Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: And again, thanks to my amazing beta, Shana the Short, who got this presentable as fast as humanly possible. Seriously, guys, it was pretty impressive. This chapter wasn't nearly as much of a soul-crusher to write, which- don't let that lull you into a false sense of security. The chapter where Raiku got out of the Chuunin exams? There was an alternate version in which she actually competes and at one point gets kicked in the face I am pretty sure and I found that so easy. Even though for her it was horrible, for me it was great.

Anyway!

Don't own, won't profit.


Raiku drifted easily in a medicine-bitter darkness until she felt the distinct and oddly familiar sensation of someone poking her in the face repeatedly. She tried to ignore it and sink back into a more peaceful oblivion, a particularly hard jab made her conscious mind resurface with a twinge of irritation.

This set the mood for her entire revival. She didn't wake slowly or by degrees, as she had the last few times she had been hospitalized, but felt more as if she were dredging herself forcefully out of some mire of haziness and sleep until her senses sharpened enough for her to start processing where she was.

Unfortunately, where she was turned out to be mere inches away from a white and purple blotch. This, understandably, gave her pause. Something had clearly gone terribly wrong with her brain if that was what it was insisting was in front of her. She felt bleary-eyed and heavy. She felt sluggish and, frankly, a little grouchy, and she was in no mood for mysterious blurs.

She gave it a half-hearted swat and saw a long white shape that she assumed was her arm, mercifully fully covered. The blur retreated a little and suddenly a yellow light flashed into existence, making her screw her eyes shut against the glare. When the pain stopped, she creaked them back open very slowly, head turned away from what she now realized was a bedside lamp. Probably. Or maybe a very small woman holding a lantern, but the lamp idea seemed more plausible. Trying to give her eyes enough time to adjust to the light also gave her enough space to try and focus them, though it was an uphill battle.

It took a few minutes, and then all she wanted was to take it back. Kankuro was not something she was prepared for this early in the - she squinted at the window through her eyelashes - early evening. Maybe very very early morning? Night-time. Night-ish.

'Thank god,' Kankuro groaned, settling back into an uncomfortable-looking wicker chair and stretching so hard his back popped. 'This watch was so boring with you just lying there like an emotionally damaged starfish.'

Raiku made a sound that was part-groan, part-mumble, but that was wholly uncertain she had heard his last sentence correctly. She wasn't sure what she'd been trying to say, in truth, so when he raised his terrifying purple eyebrows at her, she didn't try again. She did, however, stretch her white-clad arms out to the water pitcher on her bedside table beseechingly, fingers wavering a little in the air as though that would make them stretch further.

He grinned, purple painted lips stretching obscenely and obligingly picked it up for her. She sighed happily, but then he held it out of reach on his lap, seemingly just wanting to have it close to him. For emotional support in this trying time.

Raiku hated him a little, in that moment. But retaliation was out of the question since she was clearly drugged to the eyeballs and the IV she had just noticed was apparently supplying her with both fluids and painkillers. Consequently, the connection of it and her arm was a love affair she wasn't willing to risk.

She stared at him, sadly. Kankuro was completely unaffected, because he was a monster. And she couldn't keep it up for very long, either, because she was slowly becoming aware of a throbbing headache pounding behind her eyes and each temple. She had to drop her arms after a moment, because her muscles felt like they'd been pulled through a taffy machine.

When she finally gave up, Kankuro leaned forward and poured her a glass of water as though that had been his plan all along. She was too grateful to care, particularly when he helped her support the glass against her lips. She felt the fabric of her mask dampen and stick to her face and couldn't care less, too tired to pull it down and completely unwilling to let Kankuro do it for her.

After an age she leaned back into her pillow with a blissful sigh and heard him set down the glass.

'So!'

Kankuro snatched a clipboard from the top of the chest of drawers next to him, slid the pen out from under the clip and started reading from it.

'What is your name - oh, that's easy, I got that one.' He scribbled something on it. 'What is your gender - misc-ell-a-neous. How old are you?' He shot her a critical glance before turning back to the page and clicking the pen a few times in thought. '… Eleven.'

Raiku made a feeble growling sound.

'Ten.'

She glowered at him.

He smirked and tapped the clipboard with a pen, never mind the fact that these were definitely questions she was supposed to answer. Probably to check to see whether she'd sustained brain damage. 'Use your words.'

