A/N: The whole last part of this chapter is me thinking out loud about what happiness is and what relation it has to other things. I just finished writing that, so forgive me if I'm a little distracted here. I'm still thinking.

As far as I can tell, happiness is not a feeling. It is a concept. All kinds of feelings can be happy ones. I think happiness is just the concept of being alive. Being in touch with reality. Seeing everything you see as significant and meaningful. I think that is what happiness is.

I give you this definition of happiness so that you can better understand what the thoughts in the last scene of this chapter mean. I do not think their message can be understood without a clear understanding of the definitions of the words involved.

This chapter was initially planned to skip over the whole morning, but I thought that would be boring. It's nice to sometimes read a montage, but who wants to do that more than they absolutely have to? So I thought I'd sprinkle some actual scenes into the morning, and congratulations, now that's the whole chapter. We'll have to wait until next week to see what happens at lunchtime.

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Konan

It's raining…

In the dark early morning of the day after Yahiko had come home beaming and happy (who knew why), Konan dreamed of rain. Shortly after, she awoke to find that it was actually raining. It was a quick passing shower, and would most likely not last until daylight. She lay in bed and listened to the rain drumming outside the window.

She was cold, but the blankets were all the way up. So she only closed her eyes. Blankets wouldn't help this kind of cold anyway. Yahiko had looked just like his old self yesterday: determined, aware of his purpose, brave. So brave. His eyes had glowed with the light of someone who could master life and lead others to do the same.

Konan shivered and pressed her face into the pillow. She had felt cold, seeing that, and the coldness she felt now was the same. It hadn't left, even while she slept. If she was being truthful with herself, which was easier to do in the dark, the coldness was actually a form of fear. Yahiko's old self would not have passed the test she had planned, no matter how brave he looked. Seeing his clone look the same yesterday was like seeing a ghost. Was he any different from his original, after all?

If he was not, what would she do?

Never look at him again, probably.

Her hand tightened, squeezing the pillow and threatening to tear it. She didn't want Hidan around. She didn't want Nagato, or Sasori, or anyone else. She wanted Yahiko. She wanted him here, now, so she could shake him and test him and peer into his eyes for a sign that it was real. That he was real and different and not like his original at all. If she could only see a sign of that, perhaps the nightmares would fade.

But she could not, so they did not. She closed her eyes and sunk into uneasy sleep again. In her dreams, she was trying to make a delivery for her parents, but did not know the address. When she found a likely place, it was abandoned. Except for Madara, suddenly swooping down from the shadows like a giant owl. She ran from him. Stopped. Turned her head to listen. People were dying inside! She ran back in to try to help, but was grabbed, and Hanzo sama appeared…

In her dream it was raining.

.

In the morning, she awoke and wished she hadn't. But there is work to be done. But she was tired. Yahiko can never be tested if the preparations are not finished. True; yet, that did not seem to be as important as it had seemed in the dark. ...Very well.

The voice of training and habit abandoned her.

Konan's breath surged, and she gasped for air. She thrust herself upright. Was it true? Was she really abandoned?

There is work to be done.

She brushed her hair out of her eyes and obeyed the voice. It couldn't leave. It simply couldn't. Konan took deep breaths while brushing her hair, and studied her eyes in the mirror as she tied her hair back. Her amber eyes shone with strange light. What on earth was behind those things? What kind of secretive monster?

Putting on her cloak made her feel better, as always. Now she was not herself, not Konan. She was part of the leadership of the Akatsuki, and the work demanded of that role simply had to be done. She no longer had a choice. It was a great relief to have the burden of choice off her shoulders.

Yahiko cooked again, but his bravery was fading. That was a good thing to see. Perhaps he is not like his original, after all. He asked if there was anything he could study during the day in order to be more prepared for the training. Konan watched the way he nervously smoothed his hair as he asked and turned away, saying nothing. That is rude. Yes, it was. Rudeness is unbecoming. Yes, it was. As she left the room, she reached across to feel her sleeve and reassure herself. While doing so, she wondered if something was wrong.

There is work to be done.

Konan saved that question for another time, and hurried off to obey the voice instead.

She met Hidan at the top of the stairs to the basement. He was patting Samehada, and Kakuzu was nearby. Kisame was nowhere in sight.

"I didn't agree to this," Kakuzu was saying.

"I know!" Hidan answered. "That's why I'm mentioning it. Yeesh."

Kakuzu spotted Konan as she approached. He did and said nothing. Hidan waved. Konan asked, "What agreement were you two referring to?" She did not choose to ask that. It was not a question she wanted to ask. She did not want to ask any questions. But it was the sort of question demanded by the role she filled, so she asked it. There was no choice, and it took no effort or thought. Like sleeping while standing upright.

