A/N: Yo!

I have to say, I enjoyed writing this story more post-college than pre-college. Basically, I was exposed to better quality fiction, and then made the characters I had before butt heads even harder when I came back to the story. I want to get much better at getting across the sense that characters really dislike each other, or are just jerks, and they're just gonna do what they wanna do, not what the main character wants them to do. I think Kaoru takes point on that one. I am continually surprised by the things he does. Continually. I don't even know it's coming until it happens. Some authors know exactly what will happen through their story; they know point B and all the things that get there. Me? I get the pleasure to be the first audience. I get to be the first person to witness the madness. This started off as a generic time travel save the world scifi-suspense thing, plus, Kyouya. That was what I thought I was writing - a Kyouya romance.

And then, it became so much more. I'll say more on it later, but for now:

Chapter 14: The DVD

The tension dripped off the doorknobs and crawled down the windows with the rain when they came in. Mori landed the carry-on luggage on the chaise lounge as he charged into the kitchen, and Kaoru, with the collar of his coat turned up, slapped the door shut.

"Where's Hikaru?" Diana asked, keeping a large distance as she and Naoto hovered at the dinner table.

"I'm Hikaru." The man she mistook for Kaoru slipped off his rain jacket as he appraised the apartment, his eyes running over Diana and Naoto like they were furnishings along with the table.

"What happened?" Hunny asked.

"Mitsukuni, show Hikaru to his room," came Mori's voice from the kitchen.

"But what happened?" Hunny insisted.

"I can find it myself," Hikaru responded, already half upstairs.

"Hey! You can at least say hi!" Hunny called after him.

"Hi."

Diana bristled. "Runs in the family," she mumbled to Naoto.

Naoto shrugged. For a moment the only sound was the controls of the PS4 as Naoto loaded the first DVD with a wireless controller. The TV alongside the dining room was huge. Hunny had gone into the kitchen. "Where's Kaoru?" he was asking as he went in.

Diana sighed, not entirely certain what to do, when she felt something strange in her pocket and pulled it out. "Oops. Looks like I shoplifted."

Naoto looked over. Diana held up the googly-eyed bunny Hunny had handed her, making it dance. When Naoto looked back at the screen, there was a burst of sound, a burst of screaming. The main menu was providing some 4-5 second previews of the videos in the DVD. They were an unfinished quality, like a series of family videos, and it took a moment to realize that that was Mori running in one of them. For two brief seconds, the camera tracked Mori running through a set of tables set formally as they had been at Kyouya's funeral. It was a darkened room, and then the camera started to veer off track of any subject and paused, featuring for the most part the raised dais of a stage of some sort with an unmanned microphone as the sound of screaming ensued.

"What is this from?" Diana asked. "What is Mori doing in some random DVD?"

"Let's find out," said Naoto.

The sounds registered before the visuals for Diana. It took her a moment to place the voice. " — pleasure than myself. The two people you see here today are the two people that continue to humble me — " It was the exact same room she had been in less than twenty-four hours ago, for Kyouya's funeral. But on the dais where Tamaki had given Kyouy's funeral speech, was the man she finally recognized to be Kyouya. Along the table behind him, on the stage, amongst four other people — Tamaki and Haruhi, dressed for a wedding.

"What the hell?" she thought she heard Mori say. He and Hunny had been attracted by the voice on the TV.

This was the part with the screaming. The camera had long ago zoomed in to Kyouya's face, or so it seemed at first. Rather, it was focusing on Tamaki behind him, who was rising in his white tuxedo, a dark star upon his chest. The moment was registering into everybody's brain, Hunny, Mori, Diana, Naoto — Kyouya too in the footage: there was the report of a gun. Tamaki had been shot.

And then Kyouya had run off screen, leaving only the microphone stand, and then another man flashed through the field of vision, followed closely by three more.

Then another scene, another place, this one with a large, black mug on obstructing the view to a window outside. There was a Target logo on the building over. The camera must have been placed on a table. An accidental recording. "He wasn't supposed to be there!" someone was saying.

In the black mug she saw reflected the makings of the room behind the camera, with a hallway in the back, a light on in some doorway in the hall, somebody's form casting shadows in the hallway as he moved in the other room. He moved out of the hall and filled a cup at the sink.

"What the hell was he thinking?" came a voice unobstructed, a voice she knew so well her insides imploded. "Why would he do that? He wasn't supposed to be there!"

"Orihara," she whispered.

"What the hell is this?"

