Imperfect Cherry Blossom

by Supperdude9

Belief, faith, & fear are funny things. Kyon finds himself in a new world, a world of true fantasy. He will need help to get out of Gensokyo alive. Haruhi/Touhou Crossover! Set after the events of Snow Mountain Syndrome & written as an introduction to Touhou. Rated T. Soundtrack companion available on Youtube. Search episode name for playlists! Meltdown 12.5 is OUT!

50. TMOHS Episode 12 3 TEOTW

Touhou 17.5, which is the Gensokyo oil war, is to be released sometime this month (September 2021, as of this writing). We recently got a surprise trailer giving us Captain Murasa, the ship ghost of Byakuren's crew, as a playable character in that. That really came out of nowhere as she's been relatively quiet in the canon world. Not much has been done with her character, and now all of a sudden she's playable. She rocks her anchor melee weapon while wearing a captain's jacket quite well.

The world keeps getting crazier with every passing minute. Stay safe out there.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is owned by Nagaru Tanigawa. Touhou Project is owned by ZUN and Team Shanghai Alice. I own neither. This is a fan fiction of those works.

Beta Reader (and partial writer) for this episode:

Smooglii

---

Kyon was silent. Unmoving, deaf, and mute, or perhaps he'd died on the spot. That's how it seemed when Youmu and Marisa dragged him back from the open between the two school buildings amidst the lingering embers and ash that had once been the body of the alternate Nagato. His eyes were the only thing that showed a sign of life, fixed almost unblinkingly as they were on the top floor window of the rightmost building, where Hecatia could no longer be seen. The heat of her attack still lingered, stinging the skin even at a distance, and everyone was in a panic.

Reimu was the first to take initiative. Nagato's power had ground away at the corner of the central building, leaving a narrow gap that led inside, and Reimu flew through it, calling to the others to follow her quickly. Everyone, even Tenshi, followed without argument, a tense and faraway look on their faces. None of them were strangers to death, and yet all of them were beginning to feel the weight. It was a look that Reisen knew well.

She, too, felt empty. Her mind reached for answers, anything to explain what had just happened. Why would Hecatia destroy her own allies? Simply because Nagato had failed? She should have been angry or sorrowful at the thought, but there wasn't any feeling, nor any idea what to do about it. In fact, she and all the others seemed to have no reaction at all. They simply kept moving, following whatever Reimu and Asakura said to them as if nothing had happened.

"Even the doors are blocked by runes, but I don't detect any on the inside. I don't think Hecatia expected us to be able to enter the school." Asakura's voice floated through the darkened school hallway above the group, who listened but didn't hear it. Only Reimu, Marisa, Seija, and Koizumi seemed to truly still have their heads on.

Watching out the windows lining the hallway by instinct, Reisen saw the reflection of herself, leading her thoughts to her own clay doubles. Alternate versions of herself that had followed Hecatia, maybe even willingly. They - that is to say, she - had seen Hecatia as a worthy leader, and either agreed with or turned a blind eye to these kinds of horrors. If what Seija had said was true, it was far from the first time Hecatia had executed a friend, and it seemed to Reisen that she had allowed the rest of them to die as well.

She couldn't understand. For her other selves to have abandoned themselves; to have abandoned Eientei, and their whole world, to follow this woman, only to be thrown away in the end...

"The original you was always weak." She couldn't stop remembering those words.

Idly, Reisen began checking her ammunition. That spark of rage was coming back, dragging her attention back into the present time. The long windows of the far building gave her an idea. This time, she had to be better. She had to be the soldier that she was never meant to be.

---

It wasn't supposed to be like this, was it?

Power is supposed to let you make change. The power to see the future, to avoid all the mistakes you'd make otherwise, should by all rights let you do anything. It's a power that enforces absolute perfection, created by one of the leaders of the most perfect people in the universe. It's a flawless ability that everyone wishes they had when they have to live through the consequences of their own mistakes.

That's the problem, though; I had to live through it anyway. I had to suffer through each and every time I would have died or been hit in this world, and every time one of my friends would have died, too. Even if it was just a vivid dream, I had to watch them be destroyed over and over, and I knew that if I messed up, it might happen for real. I couldn't save Koizumi from getting half of his skin burned off. I couldn't save the alternate Utsuho, or Mayumi, or even Nagato, and every time I thought I'd come to terms with the imperfection of this power, it'd hit me all over again even worse. All that mattered to the elixir was that I stayed pure. Maybe the reason it only took me back two seconds was to stop me from running in and putting myself in an unwinnable situation. To a Lunarian, perfection is only of the self.

