Blondie called them all together on a roof in his verse, but he was late and so Peter was stuck there with the kids, listening to Gwen lay out all the week’s drama between herself and her band members. He couldn’t say that it wasn’t entertaining.
“And then she just fucking left. In the middle of a gig?? And then ghosted us for a week, Benj, you hear me? A week.”
Benj bobbed his head so hard his goggles bounced against his chest. Benj had been in the middle of improvising a flash bomb to hide under a guy’s seat in a theatre when Peter had stuck his head into his verse to let him know it was time to go. Peter worried about him sometimes. His verse was pretty dark for someone so young and day-dreamy.
Miles pointed out valiantly that it wasn’t really ghosting if Gwen had refused to text her friend in the first place, but his attempts at reason were ignored. He was there to listen in Gwen’s head, not contribute.
“And then she had the nerve to be all ‘why’s no one talking to me. UwU, are you all mad or something?”
Gwen actually made the noise to indicate the emoticon face. Girl was a lot sometimes.
“And so I said, ‘bitch, you can’t just leave in the middle of a set ‘cause you’re not getting your way.’ And then she said, ‘oh, I’m so sorry, I won’t do it anymore,’ as if we’d fall for that shit again.”
Ham thought that this was fair and reasonable. Most recently, though, Ham had applauded Benj for keeping a pistol on him at all times and had given Peni the brilliant idea of making a mini Sp//dr to enter into a bot contest. Peter couldn’t tell if he was a bad influence or just chaotic neutral.
“Wait, wait, wait!”
They all looked up at Blondie’s sharp voice and got to see him throw himself halfway off the side of the roof. He appeared to have caught something before it went over.
Peter was pretty sure it was a new friend. One he’d managed to nab before they went careening ass over kettle six stories down. Blondie pulled back and wrangled what was indeed a new, teeny, bitty munchkin Spiderman back onto the side of the building which was perpendicular to the ground. He released the demon and then held a firm hand in front of its face.
“Stay,” he instructed, warily, as though this kid was a poorly trained dog. “You stay right here. Don’t you move. I’m gonna go—I’m getting a—AH, look at me. I’m going to get one more person, alright? You’re gonna—AH, eyes front. You’re not going to leave this roof, you understand?”
Oh, this was going to be interesting.
Blondie kept a finger at the kid and flicked his eyes over to Peter pleadingly. Babysit please, they said. Peter gave him a little nod of promise and he got eyes back on the kid before he started to back away.
“Do not move,” he said.
The kid wriggled in anticipation. It made Peter grin involuntarily. The other kids, all three of them, were already transfixed by another Spidey around their age. Benj seemed a little wary. He kept looking back at Peter and Ham as though trying to figure out how to approach this new person. Blondie took another step back.
“Everyone,” he said, eyes still locked with the kid’s, “This is Funsize. Funsize, this is everyone. I will be right back. You will stay on this roof.”
Ah, so Funsize was another Peter, then. Cute. He was somewhere between Miles and Gwen’s height and approximately the breadth of a bean across. Kid needed feeding. Probably burned through all his calories in seconds from vibrating at his current frequency of excitement.
Blondie turned his head ever so slightly and Funsize was off, whipped around and fascinated by Benj.
“Peter—Funsize, no,” Blondie said already chasing after him to get him out of Benj’s face.
“You look like Big Peter!” Funsize said. Benj edged away slowly.
Oh, this sweet child. If he thought Blondie was big Peter, just wait until he saw Peter himself. Blondie looked at Peter desperately again.
“I think he’s a Tats,” he said. “Except he’s crazy. Can you watch him until I get Tats back here to confirm?”
Yeah, of course.
“WOAH.”
Ah. Timely.
“You’re HUGE.”
He wasn’t, but sure.
“Oh my god. What’s your name??”
“He’s very sweet, he’s just extremely excitable,” Blondie said over the kid. He’d already abandoned them for the other young ‘uns.
“WOW, you’re a girl?”
Gwen was gonna slap him.
“I got it,” Peter told Blondie while that trouble brewed under Ham’s watch. “Go get Tats.”
Blondie thanked him by pressing his hands together silently and then hopping off back into the In Between. That left the rest of them with Funsize who, amazingly, caught Gwen’s hand when it shot out to execute her offense-response.
