A/N: Why HELLO THERE. Shana has once again dragged me, kicking and screaming, into daylight. I hissed and screamed, but here I am!

I own nothing but Raiku and the like. No other takers.


Her palm itched.

Yamada was yelling at them. "One thing, I ask you to do one thing," he was telling them, working himself up into a full-on dressing down. Obviously he had to pace himself. These things couldn't be rushed. "I gave you one job," he was continuing, and Raiku had her fingers curled into her palm because she couldn't stop the skin from tingling, couldn't stop herself from being too aware of the nerves there, where the fabric was touching her hand.

But she wasn't staring where she wanted to, which was a point in her favor. She was instead staring fixedly at the floor, which made her look ashamed for Yamada's benefit but more importantly, stopped her from looking at. Looking at.

It.

It made her so angry she was sick with it, her stomach churning and bile rising in the back of her throat whenever it spoke in that horrible approximation of a voice that was all a Plot could really manage. She could almost hear it each time the thing shifted, hear the slick slide of storyline shifting over raw narrative potential, and that was ridiculous. It was purely visual, the oily black of Plot, and it didn't make sound because it wasn't physical the way real things were physical, but she could and did hear it, and her palm itched.

She only realized she was grinding her teeth when Yamada's yell reached the volume where she could feel the vibration in her jaw, combining with the pressure to create a sharp stab of pain.

"And you!" He rounded on her. Plot or no, she couldn't not pay attention, he was just too big. "What the hell were you thinking!?"

'I don't know what happened!' she protested, shrinking back and pressing herself to the wall to try and make herself smaller. It was useless; even in her comforting cower, she was taller than Daisukenojo. 'I think historically we have proven that using me for any kind of secretive action on my own is a fifty-fifty chance to fail!' she added, realizing too late just how accusatory her tone was.

'It wasn't her fault,' the thing grumbled before Yamada could fully deep enough breath to yell at her. 'They were riled up when we got there and she just reacted.'

Yamada slowly turned to face it and how could he not see it, how could he not see it there—

"Oh, and that makes it okay to go nuclear?" he asked, voice dangerously mild.

It snorted. Maybe. She couldn't readily identify the sound, but the movement of its shoulders was familiar. 'No. But it was gonna go bad either way.'

Yamada looked back at her, somehow demanding.

'That's… right,' she confirmed, reluctantly, knowing it was her only way out but wanting to gag at going along with the Thing. 'That is what. What happened.'

Daisukenojo's face suddenly blocked her view of Yamada, freckled features sent into a frown. 'You seem... Hey, none of them actually got you, right?'

Raiku closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath, but when she opened them it hit her, a sudden flash of story and Daisukenojo was strongbraveloyal and he was pale, so pale and he was gasping, he was going to bleed out in the dirt and he was never gonna make it, was always doomed because that's what happened to people with more integrity than cunning because

Raiku choked on air and it fractured, and

Daisukenojo smiled at someone and he was old and he was reminiscing about the team he used to have, the boy who never smiled and the girl who died so long ago, what was her name he would never say her name and

"I don't know what the hell is going on with you, but we're getting out of here." Yamada's loud announcement broke the concentration and the tiny narrative fragment and Raiku blinked away the dark spots in her vision, low blood pressure and hysteria or too much Plot set loose all at once and scrambling to find a place to settle.

Thank god for Daisukenojo, she thought, eyeing him and noticing with no small amount of relief that the stories that were trying to find a way in were fragmenting too fast to get a real foothold. He was too steady for it to latch on for long without making some major changes to his character, because as she'd just seen, there were only a couple of ways to make him Plot-interesting and none of them were anything but cliches. And there may have been a lot of Genematrix fodder around, but all of the most potent, the really deadly powerful stuff had gone to—

She shut down the half-formed thought immediately.

Nope. She couldn't think of it as Ryuu. Ryuu was an asshole and a sadist and quite possibly legitimately mentally unstable, but he was still her teammate and sort of her friend, and she couldn't conflate the… thing there with him. After all, it had to die.

It did.

The room was dark, lit only by a couple of lamps and Yamada's amazingly incandescent rage, which was a blessing. She could feel it in her mind, a pressure against her thoughts, but it wasn't hard to avoid looking at it.

She breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth. It staved off the nausea and helped take her mind off that thing, since breathing was only barely an automatic process for her even under normal circumstances.

'It could be beneficial, anyway,' it pointed out.

"Exc-goddamn-use you?" Yamada asked, expression darkening. Well. Darkening even more. Darkest-ing? Bad, it was bad.

'Well. The targets were hiding, so they probably knew we were here. If we have to leave after an accident and we haven't been able to find them, they are just civilians. They might think we've gone home in disgrace.'

Yamada's dark eyes took on a shrewd gleam, even though Raiku didn't doubt the thought had already occurred to him. Yamada's approach to team leadership was one tiny part actual inclusive strategizing, and one larger part refusing to put forth suggestions so that they had to figure things out on their own. The final overwhelming majority was training and yelling.

