Part 2

.

In case you're wondering, the reason Haruhi gave for my usual treat-everyone-to-lunch penalty that Sunday was that I was the last to arrive at the usual meeting spot, even though I was technically on time. ("We could have started early if it hadn't been for you!")

Not that she needs a reason anymore, really, and to be perfectly honest, I'm resigned enough to the inevitability of it all that I no longer feel the need to ask for one. Aside from which, my attention was on Haruhi's potential new recruit, as well as said recruit's companion.

Her name was Otohime Mutsumi. She was twenty-two years old and a student at Tokyo University, after having succeeded on her fourth attempt at the entrance examination (her previous attempts having been marred by such mishaps as passing out due to her longstanding anemia, or in at least one case simply forgetting to sign her name on the test). She came from a large family in Okinawa, and had a fondness for watermelons (which her family grew in great quantities), as well as turtles (whose speech she claimed to be able to understand). She lived in a sort of hotel-turned-dormitory with a number of other people, including two childhood friends with whom she'd made a promise to attend Todai together. She was a Pisces, but didn't believe strongly in astrology unless it already agreed with what she knew to be true. She preferred white tea to green on the whole, but occasionally liked to indulge in a good, strong, British-style Earl Grey, which she tried for the first time at age thirteen after hearing it referred to on Star Trek. She was an excellent bowler, and had a love for ballroom dancing which was somewhat hindered by her occasional tendency to faint against her partner.

I learned all of this in maybe the first ten minutes after meeting her. You see, along with all of this, Mutsumi-san was easily the most comfortably forward person I'd ever met, and like Koizumi, had no sense of personal space whatsoever.

Mind you, sharing personal space with her was an entirely different (not to say more pleasant) experience, even as unnerving as it was considering that we had just met. She was one of those perpetual eyes-seemingly-closed smilers whose facial expressions are given in text messages with a pair of upward-pointing carets (^^), and her face itself was flawless, with the possible exception of her eyebrows, which were a little on the thick side. Her brown hair fell in loose waves to about mid-back, with a pair of pronounced forward-facing ahoge which actually seemed to move with those eyebrows as though somehow attached. On the rare occasions that she opened her eyes widely, they were a deep, mesmerizing brown that matched her hair. She was wearing a pastel yellow sun dress, and...

How shall I put this? I'm a heterosexual male teenager, so I'm going to notice these things. It's in my DNA.

She had the largest breasts I'd ever seen in my life, at least in person. Larger than both the younger and older Asahina-san. As trite as it is to say that a woman is "curvy in all the right places" (making one wonder what the wrong places are – on the soles of the feet, perhaps?), Mutsumi-san fit the hourglass-figure archetype as perfectly as anyone. She may not have been the Platonic ideal of femininity, but she was a lot more than just a shadow on a cave wall, that much was certain.

I don't know why, but I was actually finding myself extremely taken aback by this.

Well, maybe I do know why after all. Even after meeting the also very feminine Chikaru-san during the video-conference in Hazuki-san's apartment, and finding out that she was "one of" Hazuki-san's girlfriends, I guess I expected someone a bit more... male.

I'm sure I'll get grief for this at some level, but I have a confession to make here that will probably upset some people. All I can say is that I'm sorry, we can't all be as progressively open-minded as you no doubt are. Cut me some slack: I can only adjust so much at a time.

I just don't get homosexuality. At some level, it still just creeps me out, and I don't know if it's just because I don't swing that way, or if it's because I'm a product of my environment, or what. I suppose it might also be at least in part due to the presence of a certain esper who seems to delight in making me squirm with his occasional yaoi-flavored teasing, but whatever.

One of the things I have always had difficulty understanding, though, is the way that gay couples seem to invariably fall into a male/female dichotomy, with one of the partners either being a limp-wristed fairy-man or a short-haired, husky-voiced woman wearing jeans and a man's shirt. If by some accident of genetics (or whatever it is) I had turned out to be the sort of man who was attracted to men, wouldn't it make sense to look for someone who wasn't trying his hardest to act like a woman? And vice-versa for women: what's the point of being a lesbian if you're going to seek out a woman who's as manly as possible?

So in retrospect, I think what unsettled me here was the fact that Hazuki-san and Chikaru-san (and now Mutsumi-san) did not fall into my expectations for what a lesbian relationship "should" look like, even if the way it "should" look was something of an annoyance to me. I suppose if someone put a gun to my head and asked me who was the "man" in the relationship, I'd have to go with Hazuki-san, both for her height and the fact that she was again wearing pants (though again, they were tight-fitting capris that accentuated her hips something fierce). However, having seen Hazuki-san with her shirt off (and doesn't that feel strange to say), I can assure you that she's pretty damned feminine herself: the image of that lacy white bra she was wearing will be burned into my memory forever. While it's obvious enough that she's hiding some significant muscle tone somewhere, she's sleek rather than ripped. No washboards here.

