The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Thanks Vanya, your beta skills are wondrous.

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


'I want answers,' Neji said matter-of-factly.

Raiku paused. 'What kind of answers, because I can't answer some sorts of que-,'

'Answers,' he said flatly.

'Right,' she nodded, cringing. 'Right.'

'You'll tell me what I want to know. If you lie to me, our agreement is void.'

Another pause. 'Define "lie-"'

'Anything less than the perfect truth,' Neji supplied with a distinct lack of agreeable compromise. She sagged in disappointment, thin shoulders slumping.

'And dry yourself off,' he ordered in afterthought. 'There's no point in you ruining the floor.'

'Can't,' she said glumly, by now fully bound to the 'no lying' clause.

Neji took a deep, calming breath. 'Why?'

She shrugged. 'Just can't.'

He gave a faint snort of derision, moving on. 'When did you acquire this ability, and where?'

'Prior to my birth and … I'm sure you get the message. It's more of a condition than an ability, by the way.'

'Is it why you can move as quickly as you do?' he continued, ignoring her definition.

'Yes.' She hesitated. '…Probably,' she added.

'Any other effects?' he asked.

She gave him an odd look. 'Yes. Electricity, all the time?' she answered slowly and vaguely patronisingly, as though talking to a particularly dim child. Neji didn't appreciate this.

'Aside from the obvious,' Neji gritted out.

She eyeballed him warily as she rattled off a list. 'Lightning really loves me, I can't swim or use chakra properly. Gaara hates me-' she broke off, lowering her voice to mutter under her breath. 'At least I think that's a side-effect… And you hate me too, but I think that's because I called you a girl,' she said in addition.

Neji's eyes sparked with hostility.

'You're… You'd be a lovely girl,' she said awkwardly, rubbing the back of her head. 'You're… you're very…' beautiful '…pretty.'

'Continuing,' he said with a strained tone, a muscle working in his jaw. She recognised the signs of someone contemplating horrible murder. Ryuu gave off all of those signs, all of the time. 'You said you can't turn it off.'

She looked at him expectantly. He wore a similar, but infinitely more restrained and hostile look. He at last grasped the odd way Raiku's mind functioned and elaborated. 'Is it true and what happens as a result?'

'It's true. Well, I can turn almost all of it off, but it's always… on. Sort of.' She waggled gloved fingers at his unimpressed face, stretching a thin arm across the dim room to a few inches from his head. Sparks flickered on the skin in the holes above her palm, corresponding eerily to the far more potent ones trying to get inside. 'I don't… have a problem with my face or anything… the masks and gloves and all the rest are to stop me from hurting people,' she explained. She creased her eyes to indicate a smile, and hated how she felt his eyes go through her. 'It's not as bad as people think… it just gets kind of hot sometimes.'

He watched her for a while, before snorting lightly. She recoiled as though he'd cursed. 'Is this why Hinata goes red at the mention of your name? The electricity?'

She stared at him uncomprehendingly.

'We did hear about the incident on the street,' he said, smirking at her sudden discomfort. 'Did you touch her?'

'Almost,' she admitted abashedly. She wrung her hands, trying to think of an appropriate explanation. 'It's … weird. But I didn't quite touch her.'

'Explain.'

'You're very impatient,' she observed with a frown. 'And it's hard to explain. For me. I'm not…' floundering, again, always struggling… 'I'm not good with words.' She reached up and tugged a glove off, flexing pale, long fingers and stretched them out towards him. Unwillingly, he leaned back.

'What are you doing?' he asked suspiciously.

'Just… gimme your hand,' she instructed exasperatedly. 'It's not gonna hurt. It just feels weird, apparently.'

He stretched out a hand cautiously, leaving it open with the palm facing upwards in the air between them. She flexed her fingers again to hide her nerves, hoping she hadn't inadvertently lied. 'Okay,' she said, hand hesitantly coming to hover a few inches above his steady one. 'Just… watch.' She let her hand drop the smallest of degrees down, a thin tendril of blue power dancing from her skin to his. His hand jerked reflexively, the stiffening of his jaw indicating his own annoyance at one of them. He put it out again stubbornly. She gave a pained smile, fingertips hovering above his. He didn't jerk but he did twitch slightly, which she was wise enough to pass off as bioelectrical stimulation as the thin strands of power tied her fingers to his.

