- Chapter 15: We Are (Still) Spirits in a Material World -

I woke up to the sound of knocking at the door.

With a groan, I got up. I figured I'd better see who it was. There was no telling who Asakura might have for a visitor.

Haruhi was already up. "Come on, Kyon, let's go. Let Asakura answer her own door."

But I had to see. It could be important. So I pulled the door open.

On the other side, smiling smugly, was Goro Mishima.

"Wh... what..." I stammered.

"Oh, come now. You didn't really think you were going to escape me, did you? Hadn't it occurred to you that I would have planned for everything that would happen to you and Miss Suzumiya once I sent you to this world?"

I noticed someone standing just behind him. "Nagato! What are you doing with him?"

"He showed me where to find you," she answered. "The Integrated Data Information Thing has decided. The branched version of Haruhi Suzumiya must die now."

Before I could react, Nagato threw a hand up, and a beam of light shot straight from her palm.

"Haruhi!" I screamed. I tried to block the beam, but I wasn't fast enough. Haruhi started to disintegrate.

"You idiot!" she yelled at me. "You were supposed to protect me! What kind of brigade member are you?"

"I tried my best..."

"Well, then you need to try harder than your best! Wake up, you idiot! Your best just isn't good enough! Wake -"

"- up!"

Haruhi's shrill command jolted me awake. It was a disorienting way to wake up to begin with, and making matters worse, I wasn't in the spot I had laid down to sleep in. Twisting around to get my bearings, I found that I was...

...about a meter above the floor.

"Gah!" I flailed uselessly for something to grab onto, and landed right on my butt. It hurt like a... like a... Okay, yes, I guess it could have been a lot worse. It was definitely not fun, though.

"Finally," Haruhi said in a sigh, then switched back to cruel taskmaster mode: "What's the deal with you, anyway?"

"What's the deal with me?" I groaned.

"Yeah, what's the deal? I didn't even know we could float around like that, and anyway, that's no way to sleep! You freaked me out, you know?"

So, I'd done it too. If the floating thing was Haruhi's powers at work, it had affected the whole laws of ghost physics, not just herself. To decide for herself that since we were "ghosts" we should be able to float was perfectly like her.

"And then on top of that you're twisting around and moaning my name in your sleep." My breath caught in my throat. "What the hell were you dreaming about? If it was something perverted, you're getting a penalty. Two penalties if you give me any details!"

That accusation actually made it easier to keep myself under control. As embarrassing as my dream was, it could have been a lot worse. Not that I would ever have those sorts of dreams with Haruhi. I just don't think of her in that way. But a dream like that about Miss Asahina could have cost me an eternity of shame. Among other things.

I gave it to her straight. "It wasn't a dream, it was a nightmare. You appear in those a lot."

I thought that might earn a scowl from her, as a little payback for her "perverted" accusation. But she just nodded. "Yeah, that's what it sounded like. You were reliving that moment where you thought I died, right? I get it, but whatever it was you were dreaming, you were twitching and moaning like I was your last lifeline. It was pretty pathetic to watch, I can tell you that."

"Yeah? Well -" I caught myself. As tempting as it was to shoot back at Haruhi that I'd just seen her do the same exact thing, I couldn't do that to her. Even if she'd just proved herself willing to do the same thing to me.

Well, it wasn't like there had ever been equal terms between us. From the day we met, I had always had to walk farther for Haruhi than she would even consider walking for me. And Haruhi had too much dignity to withstand a blow like that. It would humiliate her. I, on the other hand, hadn't much dignity left at this point. I could handle it.

"What?" she demanded, my unfinished comeback hanging in the air.

"Maybe I just care about you that much," I shot back, without thinking.

Her face twisted. "I said that I don't want to talk about that."

"About what?"

"About you getting all upset over me 'dying'."

"You're the one who insisted on bringing it up."

"No, you're the one who was talking about it in your sleep!"

This was too much. "Did it ever occur to you that you didn't have to talk about it when I woke up? That you could have just pretended the whole thing never happened?"