In my hands, I squeezed a little snowman charm. I wasn't sure when I'd gotten it. Maybe Asakura had handed it to me. It was the only thing I could see, so I stared at it, not really even thinking about it. Even so, being able to fixate on it helped to bring me back to reality. When I finally became aware of my own surroundings again - the school hallway, with only the merest hint of moonlight sneaking in through the windows - I saw the state that everyone else was in. Even in the darkness, I made out the scrapes and blisters and bruises on their skin, their charred and torn clothing, and their straining spirits. Koizumi's raw half still glistened. And then there was me, undamaged, completely fine, with only an extra few layers of dirt and dust, and some dampness from the snow. I had to be perfect, and so I could only save my own perfect self. I couldn't change a single thing if it required shedding my own blood.

I couldn't stand it anymore. I didn't care how many uses I had left; I pocketed the snowman charm, took a vial into my hand and drank it down, not even tasting it, before I went around and tapped everyone else starting with Koizumi. Gradually, their imperfections disappeared under the light of the Paranormal Border, and Koizumi's skin grew back over his whole body as though it were a symbiotic organism wrapping itself around him, at the end of which, his bare torso was smooth and healthy again. Not even a single visible scar remained; if I could have restored their clothing as well, it would have been like none of it happened. At least, except for the people who died.

Koizumi said something to me, but I didn't hear it. I couldn't listen to what the others were saying. There was a distant, echoing white noise in my head that drowned everything else out. I didn't want to hear words of gratitude, or admonishment for wasting resources anyway. I just couldn't keep looking at myself compared to everyone else. Even so, I couldn't block them out completely, especially when I felt Reisen elbow me from behind and met her eyes when I turned to look. The expression she had - even though I never processed what, if anything, she said to me, I saw in her red eyes that she understood. There was pity in it, sure, and to be honest I pitied myself, but she and everyone else whose faces I could still see in my dimming border's light were going through those same bad feelings as me. All of them felt responsible, at least a little bit.

Despite my wallowing in my negative emotions, seeing that also reminded me of what I had accomplished. What we had accomplished together - that we went out of our way to save one another. Even with this power, I certainly could not have done any of this alone. I needed help. We needed help. We needed each other. We'd been doing the right thing. Had to be. Compared to when we went in, we were at full strength. No sacrifices, nobody had been lost from our world. It would have to be enough, right?

This... isn't the time to be doing this. We're still in danger. She's still here somewhere.

Hating myself wouldn't help me now, and so I tried to push that hate on to the only other person responsible - Hecatia. It didn't matter that the Nagato who died wasn't mine, or that she was trying to kill me, or anything else. I hated Hecatia. She betrayed and killed Nagato in front of me, and as far as I could tell, she delighted in it as much as Clownpiece ever had. I couldn't fathom that level of evil, that twisted level of thinking. They were all like that. Junko died smiling in that exact same way, believing that she'd won regardless. Jinwu thought nothing of destroying her own universe and others besides. Seija murdered her friend to save her skin. Mayumi had tormented Quarter for her own satisfaction. Clownpiece... I don't even have to say it.

Nagato... she would have killed us, yes. She avoided the responsibility of what she was doing. But she still wasn't as bad as the rest of them. After all, she couldn't bring herself to kill me, nor Haruhi, with her own hands.

Hecatia was the one I needed to hate. Looking into Reisen's eyes, I began to understand that - or maybe she was hypnotizing me to think so. Either way, I was glad for it. This wasn't the same blind rage as I had before. I felt focused. There was purpose behind what I was doing, and my head felt level enough that I could think rationally again. The first thing I did was check my weapons - as I thought, Asakura had repaired my guns and the Sword of Hisou for me while I was out of it. At least she was somewhat reliable, as strange as it sounded. As I finally stated listening to what the people around me were saying, the first thing I heard was Reimu saying, "The boundary is broken. She's coming through."

I looked - and realized that I must have lost track of time, because another one of Yukari's gaps was taking up the center of the hall, fully opened and churning with an orange, flickering light from within.

Who...? Wait, that light...

A shudder passed through me and I stepped back by reflex when I registered what I was seeing. Flashes of one of our earlier battles came into my mind, and my nerves flared up again, watching as someone began to emerge from within. My worst nightmares for the past few years, and most painful deaths today. The reason for my anxiety, my fear, my sleepless nights.

And she was on our side this time. The nuclear powered Hell raven youkai, Utsuho Reiuji.

...To Hell with it. This is par for the course today.

---

[The Meltdown of Haruhi Suzumiya]

[Episode 12.3]

["The End of the World"]

---

"On the surface, humans appear to hate conflict, but in reality, they seek it."

-Nagaru Tanigawa

---

Gout, liver disease, diabetes, kidney disease. Not to mention what it does to the teeth. That everything good in life should kill you, Hecatia thought, was the essence of Hell.

