At the cafe on Sunday, Haruhi made me delete the photos of actual strange creatures from the camera that Itsuki had given me, in order to make room for our real work that day.

"Okay here are the two sectors we'll search this afternoon." Haruhi spread out two maps of the city that were identical, except that each had a different section outlined in pencil. "We'll split into two groups, one for each sector, and search these areas for the likely victims of the monsters."

"Yeah, yeah. So let's draw toothpicks again." I reached for the toothpicks holder.

Haruhi shook her head. "No Kyon, you already messed up twice before. This time I'm putting you under Itsuki, so you can finally learn something. You've proven you know how to point a camera so you just take pictures, while Itsuki leads the way, interviews the future victims, and takes notes."

So my supposedly faked photos are now supposed to show that I'm good with a camera? Once again Haruhi's logic was so difficult to follow that it might as well have come from different people mixed together.

"That leaves you two girls with me. Yuki, how's your vision on land?" Haruhi examined the glasses worn by my monster fiancee, who was sitting next to me.

Wait, did Haruhi just admit that she knew of Yuki's non-human nature?

"My glasses correct sufficiently."

"No need to take the risk of misfocus. All those decades of reading should indicate some ability to write, so you'll be our note taker. Mikuru is too clumsy to be trusted with the camera so she'll be the face for our team to interview people. Well, any questions?" Haruhi looked around, but none were offered. "Okay Itsuki, pick your map."

"I'll take this one." He picked up the map with the marked region closer to his church.

"We'll meet back here at five." Haruhi set off with Mikuru and Yuki in tow.

We walked the other direction for a while, then I turned to Itsuki. "Do you think Mikuru will be safe with those two?"

"I doubt they'll reveal their true colors so early. The stars are not yet right."

"Haruhi knows everything, you know. She came storming over to my house on Friday night and guessed Yuki's age to within one year."

"It's Yuki now, instead of Miss Nagato?" Itsuki smiled as he checked the map then turned right.

"Yeah, yeah. So she's a monster. She's also my fiancee."

"So what has your fiancee told you about her kind?"

"She's demonstrated a lot, but said very little. She's hinted that more information will be forthcoming, once I put out for her." I thought back over all the times that Yuki had flaunted her naked or barely dressed body in front of me.

"Actually a rather tempting offer, but it is your soul on the line. Before you accept, I should tell you that they are all half-human widows."

"Widows?" I stopped for a moment, then hurried to catch up with him.

"Only daughters are born to the sea-witches, and their tradition is to devour the fathers of their daughters, on the night of conception."

"Aren't I a little big for Yuki to wolf down in a single meal?"

"They invite their relatives to the party."

Itsuki led me to selected homes in the outlined area and he was welcomed at them by people who knew him and tended to also wear Christian crosses. His notes bore little relation to the actual residents.

As we were heading back I asked him. "Do you feel okay about all this? What happens if one of your friends gets attacked?"

"Wouldn't that be an interesting coincidence?" He looked at me and smiled.

As I walked back home later with my "sea-witch" fiancee, I decided to test her against this latest fact. "So, what was your father like?"

Yuki glanced at me, then looked down at the sidewalk. "Papa was very kind to me. The first time I was ever told that I wasn't entirely human was when he sat down with me and my mother and they both carefully explained to me the things I had to do to keep from being noticed for what I was."

"So, whatever happened to him?"

"I don't know. My last memory of him was when I was ten. The two of them had been crying and then my mother took me and we traveled a very long way on a train. It's been fifty three years, so I suppose he must be dead by now, if he indeed survived the night." Yuki gently sighed.

Her act, if that's what it was, was starting to get to me. I harded my heart and continued. "Your night vision is excellent. An adaption for living at the bottom of the ocean? What's it like down there?"

"I don't know. I've never been to the ocean. Once we are closer, I will burden you with the secret as to why that is."

