Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

And... so... I STRUGGLE ON. But I am still alive!

Don't own anything but characters and plot, won't profit.


'So!' Raiku said brightly, hands folded on the table in front of her. 'What's next?' Life was moving on and by god, she was going to keep up this time.

It was some consolation that it couldn't be more training. That's what the entire time-skip had been about. If she did one more push-up, she would weep blood. She was as prepared as she reasonably could be, she had braved the whirlwinds of personal development and the Copy-nin, and it was time to move on.

'Well,' Daisukenojo mused, perusing the menu. 'I was thinking about some of those little dough things, what're they called-,'

'I meant in general!' Raiku paused. '…But yes, we are definitely getting those.' While the little dough-things were undeniably important, the time-skip wouldn't end at a mere team lunch. Something was going to happen. She was filled with equal parts dread and excitement, a feeling she had become accustomed to over the terrifying years of puberty. And also her whole life.

Yamada eyed her suspiciously. "Why do you ask?"

Raiku tried a wide-eyed, innocent look. Hers had never been very good, but she had spent several years staring at Kakashi's version and never quite broken him. And indeed, Yamada met it with a glower that she heavily suspected he'd been born with, but eventually relented. Yes, Raiku thought; Kakashi finally taught me something useful.

"We've got something lined up already," Yamada informed them begrudgingly.

'I knew it!' Raiku exclaimed, hitting the table. 'Called it! Called it!'

Ryuu batted one of her flailing limbs out of his direct line of vision. 'Shut up so he can tell us about it.'

But Yamada hardly needed Ryuu to fight his battles for him, just carrying on. "Some small-time criminals have been stirring up trouble along patrol routes, get me?"

Raiku frowned. Not exactly groundbreaking. In fact, it was sort of weird?

But anything she noticed, Ryuu could be counted on to pick up on first, because he was a smug asshole. 'That's the patrol's problem. That is, in fact, the sort of problem that patrols are for,' Ryuu pointed out.

"Yeah, only no," Yamada shot back along with a dark glare promising retribution for any further interruptions. "Our patrols are having trouble and they think there might be something bigger behind it, get me?"

Raiku discreetly preened; she'd been right.

Wait. She'd been right.

She groaned and hid her face in her hands. 'Of course. So now we have to go and investigate this mysterious problem with hidden depths!' "Hidden depths". Swearwords in the large and strange Gairano vocabulary.

The one time she was indisputably right! Why couldn't she just have this one thing?! Why did it always have to be terrible if she saw it coming?!

"Got it in one," Yamada grinned.

'But,' Daisukenojo said to himself slowly, still reading the menu, totally at ease with the entire situation, probably secure in the knowledge his more histrionic teammates would bitch enough to get the truth out. '… the dough-things only come in sets of three…'

'If they're taking out actual patrols, why would they send three newbies and only one Jounin?' Ryuu asked, leaning back in his chair with an attractively brooding expression that Raiku eyed with blatant hostility. 'Isn't that a job for White Ops?'

Yamada folded his arms and brooded in a reassuringly less photogenic way. "They aren't taking them out, or they'd send some people who actually know what they're doing."

'Ouch,' Daisukenojo said absently, turning the page to peruse side-dishes for something less likely to start a fight.

'So… what's the trouble they're causing?' Raiku asked, braced for impact. Just in time, too- Yamada opened his mouth and Plot materialised on his exhale in the empty space in front of them. It waved at her. Or at least undulated in an attention-grabbing way, even giving a little showy wiggle where it now took up most of the table. She managed not to recoil, but did lean back and pretend to be pensive as an excuse. Settling back and brooding was a thing! A thing that finally worked to her advantage!

The Plot was oddly difficult to analyse, even at this distance. The usual flashes of light and snatches of words were absent, though it certainly seemed as stupidly smug as the other members of its family. Oh hey, it announced with its… best attempt at jazz hands, the little shit. But realistically, she knew what this was. Introducing all the characters, establishing limits emotional and physical, setting up framing…

Raiku sighed. She couldn't squish it when it was right there. Even for her, randomly stabbing the table would be a bit out of the ordinary.

Bam. Yamada got his Exposition on, right on cue. "There've been some natural disturbances in the area. Somehow, these guys seem to know when and where they'll happen, and they've been leading our guys into them and then making off with what they can grab, get me?"

'But they aren't causing them?' Ryuu asked sceptically. 'That's a pretty big coincidence you're asking us to buy.'

Yamada smiled grimly. "Exactly. We've gotta go check it out."

