on him, and he was visible, and Human Cousin could see him clearly and swim with him. Samehada performed a backwards flip, and dove down into the lake where Human Cousin was swimming.

They both moved to their rights, and before either shark knew it they were circling each other. Human Cousin grinned, although Samehada knew humans did not circle each other. He must feel like a shark now! The lake was very good. Samehada loved the lake. In the future, he would have to bring Human Cousin back here to tell him about important neglected matters.

But for now, Samehada didn't care about matters of the past or future. Here they were, circling each other, and that was good.

Before either of them realized it, the circle broke up. That was the way of circling; it was not a thing one chose to start or to end. It just happened. Human Cousin gestured toward the shore with his head. Samehada agreed. Dry beach good! Being on land was just as good as swimming. After all, they both had land-based halves too. The fact that Samehada's aquatic half had been neglected for some time did not make being on land any less pleasant.

He wriggled his way onto the dirt and found a good patch of sun. Sun warm. Makes water shiny. Sparkles! He flapped his tail, throwing drops of water off of it that sparkled as they flew through the air. When they had fallen to the ground and soaked in, he flapped his tail again, and again, until there were no more drops left to fly.

Samehada stretched his fins and wiggled luxuriously. That was when Human Cousin came over. He, too, had found a patch of sunlight to dry himself in. He was not dry enough to have the rest of his clothes on, but he seemed not to mind that. Samehada began to warble curiously. Human Cousin was not like the Red Claw Person, who liked to never wear a shirt. Human Cousin always had clothes, just like the other humans did. But he was happy without them now. What was the point of clothes? Samehada didn't actually know the answer to that. He only knew they were things that humans liked to wear. But why did they like to wear them?

He nudged Kisame's arm, then pointed with his snout across the lake to the opposite shore, where Kisame had left his clothes. Then he nuzzled Kisame's arm again, licked softly at it, and trilled. Kisame understood. "You want to know about clothes?" Samehada nodded. Kisame chuckled. He never would've thought on his own that Samehada needed to be told about such basic parts of human life. Although… Now that Kisame was trying to think of an explanation, he realized he couldn't give one. The fact that clothes were such a basic part of human life made them hard to think about. This was a great challenge. "Give me a minute," he muttered while stretching out his limbs. "It's hard to explain."

Samehada chirped and settled down to watch birds fly over the lake. The forest was filled with the sounds of chirping, and every so often Samehada could see birds dart through the skies over the lake in little groups of two or three. His attention was soon captured, though, by a trio of birds that were not flying at all. They made harsh sounds at each other and hopped from branch to branch through the crown of a nearby tree. Two of them did most of the chasing, though the third joined in at one point. Samehada wondered what birds argued with each other about. He had a better idea now of what humans argued about and why they argued. But what about birds?

"It's considered inappropriate," Human Cousin said, breaking into Samehada's bird thoughts. "Not wearing clothes. It has a certain meaning. People don't want to be sending that kind of message all the time, so they wear clothes instead."

Message? What message? What is the message? Samehada warbled, trilled, and did everything else he could to convey his question. Sadly, he had only body language and sounds to use, so all of his messages were too general. It was obvious he had a question, but Kisame had no idea what the specific question was. "That's the best explanation I can think of," he said. Samehada shook his head and tried again. "I don't know why people are uncomfortable with that, okay? I haven't studied psychology." Samehada shook his head again and lowered himself to the ground, whining. He just wasn't going to get his question answered. That was very sad, because it was a nice question, and now it would be incomplete.

Kisame sighed. "Sorry, Same." He rubbed the insides of his elbows, his knees, and other parts of him where water could still be lingering. "I'll do my best, but I'm not naturally the sort of person who's good at explaining things in detail."

Samehada perked up. He knew a human who was! Question can be finished! Doesn't have to be lonely with no answer! He nuzzled Kisame's arm again, jabbed his tail across the lake to the clothes, then pointed with his snout in the direction of the Hatake campground.

.