So much yelling.

Daisukenojo reluctantly stopped eyeballing Raiku to think about this. 'So, what—we hide in the woods and wait for them to fuck up?'

'There are teams moving through here pretty regularly. We just have to keep an eye on them and the bastards should show up,' it corrected.

'Oh, yeah, cool. Great. But in case you haven't noticed, asshat,' Daisukenojo pointed out, voice getting steadily louder until he seemed to actually notice, at which point he dropped down into a terribly conspicuous stage-whisper, 'she is freaking out over here for no goddamn reason. Not exactly ealthy-stay, ight-ray?'

'I'm pretty sure Pig Latin is still within her ental-may apacity-cay,' it shot back.

Well, that settled it. Ryuu would never have argued in favour of her mental nything-…ay.

Raiku wasn't sure which was worse: that it had vouched for her, or that it had apparently been wrong to. Why did she always pick words for Pig Latin that started with vowels when she knew it didn't work right?!

"Lie low and wait for them to get cocky. That's your plan?" Yamada asked, face unreadable, arms folded across his chest.

Daisukenojo sighed. 'Well it's not like we have a lot of other options. It's that or fail the mission, so it's at least a chance to salvage shit.'

Yamada frowned, but in that way he tended to when he begrudgingly agreed. Raiku breathed in slowly, letting this idea sink in. Daisukenojo was mostly right, but it was better than a chance, really. With that thing tagging along, events would slide into place with terrible convenience. In addition, it could only be better to not be trapped inside with it, to be left to feel Its awful presence expanding to slide across the walls. At least outside she wouldn't have that problem.

Well. The thing itself would still be a problem.

Raiku let out her breath just as carefully, absently sliding her hands together.

All she felt was fabric.


Well, she'd been wrong.

It had only been a matter of time, really; this whole "being correct" thing was only ever a phase.

It was so much worse outside.

Away from the elaborate web of conductors and electricity that even a small village like Iji was made of, Raiku's focus on it only became more and more painfully acute as the rest of her mind seemed to diffuse. The tug and turbulence of energy surrounding her left her grasping tight to her own mind to keep centered and it had been distracting, helped even more by how she could never do it completely. She ended up slightly adrift each time, as though her mind was dissolving into electrical currents at the edges, simultaneously more aware and less focused all at once.

Outside, away from the kind of everything that could pull her into itself, was a nightmare, and it only confirmed what Raiku already knew:

Nature was terrible.

They'd ended up leaving so late that it was early and the dawn was still a way off, leaving them in that dim, grey pre-dawn light, the false morning making the close-knit trees seem to stretch up forever. It was still going to be overcast when the daytime finally got its ass in gear and she knew it would be because it was... It was foggy. And what was fog?! Fog was just slow moving water particles, not running but sort of… lurking. Fog was water that couldn't suck it up and commit, fog was just clouds that were lazy as shit. Raiku had shocked herself no less than fourteen times in ten minutes and almost burnt off what was left of Yamada's eyebrows twice, practically wading through the dense mist.

Nature.

Gross.

Still, at least it was just sticky and warm instead of sticky and disgustingly sweltering. Little victories. She could almost ignore the tiny black flecks swimming through the haze, narrative energy cast adrift and looking for a place to go.

'I wish I'd had a chance to say goodbye to Taro,' she said with forced cheer, trying to inject some life into her voice, watching her breath disturb the fog in front of her face. 'That guy was alright.'

'Yeah,' Daisukenojo replied. He was half-asleep and it made his voice even thicker, the huskiness of it never failing to sound weird to her. 'He barely laughed that time you skidded off the roof.'

Raiku half-heartedly shoved him. Tragically, he was carrying both her pack and his and additionally weighed eighty thousand tonnes so he didn't budge, the force of the push instead sending her unexpectedly sideways. Her toes skidded over a tree root, almost sending her into the ground before she caught her balance on a low-hanging branch.

Daisukenojo just rolled his shoulder, clicking his tongue. 'Man. You zapped me,' he said with mock injury, practically batting his static-y eyelashes.

From behind them came a slow clapping.

'Shut up,' she hissed, clutching the branch so tightly she almost felt her bones creak. '…Ryuu,' she added when Daisukenojo looked startled by her vehemence. The name tasted sour, bitter in her mouth, the ghost of battery acid and ionized air. She was going to kill it. She'd find a way to kill it, even if it took the rest of her life and then it would pay.

"We'll set up camp here," Yamada announced, apropos of nothing. She looked up and caught him eyeing her, expression dark even through the mist.

Aw. He was worried. Raiku beamed back at him, wearily lifting an arm from the branch to wave at him and feeling like a winner when she managed an uncoordinated flop. Half a wave, right there, first try! It was important to give Yamada positive reinforcement whenever he expressed an emotion other than rage or utter disappointment.

