[OP: "O Sleeper"--The Oh Hellos]

Sasuke wondered if Shine was too optimistic after all. 

"I don't think there's any real good to come out of it all," he said flatly. "It's as you said--if I wasted all my life pursuing things that ultimately didn't happen, there's nothing to show for it."

"Nothing to you," Shine said, "but God can use anything to bring about His glory. And to help people. I wouldn't count it out. But if you worry about that, you need to know what you want it all to mean. You know, 4 years is not really so long, in the course of someone's life, to spend in the wrong way, if, after that point, you change trajectory."

"It's long enough." Sasuke was frowning. "I don't even really care about hurting people, even now. It's just that it angers me to have nothing to show for it. That's not the kind of regret you're looking for."

"Not for me to say." Shine shrugged. "Maybe that's what you need to feel. I know I don't control this process. Ultimately, you have to choose what you will take away from it."

"You always say that I have to choose. But what if I don't know how to?"

"You will sooner or later." Shine didn't seem concerned. "The choice will always be clear eventually. We worry so much over those things that will happen naturally. Trust me, you will be tested on what you've decided. If you pass or not will depend on what you truly want. You may not even know that's what it is till the moment you're tested." She tugged her hair.

Sasuke had another question, one he thought she'd avoided earlier.

"Did you want to do this because of what you thought I was like before?" he asked. "You thought that it was still there? Somewhere?"

Shine was ready for that question.

"No," she said. "I didn't really know if that person was still a part of you. I'm not like Naruto and Sakura. I think people can change their character. But if we hoped it was true, can you blame us? We might all hope someone still has some goodness inside them. Is that the answer you wanted?"

Again Sasuke really didn't know.

He wished she'd have said if she still thought so... He was surprised she didn't think what he'd done earlier today showed it.

"So why did you?" he asked for the umpteenth time.

"Nice try." Shine shook her head. "Still not ready to explain. But perhaps we're getting close."

"What percentage of trust do I have now?" Sasuke couldn't believe he said something that almost sounded like a joke.

"25% maybe."

"I only get up to 25% for that?" A little insulted.

"Well, you said yourself that it's not because you're a good person," Shine replied. "So why should it be more than that? You know, some progress is still progress."

"I'd have to be flawless to get to 100% trust." Sasuke was annoyed.

"I'm not sure anyone has 100% of my trust except for God," Shine mused. "So maybe you're right. Even my partner and I are liable to disagree, and he's still human, so he'll fail me at times. Though he's close to perfect about that. I'd hardly notice it."

Sasuke didn't care to respond to that.

"I'm gonna go now. I'm exhausted." Shine rubbed her face.

"Wait." Sasuke had still another pressing question. "Are you all going back to your world now?"

"Shh," Shine hissed. "I can't be sure the walls don't have ears now..."

She looked around. "And I'm not sure about that. There may be other things we can do... Don't lose sleep over it just yet. For now we'll just leave the Village with all of you and head back, I guess."

Sasuke was relieved that it wouldn't be a given that they'd just go...but even so, after she left, he didn't sleep a wink.

Not only that, but his other troubling thoughts kept him up. Shine hadn't really set his mind at ease--not because she wasn't good at it, but because once she was gone, he was alone with himself. And it turned out that was the problem.

* * *

Other people were having a sleepless night. Though Camie dropped off surprisingly quickly, Ino couldn't settle down.

Now that the talk about it was over, she kept seeing the scene in her head over and over again.

She felt terrible that she had done nothing to stop it--just froze up like she always did.

She wondered why Shine and Naruto weren't upset about none of them helping. They hadn't said a word about it.

To think Sasuke had stepped in before anyone!

But her surprise had been nothing to Shoto's, she knew. The part of the story where Sasuke did anything had been sped through by the others, as Shine really had seemed not to want to talk about it, but of course the bandit-fighting group had had questions.

Shoto had demanded an explanation later of Dabi. She'd heard him before she left for the girls' building.

"What did you mean about that?" Shoto asked. "He stopped something? But I don't understand how."

"Oh, I'm as shocked as you are." Dabi had stuck his hands into his pockets and shrugged. "Not that the little punk has never done anything like that, but it was so long ago, I really didn't think he had it in him now. Too corrupted by his evil... I guess people can surprise you. It's true, we all saw it. 'Course maybe he just didn't want to lose his protection for being here."

