There's something I'd like to address, especially given the recent blow up of such issues on the global stage.

There was a review for last chapter where someone said that Bishop was "based and redpilled" and that they kind of liked him. Such a statement is disgusting, and I hope whoever said it meant it as a joke, though a tasteless one. To agree with Bishop's insane, fascist, evil rambling from last chapter is just wrong. I wrote that because I want Bishop to be an interesting character where one sees his twisted, awful thought process and how he thinks he's the good guy. Make no mistake, he is a genocidal maniac. A lot of this story is based on themes like the fundamental value of human empathy and understanding, of standing in the face of hardship and hate.

Jaune still felt powerless, even an hour after seeing Ruby run frantically into the bathroom. Yang, Weiss and Blake had forced him out of their room, trying at first to coax and console for a little while with just the girls. Her sister and her best friends may have been what she needed most at the moment. Since then, he had waited silently with his own team out in the hallway.

He cycled through different physical ticks, from clenching and unclenching his fists, to rubbing his hands together, to shifting his hands around in such a way that was reminiscent of how he moved his slinky during his session with Peach.

Eventually, Pyrrha grabbed one of his hands with hers and squeezed. She mustered a smile for him. It made him feel marginally better.

"Thank you," he told her.

Before Pyrrha could respond, Yang came out into the hallway. Her face was blank.

Jaune left his partner and rushing to his girlfriend's sister. He knew it would be wrong to ask if was alright, so he asked, "How bad is she?"

Yang crossed her arms. "Like talking to a brick wall," she said, "a brick wall with a smile on it."

Weiss and Blake exited the room and closed the door behind them, then looked at one another and sighed.

"That bad?" Jaune asked.

"It's just creepy now," Blake said, "how she's smiling and giggling even though…"

"It's…" Weiss trailed off. "It's scary. She isn't opening up, not at all. I fear for her mental health, truly."

"What happened?" Pyrrha asked. "Why did she freak out and run back to her room."

Yang grit her teeth. "She was training by herself in the gym. She's been doing that a lot now. Apparently, she tripped and collapsed on the treadmill, then some other people there called in the nurse when she started shaking and looked in a lot of pain…"

Jaune felt like he would vomit. He brought one hand up to his throat, where a painful knot had gotten twisted up.

"But when we got to the nurse…" Weiss trailed off and nervously fidgeted. "Ruby just tried to tell us not to worry and that she only tripped."

"Which is a load of bull," Yang growled through gritted teeth. "She's too good at running to trip on a treadmill. Even if she did, she wouldn't have acted how the nurse said she did. But the more we talked, she got more and more frustrated. Her face got red and she started to breathe faster, and then she gripped her chest and stopped breathing altogether."

"We all freaked out because we thought she was having a heart attack," Blake said.

"A panic attack?" Jaune guessed. His fists were gripped tightly.

"Yeah," Yang said with a heavy sigh. "Or at least that's our best guest. And when Ruby got better after a couple minutes… she just ran away." Yang looked down at the floor. "She didn't want to talk to us. And now here we are."

"She didn't say anything more to you all?" Pyrrha asked.

"Like squeezing blood out of a rock," Weiss said. "She's insisting that there's nothing wrong, nothing for us to worry about. It…" Her fists shuddered, as tightly clasped as Jaune's. "It's frustrating to a degree so powerful that I've never really felt like this before. I know something is wrong. Things have been wrong, and I've been meaning to confront her about it, but I didn't know how to go about it."

"What kinds of things?" Yang asked.

"You know every other night since she came back, I wake up once or twice because the bed's shaking? She's just above me, always tossing and turning." Weiss grit her teeth. "She hasn't gotten a half-decent night of sleep this whole time, and she pushes herself so hard during the day, so much training… no wonder why she has giant backs under her eyes.

"She hasn't been eating much either. I'm not sure if you all noticed it, but I have." Weiss head dropped and she looked at the floor. "I bought her some cookies from the vending machine, and she thanked me with sickening sweetness. I noticed she didn't eat them that day, however, or the next day. I looked at her during meals and in between and she's eaten a lot less than she used to."

"Like she's given up on it?" Blake asked.

"I have no idea," Weiss said somberly. "And remember how she said the window got cracked because a bird flew into it? I'm not sure I really believe that, either."

