Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous
A/N: Well, we've made it to chapter two. I've decided I didn't like how lacking in flaws Raiku was, so welcome to reality, baby, because it's going to sting.
If you read it and like it, please review. If you read it and hate it, bring it on. If you read it and would like it if something were better, let me know, and if you'd like to see it go a certain way, I'm open to suggestions at the current.
I don't own Naruto or any of its characters, storylines or affiliates.
The city of Konoha was beginning to awake, the vigilant sentinels of Continuity ensuring that the unfortunate stayed that way and secrets were kept until the least appropriate possible time for them to be revealed. As usual, the Genematrix hammered on the doors of the Gairano Compound, the complex squatting like a belligerent badger on the foot of the mountain with the words 'CUT TO THE CHASE' emblazoned upon the walls in a suitably obscure foreign language. Someone came out with a broom, pushing at it in a distinctly unfriendly fashion until it went to bother Uzumaki Naruto, who'd never really done anything to deserve it.
In the meantime, Raiku was about to meet her team, Team Ten, for the first time.
'Have fun,' her father grinned devilishly from the door, watching his daughter pause at the doors of their compound.
She instantly turned and narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. Well wishes were not common in this family, since people who took up a habit usually died tragically and left a habit-shaped void in a character's life.
'You're going to meet the man of your dreams,' he said solemnly, in answer to her unspoken question.
'You're lying!' she exclaimed, levelling an infuriated glare at him. 'You never tell the truth!'
'Come on, sweetie, you know I'm not allowed to scare you out of going to your first day!' he protested.
She gave a triumphant cry, pointing at him accusingly.
He paused, caught out, before he hurriedly vanished inside. Raiku's shoulders slumped and she groaned loudly. 'Why can't you be more helpful!?' she called after him.
No response, though he was undoubtedly waiting, pressed against the wall next to the door.
'Gairano, you coming or what!?' a very short, very bright haired genin yelled up the hill, shading his eyes with his hand and squinting against the glare. Daisukenojo was a short boy in a tall family, and no one was going to let him forget it. They probably wouldn't forget the teeth he'd knock out and make them swallow when they said anything to his face, either.
Raiku spun, sending him a thumbs-up while her face creased into its standard, if faintly nervous, smile. All she had to do was stay away from brooding storylines and monologues.
For the rest of her life.
She skidded down the almost sheer cliff face, sending a shower of pebbles and dirt onto the violently red-haired boy, who sputtered in a combination of indignation and rage. 'Sorry!' she called, feet slamming into the ground in practised confidence.
'Why the hell don't you bastards buy some stairs!?' Daisukenojo demanded, shooting her a vile glare from murky hazel eyes. She rubbed the back of her head, smiling apologetically. Daisukenojo was perfect for a teammate- both parents were still alive, he was cute but not handsome, and his inferiority complex made him even angrier than his family was reputed to be.
'We like rock-climbing?' she offered sheepishly. When he failed to laugh, she cleared her throat awkwardly. 'We're meeting Yamada on training ground two, right?'
Daisukenojo, features more freckle than face, didn't say anything.
'Right!' she supplied, eyes almost physically producing joy with the effort she was putting in. 'So let's go!'
Raiku set off at a brisk walk, and after a moment Daisukenojo followed. Vaguely, she wanted him to at least fake civility. It wasn't her fault his name translated to 'big', 'helpful' or 'flower'. Even the Genematrix wouldn't take responsibility for that sort of poor taste. At least he was too belligerent to be deeply traumatised instead of just perpetually aggravated.
'Raiku,' the same grass-chewing grey haired boy greeted, still leaning against a wall though this one was admittedly made of brick and covered in posters. Ryuu's family had given him a perfectly good name when he'd been adopted, so there was absolutely no reason for him to ignore it- her drama sense twinged alarmingly. She gave him an odd look, one eye suddenly larger than the other as she squinted. What would he do if there was no wall to lean on? Fall over? Here was yet another example of poor character construction.
