(A/N: This is an experiment, ok? I just thought of this and had to write it. I don't know if anyone else has written a similar story or not but if they did, then I didn't know a thing about it. I'm going to be very hard on myself on this one, so I'll try to make it as good a story as possible...well, I try that with all my stories, but sometimes I falter somewhat. Not this time! This story is dedicated to Blue the bloody Baron. Also, there are some OCs in here, but I will try with all my might to not make them "Mary Sues" or whatever. And I'll try to make characters as in character as possible. I'm also making this a slight AU because I have not finished the Naruto series, I'm just going to write what I think should happen. Hee hee.)

I love you, Blue!

I own nothing that is not mine - including Naruto.

Chapter One

It had been five years since the Akatsuki had been "disbanded". Kisame had no idea who else had made it out alive, nor did he care. He was living a semi-comfortable life as a bounty hunter. His skills as a shinobi were rather useful in his profession; of course he made sure no one saw them unless it was absolutely necessary. Another thing he didn't want the public to see was his face. He wore a black hoodie and a pair of dark jeans every where he went; hood up. At first, the police didn't take him seriously, but after he brought in a few "dangerous" criminals, that changed. He was still wanted throughout the ninja lands, and he was sure there was a bounty out there for him - which was one of the reasons why he hid himself. The other being the fact that he was blue and civilians didn't see things like that everyday. Kisame didn't want a commotion started, so the man traveled around town to town trying to find the means of entertaining himself. Sure, every now and again he would find a criminal who wasn't a complete idiot, but those finds were few and far between...

Kisame had found himself wandering farther and farther away from all of the ninja villages. Not that he was frightened by the thought of being caught—that would just be a small in-convenience—he just happened to be wandering in the opposite direction. He usually dealt with civilians in large—over populated—cities. Kisame had found that crime bred in such places however and decided to stay close to said areas. He had never cared for money; he was perfectly comfortable with the thought of living in a dense forest. But living in a large city was nothing like living in the wilderness. Money was needed for a place to sleep and for food, and the way he earned his money was fairly amusing.

At the moment, though, the rogue ninja was doing his job. Kisame was tailing a couple of well known drug dealers, also the leaders of the gang known as Shark Teeth—Kazuya and Daichi—the two men were brothers. Kisame had found out that the gang's strong-hold was in a rather large, abandoned house by the docks. The city the gang occupied, and where Kisame was currently in, was coastal. The shore was a well known tourist attraction during the summer months. But, it wasn't summer so luckily there weren't all that many people around the beach areas; only the occasional fisherman would chug along in an old boat a few miles off shore.

Hiding under the docks, using his chakra to keep on top of the freezing water, Kisame silently listened in on the conversation of the gathered criminals. Surprisingly, Kisame had had slight trouble figuring out the location of the hide-out. This was the night he would bring the brothers in and permanently rid the city of the gang; not that he cared all that much for the city's well being.

Since Kisame wasn't gifted with the Byakugan's all seeing powers, he used his ears. The way the men were talking it sounded as if they hadn't a clue he was there. He smirked and shook his head, how could they?

After a few moments of listening to the rather boring criminals, it fell silent. Kisame suspected someone had figured him out; impossible. If these were normal thugs, there would be no way they could know he was there. Curious, he effortlessly flipped over on top of the deck and peeked in through a small crack in the old, sea worn building. Kisame saw the door was wide open and the room was empty. He smirked and stood, turning around to face the rather large group of thugs.

"Who are you?" A young man appeared from the crowd. The perfect word to describe him was scruffy; he looked like he hadn't eaten in weeks; druggie. "Are you a cop?"

Kisame snorted. "Hardly." White puffs forming from his mouth as he spoke. It must have been twenty degrees, and Kisame hated to admit it, but the sea crashing against the dock wasn't helping him stay warm. But, regardless of the weather he smirked to himself, if, and I seriously doubt this, but if I need anything big, I have the ocean on my side...

The boy visibly grit his teeth. "Whatever. It doesn't matter who you are, you're dead." He looked to his side and nodded toward Kisame. "Kill him."