"That must be it." Shoto had said that in what Ino thought was almost a desperate or relieved tone. "And he didn't seem the least bit bothered by what happened during our discussion."

"He was quiet," Dabi said. "Not going off about us all being cowards--so I take it he doesn't feel proud of it. He'd lord it over us for sure if he did. That probably means he just did it for security... Then again, who knows? Maybe he's become humble."

"Sasuke?" Shoto had said with scorn.

"Yeah, I know, how stupid, right?" Dabi said, but he didn't sound fully convinced. "Still, what if one of these days he really does change? I was betting against it, but I couldn't totally rule it out. I'm here after all."

"You were never that bad." 

"I think you may've been blinded by familiarity there, Snowflake. I was that bad."

"Enough to wipe out a whole village?"

"The LOV was willing to wipe out whole cities if necessary," Dabi pointed out darkly. "Of course, none of us really thought of it as murdering them all. We never thought that hard about it at all. That's the trick of AFO with Shigaraki--never let him think of it as taking human lives. It's all a game to him, and that's how we all treated it too. Sasuke knew he was planning to kill people, but he thought they had it coming. Which is worse? Revenge? Or not caring in the first place if it's wrong?"

"I'm tired of that question. But it must be that if you realized it was wrong, you have to be smarter than he is."

"Thanks for the compliment, but I really think you wouldn't be trying to defend me if it wasn't that we're both in the same boat with Sasuke," Dabi pointed out candidly. "Except that I really think I've moved on from that more. Go figure, I'm supposed to be the one who can't let stuff go."

"I'm not angry at Sasuke," Shoto said.

Ino was sure it was a lie. But he might have believe it.

"I just don't trust him," Shoto added. 

Dabi laughed aloud, bitterly. "Not angry, sure... That's your not angry face?"

[Todoroki's angry face from Sports Festival--I had other options but had a feeling this was the most humorous/intense one.]

Shoto had glowered more. "I don't feel angry."

Dabi frowned. "Hey, something I figured out a while ago--you don't have to feel angry to be angry. Anger isn't always an emotion; it can be a state of mind. Like most stuff. I didn't realize that because I thought I had no feelings at all about anything...but then I started to see that I wouldn't want to destroy things if I wasn't angry still. It didn't make it to my emotions anymore, but it was there... It was there so long I felt nothing else. It killed everything else. And if you don't watch it, that's exactly what will happen to you. This Uchiha business is awful personal for you, and, frankly, I really don't care that much if you're happy, but you're starting to get kind of unstable about it, and no one's safe then."

Shoto glared at him. "Me? Unstable? Should you really talk? And I think you're ungrateful."

"How exactly am I ungrateful--and about what?" Dabi retorted.

"I've overlooked a lot of things you've done," Shoto said. "The fact that you plotted pain to our family. That you attacked our school and society and kidnapped Bakugo--all that. And all you ever do is criticize me. What did I ever do to you?"

Ino felt she shouldn't be hearing this and snuck away.

But because she had to move slow, she'd caught the end of the conversation anyway:

Dabi had taken a few seconds to answer, but then he said flatly, "If you never did nothing to me, then why do you expect you doing nothing now to change how I feel?"

"That's just what I'm saying--why do you treat me this way?"

"Oh, I dunno, maybe there's no reason," Dabi said, not as if he believed that. "Or maybe it's that you think you're perfect. You know, one thing about you that pisses me off--you've owned up to hating Dad just as much as I did and ignoring Fuyumi and Natsuo, even when you could've done otherwise, because you were used to it. Well, who am I to judge? But you still act like I'm so much worse. The only difference between us is that I acted on the same feelings that you had. And maybe in another few years, you would have snapped too. But you pretend you've not been tempted. Same thing with Sasuke, isn't it? You weren't that many steps away from turning out like that guy, and if you don't, it's only because Mom had enough time to beat the other ideas into your head and you look up to All Might. Take that away and you're not any wiser or any better than us innately. I bet it's what galls him too. Eh, this conversation is pissing me off."

He had stalked away then.

Ino hadn't heard if Shoto said anything else. 

And, while it was none of her business, it worried her because she thought the trouble between Shoto and Sasuke was only getting worse somehow. No matter how many people told them to stop--and she could guess they had been told to--they found some other way to get at each other.

