A/N: the beta work for this chapter was full of hilarious, perfectly timed emojis, and it's honestly a miracle it got out without me asphyxiating myself.
Despite the unusually early end to training for the day, Raiku only had enough energy left to raid the pantry—no survivors—and slink up to bed before exhaustion took her legs out from under her. Physically, she wasn't worn down like she would have been from training with Kakashi or Yamada (which was to say, destroyed), but her brain was still moving sluggishly, dragging itself along through waves of tiredness. She could recognise the feeling it for what it was: the fatigue of resisting her own drive, the native assumption of violence she always carried with her, but it took her by surprise. It had never felt so hard to control before.
But then, she had to wonder how true that was; how hard she could have tried without knowing. If she'd ever, truly wanted to.
Hauling herself into the spare bedroom she was staying in, Raiku managed to change before she got under the covers before she collapsed into a heavy sleep, one arm still dangling off the bed.
It was the sleep of the dead for a while. The rest of the afternoon and evening passed without anything waking her. She was too tired to wake when her large family of hosts came home, but not enough that she didn't wake again in the middle of the night hours later, that now-familiar feeling leaving her alone in the dark to stare at the ceiling.
Every time. The dream had the same themes every time, just subtle differences in execution. Tsuji's face set in helpless frustration and god, you really are so alone, she murmured as the words drifted away again. She sighed and lifted a hand to rub her bleary eyes. It was heavy, she thought sleepily, to hold the only part left of someone. Tsuji was nowhere but her memory in the end; the world hadn't even left him his body. She thumped her head back once onto the pillow, shifting around until she felt comfortable again.
'You're so alone,' she grumbled stubbornly, curling around that feeling Tsuji always left in her stomach—that dull ache, the emptiness of waiting for something that would never come. That missed-step lurch of knowing you were missing something.
After a while of lying there, trying to will her tired brain back to sleep and instead just finding the same unhelpful thoughts repeating—if she fell asleep right then she could still get four hours of sleep!—she gave up, sat up. She swung her legs off the side of the mattress and stood, vertebrae popping as she stretched out her back. Her eyes were already adjusted to the dark-blue dimness of the house at night and she slouched her way down the hallway without turning the lights on. She yawned and pushed a shock of heavy white hair out of her face on her way down the stairs, making a note that it was getting far too long. She was starting to look like Jiraiya; at least when the comparison was to Kakashi, it wasn't to the Alpha Pervert.
Then again, he wasn't without his own pitfalls.
Raiku found herself squinting into the darkened pantry with no idea of how she'd gotten there. God, she really needed to get out of her head more.
She snatched the lone foil packet of salt crackers she had managed to miss earlier and tucked them under her arm, casually sliding open the window and climbing out. She made her way up to the roof, feet bare against the cold brick, where she flopped down and ripped the packet open with her teeth. The night air was cooler on her skin already, a sign of the weather turning as summer inevitably wound down, and the lights of the village were laid out before her while the crickets chirped. Or the lights would have been, without the compound wall in between. But there was still a glow from the mild light pollution below, and it was peaceful. Raiku tried to enjoy it, but there was a nagging feeling in the back of her mind.
She peered into the packet of crackers, mouth already feeling dry. She should have brought water, she realised. Or tried to realise. Really she just observed; that wasn't the realisation that her brain was trying to bring forward and she should have known better than to try and pre-empt it by clever verb usage. Sighing again, she continued munching on the stolen crackers while her exhausted mind tried to summon up what the nagging feeling actually was.
It took some time. She was tired, after all, and not even half-awake on top of that. Raiku tilted her head back, breeze ruffling the overlong hair draping past her ears and trying valiantly to cool her superheated skin.
Wait. There it was, her brain suggested, finally dredging up the thought it had been so carefully constructing; right there.
There was a Device down by the compound gate.
Raiku raised her eyebrows and carefully folded the empty packet, sliding it into the baggy pockets of her pyjama pants. She stood and stretched again before ambling to the side of the roof and stepping off the edge. She landed lightly but bounced, a flash of light and the sharp crack of paving tile beneath her driving her to leap again to safety. She landed mid-pivot to see the tile still smoking faintly, cracked in half from the unexpected surge from her bare feet. She winced.
