This has now been ported to AO3 under the same title! I go by northwrought there - how dare someone take my username without ever knowing it was mine.

TW: graphic description of a panic attack, rumination on death.

'You stabbed yourself,' Ryuu said flatly.

'Yep,' Raiku confirmed. She winced as a stitch was pulled particularly tight near her shoulder. Shizune cast her a warning look,carefully gripping a needle that felt all wrong for metal.

'Stay still,' she scolded, before focusing again on the wide slash, digging it back into flesh. Raiku, now used to this, made a token whining noise but held still for the pain-hot line of pinching, throbbing points to stretch further and further across. The slice was painfully red and sore around the edges where stitches already done were pulling at damaged skin, and there was dried blood from it to where Shizune had rolled her shirt just far down enough to tend to it. It flaked and itched when she moved. Like her skin was trying to peel back and leave her raw and bloody.

'Oh, no – you slashed yourself,' Ryuu corrected. He folded his arms against his own, undamaged chest. 'In a line.'

'I did,' Raiku said with a nod.

'You slashed yourself, across your own chest, in a perfectly straight line, perfectly perpendicular to your goddamn vertical axis.'

Raiku feigned interest, looking down and looking from an angle to see around Shizune's bent head. 'Is it?'

'It is,' Ryuu confirmed.

'Well,' she said, 'stranger things have happened.' Had happened earlier in the day, even, had left fear unfolding even still in her chest like her heart was some skittering thing. Stranger things had happened, certainly. Skittering, skittering.

'Have they?' Ryuu asked, skitter-thing-free. 'Have they really?'

'This is going to scar, I'm afraid,' Shizune sighed with an upwards glance at her.

Raiku blinked. 'Okay?' she offered when this seemed to require a response, not really sure why it was important, not sure what to keep track of when so many things seemed to be happening at once. Shizune snorted and started tying off. 'And yes! I can think of several stranger things,' she stressed with a firm look, 'just off the top of my head. My one singular Raiku head, the only one that looks like it in all the world. Ryuu.'

He narrowed his eyes. Shizune ignored this statement, apparently not finding this line of dialogue strange in any way. Raiku chose to believe that said more about Shizune than it did about her, but knew she was in denial.

She was in denial.

'And how did you manage that?' Ryuu asked. His voice was remaining at a perfectly even level of volume. He only did that when he was trying not to yell, so Raiku quickly leaned closer to Shizune.

'You know,' she said. 'I was using knives. Wires.' Wires made more sense, made more sense than any of it. 'I was using wires and, then. Fell.'

'You were using knife-wire – something you claim exists – and fell on it,' Ryuu repeated. Raiku winced.

'No, just wires.'

'So you said "knives", why?'

Why had there been knives, and why hadn't she known? Why hadn't she seen?

'It was an accident, Ryuu—' She broke off into a yelp more out of surprise than pain when Shizune brushed a broad line of antiseptic across the fresh stitches. She glanced down and the brown-tinted cream shone sickly over the neat black stitchwork, over the injured red of the flesh beneath. She looked like someone had tried to cut her in half, she thought, and skitter-skitter; the shape of fear still scrabbling at her ribs to try and get out. Clawing up her throat faster than she could swallow it back.

She looked at the door again, and there was no one there. She wished that someone would close it again.

'You were lucky,' Shizune informed her, yanking a fresh bandage out of its plastic packaging. 'This wasn't shrug-it-off-shallow, but it was the same depth all the way through. Any deeper and you would have been in serious trouble. As it is, I've stitched you up for the remaining depth where the chakra hasn't fully closed the wound, but you could have really damaged yourself this time. Your subclavian artery,' she stressed, jabbing Raiku just close to the shoulder joints on each side, 'is vulnerable in both these places, or your aortic arch would be to a stab right here in the middle of it. At basically only this angle. You'd have bled out before you got anywhere near help.'

Raiku rubbed the spot, frowning. 'Okay, uncalled-for attacking of the patient, thank you.' Artery, subclavian. Arch, aortic. Artery, artery, artery. She pushed her hand down harder, trying to feel the pressure, trying to feel her heartbeat against her hand.

'Only that angle, huh,' Ryuu said, glaring at her while she kept her eyes on the empty doorway to the left of Shizune's shoulder, pressing down. Down, down, down.

Shizune huffed and made a gesture. 'Lift your right arm.'

