Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Oh... hey, there...

Okay, so we can't pretend the many-year absence didn't happen. Unfortunately for everyone involved, a series of family problems and... horrible things derailed life as me and quite a few others as we knew it. It was terrible, but now that life is finally, finally on the upswing, I actually have the headspace to deal with things. Things like this, which I swear I have NOT ABANDONED. I AM HERE, YOUR RAGE IS JUSTIFIED.

I don't own Naruto or any of its characters, storylines or affiliates.


'I am almost entirely sure that this is unnecessary.'

'I am almost entirely sure that you should shut your face,' Ryuu replied unsympathetically. Raiku boggled in disbelief. Boggled, like that was a verb.

'Shouldn't you be helping me escape? Shouldn't I be your favourite right now!?' she demanded.

Ryuu peered around the entrance to the maternity ward cautiously, not bothering to look at her. 'I don't have favourites.'

'We did a technique together! It hurt many people! You like that, that's-,' Raiku's words failed her for a moment, before she rallied magnificently. 'That's a thing that you like! That I helped you do!' Magnificent failure: that was her trademark. 'So… yeah!'

Ryuu rolled his yellow eyes. 'Seeing our teacher's baby is hardly going to be a chore for you, drama queen.'

Raiku sputtered in indignation at his accusation. 'You take that back!'

"If you two don't stop your wailing, I am going to come out there and discipline you, get me!?"

The two of them paled.

There was a short, somehow angry pause.

"Get in here!"

Ryuu glared at her, like this was her fault somehow, and slunk around the corner. She followed reluctantly.

Babies.

It suddenly made sense, Daisukenojo's refusal to enter within forty metres of this hospital room.

Babies everywhere.

Raiku stood, paralysed by the overwhelmingly multitudinous swarms of babies and pregnant women sitting in rows. Swarms? Were plural babies swarms? Did it depend on the baby, maybe? Did skulks or embarrassments of babies exist? Were babies like Ryuu skulks all on their own-

Ryuu doubled back and dragged her roughly forward, towards Suzuki's hospital bed.

Raiku mustered up an eye-creasing smile. 'Suzuki-san! You're… glowing!'

Suzuki was glowing, yes, but not in the traditionally maternal way. The ominous circles under her dark eyes were even more pronounced, against her glow-in-the-dark paleness. The baby held in her arms glared at Raiku with similar levels of malevolence. A terrifying aura wafted from them both.

Raiku broke into a nervous sweat.

Yamada, who looked far more exhausted than either his wife or newborn-son? Was that a son? Raiku made a note to check, later- gave her a wide, proud smile. 'Isn't she beautiful?'

Raiku cursed internally. She'd messed this up already. 'She is… she looks a lot like you!' she lied.

She could feel Ryuu's gaze slowly sliding over to look at her, no doubt scolding her for her terrible lie. She was a bad liar and he had known this when he'd brought her here.

Yamada didn't seem to notice the deception. "I know!" he beamed. "She has my eyes!" On cue, Suzuki offered up the tiny glowering machine, which promptly grabbed onto Yamada's outstretched hand and twisted. Too weak to do any damage but still possessed of killer instinct at several days old, Raiku noted hysterically, the baby instead chose to munch toothlessly on Yamada's wrist.

"And her mother's tenacity!" he boomed.

Even Ryuu stared at that one.

Suzuki gave Yamada a meaningful look, full of dark threats. Raiku's cheerful demeanour dimmed under the force of the glare he sent them. "Either of you little bastards want to hold her?" he gritted out.

Raiku and Ryuu immediately began spouting hasty denials.

'No!'

'No thank you!'

'I'm not good with babies.'

'I would, but I'm all… crippled.'

'In fact, she should really go back to the ward,' Ryuu interjected.

Raiku instantly forgave him all his previous sins.

He smirked. 'With all the medics fussing over her, though, she'll be back to training in record time.'

Except that one, the filthy traitor.

Raiku eyeballed him with one glowing orb, trying to keep the other on the baby and only succeeding in giving herself a headache.

'Are… you sure?' Suzuki drew out lingeringly. Her 's' sound was particularly long. Ryuu clapped a hand on Raiku's shoulder, so used to the immediate faint shock that he didn't even flinch.

'It was nice to see you again,' he said formally, steering Raiku out.

'Now I kind of want to hold the baby,' Raiku admitted, looking over her shoulder. The tiny menace was pulling on the scars around Yamada's smiling mouth, while Suzuki overlooked the display with a kind of menacing watchfulness.

'No, no you don't. Because then it would explode, and his wife would make us die with her mind.'

