Chapter 115

Big Sisters

Hunter had been caught by a group of middle-aged women in matching T-shirts who, upon realizing that they couldn't squeeze around him, decided to push him along in front of them, turning an obstacle into part of the path. By the time he was able to extricate himself without breaking any bones (his or anyone's in the crowd's), he had completely lost sight of Shane and Cole.

Deciding he may as well ditch the bulk of the crowd and take advantage of the shorter lines at the vendors' booths, he began pushing his way through the mass of people, moving parallel to the nearest line rather than towards it, figuring that, as squeezing through the crush of people packed into the line, it would be best to go around it. Surely the line had to end. Somewhere.

Just as he dodged around a big guy with a beer gut into a relatively open space, a person came crashing into him, shoved by someone else in the crowd. Hunter stumbled but managed to keep his footing, catching the person who'd hit him—whom he could tell was a girl, because even as she fell she was shouting.

"Hey! Watch where you're going! Toad!"

Hunter looked down at the girl in his arms as he set her back on her feet. She was a teenager, with short dark hair featuring a couple red streaks, her expression livid. Hunter stared at her, amazed. She was nothing short of electrifying. Not that he would ever say that aloud, but the fact remained that he was suddenly quite certain he was going to spend the rest of his life with her. She was beautiful. She was perfect. She was—

"Let go!" She jerked herself free from Hunter's grip and began glancing around, frowning. "CHIP!"

"Are you okay?" Hunter asked, just as soon as he felt he could speak without asking her to marry him.

"I'm fine," she said shortly. "I'd be a lot better if stupid rubberneckers would watch where they're going!" she added, twisting her head in the direction of whoever had knocked her over, getting louder with each word until Hunter cringed at the volume.

"There you are!" A freckled, redheaded teenage boy came bounding up to the girl. "I thought I lost you in the crowd!"

"Wouldn't want that, would we?" the girl grumbled. She looked at Hunter as though wondering why he was still there. Her gaze darted over him; Hunter hoped he wasn't imagining the appreciative look in her eye. "Well. Thanks for breaking my fall," she said. She grabbed the redheaded boy by the arm and made to pull him through the crowd. "Come on, Chip—we've gotta find Madison and Xander."

Hunter watched the girl storm off, towing her friend in her wake, and abruptly found himself following them. After a few paces she glanced back and saw him, shooting him a dark frown that did nothing whatsoever to deter Hunter. She marched purposefully through the crowd as though hoping to lose him in it, but being a ninja Hunter had no trouble keeping up (though poor Chip was pretty much being dragged) and when it became apparent that she would have no success in ditching Hunter she rounded on him. Chip yelped as he was flung in a circle; the yellow cape pinned to his back whipped around to smack him in the face, eliciting another yelp.

"What?" the girl demanded of Hunter.

It took a lot of concentration not to profess his love for her, so, "Do you have a name?" was all Hunter could think to say.

She glared at him, looking mildly offended. Her shoulders tensed; apparently her grip on Chip's arm tightened too, if the wince on his face was anything to go by. "No," she ground out.

"No, huh?" Hunter grinned. "Guess that means I'll just have to make up something to call you."

"Or," she growled, "you could go very far away before I start thinking of things to call you."

"My name's Hunter," he offered.

"Are you sure it isn't Stalker?" she retorted.

"I'm sure," he replied, completely unabashed by her tone.

She dropped Chip's arm and took a step towards him; in spite of himself, Hunter took a step back, catching himself just before the instinct to pull a fighting stance set in. "Look," she snarled, "my friend has to be a dork, and I've got to keep an eye on him, and I'd rather do that without you following us. Get lost."

"That's not very nice," Hunter said. "I'm not a bad person, you know. You just have to get to know me."

She stared at him. Then she took in a deep breath, allowing Hunter to brace himself for the shouting that ensued before she cut loose. "Look, pretty boy, you've got ten seconds to back off before I remove your skin!"

Hunter's eyebrows rose. "Pretty boy?" he repeated, unable to keep the note of hopefulness out of his voice.

Her face twisted in a scowl and Chip was quick to put a restraining hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry," Chip told Hunter. "She's usually like this."

