Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Thank you to everyone who reviewed, and thank you to my beta, Shana the Short, naturally.

Don't own, won't profit.


"Alright!" Yamada boomed, standing in front of the motley crew assembled in his downstairs living room. "Time to make a plan to get Speedy out of this bind, get me?!"

'If your teammate is genuinely sick,' and Neji's voice implied that he absolutely did not believe that she was, but he was sitting between two other rookies and a Jounin so he had to hear them out, 'and you take her out of hospital, what's to say that she'll survive? They're performing this procedure to try and save her life. If you interfere, you could be saving her from one death just to watch her meet another.'

Yamada eyed him. Daisukenojo winced. Hyuuga had not yet learned that Yamada was both omnipotent and omniscient, and that wasn't his fault. He would learn. Painfully and quickly, like Ryuu and he had before him.

But...

'He's got a point,' Daisukenojo admitted grudgingly. 'Even if we get her out, after what Ryuu saw...'

Neji turned his skeptical gaze onto the teen in question, whose face remained impassive. 'If we understood what was going on with her, what the hell would we need you for?' Ryuu asked with his trademark bluntness.

Well, Daisukenojo thought irritably. So much for the Hyuuga's help. He was going to ditch them and laugh all the way out the door. Great work, Ryuu.

'And what do you want from me?' Neji asked coldly, "you can rot in hell" broadcasting from every part of him. In all fairness, he seemed to do that every time he got within visual range of their team, so it didn't necessarily mean he'd taken offence to Ryuu's tone. Or so Daisukenojo told himself. Damnit, didn't Ryuu understand how important this was?! They wouldn't get another shot and they couldn't replace the Hyuuga in the time they'd been given! His fierce glare had no effect on Ryuu, tragically.

"Simple," Yamada replied. "We want as many hands on deck as possible. Pulling one over on the Hokage is going to be tricky, get me?"

'Tricky. And career limiting,' Neji said in an icy tone that did not bode well for them. 'To help someone who wouldn't be in trouble if they just told the truth.'

'You really think that you're in a position to criticize someone for not being Open McFriendly?' Daisukenojo blurted out before he could stop himself.

Okay. So maybe Ryuu wasn't going to be entirely responsible for their glorious failure.

The Hyuuga ignored him in a rather pointed way. 'Even if I did agree- our group is three Genin and you, and we've established that you can't be involved in the actual execution in case the Hokage suspects you know something. I think that together, we could probably manage to mug the mailman.'

Daisukenojo fidgeted in place, trying to keep his mouth shut. He made it all of five seconds before Neji added, 'if he was caught off-guard.'

'Were you always this much of a dick, or did opening your heart to friendship let all your bitchiness out too?' Daisukenojo burst out. Neji responded to this by tensing slightly, like he was going to stand and leave them high and dry, so Daisukenojo hastily waved his hands as though he could swat the words out of the air. It usually worked for Raiku, but judging by the death glares everyone was giving him, it didn't suit him as well.

He glowered when Neji looked away. When this was over, he was going to bitch the Hyuuga out so thoroughly that he would... he would definitely something, Daisuke would think of the specifics later, but it would be intense.

"Shut it!" Yamada roared, obviously having grown tired of their questions and bickering. "You punks leave the thinking to me before you strain something, get me?!"

Neji folded his arms.

Oh no.

Ryuu and Daisukenojo edged away from him on either side, pressed against the armrests of the couch, bracing for the imminent clash.

'No,' Neji said coldly. 'You've given me no reason at all to kidnap a patient of the Hokage in broad daylight. I have everything to lose by helping you and nothing to gain, so no, I am not going to shut up and leave the thinking to you.'

Yamada folded his own, much more substantial arms across his own, much more substantial chest. He leveled Neji with a critical look, as though searching him for something, before he shrugged carelessly.

"You're right."

Daisuke leapt to his feet in outrage, ready to rip Yamada a new one to even suggest that-

"There's nothing in it for you. Or us. She's skinny, secretive and spastic as shit. She can barely look a person in the eye when she's talking, and there've gotta be a thousand Genin out there who're better than she is."

