Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Aha! Be warned, this chapter is a bit slow. But, but! The next one is one I'm really excited for, so bear with me.

Don't own, won't profit.


By the time they reached their second day of travel, she had managed to stop wallowing in despair. Not all hope was lost! Luckily for Raiku, they wouldn't reach Sand for a few days at their current speed- that left her with some time to try and think of a solution.

Well, that what was she was telling herself. The thought of having some time between the desert and her failed to cheer her up, as she knew the odds of her finding clothes that were both cool and covered her from head to toe were not in her favour.

She darted from tree branch to tree branch through the dense forestry that lay between them and their desert destination. She was following her team in what amounted to a tiny cloud of fast-moving shinobi swiftly leaping through the upper echelons of branches in perfect silence, the chakra on the soles of her feet holding up. For the time being.

She barely restrained a sigh on her next jump, reminding herself to try to keep her mind on the task at hand. She found travelling at this speed… tiring. More tiring, somehow, that her usual methods of lightning transit, and also far more difficult for her. Her pathetic chakra senses were enough to keep a vague sort of tabs on everyone else in the small group as they flitted from branch to branch, but she preferred being able to see them, to track people with her more basic senses. This silent path they were taking was too different from their last approach, which had been swifter, but also basically had been a training exercise, and made it impossible to forget that they were actually in danger this time.

The ache in the balls of her feet and calves attested to the hard pace that Yamada and Ichitaka had set, but she knew she couldn't complain. Everyone else seemed fine with it, after all. Daisukenojo had looked a bit pale when they had bedded down the previous night after a long day's run, but Ryuu had settled in to fight with him immediately, which had seemed to energise him somehow. Raiku had tried making more amiable conversation with Iwao, but no matter how many words spilled out of her in tidal waves of nervous energy, all she got was one-word responses. She'd accepted defeat in exhaustion and gone to bed with the sinking feeling that this would be the tone of the entire trip. As a result, each time she caught a glimpse of yellow in her peripheral vision, she had put on an extra burst of speed. Infuriatingly, this hadn't seemed to help.

She vaulted over a particularly low branch and in her split-second of superior height, scanned the distant forest floor below for her Plot. It had taken to following her around on the ground, since it had had the apparent realisation that controlling her emotionally wasn't as effective as just steering. She couldn't see it, which unsettled her at the best of times, and was so distracted she almost hurtled into the back of one of the Kano twins.

Raiku managed to catch a low hanging branch and twist at the last second, but she landed so close to the unmoving, crouched young man that she could feel the heat radiating off him, could see each muscle in his neck in detail as he turned his head slightly. She stilled as well, feeling their leaders up ahead, their chakra just as frozen in space.

She strained her ears listening for any sign, stretching her limited senses for whatever had stopped them. For achingly long minutes their group blended into the trees in their stillness as a unit, before Ichitaka released a tiny pulse of chakra to signal the all-clear.

Kano sprung off the branch immediately, so lightly that it didn't shift at all. Raiku followed suit but in another direction… which was the other problem.

This was really boring.

God this was going to take forever.

She allowed herself to fall into the rhythm of check-jump-check, occasionally looping under or precision-jumping onto a particularly narrow branch for entertainment, eventually becoming lulled by the repetition.


When they camped for the night, Daisukenojo was put on first watch with Ichitaka right away, leaving Yamada to direct the other five members of the group. Raiku and Ryuu were conscripted for camp set-up so that the three other junior shinobi could set up traps- which both Raiku and Ryuu resented, since they were both excellent trapmakers. Raiku because her upbringing had demanded a mind like a corkscrew, Ryuu because he enjoyed trapping people, and liked to be good at what he enjoyed. It was the same reasoning that made him so good at most shinobi activities and an undefeated player of Monopoly.

The two Team Yamada members protested from where they clambered around on the lower branches of the trees surrounding their campsite, but their complaints fell on unsympathetic ears. Yamada had his reasons, and he maintained they were strategically valid.

"You've both got creepy eyes and I don't like them watching me in the middle of the night!"

Yamada stared them both down from where he was overseeing and timing their construction of a camouflage canopy for them to camp under.

Two bright pairs of eyes glared at him, one far more effectively than the other.

He shook his head firmly. "I'm not budging. One of you will be on watch with me tonight, and the other on will tomorrow night."