Raiku cleared her throat, having to do it a few times before she could get a word out.

'Thirteen.'

Kankuro pulled a face, which bordered on the grotesque with the way his face-paint shifted in the yellow light. 'Gross. Next! What village are you from? Grass-munching … hippy-town,' he sounded out slowly as he wrote.

'Konoha,' she rasped. She had no idea if he actually changed his answer, he just moved on.

'What day is it?'

Raiku frowned. '… s'night-time?'

Kankuro clicked his tongue against his teeth. 'Bad sign, bad sign.'

He knew damn well that she had no way of knowing. Raiku was too tired to fume and too relieved at being warm and safe to muster real anger, so she just sort of simmered in mild discontentment.

'How did you barbecue like five trained medic-nin?'

Raiku squinted. That question didn't seem to be keeping with the theme, somehow, but her drug-addled mind wasn't keen on examining it too closely. That seemed too much like hard work, so it let her conditioned response take over. 'Pr'tective jutsu,' she mumbled.

Kankuro eyed her for a moment and then moved on. 'What is the name of the current Kazekage - oh, there's no one yet. You fail that question. This isn't looking good for you or your grey matter,' he added with a devilish glint in his eye. 'Current leader-slash-elected representative of your place of residence?'

'Tsunade?' she offered tentatively.

'Last name?'

Raiku paused, but didn't actually know. She stretched her long fingers out on a quest for the remote that would either up her meds or summon someone to take him away, while he continued on, shaking his head. 'How many fingers am I holding up?'

He held up thumb and forefinger.

'Two,' Raiku answered, a note of victory in her voice.

Kankuro sighed sadly. 'Only one. Seeing double. Bad sign.'

'But-,'

'Ooh, a thumb's not a finger,' he tsked. 'Cognitive… function… clearly impaired…' he drew out with relish, his wide smirk reminding her vividly of how many times he'd beaten her at Mercy without getting bored.

Raiku let her head fall back in despair and pressed the button for morphine repeatedly in the vain hope that she'd either overdose or pass out.

By the time dawn broke and a warmer light spilled into the room, two things had become clear.

The first was that Kankuro did not, in fact, get tired of victimizing her and he was also actually under instructions to keep her awake despite her best efforts to doze off. He always nabbed her with some terrible, terrible way of keeping her miserably, thoroughly conscious and most of the time, horrified. The last part he seemed to view as compensation for his troubles.

The second was that Kankuro, or some nurse in that was in cahoots with Kankuro, had disabled the button.

Raiku still pressed it sadly on occasion just to hear the empty click.

That click was what betrayal sounded like.

It was also, she had figured out with some spiteful trace of amusement, the only way she could get back at Kankuro for his misdeeds. She was almost catatonic again by daybreak and he'd become increasingly direct, now just jabbing her to stop her from dozing off. In response, she either clicked the button slower or faster, depending on how aggressive he was being. And the best part was that he couldn't take it away from her.

Raiku smothered the malevolent giggle bubbling up inside her chest.

A tiny muscle in his eye was twitching even before the night shift for nurses had ended. She watched it with sick fascination, testing to see if she could change its frequency with her clicking.

Kankuro began emitting a deep, drawn-out growl when she started clicking it to a nonsensical and inconsistent rhythm, fingers tightening on the arms of his terrible wicker chair. 'That is it!'

Raiku squawked and clutched the little remote to her protectively, but he barely had time to wrap a broad hand around her small wrist before a voice interrupted him.

'Kankuro.'

Kankuro froze in the beginning of a yank, leaving Raiku's arm suspended awkwardly between them. She quickly traded the remote to her other hand and clicked it furiously in panic. Which made no sense as it couldn't help her in any way, but she still found the movement oddly comforting.

Kankuro's eye twitched again but he released her, to her profound surprise. The clicks trailed off uncertainly as she wondered what was going on, but it all became very clear when he removed himself from her personal space and she could see the doorframe.

A man with a veil of cloth covering the left side of his face frowned at Kankuro disapprovingly. He was dressed in the uniform of a Sand Jounin and something about him triggered recognition in Raiku's mind. The Chuunin exams…? No, she didn't think that was it. While she was puzzling it out, the man had folded his arms across his chest and addressed Kankuro. 'You're relieved. Go home.'

