The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Oh. You wanna know something interesting? I totally could have put this up yesterday. Would have broken my record and everything. But I think not. I'm not that nice. Thank'ee Vanya Starwind.

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


'You aren't very good at this "failing" thing, huh,' her father said conversationally, casually cleaning out his nails with a kunai as he sat on the grass in the light of the setting sun.

She shook her head frantically.

'You know you'll have to fail the next round?' he asked lightly, flicking a leaf off his leg, listening to the pleasant sound of water flowing in the river he sat next to.

She nodded furiously.

He smiled as the water reflected the setting sun and the breeze gently tousled his hair, completely the picture of serenity.

Well, what would have been a picture of serenity if Raiku hadn't been tied up and then tied to dangle by her feet from a sturdy tree branch above the river. She struggled furiously against her bonds, rubbing her skin raw through the fabric as it chafed against her clothes, resembling nothing more than a fish wriggling on a hook.

'So we understand each other?' he asked, looking up at her at last, smiling warmly. Her father and the Equaliser next to him.

Securely gagged, she nodded helplessly. He hadn't waited for her to explain why she'd failed and he hadn't waited for her to tell him she'd have another chance. The family was angry. A strong burst of wind made her sway ominously on the rope, and she screwed her eyes shut. She could picture it now: the sudden burst of power as everything in the river was treated to an impromptu frying, the warm water filling her lungs as she tried desperately to inhale and stinging her eyes as she tried to see, buffeted down the river like a leaf in the wind to land where she may, sending electric destruction both before and behind her…

The Equaliser sent the kunai flashing through the air to sever the rope holding her up as her father walked away. She gave a muffled scream and thudded onto the riverbank headfirst, sending a sharp jolt of agony from the top of her skull down her spine. The water flowed quickly only inches from her face, that pathological, programmed terror she faced when confronted with the liquid rising to choke her. A distant crash echoed in her ears, fire spreading down her back and through her limbs, surging to the surface of her skin while her ears rang and the pain threatened to steal her vision completely.

'Happy birthday,' the Equaliser added, muffled by the ink-black mask. He turned on his heel and strode back towards the compound. She wriggled her way free of the restraints on her arms, yanking down the gag and glaring after him as she shoved the burn down, with the pain and indignation to somewhere it couldn't bother her.

'Thanks,' she muttered, one dazed, dilated pupil sparking more than it should have.


'Why the hell didn't you tell us it was your birthday yesterday!?' Daisukenojo hissed without any sort of discretion and a jab to her ribs as the Genin waited in front of the monstrously large forest for the Examiner.

She kept her eyes fixed firmly on the trees in front of them and didn't respond. The smallest part of their smallest root would still be bigger than her. Ancient moss coated the colossal figures, the canopy so thick and lush that they could barely make out a tree beyond the ones immediately behind the heavily reinforced fence guarding the territory. The leaves left the tops of the trees overshadowed and the gaps between branches ominously dark and impenetrable, unstirred by the breeze.

'I-it was your b-birthday yesterday, Raiku?' Hinata asked timidly from behind them.

'Yes,' she answered, not shifting her gaze.

'I-it's a shame… that you had t-to spend it in that exam,' the quiet Hyuuga said softly.

Frankly Raiku was more worried about the concussion. The pain and intense headache had left her in… the first bad mood she had ever, in her entire life, been in.

And it was a bad one. The burn was sweeping through her whenever she didn't actively focus on it, and the exertion was making her head spin and her ears ring. It was enraging, the thought of having so little self-control after one measly hit on the head.

'I don't really care about my birthday,' she said stiffly, forcing her ire down, the irrationality spurred by the odd tightness in her chest.

'What the hell are you talking about?' Kiba asked, slinging an arm around her tense shoulders. 'You turned thirteen, right? You're finally a teenager and you don't give a damn?'

'No,' she said, shrugging his arm off.

Ryuu's eyes carefully scanned her face, his expression shrewd. '"Electrical malfunction",' he echoed for the second time.

She nodded again, swallowing in feigned pain. Her mother's death wasn't something that her family cared about, and therefore she didn't either. She couldn't mourn a stranger and she'd never noticed her absence. But her family hated birthdays too, since on birthdays the level of Trauma risk skyrocketed, so she'd simply never celebrated one. Her mother's death gave her an excuse, which she cashed in on now.

