Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Thanks again to my beta- my dialect hurts your brain, and I'm sorry.

I don't own Naruto or any of its characters, storylines or affiliates.


Raiku woke up by degrees, floating somewhere in the disembodied dark.

The smell was the first thing that pierced the fog. Antiseptic, soap and that strange, undefinable smell that pervades all hospitals came to her nose, instantly telling her where she was.

Shortly after that came touch. Rough fabric shifted lightly, grazing the pads of her fingers when they twitched reflexively. Dimly, she registered the foreign sensation of cool air on the backs of her hands.

After that came the pain. Deceptively mild, it wrapped itself around her limbs and weighed them down. Her brow creased, eyes screwing further shut.

A heart monitor beeped steadily, attached to the gauze covered patient prone on the sterile white hospital bed. Next to that peaceful scene, Raiku's heart monitor had an epileptic fit. It had lived a blameless life and now it was hooked up to a battery- it was less than pleased.

A suitably plain Gairano family member in the suitably plain white clothes of a medic leaned over from their post to adjust the volume on the monitor yet again, fully aware that Raiku was not in fact going into cardiac arrest. Other hand clenched firmly around a broom, they cast a wary eye at the door for Plots.

Raiku swallowed thickly, dry throat catching. She dragged a heavy eye open and the white ceiling swam into view as an indistinct blur. 'Raiku?' the Gairano woman asked quietly, leaning towards her from the chair questioningly. 'Raiku, can you hear me?'

She blinked sluggishly, turning her head and gasping at the sudden pain. 'Raiku,' the woman repeated, rising to her feet and placing a gloved hand on Raiku's gauze-bound forehead. 'Can you hear me?'

Raiku pulled the corners of her lips up into a weak smile, eyes half-closing in weariness. She nodded slightly. The woman smiled down at her warmly, the action making a plain face light up with sudden loveliness. 'Your father's worried about you, but he can't come in. You understand?'

Of course she did- it was far too melodramatic for a grief-stricken father to wait at her bedside, drawing too many parallels to his deceased wife. It prompted traumatised flashbacks and drama.

All the same, she thought as she nodded again, not trusting her dry and constricted throat to speak, it would have been nice to see him.

'I've been asked to tell you to keep your mouth shut,' the woman said with abrupt sternness, grey eyes flicking over Raiku's exposed face. 'And to give you this.'

Raiku sagged with relief at the sight of the black latex mask. 'We haven't been able to cover up your hair while you've been here,' the woman continued as she propped Raiku's head up to tie the back at the nape of her neck with brisk, efficient movements. 'So try to keep the boys away from your head.'

'I'll do my best,' she croaked painfully, wincing at the sound of her own voice. The woman nodded and gently set her head back down. 'Tell me where it hurts,' she instructed, setting her hands on her hips.

Raiku quirked a brow.

'Raiku,' the woman said warningly. Raiku's eye creased with her reflexive show of mirth. 'Just everywhere, Gairano,' she rasped wryly.

'My name's Mayuko,' the medic responded distractedly, lifting her safely covered arm and testing the elbow. 'You've accumulated some nasty injuries on your abdomen, not to mention you've strained... almost everything,' she criticised. 'You must have known the results of burning out your own chakra, Raiku. I don't want to see this become a habit,' she frowned.

'I didn- don't!' She jerked her arm, managing to flinch away feebly. Mayuko raised an eyebrow in return. 'You're just tired and strained, Raiku,' she sighed, rubbing her face wearily. 'You've got to be more careful. You can't channel chakra through vessels already completely preoccupied with...'

There it was- the trademark hesitation.

'Your condition,' she finished. Raiku coughed slightly, wincing. 'So I can't...?' she forced out, trailing off hopelessly.

'You can't,' Mayuko confirmed, eyes softening with sympathy. 'You may want to consider a different profession- especially after what you did to Yamada.'

'Yamada?' Raiku asked in alarm, eyes widening and trying to sit up. Mayuko put a hand out to her shoulder and pushed down firmly, gaze stern. 'You can see him when I say so and not before, understand?'

'What did I do to Yamada?' she persisted fearfully, breaths coming faster and irregular. 'Did I hurt him?'