Huh. He was fast, this one.
He lost interest in Gwen almost immediately. Miles was standing next to her.
“And you! Your suit is crazy! Did you make it?”
Miles blinked at him and looked down at the spider on his chest like he’d forgotten, himself, whether he’d made it.
“I, uh. Designed it, I guess,” he said, “But I didn’t—”
“That’s amazing. I should make a black suit. Stealth suit—I’d call it a stealth suit. And who are you?”
Peni was just as fascinated by this guy as he was by her.
“I’m Peni!” she said brightly. “Did you make your suit? It’s different from the others’.”
Funsize went rigid for a moment and then burst out in excitement, “I did! I made this one, it’s kind of like the one Mr. Stark gave me but better. Look, I put pockets in!”
“Woah! What’s it made out of?”
“It’s a polymer mix.”
“It’s got like, scales??”
“Yeah, really tiny. Layered it with very fine carbon fiber to help deflect bullets.”
“Oh my god. Does it work?”
“Nope!”
“That’s amazing!”
“Right??”
Gwen gave Peter a mortified expression, while Miles tried to hide his giggling. Peter felt Benj peek out from where he’d hidden behind his shoulder. He, like Peni, could smell a fellow nerd inventor from a mile away.
“What’s your name, kid?” Peter asked. The kid spun around to set his huge white eyes on him. They squinted a little and then, in one fluid motion, he yanked off his mask.
“Peter,” he said with huge brown eyes and a sweetheart face. Tats. He had to be Tats. “Peter Parker.”
He was all windswept without even trying, this one. Like he lived in a perpetual mini-tornado of his own making. He had a brilliant smile and deep dimples which he directed right back to Peni. She was ecstatic. She introduced him to mini-Sp//dr and the crowd went wild.
Blondie took that opportunity to jump back out of the In Between with Tats on his heels in his eye-searing suit. The kid turned that way and Tats froze dead for a second.
“Hi!” the kid chirped.
Tats flattened a hand against his chest and sighed in relief.
“Oh, thank fuck, he’s not me,” he said.
Blondie gave him the saddest look ever.
“He’s not?”
“No. Thank Jesus.”
Peter tried to determine if this relief came from escaping second-hand embarrassment or from Tats’s deep understanding that the younger version of himself was a safety-hazard waiting to happen.
Blondie sighed and scratched his head.
“Well, if he’s not you then I dunno what to do with him, he’s having a problem with—”
“Double D’s latest jerkwad is trying to kill me.”
Oh, okay. This one was attached to a Daredevil, then. Blondie watched the kid like he’d maybe considered this jerkwad’s methods himself a time or two in their brief acquaintance.
“Oh?” Tats asked, “Which one?”
“Bullseye?”
Tats cocked his head slowly, evaluating. Then shrugged with both shoulders.
“Well, that sucks,” he said. “Nice knowin’ ya.”
Tats, no.
The kid hummed, though, almost like he’d expected that answer. The rest of them scrambled a bit because neither side of this exchange was how they, as a team, operated. Tats didn’t spend enough time with them to understand this.
“What’s with your suit?” Tats asked, moving past Blondie’s arm and waving off his scolding to get closer to the kid and squint at it through his mask.
“It’s scales. They don’t work, but I’m working on that,” Funsize told him, happy to let him into his space.
“’Course it’s not gonna work, they’re flat. You gotta go round if you want to deflect anything,” Tats grumbled, jabbing a finger at the material. “And carbon-fiber? Psh. You can do better than that. This shit ain’t flexible enough for what we need it for.”
The kid snapped his head back up to Tats’s in awe.
“Are you a scientist?”
Tats looked him dead in the eye.
“Nope.”
Tats, why? Why are you like this?
“That’s so cool.”
“Ehn. Not really.”
“I wanna be a scientist.”
“Surprise, surprise.”
“Do you work for SI? Or Oscorp? Or any of the big five? I wanna work for SI.”
“Well, pal, you then, are in luck.”
“Yeah?”
Tats, do not ruin this child’s dreams. Peter was begging him.
“Place burned right the fuck down two years ago.”
Blondie covered his face with both hands in horror. Funsize’s eyes went wide and then his whole face crumpled.
“That’s horrible.”
Tats shrugged.
“That’s the way things are.”