Raiku obeyed, wincing, and turned her attention back to Ryuu while Shizune started to wrap. 'Also, why are you even here? Did the smell of my blood lure you in?'

Ryuu glared. 'I think my presence here is the most explicable part of this, don't you?' he asked.

'I do not,' Raiku replied, a high and brittle laugh bubbling out. 'I don't think that at all.'

'He was in the hospital already,' Shizune said, pushing Raiku's left arm down, lifting her right and starting a second roll of bandages. Layers of linen were crossed over her chest to get the incision around the shoulders, and layered further in to cover the centre. 'He was revising field tracheotomies with Shuchihara. He came downstairs with me when you arrived.'

'I'm going to pretend that sentence didn't happen,' Raiku mused. 'Just anything about tracheas and Ryuu, really. Not a thing. Weren't you with Daisukenojo?' Daisukenojo, who she hadn't seen at all that day. Who hadn't really been there at all.

She dug her fingers back into her collarbone, trying to focus on the pain.

'He and Konishi were sparring with Yamada guiding. I came back here to revise.'

Raiku raised her eyebrows and lowered her arm at Shizune's nudge, heat blooming where she'd pressed a fresh bruise into herself. 'I can't believe you turned down a chance to beat up someone new and exciting.'

Ryuu looked his trademark blend of bored and irritated. It was reassuringly normal, even if the tightness around his eyes belied his lingering anger. 'I didn't. Yamada wanted me to fight someone with a purely physical technique and it wasn't going to work with Konishi's particular one. His abdominal armour expands when he breathes and exposes weaknesses if he inhales too deeply, so he compensates with controlled breathing and chakra to maintain oxygen saturation. He can't spar with me like he can Daisuke or you, not with technique inclusion.'

Because Ryuu would just suffocate him, Raiku filled in. Like Iwao was a self-glazing cake, he made his own little stone casket for Ryuu to bury him in. And Ryuu would have enjoyed that, for about five minutes. Like a cat killing a mouse too fast and wandering off, bored. She took a second to quickly remind herself that Iwao was an exceptionally dangerous young man and not a mouse left on a doorstep. 'So in a real fight,' she guessed, 'he'd have to kill you as soon as possible. Which doesn't work in a training scenario.' Kill you, kill you.

Kill you. Her fingers twitched.

'It wouldn't work in either scenario,' Ryuu said darkly. Shizune pulled back and away from Raiku, tugging her latex gloves off with a snap. Raiku flinched at the noise, too sudden and sharp.

'All done. Try not to scratch at it this time.' She slingshotted the glove neatly into the nearby bin.

Raiku gingerly rolled her shoulders back, feeling the sharp pull of the stitches across her chest. 'Thanks, Shizune.' She gripped the side of the bench for a moment, fingers squeezing hard and starting to hurt against the metal frame. Ryuu was glaring and Shizune was helping, and she'd thought he was Daisuke and she'd thought she was starting to understand and then it had been him instead, staring at her and seeing too much and with her blood, her blood just sprayed across his chest like it was nothing.

Raiku let out a shaky breath, then again, steadier. Forced it to be smoother again, until almost shaking with the effort in fine motor control, it left her in a steady stream.

Ryuu was watching her when she looked up. 'Raiku,' he said.

She pushed herself off the bed, rolling her shoulders back again for the sting. 'Am I good, or do you need me to take anything?' she asked brightly, loudly.

Shizune waved a hand. 'No painkillers for you, not after last time. Bandages changed twice a day for the first three—'

'Once a day after,' she finished. 'And check for infection whenever I get them changed. Got it.'

'Any increased pain or fever, you come right back,' Shizune added sternly.

Raiku saluted with two fingers, a flippant gesture that always worked for Kakashi. 'No problems, boss.' She ducked around her out into the hallway, not bothering to check and see if Ryuu was following. Which was insane, because when had she started assuming he would shadow her? But Shizune called him back before he could follow, and Raiku snapped out of it quickly enough to escape, sliding into the elevator at the last second and breathing a sigh of relief when the doors closed, leaving her alone in it.

Alone.

She could hear a high noise escaping with her breaths and reached up, digging hard into the fresh line of stitches to feel the pain. The thick bandaging reduced it to a dull ache that set her teeth on edge, but was nowhere near enough. She just had to get home. She just had to keep it together, to keep breathing, until she got home. Everything would be fine.