Hidan began to growl. "Hey, I don't like ice."

That, Kakuzu responded to. "Another dream about being trapped under ice and not being able to find a way up?"

"No." Hidan shook himself. "Not a dream, a real thing, now." Samehada whimpered and rushed to Konan's side. He started licking her hand very roughly. Konan wondered if he knew his tongue was that rough, but said nothing. It did not hurt and she did not have to say anything.

Kakuzu glared at her. She stared back blankly. Why? Samehada graduated to chewing on her hand, and found that her chakra was slow. How could he speed up chakra? He didn't know. There were so many things he didn't know. The shark whimpered again.

Hidan forced himself to his feet. "'S fine," he muttered, obviously not being fine. "What-fucking-ever. Go away. Fuck off."

Kakuzu gestured for Samehada to come to his side, and the shark obeyed, still whining. Silently, he did as Hidan asked, leading Samehada down the hall back to an area of normalcy. Konan was aware of him shooting her another glare as he left. Why?

She looked at Hidan. Perhaps Kakuzu's anger had something to do with him. "I am not feeling well right now," she admitted.

"I got that from how I just want to give everything the middle finger and tell it to fuck off forever," Hidan grumbled.

Konan tilted her head. "Your cloak should be able to prevent that. Mine does."

He glared at her. "No it doesn't."

What? Him too? Konan almost frowned. What did he mean by that, and why was he glaring at her?

Hidan sat back down. "I hate feeling iced over," he groused. "Because nothing ever leaves the ice alone. I just want everything to go away, I'm frosting here. Fuck off."

Something about that sentence made Konan's heart beat faster. Why? He was only talking about how he felt, which was the same as how she felt. He was frustrated and hurt and needed to be very still for a while and not be bothered. Why did that make her feel very sad…? Is it hurt? Is that why I feel this way? Is this some form of healing?

Accusing herself of being hurt made it real, and suddenly she felt hurt. There was pain in her throat, where it closed and felt like crying. Her breath briefly hurt, like a needle shooting through her insides, when she took a deep shaking breath in order to fuel her beating heart. Its beating was very noticeable now. The ice was defrosting. Now that she knew she was hurt, it was no longer needed.

Hidan ground his teeth together. He looked ready to explode with anger any second. Konan tensed, ready to take evasive action, when he reached forward and hugged her instead. He was still very tense, and it was clear she could not leave the embrace. Konan hugged him back and waited for the ice to finish melting.

When it did, he let her go. "Ow," he whispered.

Konan realized what Kakuzu had been glaring at her for. She bowed her head. "I am sorry."

"Nah," he answered. "'S fine."

"It is fine to be hurt?"

Hidan looked puzzled. "I don't go around imagining alternatives to whatever happens to me. I mean, sometimes, but not as much as other people do. So what do I care? It happened. I'm not going to try to imagine something else that could have happened instead. That's pointless."

Konan bit her lip. "Perhaps I ought to learn how to do that."

Hidan rubbed his head. "I don't know if that can be taught. Never thought about it." He shrugged. "But what'd you want to ask about?"

I didn't want to ask about anything. So what had she asked about, then? "I asked what agreement you and Kakuzu were talking about."

"Oh, yeah, that shit! It happened yesterday when I was thinking of the testing. I already talked about how I wanted to do that with everyone with you, right?"

Konan nodded. "You wish to test everyone, over the weekend, in the order of whoever volunteers first. You will start by making reasonable guesses of what kind of chakra they may have, and go from there. In cases where you already know what kind of chakra they have, you will test them anyway, simply so they can see what effect they have on your scythe."

"That's all I mentioned?"

"All I can recall, yes."

Hidan rubbed his chin. "If that's so, it means I didn't get to mentioning how the testing would work, which is exactly what the agreement's about!" He took the scythe from where it was propped against the wall and held its blades. "You remember how I tested your chakra all slowly and carefully and shit?" She nodded. "That's part of the agreement too."

Hidan got around to explaining, then, what had happened in between the scythe exploding and Konan's test. "Everyone was all scared at first, and I didn't get it, but they were all looking at me like I should be and I didn't like that, so a huge argument started…" Hidan went back and forth, shifting his facial expressions in a very amusing way that added greatly to his story. He could have been a storyteller if he hadn't become a shinobi. Or a comic actor. Either one. "So then, Itachi stepped in, and since a couple hours'd gone by, we'd cooled down enough to listen. He suggested making people feel safe by putting in all kinds of rules and shit. I liked making people feel safe, and Kakuzu liked rules, so we agreed. And then we started drawing up the terms of the agreement. It specified all kindsa ridiculously safe procedures and shit for testing. I would've rather thrown a rock up in the air and tried to cut it in half for testing sharp chakra, for example, but he insisted not. Pansy."