Neji raised an eyebrow.

Daisukenojo fumed.

"She can't even find her chakra," Yamada continued, shaking his head in a world-weary way. "She's smart, but she's so damn panicky that she can't hold on to a plan half of the time-,"

'You were making a point?' Ryuu gritted out.

Yamada coughed. "Right. The point is that she's probably all of those things. But," he tacked on, leaning forward to stare Neji right in the eye and dropping his voice. "She still shouldn't have to die because her family decided she's not important enough to keep alive."

It was a point that went right over Daisukenojo's head, but from the look on Neji's face and the intensity of Yamada's gaze, it was one made effectively. It didn't make any sense to him, really; they had no reason to think that her family had any say in the matter, or that they didn't care about her, so Yamada had to either be lying or exaggerating. But why? Why would that help them recruit Neji? His family was huge and notoriously protective of its members, so why would he ever have reason to relate to …

His eyes darted between them, not sure why he suddenly felt uncomfortable.

After what felt like an age, Neji spoke softly, keeping his eyes narrowed and fixed on Yamada's.

'Tell me what to do.'

A slow smile stretched across Yamada's face. Now they just had to find out how long they had left to do this.


'Two days.'

Mayuko shielded her eyes against the harsh midday sun and looked up at the sky, squinting through the glare to take in the building clouds. The white fluff had gradually transformed into something with a little more substance, but even the more promising dark grey masses weren't yet delivering, just hanging around ominously and making the air seem oppressively heavy. Oh well.

'The date for the procedure has been set for the day after tomorrow - two days,' she repeated to the Head Gairano, who sat above her on the compound walls, the bottom of his sandals resting almost a foot higher than her head. Shinobi. They were like pigeons, if pigeons were prone to dramatics; the second things got hairy, they perched somewhere high and cooed fretfully. Their family leader was no different, for all that he usually restrained such urges. So there he was, sitting on the top of their wall, staring at the increasingly cloudy horizon and probably getting sunburnt. He didn't respond to her, on top of that, which Mayuko believed to be the height of rudeness.

But still she persisted, pushing the envelope just enough that after all this she could say that she had tried, but not enough that she felt compelled to take up arms when she was inevitably repressed.

Here it went.

'I understand the theory behind this. I do,' she said, choosing her words carefully, fixing her eyes on the white stone in front of her. 'But I have to ask.' She took a long breath in before she continued, pacing herself so that her words seemed as non-confrontational as possible.

'Are you sure this is going to work?'

He leaned back on his hands, tanned face solemn. 'It'll work,' he said after a long silence, his tone indecipherable, watching Konoha where it spread out from the base of the mountain.

Mayuko was, oddly enough, not reassured. 'She's not coping,' she persisted. 'She's dissociating so often that we can't even finish a conversation any more; I don't think she's withstanding the weight of the narrative, I think that if we proceed, we risk it breaking her mind apart before it ever reaches completion.'

'It's not the story that's doing that,' he replied, tension written down the line of his spine and shoulders. 'It's her condition. It's become unstable.'

'Because of what we did-'

'Because of what it is,' he interrupted, firmly but not aggressively. It was a line he often walked. 'It was always going to become more unstable as she matured physically. Without the Plot, any traumatic event could have caused this spike and we would have been completely unprepared. At least this way we have a chance to fix it before it kills her. Or anybody else,' he added, and Mayuko saw the truth in that.

But still.

'Plot or no Plot, how can you be sure that this won't kill Raiku? It's going to remove part of her,' she pointed out, squinting to try and see his face through the glare.

'It isn't part of her, it's an unwelcome narrative passenger,' and yes, they all knew that, but she had shared her skin with it for so long that it seemed normal now. 'It's not going to change who she is. Once it's gone, we're still left with Raiku,' he said tersely.

'That's only true if this plan works,' Mayuko shot back.

'It'll work,' he repeated. 'As long as everyone sticks to their role.'

