The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Oh look, more favourites... and no constructive criticism. Damn you!

Except Vanya, because she pushes me to improve. Problem free chapter! Viiiiictory.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.


"Raiku, take the mask off,' Yamada said wearily, sitting with his head in his hands.

Raiku cradled her broken nose protectively, inching away from him on the makeshift stone bench. 'No! You'll hurt me!'

"You're already hurt, you little-"

'No!'

"Gairano, I am giving you until the count of three," Yamada growled, rolling his sleeves up with calculated menace. She tried to squeak and ended up gasping in pain as agony shot up her nose into her brain. The cover of the temporary canvas outpost they currently occupied provided cool shade and a protective team of three Sand-nin, medic luckily included and waiting, the other two jounin training (injuring) Daisukenojo outside.

Outside, Ryuu was doing push ups as punishment.

'I hope you burn to death,' Raiku muttered spitefully, glaring out the flap with an eye swollen and discoloured. The medic squatted in front of her, expression deadpan, waiting patiently. Like Raiku his skin was fully covered, but in cool, sand-coloured linen.

'I can't heal your nose through the mask,' he said flatly, looking up at her.

"You wanna have a freakish nose for the rest of your life!?" Yamada demanded.

'She gave ME a freakish haircut!' Ryuu roared, shifting onto his knees and pointing at her furiously, outrage written on his flushed face. 'And what the FUCK was THAT, Gairano!?'

"Don't swear!" Yamada ordered, shooting him a thoroughly rude gesture.

'Oh, I'm sorry- the sudden RUSH OF AIR TO MY HEAD MUST HAVE GOTTEN TO ME!'

'One day you'll thank me!' Raiku exclaimed, pointing at him in return, trying to glare and ending up squinting lopsidedly.

The medic instantly reached up and twisted.

The pain was short and incredible. Raiku shrieked as the bones and cartilage of her nose slid back into place, trying to jerk back and finding the medic unrelenting in the strength of his grip. The dark red glow of his chakra immediately eased the pain when her eyes started to water, the long, tanned hand hovering gently over her eye.

'See?' the Sand-nin deadpanned. 'Not so bad, is it?'

'Thank… you,' she forced out, blinking furiously in an attempt not to save face, but to save moisture. 'It wasn't… so bad…'

He hissed between his teeth as something pale and sharp danced between the centimetres separating his skin and hers, pulling his hand back to look. 'Your clothes generate a lot of static,' he criticised, frowning at the small red mark on his hand.

'Yes,' she agreed with sudden blankness. 'Yes they do.'

"Flower boy!" Yamada roared, cupping his hands around his mouth after he was satisfied with Raiku's condition. "Time to stop playing with the Sand-nin and get back to the mission, get me? Sun's setting!"

Raiku jerked in surprise, turning her head and leaning forward to stare out of the flaps of the tent.

She blinked, once.

The setting sun sank into the shimmering air flowing from the sand dunes, painting the sky in vivid shades of red, orange and the beginnings of blue. Faint clouds created shadows in the skies and onto the dunes below, and as the light began to shift and move the sand looked like water, catching the light and capturing shadows in nets of glistening grains.

The Gairano segment of her mind whistled sharply, snapping its non-corporeal fingers. That was just about enough romanticism, thank you. Cue sarcastic or dry comment:

'I guess this is as close as I can be to the ocean, huh?' she asked Yamada, appropriately dryly, not tearing her eyes from the scene. He shot her an odd look.

"About as far as you can get, actually."

Her lips twitched distantly, unseen. 'Not what I meant.'

Daisukenojo's abrupt reappearance cast a dark shadow over her face, almost completely obscuring the view. He was out of breath, rubbing sand out of his eyes. 'We good to go, Yamada?' he asked, giving his head a brisk shake and sending sand flying everywhere.

"That depends," Yamada said, slowly leaning back in his chair to squint past him. "Has our little trouble maker learnt his lesson!?" he shouted, raising his voice to epic levels.

There was no response.

"I said -"

'Sure,' Ryuu's voice said wearily, glower still audible in his tone. 'Why not?'

"Good! Ichitaka, we're ready to go when you are!" he called. A low sound of assent was his answer. He stood, and Raiku winced at the series of cracks as he stretched. "We need to reach Sand by dawn, or speedy's not gonna make it," she made out as he murmured to the Sand-nin, eyes flicking to her to explain the nickname. She tuned out, standing with purposefully loud movements and sauntering out with forced cheer.

Ryuu glared up at her from the sand, sweat beading his brow and practically dripping off him as he took a swig from his water canteen, ugly ropes of sunburn stretching around his torso where his shirt had ridden up or simply failed to protect him. His bare feet were cracked slightly, but as she neared him to apologise, she noticed something that made her eyes crease happily, glad for her teammate.

Around him, the air was cold.