Kankuro almost smiled, but then suddenly tensed and frowned. 'I don't think-,'

'Go. Home,' the man repeated more firmly.

Raiku rejoined the conversation when Kankuro grabbed his hood off the chair and shot her a broad smirk. It made her skin crawl a little but she visibly sagged with relief and smiled when he moved around the Jounin to leave.

She recognized her mistake when that made room for her to see Gaara.

He was glaring at her. Maybe that was just his face, but it looked like he was glaring at her.

She became aware she was still smiling at him and cringed a little. She wanted desperately to still feel relieved that Kankuro wasn't the one keeping an eye on her anymore, but couldn't. Maybe she could suggest that one of her teammates come to keep her company?

Actually, come to think of it…

Raiku frowned to herself and wracked her uncooperative brain to try and remember if Kankuro had mentioned them at all. Was…

Was it possible they had never made it?

She was so deep in thought that she missed Gaara setting his gourd down against the chair and then sitting in it, keeping those blank green eyes fixed on her.

'Hey,' she said hesitantly. The ache in her throat made her desperately want more water, but she didn't want to even twitch in his direction, lest he decide it was an insult and crush her.

Gaara didn't look away but also didn't say anything, which she took as permission to continue.

'Has… Is my team…?'

Raiku found herself unable to verbalize the question of whether they were alive; she couldn't bring herself to even picture the alternative, which she knew spoke of an inappropriately powerful attachment. Her medicated mind refused to feel sorry for possessing it, though it was sorry that she hadn't thought to ask Kankuro, whose irreverence may have been infuriating but who at least theoretically possessed some empathy.

After an age of letting her squirm, Gaara spoke.

'They're here.'

Raiku's breath escaped her in a shaky rush of relief. She closed her eyes for a moment just to compose herself, nodding slightly. Of course they had made it. Iwao had said that Yamada had survived the blast; he wouldn't have let anything happen.

Well, certainly not twice, her treacherous mind pointed out.

'Ichitaka is dead.'

Raiku's eyes flew open at the news, fixing on Gaara. He looked completely unaffected. 'The… explosion,' she said slowly.

Gaara didn't respond, but she now took his silences as confirmation and sagged back into her pillows.

She knew intellectually that it was useless to feel guilt. Guilt was a valueless emotion at any time, even when it seemed so justified. She hadn't done anything deliberately, but that hadn't changed the fact that she had done it. She remembered Ichitaka's smile, the one and only time she had ever seen it and now, the only time she ever would. Her gut twisted.

To distract herself, Raiku found her hands reaching for the water again.

Gaara's gaze flicked over to it, then back to her.

Her guilt morphed into anger in a flash. 'Do you have to be so mean all the time!?' she demanded, wishing she could take the words back even as she said them.

Gaara's eyes narrowed. A distinctly murderous air started to fill the room; the silence became heavy and unpleasant.

Raiku shrank back immediately. 'Sorry.'

The smothering silence continued until she felt brave enough to ask the question she had wanted to from the beginning, unable to meet his gaze for more than a glance each time she tried. She settled for looking at the floor, the wall, the window- anything else. 'Why… haven't they come to see me?'

Gaara tilted his head. Folded his arms. 'Why would they?'

Well.

Well then.

Raiku wasn't sure how to take that. Was it an insult? Was it a snide commentary on her status or theirs? Did he not know? Had he-

Ah.

'You're supposed to visit each other in hospital,' Raiku muttered, twisting the sheet between her bandaged fingers and feeling the painful tug and stretch of her burnt palm. 'It's what friends do.'

Gaara blinked, slowly. Just once.

He'd never been in hospital, of course. She couldn't expect him to know these things, at least not in a non-intellectual way.

Wait.

'Not that I'm trying to tell you what to do about friends,' she forced out as quickly as possible, which was not particularly fast when she was under the influence. She could still hear herself slurring a little, but she now only took a second to refocus her eyes whenever she blinked, which was a vast improvement from her state hours before. 'Every friend is different.'

The silence stretched on.

Raiku eyed the water pitifully and found her salvation when a nurse knocked on the doorframe tentatively. Her hope was short-lived, however, when the woman seemed white and jittery and gave that entire section of the room a wide berth when she hurried over to check Raiku's chart.

Of course. Gaara was terrifying.

