27. Eviction Notice

For the first time in quite a while, Tzintchi was in an unambiguously good mood. Phase Two was ready to go, and everything would soon be back to normal. No mood swings, no powers going out of control, no untidiness. Mislaato had apparently made a full recovery from her temporary indisposition (a very full recovery, he noted with pleasantly weary satisfaction), and he had chosen to take it as an omen of what was to come. Finally, their lives and those of their worshippers would be back on track.

He materialised inside the Eye with an extra-cheery shower of sparkles, blowing his assembled wives kisses with three separate mouths. All of them seemed to be in equally high spirits, even Reigle – though it was admittedly hard to tell in her case.

"Behold, for I have arrived!" he proclaimed in his best dramatic voice, setting the furniture to quaking. "And how are the three loveliest ladies in the cosmos this fine morning?"

Asukhon's answering grin seemed, if possible, to show even more teeth than usual. "All the better for you asking, Shinji. Just need to run a few things past you, then we're good to go. Want to check the view first, though? May not be our doing, not directly, but it's pretty damned spectacular."

"You know, I might do just that."

A few complicated wiggles of his tentacles, and the already-tenuous walls of the room vanished. What replaced them were... ships. Millions of them, all several miles long, heavily-armed, and impressively spiky. Phase One had been a series of raids, intended to weaken and disrupt their (actual and potential) enemies. Phase Two was a full-scale invasion, intended to annihilate them.

Only a small part of the fleet was visible, even with their superhuman perception. In total, it numbered in the trillions, containing enough cloned manpower and equipment to crush galaxies – several at once, in fact, which was of course what it had been designed for.

One might have wondered how the gods had managed to create such a force given the problems they had had with their powers, especially given that said problems increased exponentially with the magnitude of the crafting. The answer was simple – they hadn't. There were certain benefits to having a pet reality-warper, after all. With her universe thoroughly subdued, they had begun to test the limits of Haruhi Suzumiya's abilities, and so far she had not been found wanting. In fact, Tzintchi was beginning to suspect that with the correct applications, she would render their experiments on Bloodhaven entirely obsolete.

He gave a small, enigmatic smile – he'd been practicing of late, and was pretty sure he had it perfected. "Not bad. Give my regards to K.J. – for such a despicable little piece of offal, he does his job pretty well when he puts his mind to it. So what did you want me to go over?"

"Like I said, just a few little things. First off, when we hit the New Republic, are we going after the Yuuzhan Vong as well?"

"Might as well – can't have the situation there getting too stable, can we? In fact, we might want to go easy on them so both sides've still got enough firepower massed to blast each other back into the Stone Age. Admittedly, I'm not one hundred per cent sure the Vong ever left it, but you get the picture. Next?"

"Well, we weren't entirely sure about the weapon loadouts for... wait, what's that?"

On the displays that floated around the Eye, something was moving. A thin spike of space-time distortions had emerged from the Integrated Data Entity's presumed location, slowly but steadily reaching out towards the parallel Earth that was the seat of their agents' power in the Suzumiyaverse.

"It appears that the Entity has commenced its attack," Reigle said, stating the obvious as only she could. "I shall order elements from the fleet to be deployed in its path – they may slow it down."

"Why are they moving now, though?" Asukhon asked. "How did they find out what we were doing? I think we'd have noticed if they'd just breezed through the camouflage we had set up."

"It could be an external factor," Mislaato pointed out. "The Divine Assassins were briefed on the complete plan, and we know you didn't get all of them in that purge of yours. I doubt that little temper-tantrum particularly endeared you to the survivors, either – there's something about daemons coming after one's scalp that makes one seriously reconsider one's loyalties."

Perhaps his memory was failing him, but Tzintchi didn't recall the Goddess of Lust being quite so snarky in the past, and certainly not to her fellow deities. All things considered, he couldn't say he approved of the change.

"Rei," he said, refusing to let this sudden hindrance spoil his mood, "activate the sleeper code in their system. It's time to end this nonsense."

"Affirmative."

They watched with satisfaction as the god-computer convulsed, viruses seeded in it weeks before in preparation for precisely this eventuality activating and consuming it from within. The lance-like distortion lost coherence, whipping back and forth like a headless snake.

Tzintchi grinned. "And that, ladies, is why you should always have a plan B. Now, where were w-"

The Entity changed form again, in a rather more ordered and graceful manner this time.

"Asuka, what's it doing now?" the god demanded exasperatedly.