"I just… I don't know what to do," Yang said. "I texted Qrow but I don't know when he's going to get here. I just wish he'd make it quick." Yang ran a hand down her face and screwed her eyes shut. Her face was red. Jaune knew she was holding in a lot of feelings.

"Jaune."

He looked to who spoke.

Weiss looked back.

"Could you go in and talk to her?" she asked. "It worked the last time. You're special to her." She was unable to hold his eye contact for what she next said, instead glancing to the side. "You also have some… experience with traumatic matters. Perhaps you could commiserate with her in a way we cannot."

Everyone was quiet, thinking over what Weiss had proposed. After several seconds, Yang slowly shuffled to her side, leaving the way to the door open.

Jaune sighed.

Wordlessly, he walked past her and into the room. The door clicked shut behind him.

Ruby smiled before him.

It looked wrong.

Jaune had seen Ruby smile many times now, and he cherished it more than gold. He knew perfectly how her lips curved up and her eyes glittered when she smiled. He knew that look of ecstatic, infectious happiness.

That was not what he saw before him now. He finally realized it, that he had not seen Ruby's true smile ever since she came back from the infirmary.

Her eyes were flat. There was no life in them, bloodshot with recent tears; under them were dark ruts born of exhaustion. Now it was impossible for him not to notice the tell-tale traits of restlessness and pain.

Yet still she forced a smile.

"Hey there," she said with a wave of her—natural—hand. "I'm glad you came for yourself, since I bet Yang is trying to blow up everything that happened." Ruby shook her head and sighed. "She's always been so overprotective, really. I mean normally I let it go but now it's really starting to get annoying so I hope you—"

"Please stop that," Jaune said.

Ruby looked up at him. Her smile did not waver. "What?" she asked.

"Please stop acting," Jaune repeated. His throat was clogged, and it hurt to speak those words. But he was tired, and he was scared, and he was frustrated, and he was desperate. "It must be taking a lot from you, to have been pretending this whole time."

Ruby pouted and puffed out her cheeks in that cute way she sometimes did when annoyed by someone she cared for.

Correction: This was an imitation of that expression she made.

Jaune saw how forced it was, fake.

"Please stop," he said. "Please be honest. Let me help you."

Ruby's cheeks deflated and she giggled. It was a dry, airy giggle.

She opened her mouth as if to say something. She said nothing.

Her breath had escaped her for a moment, leaving her voiceless.

She shook her head. Tears welled up in her eyes. She kept up that smile.

"Fake it 'til you make it," she said.

She stood there silently, keeping up that grin that was as brittle and false as rusted gilding on an old monument.

"I really hoped that I would be able to fake it 'til I made it, like I always have," she said, the words quiet and fragile. Her shoulders sagged. The fake smile drooped down. She brought up a hand to massage her throat, which must have felt as clogged and painful as Jaune's did.

She shuddered as she took in a breath, almost choked on it, then let it out.

"But I guess I wasn't strong enough to do even that much," she said. "Too weak to be brave. To weak to fake being brave."

"That's not—"

"Please don't," Ruby said. Her voice sounded weak, desperate. "Please, please don't try and tell me about how big and brave and strong and cool I am or whatever, because it's not true and anything you say will only make me feel worse."

Jaune looked at her. She looked at the floor. She shuddered, holding back tears.

The amount of pain that Jaune felt in his soul at that moment almost made him want to cry too, because he could not bare to see her hurting.

Jaune clenched his jaw, not daring to speak, wondering what he could possibly say, knowing that this conversation would be like treading a minefield. A part of him figured that leaving to try and get Peach would be the best course of action right now… but no. There may be no one else who could for her in that moment, what he could do.

Instead, he stayed quiet as he looked at her. A minute passed in unsteady silence, during which he thought and reviewed and tried to get a grasp of her situation. What she'd said thus far… about being weak. Jaune sighed sadly.

"I know how you feel," he said eventually. "I really do. I wish you didn't have to go through it too."

"Do you know?" Ruby asked. There was a bitter, unbelieving edge in her voice, like nasty rust tinging a normally perfect blade.

"Yeah," he said. "Out of everybody, I think I'm the only one who really does."

Instead of answering, she slowly crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders, making her already slight stature shrink further. Walling in silence.

"You blame yourself for what happened because you were too weak to stop it," Jaune said. "I know that feeling." He took a step towards her.

