A/N: Well, this was unexpected. I planned to write a chapter with characters doing character stuff, like normal. But everything I planned for is going to have to wait 'til next week, because hold a sec, we've got a lore chapter coming through! A chapter that explains what the basic premise of this story even is! I had a vague feeling like it was eventually going to be explained, but I didn't even have concrete thoughts about it, really. I certainly didn't expect it to be explained in any particular way, at any particular time, or in any given chapter.

But yeah. I had a dream about Konan coming into this world after her death and finding amnesiac versions of the Akatsuki members needing to reunited. My first task after waking up that morning was to figure out why that was happening. Almost all of the material presented here is unchanged, is the exact things I came up with then, before writing a single chapter or settling on a single character idea. Almost everything else about this story has changed drastically since I first imagined it, but the premise has not. This stuff has been waiting 3 years to be written down.

My other story still takes first place, though. In Search Of Demons was the first story to make clear what was going on. I forgot to announce that when it happened, so I'm announcing it now.

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Konan

His sense of tactics is better. Deidara spent as much time as possible in open areas now, heading for the bottoms of trees where there were no branches to snag him, and staying there. Of course Konan used the opportunity both to try to pin him down and to try to force him higher. His owl got a lot of paper embedded in its sides. Deidara tried to steer towards an open area where he could safely rise into the sky, but Konan blocked him from doing that. He was trapped among the forest floor. Now she just needed to drive him towards a hill he would not be able to rise over.

So of course, as any trapped animal would do when it recognizes that it is trapped, Deidara grew desperately bold. The owl made nearly a 90-degree turn straight up, and Deidara threw and blasted small spiders to clear the way. Through this clever use of midsized explosives, he escaped from her trap and entered the open air above the trees. He grinned and continued to fly up. Her range was long enough to cover most kinds of battle, but in a battle of the skies it was too short. She would have to come out of hiding and follow him.

Konan devoted some of her paper to a clone, which disappeared among the trees as she flew up to meet him. The clone would do whatever it needed to in order to take the proper position, wait, and make preparations if it was able. In the meantime, Konan's paper wings carried her into the sky. She was looking forward very much to seeing what Deidara would do with such open space. Fly away and force her to chase him? Turn and face her? Make tricky maneuvers in the hopes of disorienting her and gaining the upper hand? So much open space, so many choices.

Deidara made a sharp turn, zipping beneath her. Konan turned to see him already making a steep climb. He was using tricky maneuvers. Konan smiled. That strategy could be countered by simply deciding not to move. Or, since he could easily target her with clay creations if she did so, it could also be countered by flying in a way of her own choosing. She did that, making entirely separate but equally tricky maneuvers.

Deidara moved in for a direct attack. Konan summoned her paper claws, felt her wings sharpen without her having to do anything, and flew towards him as well. Deidara's eyes widened, but he was too committed to this course of action to back out. He threw explosives, which she did not dodge. She used kunai to spear what she could and let her paper wings take the rest. They made excellent armor in addition to excellent weaponry and excellent movement aids. I like this jutsu very much. It was a wonderful idea.

Deidara's owl flapped its wings differently as he came within striking distance, telegraphing its intent to dive. Konan dove to match it, surrendering to free fall in exchange for the ability to use her wings as the sharp slashing weapons she had envisioned. Deidara's sleeve was ripped open. They both knew it could just as easily have been his chest.

They landed by the lake. Konan called her paper clone out from the forest and dispersed it; she had not really expected it to be useful, but no one ever knew where a battle would take them. Deidara took off his outer pants and waded into the lake in order to fully immerse his bleeding upper arm. While his arm was soothed and numbed by the cold water, he took the opportunity to gingerly pull the torn fabric away from the wound, wincing. When he came out of the water and put his pants back on, Konan bandaged his arm.

"Where the hell did you get bandages from, hm?"

"I keep a small storage scroll for them in my pockets," she explained. "Seeing as I cannot simply carry bandages on my body, where they would be ruined by the rain."

"On your body?" Deidara looked away from the wound. "What do you mean by that, yeah?"

Konan furrowed her brows. "Is it not typical to wrap bandages around the arms or legs in this world?"

Deidara tested his arm after the bandages were finished, and winced. She must have sliced through some muscle. "No, hm. We carried medkits. What would be the point of wearing bandages anyway, hm? Isn't the point of them to be clean? Why would you want to expose them to sweat and dirt?"