'I'm glad for you, Ryuu!' she smiled, giving him a thumbs up and cheesy eye-crease. 'You mastered that jutsu you were working on!'

Daisukenojo snorted, turning to look at them over his shoulder. 'Bastard didn't feel the need to share, of course.'

Ryuu's yellow eyes narrowed into slits.

'I'm… sorry… about your hair,' she said after the silence stretched on to the point of unbearable tension for her. She pointedly did not look at his now very short hair, as spiky as hers but for the bangs, which hung slightly lower. 'It… I wasn't… I wasn't thinking, and I'm really sorry.' She bowed as low as she could, which was impressive when a shinobi did it. 'Please forgive me!'

Those yellow eyes sparked maliciously. 'Oh… I'll forgive you…' Ryuu said slowly, half-laughing, half-growling, as though he couldn't believe what he was saying. 'I'll forgive you on one condition.'

Raiku tilted her head up without straightening. 'What's the condition?'

She wants to be forgiven, wants it badly, but she can't afford to bond and she can't afford to be careless.

'Take off your mask,' he smiled unpleasantly, showing far too many teeth.

The sun began to fade to purple and deep, rich blues. A star winked to life as they stood there in the heavy silence and the approaching cool, grains of sand stirring in the unnatural air around the seated boy.

'Ryuu, I'm not allowed,' she sighed, dropping her head and assuming an almost comically sheepish expression. 'It's against the family rules.'

'And assault is against the Konoha laws. Take the mask off, or consider what your stay in this team will be like with me mad at you.'

She paused.

Trading teams was a bad idea.

'Alright,' she said slowly, looking up again. 'I'll take my mask off. Do you forgive me?'

Ryuu tilted his head, looking at her suspiciously. The pause they fell into was almost stifling. 'Sure,' he said eventually.

She beamed at him, eyes forming those ridiculous crescent shapes of happiness. 'Thank you, Ryuu!' she said cheerfully, straightening and dusting sand from her shorts. 'We should be going now.'

Daisukenojo sputtered indignantly. 'You said you'd take your mask off!' he accused.

'Yes!' she chirped, turning and sending him that curiously happy expression. 'But I never said I'd do it now!'

The pause wasn't so heavy this time.

To her profound relief, Ryuu chuckled slightly. His voice was hoarse and the sound threatening, but he chuckled nonetheless. He stood, cracking the bones in his neck in a way he knew irritated her. He looked right at her, sardonic smirk on his face.

'I can respect that sort of underhanded behaviour,' he said dryly. 'If it's rare.'

She turned back around, shooting him a megawatt smile in all senses of the word. 'No problem!'

'He actually smiled! Maybe he's not an Uchiha clone!' Daisukenojo gasped with mock surprise.

'I don't refuse to smile because I'm an overly emotional moron- I don't smile because I believe baring teeth is an act of aggression,' Ryuu smiled unpleasantly.

Raiku looked at his perfectly white teeth, and shuddered. She personally never wanted to see them again.

'There are exceptions,' he allowed, turning his back to them.

'Remind me never to piss him off,' Daisukenojo muttered to her, taking a few casual steps to stand at her side.

'You wouldn't listen even if I did, Daisuke,' she sighed.

"Damn right," Yamada said sagely, nodding and putting a heavy hand on each other their shoulders. "Now quit dawdling, ladies, because we have a real lady to escort home!"

Raiku deflated again, sagging.

"Oh I'm not even going to bother, Speedy, you can just deal with it."

Yamada pushed past, settling into a steady pace that took him at decent speed over the dunes. Daisukenojo followed, again drawing level with Ryuu before the two split off, leaving Ichitaka to settle in the middle and Raiku to guard the back, completing the diamond formation.

Raiku looked up at Ichitaka passed her, into the midnight blue sky. A curious look stole over her features, as she was once again confronted with the feeling spurred by Ichitaka's smile, confronted with a beauty too perfect, a beauty too unspeakable and untouchable. The stars numbered in millions, caught together by ethereal celestial trials and winking at her faintly from their sea of darkness, hanging suspended over the flat and limitless sands she stood on.

She felt so small.

It was a good feeling, for any Gairano, constantly twisted into webs of narrative and searching desperately for a hole to escape through.

'Oi toaster- hurry it up!' Daisukenojo shouted back to her, grounding her instantly. She darted across the rapidly cooling sands, feet padding silently into the soft surface and propelling her easily. She didn't know what she'd been worrying about: sand was easy to move in.

Footprints made of glass trailed after her and shone with light stolen from stars, and in the dark above them, a hawk followed.


'Victory!' she crowed- croaked, really- as she stood inside the deep chasm in the earthen barricade surrounding Sand. 'Victory!'

'We made it. Yay,' Ryuu snorted, rolling his eyes and absently chewing on a piece of grass.