“He’s fucking with you, kid,” Peter interrupted before this got out of hand. Funsize stared at him and then mugged hard at Tats.
“You’re a dick,” he decided.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Tats said offhandedly, “Anyways, Bullseye is DD’s problem. He’s just gonna have to figure that shit out.”
Funsize pouted and looked out over the lights of the city.
“I know that, but he’s got like, scissors stuck in his leg again and I wanted to help.”
Sci..ssors?
“Yeah, him and Bullseye were duking it out in another office building and he’s doing the thing he does where he rage-screams and Wade has to lay on him for a while so he doesn’t hurt himself.”
Good to know? Blondie was interested in this and so was Miles. They were both very fond of their young, spry and optimistic Daredevil. Peter was of the personal opinion that they shouldn’t get too attached to him. That guy always went off the deep end eventually.
“Did you tell your Wade this guy was trying to murder you?” Gwen asked.
“No, I just told you. He’s busy.”
“Who’s Bullseye?” Benj asked.
That was a conversation for another day. Peter uncrossed his arms.
“He actively chasing you?” he asked. Funsize confirmed this, then explained that Blondie had shown up just in the nick of time actually. Bullseye had chased him to the city’s docks and Funsize didn’t really know where to go from there.
This sounded like it might be kind of fun to Peter. He grinned back at the others.
“Y’all thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” he asked.
Benj got it first. He bustled off in a hurry to go change into his suit. Gwen and Ham got it after him and Miles and Peni looked at each other and then back to him.
“No?” Miles said for the two of them and their new friend.
Divide and conquer.
Funsize’s verse looked a whole lot like Peter’s actually, with the exception of the Brooklyn bridge not being under construction and there being a hell of a lot more bicycles in the street. Funsize told them very seriously that bike theft was a problem these days. Then he rushed off in the direction of what could only be his and his team’s meeting roof, and sure enough, when they all got there, there was a Deadpool pinning down a furious Daredevil by sitting on his hips. This Daredevil had zero qualms about foul language. He also had a set of scissors sticking ominously out of one of his thighs.
The blood loss did not seem to be slowing him down much.
Deadpool looked over his shoulder at the sound of feet hitting the rooftop and did a double then a triple take.
“I got you backup, Double D,” Funsize announced in high spirits.
Daredevil stopped struggling in confusion. He cocked his head to the side and appeared to finally notice Deadpool’s stillness. He patted a little at Deadpool’s thigh.
“Wade? What’s going on?” he asked.
“C’mere, Pete,” Deadpool said instead of answering.
Peter knew that tone. Blondie and Tats looked to him for guidance here.
“Peter B. Parker,” Peter said, holding out a hand in Deadpool and Daredevil’s direction, knowing damn well one couldn’t see it and the other would rather gut himself than shake it. “From what we’ll go ahead and call Universe A. These guys,” he said gesturing to the rest of them, “Are from Universes, B, C, D, E, F and G. That’s Blondie, Miles, Gwen, Ham, Peni, Benj, and Tats. Heard you’re fighting Bullseye; we’re here to help.”
The lower half of Daredevil’s face did some complicated acrobatics and he patted a couple more times at Deadpool’s thigh.
“Am I conscious?” he asked.
Deadpool didn’t move.
“Wade? Hello? Pete—Peter, am I conscious? Is this the purring thing all over again?”
Hold up.
The purring thing?
“Get fucked,” Deadpool growled. “We ain’t playin’ dimension games tonight.”
“Waaade,” Funsize whined. “You’re the one who said we needed more people if we were gonna do this right.”
Deadpool very slowly turned his white gaze onto Funsize. Funsize shut up and looked away fast and hard.
“You,” Deadpool said, “Are supposed to be at home.”
“I can’t just sit at home when you and Double D are fighting a psychopath.”
“You can, you should, and you’re going to.”
“Seriously, can someone either narrate or give me a reality check? Is this a blood loss thing?”
Peter actually kind of liked this Daredevil. He’d lost a bit of the wind in his sails in the face of—well. He wasn’t even sure what it was in the face of, but he was being pretty chill about it. Despite the scissors, yikes.
“They’re like me, Wade. Better, even! The big guys have been doing Spiderman for forever! And anyways, they just want to distract the guy and to give Double D an opening,” Funsize argued.
