So, a shorter one that was going to be part of the last chapter, but there was simply too much of it. Enjoy


11.1A (Evilhumour)

Revan looked at Shepard, and then at the pamphlet in her hands.

"A support group for gender lost loopers?" She asked, raising an eyebrow at other female looper. "That's a thing?"

"Revan, there's a group for everything these days," thumbing behind her, the Sovereign entered meeting room titled 'So you encountered Pinkie Pie and you wish to get your mojo back? Villains only, drinks and snacks provided inside. No Pinkie Pies allowed.' "So you're in?"

Revan rolled her eyes, shrugging her shoulders. "Eh, why not. Might convince other people that I actually exist. Did you know that Gendo's kid, that 07, still doesn't believe in me?"

"Can't hurt to try sister." Shepard laughed, walking in the meeting room titled: 'So the world tree flubbed your gender code and you wish to deal with it. Gender optional loopers only, drinks and snacks provided inside. No Slaaneshs allowed.'

11.1B (Leviticus Wilkes)

Meanwhile, a short distance away, Stoick the Vast and Gendo Ikari shared a surprised (and in Stoick's case, disgusted) look when they bumped into each other outside of the "Anchor-Parent Support Group."

11.1C (Evilhumour)

"Gentlemen," Anakin tapped the gavel on the podium, forcing them look at the angry looking man with brown hair. "Remembers the rules; no killing each other here and you only get one free kidney punch."

11.1D (Xomniac)

Gendo made to protest...

SLAM! "GAH!"

When all the air in his lungs whoofed out of him as he doubled over the warhammer buried in his gut.

"He ain't dead, but that sure was satisfyin'." Stoick chuckled.

11.1E (Leviticus Wilkes)

"Now now, ladies and gentlemen," Tenzin said. "We mustn't be too hasty to come to blows: Anakin never specified whether or not he meant one kidney punch per puncher, or punchee."

Anakin pointed at Tenzin with his gavel. "It's one punch per puncher."

Gendo felt a sinking feeling in his gut as the assembled mothers and fathers began eyeing him dangerously. "Everyone, In my defense, I don't know any of you."

11.2 (Me and Hvulpes)

"You'll never get away with this Skywalker!" Mace Windu shouted in fury, fellow council members Mundi, Yoda and Kenobi bound together with him via rope on a boat of some sort as the mutinous Tatooine native yawned dramatically.

"Yeah yeah, look my wife wants to spend some quality time with me, and by the Force I'm going to give her it. This is merely a preventative measure to keep you from bothering us"

"And what exactly do you think tying us up in a cheap raft is going to accomplish? When we get out of here, you are going to be punished for this, as well as your breaking of the attachment code."

Anakin's grin was rather sinister as he pressed a button on the side of the artificial tunnel, starting up the current that began moving the raft away from them.

"Oh, you won't be up to much anything after a full day in here" he chuckled.

Obi-Wan stirred, before he heard a distant choir of music, and gulped "Oh dear", as the music began to hit them.

"It's a galaxy of laughter, a galaxy of tears

It's a galaxy of hopes and a galaxy of fears

There's so much that we share that it's time we're aware

It's a small galaxy after all..."

Anakin flinched in sympathy for the poor smucks, but hey, his Wife wanted a Walt Dooku world vacation, and he was going to give it to her.

Who knows, maybe this loop would the loop he had been waiting for...

"I saw what you did to the Jedi, young Skywalker."

Anakin turned to see Palpatine behind him.

Before the potential Sith Lord could speak, Darth Sidious feel to his knees before Anakin and said, "What is thy bidding, my master?"

Anakin chucked the would be destroyer of democracy into the water via the force before he went off to go find his wife.

11.3

Anakin, for some reason trapped in his young body in a single room, and only a single room (The doors were locked and he didn't have a keyblade on him), with only a single television and one of those 'game console' things (X-Station 1? PlayBox 4? Mee U?), stared at the little figure in his hand in somewhat morbid interest.

It was some cutesy, plastic model of Solo.

Shaking the figure in his hands idly, Anakin really had no idea what this was supposed to be.

It wasn't a action figure, it wasn't poseable. It wasn't a figurine, it lacked detail.

It seemed, almost the sort of thing he'd give one of his grandchildren as a toy when they were young.

Of course, he'd never be so cruel as to give them a Solo...thing.

Idly he looked around again, before noticing more of those figures all by the console.

Plastic versions of Leia, Luke, R2, Obi-Wan, Antilles, that Lando fellow...

Hmmm...was this connected to the console somehow?

Noting the controller and the power button on the archaic entertainment device, Anakin decided to experiment with just what would happen if he turned it on...

...

"...Why do we look so, weird"

Han summed up the big question that was currently going through the minds of himself, Luke, Leia, Wedge, Obi-Wan, R2 and 3P0 in a cartoony version of Bespin.

"Hmmm, variant loop perhaps. Might be some variant of that Lego variant?" Wedge suggested.

Leia observed her hand idly at that one "No..it's not a lego loop"

Their thoughts on the situation the group had found themselves in were suddenly erased as giant words emblazoned in the sky above them in dark red letters

TOYBOX MODE, ACTIVATED

"I have a bad feeling about this" Obi-Wan understated as a dozen Wampa's appeared around Han, the thirteen of them (Wampa and Smuggler) suddenly was teleported onto a replica of the Death Star 2.

"Yeah, no kidding!" Han gulped, all alone and surrounded by big hairy monsters.

….

11.4 (Kris Overstreet)

The late ping had come while the Millenium Falcon was playing hide-and-seek with the Star Destroyer fleet that had launched the strike on Hoth.

Thus, when the door opened to the Bespin dining hall to reveal Darth Vader, Han Solo was not surprised by the absence of Boba Fett. Obviously Vader was Awake...

... but Han wasn't going to give up on the moment he'd looked forward to all Loop, just because of a petty technicality.

With his best quickdraw speed he reached to his gun belt, grabbed, drew, and flicked his wrist with absolute precision.

Vader looked down to his own belt just in time to see his lightsaber get yanked out of its pocket by the long leather whip.

Han, holding the whip handle in one hand and the lightsaber in the other a moment later, shrugged and grinned. Leia, standing beside him, rolled her eyes. Lando, not Awake and with his hand still on the door controls, stared in total confusion.

The lightsaber floated out of Han's hand and back across the dining table to Vader. "You couldn't pull that trick again in a million Loops," the Dark Lord said, sounding much more Anakin-y than usual for this late in his timeline.

"Maybe not," Han agreed. "Wanna let me try taking it from your hand? I've got three or four of these from my last Loop, so frying one won't be too great a loss, right?"

"Yeah, why not?" Vader nodded, igniting the saber and holding it out over the table.

"AFTER dinner," Leia said pointedly, nodding to the fully laden table between the two. "Honestly. Men."

Sheepishly Han and Vader put away their toys and moved towards their seats, while Lando called for extra wine... make that brandy... no, make that strong whiskey…

….

11.5 (Crisis)

Anakin held his lightsaber in front of him warily. General Grievous being replaced by someone he'd never heard of was one thing. Actually seeing what looked like a young girl in a black and beige armored sundress in command of the Separatist droid army was another altogether. Facing her down in the middle of her current command ship was... surreal.

"Are you... her?" the disturbingly lifelike girl droid, as lifelike as Blues had been when he visited come to think of it, asked with an insane grin as every single danger sense Anakin had picked up in the Loops screamed at him to run for his life. Only the fact that his precognitive abilities were screaming just as loudly that bad things would happen if he tried kept him rooted to the spot.

"Her?" Anakin asked with not a little confusion. He was his normal male self this Loop after all.

"The one I need to kill," the girl droid said with a disturbing gleam in her eye. "To rend, tear, and torture until she begs for a mercy that will never come. Are you sure you're not her? Maybe her brother perhaps?"

"I... really don't know who you're talking about," Anakin resisted the urge to take a step back. "Maybe if you tell me their names?"

"I don't know her name..." the girl general giggled creepily. "Only that she exists somewhere and that she has a brother..."

"I can't really help you find them if you don't know who they are," Anakin stalled.

"Oh, well," the droid girl sighed dramatically before grinning maniacally. "I guess I'll just have to kill and torture everyone to be sure! It'll be so much fu–"

"General Waltz!" a droid soldier came running up. "General Waltz! We have intru–*skrzzt*"

Anakin blinked as the droid fell in several pieces from the lightsaber blades that had suddenly sprouted from the girl droid's fingers.

"What have I told you idiots about interrupting me when I'm in the middle of killing someone?!" the girl screeched before turning back to a thoroughly creeped out Anakin and igniting lightsaber blades from her other fingers as well. "Now, where were we? Oh, yes, I was about to tell you that if you really wanted to live you should start running for your–*skrzzt*"

Anakin stared in horrified confusion as the girl droid cut her own face with one of her finger-sabers.

"WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT WARNING THE VICTIMS?!" she screeched at herself. "YOU DON'T WARN MY PRECIOUS MEWLING PLAYTHINGS AWAY AND I SOMETIMES PRETEND YOU DON'T EXIST!"

Anakin's resistance against his instincts failed as he finally took a step back, which caused the crazed girl droid to refocus on him, the neon pink 'W' in her helmet flaring with ominous light.

"WHO SAID YOU COULD LEAVE?!" she screamed and flung one hand and all five energy blades emitting from it in his direction, the blades lengthening to score the armored walls of the hallway as she swung.

'Shit!' Anakin panicked as he jumped, curled up, and used the Force to push the energy blades up and down to create a gap he could fit through as they passed. His hair and the soles of his boots were singed, but he wasn't a few feet shorter on either end. He brought his own lightsaber around to block the next set with a downswing even as he used the Force to push himself up and over them. 'I hate full modulation lightsabers enough when there's just one of them!'

And then he spotted the even more crazed and excited expression of General Waltz's face as she spun back around for another pass and his spirits sunk.

The assault was relentless and devastating. At least to the poor ship corridor they were in as deep molten gouges were carved into it with every missed, blocked, and deflected strike of General Waltz's, but the girl droid general didn't seem to care about the collateral damage to her own ship as she kept up the assault.

Anakin's mind was racing as much as the situation allowed. Most of his energy was being spent not getting diced to little smoldering bits in the next moment which left precious little to formulate a plan or try and counterattack. Any time he moved to try and turn the flow of battle, his danger sense, precognition, and survival instincts all screamed him back on the defensive. And forget trying some of the more powerful stuff he'd picked up. Much of it needed at least a moment of concentration that he couldn't afford, and some of the best stuff (most of which could have turned the entire ship into vapor easily) practically needed a heartfelt speech or a few seconds to charge up which was emphatically out of the question right then.

And then, practically through sheer chance, he spotted his looping apprentice charging up behind General Waltz with a massive swirling ball of chakra flames in her hand.

"Take this you monster!" Ahsoka prepared to strike.

"Snips, no!" Anakin yelled as his padawan jumped into the air and angled the swirling orb of flames for a downward blow.

"RASEN–"

Ten finger-mounted lightsaber blades flashed through the spot occupied by Ahsoka and the fire-based Rasengan variant exploded to incinerate the girl's remains before Anakin had even finished registering the sight.

General Waltz hadn't even turned around.

"Ooops..." the insane droid girl grinned. "Was she important to you? A student? A friend? A lover? A daughter perhaps? I always forget to ask that before I kill precious people..."

'Yes, yes, a few Loops I try not to think about, and YES you unholy blight on creation!' Anakin's face twisted with fury as Dark Side Force Lightning arced over his body.

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! THAT'S THE LOOK I LOVE TO SEE! FURY AND ANGUISH!" Waltz cackled as she charged again. "LET IT BE THE LAST THING YOU EVER FEEL!"

Anakin roared in anguished fury as he charged to meet her head-on.

*hoooooo*

*hissssss*

*hoooooo*

*hissssss*

Anakin awoke to the all-too-familiar sound of mechanically assisted breathing and looked around. This... wasn't the chamber where Palpatine told him Padme was dead. Nor was it one of his chambers after the Empire had been formally acknowledged.

Raising his arm up, he noted that as Darth Vader he most certainly didn't normally wear white.

"Where...?" the familiar deep voice he was more familiar with than he liked asked.

"Easy Anakin," the gentle voice of Obi-Wan made itself known as the decidedly younger version of the man entered Anakin's view. "You've been through a lot. You almost didn't make it."

"Obi-Wan... I..." Anakin choked as what happened came back to him. It was still the same Loop, which meant Obi-Wan wasn't Awake and Ahsoka was still... "General Waltz... She... she got Snips..."

"Oh, Ani..." Padme's shocked gasp made his heart hurt even more. "I'm so sorry..."

"Do you remember what happened?" Obi-Wan asked.

"No... I..." Anakin tried to think, but everything after Ahsoka had died was a roar of rage and sorrow. "She got Snips... I... I lost it... and then... here..."

"Hmm..." Obi-Wan frowned in his classic manner. "Then we have a problem... When we found the ship adrift, you were the only thing even remotely alive on it. All of the droids, the crew, and everything else was carved to pieces but no sign of General Waltz was found."

"We can't..." Anakin tried to sit up, only for his vision to swim.

"Easy Ani," Padme lowered him back down gently. "You're nowhere near recovered."

"Indeed," Obi-Wan nodded. "We'll put a stop to General Waltz and whatever she or the Separatists have planned, but for now you need to rest and recover.

Anakin reluctantly heeded their concern, vowing to himself that by the time this Loop was over, Waltz would be put down like the madwoman she was.

….

11.6

Mara Jade had little knowledge of her past: looping had not helped her connect with her past.

She had no idea why, perhaps it was just like what happened with Yoda's species.

In her time, during loops where she did not start out as the Emperor's Hand, she had been many things. She had looped as a diplomats daughter, a crime lords princess, the daughter of scientists and generals, and even once the daughter of a Astromech and a Gundark.

She had a long drink with CatDog after that loop.

It really didn't bother. Sure, she'd love to know her past, but she didn't want to dwell on it like Logan did.

It wasn't like she lost the memories, like the case was with that 'bub, nor with the case of the Ketchum's patriarch. She never had them to begin with.

It was the best way to look at things anyway.

This loop, though, she was but a 10 year old street urchin on some mid level planet that she wasn't sure existed in baseline.

Grumble Grumble

And damn...she was hungry.

One of these days she had to remember to staff vast amounts of food in her subspace pocket (perhaps next visit to Hogwarts).

Come to think of it, could you staff food in a subspace pocket? Or did that only work with twinkies...

A ping suddenly rang, followed by the sound of T.I.E fighters.

...

"You know, I know I promised you a date after how busy the two of us were last loop" the nearly 12 year old Luke Skywalker noted as Mara began devouring the meal he had ordered for the two of them on a picnic table in the local park "This...isn't how I imagined it would be. Ideally, the two of us would have gone through puberty for one thing..."

The meal had vanished by the time Mara responded "Sorry, I haven't eaten in days this loop."

Luke smiled sadly at his wife as he patted her back gently "My apologies. I haven't been able to go looking for you, or anyone, for a while. See, this is a variant loop where a non-looping version of my dad is raising Leia and I as the future emperors of the Galaxy."

Mara looked at Luke with some dread. Non-looping version of their father could be...risky. The slightest change in baseline could make them either saints, or horrors. It really depended on what parts of his mind were damaged by the dark side and/or the lava.

"He's not doing a half-bad job" Luke alleviated her concerns "This isn't a Galen Marek variant him. However, he has made some questionable calls" at Mara's curious/worried glance, he elaborated "As of now, he has not decided if I or Leia will inherit the empire. So, he's decided to test us" Luke gestured to the Stormtroopers doing a really poor job of being subtle in their presence "He gave the two of us each a Venator under our command and told us to go out and do something with it."

Mara looked at her husband in shock "He gave 12 year olds..."

"I never said my father is a model parent this loop, just a decent one all things considered. I mean, sure, it's probably better than just giving the empire to me because I'm the boy, but he's not going to be winning any parenting awards for it. Last I heard, Leia apparently went off to go capture Hondo Ohnaka and may or may not have forced Tarkin to kneel before her" Leia honestly unnerved him this loop. Half the time she seemed like a imperialistic nutcase who had a kneeling fetish that made Zod look chaste, and the other half it felt like she was flirting with him.

Why did his sister have to go through so many radical personality shifts when raised by their unawake father and only him?

"Though I just might be winning this little contest, for coming home with my very own elite minion." Luke's cheeky voice made Mara smirk.

"And what makes you think I'm going to be your 'minion'?" the tone was somewhat not appropriate for a 10 year old girl.

"Well, there is this galaxy famous ice cream place I know of a few planets away I can use my status to get us ahead of the lines..."

"Sold"

11.7 (KrisOverstreet)

That Loop there were more pings than I could account for. Yuki, Asahina, and Koizumi all sent text messages. Haruhi, being even more energetic than any of them, actually called one minute after the usual 4:38 AM start of the Loop and spent over an hour blathering about the prospect of visiting Loopers. For the first time the SOS Brigade was going to play host to people from a whole other universe. I said maybe fifty words total in that whole conversation, all variants on Please let me sleep. Of course Haruhi disregarded them all.

Sure enough, there was a new faculty member on the stage during the first assembly of the school year. I was too far back to recognize him, but the light brown hair and thick beard marked him as a Westerner, probably an American of some sort.

Then we reported to our homeroom classes, where one of the minor annoyances of my life, Taniguchi, failed to appear. In his desk at the front of the row sat another Westerner, bright blond hair trimmed to a buzzcut except for a tiny braided lock dangling from his right temple.

