The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Ah. Chapter 28. Yet more violence.

Thank you Vanya, for once again saving the quality of this chapter.

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


Screams broke out through the streets even as unearthly silence fell over the far stadium, making Mura take a wary step back. 'What's going on?'

'Shut up!' Raiku snapped, trying to listen. She wasn't in the mood for any of this bullshit any more. She didn't want to deal with terrified civilians. She didn't want to calm down or be understanding and she wanted to kill things.

Murder was familiar ground, after all.

The ground shook as, with a colossal sound unlike anything she'd heard, the East gate crumbled under the onslaught of three snakes larger than the entire circumference of the walls themselves, lunging forward to throw massive bulks against buildings not built for the impact, crumbling instantly.

Raiku's eyes widened. Despite herself, she gave a low whistle. 'That's a really big summon.'

Something giddily darted through her veins, heat searching for an outlet as she reached up to absently tug a sleeve off her good arm, the flash of a shuriken taking care of burnt and tattered wrappings, material both dark and pale dropping to the ground. She took more care with the injured arm, taking hold of her wrist and faintly purple hand and taking a deep breath.

Mura paled. 'Oh, don't-'

Raiku gave a sharp jerk and strangled scream, colour fleeing her face as the world spun. She numbly flexed her injured fingers to test the restored movement, fully aware that this was no substitute for a splint or a medic, but knowing it would have to do. She swayed slightly before she caught herself, gritting her teeth and ripping sleeve and wrappings from her arms, rolling her shoulders and slamming a palm into the air in the direction of the Sand-nin that jumped from the building above her to some destination unknown, catching them in flight with power of her colour. She bared her teeth in sudden, perfect understanding of why Ryuu smiled the way he did and leaped, twisting and slamming an elbow into the burnt midriff as the Sand-nin plummeted, leaving a crater and rising dust where they landed.

Mura stepped back and found cold steel pressed into her palm and her cheek patted with the blade of her new kunai, Raiku's hand temporarily wrapped in latex out of consideration.

'Try not to die before I can kill you,' Raiku said with malicious cheer, vanishing in a flicker. As Raiku darted over rooftops in a highly conspicuous and highly electrified blur of white blue light, she wondered with a sort of macabre fascination, just how well the skin of a snake conducted electricity.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a union that fate smiled on. Several Sand-nin, attracted by the colour- they're as bad as moths, she thought to herself- and the motion, broke away from their group and pelted in her direction, increasing speed until they became blurs. Her face split into a savage grin, possessed by pain, adrenaline and aggression.

Do you want to race…?

A bit too late to calm down, a bit too late to convince her what she was doing was a bad idea, she braced a foot on a chimney and hurtled towards them, trailing electric death in her wake.

A black blur was thrown off by her speed and suddenly her mind cleared.

Then reality came forward, backhanded her across the face and started talking about what a bad idea this was and why she hadn't done it before-

And Raiku learned how to fly.

Of course, at such speeds, a single twitch can rapidly change direction, which- of course- it did when she shrieked in surprise and flung an arm up to protect her suddenly airborne face, sending her to the left in an uncontrolled, panicked spin. Flailing could really, only make this that much worse.

But when had that ever stopped her before? She caught the edge of a building with a flailing limb, sending her careening through the air with a sickening crack, at last managing to latch onto a nearby wall, panting.

Alright. She could admit that was a bad move. It had felt really, really good, but that was entirely beside the point. The Sand-nins had caught sight of where she'd been headed and changed direction, bearing in on her with all the inherent mercy of a flock of vultures. She thought mournfully of how this was the point at which she should reveal some awesome shinobi technique, but was left with only what she already was.

Sure, it didn't take chakra and it didn't run out, but- she thrust out her hands, settling bare, bleeding feet on the edges of the building's fuse box, giving one short stamp to dislodge the lid as power almost threw her backwards, dodged narrowly by her new opponents.

She'd killed an Equaliser, so this couldn't be that much harder… right? She dropped into a crouch and fisted her injured hand in the mess of cabling, foreign and somewhat traumatised power surging through her fist, along her arms until it escaped, shrieking outwards through her other outstretched palm, turning herself into the perfect conductor and better allowing her to move. But it wasn't as potent as she was and she found herself feeling somewhat disgruntled as along the circuit, breakers struggled to destroy the path of power, the corresponding manifestation of her annoyance thickening the bolt of energy and slamming squarely into the chest of the closest Sand-nin with a hoarse scream.

She grinned as a blackened corpse dropped from the air, immediately overtaken by the far more inconvenient living teammates and making her glee falter slightly.

