The Search for Haruhi Suzumiya
By: lemonpuff
"Wait a moment," I said. My lips were dried and cracked, and each time I uttered a word, needles of pain were sent throughout my mouth. But right now, I didn't have the luxury to worry about it.
"Is this it?" Akane asked nervously.
"Should be," I replied. I took a look around at the surrounding landscape. Nothing but white, glaring sand and the heat that normally came with a desert like this. The air was dry as evidenced from my lips and parched throat. Frankly, I didn't understand how anything could live in a place like this. Cacti, snakes, birds that preyed on the deathly weak, and all those sorts of creatures were supposed live here right? However, contrary to that notion, there wasn't a single cactus or a vulture in sight; all organisms seemed to have disappeared from this area. That wasn't a particularly good sign.
"That house looks really creepy," Akane continued, her eyes glued to our objective.
I turned back to our objective: in front of us, disturbingly clashing with the desert landscape, was a large, three-story mansion covered in peeling black paint, and windows covered by shutters. It looked like one of those haunted houses found in those B grade movies. Although in our case something much worse than bloodthirsty ghosts or zombies could be living there.
"Environment looks uninhabited, can you do a scan of the house?" I asked Akane.
"No, there's some sort of field over it," Akane said, her face still petrified.
"Of course," I muttered. There was nothing else that could've been done: we had to go straight in without knowing what plane to be in. Noticing that Akane was still hypnotized with the aura of the building, I walked over to Akane and flicked her in the forehead.
"Ouch! Hey!" Akane protested, rubbing the wounded spot.
I faced the door of the mansion. "Concentrate now; no time to lose your nerves."
"Yes, sir," Akane said promptly and straightening up, "I'm sorry for my behavior, commander!"
"Remember to stay behind me, and if I say so, ghost out of here. Do you remember our objectives and their priorities?"
"Yes, sir. Number One: Look for the target. Number Two: Look for information about the target. Number Three: Come back alive."
"Good girl," I said, "As long as you stick close to me, you don't need to worry about dying."
"I'm not afraid at all!" Akane said proudly sticking her chest out, or what she had for a chest.
"Hey! You were just insulting my breasts in your mind, weren't you?" my subordinate said angrily using her arms to cover her small chest.
"Concentrate officer," I barked. Damn, she was perceptive.
We quickly ran up to the sides of the door. I was on the right, and Akane took the left.
"Ready?" I asked. From now on, talking would be kept to a minimum, and things would happen very quickly. There were no second chances, and we would have to react as fast as possible to any dangers that would be in this building. Akane nodded.
I pressed my finger to the keyhole and willed the heat to leave from it. In a matter of microseconds the lock was frozen brittle. I swung around and kicked the door, which burst open easily. I ran inside with Akane trailing behind me.
No time to stop moving, I ran through the main room. No closets, but there were two points of visibility that were obstructed: one from the behind the sofa and another behind a large cluttered table.
The state of the room indicated that someone was living here. Taking that into account with the desert around us, it was almost certain that an alien or time traveler resided here. I would have to take more caution from here on out.
"Two points clear!" Akane shouted.
When it came to it, Akane knew how to do her job well. I decided to leave the rest of the checking to her and concentrate on reacting if anything came up. We passed the main room and headed down the hallway. I concentrated on the shadowy areas, in case something unsavory were to pop up. Akane kept up with me, scanning the rooms for the target.
"Hallway closet," Akane said.
I slammed open the door in the hallway already prepared with my right palm up. Nothing popped up.
"First floor cleared!" I said quickly heading up the stairs.
"No immediate signs of the target! Four potential spots cleared!"
I nodded, and proceeded to check the second floor. It turned out to be one large room much like an attic. The room was filled with junk like old bookshelves, cardboard boxes, junk equipment and typical things that an attic would have. In this situation though, they only provided a variety of hiding spots. Akane and I would have to move slowly now.
I headed to the north section aiming my hand in front of me. I kept the training basics in my mind, which mainly consisted of making sharp turns around corners and scanning with my peripheral vision. Every step was a tense moment of expecting the unexpected. After what seemed like hours, I reached the end. I put my hands down.
No one. It was another dead end. Damn, for a second I thought I would find her here…
"South side?" I asked Akane.
She shook her head, "Came up clean."
"Oh well, I didn't expect much anyways," I lied to her.
"Does that mean we're going back to base?" Akane asked hopefully.