I didn't know which way to respond at that point so I simply opened the door to our house and stood aside so she could enter first.

Inside, my little sister was playing a video game and she invited "Big-sister Yuki" to play with her. I had homework to do and so didn't dwell on the loss of the final bit of my big-brother status. At least I could take comfort in the fact that my sister wouldn't sever all ties to Yuki's husband. Assuming that I wasn't devoured by sea-witches on my honeymoon of course.

Monday afternoon in the clubroom, Itsuki was typing in the data we had "gathered" as I read it out. Yuki was wearing her cat maid outfit while sitting in her comfy chair (even Haruhi seemed loathe to take that away from her) and reading another book from the library, while Haruhi sat at the table and studied the maps. Was she plotting quick getaway routes or what?

The door opened and Mikuru said from outside, "This way please."

Another girl who also wore a sophomore uniform followed her into the room. She had green eyes and also green hair.

I glanced at Yuki and then back at this new girl. If it was a dye job then it was very good indeed. If it was natural, well at least she seemed to be able to see her way around without thick glasses like Yuki's.

Haruhi quickly folded up the maps and turned to the newcomer. "Hello, how can we help you, Miss?"

"Emiri Kimidori. And I hope you can help me, because everything else has failed."

"You've come to the right place then. I'm Haruhi Suzumiya and you will find that my SOS Brigade is very unusual. Please, have a seat." Haruhi clapped twice. "Yuki, some tea for our guest please."

"As you wish, Ma'am." Yuki put aside her book and rose to her maid duties.

Miss Kimidori said that her boyfriend had been missing for several days and that nobody had taken her inquiries seriously.

"This is precisely the kind of case we've been preparing for." Haruhi turned to me. "You see, my dear Watson, the game is afoot."

So now she thinks she's Sherlock Holmes? I may have sighed, but I said nothing.

Haruhi turned back to our first ever client. "So Miss Kimidori, how did you find us?"

"It was my boyfriend himself. You see, he would mention you in his, er, sleep. He would suddenly shout things like 'the SOS Brigade', 'those eyes, those monstrous eyes', and such. I would appreciate it if those details were never released."

"Oh, we are the very souls of discretion. Still it seems a bit odd."

"But his computer club is just down the corridor. He's the president of that club."

Haruhi sent Miss Kimidori on her way and led the brigade to the address given us. We followed her up the stairs to the apartment in question and then she kicked the door in.

I stood there stunned for a moment, then found my voice. "Why didn't you knock first?"

"Oh, do be sensible Kyon. The door was locked of course." Haruhi marched in and the rest of us followed her.

I stopped to look at the ruined door. It had indeed been locked, with even the deadbolt in place. How had Haruhi broken through with just one kick?

"Kyon, quick take a photo of this!"

I hurried to her side and saw that Haruhi was pointing at a large roughly circular pattern. Was that drawn in blood with the outstretched fingers of one hand?

No sooner had I taken the photo, than Haruhi grabbed the camera out of my hands.

"Good job Kyon. See how it spells out SOS? This is going to be so great on our homepage."

"What?" I assumed she must be kidding, or at least I silently prayed that she was.

"What are you kids doing?"

I turned to look to the corridor. There was a middle aged man looking aghast at the damage Haruhi had caused to the door.

"Are you the lazy, good for nothing, manager of this building?"

"Yeah, who are you lot?"

Had he even heard Haruhi's question?

"One of your renters has been abducted! Just look at this message he left." She pointed down to the mysterious sign.

The manager wanted the police to arrest us all for breaking and entering, but Haruhi managed to shift the suspicion onto him for not reporting the abduction earlier.

The Tuesday morning paper's headline read: "Another North High School student missing!"

My little sister looked up from the newspaper section that my father had placed on the table as he turned to the sports section. "Big-sister Yuki, I'm so worried for you."

"Don't worry, little-sister. Kyon will protect me."

