Okay, update time. I've done some cleaning out in my fanfics folder, removing the stories that had no hope of seeing another chapter. The following stories, if anybody still reads them, might, MIGHT have some hope of an update sometime in the unforeseeable future.

Every Tohohana story, A Magician's Chronicle, Extra Set of Hands, Ibuki Miko, The White Wolf Tengu, and of course, my new MokoMyschi fic entitled Fried Birds, Broiled Fish

For the most part, my comedy works seem to still have some hope of an update. However, the Tohohana niche I've found for myself feels very much like where I belong in this fanon, so don't depend on my Gensokyo stories seeing an update. Just don't rule out the above ones, that's all.

Now then, this chapter.

Two songs that work especially well for bringing out the tension of this chapter are Fires of Hokkai from the UFO soundtrack, but also a track from Legend of Zelda. Listen to Majora's Mask's song, Final Hours, if you want to hear what I was hearing when I wrote this. If you want to hear what I heard while writing this note, on the other hand, ask me about a Power Rangers remix I wrote ^_^

But enough about that. Here's that long-awaited update~

The day of the showdown; 6:30...

THUD! The typical "faceplant-to-wake-up" method had been employed once again. This time, though, Nue's first target wouldn't be the kitchen to soothe her growling stomach. It was a remote for her tiny television. When it lit up with power, Nue started flipping through the channels. If a monster storm like Yukari had whipped up was coming this way, it would be on every news station. If she was lucky, the newscasters would know exactly when it would strike, but knowing Yukari, she'd speed it up or slow it down if she knew that Nue knew. Maybe she wouldn't, but it was best to not rule it out. When Nue finally found a news station, she sat back and listened to what had to be said about the storm that would end Tohohana.

"Officials say that such a supercell has not been seen before, partially in its sheer force and partially in its odd behaviors. While the conditions are staying constant, the speed of the storm itself has been changing constantly since last night. As such, we're unable to predict exactly when it will strike. All schools in the Kanto region and the whole of the Chubu region, save those in Niigata Prefecture, have closed for the day, and evacuations are underway. In other news…"

"Closed for the day," Nue said to herself, switching off the TV. "Great." Yukari did say she wouldn't strike while Nue was at school. This was probably just a final cruel joke on her part before she prepared to obliterate this city. With any luck, Nue and Kogasa both would get through this just fine. Kogasa was learning to read and write okay, and was able to write down basic things. The longest full sentence Kogasa had written so far was about schoolwork, and was about equal to "My dog ate my homework this morning before I got to school." She'd also taught Kogasa other words that were big in her mind lately. However, when Nue looked at the bedroom door where Kogasa was just last night, she found it wide open, with a yellow note attached.

Couldn't sleep last night. Went to school early. Kogasa.

"…" Yukari planned this. Nue was certain. She was able to make Nue very tired and drag her into sleep while she was in jail just yesterday, so who was to say that she couldn't do the exact opposite to somebody overnight? If Kogasa had already left, she wouldn't know about the current happenings, and unless she'd been found and evacuated - in which case Nue could kiss her chances of seeing Kogasa goodbye - she would be obliviously at the front doors of the school, waiting for them to open. "Wonderful way to start a day," Nue sarcastically seethed to herself as she ran downstairs. She'd need to grab a quick breakfast and pack two backpacks of supplies to hold herself and Kogasa over for the day. She'd been planning all night last night, so she knew that as long as she could meet up with Kogasa again before anything hit, she would get through this okay. Yet, Nue felt as though she was missing a very important part of her plan…

Thirty minutes later; front doors of Tohohana High…

"It's raining…" I wish I brought my umbrella. Not that I dislike the rain or anything. Just that going into school with a wet uniform wasn't the best start to a day. It wasn't raining when Kogasa first got here, but it was now. The sky was dark despite the morning hour, though Kogasa had no way of knowing what time it was. If she did, she'd say "Wow, I've been up for a really long time!" She didn't really look tired, but it was probably far from her first time pulling an all-nighter. The years in the box came to mind.

"Kogasa!"

"Huh?" When the heterochromatic girl turned to see who was calling her name, a smile broke out. It was Nue! She had her own school bag around her neck, one backpack over each shoulder, and what looked like the mini-TV from her bedroom in her hands. The whole load looked pretty heavy to Kogasa, but it probably wasn't as heavy as she was thinking if Nue could still run fine. "Hey there! Why'd you bring your TV to school?"

"Forget that, get outta the way!" Nue would probably have one good shot at this. The school doors were locked until hours started. Since they were glass, Nue's plan was to take her TV and throw it through the doors, shattering the glass. She wasn't really sure what to do after that, but it just seemed like a good idea. Plus, it would help relieve a lot of the stress brought on by impending doom, which was always nice. With the weight and toughness of the TV plus the running momentum Nue would have, it should have been enough to break through the doors. That was why, the instant Kogasa figured it out and ran out of the way, Nue released her TV, and let it fly. If she hit the walls of the school, the TV would probably break. That was why she only had one good shot.

CRASH! Success!

"You broke the doors in!"

"They're gonna get destroyed today anyway," Nue said, taking one of the backpacks off her arms and handing it to Kogasa. "Tohohana's probably getting wiped off the map today."

"Huh!?"

"The mother of all natural disasters is coming this way. There's food and stuff in that bag, but eat sparingly, okay? We may need to stay sheltered all day." Nue's plan was flawless, really. Even so, there was still this notion that she was forgetting something important in her plan…

"The MOTHER!?" Now Kogasa looked a nervous wreck. To her experience, homes got destroyed or blown away in regular disasters. Even if this was only because cardboard boxes were her basis for judging these things, the sound of what Nue was saying didn't sound so great. "Th-Then…you've got a plan, right?"