Raiku narrowly dodged a nurse. 'That's why I like you, Ryuu. You have such a poetic way with words.'

He snorted, glancing over his shoulder at her. 'Why are you walking so strangely, anyway?'

She blinked, pointing at herself with two fingers that were splinted together.

'No, the other spiky-haired toaster-face. Yes, you.'

'I'm… not?'

Ryuu glared at her. She hated that look. It meant something bad was going to happen to her limbs. And her bones. Her poor, poor bones. They ached when she remembered their electric hurricane of bonding.

'I'm not!'

'Yeah, you are,' he said stubbornly.

'You did almost shatter my knee, remember!?'

'That happened before I got hold of you, remember?' he glowered, tugging her forward and back into her own room. Rock Lee looked up and waved with one hand casually, so used to their antics by now that he just smiled and kept reading… whatever he was reading, Raiku had never been any good at reading upside-down.

'Do not leave this room until I come back with Freckles, got it?' he said firmly, eyeing her from the doorway.

She held up her splinted hands defensively. 'I'm not!'

He glared.

'I'm not!' she repeated, taking a step back.

After a few more minutes of suspicious glaring, he gave Rock Lee a nod of acknowledgement and closed their door harder than was strictly necessary.

There was a short pause.

'Well, man, it's been great!' Raiku began cheerfully, tugging on her sandals from where she'd hidden them under the bed. Rock Lee frowned at her in concern. 'But Gairano-san! You're still injured!'

'Yeah, well!' she beamed, throwing up her hands. 'What can you do? You can leave, that's what you can do, before your teammates harass you into an early grave.' Or notice things they shouldn't, she added mentally, with a scowl her mask hid perfectly. She finished pulling on her shoes, only to stare at her feet for a moment. The inky black Plot moved sluggishly, sending broken, refracted light out from its oily surface. It was clinging to her legs, but she'd been shuddering to feel it on her back since her father had left it with her. Ryuu had noticed because of course Ryuu had noticed. He was the Moderate Hindrance in her very own cautionary tale. The Plot was heavy and it made electricity jump inside her nervously wherever it touched her.

Her chest clenched when even thinking about being normal. She would start glowing erratically and sending sparks along her hair, which she hadn't done since she was a child. It did bad things to her hair dye, made her look like a brindle-back… stick insect.

'…Raiku-san?'

Rock Lee's voice interrupted her sickened reverie. She glanced over her shoulder at him in surprise, ignoring the twinge of pain from her ribs. 'Yeah?'

He was watching her with a gaze surprisingly old. She sometimes forgot, like everybody else, just what Rock Lee's own burdens were; she forgot how hard he'd had to work to get where he was, and how much he'd suffered. 'Rock Lee?' she asked, more quietly, when he failed to respond.

After a few pensive moments, he gave her the same blinding smile he usually put on to face the world. 'Nothing.'

She smiled uncertainly back at him through the window of fabric her face was allowed. 'I'll see you out there soon.'


When she finally got home, her father greeted her the same way he always did when she arrived wheezing, injured and near unconscious.

'Weren't you in hospital?' he asked absently, standing in front of the cupboard and staring into its contents with a serious expression.

'Oh… not for anything serious,' she avoided, trying to sidle towards the hallway while taking her shoes off at the same time.

'…No,' he drew out thoughtfully. 'No, I'm pretty sure it was, when I came to see you.'

The cupboard door was now obscuring his face and, by extension, making it impossible to see her. 'Nurses,' she brushed off with a high-pitched laugh. 'They love to gossip!'

He made a sound of agreement. She relaxed slightly.

Big mistake.

He slammed the cupboard door shut just as she reached the hall, allowing him to get a clear look at her. 'Raiku!'

She shrieked and made a break for the door, her half-removed sandal flapping with each step.

'Get back here!' he yelled from behind her, footsteps thudding through the kitchen just as she broke out into the warm night air.

'I'm not staying there anymore! They poke me with things and I keep getting grabbed by Brooders!' she screamed, leaving sparks in the air behind her. Each deep inhale she took made her chest ache dully.

Given how excruciating it had been a few days earlier, that was an impressive testament to how drugged she apparently was.

'They really gave me the good stuff,' she wheezed, sending pebbles skidding down the incline.

'Raiku!' her father's voice bellowed from the top of the incline to the compound.

She managed to turn a bruising stumble into an agonising roll on the last few feet. 'I love you very much see you tomorrow I'll be at a friend's house!' she got out in a single, unbroken yell.