"I can't just pretend something didn't happen! That's denial, and delusional!"

I gave up. "Are you ready to go? Or do you need to spend another hour or so talking about how much I embarrassed myself in my sleep?"

Stupid question. Haruhi might not realize it was sarcastic.

"Of course I'm ready!"

Without further comment, she strode out through the wall of Asakura's apartment.

"Mmm. I'm really going to miss you two after you leave." I started, not having realized until she spoke up that Asakura was present. "Your interactions are so different from those of your counterparts in this plane."

Cry me a river. I walked out after Haruhi without giving Asakura the satisfaction of a verbal reply.

I saw Haruhi striding right through the floor in a diagonal towards the apartment building's entrance. "Hey," I called, running after her. "What's your hurry? The SOS Brigade meeting isn't until this afternoon, remember?"

"I've been thinking," she said, paying no heed to my struggles with the new experience of going through the floor. She didn't even comment on how earlier she had pointed out that we specifically couldn't do this. I wondered if it was her will that made us able to do it now, or her will that had made us unable to do it before. "These are the last few hours we have left as ghosts, since today we're either going back home, or I'm waking up."

Or the humanoid interfaces kill us.

"So we should be making the most of the opportunity to do the kind of snooping we never could before, right? But who should we snoop on? That got me thinking. We still don't know what the slider's plan was. If part of his plan was for us to be trapped here, he must have done something to counter our escape plan. So we need to find out what he's doing, right?"

It was eerie that she was echoing the same worries that came to me in my dream. "But we can't snoop on the slider," I pointed out. "We don't know where he is. And Kuyoh Suoh is an alien, so she should be able to see us just like Nagato can. Come to think of it, we have to assume that Goro Mishima would have had Kuyoh Suoh give him and the slider the ability to see us, just like Nagato did for Koizumi and Miss Asahina. So if we get anywhere near them, they'll send us on to a third alternate dimension, and we'll have to start all over. Either that, or they'll kill us."

Haruhi kept walking, but she looked back at me and scowled. "Do you enjoy shooting down all my ideas?"

I wouldn't say "enjoy", but it does come with a certain satisfaction. Not unlike the satisfaction of a job well done.

"Seriously, you even had to jump ahead to the slider's partners. Do you read my mind now, or something?"

"Weren't they the next logical people to consider?" Not that your train of thought is usually logical.

"Alright then, where do you suggest we snoop?"

"We could always check out the classrooms when everyone is getting changed for gym. You take the boys, and I'll take the girls."

"That's disgusting." She looked seriously sickened. I guess she hadn't learned how to sense a joke yet. "Besides, that's hardly a fair trade."

"Wait, you mean you'd really be interested in seeing the boys change?"

"Mildly. But I'm not going to let you peep on the girls."

"Well, of course. Did you think I seriously would?"

"You said it."

I sighed. "Actually, I was thinking of seeing if we can figure out what Koizumi and his agency are up to."

"Koizumi?" She sounded very surprised.

"We're still not sure why he decided to help us. It would make sense that he realized that end of the world situation with the other you was coming, and that we might help with that, and it would make sense that after that he agreed with Nagato that we should get us out of this world as soon as possible, but we don't know. We -"

"What are you talking about?" she burst out. "Koizumi helped us because he's a good guy, and we're his friends! Even if that weren't obvious, we can't spy on a fellow SOS Brigade member!"

Oh, right. Haruhi knows about her powers, and about Koizumi being an esper, but no one mentioned to her that Koizumi, Nagato, and Miss Asahina only joined the SOS Brigade to keep an eye on her. She still thinks they're just her friends.

"Never mind," I said.

But she wouldn't let it go. "Do you have a problem with Koizumi? Or is the Koizumi in this world different from our Koizumi in some way that you haven't told me about? Huh?"

There was a thought. "Not in any specific way. It's just, you've seen how different Other-me and Other-you are from us. It only makes sense that Other-Koizumi would be different, too."

