Becoming a Missing Nin can change a person. Kisame himself learned that quickly when he left his own village. He always believed that he was likely one of the luckier members of his shattered previous organization. For one thing, he had been recruited into a new group before he had to come to terms with some of the harsher effects of the Missing Nin lifestyle. From what he?d seen in others, they weren't pretty (for godsake, look at Orochimaru!). But nevertheless, even under the somewhat-security of the Akatsuki cloak, some changes were inevitable. One has to learn to never hold anything as truth until given solid proof. Just as well, they need to learn to keep their name and identity to themselves until the last possible moment (though considering Kisame's level of uniqueness, this was a little hard). And most importantly, you learned to turn yourself off from developing any kind of specific liking of other people. The latter rule was encouraged in most shinobi villages anyway. Especially in the Bloody Mist, where a comrade was either killed or slaughtered nearly every day of one?s career. Living there as long as he had, and better, being on a team specifically meant to kill in violent, if vaguely discrete ways, had done it's job in jading him. But there were still times when he couldn't completely conform with the Indifferent-until-given-Reason-for-Otherwise rule.

He couldn't help it. He liked kids.

So why he stayed out of the fight when he reached the attack site where Zabuza, unaware that his backup weapon had been captured, was carrying out his own mission, he didn?t have an excuse. The group being attacked consisted of five: the civilian bridge builder that Zabuza had been hired to eliminate, three obviously inexperienced Genin (he could see them shaking from his position), and their single Jourin instructor. Since Kisame had come to the site with the intention f removing the bandage-wearing, arrogant so of a bitch's jaw bone with his teeth, it might have been more practical for him to jump into the battle right away. It would have been kinder, definitely, because by the time he arrived the one Jourin (who Kisame recognized as the infamous Copy Nin, from his old days working for the Mist) was already out of the fight. Zabuza was holding him in a hydro prison, possibly waiting for him to suffocate, or keeping him out of the way while he played with the younger shinobi present. Either way, it was clear that no one was going to be defeating Zabuza anytime soon...

But then again, being a Missing Nin, Kisame thought to himself, did go a long way to hardening one's sense of compassion, as was already mentioned.

But he knew that that was an empty excuse, completely contradicting the confession he already made just a few minutes ago. Yes, he did like kids, and yes, he was probably going to stop Zabuza before he mercilessly slaughtered the three preteens below, but the reason he hadn't done so yet was because not ten minutes after Kisame got there, one of the Genin stepped forward. When Kisame had first arrived, a loud blonde was already shouting and making a perfect ass of himself, which was probably why Kisame hadn't taken the other two into account until the very moment that the team's other boy came forward to try to shift the situation too their favor. Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly) the boy's attack failed (since he apparently forgot that the odds were a Genin against a seasoned exiled ninja). The boy's blonde teammate gasped loud enough to be heard by every shinobi present, which could also be said about anything else the orange-clad miscreant did. Soft spot or no, Kisame was tempted to wait until after the blonde was killed, just to show the other two what happened to a ninja that had not mastered the art of silence,

But that's off point. The thing made Kisame suddenly decide that he wanted to stay on the sidelines and observe the fight rather than join it, was because when the darker of the two Genin came running forward in his failed attack, Kisame got his first good look at him. Then Zabuza?s clone (it was all the boy could reach. He hadn't even learned to walk on water yet) lifted him up by the throat, and the discomfort of the hold made the boy?s harder to read, but there was still something that jumped out at the shark nin from the thin, haughty nose and the particular way the hair parted away from the unscratched forehead protect that was oddly familiar.

The clone threw the boy aside, sending him crashing to the ground at his teammate's feet.

The boy got up after a moment. Glared.

Oh. That's the resemblance.

Kisame wrinkled his forehead in confusion once he drew up an mental picture of the partner he had spent the last four years with and confirmed that there was an alarming, very clearly family resemblance between the two. Their conversations over the years had been on the short-but-gradually-becoming-frequent, and Kisame clearly remembered that the reasons as to why they had left their home countries had definitely been covered. True, Itachi had given him only the barest details, but that was alright. Any Leaf shinobi in a bar could recite an inventive version of the Uchiha Massacre on spot if he were approached after enough jars of sake had been ordered. But nevertheless, from the conversation with Itachi, the words "I killed my family" had most definitely been used. So maybe it wasn't the same as "My whole family" or "My entire family," but that had been assumed.

Shaking his head slightly in dismissal, Kisame forcefully put the question aside until later. Itachi was hard enough to figure out when he was present.

Kisame brought his attention back to the fight going on below. The idiotic blonde was still mindlessly wasting energy on Zabuza's clone. He did have to admit that the kid was determined. But also sloppy. And very, very loud. The dark haired Itachi-look-alike was off to one side, either recovering from his fall earlier or trying to think of a way to throw himself at the clone again. Kisame noted that their was no sharringon on the replica of his partner, which was probably the biggest difference (Itachi would have fried Zabuza alive by now). The third member of the team, Kisame noted for the sake of not being caught off guard by another sudden appear in the battle, was a pretty little pink haired thing that was probably showing the greatest amount of sense out of the whole team by being the only one to actually stay with their client, and Zabuza's perspective target. She couldn't do anything to fend him off of course, but at least she was trying to create an illusion of protection for the old man....

The dark haired boy caught something thrown to him by one of the many clones the blonde had made of himself. There was a half second pause and then, black bangs falling forward as if to damage his sight, he re-entered the fight, and Kisame was able to see that it was shurikens that had been thrown, before the blades were unfolded and the boy performed a prefect Itachi-worthy Shadow Windmill. Not that Itachi used weapons too often. The Uchiha was, after all, recruited for the sake of his eyes before anything else (not that anyone was willing to say that to his face. No one was stupid enough to piss him off, the vanity queen).

