Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: And a third!

Don't own, won't profit.


When their team finally met again, Daisukenojo and Yamada having finally settled their differences, Raiku noticed that Yamada was in a much better mood than usual. A quick glance over at Daisukenojo made it pretty clear why: he was scowling and also had what looked like gravel rash all down the side of his face and neck, disappearing down his shirt. She hadn't noticed it at first because of his angry covering of freckles camouflaging it, but it bore the clear mark of Yamada's special blend of training and vengeance. When he caught her looking at it he glared fiercely, but the combination of the freckles and the fact he was still slightly shorter than her just made it endearing, rather than threatening. From the way the glare worsened when she tried and failed to hide her grin, he knew exactly what he was thinking.

"Alright, ladies!" Yamada boomed, arms folded across his gargantuan chest, feet set apart and the entirety of him looking ready to carry all of them and Konoha itself around if he had to. The sun shone down on him cheerfully, like it was egging him on, the unhelpful little shit. "We've been specially requested for a B-rank, get me?!"

'Requested?' Ryuu echoed, folding his own arms across his much leaner body with an air of suspicion. 'We're genin- who in their right mind would request us?'

Yamada's scarred lips creased into a smirk. Raiku grimaced slightly in automatic response. Yamada's happiness was never a good thing for them. He still sometimes walked Cerberus past their house, whistling, knowing that the sight of that dog even a year on made them shudder.

"It's an old friend, from last time! Apparently she thought your piss-poor performance was hilarious enough to warrant an encore, get me?!"

Raiku cottoned on before the other two, hanging her head with a groan. Last time, Yamada had teamed up with her to make fun of Raiku with an unholy glee that she remembered vividly.

"Ichitaka! We're taking her back to Sand, easy-peasy. Again. A little bit repetitive, but this time she's in a group."

'Is that why it's B, when last time it was C-rank?' Ryuu pressed. Yamada didn't smile when he answered this time, which made all three of them straighten slightly in response.

"No. It's because of hostile activity between here and there. We'll need to be careful, but I think you're all ready for this." He was still speaking seriously, his flinty eyes scanning over each of them in turn, checking for anxiety or, in Raiku's case, unusually frequent twitching. Ryuu's lean body was relaxed as ever, and he realised that the little bastard was now a centimetre or two taller than Speedy, who had historically been the tallest. He double-checked Shorty, but thankfully, he hadn't shot up while Yamada hadn't been paying attention. Quite a bit bulkier than the other two, though, probably because Yamada's physical training regimen was based heavily on revenge and they argued the most.

"This could all go wrong. But you're gonna trust in each other, and trust in my judgement, and I say you can do it. You almost made Chuunin, and Chuunin could do this with their eyes closed."

Raiku took a long, slow breath in, closing her eyes for a moment to feel the light breeze rifling through her hair, the early morning sun on her face and shoulders, calming her instinctive urge to run away screaming, giving it some serious thought. She did want to be a shinobi, she told herself firmly. She did want to be one, and her father had said that the Plot she'd been given meant she couldn't be one afterwards... So all she could really do was to keep doing what she was doing, and doing the best she could. She didn't know how long this would take to play out, so she didn't know if she could waste time being afraid.

'No problem,' she said firmly, surprising everyone there. This would be fine. This could be exactly what she needed! Time to get out of the village for a bit. Get some perspective. Time to untangle herself from her family long enough to really think about her situation and get back to being Raiku, the Raiku who wasn't angsty, who was emotionally stable and who could keep grinning and bearing it.

Steeled with this new resolve, she even refrained from fleeing from the intense scrutiny of the three people around her. The training field they were in was only just recovering from her last little adventure, some part of the long, largely green grass still blackened or just gone entirely.

'... What the hell,' Daisukenojo said after a moment, turning from looking at her to look back at Yamada. 'If she's not freaking out, how scary can it be?'

She felt Ryuu's steady, narrow gaze rest on her for a moment longer before he, too, looked at their teacher. 'Let's do it.'

Yamada appeared to suffer a moment of emotion perilously close to pride, the deep scars around his lips creasing a little as he struggled to hold it in, nodding. "We're meeting them at the main gate, picking up our travel supplies at the same time. Everyone good for your general stock?"

When this question was met with general affirmation, he jerked his head towards the path out of the training grounds, the bridge they would take to leave. "Let's head out then."

They fell into place easily in a group behind his lead, Daisukenojo slinging an arm around Raiku's shoulders, to her great surprise. 'So, that was weird,' he said without delay. She shrugged and creased her eyes at him cheerfully.

