A/N: Apologies for the late posting. I had surprising success with going back to bed this morning - namely, I managed to get back into dreamland and have a series of dreams I remember. They were very pleasant. One of them brought up desire, that old childhood thing, another had a bunch of old classmates who I had no idea about write me surprise messages for my birthday, and the others were all pretty pleasant. Best morning ever. I was going to write here about how I am a horrible astronomer and cartographer, but I'll save that for another time.

Enjoy another scene from a side character's perspective!

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In The Park

So angry! So much! Scared!

A quiet whimper. The kind person heard the whimper and let go, but there was no leaving for a long time. The angry person's yelling was like that. It made people shaky and afraid and small like prey.

"I'm sorry," the kind person tried to apologize. For what? "She only has a problem with my original, and by extension me, but not you or anyone else. I'm sorry you had to go through that. You're so little. What was I thinking?!"

No. Not little. The kind person refused to be comforted, but he had to be. He shouldn't feel bad. There was no littleness, really. There was only smallness, a smallness like being lost and trying to find a way back to the last good time. The kind person was not bad because he had nothing to do with the lostness. He had to know that.

"Thanks," the kind person said with a weak smile. It wasn't real thanks. He still didn't understand! "You're a really sweet kid! That's why I don't want you to be scared, and you wouldn't have been scared if you hadn't been here with me."

Swat. Swat. Swat. Snakey was swatting the kind person with his tail. Swat. Swat. Swat.

"Why are you hitting me with your toy snake…?"

Snakey stopped hitting the kind person with his tail. The kind person still didn't understand! He had just said he was not stupid, but he still was. He still didn't understand. He should be smarter than the birds and the crickets. The birds and the crickets sometimes did not fly when they were supposed to fly, or jump when they were supposed to jump. It was what they had legs and wings for, so it was wrong not to use them. The kind person was smarter than the birds and the crickets because he knew how to be what he was. But more and more he was forgetting how to be what he was. No! Don't forget! Swat.

"Um...okay? I'll stop apologizing?" The kind person looked very confused. Was not apologizing enough? Hm… Maybe. Snakey approved and stopped swatting.

"Aw! That was awesome! And super cute!" admitted the dark person. He hung down from the trees and looked with admiration. It was good to see admiration: warm, like a surge of ice melting. The dark person came down from the tree, and Snakey was offered. He patted Snakey softly on the head. His arm was warm and shelter and safe-feeling. No anger here. No lostness. Foundness.

"Yeah," the kind person agreed. His eyes were starting to glow again as he rubbed his nose. "It was weirdly cute to see him hitting me with a stuffed toy, but so weird! Why was he hitting me?"

"I don't know," said the dark person. "I have a policy that keeps me from knowing that."

The kind person was surprised. "A policy? Can you - I mean, will you tell me what it is?"

The dark person looked right and left and right again. His eyes narrowed. It was a big question. His hand was good to suck on while he thought about it. "Okay," he decided. "My policy is just that I kind of, sometimes, in some cases, don't want to know everything. It makes people boring when I can just finish reading them! So sometimes, for him and that other guy, I don't look into their minds. I don't want to finish them."

The kind person smiled in understanding. "That makes sense. Everyone needs mystery. Even you would, right?"

The dark person looked down at the fingers that were being sucked on. Did he disapprove? He smiled. He did not. The sucking resumed. "Yeah! I like to look at the cool things! It would be so bad if I ran out of cool things to look at."

The kind person looked down, suddenly sad. "You're not going to tell me why Konan's mad at me, are you?"

"Nope!"

"Yeah." The kind person bit his lip. "I think I know why now. It wouldn't work, would it? I need to figure out what she means for myself. There's something I don't understand."

The dark person's hand was released. Yes! No being mean. That's wrong. You are not mean. You are kind. Snakey climbed on top of his head and rubbed back and forth. That was good to say.

"You've still known him for longer than I have, right?" the kind person asked the dark person. "What is this? I think he likes what I said, but what part of what I said?"

The dark person grinned. It was the sneaky grin. The sneaky grin meant he would only say a little bit. "She said you weren't stupid," he offered.

"I agreed prematurely, didn't I?" the kind person said, while turning red. "There's a lot I don't know yet that I think she wants me to know." Snakey rewarded him again. "That's it, isn't it? You want me to know that I don't know things?" A nod. "I don't understand why, but okay."