Raiku reached forward and jabbed the ground floor button again, impatient. The level display ticked from three, to two, then hung.

She jabbed the button again, but it didn't depress. It stuck hard, and the elevator shuddered.

She glanced up at the ceiling, but it didn't seem like her death was coming through the trapdoor there. She looked back at the doors, and the dark line between them suddenly seemed to expand. She yelped and plastered herself to the opposite wall, convinced for a second the elevator was being pried open from the outside by force, but it wasn't.

Of course it wasn't.

It oozed outwards and darkened the walls until they shone wetly, light reflecting off black, slick Plot all around her where there had been nothing before. Layers upon layers, stretching out to cover the walls, the floor and the ceiling, flecked through the air. It shuddered once before she could react, sending her staggering to keep her balance. She recoiled in on herself to try and keep her hands from touching the walls, trying to keep her feet in the perfect circle of untouched ground that the Plot was pooling around. She knew it was the fail-field, that it would just move with her. But she felt rooted in place, in her island free of contamination.

A line shot through the slickness like shrapnel, like a hard ricochet that delineated the oozing mass, rocketing off out of sight down the hall.

Something was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong wrongwrongwongwrong-

A shockwave rushed through and broke on an invisible barrier around her, surging through the Plot like an explosion, like the tremors from an earthquake. Raiku ducked instinctively and covered her head even though she knew, she knew it wasn't physical, even though there wasn't even a change in the air to tell her something was happening. By the time she felt able to open her eyes, the walls were just the walls again. The floor was just the floor. The feeling, the certainty of wrongness had dissipated, leaving something like rightness just by contrast.

The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open to the ground floor.

She cautiously straightened and scanned the empty air in front of her, the lobby beyond. The sounds of people walking by filtered back in, through Plotless space.

Raiku nodded. Once. Twice.

And then she shrieked and sprinted for home.

Raiku arrived home panting, leg aching fiercely, and she slammed the door shut behind her. The compound was always mercifully free of Plot, including pollution by abstract concepts of good and bad. 'Dad!' she yelled, only remembering to take her shoes off hallway down the hall and just hurling them back towards the door. 'Dad!'

'In here!'

Raiku swerved left and stopped in her tracks at the sight of him tightening the straps on his small field-pack at the kitchen table. 'Are you going somewhere?' she asked faintly.

He nodded, zipping up the front compartment. 'I'm tagging along on a Jounin assessment for a friend, as the third-party assessor. It'll be a few days out of the village, then one day assessment work once I get back.'

Raiku boggled at him. 'You want to go now? Now?!' she demanded. 'Uzumaki's training in the village limits, who knows who's coming to come and try to cause trouble with him here?!'

He waved her off. 'It's the best time. No major villain arcs when it's focused on his personal development, I'll be done before he starts moving into Event-based arcs. Just a few days. It's really safest to do it right now, really.'

I know something you don't know, Raiku thought deliriously, and had opened her mouth to speak when he continued.

'From now on, missions are just going to get riskier and riskier for us,' he said, tucking a spool of explosive tags into a side pocket. 'Antagonists are going to be cropping up more, and you know what that means. I'm not sure either Izai or Senta are ready to take over for me, so I want to put in some hours before it gets too hairy. Buy myself a little more time to pick one of them.'

'Take over?' she asked dumbly, and he raised his eyebrows at her.

Take over, she repeated to herself. Take over. From… her dad.

Her dad, the Gairano shinobi. Out in the violence, and the blood. With indestructible enemies and blades everywhere, a world full of pitfalls no one else could see. Her dad, forgotten by the universe.

She found herself gripping the archway for support. 'Already?'

He nodded, finally zipping the last compartment shut. 'I am over forty, now,' he reminded her. 'It's not like I can keep doing this forever. We've got Antagonists falling out of the woodwork every other week, so I have to be more cautious. I'm getting old, after all,' he added with a grin, a joke in the face of Raiku holding onto the arch to stay upright.

Forty wasn't old. Forty wasn't old and it wasn't fair.

'You alright?' he asked. 'You seem…' He gestured vaguely at her. 'Off.'

She tried to say yes. She really did. But she was shaking her head before she knew it, a high whine escaping. He immediately rounded the table, hands hovering awkwardly over her. 'Honey, what's wrong?' he asked, ducking his head to try and meet her lowered gaze, settling for taking hold of her shoulders. 'It wasn't the age talk, was it? There's really no need to worry, this is a nothing mission. I'm there as an assessor for three non-Characters, I couldn't be more under the radar if I tried!'

