| [Aug. 16th, 2010|01:44 am] |
"Two, yep." Ginta smiled at his fish. "You're a good guy, Hyuuga Hiro. Know how I can tell? You pet fish. Only really good people pet fish. If you wanted, I could give you one of her fry. I mean, from this breeding. Of course I don't know how many eggs we'll get, or how many of those will actually hatch. Frogs get some of them. But I'd save out one for you if you wanted. Might even get one with that really bright yellow. Or what color do you like? If I get an all silver, though, I'll be keeping that one for breeding. But I'd totally give you any other one. You could keep it here if you don't want to put it in with the Hyuuga koi. Or actually you could probably have a tank. I keep thinking about getting a tank, but..." He shrugged and withdrew his crutch from the pond. "Missions."
Hiro hesitated, eyes following the fish as they patrolled their small pond. "I..." started Hiro. Ginta could see the lift of Hiro's shoulders, the fall. "I'm not sure I could properly take care of it..."
"Sure you could!" Ginta enthused. Hiro wanted a fish — wanted one of Ginta's fish — Ginta could see that. "I'd teach you. Besides it's easy. And if you kept it here then it'd be totally taken care of. Of course then we'd have to visit together, but I'd explain to Tsuki that you're a friend and you have a fish here. You'd have to meet Grandmother, but she'd like you, I'm pretty sure. Especially if you had a fish. What color do you like?"
Hiro's lips twitched in a smile that seemed almost surprising. "That black-and-silver one was pretty. Or... I saw one that was almost bluish."
"Oooh, yeah, the slate blues are gorgeous! I have some over here, actually. They have red on the edges of their scales, but it's really subtle. You can see it in shallow water when the light's right." Ginta shoved back on his crutches and swung to the right, heading deeper into the back garden, towards another low-walled pool. "See?" he said, when they stopped. "There's two. And some red and blacks. And there's one black and white. But I really like the blue one with the red tail, see him? It's a boy, we think, although sometimes it's really hard to tell with fish. A lot of the time, really. But anyway, I think he has really nice coloring, and he's got a good shape. They're still small, so you could even have a tank if you wanted one of these. Which one do you like?"
Hiro crouched down to take a closer look at the juvenile koi. The fish reacted instantly, darting toward Hiro's shadow where it fell over the water. "How do you tell if it's a male or female fish?" he asked, trailing a finger through the water's ripples, and drawing a flock of eager koi fry in its wake.
"Well, the males are more likely to have colored fins. Females are kind of translucent. But sometimes males have translucent fins, so that's not a guarantee. And females have rounder fins, usually. And females are bigger and wider, but that's only when they're sexually mature, when they're over two, which these aren't. But females get eggs when they're grown, so then they're rounder, you know? And males are skinnier. But of course all these are skinny because they're juveniles. But that's why all the prize winners are females, almost, because they have rounder bodies and it shows off their colors and patterns better. So really it's kind of cheap to give you a male, except I do think he's prettiest, even if he's a boy."
If Ginta had kept his eyes solely on the fish, he might have missed it when Hiro activated his Byakugan. But he was watching Hiro's face, watching for a reaction. Veins stood out at Hiro's temple for an instant, than subsided again. "I think he's gorgeous," Hiro said, and reached his finger towards the red and blue fish.
"Wow, that's totally cheating. Awesome!" Ginta laughed delightedly. "OK, he's yours. That's Hiro's fish. You hear that fish? You're Hiro's. I never even though to try that before. Well, obviously I can't since I'm not a Hyuuga. But I never thought about asking one to look. So can you see, I don't know, like, the undeveloped ovaries in the females or something? That's awesome!" |
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