Hecatia loved the acidity of cola, and the artificial cherry flavor was her favorite. Her time in Hell had taught her that pleasures like this were dangerous, for there were many in that realm that had fallen there through the endless pursuit of self-gratification. Even the devas of Paradise would one day be consigned to that darkness, for Hell was the long shadow cast by a powerful light, and once, Hecatia would have done anything to deepen that contrast. It was her grudge against Houyi, who destroyed the light of nine suns, which had brought her, Junko, and Jinwu together.

But that was many, many lifetimes ago - and just as the light of Paradise would lead into darkness, Hecatia's own darkness had led her into light.

"Try this, Master! It's so good, it's like it burns you in the mouth! But it's so sweet, too!"

Clownpiece's voice came to her as she stared idly into the candy red label of the can in her hand. Hecatia had never hated to try new things, and she couldn't say no to her favorite underling. By karma or no, Clownpiece had the great misfortune born as a fairy in Hell. The weakest and simplest of Hell's creatures, brought into a world where strength ruled all, and pleasure could only be found in others' pain. It seemed as if these poor creatures were made to suffer - but not her. She would not be a victim of that cruel place. The strength of her spirit, of her love for her own existence, was greater than that of most oni, Hecatia felt.

How happy she had been when Hecatia brought her to Gensokyo. A world between Hell and Paradise, where Hecatia could glimpse in her those moments of innocent joy between hardships. Every time they met, Clownpiece would bring her something new from that world, or something that had fallen through the Barrier from outside, and every one, Hecatia had kept as a personal treasure.

It was Hell which had made Clownpiece so beautiful to watch; Hecatia could not help but be proud. However, Clownpiece was but one among many souls who might never escape Hell, and Hecatia's heart could not bear that any longer.

If there is Paradise, there must be Hell. If there is the world between, then there must be both. And if Hell must exist, then all universes must be remade so that there is no such law. For everyone.

Hecatia tipped back the can for the last time, swallowing what was left of the cola inside.

For her.

She could never forget why she was doing this. Junko, Keiki, Jinwu, Mayumi and all the rest of them had sacrificed themselves because they knew that this cause was worth any cost. Their lives and souls were nothing in comparison.

Preparations were complete. One of Hecatia's other bodies entered the room, and together they watched the opposite building through the clubroom window. Nagato's destruction of the wall's edge had given them a way in, but that was fine. They'd have found a way through no matter what, and this way, she knew what route they had to take. Her third and final body was already in position. This way, she could prepare them just right.

An orange light shone from inside the far building, illuminating Reimu, who was at the head of their group. She was concentrating on the light, but as it grew, she started to relax - and then she looked aside, out the window, and met Hecatia's gaze from below. How defiant her eyes were. How like the Reimu of Hecatia's universe, before she was destroyed. Hecatia smiled at her, wondering if that resolve might falter soon.

You, too, will be freed from this struggle, and nothing will avenge you this time.

If she must continue to be a goddess of Hell for a little while longer, she might as well play the part. Let them see how small they truly are, she reasoned, and finally despair. There was no need for trickery, nor any grand illusion. The truth would be so much more terrible than that.

---

The white noise was gone, and the others' voices were loud and clear. Everything seemed to come back into focus as I watched Utsuho set her concrete foot on the floor of the school hallway... before her massive wings clipped the sides of the gap and jerked her body out of alignment, which made her thrust out her arms... and the weight of the giant orange control rod sprouting from her right elbow caused her to lose her balance and tumble face-first out of the gap towards the floor.

Uh-

There was a loud CLANG as the Third Leg impacted the tile floor, followed by a gust of wind from Utsuho flapping her wings to try and right herself. It worked a little too well - the recoil sent her backwards, and she landed on her rear end in front of the portal with an undignified yelp, her arms and legs flailing upwards.

...Is this really Utsuho?

I'm not sure how to describe how surreal it was. With those wide black wings and the cannon of destruction, Jinwu had looked frightening - here, it was like watching Asahina try to walk while laden down with a bunch of mismatched cosplay pieces. The squeal of pain when the base of her spine met the floor only added to the effect.

No one rushed to help her up. I think we were all a bit intimidated, but Koizumi stepped forward after some hesitation, only to be knocked backward when Utsuho sprang up to her feet by herself, both hands in front of her without looking. I felt a moment of panic when I thought she'd clubbed him in the head, but he stumbled back, biting his lip to maintain a smile while cringing his shoulder.

"Hello!" she cried out, wearing a big smile and seemingly oblivious to the minor injury she'd just inflicted. "My name is Utsuho, but everyone calls me Okuu, so you can call me that!" She swung her third leg up and to one side in greeting, where it smashed through the adjacent wall. With another yelp of surprise, she quickly removed it... whereupon the small prongs extending from the end of it hooked the wall on the way back, resulting in a shower of drywall on her head. The rest of us could only watch her try to pick the pieces out of her hair.

This is the person from all of my nightmares?