Raiku rubbed her temples, just to have an excuse to close her eyes against the oily black mass of Plot that was staring her in the face, mocking her inability to do anything about it just yet. 'Where?'

Yamada shrugged. "Our lead starts only about a day away. Well inside Fire, don't worry."

Raiku narrowed her eyes. Only she should be worried. The end of the time-skip made her narrative protection flimsy at best, and she could no longer risk accepting the Plots that threatened them as small-time. After all, that hadn't worked out so well… historically. Things were going to be building up and spilling over from the Main Plot, so she'd have to ask her dad about it.

But he surely would have told her. And actually, he'd said Team Seven's storyline starting would mark the end of the time-skip, so…

She brightened. That meant they would be far away from her!

"We'll head out once you sad-sacks have recovered from the Exam, get me?"

'Sure, sure,' Daisukenojo agreed, finally putting down the menu. 'Now hurry up and decide on what you want, I'm starving.'

Damn, Raiku thought, tugging at a sleeve as she did some laboured mental calculations; that only gave her two days, at most. Two days to get ready, and two days to make sure this little Plot nuisance was well and truly dead before they set off. Neither of her teammates had been seriously injured, they mostly just seemed tired.

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. She could do it. Sure, she couldn't read the Plot very well and since her family would now be preoccupied with the Main Plot, so she would have to deal with it on her own. But she'd spent three years preparing to have some autonomy again, and no … universal causality would break her. Not even her growing fear! She would run towards it, and not away, that was her goal!

… That wasn't true. She had to be realistic. She would at the very least pause significantly before running for the hills! She was a whole new Raiku!

… That wasn't true either. She was a slightly updated Raiku! She was ready.

'For dough-thingies!' she cried, unable to give a genuine battle-cry for obvious reasons and settling on a cause she could at least get behind anyway.

'Oh no! Those come in threes, and we are not starting another fight over those!' Daisukenojo snapped, smacking her with the folded cardboard menu. 'We can get spring rolls or we can get-,'

'We can get your face,' Raiku shot back immediately, before closing her eyes and cursing at the feebleness of her comeback.

'Oh, burn,' Ryuu said snidely, never one to miss a cue. 'Such witticisms.'

'Your face is a … witticism,' Daisukenojo retorted, both he and Raiku turning on their more composed teammate. They were on opposite sides, but those sides were left and right, while Ryuu's was down. In Hell, from whence he had presumably emerged.

'Yeah,' Raiku added in a show of support. '…Take that.' She raised an arm to call the fleeing waitress back. In response, the Plot raised what was possibly an arm in what she felt was an unnecessary mockery, leaking a brief ray of white light before it slid over the table and to nowhere she wanted to think about because goddamnit, of course it wouldn't make things easy for her.

"Pathetic," Yamada chipped in eventually, apparently concluding that their tiny fight was over. She was glad to see the haze of Plot compulsion clearing from his eyes, but the dubious look was barely an improvement. "We're all gonna die."

'So! Now that that's settled, how was the Exam?' Raiku asked, while Daisukenojo apparently sorted out their orders for them. He was getting rather bossy. In an oddly reasonable way, but still. She'd have to keep an eye on that. Ryuu was controlling, but entirely too misanthropic to be leader under Yamada, and she was woefully underqualified. Maybe he'd step up?

'Surprisingly easy,' Ryuu said after a moment's reflection. 'It was just a straight series of fights and tests.'

'Yeah, actually. It was kind of weird. The last few were super elaborate and needlessly complicated,' Daisukenojo added.

Of course they were. It was made up by shinobi; needlessly complicated was their entire thing, Raiku sniggered mentally. But still. It sounded like the Genematrix had made it a bit easier just to make absolutely sure the last batch of their rookie year got through, which was a relief. Especially since the alternative was for it to kill them off, which she would find inconvenient. All the other teams were so Dramatic, it would have been totally unmanageable.

Oh, and she'd sort of gotten attached to them. But she tended to gloss over that part in her head, because feelings were for ladies. Which she absolutely was not. Female, yes, but the finer parts of ladydom had sort of skipped her. Ladyness? Ladyhood?

"They did good," Yamada chipped in reluctantly, to her surprise. "Little bastards."

'Aw! You're proud of us,' Daisukenojo cooed, because he never could leave well enough alone.

Yamada's face immediately darkened. Raiku quickly scrambled to distract everyone. Unfortunately, she'd spent the last portion of the time-skip motivating her teammates through open provocation, and old habits died hard.