Almost ten exhausting minutes later, it occurred to Raiku that she had almost no friends. Naturally, this was a bit of a problem, given that she was dressed like a hospital patient and only wearing one shoe.

She took a deep breath and regretted it immediately. She emitted a long, high-pitched sound of pain. 'Ow,' she managed, putting a hand to her ribcage. Her ribs had had enough. No drugs were worth this kind of torture. They were bound and extremely displeased. Even that pressure made her squeak again, trying to inhale as shallowly as possible. She was simply not built for sustained endurance. It just wasn't in her nature. Her fragile, cowardly nature that was taking a real beating and wasn't that just so unfair-

She kicked spitefully at the Plot, oozing its way up her shins, and the self-pity immediately dissipated. Much better. Now, to look at her options.

Ryuu was right out. Daisukenojo? Well, his mother was a medic.

She frowned.

And so just as likely to send her back to hospital. Damnit! Hinata?

She tried to restrain her hysterical laughter, she really did, but even the muffled shaking sent pain rocketing up her spine. When she got light-headed from lack of oxygen, she finally managed to calm herself down.

But seriously now. Sakura? No, she was probably about to lose McBroody, so that wouldn't help anything. Raiku would just get more embroiled and then she might actually end up getting killed to correct the Storyline.

Yamada was at the hospital with his wife (her next choice) and Lee was obviously out of the question. None of Team Nine were her friends; Neji was actually the worst possible choice- short of throwing herself at Naruto and begging to have his babies.

She glared fiercely at the Plot on her leg. It was patting her with a long tendril in what it probably thought was a soothing manner. 'Why can't you do something useful, and get me some help?' she grumbled, hugging her ribs gingerly.

It oozed unhelpfully.

'Of course you can't.'

She slid down against a nearby wall, careful to leave the sight of the street first. It was warm this time of year, even at night, so she could always sleep outside.

And die of infection.

She let her head fall back against the wall in frustration. How was this her life? How was she supposed to get anything right when she had no one to- 'you are being ridiculous!' she snarled, kicking the tenacious Plot off again. It made an unhappy series of vibrations. 'I mean it! Sitting here feeling sorry for myself isn't going to do anything except make me suffer attractively! Which I am physically incapable of doing! Do I look like I can pull off a Grade Four Brood?' she demanded, kicking it away as it tried to slither back. 'You are going to have to work with me a little if we're going to get this right!'

It apparently disagreed, dodging her kick and lunging for her yet again, successfully pressing its unpleasant, connotation-laden weight on her pelvis. She gagged, starting to glow around the edges. Getitoffgetitoffgetitoff-

No! She needed it!

She tried to rein in the electricity starting to shimmer on her skin in waves, but the panic at the Plot's proximity and her rising hysteria only made her failure to make a difference have greater impact. The small side-street began to light up even more intensely, flickering with an eerie blue. In retaliation, the Plot clung more closely to her skin, seeping inside her clothes. She gasped at the overwhelming cold- was this what it was going to feel like? Was this what it felt like to be normal, cold and alone inside her skin with nothing there, with just herself and-

'Toaster!'

Rapidly approaching footsteps pierced through the growing haze in her mind, forcing her to take a shuddering breath. A worried, freckled face peered at her between the dark spots in her oxygen-deprived vision.

'Daisukenojo,' she gasped, trying to stop hyperventilating. Her electric eyes made his colouring appear more blue and purple than its healthy red, but didn't detract from his obvious concern.

'Calm down, you idiot! We've been looking for you all over!'

'I … don't want… to go back,' she forced out between shuddering breaths.

'Fine! Just… stop doing what you're doing!'

She nodded and screwed her eyes shut, trying to center herself. After an agonisingly long time, sitting in silence, the glow began to dim. When it was at a reasonably disguisable level, Daisukenojo put a cautious hand on her shoulder. 'Better?' he asked warily.

She nodded, curling in on herself slightly. 'I've had a bad week.'

He looked visibly relieved. 'No kidding. Come on, you can stay at my house. My mom knows all about it.'

Raiku highly doubted that.

He hovered awkwardly, not sure how to help her up. In the end they settled for a method known as non-interference, where she got up by degrees and with occasional setbacks and he watched in captivated suspense. His careful scrutiny lasted all the way to his street, where he made her stop a few houses away from his.

He hesitated.

Do not be in love with me, Raiku prayed silently.

'When you meet my family,' he began slowly. She sagged in relief that was probably uncharitable. 'Don't, uh…' He rubbed a hand through his almost non-existent hair. 'You should…'

Raiku felt this needed hurrying along. 'I … should…'

'They… They can smell fear. You should, uh, remember that.' He finally settled on.

