The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Ah, thought I was gone forever, did you? Nothing so dramatic- my internet stopped working. Thank you Vanya Starwind for the beta, and all readers should thank her as well: if she wasn't so quick, you'd get this another day.

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


There would be a month between the preliminaries and the real Third Exam, and a week after his agonisingly painful defeat, Daisukenojo had been released into the loving arms of friends and family. Well, friends and family with the exception of Raiku. Raiku wasn't there, because Raiku was in hell.

Well, she conceded, staring grimly down into her bowl of ramen as the bustling chef and his daughter conversed happily with the blonde Drama Magnet sitting not two seats from her, at least it was hell with food provided.

That morning had started much like any other, with a gratuitously large breakfast and her father's envious eyes demanding to know where she put all that food without becoming morbidly obese. After that she'd settled in for a quiet day at home- Yamada was busy putting Ryuu and Daisukenojo through the most harrowing punishment he could think of. He hadn't been willing to 'emotionally destroy' her with details, but it involved his wife and the tallest tree in Konoha. After that, she hadn't asked many questions. It was at roughly midday her day started to decline, and decline spectacularly.

The walls shook. A picture came loose and the glass of the frame shattered as it hit the ground, crushed further by a falling chair. 'Code Blue!' her father yelled over the quaking, picking up a broom on one hand and a scroll in the other. 'Run for it!' He made for their not-so-hidden room, cursing loudly over the crashing and shuddering, kicking a fallen door out of his way.

On her part, she leaped over the debris that had formerly been furniture, staggering to the doorway leading out of their house to try and remove herself from the sound long enough to remember what a Code Blue entailed. And as the quaking stopped and the shaking dropped, she opened the door and remembered, vividly, what a Code Blue was as she stared into the very blue but not quite as blue as her own gaze of Uzumaki Naruto.

He grinned at her. She stared at him, mute with shock and a large, icy dose of horror. 'Hey Raiku-chan!' he said, giving her a cheesy grin. 'We're here to take you to lunch!'

Raiku could only stare. '…"we"?' she managed eventually as she clutched the doorframe for support.

'Get out of the way, Naruto!' a very familiar voice snapped, and a feminine white hand rudely shoved Naruto to the side. Sakura sent her a bereaved smile as Naruto cleared the way for Raiku to see her, rubbing the back of her head awkwardly. 'I'm so sorry, Raiku-chan, but he just wouldn't quit once he found out where I was going…'

'This is because of the bet, isn't it,' Raiku interrupted, expression flat.

'Yes,' Sakura said, hanging her head in shame. 'I'm sorry.'

Raiku sighed, looking back over her shoulder to a deeply traumatised father, brandishing a broom out of sight of both of the guests. 'I'll be back later, Dad!' she called. He instantly dropped the broom, clasping his hands together in a pleading gesture. She shot him a murderous look and slammed the door behind her. 'Let's go!' she said bravely, squaring thin shoulders.

And that in and of itself, would have been alright. Two people for lunch, even if one of those people was Naruto, were okay. Even if the Gairano part of her shrieked loudly and flailed in terror like Raiku so often did herself, all other parts could handle it.

It was what had come after that that was worse.

Raiku poked her cooling ramen with a sad, sad chopstick.

Oh yes. So much worse.

They'd made their way down the incline, Sakura and Naruto managing to do so with far more grace than she ever had, despite the fact she'd been doing it her whole life, before they started towards the downtown area.

'So, Raiku,' Sakura had said as they walked in vaguely awkward silence. 'How's your teammate? Daisukenojo, right?'

'Yeah,' Raiku confirmed, sticking her hands in her pockets. 'And he's fine. But he's really annoyed that Ryuu managed to get one over on him.' She rolled her eyes, exchanging knowing looks with Sakura. 'He's never going to let it go.'

'Sounds like Naruto and Sasuke-kun,' Sakura sighed, earning an indignant cry from her blonde teammate.