"Is she?" Hunter asked mildly.

The girl started to round on Chip, and Hunter was struck by an abrupt need to rescue the kid, who reminded Hunter of an odd cross between Dustin and Blake. "You're really hot when you're angry," Hunter announced.

Her jaw dropped and she spun back towards Hunter, the rage on her face so exquisite that Hunter couldn't help smiling, even though some distant part of his brain labeled "common sense" knew that smiling would probably be the last thing he ever did.

The kinship he felt towards Chip was apparently mutual, however; Chip lunged forward and flung his arms around her. He seemed aware of the fact that he wasn't physically capable of holding the girl back, though, and it seemed more like a hug than an attempt to restrain her. "Don't do it, Vi!" Chip wailed. "If you get us thrown out of Power Rangers Day our friendship will never recover!"

She shrugged him off with minimal effort. Chip went flying, but she and Hunter were too busy staring each other down to notice where he landed. She seemed to be warring with herself, while Hunter was currently trying to recall as many ninja moves as possible. Finally she hissed, "Stop. Following. Me."

Hunter swallowed but his voice was steady as he responded, "Sure. If you give me your phone number."

"Excuse me?" she demanded. "You cannot stalk a girl and then ask for her digits."

"I just did," Hunter pointed out. "Come on. I think we could have some fun. At least let me buy you lunch or something. We can go hit a vendor's booth."

The girl dubbed "Vi" really was more attractive when angry, and right now she was just about the most attractive thing Hunter had ever seen. "Sorry," she snapped. "I don't date men who wear pink."

"It's not pink!" Hunter protested, deeply wounded. "It's crimson!"

Chip came running up. "Oh, thank god you're still alive," he said, smiling in relief. Then a thoughtful look crossed his features. "Huh. She must like you or something."

"Really?" Hunter asked eagerly, but before Chip could answer Vi let out a primal noise of fury and Chip went flying again.

By the time she turned to face Hunter she was breathing heavily, practically foaming at the mouth, but Hunter was beaming. "I like you too, Vi," Hunter told her.

Somehow that comment seemed to take the wind out of her. She let out a shaky sigh, spun on her heel, and stalked off.

Hunter made to start after her, only to trip over the prone form of Chip. Sympathetically he bent down to offer his hand to the poor kid. "You okay?"

"I've had worse," Chip said, accepting Hunter's hand up with an irrepressible grin. "Like I said, she's usually like this."

Hunter helped him up and dusted him off, then turned to start off after Vi again… only to discover she had vanished. Horrified, Hunter turned to Chip. "We lost her."

Chip shrugged. "Well, she's the one who drove me here and Madison won't let her leave without me. I'm sure I'll track her down at some point. Or she'll track down me."

Hunter growled in frustration. "Tell me everything you know about her. Everything."

Chip gave him an apologetic smile. "I can't. Me and Vi go way back."

"Come on! You gotta give me something. Anything. What's her last name? Hell, what's her first name? Is 'Vi' short for something?"

Chip frowned in confusion. "Why? I mean, no offense or anything, but why do you care?"

Hunter stared at him. "How could I not?"

Chip still looked a little blank, but he shrugged. "Sorry, man—you're on your own. Like I said, me and Vi go way back, and in case you haven't noticed? She's not a person you want mad at you." Chip grinned. "Nice meeting you, Hunter," he added, and darted off into the crowd, cape flapping behind him.

Hunter sighed. He couldn't fault Chip for his loyalty, but he did find it frustrating. Now he not only had to find her in the crowd but also convince her to like him. He wondered how the Chip kid had managed to get in her good graces—apparently it wasn't easy.

It didn't matter how easy it was, though. Hunter was no stranger to making an effort, and he was beyond convinced that she was worth it.

"So what did you want to talk to me about?" Alyssa asked Hayley as the two wandered between the vendors' stalls. Hayley shot her a startled look and Alyssa grinned. "Sorry. I'm pretty good with people."

"I know you are," Hayley said, "I'm just not used to having people figure me out."

Alyssa smirked. "I know how you feel. Max, Danny, Taylor and Cole aren't exactly socially inept, but I'm still the resident expert. I try not to let it go to my head, but I get so used to being the one with insight that it always surprises me when someone else does it."