'Where did you get that…?' she asked, staring at him. He quirked a brow.

'What was that?'

'Commentary on poorly constructed narrative function, it doesn't matter,' she dismissed hastily, raising her hands in front of her. 'But we got to Sand!'

'Two hours after dawn,' Daisukenojo pointed out, successfully popping her bubble. 'We were too slow.'

A Sand-nin with a thoroughly sour expression stood with his arms crossed at the end of the enormously thick and tall barricade gap, arms crossed and feet set firmly apart. His eyes were curiously darkly rimmed, a swathe of white fabric hanging to obscure half of his face from his forehead protector.

'Hello! We brought Ichitaka!' Raiku greeted, waving enthusiastically. Other than a slight twitch of his eye, he gave no response until Yamada walked up to and towered over him, expression curiously blank.

'Konoha Team Yamada reporting the successful completion of the escort mission assigned by Ichitaka.'

For some reason, this statement did not in fact warrant full quotation marks.

Raiku's eyes creased with worry. Behind her back, she could feel the other two exchanging looks. She tried to look up at the sky, craning her neck to do so, but the walls were simply too high.

The walls were crawling with Plot.

She gaped in horror, cringing back. A single Plot! Wait, a single Plot!? That was ridiculous! There was no such thing as a Plot this big!

Unless it was Uzumaki Naruto, but his name was actually forbidden in her family, as saying it would prompt spontaneous combustion or dramatic pregnancy. Naruto was, for this reason, probably the cause of the population boom as well as the 'anonymous shinobi-to-villain' fodder main supplier.

Verily, for the Gairano family truly did know trouble when they saw it.

She gagged, reflexively, earning herself several odd looks. A small part of the Plot broke off and slithered towards her, faithfully dogging her steps as she discreetly tried to inch away.

Yamada turned, inclining his head to Ichitaka. 'Ichitaka, my team and I are glad to have served you well,' he said formally, for some reason still failing to recover his illustrious punctuation.

The white-blonde woman bowed. 'I honour you and your team, Yamada.'

She half turned, inclining her head to the three genin watching her. The corners of her lips twitched into a ghost of that exquisite smile, before she turned on her heel and vanished into the light beyond the chasm.

Raiku tried to surreptitiously lean away from a wall, which waved at her.

The Sand-nin turned abruptly, moving away from them stiffly.

"Well, ladies, we've got until tomorrow night to recover, then we set off, get me!?" Yamada boomed cheerfully, turning to them with that smile that frightened Raiku still.

She nodded uneasily, casting an eye over the walls. She was tired- exhausted, in fact. But the steady surges of electricity that her body provided her from its desperation kept her moving and alert. It was a strange feeling, almost like heaviness under her sternum, one that she physically was unable to succumb to as long as this strange feeling, almost like elation burned along her veins. But she was tired, and she recognised the danger signs. Mostly because she had a senbon still sticking to her magnetised forehead protector, but that wasn't the important thing here.

"Welcome to Sand, team," Yamada grinned, surrounded by the brilliant nimbus of light that was the exit.

He stepped downwards, steadily vanishing from their sight. Raiku and the others paused, before they ran. She easily led the way, skidding to a halt as she almost tripped over the stairs descending into Sand.

She stared, wide eyed.

Sand lay inside a giant earthen bowl, and sprawled for miles inside it. The city itself was far below the level of the dunes outside and made of buildings the same colour as the desert outside rather than steel and glass. Wood was scarce, obviously a rare commodity in such a distant and isolated place. The earthen walls cradled the city and the sky above it, and once more she was struck by the space.

That and the Plot.

It literally surrounded the city.

The piece that had detached itself clung helplessly to her foot, unable to assimilate with her as the inaudible crackling of her skin kept it at bay. She jerked her foot, but it stubbornly refused to leave. 'Hell yes,' Daisukenojo smirked, putting his hands on his hips. 'Traveling to different hidden towns? This is totally what I signed up for.'

'And here I was thinking that it was for the excitement and honour of protecting your country and loved ones,' Ryuu drawled.

'Nope,' Daisukenojo said without a hint of embarrassment. 'This is totally it, right here.'

Raiku turned her head and looked at him for a moment, then turned back to face the city. She was, in truth, paralysed with indecision. Clearly this was a plot far bigger than what she was accustomed to, spanning multiple lives. It must have been anchored here by some primary component, now unable to leave. Webs of narrative hung over the city like some foul web, the thickest leading directly into the most fortified building- probably the office of the Kazekage.

She wasn't qualified to deal with this.


A/N: Oh gee... I've written another chapter people will silently enjoy. You're making me so bitter. You're all just lucky I'm writing this because I want to, rather than for praise.

I love you all, I'm just joking.

Except you, over there. I don't know what your problem is.

Reviews

V: I'll taunt them as much as I please! 3