Ruby shuffled uncomfortably where she stood. She did not back away.

"And I bet that people trying to give you sympathy just makes you feel guilty, like maybe you don't deserve it." He took another step closer.

She looked down, such that he could not see her face.

"I've failed before," Jaune said. He stepped ever closer, now just in front of her. "I know that it hurts, and the best way to get through it is to just let the people who want to help you, help you."

Jaune reached to put his hand on her shoulder, and the moment his fingers fell upon her—

She shuffled back, away from him. She shook her head, slowly.

"No," Ruby said. "I… I can't…" She held her robotic hand up before her. "It hurts."

"What?" Jaune looked at her prosthetic. It shook slightly. He looked at her face. It was pained, for Ruby was gritting her teeth as she glared at her hand.

"I have this to remind me," Ruby said. "I…" She winced and forced her prosthetic to form a tight fist. "It's right here, and I always feel it. Right here."

Jaune gulped. He placed a hand over his chest.

"I just… I have this reminder. Of everything's that happened." Ruby started panting. Her chest rose and fell quickly while beads of sweat gathered on her forehead. "I keep thinking back to it. Every time I look at this stupid thing I see him coming to us to kill us, and I know we would've died if it weren't for whatever weird thing happened with my aura." She shook her head. "I still don't even know what that was… I have no idea what's going on, really. I don't know where Bishop is, or when's the next time he's going to try and kill us." She turned around, facing her back to him. "I only know that I messed up, that I got my hand cut off and that it still hurts and I can't forget."

"Ruby.."

"And I know…" She spoke with a hollow voice. "The only thing I really know is that I don't want to bother people with it any more than I have too. That's what I've already done my whole life." Her shoulders hitched as she took a deep, painful breath; it was a desperate gasp for air, as her clotted throat and welling tears suffocated her. "I just don't want to be a burden."

Those words stabbed Jaune in the gut and twisted the knife.

"Please just let us help you—"

"And what if I don't want that," Ruby said, bitterly cutting him off. She glared at the ground between her feet; her voice was infected with a hateful spiteful tone.

"Well we want that," Jaune said. He quickly wiped away a few tears that were forming before continuing. "I didn't want to be a burden to people either, but Peach convinced me—"

Ruby scoffed. "You don't get it."

"Then help me get it," Jaune begged. "Please."

She said nothing. She wrung her hands together. She let out a shaky breath.

Ruby finally opened her mouth, and her story went like this:

My mom died a long time ago. When she did, I was really young and I didn't know how to react to it. I didn't really understand. When my dad finally told us about it, Yang just started crying and crying and crying. I asked him what he meant and he just said, "Ruby, mommy won't be coming home."

I asked him what that meant, hah. I really couldn't wrap my brain around it. Mom was so strong, invincible. She would leave for a long while sometimes, but she always came home.

That night I was wondering what he meant, and then I got a fever. I got sick. I got really, really, really sick. I stayed in bed for a week, groaning in pain and sweaty and tossing and turning. It was terrible. I don't really remember any of it specifically; it all blurred into one big bad pain, in my head and my guts and every muscle and all my bones. I remember it being different than any other kind of cold or flu or whatever that I've ever gotten. Different and a lot worse. I had all sorts of crazy dreams and nightmares that made me scream out at night. Aside from those, I also kept mumbling and being delirious while I was awake, talking about things Yang said she couldn't understand. My dad even unlocked my aura, he was so desperate for me to survive.

When I finally got better… that was when I understood. I realized mom would never come back. It just had me, so clear. I understood.. I don't know how, but suddenly I knew. The feeling of knowing that I would never see her again, that I'd lost out on an entire lifetime of being with her...

I started crying. I wouldn't eat anything. I wouldn't come out of my room. I didn't play anymore. Things went on like that for days and days. I just sobbed until my eyes hurt sometimes, and then I felt numb and I wouldn't do anything, anything at all. My dad would beg me to come out and have a meal, but I wouldn't. I'd stay in my bed and try to sleep as much as I possibly could. Yang would beg me to come out and do something, anything. They even got Qrow on the phone to try and cheer me up, but that didn't work either. Of course it didn't. Nothing worked. Nothing worked on me at all.

I looked up to mom so much. I loved her so much.

This went on for a month. I lost a lot of weight, and I remember Yang crying and begging me to try and snap out of it. I didn't listen to it.