Konan shrugged. "Worn bandages are not worn for very long: only as long as a training battle or a mission lasts. If you need them, it is more important that they be easily accessible than that they be sterile."

"If you need them in this world, you need a lot more than bandages, hm. Antibacterials, a full tourniquet, a compress." Deidara shuddered. "It's hard to get a mere flesh wound with today's weapons, yeah."

Konan tilted her head. "Hmm…" That seems related to something. Related to what?

Deidara winced again, more from mental pain than physical pain. "My original used the spiders to blow holes in people, right?" Konan nodded. "That's basically what every weapon does now, hm."

Ah, that's it. I was sensing a connection between this topic and his original. Good. I should probe deeper, but carefully. Softly, she asked, "So there is nothing about blowing up people that is interesting, is there? It's common, and ugly, and cheap. There is nothing good about that."

Deidara shook his head and swallowed. "You think that's why he liked blowing people up? Because it was something different from normal, yeah?"

"He referred to his explosives as art. Art generally should be something special."

Deidara stood up. "They still are different, special, yeah. The way I used them to clear branches just now was different. Testing Hidan's scythe and mixing them with Sasori's chakra was different, yeah. I really like the shockwaves and the way they just blast everything, hm!" For a moment, he looked just like his original. Then he turned to her, still very happy but in a calmer way. That kind of calm was something she had never seen in Original Deidara. "Just, you know, not on a battlefield, hm. A warzone's the only place where explosions don't mean anything, so they're something special when used around here. Small and creative is the only way I can use them where they would be fun, yeah."

That raises another question, of a frightening sort. I hope this does not disturb him too badly. Probably it will not; they've all built up some tolerance to the stranger aspects of this world. Perhaps they are finally ready to hear what I have been thinking about. Konan tilted her head as she looked at him, monitoring him for any signs that she was going too far. "What would happen to you if it were not the case that every civilian is oblivious?"

Deidara sighed. "Before you invited us here, Sasori used to be really protective of me. He worried I was going to get in trouble with law enforcement or somebody like that. I didn't have the healthiest ways of coping with anything, hm, and I couldn't stop thinking about explosives even though it scared me. I wasn't in any trouble, and since everyone is oblivious I don't think I will be, but we didn't know that before you came."

"It seems I died at just the right time."

Deidara started. "Uh, yeah, hm." His eyes widened. "Wait. You died. You…" He blushed and started fiddling with his ponytail. "Do you remember it?"

"Yes." And that is all I am willing to say about it.

"Oh. Damn, yeah." Deidara looked at her sympathetically. "I'm glad I don't have the memories of my original, hm."

Konan chuckled. "I am also glad you are not him, for other reasons. He would be angry if he knew how well his suicide bombing worked."

Deidara flinched. He had to swallow several times before he was able to speak. "Can we not talk about that, yeah?"

"Of course. I wanted to discuss something else."

Deidara's stance shifted into one better suited for battle. He tried to sound casual as he asked, "What is it?," but she knew better. Konan indicated Clay's outstretched wing. They might want to sit for this.

They sat angled toward each other, crosslegged. Deidara took a deep breath. "Is this something else about my original, something you haven't mentioned before, yeah?"

"No," Konan reassured him. "It has nothing to do with your original. It has nothing to do with anyone. This is a more abstract concern that I have."

"Oh." Deidara relaxed. "I think I can handle abstract stuff, yeah. What is it?"

"I have been thinking about the nature of this world," Konan began. "I do not think it is what it appears to be."

Deidara nodded. "Like how I've been thinking we're in a video game world?"

Konan paused. "Possibly. I am not familiar with the nature of video games."

"Video games take place in well-defined areas that tend to be set up entirely for you the player's convenience, hm."

"Then yes, very similar."

"You think we're in a video game too?" Deidara asked. His eyes were wide.

"No." Konan shook her head. "I do not think this place is designed to be played in. Please, let me lay out all of the things I have seen.

"Firstly, this area is very convenient. It is a little like a playground, in the sense that normal hindrances are not present. People will answer my questions, will not look at me oddly, will not exclude me from doing things simply because I am clearly a foreigner. All those little inconveniences are absent.

"Secondly, for as long as I have been in this world, I have sensed a purpose behind it all. I needed a place to gather you all that was somewhat civilized yet remote. Just after thinking that and making my plans, I found this hotel." Konan paused here. "Although… I am not sure what was being influenced there. I feel as if my own actions are being guided. Is this world being shaped in a certain way, or am I?