"From Cibola High School, Yuma, Arizona, in the United States, Anakin Skywalker," he said when it came his turn to stand.

I couldn't suppress a grunt of surprise. My Loop memories said nothing about Star Wars this time around, but in baseline I'd seen all the movies, even the bad ones, at least once. If you were a child anywhere on Earth at that time, you knew about Star Wars.

Behind me I heard Haruhi gasp. I didn't need to turn and look; I already knew what the wide-eyed excited smile on Haruhi's face looked like. I'd learned to dread it. And now, so would someone else.

"My interests are swordfighting and repairing things. I'm looking forward to a quiet three years to learn and expand my horizons in your beautiful country. Thank you."

A moment later it came my turn to speak, and as usual I gave my proper name. "My friends, despite my wishes, insist on calling me Kyon. My main interest is in keeping my sanity in the coming three years, despite the efforts of the girl behind me. If you are an alien, time traveler, or esper, give up hope now, because she will find you."

"Kyon! Don't say idiotic things like that!"

I don't fight the inevitable, but there's nothing that says I can't give others fair warning.

"Hmph!" As I sat down, Haruhi stood up. "From East Middle School, Haruhi Suzumiya. I have no interest in ordinary humans. For extraordinary humans I plan to form a club to seek out the mysteries of the universe and have fun with them! I'm especially seeking out quiet intelligent types, people who feel emotions deeply, and mysterious transfer students! Especially people who are all three!"

Skywalker turned in his seat to look back at Haruhi. To his credit, he was the last student in the class besides me who wasn't staring in complete shock at Haruhi. On the other hand, his face was definitely the most disbelieving.

I clapped my hands twice and sent up a silent prayer. Rest in peace, Anakin Skywalker. Your life ended the moment you were seen by Haruhi Suzumiya...

For once the first lunch bell of the Loop did not coincide with Haruhi's freakishly strong grip on my arm and a pell-mell rush down the hallway towards the old school building and the club rooms. Instead she left me to trail along behind as she tried to haul Skywalker out the classroom door and along the usual path.

"Hey! Leggo! What are you doing?"

Did I look that surprised and disoriented the first time Haruhi Suzumiya, frustrated with not finding an extraordinary club in the school, took the notion to make her own? Was I that helpless? Did the other students, even that creepy Asakura, give me the same pitying looks?

Only a handful of other students were in the hallway of the main building, and all of them had vanished by the time we got to the walkway to the old building. Skywalker didn't stop protesting the entire way.

"Why are you doing this? HOW are you doing this? I'm thirty centimeters taller than you at least!"

Up the stairs they went, with me following along behind.

"Look, if you don't cut it out I'm going to start getting upset! Bad things happen when I get up set! There are whole planets that can tell you how that ends up!"

Haruhi never answered, never said a word, just kept leading on until we came to the door of the literature club. Haruhi grabbed the knob, opened the door, and practically hurled Skywalker inside, dashing in behind him and leaving me to close the door behind me. It was that simple. But then, for Haruhi the impossible was always simple. It was the simple things that she found impossible.

Nagato, the ever-present sole member of the literature club, looked up from her book. I could just see the title: The Hero of a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. Somehow she had known. Sitting in another corner, Asahina, the adorable, helpless second-year student, squirmed in another folding chair. "Ah, my older self- ahh!" Her eyes widened as she realized Haruhi wasn't the first person through the door. "Kyon-kun, who is this?"

Just as Skywalker was recovering his balance, Haruhi stood next to him and gestured in much the same way a game show hostess might point at some wonderful prize. "Starting from this day, Darth Vader is a member of the SOS Brigade!" she proclaimed.

"Whaaaaat?" Anakin Skywalker's eyes bulged. "What the hell are you talking about? Aren't you even going to ask?"

Save your breath. Nobody joins the SOS Brigade. We all get drafted.

"Ah, who's Darth Vader?" Asahina didn't seem to understand. Apparently the Star Wars movies hadn't survived until whatever future year she came from. I need to find some way to get her to a movie theater without Suzumiya thinking it's a date or anything like that. Or maybe I can talk her into making it a brigade activity.

"I prefer the name Anakin Skywalker," the Looping exchange student said firmly. "And if I join any club it's going to be the kendo club, just so I can spend every afternoon yanking Ben Kenobi's chain."

"Obi-Wan's here too?" Haruhi gasped.

"Science teacher," Nagato murmured, returning her attention to her book. "Homeroom 1-9."

"So Koizumi will have him for homeroom when he transfers! Excellent!" Haruhi began pacing up and down the club room. "Finally, a loop where we'll have a friendly faculty member to sponsor the SOS Brigade! This time we'll make the administration recognize us as a legitimate club! No more looking down on-" She stopped as she noticed Skywalker's hand on the doorknob. "Where are you going? I didn't say you could leave!"

"I told you, I'm not doing this," Skywalker insisted. "You're really beginning to annoy me. So unless you give me a good reason to-"

One moment Haruhi's hand was empty. The next it had a thing about as long as a Setsubun lucky sushi roll in her hand. Her thumb moved, and it hissed. A bright red bar of light extended from it.

Despite the added light source, the end of the room where Anakin stood suddenly seemed a little darker. "Where did you get that?" he growled.

That's enough of that. Someone has to stop this from getting any worse. The club room might get damaged, and then where will Asahina brew her tea?

"But it's just starting to get fun!" Haruhi protested huffily.

Remember the movie, Haruhi. There are limits, and you're about to hit them.

"Why do I keep you around, anyway?"

To lift your heavy bags, to clean up after your messes, and to apologize for you when you're being a monster, I didn't say. From the look in her eyes, though, she heard it all the same.

"Whatever!" she snapped. "Kyon, take our new member and explain the SOS Brigade to him. The rest of us need to make plans!"

Good grief. Well, whatever. You owe us each a lunch for this.

"Since when does the brigade chief pay penalties?"

Since the brigade chief is hosting guests. Or had you forgotten courtesy?

"Oh." Finally, at long last, something got through her enthusiasm. "Well." Getting through her pride was another matter. Anyone expecting an apology from her would have better luck waiting for Mt. Fuji to walk into the Inland Sea. "If I do make you lunches, it'll be because I felt like it, that's all! Now go straighten our new member out!"

"What is with her?" Skywalker asked as I closed the clubroom door behind us. "Is she insane or something?"

Oh, where to begin with a question like that? First, it's obvious we know about your home world.

"No kidding. I've met other Looper fans of mine. They tend not to be so demanding." Skywalker hesitated a moment before adding, "Well, the non-creepy ones, anyway. And where did she get that lightsaber? She didn't pull it from a subspace pocket. I could feel the Force change suddenly when it appeared. It was like the world changed to include that lightsaber."

Well, that'll save some explanations.

"What? How?"

Or maybe not. It'd help if you'd ever visited Japan before in your Loops.

"I did. I had a wonderfully relaxing Loop here some time ago as a tourist. Saw all the sights, spent a lot of time in temples. It was very refreshing."

Oh? Did you ever go into the manga shops, then?

"Only once or twice. I wanted to see what your manga artists did with my world's stories."

That, and nothing else?

"Well... and to try out some new giant robot mangas I hadn't heard of before. Does the SOS Brigade have a giant robot?"

I had the horrible thought of the SOS Brigade piloting GoLion or something and shuddered. Haruhi in command of a giant robot team is something which should never happen. Of course, this being Haruhi and these being the Loops, it's probably inevitable.

Anyway, forget mangas for now, or light novels, or anime or radio plays or anything like that. Let's just stick to here and now. The world didn't change to create that lightsaber. Haruhi changed the world to do it.

"What?"

I explained, there in the empty hallway with as few words as possible, the original baseline run of our world: Haruhi Suzumiya as an unconscious god-or-something, Nagato, Asahina and the yet-to-appear Koizumi as representatives of various supernatural factions- yes, an alien, a time traveler, and an esper- sent to observe Suzumiya- and myself, an innocent student swept up in the insanity. I didn't mention other agents from those factions- especially not Asakura. Let him find out about her for himself.

"So Haruhi's a reality warper, but she doesn't know it? Then how did she create that lightsaber?"

Baseline Haruhi doesn't know, and the rest of the Brigade works hard to keep her from finding out. But the Loops made that impossible the first time Haruhi visited a world where ours was published fiction- like your prior trip to Japan. So now she knows, and she has partial control over it.

"That's... disturbing." Skywalker leaned against the hallway wall and kicked one heel against his other toe. "How powerful are we talking about, exactly? Closer to Discord or Q?"

Our Admin says her subconscious managed to activate our Loop from the inside.

"That's impossible."

It is now, or so I'm told.

"How could your Loop survive?"

As far as I can tell, because she really wants it to survive. The only reason she doesn't Ascend right now is, she doesn't think it would be any fun.