It was the first time I, and probably the others, had seen her as something other than an object of fear. Well, I was afraid of being bludgeoned like Koizumi if I were to step forward and help her, but still - the comparison to Asahina was apt. She was a little bit taller, and just as gorgeous, and bouncy in more ways than one. If you stripped away all of those extra bits, she'd just look like an excitable girl with a loud voice and no sense of control.

After brushing out most of the dust, she tried for a curtsy instead, thankfully only putting a small dent in the lower wall this time. "Lady Satori has given me permission to assist you all!" she declared with a beaming smile. "Sorry for trying to bring Hell to the upper world and all! My mistake!" She tilted her head to the left, brought up her left hand, and made a light knock to her head while she winked and stuck out her tongue.

That's not something you can say, "Tee hee, sorry!" about. How do you make a mistake like that?!

Everyone else was too flabbergasted - or annoyed, in Reimu's case - to reply, except for Tenshi, who swaggered forward, saying, "It's fine, it's fine! Anything's fine if it heats the place up, right?" She matched Okuu's smile and put her arm around her shoulder, heedless of the danger of physical trauma.

You're not even from Gensokyo! You don't get to say it's fine!

"Really? You want me to heat it? But Lady Satori said-"

"We're fine, thanks," Marisa piped up, trying to laugh off the weird situation. "We got plenty of heat to last the winter from your double earlier."

"Oh." Okuu wilted a bit at Marisa's words, and said, "Um, Lady Satori said I should apologize... I, uh, was... well..." She fidgeted and fumbled with her words, suddenly a lot more conscious of what she was saying. It struck me as odd, until I remembered the smack that Satori had given her for what she'd been about to do. Apparently, this wild bird could be disciplined after all.

"Oh. Right. I was gonna turn your world into blazing embers." Okuu looked downcast for a moment before suddenly recovering her energy and her wide smile. "But! Right! I'm gonna use that for you now! The ultimate power!" Again, she lifted her Third Leg in some kind of salute, which again smashed a hole in the wall next to her, and she unfurled her wings, creating a wall of black feathers that blocked the whole hallway behind her. "The energy to melt up every corner of this world! I'm gonna use it to help you all! My ultimate nuclear energy melts up everything completely! I'm gonna blast that Hecatia to bits! There won't even gonna be a trace of her left!"

Some of our number shrunk back a little at her declaration as though expecting her to blow up that very minute, myself included. Tenshi just laughed and cheered, "Hear, hear!" while Reimu stared out the window with a hard expression. I was a little perturbed myself at how loud she was being and how we couldn't be sure we knew where Hecatia was, but there wasn't much I could do other than be baffled, and a little bit afraid at the thought of Okuu joining the fight.

Can we rely on her? Actually, can she fight as a team at all? She can barely even stand still without destroying something. To say nothing of the fact that we might have to fight Hecatia indoors...

A nuclear bomb is a powerful weapon, but there's no point in using it if it blows you up, too. That's the kind of feeling Okuu was giving me.

[Emiri:] "Satori was against sending Utsuho, but Yukari believes that her raw power will be necessary. Out of everyone we have, Tenshi is the only one who even comes close."

That doesn't make me confident. How's Nagato?

[Nagato:] "Recovering. Some of my responsibilities have been delegated to the others."

Nagato's voice sounded as neutral as ever, but she must have been exhausted after what happened. To be honest, I was relieved to hear it, like that alone could heal my emotional pain. If we had to fight this final battle without her, I'd have felt even more helpless, elixir or no.

Reimu looked like she was ready to talk about what we should do, but before she could say anything, someone cried out, "Okuu!" and rushed past me - Koishi! I was once again startled to be reminded of her existence, and I watched as she leapt up and threw her arms over Okuu's shoulders in a bug hug, which made Tenshi let go and step back to allow her. "Oh, Okuu, you're back!" The little satori wailed and pressed her face into Okuu's collar, her hat sliding down when the brim of it made contact with her body. "I saw something bad. There was another you, and she... she..." She began to sob loudly, precluding any productive discussion.

"It's okay, Young Lady Koishi." Okuu smiled, using her free hand to reciprocate Koishi's affection by patting her head. "That was a bad person. Just a bad person. Some other me that wasn't me."

Koishi sniffled, shaking her head. "It was another you. Trapped with that bad person. She was sorry. I saw it in her eyes."

Koishi hugged Okuu tighter, the raven's face saddening at her master's sister's tears. Her wings drooped, and it seemed to me that she might have understood.