Konan nodded once. Thoughts were starting to form and connect to each other in her head, and it felt good instead of effortful. This was so much better than the broken stillness she'd felt earlier. "But now, you wish to expand upon the agreement."

"Yes." Hidan grinned. "The agreement covered fiery chakra, watery chakra, sharp chakra, and earthy chakra. But I've been thinking, and on top of all that shit, we know for sure that Nagato has space chakra that can push and pull and shit, Itachi has illusion chakra that can make people see and feel things they couldn't otherwise, Yahiko has healing chakra, and other weird kinds of chakra. Sammy started making explosion sounds when I said that, and turns out he can taste exploding chakra. If he can taste that shit, and he can taste moon chakra like Nagato has, then there might be some kinda overlap and shit. He tasted explosions, and this thing exploded. Sammy can taste other things too, so what else can this thing react to?"

Konan stared at the scythe. But those are… Hm, what are they? There are the five basic elements - which I have only told Ruta about so far. Damn! - as well as light and dark natures, I think. Shinra Tensei is a Rinnegan-based power, though. It does not use any special kind of chakra. The eye transforms chakra somehow. That is what Jiraiya sensei said when we asked how Nagato's eyes could give him special powers. However, Yahiko's healing chakra is different. That can't be explained by eyes. Perhaps his chakra comes with a basic light nature? If so, this scythe can test for all five elements, as well as combination elements like Deidara's explosive chakra, and light and dark natures too. That makes it much more useful than chakra paper.

"Work it out on an individual basis, as these are individual qualities," she told Hidan. "Do whatever you need to start testing as soon as possible. Run thorough tests of everyone's chakra, for all five elements - that means you need a procedure for Lightning Style too - as well as any other special qualities you think they have. I will send a paper clone to contact Ruta; he will record the results, and decide how they fit with the information I've already provided. He will also need to be there in order to share everything I already told him about chakra after the tests, because I don't care how many unanswered questions there are or how incomplete he thinks his document is, there is obviously a need for information now."

Hidan's eyes widened and dilated. "Procedures and rules and happy and shit," he said. "Good things. Fuck yes!"

Konan sighed pleasantly. "I feel more like myself," she admitted. In charge again, knowing what is going on, having the information. Thinking, analysis. This is good.

Hidan bounced on his ankles and purred.

Just like that - easily, as if it was easy - Konan shifted her attention to something else. "But there is other work to be done in the meantime. I see a morning full of menial labor ahead, arranging things in the basement. You must expand the agreement to cover Lightning Style testing. Kakuzu needs to finally get around to fixing that crack in the wall."

"I'll grab Deidara too, see what he's noticed or thinks we need to do," Hidan added. "Maybe I can get Kakuzu to help me figure out that punching bag idea too. He said he'd wished they were set up sometime recently, so we got a need there."

"The rooms ought to be maintained too," Konan added as an afterthought. "I am not allergic to dust as far as I know, but I have seen that my room is dusty, and that may not be helping the way I feel."

Hidan laughed. "So that's what clones and shit are for! They'll do any-fucking-thing no matter how boring, as well as a person would do it, and won't give a shit. Hah!"

"...Clones were not invented for the purpose of doing domestic chores."

"How do you know?"

Konan blinked. "I do not. But I find it very hard to imagine -"

"Ah! So you DON'T know! That means they probably were."

"Given that clans have been battling each other for centuries and did not have permanent settled settlements until the past hundred or so years, which are well within recorded history, I have no reason to believe that jutsus created in such an environment would have been intended for anything other than combat. Certainly not domestic chores, as warring clans did not share ninjutsu with civilians."

That stopped Hidan. He looked sheepish. Konan settled back down and waited for him to admit she was right. He was about to… But then his eyes focused as he got a new idea. "How easy are clone jutsus to do?" he asked.

Uh oh. I do not know what he is doing, which means I am in danger of losing ground. She was not about to lose conversational ground to Hidan, of all people. It would not be very embarrassing, not against this version of him, but she really did not want Kakuzu to have any reason to crow. "Why do you ask?"

