Your name is Jaya Vantas and you want shooting lessons. You saw guns in a movie once and you really want to try it. They made the sport look so much fun!

Karkat was okay with it when you asked him. Kanaya will be a tough nut to crack.

"Can I have gun lessons?" you ask her after awkwardly standing outside of her room for a few minutes.

"Jaya, you are ten human years old, why would you need to shoot a gun?" she asks, head bent over a sewing project.

"Everyone else has cool weapon stuff," you say, "Nepeta has claws, you have a chainsaw, Sollux has his eyes, Vriska has her sword, Aradia has her horns…" You pause. What did Karkat have? Oh, you got it! "And Karkat has his yelling." The only one you missed was Eridan because he doesn't do much. And Gamzee. You don't see him very often, but you think you saw juggling pins with his name on them once in the basement.

"I knew this time would eventually," Kanaya sighs. She sticks her needle and thread into whatever she was sewing and stand up, brushing loose pieces of thread to the floor. "Follow me," she says. You do.

She leads you to the basement, where you've danced and played countless times, she took out a long metal box with two latches. You've always wondered what was inside, but never dared because the last time you opened up something without permission, Karkat yelled your ears off. She opens it and there, in pieces, is a gun. It's a rifle, and it's black, and it's so awesome!

"I cannot find any ammunition, but it needs a cleaning. It does seem like a good way to practice caring for such a weapon. I have a feeling that if you show me that you have patience for it."

"Yeah!" You smile widely and hug her. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

"You are very welcome, Jaya. I remember starting to train with my weapon when I was four sweeps old, or in human years, almost nine."

"I'm ten now, so when do I get ammunition?"

"I do not know exactly, but when we go to the mainland next time, we can figure it out, okay?"

"Yessss!" You make a fist.

"I will leave you to it, then," she says with a wink and a smirk. At that, she leaves you behind.

"Okay!" You pretend to crack your knuckles. "Now what?"

"Vriska, I need you to put Jaya to sleep for a bit," Kanaya says in a rushed tone.

Vriska raises her eyebrows. "Why?"

"I am having reservations about letting her learn a weapon so early in life."

Vriska chuckles. "You learned when you were four."

"And you learned when you were five."

"Same difference, but if you want me to, I will."

"Thank you."

Vriska rolls her eyes. She closes her eyes and concentrates on Jaya's wavelength, which isn't hard. She's the closest human in the vicinity, so locating it is easy. She sees through Jaya's eyes. The gun is still sitting in the case, and Jaya is poring over a set of instructions. She lets the girl reach for the first piece of the gun before promptly putting her to sleep. Vriska imagines Jaya's face pressing into the gun and making indents in her cheek and stifles a small laugh.

When Vriska opens her eyes again, Kanaya is gone.

Vriska lets out a satisfied sigh and heads to her ship. She feels like going for a ride.

Kanaya briefly checks on Jaya sleeping on top of the weapon. Perhaps making Vriska put her to sleep was not wise. Jaya sure does seem to have a passion for guns, and taking her away from it would most likely cause a rift in their relationship. Kanaya sighs and returns upstairs to her sewing.

When she finishes Jaya's new outfit a few hours later, which comprises of a long white skirt and an emblem of a dog on a shirt, she folds them neatly and puts it next to the sewing machine for later. She makes her way downstairs to find Vriska presenting a gift box to Jaya. She eyes the spider troll warily and opens it, revealing a case that looks suspiciously like the rifle case downstairs.

"Is this gun?" Jaya asks with unintended glee. At least, Kanaya hopes it's unintended. "It even has ammo!" Jaya picks up the package tenderly and shakes it, the metal bullets clanking inside. She looks up at Vriska and smiles. She then notices Kanaya and points at the case excitedly.

"Look what Vriska got me!"

"I see that," Kanaya says, feigning the same amount of glee. "I must say that it is a very hefty gift." At that point, Vriska looks over her shoulder and smirks. Kanaya approaches Vriska and asks in a hushed tone, "May I speak with you?"

"Sure," Vriska answers. She turns back to Jaya and says something unexpected. "If you dare load and fire that thing in the next three years without clearing it with Kanaya or Karkat, you'll regret it."

Jaya gulps. "Okay."

Vriska turns back to Kanaya. "Yes, mother?"

