Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: AND AGAIN! BAM! That's right. This is still happening.

Don't own anything but Raiku and the other originals, am not profiting.


Raiku's father had been understandably surprised, given their recent emotional distance, when she got home and immediately honed in on him for one of their rare and careful hugs.

'What is this…?' he'd asked, staring down at the damp limpet wrapped around his torso.

'Sometimes I really just appreciate you,' Raiku answered, creasing her eyes up at him with great affection.

He had taken this in for a moment, eyes narrowed and brain working furiously, trying to fit the umbrella and her sudden warmth together, and come up short.

He'd cleared his throat. 'Well.' He may have been panicking slightly, since he had never anticipated having to have a deep and meaningful with his very own lightbulb and was woefully underprepared for this kind of pressure. '… Good talk, son.' He'd given her a brisk, manly pat on the back and then fled, probably to read some of their available literature on parenting.

Raiku counted it a success, right up until she woke the next morning.

She entered the waking world like she did every day- by jerking bolt upright and crying 'Aha!' to her empty room. One day, she knew it would pay off, because Ryuu would have come to murder her in her sleep and she would look like she'd seen it coming, staving off her execution for at least as long as it took him to figure it out.

This morning ritual done, she sprang out of bed, feeling immeasurably cheered by the grey light coming in through her window, the sound of the pouring rain steadily coming down on their well-insulated roof and the faint smell of wet earth, which she breathed in happily.

This.

This was the problem.

This was the reason why the hours of six am to ten am were banned in the compound, just shoved into one large time period called Morning.

'Good morning, dad!' Raiku chirped as she padded into the kitchen, humming slightly both under her breath and electrically, creating a tiny and unsettling harmony with herself.

He hummed back from behind his newspaper, which he had used to shield himself from her enthusiasm every morning since she'd exploded into the world, with the exception of special occasions and days when he had to yell at or be proud of her.

Raiku was a Morning Person.

That wasn't capitalised because it was of any use to the Genematrix- it wasn't even capitalised because it was Plot relevant. It was capitalised to every Gairano because it universally disgusted them, as each of them felt the world had brought morning upon them out of spite every day since they'd rolled into it. And maybe it was because, to Raiku, recharging her batteries meant her batteries actually achieved charge, but she loved mornings. They were what happened before the rest of her day, which was almost always horrifying.

But…

She frowned and peered at her father's newspaper from around the kitchen cupboard, other hand fishing blindly for a box of cereal.

His morning hum had been slightly higher pitch than usual.

'Dad…?' she asked cautiously, retrieving the box and starting to eat cereal by the handful, each crunch soothing her suddenly piqued nerves.

He made a questioning hum that sounded sort of strangled.

She absently swung the leg she'd injured in the Sand invasion, gleefully able to do so without pain after so many weeks of intensive healing. 'Is… there something you wanted to talk to me about?'

His hands tightened on the newspaper.

The occasional crunch of cereal was the only sound in the kitchen for several long moments until he carefully folded the newspaper and set it on the table.

Raiku stared at him.

He folded his hands on top of his newspaper.

'Raiku,' he began, looking every inch as uncomfortable as she felt. 'After yesterday, I got to thinking.'

He winced.

'I think we should talk.'

Raiku's face suddenly looked hunted. 'What, why?'

'About… how things are going with you.'

He cleared his throat.

'Emotionally.'

Raiku's expression melted into one of horror. Her fingers went through the cardboard of the cereal box on a horrified spasm. He raised his own hand to stop whatever she could have said. 'I know. I know. I don't like this any more than you do, but it's something we have to do for your emotional wellbeing.'

She carefully set the box down, remembering how she'd gotten out of a similar situation recently. He glared. 'Raiku,' he said warningly, clearly also vividly remembering how this had gone the first night she'd gotten back from hospital.

She edged back, newly healed legs tensing for running. He slowly rose from his chair, hands braced on the table.

'I…' she began in very slow tones. 'Have… to go…'

'Yes…?'

'Literally anywhere else!' she cried, smacking the cereal box off the counter and directly at him, lunging for the door so fast the boards burnt and warped under her feet.

'Not again! IT'S RAINING!' she heard a yell from behind when she hesitated over whether she needed shoes or not. No! There was no time for shoes!

She slammed through the door, not built for that kind of impact and too slow to open and felt fingers graze over the shirt on her back briefly before her father was probably slowed down by the wood flying everywhere. The rain immediately starting reacting upon impact with her skin, but the rush of cold and wet did nothing to slow her suddenly luminous escape.