…It had been a long night.

'You really think they're just gonna fall for it?' Daisukenojo asked, voice coming from about eight feet higher than she'd expected. She spun around, terrified that he would suddenly be—...up a tree. He was up a tree, already securing the temporary canopy.

Well.

So, he probably wasn't going to become an inhuman giant anytime soon, but she could hardly be blamed for being afraid of that.

'Maybe, maybe not.'

Raiku shuddered at the sound of its almost-voice and tried to hide it by swiftly dropping into a crouch, dragging some kindling together and tugging a glove off, rubbing her fingers together briskly to generate a spark, more out of habit than anything else. Fire probably was a terrible idea, actually, but it wasn't like it really mattered. With that thing hanging around and no plan to get rid of it yet, things would just… fall into place.

'Hey, Raiku.'

She hummed to herself, high and manic and utterly tone-deaf, pretending she hadn't heard.

'Oi, Raiku.'

There was a tap on her shoulder. Raiku slowly turned her head to catch sight of two long, spider-like trails of darkness, roughly the right shape for a stretched, distorted hand, before reluctantly tracing up the length of its arm to look into its eyes.

Darkness was flowing into and out of new, invisible seams in what could have been flesh, flashes of tanned skin here, snatches of black fabric there. It was grotesque, somehow worse than just the darkness. The Plot was… being absorbed, or being assimilated in his skin and his body, it was becoming more a part of the world and a part of what was left of Ryuu and it was wrong. It was monstrous, and it was still looking at her. 'You alright?'

Raiku managed to crease her eyes in a weak approximation of her usual way of smiling.

Was she alright? Wow. That thing really didn't understand Ryuu at all.

Apparently satisfied with that, it turned away and Ryuu never did that while she was still making eye contact, always dragged it out until she wanted to gouge her own eyes out. Ryuu never turned away unless he was making a point of it and something about this normal human behaviour from something with his face made some part of her recoil.

She could feel the thought coming. It was explicitly unwelcome, shoving its way to the front of her mind and she shoved it back down with equal vigor, because she just knew it would be a bad one. Gairano had developed the ability to sense and avoid unwelcome revelations over years of dealing with highly charged teammates. She could hone this skill. She could. She busied herself, dragging her gloves back on and unrolling her bedroll with a deft flick of her wrists, barely bothering to space it her customary two feet away from everyone else.

Maybe if she was lucky, she'd electrocute the thing before she even woke.

Raiku shook her head, sinking onto her bed and discreetly tugging her glove off again under the safety of the covers, rubbing her fingers together just to feel the skin there. Nothing happened; she wasn't even sure why she was doing it. She was just hyperaware of it and she knew that intellectually, but she'd… she'd expected it to be different, in some way. Like there'd be some sign of it, stamped across the pale skin of her palm, lines of contact tracing up her fingers.

Ridiculous. Normal people didn't go around with that kind of history written all over them. Nope. She was being insane. Touching one Plot abomination was not enough to mark her in some way, wasn't the right kind of touch to qualify as anything that meant something.

Which she'd never even wanted! Not her. Touch, the whole field of touch and touch-related things, it all seemed gross. She tried to summon up the memory of some of Mayuko's more graphic diagrams and failed; she'd repressed them pretty well. It was distracting enough that it caught her by surprise, when the thought sneaking around her subconscious hit.

Was Ryuu still in there somewhere?

And god damnit, there it was. She'd struggled against it for a pathetic one time only and there it was, plain as day. She was so out of practice with the whole "being a person" thing, it was frankly a little disappointing.

It felt weirdly like a knock on her mind, the thought resurfacing against the current of tangent trying to push it out of her brain.

Could Ryuu still be in there?

Raiku had never seen this, outside of Naruto, and for the first time she wondered if there was a person in there under the Character. She had tried so hard not to, but she wondered if the skin she'd felt under her hand was all that was left of Ryuu or if it was a cage now, wrapped in enough Plot that Ryuu was trapped inside beneath it, watching his body act without him, his life lived by someone else.

Raiku suppressed a shudder, her own skin crawling in sympathy, her chest suddenly constricted. Being trapped inside your own body; Raiku was more qualified than most to be deeply, viscerally afraid of that, but for Ryuu, who was stolen from his family, the boy who'd found out his whole life had been decided for him by his genes, before he'd even been born...

Ryuu, who had been so helpless all along and never even known.

No.

She shoved the idea back down, forcing herself to breathe deep and power through the pain in her chest, through the sudden feeling that there wasn't enough air in the world and not enough space for her to fit in it.

No.

It didn't change anything, either way. She knew that.

Her palm itched. Roughly, she dragged her glove back on.


A/N: OHOHO and the Plot... thickens.

I'm... I'm so sorry. I would like to extend my sincerest apologies for that hilarious pun, I've been writing a lot of Raiku lately in an attempt to get ahead, making a chapter-buffer.