But anyway, the attack worked. From his position, Kisame was able to see the other shurikens hidden in the shadow of the first. But he couldn?t deny that he had no idea of how it got there when the Itachi-mini had clearly thrown only one, until the moment that it poofed into the spiky haired blonde Genin.

Okay, so maybe he would save the kid before Zabuza killed him. He earned that...

But even as Kisame was deciding that, the blonde whipped out and threw one of his own weapons directly at Zabuza. The bandaged ninja, having caught the original shurikens for the sake of protecting himself, and with his other hand busy holding the hydro-prison together, had to let go of something or accept a rather painful gnash. He had to let go of something.

He chose the wrong something.

The Copy Nin was freed.

The odds changed. Not to the point of a sure victory, but at least to a fighting chance now that someone who did know how to use the sharringon was back on the field. Which very shortly became just as good as a sure victory. Kisame was inwardly a little disappointed at how easily Zabuza was taken in by the sharringon as soon as Kakashi the Copy Nin was out of his prison. Of course, that was coming from someone who had spent almost four years straight traveling with a master of the ability, and was able to grasp some of the basics of how it worked.

But after completing that thought, Kisame was immediately hit by disappointment again, this time for the fact that now it looked as if he wasn't going to be given the chance to dismantle his old teammate at all. Though granted, the humiliation of being brought back to their village by a mere Genin team and their instructor won?t be great for Zabuza?s ego, but still...

Kisame watched Zabuza's water dragon attack fail when used against an identical one done by Kakashi. The effect of the two bodies of water clashing created a massive tidal wave that somehow only seemed to swallow up Zabuza while Kakashi went off into the trees. His location was noted a few minutes later when the current forced the bandaged ninja against a tree trunk, and two well aimed kunai shot into his arm's, pinning him there. Kakashi hopped onto the branch above the Missing Nin, which Kisame noted ironically, was only a few feet away from where he himself was hiding.

"How...? Can you tell the future...?"

Kisame nearly shuddered at the pitiful note in his ex-comrade's voice. He was close enough to hear their conversation over the rushing water.

"Yes. You are going to die."

Kisame shifted a little for a better view, but nearly slammed himself back into the tree when the prediction proved correct. Though not in the way that the Copy Nin had "foreseen," he was sure. Out of nowhere, two long slender needles shot into the neck of the Mist's one time Silent Killer. By the way that Zabuza's body slumped and his face froze with the convincing expression of shock in place, for all appearances, the needles might have really severed his jugular vein. It was so sudden and clean.

Kisame didn't believe it for a moment.

Though, admittedly, he might have. If he hadn't been specifically told about those kind of attacks before accepting his current mission. The unease that entered his mind at that moment had nothing to do with the death of his ex-teammate, but more likely, went along the lines of "What the hell Itachi-san?!"

He looked up from his perch, already knowing what he would find if he looked in the right direction. He might have already been spotted by the painfully large and naive eyes of Zabuza's "tool." The Copy Nin turned his attention to finding the bandage-wearer?s killer, too.. As did his team. The blonde was the first to speak.

"Who the hell are you?!"
He was standing just across from them, up in a tree directly level with Kisame. The mask was in place, keeping the shark nin from knowing whether he had been spotted. He assumed he was regardless.

Kisame didn?t need to listen for the answer to the blonde?s question. Unless Zabuza was in the habit of training twins to live and die for him, there was no about whether the boy standing across from him with the red and white mask was the exact one that he had left with Itachi less than an hour ago.

Rather than doing something stupid like trying to retake the boy in front of a group that very nearly killed his ex-comrade, Kisame decided to take care of first things first. He needed to fine Itachi. After all, allowing a target to simply walk away was simply not characteristic for the cool, collected, and occasionally very cruel seventeen year old.

Not to mention it made things one hell of a lot more difficult now. If that masked kid had any sense at all he would tell his "Zabuza-san" about their presence now. Sparing one more glance, Kisame silently left the battle site, intending to track down his partner and find out just how exactly the second strongest member of Akatsuki could be over power by a bound and unarmed fifteen year old girl-boy.

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Itachi hadn't moved since the boy ran off into the forest, mask hastily being strapped back into place. Dazedly, he stayed seated until the sound of crunching leaves went away and the boy's chakra faded out of reach of the Uchiha's sense. When he finally did force himself to stand, a sudden headrush threatened to send him back to the ground, despite the Uchiha clan's legendary and un baffle-able grace. He regained it though, by taking a step back and leaning against one of the many trees. He felt dizzy.

He had just helped a target escape. That fact didn't need sinking in, it was right at the forefront of his mind. Along with the fact that he had broken one of the most basic of all shinobi rules: never let emotions mingle with duty. And damnit, he was an Uchiha! He didn't have bloody emotions that couldn?t be well shrouded if not controlled. Had his father ever shown unwarranted compassion on a mission? His cousin Shisui? At this rate he would end up as much an embarrassment as that one cousin with the yellow glasses that died before he even reached the status of Chunin.

Pushing himself away from the tree, Itachi matter-of-factly clamped down on his thoughts as he always did when they threatened to distract him from the present. His hands automatically went to brush leaves off his uniform and straighten his cloak. Outwardly, he showed no sign of distress. Inwardly, he attempted to retrace his thoughts but gave it up when his head began to ache, and wearily closed them away for later. The sensible part of him that was still functioning told him that whether he was currently on mental-clean-up or not, his former captive had just run off, and was more than likely go to regroup and come back (if he was half competent on the fact that one needed to eliminate enemies right away if they wanted to live past the age of twenty in their profession).

He needed to move. Now.