Neither of those two boys ever suspected how much they worried the rest of the team. Everyone knew about the beef, and everyone worried about it, but it was not the ninja way to get involved in other people's arguments and griefs, and the heroes had all failed to fix anything by trying. 

Finally, these and other thoughts were too much, and Ino got up and put on a kimono-kind of nighttime robe so she could go to the kitchen building and make tea.

It was kind of creepy to leave the dormitories, she thought, as she came into the hallway.

On this level there were windows, letting in some pale moonlight, but it wasn't that bright, probably only half a moon.

She half changed her mind, but she was far enough already, so she kept going.

She nearly jumped when her own hair brushed her arm.

The dorm was just too quiet...no sound of snoring or deep breathing or anything... Perhaps more people were awake than Ino realized. She only thought it was eerie.

She made her way to the bottom level of this building. Now the bedrooms were all on the top floor, since it used to be a jail. The bottom level had once been used for checking in prisoners, which was why it had a long hallway before you got to the stair but no rooms in it. The hallway was just closed in on the other side with a wall with some windows in it, and since the wall had been redone when it was converted into a diplomatic house, the windows now had seats in them to make them look less military.

This was worth noting because Ino actually found someone sitting in one, and she nearly jumped out of her skin before she realized that it was Sai.

Sai had not noticed she was coming--Ino was quite silent, like most ninja--and he was too engrossed in his own musings.

In fact he wouldn't have noticed her at all if she hadn't jumped several centimeters when she saw him.

Thankfully, she didn't draw a knife at the same time.

Sai looked around in a hurry, though he gave no sign of alarm, since that was beaten out of people in the Foundation.

"Oh...hello," he said.

Again his tone gave no sign of surprise, but Ino was starting to recognize that Sai just didn't emote. But his word choices suggested that she might have startled him anyway.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to..." She held up her hands. "I was going to the kitchen...I think... I mean, I just didn't think anyone else was up..." She was babbling for some reason.

Luckily, Sai never noticed.

"Is it quite safe to go out?" he said instead. "Given the...incident earlier today?"

He frowned when he said that, and Ino wasn't sure why. Was he perhaps mad at her for stopping him from interfering?

Not that she had been alone in that, but...

Maybe he was just upset that it happened, but she had no way to be sure.

"Maybe it is..." she said. "Though, I don't sense anyone out there... I just...can't...sleep."

"Oh...me neither," Sai said, still without any emotion. "I suppose there's too much to think about."

"Way too much," Ino agreed. "Is it...uh...okay if I join you?"

Sai took longer to think about that than she expected, as if he was asking himself if it was okay with him and trying to figure out the answer... To Sai, the situation was very complicated, and he always chose to ask anyone else if it was okay with them if he joined them.

[Canonically, Sai did do this in the episode right after his introduction arc, with Naruto and Sakura--and it was adorable, but as usual they treated him like a weirdo for it. Smh.]

Ino regretted asking and debated if she should just slink away in humiliation.

"I don't really see why it wouldn't be," Sai finally said, just as she was going to make an excuse to do this. "We're friends after all."

"Oh..." Ino was surprised. "Okay..."

She sat down gingerly, not too close. The window seat was pretty wide.

[Ino and Sai Window seat art done by Julianna Gardner.]

The moonlight was falling in strongly, since the window was bigger than the upstairs ones, so she could see that Sai was holding a sketch pad.

She saw that the picture he was working on was of the incident earlier.

"Why would you draw that?" she said, forgetting to make her tone softer in the quiet, and it came out rather sharply.

Sai didn't really notice it, but she winced at herself.

"To remember it," he said, as if it was a puzzle. "I was hoping I would understand it better this way."

"Did it work?" Ino would pay money if that trick worked for her.

"I'm not sure," Sai said. "I've been thinking of what happened, to get the faces right, but they don't make sense. Sometimes I keep thinking they looked afraid---" He pointed to some people in the crowd who he'd struggled to draw the expressions of. "And sometimes I think they looked angry or hateful, if I were sure of those expressions, but I'm not."

"Can I see?" Ino asked.

Sai handed it to her, and she looked more closely.

"No, that's right," she said, with a shudder. "It's like I'm there again--if it was all black and white, anyway. Did you know some people see in black and white?"

"No." Sai had never heard this.

"I don't know why I thought of that. Someone who came to our flower shop was like that. They used to ask my mother to make the colors right for them because they couldn't do it themselves," Ino mused. "It's a random thing to just remember... I sound like Momo almost."