Oh, yes- they were coming to kill her. She tore her hand free of the wires, freeing herself from the power grid and jumping up, kicking off a wall to raise her to the level of the roofs and setting off again, careful to maintain only the speed she was accustomed to.

When someone who could be compared, in flight, to a blind pigeon with no sense of direction had become airborne for the first time, it was best not to immediately repeat the experience. And from the seizing, burning agony that her right knee had gained from the experience, that was the wiser move anyway.

It always looked so easy in the movies.

She sped past the two Sand Genin carrying their more belligerent counterpart between them, missing them by a hairsbreadth and almost sending herself into yet another wall as the Uchiha followed them a small way behind, not bothering to try and get out of the way as they had. She growled at him as she passed, limp growing more pronounced and simply jumping from one leg to avoid losing speed in her run to the stadium. Was she running towards her death? Probably. It was the proud tradition of the Gairano family after all. A magnetised kunai was sent winging into the distance as it hit her electrical field, making her fiercely glad that they hadn't seen fit to bring the kind that couldn't be affected by it. Then again, this was hardly a normal thing to encounter, so they couldn't be blamed. She, on the other hand… well, that was a different matter. She reached down and pulled out a kunai for each hand, striking the blades against each other as they began to glow-red hot and threatened to burn her palms, spinning to throw them mid-step and turning back around without checking to see if they'd landed.

Raiku needed wire, she needed traps and things hard to see. She reached down to fish out the spool she loyally carried with her, ripping the seal from it and letting the tightly wound metal come slightly apart in her fingers, crackling as it, like her, began to glow. The stadium loomed in the distance and a large, dark rectangular prism of chakra, which she quickly told herself was none of her business and ignored.

Wait, was that the Ho- none. Of her. Business.

No, seriously, that was totally the Hoka- stop that.

She yelped and used her wire to hook around one of the spokes protruding to the roof and changing her trajectory as through concrete a man was sent screaming, setting her feet on the wall just above the massive hole and allowing herself to drop down, swinging through and rolling to absorb the impact.

She looked up, fingers splayed and crackling, well at the ready. This, she knew, made her look like she was wielding electric jazz hands, but she had very few options.

Sakura stared at her, jaw dropped.

She winced. She needed something to say to drop the tension, to make the (three Genin and two Jounin, how did she miss these things?) shinobi staring at her focus.

'…'Sup?' she offered, cursing under her breath her own lack of eloquence.

'Sup? What was that?

'Toaster,' Ryuu said, moving towards her and ripping a piece of his sleeve off with hands and teeth, never breaking stride. 'With me.'

She brightened in a way more than figurative and stood, rubbing her hands together and relishing the sound of quiet thunder. 'Alrighty!' Ryuu was there, he was good at excuses! Ryuu always had a plan. She could even see the well-oiled mechanisms of his brain whirring behind his downright malevolent stare.

'Raiku!?' Sakura goggled, taking in her appearance. 'How did you g- what happened to you, what happened to your legs?'

'There were Sand-nin, there were family arguments, it's a very long story and I hope sincerely to-' she broke off into a strangled gurgle as Ryuu grasped her hand with the torn fabric, wrapping it around the injured appendage and clasping it tightly when he was certain he wouldn't be injured by electrical backlash.

'Not that wrist,' she whimpered, biting her lip as tears sprung to her eyes. He… ignored her.

He half-turned. 'Hatake, we can keep them from being followed,' he said, giving a firm nod.

'What? What's going on?' Naruto asked blearily, finding his arm yanked over Sakura's shoulders.

'I can explain on the way,' she said, jumping out of the hole Raiku had just entered.

Kakashi shook his head slightly. 'They're taken care of. Withdraw to the hospital, we'll need it soon enough.'

Ryuu's pale eyes slid over to her, glinting evilly. She paled. 'Oh no. Oh no, not that. Don't do that,' she pleaded. 'I've broken like, more than four bones, don't-'

'Take a deep breath,' Ryuu instructed with malevolent glee. She shook her head frantically.

'No! Ryuu, no -'

He inhaled sharply.

She didn't really have a choice. Ryuu vanished in a blur of wind and his hand dragged her with him into the fresh maelstrom and out of the stadium, sending the world into a breathless blur as they spun. Her power flared reflexively to protect her and set the storm alight with blue, racing in the wind after the nearest approaching Sand-nin. The wind howled in her ears and pressure slammed into her damaged body, compressing her chest and flinging her limbs out at awkward angles, anchored only by Ryuu's agonising grip on her hand. She opened her mouth to scream and found the air physically dragged from her lungs, skin turning ashen as she began to suffocate.