'And how, exactly, are you going to play yours?' Mayuko frowned. His presence in the Plot would almost certainly, almost inevitably snap one of its many threads, making the whole thing unravel. It had been almost impossible to attach the thing to Raiku in the first place, and she was a Gairano who'd been exposed to a Device before she was even fully formed. Someone like him... even untrained Gairano didn't coexist easily with Plots. It was probably the only reason that their rare narrative hijackers usually didn't make it very far. 'It's not like you can just... go with the narrative flow. How are you planning on doing this?'

He laughed at her. Quietly, but he laughed at her. Mayuko really didn't like that. She took bullshit from doctors all day; she wouldn't take it at home. She forced herself to calm down, but she could feel her fingernails digging into her palms and knew she was fighting a losing battle.

He was under a lot of pressure, she reminded herself. She was probably reading into things too much because she, as well as the rest of the family, was feeding off his heightened stress and getting overly tense.

'Carefully,' he answered, sounding oddly bitter when his amusement had died down, as though his answer helped her seething anger at all. 'I'm going to do it very carefully.'

She glared up at him. 'The procedure is the day after tomorrow, but you should go and visit her before then. If you think you can spare the time,' she added uncharitably. 'She's only lucid for brief periods, now.'

He turned his head back to watch the sky, nothing so clear as a dismissal but an obvious end to the conversation.

Mayuko narrowed her eyes further, until they were just angry grey slits, but said nothing.


'Are you sure this is the place?' Ryuu muttered, pressed into the ground so that the shinobi scattered around a large, empty field couldn't see him over the rise of the hill. Neji nodded shortly, the Byakugan causing a familiar tension in his eyes and temples as he used it to survey the area. This was the place. Tsunade's apprentice, the older one, had been sent here to get the procedure ready, or so it had said on the piece of paper she had left on her desk. Which was an appalling neglect of security, but it was one that had worked to their advantage. But all she'd done was come here and make sure a heap of metal had been delivered, and then she'd declared it fine and left.

Which didn't seem to be sound medical practice to him, but he was admittedly ignorant of much of the medical field.

'There's nothing here,' Ryuu observed after a while, though how he knew that Neji couldn't tell- they were pressed to the ground by a ridge of earth near the large, empty space, and while he could use his enhanced vision, Ryuu couldn't risk raising his head to see. It was a mercy in that it stopped the wind from slicing through them, the day's weather having turned unpleasant sometime while they were trapped in Yamada's living room, but at least it wasn't raining.

Yet.

But Ryuu had to have found a way to observe without his eyes, because he was right about the place. The space was empty; it didn't even have grass. It was just a wide patch of dirt, almost a square kilometer. In fact, he was pretty sure it was used to test explosives. The forest nearby had been cleared away to remove the fire risk, and it was well out of range if anything went wrong. And they weren't really adding anything, they were just…

Neji frowned to himself in thought. They had driven four large metal posts deep into the ground, but other than that, the materials that they had brought with them were being kept to the side. That made no sense. Why transport that much metal to a place just to leave it lying around?

'Gairano's abilities,' he said quietly. 'How are they affected by metal?'

'They aren't,' Ryuu replied immediately, frowning slightly. 'It conducts the same as it would for anything else.'

'It doesn't drain her reserve,' Neji said, seeking confirmation.

There was a long pause. Insultingly, it seemed as though the younger boy wasn't thinking of the answer so much as he was trying to decide whether Neji should be told the answer, which was infuriating given how they'd dragged him into this mess. If they hadn't been hiding from the people surveying the land, he'd have thrown Ryuu into the nearest tree. As it was, he was already irritated with himself for failing to ask about her potential output when he'd had her cornered; it was such an obvious question, and he'd missed a chance to ask when she wasn't actively trying to deceive everyone.

Stupid, stupid.

'She doesn't have a reserve,' Ryuu said eventually, and the Byakugan let Neji see, without turning to look at him, that he was staring fixedly at the ground a few centimeters from his face and looked deeply reluctant. 'She just generates indefinitely.'

And wasn't that interesting?

