Hello everyone! Happy Monday! This chapter is a little bit shorter than the others to wrap up Thor and transition back into Iron Man territory. The next few chapters, I'm not sure how many, will be more filler chapters with development of long term, more minor plot points that won't come around for a while, and some character development. They're sure to be very funny, though. I'm working on balancing the narrative style of Jasmine's first person limited POV with the S.H.I.E.L.D. forms as interludes for when her narration gets too repetitive. I don't at this point plan on having any other point of view in the story, because one thing I have intended from the beginning to explore is how the unreliable narrator changes the story. Let me know if you guys would be interested in an outtakes story to go with this one, posted separately, with other character's reactions! I've also written a few scenes for something like that that are sort of 'what if' where something happened differently (e.g. the thing Jasmine stole from Fury being Carol's pager, not his fancy key fob, which was a guess in the comments on an old chapter). Without further ado, I present chapter... 11. Wow. Yes, this is chapter 11. I've done 11 chapters. Go me. Only took me three years. Alright, I'll shut up. Lot's of love guys! Enjoy.
Mr. Clint and Agent Cou Cou are sort of glaring at me. I'm not entirely sure what their expression means, because I've never really seen it before an adult's face. Something between concern and frustration. Worry, of some kind?
They don't seem like they're about to do anything to me, though, so I let them have their funny facial expression.
"Did you at least learn anything useful from the hostage?" Agent Cou Cou asks, trying for a light tone. He fails, but I don't tell him that.
"Mr. Thor was very nice and introduced himself to me, of course. He also helped my headache and nausea."
"Did you tell him anything about yourself, about us?"
I purse my lips and look them both over.
Mr. Clint groans, rubbing a hand over his face. "Jasmine, we cannot be playing this kind of game!"
Sitwell twitches behind me, bumping into an intern that is carrying one of the angry lady's fancy computers to a new table. I grab Sitwell's sleeve and pull him forward, then turn back to Agent Cou Cou and Mr. Clint. "I didn't tell him anything about S.H.I.E.L.D., I'm not an idiot. He told me that his name is Mr. Thor-"
"He said is name was 'Mr. Thor'?" Mr. Clint drips sarcasm while using air quotes, which I think is overkill, but ignore as well.
"-and I found out he was here because his father kicked him out."
"And the weird signature around the hammer?"
I shrug. "No clue." Did Mr. Thor explain that to me? Sure. Did I understand most of it? Hell to the no.
"Right. Sitwell, I want the footage from her encounter with the hostage, 'Thor,' on my personal datapad for my perusal, ten minutes ago."
"Sir... that might be a problem."
"What kind of problem."
"The data for the security tapes from that room vanished from the electronic files, and because it's a temp-base..."
"It didn't automatically back up to the S.H.I.E.L.D. cloud."
"It didn't automatically back up to the S.H.I.E.L.D. cloud."
All three of them sigh in unison, which is a little creepy and I'm sure would be more concerning if I wasn't on the verge of falling asleep, but I definitely am. The tired has crept into my eyes and my legs, and I yawn heavily.
Agent Cou Cou kneels down in front of me, hands on my shoulders to maintain my attention. I hold my eyes wide open so that they don't fall shut.
"Sophie, this is very important. I need you to recount as much of your conversation with... Mr. Thor, word for word, as possible, leaving nothing out."
When Mr. Clint jumps in to argue about something, I let my eyes fall closed again.
"Coulson, you know that even an extraordinary mind in ordinary circumstances will have forgotten at least 40% of that by now. It's been half an hour, she hasn't been sleeping, she's seven, she wasn't trying to remember it, and if she does now then she's likely to make half of it up."
"Then what do you suggest I do, Barton?! We need that intel, and she got it for us!"
"How should I know, Coulson?! The data is lost, and yelling now doesn't fix anything. Stick a camera on the kid in the future, whenever she's in the vicinity of someone you want to have record of her conversations with, that's my suggestion. Not that it's legal, and could definitely get her in trouble."
Agent Cou Cou looks like he's actually considering the idea. I'm not sure why he thinks that I'd carry a camera around, when he can't even get me to stay in a supposedly childproof harness, but I absolutely refuse to even entertain the possibility.