'I'm much better than that bastard!' Naruto exclaimed, puffing his chest out proudly. 'You just watch! I'm going to kick his ass one day!'

'You never will!' Sakura snorted, turning her nose up at him.

'I'm sure you will,' Raiku grinned despite herself, leaning forward to nod across at him. Naruto blinked in surprise and blushed faintly, giving her a thumbs-up and a radiant smile. It was at roughly that point she realised she sounded like she was choosing to believe in him, while she simply knew it to be true. The Plot alone told her that Naruto would not only defeat Sasuke but go on to greater heights and she was just acknowledging it.

But then... he couldn't see it, really.

It occured to her with a sudden, vivid clarity that ... life could be really hard if you couldn't read the patterns. How could Naruto know? He had to go on faith. She'd known it intellectually, sure, but... A grudging respect rose despite her Gairano instincts, which she carefully ignored. You couldn't see Plots if you weren't a Gairano- without that narrative fail-field, you ... had nothing but yourself.

It struck her, for a brief moment, that ...

They really were different.

She hurriedly masked her dismay at her sudden shift in worldview with a cough, studiously ignoring the irate look Sakura was sending her.

She narrowed her eyes slightly as she turned back to the road ahead, annoyed with herself for daring to have a dramatic epiphany at the worst possible time.

Slip 1.

She broke into a cold sweat.

'That makes you as much of an idiot as Naruto,' Sasuke said contemptuously from her left. Raiku shrieked, dancing a few steps away and clutching a hand to her suddenly panicked heart.

'Don't DO that!' she said, pointing at him accusingly. 'Everyone does that to me and it's not funny!'

'Like hell it's not!' Naruto laughed and was sent a barely concealed smirk by the Uchiha as a reward.

'Good morning Sasuke-kun,' Sakura said cheerfully. Raiku blinked in surprise, and wondered when Sakura's voice had gotten so high. And kun? 'I thought Kakashi was taking you for extra training?'

'He was called to the Hokage,' Sasuke replied in a way reminiscent of Ryuu. 'We get back to it tomorrow.'

'I don't see why you get extra training, bastard,' Naruto muttered. Sasuke ignored him pointedly, earning a low growl.

Raiku discreetly tried to edge away. This was not good. This was so very, very not good. She had to leave, and ensure it never happened again. Ever. She made it all of two metres before Sakura got a hold of her sleeve, not quite pulling her back but holding firmly enough to catch her attention.

'Raiku, please don't let them scare you off!' she said in a way too close to pleading for Raiku to be comfortable. Raiku cringed slightly, hunching her shoulders self-consciously and guiltily as Sakura's bright green eyes shone imploringly. Those same eyes were also vaguely annoyed, but that was easily overlooked. Raiku narrowed her own eyes at her slightly, shrewdly. She shouldn't feel bad. One pink haired girl shouldn't be able to make her feel bad. It had to be because they both had spectacularly unimaginative names. Had to be.

'I think I should come back another time,' she began reluctantly, cut off as soon as her sentence's meaning became intelligible. Naruto seized her other arm, linking it with his and turning towards the corner.

'Don't let Sasuke-bastard throw you off, Raiku! We'll go to Ichiraku and he'll go off and make brood-babies with the Hyuuga jerk,' he grinned, pulling a face at Sasuke over his shoulder. Raiku cut off her own brief laugh, hiding it in cough and biting her own tongue.

'Brood-babies,' she managed, almost going cross-eyed with the effort it took not to laugh. Naruto shot her a wicked grin and managed to ignore Sakura's vile glare, to say nothing of the truly evil one being sent his way from Sasuke, trailing behind them.

Raiku's sad, sad chopstick joined its partner next to the bowl as the four watched them her like hawks, only occasionally bothering with an obviously fake conversation. If she'd known when Sakura said she wanted to 'see her more', she meant her whole team thought she was really damn weirdand would go with her to see Raiku, she would have refused. Hopeful, sparkling eyes or not, she would have refused and kept her damn sanity. Hell, they'd met their team leader on the way and he was only too happy to show up and mooch off their hospitality.