Non-Characters, so that was fine. Characters being the risk, being the greatest possible danger to her dad.

Her dorky, loving, expendable dad.

How long would it take the Uchiha to kill him, she wondered. To cut him down, and never think of him again.

But she couldn't just say nothing, she had to tell him. She had to tell someone, so someone would know. Someone would know besides her and it wouldn't feel like she was choking on it, suffocating on the thought she was going to die alone and afraid and no one would know why.

She had to say something. She had to say his name out loud.

Raiku sagged forward into her father's grip, lowering her head to his shoulder. 'I got stabbed,' she said, voice thick. 'I got stabbed in training today and it really hurt, and Shizune can't give me painkillers after that one time so it stung really badly, and you know how chakra healing gets all weird with me after a while so it isn't fully healed and she says it's going to scar and Ryuu is mad for some reason—'

'He's always mad,' her dad dismissed, 'don't worry about him.'

A fair point.

'But stabbed, though—you weren't meant to be at training today,' he said with a frown. 'How bad was it? Should you be at home yet?'

Raiku sniffed and rubbed at her chest. 'No, it's fine,' she mumbled. 'It just hurts.'

He squeezed her shoulders lightly. 'I bet it does. I can postpone my mission if you want me to stay with you—'

'No!' she said quickly, head snapping up to look at him. 'I'll be fine! I just sort of wanted to… vent a bit… It's not that bad, really.'

He made a wary humming noise. 'It's okay if you're upset about it, you know. It's really no big deal.' He offered her a tentative smile. 'It's a bunch of middling Chuunins, they really can wait a few days. They only picked me because they thought a Gairano would go easy on them.'

Her laugh sounded more like a sob for a second and she scrubbed at her eyes. 'When are things with us ever easy?' she asked.

He smiled lopsidedly. Wistfully. 'Some things are,' he said, ruffling her hair. 'Are you sure you don't want me to stay? I promise you, it wouldn't be a problem.'

She shook her head and gave him a watery smile. 'I'll be fine,' she repeated, 'I'll feel better once I've slept. Promise.'

She'd feel better once he was out of the house. As far away from Uchiha as possible.

He let go of her shoulders and picked up his pack, then paused.

'Are you sure?'

She took a deep breath and plastered on a smile. This, at least, she knew how to handle.

It took ten minutes of him hesitating at the door and her encouraging him to go through her teeth, stretching herself closer and closer to fraying just to get him out, to get him to go before the door finally closed on his reluctant face and she sagged against the wall of the hallway, exhausted.

She made her slow, shuffling way back to the kitchen. She had to eat something. She'd lost blood and needed iron. She nodded to herself—a good thought, Raiku. That had been a good thought to have.

She made it all the way to the cupboard before the insidious second thought surfaced.

Why bother, when she would lose the rest soon?

Raiku slammed the cupboard shut in a flare of frustration with herself.

She knew better than this. People couldn't discover the Genematrix. If they were told, they forgot. If they worked it out, they forgot. If a carrier pigeon dropped a message about it on them, they still forgot. The Gairano swore never to tell just to keep the holes to a minimum, to keep the risk of the Genematrix filling in the gaps with something that could hurt the family instead, but that was the risk.

He had forgotten already. He had to have.

She had no reason to feel so certain that he hadn't, just because he was Uchiha Itachi. That didn't make him any less of a pawn than the other Characters, Device or not.

Raiku drummed her fingers on the counter, trying to calm herself down. He had forgotten.

…and even if he'd just forgotten seeing her, recognising her, remembering that he'd run into some Gairano while he was in disguise wouldn't be enough for him to come after her. Seeing Raiku as herself would have been cutting it too close to him seeing a Device, so odds were he'd forgotten running into anyone at all. He wasn't coming after her. Uchiha Itachi wasn't going to walk through the compound for her, killing everyone in his path before finally killing Raiku just to finish the day on a high note.

But then…

Could he even kill her?

Raiku caught herself reaching for her collarbone again and balled her hands into fists, resting them on the countertop instead. She let the thought present itself, despite every fibre of her being trying to resist.