'Raiku! Get back here!'

She vaulted over one of her aunts with a babbled apology, using her poor relatives to slow her father down. 'Why do we keep doing this!?'

'Get back here so we can talk about your feelings!'

'I'd rather die!' she shrieked back defiantly, feet stinging on the wet gravel she'd launched herself onto to get down the incline to the compound, equal parts skidding and jumping her way down. She managed a more graceful dismount this time, since she had no broken ribs to demand that she roll over and die with a supporting motion from her knee, landing on both feet and only staggering a little bit in the puddle that accepted the violent charge from her wet feet greedily and lit up.

'"Feelings",' she echoed to herself with amusement, sticking her hands into her pockets and setting off at a bouncing jog, feeling rather smug about how that had gone down and also incredibly energised in the effective conductor of the rainwater.

There was a noise like earth moving audible over the sound of the rain.

'Raiku!'

Adrenaline flooded her system again. She turned to see her father jumping out onto the slope as well, significantly more gracefully than she had.

Right. He was a Jounin and not physically bound to their property, she remembered, before realising that he was getting very close very quickly and taking off again with a violent flare of electricity. The outer houses of Konoha flashed by in a blur- she'd found that her perception sped up to match her increased movement the more she used her ability, but it was still dangerous because the rain was hitting her eyes really hard and obscuring her vision and STREETLIGHT

She skidded around it at the last minute in a violent spray of water, still feeling her father's presence. Getting further behind, but still present.

There was only one thing to do.

It was unacceptable. It was wrong. It was the most distasteful thing she could possibly think of and the only thing that might work. But could she do it? Could she really go against her morals yes of course she could she refused to have a deep and meaningful with her dad after last time.

Raiku changed course, and headed at a blinding speed towards the forbidden part of town. Literally blinding, since she was moving through the air as a white-blue electric beacon, but fortunately, the neighbourhood closest to the Gairano compound had long gotten used to what they had been told were familial lightning techniques, ever since the unexpected sun shower on Raiku's sixth birthday had made hiding her condition altogether… impossible.

All she had to do was get there before her dad tricked her into falling over or she slipped in a puddle.


After a hard night and morning of training, there was only one thing to do. Uzumaki Naruto stretched his arms over his head with a sigh of satisfaction, feeling the sore muscles in his arms and back ache in a well-earned way, the rest of him still moving on autopilot towards Ichiraku Ramen.

'I can't believe we're doing this again,' Sakura sighed from next to him, looking dirtier but much more composed under her green umbrella. She'd refused to share it with him, but he knew she'd come around eventually. 'Couldn't we go somewhere else?'

She caught him smiling at her goofily and glared suspiciously, so he just widened his smile even further. 'But they've got the best food, Sakura! You know they do!'

She sighed. 'I don't even really like ramen,' she grumbled discontentedly, but he knew that was a cruel lie that she was only saying because she was really tired, so he didn't pay it any mind.

As they got closer to Ichiraku, Sakura seemed to perk up a bit. 'Hey. Hey, do you think that's Gairano?' she asked, drawing closer to nudge him in the ribs. This brought her umbrella close enough to protect half of his already drenched head, so Naruto counted it as a win. He squinted, bringing his hand up to shelter his eyes from the rain.

'…No, looks like a crazy homeless guy,' he denied.

Whoever it was certainly did. They were wrapped in what looked like a group of towels, almost entirely obscured from view and getting really weird looks from the other people there, which- Naruto perked up as well- meant there were all these free seats around them! Score!

Sakura frowned further. 'No…' she drew out. 'I think it is. Look at the hair.'

Yeah, there was some white hair escaping from the top towel, sticking out in all directions.

'It could be an old crazy homeless guy.'

Sakura conceded that point. 'True.'

But as they got closer, it became evident that it was actually her. The towels only allowed a sliver of her face to be seen, but that was all anyone ever saw anyway, so it was still distinctly the skinny Gairano. She seemed to sense their approach, turning and waving one be-towelled arm at them when they were about ten metres away, her bright eyes visibly creasing even from that distance. 'Hey!'

'Don't you dare screw this up again,' Sakura hissed to Naruto, before raising her own voice to greet her back. 'Hi, Raiku!'

