Ten Percent Worth Dying For Season 1: This Universe is Experiencing Technical Difficulties
Chapter 1, in which Legendary Girl A gets hit by a bus
Standard Disclaimer: fanfiction consists of derivative works written by fans who wish to enhance appreciation of the original works, not supplant them! Please support the creators of the original works referenced in this fanfic, particularly Lucky Star.
It was on a bright, clear morning in late February that Izumi Konata got hit by a bus.
She had walked into the Animate Ikebukuro shop that morning to do some browsing, more as a way to stay in the habit than to look for something specific. Well, she could acquire the necessary third copy of that obscure Haruhi manga, but with her allowance being finite purchases had to be prioritized. Get the first copy as soon as it comes out, the second after a time limit of about a month, and the third "my house burned down" copy – to be stashed securely offsite in Dad's rented storage locker – whenever there was a lull in new releases to spend money on.
Konata's visits traced a surprisingly wide circuit across the greater Tokyo area, checking frequently for spur-of-the-moment deals that might not have been advertised over the Internet. A capacious mind was occupied with anything but schoolwork: scheduling the journeys, finding bizarre loopholes in Tokyo transport regulations that let her save thousands of yen a year on train tickets, allocating her allowance a million hypothetical ways among possible acquisitions, sometimes wheedling on-the-spot discounts out of clerks, and finally consuming the obtained material in many-night marathons of gaming, watching, reading. And she still found time to hang out with her friends, wasting hours and hours of their time on inane conversations about food, the weather, and the finer points of moe.
All that and a couple of other things were what made her 'Legendary Girl A', famous, and even somewhat sought after as a customer by bored storekeepers and greasy-faced producers of doujins. The staff of this particular Animate, though, had a couple of additional facts on her that were not public knowledge. Facts that explained why they were so particularly desperate to sell something to her. Most days, they had terrible luck doing this. (Being so close to downtown, the Ikebukuro location was fun to visit, but low on Konata's list of likely places to get good deals.) But on this particular day...
On this particular day, Konata was spotted by a brown-haired assistant named Giro. He matched the entering girl to the description he'd been given: long-haired blunette with ahoge. Short, looks about twelve years old (despite being in her upper year of high school already, the mission briefing had noted). Perpetual sleepy-satisfied catlike expression on her face. It was her!
"Aoi-Tencho-sama! Legendary Girl A... has arrived once more!" he announced breathlessly in the back room of the store. Giro's boss "Aoi-Tencho", or the Green Shift Manager, was considered by those who knew him to be a pretty intense guy.
"WHAT!" he screamed, as though being struck by lightning. He collected his wits soon enough though. Once again, it would be the test of a lifetime for him. "Now listen carefully, everyone! She may have shaken us off last time... but today! We must absolutely make sure that she reaches the goal known as our cash register, do you hear me?"
The staff cheered their leader wildly, and went through a quick Employee Morale Ritual. It involved pumping their fists and screaming like maniacs, and it put them in the correct mood to perform their assigned roles with efficiency and precision.
For Green Shift Manager could inspire his staff like no one else could. Most certainly it would be the infamous Green Shift Manager (and not his stupid rival, the Red Shift Manager) who would successfully sell Legendary Girl A an item from his store. Any sort of item would do. But moreover! Green Shift Manager would use his sleight of hand to surreptitiously enclose within this item a certain artifact. Created by a staff of trained writers over countless grueling months of analysis of otaku fads, both inane and not-so-inane:
The Preferred Ultimate Fanfiction.
Legendary Girl A would find this Preferred Ultimate Fanfiction enclosed with her purchase when she got home. She would read it. She would be mildly amused at it. And as a result, all would be right with the world. Maybe Green Shift Manager might even get a raise afterwards for doing such a good job.
Well, he could dream, couldn't he?
"She seems to be at a loss." Giro noted to the Manager as they peered at the girl from behind a rack of recent manga editions.
"Then..." Green Shift Manager permitted himself a chuckle. ".. let us help her find her way."
Tencho went into the back room while Giro snuck through a parallel aisle until he was adjacent to Konata.
"Tencho," he said into his walkie-talkie. "Attempting to determine Legendary Girl A's objective for the day."
"Good." answered Tencho. "What's the newest comic out?" he asked his blonde assistant. What was her name again? Gero, or something? He cursed the fact that, for some obscure security reason, the boss insisted on replacing his entire staff every two weeks.
Gero (or whatever she was called) did some lightning-fast research. "Volume 14 of Sgt. Frog, sah!"