Raiku and Ryuu turned to each other, Raiku switching the thin ropes she had been pulling on to one hand, Ryuu tossing a leafy branch on their mostly suspended net and dusting his hands off. Yamada paused the stopwatch obligingly.

Raiku narrowed her eyes. 'Here we go,' she leaned towards him from the tree she had climbed, one foot braced against the side and the other stuck in a fork of branches, arm extended so that he could see her hand. 'Paper, scissors, rock- no, Ryuu!' she shrieked, scuttling back up the tree and almost hanging herself with the rope.

'You can't use a knife in "paper, scissors, rock"!' Daisukenojo protested hotly, crouching by his pack.

Ryuu kept his kunai out and maintained his eye contact with the startled Raiku, unblinking, and raised one of his already raised eyebrows even further. Aggressively, somehow. 'I didn't. We were actually playing "paper, scissors, Raiku spent all night kicking me in her sleep so I'll be damned if I take the first night". Common mistake.'

'It wasn't my fault!' Raiku protested.

Ryuu eyeballed her. 'And yet.'

In deference to Ryuu's ability and apparent willingness to stab her in the face, Raiku grudgingly nodded to Yamada to agree to take the night's second watch. He smiled broadly, a picture of happiness. "Glad we got that sorted. When you've finished that, don't forget to set it up for collapse."

Ryuu snorted. 'No, we thought we'd leave it here for the next lot of shinobi to come by and use.'

Yamada grinned. "And once you've done that, you can give me two hundred push ups! Fun night ahead, fun times."

Raiku snickered, but her amusement was short-lived. "That means both of you."

Brief triumph deflated, she set back to work as quickly and securely as she could.

A few more knots in, the others started returning from their own tasks. The twins retreated to opposite sides of the camp to set up their bedrolls, but there was no sign of Iwao until the job was almost finished. Raiku had almost finished setting up the collapse tag when she noticed him standing at the foot of the tree she had climbed up and squawked in surprise, her surprised flail almost taking down the whole thing.

This earned her exactly no change in expression.

'Hey. There,' she said awkwardly, half hanging out of the tree. 'Konishi.'

He blinked up at her slowly, the fire half-illuminating his face and making the yellow lines seem to shift in unsettling patterns. She thought maybe, staring at them, that she was starting to understand what the practical purpose of them was.

'That's not efficient.'

She blinked, and then glanced at her emergency collapse line. 'What? Sure it is.'

When she looked back at him, he had tilted his head back to scan the entire canopy. '…No. It's not.'

'But… it will work?' she offered uncertainly.

He finally looked back at her, face blank. 'Yes.'

'So…' she drew out. 'Why don't… you show me how to do it next time, and we leave this one up?'

A few long moments passed. One of the twins was watching the exchange with something like amusement, which seemed to irritate Ryuu, who didn't like it when people other than their inner circle got to be amused at Raiku's expense. It had been a problem in the past.

Iwao gave a minute shrug. 'Fine.'

Raiku sagged with relief when he turned and walked back towards the fire, settling on one of the logs they'd dragged over to sit on. That guy gave her the heebie-jeebies. Something about that totally blank stare, combined with the way she'd been conditioned to be afraid of short people's violent tempers by Daisukenojo, made her constantly wary of his impending explosion.

'I think he liiikes you,' the aforementioned redhead grinned from a nearby branch. She imitated him in an unflattering falsetto and pulled a face. He laughed, swinging his legs. 'You were right- this trip is gonna be great.'

She rolled her eyes and threw a twig at him. 'Shut up and get back to your post.'

Stupid Daisukenojo. Just because he was in love with four people at once.

Raiku jumped down and landed lightly next to Ryuu, who had commandeered two packs of noodles after he'd finished coating the canopy with the actual camouflage, leaving her to rot like a true friend. His incongruously cheerful little pot was bubbling away next to a larger pot of… something, that the other nin had put on. Raiku wasn't game to ask. When she reached for theirs, Ryuu promptly smacked her hand away with his little metal poker.

'What was that for!?' she exclaimed, cradling her stinging hand to her chest.

'Don't touch the pot,' he grumbled.

Raiku was hurt. 'I can make noodles, Ryuu!'

'Oh please,' he scoffed. 'You've destroyed a toaster, a rice cooker, two saucepans and at least four ovens in the last year alone, and those are just the ones I know of. But this is my pot and you aren't going to ruin it.'