"Sorry for being so discreet," Hayley said. "I should have just come out with it, but I wanted to talk to you without raising red flags with the others."

"No problem. So what do you want to talk to me about?"

Hayley sighed. "Tommy."

"Ah. So you do know Tommy and I are—were—um… you know…"

"Having the occasional weekend fling?" Hayley suggested. Alyssa nodded, grateful that Hayley had found a polite way to put it. "I know, yeah. Tommy tells me pretty much everything, and what he doesn't tell me I tend to guess."

Alyssa frowned. "Are you trying to warn me off of him, now that he and Kimberly are… whatever he and Kimberly are?"

"What? No. Quite the opposite. I need your help."

"How so?" Alyssa looked suddenly alarmed. "You don't actually want me to break them up? Because I don't—"

"No, no, of course not," Hayley cut in hastily. "I just… Tommy and Kimberly are new to me, and I think you might understand where I'm coming from."

"How so?"

"Well… Tommy always told me that he didn't want Kimberly back. And until yesterday—god, was it really only yesterday?—I believed him. He had managed to convince himself that it was over, and I assumed it was. And now… well, it seems like I have some catching up to do. I figured you were just as shocked as I was when you heard, that it must have seemed like a one-eighty."

"Actually, no," Alyssa admitted. Alyssa glanced around for eavesdroppers and lowered her voice, only to realize that among the Power Rangers Day crowd everyone was talking about Power Rangers and acting shifty was more suspicious than mentioning Rangers. "You probably haven't spent a whole lot of time around other Rangers without Tommy, have you?"

Hayley shook her head. "A few times with Trini and some conversations with Cam and Billy, and there was this one time with Zack that I won't get into, but other than that, no."

"Well, I hang out with Rangers all the time—particularly Time Force, since they helped us out that one time with the Mut-Orgs and Taylor's dating Eric and everything—and pretty much every Ranger knows all know about it. Tommy and Kimberly's relationship is practically an urban legend to them. Tommy himself didn't mention her much, but knowing what I did from everyone else, it was easy to see past what was on the surface when he did try to tell me he was over her. So I probably had an unfair advantage over you when it came to understanding what Tommy really wanted."

"That doesn't surprise me, now that I think about it," Hayley mused. "I may be friends with the others, but they see me as an extension of Tommy. They like me well enough, consider me a friend, but generally when we get together they'll call one of us and tell us to bring the other. It's always 'How's Tommy doing?' and 'Hey, see if Hayley wants to come.'"

"And since nobody mentions Kimberly to Tommy, no one ever mentioned her to you," Alyssa guessed.

Hayley nodded. "And I never asked. Kimberly was an annoyance to me; I always thought of her as 'the girl who broke Tommy.' I never really cared to know anything else about her."

Hayley sighed, and Alyssa's eyes narrowed at her, which Hayley found somewhat disconcerting. Hayley wondered if this was how other people felt when Hayley was employing her shrewdness against them. "You know," Alyssa said slowly, "it occurs to me that although Tommy's always said you two are just friends, I never knew if you were—"

"Don't even go there," Hayley interrupted flatly. "Dating Tommy was downright nauseating, we are that platonic. I have zero interest in him. I know our friendship seems weird on the surface—"

"It does," Alyssa agreed. "I often wondered if Tommy was lying about the whole 'we're both better off' thing, and when I figured out he wasn't I started to wonder if you secretly wanted more."

Hayley snorted. "I get that ninety-nine percent of the time when a man and a woman are friends one of them wants to be more, but trust me, me and Tommy are definitely in that last percent. Our friendship has always been weird, though, and I can't blame people for wondering. Tommy and I became friends the way most people fall in love. It just sort of happened, and there was no making it go away. We don't even have all that much in common. I'm all about computers and learning and people, and he's all about sports and heroics and he can be downright shy. He's just… the long-lost kid brother I never knew I had. Can't really live without him, but that doesn't mean I want to date him." She shuddered.

Alyssa chuckled. "Well, that's good to know. So why are you worried about him and Kimberly?"

Hayley sighed again. "No one cares how I feel about Tommy."

"What do you mean?"