Mayuko was particularly meticulous about her garden. It was the only one in close proximity Raiku's house that had survived. That slip… would cost her as soon as Mayuko got home from night shift. She shook her foot out, sending it a silent reprimand. She had enough trouble with her hands sending out accidental power surges lately, but her feet? She trusted her feet to carry her places. This sort of behaviour just wasn't on, or she'd singlehandedly destroy every roof in Konoha. She tapped the ball of her foot on the ground cautiously to make sure there wouldn't be a second incident, waiting a split second before she set off again.
A couple members of her family were night owls—given how many of them there were, that was just statistics for you—but the houses she passed on her way to the gate were dark. Fortunately. She didn't want to explain why she was, by her standards, half-dressed and on her way out to the gate. God only knew what her father's reaction would be. It would likely involve hysterical accusations of boys, more hopeful queries about girls, and then heartfelt questions about why she hadn't felt able to confide about her night-time activities.
Raiku hopped over a small fence to take a shortcut, shaking her head in affectionate exasperation. Goddamnit, sometimes support networks were a hassle. When she finally reached the perpetually open gate, she took a moment to take a breath and scan. But she didn't really need to. It was exactly where she'd thought it was, which was worrying all on its own, but at least there was no uncertainty.
Again, there were no visual indicators. No distortions in the air or on the ground. No smell or sound. Just that feeling again, of something impossibly weighty, like a room with more space inside than the walls should have allowed.
She… hadn't actually thought this far ahead. Why the gate to the Gairano compound? It wasn't like it could nab any of her family. They didn't have Plots to distort and they weren't Characters to manipulate. With the notable, unfortunate exception of her mother, those were the only things Devices affected.
Oh god. Did she have any pregnant relatives? She quickly tried to recall, and of course she did. But no, no—her running about was likely a colossal headache for the Genematrix, so even if her status was deliberate she was unlikely to be the experiment that got repeated.
Just in case, she checked to make sure the slope was empty before addressing the issue. 'Go on.' After a moment of hesitation, she flapped a hand at it. 'Get out of here. Go away.' Another pause. 'Get!'
It did nothing and it went nowhere. She couldn't blame it really; that hadn't been her most intimidating delivery. She put her hands on her hips and tried that disapproving pose on for size. Then changed her mind and folded her arms. Shifted. Scowled magnificently and then realised it was all in her eyes because she wasn't used to having this much face to express with.
Still nothing.
She threw her hands up. 'What do you want?!'
It was at roughly this point, yelling at empty air in the middle of the night, as she stood barefoot on her compound steps, that she realised she was being ridiculous. It couldn't hear her, it didn't even have ears. But she knew it was there, so she'd, what—assumed that like any other mechanism a Gairano could perceive, she should be able to understand it better? Even the fact that she knew it was there was alarming, let alone any answers she could have gotten from it. Despite her father's easy acceptance of her sudden Device-sensing (really his curiosity), she shouldn't have been so blasé about it. She certainly shouldn't have gone anywhere near it, much less in her pyjamas.
Well no, on some level she felt put out because damnit, she should have had some perks! If she was going to be part of exactly what she'd conditioned her whole life to avoid, she should have gotten to boss the other parts around a little! Sure, she'd had worse encounters with unhelpful things in the past, but the Uchiha were long gone so the memory wasn't exactly fresh, and while she was on the topic, that was another thing—
A Device wasn't perceptible, but something made Raiku stop, her face somehow inches from where she knew it was.
Raiku blinked.
'Holy shit!' she yelped, lurching back. She must have drifted closer while she was lost in thought, caught in its strange gravity. How could she have gotten so close? She had no excuse! She knew what they did, she'd done that! When she'd come home, she'd dragged another Device into their kitchen, a passenger in her journey to confront her father. And then she'd almost gotten sucked into one that didn't even have a brain to trick her with?! Everyone knew that they played off each other; everyone! Stupid Device, stupid Raiku!