The four turned around. Hikaru stood at the stairway, his hair spiked up after what Diana thought must have been a trip to the bathroom. He looked the same type of furious she had seen in Kaoru again and again. He had his cell phone out, and a look of relief washed over him. "Tamaki," he said into the phone. "Yeah — I — I just arrived — I'm not mad you didn't make it — I'll see you soon. Yeah. Yeah." A pause. "I don't know about Kaoru. …Yeah."

Mori was looking at Diana now. "I did not attend that function."

Said Diana, "I know."

"This shouldn't be possible."

"I know."

"Tamaki is alive."

"I know."

"And Kyouya is dead."

"I know."

"How did you get that footage?"

"We got it from Kubo," said Naoto, ejecting the DVD. "It had already happened, apparently."

"What are you guys talking about?" asked Hikaru. He walked over to Naoto and held out a hand for the DVD. She handed it to him. "I can't even call that a prank. I don't believe it for a minute."

"I think Diana would best be able to explain," said Mori.

Diana could feel her air tunnel closing up. Here it was, the first time she felt that anybody would actually believe what she had to say. It had been so long. She didn't even realize how accustomed she had become to people not believing her. She put a hand over her mouth, tired of the crying, wishing she could stop.

"Well," said Hunny, "it's okay, Diana. I could help explain what we know so far."

The others turned their attention to him. She was so grateful.

"So…" Hunny paused. From the look of his expression, it was clear that he was finally encountering what Diana had been facing all along, the absurdity of explaining to someone what he was about to say. "Diana is a time traveler."

Wait, what.

It wasn't incorrect, and yet completely off.

"She can only go back to a few minutes before the bus bombing that you heard about, and she's been going through all of this again and again. This time, she talked with Kyouya before… Well anyways, apparently she…wait…how did you know to find us?" he asked Diana.

Diana was finally able to clear her throat and breathe. "The first time, I had gone into a cafe and had run into Kaoru. I — here — " She took out the TM, which Mori, Hunny and Shirogane now regarded with respect, not taking their eyes off of it. "I had activated this phone — it's called a TM for Time Machine, a prank present I had gotten off of eBay for my best friend Tsunade. I turned it on to find out what it does before I gave it to her, and I happened to activate it just a few minutes before the bus. After I ran into Kaoru at the cafe, I went back to this phone and listened to the instructions and hit this button, and all of a sudden I was back at the intersection, before the bus explosion."

Hikaru looked back and forth amongst the others. "Are you guys buying this?" He was hesitant, unsure in the face of their gravitas. They didn't say anything.

"So…I don't know how many times I went back to the moment. I did it again to be absolutely sure. I thought I was dreaming, or going insane. And then I met Kaoru again, and in a moment of weakness he told me one of his close friends, Kyouya, was killed in the accident. So then…"

So then… So then… What she had decided then was finally coming back. The TM felt hot in her hand. "So then," Diana continued, "I realized if I have this, I have to be able to save everybody."

Hunny had apparently gotten tired of standing. He approached the dining table and took a seat in front of Diana, nodding grimly. The others came into motion as well. Hikaru took a seat beside Hunny, Naoto on her right, Mori on her left. Diana could feel her insides quivering again, from some overwhelming sense of elation that battled its way up to a lump in her throat again, but she swallowed.

"Kaoru was the first one to support what I am trying to do. I don't know if he believed what I was saying. Maybe he just wanted to believe Kyouya could come back, and things could go back to the way it used to be before." Yes…before…way before. "It was through him that I met Hunny and Mori before. So this time, I searched for you. I'm trying new ways out, something different every time."

"So this time you chose us?" said Hunny.

"We chanced upon Shirogane," said Diana, giving the detective a wavering smile. To Hikaru, she explained, "Shirogane Naoto is a detective. I tipped her off on the man the media would label as the terrorist who committed this act, Mitsuo Kubo, and she helped me, Mori, Hunny track that man down before the police could get to him."

Naoto was surprised by Hikaru's offer to shake hands. Did they say Hikaru was coming back from America? Diana thought. That made his now-instinctual Western greeting make sense. The Japanese usually bowed.

"Kubo was a criminal that had somehow escaped prison several days ago," said Naoto to Hikaru. "I do not believe he had the propensity to do so himself, however. I believe he was framed. It was somebody else." She pulled out the business card. "He also had this on his person."

Hikaru acted like a proper American, giving a short bark of a laugh when he saw it. "Okaaay." He paused. "No, that doesn't explain anything," he said, trying to make sense of the business card.

"We went to this store and presented the card to them," said Hunny. "It was a lot of fun. The manager handed us this DVD without realizing we weren't the ones he was supposed to give it to. So then we ran away!"

Mori looked at Hunny intently. "Mitsukuni, what did you do…"

"So in any case," Diana said, reigning in the conversation, but stopped short.