"I've been there for him from the minute we met. He can even confide in me about things he can't tell the others, because my loyalty is to him first and the others second, so he can tell me how he really feels about things he would be leery of sharing with them, but… Tommy divides himself between me and them without meaning to. In the beginning of our friendship, if he needed guidance, he went to Jason. If he needed comfort, he went to Trini. If he needed something mechanical or technical, he went to Billy. If he needed to have fun, he went to Zack. Over time, I slowly became the top go-to person, though, because in a lot of ways I'm all of them rolled into one. I'm strong like Jason, I'm compassionate like Trini, I'm smart like Billy, I know how to party like Zack… hell, I even dated the guy like Kimberly. I can be there for him in a way that they can't, individually. Yet they trump me. They always trump me."

"How so?"

"Whenever I'm building something delicate and it isn't going smoothly, he runs to the Aqua-phone for Billy's input. If I give him advice on how he should deal with a particular person or situation and he isn't one hundred percent convinced, he'll run it past Trini, too. If I hear about a club or bar I want to try, he calls Zack and Zack lets us know if it's really awesome or if it didn't live up to the hype or they had bad food or he'd been banned for some zany freak accident. And Jason? If Tommy talks to Jason about anything, Jason's word is law. Absolute and final."

"And that bothers you," Alyssa said, nodding.

"Not because I want Tommy to listen to me and only me," Hayley said hastily. "It's because—"

"It's because it makes you feel like Tommy doesn't trust you as much as he trusts them," Alyssa cut in. Hayley stared at her, shocked, and Alyssa smiled. "Like I said, I'm pretty good with people."

Hayley grinned back at her, relieved to finally be able to pour her heart out to someone who might understand. There were other people she might be able to talk to—Trini came to mind—but unlike Alyssa all of them were specifically oriented on the Tommy-and-Kimberly side and no other viewpoints would matter. Besides which, most of them were involved in Hayley's current problem.

"Exactly," Hayley said. "I feel like I'm not as important to him as they are. I know, deep down, he doesn't mean to come off that way. I know their shared experience means he unconsciously relies on them and always will. Most of the time, I'm fine with being the reserve. I even like it—backups don't have to deal with as much as the people on the front lines. It's just… this Kimberly thing."

"You wish they didn't outrank you?" Alyssa guessed.

Hayley shook her head. "That's just it. This isn't a question of rank. I can handle being trumped; I can't handle not being a part of the team. If I said, right now, 'Tommy, I think you should stay away from her,' Tommy would completely ignore me. Hell, I did say that earlier this week, back when I thought Tommy was just being nostalgic and missing the old days, before I realized he's been hiding how he truly feels about her from me all along, and on just about any other issue, my saying 'No' would have been enough for him. He might have asked one of the others for confirmation, but nine times out of ten he listens. Yet I told him to back off of Kimberly and here he is, putting the past behind him and moving forward."

"You deserve a say," Alyssa said. "You've been there for him. You're his friend, too."

"I'm his Hayley!" Hayley practically shouted. "I'm his confidant, his mentor, his inventor, his… his everything! I'm his Hayley! I damned well get a say!"

"Okay," Alyssa said slowly, "practice run. Pretend I'm Tommy. What do you want to say?"

Hayley spluttered for a moment. "I don't know!" she wailed. "I don't have an opinion yet! Everything's moving so fast! I just got slapped with this yesterday!"

"Me, too," Alyssa said. "Tommy took me aside at the party, told me he was going to try working things out with Kimberly, and asked if we were still friends. I said yes, there was an awkward pause, he left. Then I got drunk with Trent."

Hayley gaped at her. "You want me to smack Tommy for you?"

Alyssa laughed. "No. All I meant was that I may not have the same sort of epic longstanding friendship with him that you do, but I see how you feel. Tommy and I had fun together. There wasn't much between us romantically, but I kind of felt like he was a male version of me or something, and we were really compatible. We were both White Tigers, we were both teachers, we were both martial artists, we were both interested in archaeology… we even liked the same TV shows. Now he's reconnected with the Ghost of Girlfriends Past and from what I understand about Kimberly he's not coming back. So I'm bummed. Not because I want him for myself or I want to be in a relationship with him, but because I'm worried I've lost that platonic connection and I enjoyed it."