A sudden mental image of it struck her—being caught by some other Device, trapped inside it, helplessly dragged along to twist other people's lives. She shuddered and took another step back, just to be safe. Her back touched the gatepost, reassuringly solid. She glared into the empty air, hands coming up automatically to cover her exposed nose and mouth. She quickly realised and dropped them again, leaving her usually covered features feeling uncomfortably bare, nothing between them and the Device.
Damn… voyeuristic Device, she thought spitefully. She didn't have to deal with this; she would do what she should have done as soon as she confirmed it was there, which was to go and tell her dad. He was much more equipped to actually find out something useful. Raiku took a step back into the compound and paused. She could still feel it there, and the word occurred to her again out of nowhere.
Waiting.
Undoubtedly just her own paranoia but she still half-turned back towards it, some part of her having expected movement. Or something, anyway. The Device still sat at the compound gate. It hadn't moved, but then except for her dragging one that one time, she'd never seen one move. They just… appeared in places.
She glared at it for a long moment before cautiously turning to walk back.
So much for going back to sleep. But she would at least wake her dad up, and he hated that. The thought brought some spring to her step on the way back. Misery loved company, after all.
If Raiku had hoped that her recent poor timing with electrical accidents would die down, she quickly found herself mistaken. Whether it was bare minimum of sleep she was scraping by on, the Device encounter, or having to physically drag her father out of bed and almost braining herself on his bedside table after tripping on his blanket, she had no idea. It could have been any one of those very normal things. But she'd shocked her father twice since waking him, split the wood of Mayuko's kitchen table and absolutely destroyed a patch of tulips en route to the training grounds, so clearly optimism was for fools. But in her defence for one of those, who left their sprinkler on at… eight in the morning? Raiku had no idea when the correct time to water plants was, but she assumed that "when Raiku is nearby" wasn't it. She'd also hissed at her dad, she vaguely remembered. Like an angry cat, or Ryuu before noon.
Boy. She felt sorry for anyone who had to deal with Gairano Chitose today, because he would be cranky.
Raiku reluctantly dragged herself up the grassy slope to the training ground they'd all agreed to meet at, looking forward at least to having some time to maybe nap in the sun before everyone else arrived. So it was fair to say she was startled to find two people already sitting in the wide, verdant field. Daisukenojo lifted his head and waved, sitting cross-legged next to a large black thermos and, perhaps more significantly, Iwao. Iwao nodded, broad hands wrapped around what was… as far as she could tell, a small cup like the one Daisukenojo was holding.
She stopped in her tracks. Daisukenojo was early? And he'd brought something to drink with enough for everyone? Usually he catered, at most, for himself and her. If he was feeling particularly brotherly. She rubbed two fingers together and flicked a quick zap through the air between them, satisfied when he didn't burst into a plume of smoke and instead just screamed girlishly.
He reeled it back but sent her a filthy look, made worse by the mild bruising around his eyes and throat. 'Good morning to you too, jerkface! Glad you're in a good mood!'
Raiku grinned, only a little meanly, and made her way over to them with her hands in her pockets. Daisukenojo, now verified as the real Daisukenojo, didn't have a lot of force behind the scowl. He must have been in a good mood already, so she felt safe to nudge his leg with her foot. 'What did you bring?'
He jerked his chin towards the thermos where it sat between him and Iwao. 'It's just tea. My house was crazy this morning, there were like five of me, so I decided to have it here. You can have some if you want.'
Raiku eyed him curiously while Iwao serenely sipped his tea, the older boy not even having the decency to look bleary-eyed like she knew she did. She recognised the cup he was holding as one of Daisukenojo's, which meant the red-haired deviant had brought a) enough tea for more than one person and b) enough cups to not have to share, both clearly proving premeditation for this little gathering. Was he hoping to soften Ryuu up? Tea had been known to do that if delivered with perfect timing. Or maybe he had tried to set another trap for an emotional talk? He did have the least dislike for them in the team.
She briefly considered letting it go. Briefly. 'Hey Iwao, was he here before you?'