'Yo!' Naruto added, breaking into a light jog. He'd never really gotten why Sakura had suddenly developed an interest in Raiku- she was weird, yeah, but so were all the other genin. Maybe it was because Ino and Sakura were only sort of friends and Hinata was really shy? There were other girl genin, but Raiku had been the only one who didn't seem to be in love with… the bastard. No, wait, Hinata wasn't either maybe? Raiku wasn't threatening. Maybe that was it. Not the bastard thing.

Naruto stopped thinking about Sasuke deliberately. Nope! He was here for ramen. The lanky girl's answering wave seemed to twitch slightly, but her eyes were still creased into her usual smile when he reached her.

'He-ey… Uzu…Uzumaki!'

So her voice was weird and she couldn't talk to people. She was still one of their fellow Genin, and she'd been really nice last time! Naruto grinned at her. 'Felt like some ramen?'

'That's a trick question,' Sakura filled in before Raiku could answer, folding her umbrella up neatly. 'He thinks everyone does. All the time.'

She knew him so well.

A muffled, slightly odd-sounding laugh came from under the towel on the taller girl's face. 'Absolutely.'

'What's with all the towels? You look like a hobo- ow!' Naruto yelped when Sakura cut him off with a smack to the ear.

Raiku just laughed again, a little less strained. 'Yes! Yes, I… did. Feel like ramen. That is what I felt like and is the only reason I came here.'

Naruto shook his head, sliding onto the stool next to her. She only recoiled a little bit, so that was also a win. He was on fire today! 'Us too!' He rubbed his hands together. 'Let's eat! You gonna hang out with us?'

'Yes. I am. Mmhmm.'


Raiku could feel her father's smouldering resentment from where he was hiding on the other side of town, but screw him, she had won this!

That was why her terror and overpowering urge to run away from Naruto was tinged with smugness. He hadn't stopped talking since he'd sat down, but he seemed to be talking to both her and the owner of Ichiraku, so she didn't feel so bad for mainly listening to what Sakura was saying instead. The Plot on her shoulder had slunk down to say hi to the black colossus that followed Naruto around. She tried not to look at his- the more she looked at it, the more she would realise that it was only slightly visible, the rest of it shifting over the landscape as far as the eye could see, undetectable until you looked for it. She twitched at even the thought, which Naruto didn't seem to find unusual.

Much to her surprise, she was…

She shook her head and discreetly ate some more, yanking her towel back up just in time for Sakura to miss it.

She was…

Naruto burst out laughing at nothing she could really identify, hitting the counter for emphasis.

She was actually kind of having fun.

'Idiot! We can barely hear ourselves think!' Sakura scolded from Raiku's right. 'We're trying to have a conversation!'

Naruto shook his head with a snicker but did lower the volume a little, leaving Sakura to re-engage. 'So, why are you wearing so many towels?'

'I have a deathly fear of contracting pneumonia,' Raiku answered promptly. That was a lie. She'd never been sick even once. But it sounded crazy enough to be true.

Sakura narrowed her vividly green eyes. 'So you just… brought them with you?'

Raiku laughed. 'Oh, oh no. That would be silly. No, I stole these,' she added in a mutter. 'But! Enough about my perfectly reasonable precautions, how are you?'

Sakura smiled back a little lopsidedly. 'We've been doing okay with… everything.'

Raiku was master at reading Plot subtext, and Sakura's silence spoke volumes. So much about how Sasuke's defection had hurt them, had damaged their team and the two of them personally. But she was also very socially awkward, so she went for the safe route.

She tragically stumbled on the first and only hurdle. 'I knew you guys would be. You're such a good team. Duo. Oh god, I'm terrible.' She hid her face in her hands. Fortunately, she heard Sakura laugh at her expense, and peered out through her fingers. The pink-haired girl was smiling at her.

'Thanks. Your team seems pretty close-'

'Ha!'

It had come out before she could stop it, so Raiku gracefully covered the accidental outburst by turning bright red and letting every thought she had come out in a rush. 'My team is totally insane, Ryuu even tried to murder Daisukenojo and Daisukenojo would do the same in a heartbeat. Plus, I'm pretty sure that if we were on a deserted island, they would eat me first, given opportunity. Even,' she added, fixing Sakura with an intense look. 'If we had supplies.'

Sakura laughed into her ramen, apparently not taking her seriously. 'No,' Raiku persisted. 'I'm serious. They would be all "hey, guy, I think that Raiku is a liability and also looks funny. We should kill and eat her". And then the other would go "sounds like a plan, we should save those supplies for when we really need them". That would be it; that would be me over with.'