Deadpool was not sold. Daredevil perked right up though and started shoving at Deadpool’s thighs with a little more force.
“I like this plan,” he said, valiantly pressing forward despite, or perhaps just blissfully ignorant of Deadpool increasing the pressure on his hips.
“You’re hallucinating,” Deadpool snapped at him.
“You’re lying,” Daredevil snipped right back.
Funsize huffed. “Wade, come on. You know it’ll be easier and faster for all of us.”
“Wade,” Tats said out of nowhere. He got Deadpool’s full attention. He peeled off his mask and stared at Deadpool with the same brown eyes and windswept mop of hair as Funsize. He winked. “Gimme a shot, huh?”
Funsize dropped everything and went wild.
“You’re me?? You—you’re—you’re ME???”
“What the fuck is happening?” Daredevil asked over this commotion.
“He’s—Matt! Matt, he’s me!”
“Who’s you? Why’re you sayin’ my damn name in front of—”
“He’s me! Oh my god! You’re a scientist! Does that mean I’ll be a scientist? You’re still Spiderman! How old are you? Where do you work? What college did you go to? Are you still friends with—”
“Hey, easy kid, I’m not you-you,” Tats said with a cock to his hip. “I’m a version of you. When I was you-sized, I was a whole lot less,” he waved vaguely at the kid, “Lively.”
Funsize’s enthusiasm was not even a little dampened. Deadpool cocked his head extremely to the left in surprise.
“Would someone please fucking describe what the fuck is happening?” Daredevil moaned, pounding a fist against Deadpool’s thigh now in aggravation.
“There are eight Spideys in front of you in addition to your own,” Tats said, “There’s me, an old-ass version of your Spidey, two tall skinny fuckers, one with brown hair and one blonde. There’s a black kid in a black suit, a gal with a bad attitude in a white suit, another guy with goggles and a hat, a pig, and a normal-ass middle-schooler with a robot spider. We’re all from different dimensions, we’re all Spiderman in our dimension, and we’re here to help you deal with Bullseye.”
Silence.
“Okay, well, I did ask,” Daredevil said. Then he grabbed a fistful of Deadpool’s suit to drag him down and stage-whisper in his ear, “Knock me out on the count of three, alright?”
“Double D,” Funsize snapped. “They came all this way to help. We can’t just tell ‘em to fuck off.”
Funsize appeared to have hit on some deeply ingrained fear of rudeness in his Daredevil because the guy froze in horror and shoved Deadpool out of his face.
“Thank you?” he blurted out immediately, “But no thanks? I’ve got this?”
“The scissors say otherwise,” Benj pointed out lightly.
“What scissors?”
Oh, honey.
As thanks for confusing the fuck out of a maniac with deadly aim, Daredevil treated them all to bandages and icepacks on his roof. He himself endured both Tats and Deadpool holding him down and tying knot after knot of stitches in his side.
Funsize watched this vibrating. Blondie practically had to corral him into his lap to keep him from going over there to harass Tats more. Blondie pretended that this was a hug. Miles and Gwen thought that whole thing was hilarious. Gwen mimicked Peter by squeezing Peni in her own lap while they both giggled.
It was adorable.
But that was not what Peter was interested in right now.
No. He and Ham and Benj were distracted.
Funsize was vibrating. Like. Actually vibrating. At first Blondie was stunned by it and kept checking him over, cuddling him closer and then pulling away and staring down at him. Funsize and his dimples shone back up at him every time. Then Blondie hugged him close again and listened. After a couple rounds of this, he looked directly at Peter and jerked his head a bit, asking him to come over. He handed off the kid, who went happily into Peter’s arms without so much as a hitch. Benj and Ham peered at them from behind.
Peter could feel it now. The kid’s chest shook, like a really fast shiver or tremble, against his own.
He was purring.
Honest to god, fucking purring.
And to Peter’s blinding horror, his chest started doing the same goddamn thing. He pulled the kid away to make sure it really was his own chest doing it, and sure enough, he was vibrating right alongside Funsize.
“What the fuck is happening?” he asked, suddenly and startlingly aware of the slight buzz under his voice. Blondie and Ham and Benj stared at him with huge eyes and dropped jaws.
They didn’t have an answer for him, so he addressed the kid. He seemed pretty chill about their current situation.