The two of them were startled to see the large black she-wolf running and spinning like a giant puppy, chasing after a ball. She leaped up on her powerful legs, seeming to fly. Then she came down brutally on top of the poor ball, which was still rolling feebly. It could not have been an ordinary ball, because it was not broken when she carried it back triumphantly. After inspecting it, of course.

She paused midstep with the ball in her mouth. Suddenly, she was the guard wolf again, a canine you did not cross and expect to survive. The ball in her mouth made that image even more menacing, somehow. Kisame suddenly felt sympathy with the ball. It seemed like he could end up in the same situation as it was if he made any wrong moves.

"Hi," Kisame said. Samehada trilled politely.

Makuto came to take the ball from Wave. It looked like it was made of leather, or some related material. The way Makuto handled it as he carried it to a nearby porch and put it down indicated that it was heavy. That was all Kisame got to determine about it before the wolf-man came back and greeted him in return. "Hello."

"Samehada was just asking me questions I didn't know how to answer," Kisame said. "I think we're here to see Ruta."

The four of them were standing at the edge of the campground, around the side of but not far from the outer cabin. The rest of the camp was visible from here. Makuto led them to the center of it, where the cabin to the right of the parking space opened. Ruta came out. "Hey! Sammy!" He ran up, stopped short, and waved at the shark. Samehada had no such restrictions on his behavior and leaped up onto the tiger man, knocking him backward. Ruta barely held himself up on his arms as Samehada licked his face and he laughed. "It's starting to hurt! Ha ha!"

Wave circled around him and sniffed his cheek after Sammy pulled back. Detecting no injuries, she returned to Makuto's side. She glanced up at him as she did so. "Excuse me, I have a game to return to," Makuto said. "No hula hoops." He left.

Ruta sighed. "Just because I rolled hula hoops down a roof one time, now I'm banned from them for life? How is that fair?" He brushed invisible dirt off of his blue T-shirt and stood up. He was wearing a blue T-shirt and black sweatpants, which would have camouflaged him well against the lake. The blue shirt was the same very light blue as the sky.

"Uh-huh." Kisame looked at him suspiciously. "Hula hoops don't make that much noise. You're definitely leaving out some things."

"They may have been filled with ball bearings to make a nice rattling sound."

"You're lucky you're only banned from hula hoops for life. I would have killed you if you'd rolled that down my roof in the middle of the night."

Samehada chirped supportively. He would not have killed Curious Tiger Person, nor banned him from hoops. Samehada liked rattling. He wanted to see these hoops.

"I know where they are," Ruta said to the shark. "And I know they're still filled with ball bearings, because I wasn't the one who did that. Satori did it. He's not banned from using them. I could ask him…"

Samehada rattled loudly and slapped his fins on the ground. Ruta grinned. Kisame looked down at his favorite shark. "I thought we were here to ask questions."

Samehada lolled his tongue out. Human Cousin was being silly! Questions could wait. Rattly hoops were now.

Ruta pulled out his phone and made a call. "Hi, it's Ruta. Are you around?" A pause. "No, it's really about something I need your help with." Pause. "I'd be breaking some rules if I didn't involve you."

While Ruta persuaded Satori to help over the phone, Kisame struggled to remember who that name belonged to. He couldn't even remember the species, let alone any individual characteristics. The name seemed familiar, but there had been four branches of the family present when he'd been over. Kisame was very sure he would have remembered the name of the Desert Lizard guy, but that still left three branches. He decided he would find out when Satori showed up, and left it at that.

Ruta came back, pouting. "He says he's busy." Kisame scowled. Samehada trilled and wiggled in a nervous but excited way. Sneaking? Sneaking is fun. Like sneaking. He had greatly enjoyed sneaking around the top of the tank on a secret mission to get back into it that one time. If all sneaking around was like that, Samehada would happily volunteer.

Kisame looked down at him. "Same. We are not breaking the rules of someone else's home. If you're not one of the people who live in a place, you don't get to test the rules of that place, not as much as the people who live there get to." He looked expectantly at Ruta.

Ruta touched his fingertips to each other and swayed back and forth on his feet. "I'm not allowed to though."

"You rolled noisy hoops down a roof before and now you're scared of breaking a minor rule?"