'They can what? They can smell what?!'

'Daisuke!' an androgynous, high-pitched voice shrieked. Raiku almost physically staggered from the sheer force of the sound. From his front gate, there was a growing gaggle of tiny red-haired people, seemingly growing by the second.

Daisukenojo went redder than usual. 'Sanno! Naomi! Get back inside!'

His cheerfully painted front door swung open, making a rectangle of light spill onto the lawn and struggling pile of siblings. 'Everyone inside! You too, Daisukenojo!'

Raiku immediately found herself obeying the woman who was, without a doubt, Daisukenojo's mother. There was something in the harmonics of her voice that just compelled obedience. When she was near enough to see, the very tall, very red-haired woman set her hands on her hips. She fixed Raiku with an unimpressed, calculating stare.

After a few moments of this scrutiny, Raiku began to fidget helplessly.

'I suppose it's too much to ask that you haven't torn any stitches,' his mother said eventually.

'Oh, you're in trou-ble,' a child sing-songed. Daisukenojo immediately hushed them.

Raiku fidgeted in awkward agony, unused to this level of attention from an adult female.

'Answer me!'

'I don't know!' Raiku instinctively ducked and covered her head with her arms. Fingers seized her sleeve and pulled her inside.

'Don't be such a wimp.'

'Daisukeno~jo,' Raiku whined in a futile plea for assistance. He pretended not to see her past the horde of red children, all gawking at her.

'If you have time to stare, you've got time to get ready for bed!'

It was magical. The children immediately vanished, as though by teleportation.

Less wondrously, so did Daisukenojo. Raiku blanched.

His mother turned back to look at her in the better light, a gleam in her dark eyes. 'Now, where shall I start?'

Raiku whimpered.


A/N: So! Yeah! That, uh, happened. It's kind of hard getting back into character, so feel free to tell me where I've eaten your dreams. Writing Raiku trying to escape drama while simultaneously being EATEN by drama is also tricky, so concrit welcome!

And at last. What you've been waiting for after what else you were primarily waiting for: review responses. I know that I have rightfully lost readerships, but if you're still around, HERE IS YOUR HARD-EARNED REWARD.

Reviews:

Dureth: Heeeey. Long time no, uh, read. Yeah, it's quite sad. Like Raiku observed, she can't really do the 'beautifully sad' thing, though, so it never sticks for long. And I updated! Eventually! Please don't stab my interweb.

Kai-Chan94: We all feel bad for Raiku. If we have souls. So I don't, but you are a good person! Yay! Yeah, she got too involved and now she must Suffer. You've read the story, so you know what mid-sentence capitalisation means.

heavens-gaze: I hope you're proud of yourself. I actually almost choked to death on my own laughter when I read your pairing recommendation. You are a horrible, hilarious person for putting that in my head. Also: I AM SO SORRY. For making you read a Naruto fic then basically abandoning you. Sorry!

Parrot Post: Good idea, but Raiku will never stop comparing Neji to a girl. Despite his wonderful jawline. It's envy-based, really, his hair is so much nicer than hers could ever be. Don't join the mob! I had reasons! REASONS I SAY! The story is never on hiatus. I always want to write but... things.

srooone: Well. This is awkward. BUT I DID UPDATE! Again! Uh, sorry.

phobia97: Raiku would love to kick butt, but then she would get PTSD, and then her father would actually eat her. As in, physically devour her, as an example to everyone else.

Skwiziks: BLINKIN. BLINKIN I AM SORRY!I always love your reviews, but your review-pology is now guilting me to death. If you're reading this, you are made of awesome. Thank you for your feedback- I try to write as honestly as possible, but I anticipate pitfalls now that the story is actually being attacked by a Plot in the most awkwardly meta way possible. Your google-fu will hopefully not fail you. I am still writing. For a long time, I just... couldn't.

Buziwuzi: A year is NOTHING. I APPARENTLY HAVE THE PATIENCE OF A PROCRASTI-GOD. Thank you, I try to keep her development smooth. And cowardly.

Guest: WISH APPARENTLY GRANTED! A-ha!

blackcheerynuke: And I friggin' love you guys.

tazdevil: They did. I didn't deserve new reviews, but occasional inbox reminders stabbed my little writer heart. As we all know, writer's hearts are small and twisted, but man. The guilt. I do continue, I just... for a while, just didn't.

myharlequinromance321: Thank you. I am back. Clinging with my talons.

Thank you all for reviewing!