Was that a function a Device even had, to kill another one? Could Devices technically even be killed, would it even count as killing her or was it just… editing? Taking away a body she wasn't meant to have at all? As a Device, she had to consider that maybe Destruction hadn't been meant to have legs in the first place and then the Gairano got involved and messed it all up. Maybe that was the point. Maybe he'd been drawn to the Device on the bridge, maybe they'd pulled her in together so he could just end her shenanigans before the Plot got serious. Maybe that was the kind of Device he was, typical of an Uchiha. The kind that tidied things up whether they were people or not. It certainly fit with his Backstory.

The heat spilling down her chest made her fear for a moment that her stitches had somehow split while she sat there. When she frantically touched the front of her shirt and found it dry, when she tried to breathe in and couldn't, she realised it was just panic.

Oh, she thought. That makes sense.

And then she was crouching with her back against the counters, thumping her chest hard and clearing her throat, dragging in quick, harsh breaths to try and ease the pressure. The line of stitches just ached at the stretch and she hunched down further, clasping her hands on the top of her head and squeezing in with her elbows, muffling a long, hard scream into her knees, until she felt lightheaded and crunched in on herself as a vacuum. She couldn't breathe and she was going to die, he was going to come and kill her and there was nothing she could do about it, he was coming to kill her and she was going to miss so much, she was going to miss everything and her dad was going to be sad and then her dad was going to die as well probably because of her, it was her fault it was all her fault—

She gasped for air but it felt too thin for what felt like forever, inhaling through the fabric of her pants until the tight, hot spring wound to the breaking point in her chest started to unwind and her head felt light, dizzy. By the time it had eased enough for her to register her hands were hurting, her stomach was hurting from tensing and her arms were shaking, her throat felt hot and swollen. Breathing had been touch and go with her but she was suddenly exhausted by it, drawing great, shuddering breaths like that would somehow help. She started to uncurl like a wrung-out rag, frayed and twisted, unfolding her legs slowly in front of her on the tiles. A hiccupping sob broke through intermittently just to startle her.

Raiku sat there for a long moment on the cool tiles, head resting back against the cupboard.

It was all her fault, she thought. But there wasn't anything she could do about it. Whatever he was—whatever her brain was trying to tell her he was—he couldn't really be like her. He was too important, too central. He had no fail-field, and therefore was just exactly what he was meant to be. And that meant he was someone who could kill her if he wanted, and she wouldn't know if it counted or not.

She pressed her hands to her temples hard, using the pressure to focus herself while she caught her breath. Which felt ridiculous, because breathing had been the problem in the first place, but she felt suddenly so worn out. After a long, long moment, she dragged herself to the table and pulled out a chair and collapsed into it. She could see all the doors and windows from where she sat, the fading light of evening casting them in shadow. Every darkness a space that the Uchiha could come from, with his Uchiha-red, Device-black eyes.

After a moment she took her gloves off and pressed her hands to the wood of the table, feeling the grain beneath her fingertips.

She waited.

Raiku sat at the kitchen table until her cousins started coming down for breakfast, but there was nothing to stay up for. Her nerves were stretched thin, her eyes hot and gritty by the time she gave in and made her way to the training grounds. She should have just slept, she knew. It wouldn't matter if she was awake or not if he decided to kill her; she'd probably never see it coming anyway. There was certainly nothing she'd be able to do to stop him, either way.

She'd just wanted to see.

The Uchiha hadn't shown himself, but she had known when it passed midnight without needing to check; that was when the time when Tsuji would have broken her sleep, when the pervasive sense of wrongness had crept back. Far more removed under layers upon the layers of fail-fields overlapping the compound, the shudder of the subsequent Plot shockwave that had dispelled it had only vaguely registered for her, so far from its unknown epicentre. She had still shuddered, her flare answering electricity casting the kitchen in flickering blue light.

But the Uchiha hadn't come, and the feeling hadn't returned. She'd just stayed at the table and waited, and the day began like it always did.

When she arrived at the training grounds, Iwao and Daisuke were already sitting on the log they had gotten into the habit of meeting by, sipping tea in silence. Raiku grabbed some from the thermos and grunted in greeting, only to choke and sputter when she actually tasted it. 'What the hell is this?!'

'It's mint, you freak,' Daisukenojo grumbled. 'Spraying it everywhere, what's wrong with you?'

'Mint—we have long agreed that mint tea is an abomination, it tastes like what tea actually is! Leaves!' Maybe that was a bit much, but fatigue was only one of the many things Raiku didn't handle with any particular grace. 'Leaves, Daisuke!'