Kisame sighed and held up one hand, stopping any actions being made. "Before you start, who is Kazuya and who is Daichi?"

The scruffy one smirked and stepped forward slightly, then, another young man stepped forward. This one was no different. The only difference was that this one was taller and his face wasn't as long. "I'm Kazuya and this is—“

"I don't care which is which. I just need to know which ones to bring in after I'm done here," Kisame grinned at the reaction of the thugs, nearly all of them growled or mumbled something. This may be far more entertaining than I'd first thought.

"Who the hell you talkin' to like that?" Kazuya yelled. "Do you know who we are?"

Kisame sighed. "Yeah, but I would have never known if I didn't need the money."

The taller one seemed to take interest in the comment. "You're a bounty hunter, then." This one seemed level-headed; unlike his brother.

"And what do you make of that?" Kisame asked, still grinning. The young man smirked and shifted his position slightly.

"I think you came dangerously un-prepared."

Kisame had to grin madly at that, allowing his teeth to be seen by all. The group gasped and whispers spread throughout. Even Daichi seemed slightly taken aback by the sharp canines. The blue man began stretching for the fight to come—even though he knew they had guns, he was going to fight bare-handed. Kisame was a ninja after all. He missed his Same-hada horrbily. The sword was apart of him, and when he had to give it up, along with everything else he had known, he had actually brooded for weeks. Then, after realizing that he was acting rather foolish, he quickly tried to find something he could do to kill time. He didn't have a grudge against anyone; he didn't want to just pillage and burn villages—that would get him caught, and that's no fun at all. So, remembering how Kakuzu came across money, Kisame took up bounty hunting.

"Oh, I think I came too prepared; especially against the likes of you." The ninja said with a dissatisfied sigh; even though the fight hadn't even begun, he knew how it was going to turn out—boring.

Daichi smirked, his shock had left quickly enough, and shook his head cockily. "We'll see," he paused and looked behind him toward his group of thugs. "Enough talk." And with the nod of his head, the large group of men were headed toward Kisame's lone form.

As the first few thugs pathetically threw their fists at the well experienced ninja, Kisame easily dodged and quickly disposed of the men by knocking them off the dock and into the freezing water. The second row of men suddenly realized what they were getting into and stopped a few feet away from the bounty hunter. Even though it was cloudy and pitch black outside, nothing could hide the blue man's excitement. Once he got started, nothing stopped him; or, nothing stopped him since Itachi died.

Too hyped to think too much into that, Kisame looked forward and grinned manically. Since the men weren't coming to him, Kisame would advance forward to them. "I bet that water's real cold," Kisame said as he slammed into three of the gang-members, causing them to fall off the dock and reunite with the men already down there. The next wave, Kisame noticed with another thrill jolting his body, had guns.

Just as he dogded the bullets and pummeled the men shooting at him, Kisame noticed someone behind him. Quickly noting how far away the men in front of him were, and also noting they had no weapons but simple switch-blades, Kisame looked around and saw Kazuya with a large, odd weapon of sorts. It looked like a harpoon gun and a canon put together. Curious as to what it did, Kisame pretended to not notice someone behind him and concentrate on the men in front of him.

Right when the boy pulled the trigger, Kisame pulled a random thug in front of him, causing the thug to take the hit instead of Kisame. What he saw shocked him to the point of pausing and staring at what had actually come out of the gun.

It was an actual harpoon. Kisame had to move the man he had in his grasp away from him so he wouldn't also be struck by the sharp object. Kisame wasn't shocked by the weapon itself, he was shocked by the simplicity of the common ruffian. Noticing no one was coming toward him, he allowed himself to laugh. Kazuya growled loudly in response to the laughing man.

"You thought that was funny, huh?" He yelled as he grabbed for more ammunition. This time, it was different. "Let's see how funny this is," the man quickly re-loaded and pulled it up, only to come face to face with Kisame's grinning face. The man turned white.

"W-w-what are you..?"