“What’s happening right now?” Peter asked him a little desperately. Funsize blinked up at him and then came in close to Peter. He pressed his cheek against the back of the right side of Peter’s neck so that their collarbones mostly aligned. The vibrating intensified. Peter could feel their collarbones slightly juddering together. He could feel the bottom of the kid’s throat shaking lightly next to his.
The kid seemed to enjoy this very much.
And yeah, it felt weird but also kind of? Nice?
Peter was pretty sure it felt nice. He had no fucking idea why, but it did, and that shit was starting to make his upper chest flutter a bit.
He glanced up and noticed that they’d attracted the attention of most of the others. Gwen let Peni go so that they and Miles could slink in closer.
“Are you…purring?” Miles asked.
“Maybe?” Peter tried. He looked at Blondie who leaned over and listened to his back. He nodded. What the actual fuck? He jerked his head over to Ham and Benj. They kind of bared their teeth and reluctantly nodded.
What the fuck.
He pulled the kid back so that they weren’t pressed together anymore. Funsize smiled at him patiently and serenely.
“Is this normal for you?” Peter asked him.
“Yeah,” Deadpool called over for him. “He communes with my damn cat all the time.”
Peter stared harder at the small person in his grasp. Funsize had gone kind of liquid-y. He was happy to be maneuvered, it seemed, so long as there wasn’t any malintent behind it. Peter could feel vibrations in his hands from the kid’s back. He referred back to Ham.
“Am I still doing it?” he asked.
“Yeah, pal, you are,” Ham told him. Peter squinted at the kid.
“Stop,” he told him.
“I can’t,” Funsize said with a shrug.
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“It just happens. Can’t stop it. Can’t start it. It does its own thing.”
That was probably the scariest thing Peter had heard in months. And only then did he realize that he’d stopped purring himself. He blinked down at his chest and then let the kid go to put a hand flat against it.
“See? You’re uncomfortable now,” Funsize said easily, “So it went away.”
What.
“It’s a nice thing,” Funsize said languidly. “Happens when there are nice things happening.”
What, what, what.
Oh, god. What if—what—what was he supposed to tell MJ??? He thought his mutation had stabilized. He thought he’d already documented all its quirks and functions. He had an excel sheet which listed everything out, he tested it as far as he possibly could. Piling storage containers on each other. Measuring angles of maintaining balance.
He’d thought.
He’d thought.
He’d—
“Hey, you’re kinda freaking out about this, it’s not a big deal,” Funsize told him. “It’s a nice thing. The big me probably does it, too. Hey, Big Me?”
Tats popped up in Peter’s line of vision with a hum.
“Do you purr too?”
A pause. Peter hadn’t been this desperate for an answer in years.
“Oh yeah,” Tats said. “All the time. Can’t eat Fruit Loops without shaking the damn bowl sometimes.”
That was not comforting in any way whatsoever.
“This guy purrs like us,” Funsize said. He pressed himself up against Peter’s chest again and started vibrating and, just like that, Peter started vibrating right back. Tats laughed.
“Awwww, he likes you,” he told Funsize. He then waved Blondie away from Peter’s back and cuddled up against that himself, so that Peter was stuck between these two other-model Peters. Tats’s vibrating was mega loud and really strong. It sounded and felt like a rumble more than a vibrate and was audible to even Miles and Gwen who were crouched a few feet away, now gaping.
“This is insane,” Gwen said.
“I want to purr,” Miles decided. Because of course he would. He looked up expectantly at Blondie like he had anything to do with this. Blondie rightfully shrugged with his whole body.
“I dunno if I can??” he said. He looked down at Peter and rubbed his knuckles against the side of his jaw. “Maybe if you can, I can?”
Peter didn’t know. He didn’t know anything anymore.
So Peter could purr. And not only could he purr, but now that Funsize had set it off once, it was like it he was constantly fucking purring.
“Why?” he begged of Tats.
“I dunno, man. Just ‘cause I guess. Hey, little one, can you talk to cats too?”
Oh god, no. Please. There had to be limits.
“I dunno about talk,” Funsize said. He pulled at his Wade’s suit until he got his attention and then asked the guy.
“No, it’s not really talking,” Wade said, as he was apparently the primary observer of this behavior. “More like uh, chirping? ‘Mrrlp’-ing? I dunno, Bella has a pretty standard set of ‘I’ve been disturbed’ sounds. Might be that kiddo here’s just picked ‘em up subconsciously.”