'Oh, come on. I'm sure they'd eat the supplies first.'

'Ha! You agreed that they would eat me!' Raiku crowed. 'You have validated my position!'

'What are you guys even talking about!?' Naruto interrupted, leaning over so far he almost fell onto Raiku's lap. 'Who's eating someone?'

'Naruto, you idiot, get back on your seat!'

'I'm not doing anything!'

'Naruto!'

Raiku smiled a little awkwardly to herself, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth to stave off a panic attack at his proximity, but still surprisingly less traumatised by the situation than she thought she would be. She even had the opportunity to eat some of her ramen while they were bickering, which was surprisingly delicious.

Though, that may just have been the thrill of the forbidden. She wasn't going to dwell on it.

Technically, she told herself firmly, this was allowed. Her own little Plot was inevitably going to tie into Naruto's, so until it was over, she was allowed to be here. Nay, encouraged!

Not encouraged, she admitted to her ramen silently where it sat and judged her. But definitely allowed. And he was really nice! Sure, this had coincided with her running away from her father, but that was also really handy.

Feeling better about the whole situation, she was so absorbed in her thought patterns and not letting Naruto's flailing gesticulations pull down any of her towels that she almost instinctively crushed the Plot when it gave her right leg a sudden, vicious yank. She had to go.

'I have to go,' she said, not really fully understanding why. 'I've gotta go meet my teammates.'

She frowned at herself slightly. No she didn't. Did she?

'Oh. Well, we should do this again sometime,' Sakura said, giving her a slightly hesitant smile and nudging her a little. 'It was good seeing you.'

Naruto put in his two cents as well. 'Yeah! You can treat me, next time!'

She nodded and shot them an eye-creasing smile, sliding off her stool and grabbing someone else's umbrella when she noticed there was a plastic one up for grabs. Sure, it wasn't her property, but as long as she got away clean, no one had to know that.

Raiku unfolded it and set off, turning a few feet away to wave at the two of them again, before setting off in a random direction. Her feet, wrapped in makeshift coverings torn out of stolen towels, took her through the downtown district in what she recognised as the most winding possible path to Ryuu's house. She caught glimpses of her Plot sliding on the ground under the water, leading her somewhere, but tried her best not to think about its sudden burst of activity. She was lucky that the streets were full of people going as fast as they could so they could stay out of the rain, since she was attracting a few weird stares.

One in particular seemed to stay on her when she stopped and waited for a group of young men to transport several large crates across the road in front of her. It made a sense that had everything to do with being a shinobi in training and for once, nothing to do with being a Gairano, twigged in the back of her mind.

Nonchalantly, she looked around, making it seem like she was just a little impatient with the progress the movers were making. She could only see wrapped up people hurrying around with umbrellas from where she stood- turning all the way around to face the stare she could feel would be too obvious. She took an absent step forward and collided with one of the young men, who immediately yelled in indignation and dropped a few smaller boxes, giving her the opportunity to hastily apologise and awkwardly stoop to help him pick them up.

Glancing around when she'd made the chance to turn showed her… no one.

Maybe she was getting paranoid? The feeling of being watched had abated slightly, so maybe she was mistaking guilt for surveillance.

Raiku frowned to herself and apologised again, side-stepping around to keep going towards Ryuu's. It was only a few streets away, now, but she was starting to feel twitchy… and not just because she was wet enough to conduct constantly. She actually found that invigorating. She felt herself speeding up slightly to try and outrun what she knew was nothing behind her, telling herself sternly that there was nothing to be worried about and that even if there was, she could just make them explode.

Oh god. Her heart started racing. What if Neji had gotten so mad he'd told his family? No. No. Neji hated his family and he'd agreed to keep it a secret. He wouldn't go back on that. She knew that. Intellectually.

No, more likely it was her dad, or the morning had just been stressful thus far. She frowned again, watching the Plot slide along in front. No, it wouldn't pull her towards or away from her father- it couldn't even see him.

She forced herself to look up again. It was nothing. She was being really stupid because she was having a reaction to being around Naruto, and all her Gairano senses were going haywire.

Even having said that, she felt a lot better when she splashed across the street and saw Ryuu's house down the way. Ryuu may have been aggressive and possibly an actual sadist, but he was very good at dispelling fears. Mostly by replacing them with himself, but he was very easy to focus on, so it worked out really well.