'You're on my team,' he said, taking the grass out to spin between his figures. His hair was the co-
His hair was grey, she noted stubbornly, fixedly ignoring the metaphor that had suddenly come to mind. This one would be tricky. His eyes were so pale brown as to be yellow, and while he was certainly better looking than the Big Helpful Flower, he'd been adopted into a loving family and so presented minimal risk.
She noticed the beginnings of brood lines on his face.
He'd have to be moved up on the drama rankings; he may have family still living, some sort of bloodline or a secretly evil-but-not-actually-evil twin.
'Yes,' she agreed simply and cheerfully.
'And you too, midget,' he said, dismissing the much shorter redhead and falling into place next to Raiku. There was an enraged squawk.
'Please,' she said, brow creasing nervously. 'Don't fight before we even meet our team leader. Please?'
Ryuu made a noncommittal sound.
'I'm going to have to label you a "two" now,' she mumbled under her breath, sticking her hands in her pockets as the concrete under their feet gradually turned to grass, then dirt. This was already less than ideal. Two boys and a girl- not a bad combination, unless the girl was sweet. Raiku wasn't sweet, she was more savoury, and so there was minimal risk there. However, a boy with something to prove and a Class Five Brooder was a bad idea.
Ryuu came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the grassy field, turning in full circle to scan the sun dappled trees, wind blowing his hair back in a choreographically attractive way.
First aversion technique, she thought to herself, eyeballing the strands shrewdly from underneath her forehead protector. Cut his hair.
"Being late on your first day isn't a good start!" someone called to them, and there was a rustling of clothes shortly before the ground shook. Raiku started, eyes widening to epic proportions at the feel of the vibrations. Was there a giant coming towards them? Might Gai? Was Might Gai back in town!?
She spun around to face the direction Ryuu had already turned to.
At last, Team Yamada faced Yamada. And he was the size of a mountain.
Under the standard clothes of a Konoha jounin muscles moved fluidly, the biceps resting somewhere at least a foot about Raiku's head, or so it seemed from this angle. She stared up at him, jaw dropping under the mask as the gargantuan man sent her a grin. His jaw was almost perfectly square, his thin lips marked with scars that told them those lips had been sewn shut at least once. His eye colour was almost impossible to tell from this distance, set under a prominent brow and hair so short it may as well have been shaven.
Raiku made an unintelligible, helpless sound in the back of her throat, eyes watering as the sun cast their new teacher in stark illumination. He grinned down at the three genin, hands the size of dinnerplates coming to rest staunchly on his hips.
I think one of those is bigger than my face, a voice in Raiku's head whimpered. Raiku was a hundred and sixty centimetres tall, and that was gigantic for a twelve year old girl. This man was… at least a metre taller than her.
Raiku was built like a rail.
He was built like a small country.
"Are you three going to stare at me all day?" Yamada asked, as lightly as a man with the voice of a bear reasonably could, his voice still warranting quotation marks rather than the standard apostrophes.
She swallowed, hard. 'You… have… no eyebrows,' she whimpered eventually, obviously at a loss for something to say. Oh for the fluid vocabulary of a Main Character (Raiku being one of those people who could and would actually think in capital letters). Raiku was really best placed in the Gairano family: she was a certified wimp, which was understandable when you have arms like noodles, and thus she was completely unsuitable for the arduous physical and emotional strain of a Plot.
The aforementioned area where the eyebrows should have been wrinkled slightly as he shot her a sceptical look. This was clearly not what he'd been expecting. A thin girl, skin completely covered but for that around disproportionately large, electric blue eyes and almost rudely spiky hair. A taller, lanky boy at least slightly more muscular stood next to her with grey hair and strange eyes, glowering up at him unabashedly. That short guy. He was already starting to rue the day he got that damn short guy. They were always the meanest.
Yamada's grin stretched even further across his face.
He knew it was a mistake as soon as he did it. The girl blanched, eyes appearing to swallow up her face.
His grin is as big as my entire face, she thought weakly.
"Alright!" he said briskly, looking away in what would, in a man about a metre shorter, have been called awkwardness. "We're Team Ten! And you know what that means."