*sigh* The kind person still didn't understand. When he knew he didn't know things, that was okay. He was kind to people who didn't know things. But when he didn't know that and said that he should have known, it sounded so mean! He was mean when he talked like that! Wrong! But as long as he knew he needed to not know things, that was okay. He wouldn't be mean. If he was mean…

Mean people can't be with kind people. Aloneness. No teaching. No laughing. Sad and lost and small. Sad and lost and small were not happy things. Snakey was soft and good to pet when the not-happy things were around.

The kind person was wincing as if in pain. "Oh no. It looks like he'll start crying any minute now. What did I do?"

The dark person glared. "You're no fun!"

"W-what? I'm not?"

"No!" The dark person huffed. "Everything you say is a question even when it doesn't sound like one! I don't like being asked so many questions. It's so boring to answer them over and over again. I'm not answering!"

The kind person leaned backward. He looked like he had two kinds of pain now. "I didn't mean to ask you a question… Sorry?" The dark person growled. "Not sorry?"

The dark person looked down. "I'm outta here. Wanna come?"

But the bush is scared… Teaching?

The dark person looked away. "Okay, fine. I'll go see what that other guy's doing." And fast, so fast, he turned into birds. The dark birds flew away like blackbirds, and were gone.

The kind person sat stumped. "I can't make sense of what everyone expects of me. It's like there's some invisible standard I'm not meeting that I don't even know about."

No. No being mean.

"Anyway, what did you - "

The kind person's hand was taken and pushed into the bush. The bush is scared. Teaching. Feel bush spirit!

General

Konan was unsure where to go. Comfort might be good, but she didn't want to disturb Nagato, and she was doubtful that being around dogs would feel good anyway. They were like Chibi, and Chibi was too much like Yahiko. A portent of what was to come. No; the shelter was definitely not an option. Apart from those considerations, Konan still felt like being alone, which ruled out being with Hidan. She had plans of her own to work out anyway; what kind of ninja would she be if she couldn't be alone? Bad feelings and painful thoughts whirled around her. Shame burned in her gut while thoughts of I still rely on Hidan! Can I do nothing on my own? rained down from above. Konan stood in the middle of the storm, disoriented, unable even to figure out what she wanted. Did she want to be alone, or with someone? It was unclear…

That's how she found herself shutting the door to the basement and locking it, sealing herself in with the symbol in the floor. The air was energized. She could swear the symbol was humming.

"Where?!" she asked, storming over to it. Three, infinity. Balance, divinity. And the other symbols that disappeared had four, eight, and one. Death, harmony, unity. All the signs point to a god that fits in, that belongs. But - "Where?"

There was no answer.

Konan took a deep breath and let it out. She couldn't stay angry here. The air buzzed and prickled, energizing her. As she took deep breaths, filling her lungs with this air, the internal ache of hurt and loss sharpened. Konan stumbled and fell to the ground. She held herself up on her shaking arms. Good. Wonderful. Excellent. Such a sharp pain feels better, somehow. Cleaner. This pain slices through me as if it was a surgeon's blade. I can take that better than I can take being sullied and battered.

Konan softly bit her lip. The feeling of a surgeon's blade was a good feeling. It brought up the thought that she should have had something like this before, that if a surgeon had attended to her ills all would have been better, that she ought to grieve for years lost to this ache - but the needle-sharp pain took that away too. To be sure, it left a hole. There was no joy or love or warmth to be provided here. But that was not what she expected, so that was alright. Clarity would do. She had a lot of thinking to do about what path she ought to make for herself from now on.

The supporting glyphs had disappeared, so there was only one part of the symbol that she could find to represent the number one. Unity. Konan was glad she'd locked the door as she sat in the direct center of the circle and triangle. What would anyone think if they saw her here?

.

Yahiko forgot about the snake boy again, this time deliberately. After being swatted with the tail of the toy snake whenever he pulled back or looked away, and rewarded when he reached out and fondled the leaves and branches of the bush, he thought he'd finally figured out what the little boy wanted him to do. He must be trying to teach me to look closely, like Itachi did!

