Suzumiya Haruhi no Shoshin
(The Temerity of Haruhi Suzumiya)

Chapter 1:

"Hold it," I said.

"Don't even try it?" she said. "You're just wasting your time." She walked up to her throne and raised her hands, and the light that shone through the skylight increased. "It's almost done, now, and then there won't be any going back."

"You'll be bored."

"What?"

"You'll be bored, Haruhi. In spite of this power you have, you're still human. The one thing that's true about all humans is that they all struggle. More than that, in the absence of struggle, they will lose the will to live. Having a world in which your every whim is granted? It would kill you."

"You don't know what you're talking about. Why wouldn't I be happy with having anything I want? I could have excitement and challenges to test me if I wanted. I could create them!"

"Could you ever create an obstacle that even you couldn't overcome? Wouldn't it all just be going through the motions? You would know you could always get rid of anything in your way. You would know everything and there would be no mystery. Even in terms of love and friendship, you could always create your own perfect friends and lovers, couldn't you? Or simply make anyone like you."

Haruhi paused for a moment. "Yes. I probably could."

"Why do you think the original Haruhi created you, who could keep her other selves from discovering what they were? Because, deep inside, you know it just wouldn't be any fun."

"Shut up," she said gruffly, turning to me. "I've already made my choice." She turned to me. "You'll see me on the other side, Kyon." She walked toward me and put her hands on my shoulders. "Don't be afraid, okay?"

She pulled me down and pressed her lips against my cheek. The light was blinding now.

"Get that light out of my face, please," I growled irritably, pulling my covers over my face.

"Get up, Kyon-kun!" my little sister's gnat-like voice insisted as she tried to wrestle the covers away from me. Curse this demon-seed, always disturbing my sleep every morning. Would an extra five minutes hurt anything?

In any case, I was soon raised from my slumber, and I dutifully readied myself for school. It wasn't long before I was once again trudging up that damned hill. Of course, today I had some reason to be happy, as apparently the world was not destroyed and remade to be... well... whatever weird kind of world would make a person like Haruhi Suzumiya happy.

"Kyon-kun."

I paused at hearing my nickname, and turned to look at the speaker. I was mildly surprised to see Emiri Kimidori. When I first met her she seemed to simply be a normal girl searching for her mysteriously absent boyfriend (who, we learned later, had apparently never actually interacted with her). Subsequent events have led me to the realization that she is actually a colleague of sorts of Nagato, but she rarely intruded upon any of us.

"We have to talk," Kimidori said.

I couldn't imagine about what.

Kimidori shook her head. "At 7:30 this morning there was a disturbance."

Yes, that would have been me saving the world, thank you very much.

"No," Kimidori said. "At 7:30 this morning the Integrated Data Sentient Entity recorded an explosion of data similar to that time..."

I felt a chill deep in the pit of my stomach. "You mean... the world has... been rewritten? But why do I remember...?"

"Until this morning," she said. "You didn't. Yesterday I recovered data that remained uncorrupted from the last iteration of the universe. From this data I was able to reconstruct your original self. It is curious that your regaining consciousness should match with the data explosion. Perhaps it was coincidence..."

This was beginning to confuse me greatly.

"It is very important that you―" she began, but suddenly a wild Taniguchi appeared.

"Hey, Kyon!" he greeted boisterously. "How's it been with..." he trailed off and eyed Kimidori. Then he put his arm around me and turned me around, as if putting our backs to her would mean the girl couldn't hear a word we were saying. "What's with the A-rank babe? You looking to add to your harem?"

That was a ridiculous question that didn't deserve an answer. I'm not the kind of guy who would even consider something as ludicrous as a harem. And I didn't really agree with the basic premise of the harem genre in the first place. So a gaggle of the hottest women in existence meet a dumpy, slow, and generally average guy and all fall madly in love. Really, is that supposed to be believable? At least show me some admirable trait beyond being exactly like every other teenage boy in existence. Maybe if he's some big, damn hero...

In any case, that's a completely unrelated tangent. "Well, let's hope Suzumiya doesn't get wind of it," he said. "She gets pretty jealous, doesn't she? If she weren't so good looking, I'd say run away quick. As it is, I can understand your situation."