...Besides...Kisame would be coming back soon. And if the shark nin and their target had both gone in the direction he thought they did, and were seeking out the same person he thought they were, it was only a matter of minutes before the first of the two noticed that Itachi had just needlessly made their mission a good deal more difficult.

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It goes without say that all ninja villages try to encourage a survival-of-the-fittest attitude in their shinobi. The only exception might be the Hidden Village of the Leaf, which during its time of peace grew to encourage fellowships and alliances more than any other country. But on the other hand, no village rejected the idea of one risking their neck for their comrades more than the Mist.

The Hidden Village of the Mist not only thought that their shinobi could live and thrive just off of their own strength, they viewed the civilians with the same live-or-die-on-your-own-strength principle. As a result, the Mist had one of the largest percentages of desolate families, and the fewest amount of charities to help them (a statistic that the Mizukage neither flinched away from, nor encouraged acknowledging). Non-nins in the Mist Village weren't exactly the kage's first concern. The council there was far more focused on raising their ninja to be the most efficient killers possible, as other countries were quickly able to deduce from their Academy exams, where the students were basically put into a room with weapons and told to go nuts.

The Mist, obviously, wasn?t known for being careful with resources either.

Kisame himself had gone through the infamous exam the year just before the Academy reformed, which was possibly just as well for all the merit his family hung on it (his father alone might have waged war on the schools if they changed it any sooner). Unlike other villages, the Mist doesn?t pair its students up depending on grades, so that the highest scoring student is set up to fight the lowest scoring. It would be pointless, the council said, because the outcome would be clear before the match even began. Instead, the students were match up alphabetically, A fighting Z, and so on. And it just so happened it Kisame?s family, that he had a brother named Ping.

Every family, Kisame was sure, had its troubles. Kisame guessed, during the years that he began to understand the rules that waited to take either him or his brother out of this world at the end of their Academy days, that the rift in his family had likely been around from long before he was born, and the rules or cause of it, he could not be completely sure. His parents had been an arranged marriage, and though Kisame and his brother were supposed to be the generation that bound the two families together, the exact terms of the union was never fully explained. He was told by one of his aunts that it had been meant to resolve a land feud of some kind between the Hoshigaki clan and the family that lived there before them. But his mother's family, if they still lived in the Water Country after the marriage, never visited, which seemed odd. His father's family, in turn, regarded his mother with what seemed to be a not unnoticeable frosty courtesy, which Kisame had also come to wonder about when he grew older. But as a child, the future exiled nin assumed that the difference between him and his twin had made the difference between binding the family and continuing the division.

Unlike what their family had doubtlessly expected when they found out that the head of their clan was to have twin sons, Ping and Kisame had been born fraternal twins rather than identical. Kisame was the older by a matter of minutes. He inherited the family's customary appearance that so matched their family emblem, complete blue-gray skin. His mother might have been horrified during the fifteen minutes fifteen minutes before she bore her second son. Ping was as different from the Hoshigaki as was possible. His hair was smooth and black, like what was considered natural in the Water Country, his complexion pale, eyes large. No trace of blue. No gills. He looked like his mother?s son.

Maybe that was why Kisame and Ping were named with the letters directly opposite of each other, because no matter how he tried to credit his family, Kisame could see no way that his mother and father, both respectable Jourin raised in the Mist, could have not known about the pairings for the final exam. He only wondered which one had named them.

Growing up, it didn't take long for the lines to establish themselves between the shark nin and his average-looking brother. People will always chose what is known to them over what is different. Ping was liked better at school by teachers and students, while just the opposite was done at home with their family. Except by their mother. She unabashedly played favorites with her two children, and the choice of which one she favored was just as clear as was the choice of school teachers and peers. She stuck to her own kind.

Years later, Kisame supposed that might have been part of the reason that Kisame was never squeamish about the idea of working with someone who unflinchingly murdered his family. In his own case, he had known from an absurdly early age that he was either going to murder his brother, or be murdered by him. The "land feud" between their mother's family and their father's might have been officially ended before they were conceived, but Kisame knew, and he was sure Ping knew, that it was going to end with them.

Of course, there were other children whose name started with K and P. If either of them had tried, they probably could have changed their match up. Their parents might have protested, but once a complaint was made, there was no doubt in Kisame's mind that the teachers would have done something to alter it. But neither of them said anything. Whether Ping had any inclination to do so, Kisame didn't know. And he never asked the brother that he hardly spoke to, who was accepted so easily into any group, and who's grades were far below his own because he had never had their father pushing him to the point of exhaustion.

And when Kisame won and he held a kunai into his smaller brother's gut, Ping looked up at him with their mother's cold, large eyes and quietly wheezed out, "You win."

Mourning for Ping lasted only as long as was absolutely necessary for a family. There was an official period of mourning in the Mist that was set right after the Academy exams, probably suggested by one of the kinder council members, where the whole village was told to mourn the loss of half of the years class. Some families continued mourning for weeks afterwards. The shark clan didn't.

Not long after Ping?s death, Kisame?s mother passed away too, while he was away on his first outside. Though when he got back, he highly doubted that the precise, graceful woman that he and his brother had occasionally trained as children had tripped and "accidentally" stabbed herself with a kunai, he didn't say anything. He hadn't so much as spoken to her since his exam anyway.

He began staying away from home as much as he could after that. He encouraged his sensei to get them as many long term missions as possible (which he learned from one of his short conversations with Itachi, was much easier than in the Leaf, where Genin were assigned to simple chore-like missions during their first year. The idea of Itachi mucking out a stable still made him laugh). And when they weren't able to leave the village, he trained.