Part of the plan, naturally, and the part of the plan she objected to most strongly. In times of pain, stress and danger, like all defensive mechanisms, she started to lose the voice inside her head that kept a firm control over the other parts of her head that glowed blue.

It flared. She would have appreciated even a little time to recover- there went another rib, the horrific snap and instant pain gave it away- from the events of the past…

As black dots danced in front of her eyes, she managed to try and consider.

The events of the past… thirty minutes, even thirty seconds would have been nice, really, but of course not. That would have been ridiculous.

Her fierce and terrified grip on Ryuu's hand began to slacken as her skin paled under the current, tiny lacerations from various weapons dragged from the pouches of wind-crushed and electrically-burnt Sand and Sound-nin adding insult to injury. They came to an abrupt halt over a roof and she landed heavily on Ryuu, supported by hands suddenly firmly braced on either side of her ribs as she found herself draped over him, gasping for air. His neck was contorted to deprive her skin of the opportunity to kill him, his usually stoic face flushed and breath coming in pants.

'You alright to go again?' he asked, swallowing heavily and trying to focus, lifting her off him enough to make the distance safe.

'No,' she croaked, head lolling about as he unintentionally further compressed already nigh-shattered ribs. 'Never.'

He nodded in satisfaction- she realised her mistake in talking, eyeing the distance between the stadium and their current location with a distinct feeling of nausea.

'We need to help protect the hospital,' he muttered, head turning and tracing the direction of the enemy shinobi. 'You'll need it later.'

He looked back at her, giving her a light shake to bring her back to herself. 'Take a deep breath,' he ordered again, sounding fairly breathless himself. She made a low keening noise, dragging breath unwillingly into abused lungs as they set off again.

At least there was no one following her anymore. After this little stint, she'd probably welcome a murderous ninja or two. Or a hundred, really, it was much better than this- the miniature, personal storm built and they were ripped through the air on the wind of the localised tornado, the sudden drop in temperature mercifully starting to numb her extremities and better conducting what she gave it, thunder cracking in their wake as he took her with him, firmly answering any question of how he'd caught her previously after he'd started to create, blessedly, a path of less resistance. The artificial path allowed her to compensate for what should have been a drop in acceleration and use her own ability to carry her forward, wind and lightning sweeping up the human debris that had seen fit to invade, traveling away from the snake summons towards the besieged hospital (maybe there was a god after all).

When they came to a halt this time it was because even the adoring wind couldn't keep the abandoned weapons from being tossed into their proximity and Ryuu had blood in his eyes that dripped from his hairline, hissing in pain and releasing her hand to try and both stem the flow and clear his vision. 'What do you see!?' he demanded blindly.

Raiku swayed alarmingly, blinking to try and focus her eyes. Her vision wavered. 'I don't… I don't know,' she wheezed, staggering and placing a hand on the roof to try and steady herself. 'I … I don'…' she broke off, words slurring together in incoherency caused from both suffocation and blood loss. Her skin shone, the freedom of her personal physical conductors only enhanced by the iron in her blood, incisions only the size of paper-cuts making up in number for what they lacked in depth. She reached down with shaking fingers and tore a shuriken from the back of her shin, dropping it quickly. 'Nice,' she managed, glow flickering in indecisiveness. Was it meant to surge or stop?

It was only a condition, it wasn't known for its intelligence and it was trying its best.

Ryuu put a hand on the small part shoulder that still was safe to touch, eyelashes and eyes marked out in vibrant red. 'Stay with me,' he panted. 'We can do it.'

'I don't wan' to 'nymore,' she whimpered, shaking her head weakly. 'I don't want to…'

'Suck it up.' He dragged her up into a standing position, closing his eyes briefly. 'You ready?'

She didn't bother to respond, given he'd just take that as confirmation. She just took a deep breath in, registering that the deep breath of right now was a great deal shallower than the deep breath of only a few minutes previous.

He sighed wearily, bringing a hand up to clasp hers again, bruises in the shape of his fingertips pressed into the covered flesh. 'Good girl, toaster.'

The trip was the shortest through necessity, her own feeble desperation adding to what should have been terminal velocity to send them crashing to the ground at the front of the hospital in a blaze of electricity and wind that cut as easily as razors, barely cushioned by air rising to meet them and leaving Raiku with most of the skin of her arm left on the trail she'd been flung along on the cement. She made out the silhouette of Ryuu, no longer safe to touch her because of the conductivity of the blood from shallow cuts and hovering over her, nudging the side of a masked face. 'Toaster,' he panted, managing a small, cooler breeze that washed over her face. 'Toaster, c'mon. We're not done.'