"Yeaaah, no. I'm not buying any of this." Skywalker pushed himself away from the wall. "And I'm not playing along with it, either. If you think it's your job to keep a spoiled baby god entertained, fine, but leave me out of it. My home Loop is irritating enough, and I intend to enjoy this vacation, all right?"

Believe me, I wish you could.

I watched him walk way, thinking that the only thing Skywalker's resistance would do is wear his nerves out even faster. Once Haruhi really makes up her mind, one way or another, what she wants happens…

It took about a month for Koizumi to arrange to transfer to North High this time. That was a bit slower than usual for him when Awake; usually the Agency could arrange it in a matter of days. Koizumi offered a detailed explanation, but I didn't want to hear it, and thankfully neither did Haruhi. That's one thing we agree on; neither of us wants any more to do with bureaucracy than we have to, even second-hand. Anyway, that delay was probably half the reason her campaign to forcibly recruit Skywalker into the SOS Brigade didn't begin immediately.

The other half of her delay came because of her first-day introduction. Despite her reputation from middle school, and despite her complete lack of interest in what other people thought of her, Haruhi still drew people like a magnet. By the end of the second day of classes everyone had heard through her former schoolmates that she was a genuine genius, both academic and athletic, the One and Only. Even as eccentric as she was, people still wanted to be around her at that point, either to recruit her into their own "strange and interesting" clubs, or simply to be part of the group of "intelligent and sensitive" people Haruhi had said, on that first day, she wanted to seek out.

It took, coincidentally, about a month for North High, as a whole, to give up on Haruhi and to file her as hopelessly insane. Even then there were exceptions. Ryoko Asakura, of all people, defended Haruhi as an exceptional human being who would, one day, accomplish great things. (When other students tried to petition Haruhi to take her into the SOS Brigade she withdrew herself, saying, "I'm not the person Suzumiya is looking for." Touching, how well Asakura obeys orders from the Data Overmind.) Taniguchi, by whining to anybody and everybody about Haruhi's revolving-door dating scene in middle school, actually made people feel a bit sorry for her. (Take your medicine, Mr. Five Minute Man.) And the computer club didn't have to be blackmailed this time- they actually volunteered a computer to the literary club and, to a man, pledged their loyalty to the SOS Brigade. (I managed to talk Haruhi into accepting, not that anyone appreciated the effort.)

Come to think of it, I think Koizumi mentioned the unusual number of closed-space incidents as being a reason for his delay. Considering how annoyed Haruhi was by all the interruptions, I wouldn't be a bit surprised. Work hard, Koizumi, because every self-important social climber in North High who bugs Haruhi is another Celestial for you and your esper friends to defeat.

Eventually Haruhi had managed to arrange the SOS Brigade to her satisfaction- Nagato's one-member literature club, the computer society, and a few people like Tsuruya and Kunikida who Haruhi just couldn't justify blocking from membership. She made it clear the SOS Brigade had an inner circle- the five of us from baseline, of course- and that even I, "Brigade Leader's Flunky #1," was owed obedience and loyalty from all members not part of the inner circle. When Koizumi arrived, and when Haruhi dropped him into his pre-reserved title of first lieutenant, the outer circle didn't even blink. Haruhi was Haruhi, and you either liked it or you didn't.

As I said, that took about a month. Golden Week was behind us by the time Haruhi dragged a large footlocker into the club room and declared, "Today we're taking back our own from the kendo club!"

The pronouncement brought half a minute of guffaws from Tsuruya. While most of the outer circle didn't have a clue what she was talking about, Tsuruya... well, she's a genius. She hadn't been there to see Skywalker get dragged out of classroom 1-5 at lunchtime on the first day, but she'd heard, and she'd remembered. She's almost as much a genius as Haruhi, though she acts silly enough that sometimes you forget. "So Haru-nyan's going after Anakins, is she?" she grinned. "Do we get to watch? Sounds like it'll be lots of fun, nyoro!"

(Tsuruya only talks that childishly when she's really amused... which means she does it quite a lot, come to think of it. Tsuruya in any Loop is a carefree, happy girl.)

Haruhi didn't answer Tsuruya at first. She pulled out one bundle of clothing after another from the footlocker and tossed them at us- me first, then Nagato, then Asahina, then Koizumi. The last bundle she kept for herself- a rainbow-splattered SOS Brigade keiko-gi with matching hakama. My bundle turned out to be the same, as did Nagato's. Asahina, on the other hand, got what was basically a geisha outfit, and Koizumi the elaborate robes of a feudal lord or Imperial courtier.

"Girls dress in here, boys in the computer room!" Haruhi decreed. "Tsuruya, we'll need your help in getting Asahina's kimono on." When the outer-circle members just stood and stared, she added, "We're challenging the kendo club to a duel! We have to dress the part, right? So if you're not helping dress, get out!"

Most of the outer-circle members scattered, but half of them- including the computer society president- returned wearing oendan jackets. As if this was a sports day event! So, is the SOS Brigade the white team, and the kendo club the red? (The computer society president had added a hachimaki head-wrap. It reminded me that I needed to remind Haruhi that she hadn't "created" the SOS Brigade logo yet this Loop. The president, the walking talking billboard for Stockholm syndrome this Loop, would doubtless have had a happi made with the logo instead of his family crest...)

Koizumi knew his way around his formal wear, so he and I were waiting in the hall when the three girls emerged. Nagato had supplemented her keiko-gi with a belt of hanafuda. Did Yuki feel like a warrior priestess? I didn't ask, but as the SOS Brigade marched for the gym where the kendo club was practicing, we of the inner circle clustered together, allowing me to whisper, "I don't know the first thing about swordfighting!"

"I still can't believe you were too lazy to learn in that Warring States Loop!" Haruhi whispered back severely.

I'd been a minor court lackey that Loop, not entitled to carry the sword and even less interested in trying. But for Haruhi that was no excuse.

"Lucky for you Yuki's Awake," she whispered. "She's going to do the baseball bat trick with a practice-sword. That should be enough for you to at least make a good showing."

"Adaptive homing mode," Nagato agreed.

I never even thought of trying to stop the parade. The best way to deal with Haruhi, even an Awake one who knows about her own power, is to avoid direct confrontation as much as possible. Try to stand like a brick wall, and you'll find out what it's like to meet a wrecking ball swung from a Sherman tank.

I confess it was entertaining to see the sparring matches come to an end as the SOS Brigade filed into the kendo club's dojo. Even though the armor and masks anybody could see the confusion and surprise of the members... well, all but two. The faculty sponsor, Mr. Kenobi, and our designated target, Anakin Skywalker, had been watching the door when we stepped through it. It's hard to surprise people who come from a galaxy far, far away.

Haruhi didn't spare a glance for the dumbfounded kendo club members. While the inner circle followed her and the outer circle spread around the edge of the room, she shouted, "The SOS Brigade hereby challenges the Kendo Club for the membership of Anakin Skywalker!"

"What? Don't I get a say in this?" Skywalker asked. His voice was light, but those eyes, even flickering at me for half a second, drilled straight through.

"Of course not!" Haruhi retorted. "Your rightful place is with the SOS Brigade, and I'm not going to let the kendo club waste any more of your time!"

Those piercing eyes narrowed. Afterwards, comparing notes with Kenobi, I learned that Skywalker had a lot of hot-button issues, and right at the top of the list was treating people as property. Haruhi didn't know it, but she'd just made sure that he'd never join the SOS Brigade voluntarily.

"Miss Suzumiya," Kenobi said quietly, "the kendo club does not barter its members like used comic books. Your presence disturbs the peace of this dojo. Please take your followers and depart."

Well said. I concurred one hundred percent, especially since it would save me some lumps from one or another of the kendo club, "adaptive homing mode" or not.

"So the kendo club turns its back on a duel of honor?" Haruhi retorted.

Kenobi would probably have done just that, given his preferences. So would Skywalker, no matter how much he personally wanted to wipe Haruhi's self-confident grin from her face. But the rest of the club looked... uncertain. Uncomfortable.

And then one still in full armor stepped forward, raising her face mask to say, "What are your terms?"

It was Asakura. Of course the knife-obsessed alien would be part of the kendo club.

"Best two of three matches," Haruhi replied. "Each match, best two out of three strikes. Itsuki Koizumi and any two kendo club members to judge."

Asakura smiled that vicious little smile that never failed to terrify me. "For my part, those terms are acceptable," she said. "I claim the honor of the first match."

Nagato took a shinai from the rack. "I shall be your opponent," she said.

"It seems foreordained," Asakura said, her smile becoming a bit less vicious and more... wistful? Asakura knew about the Loops through the Data Overmind, which shared all Nagato's memories from prior Loops. She also knew how she ended up- deactivated, put "on standby mode" by the Data Overmind, essentially ceasing to exist until needed for special tasks... always by Nagato's action.

Kenobi shook his head. "So be it," he said. "Armor for Ms. Nagato, please."