Yahiko banished the child from his mind and focused. He took one branch of the bush and studied a single leaf of it. The leaf was a shade of dark green that reminded him of a precious gem, though Yahiko had never actually seen any precious gems. How could he be reminded of what he had never seen? Nagato said he and Hidan figured that out last night. It's grief. But… This isn't grief. It's familiarity. Shouldn't I-

He was getting distracted. Yahiko created a mental image of the Big Bang as soon as he heard the word "should" in his thoughts. That word was incompatible with a close look. Focus!

The leaf was still there, still faintly luminous like a precious gem. Yahiko held it up at an angle to reflect light, and saw how the light reflecting off the leaf looked like a smattering of white dots, instead of a smooth sheen. Softly, he ran a finger over the leaf, and felt nothing. Microtexture. Amazing. The leaf was not particularly smooth or textured. Yahiko thought it might be a little waxy, or… What was the word to describe it by? Not waxy; that would be smooth and make a sheen of light. But the leaf was not papery, because it certainly didn't feel fake. It felt real, and alive, with a strange weight to it that only Yahiko's mind felt.

He let the vocabulary issue drop. It would distract him, and the purpose of this was not to tell someone else about what he saw. It was simply to see it himself. For that, he needed no words.

The leaf's edges were smooth and softly curved, like a water droplet but more rounded. Instead of tapering to a precise point, they simply met, each curve connecting at about a 30-degree angle. There was a single, central groove running down nearly the full length of the leaf, and that was the only mark; no veins were visible. The full length of the leaf was about the full length of the pad of Yahiko's thumb, but a little shorter. Less than a millimeter so.

Yahiko moved on, looking past the single leaf to the branch it grew from. There was a little joint at the base of the leaf where it attached to the woody twig that held it. Said twig was barely visible, as this leaf was only one of a dozen or so growing in a cluster on the very end of this branch. Yahiko looked up the branch and saw no leaves at all, though scars left on the wood marked where past clusters of twiggy projections with leaves attached had grown.

Scars? Yahiko bent down for a closer look. Like an epiphany, he realized that scars are the records of personal history. This plant had a personal history! He was captivated. You grew. He bent neighboring branches out of the way so that he could reach in to feel the wood-scars, then hesitated. Was it right to reach in like that? He wouldn't just touch a person or animal's scars, right? No, he wouldn't. Yahiko took his hand back and contented himself with reading the scars. You were small, a seed. But then you wiggled a root out, and sent it into the ground, and searched and searched for what you needed to live. By luck, you did it; you're a survivor! How many other seeds were here with you? How many friends did you outgrow? Yahiko thought about what the scars meant, and envisioned year after year of growing new leaves, having them eaten, and struggling to put out more anyway because there was no choice. Because life had them all in its grip, himself and Itachi and Itachi's brother and this bush alike, and they were helpless and hurtling on a ride that was painful, but fun. Like a wind, it had picked them up and was throwing them forward and surging along underneath them, and it would not stop. There was no choice. Yahiko smiled in awe. That simple not having a choice made it all the more powerful and interesting, somehow.

Yahiko's eyes widened. There is a branch on top of my head. He hadn't put it there, hadn't used chakra, and there was no wind. Yet, there were leaves in his hair anyway, and they were not leaving. Yahiko blinked, and became very aware of his heartbeat. This was his first contact with nature spirits! Neither book had contained instructions on what to do when you finally met one, except for the Complete Encyclopedia, which had said that water spirits were notoriously shy and you had to be especially indirect to even spot one. What about bush spirits?

Once again, Yahiko had to trust to his instincts. Was the way he approached the world the way he should approach it? That was a question he always held in the back of his mind whenever he was forced to rely on instinct. As if he had something to confirm, or to disprove: an answer he had yet to give.

But he did not think about that, because he never did. He couldn't have put the hidden question into words, even if he had known it existed. Yahiko simply thought to himself, Okay, that's what I have to do. Here I go. Hope I'm right. "Hey," he whispered.

Aside from the branch on his head, nothing about the bush seemed out of the ordinary. But then there was that strange weight the leaf had seemed to have.

"I…" What to say? Yahiko had not looked up at the branch touching his head, for fear that would make it go away. His eyes were still on the old, faint scars. "I...wish you luck." Do I have scars? "I'm glad you...made it. So did I. I lost my parents and sister, and I didn't think I could continue to even survive. It seemed like everything had to stop, but it didn't stop, and that didn't make any sense…"

He took a break to sob quietly, wishing for tears to drip down his face. None came. Perhaps he had run out already. "But I had to go on, so I did, and now I'm here. You're here too. We're here, and we have that in common, and… Um… It just seems like that's all we need to have in common."

