A/N: Okay, this chapter's short just because I ran out of time. There is room at the end for another scene. I think.

Woohoo, first time since chapter 2 that I have not been able to find a single title to fit the whole chapter! I kinda like this format, actually. It would help me better remember which scenes were in which chapter.

More actual plot movement, however miniscule! Enjoy!

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Nagato

Nagato was still paying extra attention to his phone. One could never be too careful. He stepped outside to check Hidan's text as soon as he heard it come in, and his hair stood on end. Why is Hidan being vague? He's never vague. Not unless he has to be. What would he HAVE to be vague about? Something that could induce a panic attack mid-work if he was direct? Nagato put all of his newfound emotional strength to good use as he walked back in and asked Marsha about staffing for the next few days. "There might be something coming up in the next few days I'd need to take off for. I promise to contact you promptly as soon as I know."

Marsha clicked her tongue. "Ever since this sister of yours moved into town, you've been taking so many days off. Are you alright, dear?"

"W-well, it's not just her. I'm also making a bunch of new friends, and getting into a relationship for the first time ever, and, um, life stuff." Nagato giggled nervously, his face flushed.

Marsha stepped out from behind her desk. She checked the door for incoming people, saw none, and came back to Nagato. "It's not all going well, is it?"

His smile faded. "No. Not everything."

"Would you like a hug?"

Nagato swallowed. "Thanks," he whispered. He gave her a hug. She squeezed him tight and patted his back, telling him that everything was going to be alright.

"If you ever need to let your troubles out, I'm here," she said. She released him from the hug and went over to her desk to write something down. It was her phone number. Nagato's eyes went wide at the sight of it. She did of course have a cellphone, but only for those parts of modern life that had come to treat it as a necessity. She almost certainly did not use it for routine social contact. I'm that important to her?

"Thank you," he squeaked, his vision growing blurry.

"Take a minute, then give Golden another bath," she ordered. "That girl gets everywhere. I'm starting to think you're on to something."

As Nagato went to give his favorite dog a bath, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I've got the dogs. I've got her. I've got Hidan, and Konan, and Itachi, and maybe the demon kid. I've come a long way since the days where I leaned on Yahiko like he was one of my legs. I've got a lot more support now. Whatever it is that Hidan's worried about, I'll be fine.

Sasori

Sasori, too, was on alert. His senses were attuned to behavior in general, not just Konan's but everybody's. He noticed Laurie seeming a little downcast and asked what was wrong.

"A friend of mine from the dojo. Her mom's sick." Laurie bit her lip. "I get so anxious when people close to me have bad news. I don't know what to do. What do I say? Do I say anything? She told it to me in person, so I gave her a hug then, but I'm not sure what else I should be doing, if anything."

"Just check up on her," Sasori suggested. "Like you would do for a sick person. She's probably paying that sort of attention to her mom and not herself."

"Okay. Yeah. She was really close with her mom, so she's taking it pretty hard. I should." Laurie reached for her phone. "Oh. Not at work."

"I'll keep watch for human customers. Go."

Sasori took the chair behind the front desk and wheeled it out to the side, then sat in it. He sighed. She's right. Random events, uncertainty, no clear set of steps to follow, all of that is a real pain. He found himself missing the days when he kept his head buried in his machines while the shop manager lurked in the office. In a way, that had been relaxing. Now both his work and his non-work lives involved dealing with people, and he never got a break except on the weekends. Getting those breaks only made him more aware of how much he longed for simplicity.

Laurie came back after a short time. "She says she's doing alright, though it's been hard to sleep. She sounded really grateful that I asked."

Sasori gave her a brief smile. "Yeah, I'm becoming something of an expert on people lately."

"You don't sound like that's a good thing."

"I like working with orderly systems. Steps to follow. If this, then that. No hurt feelings, no ill-defined concepts, no subjective viewpoints. Just a nice, clean, 'this is how things work. Do it.' I like that."

She gave him a brief smile. "I'll take the desk back. Go."

Sasori went into the back, where he found Ruta taking a break. There was nothing that needed doing immediately. He and Ruta looked at each other. Sasori shook his head. Ruta went back to sitting silently, and Sasori started to clean. Cleaning was nice. Simple. His body could do it automatically, freeing his mind to relax. Ah, I'm on vacation.