"What?" asked Hikaru.

She pulled out her TM and started looking through the voicemails and messages, anything stored within her phone. "Everybody keeps forgetting what happened when I return, every single time. The only things that persist through all this is whatever I save in this. In which case…"

Mori asked, "Diana, did you record that footage?"

Diana shook her head. "No, I wasn't there, I've never been to Tamaki's wedding."

"So then," Hikaru was catching on, "there has to be another one, somebody else who was at the wedding to have recorded it."

"Not only that," said Diana, a flush of hope barreling into her veins, "there had to be a universe in which the bombing had never had happened, because Kyouya was up there giving a speech in that one."

"And," added Naoto, "they somehow were able to transcribe it onto a DVD and store it somewhere. But — why would they even want to put it on a DVD in the first place? It's incriminating evidence. And why would they hand it off to somebody else? This doesn't make sense."

Hikaru chuckled. "There are a lot of things here that don't make any sense."

There was a sound Diana didn't understand for a moment. Hunny and Hikaru burst out laughing as Naoto started pulled her black police cap over her face. Naoto's tummy was grumbling.

"Now there is the first thing that's made sense to me all day," said Hikaru. "Who wants to break for lunch?"

Lunch was almost wonderful. Diana was almost able to relax. It had little to do with not knowing how she would pay for lunch at such a high end hotel and a lot to do with how she was dressed. The women on the next table over may have been wearing necklaces that cost more than her high school tuition. She couldn't stop staring at them until they started staring back.

Thanks to Hunny and Hikaru, both she and Naoto became privy to the extremely bizarre accountings of their high school host club. Diana made plain through her face just what she thought of the exorbitant extravagance in which this group of men seemed to have lived in, but she remained engaged through the tellings of multiple humorous happenings. She learned about each of the hosts, including their types, why they joined, how the woman Haruhi had come into the club as the natural rookie. They learned about the outrageousness of Tamaki, the twins' devilish antics, about Hunny's cavities and his little brother and Mori. They talked about the grade school prodigy who was considered the naughty type, and how much of a flirt the child did indeed grow up to be. Diana's head was whirling already. She didn't know how much more could be put in, but there was something major missing.

"Hold on," Diana said at last. "You've told me a lot already, but…well, what was Kyouya like? I mean I know he's the cool type, but…"

"He's the third son of the Ootoris," said Naoto, explaining how Kyouya worked to outshine his competent elder brothers to inherit their medical industry. She went into detail about his brothers Yuuichi and Akito, about his strict father Yoshio, and of the rumors that he had bought out and returned control of the company anonymously.

"Why do you know all these things?" asked Diana.

"Because the Ootoris also have a police personnel a hundred strong," responded Naoto.

"Oh."

A waitress came by to collect all of their plates. Hunny ordered a Nicaraguan chili bubble tea as Naoto continued, "Once you save him, he may be of some use."

"I can't believe we ran into you, Shirogane." Diana's smile turned into a grimace. "Wait. What was that? 'He may be of some use?' How exactly do you imagine I could use Kyouya? He's, frankly, terrifying!"

"This is also assuming," said Mori, "that they are not already engaged by his father in something else."

"All one hundred of them?" asked Naoto.

And no one tries to insist the idea of using Ootori Kyouya is not a notion frightening. Diana sighed. She looked up at the vaulted ceilings, which were completely glass. She would have liked to see the view from this seventy-fourth floor cafe, but she didn't want to look any more like some tourist pleb than she already did. Even Naoto at least looked like she was in formal wear with her police-officer like uniform. You can't see anything through the clouds anyway, she consoled herself.

"Diana, Naoto, look at this!" Hunny reached across Naoto to hand Diana his phone. "This used to be our website, when Kyouya would sell all our stuff!"

The table crowded inwards to witness the history of all the useless junk people had purchased for ridiculous prices. They were seated Hikaru-Hunny-Naoto-Diana-Mori-Hikaru, clockwise, and Diana found herself leaning closer to Naoto when she felt Mori lean over too.

"Somebody bought Kyouya's Singles Day tie for six hundred dollars?" asked Diana incredulously. "Isn't Singles Day supposed to be in China?"

"That's probably from when he was touring with Akito during his third year," Hunny said with a shrug. He immediately brightened, happy to receive his bubble tea from the cheery waitress.

Diana shuddered. These rich people were crazy. She felt like she needed to take a bath. Her skin was prickling.

Mori, Hikaru and Hunny went into further detail about the true governor of the host club, the Puppet Master Shadow King Low Blood Pressure Lord. They explained how it was Ootori who had set the terms for Haruhi and had been in direct contact with her father to acquire artifacts that he could sell of Haruhi's.