She frowned. "Hmmph. Well, I guess it's -"

"If it is snooping you two are interested in, I believe I am better qualified for the task than either of you," came a voice from below.

I glanced down and saw Shamisen strutting along between the two of us. I don't know which surprised me more: his unannounced presence here, without Nagato, or his managing to actually interrupt Haruhi.

"Hey!" Haruhi crouched down to talk to him face-to-face. "I thought we left you with Yuki. What are you doing here?"

"I wished to speak with him and share some of the information I have learned. The girl whom you left me with for the night agreed to allow me to do this."

"What information?" I asked.

"Two women were keeping watch over the girl's apartment."

"Humanoid interfaces?" I said, thinking for a moment that Nagato's fellow aliens were making sure she didn't betray them. "No, wait, that can't be it. Super aliens have better ways of monitoring her than staking out her apartment."

"When I asked the girl if she knew who they were, she told me that she was unsure exactly who, but that espers routinely keep a watch on her."

"They must be Goro Mishima's people," Haruhi chimed in.

I wish I could believe that. Mishima had always seemed like a lone wolf. It was a lot more likely that this was Kyoko Tachibana's faction, or Koizumi's.

"They were discussing the two of you," Shamisen continued. "They commented on how well you had worked out for them, not only preventing the destruction of this world, but flushing out the slider."

"Uh oh." Haruhi glanced at me. "That sounds like they're planning to kill off whoever the other me picks as the SOS Brigade's slider, so that they'll have the only slider in existence!"

"Um, no." That earned me a look that was equally surprised and offended. "Sorry. That was a good theory, but I think someone would be more motivated to find a slider if they were going to use him rather than just kill him. Especially if they're part of a group that doesn't have any sliders at all, like Koizumi has already admitted is true of his group."

"You're going to throw suspicion at Koizumi again?"

What do you mean, again? Nothing happened to make me stop suspecting him. "It would explain why he's been helping us. Think about it. Koizumi was the one who suggested we get the other you to find a slider replacement for me in the first place."

She blinked. "He was?"

Oops. "Um..."

"You stole credit for Koizumi's idea!"

I couldn't lie. I mean, I could, but it wouldn't feel any good to lie to Haruhi just to make myself look better. "...Yeah. I didn't plan to, but..."

"Hmmph." She folded her arms, the piercing anger of her eyebrows abruptly giving way to a softening hint of a smile. "You're always getting jealous of him."

Arrrgh. "That doesn't matter right now. If the espers of this world get their hands on a slider, there's no telling what they could do."

"Okay." The smile sobered up into a firm, serious line. Haruhi's mood changes were enough to give me motion sickness sometimes. "But there's a pretty simple solution to that, isn't there? Just have the slider come back with us to our world."

"They won't let us have him that easy. The espers can use their powers to influence people's minds. They could make the slider refuse to come with us."

"Perhaps," Shamisen mused, "...you could ask the short-haired female to protect the slider from the espers."

"Nagato? She'd just say that her duty is just to observe."

"We have to at least try!" Haruhi said. "It's not fair to Yuki to just assume she won't help. Besides, how else do you expect to keep anyone from using the slider?"

We could use Haruhi's powers, probably. But I didn't want to go messing around with that, especially when I wasn't even sure exactly what I wanted done. "Okay. We'll ask her."

"Idiot. Don't say things like that as if I need your permission."

I'm agreeing with you. What more do you want?

"Okay, Shami, you've proven your worth at snooping. Now, go spy on Goro Mishima, while Kyon and I check out what Haruta, Inokuchi, Yamamoto, and Nozawa are up to. We'll meet up with you outside the school, after the Brigade meeting is over."

"I shall do as you say."

Shamisen trotted off, while Haruhi resumed walking towards school.

"Hey," I said.

Haruhi came to a stop, and sighed. "What?" Like she knew what was coming.

"You realize that this is still before they snuck into school and stepped on that special step, right? That it's even before they shaved Nagato's head?"

"Yeah, so?"