You don't understand anything, Taniguchi. I turned back to continue my unique conversation with Kimidori, but she seemed to have disappeared. In her place stood the latter subject of our one-sided conversation.

"Hey, Kyon!" Haruhi said jubilantly. "Come on, you're going to be late! Don't let this boring person drag you down." She grabbed my arm and began dragging me up the hill. I supposed dragging me was okay as long as she was the one doing it. "As long as it's not 'down.'" Haruhi corrected me. "Anyway, what's with that face this morning?"

My face is the same as it's always been. I was born with it, and if you find it offensive, take it up with my ancestors.

"Idiot," she said. "I find your face stupid, but cute in a moronic way. I mean that sourpuss expression. You normally seem happier. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen you not smiling."

She must have been confusing me with Koizumi. Her statement was so wildly inaccurate that it hurt. Of course, I mostly wasn't smiling when she was up to her wacky hijinks again, and perhaps she was too caught up in the ensuing hilarity to notice my expression at the time. I also had to protest that my face was quite intelligent.

"Maybe a little," Haruhi said coyly as we reached the doorway of the school. She whirled on me and grabbed my tie, pulling me down to her level. "But I still don't like that world-weary expression of yours. As Brigade Chief, it's my duty to make sure all my Brigade members are happy. But what can I do?"

I was about to tell her she could let me go to class and I would be quite happy, but I found my tongue frozen, and I got the strangest impression of a blue box floating before my eyes. In that box were three sentences. One said "We should go hunting for vampires tonight," which was just ridiculous. Why would I want to sacrifice time I could be sleeping to look for things that would most likely want to kill me? The next sentence claimed, "Just looking into your beautiful eyes makes me happy." While I would admit that Haruhi's eyes were... captivating, to say the least, I would never want to sound like that much of a kiss-ass. "We should schedule a private Brigade Chief/Subordinate meeting later tonight to discuss the matter," was the last one. I couldn't help but feel such an option, while seeming to be the least directly provocative, might be the most detrimental to my health if I read the subtext correctly. I am a normal, healthy male, and I had to say that a private meeting late at night with Haruhi... well, it wasn't as if I didn't dream.

"Just looking into your beautiful eyes makes me happy," I suddenly said. I really didn't know why I'd actually said any of those three sentences. There were countless other possibilities open to me, and yet it seemed I had mentally railroaded myself into these confining three. Well, it couldn't do that much harm.

Haruhi's cheeks turned pink and she gave me a weird smirk. "Ah, Kyon!" she screeched, yanking me to and fro by my necktie. "You're such a corny dumbass!" Then she yanked my tie toward her and smooched me straight on the lips. It was only for a moment, and then she smacked me, sending me tumbling to the floor. "How dare you embarrass your Brigade Chief like that? I think we're going to have to have a private Brigade Chief/Subordinate meeting later tonight to discuss the matter." Then she shot me that devilish grin that she always would before doing something that would make me very exhausted.

What the Hell, Haruhi?

Upon entering class I was greeted to yet another strange sight. When Haruhi entered ahead of me, strolling confidently, the entire class turned to look. It was certainly a trick of the mind, but it almost seemed as if time slowed down in that moment, Haruhi moving as if through molasses, with her hair whipping about in some nonexistent wind and natural sunlight somehow shining off of her creating a golden halo. The girls looked at her with idolatry, and the guys... if they kept looking at her like that I was liable to give someone a mouthful of knuckles. I shook my head, and the world seemed to speed up to normal again. Strange, I thought. I usually thought that way more toward Miss Asahina, though I supposed looks like that should bother me when directed at any girl, even one like Haruhi.

"Hey, will you sit down, Kyon?" Haruhi said. I looked over to where she was sitting. It was one of a pair of desks in the center of the room, which seemed to be separate from the others, though only separated by mere centimeters more than the other desks. I supposed the seating assignments must have changed. I sat at the desk next to Haruhi, and noticed it was quite a bit closer than was normally allowed to her desk. She turned and looked at me with that demon smile.