"No, I won't let you. I'll cover the camera. Or break it. Or find a way to leave it behind." His glare has me scrambling for a better defense than a simple 'I won't,' and I try to think of what an American would say, because they seem to win a lot of international arguments. "You're not keeping a camera on me at all times, it's a violation of my privacy rights." Bringing rights into it is a pretty American thing to do. I can only hope it convinces at least one of them to listen.
"And none of you are thinking rationally, because you're all sleep deprived," Sitwell cuts in to my defense, and to diffuse the situation. Surprising: I didn't know he had it in him.
"Sitwell's right." Mr. Clint sighs and picks me up, my pajama pants sliding up my legs a bit. "We are all too tired to be having this conversation. Coulson at least, I know, has been up since yesterday morning or earlier. Let's go get some sleep and revisit this in the morning." Agent Cou Cou and Sitwell don't say anything as we walk away, and I keep quiet when we're going through the base.
Mr. Clint carries me gently up the stairs and down the halls, passing agents who are on their way to bed or work, and quite a few who are moving things around to different locations, like some more of the angry lady's computers. I get stiffer and stiffer as we go, waiting horribly for the ball to drop. Mr. Clint uses one hand to open the door to our room, and the silence inside is heavy.
When Mr. Clint sets me down on my bed, the blankets rumpled from my sleeping in them earlier, and closes the door, I hold my breath.
"Jasmine, why did you think it was a good idea to go and talk to the captive alone?" He crosses his arms and leans against the door. The light in the room flickers in time with my quick breaths, flashing over his face.
Mr. Clint has never hurt me, and I have no reason to believe he will now. I also have no reason to lie.
Trying to calm down, I swallow and then chew on my lip. "The klaxons woke me up," I start slowly, glancing up at him for a moment. His expression has softened, and the light stopped flickering, so I continue. "I went downstairs to see what was going on, and wasn't ready to go back to bed when Agent Cou Cou told me to, so I asked Sitwell if I could sit somewhere and watch the interrogation." I shrug and twist my fingers in my blanket. "It seemed like something to do that wouldn't be bothering anyone." Flattening my hands on the plain bedspread, I shake my head.
"Anyway, when Agent Cou Cou got called out of the room to go see something, I was watching the feed when another man just... appeared in the room. He was tall, with dark hair, and at first I thought he was another Agent there for the interrogation but after watching him converse with Mr. Thor I realized that they were brothers. As I watched, I also realized that... only Mr. Thor and I could see him." The bedspread has a few wrinkles in it, and I play with them rather than look at Mr. Clint. "When Agent Cou Cou came back from his thing, the man disappeared. I found him again on the screen Sitwell was watching, where he tried to pick up the hammer thing from space. When I asked Sitwell who he was, he confirmed that there was nobody there. None of the other Agents seemed like they could see him, and Sitwell tried to insinuate I was having a feverish hallucination.
"I needed to know why I was having the same hallucination, or special sight, or whatever it was, as this guy that S.H.I.E.L.D. took captive, so I snuck into the room to ask. When I watched Mr. Thor converse with his brother, I determined he likely wasn't going to hurt me if I asked him some questions, and if he did, then everyone would be right there." I carefully don't mention that my logic was not based on belief the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents would save me, but more that I didn't really care. Nothing could be worse than Uncle Vernon. "He told me about him and his brother, and said something about realms and 'seidr,' and then he made my headache and nausea go away just before that old man came in to get him out."
"Right." Mr. Clint rubs a hand roughly over his face and then sighs. "Yeah, I'm not dealing with that right now. Coulson can debrief you in the morning. Let's just get some sleep, okay kiddo?"
I nod quickly, the tension in my stomach easing with my relief. I climb up to the top of the bed where I have a single lumpy pillow and crawl under the thin quilt. They probably won't do much to keep me warm, but at the Dursley's and the orphanage, things were much worse. Mr. Clint turns the lights off and changes his clothes in the bathroom, but I'm still wearing my pajamas from when I went to sleep earlier. I tuck my fuzzy blanket around my head and pull it over my face, curling into a ball around my pillow at the top of the bed, and go to sleep.