But what she saw there gave her pause. '…You scored only four out of twenty on your checklist,' the woman mumbled to herself with a frown.

Raiku creased her eyes in awkward apology. 'It… Kankuro,' she said by way of explanation. Worryingly, this seemed to be sufficient. The nurse tore the page off and grabbed a new one from the folder at the end of the bed.

Raiku was way ahead of her. 'Gairano Raiku, female, thirteen, Konoha-,'

The nurse waved her off. 'I get it, I get it.'

With supreme reluctance, the woman went to the side of her bed opposite from Gaara, carefully avoiding looking at him, and pressed her fingers to Raiku's wrist to check her pulse.

While the nurse checked her vitals, Raiku tried to make it clear that she desperately wanted more water. The nurse, in a display of staggering denial, pretended Raiku's flailing and gesturing and outright requests weren't happening until Raiku just let her hands flop back to her sides and watched her with resentment.

'If you're able to drop your technique, we can reattach the monitors,' the nurse told her, after jotting down some observations, her blue eyes only briefly looking at Raiku before she plastered them back to the paper.

Raiku smiled helplessly. 'Can't.' She didn't even have to think up a reason - she was that prepared. 'Too tired.'

The nurse seemed to accept that, but from the slight pursing of her lips, she didn't like it very much. She reached for one of the boxes on a nearby cabinet and pulled two gloves free, snapping them on.

Raiku tensed. She hated that sound.

Here, however, the nurse faced a dilemma. Raiku was injured on her left side.

Which was within a few feet of where Gaara was sitting.

Raiku watched with fascination as a sweat actually broke out on the poor woman's forehead. She took mercy on her, knowing that unless Gaara moved, the nurse would actually chicken out and leave Raiku without checking on her injury or, more worryingly, giving her any more painkillers. And then Raiku still wouldn't be allowed to go back to sleep. 'Could…' she winced. 'Could you… make some room for her … to …' She trailed off, too intimidated to continue.

After a long, ominous moment, Gaara shifted out of his chair and stood closer to the door. Simultaneously helping the nurse reach Raiku, while making damn sure the woman couldn't escape. This seemed to only make the nurse more anxious but to her credit, she did make her way around to Raiku's side.

Back in her element, she seemed to gain confidence, happily bullying the exhausted and sore Raiku into a sitting position and then lifting up her shirt. Raiku responded to this less than gracefully, namely by squeaking and flapping her arm at Gaara to make sure he didn't look. He did not seem amused by it, glaring out the window.

Raiku avoided looking at the injury herself. Her mind may have been having trouble keeping her eyes focused and her speech understandable, but it had no problem summoning the vivid memory of her nausea to the forefront of her consciousness.

She only felt comfortable with looking at the woman when fresh bandages had been almost completely applied and the wound wasn't visible. 'S'okay?' she asked hopefully.

The nurse seemed pleased for the first time since she'd entered. 'You seem to have a resting heart-rate of a hundred and thirty and you're still dangerously dehydrated after two liters of fluids, but yes.' She delivered this mixture of mostly bad and some good news with a satisfied smile. 'Absolutely no sign of infection. Which, honestly - I would have expected you to be in stage two sepsis after the way you came in.'

Raiku let out a high, nervous laugh and didn't trust herself to try and give an excuse. The nurse didn't seem to require one and sat on the bed to carefully unwrap the bandages on her fingers, pulling the packet of fresh bandages up to rest beside her.

She seemed to get irritated when Raiku kept twitching away, but she honestly couldn't help it. Her hand hurt and the gloves felt strange against her skin. In an effort not to annoy her anymore, Raiku looked up at Gaara and creased her eyes in a smile. 'So I can go soon!'

'Your team leaves in a few days,' he told her, which popped the tiny bubble of happiness she'd worked so hard on.

'What!?'

'Stop moving!'

'Sorry, sorry,' Raiku said hastily. 'But - what?'

Gaara looked back out the window unhelpfully. Raiku had never felt a stronger urge to smack someone right in the mouth, mostly because she had always been scared that they might hit her back.

Well. She had often felt the urge to just grab Ryuu by the ears and shake him, but that was different. His threats were usually empty. An easy, sixty, seventy percent of the time. Or maybe fifty, but she was getting distracted again.

'Do they even know I'm here!?' she persisted.

Gaara shrugged.