"It would be a shame to see only in black and white," Sai said. "Who would understand emotions then?"

"What does that have to do with it?" Ino was confused.

"Oh....never mind." Sai almost seemed embarrassed by it.

But Ino was smart enough to put it together. "Do you use colors to show emotions?"

Sai was silent like the whole thing still embarrassed him.

In fact, the only thing he ever recognized as embarrassing was his lack of understanding of feelings. [Also canon from the episode I mentioned above and other episodes.]

"I guess that make sense," Ino said. "Flower code is based on colors a lot..." She studied the image. "Perhaps I think black fits it...maybe red, or an ugly purple...at least that's what hatred feels like, I think...like that Susanoo armor thing Sasuke can make. Karin says it was dark..."

"None of it makes sense anyway," Sai said. "It doesn't add up. Helping people and then them making those expressions...it's like Sasuke. He also looks completely emotionless about his friends...I don't understand it."

Ino wondered if Sai was actually perhaps a sensitive person--hadn't some of the others suggested it? He didn't get feelings in his head, but he certainly seemed to notice when people didn't have the right ones... Perhaps he was closer than he knew.

"I can't explain it to you," she said sadly. "Because I don't know. But I do know that people's feelings do not always match what you think they should be like. No matter what you do for some people, they hate you anyway. It's sad... I can't believe the village turned on us like this though... One or two people being like this was nothing, but how could so many people believe such terrible lies about us?"

She put the drawing down. "It makes me angry and scared at the same time."

"Anger and fear seem to go together a lot..." Sai had notes about this.

[They do, psychologically speaking.]

"Speaking of anger--" Ino wanted to settle the matter for herself. "--I hope you're not mad about earlier...uh, I mean, when I stopped you..."

She had learned by now to be specific, or Sai wouldn't have a clue what she meant.

"What?" Sai had forgotten about it. "Oh...that... No...no, I suppose there wasn't anything I could do. I wasn't thinking."

"At least you wanted to do something though." Ino leaned on her hand dejectedly. "I couldn't think of a thing to do... I hate being so useless."

"No one else did anything either expected for Sasuke," Sai said.

"And why in the world did he do something fist?" Ino said. "I thought he was going to kill them all for a second. Did you see the look in his eyes?"

"I saw them turn red. It reminded me of when I met him the first time and that look scared me," Sai said. "And I never felt fear before--that I remembered."

"I think everyone feels fear," Ino protested. "You must have, when you were a kid...before the Foundation."

"I don't remember before then. But it's possible." Sai seemed to like that idea. Perhaps the thought that he had had feelings once, and that it would make it easier for him to have them again.

"Then again, maybe you're lucky." Ino changed her mind. "Not to feel fear would be amazing... I wish... But Sasuke can be quite scary. Though he didn't used to scare me. He does now. Personally, though, it wasn't that he looked really dangerous that made it so bad--I'm used to that--but it was that he looked completely unrestrained for a second. Like he might have done anything and not felt a thing about it. I think if he'd been yelling threats at them, I wouldn't have minded that as much."

"That does bear resemblance to how I thought of him," Sai concurred. "It really wasn't that he did something dangerous to me, it was how he looked as if he would and wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over it or even think of it afterward. Something about him was so senseless back then, and sometimes it still is. But his friends must see past it somehow."

"We all thought that," Ino said. "But what if they were wrong? I mean, I hoped he was defending Shine because he cares about her, but he didn't give much sign of that later... Shine didn't seem to think it was anything special either."

"No," Sai agreed, but, a little less blinded by concern than Ino was, he added, "Yet I've noticed now that Shine rarely lets on when she does think things like that. She might feel it would humiliate a person to do that. But she never said it wasn't the reason either. I'd think she'd say something."

"True, she's hardly spoken about it." Ino noticed that was unusual. Shine was always one to explain things even when no one asked. "She just brushed it aside... Maybe that does mean something... Maybe Shine is the kind of person who doesn't say when they're touched by something, because they're shy about it."

"Is that a thing?" Sai was mentally writing the note--but had left his emotions notebook in the hiding spot he'd selected for it, along with other stuff they'd wanted to hide. 

"Oh, sure it is." Ino hardly noticed the question. "Choji's like that, for sure. Well, so am I, honestly. I never know what to say when people compliment me."

"Oh, that makes sense." Sai had remembered something right then.

