"Haruhi! Tell us what happened!"

"I said I wouldn't, and that's final! As the commander-"

"I don't give a damn about that! Screw the Brigade! Tell us what happened to you! Tell us who did this!"

I was doing something I wouldn't normally be doing on any other day.

I was yelling at Haruhi Suzumiya, self-appointed Supreme Commander of the SOS Brigade at North High.

If I did something like that on a normal day, I'd be beaten up before being subjected to a series of horrible punishment games…most of which would probably involve me paying for things.

However, that day wasn't a normal day. I was extremely pissed off.

How would you feel if someone that you knew walked into your clubroom covered in ink, their uniform cut nearly to shreds, their shoes full of holes, and bruised from head to toe?

Well, I don't know about you, but I'd want to see some blood. Yes, this girl had treated me like a punching bag, a personal wallet, a slave, a tool, whatever you can think of, but…she would never let something like this go if it were to happen to me, or Yuki, or Itsuki, or Mikuru…she'd do whatever it took to get revenge, come hell or high water.

That's why I was yelling at her: because she wasn't letting us treat her the same way, and was trying to act like nothing happened. Yes, I may be lazy (and somewhat spineless, I will admit), but do you think I could let something like this go?

Hell no!

"We're not getting anywhere like this, Kyon. Maybe we should all just calm down."

I had planned to tell Koizumi to stay out of this whole thing, but he was right. We, or more accurately I had to calm down and try to sort this out. I took a seat and looked towards Haruhi as she did the same.

I was still seething from just looking at her state. And if I didn't know any better, I would have thought that she had been crying recently.

"…"

Nagato was silent as usual, but these days it was easier to read her. Her book had already been placed on the table in front of her, and she was staring intently at Haruhi, like the rest of us were. I could tell immediately that she was none too pleased with this, either.

"Wah! I'll get you cleaned up quickly; we can't have that ink dry!"

Mikuru Asahina's sweet voice broke the silence that had filled the room. Other than that, the steady dripping of ink onto the linoleum floor was all that rang through my ears.

And it was pissing me off.

I didn't know exactly why I was so incredibly angry, but I was. I couldn't help feeling this way.

"Haruhi…we all would like to know what exactly happened today. We want to know who did this so that we can help you."

"You want to help me now, huh?"

Koizumi hesitated for a moment. "You mean…this is isn't the first…?"

"Nope. But it's definitely the worst. Having ink dumped all over you is the worst, you know?"

Mikuru came back with a wet towel and started on Haruhi's hair.

"Don't be too rough, Mikuru."

"O-Of course!"

"...treating this like a game…"

She turned her head towards me. "What was that, Kyon?"

"I said to stop treating this like some sort of game."

"But isn't that all it is, a prank? Lighten up."

"Lighten up? You expect me to somehow feel better after hearing you say that?"

"It would be nice if you did."

I was beyond angry after hearing that, so I got up and started to grab my things.

"You're leaving? Well, just sleep on it and you'll feel better, Kyon."

"Am I supposed to take advice from someone like you?"

"What was that?"

"You can call yourself a Supreme Commander, yet you act like this when something happens to you. That's pretty pathetic, if you ask me."

Haruhi stood up quickly, throwing Mikuru back and the towel onto the floor.

"You'd better quit talking!"

"Quit talking? Why, because I'm right? You're just a joke of a leader, a fake, a sham!"

"Shut up!"

"Make me, loser!"

At that moment, she rushed me and tackled me straight to the floor. I didn't remember much except for her cussing at me non-stop and knocking my head around with punches.

Hard punches, in fact. I had never been hit that hard before, not even by a guy.

Koizumi managed to pull her off me as soon as she started to tire from beating my face in.

"Bastard! Let me at him, I'll kill him!"

I got up, barely able to feel my face anymore. Mikuru was practically in hysterics at that moment, but she tried to get me some first aid, anyways.

"It's okay. I'm fine." I really wasn't fine, but I didn't say that to put on a cool front, either. I took a good look at Haruhi through one of my better eyes that wasn't swollen shut, and then left.

Mikuru called after me, but I faintly heard Koizumi tell her to let me go on. That was fine.

I didn't care much about anything at that point, anyways.

My sister made a huge fuss about my face when I got home, so I told her a lie about tripping down some stairs. She made fun of me for a good while before insisting that she take care of my injuries for a while. I let her do so before Mom came home, and I gave her the same spiel about the stairs.

I didn't care about them finding out I had been beaten up by a girl, but I really wanted to keep this between myself and the Brigade.

Shamisen didn't recognize me, apparently, and went to sleep with my sister that night. Yeah, my face was pretty bad.

I was in school the next day, and it was business as usual, except Haruhi and I stayed away from each other for the most part. It was an easy task, actually.

After school, my feet took me in the direction of the usual hangout, the Literature Club room where Yuki Nagato read in silence, also unofficially known as the clubhouse for Haruhi Suzumiya's SOS Brigade.

The title character was running a bit late, though.

Nagato pushed up her glasses a few times as she read, and gave me some subtle glances. I read that as worry.

Koizumi would break the silence with a smart-ass question.

"Our leader is running a bit late, don't you think?"