Eventually, one night I had a nightmare. It woke me up, and I went over to my dad's room to ask him to make me feel better. But when I got there, I heard crying through the door. It was open a little bit, so I looked through.

Dad was on a scroll call with someone, and it sounded like Qrow. I heard him venting about how hard it had been ever since mom died. He complained a lot about me. He said he loved me, but he said that it was a lot harder because of how much he was worrying about me, because I was in a such a bad state. He felt like he had to pretend to be strong just for me and he had to look after me so much. He said that it was taking a toll on Yang, too. She wanted to grieve but felt she couldn't because of me, or because she was busy trying to help me. Yang was in a lot of pain too, but she had to try and push it aside for my sake.

I realized right then that I was hurting them, just because I was too weak.

So the next day I forced myself out of bed and came down to breakfast. The looks on their faces… they were so happy. It sorta made me happy. Sorta.

I kept hurting for a while. I never told them about it. Never. The pain for my mom turned numb eventually but… I just forced myself through it all. For their sake. I covered up all my feelings and pretended for them. I faked it 'til I made it.

And that's why I never opened up to either of them again about my problems. I kept things inside. My therapist back at Signal—who I only went to so my dad would stop trying to talk to me about my problems—said that this might have been why I developed such a bad anxiety problem. Hmph.

"I just don't want to hurt people I love," Ruby said. Her voice cracked as she said that. A few tears ran down her cheeks.

Jaune had no idea what to say. He wasn't trained for this, no not at all. What would Peach do? Who knows, she's the expert, not him.

"I…" He felt like something had to be said, but he was barely able to muster a word.

"You don't have to say anything," Ruby whispered. "I know that you're going to try and tell me to open up but… I don't want to be a burden to everybody. I know you won't, but it would make me happy if you tried to convince the others I'm fine." She shrugged.

Her voice felt dead.

"I…" Jaune trailed off. What could he possibly say to her?

He ran a hand through his hair and despondently walked away. He leaned up against the wall and glanced over at his girlfriend. She didn't look back at him.

He chewed on the inside of his cheek, wondering and powerless.

Suddenly, he scowled. What the hell was he doing? Looking so weak while she needed his help, what was this? Hadn't he resolved to be better? Come on, raise your head and straighten your back and… and…

Jaune eyes widened.

"I…" he said. "I've been faking too."

Ruby looked up at him when he said that.

"I've been trying my best to look strong," Jaune said. "Because I figured it would help all of you, because I'm supposed to be the team leader. An old mentor of mine told me that I should never reveal weakness, but I'm not sure if she was right…

"Peach told me it's alright to show yourself around the people you care for. And I think… maybe…"

He met Ruby's silver eyes, the ones he loved so dearly.

"I know what you're feeling. Maybe we can work that out together?"

"And if I don't want to?" Ruby asked.

"I promised I wouldn't leave you," he replied. "I'm keeping that promise."

He pushed off from the wall and walked to her. She didn't move in response. When he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, she didn't move for a bit.

A few seconds passed, but then she wrapped her arms around him as well and quietly rested her head on his shoulder.

"We're here for you," he whispered for her.

Ruby choked out a sob.

"You can talk to someone who's good at this thing, someone like Peach. And we'll be here for you."

"I just don't think"- Ruby tightened her grip around him –"that it's fair… fair for me to use you like this."

"We're here for you," he repeated. "No matter what. Like how you all were hear for me."

She squeezed him even tighter. His ribs felt a bit constricted, but he didn't consider for a moment telling her stop.

"I've been through a lot," Jaune said. "You told me I could get it through it with your help. You're going to get through this with my help."

"I…" Ruby's voice wavered. "I just… I can't stop thinking about it." She sniffled and held back a sob. "It's hard for me to focus sometimes because I just keep thinking about the fight and everything I should've done different and…"

"Everyone's alive," he said.

"My hand…" she said.

"We can work through this."

"My hand…"

"We—"

"My hand!" Ruby suddenly shouted. Jaune's eyes widened as she forcibly tore herself out of his grip and jumped back.

She brandished her prosthetic before her, tears streaming down her face, twisted into a hateful scowl.

"This, this, this stupid thing!" She waved her robotic hand in the air, suddenly filled with an angry spirit. "Sometimes it still hurts so much! But I don't want to go back to that infirmary where they treated me because the place is terrifying! And if I do then I'm practically letting this stupid hand win!"

