Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

Ahaha! I'm finally online for more than two minutes! The internet here is ... tetchy, and I've actually had this sitting in my inbox for weeks now, waiting for the day I could download it without an error sign. AND HERE IT IS.


It wasn't that Raiku was looking forward to the mission.

…Per se.

That would have been ridiculous, after all. Missions were rife with Drama, and she was in the worst possible age bracket for that anyway. Plus, since she was (at this stage) flying under the Plot radar, there was the very real risk that she could be killed. Being a shinobi was dangerous. Genematrix aside, it would have been ridiculous.

It was more that… okay, so she was sort of looking forward to it.

Raiku snickered to herself, barely registering the unsettled looks Daisukenojo was throwing her way. She was no less cowardly than she had been, but she'd been dealing with Kakashi. For years. Any enemy that was scarier than him was not one that she would survive anyway, so this mission actually had the potential to be reasonably painless. Well. Maybe not that far, but still! Maybe not as specifically designed to torture her, so comparatively painless-

She jerked up and looked around quickly, making sure no Narrative threads had caught her thinking that. After a moment, she relaxed. All clear. Still, she couldn't do that again. That had been risky.

'Why are you acting like you're on drugs?' Ryuu grabbed her by her covered chin and forced her to look at him, bright yellow eyes scanning her suspiciously.

When this continued past the point where she usually cracked under scrutiny, Raiku cottoned on to his actual motives. 'Are you checking my pupils?!' Well, that was what she had meant to say. Mask or not, Ryuu was still perilously close to skin and still perilously Ryuu-like, so her attempt to avoid moving her jaw much made it come out as a string of incredulous noises.

Ryuu made a sound low in his throat, eyelashes terrifyingly perfect at this range. After a few more seconds he apparently deemed her strange, but sober, and let her go.

'…Where would I even get drugs?' Raiku managed, a little slow on the uptake with all the added stimuli. Yamada was the one with weird drug connections, if her stash of soldier pills was any indication! And given how very, very strictly controlled they were, serious objections should have been raised to her jealously guarded little stockpile, and not so much as a word from Tsunade!

"Alright, you'd better be ready!"

Yamada's booming voice startled her out of it and also a few steps away. He cracked his knuckles as he took in their various states of readiness. "The last report of these little shits said they were still in Fire, and somewhere to the South, South-West of us. There are a few civilian towns nearby, but nothing important enough for us to stake them out, get me? We're gonna operate out of one of the quieter ones, and stay in contact with our patrols that way if this drags on."

Raiku nodded, taking this all in. So they'd be checking out areas to the edge of the patrol routes of Konoha, probably with larger populations or concentrations of wealth, because people were usually predictable at heart.

Geography was never her strong suit, but luckily, Daisukenojo had always been good at it. 'South, South-West? Wait, won't that take us near Land of Rivers?' he pointed out, adjusting one of the straps on his pack. He was carrying Raiku's tiny bedroll as well, since they usually just traded between the three of them to avoid unpacking after a shift on watch and he didn't trust her not to snap like a twig under too much weight anyway. Direct quote.

Yamada nodded. "Should take us just around the border. Tani shouldn't be a problem, not with their patrol range."

'Didn't we all almost die horribly a few years back because we didn't think we could trust them?'

Raiku nodded emphatically in agreement with Daisukenojo, the memory of her own trauma all too vivid.

"Those were different times for Konoha, get me? We won't be anywhere near them and we know we're not on bad terms with them right now anyway." Yamada folded his arms across his chest. "That's not the point. Get walking. I'll brief you before we really get running, get me?"

Raiku turned to look at Konoha's main gate again, steadfastly ignoring the two extremely persistent and extremely annoying jounin who were waving at her mockingly from the left sentry tower. Who needed bandages over their nose for three whole years?! Were they decorative, how would that even work?!

…Ignoring them was impossible. One of them was waggling his eyebrows. She turned away with a huff, totally not disappointed by not being able to take a properly affectionate look at her home village. Teenage girls weren't that sentimental, nope. Stupid… Izutetsu. They didn't deserve separate names! That was their name now!

The three of them fell into step beside Yamada, and she found herself glad that she was officially the agile teammate. It was warm and only going to get warmer, and if she'd had to carry a full pack, she probably would have been melting already. Her loyal team would then, naturally, leave her body-puddle for the crows. Her load had been stripped to the bare essentials; her heavier items either handed over to Daisukenojo or left behind entirely, specifically to allow her maximum mobility and speed. Even with that, she was uncomfortably warm and a bit sweaty. Not bad to start off with, though!

"Alright!" After about a kilometer, when the various twists in the road had put some forest between them and Konoha, Yamada officially kicked off the mission with the briefing. "So. Our best info puts them as non-shinobi, but some pretty hardened criminals anyway. Group of a dozen, maybe two dozen. They wait for some disaster to trigger, which they somehow know about, then hit small travelling groups, hard."