"Yeah, sad. Listen," Seija's voice butted in, with little enough tact that even Reimu looked offended. Seija walked to the front of the group, between us and Okuu, and pointed lazily out the window, tracing a line with her finger along the length of the wall. "We ain't getting to her. Not unless she wants us, and I wouldn't go through any door that she opens." She sneered, then pointed down the hall to one of the exterior doors. "Every exposed outer wall, and every door between the buildings of the school is lined with her runes, and only her blessing can open them. Obviously, I got rid of mine before I joined you guys. I ain't dumb enough to fail her while she's got the noose around me." She smirked and stroked her chin, glancing out the window at the scorched path outside, and I suppressed the urge to punch her by squeezing my fist at my side. I wasn't about to call my own universe's Seija decent by any means, but I never had the impression that she'd go so far as to mock the dead. This one seemed to have no boundaries at all.

[Asakura]: "There are dormant rune walls running between the buildings outside, as well."

[Emiri:] "We've been analyzing the data that Mayumi used to unlock the runes on the gate outside. There's no telling how long it will take to crack..."

And we don't have time to wait on a solution. Hecatia's growing stronger by the minute. I looked at the others, who seemed to be thinking the same thing. Maybe Sakuya could give them some time...?

[Nagato:] "Our process architecture makes that problematic. Even if she could, it would drain her before your most important battle."

Youmu had the Roukanken out and was readying up for a test swing at the wall, but Asakura put a hand on her shoulder to assure her that the sword would be the one to break instead. It seemed like we were running out of tricks. As I saw in my fight against Nagato, the runes seemed to strengthen whatever they were attached to as well as destroy anything foreign that touched them without Hecatia's blessing. Only the part of Haruhi's power that Nagato possessed was able to break it. Maybe if we retrieved Mayumi's armor? It glowed when she unlocked the gate... but I guess Hecatia would just attack us through it...

Everyone went quiet, except for Utsuho and Koishi, who were still commiserating to one side in spite of Seija's interruption. Koizumi, Marisa, Sanae, and Reisen were staring at the far building, maybe trying to think of a solution, while Reimu and Tenshi both just crossed their arms in an impatient huff. Sakuya and Youmu traded some few mumbled words, but I couldn't hear what they were saying. After a few agonizing seconds, Marisa asked Seija with a wry smile, "She didn't cut any corners, did she?"

Seija shrugged. "I poked at the defenses a few times. Not with my hand, of course." She glanced down at the wreck that Okuu had made of the wall between the hallway and one of the classrooms, and said, "All the exterior walls between the building rows are rigged up, and there're some extra dormant rune walls running lengthwise between the buildings down each row, and, uh, one across each space between 'em." She gestured vaguely with one finger, tracing a line across the path between the building rows just behind where Nagato and I had been fighting.

"These are formidable defenses," I heard Koizumi murmur as he took another look out at the grounds. "And they weren't erected today, either... yet we're the first to get this far, aren't we?"

"They've gone to a lot of trouble to protect themselves, but they were pretty ready to sacrifice themselves anyway," I remarked.

Koizumi's eyes twinkled, and he spoke in Seija's direction, "And to think that they even forestalled Suzumiya's power. The Miss Nagato of the Furies could not annihilate the school wall instantly as she did everything else. Did Hecatia expect us to wield such force? Or was there something else you all feared?"

Seija scoffed and chewed her lip, shaking her head with a humored grin. "Man, I don't even have to say anything to you. I liked you better as a statue, those guys were a lot dumber."

"Well," Koizumi gave one of his best quality fake smiles. "If there was a version of me who gave in, they'd have to be weaker."

Self-arrogation... or is that self-deprecation? Both, maybe?

Neither Seija nor Koizumi was interested in elaborating on what Koizumi had figured out, with the latter turning his attention back towards the puzzle of how to penetrate Hecatia's defenses. I scanned the others, thinking that if no one else asked, I should, but it was Youmu of all people who, after meeting my eyes, squirmed a bit and said, "Yasumi. I think. From another universe..."

I paused, not sure what made her come to that conclusion, before suddenly remembering - "From Quarter's memories?"

Youmu nodded. "We... I mean, they couldn't always account for Suzumiya. Sometimes, her power will create an obstacle like her."

...And that was the other Yasumi who was killed along with me. I'd nearly forgotten, but the mention of her name brought it back. I put a hand behind my neck, trying not to think too hard about it. That a vestige of Haruhi's power, or her unconscious, or whatever could have pursued the Furies across universes, only to be snuffed out like she was...

"Almost felt like reaching out to her," said Seija. Her back was turned, and she was gripping her right wrist as she opened and closed her right hand again with her usual nervous energy. "Figured Hecatia would notice if I did. One day, maybe those door runes would blow up in my face." I watched her fingers clench and unclench, wondering if that was a habit to calm her fear, or maybe her regret. It made me think that maybe she dwelt on her own actions more than the one I knew. She'd definitely been through a lot more.

"Does that mean we can get in if there's no door?" Reimu pointed her gohei at the gymnasium building next to the culture department. It sat a bit higher on the hill than the culture department, and there was a hole in its closer end at the ground floor, which had previously been a doorway into the connecting passage that Fury Nagato had thrown at me. The door, and part of the wall, had been ripped away on both sides, with the other end at the same building we were in.