"Excellent!" shouted Tencho. They had it in stock already. "Raise the height of the goods to the appropriate height for Legendary Girl A, and deploy the flyers!"
"Tama! Tama!" shouted a third assistant for unknown reasons, as she began to rearrange the shelves faster (and more neatly) than a tornado ever could.
In the aisles, Konata paused in confusion. Did something just move past... wait. Were these Sgt. Frog comics on the shelf a second ago?
"Manager!" shouted Giro into his walkie-talkie in panic. "Her objective was not the comics section!"
"WHAT!" shouted Tencho. All that work had been for nothing?
"Tencho, sir!" came the response. "Switch target to the DVD section."
"Understood. Thank you, uh..." he tried to remember the clerk's name "... Giro."
The other assistants were in the back room waiting for their orders.
"Just to be sure." Tencho told them. "Block all side paths so that Legendary Girl A will be forced to proceed directly to the new releases."
Konata was startled to find that two female clerks were in her way with boxes.
"Gero-gero-gero-gero buildup!" one yelled, having first apologized profusely for blocking Konata's escape.
"Tama-tama-tama-tama buildup!" the other echoed.
"Okay..." said Konata and indeed found herself with no choice but to proceed to the new release shelf.
Hmm, here was a promising title. She picked it up, wondering why it suddenly felt like she was doing something momentous, as though she were Howard Carter opening up Tut's tomb for the first time in thousands of years.
Taking his position behind the cash register, Green Shift Manager nearly gave an excited laugh, but stopped himself in time. I've finally become a winner today!
"Comrades!" he whispered into the walkie-talkie. "Let us certainly have a wild celebration tonight!"
"Yes sah!" everyone responded enthusiastically.
The Green Shift Manager suddenly found his focus slipping as a weird fantasy played itself in his mind of lying on a beach with beautiful girls who were expressing great interest in his anime collection...
Ennh, thought Konata. On the other hand, I can always buy this DVD when the price goes down. She put it down on the shelf.
"It was a feint!" Giro screamed into his headset.
"NOOO!" yelled the Tencho as he saw Legendary Girl A turn to exit the shop entirely. Was he doomed to lose another several weeks waiting for her to show up again? (Not to mention that in an unusual stroke of workplace sadism, his boss had wired the displays to explode whenever they failed to sell something to Legendary Girl A, a punishment that meant they'd have to spend hours reshelving the resulting mess.)
Before exiting the doors, Konata paused momentarily before the "bin of shame" as the employees had labelled it, where particularly stupid things the store wanted to get rid of were dumped, to be purchased by severely deranged people at bargain-basement prices. (The price by weight was on average slightly higher than that of raw sewage.) She suppressed a mild and easily-suppressed urge to sort through it and satisfy a morbid sense of curiosity.
Suddenly, Green Shift Manager could see his ending. It was silly, but workable. He'd have to use his ultimate trump card for it. It had been installed as a last resort to be used only after all other last resorts had failed. He had been warned that using it repeatedly would lead to inevitable character derailment, particularly for a person of his temperament. But... this nightmare had to end today! He, the infamous Green Shift Manager, would personally deliver to Izumi Konata the Preferred Ultimate Fanfiction, and with his own two hands bring about the creation of a brave new world, a world where, where...
... he would continue to have a pretty spiffy time running a store, he supposed.
He smiled grimly, wiped some stray drool from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, adjusted his cap, looked Konata directly in the eye...
Konata wondered why the clerk behind the counter, who looked sort of like Ash Ketchum cosplayed by way of Yu-Gi-Oh by a man far too old for the role, was staring at her. No, scratch that, there was probably a far more interesting reference she could make at this point as she stared back at the clerk...
... and he activated the full hypnotic power of his Code Geass parody. Hey, maybe she could make a reference that incorporated Code Geass somehow! Konata decided before all coherent thought vanished from her brain.
"Now then," his voice filled the room, overwhelming the young girl's will immediately. "You shall bring a super-rare, bargain, out-of-print DVD out of that bin to me and purchase it." he emphasized the nature of the item carefully so that she'd be tempted to fork over the cash. Hopefully Geassed people didn't pick up on sarcasm. "And you will not notice or question my actions when I rip the DVD case open and insert a small book that will, trust me, blow your mind when you get home." That would probably do it.
As a bonus, the 'blow your mind' comment would force the girl to actually enjoy Preferred Ultimate Fanfiction. That had definitely not been a concern of its creators, but Green Shift Manager felt it his duty as a salesman to ensure the enjoyment of all his customers.