Unfortunately for Agent Cou Cou and the rest of the organization, they do not have the opportunity to 'debrief' me in the morning. Apparently, just around sunrise, there was another astronomical event like the one a few days ago that ended with the immovable space hammer appearing. We pack into a bunch of the S.H.I.E.L.D. issue SUV's very early in the morning. I pull on a dress covered in glitter llamas, and Mr. Clint is still not coherent when we get in the car, as evidenced by the fact that he hands me a cup of coffee, doctored up the way Miss Natalia likes hers. I drink two sips, because I am absolutely exhausted still, before Sitwell sitting next to me realizes what I've got and snatches it.
I pout at him, violently for the early hour, and open my mouth to disturb the quiet in the car, but he just smiles gentle and pushes me slowly so I'm leaning on Mr. Clint. I blink owlishly at him for a moment as he sets the coffee cup in the door cup holder and goes to look out the window, but Mr. Clint is soft and warm, and the car is quiet and smooth, and I start to drift off.
Mr. Clint is also sleeping, and somehow still managing to drink his coffee, but that is an Awake Jasmine problem, not a Sleeping Jasmine problem.
The ride to wherever we're going is a haze of jostling and the smell of coffee. Mr. Clint drags me out of the car when we stop, and I stand next to him in the middle of the desert with my head planted in his stomach, leaning at an angle that allows me to go back to half-sleeping.
There's some yelling going on, but I'm more asleep than awake, and thus ignore it. I ignore everything going on, even the loud noises and the rainbow light I see through my eyelids, until Mr. Clint grabs me and jumps back in the direction of a big boulder.
Wide awake now, I see that we are in the middle of nowhere in the desert, and there is a giant metal monster glinting in the sunlight and shooting blasts of flame at the vans and SUV's around us. The other agents are shouting at each other and running around, not firing their guns at the scary giant.
Mr. Clint keeps pulling me back and away from the fire, and the metal giant guy marches off in the direction of the town.
The cars are all on fire, and someone starts a count off.
When Mr. Clint relaxes at the end, I guess that nobody died. We crawl out from behind the boulder and Agent Cou Cou assesses the situation with his hands on his hips. He's standing on the edge of a huge... burnt circle pattern on the ground that I don't understand, but guess isn't my problem.
With all of the SUV's down, and half of the Agent's injured, we're stranded in the middle of the desert. Of all the ways to die, this was probably at the bottom of my list.
Agent Cou Cou radio calls Fury with a request for some back up, although I'm not sure what he thinks that's going to do, and then turns very determinedly in the direction of the base. As he begins walking, I stare after him, then turn to Mr. Clint, who sighs heavily. I tug on his S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform shirt and he looks down at me.
"Is he walking back to the base?"
Mr. Clint sighs again. "We're walking back to the base, kiddo."
I frown and shake my head vehemently, taking a step back and nearly tripping over a rock. "No, I am absolutely not walking back-"
Twenty minutes later, we're still walking through the desert. Agent Cou Cou is keeping up a brutal pace through the desert, and we're far enough away that I can't see the base.
I tell that to Mr. Clint, loudly, and he grins down at me. "Maybe you're just short."
I grumble again and stomp after Agent Cou Cou.
"Quit pouting, Jasmine. You've had Coulson and the others running laps trying to keep up with you this past week, you can take a little bit of keeping up with them."
I let out a grumpy noise that sounds a lot more like a growl than it probably should. There's sand in my boots- well, there's actually sand everywhere, and I hate it. But I especially hate it in my boots.
Because I slept through our drive out to wherever we were in the desert, I have no idea how long it took us to get all the way out here, and thus no frame of reference for how long walking back may take.
In the distance, I can see when the metal giant that attacked us makes it to the town, mostly because the sun glints off the shine of its plates and reflects all the way out to where we are. Which is too damn far from our base.
And I'm still getting sand in my boots.
"How much farther?" I whine. "I'm thirsty and tired and thirsty!"
Mr. Clint sighs and stops for a moment to pick me up and set me on his shoulders. In front of us, slightly closer than the little town in the distance where the metal guy is, I can see the base.
I cheer, and Sitwell next to us snorts. Mr. Clint shoots him a look that I can't see, but don't care about. I am no longer getting more sand in my boots, so everything is alright. The only thing that could be better is the absence of that sand, but I can't do that while sitting on Mr. Clint's shoulders.
He carries me for a few happy minutes, the group progressing in silence, until there's a rumble through the air, the sky crackling.
There's a big storm with lots of lightning that appears over the little town in the distance, and Agent Cou Cou makes an anxious noise as he looks at it, then picks up his pace.