"But you can't let this thing with Kimberly take that connection away from you," Hayley said. "You have to remind him that whatever else you were, you guys were friends and that shouldn't change just because he has a new love interest."

Alyssa shrugged. "I know, but it's different this time—it's not like that Maria girl he dated, or anyone else. This time it's the love of his life."

Hayley froze, horror washing over her. "Oh, god," she whimpered. "Kimberly's the love of his life."

Alyssa tilted her head at Hayley, confused by Hayley's reaction. "What?"

"The love of his life." Hayley's knees felt weak and she clutched at a nearby vendor's booth for support. "Kimberly is the love of Tommy's life."

"Are you okay?" Alyssa asked in concern.

Hayley shook her head. "It hadn't sunk in yet. I was too used to Kimberly as Tommy's ex, nothing more than a first love gone wrong… I hadn't realized it yet. I'm going to be dealing with this for the rest of my life. Absolutely for the rest of my life."

Alyssa patted her back, afraid Hayley might throw up; she certainly looked ill enough. "Well… look on the bright side. At some point it has to end, right? One way or the other. Either they'll get together and stay together or they'll—"

"Or they'll break up!" Hayley finished in alarm. "What will I do if they break up? If it doesn't work? None of them are prepared for that. I'm gonna have to pick up the pieces. It was hard enough the first time! Getting Tommy to do something normal is difficult enough without throwing more baggage into the equation! If this fails he'll never function again! And the others, they've got so much riding on this I'll have to comfort all of them…"

"Hey, hey, calm down," Alyssa said soothingly. "You've got the advantage here. You're not invested in this, not like they are, and you can guide him through this."

"If he listens to me," Hayley muttered bitterly. "I'm going to be second string."

"Hayley, you don't have to be ignored here," Alyssa insisted. "The more you make yourself a part of his little quest to reconnect with Kimberly, the more he'll listen to you."

Hayley nodded wearily. "I know. You're right. I'm just pissed off that I have to earn the right to make him trust me. I've earned that right when it comes to everything else—why should I have to earn it about this?"

Alyssa grinned. "You know what? I say we take back our Tommy."

Hayley gave her an incredulous look. "What, you seduce him and I poison his mind against her?"

Alyssa laughed so hard she needed a moment to recover. "No, no… what I meant was, we can't let him shut us out. I shouldn't get demoted to awkward smiles and uncomfortable pauses just because I slept with the guy, and you shouldn't get demoted to unworthy of voicing an opinion just because his history with Kim predates his history with you. I say we refuse to allow Tommy to shut us out. I saw we refuse to allow anyone to shut us out."

"Hmm. You've got a point. It's not that I don't want him to chasing after Kimberly—it's just that if I told him not to he'd ignore me, and I deserve better than that."

"Of course you do," Alyssa agreed. "But he can't push us out if we don't let him, and neither can anyone else. Hell, we're the smart ones. We think in circles around them, not the other way around, and we will not be cast out."

"The sad thing is, they don't even realize they're doing it, either," Hayley added. "It's just that Tommy reconnecting with Kimberly has unified their team in a way it has been in years. They don't mean to push us away. They're just protecting that bond, solidifying their unit. Making it harder for anyone who wasn't a part of that team to be close to them." She smiled. "We can keep them in line, if we work together."

Alyssa looked shocked. "Are you kidding? We can't team up—we're too good. You and I, working together against Tommy? I've got too much in common with him and you compliment him too well. It would be like teaming up to beat up a preschooler. We'd destroy him."

"You're right," Hayley admitted sadly. "We'll be fine on our own. Still, it would have been fun to team up."

"Totally," Alyssa agreed. "Hey, if I ever go evil? I am totally recruiting you to be my number one general."

"That is so sweet!" Hayley exclaimed. "Same here. I mean, if I don't brainwash you, you'll ultimately bring about my downfall, so…"

"You really think so?" Alyssa asked. Hayley nodded. "Aw! I'm touched."

"We can help each other, of course," Hayley said, "but if we become a unified front you know Trini will figure it out, step in and destroy us."