Seija squinted at the hole, bobbed her head to one side, and said, "Yeah, probably."

"I can't detect any defenses between those openings," said Asakura.

"Which would help us if that wasn't the wrong building," I grumbled. And you couldn't detect the ones outside until Seija pointed them out, either...

"Well, it's closer, isn't it?" Reimu started walking down the hall towards the far end of the building, swinging her arms impatiently. "We might as well go instead of sitting here waiting to be attacked."

I mean, I guess so... I looked at Koizumi, who smiled back before following after her, giving me a meaningful look. If only I knew what it meant. The rest of us went after them, having no better plan. Even Tenshi stayed quiet, though she walked in stride with Reimu, never letting her get ahead. Sanae, Marisa, and Sakuya hung near the rear, seemingly wanting to stay behind Koizumi at all times while they whispered to each other and to Reisen, who was pointedly keeping watch out the window with a slight blush. Okuu thankfully proved that she could walk harmlessly in a straight line, even if her heavy right foot and Koishi hanging on to her shoulder made her stride look awkward and fill the whole hallway with the sound of concrete against the tile.

Is it really okay for us to have no plan right now?

I was starting to lose my calm again. Something about this place felt eerie. Maybe it was the fact that I had also seen the school at night inside of a closed space at the end of the world, and this time, the enemy was a lot stronger than one of those celestials. Although most of the girls seemed to share my apprehension, Koizumi looked practically serene, walking ahead of me and glancing into the classroom next to us with a face like he was perusing an old photo album. This didn't feel nostalgic to me. It felt like death, and that's saying a lot for what I'd been through.

"This place looks totally different," I said, coming up alongside him so I didn't have to stare at his naked back.

"But it smells the same," he replied. "Even after the end of the world."

Does it...? I wasn't sure I remembered how the school smelled, or if it had a smell at all. Are espers like dogs?

We passed the open door of a classroom that might have been any other, and Koizumi looked almost relaxed as he glanced inside on our way by, saying, "It was a simpler time, was it not?"

"I don't know if I'd call it simpler. We kept running into things like data crickets and time loops. Hell, we couldn't play baseball or go skiing without complicating it."

That made Koizumi grin. "Or take a vacation," he agreed. "For me, those times were the most stressful."

...Yeah. For me, too.

None of us said a word for the rest of the journey to the school's second floor. We just walked, all of us alert for the enemy, and all of us thinking about either the past or the future. Every hall and stairwell had a memory of Haruhi in it, and as I recalled them, I started to think that maybe I smelled something familiar about this place, too.

---

There was no need to worry. No need to be tense. It was almost time. Hecatia breathed easy after finishing her last can of cola, savoring the lingering taste on her tongue. She could not let this taste of it be her last, and yet, more than ever, the possibility was there. If she couldn't distract herself with such luxuries, the weight of it would tear her hearts from her chests, for such sensations she felt with all three of her selves.

They should have been strong enough, but Yukari had planned her counter-strike beautifully. To make Hecatia be the one to show her full strength, to be the one to step up and kill the boy, and to have it all backfire. The trap may have sprung even earlier had she not deigned to spare them the first time around. Her friends - her Furies, though she hated to think of them as such - had created between them such distance that now they could hardly cooperate, and yet all of them had laid down their lives to protect her, but even that was thwarted by Yukari's invisible move - the unwitting recruitment of a powerless enemy from a future that would not exist.

She should have seen it coming. She had, after all, her own Seija to deal with.

Hecatia had suspected from the first that Seija was the one responsible for that rebellion all that time ago. The only reason that she and Shinmyoumaru were recruited in the first place was so that Hecatia could weed out the traitors in their group; she had planned to destroy them both when the time came, but Seija's willingness to betray even her closest friend in such gruesome fashion had impressed her. Seija had a will that others did not. She could sacrifice anything and anyone to survive. Dangerous and intolerable she would be in Hecatia's perfect world, yet until that world was born, she was a useful tool. It was not for Hecatia to judge treachery, in any case, for she had done the same and more.

But for all the evil they had together wrought, their release was close at hand. All would live again, and all would become absolved of their darkness. Seija would be set free from her traitorous nature, Junko would know not wrath, and Clownpiece's innocence would shine untarnished by Hell. All of them knew that to obtain this perfect, eternal life, they must be willing to lay theirs down for the cause. For themselves, for each other, and for all the universes that exist. Hecatia had believed that even Seija, somewhere inside her, must have known this, and it was only that very nature that drove her to betray the cause. If only she had waited just a little bit longer... but that's my fault. For her own sake, I should have destroyed her before she had the chance.