Mr. Clint sighs heavily and then jogs a little to keep up. Half the group, mostly those that weren't injured, goes faster with us.
We make it back to the base, where a new group of Agents is waiting with another fleet of SUV's. Sitwell, Mr. Clint and I get into a car with Agent Cou Cou, and we peel out of the base and onto the road to the little town. I'm not sure why we're going towards the electric storm thing, but there's a slight tugging in my stomach the closer we get, and I'm curious about that.
Maybe it's from Mr. Thor and the hammer thing nobody could move?
We get into the town in time to see Mr. Thor, wearing a cool costume and holding the hammer thing, defeat the giant metal monster that tried to kill us.
The angry lady that Agent Cou Cou stole from is also there, and apparently Mr. Thor knows her because he demands that her stuff is all returned.
I walk up to him, slipping Mr. Clint's grasp, and Sitwell makes a strangled noise behind me.
"Hi Mr. Thor!" I chirp, giving a happy wave. Angry lady stares down at me, confused.
"Your spy organization employs children?"
I shake my head. "Just me. And it's a special case." She still looks worried, so I whisper conspiratorially, "Don't worry. The way they try to treat me makes it very clear they don't regularly have children on base."
That doesn't seem to have fixed her worry, however. I'm stopped from trying to figure out what she's concerned about, because Mr. Thor leans down and claps a hand on my shoulder.
"Little Lady! Tis good to see you, and in better health and spirits! I regret to inform you that I must depart, imminently, and return to Asgard to deal with my brother. However, I will be in touch with you, young one, I promise! You remind me of my brother, except much more tolerant of people! I will of course meet with you whenever I have correspondence with the Son of Coul!"
"Wow, really? Mr. Thor, do you think I could meet your brother some day? He sounds cool!"
"Why of course! I'll bring him to meet you the next time I come to earth!"
"Great!"
"No, not great," Agent Cou Cou interrupts. Mr. Thor frowns at him, and I take that as my cue to slip back between Sitwell and Mr. Clint.
There's some adult-y conversation that I tune out in favor of poking Sitwell.
He glances down at me, eyes wide. "What?"
I whisper to him, "I'm hungry. I haven't had breakfast."
"Right. Okay, just one minute."
I blink, and he vanishes. Mr. Clint doesn't seem to be paying attention to Sitwell and I, focused instead on Agent Cou Cou and his angry interaction with Mr. Thor.
I decide to count to sixty before seeing if Sitwell vanished on purpose or on accident.
He comes back when I get to fifty-four, holding a bagel with an egg and bacon inside in one hand and a styrofoam cup in the other. I take them both greedily, and he explains, "It's a strawberry smoothie," just as I take a big sip.
I nod at him while eating as fast as possible to affirm that it's good, and he relaxes.
I enjoy my smoothie and bagel sandwich thing while Sitwell directs me around to getting in and out of the car, perfectly happy to ignore everything that is going on.
Some undetermined amount of time later, I finish the smoothie. Looking around the room I'm in to find a trash can, I find that Sitwell, Agent Cou Cou, Mr. Clint, and a few other agents are talking with the angry lady, the man who called Mr. Thor the wrong name last night, and a lady with dark hair and glasses who seems way weirded out by the agents in the room.
I do not find any trash cans, so I poke Sitwell again. He startles and looks down at me. I make an innocent face and wave the trash at him. "Am I allowed to go find a trashcan to throw this away in or will that get me in trouble?"
"Err... I'll take it."
"Great!" I give him the cup and walk back to leaning on the wall, but my blissful ignorance is much more difficult to fall into when I don't have a yummy smoothie to snack on.
I count the floor tiles (eight), the ceiling tiles (sixteen), the breaths Sitwell takes in between the flickers of one of the two lights (four on average, but seven when he noticed me looking at him), and the number of holes that the mystery lady has for her shoelaces to go through (thirty-two in total, with eight on each side and two shoes).
The moment I start walking around happens to coincide with Agent Cou Cou and angry lady coming to an agreement about their adult-y discussion.
"Miss Lewis? Would you mind doing me a favor?"
"Just call me Darcy, Mr. Secret Agent man. And I can try." Everyone else in the room files out quickly. Agent Cou Cou points at me.