The branch gently lifted from his head. Yahiko could feel it brush against his hair as it went. "So thank you," he said. "Just for that. I don't feel so alone now."

That was all he had wanted to say, and some sense told Yahiko that was all he could say. He couldn't ask more of a being that also had its own business of living to attend to. That would be most uncivil. He shuffled backward, let its branches spring back into whatever position they would, and started to tremble. How did I do that? It reminded Yahiko of using his chakra the first time, that strange tingle of using muscles he had never known he had before. The little snake wrapped his arms around Yahiko from the side, leaning on him for comfort. Yahiko smiled through his shaking.

.

Whisper whined quietly as Quiet Human passed by. Now that he knew what to smell for, he smelled Packmate underneath Quiet Human's scent. Packmate must be alive. The traces of her scent smelled alive. Was she though? She hadn't returned, like some of the others from the other cages hadn't returned. They were gone, so they probably weren't alive any more.

Quiet Human stopped and knelt down, still facing away from Whisper but showing that he was paying attention nonetheless. "Hey, buddy," Quiet Human whispered.

Whisper heard Quiet Human make reassuring sounds, and curious ones too. Quiet Human was like that. Every signal he sent was both reassuring and something else. Whisper liked it. There were not a lot of reassuring things here in the place of cages and toys and baths, where the giant human-dog female patrolled. Whisper never quite knew where his place in the pack was. Was there a pack? Yappy, with the deformed tail, seemed to think so. But the only pack-person Whisper saw was Quiet Human. He was the only one who did social things and made bonds and other packlike things.

"What are you whining about?" Quiet Human asked.

Whisper wondered what Quiet Human was so curious about. Quiet Human sometimes sent double signals of curiosity when Whisper hid something, like a toy, and Quiet Human knew and wanted him to give it up. But Whisper was not hiding a toy. Maybe Quiet Human thought he was hiding sickness? No; Whisper would never hide something like that. Sickness was bad and should be snarled at, not hidden and protected.

Maybe it was just one of those funny signals. No human could ever give reliable signals, even when the exact same thing happened. They just didn't make any sense sometimes. Whisper did not think about why Quiet Human was curious any longer, because the answer was probably "he just was," and instead returned to thinking about Packmate. Whisper stopped flopping his tail in contentment and leaned forward to take a closer sniff. It was definitely Packmate's scent, and it seemed alive…

Nagato carefully held out an arm for the dog to sniff at. Whisper had seemed to be paying a lot more attention to him ever since Konan's visit. Does he miss Konan? He might be checking for her scent. Poor dog... I really wish we weren't living in such a messed up place, that he could have a home. I'm sorry, buddy. Nagato realized some distress must be leaking into his scent and body language, but allowed it to. There was simply no way he could reassure Whisper except by convincing her to come back and visit the dog tomorrow.

Whisper whined again, and shifted uncomfortably. Quiet Human was stressed now? Was it by Packmate? Had something happened to Packmate?!

Uh oh. He's already nervous, and here I am… Nagato made himself relax and murmur gently and reassuringly, then left. I really need to stop thinking about my personal life while I'm at work. It's stressing me out.

Luckily, Jonesy was right there to give him a tongue bath regardless of what Nagato looked or acted like. He was the same golden dog with the deformed tail that everyone else called "Yappy." Nagato wondered whether his behavior was out of desperation, or genuinely being that happy, or something else that would explain it. The only other option was that Jonesy was blind to body language and other social signals, which would be very bad for his chances of ever getting adopted. Nagato hoped he would not stay here forever and would learn to get along with others eventually.

"Hey, Jones," he said as he held out a hand for the dog to sniff. As usual, his fingers got licked instead. He really needs to learn to sniff first. How else is he going to tell what another dog is like? Nagato wondered for the third time just that day whether there was such a thing as social skills lessons for dogs, and if so, how he could get Jonesy enrolled. If the Hatakes can talk with wolves, maybe they could teach dogs too. Or do they just have special wolves?

.