"It's isolating the infected sections and... and it's shedding them! Shinji, it's clean as a whistle under there! We didn't stop it at all!"

At the centre of the display, a pulse of energy winked on and off, sometimes long, sometimes short. As he realised what the Entity was doing, Tzintchi's jaw dropped.

"Is... is that Morse code?" he asked, incredulous.

"Agents of Chaos," Reigle translated, "we bid you welcome, and hope that this means of communication is not beyond your admittedly limited technical aptitude. In the future, please think twice before attempting to hack a sentient computer. That is all."

"Well," Mislaato said acerbically in the silence that followed, "do you have any other backup plans up your sleeve, husband of mine?"

It took the beleaguered God of Ambition quite a while to reply. "Asuka, can we get in touch with the fleet? I want them to evacuate to the Warp now, if not sooner."

"That depends," she said slowly. "Do any of the clones we've got commanding that little lot speak Swahili?"

"Swahili? No, why would they need to?"

"Because that little message just now wasn't only a message. They used it to locate the means we were using to interact with their universe, and guess what language they encoded our comms into?"

"... Oh," Tzintchi said eloquently. "Is it... is it good Swahili?"

"Hardly. In fact, it makes Babelfish look precise. I tried to send an evac order, and it ended up as something about gardening. Shinji, I do believe they've fucked us over good and proper."

He didn't reply, instead staring at the screen as the Entity's probe brushed through squadron after squadron of ships as if they weren't even there. How? How did it all go so wrong so fast?


Kyon Junior had decided that he didn't like the gods very much.

Yes, they had given him life, yes, they had introduced him to this wonderful playground of a universe, and yes, they were capable of things that made him weep with joy, and yet despite that, they were so very... limited.

Consider, for instance, their treatment of my brother. It should have been a turning point for them, someone to break not because he had done something sufficiently vile to deserve it, but simply because he was in their way. They didn't even have the benefit of distance, as they had with the various extradimensional civilisations they had subdued in their increasingly nebulously-defined quest – just one little high-school student entirely under their power who really needed a good brainwashing. K.J. had even offered a few suggestions.

What had followed was a thorough disappointment.

They had boasted to the wretch, offering justifications for what they were about to do in a transparent attempt to psych themselves up, and what they had done in the end hadn't been very impressive. A bit of rape here, a spot of torture there... so very pedestrian. Admittedly, employing crafted daemons in the guise of his friends had been a nice touch, but not really enough to make up for everything else. As for his cell, K.J. had seen worse five-star apartments. Sure, they could claim that it was intended to intimidate prospective prisoners with a display of power, but to the clone it felt more like an apology in architectural form. It wasn't even as if what they needed to do was all that hard. Lock him in a sensory-deprivation tank, administer creatively-applied pain and humiliation at irregular intervals, and once he starts looking forward to the sessions outside, well... you've pretty much got him in the palm of your hand. Easy.

It had come as no surprise whatsoever when they let the worm escape, driving him into a place where his corruption would happen in its own sweet time and where they could forget about him as the work was done in their absence. Yes, it would most likely work – it certainly seemed to be doing so, judging by the reports K.J. occasionally filched from the Palace – but that did nothing to mitigate the gods' failure in his eyes. They were unworthy of the power they had been granted, incapable of using it to its full potential. Better that it had been given to someone with vision, someone who did not share their weaknesses. Like him, for instance.

The horrible, demeaning name they had given him was just the icing on the cake.

He had a feeling that they didn't like him either. Understandable, really – being surpassed by an unpowered mostly-human was likely to cause a bit of resentment. He had no idea why he had not inherited his brother's supposed abilities – perhaps it was unrelated to genetics, perhaps the Warp had screwed things up (again), or perhaps the gods had just been typically careless and missed something out during his creation process. Whatever the case, it was a source of endless frustration for him, not least because it meant he was pretty much entirely dependent on that spoiled, self-centred brat Haruhi.

Corrupting her had been fun, at first. There was a very special thrill to conquering a being who could quite literally erase you with a thought. It hadn't been enough to convince her that she deserved the things he had done to her. The resentment and self-loathing would still build up, and could lash out in manners most inconvenient. No, professional ethics and gleeful sadism both demanded that he ensure she actively wanted them – and him, of course. Turning someone into both an on-demand superweapon and your own personal plaything was no easy feat. He really should have demanded extra pay for multi-tasking.

