A/N: Sorry for another mostly speech driven chapter. At least there's some drama.

...

In almost no time at all Akira appeared in front of me. She was wearing the North High uniform and her hair was blond like it had been when I'd first met her, but soon she was suddenly wearing her strange blue clothing and her hair was black again. As though it were the most normal thing in the world to disappear and reappear moments later or to change appearances at will, she asked, "Have you been waiting long?"

She should already know the answer, she left less than a minute ago. I answered with a cliqued line anyway, "No, I just got here myself."

"By the way," She started in a casual tone, "We're behind schedule. The amount of time I spent in the future should have been half a day, but my internal clock is telling me it's been two days since we entered this world, so since I went to the future almost immediately after we arrived that four times the amount of time that has passed has been counted. Either it's counting based on the occurrence of important events or times passing in this world has been altered, the second being more likely."

"Um... What does that mean?" I asked. If she's already used two days of time we probably won't have enough time left to finish the rest of the plan, she never told me what the consequences of her not making it back to her world within the time limit were but I assumed it would be really bad.

"It's likely that the flow of time has been sped up but the events occurring in that time are not sped up, causing something that would normally take a half of a day to take two full days... but since we arrived in this world in this time plane it shouldn't be possible for the infection to be interfering because it hadn't taken effect until much later. The infection hadn't reached my world yet in the time we came from so I've had no direct contact with it, meaning the infection should have no effect on me or my powers at the moment; as for you, you were one of the first infected but you were probably able to develop an immunity to it in the three months that you stayed in the library so it should no longer have an affect on you whatsoever, and the same should go for Mikuru as well," She paused, then continued with a disconcerting expression, "However... if none of us could possibly be affected by the infection then the only way that time could be estranged like this is if someone were manipulating it. That would have to mean that there's someone directly trying to prevent us from correcting the world balance."

That's strange, I think I was able to actually understand what she was saying... 'time's become strange but it can't be any of our faults so it must be because there's a bad guy, and now we're running out of time', or something like that at least.

"Do you think we'll still be able to pull of the plan?" I asked.

"No." She answered bluntly.

"But then..." I started, I was going to ask 'but then what are we going to do?' but she interrupted me.

"We'll have to use plan B," She said, "and it's going to much more difficult... for you."

Actually I hadn't even been aware that we had a plan B, weren't we only supposed to have one chance, an all or nothing bet. If plan B takes less time then why wasn't it our plan to begin with? The last part of what she said had been whispered it hadn't even registered in my mind till a moment later. Wait... why does it make things harder for just me?

"Well it'll take less time anyway..." Akira trailed off, " Regarding plan B: I believe I said something like this to you before, 'It began on your first day of high school, activated the day you started to talk to Haruhi, began spreading the day the SOS Brigade was created, and has continued ever since.'"

"Yeah that was not long before you left... what about it?" I asked, really hoping she wasn't about to say something completely ridiculous. As usual... my hopes were not answered.

"The you I'm currently talking to is immune to the infection because of various circumstances, however the you in this time period is a carrier (though completely unaffected by it) of the infection contracting it on the first day of high school and it will be latent until he comes in contact with Haruhi Suzumiya. Of course the two of us are here on a mission to stop the infection at all costs, but we don't have very much time on our hands... Do you see where I'm going with this?" She stopped and asked suddenly.

Not at all, that's not enough information to really understand what you're planning.

For the first time completely ignoring my internal dialogue, Akira continued, "So then... you see that I intend to make a copy of the current you, alter one of your memories and have the altered one replace the you of this time period?"

Wait... what?

There's a huge gap in logic between that plan and the summery of our situation from before! How on Earth would something like that work? Wait... no it actually makes sense, well a little bit. This could work...

No. No. No. There's to many holes in that plan! For starters; what's going to happen to the me (from this time), she's not seriously planning to get rid of him is she? But it's not like she can just let him walk around seeing as he's carrying a dangerous infection. And why does she need to clone me and mess up my memories? Couldn't I just take his place until those events had passed or something?