She gripped the prosthetic and wrenched it off from her wrist, then chucked it onto her bed. It landed with a light thwump on the blankets.

"It just feels like…"

"Something that's not supposed to be there?" Jaune asked.

Ruby breathed heavily. Her chest rose and fell and her face turned a shade of red from the hyperventilation and the sudden emotion. A thin sheen of sweat covered her.

"Sometimes I see it after forgetting about it and it makes me want to throw up all of the sudden," Ruby said. She nodded. "Something that's not supposed to be there."

"Is that what happened at the gym?"

Ruby paused a beat, and she for a moment she took in no breath. Then she nodded again, slowly.

"I could guess," Jaune said. "Does it give you panic attacks?"

Her shoulders sagged. Her sudden energy proved fleeting. She nodded despondently.

Jaune bit his lip. An idea came to him, one which immediately caused a sense of anxiety to bite down on him like a rabid dog. The thought was scary and selfless and the only thing he could really come up with at that moment to make her feel better. Make her feel better. If it worked, even a little bit, then it would be worth it.

Jaune tentatively reached for the buttons along his shirt.

"I understand how you feel," he said. "I know what it's like to have something that shouldn't be there."

Ruby looked at him.

"I want to show you something… it's nothing weird, so don't freak out," Jaune said as he undid the top button on his shirt.

Ruby's eyes widened. A pang of worry struck her, a bit of embarrassment; after all, having a boy alone with you in your room as he took off his shirt was sure to summon up a complicated reaction in a girl her age. The trust she had for him, however, overpowered any concern immediately, and she silently watched with uncertain curiosity as he unbuttoned his shirt.

She was taken aback by some of the scars. There were a few scrapes and pockmarks that looked like slashes and burns, along with a nasty gouge where that beowolf had nearly gutted him.

Something, however, stood out. As he pulled his shirt apart and her curious eyes roved his battle scars, one of them looked unlike the others. It was a thin, straight scar that ran down the center of his chest. It seemed surgical rather than battle born. Right beside it was a mean burn scar with a inch-long stab scar in the middle. It was almost right over his heart.

"There's a reason I never like taking off my shirt," Jaune said. "Not when changing, not at the pool." He held open his shirt, and his hands shook slightly with the effort of it; his voice shook too. "I don't care if people look at my scars, except for one. Because it's the one that represents how I failed everyone."

Ruby took a step forward. A part of her was afraid, worried. The atmosphere had changed, such that she suddenly was keenly aware that she was witnessing something unknown to any other. It felt to her like she was stepping toward a closely guarded, extremely private place, like some doleful shrine left hidden and protected from the world.

"This scar right here"– he pointed at the straight, thin, vertical line –"happened because of this one."

He pointed at the nasty blotch that rested just about over where his heart was supposed to be.

Ruby took another step closer. She stared at the scar he had pointed out, entranced by the mystery of their origin and the intimacy of their reveal. When she reached out and placed brushed her fingers against it, Jaune flinched.

But her hand was warm, and he did not stop her when she rested her palm over the place where his heart was supposed to be.

"When Bishop attacked me… when he killed my last team…" It was difficult to summon those words, for they felt thick and heavy and sticky in his throat, and they made him want to cry. It was past time they were said. "He stabbed right in the chest. But his sword was on fire, so he cauterized a wound that would have been fatal… should have been."

And Sarah had gotten to him. A volley of laser fire from the vertibird had been enough to chase Bishop, Arthur and some of their power-suit clad comrades away. Not before killing his friends. He knew Bishop must have been smiling under that helmet, just like he smiled now.

Sarah had pumped a few stimpaks into him, staunched the wound and gotten him back to camp, whereupon—

"I got a new heart," Jaune said.

Ruby looked up at him, and he had a hard time working out what emotions were there.

"It's a fake one, made out of metal like your hand. And it doesn't even beat. It just sorta… filters." He shook his head. "That's why you'd never be able to find a heartbeat from me, even if you tried.

"Used to be that every day I could feel it in my chest; it felt wrong, bad, not right." Jaune tried his best to smile for her. "Now I've gotten used to it. I'm sure you can get used to your hand, too."

Ruby averted her eyes. She looked back down instead, right at his scar. Then she looked back over her shoulder, back to her bed.