I still wonder if any of the normal humans could feel the tension in the room. Koizumi told me he could sense it, in much the same way he could sense Haruhi's moods. To me it seemed like two vast powers, bitter rivals since time began, had clothed themselves in toddler's clothes and decided to play war in a sandbox. It certainly didn't look like much. For half a minute neither girl moved. Then, each time, Asakura would shout a kiai, lunge forward with incredible speed, and...

... the first time, scored an unopposed point on Nagato's left chest. Yuki never even moved.

The second time, Nagato blocked the blow to her head with an upswing so swift it knocked Asakura's shinai out of her hand, leaving her defenseless to Nagato's tap against the side of her head.

The third time Asakura lunged for a stabbing blow, and Nagato spun round in a move I've seen more in swashbuckling movies than in kendo. Asakura's blade slid past Nagato's, leaving the class 1-5 president open for the quick slap to the ribs Nagato administered in passing.

Just like that- one, two, three- it was over.

"Great job, Yuki!" Haruhi shouted, slapping the alien on her back, ignoring the padded armor. "Take a break, you've earned it!" She shoved me forward and said, "Get your armor on, Kyon! You're next!"

"Is he?" Asakura's mask was still on, but I could see that smile. "I would be greatly honored to test his skills."

"No thank you." Skywalker was pulling on his armor. "I claim the right to fight for my own destiny."

Asakura bowed meekly and stepped back from the crease.

As a spectator watching Nagato and Asakura face off, the tension had been incredible, even to an ordinary person like myself. Being in the center of it, being a direct part of it, added another zero to the energy level. From where I stood the taller, more athletic Skywalker towered over me like a suffocating shadow. Meanwhile, the shinai in my hand felt like... well, like a bamboo sword. During the baseball tournament the magic bat never felt any different whether Nagato had "homing mode" turned on or off, not until you discovered that it was swinging you, rather than you it.

But when I compared notes with Kenobi afterwards, he told me that the sword looked like someone had used the Force to make a bow knot that was also a Moebius strip and a Klein bottle at the same time. For him and Skywalker, the thing was hard to even look at- just as unsettling to them as Skywalker was to me. Maybe that should make me feel better, but all I can think is: Jedi Knight or Sith Lord, either way, Nagato scares them half to death.

There was no thirty-second pause before action in this fight. The instant the referees dropped their flags Anakin was on the charge, shouting again and again, swinging his shinai back and forth and overhead, simply overwhelming my defenses. Adaptive homing mode only lasted five seconds before the two kendo club referees raised their flags to award first point. I didn't even notice the blow until I saw Skywalker's shinai pressed against my right side, tucked under my own sword.

After that it was a bit more even, but please don't ask me to explain what happened. My arms, and even once or twice my whole body, moved by themselves, faster than I could even think. Anakin shouted, and I may have shouted too, once or twice, definitely not screams. I remember two distinct times when one or the other of the kendo club's referees raised a flag to award me a point, but the other referee didn't agree. Neither did Koizumi, the traitor.

And then, after more time than I care to think about, Kenobi shouted, "TIME! Winner: Skywalker!"

"What?" Haruhi charged forward. "You can't just end the match like that!"

"This match has already gone longer than tournament rules permit," Kenobi replied calmly. "Skywalker has one undisputed point. Your team member has none. Therefore Skywalker wins."

Fine by me. The shinai clattered out of my numb, shaking hands onto the floor, which got me dirty looks from the entire kendo club. Good grief, it's not my club, and it's not my traditions of respect for even practice weapons. If you banned me from your dojo, I'd be as happy as you people.

"Terribly sorry," Koizumi whispered in my ear as he helped me take off the armor. "But the blades were going so fast I simply couldn't see the blows to count them. And I think you'll agree that, since we are the visiting team here, we must be absolutely honest and above-board? With, that is, the exception of the baseball bat?"

I wanted to say something back, but he was using my own frequent line of argument against me, so all I could do was growl at him as I sat on a bench.

"So," Skywalker said, facing Haruhi, "who will face me for the deciding match?"

"Well," Haruhi said, that arrogant smirk back on her face, "it falls to the master to make up for the apprentice's failings! I shall be your opponent!"

Since when have you taught me anything?

Haruhi picked up my shinai from the floor, and instantly both Kenobi and Skywalker took a step back. I could imagine what was going on in their minds that moment, and what little they told me afterwards confirmed it. The instant her hand touched the practice sword, Nagato's power left it, and it was an ordinary shinai again. But at that same moment Haruhi's power flared, strong enough that Koizumi's eternal pleasant smile slipped for several seconds. In that moment the two visiting Loopers were looking at what must have seemed like the Dark Side incarnate; unlimited cosmic power focused by indomitable will to a single purpose, namely sending to the floor anyone fool enough to face that will in the crease.

As Skywalker put it later: "When the Force is against a Jedi, the Jedi must either bow to its will or fall. And in this case, the Force was in the hands of a teenage girl and telling me, in so many words, 'Prepare to get your butt whipped.'"

What he actually said at the time, with a broader smile than he ought to have used, was: "Oh, well, if it's a case of master after apprentice, then you should fight my teacher instead. Isn't that right... Master Kenobi?"

Kenobi had looked pretty grim from the moment we'd entered, but now he looked absolutely stern. Every member of the kendo club had their eyes glued on him. "We will discuss this when we get home, Anakin," he growled, surrendering to the inevitable.

"I'm sure we will, Master," Skywalker said, still grinning. "Could the match wait long enough for someone to make popcorn?"

The following Saturday found us at that cafe across from the train station in the shopping district. I was feeling smug; Skywalker had arrived two minutes after me, and so for once I wouldn't be the one paying for everyone's drinks and meals.

"This is definitely not an excuse for you to have fun and goof off!" Haruhi said sternly over her coffee. "The boys will take the park, we girls will take the shopping district. If anyone sees something strange and unusual, report to the others at once so we can investigate!"

We've done this a thousand times, Haruhi. We're not going to find anything stranger than the six people sitting in this booth.

"This could be a variant Loop, and we haven't discovered the change yet!" Haruhi insisted. "Or there could be a stealth Looper like the ones that unicorn friend of yours told you about! And it's part of the SOS Brigade Executive Committee's duties to seek out the strange and unusual and to play with them!"

Yeah, yeah, good grief.

Haruhi's cell phone rang. She held it up, looked at it, and then looked across the table to Nagato, who held her own phone up with one hand while pointing at Skywalker with the other.

"You know what I meant, Yuki," she grumbled. "Strange and unusual... besides the six of us. We can explore our own weirdness at school during club time!"

"Why am I here again?" Skywalker sighed.

Because if you try to get away, she'll find some other way to bring you back. It's how this world works.

"I don't think I'm going to like this world," Skywalker murmured.

"That's all!" Haruhi, ignoring our quiet exchange, stood up from the booth. "Kyon, this is Skywalker's first patrol, and besides we should show courtesy to our guests, right? So you're paying in his place!"

"Er, that's all right," Skywalker said, "I don't mind-"

No, no, let me. Some fates you just can't escape, and an empty wallet in my pocket is definitely one of those.

"Why are we driving to Kobe?" Anakin Skywalker leaned up from the taxi's back seat to question Koizumi, who had been forced to sit beside Arakawa this time. The cab simply wasn't large enough for three people in the back when one of them was a tall, broad-shouldered blonde Jedi Master turned exchange student from the United States.

"The thing we wish to show you is there," Koizumi replied. "I thought it might help motivate you to be a little less confrontational with Haruhi."

Yeah, that. Besides, confronting Haruhi is my job. Second bananas need not apply.

"You know perfectly well I'm only going along with your little club under protest," Skywalker complained. "Is this about my refusing to train Mikuru in lightsaber dueling? Believe me, if there's a human less attuned to the Force than Mikuru Asahina, I've yet to meet him."

"That does have something to do with it," Koizumi said agreeably, "but I think today's little adventure was prompted by your declaration of refusal to take the SOS Brigade to Tranquility Base. You really shouldn't have mentioned those shuttlecraft in your subspace pocket."

"I am not a piece of playground equipment for a spoiled demigoddess!" Skywalker insisted. "Why doesn't she just take you to the moon herself, if she's all this powerful?"

"Haruhi's control over her abilities is... rudimentary," Koizumi said with careful consideration. "Little things like creating that lightsaber take a lot of practice. Mostly her power does things according to her subconscious wishes."

"So what?" Skywalker asked. "She wakes up one morning and there's a spaceship in her driveway?"

Koizumi winced. "Never so straightforward," he said, "and often not so... constructive. Have you any idea what lurks repressed in the dark corners of a person's mind?"

Skywalker slumped back in the car seat. For a moment the shadows across his face seemed to form the image of a very familiar mask. "I've got a mild notion, yes."

"Ah, of course. Pardon my presumption."

I felt a bit of sympathy for Skywalker. I've been on the receiving end of Koizumi's smarmy play-acting for longer than I care to think about closely. I had to admit, though, that my point of view was closer to the esper's than to the Jedi's. I knew what we were going to look at, and the gentle reminder of Skywalker's darker nature was probably a good step towards preparing him for it.