Alyssa winced. "Yeah, we have to be careful. Trini and some of the others might throw a wrench in things."

"Plus if a Ranger smells a fight, they'll beat you up on general principles—no offense."

"None taken," Alyssa replied with a shrug. "Anyway, I think in the end we'll both be fine. I feel better already, in fact."

Hayley nodded fervently. "Me, too. Hey, let me ask you something—you've met Kimberly before, right?"

"Yeah, sure. You mean you haven't?"

"Never. Not before Friday morning when we got them out of the closet."

"Closet?"

"Don't ask. Anyway, before then I'd only seen photos of her and heard about her through Tommy. If I'm going to do this…" Hayley trailed off, shrugging. "I'm going to need some insights into her character and most of what I have comes from Tommy drunkenly waxing poetic."

Alyssa frowned. "Just to be clear here, are you… you're not going to break them up, right?"

Hayley snorted. "Of course not. Do you have any idea how much easier my life would be if Tommy had an actual girlfriend? Someone to clean up after him, remind him of things, help him do his laundry? Someone else to keep him… oh, my god." Hayley's eyes widened and she turned to look up at the Pink Mighty Morphin Ranger up on the stage. "I have to make this happen."

"Make what happen, exactly?"

"Make them happen," Hayley growled. "I have to get Tommy a girlfriend. Suddenly it's all so clear. I don't know why I didn't think of it before. Before he… well, he had a few serious girlfriends here and there, but never anything like what Kimberly could be."

"So you want to… what? Marry Tommy off?" Alyssa asked uncertainly.

"I can dream, can't I?" Hayley demanded, her tone a tad defensive. "Think of it. No more 'Hayley, I can't find my reading glasses' or 'Hayley, I'm invisible and my foot is stuck in the kitchen sink drain' or 'Hayley, my former employer unleashed an army of mutant dinosaurs on the city where you live.' I could be… could be…"

"Unnecessary?" Alyssa supplied.

Hayley snorted, shaking her head. "Oh, I'll never be that. I'm hopeful, not delusional. But having someone else around to pick up the slack… help with the chores… handle some of the chaos… this isn't a nerve-wracking foray into a potentially disastrous situation. This is my ticket to separate vacations. Separate vacations, Alyssa! Think of it!"

Alyssa stared at her, confused. "…I'm trying…"

"He left town last Friday and by Thursday night I was on my way to Angel Grove. But if he has a Kimberly… oh, how calm life could be. Not perfect. I wouldn't want it to be as quiet as it used to be, back in college before I met Tommy when drinks on a Saturday night was a wild time and difficulties were caused by things like money and family and friends and school and work. Still…" Hayley's eyes narrowed. "Kimberly is my ticket to chaos reduction. Hell, it doesn't even have to be Kimberly, come to think of it." She gave Alyssa a speculative glance that made Alyssa distinctly nervous. "Regardless, I'm going to help them. You can be sure of that. And no way can I let the boy shut me out; he'll make a mess of everything, my life included. Tommy needs his Hayley to get his Kimberly." She nodded determinedly. "It all makes sense."

"If you say so," Alyssa said with a shrug. "So. Want the dirt on Kim?"

"Everything you've got," Hayley confirmed. "I have a feeling I'm going to need it."