Gee, you think so?

"Ah…what should we do?" Mikuru asked nervously.

I looked over at Nagato, and she nodded in her delicate way as she put her book down. Koizumi loosened his tie a bit and stood up. I took off my jacket as I led them out of the clubroom.

"Mikuru, please stay here. We'll be back soon."

"Um…okay."

The eternally cute Mikuru Asahina saw us off as she held down the fort.

The three of us took off through the school halls, looking for some kind of suspicious activity that Haruhi would surely have some hand in. We heard loud chattering near one of the windows overlooking the front of the school.

There were a lot of people near the gates, but one in particular stood out, with those yellow ribbons in her hair.

"Shit…!"

I cursed loudly as I took off towards the front entrance, not caring about what happened next. This was my only objective now. Again, I didn't know what made me feel so strongly, but I hope I figure it out one day soon.

We made it to where that insane girl was, and pushed our way through the crowd to where Haruhi stood. She was drenched from head to toe, and smelled weird. Almost like…

"A product of the oxidation of ethanol by acetic acid bacteria."

Nagato said something really complicated, but then summed it up for me.

"Vinegar."

I almost wish that she hadn't. I was ready to turn on every single one of those people staring at us.

"Kyon, please go away. We're having a discussion here."

I thought I was going crazy for a moment. Haruhi was talking about having a conversation with people who just dumped vinegar all over her.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

"You don't need to use language like that. Look, I'm trying to start up a dialogue here. There's naturally going to be some resistance from some people, so it's not as bad as it seems."

She said that with a straight face. I was shocked for a moment, but something clicked within my normal brain and I could understand where she was coming from.

However, I had decided on something while I lay in bed the night before, with my swollen face. I understood what she was trying to do, and if it had been the old me, I probably would have let it all go.

But a lot of things had changed since I had met Haruhi Suzumiya. And this was one of them.

"I'm trying to connect with them, you know? So don't worry about me, Kyon."

I looked at the girl dripping wet with vinegar, and said my one line as confidently as I could.

"The absence of war is not peace."

Her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates when she heard that come from my mouth. I was supposed to be a slacker most of the time, but there were things that I absolutely could not stand for.

"Ah! Everyone!"

Even though we had told her to stay put…what exactly was she-

"The principal is coming!"

Well, that was actually important news. Thank you, Mikuru.

"Oh ho~ so it's sudden death now, is it? Perfect."

I didn't understand what she was saying at first, but it then became clear as she gave me that one of a kind grin.

To be quite honest, I was itching to inflict some pain and suffering myself.

"On my mark!" She jumped onto my back and draped her arms around my neck.

Koizumi gave me a smile of approval…well, that's what I assumed. I couldn't actually read it otherwise.

Nagato adjusted her glasses and stared at me expressionlessly. I guess she was fine with this.

"Charge!" Haruhi kicked me, as a jockey would do to their racehorse. I followed her commands, as did Koizumi.

I guess we could have called it the 'Charge of the SOS Brigade' or something.

What happened next was fairly obvious.

It was after school the next day.

As I mentioned before, we were absolutely massacred by the other students, but even so, we managed to take quite a few of them down before the principal showed up on the scene.

Haruhi took the blame for all of us from the Brigade, with Koizumi preventing me from protesting. The five of us were a complete mess, but our spirits were high after the recent battle.

She was assigned major cleaning duty as a punishment, and today she was in the gymnasium. Naturally, we decided to join her. She protested, but…

"Haruhi…you're sometimes…you're too greedy sometimes!"

The surprising comment came from Mikuru Asahina, and even though it didn't make sense in the context of the situation, we all understood what she meant.

Our quasi-benevolent dictator puffed up her cheeks and finally caved in to our demands, handing the remaining four of us brooms, including her own to me.

Where was she going?

"You agreed to help me, right?"

Don't you understand what the word 'help' means?

"Of course. You're helping me by doing my work for me, right?"

She was totally impossible, that Haruhi.

"Besides, you owe me big time, Kyon. Consider this part of your punishment. Also, when you're all done, report back to the clubroom so we can go to the café together. You know what's coming next, Kyon."

My wallet…my poor wallet.

I guess it couldn't be helped, right?

"But…I'm feeling generous, so…the three of us will pay half of our total. That's fine, right?"

Well, I didn't mind paying the whole thing, but this was really nice of you.

"You'd better be grateful. The next time I'll come down hard on you for being so impudent."

She started to make her way out, but stopped halfway to look back at me.

I don't know if it was the way the sunlight came in through the windows, or the angle of her head, or whatever it was…but when she smiled and looked back at me for that brief moment, she really looked like an angel.

I watched that slender form get further away, and I started to get this weird feeling all of a sudden. I didn't understand that, either. Maybe I would figure that along with all of the other things.

But there was at least one thing that this normal guy could understand from looking back at everything that had happened so far.

No matter what you thought of her, or what you saw in her, or what you felt towards her, Haruhi Suzumiya was absolutely irreplaceable.

She had taken me through so many crazy situations that my whole position on life and myself had changed completely. In other words, my existence with her had been total chaos.

And you know what?

I've never been happier.