So long as he didn't push Skywalker into going full Vader on us. I like my limbs where they are, thank you, and my larynx doesn't need any downward size adjustment.

As we left the expressway for the city streets of downtown Kobe, Skywalker shifted in his seat. "I sense something," he said. "That... that's really strange."

"Oh, do you?" Koizumi looked back from his seat, and this time his fake-cheerful smile was mostly absent. "It may interest you to know that I sense the same thing. And you're right, it is most strange indeed." Looking more serious and thoughtful than usual, he said, "It may be worth an experiment, if you'd be so kind as to cooperate. I promise you this is not for my entertainment. This may seriously affect you."

I could tell Skywalker was barely even listening. "The feeling's getting stronger," he said. He pointed a finger. "It's coming from that direction. What is it?"

"It is easier to show you than to explain it," Koizumi said.

"Better to say," I said, "it's easier to understand the explanation once you've seen it. Which doesn't mean you'll understand it at all. It still surprises me sometimes."

The cab stopped, letting us off at the curb half a block down from an all too familiar intersection near the center of Kobe's downtown district. "This way," Koizumi said, leading us to the crosswalk, where we waited for the signal.

"Now, here's the experiment," Koizumi said. "When the walk signal lights up, start across the crosswalk, close your eyes, and head towards the center of the disturbance. Concentrate on moving towards the disturbance. I'll be right behind you, bringing Kyon along. He can't get where we're going without an invitation, you might say."

I might say, keep your lame efforts at humor to yourself. Otherwise I might slap you in the gut and say, "Gimme a break!"

Anakin, his face a mixture of worry and curiosity, silently nodded. The moment the crosswalk sign changed, his foot hit the pavement. His eyes closed, and he kept walking forward, allowing the normal people in the crosswalk to part around him like waves around a boat.

"It's time," Koizumi said, grasping my hand and pulling me after Skywalker. "Close your eyes."

I didn't get to see Skywalker make the transition, but when Koizumi told me to open my eyes he was there in front of us. We were the only three humans in sight, when a moment before the crosswalks had been crowded with hundreds of people. The afternoon sky had been replaced by a solid, featureless steel gray.

"What is this?" Skywalker asked.

"Welcome to closed space," Koizumi said. "You didn't believe Kyon when he tried to tell you about Haruhi's power. So we brought you here to see direct proof. Now follow me, please, and quickly. I'll try to explain on the way up."

I'm used to long climbs, thanks to that monster hill between the train station and North High, but nothing will get me to enjoy the climb up all those flights of stairs to the roof of that office building. For Koizumi and Skywalker, of course, it wasn't any effort at all, and those two were able to keep up a conversation even as I trailed behind.

"Are you trying to tell me," Skywalker said as we climbed out the roof access door, "that Suzumiya is powerful enough to create an entire universe every time she gets pissed off?"

"Not exactly," Koizumi said. "Closed space might be considered, from one interpretation, as a universe in embryo. If allowed to expand it would eventually destroy and replace the existing universe. But generally speaking closed space only arises when Haruhi is feeling frustrated with the world. Simple anger or boredom don't trigger the effect."

"You're quibbling over details. Does Haruhi intend to remake the universe right now?"

"Almost certainly not. This is the method her subconscious mind uses to let off some steam. My colleagues and I, the espers of this world, were granted our powers by Suzumiya specifically to keep closed space in check."

"I don't get it, though," Skywalker said. "So all of a sudden the sky's gray and all the people are gone. Big deal. What's destructive about this?"

"That," Koizumi said, pointing to a spot half a kilometer off, where what looked like a patch of night sky was taking humanoid form.

"That is a Celestial," Koizumi said. "Or at any rate that's what my organization calls them. Watch."

I'd seen this show before. I'd seen Celestials that moped. I'd seen Celestials save lives. I'd even seen Celestials dancing to immense taiko drums crafted from half-destroyed buildings. Most of the time, however, Celestials smashed things, and this was no different. One glowing star-speckled limb slammed into a twelve-story building, tearing off a large chunk from one corner.

"It's rather like taking one's frustrations out on a punching bag," Koizumi said. "Except the scale is, I admit, rather larger than usual."

"You've got to be kidding," Skywalker groaned. "You were telling me the truth. Your universe could be destroyed at any moment because of a teenage girl's... hissy fit!" He threw his hands into the air, shouting, "And this girl is a Looper? And she knows about her powers? Why doesn't she stop doing this? Why does she keep putting your existence in danger?"

"I can explain that," a new voice chirped from behind us.

Out of the stairway access door stepped a short girl, slightly younger than us, wearing a North High school uniform that was about a size too big. Close-cut brown hair held a large smiley-button decoration on the left side of her head. "It's me," she said, one bright eye winking.

"Who are you?" Skywalker asked.

"I told you. Watahashi."

Don't make bad puns, Watahashi. "This is Yasumi Watahashi," I explained. "You can think of her as the incarnation of Haruhi's subconscious. She's everything she doesn't let herself know about."

Anakin made a face of utter disbelief. "Whaaaaat?"

"That's not exactly true," Watahashi said, "but it'll do for now. I'm here to answer your question, Skywalker-san."

"Then I shall leave you to it," Koizumi said. "My colleagues, as ever-"

"No, Koizumi-san," Watahashi said. "Suzumiya has given Skywalker-san the powers of your group. You should help him practice after I'm done."

Skywalker looked about as baffled as I'd ever seen him, before or since. "Could you please just explain what you're all talking about?"

Watahashi grinned. "I'll tell you a little bit of a story," she said. "Imagine a very powerful being, technically able to sense and change anything and everything about the world in which it lived. And that being chose to keep these abilities hidden from itself, because it's more fun that way. And yet, that being still had to be able to take action to prevent certain things from endangering its world, and particularly those it felt affection for, so its powers had to be able to operate without its limited conscious knowledge. Do you follow me so far?"

"I... guess so," Skywalker said doubtfully.

"Now, imagine this being subconsciously looking at itself, at its universe, and noticing something slightly wrong. Time isn't flowing quite right. There seems to be a hiccup here," Watahashi held one hand flat on its side, "and here." Her other hand paralleled the first, measuring out an arbitrary distance between them. "This being has the ability to alter time within its own world, and it knows the signs of a time loop, right? But this one seems to come in out of nowhere and go off to nowhere. And the being doesn't remember anything beyond the current Loop, not at any level of its consciousness." She pointed to me and said, "Kyon knows what I'm talking about here."

Endless summer. It's not just an expression for the SOS Brigade. In baseline it was damn near 600 years, though while Looping we keep it down to a sane five or six months. And it doesn't affect our memory anymore, thankfully.

"So, imagine this being, which has a dim idea of the Loops but no direct knowledge," Watahashi continued. "But that's not the only hint. There are occasional... traces, kind of... it's not the right word, echoes might be closer. The being can't prove that people from other universes have been visiting in each Loop, but it can extrapolate from the echoes. And thus it learns that there are other universes, other people to meet and explore and play with and other fun things.

"But the being's world isn't Looping by itself. It's only activated when someone from outside comes in to visit. So, from the viewpoint of someone outside the being's world, it takes a very, very, very long time for it to figure things out. And then it forgets it all at the end of a Loop, right? But the next time it figures it out faster, because the evidence is just a little bit stronger. And the next time, faster, and the next time, even faster. Eventually it goes from, 'Hm, that looks like a time loop with loose ends, that's funny,' all the way to, 'There's something big and fun outside this world, and I'm not allowed to play,' in less than a day."

I looked up to see half a dozen glowing red balls- other members of Koizumi's Agency- and the Celestial watching and listening to Watahashi's story. I wasn't expecting an audience for this.

"So imagine the being, knowing about this, and looking for a way out. And then, one day, something breaks. I mean, really, really breaks, really badly."

"The Crash," Anakin said. "An entire universe wiped out of existence, even from memory. A lot of other universes badly damaged. And every loop crashed, glitched or frozen until the Admins picked up the pieces."

Watahashi nodded. "And in the confusion, the being finds a tiny crack in the universe, and pokes a bit of itself through to see what's on the other side."

"WHAT?" Anakin rushed forward and grabbed Watahashi by the upper arms, lifting her up to face level. "Are you telling me you ASCENDED? What were you THINKING?"

"Eeeeh, that it'd be fun?" Watahashi said. "The being poked a little bit of itself through. It wasn't that difficult. And it found a system, worked out how to tweak it- again, not that difficult- and set it up so that the tweak would happen the very instant it pulled itself back into its home world."

"But you can't DO that!" Anakin gasped, setting Watahashi back down so he could gesticulate freely. "I've heard what happened to Madoka's world! There is nothing left of it but Homura and that damn bunny cat! If you Ascend to the Admins' level of reality, your home world basically gets destroyed!"

