Author's Note: Whee, it's a new chapter. It's delicious. Oh, and there's all that standard stuff that goes here. I don't own Azumanga Daioh, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Paranoia Agent, or Katamari Damacy. I also don't own several thermonuclear warheads, although it'd make life a ton more interesting.
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"Our SOS Brigade is looking for mysteries of the world. People who have run into something mysterious in the past, people who have run into something mysterious recently, people who plan on having a mysterious experience in the near future, if any of the above apply to you, come see us! We will solve your problem on the spot! However, a normal mystery will not do. It has to be a mystery that wows us! Make note of that"
"Chiyo, what are you doing?"
"Oh, hello Miss Kurosawa! I was just reading at this poster on the wall."
Minamo glanced over to a small poster plastered on the wall. She actually put them up…
"Erm, Miss Kurosawa?"
Minamo realized that she had been spaced out, and flushed red. "Yes, Chiyo?"
"If this is a poster for the SOS-Brigade, then… why does the logo say ZOZ?"
"I'm… I'm sure there's a reason, Chiyo."
"Hey, I got a question for ya, teach," called a familiar voice. Osaka had managed to slip into the situation unnoticed. Of course, she worked hard to rectify that. "Well, y'know how you and Yukari were all busy on Saturday spyin' on Kimura?"
"You don't have to say it that way. We were investigating Kimura, not spying on him."
"Yeah, yeah, same difference. Anyway, I asked Miss Yukari if y'all found anything interesting on Sunday, and all she replied with was 'Sunday's for hangovers,' so I wanted to ask you about… er… that, I s'pose."
"Erm… actually… don't worry about that. Yukari says some crazy things sometimes, so it's pretty important to ignore her. Looking too deep into it will only result in strife. Lots and lots of strife."
"And gonads?"
"…no. Go to class."
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Kagura sighed, idly tapping her pencil on her desk. She stared out the window, looking down into the gleaming blue pool, longing to feel the cool, comforting touch of the water against her skin. Unfortunately, now was not the time for that. This was Yukari's English class, and there was very little swimming to be done in this class, excluding one of the English teacher's bizarre whims.
Speaking of bizarre whims, Yukari was smiling a little too pleasantly at the class this morning. The grin seemed predatory, but playfully so, like a cat contemplating whether or not it wanted to eat the mouse just yet.
"So anyway, I think that as a class you guys have been pretty lazy," Yukari started, "so I've decided that the time is now for a biggish assignment! However, we are also supposed to support the freedom of ideas for the students, and your brilliant English teacher has decided to take down two birds with one charged shot, so I'm giving you a longish assignment with plenty of freedom!"
Kagura sighed, watching Ooyama raise his hand. "Excuse me, Miss Yukari, that sounds all well and good, but what exactly is this assignment?"
"Ooyama, this is why you were fired and replaced with a grade-schooler: You don't let me finish! Anyway, this is going to be… a free-writing assignment! You kids have until the end of class to write a few sentences… nay, paragraphs, on the subject at hand! I will collect them all at the end of class, and so I suggest that you get started!"
Chiyo looked over at Ooyama, who sank in his desk, obviously hurt by Yukari's callous dismissal. She decided to be the one to ask the question this time around and raised her hand nervously.
"What? Chiyo, do you want to be fired too?"
"No, no… it's just that… you didn't tell us what the subject was, and what language to write in."
"Well, this is an English class, so you're going to write in Japanese, of course. If you try to figure it out, you're not going to manage it, so just trust me on this one. Write your thoughts out in Japanese, because it's important that they come through loud and clear. As a matter of fact, write them in a way that will prevent them from being misinterpreted, like you were creating evidence for a trial of some kind. Oh, and of course, you're going to need your subject. What is it? It's… our good friend… Mr. Kimura! Haha! Write away, children!"
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Follow her lead, she said.
Minamo sighed, watching her class pay more attention to Yukari in another room than they did to her at the moment. She smiled wanly at her students who, by this point, were used to listening to the English teacher's various outbursts. The last part of the outburst, however, shocked everyone in the room, including Minamo.
"Also, Minamo's class, I know you've been listening in on me, you mischievous children. You've got this assignment too!"
Kaorin recoiled, shocked.
Write a paper about Kimura? I have to be in that bastard's class for homeroom, and in my other classes I have to write about him? Hell!
She stood up, outraged. "Miss Kurosawa, she can't be serious… can she?"
"I'm sorry, but yes, this is a joint assignment. Enjoy as much as you can, and remember that we want you to be completely honest about him, even if it's astoundingly negative or positive. We want you to be honest."
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Minamo carried the pile of essays and stalked moodily into the teacher's lounge. She looked around carefully, noting that only Yukari and her were there at the time.
"Alright, you've got some explaining to do. I think that your little stunt there gave Kaorin a bout of mental trauma. Hope you're happy."
"Oh, you should know more than anyone else how much I like to deliver a bit of trauma. Anyway, you snagged all of the papers in your class, right? Everyone wrote their thing, and everyone was honest, yeah?"
"Yes, as far as I can tell. How exactly are we supposed to grade these, anyway? I mean, sure you can correct grammar, but for the most part, it's all just their own personal opinions! We can't judge them for that, can we?"
"Oh, just grade them based on the names. If they get the same kind of grade they normally get, then they won't really question anything. See? Chiyo's a genius, so she gets 100. Yomi's smart, and even moreso, smart enough to check why she lost points, so she also gets 100. Sakaki's kind of smart, but she's very distracted and won't double-check her papers, so she gets 85. Tomo'd get braggy at Yomi if her score was too high, and so it has to be around 40. Osaka's Osaka, so she gets 45. Ka…"
"Okay, you can stop. I get it, although it doesn't feel right. What exactly do you plan to do with all of these, anyway?"