She sat heavily on a large rock next to him, resting her elbows on her thighs. She then grumbled half-heartedly for a few minutes, only a token show of protest because it meant he was making her dinner and she didn't have to ever again, probably. She had to admit that she mostly lived on whatever she or her dad could make very quickly, since she tended to experience sudden, unexpected surges of hunger.

She realised someone was talking to her and glanced up.

One of the twins had his eyebrows raised expectantly. 'Sorry?' she asked, flushing slightly, grateful for the mask that hid it.

'I asked how you managed all that,' he repeated, lifting the lid on his own mysterious pot and stirring it a few times. His voice was higher than she expected; a mid-range tenor that seemed incongruous somehow.

Raiku laughed a little nervously. 'Oh, I… I'm not good with cooking in general. I get distracted easily.' A blatant falsehood; Raiku had a good attention span, but the unfortunate trait of being possessor of an extremely potent electrokinesis that made using metal pots and pans a risky endeavour.

… Also umbrellas, hairpins and coins of any kind.

She winced. As if that weren't bad enough, kunai, senbon and razor wire were already dangerous even without being inevitably magnetised by the powerful electromagnetic field that she generated by using her abilities.

'Akihi…to?' she guessed, adding it slowly to the end of her sentence. Iwao was sitting next to him, the flickering fire making those lovely, awful patterns with the markings on his face and stretching down his neck. From her peripheral, she noticed that he was making eye contact with… Ryuu's pot, but shaking his head very slightly, very slowly.

'Akihiro!' she amended hastily. 'I meant to say Akihiro.'

Iwao stopped moving his head.

The older boy smiled faintly, but she couldn't help but notice that it didn't reach his eyes. 'Correct.'

Raiku laughed a little, but it was a little too high and obviously nervous. She covered it by trying to reach for the pot, only to receive another stinging smack on her wrist.

Hissing in pain, she withdrew. For now.

Another movement in her periphery caught her eye, dragging her attention downwards.

She groaned internally.

The Plot wiggled to say hello.

She'd had almost a whole day without seeing its black, undulating mass! It had been going so well! Her calves, hamstrings and feet were aching, but it was still better than this!

…Also all her core muscles and, inexplicably, her upper arms, but still better!

It oozed cheerfully. She tried to glare at it while not being too conspicuous, but felt Iwao start looking at her again. Stupid Iwao, why couldn't he just murder her and be done with it? It would be a mercy to end this suspense. It jerked what amounted to a head, or at least an upper part, towards the left (Raiku noticed something strange at the edge of her chakra senses and half-turned towards it, extending her reach slightly) no, she absolutely did not! She jerked her head up and stubbornly refused to look at it. No, this was not the time! She had to go along with it, but this wasn't Konoha and she wasn't at leisure to go off investigating anything. This was a mission, and any deviation from their mission structure would at best, inconvenience everyone, and at worst, put people in danger and kill them.

Her forehead creased a little under her forehead protector. And she didn't even know how to extend her chakra senses! At least not in a practical way, she understood the theory. God, why did Character Raiku have to be better at everything? The wretched cow probably had better hair, too.

She realised what she was doing and shook her head violently. This earned her some weird looks, but they were just going to have to get used to this sort of behaviour. Ryuu had; he'd barely blinked. Nope! No. She was not going to envy someone who was somehow, confusingly, both her and not real. She had poor chakra senses and couldn't use jutsu, but by god, neither could Rock Lee, and if he could both be shinobi without being able to do those or have nice hair, so could she.

She smiled. Unfortunately, she found herself creasing her eyes at Iwao, who didn't respond at all. The flames reflected off his dark, dark eyes.

Raiku died a little inside, but that was to be expected.

Ryuu jabbed her in the side with a hand outstretched for her bowl. She handed over the worn plastic container automatically and accepted her food a second later, nudging him a little with the entire side of her body in thanks. 'Stop wiggling, you need to get some sleep before your watch,' he muttered.

She didn't stop fishing her chopsticks out of her bag with her free hand, just rolled her eyes. 'Thanks for the reminder, pal.'

He shrugged. Smugly.

'God, you're terrible,' she mumbled. But she couldn't stop the faint thread of affection from creeping in; it was easier to appreciate her team when she was being intimidated to death by another one. She also felt more warmly towards them literally every time she saw, heard, or heard the name of Hyuuga Neji. Or Naruto, but that was more subliminal conditioning.