In the Mist, where snowfall takes up over seventy percent of the year, and rainfall the other thirty, there are two ways an advancing shinobi can train. The first was to go to the training grounds and work until they pass out and spend weeks in the local hospital recovering from frost bite and a sever cold (because a determined ninja would stay out that long), or they could go to the training building. As had already been mentioned, the Mizukage in the Mist had only one obsession: raise strong ninja. And to do that in his cold climate, he discovered, there needed to be a place inside that the shinobi could go to train without the risk of getting sick. Thus, he order the construction of a three story building specifically for that purpose. The building was to be heated, stocked with weapons, and for the sake of keeping shinobis? strength up, rations such as what are used on long term missions. Then, on a more chilling level, there was the one spacious room that was built for the purpose of housing the Academy's exit exam. It was right next door to the Genin lockerroom. The kage apparently had a sick sense of humor.

The distribution of keys was also specifically noted. Jourins, of course, had a key to every room in the building. Chunin had a key to the front door. And Genin, well, they should build up an immunity to the cold, shouldn't they? In most cases, Genin were only able to get into the building with their sensei's permission. Most cases, being Kisame?s wording because, well, since he spent so much time training his father sort of..."gave" Kisame a set of keys one morning after he came home late the night before and carelessly left his key ring on the bathroom counter.

Kisame just had to remind himself to be careful going in and out at odd hours. He didn't doubt that someone had to have noticed him, but was certain that the Jourin or Chunin that did simply didn't care enough to say anything, because really, who cared if a Genin spent a few extra hours training? All the more likely he'd become a Chunin soon and have his own damn key anyway.

But years later, when Kisame was feeling thoughtful, and maybe a little drunk, he supposed that in the long run, that set of keys did effect every shinobi that came in and out of that building.

Exactly two hours, forty-five minutes, and fifteen seconds later, Itachi had relocated. Because deep down he was still aware of the fact that he had been born and raised (to an extent) in a forest climate, and because it was the most practical way to travel through dense forest, Itachi moved by jumping from branch to branch in the trees, not letting even the driest of leaves stir as he passed by. As soon as he felt sure that his direction and movement could not be tracked and thus bring any unwanted company after him, he had began thinking about where to go from here. The most logical plan of action would be to find his partner and formulate a plan to re-capture their target. Though the only problem with that was that he would have to explain just how he managed to lose him in the first place.

A sensible voice told him that the responsible thing to do would be to simply admit to letting the boy go. It would save him the trouble of making up a story and keep Kisame from doubting his abilities and thinking that his partner could be outwitted by a boy that they caught so easily before.

Oh, but then there was another part of him that had to point out that the responsible thing would have been to not get intimidated by some fifteen year old drag queen's looks and let him go in the first place. He was Uchiha Itachi, after all! As far as looks went, he knew he had nothing to fear. Even if that boy with the mask had gotten more of a reaction out of Kisame than he had in years.

But that was off the current subject. He had to find Kisame before he could undo his mistake. As long as the mission was carried out successfully, there was always the chance that the right Do-Question-Me glare would keep this incident from conversation. But even if he did catch the false hunter nin again, if his partner was killed by that bandage wearing freak and his apprentice, and Itachi had to drag his lifeless corpse back to homebase, there was no possible way for him to avoid a scolding. He might even be reassigned to Orochimaru.

Itachi inwardly winced at that thought.

Re-taking their masked target would harder now that they no longer had the element of surprise, but far from impossible. Maybe they wouldn't be able to pull the mission off without running into Momochi Zabuza. Kisame might be unhappy about that. But it was still far from undoable. The hardest part would probably be getting the boy back to the Mist alive. From the pathetic display before, it seemed that the unfortunate creature was dedicated to his partner. That was a fairly big mistake to be made among shinobi.

Another subconscious voice popped up the back of his head to snicker Hypocrite, and then disappear.

As Itachi continued to move, he scanned the area around him more thoroughly with his eyes than his chakra senses. Though he did occasionally sense small spurts of it, it was not strong enough to be identified, he didn?t expect to recognize Kisame among them anyway. The shark nin was not an idiot. If he were out and looking for him as well, Itachi knew that Kisame would hide his own chakra well enough so as not to attract enemy ninja. So he went on.

Until he caught one sudden strong energy when he paused on a branch for a spilt second. The source came from behind him. He pretended that he didn't notice. He continued going onward through the trees, taking careful notice of the person following him. They were approaching him quickly, probably traveling above the ground like himself rather than on it, and steadily making himself more obvious until it became clean to Itachi the speedy presence behind him wanted to be spotted.

He stopped after completing the jump he was in the process of making when this realization dawned on him. The chakra source that he had only recently been acquainted with came bounding after him, until Itachi was even able to heard the loud clicks of his shoes hitting against the trees as he landed on the branches. Shoes that made such loud sounds, Itachi knew, either spoke of great confidence or great ignorance in the wearer. He wasn?t sure which one he would credit to the person who landed on a branch across from him ,in a flutter of loose clothing. His target?s mask was off, revealing the soft face beneath to the shady forest light. Their eyes met instantly. Neither blinked.

Haku smiled.

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Because of the little amount of concern that people showed to the homeless when he was a kid, as a teenager Kisame showed little, if any, concern for the that were known to haunt the alleyways and light fires in old trashcans at night. As children in the Mist, one learns not to look below chin level. For children this does of course, result in many nasty falls in winter when puddles turn into slippery ice on the sidewalks. But by following the rule, there?s no reason to see the pitiful bodies curled up into balls against the sides of buildings for warmth. There was a saying that you could recognize a foreigner from a local in the Water Country depending on how they walk down the street. Someone from the Leaf or even the Sand would glance down to step around the ragged urchins, while a local citizen, shin obi or not, would walk on as if there was nothing there. The only people, in fact, that show any acknowledgement to them at all are the Genin teams that are assigned to clear the frozen bodies off the street before decay sets in.