Diana frowned. "That's the guy I am struggling to save?"

Hikaru laughed. After a moment, he stated, "Kaoru was close to him. Closer than the rest of us, I think. Excepting Tamaki, of course."

"I see…" She looked back at the photo of the man she was struggling to save on Hunny's phone screen. Why couldn't this be Mori or something? She kicked herself hard for such a thought. She didn't really mean harm on Mori, but Kyouya sounded less scary dead than alive.

Hunny turned to Kaoru. "Soooooo… So what happened between you two? Kaoru didn't even come back today."

Hikaru was still picking at his…well, Diana didn't know what he was picking at. Something the hosts believed was edible. He said, "I found out."

Diana saw Mori and Hunny exchange a glance, and Hikaru didn't miss it. He scoffed.

"Yeah, I bet you both knew for a while now, didn't you?" said Hikaru. He chuckled mirthlessly. "I'm tried of being angry. Tired of being sad. But he really brings it out of me."

Naoto looked from one person to another. Diana could see her debating whether she wanted to know. From the way she dismissed herself for the bathroom, apparently not.

"So," Diana said, "Kaoru confessed?"

Hikaru spun the wine in his glass and chewed on the insides of his cheeks as he regarded her. "Not…exactly… Agh," he growled, "what does it matter anyway? What happened is still the same." He propped his chin in his hand in a pose she had seen Kaoru wearing many times before. He clenched his fist. "Haruhi doesn't matter to me anymore." Then apologetically, "Well, not in that way, I mean. I have someone in the States." Smiling to himself, he said, "I'll be lucky if she misses me though."

Hunny was quick to pick up any upturn of the mood. "Ooooooh! Who is it who is it?"

"I think it was good for you two to split apart," said Mori. "You are your own person."

Hunny nodded. "And now you have someone who loves you for you. Did you tell her you have a twin brother yet?"

Hikaru's expression darkened. "No."

"What? Why not?"

"Because," Hikaru took a drink from his cup, "she has to face the challenge."

Diana looked to Hunny. "What challenge?"

"The Which-One-Is-Hikaru game," Hunny responded.

"She will get it," said Mori, nursing a cup of black coffee. "You are no longer alike enough for it to be a challenge."

Hikaru gave Mori a pained expression. "Yeah," he said. Then, as if to himself, "Yeah." He looked up as Naoto was returning to her seat as he said, "It didn't have to be that way though."

"It just needed to be some way," said Diana. "I am sorry it didn't happen some way better. But it's been eating your brother from the inside out ever since. He's stayed in the host club line of work searching for what you used to have in high school. He's been stuck in his lie for years now."

Hikaru hmphed. "I guess I'm glad he had you."

"Ah ha!" Diana retorted. "Kaoru doesn't remember me."

The ladies from the next table were looking in her direction. Diana lowered her volume. "And if I'm successful, neither will any of you. …When I'm successful."

"That's sad," said Hunny.

"Sad but necessary," added Naoto.

Silence enveloped the table. They seemed to look everywhere but at her.

"You know," Diana said, "I never wanted to be pulled into this mess. It'll be such a relief to just make it to my job interview, to be able to live my daily life. I can't wait to go back to normal. I can't wait to be able to find out what happens next week."

The table filled with a train-like rumbling. Diana jumped out of her seat, ready for an explosion. Her glass careened across the table, lining the white tablecloth with what could have passed for the map of a subway system.

"Uh oh," said Hunny.

The sound stopped.

Nothing was happening.

…Nope, nothing.

The silence continued to extend as Diana didn't even collect her wits to apologize for the spilled wine.

"Oh," said Mori. "Diana. It's all right. It was Mitsukuni's straw. He's just running out of tea."

Her eyes locked with Hunny's. She could finally breathe again, and the air entered her like a punch in the gut. She collapsed back into her chair.

Hunny blew a gurgled apology into the remainder of his tea.

"Not. Funny." Hikaru scolded him.

"Mitsukuni…" chimed in Mori.

Hunny pouted. "Sorry."

Diana waited for her breathing to come back to normal. "It's… It's all right, Hunny."

"It does beg the question," Naoto said, "of how we will be able to remember, so we can help you." Naoto must have been completely absorbed in calculations for the last few minutes. She seemed to be lost in the napkins she had been absently folding for the last few minutes, making squares out of triangles, then making triangles out of squares. "There has to be a way. The amount of time you'll waste otherwise is impossible. If you have to convince us, again and again?"

"I can agree with that!" said Hunny.