Now, for those who want to flay me alive for my lack of sensitivity concerning people different from myself, I will at least say this: having them blow my expectations out of the water did at least get me thinking about why I might have had those expectations in the first place. Like I said, I'm a product of my environment, and I can only adjust so much at a time. I'm working on it.

I have since learned that an American comedienne once said that asking who is the man and who is the woman in a same-sex relationship is like asking which chopstick is the fork, so I'll try to keep that in mind.

As is often the case, we drew lots for the first round of the search. In the end, I found myself grouped with Asahina-san and Koizumi, while Haruhi and Nagato were to be in the company of our guests. Needless to say, I found myself more than a little nervous about this, given what Nagato had previously said about her feelings of instability in Hazuki-san's presence, but Nagato herself seemed to have returned to her normal levels of calm. In addition, Mutsumi-san seemed to have taken quite a shine to our resident data interface, and unless my watching-Nagato skills had gone completely out of calibration, Nagato actually seemed to be enjoying the older woman's attention. Well, maybe enjoying is too strong a word, but it seemed to go somewhat beyond mere tolerance.

Aside from which, if Nagato thought it would be dangerous to be in their company, surely she would have rigged the draw in her favor somehow. Unless, of course, Haruhi was doing the same. Or unless Nagato's perceived need to protect Haruhi was outweighing her concern for her own well-being...

We split up to begin the search, and I was so distracted by the new additions and my concern for Nagato that I didn't even have the presence of mind to cherish the fact that I was getting to spend time with Asahina-san outside of Haruhi's presence...

"Well, then. What shall we talk about?"

...or to dread the fact that Koizumi would certainly use this time to deliver a lecture of some sort. Well, at least the answer to the question was easy enough: surely we were going to talk about Haruhi, and the latest threat to reality as we know it, right?

"Perhaps it's a bit early to consider our otherworldly visitors a threat," Koizumi smiled in his normal fashion. "Though it's curious: as taken as Suzumiya-san has been with Azuma-san, she seems far less at ease with..." He paused and gave a wry chuckle. "I can't bring myself to call her Mutsumi-san, I'm afraid, her own insistence notwithstanding."

"She certainly is very... forward," Asahina-san nodded, echoing my sentiments. "For a moment, there, when we first met her, I could have sworn she was leaning in to kiss me."

I consider it a credit to myself that my eyes did not glaze over at that mental image. Yes, I know I was just going on about not understanding homosexuals. Yes, I know I am a hypocrite with a double standard. Deal with it.

"Maybe that's part of it, then?" I posited. "Haruhi's so used to being the self-assured one that she doesn't know how to react when she meets another personality like that?" Not that they were the same, certainly: while Haruhi was forward in the same way as a charging bull, Mutsumi-san had a more elliptical, gentle approach, so that you barely noticed that she had become the center of the scene until well after it had happened. More to the point, Mutsumi-san didn't seem to notice she was doing it either. Was it a natural college-girl thing?

Asahina-san had started to blush very slightly, and looked reluctant to say what she was about to say. "Um... you know, in spite of what Suzumiya-san said before, I'm really not a homophobe. In my time we don't really worry about that sort of thing. I'm not sure why she said that, really..."

Perhaps because you didn't take kindly to being continually stripped and molested by our brigade chief?

"But I wonder," she went on, "if maybe Suzumiya-san might be a little put off now that she's seeing two women who are an actual couple? Maybe she's less comfortable with it than she lets on?"

Koizumi gave a knowing laugh. "Or perhaps you're both ignoring the obvious conclusion."

Okay, if it's so obvious, go ahead and share. I'm sure you will anyway, so get on with it.

"Surely our leader has quickly fallen in love with Azuma-san, and thus sees Otohime-san as a threat. It makes sense, doesn't it?" He then shot me a wink, and I will thank him to never do that again. "So perhaps you should step up your game."

The conversation came to an abrupt halt. After a long pause, Asahina-san found herself enough to gasp. "Do you mean it?"

It certainly didn't feel impossible. There had been that comment of hers which I had recently unearthed, about how she was only looking for someone interesting, boy or girl...

"Actually, I'm just kidding," Koizumi said, smiling more broadly. "Think nothing of it; it was only a joke."

Something else I will thank him to never do again, but I won't hold my breath.