"It's information, Nyamo. Mankind's greatest aspiration is the collection of information, the pursuit of greater knowledge! That is how we rise above the dregs of the natural world, and that's why I keep my research slider at well over 60 all the time!"
"That's also why your cities riot, your nation goes into debt, and Shaka comes over and claims your nation in the name of the almighty Zulu."
"That's partly because Shaka's a jackass."
"Yeah, he is, kind of. So it's just information, right?"
"Yeah, but it's a ton of information! We're going to roll it all up and make a beautiful star!"
"A beautiful star?"
"A Kimuramari! We are moved to tears by the size of it!"
"You're not going to start using the royal "We." It took me months to get you to stop doing it, you're not starting it up again."
"We are hurt, Nyamo."
"Not as much as you will be if you keep talking in the plural."
"Oh, diminutive prin… Hello, Mr. Gotou!" shouted Yukari, waving at the somewhat elderly man entering the teacher's lounge.
"Hello, Miss Tanizaki."
"Excuse us, but we would like to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind."
"Oh, well, alright. Questions about what?"
"Well, if it doesn't seem too strange, Nyamo wanted to ask you about Mr. Kimura."
"She does know that he's married, right?"
"Wouldn't sto-"
Minamo pushed Yukari over, glaring angrily at her. "It's not like that, Mr. Gotou. We're simply trying to find out more about some of our esteemed colleagues, and figured that Kimura would be a good way to start. You and Mr. Kimura have been at this school for longer than Yukari and I have been, and Kimura has always seemed somewhat… enigmatic, you know? So we would like to ask you about what he'd been doing before we got here."
"Oh, let's see, you guys arrived around eight years ago, right? Well, you know, Mr. Kimura had been really kind of run ragged around then."
"Oh, we see," Yukari said, interrupting Gotou. "Revitalized by Yukari's vibrant beauty, eh? Well, maybe Nyamo helped. 90-10."
Minamo sighed, looking over to her the older teacher. "Mr. Gotou, why was Mr. Kimura run ragged? What was wrong with him at that time?"
"Well, you see, it was around that time that Kimura's wife was pregnant with their daughter. I don't know if you'd heard, but their daughter's always been kind of on the small side, and she doesn't eat much. He winds up worrying about her a lot even now, and I can only imagine that it was much more intense back then, when she was just being born."
"Hmm… perhaps we're too hard on him, Yukari."
"What? Gotou, that's not the same Kimura we know. He's rather… er… relaxed nowadays, if you couldn't tell."
"Yeah, he loosened up after his daughter was born. I'm not entirely sure if I should tell you why, so really, I think that it would be best for you to ask him yourself."
Minamo smiled wanly at Gotou and bowed slightly. "Aha. You're probably right, we should do that. Thank you for your help, we appreciate it. We'll go ask him ourselves."
"Hold it, Nyamo," Yukari barked. "Gotou, you're ignoring the main thing about Kimura, you know. He's widely seen as a pervert, and yet you cover for him when he slips into Nyamo's gym class. Why?"
"… He wasn't always that way. Before his daughter was born, he was really rather an okay guy. The kids actually rather liked him, although being children, they took advantage of it. Kind of sad, really, because he used to be such a nice guy. I'm not sure what happened, but after his daughter was born, he changed, and the discipline problems went away. Oh, and he may be a pervert, but he doesn't cross the line. He knows exactly where it is, and he doesn't go over."
"Hm… We suppose you may have a point there."
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Minamo sighed. Reading. Lots of reading. I'm a gym teacher specifically because it meant that I would have to do a minimum of reading, but no, I still wind up slowly easing through a big pile of papers and having to decipher the children's handwriting, all because I had an odd idea one day.
Yukari grinned at Minamo. "Buck up, plucky! We know reading's not your thing, but we're now in pursuit of the truth! Dive eagerly into the Kimuramari! Besides, some of this stuff here is kind of interesting, you know?"
"What? Interesting? You have a bizarre idea of 'Interesting', Yukari. I just finished Kaori's paper. It took a little bit to decipher it, probably because her hands were clenched in tiny little balls of rage while she was trying to write. Even then, I kind of wish I didn't. Here, take a look."
Yukari took the paper from her friend and looked it over carefully. "Nyamo?"
"Yes, Yukari?"
"We think we just threw up a little… with our heart."
"Yeah, I got that too."
"On the other hand, there was an interesting bit from that Genji kid's paper that should hopefully balance it out. The guy seems to be inspired by video games, or something. He says that Kimura is a 'Noble champion of the Truth,' or something. Apparently, Kimura wields the 'Sword that knows the Truth' and is charging it up with his honesty… or something. Actually, most of the boys seem to approve of him, applauding his honesty and forwardness, or something."
"Okay, so what've we gathered today?"
"Well, we can see the general effect that Kimura has made on the student body, can't we? The boys generally seem to have a sort of hero-worship complex about him, generally for being honest or for being very confident in himself. The girls? The girls are absolutely terrified of him, if not filled with murderous hatred, as we can see. And from Gotou, we learned that he hadn't always been this way, so at some point, presumably around the time of his daughter's birth, he changed for some reason. Why's that? Well, we've got an idea, but we think that it would be a good idea for us to confront Kimura himself."
"Two things, Yukari. First, I'm going to hit you for the Royal "We." Secondly, when and where?"
"At his house, after school, in front of his wife. No escape!"
"Cruel, but you're right."
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Author's Note: We're nearing the endgame! What's going to happen at the final showdown? Who will rise victorious above all else? Can you even rise victorious above all else in this kind of story? No, not really, so we're going to stop that right there.
Yaha. We are most pleased with the way this story is turning out, but we would be infinitely more pleased if you could roll up more reviews to make a truly beautiful star.