'So … I didn't quite touch her,' she said sheepishly, looking up at his face again. Her fingers jerked back and into a loose fist to sever the connection as she took in his expression, slightly flushed and his jaw tense. 'Are… you alright?' she asked slowly.

Neji nodded stiffly.

She looked uncertain. 'Can I… go?'

He gave another nod.

She surged to her feet with embarrassing relief and vanished out the window with a flash of white blue light, leaving the room dark with only the repetitive drumming of the rain to break the silence. He slowly curled his hand into a fist, letting it fall to his side as thunder shook the walls.

Needless to say, Ryuu adamantly refused to help her this time, given that she was dripping wet, sparking and somewhere along the way, she'd lost her glove and left shoe. But Raiku was never, truly, alone, not until she was what she was and apologised for it, so Ryuu just talked to her through the glass until the rain stopped and her skin stopped glowing, easily ignoring his exaggerated disappointment at the sudden semi-normality of her appearance. And when she couldn't put it off anymore, she went home and he let her, knowing full well that fated hated her enough to make her come back.


There wasn't enough instant miso in the world to make her tell her father about Neji. Regardless of whether Neji did in fact break his promise or not, she should have done so anyway. Should do so- there was still time, after all.

But standing in the doorway as the light drizzle changed and began to hammer onto the tiles of the roof and lightning cracked the nearest window, she just couldn't. It was bad enough she'd been tricked by a Plot, this would just make everything that much worse. She'd been found out, because ever since she'd become a goddamn ninja everything had gotten harder, and ever since she'd become a goddamn ninja she'd started losing track of the lies she told her friends, the lies she told her family and the ones she told herself out of habit.

Raiku wanted to run away, not for the first time.

But as aforementioned goddamn ninja, she slipped her remaining shoe off, loosened the kunai pouch bandaged to her leg and padded down the hallway, pulling down her mask and sliding her gloves into her pockets. The steel door she passed was black with plot, shimmering with odd colours like light playing on oil, giving her snatches of voices, laughter and screams as her father tried to fix and find what she'd changed, tried to read the Plot she didn't particularly want to be a part of.

She wondered if Sakura would mind Naruto so much if she knew what beauty they'd be capable of. She absently pulled her bare hands up and ran her fingers over her face, closing her eyes as she stepped up the stairs on light feet in memorised route, trying to picture what she couldn't see. Would it be so horrible, touching someone else? For that matter, was it that great?

Her skin was smooth under her fingertips and crackled faintly from even this small amount of friction, light gathering on pale eyelashes and along her hairline. Skin wasn't so important, surely. Surely it wasn't something so vital to a human relationship.

Surely not.

She slid the shoji door across and closed it behind her, tugging off her forehead protector in the relative safety of her room. She had a futon next to the wall more window than barrier that overlooked in half a ridge of the mountain and otherwise the forest, various electrical devices scattered along the floor that she'd broken or been asked to fix. The moonlight cast the room in earthen shades of blue and brown, the darkness of the shadows almost indistinguishable from the more comforting tones. She nudged aside an old radio that hadn't survived her ungloved attempt to change the station and sank onto the edge of her futon, exhaling heavily and drawing a leg up to remove the wrappings from her shins, tugging at the similar ones around her left palm and forearms with her teeth.

Rule four of shinobi: unnecessarily complicated clothes- necessary. She obeyed the rules of being a shinobi as long as they didn't conflict with those of being a Gairano, as best she could. She yanked a senbon out of her sleeve and balanced it on her finger thoughtfully.

She was a shinobi.