At the moment Sakura sat on the stool to her right, eating her ramen with a long-suffering look. She hated ramen, or so Raiku had gathered. Which made this restaurant a somewhat odd choice, but she would have been left with the same problem in any case, so she didn't particularly care.

And now Kakashi sat on her left and Sasuke sat on his left, leaving Raiku smack-dab in the middle of Drama central, to ferment in her misery. She sighed again, looking down at her food. She couldn't even eat it, because she second she lifted her chopsticks four pairs of eyes- and that wasn't including the damn owners of the place – looked at her expectantly, waiting for her mask to come down. Since Raiku's tragically fast metabolism demanded she eat her own body weight in food regularly, sitting here with a bowl of ramen and no way to eat it was a nightmare.

She frowned slightly. In fact, she thought she may have had a nightmare like that once.

'It's weird,' Naruto announced, and her, Sakura and Kakashi turned to look at him. Sasuke, true to form, ignored him. He shrugged as they looked at him, pointing and moving his finger between Raiku and Kakashi. 'It's like looking into the future.'

'You think I'm a boy?!' Raiku asked in horror.

Sakura shot the mortified Naruto a vile glare. This was not how she envisioned getting to know the famously shy and mysterious Gairano. Not what she envisioned at all, and it had to be Naruto's fault. Naruto went red. 'No! Not that part,' he said hastily, raising his hands defensively. 'It's just the hair, and the masks! You're pretty much the same! But,' he added with obviously feigned nonchalance. 'You could just… take the masks off.'

Raiku slowly turned around to look awkwardly up at Kakashi, whose mildly amused gaze was fixed on her. 'If I'd known,' Raiku said awkwardly, cringing and too frightened to break his gaze, 'this was a ploy to get my mask off me and to compare me to your team leader… I would have refused to come, Sakura-chan.'

Sakura took a moment to look away from Naruto, flushing in realisation and embarrassment. 'No! No, that wasn't my plan at all!'

'It seems like it was,' Raiku said faintly, moving her head slightly. To her supreme horror, his eyes stayed on her.

'Raiku, I'm sorry for my idiot of a teammate,' Sakura said, gaze essentially stabbing Naruto, pinning him in woeful place. 'I meant it when I said I wanted to get to know you better,' she added sincerely.

'Come to think of it, I'm pretty boring,' Raiku said cagily, shifting on her seat. 'Maybe I should go, before you find out first hand and hate me?'

She got the distinct impression that the leader of Team Kakashi was laughing at her and quietly swore revenge as Sakura grinned. 'Sure,' she said lightly. 'Boring, right? So why don't you tell me how you managed to follow Ino-pig's team for a whole day without getting caught?'

'By acting like a spider,' she answered evasively.

Sakura raised an eyebrow.

'You sorta look like one,' Naruto agreed, earning him a swift kick that sent him flying off his stool.

Raiku's eyes widened. Sakura was even more violent than Kankuro, and that was saying something. Next she'd be asking to play "mercy".

'She does not,' Sakura hissed, looming over Naruto threateningly. Raiku looked down at herself critically.

'I think I sort of do,' she admitted to the surprise of everyone present. 'But it's better than being called toaster.'

'"Toaster"?' Sasuke echoed mockingly.

She narrowed her eyes, gripping her melancholic chopsticks. 'Toaster.'

'You're a total freak, Raiku,' Naruto said and stood, grinning at her. 'Total freak!' Sakura's hands clenched into ominous fists again.

'Probably,' Raiku said amiably, creasing her eyes at him. Sakura seemed torn between the instinctive urge to defend her guest and Raiku's obvious dismissal of offence- she settled on stamping on Naruto's foot.