Now, though, the game was over, and he was stuck with a useless sack of meat who just happened to be both the source of his power in this universe and his one bargaining chip with the gods. He had made quite sure during the corruption that he was the only one Haruhi properly responded to – in light of worsening employer relations, it was only sensible to take a few measures to ensure one kept one's job, especially when one knew that losing that job would likely result in one being dragged screaming to the Hall of Torments. As mentioned, the gods could be remarkably inventive when they thought you had it coming.

In fact, it was safe to say there weren't many people K.J. liked, and since people he did like naturally resembled him as much as possible and sociopathic, megalomaniacal narcissists were not known for their teamwork abilities, most putative candidates ended up being quickly and quietly disposed of. Indeed, he'd run a few calculations back when they'd infiltrated the Integrated Data Entity, reasoning that such a trivial use of the mighty god-computer's processing power represented the perfect insult, and been surprised that his list of potential friends had an almost hundred-per-cent overlap with his list of potential threats who really, really needed to die. It wasn't a problem most of the time, but it did mean that loyal flunkies were in shorter supply than he might have hoped for when, say, an irate Humanoid Interface with the entire might of the Entity backing her was chewing through an entire planet's worth of defences to get to him and the brain-dead little bitch of a reality-warper he kept around specifically for situations like that was not even lifting a finger to help.

Not that he had a specific scenario in mind, of course. Oh no.

He sat back in his throne, a surprisingly comfortable affair comprised of the bones of various North High School students. Said bones were still attached to their original owners, most of whom were still alive. He was fond of the throne – it was a nice little memento of his earliest successes on this world. Screens hovered around him, carried by insect-like lesser daemons, and he saw that the Interface had finally arrived on the Earth's surface – more specifically, she was right outside his city-sized palace, disdainfully smacking aside entire legions of once-human guards with her force-fields as she forged her way towards the main entrance. At a gesture from its master, one of the screens zoomed in on her head, and he smiled slowly as he recognised her features.

"Yuki Nagato," he said across the palace's public-address system. "Long time no see."

She ignored him, instead squashing a Black Pharaoh that had got a little too close.

"You know, I thought they'd be sending you to do this," he continued. "Hell, I doubt they even had to give the order. Just set you loose, sat back, and watched the carnage. So why are you doing it, hmm? Not because the Entity asked you to, that's for sure. You've butted heads with it too many times in the past. How many of its programs did that thing purge when it was escaping the gods' infiltration? How many of them were your friends? Fun, isn't it, working for something that would mourn your loss no more than it would a bad case of dandruff?"

She was at the gates now, smashing through them with a wall of energy. The palace's defenders were waiting for her, though, and a barrage of projectiles boiled out from within, creating a forest of explosions that temporarily whited out the monitor.

"It's not Haruhi, either. I've seen how you Interfaces see her, more like some interesting natural phenomenon than anything else. I've been putting on a good show for you, haven't I? Is it getting a little bit stale? A bit moribund? I'd be happy to accept any criticisms and suggestions you have, of course – there's no need to take it so personally."

The shooting inside the lobby had stopped. K.J. knew the nature of his guards, and knew that the only way to stop them attacking was to stop them doing several other things as well, including but not limited to living. He looked closer at the display. Or teleporting them half a continent away. That works too.

"Oh, I know!" he declared, slapping his forehead theatrically despite the fact that she almost certainly couldn't see it. "It's my brother, isn't it? Restoring his home, protecting the people he cares about... very noble. Very romantic. Come now, I have access to all his memories, even the ones he won't admit to. Did you think I was unaware of your silly little crush? Very well, let's assume that you get it done. That you kill me, rescue him, and everyone goes home happy. What exactly are you expecting in return? A couple of words of thanks, a request for help with whatever idiocy Suzumiya's landed you all in this time, and then straight back to mooning over that airbag Asahina. You're a tool, Nagato. A useful resource. Nothing more, nothing less."

One of the screens now showed a map of the palace, with compromised sectors marked in red. There were quite a few of them, marking a trail pointed straight at the throne room. The building's outer layers had been built as a maze that he had calculated would take prospective invaders several days to navigate – not that they'd have that long before Haruhi erased them. The Interface, on the other hand, seemed to be blasting straight through it. Some people just have no respect for household convention.