Ruta looked sharply off to the side. "Let's find a nice place to sit." Without waiting for a reply, he led them out of the camp, down a trail, around some fallen trees and into a clearing with grass growing in sparse clumps. The broken and uprooted trees blocked them from the view of anyone on the trail. Kisame was immediately on guard.

He did not sit down when Ruta did. "What are we doing here?"

Ruta winced and looked around. "Be quiet! I don't want anyone to hear. It's a secret."

Kisame sat down. "Alright," he whispered. "What's the secret?"

"Satori encouraged me," Ruta whispered back. "He likes the sound of the hoops. That's why he made them. He thought they would sound even better if they were rolled down something, so he asked me to help him. We found a cabin nobody was supposed to be in, and he said it's normal to do rule-breaking things for fun. I've never done that since I was a kid, so I wanted to see if I could, just once… And nobody was supposed to be in there."

Ruta rocked back and forth in a tensely curled posture at an increasingly rapid pace, indicating that all had not gone according to plan. "There was though. The first two hoops were fun, and then we heard shouting." As suddenly as if a switch had flipped, he stopped rocking and straightened. "I waved at Satori to go away. Nobody saw him, and he's not in trouble. Everybody thinks I was behind all of it. Don't tell anyone I wasn't, okay?"

Samehada purred and nuzzled Ruta's knee. He loved this story! It had friendship, and compassion, and even a little bit of sacrifice. Same was a sucker for stories like this. Kisame was smiling. He had to admire the chutzpah of this kid. "If you keep looking so scared of breaking any rules, someone's going to figure out you couldn't have been alone," he warned.

Ruta smiled. "I think getting in trouble has been really good for me! It's been so mild, and it was kind of thrilling. I remember why I used to volunteer for it now. Maybe I'll do some more of that again."

Kisame nodded at him. "I don't tell secrets that aren't mine. I barely tell mine." Samehada nodded agreement. No telling, no trouble.

Ruta hugged them both. "Thanks."

Kisame looked to Samehada. "What do you want to do now? Convince him to get the hoops illegally, or ask him about clothes?"

"Clothes? What about clothes?" Ruta asked. "I have done extensive thinking on the purpose of clothes." If he'd been a dog, his tail would have been wagging.

Rattly hoops could wait. Closed-place good for talking in was now. Samehada nudged Kisame's arm twice, then settled down in listening posture.

"He asked what was the point of clothing," Kisame explained. He looked at Samehada for confirmation that this was accurate, received it, and continued. "I told him that not wearing clothes sends a message that most people don't want to send most of the time, so they wear clothes instead."

"Heyyyy," Ruta whined. "You can't do that! You can't hint at something really interesting and leave it unsaid! What's the message?!"

Kisame stared at him. "I don't need to spell out what not wearing clothes means."

"Yes you do!" Ruta took a moment to collect himself. "I mean, I've looked up stuff about sharks since Same last visited, and it looks like sharks mate in completely different ways from humans. How would he know?" He turned to Samehada and said, "Humans don't use our sense of smell very much. We use our eyes instead. Not wearing clothes sends a message that you want to mate, because it makes the mating parts visible and visual displays are what humans do."

Samehada made a low "Ohh" sound. That explained why nobody, not even Red Claw Person, ever took off their pants. Samehada knew enough about general anatomy to guess that was where the relevant parts were. He chirped curiously as another question occurred to him. What about shirts? If shirts did not do that, why did so few humans take them off? Samehada nudged Kisame in the chest to convey this.

Kisame grimaced and kept his mouth firmly shut. If he had understood what Samehada was asking, he would have run to find Ruta instead of walking. He was more than happy to leave this entire topic to Tiger Kid.

Ruta was more than happy to take it. "Oh, shirts are in this kind of in-between category. If a male is shirtless, it's possible to appreciate that as a display, but only if you choose to interpret it that way. It's not like he's the one sending out the message, in that case. Guys might choose not to go around shirtless just because they don't want anybody to interpret them that way, or they want other people to be comfortable because seeing what you think is a display and wanting to interact with it and not being able to is painful, or other reasons. And female humans have structures on their chest that are definitely displays, so for them shirts are needed the same way pants are."