As Naruto yelped in pain, Raiku took the opportunity to eat her ramen, scarfing down the now unpleasantly lukewarm concoction and yanking her mask back up. A movement in her peripheral make her turn to look at Kakashi adjusting his where it lay over his nose, bowl as empty as hers. He creased his eyes at her, receiving an almost identical one in return.

They were actually eerily similar, she reflected with no small amount of depression.

The daughter of the owner leaned forward towards her across the divider, beckoning conspiratorially with a friendly light shining in her eyes. Raiku blinked and leaned forward curiously, tilting her head to hear what the woman was going to say better.

'Don't worry about what they say about you,' the woman winked. Raiku frowned in confusion, before understanding dawned. Of course she would have been watching, would have seen her face and drawn her own conclusions. The woman leaned back and took her bowl with her, passing it to her father cheerfully and continuing on as if she hadn't said anything. The question then remained: what did they say about her? Or her face, more specifically.

Naruto whined in protest as he caught sight of the empty places in front of Raiku and Kakashi, sagging in disappointment. 'We missed it!' he complained to Sakura, who went bright red.

'Shut up, idiot!' she hissed, cuffing him over the back of the head. 'You're going to make her self-conscious!'

'I already am, and have resolved to never go anywhere with you guys ever again,' Raiku announced. Deep into an intense argument over something she decided she didn't want to know about, neither of them heard her. She sighed wearily, rubbing her temples to try and alleviate her growing headache. 'It's cool, I'm not even here. Please continue with your conversation.'

When they did, she sighed yet again. 'In fact,' she added, 'I may just go and request a restraining order! Right after I go and saw hi to Gaara, who apparently would like to kill me, having tried and failed already.'

She waited expectantly for a response, deflating when there was none.

'All this,' she fabricated, resorting to making various gestures to emphasis her point as she continued to talk to herself, 'this would be shortly after I go and profess my undying love for the perhaps overly loquacious Hyuuga Neji, whose struggles with fate I can empathise with. We will have eight children.'

This earned a snort from Sasuke, but no other audible reply.

Each of her comments half true, she was rapidly running out of things to say. Actually, she considered, this was helping to get things off her chest. She should confront Gaara and it was hard to avoid mentioning the attempt on her life in public, and Neji's struggles with fate were something she could feel for, though his were far, far less successful.

Clearly she didn't actually bear any sort of undying love for him. Or Gaara, while she was on the subject.

'Leaving,' she added to the bickering too, sliding off her stool. 'Thanks for the ramen and unfavourable comparisons? Thanks and I am leaving.'

She took a few wary steps back and found it safe to continue, immediately turning and beating a hasty retreat. When her meagre senses couldn't pick up Naruto's aura any more she sagged in relief, releasing a tension she wasn't aware she had been enduring.

It was the first time Raiku had agreed on anything with her family for a while. She was screwed.


A/N: Ah, Raiku. You can't have any children, much less eight. Thanks for reading, make sure to review.

Reviews:

envysXsin: Daisukenojo can't make Chuunin, but Ryuu's on his way to the Third Exam now. x3 And it could be worse than being compared to Raiku! I could compare you to... Give me a second... I'm sure I'll think of something... Well, I can't think of anything, but I'm sure there's someone. Yamada's wife, maybe?

He-hem, continuing in my response- I'd love to write more about Raiku and the end is still quite a way a way, so I'm not sure if the way it ends will give me leeway. I was thinking of doing a series of drabble/oneshots set within the story from both Raiku and other character's perspectives, but it's only an idea at the current.

As for making enemies- Gairanos can't afford to make enemies, because people remember enemies (they also remember Raiku, but that's probably not her fault). Thanks for reviewing.

XxXTwilight-SinXxX: Not as yet, no, since I can't meet a deadline to save my life. Thank you for reviewing.

Impatiens Psittacina: I hope you enjoyed the alternate chapter. Thoughts? The Gairano family is, without question, expendable. That's a deliberate move, hence 'deliberately expendable'. And as for poison... I'll leave you with that one.