An unknown blissful span of time later, his work area was clean. Ruta had joined him, unpacking things to be cleaned and putting them back afterwards. Sasori had never thought of him as pleasant to hang out with before. Useful, yes, but not pleasant. Too chatty. At least, that was what he seemed to be before. Come to think of it, that document is the product of a mind that at least aims to be organized. And he never seems to have personal feelings about anything, and I've never seen him deal in ill-defined concepts like pride, honor or fairness. Everything is just an idea to be played with. Simple. I might like that.

"I'm glad I hired you," he told Ruta.

Ruta smiled. "Yay!"

Deidara

Of all the people who knew about what was coming, Deidara was among the most affected. His sense of being a child came roaring back. He tried to fight it off. But he couldn't shake the sense that if the stability of his new home was threatened, there would be absolutely nothing he could do about it. He couldn't counsel like Hidan. He couldn't assign people jobs to keep them busy, like Konan. He wasn't the sort of friend one turned to with hurt feelings. He was the counterweight, but what did that mean when the leadership was grappling with relationship stuff? His role as the counterweight seemed to only involve ideas. What could he do?

Itachi and Hidan distracted each other. Hidan wondered how attractive the character in question really was, Itachi wondered about how attraction worked in general, and they were off to the races. Deidara tried to contribute, but had nothing to say. His experiences with attraction were too mainstream. He briefly found relief in discussing what drew him and Sasori together, but soon returned to dreading what might come. Is Yahiko not going to be happy anymore? Will Nagato leave? Will Hidan leave? Will it drive Konan nuts? Are we gonna hold the training battle this weekend like we planned? Strangely, that last question upset him the most. He was looking forward to it so much. They'd already gone to all the trouble of inviting their neighbors. It was going to be like a party.

"Ow fuck fuck," Hidan exclaimed. "Great ideas, Itachi, but I can't get into it. Shit."

"My excitement is not enough for you?"

"I feel so sad."

Itachi was already holding his hand, so there was nothing more that could be done. "Sad about what?"

"I…" Deidara's eyes filled with tears. "I was looking forward to the training battle this weekend, yeah. Is it gonna happen?"

"Of course it will happen," Itachi said. "Even if everyone there is in low spirits, that is not a reason to cancel. In fact, it would be an excellent distraction from any personal problems."

Deidara sniffled. "Oh. Makes sense, yeah."

Itachi took his hand. "What are you sad about?"

"I wish I could reason away problems like you can, yeah. I wish I could do something about them, like Hidan or Konan can. I wish I could do anything at all."

"You're not supposed to be like they are," Itachi said gently. "You're the counterweight."

"Which means I suggest new ideas. But this isn't an idea, this is feelings. I can't counterbalance that, hm."

"Nothing's wrong yet," Hidan said, gripping his head. "There's no reason to freak out."

"What if there are all the reasons to freak out?" Deidara's voice rose. "I'm ready to freak out, yeah!"

Itachi put an arm over his shoulders. "Deidara. He's right. Nothing is wrong yet. And so many things change at the last moment around here, remember?"

"And all I can do is react to them, yeah."

"Deidara. You are not powerless."

Deidara looked up at him. "Then why don't I ever do anything?"

"Someone thought about this," Hidan said. "Someone. I think it was Yahiko."

"Go talk to Yahiko," Itachi said.

Deidara's heart pounded. That was the last thing he wanted to do. All of the terrible choices Hidan faced would be his to face, and he did not want to make that kind of decision. But if I do, that would be doing something. I'm the counterweight. If Hidan can't figure out what to do, maybe I can. This idea seemed very reasonable and tempting. It also filled Deidara with dread, but he pushed that aside. "Okay. Can I take Clay?"

"Of course. We'll be fine here," Itachi said with a smile.

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Deidara landed in the backyard. Fortunately nobody was there to see him clutch Clay's wing and take deep breaths. His heart threatened to explode from his chest. Hidan only saw three options. Maybe he missed something. His three were warn Nagato, don't warn Nagato, and tell Yahiko. What else could there be, yeah? Um…warn Yahiko?

He went inside. He could not find Yahiko anywhere. As he stood in the kitchen puzzled, his phone rang. "Forgot to mention: he went to the library to look up golem magic," Hidan said. "Totally forgot. Sorry."