"Regardless. Thirdly, we live in a bounded world." Konan looked around. "I hear about great interconnection, great communication, transportation. Yet it seems as if the outside world has no influence here. This town may be structured according to the rules of the world we supposedly are in, yet now that it exists, it functions without outside influence. The more unusual members of the group use communication technologies to access the outside world, yet they attract no notice. Shouldn't somebody from outside be interested in the presence of half-beast people?" Konan shook her head. "I sense that this place may not really be a whole separate world. It does not feel as vast as one.

"Fourthly, who or what is deciding who lives here?" Konan frowned. "My death was part of the beginning of a great war, a war that should have started by now. Even if it has not, there has been increasing tension in the past year, leading to many deaths. Yet this 'world' has few people from my world in it, and does not seem to have gained any in the time since I arrived. Even very notable people, ones who are very important and seem like they should be around somewhere, are missing. Jiraiya sensei was killed shortly before Nagato, yet I have seen and heard nothing to indicate that he has a clone here. An influential political figure from Konoha has also been killed recently, I believe; but he is not here either. Where the hell is everybody?"

She took a deep breath. "Those are my observations and concerns about the nature of this world." It feels oddly good to share them, though I doubt any of the world clones will have any useful information. Dei probably does not have anything to add, but I enjoy talking to him anyway. It's as if he is a personal friend. How odd… I've never been personal friends with anybody besides Nagato and Yahiko before. It is pleasant.

Deidara's mouth hung open. "Their dad - father figure of some kind, anyway - should be here? And he isn't? That's fucked up!"

Right. Of course. I shouldn't get too caught up in happy and pleasant moments. There is hardship and suffering to be prevented, too. Konan leveled her eyes at him. "I trust you understand not to share any of these concerns with anyone."

Deidara looked down. "Well, people are asking questions, hm. I'm asking if we live in a video game, everybody knows that the people around here are weird, things like that, hm. Some of it can't not be talked about. But I can keep my mouth shut about all the things you said about your world: about war and people who should have died but aren't here, etc."

Konan considered this compromise. "That is acceptable. Everyone seems to be on their way to realizing or wondering about everything else I said. If I do not share mine, they will invent these same concerns on their own. Very well."

"You think we're here for a reason?" Dei looked around. "Like we're supposed to do something?"

"We may be." Konan considered her words carefully. "As I said, I felt a sense of being steered. And parts of this world appear to be shaped. Something is at work here. But perhaps 'purpose' was too strong a word. That something, whatever it is, may be working on accident. We are not lacking in extremely powerful beings who influence the world without really intending to around here."

Dei's eyes widened. "Jashin sama? The gods are doing this?"

"I do not know if they are responsible. If they are, it is definitely not deliberate, since the gods apparently lack the ability to even have intentions. But I don't know if they are responsible for this; Jashin sama is involved somehow, but he may have been caught up in something else. The idea I had about Jashin sama being forcibly brought into this world just because Hidan was brought here has not been contradicted."

Deidara looked down at his hands. They frowned back at him. "Damn, yeah. This is reality-bending stuff we're talking about. Literal worlds, being shaped and twisted and maybe having little pieces of them set aside like people zoos. How the fuck are we supposed to find out anything about that?"

Deidara's question went unanswered. Konan sat very still, not really looking at him. "What did you just say?"

"Reality bending?"

"No, after that." Konan blinked. "People zoos. That is exactly how the demon boy describes his haunted hospital. He is the most powerful being around here, aside from the gods. He is something I cannot explain, something that does not match the rest of my observations." Her eyes darted around, pieces of an idea sliding into place. "Perhaps he and the snake child are the key to solving this mystery."

Deidara blinked. He opened his mouth to try to say something, but failed. There was a long pause before he finally said the only thing he could say. "I don't understand, hm. What are you talking about?"

'If I tell them I was wrong about this world, they will never trust me again.' I remember thinking that, or something like it. But now that it has been a few weeks, is their trust strong enough to hold? Konan took a deep breath. "There is something about them that I have not mentioned yet."

Deidara gulped. "Is it something we could have stood to hear?"

"I did not think so. I expected your trust in me to be shattered. This information completely changes my perception of what is happening here."

Deidara nodded. "Then you are totally forgiven and I'm glad you didn't mention it before, yeah."

Konan smiled a little. "Thank you."

"What is it, yeah?"