"Of course! You don't think I'd just let this kind of thing have its way with you, do you?" Taking her first steps into the school, Nue said "The plan was that I pack up food and other things in these backpacks, and find you. After that, we'd take shelter away from everybody else for the duration of this monstrosity, and be a-okay when it's over."

"Good plan. So…where's this shelter?"

"It's…it's…"

"…"

"Crap!" I knew I was forgetting something! Nue forgot where the two would take shelter! That was THE most important part of this plan, and she completely forget to take it into account! Without a sufficient safe spot, the two wouldn't stand a chance against Yukari's final challenge, and would get killed! "I have no idea!"

"Uh-oh."

"Deep breaths," Nue said, taking a few of them herself. "We just need to figure it out before things get too bad to go anywhere." Sitting herself down away from the pieces of shattered glass on the floor, Nue put herself into thinking mode. Where could the two go to hide from mother nature? Or more accurately, where could they go to hide from Yukari? If her impressions of the situation were right, no average shelter would suffice. Evacuations were already underway, but if Kogasa and Nue got evacuated, it'd be discovered that Kogasa was still homeless by all legal definitions, and the two would get separated. In that case, Yukari would win. Therefore, this was something Nue had to figure out herself.

If her intuition was any indicator, and the tense feeling in her gut, it would take too long to reach her house again. Even if they got there, what would that place do? Lose its windows and throw shattered glass all over the place, cutting the two to death? Aside from sounding like some kind of nightmare to Nue, that didn't seem like a pleasant end at all. What other places was she familiar with? Jail? If the two hid behind bars, the jail was underground. When town hall got devastated, the two would drown when the jail flooded. That didn't sound fun either.

"U-Um, Nue?"

"Hold up. Trying to think of how to save the day." Her house was out of the question, as was jail. Ironically, the two could have always hidden in the youth shelter. It was two stories high, and it did have pretty tight lockdown measures in case of an emergency. But…if they hid there, and it's current residents chose the same hiding place, Kogasa would inevitably share her story while chatting with everybody. That had the same outcome as being evacuated. Maybe the two could just run away? …impossible. We'd have to get out of the entire Kanto region, and that's not easy from Chiba Prefecture. By the time we were out of this prefecture, let alone the Kanto region, the storm would hit, and Kogasa and I would lose.

"Nue?"

"Just give me a second, Kogasa. Not trying to put you on hold, but this is a life-or-death thing." The school wasn't too bad of a shelter. Only, it had tons of windows and doors, so if things got especially nasty, shattered glass and ravaged wood would go flying everywhere. That meant that Kogasa and Nue could get killed by glass cuts, or impaled by a stray piece of wood. Neither of those sounded like a good way to go. Maybe a warehouse? Those were always pretty big, with plenty of spare room! Alas, those were too far away to reach in a reasonable time, and if a car or something got blown through the walls…Nue didn't even want to visualize her bones and Kogasa's getting shattered by a car thrown astray slamming into them. For some minutes that felt like hours, Nue kept going over potential shelters, but then realizing how they would fail to suffice in the end. Slowly, she was losing her hope of winning this.

"Nue…"

"Okay. What's wrong?"

Pointing out the door to the increasingly black sky, Kogasa said "I think it's getting closer."

"Dammit!" It was raining pretty heavily outside too, and Nue could feel the wind blowing in through the now-empty doorway. She'd have two - maybe three - minutes left, if the current conditions could be used as any measurement source. Looking to Kogasa, who seemed more and more afraid with each second, Nue said "Sit down, alright? I want to say something to you."

"Okay."

Only when Kogasa was sitting next to Nue, opposite the door, did Nue begin saying what she wanted to say. "The truth is, I've been hiding something from you. Yukari Yakumo - our town's mythological founder - is very much real. She's been trying to make me throw you back out onto the streets, so that you can someday become a world-famous poet."

"I can barely read or write, though!"

"That's what I told her. Anyway, when we went to town hall, my real objective was to talk to the mayor. She told me the same crap Yukari was giving me - that throwing you out would make us live happy lives - and when I refused, she had me thrown in jail." It felt as though with every passing word, the storm drew nearer and nearer. Maybe Yukari's way of warning Nue to not share the truth? Typical. "This supercell is Yukari's doing, and she said that if you and I could live through it, she'd let us start new lives together somewhere else, since Tohohana's getting destroyed completely today. I tried to think of a plan to survive today, but I forgot about where to shelter ourselves. So, I guess this is probably our last day alive. Weird, right? I've been protecting you all this time without you even knowing it, but now when I'm finally confessing to everything, I can't even protect myself.'

"But, I had an idea."

"…say what, now?"

"Since you busted in the school doors, couldn't we just go hide in the girls' locker room? You said it was really safe the day you took me in, so I figured, why not?"

"…"

Well, I tried to make it kind of funny despite the tension.

The punchline is at the end of the chapter, as a punchline should be, and I find it silly that when Nue's given up all hope of surviving, Kogasa comes out with an idea that Nue herself gave her in the early chapters of this fic. She DID say it could come in handy someday~

The only real hard part about this fic so far was getting this chapter right. From here, it should actually be pretty easy.

My original idea was to have Kogasa mention the locker room outside, and the two would struggle against an increasingly powerful weather to get around to the side of the school. I'm still not all that great as a writer, though, so I avoided doing such since I feel as though I couldn't capture that kind of thing properly. Instead, I did what you've just read, since I can get a scene where the otherwise-confident character finally loses hope, but then out of nowhere her cute friend has the idea that saves the day.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Expect an update sometime relatively soon, okay? The rest of this fic should be easy; I've only got 2-4 chapters left~