Neji narrowed his eyes slightly, mind working furiously. He'd done as much research on electricity as he felt he would need to beat Raiku after he'd found out her secret; she may have chickened out of the Chuunin Exams, but she had had the opportunity to retract her refusal until a few days before and he wanted to be the strategies he had thought of were all predicated on her reserve being exhaustible. If Ryuu was correct, and there was no reason to think that he wasn't, then it shouldn't really be possible to drain Raiku's excess energy. And they had told him that her family gave the Hokage as much information as she needed to understand her symptoms without knowing about her condition, which meant that the Hokage had to be aware that her energy couldn't be grounded like a normal electrical surge.

So, why…?

He thought back to his conversation with Raiku, a meeting that still made him tense whenever he thought of it. She had said she could stifle most of it. Most, but not all. But what had happened-

It was pointless to try and figure it out based on the information he'd been given. So he decided to ask. 'Have you ever seen her this way before?' he asked after an age of thought, watching Ryuu carefully.

Ryuu was silent again. There were enormous amounts of time being wasted in this conversation, Neji thought irritably.

'Yes,' he replied.

'When?'

Ryuu let out a slow, measured breath through his nose. 'On our last mission.'

Neji narrowed his eyes. He'd heard that they'd had trouble, and that the Gairano and one of the people they had been escorting had been separated from the group. Everyone had heard about the explosions, obviously, but it had been passed off as an attack.

Which, now that he thought about it, was an explanation he had accepted too readily.

'Why did it happen?'

Ryuu's eyes were distant as he remembered. 'She was …'

Neji waited for him to continue after he'd trailed off, but he was growing steadily more annoyed. Eventually, Ryuu seemed to compose himself enough to explain.

'She was being suffocated. When she lost consciousness, there was.' He cut off abruptly, blinking.

'An explosion,' Neji finished, trying to make this go along as smoothly as possible.

'Yes,' Ryuu said, now so quiet Neji could barely hear him. He couldn't read his face, though; it was carefully blank, which he found deeply suspicious. 'We tried to drag her to safety but we were separated, and then there was a second explosion. Her eyes weren't normal then, either, but it wasn't this bad.'

And then there had been a second explosion, apparently, and she had come back completely normal. Neji felt frustrated by this new information, rather than enlightened. He felt as though this field they had prepared, the explosions on their mission, Raiku's human eyes - they were all pieces that he needed to complete the picture, that if he could just get them in the right order that they would tell him what he needed to know to get this done, but he couldn't arrange them in a way that made sense. He didn't like it. Neji didn't misunderstand things. He prided himself on being thorough.

He turned back towards the field, feeling strangely anticipatory. They had very little time, and no plan to speak of.

What were they planning?

What was he missing?


'Shishou,' Sakura said uncertainly, holding her clipboard protectively and almost jogging to keep up with the Hokage's storming through the white hospital hallways. She didn't actually need the board, but as much as she admired Tsunade, she couldn't help but feel intimidated by her and so every layer between them made her feel a little bit better. She was slowly weaning herself off the props - by the time Tsunade realized she wasn't going to give up on being her student, Sakura wouldn't need to hide behind anything.

But for now, she clutched the clipboard.

'Shishou?' she tried again. Tsunade's amber gaze was fixed firmly ahead, smoldering with rage. 'What exactly is this procedure? How is it supposed to work?'

If Raiku's electrical charge wasn't drained by contact with the ground, how could they remove the charge at all? Sakura had done some research into electricity to try and figure it out on her own, but it didn't make much sense and she couldn't ask anyone for help; no one who wasn't involved with the procedure was supposed to know that it was happening. All the materials said that grounding something removed the electrical charge, but what did you do when that didn't work?

Tsunade didn't stop or slow, still briskly heading towards an elevator discreetly tucked away near the supply closet, well out of the ordinary path of a visitor. 'The technique seems to depend on ambient electromagnetic radiation to work. So, what do you think we do?'

Sakura wracked her brain, desperately piecing together what she remembered from the library. 'We… have to… create a neutral field?' she offered tentatively.