Yeah, so, my butt. You forgot all about that until I brought it up. "So what are you planning to catch them doing? And what difference will it make once we get back to our world and our present?"

"...Use your head, Kyon." Great. She was making up an answer as she went along. "This is a branched version of our own universe, so most things are the same. That means we're essentially getting to peek into the past."

"A peek with unreliable accuracy."

"So we'll get to see what they've been up to, and maybe use it against them!"

"I'd rather not know about the kind of things those four have probably done, thanks."

But Haruhi still wasn't listening to me. She was skipping off towards school, caught up in the excitement of her own imagined triumph. As usual, I had little choice but to follow after her.

There's really not much point in going over my morning ghost-spying with Haruhi right now. Like you'd expect, it was not uneventful, so I guess I'll have to tell that story someday, but as far as getting out of this parallel universe went, we might as well have spent the morning laying on our backs and staring at the sky. And I refuse to go off-track the same way Haruhi's short attention span takes her off-track.

As the time neared for classes to be dismissed, we wandered over to classroom 1-5 to check in on Other-Haruhi. She was looking very excited, leaning forward over her desk to whisper to Other-me.

"We're having an SOS Brigade meeting today. A special one."

"Like I care," Other-me muttered back at her.

"I just recruited a new member to take your place. He's super-cool and interesting, and he's really well-read on UFOs. The SOS Brigade is going to go farther than it ever went with you in the group."

"Then I guess you won't have any reason to bother me with what you're up to anymore, then." He scribbled in his notepad.

"You wish. You're going to hear all about it, along with everyone else in the school, and you're going to regret you ever left." She sat back in her chair, grinning brightly.

I wondered what was so special about this new member she'd found. Even by Haruhi standards, she was looking very confident. I found myself hoping that confidence wasn't misplaced, that Other-me really would be driven to swallow his pride and return to the SOS Brigade. Even if I was about to leave this world, what happened in it felt like it mattered.

"C'mon, let's hurry to the clubroom." Haruhi scampered down the hall.

I followed as best as I could. "You know, we could just follow her. We'd find out who the slider is sooner that way."

"What's the hurry? I'd rather see a dramatic unveiling of his identity when she introduces him to the rest of the club! The right moment for something wonderful and exciting isn't always ASAP, you know?"

That was true, I supposed, if an odd piece of advice to be getting from Haruhi. Maybe she just didn't like watching her other self. Watching my other self was certainly enough to make me grind my teeth.

We got to the clubroom early and found Nagato there, reading. It occurred to me that since I couldn't knock in my current state, it was for the best that we got to the clubroom early, before Miss Asahina might be changing.

"Hey, Yuki! Consensus hasn't changed yet?"

Nagato shook her head. I think. It was more like a slight shifting of her head hair and a faint wavering of her glasses.

"Well, don't worry about it, because the SOS Brigade is going to beat this thing. We always do. So you just do what you believe is right, okay?"

Nagato looked at her and blinked.

"And listen, we need a favor from you. You know how Shamisen heard those espers spying on you? We're worried that they might try to kill the slider, or kidnap him for their own use. Do you think you can make sure that doesn't happen?"

"We will make every effort."

"There! See, Kyon?"

"We", huh. I guess that means the alien entity as a whole is willing to put aside the pure observation thing to keep the espers from getting too much power. I wish I could say that's a good thing, but it probably means that Asakura's way of doing things still holds a lot more sway in this world than it ever did in ours.

Miss Asahina arrived before too long, so I stepped outside to let her get changed into maid garb. I imagined it must be pretty frustrating for Haruhi to be physically incapable of changing Miss Asahina's clothes for her. Another downside of no physical form.

Koizumi showed up, looking pleased. "I just spoke to your counterpart in this dimension," he said. "He tells me that Miss Suzumiya has picked out your slider. With luck, you'll soon be own your way home."

"And your agency will have its first slider," I emphasized.

"Ah. So you've figured out my ulterior motive for helping you."

It irked me that he wasn't more upset at being caught out. "It wasn't hard. You told us yourself that before we came along, you weren't even sure sliders existed. So obviously you hadn't found one."