There wasn't any choice. Since we didn't find anyone here, there wasn't anything we could do.
"Yeah," I sighed, "we'll do the paperwork tomorrow. The field block must have been old. Whoever lived here must have evacuated only days ago."
As Akane headed to the stairs something registered in my mind. Weren't there supposed to be three floors to this building? So why did the stairs stop at the second floor?
"Akane wait," I said stopping her.
Akane stopped and gave me a quizzical look. "What is it?"
"Someone trying to be sneaky," I said breathing slowly. Looking around, I grabbed a yardstick propped against a shelf and touched it to the ceiling.
"Freeze."
A wave of blue light followed by half an inch of frost traveled from the point where the yardstick was touching the ceiling outwards. The wood in the ceiling cracked after it iced over, then a second later, shards of ice protruded in every direction. With a loud creaking noise, the ceiling finally collapsed.
As I suspected, from the explosion, a shadow dropped behind a bookshelf.
"Who's there!" I shouted knocking over the shelf.
The shadow turned out to be a hunched young woman with a large hump on her back. The girl's long black hair was offset by her pale white face. Her black lips curved upwards as she spoke, "Dangerously observant aren't you?"
"Quit it," I said, "who are you working with. Aliens or time travelers?"
Her back ripped open revealing six large spider legs that spread out menacingly.
"Guess that answers that question."
"You'll be sorry that you didn't leave me alone," the woman said.
I stepped forward motioning Akane to retreat if she could. "Look, we don't have to fight," I said calmly, "just tell me if you know anything about the whereabouts of Haruhi Suzumiya-san."
"OH HO HO HO!" shrieked the woman, "You expect me to give you information about Haruhi Suzumiya?" Lowering her tone she continued, "Why don't I slice your head open and see if you can tell me about the things I want to hear?"
"You don't have to be so impolite!" Akane shouted.
I closed my eyes and sighed. She still hadn't ran away yet?
"Final warning," I said to the spider woman.
From each of the legs of spider burst a tendril of web narrowly missing my body. After the web stuck on whatever object or wall that was behind me, the woman placed her end of the web on the floor, and then shot more lines of web at me. I dodged each of the strands and ran towards the stairs. I didn't need to worry about Akane since she could just ghost out of the webs if she got stuck.
Unfortunately, it seemed that a portion of the ceiling caved into the area in front of the stairs, which effectively meant I was trapped in the room with this woman.
"Akane," I said to my junior, "keep out, and if it looks like I'm in trouble, get out of here and report to the center."
Akane nodded, and I headed to do what I did best: destroy aliens and time travelers.
I faced the spider alien and let my hands ice over. Now, my hands would change the temperature of anything it touched to near absolute zero. All I had to do was land one punch to that bitch's face, and it would be as if I sprayed her with liquid nitrogen.
"Ah ah ah." The spider woman shot protective webbing in front of herself, and I skidded to a stop.
"See my webs," the woman asked, "they're a specialty of mine. Whenever I want, they can change to be as sharp as razor wire. Take a look." As she spoke, she demonstrated by twitching one of her web strands. A large television set was immediately sliced into two from the right top corner to the bottom.
She gave a great big smile, revealing hundreds of sharp teeth.
"iF You DoN'T WaNT To Be SLiCeD INTo FouRTY SeVeN PieCeS THeN i SuGGeST You RuN!"
I took a look at her and just punched.
The web shield that she had in front of her turned into ice and shattered as I slammed my fist into her face. The woman shrieked again, emitting a high pitch. A second later she dropped onto the ground unconscious.
"Don't talk so much," I said.
"You did it!" Akane chirped jumping up and down. She ran up to me and gave me a tight hug.
"Sergeant!"
"Sorry!" Akane said cutely sticking out a tongue.
I shook my head and surveyed the area. It didn't seem that I would get any information about Haruhi from this place, which meant I could get leave. That was good as I didn't want to stay in this black widow death trap any longer than I had to.
"Clear up the way back, Akane," I ordered. As she started swinging the yardstick to take down the remaining webs, I took my cell phone out and dialed headquarters.
"Hello?" I said, "Koizumi, this place is cleared. There's some sort of alien girl here that should be interrogated, but the area's clean. Yeah, sure, I'll fix that right up tomorrow. Alright, good-bye."
"I'm finished~! Ready to go Kyon-sempai?"
"Yeah," I said taking one last look at the place, "let's go."