Samehada rumbled in thought. Now that he thought about it, Red Claw Person never was shirtless when he was female. That made sense.

Kisame grimaced again. "If you're going to give him a full talk about how humans mate, warn me so I can leave."

"Why would I? That's not very different between sharks and humans," Ruta said. "Except it's easier for humans because we don't have to worry about sliding or floating out of position. Being dry is really helpful for that." Kisame facepalmed.

Samehada purred. All questions had been answered. The purpose of clothing was fully explained. He already understood the idea of not wanting to mate or attract attention in that way, so he didn't have any questions about the way Human Cousin was acting. Talking about something was the human equivalent of drawing attention to it, after all. Everything was fine.

Rattly hoops?

Kisame

Ruta knocked on the door of the cabin next to the one he'd come out of, two cabins away from the parking space. Kisame was startled to see the Desert Lizard guy open the door. Something about the guy's face told Kisame that the guy already knew what Ruta was going to say.

"Hi," Ruta began. "I would like permission to roll hoops down the roof of this cabin, if I may."

The half-lizard's face did not change and he did not pause at all before turning and yelling a few short commands into the cabin. Kisame's suspicions were confirmed. Two other people came out of the cabin, hands empty. They looked up at the roof. The one Kisame had met before grinned. "I wish I'd been around to see it the first time," he said to Ruta. "You need any help?"

"No, just permission. Thank you guys!" Ruta dashed off.

A lizard girl studied Kisame. He tried not to lean away, wondering if she was capable of not having a predatory look in her eyes. If she was not capable, being descended from voracious lizards and all, then it would not do to behave differently around her just because of an inborn characteristic. "You're the shark," she said.

"Yes."

She smiled. Her smile was soft, yet the predatory glimmer remained. Kisame decided it was a permanent characteristic that he would just have to get used to. "It's nice to meet someone else," she said.

Kisame frowned. What was he hearing? Did they think he was like them in some way? "Someone else like who?"

The lizard people glanced at each other. "I think the wolves don't want to do that."

"What's the harm?"

"They're wolves. They always think about packs and group cohesion and all that. They can go overboard sometimes." The lizard man Kisame had met before turned to face him. "Your kind is important around here."

My kind? Kisame's blood chilled. I don't have a kind. Not as far as I know, anyway. "My kind?"

The guy frowned. "Thought you would've noticed before. Every branch of the family that we have here is terrestrial. We come from such a variety of animals from different habitats that we must've come from people who could have hybrid kids with any species. There are aquatic animals that are suitable. So why don't we know any aquatic branches of the family? There have to be some."

The third lizard person, who had yet to speak, piped up. "Aquatic branches of our family are legend, like dragons are. I've written stories about people like you. Where did you come from? Well...only if you're comfortable sharing that, of course."

Kisame's mouth fell open. Another memory of something that he had not recalled since it happened resurfaced. Mitsuki. When I met him, he said… He said I should stay outside for a few minutes. He had to prepare everyone to meet me. Family business. Jesus Christ. They think…?

The first lizard guy waved a hand in front of Kisame's face. "I think you broke him, Soma."

The lizard girl frowned. "I'll get him back." The first guy stepped back, giving her plenty of room to walk up to Kisame and strike him sharply on the side of the head.

Kisame dodged her hand. "What the fuck?" He glared at her. She smiled.

"He's back," the first lizard guy announced. "Ask away, Soma."

Soma, the lizard person who wrote stories, glared back. "It's called tact."

"You people think that I'm secretly part of some long-lost branch of your family?" Kisame asked.

"Yes."

Kisame sputtered. How could he respond to that? Against his will, his mind defaulted to trying to answer Soma's question. Before we moved away, my family came from a little place by the sea, the kind you wouldn't even find on a map. They never talked about anything that happened there. Changed their names. Holy mother of sweet cheeses. These people might actually be right.