"Me, on the other hand? I'd be happy to oblige. Sure, you're a bit underdeveloped for my tastes, but new concubines are always welcome. Hell, I'd even give you the full Haruhi treatment, and you can't say better than that, right? I mean, sure, it's not like you're likely to enjoy it, but you still get to be fucked by a Kyon or alternate-manufacturer equivalent, and that's what really matters, yes?"

Her lack of reaction was beginning to unnerve – no, that wasn't the right word, too strong – disconcert him. He signalled one of his servant-daemons to head by Haruhi's quarters and kick her awake. Seriously, what's keeping her?

"You know, you can kill me if you want. I bet you've got a whole lot bottled up in that pretty little head of yours – spot of catharsis would do you a world of good. I hope you don't think it's going to make a lasting difference, though. I've left my mark, Nagato. My legacy is carved in the very bones of this planet, in the very hearts of its people. They'll remember me, you see, and as long as my name is spoken with the fear and loathing I've given them, I'll still be here. I'll still be here watching you deluded little machines scurry around, laughing as you try vainly to pick up the pieces. I'm not afraid of death, Nagato. I know it's not the end for me."

Another red light. She was right outside the throne room's door. I'm not scared. I'm not.

"What do you feel, Nagato? What's behind that mask of yours? Fear? Anger? Grief? Hatred? A desire for vengeance? What is it? TELL ME!"

The last sentence was barely coherent, a screaming, desperate plea. Warmth streaked his cheeks, and he realised dimly that he was crying.

Yuki Nagato materialised in front of him, her eyes gazing into his. In a quiet, calm voice, she spoke.

"Only contempt."

She raised her hands, chanting in the bizarre machine-language of the Interfaces, and the clone called Kyon Junior simply disappeared from existence, his panicked appeal for mercy still unspoken, along with the throne, the monitors, and a good portion of the floor.

It was a quick death, but not a painless one.


Yuki walked through the palace, inspecting the decor as she went. She could have teleported to her desired location, but there was something about this place that demanded one's attention. In fact, she was fairly sure that that was its sole purpose. Half the furniture was comprised of bits of dead human, all neatly labelled with their former owners' names, lifespans, and causes of death.

A curtain of skin covering a window, its label stitched to it with black thread:

Grace Sinclair

1989-2011

Exsanguination

An appropriately bone-white brick in the wall, its gleaming, pearlescent surface marred by three carefully-carved lines:

Chow Ying-sun

1948-2011

Starvation

A soft leather cushion, offset by the clean white label attached to one corner:

Pyotr Simonovich Raikov

2004-2011

Poisoning

When she had been released from the Data Integration Thought Entity's storage vaults to liberate Earth, Yuki had thought the palace of its regent rather clichéd and unoriginal, a brooding, gothic affair straight out of the cheap horror stories she read when no other literary entertainment presented itself. Now, though, she realised that that was precisely its intent, its surreal, more-fiction-than-fiction nature deliberately designed to sear it into observers' brains with the power of a waking nightmare. It was a monument to pain, to death, to atrocity, and to the creature that had made them happen.

It was as he himself had said – he had known that he was not long for the world whatever the outcome of his mission, and had endeavoured to secure some measure of immortality in the only way he knew how. If the results hadn't been so horrific, she might have almost felt sorry for him.

Then she opened the door to Haruhi's cell, and everything even resembling sympathy vanished for good.

It was pretty much impossible to recognise the thing huddled in the corner of the room as the self-proclaimed leader of the SOS Brigade. In fact, it was only thanks to Yuki's abilities as a Humanoid Interface that it was reliably recognisable as human.

Most of it was hidden beneath tangled, matted hair and ragged clothing, and those parts that were not were caked in filth and covered in wounds, some of them very obviously self-inflicted. It raised its head, regarding her with a flat, incurious gaze that made her skin crawl in a manner entirely too human to be within Entity regulations.

Back while she had been a member of the Brigade, Yuki and Haruhi had not got along well. It wasn't that they had got along badly, mind – just that their radically different personalities ensured little real interaction. The Interface had always been faintly irritated by the reality-warper's relentless hyperactivity and cheerful irresponsibility, whilst Haruhi, for her part, had tended to treat Yuki like an item of furniture when she remembered she existed at all. Nevertheless, it was precisely those aspects of Haruhi's personality that had once so annoyed her that made her current state all the worse. To see such a lively, carefree girl reduced to... to this was an obscenity, plain and simple.