Tsunade's lips twitched slightly. Not into a smile or a frown, but in thought. 'Oh? And you think that'll remove the existing power in her system, do you?'

Sakura struggled for a few minutes, as she'd obviously not given her the right answer. Well, not the entirety of it, or Tsunade would have shot her down immediately. She continued her mental gymnastics for the duration of their elevator ride, but when they reached the ground floor and started to walk towards the hospital exit, she could tell by the twitching of a muscle in Tsunade's jaw that her time was up. 'I'm not sure how we would do that,' she admitted. 'Unless… the charge isn't constant? Then we could interrupt the cycle by just stopping it from re-entering her system? Using the … field?'

She winced, dreading a harsh rebuttal but determined to hear it, forcing herself to look away from the darkening sky visible out the nearest window and at Tsunade, trying to get rid of her reflex of avoiding eye contact whenever the older woman got mad at her.

But when she looked there was a grim, pleased glint in Tsunade's eye, even though her brow was creased and her mouth tight. 'Something like that.'

Sakura allowed herself a moment of giddy triumph before a niggling doubt at the back of her mind raised its ugly head, her hesitation letting Tsunade get a few feet away from her at the doorway, Sakura left on the threshold and her teacher out on the concrete.

'But wait,' she said, half to herself, grip tightening on her clipboard and the rising wind blowing her hair into her face. 'How could we be sure that all the energy is gone? I don't see a way we can definitely be sure that it's stopped.'

'Wrong, Sakura,' Tsunade said heavily, without turning around and looking at her, continuing to walk away under the increasingly cloudy sky, against the rising wind. 'There's one sure way to stop anything.'


A hand on her arm and the pressure of it dragging down on her, forcing her back slowly and by agonizing inches into wakefulness. It hurt. It hurt.

Raiku blinked slowly, feeling a thousand years old and like her skull was lined with cotton wool, hypersensitive to the point of pain. Wool scratching on her arms with each tiny shift, the weight of the cotton around her torso.

'Raiku,' someone said again and it was her dad, but when had he gotten there?

Raiku blinked again, staring at him. He looked so tired. He looked so much older than he had a few days ago, so uncharacteristically grave.

Had it been days?

She swallowed slightly and wondered at it, but she couldn't muster up the appropriate anxiety. She didn't want to be here and she felt oddly detached, not entirely sure if she was in charge of what she was doing or just watching.

'Raiku,' he said, voice sounding oddly rough and quiet. His eyes searched her confused ones. 'Are you sure you want to do this?'

What, though?

She couldn't keep a thought in her head - trying made her entire body ache fiercely, particularly through her temples and down the back of her neck. Her mind felt like it was being dragged away in a thousand different directions, through copper wiring and cables, being pulled apart.

And that was because of this, because of what she was, so she was sure, of course she was sure.

'Yes,' she said, eyelids drooping slightly as the ache pressed in. 'I want this to be over.'

Which was true, it was so true, because she kept getting yelled at and hurt and she had to lie all the time but she wasn't very good at it and she was so tired of not being able to see her own face because if she could she felt like she could just-

Raiku jolted when her father gently shook her arm, dragging her focus back onto him.

He seemed to want something more from her, judging from the worry written all over his face under and over the weariness she could see there, practically saturating him.

'I do,' she reassured him, not entirely sure what she was saying but positive she meant it. 'I'm just scared.'

Because she was, and how could she not be, when she knew herself as one thing and was about to be another? It was reasonable to be scared. She knew that. But she knew that this had to happen, because this was already so far out of hand.

He gave her a weak, grim smile. 'This will be over soon. You just need to hold on a little longer.'

'Okay,' she sighed, feeling herself drawn inexorably into the current of power shifting through the walls, but stopped by something in the way he paused before he spoke next.

'You ... the Device has to be removed, it's not really part of you,' he said, grip tightening just slightly. 'It would only have destroyed you in the end. This is all I can do to protect you from it.'

She smiled at him warmly. 'I know, Dad.'

He nodded, but didn't look reassured. 'This is all I can do,' he said more quietly, looking at his hand on her arm and saying nothing further.