Too many mistakes. Too many risks. It was beyond forgiveness that now, at the eleventh hour, there was a chance she might be thwarted by them. They who feared that their world might change, even for the better, would only doom all the multiverse in the end. Hecatia crushed the can in her right hand and closed the book she had been reading from her left. It was true - he was a tricky one. Despite being weak, despite being human, he was forever tied to Suzumiya's power. In disgust, she flung the can and book both across the room, towards the door. No wonder he was given that accursed elixir.

Hecatia's second self picked up the book and carried it outside. It wouldn't do to have it absent from the set.

---

"That was reckless."

Satori didn't look up; she knew who it was. She recognized Kasen's heart long before her words escaped her lips. She just nodded, staring out at the newly-hot fires of Blazing Hell.

She knew that sending Okuu was a good idea, already, this incident had threatened so many of her people. Even her own sister had slipped into the party that went to the other universe... or rather, Yukari had knowingly slipped her in. Two of the only people she cared about, stuck fighting in another universe for a conflict that, for all its far-reaching consequences, Satori could still not feel had anything to do with her. Even if they came back, Okuu might never be the same, now that she had been tricked into receiving the Yatagarasu. A power that Okuu was most able to wield, perhaps; but not one she could ever truly control.

Kasen was beginning to think her rude, so Satori let out a sigh and said, "It was. I won't disagree with you."

"Remind me why we're following Yukari again?" Kasen spoke impatiently, and her thoughts revealed much. She seemed to have a low opinion of the group's de facto leader.

"I live down here. You're the ones who agreed to fight with her," Satori pointed out. "Not that I'm ungrateful, of course. You were there to spare my pets from their wrath. They would have fought your group if you hadn't spoken to them first." Satori finally took her eyes away from the scenery and faced Kasen, still a little bit intimidated by her. There was much she rightly wished to hide, and it seemed that Kasen was just as wary of her. Still, Satori looked her in the eye and said, "You don't need to persuade me. I already don't trust Yukari. But you must admit that what she's done so far has been nothing short of a miracle. I'm not sure I understand your reasons for being so steadfastly against her."

Kasen's brow furrowed, and she said, "Miraculous, yes. Which is why what just happened bothers me - she allowed the alternate Nagato to possess our own, right under her nose. If she has knowledge from the future, should she not have seen that coming?"

Satori went silent, weighing whether she ought to respond, and how. The others seemed to love their secrets, and would hate her for revealing them. Even saying nothing may have been revelatory, though. Kasen stared into Satori, her thoughts beginning to converge upon the truth. It wouldn't be long before she figured it out anyway.

Checking around them for would-be eavesdroppers, Satori leaned closer to Kasen and said, "Look. As far as I can tell, things are going as planned, so if you're looking to stir up trouble, may I ask that you hold off on it?"

"Trouble is what I'm avoiding. I need to know what her future plans are. Yukari must have an ulterior motive here, and who knows what it could mean for us?"

"Therein lies the problem."

Kasen's eyebrows rose. "What?"

Satori knew Kasen wasn't going to give this up. Though she may have been attempting the path of the hermit for now, she was clearly going to sow discontent if she didn't get her way. Meanwhile, Satori owed Yukari a lot. Roundabout as it were, she had arranged to bring back Orin from death. Her own misgivings aside, Satori did not want to seem ungrateful for Yukari's help. And besides, any actions I take against her now may come back on me later...

...But then, later was the problem.

"She..." Satori bit her lip. "As far as I have been able to read, she has had no contact with her future self."

"Excuse me?!" Kasen was taken aback at this. "Eirin was saying her future self was-"

"That's the problem. Her future self has been moving things along at her own design, feeding her present self bits and pieces. I don't know what Yukari has in store after all of this is done, because I haven't come across her future self at all." Satori eyed Yukari, who was still talking with Eirin. "Which is a bad sign."

"How so?"

"There's only one reason why she wouldn't expose her future self here." Satori shrugged. "Meaning... meaning she has something in store for the future that she wants nobody to find out about, especially me. That's the only explanation I have for this." Satori grimaced. "It's... frustrating. Her future self figured out a way to get around my power. I'm in the middle of something and I don't know what's fully going on."

Kasen folded her arms, staring down at her critically, and said, "You must not be used to that."

"Whatever Yukari's true plan is, I can't help you there. Just..." Satori shook her head and looked back at Kasen. "Just be careful. Whatever she's being so cautious about, it must be something very important to her."

---

When you get used to a place like your high school, the sight of it from the inside with part of it destroyed is bizarre. It's a negative shift in something familiar, something you never expected to see. Where once there was an elevated corridor beyond a door like any other, there was now just a big, empty hole facing another big, empty hole in the ground floor of the gymnasium on the other side. The inside of it was dark, and there was no way to get from there to our goal.

Koizumi, standing at the edge of the intact part of the floor with his arms crossed, seemed satisfied with the view. "As I thought, this should get us to the culture department," he said.