'Well, we did do pretty well as a team in the exams, and during the invasion. I think we can do it!'

He shook his head to himself. 'You're pretty confident, for once.'

'That means we're all gonna die,' Ryuu sighed theatrically, casting his eyes heavenward and stepping up onto the bridge at the same time, a manoeuvre that Raiku would have fallen on her face during, since she had trouble looking up and walking when she also had to monitor a social interaction of any kind. She swatted at him daringly, which he bore without complaint, to her great surprise, yet again. She shrugged Daisukenojo's arm off her shoulders so she had room enough to put her hands in her pockets, feeling uncharacteristically at ease. Maybe it was the fact it was early in the morning, or maybe it was the fact she loved bridges over busy rivers and the sound of rushing water that had been conquered by man, the stupid smug liquid finally taking a hit to technology, but she felt good about this.

She trod particularly hard on the last bit of the bridge, feeling her usual surge of smugness at the river's expense, which her teammates were used to enough that they didn't comment on.

'... You think she'll recognise us?'

'Why do you constantly feel the need to become infatuated with women who are way out of your tiny league?' Ryuu sighed. Daisukenojo flushed with outrage.

'It's not like that, it's just been ages!'

A pause.

'Wait, what do you mean, "tiny"?! You asshole!'

Raiku took a nimble skip ahead to draw level with Yamada, rather than getting caught in the perfect storm that was Ryuu's snide comments and Daisukenojo's inferiority complex.

"Hey there, Speedy."

'Yo.'

Yamada fixed her with a horrible glower that she was completely unprepared for. "Don't you start saying that. You look enough like the goddamn copy-nin already, there's no need to starting talking like him, get me?'

'Got it, got it,' she replied quickly. After a few minutes of walking in a surprisingly comfortable silence, she finally mustered up the courage to ask what she'd wanted to since the mysterious person she'd seen a few days earlier, using her teammates' argument to make sure Ryuu didn't hear them. 'Yamada-sensei...'

She hesitated, but she had his full attention now, so the only way forward was through. 'Do you think that Ryuu... Has been acting a little weird?'

Yamada eyed her side-on. "... In what way?" This could be bad. The last thing that he wanted was an internal conflict on a mission they hadn't even grazed the level of before.

She shifted a little uneasily. 'I just.. I don't know, he just... I think he's worried about something. And I think someone was watching his house, on Tuesday.'

This made Yamada fall into a long silence. "How sure are you?" he asked at last.

She shook her head helplessly, so he put a hand on her shoulder, marvelling at how narrow it was. She really was a skinny little thing. "Leave it with me, Speedy. I'll look into it."

Fears addressed, Raiku felt herself relax again, a weight she hadn't been entirely aware of lifting from her shoulders. Or maybe that was just Yamada's hand moving, letting her spine fully straighten again.

"And cut your damn hair. You look like an ancient porcupine." Raiku yelped and clasped the sides of her head, using her black-clad spidery fingers to tamp down her spikes protectively. Yamada snickered and sauntered ahead with his hands in his pockets, whistling to himself.

Raiku was still silently resenting him from behind when they approached the gate, Ryuu and Daisukenojo mercifully postponing their argument from the moment they came into the visual range of the party they'd be leaving with. Ichitaka was as perfectly beautiful as Raiku remembered, her white-blonde hair and sultry, dark-rimmed eyes unforgettable even after the year they'd had. She was dressed as a shinobi, in serviceable, flexible but reasonably tight clothing, pulling off the browns and mesh in a way that made Raiku envious in some well-smothered, feminine part of her brain. Raiku took the opportunity afforded her and the others by Yamada and Ichitaka exchanging pleasantries and some preliminary information, sinking back to stand with her team and observe the group they'd be travelling with.

Ichitaka was obviously the leader, her forehead protector around her slender neck matching those arranged on the three younger people she was with- obviously either genin or newly-made Chuunin. They were glaring at Team Yamada; the alliance with Sand was very, very new, and there was still a lot of tension between the two villages. Their alliance had been made, after all, after a devastating loss on Sand's part after Orochimaru's apparent betrayal, or so Raiku had heard, so things were... Tense. To say the least.

'We're basically ambassadors,' Ryuu muttered into her ear on her left. 'There are a lot of goodwill missions going on, to try and dispel tension.'