Kisame's grin widened, if that was at all possible. It had been a while since he’d actually killed someone. But the moment was ruined when something was jammed into his side, causing his grin to fade. He turned to see Daichi with a syringe in his hand, which was fixed into Kisame's side. The ninja couldn't believe what had happened as he stared at Daichi's smirking face.

"You're pretty good, I'll give you that." He paused and shoved the needle sideways, causing it to break off into the blue man's side, and then throwing the rest of the syringe away. "But you're just one ma—“

Kisame punched the young man off of the dock and into the ocean with ease. While Daichi was talking, he had thrown Kazuya off the dock. Kisame sighed and looked down at the rest of the gang and realized they had left. He then looked at the sea; he hadn't realized how bad the weather had gotten. The waves were toppling over the dock fiercely and the wind about blew him off of his feet. But he easily stayed upright due to chakra control...

For a little bit. After not even half a minute, Kisame found it very difficult to stand, let alone use chakra. He couldn't believe that little nothing got to him. Kisame would have been angry if it weren't for whatever that punk put in him. Instead of being angry, he was immensely confused and felt nothing, like his body fell asleep and he was still awake.

Thuh...this is..bad... Kisame thought as he fell off the dock and into the frigid cold water; as soon as he hit the water, he blacked out.

It was early in the morning when police found the whole gang washed ashore. Some were alive, but others weren't so lucky. Most of the dead looked half eaten. Sharks were for some reason attracted to the area in the winter months. Due to the involvement of the sea animals, police called in a marine biologist. Well, since the local marine biologist was on vacation on some island, they called his personal student; a young woman of twenty two. She lazily pulled herself out of her car and headed down to the docks.

"Miss Izumi," a young police officer approached the woman, clearly nervous about something. "I...don't think you should see this, it's rather...uh, appalling."

The young woman sighed. "I know, but I need to identify the type of shark that did this." She paused and smiled up at the young man. "And call me Hitomi." The police officer nodded and led the way to the scene.

The young woman gasped and looked away from the more mangled bodies. It was awful; blood was literally everywhere. She looked away toward the ocean, seeing something barely on the beach. It looked oddly like...a person? She was told that everyone, dead or alive, were hauled on shore and examined thoroughly. The young woman, ignoring the police men's cries of disapproval, walked over to get a better look at whatever was beached.

"You missed someone!" She yelled as she ran toward the body. She didn't know if he was dead or alive; he wasn't bleeding anywhere, so she guessed he was just knocked out. The first thing she noticed was that he looked odd. He was in the sand face-first, so she couldn't see his face. But the skin on his neck was blue. At first she thought he was super cold, it was winter. Then she flipped him over—with some difficulty, he was huge—and nearly fell over on her back side.

Hitomi was staring into the face of what she first called a shark-man. He had the color of skin, even had gills on the side of his neck, like a shark. But he had a full head of hair and eyebrows, so he didn't look all that frightening. Not knowing what to do, she simply continued to look him over... Which was hard, considering he was covered in clothing. Looking around sheepishly, she grabbed the bottom of the man's hoodie and pulled it off him, throwing the wet thing aside. She was shivering just touching him; the water was probably below zero. But, as she thought of shivering, she noticed the man was shaking horribly. She felt bad for taking his hoodie off, but it did no good anyway. As she stared down at the naked chest, her eyes widened as she noted how much muscle he had.

Pushing that thought aside, she moved her hands to his mouth. She had second thoughts about doing it, but she finally placed her fingers on the top and bottom of his mouth. Pulling the blue lips apart, Hitomi saw what she was looking for - rows of super sharp shark teeth. She was so shocked by her discovery that her mouth was gaping. After a few more moments of her "research", the young woman noticed something embedded in the shark-man's side. She cautiously placed her fingers lightly on his side and—

The next thing Hitomi knew, dark eyes glared down at her - then, she realized she was pinned to the ground by the large shark-man. His breathing was horrible; short, shallow breaths rasped out of his mouth and he was still shaking from the cold. He probably had hypothermia, Hitomi thought as she felt shaky hands pinning hers to the sand.