However, his expression quickly darkened, and lost a bit of its practiced nonchalance. "I will say this, though: while I do not believe there are any romantic complications as such, I can assure you that Suzumiya-san is indeed ill at ease in the presence of Otohime-san. Not to the point where I shall need to excuse myself and visit a closed space... at least, not yet... but there is something there beyond mere jealousy or a personality conflict."

"She seems so nice, though," Asahina-san objected. "And... it may sound silly, but... right when she was introduced to me, she took my hand, and... it felt... really comforting, like I was meeting an old friend after a long absence. It was as though I'd known her all my life somehow." Her face then flushed again. "Not enough that I wanted to be kissed, though. That would have been embarrassing."

Asahina-san, you really should be more careful with the images you place in a young man's imagination.

"Yes, Otohime-san is very tactile, I've noticed," Koizumi nodded. "She did the same to me, and like you, I'm certain I felt something. It was not completely unlike the feeling I get when I activate my powers in closed space, though on a much smaller scale."

I didn't recall feeling much of anything when she took my hand during the introductions. Other than the fact that hers was very soft and warm, and that I hadn't expected the contact.

"This does give credence to the story Azuma-san and her friend told you, though," Koizumi went on. "Perhaps if our powers all come from a common source of creative energy - the Souma of which they spoke - that would explain why we feel a sensitivity to it while you do not. Moreover, perhaps that would explain the opposite reactions that Suzumiya-san and Nagato-san have had to our visitors."

I was starting to see his point, but as usual, he seemed to be taking great pleasure in drawing out the story so he could bask in his own brilliance for a while longer. Get on with it, please.

"Think of a bar magnet with two poles," he explained. "Positive repels positive and attracts negative. Suzumiya-san is drawn to Azuma-san, but repelled by Otohime-san. Nagato-san is repelled by Azuma-san, but seems more at ease with Otohime-san. Perhaps Otohime-san and our fearless leader are a form of positive energy, for lack of a better term, while Nagato-san and Azuma-san are attuned to negative energy. Strictly in a metaphorical use of the words, of course."

"That makes sense, I suppose," Asahina-san said thoughtfully. I could tell by the look on her face that she was wondering where she might fit into that bar magnet analogy.

"Saying that Nagato was just repelled by Hazuki-san doesn't seem strong enough, though," I pointed out. "Nagato seemed convinced that Hazuki-san's presence in this world was going to somehow lead to her death."

"So you've mentioned," Koizumi nodded gravely. "While Suzumiya-san's reaction has not been so severe as that, I would be lying if I said it did not concern me. If she somehow senses Otohime-san as a threat, things could spiral out of control in a hurry..."

Analogies of positive and negative energy aside, it could not be denied that Haruhi looked a little surly during the break between searches, though in a very non-Haruhi way, she was making an obvious effort to disguise it with a mask of false cheer. Normally Haruhi never bothered to keep a lid on her annoyance: I can only assume that she did not want to lose her potential new recruit so soon.

It came as little surprise, though, that upon the next drawing of lots, Haruhi was teamed off with Koizumi and Asahina-san, leaving Nagato and the self-described sliders with me. I was a bit relieved, to be honest. It had been difficult not to worry about Nagato after the wholly uncharacteristic fear she had displayed the other night, and it was comforting to see that she was more or less back to her normal self.

The two groups split off again, and once we were a safe distance, Mutsumi-san started the conversation with a small giggle. "Ara ara, now that was certainly interesting."

Interesting?

She turned a sunny smile on me. "Suzumiya-san does not like me at all," she elaborated, though by her expression, she did not look offended in the least.

"Dear God, I hope she's not crushing on me," Hazuki-san sighed.

"Yes, you do get that a lot, don't you?" Mutsumi-san giggled, pulling herself closer to the other girl in a brief sideways hug.

I suddenly flashed back to the conversation in Hazuki-san's apartment, where Chikaru-san had described herself as "one of" Hazuki-san's girlfriends. "So, uh... how long have the two of you been together, then?" I asked, uncertain of the protocol in such things. That seemed a safe enough question to start with.

Mutsumi-san laughed and reached over to give my arm an effortlessly friendly squeeze. "Ara, bless you, Kyon-kun. Hazuki-chan and I are just good friends. I'm not part of her harem."

"It's not a harem," Hazuki-san said in a voice that hinted that she'd explained this before. "I have two girlfriends. Two. That's called a threesome, not a harem."

"Yes, and it's absolutely the sweetest thing to see them all together," Mutsumi-san went on, still speaking to me. "You've met Chikaru-chan already, I understand, and Tamao-chan is simply the cutest little thing. They complement one another very well. I hope you get the chance to meet all three of them, so you can see it for yourself. I envy them, truly."