Did I kill him?

She stamped on the thought. That sort of thing led to self-pity! That sort of thing led to Love Interests and tragic interludes!

'He's injured, but he's fine. Causing us all trouble,' she muttered darkly. 'And your teammates are waiting outside. One of them got a rather nasty shock- you need to be more careful, Raiku!' she scolded.

Raiku flinched under her unyielding gaze. Mayuko continued on, relentlessly. 'You can't afford to let your guard down, and you know that! Bio-generated electricity is far too unpredictable for you to be taking these sorts of risks!'

'Naruto gets to take as many risks as he wants,' Raiku muttered sullenly.

'Naruto is a tragedy and heroism Plot, and you know that perfectly well,' Mayuko retorted. 'Now do you want me to let the boys in or not? Because if you want to see them, you're going to have to behave.'

'Yes,' Raiku said reluctantly, gripping the bars on each side of the bed to push herself into a sitting position, the muscles in her back and arms screaming in protest. Mayuko nodded and crossed the room to the door, sliding it open smoothly. 'You two- she's awake.'

Raiku heard hurried footsteps, before they came to an abrupt halt. 'What's the big idea!?' the indignant voice of Daisukenojo exclaimed, blocked by Mayuko's rigid figure.

'You can't go barging in there and riling her up, you hear me!?' Mayuko demanded. 'You're going to be on your best behaviour-,'

'We know the rules,' Ryuu's bored voice interjected. 'We've been to hospitals before.'

'You give me attitude again and I'll remove something needlessly,' the medic grumped. 'Fine, in you go. And don't touch anything!' she added hastily as they pushed past her.

'You!' Daisukenojo said, standing at the foot of her bed with a livid expression. 'You have any idea how expensive it is to get bloodstains out! What kind of a jerk are you!?'

This wasn't what Raiku had been expecting. She'd expected some sort of cheesy throwback to the 'finding some common ground' comment, with her or Yamada being the common ground, but she was after all a creature of satire.

And it was common knowledge peddlers of satire have no souls.

'A ...jerk?' she offered lamely, brow wrinkling in confusion. Daisukenojo glowered at her unimpressively. Ryuu glared at her from just behind him, arms folded across his chest. Blood coated his dark shirt and led up his neck to frame the left side of his jaw, a smear of blood under his eye. 'It's. Everywhere,' he gritted out. 'And you blew a hole in Yamada. He only survived because there's so much to blow a hole through!'

She stared at him, eyes wide.

'Don't give me that look,' he grumbled. 'I'm not falling for that.'

Her eyes shone tearfully. 'I... I hurt Yamada?'

'Yes!' Ryuu maintained, finding it difficult at this point to maintain eye contact. Freakishly blue massive things...

'And you bled all over both of us!' Daisukenojo sputtered, not to be outdone. 'What the hell were you trying to pull? You exploded!'

'I... do that,' she said awkwardly, clearing her throat.

'Learn to control your damn chakra, or we're replacing you with someone else!' he threatened, face almost as red as his hair. 'Get me?'

'You sound like Yamada,' Ryuu criticised. Daisukenojo flinched. 'Shut up, moron,' he muttered defensively, folding his arms across his chest. 'We've been waiting here for days, little blue idiot,' he added to Raiku. 'My mother's gonna flip when she sees me.'

'You guys... didn't go home?' she asked falteringly. Daisukenojo gave her a scornful look. 'You're a member of our team, and Yamada's only in the next room! Like we were going to go home. And the nurses won't let us use the shower.'

Raiku blanched, eyes dragging over to Ryuu.

'That's right,' he said in answer to her unspoken question, relishing the next word: 'days.'

Raiku cringed in disgust, inching back. 'You... You can go home... Please go home,' she winced.

Ryuu's eye twitched. 'We wait here for ages and you tell us to go home!?'

'The reality of lovely gestures is lost on me when you haven't bathed! Go get clean! CLEAN!' she exclaimed, breaking into a cough as she finished. 'Go!' she croaked, waving a hand.

'Ooooh no. We're not going without a hug.' Daisukenojo said gleefully.

Raiku paled.