"Whut.." He didn't finish his sentence. A police man had hit him over the head with his baton, causing him to fall on top of Hitomi, who was already freaking out by the man fixing her down to the ground.

"Ma'am, are you alright?" It was the police man from before. Hitomi nodded shakily and waited for the police to take the man off of her. She was all wet and the wind began to blow, causing her to shiver and wrap her arms around herself.

One police man threw a blanket over her and she thanked him. She then looked over at the shark-man. "What're you gonna do with him?"

An older cop thought for a moment. "When he wakes up, we'll question him; see if he has anything to do with the Shark Teeth gang," Hitomi laughed at the thought—a shark man with a gang entitled Shark Teeth. She doubted he was with them, but she couldn’t be sure. Regardless of the warning signs, she had to ask…

"Well," She started after her giggle. "I was wondering if...I could take him with me. I've never seen anything like him and I'd like to see what he is." The police officers looked at each other with skeptical looks.

"Ma'am, clearly he's dangerous."

She snorted. "And injured. He can't harm me when he's down and out." She then thought about the statement. He could actually be even more dangerous when injured…But again, regardless of warning sings flashing in her head, she didn’t change her mind.

It took a while, but the young woman finally convinced the police men to let her take the shark-man home with her. She had the equipment to take care of him since she was a marine biologist in training—even though Kisame was exactly an actual shark, she could still take care of him. After getting him home, a rather large feat considering how large he was, she set him down in her lab on a table. She felt awful for treating him like a test subject, but there was no other way for her to actually examine him. She saw the injury again and carefully, more careful than last time, placed her hands evenly on it and saw it was a needle. She paled. Someone had put something in him. She then pulled out her medical tools from a nearby drawer. Pulling up a pair of tweezers, she slowly, and cautiously, placed the tongs around what little of the needle was poking out of the man's side. Now that she got a better look at it, someone had jabbed it in his side and pulled it sideways, making it all that worse.

So, to get it over with, she began to pull. As she did, though, the stranger shot up and away from the tweezers and off the table onto the floor. Hitomi was frightened and against the wall, not knowing how to handle someone four times her size.

The shark-man held his side and grit his teeth; apparently, he was in a lot of pain. Now good and guilty, Hitomi slowly walked toward the man and knelt down beside him, even though he was thrashing around and could hurt her. Not knowing what to do, she tried talking.

"Shh, shh..." She tried calming him, which only caused him to look up at her from his spot on the floor. He growled almost animal-like at her.

“Where am I?” He asked harshly. Hitomi flinched at the loud voice but quickly gained her composure.

“You’re at my house—“

“Who are you?”

Hitomi was feeling her patience leaving her. Yes, he was scary, and yes, he could and probably would kill her given the chance, but the murderous intent somehow blurred into none-existence as he fell back over and balled up.

“My name is Hitomi,” she started slowly. “I took you in to treat your injuries. We’re at my home.”

The man was quiet for a moment before countering. He sat up and looked down at her—Hitomi couldn’t make anything out of his expression. Maybe frustration? Or confusion? She didn’t know…

“There’s nothing you can do for me,” he stood shakily and without a word, headed for the door. Hitomi sighed and stood, shaking her head.

“Fine. I was just trying to help.” Well, even though she was going to run some tests on him—harmless tests—just to see if he was actually anything like the animal he resembled. She frowned at her somewhat greedy goals and wasn’t as disappointed to see him walk away…

Actually, he didn’t even get out of the house. He fell out-cold as soon as he entered the dining room.

Hitomi’s giggle rang throughout the complex as she walked toward the dining room…

End of Chapter One

(A/N: Ok, Hitomi means “Iris” as in the eye. And Izumi means “fountain”. I don’t know if Izumi is an actual last name, but in here it is. I tried to keep everyone, (or Kisame anyway, everyone else is an OC) in character and I think I did fairly well…you’ll be the judge of that, though, huh?)

Red.