A brilliant eye managed to fix itself on him, looking somewhat dazed. 'You do it,' she half-slurred, half-groaned. Her knee had given up on burning and now simply throbbed, much like the rest of her. Except for this stabbing pain near one of her more-broken-than-the-other-broken-ribs rib, which she was a little concerned about. ' 'm done.'

Crouching amongst human debris, blackened beyond recognition or sliced into pieces, Ryuu had to admit that she'd done pretty well, or they had both done a good job. But now wasn't the time for rest, and he told her as much. He ripped a piece of burnt fabric from a body he couldn't even tell the gender of anymore and wrapped it around his hands, sliding them under her body to pull her up. 'C'mon,' he grumbled, hoisting her up further and slapping the side of her face slightly. 'C'mon, wake up. You've got to kill some more people.'

'I… hate you,' she managed, glaring at him blearily. The metal of her forehead protector was slightly melted, unfortunate enough to stay connected by what was left of the fabric and forced to deal with what no inanimate object should. A distant, sharp exclamation alerted him to another squad narrowing in on their position, drawing a frustrated growl.

Daisukenojo would have been helpful right about now. Hell, a healer of any kind.

'Raiku!' he snapped, shaking her harder. Her head lolled back and forth as she whined in feeble protest. 'Get up and kill people right now or so help you I'll tell everyone what you are and I'll tell Uzumaki you have a crush on him!'

She opened her eyes, staring at him in horror.

His own gaze was devoid of pity. 'That's right. Uzumaki,' he said, relishing the word.

For a moment she simply couldn't respond, paralysed by the sheer horror of the idea, before she slid an arm under her, pushing free of his support and coming to a wavering standing position. A Chuunin medic landed on her other side, slightly in front.

'Where the hell are our reinforcements?' he asked impatiently, settling into a defensive stance.

Ryuu's expression flattened. 'Hi.'

The Chuunin glanced back at him, dark brown eyes narrowed. 'You've got to be kidding me.'

Ryuu's eyebrows shot up, sending him a venomous look as Raiku swayed, possibly drooling slightly under the mask and looking, in general, more like a recovering coma patient than a ninja. 'Just fix her. Do your job and we'll do ours.'

The medic shot a distracted look at the roofs ahead, at the moment devoid of enemies and took a step towards Raiku, instantly intercepted by Ryuu's hand. 'No,' Ryuu said reprovingly. She suddenly knew just how he'd sound when telling his children not to touch the stove. 'You don't touch. You heal, you don't touch. Got it?'

The medic gave him a disbelieving look just as Raiku clapped her hands together and pushed her palms to face outwards, sending a jagged wave of electricity crackling through the air. A Sound-nin gave a choked scream, frozen in place as it coursed through their diminutive frame.

Raiku's eyebrows quirked slightly. 'Didn' know I could d' that,' she mumbled dizzily, looking down at her hands like she'd never seen them before. 'Tha's interestin'.'

'Less gawking more fixing!' Ryuu said, giving the medic a sharp tug in Raiku's direction, hands coming together in a series of seals as another, infinitely larger Sound-nin crested the line of roofs and came down towards them, hands ablaze in a taijutsu-centred technique. The shinobi choked, the fire dying on his arms, suffocated as he was now suffocating, sweat breaking out on Ryuu's forehead. 'Toaster,' he gritted out. 'Third... coming from your left.'

Raiku looked right, hastily looking left as she realised her mistake. She squinted at the four opponents heading her way, all oddly identical. 'S'four,' she pointed out.

Ryuu's hand started to shake as the captured, hovering shinobi tried to pull his hands up to form a seal, Ryuu's other hand coming up to complete the seal and snapping the man's arms back to his sides. 'Clones.'

Raiku groaned, casually dropping her hand and pulling her arm back while her fingers clenched into a fist that hurtled forward towards the foe, stepping forward and throwing her weight into the blow, elbow almost getting the medic in the eye as he hastily twisted to avoid touching her.

The shinobi in the air was turning purple by the time two of the shadow clones of his teammate met an ugly demise, the other two approaching figures jumping to sprint at her along the wall of the hospital, brandishing shuriken that narrowly missed all but her pretty unfortunate and already injured leg.

She stumbled back and drove her palm into the bricks, sweat breaking out on her forehead as she relied less and less on, well, blood to power her and more and more on everything else. The paint turned black and cracked as lightning ripped across it, demolishing the first shadow clone and reaching for what had to be the real shinobi.