Iwao glanced at his cup thoughtfully, but Daisuke shoved at his knee. 'It's fine that you like it, you moron, don't let the crackling throw you off. She always does that when she's tired.'

Crackling? What—oh. Raiku gritted her teeth and dialled it back, the bright glow dimming on her skin. He had her there. The urge to give herself the boost was automatic, a rush to replace the more organic energy that sleep would have given her.

Daisuke nodded, waving a hand at her. 'See, she'll be doing that all day. Like she's got a dimmer switch. Just tell her off and she'll cut it out.'

'Tired?' Iwao repeated, looking at her. 'You were injured yesterday.'

Raiku shrugged, forcing herself to take another sip of the appalling tea. 'It's not so bad. I've had worse.' Only once, but it had been very bad. 'You know how it is.'

'Do we?' Ryuu remarked, appearing beside her rather than walking there like a normal person. She rolled her eyes and prayed for patience. 'Do we know how it is to slash ourselves? Or wait, was it a stab? Remind me.'

'Who can say?' she asked around a jaw-popping yawn. 'Life is mysterious.'

He had bags under his eyes. It sadly didn't detract from his bright yellow glare. 'Isn't it.'

"Good morning, my feeble goddamn sunflowers!" Yamada called, almost startling Raiku out of her skin. "How are we? Wait, Speedy, what the hell are you doing here? You're falling apart!"

'I'm not—"falling apart" is a strong phrase,' she protested. 'I want to stay!'

Her smile felt strained. More specifically, after all, she didn't want to be at the kitchen table anymore, waiting to die. He would kill her or he wouldn't, she reminded herself again. Brooding wouldn't save her and she'd already gone over her quota and had to borrow against next month. He would or he wouldn't. Would. Wouldn't.

Raiku shuddered, just once, and pretended she couldn't feel Ryuu watching her.

Yamada frowned. "You look like hell, Speedy."

'Wow.'

Iwao raised a hand. 'Training should reflect life. Sleep isn't guaranteed.'

Daisukenojo made a disapprovingly clicking noise with his tongue. 'I think she'd just kill them, then. Save herself the risk of trying to incapacitate them.'

'Maybe.'

'And she is way better at killing people than Ryuu, just by accident even. Going off numbers alone.'

It was hard to say who was more offended by this, Raiku or Ryuu. They glanced at each other, the tension between them briefly put aside in the face of deciding who had the most right to get irritated.

Yamada, as usual, decided it was him. "I did not open this to the floor, get me?!" he said loudly. "This is not a democracy!"

'Nothing in Konoha is a democracy,' Raiku muttered, because the Gairano had Views on martial aptitude as a means of political succession.

'She'll kill him!' Daisukenojo pointed out. 'You can't seriously want them to train together when she's like this! She almost electrocuted him over tea!'

'Boiled mint leaves,' Raiku pointed out lamely.

Ryuu tilted his head. 'That's not tea, that's garbage. Why did you even make it?'

Daisukenojo glowered. 'Why did anyone make you, asshole—'

"It's too early for this bullshit," Yamada groaned, scrubbing a hand down his face. "You do look terrible, Speedy."

Raiku wasn't above begging, but the thin note of hysteria in her voice wasn't there by choice. 'Please let me stay, it'll be fine! I promise, I promise it'll be fine, just let me stay!' She could hear the crackling again. It wouldn't help her case, but she was so tired. How was it fair? Destruction on two legs and here she was, shaking because of one Uchiha who'd been sent to war too young and ruined everything for everyone. Even trying to whine about it in her head didn't fly because she knew, she knew the Gairano were free, after all. She was free to be afraid.

Yamada looked at her shrewdly. She tried not to fidget, realised even that would be out of character, and did it anyway. She twisted her hands in her shirt and tried to look harmless instead.

"You promise to stop when it hurts?" he asked. "Or if you start getting too into it, you stop right away. Get me?"

It would be inappropriate to kiss Yamada, Raiku knew, but the way she brightened must have told him she was thinking about it because he quickly leaned away. 'Yes! I get you!'

He nodded. "Good. And you two, we need to go over some notes from the training yesterday, which we'll do first. Speedy, you may as well listen in."

A cloud seemed to pass and block out the sun, casting them in a shadow. Which was something the weather did, so Raiku didn't pay any attention until black flecks started drifting through the air.