"I'm... not entirely certain about that," Watahashi said. "If Kyon here did that, then yep, that'd be Bad End Game Over for this world. Everything rests on his shoulders. That's a known, definite, absolute fact."

Every word slammed into my shoulders like the weight of the Earth, and I'm certainly no Atlas.

"But if someone who's not the Anchor ascends, then... nobody knows," Watahashi continued. "It hasn't happened, and nobody wants to risk a universe's existence to experiment. But the best case is, if a non-Anchor manages to Ascend, it sheds the shell of its former universe, and maybe- maybe- the eggshell can be reassembled." To illustrate, Watahashi cupped her hands into a ball, opened them with fingers spread wide, and then closed them again into a loose sphere. "But the restored egg would have a hollow spot. That world would go on forever- past, present, future- with the Ascended person never having existed. Maybe they would be replaced, maybe not. Maybe the world would be strong enough to survive..."

Watahashi's hands flattened with a clap, made all the louder by the absolute silence of closed space.

"... maybe not." Watahashi dropped her hands, smiling. "That's too many maybes for the Admins. Or for Suzumiya."

"But... you... Ascended," Skywalker said, hands still gesticulating helplessly.

"In my defense, Suzumiya never completely left this world, and I didn't know the danger before I did it," Watahashi said. "But at the time this world wasn't actively Looping. That made it weaker in some ways, stronger in others, especially when everything broke. I understand things are fixed now, and what I did can't be repeated. Also can't be undone!" she added with a giggle. Then, sobering up, she added, "But that also means that things are different now. If Suzumiya Ascends again, it will be all the way, no partial, no sneaking through a crack, no over-and-back-again. And that's a problem."

Watahashi stepped closer to the edge of the building, gesturing at closed space. "Look at what Suzumiya can do already. Even an unAwake Suzumiya can do this," she said. "She can revive extinct species. She can make flowers bloom and fruit ripen out of season. She can move stars and alter the laws of physics themselves. She can break time as easily as a child cutting and knotting back a piece of string. Now imagine what she could do if she learned how to do it all... deliberately."

Anakin Skywalker, the most feared being in his home universe (if not the most hated), went ghostly white in the face.

"Now add to that any little tricks or epiphanies picked up in the Loops," Watahashi continued. "And then think... how long before she grows too big for the eggshell to hold her?"

Skywalker recovered the power of speech enough to ask, "So that's why she allows this to continue? Because her subconscious mind thinks it's safer for her universe to deny her the knowledge and control she needs to stop herself from destroying the universe herself?"

"That's one answer," Watahashi said. "There's another answer that's equally true."

"What?"

Watahashi grinned and held up a finger next to her nose. "It's more fun to learn to do things the hard way!" With that she jumped backwards off the edge of the building and into open space. Everyone except the motionless Celestial rushed to the edge to look down... except me. I knew exactly what they'd all see, and that's exactly what they did see.

Nothing.

Anakin leaned over the edge and kept staring down long after everyone else had pulled or floated away. "What? How?"

She's an incarnation of her subconscious. You're currently IN her subconscious. Figure it out. Of course she can appear and disappear at will.

Suddenly Watahashi popped into existence again directly behind Skywalker. "Oh, by the way!"

"WHA-HAAA!" Anakin very nearly jumped off the building himself, which likely would have had a much different result from Watahashi's jump. He managed to flop on his back with his shoulders hanging over the edge of the roof.

"I almost forgot to warn you," Watahashi said. "Suzumiya kind of dreams her way through visits to other worlds. She remembers afterwards, but not at the time. So if she visits your world, treat her as if she's not Awake at all, okay? Just a caution!" Waving goodbye, the strange underclassman took a more conventional exit by the roof access door.

"D-does she mean..." Skywalker gasped, looking from the door to me, "does she mean to say that that girl could show up in my universe any Loop, and maybe destroy it... without even knowing she was doing it?"

Memo to self: no matter how much Haruhi enjoys it, talk her out of the Sleeping Beauty incident this Loop, for the sake of our guest's sanity. "To be fair," I pointed out, "there's the same risk if any of the original seven show up."

Koizumi put a hand on Skywalker's shoulder. "And besides, Suzumiya's given you a counter to use against her." He used his free hand to summon up a glowing red ball. "You'd figure this out by instinct anyway- that's how our powers work- but you might as well take advantage of this opportunity to practice."

The Celestial, destined for a very brief existence as practice dummy for training Darth Vader in new esper abilities, stood there, motionless and expressionless. I don't think I'd be so stoic in its place, do you?

On the taxi ride back, Koizumi said, "By the way, it would be for the best if you never mention Watahashi's little story to Haruhi."

"Why not?" Skywalker asked. "Does she not know about her?"

"Oh, she knows, all right," I said. "There's a point in baseline where they meet- don't ask me to explain, it's complicated, and a lot of the time we short-circuit those events anyway. But Watahashi never tells Haruhi anything, so the whole business makes her really cranky."

"And we've just seen what happens when Haruhi gets cranky," Koizumi agreed. "Though cranky isn't the word I'd choose."

Skywalker groaned and put his head in his hands. "How do you people put up with this, Loop after Loop, and stay sane?"

Koizumi considered the point. "It could be argued that we haven't," he admitted. "The SOS Brigade as a whole could be a collection of four cases of extreme Stockholm Syndrome."

"Don't listen to him," I interjected. "We stay sane because, for all the crazy things Haruhi puts us through, there's a lot of fun as well. You wait and see." I sat back and relaxed, glad to finally be in the role of the wise mentor to... well, to anyone at all. "The first couple of months are always the worst... well, except for November, but that's not a problem when Haruhi's Awake. And we have our own little Loop within this one, that we completely control."

Memo to self #2: explain to Haruhi that this Loop's endless summer itinerary needs to be set by Skywalker. Two weeks of summer in any location in Japan he cares to go? Or possibly anywhere, full stop? Can Koizumi pull enough strings to get us all international plane tickets each time the summer resets? Need to get the inner circle together and hash this out.

"Oh, hells," Skywalker moaned. "I just realized something." He brought a hand up to rub his forehead. "Never mind Suzumiya... think how cranky Obi-Wan will be when I tell him about all this!"

Being the wise mentor here, I acted wisely by leaving that problem entirely to Anakin Skywalker to solve. Not my business at all.

The rest of that Loop, I'm sorry to say, was a bit of a flop from my point of view. Oh, we all had fun, and even Anakin enjoyed some features. For example, this year we had enough people for a proper nine-man baseball team without using Asahina or my little sister. Thanks to a change in seeding we didn't meet the Pirates in the first round, so we actually advanced to the second round without cheating. Also, Skywalker figured out both the murder mysteries almost instantly, which led Koizumi to accuse me of dealing in spoilers. We avoided the Disappearance and the anti-SOS Brigade, though I did make sure to introduce Skywalker to Sasaki as sort of a Haruhi antidote.

But our visiting intergalactic Looper never became comfortable with Haruhi Suzumiya. Never. He played along with her whims (though the moon trip was out, because he had shuttlecraft but no spacesuits for anyone besides himself), but whenever she wasn't looking I could catch him regarding her with fear and suspicion.

One day well into second year, not long before we would expect a possible ending if the Loop ran short, I asked Anakin what he was staring at.

"In a way, myself," he said, "magnified a thousand times. You don't sense the Force at all, so you don't feel it."

Thank the Admins for little favors.

"If the senses were sight, it'd be like staring into two arc lamps at once," he continued, "except that one glows black. There's so much selfishness, and also so much love, in that one little figure. In my world she could be the greatest Jedi or Sith of all time... even before we talk about eggshell issues." That was how he referred to Suzumiya's powers- "eggshell issues."

"If you ever visit my world when I'm Awake," Skywalker finished, "don't even bother talking to me, because I'm going to run and run and never look back. Let my son deal with it- he's better at that sort of thing anyway."

And now you know why Haruhi is the only Looper Darth Vader actually fears (and/or loaths) that he doesn't put a bounty on in his home Loop. Not because he feels any sympathy for the SOS Brigade leader, but because he fears what she might do if any bounty hunter were unfortunate enough to try to claim it…

11.8 (Gamerex 27, Evilhumour and Thanatos Scribe)

"And I thought the Horse was a bad joke," Luke muttered, as he weaved in and out of the blaster fire over the first Death Star. "At least that one rhymed."

Luke, Obi-Wan's Force Ghost said, right on time.

"Can't I just use a torpedo instead?" he asked, anticipating the Jedi's next response.

You could use that any Loop, his voice replied. Now, use the Bees, Luke. Use the Bees!

Sighing, Luke switched off his targeting computer, waited for the exact moment he had long ago memorized to come, and pulled the trigger.

Out of his ship came a simple, humble bee hive. Slowly, it drifted through space, miraculously avoiding every single blaster shot coming its way.

Finally, it bumped against the heating vent, and several bees (inexplicably still alive in the vacuum of space) obediently flew into the structure.