"It does?" Ino said, feeling as if she'd just outed herself but she didn't remember why.

"Yes," Sai said. "I remember now, when I said--"

"Oh that!" Ino felt herself flush but thankfully the moonlight was hiding it. "I'd forgotten all about that."

Actually, she had not forgotten about it but thought it was better to avoid bringing it up.

"Come to think of it, I shouldn't have lied back then." Sai put his foot firmly into his mouth without knowing it. [🤦]

Ino's good mood dissipated right away.

"Wh-what?" she said.

"At the time--" Sai really didn't think he was saying something offensive. "--I thought I should say the opposite of what I thought after Sakura's reaction, but now I think that wasn't a good idea."

Ino felt horrified--and furious.

"Wow, okay," she said, reverting to a more catty tone despite knowing it would be lost on him. "Well, good to know that now."

Sai didn't miss the change in her tone--it was so dramatic. "Did I say something wrong?" he guessed.

"I thought you were being honest." Ino was still mad--and humiliated also. "But now I know that."

Sai thankfully had enough experience from Sakura to finally figure out why she was upset--he was at least a quick study.

"Oh...you're offended," he said, for all like he was glad he'd figured it out.

Ino wanted to hit him so bad right then, but she held herself back--even now she wasn't so far that she'd forgotten how the others had said that wasn't fair.

But nor was she in the mood to discuss it with him patiently. It was too embarrassing.

But, thankfully for her, Sai had some context on this after his many mistakes in this area and was mentally trying to remember if he'd even found a solution to them.

"It's important to girls to be beautiful, isn't it?" he finally guessed. And Camie had probably helped him get this idea.

Ino calmed only slightly, since this question was less offensive. "Yes, it is."

"Why?" Sai really wanted to know the answer.

Ino got mad again. "Isn't it obvious?"

"No."

Ino frowned, then she realized that it was preposterous to be mad. Sai clearly didn't ever think about his looks. How could she possibly expect him to see it the way other people did?

Maybe she'd gotten too reasonable lately, or maybe it was harder to stay mad at Sai than it used to be, but she finally rallied a little, though she was still sad.

"I don't know," she said. "It just is. Maybe it's because people make fun of you if you're ugly...but you know, I think it's more than that too... It's..." then she thought of something that might explain it. "It's like you want to feel things the right way, right?"

Sai nodded.

"Girls want to look the right way," Ino said. "It's the same way...on the outside."

Sai had a glimmer of understanding. "I see... Oh, so when they don't look right, they feel ashamed of it just like how I feel ashamed of not feeling the right things."

"If you feel ashamed of it...then I guess." Ino felt bad for him again. Of course...she was being petty, she thought. 

Her ego had taken a hit there, but Sai had a bigger problem, and she was just being selfish to focus on her hurt feelings.

Ino didn't know that this was something she'd never have thought months ago. The difference was not only just that she knew Sai better. Slowly, she'd started to adopt the new standards of this team and their book of faith, and to be changed by it, without even realizing it.

Uncomfortably, she wondered if she could give Sai a panic attack if she pushed this--and that would be terrible.

"Nevermind, don't worry about it," she said out loud. "It doesn't matter now."

"But I think that it does." Sai was quite troubled. "I think I hurt your feelings." [😍]

Ino bit her lip. Should she lie?

But that wouldn't be a good thing in the long run.

"I'll get over it," she said instead.

"I always do this..." Sai began to get depressed.

"No, no, not always," Ino hurried to say. Now she really was afraid he'd have a panic attack. "Just this time--" She stopped. Wrong thing to say.

Sai shook his head. "It was wrong of me to say that." He was determined. "I should have known better."

"Should you have?"

"Yes, I have learned about this. I should have remembered not to say that," Sai insisted. "Even if I don't know why it bothers people, that's no excuse for being so careless."

Ino pursed her lips. "Maybe it's not." She should just be honest after all. "But it's just a mistake... All of us make them. And I didn't have to ask...so... But I'm a little disappointed to learn that you weren't serious."

"Oh, I didn't really this that hard about it," Sai surprised her by saying. "I was more worried about Sakura's reaction if I said the same thing as I said to her. Actually, physical appearance means very little to me."