Even if in this case, he had been forced to use such underhanded tactics.
"Manager. She is picking up the item." confirmed Giro.
"Okay. Keep going." Tencho licked his lips. "Oooh, what a beautiful scene! The invisible crowd within me is cheering with wild applause at this very moment!"
"We did it!" cheered the female clerks, pumping their fists in the air.
Konata grabbed an item at random from the bin, without even looking at it.
It turned out to be a DVD re-release of an incompetent English VHS dub of a famous eighties cinematic anime. Very limited print run: only one copy. It was rumored that a disturbed otaku had meticulously faked it just to annoy a certain famous anime director. The director had been not merely annoyed but also horrified, and had expressed his horror by throwing the DVD case into the ocean while on vacation in the coastal village of Tomonoura, where it had been immediately recovered from the bottom of the bay by a garbage dredging barge.
Miraculously, it was saved intact from the landfill by a garbage worker oblivious to its true nature, who gave it to an otaku running a local anime store, who was suitably horrified (but could not bring himself to destroy the thing, due to its rarity) and palmed it off to another otaku as quickly as he could, and from there it had been handed off from otaku to otaku like a hot potato, spreading horror and misery and doing time in various remainder bins across the country. Now it had ended up in the remainder bin of Animate's Ikebukuro store, where Konata had picked it up and was now proposing to buy it.
The employees threw up a little in their mouths when they saw the title. Green Shift Manager was worried. He hoped to God his wording had been sufficiently precise. Had he doomed the poor girl to actually enjoy this... truly bottom of the barrel DVD release?
There was another slight problem: due simply to the item's rarity, it was the most expensive thing to be had in the entire Bin of Shame...
"That will be 1,785 yen." Tencho announced, having scanned the thing, opened the case, and added the item that had been his real reason to sell something to Konata in the first place.
Konata emptied the bills from her wallet, and began wordlessly to dig in the corners for loose change.
... it turned out Konata hadn't come prepared that day. All that advanced train journey scheduling, and yet she hadn't bothered to bring a fresh wad of bills? Well, Konata did things like that sometimes.
Konata started to put her change into the tray one coin at a time. The tension in the air could be cut with a knife.
She was down to one-yen coins, clinking down into the change tray. Almost there, Legendary Girl A! Don't let us down now!
The other employees forgot to put up even the slightest pretence of a cover, and had their noses pressed up against the change tray, crowding Konata from all sides. Tencho would have made a note to tell them off later, had he not also been preoccupied with the scene before him.
Konata rummaged in the corners of her wallet one last time and came up with nothing.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Three yen short." she noted. Tencho could see it. In just a second she would grab the money back and leave. All that advanced preparation for nothing. Could he ever look his subordinates in the eye again?
The infamous Green Shift Manager sweated. This was going to require some of the quickest thinking he'd ever done in his entire life!
"TAKEAPENNYLEAVEAPENNY!" he shouted in Engrish, knocking Konata's hand out of the way and throwing down three yen from his own wallet.
"Waugh!" Konata took a step back. "Hey, you scared me! What is this 'take-a-penny leave-a-penny' thing?"
"It's, uh, huhh, just what we do here!" Tencho offered lamely. "Since you're such a valued customer we can surely discount three yen on this here purchase.."
"Why do you consider me a valued customer if I've never bought anything from your store?" Konata wondered, tilting her head to one side.
The scope of the Geass was probably running out. In a moment she'd probably notice what exactly she was buying and refuse. If she had only left the store by then, he could then answer any subsequent complaints by stating that items from the Bin of Shame were non-refundable, and really, how could she not want to buy such a rare item for only 1,785 yen?
"Just take the bag and go! Go!" he whispered, waving Konata towards the door before she could react. Good, she was leaving.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he realized the full scope of what he had accomplished. Based on the few hints his boss had deigned to drop about this situation, he had probably just saved the entire concept of objective reality as he knew it. In any case, the cheering crowd within him was giving a standing ovation, and he felt a sense of peace and accomplishment he had not felt in a long time.
Outside the store, Konata stared at the item she'd bought, puzzled. How had "Warriors of the Wind" ended up on this side of the Pacific? (For that matter, when did it manage to get a DVD release?) She was pretty sure that bringing it into the country was punishable as high treason against the Japanese culture. The cover art was pretty laughable. She opened it to see if the DVD label would be just as laughable. She stared at the title on the surprisingly thick insert booklet:
Ten Percent Worth Dying For
The Preferred Ultimate Fanfiction
Being a crossover between the animes Lucky Star, Haruhi Suzumiya, Evangelion, and whatever else the authors thought to throw in at the last minute.