Deidara flew to the library and landed in its parking lot. He carefully parked Clay in an open space far from the doors, then took another deep breath and went inside. At least I already got all the shakes out of my system, yeah. The air conditioning in the library helped. A library was a place it was impossible to be anxious in.

He asked where the reference room was, followed the directions, and found Yahiko there perusing a book that looked like it would disintegrate into mist if he ever put it down. "Find anything?" Deidara asked.

Yahiko's face lit up. "Yeah! Nothing we can use, at least not yet, but a bunch of really cool stuff! It looks like mana in that universe is pretty similar to our chakra. I wonder if we could use this kind of magic, after all."

"I, um, had something to talk to you about. Should I wait?"

"What is it?"

"Um… Well… Uh…" How do I warn him without telling him? "You might want to, um, tone it down a bit when you talk to Nagato about the plushies. He might not be as happy about them as you are. I mean, he did vote against them."

Yahiko grinned. "That's no reason not to be happy about how cute they are!"

Deidara got an impulsive idea. "What if you meet the character they're based off of, yeah? Would you go on about it to his face?"

Yahiko imagined this. His smile slowly dwindled. "I…I wouldn't be able to speak if I met him."

"It's bad form to say things about people that you wouldn't say to their face, isn't it?"

"...Yeah."

"Just keep in mind that the dolls are based off a real person, yeah. You can totally squee about how cute they are, yeah. Just don't go overboard with it, or it might look weird."

"...Oh." Yahiko glanced at the bookshelf. "Oh." He started to fiddle with his hair one-handed.

Success? "Also, I wanted to ask you about power and being powerless and all that kind of stuff."

"It's just a question of channeling," Yahiko muttered. "You're not the one with the power. Something else is, and you're just letting it flow through you. Like Hidan. Or like an electrical socket."

"So what does that mean for me? How can I do things, make a difference, yeah?"

"It's emotion. The energy flowing through you feels like emotion. Just do something that makes you feel strongly."

"If I do, I'll channel lots of energy and something will happen?"

"Yeah."

"But what if…"

Yahiko blinked. He stopped fiddling with his hair. "Oh, no. You have problems from being at war, right? If you channeled energy, it might be fear energy."

Deidara shivered. "I don't want to do that."

"Maybe if you let it through, it'll clear out and let you access some other kind of energy?"

"I still don't want to, hm."

Yahiko gulped. "Being blocked is, um, unhelpful. You won't be able to do much. But I understand why you don't want to feel that intensity of fear. I don't even want to imagine it." He shivered. "I don't know what to do. I'm so sorry."

Deidara sighed. So in order to do anything, I would have to torture myself. Great. "No, it's okay, man. Thanks for helping me figure out what the problem is. Good luck with your golem magic."

Yahiko blushed. "Oh my gods, what would he think about me ordering a dozen plushies of him?"

"Where are they, hm? Want me to set them up in everyone's rooms?"

"Yes please. Give them good seats. Only the best."

Deidara saluted. "Treat them like the idols they are. Got it."

Yahiko blushed harder. "Idolatry… I don't think I can even face him. I would die of embarrassment."

Deidara laughed. He patted Yahiko's shoulder. "Relax, man! That was just a hypothetical. We've seen no evidence of anyone from another fantasy world even though we have access to their possessions, right? Maybe we only have their books and stuff, but not the people."

"Oh, no. I would love to meet him!"

"So you can die of embarrassment?"

"...Meeting him and then dying sounds weirdly worth it."

Oh shit, I'm getting dangerously close to telling him. "Cool! It's awesome to have something you care so much about, right? Not like me. I would, except for this blockage in my way, yeah."

"Do you need a hug?" Deidara nodded, so Yahiko gave him a hug. "Good luck with…with figuring it out, I guess."

"Thanks, yeah."

Deidara left the library, went to Clay and leaned against his side. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Whew. I got out of there without setting off any bombs, and I might have helped. Heh. Not setting off any bombs. That's funny, coming from me. Maybe finding a safe place to blow stuff up will help? He considered his options as he flew off to the park to tell Hidan and Itachi what he had done.

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A/N: Ran out of time, had to rush a bit, but still I love this chapter. That's the benefit of doing actual plot movement. Yahoo!

Alright, see y'all next week.