'What?' Daisukenojo asked, he and the other Rookie Genin giving Ryuu weird looks at the unexplained but inexplicably confirmed assumption.

Ryuu rolled his eyes, shooting him a glare. 'Electrical malfunction?' he said, jabbing him. 'Hospital, birthday?'

Daisukenojo's look remained uncomprehending. Ryuu growled under his breath.

'Her mother died the day she was born, moron!' he hissed. 'Her birthday's the anniversary of her death!'

Daisukenojo scowled. 'Hey, don't call me a- oh.' He shrunk back, casting her a wary look. 'Oh.' The words "electrical malfunction" flashed into his mind. He swallowed hard. 'Oh,' he repeated.

'Well why the hell didn't you say so?' Kiba asked, patting her awkwardly on the shoulder. 'You could've said you didn't want to talk about it.'

'It's fine,' she gritted out. 'I'm fine.' The fierce, hot ache hit her in the chest. Ruthlessly quashed yet again, it settled to a dull twinge.

'You don't seem fine,' Daisukenojo pointed out.

She narrowed her unnatural eyes at the forest in front of her and said nothing. Getting the hint, Kiba raised his hands and backed off. Hinata dropped her gaze, flushing in guilt and embarrassment. Clearly, she thought, Raiku was in pain.

'Shorty,' Yamada interrupted from behind the Genin group as Daisukenojo opened his mouth to speak. 'Leave it,' he said warningly, eyes flicking pointedly to Raiku's hands. Daisukenojo closed his mouth, eyes skimming down her arms to see her fists clenched and shaking, sparks jumping between the fine stitching on the leather and burning.

She'd only wanted to leave the exam and do her job. She wanted to be free of this damn Plot and to live a normal life. She didn't want to be murdered by Equalisers or strung up by her father above a river and set crashing headfirst onto the rocky riverbank. For the first time she was feeling… As though she'd been unfairly treated. Her blood pounded in her ears. At last she realised: she felt… Angry.

Very, very angry. She shoved it down yet again and smiled. Cheerful… now was the time to be cheerful.

'Raiku-chan!' a familiar, sickeningly cheerful voice exclaimed. She found herself spun around and seized by the shoulders, staring in bewilderment into the tearful face of Rock Lee. 'Your bravery is so inspiring!'

'What?' she asked incredulously. She was unheard.

'Despite the pain of your mother's death-,' yes, there go the curious gazes. She closed her eyes wearily to avoid the stares of every single person present. '-and the subsequent sapping of joy from every birthday you had since then, you valiantly persevere-,'

'It's not like that,' she interrupted, immediately derailing his train of praise. He jerked back in surprise, blinking owlishly.

'Raiku-chan?'

She opened her eyes, looking up at him, eyebrow twitching in aggravation. 'I said it's not like that,' she repeated. 'Mourning is just selfish.'

'…Selfish?' he echoed dumbly.

Her eyes narrowed, gaze falling on the ground. 'Mourning is wishing that someone would be with you, that you would have them there for your purposes,' she muttered, the leather of her gloves threatening to rip in her tightening grip. 'Mourning is selfish.'

Rock Lee blinked at her, hands releasing her shoulders uncertainly. 'Raiku-chan…' he repeated quietly, staring at her. She took a deep breath, calming herself.

'Yesterday was my birthday and today it's not. I don't mind- really,' she said, creasing her eyes and smiling up at him. 'It's just another day. I'm sorry I said that, but I'm really nervous about the exam. It's…' she gave a self-depreciating laugh, rubbing the back of her neck. 'Really embarrassing to react like that. Forgive me?'

She knew she should snap out of it. She knew what she was doing was because the Plot was getting its grip on her, but if, as the family had told her, she was trapped in it already, what was the point? She felt multiple gazes resting on her, felt them relax at her confirmation of what they'd already suspected.

She was a Rookie – her nervousness was expected.

On her part, she just had to fail. Once she failed, she'd be out of the Plot forever. Then this anger would go away. This sense of injustice would vanish and the images would stop haunting her. The image of Mura's face and a man sitting alone. The image of a shinobi who had no one and never would. The sight of the ground rushing up to meet her for a mistake she hadn't been able to prevent.

She shook her head, closing her eyes as Rock Lee happily accepted her apology. Ryuu and Daisukenojo suspected they knew why she was upset. They thought she was upset because she thought she was a murderer. That wasn't true either. She wanted to tell them that being a murderer didn't matter to her because every shinobi became one in the end; she wanted to tell them that it didn't bother her. But she couldn't do it. Doing it meant that she would have to acknowledge that that wasn't the problem, doing it meant having to face that something else might be wrong.