How had that ended up in there? Konata thought. Curiouser and curiouser. Moreover, she had not heard of this "Lucky Star" thing, which personally irked her. She worked hard at becoming the queen of otaku. Surely she should have heard of every anime and manga ever written? What if staid, studious lawyer-child Kagami suddenly made a Lucky Star reference one day and Konata didn't catch it? She would never live something like that down.
Something was not right, and Konata was determined to get to the bottom of this. She'd have to cancel her other store visits, drop in on the Hiiragis' an entire three hours earlier than they'd invited her, and put off that evening's gaming session for the sake of an all-nighter spent scouring the Internet. She removed the booklet from the case, giving it a place of honour in her bag instead. She'd have time to read it when she got home.
Konata thought back to the character of her longtime verbal sparring partner, Hiiragi Kagami. Character Type: tsundere, more or less. That one was easy. She wondered if it had solely been due to Konata's baleful influence, always keeping her on edge. But no, she seemed to remember Kagami reacting like that to the frankly bizarre antics of Misao as well. People like her were just inevitably drawn to those who could bring out their sarcastic tsuntsun edge. However, being truly tsundere also involved an entire character development arc, including a romantic foil that would eventually crack open the character's spiky shell to reveal a gentle interior world. Konata thought of her constant goading of Kagami as her public service to the world – the tougher and spikier Kagami's tsuntsun shell turned out to be, the more soft, gooey and wonderful her deredere inside would end up being for whoever persevered to crack that shell open.
Now if Kagami had a romantic foil, it would have to be someone like, someone like...
Konata was coming up blank on that one for some reason.
So Hiiragi Kagami was only a proto-tsundere, then. And she was also a good student and dutiful to her friends and family. All of Kagami's behaviour followed inexorably from these three basic principles. But! One year from now they would be graduating high school. One of the three pillars of Kagami's character would be removed forever. University just wasn't the same in terms of automatic character potential.
So what of Kagami's future destiny? Well, in her school studies Kagami was one of those "doctor or lawyer" types. Konata couldn't remember any tsundere doctor characters off the top of her head, so that meant Kagami would have to become a lawyer instead. So far, so good. But lawyers were such ordinary, boring people! It was necessary, no, essential, for Kagami to get bored with lawyering, brilliant as she would be at it. She would get frustrated with the poor quality of the evidence some down-on-his-luck detective always brought to the criminal trials, which allowed horrible criminals to roam free. She would become a detective herself, and show that man how to do the job properly!
Konata stepped back in her imagination and admired the chain of reasoning. So far it led inexorably to an image of Hiiragi Kagami, brilliant tsundere attorney by day, ace detective at night.
It was the most beautiful thing she had ever thought up in her entire life! A shame it would never happen quite that way. If Kagami had only had a dark past filled with things like street-fighting, Konata would declare her eventual development into a tsundere lawyer detective inevitable. Alas, she had an ordinary past filled with things like studying, hanging out with her friends, and nagging Konata about her homework!
Hmm... it was certainly easy to think about your friends' futures so long as you thought of them as the main character in an anime. However, Konata honestly couldn't imagine who would want to watch an anime that had her as a main character. She was just a colourful supporting character, you know? The main character goes to school, or maybe they're a regular at the cosplay cafe, and that Izumi girl is there in the background, always saying something ridiculous or interesting, but never actually advancing the plot. This meant that there was no realistic character arc that Konata could construct for herself. So there was nothing to do but go home from whatever day job she'd end up drifting into and do otaku things every day for the rest of her life.
At this point, Konata also thought back to something Miyuki had mentioned reading on the Internet... what was it called again...
インテンショーン・マニフェステーショーン立場
... "the intention-manifestation viewpoint"? She couldn't remember a single thing about what that had meant. Storyboard artist, insert a convenient flashback here if you please!
Today in class, Miyuki inadvertently teaches Konata how to ignore the constraints of objective reality.
"... on the phone trying to figure out the source of the stink in the office for that night job I was telling you about." Miyuki was explaining to Kagami one morning before class. "They're going to come and have a look at it, though."
"Miyuki, onee-chan, good morning!" Tsukasa called as she and Konata rolled into the classroom.
"Oh, you're both cutting it a bit close today." Kagami noted threateningly, pointing at the clock (only a minute left until class started). "Let's see, Tsukasa is off the hook because she had a cold recently, so it's good to sleep in a little each morning..."