As she got closer, the feeling of being watched returned. That would just be Ryuu, though, watching to make sure she didn't talk to his mother. It was something he was weirdly and violently against, for some reason. The last time she'd tried to exchange pleasantries with the exceptionally friendly woman, he had actually tackled her to the floor and then dragged her twitching body outside, where he had rolled her along the street to the training ground.

She winced at the memory.

There had been stairs in the way.

But a few houses away, she started slowing down, grip tightening on her little plastic umbrella. There was someone standing across the road and a house down from Ryuu's place, just… standing there. In the rain. Looking up, at what she was pretty sure was Ryuu's window on the side of his house, Raiku having climbed through it about a thousand times to harass him. It was pretty early on in Ryuu's life for people to be staring wistfully through the rain at his window, regardless of how pretty people were saying he was, but it did seem that his was the one they were watching.

She couldn't tell if it was a man or woman from the silhouette, they were so heavily covered in fabric, but they looked towards her and then started walking in the opposite direction as she approached, rounding a corner before she even got close enough to pass through Ryuu's front gate.

Something squirmed around in her gut that felt suspiciously like concern. Not fear, because she knew what that felt like, but…

The Plot had stopped pulling her, which meant she'd done what she was supposed to, and this definitely had been dramatic timing. She definitely didn't like that. It was one thing for the damn thing to ruin her life, but her teammates had their own, and she had no right to interfere with that, or to endanger anyone else. But she couldn't really stop it, could she? Plots were never about just one person, and Ryuu and Daisukenojo were the people she was the most heavily involved with outside her family.

Insides wracked with turmoil, she scaled the side of the house and let herself in through his window.

Ryuu didn't even glance at her, towelling his dark grey hair dry with tanned hands. 'Toaster.'

'Hey,' she greeted, deeply relieved that she hadn't come in while he was getting dressed.

When he pulled the towel down around his neck, she observed that his half-dry hair was messy in a way that only made his sharp features appear even more distinct and good looking. That was a bad sign. No one looked attractive after towel-drying their hair, it made normal people looked flushed and bedraggled. Maybe his Drama Ranking had been higher than she thought?

He looked at her for a moment with those strange yellow eyes before he spoke. 'You look terrible.'

She winced. 'Yeah... I know.'

He seemed to feel that was his daily quota for small-talk achieved, and resumed drying his hair for a moment. 'Did you see someone watching the house, before you came in?' he asked eventually, settling into his desk chair and tossing her a spare pair of shoes from the drawer he'd started keeping with spare emergency clothing for her.

Raiku caught them automatically and sat on the end of his bed to put them on, pulling off towels in the process. 'I thought I might have, but they were already walking away before I could tell.'

Halfway through pulling her left sandal on, she looked back up reluctantly. '... Why?'

Ryuu, for once, didn't meet her gaze for very long. '… I just felt something was off. It was probably nothing.'

Raiku didn't know how, but she knew instinctively that he was lying to her. She could really say anything, though- she lied all the time. Maybe it was something personal, or maybe it was something about his family that was none of her business. So she shrugged it off, trying deliberately not to remember how she had thought, for a second, through the rain and even over that kind of distance, how that person's eyes had been a funny colour- a brown that was almost yellow.

'So,' she asked brightly, instead of dwelling on it. 'When I am going to meet your mother?'


A/N: And there it was! I was really worried about this chapter, but also excited, because Ryuu was ALWAYS GOING TO BE TROUBLE. I'm just... I'm so glad to write something that's not her fault (possibly). And she even hung out with Naruto! Willingly, and without crying.

Reviews:

1412 karasu: I know, right? I'm gratified you feel so strongly about it, so stay tuned! Thanks for the review.

Memory25: Thanks for reviewing, and also for the concrit! I'm really glad you like it, and also that I'm trusted to steer this enormous story without it being confiscated for my own safety. So help me.

Fluehatraya: Yes, yes it did, and your persistence has paid off! I HAVE NOT ABANDONED RAIKU, largely because I created her and I feel so terrible whenever I leave her stuck somewhere awful. Like she is ... most of the time. Thank you for the comments on the action scenes, because I was very new at them and this fic was my main practice for them. I'm glad you liked them! Also thanks for your concern, but they're very minor. I'm fine, just not able to d my usual crazy shit. Thanks for the review!

White Ivy: Thank you for your reviews! I'm glad you're liking it so far!