Daisukenojo cleared his throat and continued before Iwao could respond. 'And I knew Konishi was going to get here early since we bumped into each other last night, and Yamada lives right by me anyway. So we walked here together. I wanted to make sure he didn't get lost.'
Raiku hadn't spoken to Iwao in a long time, which she'd probably have to address at some point, but she somehow knew with certainty that he'd never been lost in his life. He also had the poker face to end them all, so she immediately discarded the thought of getting answers from him. She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully at Daisukenojo instead, who was looking at the sky the way he always did when he was avoiding something.
Curious.
Her train of thought was cut off by Ryuu brushing past, making a beeline for the thermos with his eyes half-closed.
'Good morning to you too, princess,' Daisukenojo said, tossing it to him before Ryuu could do something like kick him out of the way.
Ryuu made an irritated noise and sat. He reclined, really, against the nearby log, shamelessly hogging the thermos. Like Daisukenojo, he'd clearly taken a few hits during their training session, though the long cut down one cheekbone had obviously been expertly tended to. He was also moving a little stiffly, which Raiku easily chalked up to Daisukenojo doing what all three of them tended to: punching his opponent in the spine.
They had a few minutes to settle in before Daisukenojo finished his tea and started putting it back into his bag. 'Heads up, Yamada's coming.' Ryuu put up a brief fight for the thermos, which he seemed to mostly want for the warmth; Raiku tried so hard not to make the lizard-warmth-basking comparison in her mind, but come on! Ryuu, like dragon? And he was basking on the log, really—
'They rely on your chakra abilities,' Iwao said to Daisuke, handing over his mug.
Daisuke shrugged. The tops of his ears went pink, like they always did when someone implied he was good at things; he put on a good front, but she did have to remember that he was a self-conscious young man. 'They've both got things that do something sort of like it.'
Raiku nodded, the familiar taste of metal at the back of her mouth settling in when she focused on each of them to find the conductors there. Ryuu had far more than she would ever have guessed in such simple, close-fitting clothes, while Iwao had… none. At all. Daisuke had what she was pretty sure were brass knuckles in his pocket, just based on how well she knew him.
Yamada, approaching up the hill, had tiny spots of metal on him that she was pretty sure were surgical staples. Lurching to her feet, she brushed off the back of her pant legs. 'Ten ryo says he's still in scrubs,' she said cheerfully. Daisukenojo clapped her hand and used it to pull himself up, grinning.
'Deal.'
Iwao was not, upon further consideration, as kind a sparring partner as Raiku had been led to believe. By him. And his obviously misleadingly kind demeanour.
Several days into their new arrangement, she had actually decided that he was a monster, determined to provoke her into murdering him at every turn. Yamada hadn't needed to intervene as dramatically as he had on their first day but her tendency to try and force Iwao from the ground, where he was safely earthed, was still a problem. As much as she tried to avoid it, her subconscious predilections would prompt her to take the most damaging approach every time, and it was only Iwao's superior experience and honed reflexes that kept him from permanent nerve damage. Or worse. But he was amiable about it and gave clear, helpful feedback, exactly like a good sparring partner would.
It was hell. His apparent equanimity largely removed the guilt that ordinarily prompted her to try and hold back. Raiku had decided to buy herself a whole cake if he survived the week, and her odds weren't looking good. She went home every day and collapsed into an exhausted, highly-strung mess, and the occasional electrical accidents outside of training had become more regular without her mind fully on top of controlling them. Not that she ever seemed to have much warning anyway.
Worse yet, Ryuu and Daisukenojo had totally failed to similarly endanger each others' lives.
In the sessions themselves she wasn't hurting Iwao as often, had left burns along his arms and shoulders less and less. ...Well, less accidentally, anyway. By Yamada's standards it was safe to say that the training was going swimmingly.
For a given value of the word.
Raiku blocked a blow that still shoved her backwards and lashed out, a broad, sizzling wave of electricity following her hand. Iwao absorbed it without flinching, the seams of the stone heating red for a moment before he aimed a kick squarely at her ribs. She ducked backwards rather than trying to block again, sinking into a crouch to lash out with a low kick of her own. Iwao ducked back and she felt a thrill of glee at the sight of him forced to withdraw, his planted feet as always, the enemy. If she could knock him back then she could knock him down, sink electricity through the stone to find something that would burn—
Raiku caught her glowing fist before she could send it forward with too much charge yet again, arresting the motion with a sickening lurch that sent her balance all wrong. Iwao had already ducked in before she could correct it and she tried to bring up her guard instead, to buy her time to gain distance.