My little sister turned to me for the first time in days. "Promise me, Kyon. Promise you won't let anything happen to Big-sister Yuki."

"I promise."

On the way to school, I reached for my little sister, but she took my offered hand and put it in Yuki's, before taking Yuki's other hand in hers.

When I got to the clubroom after classes I found a note on the door from Haruhi. She had a meeting with the school authorities and so the club meeting for today was canceled. I turned away with Yuki following and stopped.

Fellow club member Mikuru Asahina was standing right in front of Yuki. "You went to the search on Sunday in your school uniform. Did Haruhi only buy you that maid outfit?"

I turned to Yuki. I was so used to seeing her in her school uniform that I hadn't even noticed that she really didn't really have anything much of anything else, escpecially with her habit of shedding almost everything whenever we were alone.

Yuki nodded.

"Come along then and we'll get you some outfits you can wear on dates. You are engaged after all." Mikuru reached for Yuki's hand.

"Sorry, but we're broke." I held up my hand to show my engagement ring.

"It's okay, I can pay. And Yuki, can we take Kyon along so that he can carry the bags?"

"Of course."

Mikuru led us down the hill to the train station and then two stops later we got off at the shopping district.

The sales lady noticed Yuki's ring, was about to ask about it, but then spotted my ring. She nodded and began to make suggestions, which Miruku joined in.

As Yuki was changing into the first selection that had been made for her, I sat down next to Mikuru and whispered to her, "If the kappa are all female, then why spread the rumor that they're all male?"

"Yuki won't look like that forever. Give her a few thousand years and she'll be all scaly, with webbed fingers and toes. It took us a few centuries to find out that young kappa could easily pass as human girls, and by that point the folklore had already been set."

"So why are you being helpful to Yuki? Is this just a ploy to get her to trust you, so you can destroy her?"

"It is the Western way to seek out and destroy all monsters. The way of Shinto is to find a common existence with the kami. We have to judge each case. Like men, not all kappa are evil. Yuki is an odd case. As far as we can determine she has never gone to sea, and she has never tasted human flesh. But Kyon, there is one thing I'd thought you'd know by now. While the kappa have poor vision on land, they retain their excellent hearing." Mikuru turned to the changing stall and continued without raising her voice. "You finished changing a few minutes ago, so let's see what you look like, Yuki."

The latch of the changing stall slid open and Yuki stepped out in the new outfit, with a hurt look on her face.

"Oh poor thing. Did I just ruin one of the surprises you were keeping for your fiancee?" Mikuru made a point of not raising her voice above the whisper level I had initiated.

Yuki walked over and said in her usual hoarse whisper, "I am not a kappa."

"Then what does your kind call itself?"

I risked a glance over at Mikuru. She seemed really pleased about maneuvering things to this point.

Yuki made her usual fish-eyed stare at Mikuru. "Your ears would need to be underwater and my throat would need to be filled with water, submerged together in a pond or something. And even then most of our name would be outside the range of human hearing. The closest translation in Japanese to our name would be The Deep Ones."

"We thought that only applied to the eldest of your race?"

"We make no such distinction."

"One final clarification, if you don't mind?"

"Go ahead." To anybody else, Yuki's huge eyes would seem as emotionless as a fish, but I could see the hint of anger behind them.

"The cause of your mother's death?"

"She was hunted down as a heretic to our race. I learned later that her sacrifice was to give me time to escape." Yuki turned to me. "And that Kyon, is the reason I must avoid the ocean. It's family politics."

"So you see Kyon, just like you, Yuki has lost a loved one." Mikuru smiled at me for a moment, then dropped the smile as she saw my expression.

"Miss Sasaki was no more my girlfriend than Miss Asakura was. I thought Sasaki was a close friend. I was the only student in our school who would entertain her so-called 'logical' reasoning. Then one day she said she saw something horrible in my eyes and asked me to please sit still while she cut them out. Sometimes I wish I'd taken her up on her kind offer. As far as I know she's still alive, if you call being locked up like that living." I turned back to my fiancee. "So Yuki, do you want to cry on my shoulder? That's what my Mom's hired me out for."