The ground shook in a familiar way. Uzumaki had arrived.

'Whoa,' she heard him breathe out. 'What is this place?'

A low, feminine chuckle interrupted any answer someone may have provided her with. 'You're going to be able to experience why this is called the "Forest of Death",' Mitarashi Anko grinned maliciously, setting her hands on her hips in front of the wire fence surrounding the forest.

Naruto snorted, wiggling in an effeminate way. '"Today you're going to experience why this is called the Forest of Death,"' he imitated flamboyantly. 'There's no point in trying to scare us like that!' he exclaimed, giving her a challenging grin. 'I'm not scared at all!'

Raiku raised her hand to her chest, tightening the glove and fisting her fingers. No point at all, she echoed sarcastically, looking up at the forest of doom. She allowed the heat to warm her frightened limbs this time.

Anko tilted her head, smiling sweetly. In saccharine tones, she addressed Naruto. 'Really? You sure are energetic.'

A muscle in her eyebrow twitched. Almost before Raiku could narrow her own eyes in suspicion a kunai slid out of Anko's sleeve into her hand and was sent whizzing past Naruto's ear, thudding into the ground next to an unfazed Genin.

Anko came to a halt behind Naruto, pressing close to him. 'Boys like you die the fastest,' she murmured into his ear as blood started to slide down his face. Raiku raised her eyebrows when Anko raised her hands to cradle either side of the boy's face, expression delighted. She murmured something to him Raiku couldn't catch, deeply unsettling Naruto from the looks of it. She half-turned with a kunai at the ready as the Genin she had narrowly missed appear behind her-

The Genin held her discarded kunai in a freakishly extended tongue, somehow managing to speak with ease around it. 'Here's your knife,' they offered.

'Thank you,' Anko said, smiling pleasantly. 'But don't stand behind me like that- that is,' she added, the warning signs around her mouth and eyes appearing. 'Unless you want to die young.' She took the kunai without a hint of disgust and the tongue withdrew into the Genin's mouth, that androgynous face remaining expressionless.

'Well,' the Genin said eventually, voice implying him to be a woman even as his speech gave him away as a man. 'I get itchy when I see blood. Also… my precious hair was cut, so I got a bit excited.'

The Plot was the same as Yakushi's; Raiku half-turned to see the man better. 'Naruto,' Hinata said in quiet concern, hands clasped to her chest. It was understandable. Naruto was in a very, very tense situation and was famous for letting his mouth dominate where his head was supposed to reign.

Luckily, the almost androgynous man turned and casually threw an apology over his shoulder, walking away and narrowly missing bumping into Sakura.

Raiku only half-listened to the explanation of the exam.

Despite her best efforts, something ugly swelled under her skin.


'Alright,' Ryuu said quietly as the three of them crouched in a triangle on a high branch, deep into the darkness of the forest. Raiku's bare hand provided very dim illumination, fist clenched to keep the power at a discreet minimum. With a stick, he drew the circle of the forest in the quietly crackling light. 'Somewhere in this forest there are twenty six other teams. Each has a scroll. One more scroll has been hidden somewhere in here, a heaven scroll. That kind is the sort we need.'

He paused, fingers halting over his rough map. 'So the question,' he said, eyes flicking up to look at her and Daisukenojo. 'Is what approach we want to take. Finding the hidden scroll will be incredibly hard, but fighting the other teams has a higher risk of death.'

'I want to find the hidden scroll,' she said quietly, because she wanted the opposite.

Daisukenojo snorted. 'Are you kidding me? Chicken like always. We're tougher than these other teams. I vote we fight for the other scroll.' He glanced up at Ryuu. 'Your vote decides.'

Ryuu was looking Raiku, who was looking at the map. 'Why?' he asked.

Daisukenojo frowned. 'Because we can beat them,' he said slowly, as though talking to a particularly stupid child.

Ryuu shook his head. 'Not you. You explained already.' He jerked his head at Raiku. 'Your turn to explain.'

Raiku tilted her head slightly. 'I think,' she said slowly, hesitantly. 'That there is… something wrong with me.' She faltered, reluctant to say much more. 'I think,' she continued, forcing the words out. 'That if I fight… I won't be able to stop.'