"Well reasoned."

"We're not going to let you get away with it, you know."

"Get away with it?" He looked shocked. "Do you suspect me of some further conspiracy?"

"Getting your hands on someone that can go between alternate dimensions is conspiracy enough all by itself."

"But why? Is there some enmity between you and my counterpart in your dimension that you haven't told me of?"

"Enmity"? Whatever. "No one should have that kind of power."

He looked at me thoughtfully. "How do you think we would abuse it? Our interest is solely with our own existence, so we would have no reason to meddle with other dimensions."

"I don't know how you might abuse it. I don't have that kind of imagination."

"And you cannot trust me even to that small extent?"

I thought about that. "I can trust the you I know that far, and more," I decided. "But not the you of this dimension."

"Then what do you propose to do with the slider? His power is inevitably in someone's hands, his own if no one else's. Who is it that you trust to handle his power responsibly?"

That... was a very obvious point that I had somehow failed to consider.

And before I could come up with an answer, Miss Asahina called from inside the clubroom to let us know that she had finished changing.

We came in and sat down, Koizumi at the table, me on the floor because two of the people coming to the meeting wouldn't be able to see or hear me, and I didn't care for potentially having to choose between giving up my chair or someone sitting on me.

Haruhi apparently either didn't think of that or didn't give a damn, because she just sat in front of her computer as if this were an ordinary everyday SOS Brigade meeting.

...Good grief. I just used "ordinary" and "everyday" in the same sentence with SOS Brigade.

We barely had gotten settled in (if you can call sitting on the floor in the middle of winter with no space heater "settled") when Other-Haruhi burst in.

"Hey, everyone! Prepare to meet our newest member!" She reached off to her right and yanked the new recruit in front of the door frame. Which was a reasonably impressive feat, because this guy was...

Was... chubby. A very familiar chubby.

"Everyone, I present to you... Takahiro Sugiyama!"

I didn't know the name, of course. But I knew the face.

I let my head fall between my legs. Screwed. But. Good.

"It's not that bad," Haruhi said, sticking her head through the wall of the clubroom to check up on me. I stalked out into the hall once it became clear that we were done.

"I guess you didn't recognize him, then," I shot back. "Our only ticket home is the guy who sent us here in the first place!"

"No, he's a version of the guy who sent us here in the first place. Maybe he's a good guy in this universe. For all we know, he hasn't even met Kuyoh Suoh or Goro Mishima!"

"Right, so I guess we just ask him if he's working with Mishima, and if he says no, we can just take his word for it and trust him to send us back home instead of on to yet another alternate universe."

"You're not thinking positively," Haruhi grumbled.

"I'm thinking about the facts of the situation. But okay, I guess I should just not think about the fact that since this guy's power is to move between alternate universes, we really have no reason to think this isn't the same version of the same guy who sent us here. Or the fact that if Mishima put any thought into this plan at all, he would have had the slider inform all their counterparts in this universe about us. That's the Haruhi Suzumiya way of doing things, after all – just pretend that reality is whatever you want it to be, and all your problems will just magically go away."

I don't want to describe the look on Haruhi's face at that moment. "What did you say?"

My redirected anger dissolved in an instant. "I'm sorry." Even if what I said to Haruhi was largely true, it wasn't deserved. "I just... I don't want to be cheered up right now. I want to think of a way out of this."

"Well, you aren't thinking of a way out of this! You're just pointing out stupid problems, like you always do!"

Was that honestly supposed to hurt my feelings?

The door to the clubroom rattled.

We both spun to see Miss Asahina open the door and step out into the hall. She hesitated before closing the door behind her, looking at us with trembling eyes. I guess being alone with a pair of ghosts still unnerved her. So why was she putting herself in that position?

"Um..." She kept her eyes on her hands, which she nervously fiddled over her lap. "Is there... is there a problem?"

"Well..." I began.

"Augh, Mikuru, if you're going to eavesdrop on people, at least have the dignity to own up to it! Sheesh, like it isn't completely obvious to everyone in the room!"