"Not enough time. That would take months, while we at most have a few more days (without consequence); theoretically, you could do that but you would have to stay in this world for the rest of your life and would be stripped of anything about you that is beyond the scope of normal human ability (though I suppose this being -most likely- your original world, and you not appearing to have any non-human powers to begin with this wouldn't be that serious of a consequence). Also it would cause a very serious paradox; because there is no guarantee that simply replacing the you of this time until after the SOS Brigade is formed would prevent the infection as we don't know for sure that it couldn't be triggered by another event, for that reason if we were to try this plan rather than staying until those events pass you would just have to wait for yourself to catch up with real time, repeating the entire first year you spent in high school and the beginning of the second year knowing full well everything that was going to happen next..." Akira spoke in an extremely serious tone, she paused for a long time which made the moment even more tense.

Actually... I hadn't thought of that. That would be a very difficult thing to do...

She'd been looking downward throughout the speech until this point, but she suddenly looked up, revealing a sad expression as she continued, "Do you really think you would be able to live like that... through all of those events without changing anything? The incident where Ryouko Asakura tried to kill you to see Haruhi's reaction? That time when you kissed Haruhi in the closed space? The time travel mess on Tanabata? The murder mystery on the mysterious island? The chaotic baseball game? The whole fiasco that the movie caused? The weird cave cricket in that closed space-like plane of existence with the computer club president? Everything that happened on December 18th? That situation with the blizzard? What you, Yuki, and Mikuru did after that in order to correct time? The accidental meeting with Sasaki- opps that hasn't happened yet, forget I said anything. Possibly even the beginning of this event (that is my joining the SOS brigade to stop the infection)? In any case, the question remains. Are you telling me that you are willing to go through all of these events a second time, knowing everything ahead of time? Could you really do that without once giving into the temptation to do something to lessen your own burden or that of someone close to you?"

"I...I..." I started to say something, but wasn't able to. I knew that it was more than just that preventing that plan from being effective, I had realized -somehow- that it could become a loop. Starting on the day I start high school and ending at this time when we have to make a decision on what to do with the current situation, who's to say something like that hadn't already happened... oh right, that'd be me, since I don't remember having lived through these events hundreds of times that would prove that I haven't. Right?

"I would have altered your memories," Akira said in response to my thoughts, "I know that no normal human would be able to stand living through such critical and traumatizing situations that they've faced before without doing anything different, so I would have reset your memory to the way it had been when your originally started high school. However there is actual proof, my time limit, if you had done all of this before you would have been under the effect of my time limit and would not have been able to leave this world to go to mine because one of the side effects of staying in a world past the time limit is becoming unable to leave by any means; and as I mentioned earlier it also strips powers to the point where the affected person has the abilities of an average human, as such it's not guaranteed that my memory manipulation would stay intact it might would become flawed so you may would remember some things, and I sure that at some point you would realize that you were aging unless I also manipulated your physical appearance... but also if something like that were possible and continued for too many times... you would probably die."

Those are some pretty dangerous theoretical side effects... but if most of that's true she'd probably die almost instantly if she surpassed the time limit seeing as she claims to be older than human comprehension. Well I guess all of this just means we shouldn't go with that plan...

"No... wait. It's probably better that we did use that plan, also the memory and physical manipulation."

"What? But weren't you completely against it up until now?" I was shocked, I wouldn't have been able to answer any other way if I'd tried.

"All of the flaws that I mentioned in that plan... it's possible that you're an exception. The only exception," Akira said with a tone that seemed to say 'I know it sounds crazy but trust me', she explained, "The time limit might have no effect on you... this would be because you're a normal human (probably) and because you're originally a resident of this world (probably). Or possibly that you coincidentally have an ability that cancels it out (probably not). Besides the possibility of creating a loop is very small, and using this plan would also fill in the major problem presented by my earlier plan... but naturally I'll leave the choice up to you, because it's you that would be effected most by all this."

She's giving me another important world-saving choice then? How many times is this going to happen anyway?