Samehada, who had curled up on the porch, came down from the porch. It wasn't good for Human Cousin to freeze like this, especially not multiple times shortly together. It was bad, and meant hurting. Samehada reared up, balancing on his tail, and chewed on Kisame's hand. Kisame's chakra wasn't as withdrawn as it had been before, and the force of Samehada's gentle bite was enough to bring him back. I might have a real family. Jesus.

Ruta came back, rolling before him a pink hula-hoop and a green striped hula-hoop, both of which made a muffled rattling sound as they rolled. "You guys'll back me up, right?" he asked the half-lizards. They nodded. With concerned glances, they turned away from Kisame and paid attention to the roof. Only then did Kisame notice that Ruta apparently did not look anywhere in the general vicinity of other people's heads. He hopped up on the roof as if nothing substantial had happened while he was gone. He would've known better than that if he'd been paying attention to anyone's faces.

"Alright!" Ruta perched on the top of the roof. All the cabins had a traditional triangular roof, with two sides sloping downward and a ridge crossing the middle, like the spine of a hardcover book. On these cabins, the roof was oriented differently than it would have been on a normal house, so that the sloping sides were on the front and back of the cabin. Ruta sat on the ridge, ready to roll a hula hoop down the slope, off the front of the cabin, directly into the spectators. The lizard people backed away. Kisame figured somebody had to catch the hoops, so he readied his arms. "Ready?" They all nodded. Samehada scurried up onto Kisame's back for a better view. "Okay!"

Ruta held the pink hoop upright with both hands as he adjusted its angle, squeezing one eye shut like an archer. He made sure the pink hoop was settled in a notch between two of the ridge-shingles, rose to a crouch, placed his hand on the very top of the hula hoop, and sent it off with a push. The hoop lifted off the top of the roof very little before settling into its roll. Had it rattled before, on the ground? Now it rumbled like tiny thunder. Kisame was intimidated. When it sailed off the gutterless edge of the roof and directly into his face, his eyes widened in fear. It took him a couple seconds to realize that he had caught the thing on reflex.

The lizard people clapped. "I got shivers from that sound!" the lizard girl said. "Get out of the way so we can hear what happens when the second one hits the dirt."

Kisame obliged, after tossing the hoop back up to Ruta. Ruta caught it gracefully, looking away from it the instant before his hands made contact and transitioning seamlessly into a sideways twist, ending with him laying the hoop down on the ridge beside him. He grinned proudly and began to set up the green hoop. The setup drew them in, heightened tensions, made everyone watching lean forward unconsciously. He sent it off in the same way as before. The green striped hoop rumbled its way down the cabin and sailed off like a slow-moving ballistic weapon in a straight line to the ground. It cleaved the air where Kisame's face would have been and smacked into the ground with enough force to bounce. The bounce was short, and it settled to the ground, beginning to roll to the side. Thanks to the ball bearings inside it, it could not stay upright while at an angle. It quickly fell and lay still, not far from where it had landed.

Kisame's mind clicked along the way it had when the Akatsuki had ventured out on their first battle. "Attach a bladed edge to that thing, and it'll make one hell of a weapon," he said. "It's slow, but it could both slice and smash through something lightweight without going wild and rolling off. It would just need a launcher."

"Battle hoops!" Ruta and Soma said simultaneously. "If it was lighter -" Soma began.

"On fire -" Ruta.

"Giant -"

"Hamster balls!"

"Make it a wheel -"

"Slits in windows!"

"Or, or, a discus -"

"Give it back! I need more testing!"

"I need to write a scene!" Soma's face twisted in agony. "But I also want to watch! Agh!"

"What is going on here?!" Makuto leaped over heads directly into the middle of the audience, Wave doing likewise next to him. The strike team had arrived. Once landed, they stood tall and took charge. "There is a rule against hoops on rooves."

The lizard guy Kisame had met before took charge too. "We granted permission."

Kisame glanced around. Not many people were in camp at this time of the afternoon, but there were some. People with scales, people with strange hair or whiskers, and wolves gathered to witness this dispute. Many of them had books they'd been reading and other materials, yet held them slackly and stared with great alertness at Makuto. Kisame realized he'd gotten himself in the middle of something he did not know how to handle. Oh crap. This is political. The Lizard Branch doesn't agree with the Wolf Branch. He stood very still and mimicked the crowd as best he could, trying to draw as little attention as possible.