'… This really seems like an issue for the local forces, doesn't it? If the criminals aren't shinobi?' Raiku said. Dealing with a couple dozen civilians was doable. Unfortunate, but that was actually something she could feasibly do on her own. Bam! Extra crispy.

…Maybe she should have been less cavalier about civilian lives. In all fairness, they were criminals. That they were being sent out specifically to kill.

"Good point! Only the small groups they're targeting are shinobi. That's where the weird part comes in, get me? It's not just landslides or anything, stuff that people can set up on their own. Freak lightning strikes, sudden illnesses and once, one of the team members was screwing both of their teammates and they both found out, completely on their own, and let their guard down to argue. Only of them one lived to tell about it. Weird, weird shit. That's why we're coming, get me?" Yamada grimaced, shifting his pack to rest a little more comfortably on his back.

'So they want us to interrogate them,' Ryuu concluded. 'To see how they're doing this and make sure they're acting alone. Then kill them.'

'What have they even been stealing? Someone who robbed us, right now, would make about ten dollars in stolen pots,' Daisukenojo pointed out.

'Hey! I have at least a week's pay worth of metal on my person,' Raiku protested, conveniently forgetting the matter of her illicit drugs. 'And god only knows what Ryuu's carrying. Besides grudges.' Ha! Hilarious and true; she was on a roll.

"Shut up! They're not robbing them. They're just killing them. In and out, murder, get me?"

Raiku tilted her head to the side thoughtfully. 'That seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to kill tiny groups of shinobi. And you told us in the restaurant that they were stealing!'

"I lied, to make sure you drama queens wouldn't get hysterical, get me?" Yamada said, utterly unrepentant. "Plus, like hell I'd say some of ours, even low-level guys, were getting murdered by civilians, in a room full of civilians! Use your damn head!"

'Still!' Raiku gestured wildly. 'Why even bother?! Stealing at least made sense!'

'It won't be for fun, idiot,' Ryuu said, rolling his eyes. 'Chances are they have a grudge against Konoha, or are trying to lure out a more important group for capture and torture.'

'Like us?' Daisukenojo said sarcastically. 'Yeah. Real effective.'

'Wait, torture? Did you say torture? Can we go back to the torture, because I—'

"They could also be trying out whatever weird system they've got, to make sure it'd work for something bigger," Yamada said, cutting Raiku's worried muttering off short. "Any of those is not on, get me?"

'Wait. Torture. I'm still stuck on the whole "torture" thing.'

Yamada was totally uninterested in her totally valid concerns. "Speedy! You'll be with Sullen, scouting ahead. Shorty and I will bring up the rear."

'I'm not short anymore!' Daisukenojo exclaimed. He may have calmed down a lot over the last few years, but there were certain hot-button issues remaining. 'Come the hell on!'

Yamada grinned. "You're the shortest here."

Daisukenojo growled and Raiku lengthened her stride, taking her ahead of the group and the increasingly likely confrontation. 'Well! Time for Ryuu and me to go ahead!'

She paused.

She turned back. 'As soon as I find out where we're going!'

Yamada took a moment to roll his eyes heavenwards, putting a pause on Daisukenojo's little rage attack. "Speedy. You idiot."

She flushed. 'Hey! We haven't been on a proper mission together in a long—hurk!' She choked, dragged backwards by the neck of her shirt yet again by Ryuu, powering forward. Why was this a thing now?! Twice made it a thing and this was not a thing she was enjoying!

'We're operating out of a village to the south, moron, near the River border. Don't you ever listen?'

'Why… are all your things… about hurting me?' she got out, digging her heels in to try and slow their progress.

'How hard is that? Oh, wait. You're terrible at geography and listening.'

'Not… an answer!'


Not that that would stop her, she decided later. 'I have another question.'

Ryuu leapt from a branch, veering off further away from her, into the canopy. 'No.'

Raiku easily kept pace, keeping just the bare minimum of chakra on her feet, for strategic reasons. Definitely not because that was all she could do. Because she didn't need chakra augmentation to be fast!

Also because that was all she could do, there was no point in pretending.

The two of them were going in advance of Daisuke and Yamada, and it wasn't a hard pace. Raiku, for one, was frustrated by it. She could only imagine what it was like for Ryuu, who was no longer accustomed to making allowances for other people after so long spent without serious missions. Oh, who was she kidding? He'd never been accustomed to it. It was… it just wasn't very fast. And sure, if Yamada wanted, he could have driven them into the ground and gotten them across the continent by dawn the next day, and she definitely didn't want that, but…

She really just wasn't used to making allowances either, anymore. She had been training with Kakashi for a long time now and they'd stressed mostly pushing her limits until she threw up. And that had been distressingly literal. God, she'd had such trouble keeping her weight up. And her food down.

Anyway, the pace. At least it left her with some headspace to concentrate on other things. 'So if we're going to be heading towards the Land of Rivers, are you worried?'