So Peter was going to learn from cats now? That’s what his future looked like?
“Dude, it’s fine,” Wade told him, a little put out.
Maybe to him. He didn’t have a wife with a twisted mind like Peter did.
“You have a wife?”
Yes, and she was going to exploit the living shit out of this.
“Oh, shit, man. I don’t even—uh. I guess that is kinda complicated. Not much you can do, though.”
Ain’t that the goddamn truth?
MJ screamed when he finally came clean about it about a week later. It was extremely hard to hide. He was pretty sure she hadn’t been this happy since their wedding day.
He didn’t know how he felt about that.
“Do it, do it, do it,” she chanted, smashed up against his back on the couch.
“I can’t do it under pressure,” he sniffed.
“Do it, do it, do it!”
God. See? This was exactly what he was—
She screamed in delight.
The worst. It was the worst.
Miles desperately wanted to purr. No one wanted to purr more than Miles did and he was pissed right the fuck off that Blondie did not purr and that Gwen did not purr and that Peni and Ham did not purr.
He did, however, make the discovery for the rest of them that poor Benj could purr, and Benj joined Peter in being fucking horrified at his body.
“Make it stop,” he pleaded with Peter.
Man, if he knew how to, they wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. That would have been the first thing Peter would have told him after he found out that he was afflicted with this ailment.
Tats told them both that they were being ridiculous. He claimed that if you found a comfortable place, like on the floor or under a couch, you could basically lull yourself to sleep anywhere. Tats had very strange definitions of the word ‘comfortable.’
Peter did not find this to be the case. No, instead he found that being in the mere presence of his wife doing normal things like grocery shopping or making dinner or watching TV was enough to set that shit off.
Benj, the poor fuck, found that napping set him off and that the purring was accompanied by a devastating new drooling habit.
Peter resolved to be grateful for that which he did and did not have upon learning this information.
Miles was still upset. By the end of the month, he’d worked out Peter’s and Benj’s and Tats’s purr triggers and had set his sights on dredging up Blondie’s latent abilities.
Blondie refused to be with him for longer than fifteen minutes at a time. Flat out refused.
One of the ways he avoided Miles was by verse hopping and he was taking up space in Peter’s window when Peter heard it. Lighter than his own, much lighter. Almost imperceptible if you didn’t know what you were listening for.
“You poor sap,” he told Blondie’s sleeping form.
Miles was going to be furious.
“PETER.”
Kid damn near gave him a heart attack.
“Miles,” he said back, reaching back to Miles’s calling hands and pulling open a window to talk to him.
“I DID IT.”
Did what? Finally stopped torturing Blondie? Fat chance.
“NO. I PURRED.”
What.
“I did it!! I didn’t even know I was doing it! Until Mom told me to turn off all the fans and then it wasn’t a fan!!”
Peter was? Happy? For him?
“I like it,” Miles told him with firmly set eyebrows. “Okay, that’s all. Bye!”
And the window closed.
Peter felt a little shell-shocked. Was it all of them, then? Could they all purr?
Nope.
Gwen couldn’t. She was bitter. Peni couldn’t. She was bitter. Ham couldn’t. He was not.
A couple months went by uneventfully, and then there was three days in there that were far too eventful, borderline touch-and-go. They’d nearly lost Benj for good there. Without meaning to, they all settled around him in Blondie’s living room where they’d stuffed him onto the couch for some well-earned sleep. Blondie’s MJ came home early and stood in the entrance of the room for several long seconds before they all noticed her.
She gave them huge eyes and dropped her keys into the bowl by the door.
“It sounds crazy in here,” she said.
Did it?
“What’re you talkin’ about, babe?” Blondie asked muzzily from the floor by the coffee table. He followed the sun as it moved across the apartment.
MJ side eyed them harder.
“Y’all sound like motorboats,” she declared.
And then, and only then, did those of them who could do it, realize that they were vibrating at different frequencies. No one could stop.
“No, no, don’t mind me,” she said. “It’s kind of cute. I think it’s making your friend feel better.”
Huh. So it was. Benj looked like he’d finally drifted off.
Well, at least it was good for something, then. Maybe it wasn’t the worst thing after all.