"Watch her for a bit while we take down the base and get everything taken care of?" He doesn't really wait for an answer before going to leave.
"Ummm..."
With a heavy, slightly nervous glance at me, Miss Darcy shuffles. She calls after Agent Cou Cou as he steps into the doorward, "Can't you have, I dunno, one of your super secret agents watch her? I'm not... I'm not great with kids."
Agent Cou Cou barely stops. "There are currently no agents available on site to watch her, because they're all busy with take down. I can assure you, Miss Lewis, that if you simply keep Evan's in this room for the next two hours, you will be thoroughly compensated." He steps out.
"Wait, how compensated?!"
"Does two thousand USD sound fair?" Agent Cou Cou shouts back, the door snicking shut behind him.
Miss Darcy turns to me in a daze. "Two thousand dollars? What kind of kid are you?!"
I shrug. "I don't think that this time the matter is me being difficult, but rather that the take down really does require all hands on deck."
"Well, what makes you say that?" Miss Darcy comes over and sits on the counter next to me.
"When they were doing set up, they locked me in an empty van with a breakfast burrito and the air conditioning. This checks out."
She gives me a horrified look. "What the fu-fudgeknuckles?!"
What?
"What's a fudgeknuckle?" I ask.
Miss Darcy ignores my question. "They locked you in a car? For multiple hours?!"
I frown at her. "Yes. I already said that. What's a fudgeknuckle?"
"I-" she works her mouth for a moment. "What the hell?" She whispers to herself. "I-kiddo-"
Rude. "Miss Darcy, please. What is a fudgeknuckle?"
She stares at me for a few more seconds, mouth open so wide that the little green ball she has in her mouth nearly falls out. "A-uh- it's a type of candy."
I tilt my head. "Really?"
"Yeah..." she looks up at the ceiling, then the door. "It's... Canadian?"
I purse my lips. "Right." I'll just ask Mr. Clint later.
There's shouts and thuds outside the break room we're sitting in as Agents take down the rest of the base. Miss Darcy doesn't seem willing to engage in conversation, staring at the ceiling once more, so I start opening the cabinets and drawers in the little kitchenette.
There's nothing in any of them, especially not a lighter or a screw driver, but I climb on the counter and check the upper ones too. Miss Darcy is chill with my exploration, even with my attempts to climb on top of the empty upper cabinets, until I start checking out the locks on the door and the screws on the vent.
"Hey, kid, I think we should just stay sitting in here for a bit, alright? I mean, I know it's boring and all, but the funny government man said to stay put."
"Agent Cou Cou," I supply, sitting down next to her on the floor. I can respect a woman who is logical and kind. Miss Darcy doesn't seem like she likes being in here any more than I do either.
"Who?"
"The funny bald man who stole your computer things? His name is Agent Cou Cou."
Miss Darcy blinks at me. "Really?"
I smirk at her, mimicking the eyebrows. "Really."
"Uh huh," she drawls, sucking on a tooth.
We make a deal: I tell her everything there is to know about S.H.I.E.L.D., and she'll tell me about her tasing Mr. Thor. After she clarifies what tasing is, I agree.
"So, kid, umm…" Miss Darcy rocks back on her heels, chewing on her lip. She's been wearing her hat and coat inside this entire time, and I'm not sure how she's managing it, but that is not a Jasmine-issue, it's a Miss Darcy-issue.
I bounce on my heels. "Can I try using the taser?"
"Err…" Miss Darcy looks around for a second, both hands clutching her purse tightly to her side. "I don't think I'm allowed… I can give you a stick of gum though?"
I tilt my head. "What's gum?"
She stares down at me, hand on her purse. "Umm, like, chewing gum. For chewing." It must be that little green ball she had in her mouth earlier.
"Yeah, sure."
Miss Darcy pulls a small flat rectangle out of her purse and hands it to me. I investigate the stick, and it's covered in a small, reflective layer of aluminium.
"You unwrap it, and then put it in your mouth and chew."
I unwrap the little gum stick and find a flimsy and powdery rectangle that is bright green. It does not look like something someone should eat, but I shrug and put it in my mouth anyway.
It's a little spicy, which is weird, but I kind of like it. I think. I chew on the stick for a minute, screwing up my face. "It's spicy."
Miss Darcy stares down at me in fascination, and then jerks as if she just realized something. "Um, please, please, do not swallow that. I'd get in so much trouble."