Konan took a deep breath, and let it out in a slow sigh. "To tell you the truth… I do not know what this phenomenon is. It seems that people who die in my world are being reborn as clones here, but the existence of the demon and the snake prove it is not that simple."

Deidara smiled encouragingly. "I can handle that, hm. You just finished telling me all about that, when you were asking why people who should be here aren't."

He's right. Perhaps it will not be so devastating to hear about them now, after all. Konan proceeded with more confidence. "I knew them both. The demon and the snake are both clones of people I knew from my world. Both people are still alive, although they have both partially died at separate times in the recent past, so that may be the reason they are here. Both are grown men. The snake is 20 years older than the man whose clone is a demon. I have no idea why there is a demon with his appearance; as far as I know that man was a perfectly normal shinobi. There is no connection between the two of them that I know of, aside from the fact that they are from the same village. And the snake has no unusual healing powers, none of the strange stealth that has been reported, and a completely different personality from what the toddler has in this world."

She gave him several minutes of silence to digest that in. While he did so, she looked him over. Deidara visibly struggled to make sense of it, but that was to be expected. He appeared confused, but Konan saw no signs of being overwhelmed or fearful or angry. She remembered what Kakuzu had said about the influence of the symbol, and was very glad she had just happened to hold this conversation out in the forest, away from the base. The symbol was likely interfering with her ability to talk about topics of great importance. Why had she installed it, again?

"So," Deidara started. "So, basically, their originals, unlike ours, are nothing like them."

"Yes. Their originals are completely different."

Deidara was stumped. "I've got nothing. Sorry."

"I didn't expect you to." Konan nodded at him encouragingly. "Just know that those two are important, and pay careful attention to them. So far people seem to regard them about the same as they regard those bicycles, as oddities that have little to do with our variety of oddness. But that's not right; they are world clones just like we are. They have very much to do with us."

There was a cry of frustration from somewhere close. Very close. Both shinobi stood and began to search the area out of reflex. Who was that? How did they sneak up on us? How much of our conversation have they heard?

Nothing was visible to the sides, so they stepped out from beneath Clay's wing and looked up. Nothing was visible there either. Deidara took a shaky breath. "What the fu -"

"Grr!" A stone bounced off Clay's head. They whirled around to face its source: the demon boy, sitting in a branch that both of them had looked at just before and had not seen him on. He was glaring. And not in a childish, joking way. He was genuinely angry. His eyes were narrowed and his hands were fisted. Konan remembered the trick with the deer. His hands were still hands, and that was good. They could all too easily be something else. Something much more dangerous. Konan touched Deidara's sleeve and pulled him backward, pressing their backs to Clay's sturdy body.

The air shuddered and warped, as if something was happening to the fabric of reality, and the boy disappeared. Konan and Deidara swiftly felt the impact of a child's fist on the tops of both their heads. "What's my name?!" the demon boy snapped.

Deidara jumped. He rubbed his head too frantically to be providing any relief. "You have a name?"

When we talked to him the first time. He said we could call him something. Konan grabbed Deidara's arm to hold him still. "You said before… We could call you…" 'That's a strange name.' "Overflow."

"Overflow?" Deidara asked. "What kind of a name is that?"

"It's not a name," the demon boy answered. "It's a description."

Both shinobi stared at him speechlessly. The demon sighed. "You're wrong! I am not like you! I'm not some kind of clone. Not the kind of clone you are, anyway." He glared at them. "I'm a demon. That means my soul isn't bound to a body, and that means I get to have any size of soul I want. My soul is my body, so it can be as big as it wants. It can be too big. It is too big."

Konan looked at him with new eyes. "Too big for what?" She had a feeling like she already knew the answer.

"Too big for a human body," the demon boy answered. "I'm not a clone of my main body! I'm just the part that can't fit inside it. I've never known my main body. I've never been to your world. I used to be big, grown! Overgrown, actually. That must've been when the rest of me was a baby. I've shrunk since then."

Deidara's mouth hung open. Konan, though, was more than prepared. "What did you look like when you looked grown?"

"Like this, but with a vest, and my hair was out of my face," he answered.

"That is what your other self looks like now," Konan told him. "And this is what he looked like as a child."

"Duh!" The demon boy rolled his eyes. "I know what I look like has to be because of him. I didn't think about what kind of human form I wanted; this just happened naturally! I knew it had to be an influence from the rest of me."

"How much contact do you have with the rest of you?" Konan asked.