It wasn't long before the teacher entered and called the class to order. "Students," he said. "It's my pleasure to inform you that we have a new transfer student, today."

Haruhi perked up. It figured. She had some crazy theory about "mysterious transfer students" being special somehow. Of course, it had been true in the case of one Itsuki Koizumi, but she didn't know that... or, she shouldn't.

Imagine my shock, then, when the new mysterious transfer student turned out not to be so "new" after all, though the situation was certainly mysterious. "Well, hello. Actually, I'm K..."

"Itsuki Koizumi?" Yes, into the classroom had walked that same esper, smiling that ingenuine smile that stayed almost constantly plastered to his face. His eyes locked onto mine and seemed surprised, to say the least.

"Ah, yes," he said after an awkward moment. "I see... Kyon... my old friend is here as well. How fortunate. I hope you'll take care of me."

Haruhi turned to me with a curious expression on her face. "You... know him? Ah..." All confusion was wiped from her face in an instant and she beamed at me brightly. "I see, so that's where your smile went! You must have given it to your pretty friend."

The murmurs and chuckles at Haruhi's too-loud statement didn't go unnoticed by me. Really, Haruhi, could you think about what you say before you say it? That just sounded inappropriate. In any case, I was wondering why Haruhi would be surprised that I knew him. Unless for whatever reason she had rewritten this world so that Koizumi hadn't transferred. But I couldn't imagine why that would be. He sat in the desk on the other side of Haruhi and shot us surreptitious glances. Haruhi also snuck peaks at our mysterious transfer, and I have to say I found the way she was sizing him up to be a bit annoying.

It wasn't too surprising when, during our break, Haruhi grabbed Koizumi by the necktie and sprinted out of the classroom with him, beckoning me to follow her to the club room. I did, reluctantly, but hoping that perhaps Nagato or Miss Asahina could clarify the situation more.

When I entered the clubroom, I was greeted by Miss Asahina in her maid uniform. She offered me tea, which I gratefully accepted. Nagato was also there, reading a book as usual. I didn't have time, however, to ask why she was wearing a strange medieval-esque outfit complete with green cloak and bejeweled armband, for at that moment the girl, herself, barged in dragging Koizumi behind her.

"Hey, everyone, sorry to keep you wai~ting!" she practically sang. "Someone transferred into our class, today, and he's joining us. His name is..."

"Itsuki Koizumi," he replied with a slight bow. "How do you do?"

"This is the SOS Brigade," Haruhi cheerfully explained. "I'm Haruhi Suzumiya, the Brigade Chief, and these are Brigade Members 1, 2, and 3. By the way, you're member number 4! Everyone should make him feel right at home."

This was sounding awfully familiar. Maybe the universe wasn't really changed, but I had simply been sent back in time? Well, Koizumi being in Haruhi and my class was definitely different. "I don't mind joining you guys," he said. "But I was wondering what kind of club this is, anyway."

Haruhi whirled on him. "Let me tell you what the SOS Brigade is all about!" She turned back to us and commanded, "Attention!" took a deep breath and said, "The SOS Brigade's mission is to find aliens, time travelers, and espers and hang out with them!"

"Ah, I understand," Koizumi said. "As expected from Miss Suzumiya. Alright, I'll join your club, and I hope to have a good time with all of you." He turned to me and extended his hand. "Kyon, it's good to see you. I just transferred so there's still a lot I don't know, so I'm counting on you to show me the ropes."

I awkwardly took his hand, and he gripped it firmly. His expression changed suddenly from that insincere grin to a much more sincere looking malicious smirk, reminding me far too much of that sneering bastard. I was struck by a feeling of disequilibrium, made far worse when Koizumi pulled me closer, pivoting and thrusting his hip into my gut and throwing me onto the clubroom table. The esper was straddling me within seconds.

I turned my head side to side, looking around the club room, and found that we were now the only two in here. Had he taken me into a Sealed Reality? If so, why would he do that? And what was with this awkward position he'd gotten me into?