'It means there are nine teams better than us?' Ryuu guessed dully, sticking his hands into the pockets of his black, three quarter pants. In the face of this kid who appeared about five hundred in terms of personality carbon dating, Yamada was beginning to realise that he may have been better off in ANBU.
"That'll be twenty push-ups, kid," he instructed, sticking his own, far more impressive hands in his pockets.
Wind whistled through the grass in the otherwise perfect silence. Somewhere, a Gairano stole the shoes of a girl from Kansas.
Yamada loomed over the much shorter genin, eyes burning like hostile stars in the middle of an unfriendly sky, fist held up and shaking with righteous fury.
Ryuu dropped to toes and fingertips.
"One – It means – two ," Yamada said, suddenly cheery, counting out the push-ups with malicious glee. "We're Team – four – Ten. Nothing else, got me? Five. Slowing down there?" he asked Ryuu, eyes glinting evilly, resting his boulder sized foot between his shoulder blades.
'No,' Ryuu forced out.
"Good! Six." He looked towards the other two, one of which was shaking slightly. It had to be the heat, he decided, almost worried for the stick. The Gairano family were always a bit… eccentric, but the clothing had to be pushing it. "You've gotta be the best you can be, and stop worrying about the other teams. Worry about them later, got me?"
'You say "got me" a lot,' the midget criticised.
Yamada glowered. "Accurate observations- that's fifteen push-ups!"
Raiku edged back, afraid she was going to be next as Daisukenojo dropped. This jounin was more of a drill instructor than a shinobi. Which yeah, was just what they needed, but she was actually beginning to prefer the tragic past and occasional monologue. She was getting the impression he was a nice man, who liked yelling.
But nice men had no right to be over six feet tall.
"In case you ladies haven't noticed," Yamada said cheerfully, apparently possessing the ability to trade between moods faster than Raiku could blink. "We're going to be training endurance today. That means you, skinny, so drop!" he roared, abruptly changing approach again.
There was no immediate response, but the second he pointed at her threateningly Raiku shrieked in terror and ran, furious footsteps and convenient alliteration leaving a trail of dust flying up after her.
Daisukenojo collapsed onto his side in hysterics as Yamada stared after her, then came back to his senses and pointed at her rapidly retreating back. "You get back here! Ten more push-ups for you!" he added to Daisukenojo, starting after her.
Raiku pelted through the training fields, hurtling over targets and at one point, an entire class of children and Iruka-sensei. Behind her, Yamada-sensei yelled in a way she found distinctly foreboding. She shrieked again, this time in alarm as Naruto and the unfortunate Uchiha came into view. Naruto blanched, taking a step back, shortly before Yamada-sensei came into view as a one-man locomotive: unstoppable and probably about as pissed off as a half-assed metaphor was capable of being.
Naruto screamed. The Uchiha's eyes widened. Raiku ducked under Naruto legs as they flailed, desperately trying to get their largely unresponsive owner to move away. Her own feet dug sharply into the ground, leaving a skid on the road behind her as she came to a gradual halt only just past the blonde, a highly important part of the Gairano code blaring loudly in her mind.
'I'm sorry!' she apologised desperately, dancing slightly on the spot as she tried simultaneously to both get away and apologise. 'I'm sorry!'
'What- what the- Raiku!?' Naruto managed, staring at her. 'What're you doing!?'
'I'm sorry!' she repeated, eyes wide and desperate for some sort of forgiveness, shortly before she was hoisted into the air by the back of her shirt, giving a sharp yelp.
Yamada-sensei eyeballed her threateningly. Sasuke watched in interest as what appeared to be all the colour in her face vanished.
She whimpered helplessly. 'Oi! What do you think you're doing!?' Naruto demanded. His heart was in the right place, but his execution needed work. Yamada cast him a glance, then looked back to the errant, visibly shaking student.
"Was it the pointing?" he asked, tilting his massive head and giving her a shrewd look.
Raiku nodded. She may have nodded. It was feasible that amidst the shaking, there was a nod in there.