Konan eventually came up from the basement, just in time to see Hidan wielding his scythe the wrong way around. Hidan held it over his head with the blades pointing backward and the back of it in position to smash into the ground. What the -

Smashing the back of it into the ground was exactly what Hidan did. To Konan's surprise, the impact was strong. She felt vibrations from it travel all the way up her legs. There was no earthly way that was possible!

"All right!" Hidan cheered. "Hey Konan, check it out! My thing reacts to chakra!"

"Does it?" she inquired neutrally. What did you just do?

"Yeah!" He grinned. "Sharp chakra makes it sharp, explosive chakra makes it explosive, and fiery chakra makes it hot! I was just checking to see what earth chakra did. I don't know exactly what earth chakra's supposed to be like, but Kakuzu uses it in a stony way to hit shit, so I tried hitting shit. It works!"

Konan glanced up to see Itachi, Deidara and Kakuzu up in the trees, as far away as they could get. That couldn't possibly be the whole story. "I see."

Hidan held the scythe out to her, blades first. "Give it a try! C'mon, I wanna see what kind of chakra you have!"

Finally, a detail Konan could latch onto. Her eyes widened. "I already know what kind of chakra I have, because in my world there are people that grow trees on a special chakra-enhanced diet to create chakra-testing paper," she said as she took hold of the top blade. "But there are no such trees here, so your scythe is the only thing that can test for chakra type."

"Seriously? I feel so proud right now." Hidan sounded happy. Deidara shook his head silently in Konan's direction. Again, she wondered what they were up in the trees for. Hidan took his scythe back and declared, "Let's try this shit!"

Since she did not know what they were in the trees for, Konan decided to follow their example and return to the porch. Hidan studied her and muttered, "Your paper is used like knives and claws and spears and shit..." He waved for Kakuzu to toss something down to him. Kakuzu tossed a branch. Hidan positioned the 2 inch-wide piece of wood on the ground and held his scythe over it, blades pointed down. He slowly lowered his scythe, millimeter by millimeter, until the point of one blade touched the surface of the branch. At that point, he continued lowering it, until he judged that two inches of his scythe had passed through. He couldn't tell any other way because he felt no resistance and heard no sound whatsoever. When he stood up, the branch was cut.

"Sharp, cutty chakra," he announced. "Not that there was any doubt about that. Paper cuts, everywhere!"

This was ridiculous. The strong impact had not done any damage to the ground and would not have done any damage to her, unless her foot happened to be at the epicenter. Konan saw no forest fires or burned patches of grass, so it was safe to conclude that however hot the blades got from fire chakra, it was not hot enough to burn at a distance. And he was remarkably careful when testing wind chakra. She stepped off the porch and asked, "Why are the others in the trees?"

"Ah, they're just scared because my thing's got weird powers and shit," Hidan answered.

"It literally exploded, hm!" Deidara exclaimed. "And had no damage, yeah! That thing's not normal!"

"Twice, numbnuts!" Hidan called back. "It exploded twice!" He immediately dropped down to a whisper and continued, "But aside from that Dei's right. What's so weird about it, though?"

"Strange, yes. Frightening, no." Konan did not look up at the trees as she said, "This is cowardice."

"We no longer know what Hidan's scythe is capable of," Itachi said as he dropped to the ground. "And it is the first unknown thing, aside from the succubus, that has been proven to be dangerous. It may have developed some symbolic power to represent all our vague fears of everything ninja as a result."

Deidara and Kakuzu also came down, now that a conversation had started and they could be reasonably sure Hidan was not going to use the scythe for anything. "That thing is unnatural," Kakuzu declared. "I couldn't break it."

"And neither could I, yeah," Deidara whispered, staring at the scythe suspiciously.

Itachi kept silent, because he did not want to declare aloud what he had seen earlier. But that didn't make his observations any less true: The scythe does not move how I predict it should anymore.

Konan felt sorely let down by her new group. Are you telling me that I just spent several hours deeply considering the thing I am most frightened of - myself - and imagining all the ways I must wrestle with this terrifying thing in order to have a decent life, and meanwhile these people are scared of a single weapon? She tightened her fist and stepped forward. "Ahem."

Everyone there listened.

"My entire life can be summarized by the following statement: 'Here there be monsters,'" she declared. "As far as I can tell, that statement also describes this entire town that you live in. Are any of you capable of living? Surviving? Looking at yourself in a mirror?"