"Alright, imposter," he said with a voice like steel, his face millimeters from my own. Why did he always have to get so close? "You're going to tell me what your plan is, and how it involves Haruhi Suzumiya."

Koizumi, I can honestly say I have no idea what you're talking about, but could you please back off?

"Very well," Koizumi said, his face becoming a mask of politeness once more, though his voice still held a hint of steel. He pulled me up and threw me against the wall. He held up his hand casually, a sphere of glowing red esper stuff appearing floating above his palm. "I can see I'll have to be a bit rougher with you."

That wasn't rough? I quickly realized it wasn't when the red ball was launched at me. The force of the attack was hard enough to cave in the wall behind me, and I collapsed to the ground. This was completely surreal. Since when did Koizumi behave this way? I knew that he wore a mask normally, but I had been under the impression that his true self... well... liked me a bit more.

"You think I'll just let you steal my face... my life... my girl?" He said angrily. Now I was definitely confused. He smirked again. "I can see that while you're able to reproduce my features, you seem to have none of my abilities. Your charade would have been seen through eventually, anyway, given the games Haruhi likes to play." His hand began to glow red, again. "However, it makes it much easier for me to solve this little puzzle." His hand thrust out and I shut my eyes, sure that I would die in this pocket universe by my own friend's hand.

A loud crash interrupted my thoughts of impending death, as well as what sounded suspiciously like a motorcycle. I opened my eyes and saw a biker in the process of running Koizumi over. Apparently this person had come in through that large hole in the wall where a window used to be. I stumbled toward my savior, stunned at the awesome display. I was even more stunned when the biker took off her helmet.

"Come with me if you want to live," Asakura Ryoko said, extending her hand toward me. She looked serious. And she didn't have a knife. And Koizumi was starting to get up, so I figured if I had to choose between someone who wanted to kill me for some personal reason and someone who wanted to kill me out of curiosity, I'd gamble on the less overtly antagonistic. I grabbed Asakura's hand and she pulled me onto the bike behind her and stepped on the gas. Beams of red light shot past us as we drove out of the building and plummeted a couple stories to the ground. Perhaps I'd been too hasty.

We hit the ground with bone jarring force, and the tires squealed on the pavement. At this point, killer alien robot or not, I was clinging to Ryoko for dear life. We sped away down the hill from the school, toward the shimmering barrier of the Sealed Reality. As we drew closer to the barrier my anxiety began to climb once again. We were going to crash into it!

"Don't be ridiculous," Ryoko said cheerfully. "I would suffer irreparable damage from crashing into that and I cannot self terminate." With that, seemingly in complete contradiction to her statement, she popped a wheelie just before slamming into the barrier and with startling suddenness...

I found that we were suddenly screeching to a stop inside some kind of trailer as the door came to a close. This didn't seem like a much better place to be, though. After all, all I could hear was blood curdling screams. Then I felt someone slap me across the cheek and the screaming abruptly stopped.

"Get ahold of yourself, man!" a young girl said admonishingly. "Really, you seemed like a much cooler guy last time we crossed paths." Calming down I suddenly recognized this person, and I found myself recoiling in anger. This was one of the individuals involved in the kidnapping of Asahina Mikuru... or 'Michiru' as she was known at the time.

"That's right, we were never properly introduced," the girl said. "My name is Tachibana. Kyoko Tachibana."

As long as she didn't come with a license to kill. So the situation at this time seemed to be that I was just rescued from an attack by one of my close friends by someone who tried to kill me and another person who tried to kidnap another friend. While Haruhi has managed to turn my life upside down since the moment she wrangled me into her club, never has it been so literally flipped.

"I realize this must be a shock," Ryoko said after dismounting the motorcycle. "But, as you may have begun to suspect by now, this isn't our original world."

"Our?"

Ryoko nodded. "While everyone else, even the Integrated Data Sentient Entity, has been overwritten, and there was even another Asakura who existed in this world, I am in fact the same Ryoko who faced you in that classroom almost a year ago. The you who did not have esper powers. Who needed Yuki to save him."

I found this rather difficult to process. How could she still be the original Ryoko when everyone else was... rewritten?