Ryuu gave him a nauseated look. 'That's right,' Daisukenojo maintained, expression gloating. 'You hate the touchy feely crap? Suck it up. If we have to smell bad, you have to smell bad.'

'Mercy,' she whimpered, holding her arms up defensively. She'd never been hugged in her life, and she wasn't going to start now.

Ryuu was catching on. 'Yeah, teammate,' he said darkly, smirking. They moved with deadly efficiency.

Her first thought was that it was warm.

Vaguely uncomfortable, too, since she was contorted at an impossible angle to avoid their skin. 'Deal with it!' Daisukenojo gloated from somewhere near her left ear.

Her second thought was that it was... nice.

Granted, Ryuu's elbow was digging into her bent leg and they smelled awful. Awful. But it was strangely safe, and completely new. Ryuu's breath fanned out against the skin of her neck, Daisukenojo's less lanky build keeping her in contented place. She was small and thus almost completely encompassed by their arms for a brief time, and as they pulled away she found herself missing the contact.

Not the smell though.

'And where the hell'd you even get that mask?' Daisukenojo asked gruffly, clearing his throat.

'Dad brought it,' she lied. He nodded. 'Well,' he said after an awkward silence. 'Now that you're as rank as us, we're going. C'mon, Ryuu.'

He sauntered out the door, Ryuu close behind. 'You found some common ground?' she called after him.

'Yeah. We both hate you bleeding on us,' he deadpanned, sliding the door closed.

She sighed.

It was a start.

She shifted back down on the bed, checking to make sure the room was clear before timidly lifting the blanket and pulling up her shirt to expose her stomach. She stifled a surge of disappointment at the sight of the bandages. She should've known she wouldn't be able to see the extent of the damage.

She turned onto her side with a grunt of pain, towards the window.

It was going to be a long couple of weeks.


The days passed slowly. Agonisingly slowly. The ceiling didn't get any more interesting, and even the periodic visits of her suddenly hygienic teammates couldn't stave off the boredom for long. After a few weeks of intense observation and medical suspicion, Raiku decided to leave. It simply gave her too much time for introspection.

Introspection was dangerous territory.

She peered around the doorway to her room, legs shaking slightly with chemically induced adrenaline, the effects of her last IV treatment. She was going to get out of this room if it killed her.

She was a shinobi, she reminded herself. She could be stealthy.

She pulled the thin cotton hospital dressing gown tighter around her narrow shoulders and took a hesitant step onto the cold tiles, bare feet painfully conspicuous to her paranoid eyes.

She took another step, hunched in the middle of the hallway like some sort of hermit. Further down the corridor, another door creaked open. Slowly, an incredibly large man edged out of his room clad only in a hospital gown. Yamada held a finger to his lips, eyes darting around warily. She brightened at the sight of him, hand jerking up into a wave.

'Where do you think you're going Yamada?! Raiku!?' the waspish voice of Mayuko demanded from behind her, down the hall.

The ground shook.

"Run for it, Speedy!" Yamada shouted, taking off past her with a heavily gauze-wrapped chest. She yelped and ran after him, obeying the order out of habit rather than free will, sprinting down the sterile, sunlit hall and leaving a trail of partially melted footprints behind her, sparks flashing between the soles of her feet and the floor.

Mayuko stopped pursuing them with a curse, pulling out her standard issue Plot Prevent Radio, or PPR as they called them. 'I need a clean up at the hospital, code Raiku!' she snapped.

'Again?'

'Yes!'

"Don't you even think about overtaking me, kid!" he growled as she threatened to pass him, skidding around a corner. 'I'm sorry, but she knows where I live!' she panted, easily ducking under his arm and vanishing into the distance.

"Damnit!" he cursed, slowing at the entrance to the staff-room, head whipping around to stare at the direction Mayuko would presumably come from. No sight of her. Something occurred to him as someone tried in vain to edge past him into the room he currently blocked. "And where the hell are my clothes!?" he barked to the intern, who reached roughly the level of his waist. She cowered fearfully, eyes bugging out of her head. The pale young woman stammered something unintelligible.

"What's wrong? Am I speaking your language, girl!?"

She covered her eyes with a shaking hand, pointing tremulously with the other.

There was a suspicious breeze. He looked down, slowly.