"That's it." The boy groused to himself. "That's the only contact. I don't know anything about what the rest of me is doing. But since he's absorbed parts of me, he must know at least a little of what I'm doing."

Konan smiled. It was a warm, genuine smile that would have been a big grin on anyone else's face. "You have crossed worlds. That may be the only contact, but nonetheless, it is a contact. You have an enduring bond bridging the gap between this world and my world. That is more than anyone else has. Can you help us find out what is happening?"

The boy rocked slowly from side to side as he thought about it. "It's a lot of fun to have you guys thinking of stuff without help," he said. "You get silly sometimes! Cool stuff happens!"

Konan narrowed her eyes. "That only happens when we have material to speculate from. Deidara is right; we are only human. We cannot find out any more about what is happening by ourselves. If we can't do that, there is nothing else to do but drop the matter. Why speculate about what is unsolvable and unchangeable?"

"Grr." The boy rocked faster. "Yeah, that's right. But I can't tell you much. I don't have any memory of anything. We didn't deliberately split up. I don't remember how it was done. Just some kinda weird, instinctual demon thing. I don't know how demon instincts work."

"At the very least, you've been here for the entire lifetime of your other body," Konan said. "That is over 30 years. You have been in this world since before this phenomenon began, before any shinobi was cloned here. What changed?"

The boy shivered. "I used to have to hide myself. I liked to be a wolf, or sometimes something scarier. I think I started some urban legends." He grinned at the memory. "But then the world started acting kind of strange. I felt it. Like something was crashing. Shuddering, or...other words like you would find in a book about two spaceships smashing into each other. I felt it in the world. I followed them, came here, and it was weird." He tilted his head at an extreme angle, like an owl. "I don't know the words. There was...snaggling, like great big bushes snatching me up and holding me by the clothes. Except I don't have a body, so I'm all clothes, so all of me stayed together. I might've dissolved and flowed in. And then I was here." The demon boy looked around. "I think I'd have to go through those bushes again to leave."

"Bushes?" Deidara asked. "Metaphorical ones?"

"Yeah, something huge and snaggly that I got tangled in," the boy answered. "But that was my soul, so it's not a physical bush. It's a soul bush. It can snag souls. I don't know how."

"So I was right?" Konan's eyes glowed. "There is a barrier separating this place from the world this place is based off of? We are not genuinely in another world?"

"Think so," the boy said. "Doesn't feel the same as I remember. It feels different here. Different energy. A mix of energies."

Deidara whimpered. "This world smacked into Konan's world and now we're trapped in some kind of in-between space?! Oh my god. Worlds are smashing into each other. What the fuck?! We're going to die?!"

The boy smiled at Deidara's terrified face. "Better go now. Don't want to say anything accidentally reassuring. Heehee!" He closed his eyes and opened them suddenly, flashing Deidara with eyes that were black as the void, except for the red, glowing cracks crossing them like the void itself was breaking open. The rest of the boy's body turned to dark smoke and disappeared into the trees. Deidara was left shaking worse than he had been before, barely able to stand.

Konan took him by the arm, allowed him to lean on her for stability. "We were already supposed to be dead, so that's alright," she murmured.

"But nobody else is," Deidara whispered. "Worlds smashing into each other? They're going to… How can you be this calm about your whole world about to be destroyed?!"

Konan's face went completely blank. We tried to make a new world. Step one: destroy the current one. Now that I am dead, only one young man remains to stop a plan centuries in the making. "That assumes it hasn't been already."

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A/N: Obviously, I have some more stuff to figure out about how this works. Some plot holes to patch. I'll deal with that later. I love patching plot holes! Either I get to patch them in a way that's really interesting, or I get to talk about how they don't work, wasn't this an absolute disaster, and isn't that awesome? Ha, I love talking about spectacular failures! If I can't laugh at myself, who can?

Heeeeeeeee

The possibility for which this chapter is named was last brought up in the chapter titled, "The Party." Poor Nagato.

Btw, if anyone is interested, I have 12 chapters already saved and more already written for the new story I mentioned, the Avatar: The Last Airbender fic. That story's going up this Tuesday. I've been a lot obsessed with writing that fic lately, so that's why I've been posting chapters of this story so late on Sundays recently. It's because I've been having to finish them on Sunday morning, because I spent most of the week writing chapters for that new fic instead. Sorry. Side effects from brain medicine may also be involved. I need to talk to my neurologist.

Have a good week everyone!