Kanaya waits until she leads Vriska outside to answer. "Is it your intention to undermine my decisions on a daily basis?" She can't help the bitter tone that comes out, but she can't help it. She is too angry.

"What, my little threat back there wasn't enough to convince you?" Vriska crosses her arms. Kanaya does the same. Vriska sighs. "No, it wasn't. I would never do that on purpose. Although, I did get that thing for a number of reasons."

"Please extrapolate, because I am seeing none other than purely ulterior motives."

"Not against you! For one thing," Vriska starts counting on her fingers, "that gun downstairs was utter shit. You ought to thank me! If she loaded that, it probably would have malfunctioned and blown her face clean off. Second, I'm doing this for myself, plain and simple. If I don't give her anything, then she'd hate me forever. I want to establish a foundation of trust so then she'd be grateful to me in the future. And lastly, I think that Nepeta could use help hunting once in a while. If you look closely, that gun is specifically meant for hunting. For sport, you can say. If she uses it on something else, well, that's her problem. Besides, maybe the two nature lovers can hit it off and become great friends!"

Vriska did have a point in becoming friends with Nepeta. Who knows, maybe Jaya could become an excellent markswoman in the future. She can defend herself on one venture, though.

"I claim to be no expert on firearms, but I have a feeling that the one downstairs is not in fact 'utter shit' and simply needs a thorough cleaning. I had a plan to ease her into it, you know."

"Is that why you made me put her to sleep right before touching the thing?"

"You what?" a small voice asks, stopping Kanaya's heart immediately. The women turn to see Jaya listening in, holding the case in her hand. She throws down the new gun and runs back inside to god-knows-where. Kanaya takes up chase and manages to lose her inside. She checks the basement first, then the upstairs to no avail. She most likely went outside while Kanaya wasn't looking. She wants to kick herself but sees no way to do that, because it is physically impossible.

"If you want, I can make her come to us," Vriska suggests when Kanaya catches her breath.

Kanaya shakes her head. "I have a feeling that she needs to do that on her own."

"It's not like she's going anywhere, am I right?"

Kanaya narrows her eyes in Vriska's direction half-heartedly. "I will retire to my block until then," Kanaya sighs. From then on, she decides to be more careful when dealing with the feelings of humans. In some ways, they are trickier than the feelings of trolls. She has much to learn about humans than she thought. The past couple of years were nearly perfect. Kanaya struggles to fathom what might come next.

Fortunately, the coming years that Kanaya had predicted with Jaya are not as bad as previously thought, Vriska concludes. After five years of the human girl living on the island, she turned out not to be so bad after all. At the ripe age of thirteen, Jaya has grown almost as tall as Karkat and become a less pasty version of when she first came to live here. Not that Vriska has anything against having pale skin. She just thinks that Jaya looks better this way. Come to think of it, Vriska is now a darker shade of gray herself, but not much. It's all that time she spends outside. She has seen that people with a darker complexion hail from parts of the planet with more sun, but that doesn't seem to be the case with Jaya. Vriska considers that Jaya's skin is more prone to change than other humans, and leaves it at that.

Karkat, on the other hand, is apparently having the worst time.

He confides in her one night, not even in a drunken stupor, which they cannot afford anyway, and can never happen.

"I may have just witnessed the grossest thing that humans can ever do," he complains.

"What weird thing did she do this time?" Vriska asks.

"Before we get to that, I am pretty sure that there is some human remedy that prevents it. Deals with it? Whatever. I've seen copious inventions on this planet, and there'd better be a fucking solution to this particular problem."

Vriska narrows her eyes. "You're asking me to buy some invention just for Jaya? I already did that. It's called a shotgun."

He slams his hands on the table. "No, you goofy-eyed dimwit! This problem is not solved by some object used to kill or maim. I still don't get why you bought her that infernal thing to begin with, and sure you probably didn't know that she taunts me with it every time I go outside, but I digress. This specific issue is the root of all of my problems I have with her currently. At least, I think it is. She's been lashing out at me, and only me, and I'm pretty sure that she's having some personal problems."

Just for fun, Vriska takes a look through Jaya's eyes and sees her hugging her abdomen. Whatever Jaya is feeling inadvertently transfers over to Vriska, who winces herself.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"Trying to understand," Vriska answers with a grunt, pulling out of it. She focuses back on Karkat. "What do you think it is exactly?"

