The rest of the day went by pretty quickly. I kept thinking about my super mysterious and foreboding dreams. What could it all possibly mean? Who was the winged figure? What did they want? And where do all these side-plots keep coming from?

I met up with Xander for about the hundredth time in this fic, and beside him was Xanny, who looked excited, which was never a good thing when it came to crazy lesbian side characters. She was probably the only representation of LGBT that we were getting in this fanfic too, which made it all the more depressing.

"What did you do this time?" I asked her as soon as I came up to them. She gave me a mockingly offended face.

"Something useful, for once." Xander answered before she could reply. "She stole a notebook from Nathan's backpack, which I'm pretty sure is illegal theft but it'll most likely be fine, considering how poorly this school deals with criminal activity."

"Not just any notebook!" Xanny grinned like Cheshire Cat. "It's his personal journal!" Why did the author have to write her so creepy? She's an even worse depiction of quirky girls than me, and I'm a walking stereotype just like 99% of all the other characters.

"Wait, what?" I said in surprise, registering her words. "Isn't that kind of an invasion of privacy?"

"Sammy, Sammy, Sammy." Xanny clicked her tongue and looked at me with disappointment. "Privacy doesn't matter when you're dealing with a possible murderer. And besides, check out what my brother found out with this."

Xander pulled out a note from his backpack— the note, the first clue that we found all the way back in chapter 5, not counting the character forms.

"Look at this." He said, taking out what I assumed to be Nathan's journal and placing the note on top of a random page. I looked over, and gasped with the force of a million bears. "Gasp! Woah, it's been a while since I did that."

The handwriting in the journal and the note was exactly the same.

"You see?" Xander began to hiss, but stopped himself before he could become unrealistic. He settled for whispering angrily instead, which was close enough. "You were right, he is the killer. If he wasn't framed, that is."

"Darn, I really thought it was the janitor." Xanny said nonchalantly. We ignored her.

"Guess we really do have to confront him." I said, a bit nervously. I thought the whole plan was a bit insane at first, but now it really felt like the right thing to do. I had to avenge Faith, who I literally had zero emotional connection with, but I'm the main character so I have to feel devastated over her death for some reason.

Xander nodded absentmindedly. He seemed to be thinking hard, either about how we were going to go with this whole interrogation thing, or about sandwich ingredients. With him, you never really know.

~~~

Suddenly, a timeskip happened! Cue Sam and the others outside the music club room.

~~~

Nathan had very conveniently decided to stay behind to clean up today, so it was our perfect opportunity to confront him in secret about the mysterious note.

Xander had wanted Xanny to stand guard outside in case anyone else came our way, but she insisted that confronting Nathan with us would be the smarter choice. After some completely non-important arguments, Xander caved in.

"But only under the condition that you don't stab him with scissors unless absolutely necessary." He said to her under his breath. Xanny exaggerated a sigh, but nodded and slowly pushed the door open.

We walked into the extremely basic and generically styled music room. Any details about it would be totally irrelevant and likely never mentioned again, so I didn't even bother describing it.

"Patricia, I told you I'm not interested-" Nathan's words died in his throat as soon as he turned around to see us. "Oh!" He dropped whatever unimportant object he was holding, and stared at us in surprise. "Wh- What're you guys doing here?" He asked in a suspiciously nervous but happy tone.

"Sorry, uh." I said shyly before Xander could begin his weirdly menacing way of talking. "We just, um, wanted to talk to you. About... something. That's all." I let my awkward and relatable introverted side out for the sake of the readers feeling empathetic towards me, despite the fact that I am literally nothing like this.

Nathan's entire face lit up, as if he wasn't extremely shy just a few chapters ago. "Really?!" He asked excitedly. "Wow, someone actually notices me and cares about my opinions." He added in a whisper under his breath, as if we couldn't hear him with nobody else talking in the room.

"Um. We sort of... found your journal." I continued awkwardly.

"Oh, that's great!" He suddenly looked nervous. I sure do wonder why. "Uh, you didn't look inside it, did you?"

There was a pause. "....did you?" Nathan said, sounding more panicked this time.