Of course, Kisame only found out about that last part during his first winter as a Genin. The mission was carried out at night, when the streets were the least crowded, with other Genin teams that were assigned the same job. No one spoken during it. What happened to the corpses after they were turned over to their instructors, Kisame didn't find out until he reached the status of Jourin himself. Even then, he preferred not to take on those types of missions if he could avoid them. And that was why in one of the coldest cities in the Water Country, children abruptly loss their love of the first snow of the year after reaching the age of twelve.

When he was fourteen, snowfall was uncommonly high, even for the Mist's standards. If it started falling when he was in the training building, he would try to stay their for as long as possible for two reasons. One was simply that he preferred not to walk home in the middle of a storm. The other had something to do with the Chunin who would occasionally slip into the Genins' lockerroom to tell stories about how the homeless could been driven mad by hunger and cold to the point of attacking shinobi walking down the streets alone at night. Though it was stupid to think that one feeble bum could take down even the slowest of Genin, one had to admit that if enough desperate people tried, the sheer numbers would be overpowering.

Some nights, the snowfall would outlast him and he would be forced to go outside or risk being spotted by the all-nighters that preferred to train at night rather than by day. It was on one of those nights that he stepped out into the snow, keys in hand to lock the door behind him. It was a safety measure that his sensei had once explain, it was supposed to keep unauthorized people out. Namely Genin who didn't have permission to be in there. He was just extracting the key and turning to go when he stopped with his hand still stretched toward the door.

The homeless generally stayed away from parts of the village frequented by shinobi. It was all too well known that no help would be offered to them. But that night, the third executive night of snowfall, Kisame abruptly found himself being studied by a black pair of eyes as aloof and cold as the ice flakes falling around them.

He was huddled in the gap between the butcher?s and the carpenter's shop, knees pulled up to his chest and arms wrapped around tightly to conserve warmth. Kisame couldn't see most of the urchin's face since it was also pressed against his knees to keep his mouth and nose from freezing in the wind, but his eyes stared out warily from beneath the cover of choppy black bangs. When he noticed that Kisame was returning his stare, the thinner boy didn't blink. He met Kisame's eyes as if to stare him down even as his arms strained to tighten his hold on himself further. Kisame could guess why this boy wasn't dead yet. As he stepped away from the building and toward the street (he needed to cross it to get home), the boy's eyes narrowed into a glare, and Kisame decided that if he were to attack the urchin, as pitiful shape as he was in, he would fight back.

As he got closer, and the cold wind finally sank into Kisame's clothes because he no longer had the protection of the training building to keep it away, he felt the weight of the keys still in his hand. The boy's clothes were thinner than his own. Not ragged, as what he'd seen on others, but definitely worn down to threads. Plus his shirt was clearly meant for summer. What kind of idiot wears short sleeves during a Water Country winter?

He was younger than himself, Kisame realized when he reached the opposite sidewalk. It was hard to guess at his age with the boy huddled as he was, but Kisame was sure that the pitiful creature was smaller. Thinner. Though likely from malnutrition rather than from any error in his genes, if the large size of the boy?s hands and feet meant anything.

A little voice in the back of his head, conscious of societies' views, told him that he was being stupid. The homeless were homeless for a reason. But even as he moved to step around him, the black eyes held his, and held him to his resolve. Later, he would try to decide for himself if he was thrown into a smothered, supposedly dead sense of compassion, or if more likely, it was because the urchin was around the same age and size as Ping when he died, but at the moment that he walked by, he tried to just keep himself moving forward. And he opened his palm and let the keys drop to the ground without losing a step.

The snow cushioned the key's fall, the still descending flakes threatened to cover them as quickly as they landed, but Kisame had no doubt that those watchful eyes had seen where they landed. He didn?t doubt either that as soon as e turned the corner the boy so spring forward and dig through the snow for them. Even with the stubborn pride that would have had him fighting a Jourin if they tried to hassle him, he knew the boy would do it, because that's what it took to survive the night.

Kisame never saw the stick-thin urchin boy on the streets again. Though once or twice he did allow his eyes to dart downward to search for him when he was alone. But he never spotted him. And he had a sneaking suspicion of where he could look, if he was serious about retrieving his keys. The day after the storm, when Kisame gone out to the training building at his usual hour and mentally told himself not to be surprised that his keys weren't waiting on the stairs for him, he overheard when of the other Genin commenting that someone had broken into his locker and stolen his spare cloak. His sensei also mentioned casually (though Kisame was sure for a moment that he was being watched from the corner of the old Jourin's eye) that rats had apparently found their way into the rations supply room.

And that, Kisame noted to himself years later, was how he handed Momochi Zabuza the keys into the shinobi world.

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Itachi kept his face impassive as the smaller Missing Nin smiled pleasantly in his direction. "Hello," he said after a moment of silence passed and it became apparent that the Uchiha wasn't going to break the it, despite being the one who ended their chase.

Itachi lifted an eyebrow in acknowledgement of the greeting, but said nothing. He considered trying to use his sharringon to distract the smaller boy and recapture him. But the boy simply continued to stare until Itachi stated more than asked, quietly, "You were following in me."

"Gomen..." the boy shifted on his perch a bit. His head bowed forward for a moment, and Itachi decided that he wasn't even going to start on the absurdity of apologizing to one's enemy. Still he waited for more of an explanation. If the boy had a death wish after begging for his freedom, Itachi certainly wanted to know why. On that note, he reminded himself to be cautious, hadn't he learned anything about detecting traps after dodging Hunter Nins since he was thirteen? Silently, he reached out for any traces of the illusive chakra he felt faintly before while looking for Kisame. He got nothing.