"Because I wanted some freakin' backup, so I twisted my hands and made my chakra do shit and eventually I got a couple images out of it. If I could do that with no process, someone else could too, and then some frustrated old person or young person or housebound sick guy or whatever could wonder if those images could be made solid so they could pick up some of the chores already, and maybe they figured it out like that. May be the warring clans had the knowledge and techniques and shit, but if the technique was easy enough that someone not knowing that could've figured it out…"

Konan smiled visibly. Hidan had just left himself wide open to a counterattack. "Why don't you try it then? You already know how to make images, and you desire something solid to use for chores. By all means."

Hidan blinked. "Fuck!"

Konan snickered quietly.

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"Kakuzu! Sammy! Where are you fuckwits?"

Kakuzu, who had been sitting crosslegged on the floor of the lobby with his eyes closed, touching his pointer fingers together tip to tip while Samehada licked his hands and warbled, opened his eyes. "What?"

Hidan paused. "Were you doing something with chakra?"

"Yes."

"Well then," Konan said pleasantly, "you three can form a study group. Hidan here has volunteered himself for the task of inventing a new cloning technique. It will require much chakra control." She patted Hidan on the shoulder. He stuck his tongue out at her before sitting down.

"Protip: " Hidan told Kakuzu in the voice of one who has learned through hard experience and wishes that no one else should have to do the same, "Do not use yourself as an example of how someone can probably do something when you want someone to do that thing. It always has the same result. I can't believe I have to be fucking reminded of this!"

Kakuzu looked smug. "Oh well."

"Yeah." Hidan arranged his scythe until it was touching his back, sat crosslegged, and touched his fingers together. "What were you doing?"

"Practicing sending very small amounts of chakra back and forth consistently," Kakuzu answered. "Stitching up that bird was a pain in the ass, probably because of all the skin-hardening jutsu I had to send out into my tentacles. I am not going through that again."

Hidan put his hands down. "Well, I don't need to do that. I need to work inside, like making my chakra do shit without hand signs." He turned male, took off his cloak, and looked thoughtfully at his belly.

"That is a very good idea," Konan said. "The crack in the wall still needs fixing. More precise use of Stonemaker Jutsu, through one finger if you could manage, could be just the thing." How in the hell are they learning to send completed jutsus into different body parts? What kind of technique is that? As long as it works, I will not question it, but what is it?

Hidan looked up. "I'm really impressed all of a sudden," he told Kakuzu. "I don't care much about how small you can make your thing, so it must not be my feeling. Congrats!"

Konan initially did not want to say anything. Yahiko was right. I should allow them to do as much as they can without knowledge of chakra first, because they have astounding beginner's luck. If I tell them what is impossible, that could ruin it. But at the same time: They don't seem very inclined to do what I tell them to, regardless of how firmly I say it. They question everything I do and say, even if I made it very clear that was not possible. They even do things they themselves declared impossible at a previous point. How much harm can telling them do?

"No one from my world ever thought of a way to send completed jutsus elsewhere in the body," she said. Choose words carefully. "They simply completed the jutsu, then released it to have its effect. But that was in a world more tolerant of destruction, where killing or maiming was the goal and not something to be avoided; it is good to have greater precision here."

Hidan and Kakuzu glanced at each other, causing Hidan to break out into a combined snort and smirk. "You mean all Original Kakuzu could do was go 'Splat!' with that thing?" Hidan started to laugh at the mental image he was conjuring. "What is the fucking point?!"

"Yes," Konan replied. Excellent! They do not view this as something that's supposed to be impossible. Correct wording accomplished. "Make stone bubble up from the ground, entrap an enemy, kill said enemy while they are helpless, then leave to move on to another mission. The stone left behind was not the responsibility of the shinobi who put it there. I don't think it would have been considered anyone's responsibility; high-level shinobi tend to create new natural features that everyone simply accepts as part of the landscape. No need to be careful."

She looked at her own hand. "This may not seem as impressive as that, but I can't imagine the level of chakra control required. I expect a clone by lunchtime."

Hidan's smile dropped. "Oh fuck. Shit. What the fuck did you do, Kakuzu?!"

"You'll do well," Konan reassured him, before leaving the room. Before she had gone too far, she stopped and listened to the sounds of Hidan arguing. His words were no longer distinguishable, only his tone. It was that tone she meant to listen to.

He sounds happy. Konan felt a pang of loss. Happy anger. When was the last time she had felt that? Arguing in heated debates with her companions, questioning each other, sometimes inflicting hurt feelings - but the whole time, knowing too that she was arguing with a good friend, and having that reassurance to temper the pain. Anger, without destruction or fear of destruction, because she could know for sure that it would end and their bond would endure. Anger that was itself a form of happiness, and not merely a necessary cost. How long had it been?