Ryuu leapt forward and away again, a black and grey blur darting nimbly to try and evade her. 'No.'

She would have to make herself clearer. 'Because last time we went near there, you remember what happened.'

'No.'

Raiku almost lost her footing and had to flail awkwardly to stay upright. 'What?!' she squawked, quickly scrambling to catch up, deftly springing up to Ryuu's level again and following him each time he tried to change direction. 'You don't remember? Really?'

'Nope.' Ryuu pointedly veered away, but Raiku wasn't having it.

'Let me remind you! We were minding our own business, and then we got to this bamboo forest, right, of which Rivers has several—'

Ryuu came to a sudden halt and stamped hard on the branch he'd just reached, snapping it neatly beneath her feet just as she landed. Raiku yelped and quickly sprang up to the one just above, clinging to it with arms and legs and eyeing him around it, warily. He glared up at her. 'I remember, you idiot,' he gritted out, eyes lit gold from the dappled sunlight coming in through the wind-blown foliage. 'That's a normal person's way of ending the conversation.'

'In my defense,' Raiku said slowly, 'no one here is normal. That's more Daisuke's wheelhouse.' Even then, it couldn't have been normal to sustain that level of anger without having an aneurysm. She'd have to look into it.

Ryuu bared his teeth at her. It was extra frightening because of the sunlight shifting over his tanned features, making his teeth seem both especially white and especially sharp, somehow. Raiku shimmied further down the branch to get some distance. 'Look, you can't blame me for asking!' she yelped. 'That was a bad time for everyone! Especially me!'

'Then what, exactly, are you asking?' The wind was picking up and the sound it made, rustling through the leaves, made it seem like the canopy was pressing in on them. 'Do you think I'm looking forward to that possibility, or that this mission will be a problem for me, somehow, Raiku?'

'I just asked if you were worried!' she protested. Hesitated. 'Though… now that you've brought all of those points up… you can feel free to address those too?'

Couldn't just let it lie, could she? Nope. So. This was how she died.

'Am I worried?' Ryuu repeated, low. 'It's been three years. I see no reason to worry.' He tilted his head. 'Do you, Gairano?'

'Do… do I?' Raiku asked, voice small, eyes scanning the area around him anxiously for any Plot. There was none that she could see, not even the small one from before. Just Ryuu, looking up at her, looking cat-like, almost feral with his eerie eyes and sharp teeth, light drifting over the sharp planes of his face.

"Oi!"

Raiku's grip slipped and she ended up holding on with just her legs, hanging upside-down and arms dangling to almost hit Ryuu with the swing.

"What part of 'ahead' did you midgets fail to understand?!" Yamada's distant roar made it clear that he and Daisuke had caught up enough to make their supposed grouping a failure, and there would be hell to pay. He didn't sound close, didn't feel close, how did he even—

Right. Raiku really had to pay more attention to the more traditional shinobi practices. He'd be picking up on Ryuu's chakra signature, so Ryuu was the one giving her away.

Stupid, mysterious Ryuu.

But the tension was broken at least. She sighed and swung up to crouch on the branch, adjusting her sleeves where they'd ridden up. 'Come on. We'd better go.'

'If we speed up, keep it up for the rest of the day and don't break for the night, we can reach the place before dawn,' Ryuu said, finally looking away from her.

Raiku brightened, immediately bolstered by the idea of an actual bed instead of a shift on night-watch, followed by forcing the next one on watch out of their bedroll and stealing theirs. 'We could use actual showers!' Well, they could. She would have to wait until everybody else was asleep and then use up the whole tank to avoid anybody else having a heavy water shower, but hey! That was also good!

'You're lazy and spoiled,' Ryuu observed, and Raiku nodded with a cheerful smile on her face.

'Yep! No camping! For years now! I'm not going back until I absolutely have to!'

She wasn't going to share the real reason, which was that Daisuke and Ryuu were not pleasant to be around after a while without showers. Time-skip or not, they were still teenage boys. That, plus her bedroll, when they inevitably stole it? Nope. Not if she could help it. Oh god; that, plus them being grouchy about her totally normal sleep-elbowing?!

The fire of determination, or at least the tiny embers of a desire not to be inconvenienced, suddenly appeared in Raiku. She adjusted her forehead protector, face grim. 'Let's do it.'

'Yamada's not going to like it,' Ryuu said, but from the corner of her eye she could see his mouth quirking up at the corners into a smirk, eyes narrowing.

He wasn't the only thing she could see. Raiku's determination didn't falter, though, even at the flicker of black in her peripheral vision.

Drama magnet or not, she was a Gairano and Gairano did not let Plots get in the way of their totally normal lives!


A/N: Oh, Raiku. You're... you're not bright. Much thanks to Shana, who got this back almost immediately and then had to wait several weeks for me to actually receive it. Who has also been enduring my endless crack drabbles since someone sent me a list of pairing names and I decided I had to write something for every. single. one.