She had a tendency to forget in light of her own cowardice and incompetence, but the fact was that she had achieved the first stage of her ultimate goal. The last being a nondescript death, but that wasn't so much a goal as an expectation. She knew how to throw this to hurt, where to puncture with it to kill and how to (poorly) pick a lock with it.

She smiled to herself, running a hand through dripping hair, slicking it back from her face. She'd accomplished something. Gairano Raiku had done something, and she'd only run away for most of it. She drummed her fingers on her knee, considering this point.

It didn't often occur to Raiku that she was only thirteen, nor did she often consider the gaps between her life and that of the average thirteen year old. In fact… it didn't often occur to her that there were any. But earlier, when she'd literally had her hands on one of, arguably, the most attractive boys in her age bracket, she mused that she should have felt something.

That would have been normal… yes?

But of course, it was just a body, and everyone had one. It wasn't relevant to her, and never would be, because the only one that would ever be of her concern was hers.

She tilted her head, face set in that mask of casual apathy it always assumed when there was no one there who needed to read it. She should have been more … something.

She shrugged, setting to free the other shin from the wrappings. It couldn't be that important.


A/N: What's that? This chapter is too short? Stop saying that. It's necessary for this one.

Reviews:

Preface to response?

I apologise sincerely to the people who I haven't responded to. The only reason I know about your reviews (given that this website didn't inform me) was through luck.

I'm so incredibly sorry.

He-hem, reviews!

Blinkin: Hello, I missed you! And you cannot be a bad person for enjoying it in light of the fact that I sit at my computer, sipping various soft drinks and laughing maniacally.

Yes. Maniacally.

I want you to think about that adverb.

I fully support your preface to your vote, and rest assured, character evolution will not be sacrificed for pairing. I'll definitely take your suggestions into account, thanks very much for reviewing.

lilmeika: Thanks for deciding to review, given that I sort of get twitchy when my review rate drops (too obvious?). I'm glad you approve of the characterisation of the stoic ones- I'm never fully sure. Your vote has been taken into consideration, thanks again for reviewing!

Dureth: I'm updating as quick as I can! I used to update every day, but as Raiku (and therefore the writing) is forced to mature, maintaining that pace would make my fingers bleed! I see your point about Neji, thanks for giving me input.

The Gairano family has been caught on so many inconvenient occasions for talking to themselves. They just don't get why people don't have the manners to ignore it. Raiku's facial expressions generally pale in comparison to how I'm forced to picture them (to me she sort of looks perpetually scandalised/awkward), but I'm glad you enjoy them.

As for characterisation- luck? I'm going to go with luck, as well as gratuitous research. I rarely feel the need for cliffhangers, but I made an exception this time. Thanks for your support and the review! (My beta definitely deserves praise- very efficient. She sends her thanks).

mebmarcus: Thank you for trusting my judgement (that makes one of us, and Raiku's especially reluctant to do so) and for reviewing. I hope I don't disappoint you.

Yukimi-Shichi: Ah, that's the first vote for Daisukenojo! As for his height... I'm a merciful author, I'm sort of torn here. Thanks for reviewing!

PersonaJXT: I'll try to define my noncanon chhracters more- thank you for letting me know. You were free to suggest 'other', but that makes two votes for Naruto. I can hear the petrified screaming now... Thanks for reviewing!

Freefantasy101: Thanks for the input, I can appreciate your point. Raiku's bad at befriending people anyway, but it's important to me to make relationships evolve. Thanks for reviewing!

hard-bitten confinement: Raiku's meant to stay inconspicuous (keyword being 'meant') because in order to remain free of the Genematrix, the Gairano family has to stay outside of it. As for why she's still here... her father's many things, but he's occasionally sentimental. That and she's almost impossible to kill, it's just ridiculous. She's like a ... cockroach, or something. One more for Neji? Got it. Thanks for reviewing.

XxXTwilight-SinXxX: She truly, truly does. I just... I myself am amazed at how bad her luck is. The family's good, but not that good- they don't know yet.

Yet.

Thanks for reviewing!

Areai Moonlight: Well... That was to the point. Gaara, got it, and thanks for reviewing!