She knew immediately that she'd judged the angle wrong in the hastiness of the block, in her hurry to defend instead of lashing out with deadly force. Iwao's leg smacked her arm out of the way, too far past her guard already. He had a brutal strike with the stone guard up. She knew that already. It made her bones shake each time she blocked.
So her unprotected leg never stood a chance, really.
The blow crashed into her thigh, hard. Raiku howled and went down, clutching at it. Iwao immediately dropped out of his defensive stance and into a crouch at her side.
'Did you hear a crunch?!' Raiku demanded frantically, holding her leg so hard her knuckles were going white, flesh throbbing painfully underneath it. 'I think I heard a crunch!'
'I didn't hear a crunch,' he said evenly, trying to see around her bare hands without actually touching them. 'Let me see.'
Raiku tried to loosen her fingers, but another wave of pain made her clamp down again.
Iwao settled back on his heels. 'I'm getting the medic,' he said, stone dissipating into his skin.
Raiku nodded. Then tensed, digging her fingers into her own injury. 'No! Do not get Ryuu!'
He stood. 'You need help.'
'It's fine! It's probably fine! It already hurts less!' she said desperately, but couldn't quite pry her hands away from her thigh. Iwao let out a long breath as he looked down at her, then gently nudged her leg with his foot.
'I'll kill you!'
Iwao nodded. 'I'm getting him. Wait here.'
Raiku, teeth still bared in a pained snarl, watched him walk briskly off, then tried to struggle back to standing. The resulting surge of agony left her gasping and lying on her back, staring at the sky.
Catching her breath, she waited for the pain-induced dizziness to fade.
Right then.
She had a choice. She could wait for Ryuu, or hope that another medic came along. With her luck it would likely be Sakura.
Or she could resort to a different, much less responsible plan, that would hopefully still be less traumatising.
Reaching into her pocket—gingerly, trying so carefully not to jostle her leg—she fished out a tiny black soldier pill, tossing it into her mouth and crunching it between her back molars. The harsh bitterness spread over the back of her tongue a split second before a rush of heat followed, surging down her spine and pooling in her stomach. She let out a sigh and closed her eyes, her hands and feet starting to tingle. After a minute the pain in her leg started to feel more like white noise, a buzzing static when she shifted it replacing the agony. Raiku lurched up into a sitting position, blinking. The upwards movement made her eyes feel like they were floating. She awkwardly struggled up onto her feet, swaying for a moment when the blood seemed to rush to her head. The combination of adrenaline and stimulants terrifyingly like amphetamines swum hot through her body, making her fingers twitch; it was a reaction of some kind but not the one she should have had, not with the electricity devouring all the extra fuel. It left her not so much overwhelmed as innervated, but it put a happy layer of chemicals between her and the pain and made her feel tingly and pleasant.
She listed to the side and lifted her arms to give her more balance, a jolt of electricity shooting out to rocket off through the trees. She blinked at her hand, deciding one pill would be enough. 'I cannot believe we give these to children,' she muttered, tongue feeling fuzzy and woollen in her mouth, eyes stretched wide so she could focus.
It took a few false starts for her to work out the angle she needed to step to make her leg weight-bear, and then she made her lopsided way through the trees separating the training ground from Konoha. She picked her way through with the exaggerated care of the drunk or concussed, the trampled grass providing a trail over and around tree roots.
Raiku came to a stop at the bridge that would lead into the village outskirts, leaning heavily on the railing. The river rushed below, the smell of freshwater and greenery reaching her nose while the white-noise thrum of energy stretched towards her skin in interest.
She stepped forward.
Or almost did, before she stepped back instead, the static clearing in her skin enough for it to prickle in anticipation before her foot could land, before that feeling of Gairano-wrong and Plot-right could settle in, and her day suddenly made perfect sense.