"The rule was made because everyone in camp has to listen to that racket," Makuto argued.

"Not us," the lizard guy argued back. "When hoops were rolled down the outer cabin, I would have liked to hear or see that. But I did not, because the sound doesn't reach this far."

"It does to those of us who have sensitive ears, which is -"

"Only a little over half of the people here," the lizard man interrupted. "The rest of us have normal hearing or compromised hearing. It was very pleasant to hear the rumbling and feel its vibrations. If it's too loud for wolf ears, that's a problem for wolves."

"I hardly heard it," said a snake person.

"We're one family," Makuto argued. "If something is actively unpleasant to any of us, the rest should avoid doing it."

"What are we supposed to do?" the lizard man asked. "Build our own cabin somewhere far enough away for your liking, for the sole purpose of testing these hoops?"

"Why can't you simply not roll them down rooves?"

"Because they sound good and I like them being rolled down rooves."

"How can anyone like something that causes pain to people he cares about?" Makuto asked. Kisame began to sweat. The question sounded half open and sincere, half condemnatory. The wolf man was starting to glare. I hope this does not devolve into a huge fight. I didn't want to cause this much trouble. We only wanted to ask Ruta a question! Speaking of Ruta, the tiger man in question remained perched on top of the roof, eyes wide and horrified. But he did not move. Kisame understood why. He too didn't have the faintest clue how to intervene or if an intervention would even help.

"It's easy enough to move away," the lizard guy said. "If you would like, we can issue a warning in the future."

"Making all the wolves, all the half wolves, and all the half tigers stop what they were doing just because you want to recreate thunder?"

"It doesn't sound bad to me."

Ruta's attempt to intervene was quickly shot down. "That's because your ears are weird," another tiger person said. "I was in the middle of a nap, and I didn't like hearing this." Hardly anyone so much as glanced up at Ruta. He shut his mouth and curled in on himself, starting to rock back and forth.

The lizard man, for the first time in Kisame's acquaintance with him, developed a noticeable facial expression. It was a glare. "The question of why rolling hoops is pleasant is irrelevant. It just is. Are we not allowed to enjoy things? You wolves get to enjoy many things, since you live in a forest full of canines to run with. There are no desert lizards in this world. We don't have companions. Can we not at least have our own kind of fun?"

Makuto lost his glare. Yes! Appeal to lack-of-family works on wolves. Kisame filed that away as extremely useful information. "Well…"

"I have an idea," a person with scales announced. Kisame guessed that cabins were generally divided by species, so he must be half snake since he hadn't come from the desert lizard cabin. "There are rocks upriver that are good for sunning on. They have similar qualities as roof tiles. If these rocks are raised into a decent slope, that would be a fine place to roll hoops on, and the only people who ever use that sunning spot are snake or lizard."

This idea met with wide agreement. Makuto nodded. Then they all looked at the lizard man. He did not nod. Not yet. He looked up at the roof instead. "Is that all right, Ruta?" Ruta raised his head at the sound of his name, visibly shocked. Tears could be seen in his eyes. He stopped rocking and uncurled slightly, eyes darting around the rooftop as he thought. He nodded.

The lizard man nodded too, and the tension visibly and tangibly deflated. Makuto stepped back, Wave relaxed, and the others began to scatter their attention. The other tiger man shook his head, still irritated over the loss of his nap. Some of the half snakes shot looks at the one who had suggested defiling their sunning spot, but they kept quiet. The wolves yipped softly, ears relaxed and tails gently waving. Nobody really wanted a fight. It was just a dispute over mismatched needs and perspectives.

Kisame finally saw a good place to intervene. He approached Makuto. "Kakuzu and Nagato can use Earth-style techniques and move heavy weights," he told him. "If you need help with the rocks, you can ask. It doesn't have to be this huge project."