Hazuki-san was making an obvious effort not to blush. "I keep telling you, Mu-chan, it's worth the effort to make it work. The sooner that Keitaro-san and Naru-san figure out how much they need you, the happier you'll all be."

"Mmm, maybe," Mutsumi-san grinned, once again holding one of Hazuki-san's arms to herself and leaning in closer to the other girl. "But in the meantime I get to have the very enjoyable experience of playing the part of your girlfriend for a day."

There was the buzzing of a phone, and Mutsumi-san paused to take hers from her pocket and check the display. She laughed for a moment, then held it out to show me.

TAMAO.S]: Please don't bury yourself in the role, Mu-chan.

"Sorry, Tamao-chan," Mutsumi-san said to the general area as she pocketed the phone.

We continued our walk, and I found myself at least a little surprised that the rest of us were more or less following Nagato, who had not yet taken part in the conversation, or indeed even acknowledged us. In retrospect, I should have realized that this was strange even for her, but at the time, I suppose I was too distracted by other things. No, I'm not talking about Mutsumi-san's cleavage. Much.

"I may regret asking this," I said then, "but why do you think that Haruhi dislikes you?" I went on to give a stripped-down version of Koizumi's theory about magnetic poles and how it might relate to their energy.

"Ara, your friend is very astute," Mutsumi-san smiled.

"He's wrong, mind you, but that's a pretty good guess," Hazuki-san added.

"Yes, you see, my energy and Suzumiya-san's are actually quite complementary in nature," Mutsumi-san went on, "and Hazuki-chan's is a third form that complements us further."

"Remember what Chikaru said the other night about Suzumiya-san having inherited the role of the Maker?" Hazuki-san asked me. "Mu-chan and I represent the other two roles."

I looked at Nagato, who still had her back turned to us as she walked slowly forward. Where did she and the others fit in?

"That's the curious part," Mutsumi-san considered. "From what I can sense, all of them..."

"Maybe we should wait to talk about this part?" Hazuki-san interrupted her. "You wanted to go over this with Eve and Lilith to be sure, didn't you?"

"Ara, yes," Mutsumi-san nodded, shooting an almost guilty look toward Nagato before turning her normal eyes-closed smile back toward me. "At any rate, if I were to guess, I would say that Suzumiya-san is uncomfortable with me because I remind her of someone she has been trying very hard to forget."

Something in that last exchange set me ill at ease. What had Mutsumi-san been about to say, and why had Hazuki-san stopped her? Was there something I wasn't allowed to know? Or were they keeping something from Nagato?

Speaking of Nagato, it came as no surprise at this time to find that she had led us to the library, and the familiarity of the location gave me a brief, warm feeling that partially dispelled any apprehension I might have had. If I still needed any evidence that Nagato was back to her old self, here it was.

Or so I thought, anyway. It's amazing what hindsight can do, isn't it?

To my surprise, however, the library was closed, with a sign hanging on the door explaining that there had been flooding damage from a burst water pipe, and it would be re-opened as soon as possible. So much for familiar surroundings.

Then, to my surprise, Nagato held her hand to the door, and I heard a click as it unlocked at her touch. Without looking back at us, she opened the door and stepped inside.

"Oi, Nagato!" I called, hurrying in after her. "We really shouldn't be here. Someone might call the police if they see us."

Nagato said nothing, and simply kept walking toward the center of the main floor, while Hazuki-san and Mutsumi-san followed us inside and closed the door behind them. The library was deserted, and the dank, musty smell in the air combined with several sections of ripped-out carpeting gave evidence to the flooding damage mentioned on the sign. A few bookcases had been emptied and dismantled, their contents loaded onto carts and tucked between other shelves.

Finally, in the midst of the couches and chairs of the central "reading area" of the bottom floor, Nagato stopped. I called her name a couple of times, but there was no response, so I circled around in front of her to try to catch her eyes.

Her eyes... which were completely unfocused, with nothing more than a tiny ring of color around her dilated pupils. To my horror, her face had gone ashen, and there was a flickering tension in her features, making her look as though she were having a nightmare while standing there.

"Nagato!" I called, even as I felt my heart speed up with fear.

With slow, painful-looking movements, she turned to look up at me with those nearly black eyes, and when her voice came, it sounded half a world away. "Thank you," she whispered. "Now... please... run."

And then she collapsed.

I dropped into a crouch beside her, shouting her name, but with a speed I would never have guessed she possessed, Mutsumi-san was suddenly there as well, kneeling and pulling the fallen girl's head into her lap. In moments, Nagato was laid out supine on the library floor, and Mutsumi-san had a hand to each side of her head, her palms over the smaller girl's cheeks.