"I see," Ryoko said. "Let me demonstrate." Her body seemed to pixelate―or, being three dimensional I suppose I should say "voxelate"―and reform into another familiar person. Now standing before me was Emiri Kimidori.

"This Ryoko is a backup left by your original Ryoko, you see," Kimidori said. "Though... unfortunately the backup has degraded."

I noticed now that Miss Kimidori's arms were not empty, and within them she was cradling a small child. One that looked suspiciously like...

"Say 'hello,' Achakura-chan," Kimidori said sweetly.

"Wait a second!" The tiny Ryoko cried. "Don't treat me like a baby!"

Kimidori giggled.

I placed my palm on my face.

"At first I believed that this was merely data from an alternate universe," Kimidori said. "But after further reviewing Achakura-chan's code, I realized that she contained unformatted code from the previous universe Miss Suzumiya had overwritten. Even then, I didn't suspect the truth until today..."

Kyoko nodded and added. "Today there was a huge Sealed Reality created. From our perspective nothing fundamental really changed, but that's also how it was almost four years ago aside from the creation of our powers."

"At the same time Miss Suzumiya released data comparable to the data the IDSE recorded that last time. Currently, the IDSE is attempting to process this new data to the exclusion of most other applications. Fortunately, this means that at this time other interfaces of the IDSE are incapable of effectively interfering with us."

Wait, but why would the IDSE be trying to interfere with you? What exactly are you trying to do?

Kyoko intervened here. "That's a very good question, Kyon-kun. Let me try to explain. You see, when Suzumiya Haruhi brought espers into existence, she also caused many other things to happen. From your reaction, espers seem to exist in the original universe, but I would imagine some of these other changes were... retroactive in nature from this morning's disturbance.

"You could say that in this world things like physics and biology are not necessarily fixed laws as they were before the incident. Heavier things commonly fall faster than lighter things in the absence of a vacuum, now. Further, occasionally gravity suspends its influence on a subject until subjectively recognized, convection occurs at random, and the gasoline in vehicles seems to be far more volatile than one might expect.

"In addition, it seems that evolution is actually more Lamarckian than Darwinian, with children inheriting acquired skills, strength, and other such traits from their parents upon birth. An American martial artist and actor with a magnificent red beard managed to literally deflower a group of islands in the Caribbean. Minor injuries are almost unheard of while people heal at a surprisingly fast rate from otherwise fatal injuries. In fact, immediately after the incident human beings ceased to die in the conventional manner. When killed women would habitually explode into tiny, furry animals while men would explode into coins. A music producer from New York produced $7,777,777 (Canadian) upon his death."

I imagined lethal crime rates would have risen quite a bit upon discovery of that little factoid.

"Indeed, not only that, but death was not necessarily permanent. Save points and what you might call 'extra lives' became common, and many people simply 'respawned.' The point is, as you can imagine, living in such an unpredictable and illogical world has caused problems."

I could imagine. It sounded like the world had literally become one of fiction, and now the small oddities I noticed this morning began to make sense. I wondered idly what would happen in this world if someone dropped an anvil on another person's head. No, best not to think about it.

Kyoko nodded. "I thought you would understand. After all, you were once friends with her."

Technically, or at least I hoped, I still was friends with Haruhi. In spite of her apparently attempting to rewrite me.

"No, not Miss Suzumiya," Kyoko corrected, surprising me. What other person could possibly merit an italicized third-person pronoun? "There is... another. Coincidentally, an old friend of yours. Or perhaps not such a coincidence."

I had an idea of whom she was speaking, but it didn't make sense to me. But, after all, there was only one girl I could remember whom I could call a friend in any meaningful sense of the word. Unless we were going back to early primary school days, at which point my memory was a crapshoot.

"Yes, you should know who I'm talking about," Kyoko said. "As you know my organization opposes yours..." She meant Koizumi's, obviously. "There is no such person in your organization as far as I know. Or, rather, from what I understand, you fill the role this person once did. However, I trust you knew even in your universe that your―Koizumi's―Organization believed that Haruhi was the source of espers' powers and is effectively what you might call 'God.'"