Yuki's gaze softened and it took every bit of my knowledge of her non-human nature to keep from falling for her as she continued in a slightly gentler tone. "No, I understand now. I will wait until you are ready. I was truly unaware of your circumstances. Perhaps if we both survive what is to come..." The Yuki turned back to address Mikuru with her standard horse whisper. "So Miss Asahina, is this charade over?"

"What? No, cheer up! You look lovely in that outfit, doesn't she, Kyon? And you've got three more to try on. You can have them all if you like."

In the end Yuki did take all four outfits, and some advice from Mikuru about how to mix certain parts together for greater variety. As I carried the packages I went over them all in my head and still couldn't shake the impression they gave Yuki of being a middle school student in casual clothes with unusual hair and eyes. I would have suggested adding a hat and sunglasses, but I didn't want that to be taken as a disparagement of her looks, rather than a disguise to throw her relatives off the trail that led to my house. So my "fiancee" was the blood enemy of human-eating monsters. Did that automatically make her my friend? It was a point I'd have to consider.

When we got home, my sister was overjoyed to be able to play fashion show with her supposed future sister-in-law.

Wednesday morning Yuki and I dropped my sister off at her school, bicycled to the station, walked up the hill to North High, then entered the school's courtyard.

"You monster!"

I turned to Taniguchi, but he walked past me to stand in front of Yuki.

"You're as cold blooded as a kappa. Getting engaged to Kyon right after he killed my poor Ryoko. Grave digger!"

I put my arm between the two of them. "You don't have a problem with my fiancee. You've got a problem with me, Taniguchi. So take it up with me."

"It's this fish eyed monster. She's the one who put you up to it. So I'm going to get some answers out of her, here and now."

Yuki backed up and I moved between the two.

Taniguchi turned to me. "Stay out of this, Kyon."

"I can't do that."

"Damn you!" He suddenly swung and hit me on the jaw.

Our Gym teacher grabbed him while I escorted Yuki inside.

"Does that hurt?" She asked.

"A bit. I'll go see the nurse."

I entered first period class ten minutes late, with a cold pack for my face. Taniguchi's seat was empty.

After the first teacher left, Haruhi said from behind me. "You got into a fight over Yuki? I didn't know that there were all that many boys who went for her kind."

I turned to her and tried to deflect the subject. "What happened with the school authorities yesterday?"

"Oh, students shouldn't try to solve crimes. How are we supposed to change the world, if they won't let us do anything?"

"Has the computer club president been found?"

"Of course not."

And how would you know what was likely or not in this case, Miss Suzumiya?

At lunchtime Yuki came over to our classroom, dropped her bento on my desk and turned to look for an available chair.

"Here." Haruhi picked up Yuki's bento and placed it on her own desk. "No meeting of brigade members without the brigade commander."

I turned my chair around and looked at her for a moment. Haruhi, if you follow us on our honeymoon, I'll ensure that you are the one who is thrown to the hungry kappas. Well fine, put this bee in your bonnet. "Yuki."

She brought a chair and set down next to us. "Yes, Kyon?"

"Do you have any plans for Friday night?"

"No."

"Then let's go out on a date. We'll set out from our house at seven p.m. sharp. Agreed?"

"Yes," both girls said in unison.

After classes I waited for the girls to change and then knocked before entering the clubroom.

Haruhi was sitting at the computer and pulled out a printed page. "You messed it up, Kyon." The printout was of my photo from the crime scene.

"What?"

"You got the angle and lighting all wrong. There's no way we can put this on our website."

"That's a relief." I took my seat.

"So I have to retrace the design in a graphics program. At least this way I'll be able to use the proper colors and include a box at the bottom for the brigade symbol."

I didn't ask her how she'd know what the 'proper' colors might be.