This is nice. Konan remembered. Kakuzu insulting Hidan, and the latter getting angry but also liking the insult somehow. Someone had described that as the verbal equivalent of sparring. Sparring was also happy. For them, it was normal to have such happy anger. To have all kinds of different forms of happiness. They could be happily angry and happily sad and even happily afraid, if Hidan's tendency to comfort worked as well for other people as it did for her. So many of their experiences could be happy ones.

The argument faded. Presumably it had ended in some form of reconciliation. Konan looked ahead at the empty hallway before her. What about her? What was her anger or sadness like?

Konan closed her eyes and tried to honestly answer the question. She had never asked it before. When I have been angry in the past… It always meant destruction. Anger, leading to death. More recently, I got angry at Sasori's laptop, and that meant wanting to destroy it. I wanted to destroy his laptop because it was too much. I almost destroyed his bond with the Akatsuki. I killed others, and destroyed my ability to think of myself as a good person. I have too much blood on my hands to believe I am anything of the sort. I destroyed, and it hurt. Anger is pain.

Sadness is pain too. Almost synonymous, in my case.

Fear is painful, as well. Konan opened her eyes. My experiences are not happy ones. They are painful ones. No matter the experience, even an experience of joy, it hurts. Do I have any happy experiences?

Konan remembered embracing Hidan, the first time. The sudden jolt as she touched his skin, the awareness of something extraordinarily painful and overwhelming lurking inside him, the lance of agony as it made all her aches into needles and drew them out through her skin. That had been a relief, and an experience she still thought about whenever she considered her need for help, and it had really formed her new bond with Hidan's clone. Ever since then, she looked to him to turn aches into sharp stabbing pains and take them away. The feeling of needles in her ribs a little while ago was the first sign that she was defrosting and becoming alive. Pain was happy.

Well that was interesting, wasn't it? If everything else is painful, and pain is happy, then is everything really indirectly happy? Is that my path?

If so, her path was one in which she could not be happy at the exact time anything was happening, but only later, after it was transmuted to pain. It would mean she couldn't react to anything simply as it was, or even perceive anything simply as it was. It would mean she was removed from the world.

That was a sad thing to realize. Of course, the sadness became a dull ache. Konan wondered how long it took to transmute something into useful pain. But what was the point, if the resulting satisfaction bore no resemblance to sadness? She couldn't even be sad. Sadness was on the opposite side of an obstacle that separated it from feeling like life was purposeful. Konan could not feel like sadness had any part in her life. Given how much of it there was, that was horrible. She wanted to feel like the majority of her life was valuable, like the parts of it had a purpose. But she could either perceive purpose, or perceive the parts of her life. Not both together.

Konan lowered her head, slumping. Is that why I feel as if nothing belongs to me? As if the only thing that is real is my pain? At least...at least she was able to feel that her pain was real and contributed to satisfaction. At least she could feel that satisfaction and happiness existed. But that was not very comforting.

That explains why the basement is so comforting. That symbol turns every damn thing into sharp pains. It speeds up this process. The dull aching of sadness would lose its dullness down there. But then it would not be sadness anymore, and what was the point of feeling it if it could not be a part of her feeling alive? If feeling it meant being not alive? Was it too much to ask for that she get a chance to be sad in a useful way for once? Konan could not remember the last time she had ever done so.

Dammit! Why is pain the only useful emotion I can feel? And of course, this frustration was painful. Damn! So was anger. It felt like her blood was burning, like her body was about to explode.

Damn it. She went to the stairs and down into the basement. If that was the only way she could reach a sense of being alive, she would do it. But I do not want to be this way. How can I become something I've never been? Something I do not know how to be?

As long as she was in the presence of that symbol, Konan could sense that her questions led somewhere. There was some advance she could make if she found their answers. But of course, the symbol offered no clue as to what the answers might be.

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A/N: Many thanks to a certain friend of mine, who I recently talked with about how I was frustrated and happy at the same time. I was thinking of that while writing this last scene, and it really inspired the whole thing. You know who you are.

Have I mentioned I love Inside Out? It's a movie that helped me realize a lot of things, that has prompted many thoughts over the years. I do not think I would understand myself as well as I do without it. There's a reason this story contains so much emotion and talking about emotion and analyzing it and explaining it.

I hope chapters like this help somebody. Well, it helped me to write it, so technically that's already been accomplished. But, y'know, help somebody besides myself.

This is why I publish. Publishing leads to writing, which helps me in all kinds of ways. Thank you to everybody reading this thing for indirectly helping me with my life problems.

So what is going to happen at lunchtime? Find out next week! (Man I really wish I'd titled this thing something with the same rhythm as "Total. Drama. Island!" so I could say that part! Agh!)