It was obvious, now, why she had not moved to stop the Entity's attack. It wasn't a case of rebellion, a final betrayal of the one who had enslaved her. It was because she simply couldn't. Haruhi Suzumiya was little more than a shell, a creature with all the self-determination and free will of a corpse. Kyon Junior had used her as best he could – it had never occurred to him that it was possible to use her up.

Yuki moved forward, lightly pressing her fingertips into Haruhi's forehead, and began her final task of the day.

The power of the Interfaces – the ability to manipulate data – was one whose true importance didn't really become apparent until you took into account certain facts – most significantly, that it was never really specified which kind of data they could manipulate. Sooner or later, everything boiled down to statistics. Suppose, for instance, that you wanted to summon a quick fireball. A Mid-type mage like the ones in the Bureau would reel off some nonsensical incantation to sculpt raw magic into something that resembled fire, but had lots of weird supernatural quirks and disadvantages. An Interface, on the other hand, would just crank up the air temperature here, inject a bit of kinetic energy here, and then sit back and watch the fireworks both literal and metaphorical.

There were limitations, of course. The larger and more complex the manipulation, the more processing power was required, and the Entity, like all computers, only had so much to go around. The trick was deciding exactly what you needed to alter in order to achieve the desired effect with the minimum of effort, and it was one Yuki was very good at.

Fact one: in the universe that was the home of Haruhi Suzumiya, solipsism was more than a mere philosophical conceit. It could safely be theorised that just about everything that existed in there was a figment of the young reality-warper's boundless imagination given physical form and complexity by her powers. There was a reason the various organisations observing Haruhi considered keeping her in the dark about her true nature so important.

Fact two: the human (or metahuman) brain was essentially a rather inefficient organic computer. The Interfaces were good with computers.

With these two facts in mind, Yuki accessed Haruhi's mind and started erasing her memories.

It wasn't as easy as she had expected – things branched off in strange ways in there, and some sections seemed to be entirely locked away, making it extremely difficult to deduce cause and effect. She couldn't simply set apart everything dated after the real Kyon's disappearance and delete it – Haruhi's brain just wasn't organised that neatly. Instead, she had to carefully analyse each packet of information, figure out how it related to everything else, and then get rid of it... which led to another problem entirely.

The entire purpose of an Interface in ordinary circumstances was to observe and record. Among other things, this meant that they couldn't forget anything they saw. Anything. Consequently, one side-effect of the erasure was that every single thing the clone had done to Haruhi was permanently burned into her own brain.

Though digestive systems were strictly optional for beings such as herself, Yuki suddenly felt a pressing need to vomit. She then ran a few calculations regarding whether or not the opportunity still existed to travel back in time and erase K.J. again (and much more painfully this time), and was rather disappointed to find that it didn't.

Eventually, it was done. She opened her eyes, and took in her surroundings. They were in the middle of a suburban street, with the sun shining down on them and people walking past. A quick scan of the immediate landscape confirmed that they were on the outskirts of Nishinomiya City, whilst her internal chronometer confirmed that it was 9:25 on a Monday morning. If flocks of daemons, ambulatory architecture, or evil towers of ominousness dominating the horizon were in residence, they had not yet made themselves known to her.

Though nobody in the crowds on either side of them had yet stopped to take photographs of one attractive young girl in a school uniform holding another unconscious one in her arms in the middle of the road, it was only a matter of time, knowing this neighbourhood. A quick step sideways into closed space soon put paid to that eventuality – though Yuki was not too worried about others misinterpreting her actions (she knew the truth, and that was generally enough except in very particular situations involving a certain floppy-haired, cynical student), being at the centre of attention was something she greatly disliked.

Now that any potential distractions had been removed, she took the opportunity to examine Haruhi. She certainly looked a lot healthier post-erasure – in fact, she looked exactly as she had prior to the Canada trip. The next question, of course, was whether she had recovered mentally as well.

The president of the SOS Brigade's eyes snapped open. "Nagato, where am I, how did I get here, and whyareyougropingmeyouPERVERT?"

Belatedly, Yuki realised that the way in which she was carrying the taller girl, whilst ergonomically efficient, was not entirely within the bounds of human decency. Sometimes, she really wished the Entity's files on Earth social mores had been just a little more comprehensive. On the plus side, at least her question had been answered. 0 to incandescent in 3.6 seconds. That would be a 'yes', then.

Haruhi, meanwhile, had got to her feet with commendable speed. "Didn't you hear me? You are going to explain yourself right now or I'll... zzzzzZZZZZ..."