I remembered that it was a theory, though Koizumi implied that such an explanation was a little too grandiose to be taken seriously. I operated on the assumption that reality was simply smart enough to know when to give into such a stubborn person.

"Well, yes, I certainly don't believe such a theory," Kyoko said with a huff. "However, my group believes a little differently than y―the Organization. First, we believe that the source of our powers actually derive from somewhere other than Haruhi Suzumiya. Second, we also believe that the original 'god,' or, rather, possessor of those godlike powers Miss Suzumiya possesses, was different in the past."

And this alternate source and the possessor of those reality warping powers are one and the same, I'd guess.

"Correct," Kyoko said. "You're quite perceptive, Kyon-kun. And that person is none other than your old friend."

Assuming I believed this for a moment, how in the world would this help us? Even if she once possessed these powers, Haruhi definitely wields them now, and with more skill than ever.

"On the contrary," Kyoko said. "She does possess some power, still. In addition, there's a certain common factor my group is interested in." She gave me the pointer finger. "That would be you. It can't be mere coincidence that you are an important person to both of these special girls."

I think it can be fairly concisely proven that I am, in fact, completely normal. In spite of my bad habit of entangling myself with unusual people and circumstances, I myself have never once deviated from the path of the "average."

"I'll forget for the moment your history in this world of being a fellow esper," Kyoko said. "And just suggest this: have you ever considered that it is your very influence which makes you special? Think back upon your previous... adventures with Haruhi Suzumiya. She may have the power to change reality, but isn't it you who controls to an extent her whims?"

If that were true her whims would involve much less punishment on my checkbook.

"Maybe I should rephrase that," Kyoko said. "Wasn't it your actions that nearly caused Miss Suzumiya to rewrite the world last year? And wasn't it you who ultimately prevented it? It's no stretch of the imagination to think that you may have similarly had some influence in transferring Sasaki's powers to Miss Suzumiya."

It was highly improbable that I could have had an influence reaching that far back, but I had to admit it was frighteningly possible.

"Of course, that's just a theory," Kyoko said. "But whatever the case, we believe you definitely have some influence here. This is especially evident given that you are the only human being to escape the destruction of the old world."

Well, there was also Acha―I mean, Miss Asakura. Though I suppose she wasn't technically human. Wait, did this mean Nagato was also changed?

Kimidori nodded. "Even the IDSE was overwritten, though it was aware of some alteration to its data. I was, as well, but I've been able to partially reconstruct my other self's data from the data stored in Achakura-chan."

I pondered what would happen if Nagato were able to sync with her. After all, she was originally Nagato's backup, so she should realistically possess... well... a backup of Nagato's memories and personality.

"Ooh, he really is smarter than he looks," Kyoko said.

Kimidori nodded, though I wouldn't think too hard on whether it was to my query or to Kyoko's inane comment. "I believe Achakura-chan should be able to restore Yuki to her original self... more or less."

Achaku―that is to say, Miss Asakura piped in, "I have all of Yuki's data from before I was deleted! Which includes the data she retrieved from her future self as well! That means I can restore her almost completely!"

I nodded. If there was one person I would want on my side here it would be Nagato. I often reflected that perhaps I relied too much on her, but it was with good reason. Simply put, she was the most reliable and powerful member of the SOS. Also, I had to admit that if I really thought about it, I would truly miss Nagato's stoic personality the most out of all the Brigade members.

Soon the vehicle came to a halt and the vibrations of the engine ceased. When Kimidori pulled up the door, I saw that we were―surprise of the century―in a large garage. I exited the vehicle, curious as to what I would encounter.

Whenever I thought of secret conspiracies and the planning of rebellions, I always imagined dark figures hunched around a table in a dimly lit room, maps and computers and various sinister planning paraphernalia littering the meeting place. While the room was certainly dimly lit, and there was definitely a table, I wasn't so much expecting the hot cocoa or the kids' card game in progress.

With a sip of her drink, a familiar face looked up at me and smiled wearily. "It's been awhile, old friend."

Another familiar, but much less expected face looked up at me and with a vengeful smirk said, "Go... fish!"