The formerly masked boy sat down quietly on his branch, as if guessing what he was doing and patiently waiting for the other ninja to finish so he could focus on him instead. Itachi caught the large eyes traveling over his face and pointedly caught the younger shinobi's eyes with his own. The pale face turned faintly pink and bowed again. There was another soft spoken, "Gomen."

The professional part of Itachi (which actually was a pretty large part, given his lack of life outside work) rolled its eyes and told him matter-of-factly that the "responsible" thing to do right now would be to grab the boy and be on his way. How easy would it be right now, with the boy staring up at him so openly and for all appearances completely ignorant of his sharringon? But then the contradicting thought pointed at the same fact and announced cautiously, This isn't right. It was too easy. No one who had been deceiving the Mist's ANBU since the age of twelve could survive being that stupid, he told himself. For godsake, the boy had come after him alone.

The boy looked up, caught Itachi's glare. Itachi thought he saw the boy?s hand twitch, and suspected an attack, but then instead:

"What's your partner's name?"

Itachi's other eyebrow went up for a moment before his image forced him to drag both back into their proper place. The boy didn't so much as blink. He stared back at the sharringon user pleasantly as if he had just asked about the weather, and not a half shark man who had earlier that day stormed off muttering that he was going to kill his partner...Alright, so maybe "stormed off" was too extreme of wording, but that didn't take away from the fact that he had, quietly, stated that he intended to do harm to the boy's partner.

In a low voice, Itachi asked back, "...Why?"

There was a pause, and Itachi thought that maybe the boy had actually been hoping for his answer. Then the brown eyes became serious, and the boy said softly, "Because you're like me."

And Itachi stared blankly less for the sake of his limited reactions, than for the fact that he didn't bloody agree.

Silence returned again up until the boy realized that the bright red eyes carefully moving over his face once, twice, then, "Gomen..." one pale hand, baring perfectly filed and painted nails, gestured sheepishly towards the not so unfeminine features of the other boy?s face. "I did not mean it that way."

Remembering what the boy said earlier, Itachi said impassively, "I'm not a tool."

"No," the boy agreed, and for a moment Itachi thought that perhaps he was going to apologize again, but he was disappointed. Instead he said, his target moved his head back a little so that his hair moved out of his face, and said in a once again warm voice, "but you belong to him."

At Itachi's continuing blank look, the boy shifted again, moving his legs either to find a more comfortable position, or for the sake of saying ?I know you?re not going to answer, so but I?ll pretended I don?t.?

"I saw you before," the boy said when he finally stopped moving. Itachi had the faint idea that his target would have made an excellent politician with his never faltering manners. "When he was checking me. I saw you looking at him."

"That..." Itachi started to glare, then his memory kicked in and his face went blank. Along with that, he put together that yes, his paranoia had been right and the boy had been perfectly awake and capable of processing his surroundings when Itachi thought he was, and that there had been at least a twenty minute period where the sharringon user had been utterly unaware. From there, Itachi?s paranoid said rose up once more to hiss that the boy might have been awake from the very moment he was laid down in the clearing, before his hands were tied, perfectly capable of attack or escape...

Itachi blinked his eyes for a moment, then looked back at where the boy was currently watching him with that same calm demeanor that was very much like his own, save that it was meant to inspire ease in the people around him rather than indifference. Then he noticed a change that had accrued during his momentary lapse.

He didn?t waste time after discovering the change though. His hand moved stealthily to his weapons hostler, and if the brown eyes across from him noticed. They didn?t show any indication until a kunai buried itself in the tree bark that had been behind the boy?s head. The pale figure on the tree opposite Itachi dodged the first kunai, but the second hit his squarely in the shoulder.

The water clone gasped in well acted pain, and then splattered down to the forest floor to form a dark puddle. The tree branch swayed at the sudden movement.

Itachi waited a moment, closing his eyes to concentrate on the signature he had learned that morning.

?You couldn?t play along??

Itachi re-opened his eyes and looked above him. One of the ridiculous or cocky sandals was dangling above his head. Itachi narrowed his eyes at it.

"Uh...Gomen." The third apology in one meeting, but Itachi was beginning to suspect that the apologetic tone might actually be forged. "I wasn't sure you wouldn't attack if I just came closer on my own."

Itachi noted that the boy made no attempt to come down to his branch. Having lost his advantageous position, the ex-Leaf nin finally allowed himself to move into a more comfortable one. His legs were getting tired from staying crouched as he was anyway. Itachi moved to sit with his back against the tree's trunk and his head angled upward to watch his target. Both hands were left free, one resting lightly over his weapons hostler.

As he had before, the boy waited patiently for him to settle himself. Then, the moment Itachi glanced upward, the boy blurted, "Is he precious to you?"

"He's my partner," Itachi responded. He made sure that his voice sounded neutral. The thought the boy having created water clones before seeking him out hadn?t accrued to him until then. Inwardly he scolded himself for making another great mistake for a shinobi: never underestimate your enemy.

"I look at Zabuza-san that way," he said. "When he goes out sometimes, and I know he wont be back until morning."

Itachi raised an eyebrow. He didn't like where this was heading. Briefly, he wondered how difficult it would be to catch the other Missing Nin's body if he sent him into a state of unconsciousness, but set the idea aside for the moment. Water clones, he told himself. Be more cautious. To the boy, he simply said, "How does that prove anything?"

The smooth face looked surprised. "Because," the girlish creature said softly, "Zabuza-san never looks that way back."

Itachi didn't say anything.

?In four years, he hasn?t noticed.? A pause. Brown eyes looked imploringly down, "Does your partner notice you?"