You mean, everyone in the hall.

Miss Asahina retreated a step. "Um... I..." She swallowed, adjusted her face mask, and looked up. "I've been granted authorization to take you two and Shamisen into the past so that you can get Takahiro Sugiyama to take you back to your world!"

There was a moment of silence.

"Wow!" Haruhi beamed with a thousand watt smile. "A trip through time! What a perfect way to end this dream!"

"Whoa, slow down," I said. "How does going into the past solve our problem?"

"Don't you get it? If we go back to when he was just a kid, he won't have teamed up with the bad guys yet!"

Oh. That made sense. In fact, if Koizumi was telling the truth, by going back three years we could meet him after he'd only just gotten his slider powers. Unless Mishima had recruited a time traveler that we didn't know about, there's no way he could have countered that move.

"Exactly," Miss Asahina nodded, her voice tinged with a slightly nervous laugh. I guess she was relieved that Haruhi agreed with her plan. "I'll be taking you three years into the past, before Goro Mishima became a rogue agent, so even if the slider has met him, he won't be your enemy."

"Wait a second," I said. "I thought you could only take one person time traveling at a time."

"Um, yes, ordinarily that is so. But since you and Miss Suzumiya have no physical substance, taking the two of you and Shamisen together would still be less effort than taking one normal person."

At that moment, Shamisen himself came pattering up. "I have done as you requested."

Haruhi squatted down before him. "You really are a smart cat, Shamisen! I knew I was right to trust you. So did you hear anything useful?"

"That depends on what you consider useful. He was talking to someone on his phone, but they made no mention of you or any other beings who have traveled from our world. His sole concern seemed to be that the girl like you in this world has chosen an associate of his to be in her SOS Brigade. He seemed rather pleased about it."

"Hmm."

"Well, that settles it," I sighed. "Mishima is working with the slider in this universe, too. We've got no choice but to time travel."

"It's my call if we have a choice or not!" She thrust her index finger at Miss Asahina. "Let's do it, Mikuru."

She nodded. "Sit down and close your eyes, everyone."

I started to do as she said, but stopped as soon as my palm reached the floor. "Wait. We should talk this over with Nagato and Koizumi first."

"Oh, fine," Haruhi sighed. She got back up, stuck her head through the clubroom door, and yelled, "Hey, Yuki! Koizumi! Mikuru is taking me and Kyon back to the past so we can get a ride from the slider before he becomes buddies with Mishima! We'll see you back in the regular universe!"

She pulled her head out and sat back down.

"Do you think they needed to hear you in Moscow?" I demanded.

"You're so forgetful. Nobody but them can see or hear us, remember?"

Them and a few dozen aliens, some of whom may be hostile. "Anyway, that wasn't what I had in mind. We should ask them if they think this is a good idea."

"It's a perfect idea, and I'm not going to sit around and listen to stupid arguments about it," she snapped. "I want to go home and be a flesh-and-blood person again. Let's go, Mikuru!"

Miss Asahina nodded and took up her position behind us.

So the Haruhi veto again was law. Oh well, I guess I could understand her haste to have this over with. Even if she could now be seen and heard by her fellow brigade members at least, this whole ghost deal just wasn't suited to Haruhi. She needed to be seen and heard. You could say that that was a character flaw she'd be better off without, but she wasn't going to get rid of it in the next five minutes, if she ever got rid of it at all.

Besides, if I couldn't see any flaws in this plan, who would? If we didn't take this chance, we were stuck, with our hour of execution rapidly approaching. This would have to be it. Whatever traps Mishima might have set in our path, we would have to face them.

Author's notes: Yes, I do intend to at some point write a story covering Haruhi and Kyon's ghost-snooping. I actually chugged out a couple hundred words of it before I realized I was wasting time on something that really has no connection to this story apart from its context. There are still a lot of plot points to work out, but it's on my "to do" list.

Next up, the finale (which I have barely started writing, so I'll say a prayer that I get it up on schedule).