Image is Everything
Part Two: Poor, Confused Shark
Kisame looked in the mirror. Or at least, he tried to look in the
mirror, but his mother had placed it so that it only came up to his
shoulders. He couldn't blame her, though, he was almost seven feet tall
and she barely came up to his waist, so she couldn't reach up high
enough to place the mirror properly.
Kisame leaned down. Hmm... he was looking great as always. His skin
tinged a healthy hue of blue, eyes slanted in a particularly evil way,
gills nice and perky. He looked exactly like what a psychotic ninja who
used water-based attacks should look like. Kisame grinned at his
reflection, showing rows of sharp, pointy teeth. He was just so cool!
"Kisame, dinner time!"
Kisame took two steps towards his smiling, loving mother, and suddenly
stopped in his tracks.
"Kisame, is something wrong?"
"Umm... no." Kisame tried to smile as he sat down to enjoy his dinner.
He looked at his mother, then looked at the mirror on the wall behind
her, then at his mother again, then-
"Are you sure there's nothing wrong?"
"Eh?!" Noodles spilled out of Kisame's mouth as he was startled from
his reverie. Since some of them were still hanging from his teeth, he
sucked them back up into his mouth. "I'm fine."
"... okay." Kisame's mother got up and took the dishes to the kitchen,
leaving Kisame to his contemplation.
After nineteen years, Kisame had just realized that he looked nothing
like his mother.
The boy always was a little slow.
Her skin was a perfect shade of normal peach. Her eyes were normally
slanted. She had no gills. Her teeth were square. And most startling of
all, she was 100%, completely, totally, not evil. In fact, she had won
Mist Village's Most Likely to Sacrifice Her Life to Save a Drowning
Kitten superlative for the third year in a row.
Well, actually, Kisame had never known who his father was. He had never
really cared, and his mother had never told him. Maybe he had inherited
all his good looks and his personality from his father.
Kisame walked through Mist Village. His father could be any of these
people. The owner of the ramen stand? One of the teachers at the
academy? The trashman? There was no one in the village that was as
particularly shark-ish as he was. Kisame stopped... what if he was
adopted? Or, worse yet, what if he was the product of some gross
experimentation or sealing? He could be half shark, for all he knew.
What was the point of having such a cool image when he didn't even know
where he came from? Kisame felt anguish as he had never known, anguish
on par with the tragic heroine in a shojo manga.
"Wow! You caught a big one!"
Kisame looked over to where some fishermen were pulling in a catch. It
was... a shark!
"That'll make a good meal tonight."
"NOOOOOOO! Father!!!!!" Kisame dived for the shark, grabbing it from
the confused fisherman's hand.
"Kisame? What are you doing?" Kisame's mother, who had been walking by,
looked down at her son. He was sitting in the water, somehow covered in
seaweed, and cuddling a large shark. He looked like he was about to cry.
"Umm... nothing?"
His mother frowned. "Let go of that shark and let's go home."
"Yes, Mommy." Kisame gently let go of his potential father and followed
his mother back. "Mommy... where did I come from?"
An uncomfortable look passed over his mother's face. "Aren't you old
enough to know by now? Well, when a man and a woman fall in love..."
Kisame sweatdropped. "That's not what I meant! I meant... eh... who's
my father?"
"Oh. Well, he was a great shinobi who decided that his true life's
ambition was to become a corporate lawyer."
"Wow." Kisame was amazed. You couldn't get more evil than a corporate
lawyer. "But then why do I look like a shark?"
"You're so silly, Kisame. That's just how your bloodline manifests
itself physically."
Somehow, through all his mother's big words, Kisame understood. He was
a little relieved that he wasn't part shark. Just as Kisame and his
mother reached their house, Itachi jumped down in front of them. Kisame
looked down at the shorter boy. Itachi had to bend his neck backwards
to be able to look his comrade in the eye.
"Kisame. Mission."
"Itachi, it's been so long!" Kisame's mother gushed at her son's
partner in crime.
"Hello, Mrs. Kisame's Mom."
"Why don't you come in for milk and cookies?"
"Yay!," Kisame thought, "milk and cookies!"
Itachi thought it over. Cookies were not badass... still... "What kind?"
"Chocolate chip."
"Okay."
The two boys went into the house where they gorged on cookies and
milk... Kisame called the last one, but Itachi ate it anyway and
threatened Kisame with bodily harm if he told his mother. Soon enough
they were leaving the house, Kisame's mother calling after them to be
safe and to try not to kill too many people.