She pulled away from him, out of his arms, and he let her go. Jaune's breath hung frigidly still as she stepped away. What was she going to do? He thought about asking her, if only for a moment. Instead, however, he wordlessly stood back as she wordlessly approached her bed.

Ruby picked up her prosthetic. It looked white and soulless in her grip. The moment was so quiet and so still that Jaune nearly jumped out of his skin when she finally spoke again:

"Paint."

That was the only word to come out from her lips, and he didn't know what to make of it. Jaune looked at her back dumbly as she scrutinized the hand.

"It could use some new paint," she said. "White is Weiss's color. I think it would look nice in red."

"Oh," Jaune said. "You're talking about the hand?"

Ruby turned to him and nodded. Her face was blank, hardly the happy and excited version of herself he'd gotten to know. Her eyes, however, no longer seemed so dull; the way she looked at her prosthetic contained no excitement, yet neither was the look despondent. There was a hint of determination to her.

She reattached the hand to her wrist with a loud click.

Ruby looked down at the prosthetic, taking a moment to flex its fingers. "My fingers," Ruby said. "This is mine now." She raised her natural hand alongside her robotic one and looked at them together.

She was not happy to say the words she said, but she knew it had to be done.

"These are my hands," Ruby said. She balled up both flesh and steel into fists. "I'll make the best of it."

For the first time since he'd entered the room, Jaune felt the slightest pang of something positive. When Ruby looked up at him again, perhaps she saw it. If she did, nothing in her reaction let him know that. She just stepped back to him.

"Guess I've gotten a lot more like you," Ruby said. She reached out her robotic hand and placed it against his chest. Jaune winced as the cold metal pressed against his bare skin. He did not dare pull away.

"And I've gotten a lot more like you," Jaune said. "In just about every way I can think of."

Ruby hummed lightly instead of replying directly. She looked directly at his chest, presumably imagining what it looked like. What was in that place where her boyfriend's heart was supposed to be?

She leaned in and placed her ear against his chest, listening intently.

"What are you—"

"Shh," she said. "I'm trying to hear it."

"Well you won't—"

"Shh."

Jaune closed his mouth then. A few seconds passed by. His impatience quickly fomented, and he was a moment away from stepping back when—

"I think I hear it," Ruby whispered.

"What?" Jaune asked, eyes wide.

"I think I hear something," Ruby repeated. "It's like a kind of… whirr. You're right that nothing's beating, but it's still there. You're heart's a bit funky, but it's still there."

Your heart

Jaune swallowed. He had assumed for a long time that his heart was long gone.

"I like it," Ruby said softly. "I like the sound of your heart."

That was when she looked up at him looking down at her. She smiled a bittersweet smile, and it looked genuine.

Jaune remembered the words of his old mentor, the one person from back on Earth who had really recognized and respected his potential. The person who had given him advice and sought to mold him into a leader with the ideals of leadership he held dear.

"Don't be weak," she had said sternly. "Or at least try not to look weak. If you're going to be pathetic, do it on your own time. You can't show that to the people who depend on you, not when you're the one with responsibility."

That is what he had heard back on Earth, and that had driven him to try and act as he had the past few days. Jaune had looked up to the woman who spoke those words, and he had taken the advice as fact. It was this exact logic that had forced him to push down some of his problem, to pretend to stand taller than he otherwise might have. It was this exact line of thinking that had turned Ruby into a ticking time bomb of emotional pressure and pain.

Jaune had taken that advice more seriously than he had ever previously realized. The Lone Wanderer had internalized this black-and-white perception, this harsh view of reality as a series of absolutes.

But maybe it wouldn't be so bad…

"… if we relied on each other," Jaune said. He spoke in little more than a whisper. "I would like to lean on you, if you would lean on me."

Ruby said nothing. She did not need to. The new warmth in her eyes said it all.

Jaune leaned down. Ruby craned her neck up.

Their lips met.

The door burst open.

"Alright!" Qrow yelled, "Time for best uncle to cheer up his niece!"

Jaune suddenly became less than pleased.

Lmao nice semblance Qrow. I like using Qrow like Chika from Love is War, a character who can just barge in whenever and shake things up with their good-natured chaos. I read an interview from the mangaka of Love is War, and he said that such a character is useful to break things up, end scenes and push things in certain directions. I must agree.