The 'real' shinobi exploded similarly into smoke and Raiku dimly heard Ryuu cursed as a wave of water greeted her when she turned to look at him, slamming into her tiny frame and submerging her instantly, glowing briefly and brilliantly as the creator shrieked in agony, planning to attack from above and disrupting what had, unfortunately, not been a technique on Raiku's part. Raiku gasped and fell to her knees as the water came crashing down to the ground around her, drenching the cement and sending a wave of ionised water over the medic's legs. Skin painted a sickly, running pink with streaks of darker red, Raiku fell to hands and knees.

'Am I done?' she asked, voice strangled and pleading. 'Am I done?'

The Sound-nin dropped lifelessly to the ground in front of Ryuu, legs cracking and skull smacking down onto the ground with a crunch. Ryuu nodded, hands shaking and unable to be relaxed from the virtual claws the strain had forced them into. 'Yeah, toaster. Yeah. You're… you're done.'

Raiku obligingly- finally- collapsed into a heap in front of the hospital. Ryuu sagged and sank into a kneeling position, rubbing a hand over his face and smearing blood over the skin around his eyes. Raiku blinked sluggishly, contorted limbs finally relaxing as the power finally got the idea and drew back as much as it was able, blurred vision taking in the sight of a familiar woman in a white coat rushing towards her, another with a stretcher just behind.

She closed her eyes and fell asleep.


A/N: Raiku's life sort of sucks. But I do it from love, I swear.

Thank you for responding to the poll- you've given me a lot to think about.

Reviews:

vampy (Vanya Starwind): But your poking is what's gotten me this far!

anonymous yay: Ah, I'm glad you asked. Sort of. Now I have to explain, which is less convenient. So I'm sort of glad. Anyway- hair is a very poor conductor. Raiku's hands, while wrapped, are, as you said, not completely safe but not in contact with the most dangerous areas of Mura's body. A hold doesn't require for a hand to be touching skin, sometimes not even clothing, while the hand in Mura's hair would simply reach a sort of electrical dead end and maybe start a fire. Also, half of the effectiveness of the Equalisers is the psychological build up. When not much is known about them they can better inspire fear within the family. One Equaliser per mission is actually less about practicality than it is about legally plausible deniability. There's one thing you should remember, in terms of family members trying to escape because there's only one Equaliser: this is not a shinobi clan, and most family members are actually civilians. Thanks for reviewing!

Impatiens Psittacina: Oi, how about a little trust here? I'm wounded. Raiku's thought patterns coincided with the poll, but there's no immediate pairing, nor is it my focus right now. Raiku has to deal with things in a way that's semi-realistic, and when placed into a situation that she feels she doesn't react to in a normal way, she's going to doubt herself. She's a teenage girl, after all, though she and everyone else tends to forget. Thanks for the review!

Dermonster: Well. That was to the point. And Naruto? You sadist, I like the way you think. Thanks for reviewing (sort of?).

Dureth: Hello, you're becoming somewhat of a constant variable here. I felt that Raiku's anger, which is rare enough, was warranted given that her family had just tried to have her murdered. I was somewhat concerned about the fight scene and cut several details out, (mostly about the Equaliser's incredibly unpleasant death) so thank you for putting my mind at ease.

And about your last review- you're the one that told me to update faster! Generally, since one a day is my average, that's not advice I hear very often. Ask my beta- I was scandalised. However, I won't sacrifice quality for speed, so if an update takes a few days then you'll know what I'm doing.

(Probably nothing, I'm incredibly lazy).

Thanks for reviewing!

envysXsin: I'm glad. I've caused a few concussions in my time, which is why I'm actually between sparring partners, so I'm happy to hear you're alright. Insanity is 'alright', in my view. And I wanted to kill Mura, I wanted to so badly. But then a friend of mine gave me some valid points about her and Genma so she's alive. For now. That and it didn't work into the story at that time.

Hm. Raiku's not exactly phased by death, given that in order to help her adjust to killing her mother she was raised with:
Father: Hello. You killed your mother. Would you like toast?
Raiku: ...
And as previously stipulated, she's aware all ninja have to kill eventually. I think it's the method of killing and the way the Equaliser died that may have an effect on her. Thanks for reviewing!

Blinkin: Day off? I think not! As seen above... Raiku doesn't get days off. She gets beaten up, suffocated and has limbs broken. She'll be fine... *cough* Anyway, don't worry about me changing my update rate. That was an idle, idle threat, given that my beta may actually sacrifice me to heathen gods. Well, she wouldn't, but she's definitely stopped me from procrastinating in the past, and I'll post a chapter only when I think it's done. So rest assured I won't go purposefully slow or fast enough to sacrifice quality. If you feel I'm slipping, let me know.

In regards to the review-chapter ratio: Pfft, I wish! So thank you very much for reviewing, I look forward to hearing from you again.