Diana was suspicious he was trying to deflect negative attention. This kid is so manipulative…

"Someone was able to persist things from the future," said Naoto. "Can you not just record with your phone right now?"

"I tried that," said Diana. "I would have a bunch of texts from Kaoru if I could bring them to the past. Or — present — or — future — or — whatever! But," giving a furtive wave of her phone, "there was nothing there that lasted."

"Then perhaps there is something special about those DVDs to make them persist through the iterations. Wait, that's not the Time Machine."

"Huh?"

Naoto pointed at her phone. "The TM is a phone as well, right? I meant, why not record with that camera?"

"That thing?" Diana pulled out the TM. "It looks like a phone from fifteen years ago. It can't even pull off video recordings," she said. "Probably…"

She started searching for such mechanisms. The others crouched closer to the table, holding their breaths as she navigating menus. It was painful, working with options that had to be keyed in by number like an ATM. As a matter of fact, it was intimidating.

Phonebook, Fun & Games, User Profiles, Organizer, Settings, Multimedia — that one! Okay, Camera — that one! No that's photos. Oh no, that's just photos. How do you take pictures with this? No, go back, aaah Main Screen, Multimedia, aaah pressed the wrong number, Main Screen, Multimedia, Video, OKAY!

"Ah HAH!" Diana held up the TM. "Let's try this out, shall we? Hold on…out of memory? What does this thing even have inside of it?"

Naoto facepalmed. "Listen, you can play with that toy later. Just make certain to record a little bit of each of us sending a message to ourselves before we part ways. But in any case," she said as she accepted the restaurant bill from another waitress, "we will not know if it worked until later. Well, we will not, but you will. Let's design a backup plan hooolyyyy crap!"

"Give me that," said Hikaru as he reached across the table and snapped the bill out of her fingers.

"Hitachiin, I will pay," said Mori.

"No way!"

"You are our guest today."

"And I am paying with money that I made!" Hikaru grinned. "Come on, Mori, it's the first time!"

Mori assented with a smile. "Just this time."

Diana faked a couple coughs as she proffered hers. "Pay for mine, too."

Hikaru smirked. "Nope. Not you."

"What? I can't pay for this!"

"I know you can't, Commoner. Guess you'll be stuck here foreveeeer!"

Mori slipped the bill out of her grasp wordlessly and added it to his.

Diana clapped her hands together and bowed graciously. "Oh my gosh, thank youuuuu!"

He said, "It's nothing." He stood up, signaling the rest of them to vacate their seats as well.

"HWA!" exclaimed Hunny. He grabbed Hikaru by the back of his shirt and pulled him back down with an inexplicable force. "Where are you going! We haven't even had dessert!"

Hikaru gave an uncomfortable laugh.

She was in the middle of putting on her jacket when Diana picked up a dessert menu against her better judgment. She could feel regrets building inside of her already. "And there are a loooot of zeroes here. How much is this converted…this cake here is a hundred dollars?" No wonder Hikaru was ready to leave. He probably didn't want to pay for it.

But the look in Hunny's eyes were pure evil. He commanded, "Everybody? Sit."

A/N: (tries to contain herself) See what I mean? Gaaah I can't believe I managed to bring Hikaru back. And he can be such a jerk! Every bit as much as Kaoru! Kind of. And I can't believe some of the lines that come out of these people's mouths! I have to say, writers have a tendency to make it so that bad things don't happen to their characters - but writing conflict between characters that are supposed to be working together is the funniest! Favorite line: Diana finding out about Kyouya's questionable antics and saying, "That's the guy I am struggling to save?" and thinking Kyouya sounded less scary dead than alive.

So I had mentioned that I was enjoying writing the story even more now than before. It's because of what happened with the ending of the Kaoru arc. I was like, "Holy crap." The story became about people. Not just the plot hook and the Kyouya fan service, but suddenly, characters who were fallible - and in turn, human. So I guess that's the main thing I am proud of in this story: I have written fallibility. Unfortunately, not all of my characters are the same depth, and I would like to get better at that, but, the fallibility I have managed to build into a few of the characters have made them human at a level that I have not managed for characters in other stories.

What I didn't expect is that all the other host club members to get so involved. I enjoy how involved they are with each other. They change each other's lives. They impact each other. I can't believe I managed to fit them all in! I had no idea how Diana, like Haruhi, would end up becoming accidentally privy into the dynamics of the entire club. It was an accident in the Kaoru arc, but those accidents built the very base that makes them substantial in the Mori arc.

I didn't know I would like writing more when I got better. Even more motivation to get more better.

I like that: "Get more better."

Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! What was your favorite line? Peace!