"Tamao-chan, talk to us!" Hazuki-san called out as she scanned the room, as though looking for an enemy.

I looked Nagato up and down, then, and if my heart had sped before, it positively stopped at what I saw next. Nagato was dissolving. Her feet and lower legs were coming apart into innumerable tiny particles of white light.

She was being erased.

There was another buzzing sound, and Mutsumi-san pulled her phone from her pocket with one hand while leaving the other against Nagato's cheek. "This was a trap of some kind. Nagato-san is under attack."

"Can we pull her to the Library?" Hazuki-san asked, which made no sense to me. Weren't we already in the library? "She has Souma. She should be able to cross over."

"Tamao-chan says she's being blocked somehow," said Mutsumi-san. She set the phone nearby so she could keep reading it, then put both hands to Nagato's face again, and a soft green glow spread from her hands until it encased Nagato's body.

"Do you know what's going on?" Hazuki-san asked me.

"Her data link has been terminated," came another voice, then. A sweet, charming voice that filled me with nothing but dread. The last time I'd heard it, I'd been lying in the street, blood pouring from a knife wound in my side.

From behind one of the bookcases, still wearing a Kitago uniform, stepped that creature from my nightmares: Asakura Ryōko. Former class president, interface from a radical faction of the Data Entity, and complete psychopath.

She gave me a friendly smile as I rose to my feet. "Hello again, Kyon-kun," she said with a giggle. "You know the drill: this area is now under my data jurisdiction, so it would save us a lot of trouble if you would just cooperate."

Cooperate? And let myself get stabbed again?

"Oh, you misunderstand," Asakura beamed. "I'm not here for you this time. The Entity has no desire to see you come to harm, given the effect it would likely have on Suzumiya-san. The primary objective of my mission is to ensure that Nagato-san will give us no further trouble." She then put her head to one side, giving me an almost regretful look. "She fought, you know. You have no idea how hard it was to get her to lead you to a place where there would be no witnesses. For some reason she insisted on dying here: something about wanting to the see the library with you one last time." Her normal cold smile returned. "No matter, though. The Entity has no place for such sentimentality. It will be purged with the rest of her."

"Don't do this, Asakura," I said with more confidence than I was feeling. "Has the Entity forgotten? If anything happens to Nagato, I'll tell Haruhi everything, and we'll get her to rewrite the universe without you if that's what it takes to get Nagato back." I realized that I was practically asking to be killed at this point, but if the Entity really wanted me alive that badly, maybe this playing of my trump card would make it reconsider.

I felt a cold, clenching feeling inside as Asakura smiled more widely and let out a rippling laugh. "Oh, Kyon-kun, that's so cute." She then drilled into me with her ice-cold eyes. "Do you really think that little threat of yours held any weight with the Entity? Do you really think you were the one who saved Nagato-san from deletion last December? I'm sorry to disappoint you, but she was allowed to continue functioning because the consensus believed that her disappearance would have a negative effect on Suzumiya-san... though perhaps not as great an effect as yours would have caused. We have now reached the point where this is considered an acceptable risk when compared to the prospect of leaving Nagato-san in place." There was no smugness or superiority in her face as she said this, and somehow that made it worse. "As for your threat? By the time we finish altering your memories, you'll have no idea that you ever said such a thing. We'll allow you to be sad that Nagato-san had to return to her people, but I can assure you that you won't find yourself inspired to take action."

I didn't know whether I wanted to throw up or pass out. After all this, the trump card I'd been holding had turned out to be a deuce.

"Now," Asakura went on, turning her attention to the others, "Otohime-san, is it? I must ask you to stop trying to interfere."

Mutsumi-san mirrored Asakura's smile with one of her own, and for a moment I was struck by how similar they looked. "Ara ara, I'm very sorry, but you must realize that I won't do that."

"Yes, but it seemed polite to ask first before stopping you by force," Asakura laughed.

There came the sound of metal against leather, and suddenly Hazuki-san was drawing a katana from its sheath. (Now, where exactly had she been hiding that?) "You must also realize that I won't let you do that," the dark-haired girl said in a low, threatening voice.

"Actually, I was counting on that," Asakura smiled. "After all, my secondary objective is to kill you, Azuma-san."

AUTHOR'S NOTE: What do you mean, where have I been?

Otohime Mutsumi, Narusegawa Naru and Urashima Keitaro are from Love Hina by Ken Akamatsu. Sometimes you just need an OT3.

Next time! The Obligatory Haruhi Fanfic Battle With Ryōko Asakura (collect them all!), and more crossovers than you can shake a stick at!