Haruhi stared dramatically into the blood-red sunset, her rifle slung over her right shoulder. The noise of undead hordes echoed across the tarnished landscape, playing a hellish symphony of doom as her theme song.

"Okay, team," she said, turning to her companions. "We've got one shot at this. Mikuru needs that antidote, and it's somewhere in that zombie-infested city."

Roll the dice. Koizumi's turn.

The battle-hardened warrior at Haruhi's left grinned. "We'll get that medicine. Don't you worry."

Roll again. Damn it. My turn.

"But how will we ever defeat the zombies?" Kyon asked. "There are simply far too many of them."

Roll. Nagato.

"With our combination of firepower, Itsuki Koizumi's charisma skill, Miss Suzumiya's leadership boost, and the odds of landing critical attacks, we will-..."

"Yuki! You're not supposed to talk about the game inside the game!"

"We will win with the power of teamwork."

"That's better! Mikuru, your turn."

The redheaded, bulletproof-bikini-wearing beauty at the rear of the group cowered in fear. "B-... but I don't want to fight the zombies!"

"Mikuru, you're dying of zombie-itis! Act sicker!"

"I-I mean," she swooned, "oh, I just couldn't bear to fight another horde of zombies!"

Haruhi grinned and swiped up the dice off the game board. "This is fun," she declared, tossing the die across the table and gaining a random number of charisma points or something. "It's like a real zombie apocalypse!"

"It is quite interesting," Koizumi admitted, smiling stupidly.

"It's too scary," Miss Asahina whined, hugging herself tightly, on the verge of tears. If she didn't look so damned cute when she did that, I might have felt a little more sorry.

"Quiet," our leader shushed, putting a finger to her lips. "It's my turn to talk. We're going to storm the city."

Okay, allow me to explain. My name is Kyon. What you're seeing here is called a role-playing game, and the players in this game are none other than your friendly-neighborhood SOS Brigade. Suzumiya was going through a zombie phase. Don't ask me where she got the board game, because I honestly don't know...

"Kyon!" she snapped, "Pay attention. We're attacking the city."

I sighed and reluctantly reassumed my role.

"Look out," Kyon cried, hefting his machine gun into a firing position. He squeezed the trigger, and amber explosions painted the drab and barren horizon.

I rolled the dice again. Everyone looked at the numbers quizzically. Except for the human calculator with purple hair, who announced, "Kyon blindly fires and misses every shot."

"Damn it, Kyon!" Haruhi scolded, huffing and crossing her arms over her chest.

I slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand and groaned. It's not even my fault...

Koizumi rolled next. Mikuru rolled afterwards, tossing the die like it had been lit ablaze. Yuki gently dropped the pair of dice last.

Itsuki somersaulted to the ground, planting his knee firmly into the dirt and unleashing a salvo of well-placed shots into the heads of several undead.

Asahina screamed and struggled to fire her pistol, but failed as a zombie ambushed her from behind. The creature roared and tore at her throat with ravenous hunger.

Mikuru herself nearly fainted at the thought of it.

Nagato stood solemnly behind the chaos, her golden eyes glaring through the glass lens of the scope on her rifle. Her pallor finger squeezed the trigger thrice. Click. Bang. Click. Bang. Click. Bang.

"Yuki," Haruhi growled, "quit hogging all the kills!"

By some cruel twist of fate, Nagato missed every shot and no zombies died.

Jesus. She played god even in the board game.

"Fear not!" Suzumiya, the group's brave leader proclaimed. With startling quickness, she dashed to the left and right, zig-zagging unpredictably and blasting away walking corpses with the business-end of her shotgun.

One headshot sent several chunks of skull and flesh sprawling across the earth. The second destroyed another hellspawn by obliterating its chest and causing its body to collapse. Unfortunately, the third blast, aimed at the zombie that held Mikuru, succeeded in disintegrating both the monster's face as well as the helpless girl's.

"Wait, what?" Suzumiya blurted, shocked and confused. "What happened?"