The silence was filled by the gentle crackling of her hand. 'God, toaster, why didn't you say anything?' Daisukenojo frowned, running a hand through the red stubble that his haircut had left him with. 'You going psycho is something you shoulda mentioned.'

'I thought I could fix it before the exam,' she muttered. 'I didn't want to have to mention it.'

Ryuu didn't comment. 'If that's the case, think of what we have to do to find the hidden scroll,' he decided, moving the stick to gesture at the area. 'This Examiner is sly. She'd pick something that would make us frustrated for not guessing.'

'Each scroll has a very small chakra signature,' Daisukenojo noted, surprising them both. 'I can sense the one we've got right now. It's really, really faint,' he added at their questioning looks. 'You can only get a read on it when you're pretty close.'

'How close?' Ryuu murmured. Daisukenojo considered.

'I could sense the one she had in her hand,' he said eventually, and Raiku was once again surprised by the instantaneous transformation into the professional. 'So a little over ten metres is the furthest I can be to sense it.'

Ryuu frowned. 'We can't afford to scan the area that way. There's a third axis to worry about when in a forest, and it may be buried.'

'I can lap the entire place easily,' Raiku said quietly. 'But I can't carry anyone. Not without…' she trailed off, averting her eyes.

'You can't keep it to a minimum?' Ryuu pressed. She shook her head.

'That's the problem right now. The risk is too high even normally to try it.'

'I guessed as much. Daisukenojo, is there any way to help Raiku be able to pick it up on her own?'

Daisukenojo snorted. 'You want me to create a technique that'll pick up signatures for her, in a forest with twenty six hostile teams, all carrying scrolls?'

'Let me worry about the teams,' he said grimly. 'Can you do it?'

Daisukenojo shifted his weight back onto his heels, considering. 'I might,' he said eventually. 'But we can't rely on it. A technique usually takes months to make, not less than five days.'

Ryuu nodded. 'In that case, the obvious solution is the alternative,' he said quietly. 'We take a scroll from another team.'

She nodded slowly. 'Then I suppose…' she said after a while. 'We'd better try and get an idea of where they all are anyway.'

Ryuu looked at her carefully, drumming his fingers on the stick. 'Can you do it without losing control?'

'I don't have control,' she snorted. 'Ever.' She tapped her mask meaningfully.

'That explains a lot.' Daisukenojo rubbed his head again, dark eyes deep in thought. 'I can sense six teams within five kilometres. I can't tell which scrolls they have… obviously. But two are Rookie teams, and one of the other's that lovely Sound team Raiku had the decency to get good and pissed off at us.'

'Maybe if I kill them I'll feel better?' she offered mildly.

'We'll think about it,' both responded.

'That means no,' she said sullenly, folding her arms across her chest.

'It means we'll think about it,' Ryuu said sternly, flicking her in the nose reprovingly. He straightened with a soft exhalation, stretching his arms over his head. Glumly, she noticed he'd had another growth spurt, now standing head and shoulders above her and lean with it, possessing the perfect musculature of a stealth shinobi. Daisukenojo was almost at her height and heavily built for his age, wearing the physical benefit of Yamada's training.

They were growing and growing older, and she was the same, she noticed in surprise. She was still exactly one hundred and sixty centimetres tall, and thin as a rail. She was much stronger but the vague outline of herself she saw in mirrors still resembled a long-limbed black spider. Skinny and curling in the light to try and disappear.

She viciously shoved the thought away. She was trapped in an Angst line. It was the only explanation and she would not stand for it. She smiled to her team, giving them a thumbs-up. 'We can do this!'

'She's happy suddenly,' Daisukenojo sighed in exasperation, cuffing her over the back of her head. He straightened, yanking her up to stand as well. 'I suppose we should be glad?'

Ryuu's eyes gave her a cursory once-over. 'It's her defence mechanism. Ignore it.'

She sagged. 'Aw.'

'Quiet,' he ordered. He ran a hand through his hair and adjusted his forehead protector. 'Let's go rob someone.'

He couldn't repress the smirk that spread across his face as behind him, his teammates grinned.


A/N: And slowly, but surely, Raiku starts to go insane.

No Orochimaru to blame, either.

Reviews:

Anonymous(envysXsin): I do intend to continue past there, and I'll try to maintain a high average wordcount. If you have any suggestions in regards to pairing, I'd appreciate it, given that Raiku's sort of ... tricky.