Luke waited. And waited. And waited.

"Shouldn't it have exploded by now?" he asked himself.

And then, out of nowhere, honey seeped out of every porthole, every crack, and every opening of the Death Star. From the doors to the hangars to the opening of its infamous main cannon, the fluid seeped outwards, coating every square inch of the Death Star in delicious, sweet nectar.

"What would the dark side of the Bees even be?" Luke muttered absentmindedly to himself, ignoring the mix of cheers and mass confusion over the Rebels' comms systems.

Trust me, Obi-Wan said, You do not want to know.

Anakin was doing his best not to yell.

"Waspinator is here to help you, my master!"

He really was.

…..

General Tarkin looked at the screen in malicious glee as the Death Star neared Yavin-4. Darth Vader may have said that this battle station was nothing compared to his archaic path, but soon he'd prove to the Emperor that this battle station far surpassed his so-called 'powers' when the Rebel base and the Rebellion itself were destroyed!

He was brought out of his malicious gloating as a slight buzzing sound began to permeate through the halls. It to a few seconds to pinpoint what the noise was, but he drastically paled as he realized what it was. It can't be, he thought as he began to panic and the sound grew steadily louder, memories of a childhood incident starting to surface, they couldn't be on here! He had the station checked over a multitude of times, and not a single one had been found!

"No. NO!" He shouted as a veritable wave of bees and honey surged into the room, "NOT THE BEEEES!"

…..

11.9

Tap

Tap

Tap

Drumming her fingers against her terminal, Nut had every issue lined up in some way, shape, or form.

On one hand, the loops with the Enterprise crew members was surprisingly stable. Despite time travel, alternate realities and near omnipotent trolls running around, there did not seem to a be a problem with it beyond their general need to be covert in their changes, as to avoid the harassment of the Department of Temporal Investigations.

On the other hand...was the dandy little galaxy far far away...

While it was nowhere near as bad as some loops (several dozen terminals away, Hephaestus and Ganesha sneezed), there existed quite a few annoying problems.

First, though it was more a minor annoyance at best, was that gray area between the birth of Luke Skywalker, and his destruction of the Death Star.

There was no clear cut 'cut-off' between when Anakin was the anchor during that time, and when Luke was.

Sometimes Luke anchored the loop as an infant, other times Anakin anchored the loop while Leia was off having her sweet sixteen.

It wasn't a major issue, it just was something she could deal without.

Second was...

SHEEV PAL...

She cancelled the pop up that was the center of her troubles: The fact her terminal kept trying to get Palpatine looping, along with most every other Sith the ones that should not be allowed to loop in any shape or form.

Darth Maul was a no.

Darth Krayt was a no.

The Emperor of the Sith Empire was a very big no.

While Revan and Anakin could loop just fine, they at least were easily redeemable.

Someone like Malagus or Tyrannus could possibly loop and not become menaces like Kyubey, Waltz or Billy.

Maul would simply turn into Obi-Wan's Dio-Brando.

Third was an inverse of problem two; the fact that Padme Amidala was not looping.

Despite being an obvious candidate, having loops of good interactions with both her anchor husband, anchor son, looper daughter and looping droids at a minimum, for countless loops, she had not been activated.

It would be like someone living in, say, Earth's Chernobyl restriction area full time, lakeside to the reactor, and not getting cancer.

It defied the odds. While the Equestrian loopers had new loopers coming out of the woodwork with questionable relation to any looper, a centerpiece of her loopers lives wouldn't and she coudn't figure out why.

The lack of loopers coming from Anakin's branch in itself was somewhat of a concern. Bar Bariss (Who was canonically dead) and Ahsoka (...whom Nut had no idea of what happened to her in those loops, a fact shared by the loops themselves), all of the loopers commonly found in his branch woke up first in Luke'ssection.

Even Revan, who was a far younger anchor, had more loopers unique to his branch than Anakin.

Speaking of Bariss...

Her wandering looper status was a pain to fix up, and whenever it seemed like she had figured something out, she was distracted. The latest was Revan's loop emerging in the wake of the Crash, while no where near as much of a clusterfuck to set up as half of the loops that came out, took up all her time, and now she was playing catch up. By the time she was back on it, some other form of massive stupidity would ensue. Another crash, a trans loop civil war, maybe Zeus becoming the leader of all the admin staff.

Something stupid like that.

Finally, was one particular issue she found herself confronted with. A puzzle if you will.

Her monitor at the moment displayed several different girls and fantasy looking creatures, all pieces of this very puzzle.

MADOKA KANAME: Status, ascended to Adminspace. Current verbal punching bag of grouchy admins.

KYUBEY: Status, MLE wandering looper. Despised by all.

HOMURA AKEMI: Status, wandering looper? Widely considered only survivor.

SAYAKA MIKI: Status, unknown. Appeared in loop briefly. Apparently connected to Anakin anchored loop. Possible connection to Luke and Revan loops as well.

CHARLOTTE: Status, unknown. Appeared in loop briefly. Apparently connected to Kirby anchored loop.

KYOKO SAKURA: Status, unknown. Probably similar to others. Begin random guessing.

Though how they fit together was still escaping her. What was going on?

A recent bit of information gathered from an email from a friend had offered up something, hence the other bit of data she had up at the moment.

MAMI TOMOE: Status, unknown. Probably similar to others. Apparently connected to Shepard Anchored loop.

Shepard, a friend of Revan, anchored one of the loops run by Athena, Olympian Goddess of Wisdom and Comparative Sanity (Formerly run by Ares, until he approved of a 'Sovereign' to loop). In said loop, a looper named Jeff Moreau had encountered a girl befitting Mami's description sometime recently, in a scenario similar to her observed appearances by Sayaka and Charlotte.

How it was that Athena knew she had a similar experience was beyond her, then again she was considered a goddess of wisdom. Theoretically that made her good at piecing together mysteries.

Her response had been a lot of complicated theoretical babble that Nut couldn't make heads or tails of. However, it made a bit more sense when she put it through the same translator protocols she used when trying to figure out what Thoth's messages were supposed to mean.

The basic theory Athena had came up with, and that once translated to something normal people spoke Nut found herself agreeing with, was this: The lost Madoka loopers had sizable bits of data embedded in various loops, apparently one per girl or vicious monster. This data caused them to randomly reincorporate into the loops at random times briefly.

The whereabouts of the rest of their data was either spread out across looping space/time, or somewhere else. The latter being a worst case scenario that opened up so many horror filled what-ifs another Crash was a serious risk it wasn't even funny.

Theoretically, according to Athena, it could be fixed by simply isolating the data of one of the girls in the loop from the native data, and manipulating it to draw in all the lost data belonging to said girl. In doing so, the girl in question would be fully reformatted into the loops once more. And once that was done, it would be a simple matter to get it applied to all other affected loops to get a similar result. Of course, you had to find all the data in the loop that belonged to the girl first, and to do that you would have to run a full system scan on the loop, which was typically used to debug a loop and scan for viruses.

That would be noticeable: not only would all native loopers be put on a streak of fused loops for a noticeable amount of time (like a sports team whose arena was damaged by an earthquake), but it would require a load of paperwork completed first that no one would want to do if it wasn't absolutely necessary. As Athena's boss was Zeus, she would be lucky to even get all the required paperwork from higher up, let alone not get harassed by her father. The fool would probably do something idiotic and mess up the entire operation. However, as Ra was always looking for ways to keep her and Geb too busy to meet up (and was still busy dealing with Thoth's little Яeverse Incident), he wouldn't give it much thought.

With a determined breath, Nut hit her keyboard to begin the request for the necessary paperwork.

Who knew? By the time she was done with it, perhaps Padme would be looping? It would take a while after all, for all she knew by the time she was done with all the red tape,, someone would have finally gotten the Doctor looping.

Stranger things had happened after all.

11.1 Revan changes gender in loop. A lot. And it isn't Gendo's day.

11.2 It's a Small Galaxy after all! It's a small Galaxy after all! It's a small Galaxy after all! It's a small, small,Galaxy!

11.3 This is an older loop that is probably going to be true this 2015, so that's why Anakin's messing with Han. Note loops do not necessarily get posted in order of appearance, but order as I see fit in telling a tale.

11.4 Someone ask for a Indiana Jones based snip?

11.5 Waltz. A one shot character of the massive Mega-Man series, the guy in charge of the Mega loops, Crisis, brought her into the story as one of the most bat shit insane elements of the loops. She is…..not popular among loopers. At all.

11.6 Figured Mara needed a focus loop

11.7 This is the start of the Star Wars loopers fear of Haruhi. More incidents merely solidified this fear.

11.8 There was a Bee gag this spawned from

11.9 That was just a bit of filler to set up an up coming storyline to be known as the Multiversal World Tour. It's kind of going to be big. And, coming up next, The Great Elevator Saga Episode 5: the Elevator Strikes Back!