'The short one looks like a real asshole,' Daisukenojo contributed less helpfully on her right, with a total lack of self-awareness that made her smile under the safety of her mask. The three other genin were either their age or a little older, with her money on older, and the three of them were male. The two taller ones appeared to be twins, light-skinned and eerily identical in both face and dress, with short, dark-brown hair and hazel eyes. They could have been attractive, Raiku supposed, though people with lean, runner's builds like Ryuu tended to remind her of, well, Ryuu, which ruined the effect somewhat. They were sending them equally assessing looks, if not the vile glare of the shortest member. He would have been roughly Raiku's height, so she wasn't sure where Daisukenojo got off calling him short. His skin was a lot darker and patterned with vertically symmetrical yellow lines, even stretching up to his face and lining his dark, dark eyes. His hair practically matched the decoration in a distinctive blond, and ... Yes, yes, he was now giving Raiku a once-over. She cringed a little, but tried to keep standing up straight. She withstood Ryuu, she could withstand this short bastard.

She reflected on what the other team were probably seeing as they scanned them in return; Daisukenojo, whose hair was so red it was offensive, the rest of him just one reasonably muscular freckle from his hairline down to the ground, not that that was very far. His clothes were simple and mostly light colours, he didn't seem to have any special weapons. Probably not very intimidating, she thought guiltily. Next, Raiku, who was too tall for a girl her age (if they could even tell she was a girl) and topped with a fitting shock of pure white hair, the rest of her narrow form covered entirely in close-fitting dark blue and black, her only visible skin around her electric blue eyes. Not very scary either, but ideally, they would take her protective measures as signs of intensity or secrecy, and think that she was stronger than she was.

Then, Ryuu, the only one of them who really looked like a shinobi, with his handsome face just on the side of too sharp, slightly predatory right down to his facial structure and the rest of him just as lean, his tanned skin and cat-like eyes. His effortlessly pushed back grey hair. Raiku had managed to cut it or ruin it almost every month, but it never really took. It unsettled her, deep inside, and only partially from jealousy.

'They all seem pretty sure Daisukenojo's the weakest,' Ryuu added, when their gazes seemed to hone in on their own shortest member, just as Raiku had guessed. Daisukenojo growled as discreetly as he could manage, but it appeared that their respective leaders seemed to feel their judgemental time had been used up and stood in the middle of the six of them.

"Team Yamada, meet Team Ichitaka." Yamada gestured from them to the others. "From right to left, these are mine: Hatori Daisukenojo, Gairano Raiku, Ryuusuke."

'What's his full name?' Little Guy asked suspiciously, crossing his arms.

"It's just his first name, get over it."

Ichitaka indicated her own group a little more gracefully. 'This is Konishi Iwao,' the littlest one glared at them, 'and Kano Akihiro and Akihito.'

'Well, I bet that gets confusing!' Raiku improvised on an awkward laugh that just trailed off when all four Sand-nin stared at her blankly.

'No. It doesn't.' the leftmost twin said (Akihito? Oh god, she was already getting this so wrong).

'Ichitaka-san, we were under the impression that you were a civilian,' Ryuu said with as much respect as he could muster without hating himself.

Ichitaka inclined her glorious head. 'When I last visited Konoha, I was visiting as a private citizen, not as a visiting shinobi.'

'You were a spy.'

Dead silence.

Yamada looked torn between pride at Ryuu's obviously powerful skills of deduction and the desire to make him run laps until he vomited.

Ichitaka didn't seem bothered. 'Well done.' She looked at Yamada. 'Shall we go?'

Raiku turned her gaze heavenward to ask the gods for the strength to get through this without losing her mind. On the way down, her gaze caught one of the shinobi in the gate-attached watchtower closest to them, making her do a dismayed double-take.

A jounin with bandages stretching across his nose sent her a needlessly conspicuous wave and a wink that could have been seen from outer space. She gaped for a moment in silent horror, then glared as fiercely as she could. When he utterly failed to be intimidated, she grumbled under her breath and looked determinedly at the ground, deciding to just ignore him until one of them died.

How rapidly her day had gone downhill, she lamented privately.

Yamada gestured. "Ryuu. Grab one of the others and scout ahead. We're setting out."

'Akihiro.'

At Ichitaka's word, the twin on the left detached (damnit, she had been wrong!) and joined Ryuu, whose face bore a totally blank expression, the two quickly vanishing ahead. Yamada looked at Raiku, who jerked to attention right away. "Raiku, you watch our backs."

It was so wrong for Yamada to be using their real names. It spoke of a greater disharmony in the universe. Raiku waited with resignation for her death sentence. Ichitaka was very prompt to provide it, just nodding at Iwao, who walked over to join the masked girl with a sneer.