'Oh come on,' she muttered under her breath, yanking her arms in and feet together to minimise the space she was taking up while Yamada started ticking off items on his fingers, given notes now drowned out by snippets of noise from Plot. 'Not these histrionics again, why can't you just—'

Plot started seeping up from beneath the ground, forming around her in a circle that spread out past the treeline, starting to ooze from the branches and leaves.

The feeling was back again, this time so strong and pointed that the words to describe it came into her head automatically, dredged up from nowhere.

Something was wrong, and it had to be found.

Something was wrong, and it had to be fixed.

She closed her eyes and waited for the shockwave to come and get rid of it, to send the Plot back to wherever it belonged. It came with the subtlety she was starting to expect, a world-bending rush that made her gasp and cringe, curling into herself until the voices of her teammates started to filter back in.

She cautiously creaked an eye open just in time to see how the aftershocks settled the Plot back into the background, seeping into the scenery like it had never been there. She looked up reflexively.

Not a cloud in the sky.

'What are you doing here?' Daisuke asked her. She jumped, then glanced around, assuming he was talking to someone else. 'You're hurt, idiot, you still have a few days off.'

Seeing no one, Raiku pointed to herself just to make sure.

'You—of course you! Who else?!'

Raiku shifted her weight uncertainly. 'Didn't we just say it was fine?'

'Oh, yeah right,' he scoffed. 'Get out of here before your arm… pops off, or something. Yamada! You told her to go home, she's defying you!'

She turned to look at Yamada so quickly she almost lost balance. 'Yamada, back me up here!'

He set his hands on his hips and glowered disapprovingly. "Speedy, the last thing we need is you getting too tired and blowing a Stripes-shaped hole in our relations with Sand, get me? Go rest."

Raiku whined, long and pitiful. 'No, come on, let me stay! Please?!'

'Who the hell wants to train this badly?' Daisukenojo asked incredulously. 'Ryuu tried to shove a needle in my eye yesterday, that is what you're missing out on.'

'You left your face exposed,' Ryuu pointed out, and which was reassuringly in-character for him.

'I left my eyes exposed. To see with.'

"Enough!" Yamada shouted, loud enough to scare birds out of the surrounding trees and probably deafen them. They fell silent. Mostly out of percussive shock. He pointed at her. "Speedy, you're out. Go rest and come back when your mandatory rest period is over, get me?!"

She opened her mouth to protest, but the lingering ringing in her ears convinced her to close it again. 'Can I stay and watch?' she asked weakly instead.

'Okay, go ahead and tell me that is something she'd usually want,' Ryuu said, pointing at her accusingly. 'Tell me that's normal.'

"I said go rest, Speedy!" Yamada repeated over the top of him, steamrolling him with sheer volume so effectively that Ryuu lapped into a low, seething hiss. Raiku cringed away with another keening noise, but stuck her hands into her pockets and stomped back down the path to the village. Steadfastly avoiding the bridge. Of death. The doom-bridge.

Actually, could she just burn the bridge down? Was that an option? After an exciting few seconds, she decided against it. Knowing her luck, the Uchiha would rise out of its ashes like a murderous phoenix. And she'd be left facing him again when all she'd wanted was to spend her day with her team, and the sense of security and normalcy that came with them.

But this wasn't her teammates' fault, she knew. This wasn't them.

This was the goddamn Genematrix.

The growl that had been slowly rising came out of her in a snarl. 'What the hell?!' She spun on her heel, throwing out a hand and sending a bolt of electricity hurtling towards a nearby tree, the deafening clap of thunder and the crack of it splitting enough to make her feel just a little better. 'Why?! Why the hell would you do that?!' She kicked at one of the smouldering pieces of the trunk that had blown free, leg twinging mercilessly to remind her why, exactly, she was being excluded.

Unsurprisingly, the Genematrix failed to answer her. Honestly, she probably would have been worse off if it had. But that sense was starting to come back.

Something was wrong, and it had to be found.

Something was wrong, and it had to be fixed.

'I can't—that's not my problem!' she cried, sending out another explosive electrical wave with a slash of her hand. 'I don't know what you want—no, no, you can't even want anything in the first place, just leave me out of it!'

The ground shook. Another tree came down in a flash of electricity from her outstretched hand, and the smell of smoke started to fill the air. Traces of burning leaves drifted through the air, too much like the drifting flakes of Plot, far too soon.