'Ooh,' she hissed. 'The family reseb- family resemblem- family. resemblance,' she forced out carefully. 'Is so obvious.'

Gaara's head whipped around to look at her. The nurse tensed for flight and almost vaulted over the bed under the flimsy pretense of getting a new fluids and med bag for Raiku's IV. 'Well, time to get some rest, I know how tired you are,' the woman babbled in terror, hands shaking as she hooked it up and traded the lines. Raiku kept her completely underwhelming glare on Gaara even as the darkness crept up the sides of her vision, before dragging her down completely.

She didn't even have enough time to wonder how Gaara would choose to kill her in her sleep.


Her dreams did not comfort her.

Raiku's mind conjured rapid-fire flickers of light and red and dark and pain and faces too quickly for her to recognize, made her body tingle from a warning low-grade current of confused alarm and then-

Metal.

The feel of it brought her mind to a harsh focus and she could taste it in the back of her throat when she inhaled. Impossibly asleep but still physically present, she breathed in the feeling and felt herself calm down through agonizing minutes. The tempo of her mind slowed to a more bearable speed, flickers of sensation penetrating her awareness, but not disturbing it.

After a while, it lulled her back into the dark.


'Hey, toaster.'

No. She wasn't ready to wake up.

'Toaster. I know you can hear me.'

Raiku stirred uncomfortably, her hearing unhelpfully unaffected by her drowsiness.

'She seems worn out, just let her stay asleep! God, you are such a dick.'

'She's been asleep for days!'

'And we've only been waiting for ten minutes!'

'Exactly. We can never get those ten minutes back. Toaster!'

Raiku smacked at the hand that shook her shoulder, but it connected with all the force of a kitten. A drug-addled, dehydrated kitten.

'Aw, she wants to hold your hand. How cute.'

'She's trying to hit me, you stupid - Raiku, just open your eyes already.'

Raiku tried to comply and found only one of her eyes responding at first, the other remaining shut.

Daisukenojo peered at her, looking irritatingly normal after their ordeal. 'What the hell?' he asked bluntly when the other eyelid slowly rose, but didn't quite make it all the way up. It left her looking and feeling lopsided, and he apparently felt that deserved comment.

Ryuu rolled his own, more symmetrical eyes, he too looking like he'd just rolled out of bed on an ordinary morning. Unlike Raiku, who had yet again been medically mummified. 'Go and get her something from the vending machines.'

'What? You do it; I'm not your lackey!'

'No, but your body's small enough to dispose of easily,' Ryuu shot back.

'Oho, you can come at me, man, I am so ready-,'

'-to meet your maker? How fatalistic, you may want to get help - on your way to the vending machines.'

Raiku watched this back-and-forth with dazed attentiveness, eyes flicking to the other each time a verbal volley made contact.

The exchange was cut off by her stomach growling impatiently. This made the two of them stop and look back down at her.

She lifted her hand a little and gave the smallest of waves, looking uncertain.

Daisukenojo glowered at Ryuu even as he grabbed his small satchel from the table. 'This isn't over,' he said warningly, leaving the room.

This left her and Ryuu in silence.

Raiku stared at him, in a pleasant haze from the drugs and her gaze warm. Ryuu seemed to have trouble meeting it; uncharacteristically hesitant now that Daisukenojo wasn't there for him to bounce off.

'Ryuu,' she greeted.

He swallowed, almost imperceptibly. 'Raiku.'

She nodded for no real reason. Yes, that's me, her mind agreed dopily.

Silence again.

A dam seemed to break in Ryuu before long and his hands fisted in the sheet by her leg.

'I'm sorry.'

Raiku gawked at him, her head pressed further back into her pillow.

He flushed, aware of how strange it seemed coming from him. 'Don't make me say it again.'

'Can't believe y' said it at all,' Raiku slurred, eyes wide.

His lip curled a little to show a sliver of white; his teeth were almost grinding against each other. She couldn't tell if it was loathing for her or himself. Statistically speaking, it was probably her.

'We didn't know you were here. We didn't know until this morning that you and Iwao had made it. We thought you'd ... with Ichitaka and Konishi in the fire. We left you there.'

After a beat, he spoke again with a knitted brow and intense gaze, directed more at his hands than her. 'I left you there,' he repeated uselessly, seeming more angry than upset. That was okay, though. That was reassuringly normal; he was like their own little fury-engine. He was visibly struggling with what he was trying to say, however, so she kept silent.