Yuki caught her before she hit the ground, and initiated a short-range teleport. She had never visited Haruhi's house herself – none of the Brigade had – but her former backup unit, Ryoko Asakura, had mapped out the area to a frankly worrying extent, and the files, as always, were stored on the Entity's memory banks.

They materialised inside the reality warper's room, and the Interface set her down on the bed – white sheets with a teddy-bear print – how had Asakura known that? – before notifying the school that one of their students would be off sick for a few days. With luck, it would buy everyone else enough time to organise a makeshift observation routine until the war was over. There was the potential issue of Haruhi's parents, but given the extent of her antics that they had thus far either permitted or failed to notice, having their daughter sleep for a day or so would probably not concern them unduly. In fact, they might appreciate the peace and quiet.

After a few moments' thought, she deposited one of the larger gift boxes from Nishinomiya's most expensive chocolatier on the sleeping girl's bedside table, making a mental note to transfer the appropriate amount of cash to the store when the opportunity arose. Even if (as she hoped) Haruhi couldn't remember anything of what had happened to her, Yuki did, and it was her considered opinion that some measure of compensation was in order. It wasn't enough, not by any means, but she doubted anything ever would be.

Her last teleport of the day was to North High School. Though classes had already started, students were still scuttling back and forth between the buildings. She watched them for a little while, fading into the background as always. It was truly bizarre to think that less than an hour ago this place had been buried under the twisted domicile of an insane tyrant, and that absolutely no-one knew.

Except her.

Perhaps K.J. had known what would happen, had ensured that the one to destroy him would be someone capable of always remembering him and his works. It would certainly have explained why he never tried to flee when she came for him. Had it been enough, in the end? Had he died satisfied at his final gambit? She recalled the look of pure animal terror on his face during his final moments. Probably not. Though she was sure her superiors would have frowned on such vindictiveness, seeing it as a sign of dangerous partiality, this gave her no little satisfaction.

They still had a great deal to do. Depriving Chaos of the Suzumiyaverse represented a tremendous setback to them, but they still had other forces, other strongholds, and they would not be so easily caught off-guard next time. Nevertheless, it was a victory, a chance for the allied universes to lick their wounds and prepare their counterattack, and she really should have felt more proud of herself for being so instrumental to it, even if she had only acted as an extension of the Entity's will.

Something still nagged, though. Deductive reasoning and logic were both very useful, but veteran Interfaces soon learned to trust their intuition, and Yuki knew when something was too good to be true. She'd known it when her dangerously unstable backup had given an apparent love letter to a nice young man recently dunked up to his eyeballs in supernatural weirdness, inviting him to come alone to an empty classroom, and she knew it now.

It was not until she checked the Entity's records on population distribution that she found out what it was. It was not until she checked the astronomical charts that she found out how bad it was.


Tzintchi looked out through the Eye's myriad Warp-attuned sensor systems in horrified incredulity. They had lost the Suzumiyaverse. They had lost their fleet. They had lost any chance of a swift end to the conflict. Not only that, but to add insult to injury, they had lost the opportunity to make that little shit Kyon Junior answer for his failures.

"Well," he announced to the multiverse in general and his fellow gods in particular, "that's what happens when you rely on subcontractors to do your work for you. See what information you can gather on the Entity's capabilities – being made to look like an idiot by a glorified abacus is not something I wish to repeat. From now on, ladies, we are doing things our way."

Of course, he reflected glumly, 'doing things our way' is going to have to wait a while. They still had the Stargate program, Reigle's little project in the Palace sewers, and the opportunity to assemble a new fleet (using their own power this time), but all three would need a little while to get ready, and in the meantime they would be on the defensive, taking their lumps from several irate galactic civilisations at once. Needless to say, he was not looking forward to it.

We had it all planned out. Explore a few neighbouring universes, raid them for arms and manpower, blast the C'tan into their component atoms, and then settle down back on Earth with our followers. Just what in the name of the seven hells happened?


Author's Notes: Oh, you thought I was kidding about the weaponised Swahili when I mentioned it in the summary on my profile, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU?

Anyways, welcome back to the madness once more. It has come to my attention whilst re-reading that there's a disproportionate amount of torture and general prisoner abuse in this story so far, often of teenagers, and I swear that this is not going to become a thing. Well, not much of a thing. My mother reads this, after all. Yes, really.

Incidentally, here's hoping I did Yuki's character justice. Always struck me as the type with a lot going on inside her head, that one.