End Notes: I just sprained my foot while trying to throw together a wedding in under four days, so fair warning, I'm posting this after two vicodin and a bad day. I can't even recall if this chapter has been proofed so try to forgive me if it turns out it wasn't ready for posting because all vicodin does for me is make me dizzy and loopy and nauseated without actually dulling the pain, which was already making me dizzy and loopy and nauseated, although hey on the bright side I have a new ace bandage. I wish I had a cat. I would call it Butterscotch if it was orange and I haven't had a cat since that time we opened the front door and a stray cat walked in and rubbed its head all over our dog and went and ate its leftover dog food. Its name was Meow-Meow. I tried to tell my mother that you're not supposed to name cats like Pokémon but she wouldn't listen. My dog was thoroughly nonplussed when the cat adopted us. My dog was weird. He was like really super smart, like an alien trapped in a dog's body. Once he pulled a Homeward Bound and walked home through the Smoky Mountains and he used to run away to the dog pound because he knew how to hop the fence and he knew the guy wouldn't kill him if he was wearing a collar and nobody ever believed half the stories we told about him but that's to be expected because normal people just don't understand that weird people even have weird pets. My favorite animals are panthers, though, black jaguar panthers and monkeys. I like dolphins and frogs too. I also like Ouran High School Host Club. I just started watching the anime and Freyja tells me I really should read the manga but I don't have the manga and I'm poor so I rent the anime at the library and it would be cool if I could actually like buy the series but hey, cool, I think I found my hairbrush. I have to hide my hairbrush sometimes but I sometimes forget where I put my hairbrush. I wish my foot would stop hurting. I don't like hurting. Hurting is annoying, man. It's a pretty bad hurt. Stupid vicodin. If it's going to make me sick and dizzy and loopy the least it could do is make me not hurting. I feel so bad for that nice lady with the blue scrubs and the pretty dread-lock-braid-thingies because I was in so much pain I had a cataplexy attack and she got really freaked for a minute but I remembered how to talk all by myself and after a few garbled words she ran and got that person I went to the waiting room with but I can't remember their name now but that's okay cuz you're supposed to be anonymous on the internet right? Right. Except on Facebook. Facebook is retarded. I hate Facebook. I have a Facebook, though, because Ninja Saga isn't retarded. Ninja Saga is awesome. I really wish I had a Ninja Emblem so I could learn all seven types of jutsu but let's be honest, you can learn Taijutsu and Genjustu and two kinds of elemental jutsu without an emblem and Fire and Water are the best, but it would be nice if I could learn Earth too because Earth can stun people at low levels without Genjutsu which uses more Chakra points. I love Ninja Saga. I friended all these hot Indonesian boys so that we could learn jutsu off each other and stuff and I like looking at their pictures. There aren't any hot Indonesian boys in Michigan. Not that I've found. I can't really complain though, because there are enough hot boys in Michigan that if you don't look too closely at their personalities they're still usable. I'm hungry. I had a garlic-bologna-and-Swiss-cheese sandwich like six or eight hours ago, though, so sure I'll be fine if I don't eat. Garlic bologna is a highly underrated lunchmeat. My chair is broken and won't tilt back anymore which sucks cuz it's hard to prop my feet up on the desk bar without having a little oh you know what? I should back up my documents on my external hard drive before I forget. Bye now. Oh, yeah, like review and stuff, and leave us ideas and stuff, and my hair isn't nearly as long as it should be. I used to have waist-length hair and I liked it and I miss it and maybe I should grow it back out but I don't know, I guess we'll see. My last haircut was this totally improvised thing where I handed my sister a pair of scissors and said "Hey, cut my hair!" and stuff. Hairdressers make me nervous. Ever since I got into witchcraft I don't really like leaving my hair lying around, ever since that one friend of mine found a bunch of forgotten curses in the back of his closet and couldn't remember which curse was which but said he had a pretty good idea because there were only so many people who had made him so mad he'd reached over and yanked out a hunk of their hair but I don't curse people much because it takes a lot to make me angry and I prefer good old-fashioned ways of getting even with people and oh hey, my food is here! I wonder if they remembered no onions. Onions are insane and evil and they should not exist you know why? Because they taint everything around them with the evilness of onion. Kind of like love. Everyone always rambles about love as if it's the coolest thing on Earth but let me tell you something, love? Sucks. It's maddening and illogical and all you want to do is be with the person you're in love with and once it hits you nothing is ever okay again because the love takes over and makes you do stupid stuff with stupid people and I strongly recommend avoiding it because even if it works out it will be hell and if it doesn't? Oy. Which is why I don't give out my phone number until at least the third date. It's a tricky thing to pull off but if you can keep a love interest from obtaining your number you save yourself the headache of all those calls and text messages and so on begging to know why you don't love them. Which is ridiculous. If we could choose who we fell in love with then only oil billionaires and supermodels would get married. I had a pet bearded dragon iguana once. It ate live crickets that chirped all night and occasionally committed suicide in his water dish. I never understood crickets. You know for like six months a few years ago I had an ambition to become a bobblehead? Huh. I should get on that.