'Hey, hey!' someone called. 'Hey, Raiku! Are you alright?!'

'What?!' she snarled, turning with her hand thrown out and glowing vicious-white.

Naruto threw his hands up. 'Whoa!'

Raiku thought about it. Looking at his face cast in white-blue light, wide-eyed, she really, truly did.

She lowered her hand wearily, her power dying down. 'Naruto,' she said.

He scratched side of his face uncertainly. 'You okay?' he asked. 'We saw the smoke on our way back to the village, I wanted to come check it out.'

Raiku could feel her shoulders sagging with defeat. She didn't know who "we" referred to but she knew it wouldn't mean anything good. 'It's eight in the morning. Why were you coming back so early?'

She knew why. Plot disturbances trying to catch something and a Device on legs? Why not throw Naruto at it, a Narrative factor so significant that he could steamroll over any problems.

He grinned. 'We've been training for a few days straight, just came back for a bit of sleep before we head back out. But yeah, you okay?' His eyes were very blue, and his hair was very bright. Every part of him was perfectly laid out to draw attention in the simplest way. It was exhausting just to look at him when she was already so tired; hard to stomach the purity of those colours and the sincerity written all over him, the Plot winding over his skin like veins. Even dishevelled and bruised, he wasn't dimmed at all.

Raiku flicked her fingers at him, just to see the strangely uneasy way he always watched that motion. 'Just. Frustrated and… really tired. I got beaten up in training and now I can't join in. I got a bit mad.'

Naruto looked away from her to take in what was now a smouldering wreckage of twisted, split trees, the gently smouldering ashes and splinters lying around them. 'Ye-ep,' he agreed with a snicker. 'Just a bit.'

That was one of the things she really hated about him, Raiku decided. The way he could have verbs like "snicker" but not seem to be doing them at anyone. Like he had so much free cheer and amusement that it just spilled out of him, directionless.

She reached up and forcefully rubbed at her features, taking them out of the scowl she'd felt forming.

He rubbed his hands together. 'That does suck. Wanna get breakfast with me? I'll even let you shout me.'

Raiku glared at him balefully. 'How nice of you.'

He grinned again, unapologetic. 'I know, right?' He turned her with a light push on his way past her, prompting her to fall into step beside him. She was both drawn and repulsed by the sheer Narrative weight of him, a distortion all of its own. 'I'm such a gentleman.'

'Where are we even going?' she asked helplessly. Despairingly, hoping he wouldn't pick up on it.

'Oh man… I sort of feel like ramen!' he laughed, eyes as fever-bright as ever. 'We can cut through here, take a shortcut.'

Raiku knew. She knew where he was taking her. She knew and she still walked, defeated, caught in his impossible slipstream until finally they reached it.

The goddamn.

Fucking.

Bridge.

It was enough to make her want to burst into tears. The sudden feeling that her life was being twisted into a circle, an orbit that revolved around her least favourite kind of landmark and there was nothing she could do about it, that she was trapped in a loop she could recognise but not prevent. The Device was there, waiting to draw her in. She just knew it, but she couldn't get away from it, and the sense of inevitability was crushing. She dragged her foot up one of the concrete steps, and then the next, Naruto's amiable chatting floating ahead as she fell behind. Her feet felt leaden, pulling her down to the ground as she still struggled up.

When she finally got there, she lifted her eyes by increments until they fell on Naruto, waiting in the middle of the bridge and looking at her expectantly. Knowing what she would see. Waiting for the thick ropes of Plot winding through and all around him to distort in place, caught in the Device that had been pulled there to wait for him. It was meant to be there, just like she was meant to be there, and when it was finally over, she could maybe leave this stupid goddamn landmark and do something new with her day. Without the Device, without Uchiha-fucking-Itachi lurking around wherever he had settled in nearby, she might be able to take a step forward.

'What's the hold up?' Naruto asked, and there was no distortion at his feet. There was empty, normal air, and no red eyes. Just Naruto, beaming like the sun.

Raiku stared at him for a long, long time, then closed her eyes. Right.

Something was wrong, and it had to be found.

Something was wrong, and it had to be fixed.

She nodded, then set her jaw and cracked her knuckles.

At least she could set the goddamn bridge on fire.

AN: we should all take a moment to be glad Shana is her wonderful self because I was going to put up until halfway through this chapter and then do the second half as the next until she told me not to.