Konata was jumping up and down like a small child, waving her arms as though to say 'Oh, pick me! Pick me! Say something nice to me too!'
Kagami frowned evilly as she shifted her gaze to the blunette, "You, on the other hand, ..."
"All-night gaming session." Konata stated simply, reverting to her sleepy eyesmile. It seemed the reason she looked perpetually sleepy was because she really was perpetually sleepy.
"Well then." Kagami crossed her arms and leaned back contemplatively. "I'll leave you to flounder and struggle through today's morning period. Don't ask me to lend you my homework afterwards."
"Kuroi-sensei sure is late today, isn't she?" Konata noted innocently to the others as Kagami turned to leave the room.
This made Kagami look over her shoulder with mock puzzlement. Wasn't Kuroi-sensei in the same gaming party with you or something? "Honestly," she said aloud, "you're a bad influence on sensei. This will all end in tears, I just know it. Guess I'll see you guys at lunch." she waved, hurrying to her own class.
"Anyhow," continued Konata. "Miyuki-san, what were you saying about having a part-time job? Guess that means I'm not the only one with employment here..."
"I'm curious too about what kind of job Miyuki-chan would have..." Tsukasa said, putting a finger to her mouth in wonderment.
"Oh, it's nothing much." Miyuki waved at them. "It's just a part-time secretarial position with..."
"MIYUKI-CHAN IS A SECRETARY?" screamed Konata, startling the entire classroom, the classrooms adjacent to it, and the classroom one floor below. (Next door, Kagami buried her face in her hands as her homeroom teacher looked up from his blackboard, wondering at the racket. Meanwhile, poor Shiraishi Minoru had decided to use Kuroi-sensei's absence to make an early start on his lunchbox, and nearly choked at the sudden noise.) Konata went into a sort of catatonic shock state as all sorts of potential moe situations flashed before her eyes. A little drool appeared at the corner of her mouth.
"Which company were you working for, Miyuki-chan?" asked Tsukasa.
"I was just getting to that..." Miyuki continued, deciding to ignore Konata's apoplectic trembling for the moment. "It's a part-time secretarial position with the media distribution group Animate..."
"Wait, Animate?" Konata calmed down a little. "Don't those guys have a truly insane work ethic? How do you survive?" She remembered the generally intense clerks who worked Animate's retail stores, and truly experienced a failure of imagination picturing Miyuki working for people like that.
Miyuki smiled with embarrassment. "Actually, most of my work consists of assisting their, uh... marketing department with field research. When I'm in actually in the office there's very little for me to do. I generally practice my English skills with recreational web surfing..." she trailed off guiltily.
"Wow, Miyuki is studying things even when she's wasting time!" Tsukasa exclaimed in admiration. Miyuki became quite flustered at this.
"Yeah, most office workers generally just play Minesweeper or waste their time on forums! I know because I talk to some of them on the forums!" Konata added.
"Actually, Konata-san, I think during my Web surfing I read an article by an American by the name of Steve Pavlina which you might find interesting." Miyuki smiled, trying to distract everyone from praising her embarassingly. "It deals with an experimental attitude to goal accomplishment..."
"That is interesting. I wish Kagami were here, she'd back me up that I'm a pioneer of experimental attitudes to goal accomplishment! Explain away!"
"The intention.. manifestation viewpoint?" repeated Tsukasa carefully, wondering how long these two words would be if you wrote them side by side in katakana.
"That's right, I didn't quite understand what it was about. But it seems to start from the premise that all of reality is a subjective dream that is seen by the conscious mind. By this logic, the first step to accomplishing any goal is simply visualizing the desired outcome and desiring it to manifest in reality. Only then will the necessary resources appear for someone to take action on an objective level. In principle, Pavlina-san claims, one can actually rewrite the objective aspects of reality from this viewpoint, manifesting infinite possibility, and he says that we only observe a stable reality because very few people actually desire to have an experience in which objective rules are modified. It's not actually possible to prove or disprove whether the method works, however..."
"..." Konata replied. This Miyuki lecture was somewhat more complicated than usual.
"For instance, most people organize their time in such a fashion that they would not be able to both spend as much time on otaku activities as Konata-san, while still being able to interact with her friends as she does. According to Pavlina-san's theory, it's probable that this is due simply to Konata's firm conviction that she has time to do both these things. The fact that Kuroi-sensei" she looked at the clock "is now ten minutes late for class might simply be a coincidence Konata has manifested in order to gain an additional ten minutes of social interaction time!"