Nagato stared expressionlessly at the board, unfazed by the redhead's death. "The spray effect of your weapon combined with the recoil drawback disrupted your accuracy skill and you fired incorrectly."

"That's not a thing!" Haruhi exclaimed, flustered.

Koizumi read the instruction manual sadly, shaking his head. "I believe Miss Nagato is correct."

Miss Asahina had long-since fallen from her seat, and she laid sprawled across the floor, pale and unconscious. Her eyelids fluttered and she moaned sickly, "I can't do it anymore..."

"Oh, don't be such a baby," the brunette scolded before turning back to Yuki. "Well, it didn't kill her, right?"

"The caliber of the weapon was high enough to prove lethal," she explained emotionlessly. "And headshots are ordinarily fatal, in-game or otherwise."

I stifled a laugh.

Haruhi cast a fiery glare in my direction before standing from her seat and huffing uselessly. "Fine. We'll just have to play again tomorrow. You're all dismissed."

Though neither I or Mikuru were looking forward to playing more of the game the next day, I'm sure we were both happy to be done with it for the time being. But, as I should have known by now, a meeting of the SOS Brigade can never end so simply.

"Kyon," Koizumi said as soon as Haruhi left, stopping me from leaving with one hand on my shoulder. "Stay for a minute, would you?"

Jeez. Don't say stuff in that soft tone of voice with your hand on my shoulder. "Yeah, whatever."

"We have something to discuss with you."

I almost jumped out of my skin when Nagato spoke from behind me. "Don't sneak up on me like that," I gasped.

"I did not," she countered sternly.

"That's not important now," Itsuki told us, policing us like we were children and he was a fed-up adult. The burning orange sunset silhouetted his permanently smiling face as he spoke. "What is important, however, is the current phase that Miss Suzumiya has been going through recently."

"You mean the zombie stuff?" I asked bluntly.

He seemed to cringe at my lack of eloquence. "Yes. The zombie stuff."

"Due to her involvement and resulting fascination with the idea and presence of reanimated cadavers, the amount of anomalies stemming from Miss Suzumiya's powers has decreased exponentially." Nagato's caramel eyes glinted in the amber glow of the approaching evening, staring at me like I was supposed to understand exactly what the hell she had just said.

But I didn't, so I replied with an intelligent-sounding, "Um..."

"Miss Nagato means that because of Suzumiya's fascination with the undead, she has become less likely to create closed spaces and other such disturbances," Koizumi barely translated.

"Ah," I responded, slightly more knowledgeable now than I had been five seconds ago. "I see. And what does this have to do with me?"

"We believe that it is best that she be kept interested in this genre for as long as possible," Yuki said, staring at me intently. "And we believe that it is up to you to do so."

"Why me?" I questioned, annoyed that the fate of the world always came back to rest on my shoulders. My back was still sore from the last time.

Koizumi's plastic grin somehow widened. "It's no secret that Miss Suzumiya has taken a considerable liking to you, Kyon. If she's going to listen to whatever any of us have to say, it's going to be you. After all, you are her knight in shining armor."

My face flushed. What a creepy bastard. Before I could protest, though, Nagato suddenly stepped to my side.

"Miss Suzumiya's liking of Kyon does not factor into this equation," she corrected in a very matter-of-fact manner. "And even if it did, there is still not enough evidence to suggest that she wishes for a romantic relationship with him." Then she turned to me. "In any case, we recommend your keeping Suzumiya involved with the horror genre for as long as possible. It seems to calm her; a very useful trait to behold when tasked with observation."

And with that, Nagato marched out of the room.

Koizumi snickered at me as I watched. "My, my. Did you detect a hint of jealousy in Miss Nagato's voice?"

"I'm not..." I stuttered, stunned and confused. "... not sure."

"But she's right," he said, serious once more. "Keeping Suzumiya interested in this walking-dead fiasco might be our best plan of action right now. If she gets too excited, who knows what she could do?"

"Start a zombie-apocalypse," I suggested in all-seriousness.

He winced. "Don't jinx it."