'Your team seems close,' Akihito commented from behind them, leaning over and around to put his own little cooking utensils on. Raiku looked at it in silent surprise- she'd thought his brother had been cooking for both of them, but he must have been sharing with Iwao. Luckily, Ryuu answered in his usual way. With derision.

'Familiarity, so on.'

'Breeds contempt?' Akihiro finished, both eyebrows raised.

Ryuu smiled thinly.

'We get along fine,' Raiku interjected between hasty bites. 'He's just a jerk. Take everything he says with a grain of salt.'

'Your group seems… stoic,' Ryuu continued on as if she hadn't spoken. 'And why are you sleeping on the other side of the camp from your team?' he asked Akihito side-on.

Another long silence. Raiku wondered if it was too late to change teams, or to defect. She could go hang out with the other Konoha missing-nin, who were guaranteed by narrative causality to be at least five times more attractive than their more law-abiding counterparts. She couldn't do anything with them, and had never really wanted to with anyone, but she could appreciate the irony? She could take in the view.

The Plot released an angry burst of sound, half thunder, half voices and she jerked slightly, but resolved to ignore it. It wasn't the appropriate time, she had other people to think of and it was just going to have to accept that. There was nothing she could do, so it had to work with her.

'Well, I'm going to get some shut-eye!' she announced brightly into the tense quiet. 'Tell Yamada to wake me for my watch when he gets back, yeah?'

Ryuu shrugged, which she took as confirmation. She took off her shoes and unrolled her sleeping roll with an air of satisfaction, smoothing her hands over the soft wool and thin futon and wishing she could risk taking off her gloves to feel the fabric. Or that she could wear a little less clothing so that she could just roll around on it for a while.

Sure, it was weird, but she had to get her textural fix somehow, it wasn't like she could touch things all the time.

But, she couldn't, so she just sighed a little and cocooned herself in a way that would definitely inhibit her ability to spring into action in case of attack, but that was so deeply satisfying anyway. Ryuu patted her in a perfunctory manner. 'Night.'

'Night,' she yawned back, burrowing further into her makeshift nest. She listened to the fire for a while, eyes closed, and nearby traumatised crickets, before she felt warmth dredging itself upwards and pulling her down to sleep.

The Plot slunk away from the clearing, unseen by the others.


A/N: Soon. Sooooon.

Reviews:

srooone: I shall!

1412 karasu: Ah yes, Ichitaka. She was apparently a civilian, but we found out in the last chapter that she was actually a spy that was being forcibly escorted back to Sand, unbeknownst to their team. They also mentioned that there were a lot of joint Sand-Konoha missions going on to promote goodwill between the two villages, but the emphasis I tried to place was that because Konoha is in a state of war-readiness, the route they have to take would be particularly dangerous. As to their level... I'd say right now that Ryuu would be able to be a chuunin, but Daisuke isn't emotionally ready. Raiku would be the opposite, since she has very minimal chakra abilities but a highly developed set of priorities and ability to cope under pressure. A welcome side effect of her constant terror, I guess, heh. I hope you stick with me, thanks for reviewing!

White Ivy: The Plot would do literally anything to make her easier to manage, so yes! There is a please narrative convention for relationships, so it would love to pair her off. Tragically, it hasn't worked out at all so far. Well spotted! And you should know that you have made Iwao forever 'mothman' in my mind, this can never be undone.

Memory25: She is. She is. Hopefully it will go better than last time, but I am guessing that it absolutely will not, no. And this should be the last short one for a while, I'm quite excited about the next few. Thanks for reviewing!

compoura: you're welcome, thanks for reviewing!

Fluehatraya: Yeah, Raiku's favourite place in the world, right? It's her greatest natural enemy- surrounded by sand and really hot. Two things her ability leaves her incapable of dealing with. I love sending her there. I restrained myself for so many chapters. She is twitchy, the poor darling. Thanks for reviewing!

(it keeps censoring your name for some reason).feathers: I'm so glad you decided to give it a shot! I've definitely thought about going back to the first few for that very reason, but I'm trying to keep momentum, so any revision would be after I've finished the story, or at least the bulk of it. I'm really happy you liked it, I hope that stays true! I wouldn't call Raiku a self-insert, though, since she's so different from me that I sometimes struggle to write her, but she's an original character I'm proud of all the same, so I'm glad you like her. And who knows who she gets dragged into love with, I may go insane with power and write Naruto in.

No, that would be cruel.

I have no update schedule, but I am writing a lot recently, so it should be pretty regular.