More silence. Xander finally decided to speak up, since I was apparently useless in this story and incapable of moving the plot forward by myself.

"We know about the creepy note you wrote." He said bluntly, taking out both the clue and the journal. He stared at Nathan's horrified expression with slight triumph.

"I..." Nathan seemed lost for words, as most murderers do when they're caught. "...don't know what you're talking about?" He said quietly in a last desperate attempt to make himself look innocent.

Xander rolled his eyes in exasperation before opening the journal and shoving it onto Nathan. "Your handwriting perfectly matches the one written on the note that was found on Faith's body. You wrote this, didn't you?"

Guilt was plastered all over Nathan's face. Before I could say anything, he broke down and crumbled onto the floor, sobbing hysterically.

"It's true! I admit it!" He cried, tears flowing out of his eyes at an alarming pace, yet was still somehow able to speak clearly without any voice cracks. "I wrote the note and planted it onto Faith's corpse! I'm so, so, so sorry!" He threw his face onto the ground and sobbed even harder.

Xander backed away into a corner, looking intensely uncomfortable. Xanny just looked gleeful at someone else's suffering. I began to think fast. After eleven whole chapters of doing absolutely nothing and letting my best friend make all the important decisions, I was ready to finally take the spotlight and actually do something helpful for once.

"Why?" I asked gently after a bit of careful consideration. Nathan looked up at me, his whole face red and wet from crying. It was kind of pathetic, honestly. "Why did you do it?"

"I..." He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and sat up. "I just wanted to be included, okay? I never get to be part of something big like this. It's like I only exist to be shipped with my friend. The fandom sees me as someone for them to dump all of their gay headcanons onto, nothing more. There's no fanfiction about me; I have to write them all myself." He gestured meekly to his fallen journal. Xander threw him a disgusted look, and I had a feeling that I didn't want to know what kind of fanfiction was in there.

"I don't even have a consistent fanon personality!" He went on, starting to cry again. "Sometimes I'm a sweet but shy cinnamon roll babey angel, sometimes I'm an edgy and protective best friend stereotype, and sometimes I'm an outgoing and social energetic kid who wants to be friends with everyone. None of those are even close to my canon self! You can understand that, right?" He asked me tearfully.

To be honest, I really did. I don't have a consistent or accurate personality either, due to the fandom always kinning and overanalyzing me. But that didn't mean I was going to defend this guy. "Did you kill Faith?"

Nathan flinched back, looking horrified. "N- No!" He began sobbing and stuttering excessively again. "I- I- I found her body, a- and thought it was the perfect chance to f- finally be involved in something o- other than sh- ships!"

"Seriously?!" Xander yelled from the corner, startling me. "After all of that, you're not even the killer?!"

"B- But I saw who it was!" Nathan said hurriedly. "I mean, I don't really know who it was, but I think I saw them... right after I wrote the note, I heard footsteps, and I hid inside a conveniently large closet. They muttered said something about a mission accomplished, and left. I couldn't see too clearly who it was, but they were pretty tall, with blue hair. Around high school age, but I haven't seen them anywhere in this school." He explained, thankfully losing his stuttering so that people could read this paragraph without having a stroke.

"Please, please, please don't tell anyone!" He gasped suddenly, clutching the hem of my hoodie. "People suspect me enough as it is! I swear I wasn't that close with Faith, she was a huge liar anyway. She lied about her emotions, her hobbies, her secret fanfiction— it's all Samder stuff, by the way." He added, making Xander choke on air. I was pretty surprised too, I honestly didn't expect that Faith of all people shipped us.

I hesitated. What was the Relatable Main Character™ thing to do in this situation? I looked at Xander's disgusted expression, and at Xanny's smug face, and then back at Nathan's pleading eyes. Then I knew exactly what to do.

"Okay." I sighed. "We won't tell anyone."

A/N: Sorry to all the Sam kinnies and Nathan fans out there! I don't have anything against yall, so sorry if this chapter offended you. I know it ended kinda abruptly, but it was getting a bit too long and I wanted to post it faster. Hope you enjoyed!