"You can't run off every time someone points at you," he reminded her, and realised that his voice actually did sound like he was growling at her.
Another possible nod.
'Your students running away from you, Yamada?' a deep, lazy voice enquired.
Kakashi Hatake – level three risk of drama.
"It's gotta be the pointing," Yamada grumbled, giving the aforementioned student a light shake, as though to emphasise it. "Gotta admit she's quick, though," he pointed out, lowering her slightly. The shorter (though probably quite tall) jounin nodded, one eye impractically covered by his forehead protector, the other droopy one looking directly at them and far more amused than he probably should have been.
"See, I'm not gonna kill you," Yamada said exasperatedly, rolling his eyes. "You see? Everyone gets all worked up over nothing. Feeling pretty stupid now, aren't you?"
'Please put me down,' Raiku whimpered, curled into the foetal position and eyes staring longingly at the ground. Yamada started, setting her firmly on the ground immediately. She collapsed and hugged the concrete lovingly.
"Come on, speedy, we've got some push-ups to catch up on!" Yamada said smugly, nudging her with his foot.
'Okay,' she managed, though she really wanted to scream in terror and beg for mercy because she wasn't sure she wanted to be a shinobi if it meant working with him anymore. She dragged herself into a wobbly standing position that almost failed her as he clapped a hand on her shoulder and successfully jarred her entire skeleton into new, uncomfortable structure. "You're looking like a taijutsu student," he said smugly. His face darkened and she winced, already knowing what was coming.
"Eighty push-ups!" he roared after her rapidly retreating back, Raiku already sprinting back to the training grounds. "And so HELP YOU if you cheat, speedy!" He waited the several seconds it took for her to vanish, before adding, "Nice to see you again, Kakashi," in friendly afterthought, sticking his hands in his pockets and sauntering off, whistling. "She's really quick."
The sun set in a picturesque fashion, allowing the sunlight to filter through the buildings and shadows to lazily multiply, artificial lights winking into existence as a gentle breeze blew the heat of the day away. From the Gairano compound, this was a truly beautiful, serene end to an uneventful day.
Someone wheezed pathetically, a bruised and scraped hand clawing upwards to grab the top of the small plateau in front of the gates, before the rest of the unfortunate individual hauled themselves up to lie helplessly sprawled on the dirt and grass.
'Yeah,' she panted, in what could loosely be called triumph. She tried to lift a hand to make some sort of victory gesture, but her arm merely jerked sadly. 'Made it,' she managed, head falling back and eyes closing.
The smell of red bean dumplings wafted across on the sweet Konoha breeze.
Her eyes shot open. 'It's… it's not fair,' she whispered to herself faintly, vaguely incredulously, wide eyes staring up at the sky.
'Wow, these ARE some delicious dumplings,' her father said in an obnoxiously loud tone, apparently seeing fit to eat outside today, about ten metres away from where she was lying. 'Really. Raiku would enjoy these, thankyou Mai, but she appears to have gotten lost on the way home from her first day of training! After all, she hasn't gone through those gates all day.'
Slowly, Raiku turned her head to shoot her unbearably gleeful father the most poisonous glare she could muster. Even more slowly, she slammed her hand onto the ground and started half-walking, half-crawling through, falling to the ground when she safely passed the perimeter.
'I didn't know you could hurt your forehead muscles,' she groaned. 'Or muscles in your ears. Until today.'
Her father gloated from his chair, while a woman with lovely and dull brown hair stared at her, paused in the middle of serving a distant cousin. Gairanos were in the habit of marrying civilians, for obvious reasons. 'You're home, sweetie! How was your day?' he asked gleefully.
Raiku forced a hand up, tugging her mask down roughly and scraping her nose in the process. Teeth bared, sparks jumped out to die on the ground.
'Now now,' he said in mock solemnity. 'Is that anyway to behave after your very first day?'
Sometimes, Raiku thought as she realised she was truly and utterly incapable of getting to the table to actually eat, the kids with the Plots had it so much easier.
A/N: Read and review, kind people.