'Please,' she begged, closing her eyes. 'Let's not do this today.'
She wanted so badly to step forward, and it had less to do with reaching the hospital and more to do with that sense at the back of her mind that was insisting she do exactly that.
Raiku stepped forward.
But no she didn't, and she gritted her teeth against the sense that she was going to, that she already had, that she just had to take a step and it would be fine. She swayed back again, gripping the railing tight to keep her balance.
'I get it,' she forced out. 'I should be doing something, right?'
The Device on the bridge between her and the village sat and told her nothing. But what else was new? The silence was so heavy between them that it almost felt somehow visible. Like the absence of noise left it so empty that it was collapsing in on itself.
'Is it the hospital?' she tried. 'There's always a Character there. That's what you want? You want me to… go near them or something?'
No, not that word, damnit. Not that it could want things from her, expect things, not that it could sit there patiently in wait for her. She repeated it mentally over and over, trying to reassert it as a meaningless Genematrix function in her mind, something she'd be foolish to anthropomorphise just because she was something like it once.
She shook her head, mostly at herself, then pushed off the railing and wobbled back into standing up straight. She'd have to go for the other bridge, for all that it was much further away. Stupid Devices on their stupid bridges—
Intellectually she knew that Naruto was also using the training grounds. That it would be there waiting for him, or for Kakashi, or for whatever Character they had dragged into their mess. But it couldn't help but feel personal, now that she'd noticed it. Like they were being pulled towards each other, to get… whatever the Genematrix needed done together. But if her dad was right, they both just needed to touch the same Characters in some way. They didn't need to be together, Devices were never together. She'd held one to her once so it had to be possible, but it wasn't what happened on its own. It was because she was moving when she wasn't supposed to, she could just feel it. Like Devices could fall towards each other if they got too close, caught in the pull of gravity intensified into a single, unspeakably heavy point.
She managed to catch herself before she could fall backwards and complete her own tired metaphor, the dull ringing in her ears making way for,
'It isn't what we do.'
Raiku's head had jerked back towards the Device before she registered she'd moved, before the words fully sunk in. Her lips parted in shock, eyes wide and searching.
Nothing. Nothing but the emptiness, and the ghost of Tsuji's voice. Clear as if he were standing there, but just pulled from thin air. The sound of running water was all she could hear.
But she'd heard something. She had. That empty air had made way for words that it could pull out of her memory, could use to pull her towards it.
The space between them suddenly seemed like it was seething; like the patience she had projected before was gone, stripped back and filled with something angry seeping out of her own skin.
'I don't know if you're the same one as before,' she growled. 'I don't know if you're the same, if you're—if you're following me, or some stupid Plot needs us to do something together, but this isn't going to work.' She made a cutting motion with her hand. 'I'm not doing this… weird shit with you! With any of you! I haven't done it before and things were fine anyway, so just… get lost!' She turned again, determination cutting through some of the haze of drugs and the returning pain.
Something slammed hard into her back, knocking the wind out of her and sending her off her feet to sprawl on the pavestones. Raiku groaned and coughed, trying to gasp some air back into her lungs. She pulled herself into rolling onto her front, pushing herself up with her hands until she could drag her legs back under her. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe steadily through the reflexive surge of rage, that indignant rush that followed an insult, a slap, a snide comment that stung.
'Really?' she asked when she could push the words past the anger gripping her throat. 'Really?'
She was saved from screaming at empty space by someone clearing their throat from in front of her. She looked forward, half-expecting there to be no one there again, but there were feet in front of her. She slowly traced them with her eyes, up a long set of legs to tanned arms, folded across a lean chest, and then finally meeting bright yellow eyes narrowed menacingly.
Ryuu unfolded his arms to toss a syringe ampule up and down in his hand. 'Where do you think you're going?' he asked sweetly. 'There's healing to be done.'
Raiku wondered wearily if it wasn't too late to choose the Device instead.
A/N: Who even carries syringe ampules around, just casually, who does that. Someone likely to engineer occasions to use them, obviously. I wouldn't trust that guy.