Ryuu got his next sentence out as though trying to hurl the words as far from him as possible. 'I thought you'd died and you'd died thinking that that was what I wanted and it's not.' He swallowed again, the entire line of his body so tense, so angry.

Raiku blinked at him, parsing the sentence silently in her head until she thought she understood it.

Oh.

'I didn't,' she managed through the wave of realization.

Ryuu glowered at her, but couldn't maintain the eye contact for more than a second. Ashamed. 'Don't patronize me. I saw the look on your face in the forest, when he asked me to... You knew I would. You knew what I was going to do.'

She had known, but Ryuu didn't. He had no way of knowing that Raiku had understood that it was his Plot, the force of narrative causality making him feel that way; he had no way of knowing that she'd never been angry at him, that she had just been afraid.

But she couldn't explain that to him. He still felt that it had been his decision and in a way it had been - but it also wasn't, not really, and there was no way he could ever fully comprehend that.

'Ev'ryone makes mistakes,' she told him, hoping it got her message across. When he finally, finally looked at her, she smiled at him warmly. She felt his grip tighten in a spasm and reached down, lightly patting his hand until it loosened. 'I make 'em all the time,' she added cheerfully. 'I know you don't mean to.'

Ryuu's shoulders seemed to relax slightly, a tension leaving them that she hadn't been aware of, a slightly shaky breath escaping him. 'I thought you had died,' he said so quietly she almost missed it, voice thick, jaw clenched immediately to keep any further words from getting out. Slowly, as though expecting her at any minute to take it back, to come to her senses and scream herself hoarse, he lifted his hand and touched the back of hers lightly. Just for a moment, just enough for him to try and communicate gratitude and relief in his own, emotionally stunted kind of way, before he placed it back on the bed. She deliberately didn't look at his face, knowing that even if any of what he was feeling had made it on to his features, he wouldn't want her to see.

She tried her best to make him feel more at ease, uncomfortable with seeing Ryuu experiencing any kind of emotion in front of her. 'Who told you I was here?' she asked, keeping her voice light.

Ryuu shook his head a little, as though he was trying to shrug off whatever emotional spell he'd fallen under. He cleared his throat before he spoke but his voice was still a little rough, which Raiku tried her best not to pay attention to. 'Gaara.'

Raiku boggled at him, which made him smirk slightly.

Still, her easy forgiveness for something that had obviously been eating at Ryuu left them in an emotionally charged silence until Daisukenojo returned. He picked up on it the second that he entered and understandably assumed that they'd fought, dropping his armful of snacks to the ground so that he could throw his hands up in the air.

'Can I not leave you two alone for two goddamn minutes!?'


A/N: Aw, she's not in mortal peril anymore. Well, certainly not in any more than she usually is when in Ryuu's presence. As usual, reviews are hugely appreciated! But not as much as we should all appreciate Shana. Do it.

Reviews:

toolazytologin(but we know who the real culprit is): What!? THAT WAS FAST. I mean, he hadn't- he'd only- what are you, prescient?! I'm doin' this whole slow building of interaction between those two and you just BAM. Nice work, but a little terrifying. Not to say that it's a romantic build or that it will go well (we all remember Neji), but wow. Thanks for the review!

Fluehatraya: Then my work here is done. And I agree, but Raiku already has a pretty bad relationship with Neji. Any more than this and Ryuu's going to take away her social interaction permit. Thanks for the mention of those parts, I was worried they were, uh, not well done. Thanks for reviewing!

1412 karasu: All my comments sound ominous. And yes, the fact that she's done it before does make Daisukenojo's reaction seem weird, doesn't it? Fortunately, he never found out about that so it's a first from his perspective, and it's still pretty gross to step in another human being. She may have fried the other one, but she didn't walk through him. AND COHERENT, YOU SAY? They, uh, talked. I wouldn't say it's coherent, but at least this time she has an excuse. Thanks for saying that, I really appreciate it! I also really appreciate that you take the time to review and read through my barely-intelligible replies!

Scarlett Franco: Hopes fulfilled! Sort of. They're both pretty emotionally stunted. They got pretty close to heartfelt. Hm, everyone does seem to love Ryuu. I shouldn't have made him so pretty. Or so completely hilarious. Thanks for reviewing!