Even Kakuzu was starting to look away from her in shame.

"Then a single weapon is a ridiculous thing to be afraid of," she concluded. "In this place, it is the equivalent of being afraid of your lamp. And if you must be afraid of your lamp, then by all means, do not expect any sympathy from me."

The other three were all red. Deidara nervously fiddled with his hair. Itachi reconsidered all of his life choices. And Kakuzu growled. "Excuse me for pointing out the reverse." He looked directly at her. "The reverse is that you have had a whole lifetime of dealing with this crap. Don't expect the same fortitude from anyone who hasn't had that much practice."

"He's got a point there," Hidan muttered.

Practice?! Konan was frozen to the spot by shock. Are they insane? I have spent my whole life being tossed about, spun around, shot forward and hammered flat. All of the strength and optimism I could ever muster has been taken. I can feel my very identity being ground down, dust and splinters flying off over the years, leaving an increasingly precious little core of what I used to have. My very life has been damaged beyond repair, endless layers of it stripped away without any chance to rest, recover, or even think about what I learned from the experience. And they think that, the very opposite of practice, has made me stronger?!

"Or - wait, hey - !" Hidan sputtered. "Aah! What is this shit?!"

Konan was strongly tempted by a mental image that appeared in her mind without any warning. In that mental image, she cleared her throat again, getting attention. She glanced politely at everyone except Hidan in turn, raised her hands in a polite, demure way, and said, "Go fuck yourselves." Konan shook her head very slightly, banishing the image. As admirable as I sometimes find Hidan's clarity, I do not think I wish to have it myself. Such directness was something she would not be proud to have. It wasn't the way she faced the world.

"Believe what you wish," she said instead. She sounded indifferent, but if they didn't know better by now, they were fools. Practice? Is that what we call losing parts of yourself, now? She turned away before more tempting images of rudeness could appear. "Hidan, continue using your scythe for whatever it can do. I want to be able to fully describe its abilities."

He nodded in confirmation. At least the gods have gifted me a competent lieutenant, she thought as she went back inside. And at least I have nearly finished my plan. "Nearly" because it was impossible to completely finish a plan, of course. No plan ever survived contact with the enemy. So this really meant that there was no more progress to make with her plan, that it was as complete as she could make it. Konan had intended to restore her chakra with a nice walk through nature, but clearly that was not going to happen. She accepted this for what it was and began to stock the basement with paper weapons and bowls. They were going to be needed.

Meanwhile, her competent lieutenant asked Kakuzu if he was finally allowed to lick the scythe. "I didn't spend hours convincing you people to try things just to not! It's been cleansed with fire three times by now."

Kakuzu sighed. "Fine. Lick the damn thing if you still want to."

Hidan did. It tasted warm, and metal. He purred.

.

A/N: Wow. I spent so long on the day before this that it's been 12 chapters since she visited the shelter, despite that only happening two days ago. The dogs are way overdue to get another scene.

No, I don't know exactly why every scene from the snake kid's perspective is written in the style it is. I don't remember making a decision or planning that "his perspective shall contain no references to himself." It might've just happened, or it might've been a decision I made so quickly, on the spur of the moment, that I forgot I made it. I dunno. All I know is that sometime before writing any scene with him whatsoever, I generated another fanfic idea for a story in which one of the characters would be very much changed, and would think differently as a result. The planned thinking style was similar to what I have written here, except that it will also be missing all pronouns, most articles, and basically every word that has less individual meaning than words like "and" or "or." If a word has a more diffuse role in a sentence than that, it's getting cut. This writing style is very clearly inspired by those plans, but for the life of me I could not tell you why.

Do not fear; I am getting closer to figuring out how the nature spirits work exactly. I had a number of competing ideas I hadn't settled yet when I first started talking about them, and as a result it may seem unclear exactly what they are. I'm going to try to settle that before writing more about them, though. This isn't going to turn into another "which way does the sun rise" debacle (that's a reference to a note I haven't written yet!)

Gods it must seem like my characters have no lives. I didn't even realize until just now that the way I cut between scenes, especially the last scene of this chapter, implies that they spent hours doing pretty much nothing, but they speed up and do a lot of important things all of a sudden when the camera's on. That's how TV shows work. I don't want this story to work like that. Oh gods what am I going to do...