Itachi felt his shoulders stiffen. He was able to look back at the younger boy. His mind clicked into place what the questions were getting at. And then, somehow he lost eye contact. He didn't know why. He'd stared people down before, but somehow he found himself looking at the worn spot on his pant leg. The one right above the knee. Above him came:

"He doesn't have any idea, does he?"

Itachi raised his eyes up to meet the brown ones again.

'You're like me.'

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After becoming a Genin, Kisame quickly forgot what it was like at the Academy. He heard things occasionally. Small things that other people knew from parents who taught there, or friends or siblings who were still completing their formal education. Kisame easily shrugged any news on Academy students off. He?d rather train. What did he care if his teammate's sister was nervous about exams? He didn't know his teammate's sister, and the most that it would effect him would be if she failed and he had to cover for the older sister more than usual when she grieved.

Much to his teammate's distress, it just so happened that they had a mission outside the village that would have them leaving on the day of the exam. Momentarily, he thought about how distressed his teammate must have been when they walked out the gates, but it was ignorable. She was the type that tended to stay in the background. After they left the village, Kisame tried not to think about the Academy and its future half slaughtered class, or whether the little girl he heard about would be among the survivors. Until they were three days into their mission, and a messenger caught up with them and announced that all shinobi had been temporarily ordered back to the village. Then, suddenly the Academy exams meant a lot.

Though there had been no official order about keeping information from lower ranking ninja at the time, their sensei had had the messenger tell him what happened out of ear shot. Looking back, Kisame guessed that that must have been for the sake of his teammate. But she found out anyway when they returned to their village. Too many people were talking about it for them to get passed the main gates without hearing the words "massacre" and "academy" linked together.

For the first time in his career as a shinobi, Kisame saw higher ranking ninja at a loss. The Mizukage was gathering the Jourin to him. Genin teams were dismissed and left in confusion, for the most part being as uniformed by their superiors as Kisame?s team. His teammate started running home almost immediately after their teacher told them they could go. Kisame started walking. Not home exactly, he just let his feet wander.

Alright. That was a lie.

He told himself he was wandering, but really he knew exactly where he was going: the training building.

It was closed when he got there.

He told himself not to be surprise. What had he expected? Kisame walked up to the building, and not for the first time, wished he still had his keys.

He looked down at the lock. It wasn't complicated. It could easily be picked. The only problem was the alarm system attacked to it, which was very, very complicated. At least, to a fourteen year old Genin.

He waited by the door, not because he thought he could get in anytime soon, but because he didn't think he would be able to get in at all and didn't know where else to go. Then he heard something. Footsteps. Fast ones.

Kisame stayed still, back leaned against the wall, as the training building's front door was unceremoniously thrown open and one very disgruntled Chunin ran out. He lifted an eyebrow to himself as the man ran down the steps to the nearest trash can, where he doubled over and proceeded to empty the contents of his stomach into the supporting container.

One moment later, calmer footsteps also came echoing down the hall, followed by an older man, who walked across the street to where his partner was still vomiting and said somberly, "Come on, we have to finish our report."

"We can finished it by memory!" the smaller one answer back, face still turned into the trash can, so that his voice echoed out of it to reach the other Chunin's ears.

Kisame didn't care about listening any further. He slipped stealthily around to the door, the gray-blue color of his skin apparently disguise enough against the stone of the building.

Inside the training building the temperature was freezing. Kisame thought to himself that it might have been the first time in the building's history that the heaters were shut off, allowing the cold outside to seep in. There were weapons left on the floor and half eaten forms of junk food left out on the counters as if the last people inside had left in a sudden hurry. Yet their was no poison on the air, and no sign of a threat of struggle having took place before evacuation.

He found himself walking slowly though the building, as he would have on a mission rather than in a place where he spent the bulk of his time off duty. Routine led him down the hallway, towards the Genin lockerroom, where he would usually go first before training. And also, because the designer of the building was twisted that way, toward the room set aside for the Academy exams. As he went he saw doors left unlocked and gapping open along the hall, as they never would have been on a normal day. More evidence of a sudden departure.

There was something almost stifling about the hallway without the sounds of clashing metal and the particular smack that only came when skin hit harshly against skin. It seemed too big. Though perhaps not exactly bad. He didn't understand what had upset the first Chunin, but of course that was before he came to that door.

Despite his slow and careful approach, Kisame couldn't make himself go farther in when he looked to his right and saw the open door way before him, leading into the pure murky blackness of a room that had no natural source of light. He was only a few steps away from the lockerroom. He remembered hearing other boys talking before he left, claiming that if they listened very closely on the test day, they could hear the sounds of the matches going on in the room. Kisame wondered if he would see toppled chairs and left behind bags of chips by the wall nearest the test room if he went inside and looked.

But that wasn't what he had come to see, he told himself. There were footprints coming out of the exam room, darkish brown in color so that they almost appeared black in the dim light of the hallway. Looking downward and staring back the way he came, Kisame counted eight steps before they passed in front of a window that looked into a lounge that the shark nin knew from daily experience to be occupied in the mornings by two Jourin that liked to come in together when they weren?t on missions. The then footsteps stopped, and two long, skitted streaks took their place, as if someone had been dragged on until the color source was gone their feet, or maybe one of the Jourin hefted him up and carried him the rest of the way out to keep him from struggling.