Makuto was beginning to cringe at the full realization of what he'd almost provoked. "That's good. Thank you." He flushed, too. "I'm sorry to drag you into our family business…"

"If these legends I've heard about are right, it's my business too," Kisame muttered. Makuto twitched. He opened his mouth as if to try to say something but closed it, and stood very still. Kisame huffed. "I'm not angry. But I am more than a little curious why you would decide to not tell me things, without any consent. I think I would have agreed to delay hearing about world-changing news like that, if I'd been asked! Okay, maybe I am a little angry."

Makuto opened his mouth again, but before he could speak, Kisame remembered something else he was angry about. "And what the fuck are you people doing to Ruta?"

The tiger person in question leaped down from the roof, both hoops in hand. He approached the desert lizard people. "Thanks," he mumbled, still red and teary-eyed and looking down.

"You're weird," the lizard girl said. "Useful weird. That makes you useful, therefore good, therefore cool."

"Do you really have different ears than the other half tigers?" Soma asked.

Ruta shrugged. "I dunno. I hear and smell and feel things differently than other people do, but there's no standards or tests to measure that with. It's just a quirk."

Soma ruffled his hair. "I have a character in one of my stories that's supposed to be a little odd, and I'm having trouble writing them. Wanna hear about the story?" A grin spread over Ruta's face. He nodded.

"Can I sleep with you guys?" he asked.

"Sure." Just like that, Ruta was an honorary lizard, for as long as he would rather cohabit with them than with other cats. He tried and failed to disguise the tears in his eyes as he went to relocate his possessions.

Makuto flushed redder. "I never said we were a perfect family…"

"They're completely right," Kisame snarled. "Useful weird. That makes him very cool, just like Kakuzu is for having tentacles and Deidara is for having mouths in his hands and Konan is for being so methodical about everything. He deserves better."

Wave whined. Makuto scratched his head. "He doesn't usually have problems like that. He is appreciated, truly. He's just…"

"Figure it the fuck out," Kisame snapped. Samehada whined. "I'm not sorry for being harsh, Same. It's just the truth." He walked away. "I'd better go tell Ruta he can come over whenever he wants and do whatever he wants, however he wants. It helped me to hear that. It's only right to return the favor."

.

A/N: Satori is a half-snake with green eyes and patches of skin. At the time I named him, I was aware only of that being a vaguely familiar combination of sounds I'd heard somewhere. I looked up the word satori later to learn what it meant. So, no, his name does not have any intended meaning, None of the names I've made up for OCs do. I don't know nearly enough Japanese vocabulary to create proper names, nor do I know where to research such a thing. I have no Japanese-English dictionary.

The desert lizard guy, I could swear I've named somewhere. However, I have no idea what it was. I think it started with Ch. Choma? Maybe the Ch sound was in the middle. I would need more extensive research to uncover that.

Oh, thank the gods! I just found it! His name was referenced in exactly one place, in the narration, not told to Kisame. Chiki. That's it. I need to have him reintroduced at some point. Anyway, that's why he is only ever called "the first lizard guy" or "the lizard man that Kisame met before" in this chapter. It's because I knew for a fact that he has an established name and I didn't want to be contradictory, yet I completely could not remember what it was. Kisame doesn't know it anyway, so makes perfect sense.

Yes, I've known everything that's going on with the Hatake clan since before the beginning of this story. Some of it directly contradicts canon, because I started thinking about this all the way back when I hadn't watched very much of canon. I don't care. I don't know which story would reveal this part of their history first. Demons is the only story that really can, but maybe some things will come up in this story, and I don't know if I ever want to dig that far into the past in either story. I probably will, but I'm unsure.

Oh, and it doesn't work exactly the same way for sharks as for humans. Aside from the problems Ruta mentioned, which prevent extended or active interactions of that nature, female sharks have a cloaca, which has a different structure. Their internal organs are different. And male sharks do have erectile organs that work via insertion, but they're also different and go by different names and so forth. I'm not sure about the exact nature of these differences, but I would expect that these parts have altered appearances and maybe some changes in functionality. So it's the same basic principle, with minor changes (like the differences between humans and other mammals, come to think of it). Thank you, childhood book that mentioned prehistoric sharks.