"Why not?"
"Umm, it's bad for you. I think I'm supposed to tell you it'll stay in your stomach for seven years or something, too."
I feel my eyes go wide. "Seven years?!"
"Umm, yeah." Miss Darcy becomes more sure of herself as she nods to me. I can't imagine something being inside me for seven years. My own stomach has barely been inside me for seven years!
Miss Darcy checks her watch and decides it must be close to time, because she leans down close to me. "Hey, kid, just... maybe keep that stuff about the taser a secret from your super secret agent friends? I don't really need to get in trouble with people that don't exist because I told a seven year old about an electric gun."
I give Miss Darcy a soft smile. "I won't tell them anything, Miss Darcy, but they probably already know. S.H.I.E.L.D. has security cameras everywhere, and Agent Cou Cou has probably been listening in on our conversation, at least periodically. I can almost guarantee that the footage is already on his tablet for him to look over later."
Miss Darcy pales, like the idea of our conversation being recorded is the most awful thing she's ever heard. "Don't worry!" I rush to reassure her. "I'll make sure you don't get into any trouble. You did exactly what Agent Cou Cou asked, so-"
"Kid, that is not what I'm worried about. Do you know how unhealthy it is for a kid to grow up in an environment where they're constantly under watch? Do you ever have any privacy or anything, or is your every move logged on a computer somewhere for these ass-inine, asinine agents to review?!"
Oh. I shrug. "They certainly try to keep track of me. But I'm pretty sure they don't manage to have someone on security cameras keeping track of me wherever I go. I manage to escape too often for that to be the case."
"That's... that's good at least." She deflates with a sigh, resting against the counter.
"But," I shrug, "after I snuck into Mr. Thor's cell and had a conversation with him that wasn't recorded for some reason, Agent Cou Cou threatened to strap a camera to me for a while."
"But- that's a violation of your constitutional rights!"
"Well, I'm not actually sure I count as an American citizen, Miss Darcy. I was in England in an orphanage a week ago. Now I've been with S.H.I.E.L.D. in New York, California, and wherever this desert place is. But I'm not sure if I got here the right way, or anything."
"Right. Well," she gives a nod, looking a little dazed, "Even if you aren't a citizen, you're on American soil. They can't record you in the bathroom. Remember that, insist on it. Call them 'peeping tom's' and 'creeps' if they try to tell you otherwise, got it, kid?"
I give her a firm nod and extend my hand for her to shake. "Thank you for all of your information, Miss Darcy. It's been a pleasure."
Miss Darcy gives a little laugh and pops her gum. "Just call me Darcy, kiddo."
I smirk at her, then walk out the door. Agent Cou Cou is standing in the middle of the desert, next to the only remaining structure from the base- the break room Miss Darcy and I were in. He nods at me, gesturing towards Mr. Clint and the car in the distance, and hands Miss Darcy a thick stack of green paper with his other hand. I frown at him, rather than following his nonverbal instruction. "Did you return all of the stuff to the angry lady?"
Agent Cou Cou sighs at me without looking. "Yes, Sophie."
I give him a short nod. "Good."
As Miss Darcy takes the money from him, a group of agents dismantles the last of the temporary base and loads it into a big container for a helicopter to take away. I make my way over to Mr. Clint unassisted but watched, and he loads me into the back of the car, handing me a sandwich. "Sitwell got it for you."
"Where are we going?" I ask as he climbs in after me.
"Coulson is driving us back to Starks, to take care of that situation."
"Miss Natalia needs help?"
Mr. Clint gives me a smirk as we both buckle in. "Stark is a handful. Just like you."
I frown, not understanding. "Miss Natalia has two hands though. And Dr. Tony seems perfectly nice to me, even if he does like to make snarky comments at Fury and Agent Cou Cou."
Mr. Clint busts out laughing. "Yeah, kid. She sure does have two hands."
Alright everyone. LSAT is done. This chapter has been updated, and I'm working on Chapter 12. Should be done soon-ish. I hope you all enjoyed reading, and I'm sorry if this chapter wasn't quite as funny as previous ones. I'll probably come back and workshop it a bit, but Sitwell and Clint are getting a pretty good handle on how to help Jasmine behave, so she's just slightly less crazy. Lots of love!