Looking back into the darkened room, Kisame's nose wrinkled at the stench coming out of it, confirming his suspicions that no one other than the two Chunin he had seen had come in or out of it in days, not even for the sake of cleaning up the debris of the exam. Kisame couldn't remember if anyone had rushed in to survey the damage inside the room after his test. He remembered when he had been lead inside with his brother and the rest of their class, knowing that it would be hours before the door was unlocked and that only half of the people led in would be able to walk out. He also remembered, with nightmarish clarity, that not all of the killings had gone as quickly as his. The matches between the sharp students and the not so sharp had been easy, but then there were the others. The graceful, almost astounding fights between the genius students who had somehow been paired together, and then the messy, bloody fights between student that clearly weren't ready for this kind of test but couldn?t leave until it was done.

Kisame also remembered leaving the room. How his eyes had foolishly strayed again and again to the ground, observing the multitude of gleaming red marks that were left behind by his classmates' sandals. It seemed strange that they could leave so many marks when their numbers had just been reduced by half. It must have been shock, he guessed. But it had clearly imprinted into his mid what the floor was supposed to look like after the exam. It was supposed to be nearly dyed with the patterns of a hundred overlapping footprint. But here, in the present, there was only one set. Eight steps. Four per foot before the streaks began. And then after that there was nothing.

Kisame shivered. He turned back towards the door and took one step towards it. The odor of blood and decay was overwhelming with his face turned directly toward it. Reaching out with a blue hand, Kisame took hold of the door and turned in back towards its frame, both blocking off the source of the smell, and allowing him to exam the lock on the outside. He looked over the front of the door carefully, trying to spot scratches around the handle, or smell any grease that might have been applied to loosen the lock. It was feeble hope...

"Find anything?"

Kisame spun around quickly, nearly throwing the door back into place. When he was an elite Jourin, he would look back on how easily he was snuck up upon and shake his head sadly.

His teacher was standing behind him, leaning casually against the wall less than three feet away. Kisame straightened up and told himself not to glare at the higher ranking shinobi. He shook his head in answer to his sensei's question.

There was a half staged sigh in response. "Pity. We're having trouble discovering how he got in." At Kisame's questioning look, the older man raised an eyebrow. "You haven't heard the story? There was a massacre here the day we left. A civilian boy?s responsible, by the looks of it. Scrawny guy. Could be put together with sticks."

Kisame didn't say anything. His sensei continued to watch him carefully.

"We think he might have gone inside," he indicated the room behind the shark boy with a bob of his chin, "the night before. The Academy teachers certainly didn't see him slip in with their classes when they brought them in." His teacher stopped, as if expecting Kisame to say something, but he didn't. "It's odd, isn't it?" the older man went on, "In the one part of the village were shinobi around supposed to be constantly on their guard, not one of them remembers seeing a dirty faced boy walk in off the street. It's making a lot of the council members nervous.?

That pause was left again.

?None of the alarms went off either," he added.

Kisame agreed quietly, trying not to look behind him at the door. He hoped he didn?t look guilty.

Finally the older man gave up. Kisame was relieved. "Just so you know," he said, and then let the subject close. The Jourin pushed off the wall and indicated back down the hallway, again with his chin. "You shouldn't be in here. We're still investigating."

"Hai," Kisame said slowly. Then added, "I'll just be a moment." His teacher glanced back at him over his shoulder. "There's something a I need to get."

Another sigh. "Make it quick. I can't explain to the investigators why there's a Genin on their crime scene."

Kisame bowed his head to his teacher, then turned around and hurried into the rookie lockerroom. Vaguely he acknowledged that his earlier suspicion had been true. There were chips and things left behind by teenage boys eager to hear the sounds of a bloody fight on the other side of the tiles wall. He didn't spare it more than a glance though. He went directly to his own locker, the third one to the end, in the back row.

He told himself not to be surprised when he opened the small cabinet and saw a shining ring of keys hanging from the hook usually meant for a towel. He just needed a moment to stare. That was all.

As he left, Kisame didn?t take the keys home with him. He knew that if he did, he would start counting them before he even got out of the godforsaken snow, and then he would have to know if his suspicion was correct: that he would find one key missing, that might even at that moment be crusting over in a drying puddle of blood down the hall.

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Kisame came back to the present easily. Or rather, he took the one part of his awareness away from reminicing and returned it to what he was currently doing instead. Being a shinobi in any village meant developing a sense of split-mindedness. It was one of the basics that were droned into children from the very beginning of their schooling. Especially in the Mist, after a civilian street rat had mysteriously waltzed his way into a building filled with every status of shinobi from ANBU to over-eager Genin.

Kisame hopped onto a particularly sturdy looking tree branch to catch his breath. He could have sworn that he had been all over this island twice by now without spotting Itachi once. Despite having a memory filled with examples of his partner's competence, Kisame couldn't help it: he was getting worried. There were no signs of a struggle back where he had left him earlier. The only indication that anyone had been there at all were the scattered remaining needles of what had once been the pile he made of their target's weapons. It would seem that the kid had taken off in a hurry to get back to his beloved "guardian," which had very likely been what save Zabuza's damned unworthy life.

Kisame shook his head to no one specifically. As much as he disliked it, Zabuza probably knew that he was on the island by now. Which did not do much to support the idea of resting when he was currently separated from his partner. Getting up, Kisame prepared to launch into another series of springing from tree to tree, when his awareness suddenly picked up a chakra source.

Kisame took a moment, not trying to identify it, but rather trying to explain it. The signature was obviously Itachi, after all the time he'd spent with the prim and proper younger ninja it would have been impossible for him not to recognize it. What made him hesitate was the fact that it had come up so bluntly. It wasn't particularly close to where he was, but it was obvious. Like a candle suddenly light in a room without windows in the middle of a very, very cloudy night. Anyone could read it. And it was on the move.

Kisame frowned, but curiously, started towards it, because another thing that he had learned about Uchiha Itachi over the years was that he had a sensible purpose for everything. Which brought him back to the reason he'd gone looking for him in the first place...

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