'So! You guys are finally my equals, hu-uh?' she asked, cracking her knuckles. 'Well, I still have seniority, so there.'

Ryuu was the first to break the incredulous silence that followed her oddly confrontational statement, because he always was. 'You really don't have any survival instincts, do you?' he marvelled, breaking his chopsticks apart. An action Raiku hadn't previously known could be so threatening, but hey, you learned something new every day!

'So we can get the dough thingies after all, once Raiku's been killed and dumped in a shallow grave,' Daisukenojo informed them, her staunch ally until the end, that asshole.

Raiku creased her eyes at Ryuu cheerfully, rubbing her faintly crackling hands together just to make enough noise for him to hear and be wary of. 'This is gonna be so great. We can finally actually do stuff with what we've been studying for so long!'

'As opposed to all of that nothing we were doing before?' Daisukenojo snorted.

'Doesn't count,' Raiku said with a dismissive wave. 'We weren't a full Chuunin team before! Now things are getting serious!'

This wasn't entirely what she meant, but it was close enough. Genin from her year had actually been getting weirdly advanced missions since early on, probably the Genematrix's way of trying to make them ready for whatever it had up its sleeves for Naruto's young-adulthood. Like it was normal for preteens to be sent into enemy territory with such awful regularity, yeah right. But their missions during the time-skip had felt tamer and even less real in her memories, probably because of the whirlwind speed of it all. Things felt real again, in a way she hadn't realised they didn't before.

It was almost exciting, actually. It wasn't; it was horrifying, but still! So close!

"At least one of you knows that," Yamada grumbled. Raiku blinked, confused, until she realised Ryuu had realised her obliviousness to his evil intentions and directed them at Daisukenojo instead, who was shooting insults at him as he yanked splinters out of his hands.

'We're off to a great start already,' she sighed, resting her chin on her palm. Mostly to hide how honestly she believed it; the two of them behaving normally wasn't Dramatic at all!

She was glad her smile was hidden by her mask; now, if she could just get that Plot that had escaped, they'd be set.

Well, not quite set. She still had to re-familiarise herself with all of the other former Genin, make sure she had enough supplies for the trip, check with her dad, tell Kakashi she was going, buy clothes that weren't fraying at the seams because what was good enough for the time-skip wouldn't last ten minutes outside of it before the Genematrix shredded it in a fit of sartorial pique-

Raiku frowned to herself, smile gone already. So wait, there was actually a lot left to do.

'Hello?' she called, waving to the waitress (still steadfastly ignoring them). 'Hello?'

If she was going to get all of this done in a few short days, she was going to have to build up her strength. Thank god she hadn't spent much money since the time-skip started. She drew breath to speak and squeaked instead when something tugged hard on her leg, almost dragging her under the table.

'Ignore her. She's just insane,' Daisukenojo dismissed, taking the waitress' attention for himself while Raiku grabbed at the table for support.

'What the hell, Ryuu?!' she hissed.

Ryuu rolled his eyes. 'What?'

… Wait.

Raiku ducked down to look under the table and caught a glimpse of a black mass sliding away.

Oh good. It had a sense of humour, too.

She righted herself and glared at Ryuu just to have something equally annoying to focus on, and got an aggressively challenging look in response. Even his eyebrows, his stupidly well-shaped eyebrows, were sharp. He really was going to take some getting used to.

'Tomorrow, we should probably go around getting supplies together,' Daisukenojo suggested. 'That way we all know what everybody's got.'

Raiku blinked. 'That was a surprisingly reasonable suggestion, Daisuke.'

A notion any Gairano could get behind. And that way, if they ran into their peers and got updated on their lives on their own, the Plot would be weakened enough to maybe even disappear on its own.

'Thanks. Your surprise isn't annoying at all,' Daisukenojo replied. 'Now hurry up and order. We've been on the road for a week and after this, I'm gonna pass out at home. No small thanks due to Ryuu's tender loving care.'

Ryuu cracked his knuckles and Raiku buried her face in the menu immediately. No sudden movements. That was the way.


A/N: Yeah... it was a bit short. But finally. Back on the horse! Thanks for everybody's reviews and patience, the feedback is a much-needed reminder that this is still a thing when life gets really hectic. Also, thanks to Shana, who has the patience of a saint. Also, I have an AO3 account and may port the story over there, but haven't decided yet. In the meantime, I'm happy to reply to reviews manually if the person mentions it? If I haven't been struck by a meteor, of course.