Actually, that sort, kind of made sense in a sideways fashion, Konata thought. Hadn't she just spent the entire night gaming with Kuroi-sensei, unintentionally ensuring that their teacher would be completely worn out and thus unable to make it to class on time? Wait, Miyuki was still talking.
"... on the other hand, if Konata were to shift her expectations and simply think of finishing her homework in a realistic manner, she would find herself suddenly gaining the necessary resources to ..."
Homework? Konata experienced an immediate sense of primal fear and grabbed Miyuki's uniform in a supplicatory gesture.
"NO! Miyuki-san, I don't want to be a studious lawyer-child like Kagami is! You'll completely upset our character balance!" she wailed. "Isn't it enough to have two good students among our number already? If you're trying to manifest me or whatever to become that way, just forget it!"
"Ehe." giggled Tsukasa at Konata's sudden movement. She'd sort of spaced out during the lecture and had been listing names of various substances in her head. Balsamic vinegar, hydrogen azide, lime jello... she shook herself to keep from spacing out again.
"Uh... Konata-san.. calm down please." Miyuki reassured her. "Nobody is trying to force you to do homework against your will! It's just an article I read during some idle web surfing that I thought was kind of interesting.. I'm not certain I buy Pavlina-san's logic in any case..."
"Kona-chan seems to be developing an allergic reaction to homework..." Tsukasa laughed. "She wasn't anywhere near so bad about it last year!"
"Wait." Konata let go of Miyuki suddenly. "All in all, I heard something about manifesting infinite possibility with your thoughts... isn't that exactly like in 'The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya'? So, the gist of your lecture was, this Pavlina guy is like one of those Haruhi worshippers, except he thinks that everyone in the universe is Haruhi? How does that work? ... I want some of whatever that guy is smoking." she concluded.
"Americans really do have bizarre ways of thinking, don't they?" Miyuki thought aloud.
They were interrupted at this point by Kuroi-sensei sprinting into the room and trying vainly to catch her breath at the front of the class.
"Sensei!" Shiraishi Minoru shouted. "Seeing as you're so very late today, perhaps you could..."
"Bagh! Aaaaaaah..." Kuroi-sensei took a particularly loud breath, shutting him up. Gods, she thought, I was just planning to catch a fifteen-minute nap after that gaming session, but then her alarm clock chose exactly the wrong time to run out of batteries! As vengeance, she resolved to give Konata a particularly hard whack on the noggin when the girl inevitably fell asleep in class today.
Oh, certainly... so that's what it had been. Miyuki had just made the mistake of assuming that Konata cared to expend brain cells on her homework one way or the other. It just wasn't a worthy cause for Konata. But ensuring that Kagami attained the pinnacle of her character development? Now there was a reasonable thing to use frightening Haruhi-like powers on! There would be tragedy and character derailment, Konata realized, but the resulting story would simply be amazing to behold...
So, Konata decided, she was ready for the necessary conditions for Kagami to become a tsundere lawyer detective to manifest themselves, right about...
Now.
Konata wondered if there was any catch-phrase to shout or something else that Steve Pavlina made you do to access your special manifestation powers. She should have asked Miyuki to forward her a link to that article. Never mind, she was in a good mood already. Full of resolve, she dashed out into the street, from behind a parked van, and right into the path of an oncoming bus that had been speeding a little, trying to catch up to schedule.
The resulting collision threw Konata about ten meters down the street, and she hit the pavement hard. In retrospect, she managed to think before losing consciousness, this was probably a cautionary lesson of sorts about ignoring too much objective reality too quickly.
Watching from inside the store Green Shift Manager was horrified. Legendary Girl A didn't look at all good. First things first, he probably needed to call an ambulance. Then he needed to get in touch with his superiors; they'd have to scramble to come up with a plan B before it was too late. Green Shift Manager struggled with a sudden and unaccustomed wave of black despair. No! He would carry on! One way, or another, he would finish this, for the very safety of this universe depended on it!
Author's Notes: I actually saw someone get hit by a speeding car in the exact manner described here once! They weren't as badly hurt as Konata, but being thrown into the air like a ragdoll has got to mess up your day. PSA: Please look both ways when you cross the street, particularly if your view is obstructed!
Except maybe for Miyuki's smelly office (that's a big problem with my current summer job; I generally just go sit outside on a bench and do my work there) everything else in this chapter is, well...
...
Strange. Actually, I don't remember having taken any drugs recently.