"Well, I'm not sure, but…" He swallows uncomfortably. "I think she's injured." He looks around and then back to Vriska. "I saw her washing her sheets by the beach once and I'm pretty sure there was human blood on it. She didn't look visibly hurt, so I tried to approach her and she yelled at me and took off! I don't get it!"

"Have you tried consulting the Internet?" she asks. "This doesn't sound like something I'd know how to handle. Besides, if there truly was an invention to solve this, why did you come to me first?"

"You've been out in the world more than I have."

Vriska knows the real problem now. "Is there something wrong with your blackrom with Sollux?"

"Shut the fuck up."

Vriska wants to prod him more, but she also wants Karkat to go away, and something tells her that he won't until he solves Jaya's problem first. "Just tell him to research for you. He's probably bored out of his mind trying to hack the government or something."

"Fine!" He throws his hands in the air and stalks off. She takes one of the cell phones and goes to the mainland, where she might finally get some peace and quiet. She doesn't want to touch that iron right now. Maybe later when they're healed, but still sore about it. Honestly, it's like they're six again.

"Sollux, you binary fucknozzle will you please open the door?" Karkat shouts, banging on the door. He hasn't seen Sollux in days, probably holed up in this dank space labelled "IINTERNET2." Karkat doesn't know nor care how to pronounce it. He finally just opens the door himself, since it has no locks, and finds the room empty. At least the computer is on and conveniently opened to the internet. Karkat closes all the browser windows except one and opens up Earth Google. Or Google. It's plain old "Google" here.

He enters in the keywords "blood," "girl," and "yelling" to see what comes up. What he finds is a website for "single dads" and a page titled "periods." He scans it and nearly chokes on his own spittle. Apparently, human girls have this thing every month, and only girls. It doesn't seem fair to him. As soon as he starts feeling sorry for Jaya, he reads that eventually the problem becomes manageable and there's nothing for a single dad to worry about! Well that would be great if he was a single dad. Fortunately, Jaya has an entire village. Literally. Since Kanaya is a girl, he's probably going to pawn this job off to her.

As for the inventions, fortunately, there are a few solutions. One of them grosses him out, and the other would probably gross other people out. He chooses the latter and goes downstairs to tell Vriska about the invention. He finds her and a cell phone gone, so he grabs the other one and tells her to get it. She agrees and will be back in a few hours. He debates going to where Jaya is and reassuring her, but decides against it and tries Kanaya instead.

"You want me to do what?" she asks.

"It's a girl thing, and you're a girl, so why not?" he says.

"I don't mind that, but you want me to do it now?"

"Yeah? She's curled up in her room right now, so it would be the best time to do it, right?"

"I suppose. I will have to do some of my own research first."

"Yeah sure, whatever. Sollux's computer is still on that page so you can read off of that."

They go upstairs to see that Sollux had returned, the browser window nowhere to be found.

"Sollux, where did my window go?"

"Oh, tho you deleting my windowth wathn't a black come-on? Becauth if not, that wath ekthtremely rude and I'm not telling you shit."

"Fuck you! Open it up again!" Karkat reaches for the mouse but is swatted away.

"No, fuck off! You're going to break it!"

They tussle for a few seconds before knocking the keyboard off the shoddy desk entirely, making the CPU unplug itself from the monitor, and sending Sollux and Karkat straight to the floor in a heap.

Karkat feels himself being pulled up by his belt and tossed onto his backside. Kanaya strikes again with her ashen tendencies, apparently.

"Why don't you do it?" she suggests.

He pales. "What?"

"Anything to get him out of here!" Sollux yells, getting to his knees and fixing the cords.

"You do seem to have extensive knowledge on the topic, so why not?" Kanaya says, shrugging.

Karkat scoffs. "You want me to tell her that she's going to be bleeding from her nook once a month, every month for the rest of her fertile life? That she's going to have genital cramping every twenty-eight days and there's nothing she can do about it? That she's basically a shitty werewolf?!"

"Wait, what?" Sollux, trying not to laugh.

"You, shut the fuck up," Karkat says, pointing to Sollux. Karkat stands up and dusts himself off. "But fine. Fuck it. I'll do it. If I don't return I'll be haunting every one of you assholes." And at that, he storms away.