Great, the small fry. Why couldn't it have been the other twin, for the sake of conceptual symmetry?

They stood and waited for the other four to get far enough ahead, Raiku taking the opportunity to take in the sight of her village behind them, its high walls stretching up amongst the trees, Hokage mountain in the distance, the sun shining down on its cheerfully well-kept buildings in between.

When she felt she had enough material for her Romanticism quota, she decided to make impromptu, friendly conversation. But how to proceed? They'd already greeted each other, and he clearly didn't like her or, if his silence was any indication, particularly want to talk to her. Raiku wracked her brain for an answer desperately, feeling the silence stretch on awkwardly.

A compliment! That would be perfect! That would show both her desire to play nice and that she was paying attention to him!

'I like those markings! You're kind of like a giant moth.'

Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god-

She heard herself start to panic-talk and could not, for the life of her, make herself stop. It probably would be for the life of her. He was going to kill her, those markings were probably of some deep cultural importance and she'd called them giant bug lines.

Backtrack, backtrack!

'Not that that's a bad thing, I like moths! Butterflies always seemed sort of smug to me but I like moths, they don't spend all their time showing off not that I think you're a show-off or anything I'm sure you're very nice and not smug at all and you're not attracted to bright lights or anything stupid like that-'

She had backtracked from a bomb onto a minefield.

Fortunately for both of them, she ran out of breath surprisingly quickly, probably because she'd been breathing shallowly already out of nerves,

Raiku closed her eyes and prayed for mercy when her nervous babbling didn't provoke a break in his stony silence. She also heard a distant laughter from the watchtower above, and silently vowed that she would one day kill that man.

'Thanks.'

Raiku's impossibly bright eyes shot open at the sound of Iwao's voice, as gruff a sound as she thought it would be, but the word itself completely unexpected. He was looking at the ground instead of at her, still glaring a little.

Had he been sarcastic? He hadn't sounded sarcastic. Maybe her sense for it had been dulled by the sheer intensity with which Ryuu usually used it, since he could project sarcasm at a distance of several miles, which he was doing now and almost constantly. She stared at him, ironically bug-eyed, so intently scanning for aggression that she almost missed it when he set off on the wide dirt path out of town.

She squawked. 'Wait for me!' She ended up running to catch up, drawing level with him quickly with her long strides.

Iwao was tense all down his spine and across his shoulders, but she took comfort in the fact he wasn't allowed to kill her. That was something she couldn't say for Ryuu or, in his more heated moods, Daisukenojo, so it made her feel slightly more genuinely cheerful. As a result, when Iwao glanced up in response to her continuous staring, he got a full voltage eye-crease that radiated goodwill.

This made him frown more deeply. Raiku was undeterred, she was going to have a good day and this mission was going to go well! She was going to be cool and collected and she was not going to make little puddles of glass everywhere like last time, because she had already made sure her clothes were water-and-sand-tight! Her momentary doubts were cast aside, they were for the weak!

Iwao's yellow-lined eyes turned back to the path ahead. 'We should split up and work from the trees,' he muttered. When Raiku nodded cheerfully, he snorted lightly through his nose in a slightly contemptuous fashion. 'I hope you brought cooler clothes with you,' he said under his breath after giving her entirely black-clad, spidery form a glance and jumping deftly into the trees.

Raiku's heart and optimism shattered into a million ill-prepared, soon dehydrated pieces.

'Damnit!'


A/N: short one this time, because god, these next few are going to be long and hard as hell. Also, this was done on a portable, so there may be mistakes, tragically.

Reviews:

GeniusPineapple: I'm so glad you liked it! I'm eager to get the next bit in action, so I wanted all this in motion. Thank you for reviewing- when I went long periods without updating, it was the occasional review that prodded me. I hope your time on stage went great- thank you so much!

Fluehatraya: the holiest of cheetos, here I am. They are their chain unique brand of broken, aren't they? But yes! You got it! She is filler. Which I kind of glanced over, but that was the gist- her family shoved her into a filler plot, which isn't working so well.

1412 karasu: ah, those are the questions, aren't they? To how Ryuu is connected to her electricness... He's involved in the Plot, but so far, that's just inevitable narrative backlash. But, keep reading, and thanks for reviewing!

srooone: you're welcome, thanks for reading!

White Ivy: ha, that would be something, wouldn't it? You'd be right about Ryuu's reaction, he would just kill her on principle. Or at least horribly traumatise her. Thanks for all your reviews!