"It...doesn't?" Ino was confused now. "But then why--"

"Well, in the Foundation," Sai began to explain without any sense of shame now, "none of us really were supposed to have any preferences about that kind of thing, but we'd talk about things as pretty or ugly or unpleasant, as if we were evaluating them. I suppose it was a way to blend in with the outer world. Danzo must have known it would be too much of a giveaway if we had no evaluative language at all...but he always had his ideas about what was good or bad in that way. Most of us assumed he was right."

Ino, by now, knew enough about Danzo to be suspicious of that. "And his idea was those uniforms, too?"

"Yes...what does that have to do with it?"

"Because they're very ugly," Ino said mercilessly.

They are?" Sai looked down--though right now he was wearing different clothes, but he'd forgotten that.

"Yes," Ino said. "And that was payback for what you said. None of you have any fashion sense."

"But our uniforms aren't even that different," Sai protested, as if he was actually offended. "They're both crop tops."

"Mine isn't that stupid asymmetrical design though," Ino replied. "Ask Camie, she'll agree with me...but it doesn't matter, right?"

"I think I'm starting to see why that must bother you," Sai said, in a flat tone still. "Somehow I don't like to think of people glancing at me and thinking that I'm unpleasant."

"Oh, don't worry about it," Ino said, with a fake smile. "I'm sure your face would distract them from it anyway."

Sai had no idea what that even meant but took it as encouragement. "Oh..."

Ino felt a little bad for messing with him, but it made her feel slightly better to dish it back. Anyway it wasn't like she was really saying anything bad--just talking over his head.

"I am sorry to hear that you think I'm unpleasant to look at though," Ino said, a bit more constrained. 

"Did I say that?" Sai was puzzled.

"Well, if you didn't mean what you said before, then what else did it mean?" Ino pointed out.

"Oh...well, that's not really what I meant," Sai said, innocently enough. "I didn't really have an opinion about it, that's what I was saying. Besides, Sakura is not proportioned correctly."

"You mean the forehead?" Ino said. "You know, she's not ugly. That wasn't a nice thing to say to her anyway--is that what you said?"

"She seemed that way to me." Sai defended his position instead of backing down. "Especially yelling at Naruto and insulting him."

Ino suddenly had an idea.

"Wait, are you saying that it's someone's behavior that makes you think they're attractive or not?" She used the word "attractive" by accident.

But Sai looked as if he's just had a revelation. "It might be... I never thought of it that way before. Though I do think Miss Likstar mentioned something about this too.... But then again, I have read about something called 'inner beauty' in some of those books... Well, though, I thought that about Sakura the first time I met her also."

"If she acted the same, I can't say I blame you," Ino said, frowning. "Sakura does act ugly."

[Interesting note: When Sai calls Sakura ugly the second time, it's after she tells him that nicknames should be about someone's personality traits, and then she calls Naruto stupid. While the show always makes it out as just about their appearances, I really thought that they were hinting that Sai is drawn to inner beauty. This was strengthened by the fact that when he does call Ino beautiful again, he follows it by saying she is kind.]

"Yes..." Sai mused. "Well, that would explain it. I got used to her after a while, but often she still acts that way."

"She didn't always, but now I just don't know anymore," Ino sighed. "I don't know if this is better or worse actually. I think I'm sad now that you didn't think I was a nice person at first."

"But I didn't even know you at the time." Sai had a very sensible response this time. "That's not very fair, is it?"

"No... So, what do you think now?" Ino asked what Sai would have known was a loaded question if he'd known about girls more.

But even without knowing that, he somehow felt a little uneasy about answering it--as if deep down he knew that it wasn't just a question.

It wasn't as that he didn't know what he thought, it was that he knew Ino was going to get upset if it wasn't what she wanted to hear--but he couldn't blame her for that, now that he saw the resemblance between how she felt and how he felt about other things.

But he was tolerably sure his answer would be one she liked--but as usual, not sure enough not to be nervous about it.

"Well..." he hesitated. "Don't get angry."

Ino felt downcast all over again. "Okay," she said sadly.

"I think you're kind," Sai followed it up by saying quite naturally. "And knowledgeable, and creative, but I don't know you very well still, so please don't be offended."

Ino was ready to faint from surprise--and perhaps delight--but before she could get herself together enough to reassure Sai that she was not angry, something changed outside. 

Several presences seem to materialize out of thin air, and then something came through the window right over their heads!

[I was nice and did not cut off Sai's answer with the action. Be grateful, shippers. I was sorely tempted to.]