"Oh you are going to PAY FOR THIS GAIRANO!" his roar echoed after her. She lowered her head and increased her speed.

'I SAW NOTHING!' she screamed back. I saw everything, she thought to herself grimly as she leapt down the fire escape, the metal grille cutting into her bare feet. That particular image was going to take some work to get rid of. She landed on the ladder to the ground floor, emitting a small scream when it shot downwards sharply, metal moving under her fingers and catching on her gloves. She jolted with the impact and clambered down clumsily to the alley next to the hospital, yanking the caught threads free with an ominous ripping sound.

The wall to her left exploded.

The air was immediately thick with dust, rubble spraying out with the force of impact to slam into the wall on her other side with a series of cracks and thuds. She landed on her back hard, fabric ripping and skin tearing on the concrete and brick fragments.

Raiku struggled onto her hands, breaths sucking dust into her lungs and choking her. She spluttered weakly, trying to cover her mouth.

"So," Yamada gloated. "Thought you could get one over on me, did you now!?"

'Did you just destroy part of the hospital!? Just you just destroy a wall so you could catch me!? Are you insane?!' she exclaimed, horrified. He stood over her menacingly. "Don't you change the subject!"

'Subject? What subject!?'

"The subject of what we're going to do with you, get me!?"

She paled.

Given he was covered in brick dust and small pieces of debris, that seemed reasonable. The man had a hole in his chest primarily filled with gauze, and was still hardy enough to crash through walls.

Insane.

"You, Speedy, have a lot of explaining to do," he said firmly, the expression on his face brooking no argument. "And you'd better start with the explosions."

'I ... explode sometimes?' she offered weakly from her position on the ground.

"Come on, speedy, I'll buy you some lunch and you can tell me all about it," he said, gesturing she should leave the alley first.

She nodded reluctantly and struggled to her feet, brushing off her hands with a wince. More scrapes. That combined with the burns on her abdomen was going to be an annoying few weeks. Raiku ducked under his arm and exited the alley onto the busy Konoha street, fresh air finally reaching her deprived lungs. She breathed in deeply, contented.

"Smell the roses later, kid," Yamada reminded her, patting her on the shoulder and jerking his thumb towards the left. "I know a great ramen place."

'No!' she said hastily, jerking back. 'I... I hate ramen!'

He gave her a deeply suspicious look.

She broke into a nervous sweat. She didn't want to meet Naruto and bond! Bonding was a class five risk!

"Suck it up," he said, sealing both their fates. "Talk as we walk." Raiku walked slowly down the street, hot summer sun warming the concrete to the point of singeing her feet slightly. Face downcast, she sighed heavily. 'What do you want to know?'

"For a start," he said slowly, waving at a woman hanging out her laundry. "I wanna know how you made yourself explode. I'm guessing," he said, giving her clothes a pointed look. "It's the same reason you're dressed like a monk in this sorta heat."

'Yeah,' she muttered. 'I'm ... different. My skin makes... electricity. Not my skin. But it comes out through my skin. My family said I can't channel chakra through my hands or out of my body properly while it's preoccupied with... the electricity. I can't touch anybody, or it hurts them really badly.'

"So the chakra flow burnt out trying to get past the electricity," he mused, eyes distant. "Solution seems pretty simple, Speedy," he said slowly. "We've just gotta improvise with what you've got."

'Lightning skin?' she asked glumly.

"No," he said, cuffing her on the back of the head with a blow that almost sent her flying to the ground. "Don't feel sorry for yourself, that's stupid, you get me?"

'I get you,' she said, squaring her shoulders. He nodded approvingly. "We're going to pretend you're using lightning techniques. Think you can get your family to pretend they're family secrets?" he asked.

'I think I can manage that,' she said dryly.
A Plot scurried behind her, trying desperately to find a place for her in the world of the conflicted.

'We're good with secrets,' she added.

He grinned proudly. "We're gonna work on this as much as it takes. Who knows, maybe one day you'll be able to touch someone!"

She smiled brightly up at him, eyes creasing with happiness. 'I'd like that,' she said sweetly.

He smiled back down at her, the two caught in a moment of mutual understanding and secrecy. "I think this just might work out."


A/N: Read, review, give love.