"How?" asked Tenshi, leaning carelessly over the edge to look at the building underneath us. "There's no secret tunnel, is there?"

"Ahhhh, I get it," said Seija, reaching up to scratch by her eye. She didn't share with the rest of us, but Koizumi took charge and pointed to the space between the gym and the culture building.

"According to our friend, the runes are set only in the outer walls - that is, those facing outside the school or between the rows of buildings," he said, wiggling his finger up and down. "The spaces between the buildings are more efficiently protected with narrow walls of dormant runes suspended in the air on either side. Since the school is normally impenetrable, it's a perfect defense."

"So, there's no protection on the right wall? We can just blow it open and create a path to the clubroom?" If I followed that correctly, then that meant the only things standing between us and Hecatia were this gap and those walls, both of which were easily solved. It was hard to believe, but we were actually, finally, about to reach the end.

Hecatia is right there. Just a few steps more, and...

"Wait!" Reimu flung out a hand to block Tenshi, who was about to start flying. Surprisingly enough, Tenshi actually listened this time, and Reimu turned to us with a frown. "Something feels weird. Can't you feel her presence?" She shot a look at Asakura, who tilted her head with a worried expression.

"There's a lot of irregular data all over the grounds," she said, "but I can't detect any runes there. They were all broken up when the bridge was pulled away."

That didn't seem to convince Reimu. She knelt down to the floor and picked up a small piece of the broken wall at her feet, then tossed it expertly into the air in front of us. The debris soared in a straight line, angled away from the hole, and when it reached the midpoint between the two buildings, it fried into nothingness, replaced by an angry red shard of energy that crackled for a moment before fading away. I felt the tension rise in everyone around me; it seemed like there were still runes that Asakura couldn't pick up.

"Those aren't complete runes," she said. "They were dismantled by the force of Haruhi Suzumiya's power. They should have stayed dormant..."

Reimu tossed a few more bits of debris into the valley before us, each one eventually impacting a new shard of a broken rune. It was like they'd been shredded and left hanging in the air in the rough shape of the bridge that had previously been there, now an invisible, chaotic cloud that was just as dangerous as before. There seemed to form a tunnel, with fewer shards in the center, but even in that space, there seemed to be a few.

[Emiri:] "The boundary that binds the rune shards together is unstable. They will most likely self-annihilate in up to an hour's time."

[Asakura:] "But in exchange, they're nearly impossible to detect. Only Reimu's elemental data can react with their presence. I'll just borrow her senses for a little bit, all right?"

"Huh. She talks to the gods so little, I didn't think she'd be able to sense 'em that well anymore." Marisa murmured, staring and puzzling over this unexpected obstacle along with Koizumi. Reimu ignored the jab, remaining just as focused.

Koizumi edged closer, reaching out a hand as though trying to test the warmth of a stove top without touching it. After going as far as he dared, he crossed his arms, and said, "I can't feel them, either. I wondered how this defense was meant to protect the Alternates from someone like Miss Watahashi. Now it's clear what Hecatia's plan was." He gestured in a circle at the invisible tunnel, explaining, "It would be foolish to erect an ordinary barrier against Suzumiya's power. Any wall in her way, she will simply tear down, as we saw earlier."

Yeah... We both know that pretty well.

"However," he continued, "Suzumiya is also prone to charging ahead when she believes she can win. Thus, the barriers around the school are also traps. It may explain why Clownpiece used so many traps as well, despite not being the calculating type. She learned it from her master."

So her plan was to let Yasumi tear down the walls, and then get destroyed when she tried to pass through them... But wait, didn't we pass through a wall earlier? "How come we could get inside the school, then?" I asked.

Koizumi shrugged. "The force used to grind down the corner of the school was significantly more pointed, and more importantly, it was Reimu who guided us inside. I suspect a thorough examination of the area would reveal that we all came perilously close to the same kind of scattered energy."

...So it was dumb luck. Or Reimu's intuition... If she can sense the gods, then I guess that extends to Hecatia as well? Can Sanae, too? I searched our group for Sanae, who had been pretty quiet. Her face was neutral, but there was something about the stiffness in her body that made me think she was doing everything she could to keep it together. Whether she shared any of Reimu's abilities or not, it seemed that Reimu was the more alert and observant of the two.

I thought back to when Reimu and Tenshi had tried to lead us in opposite directions after we entered the school grounds. We wound up following Tenshi because she knew where to go, but it was possible that Reimu had unconsciously sensed Hecatia's blessing within Nagato and was steering us away from her. If we'd followed her instead, could we have avoided Nagato entirely and found another way in...?

...No. That's wishful thinking. If we didn't pass by Nagato, she'd have just come after us. Getting caught up in what-ifs was the temptation of the elixir, and I'd learned well by that point that resisting it meant staying in the present. To that end - "We don't have an hour to wait for these to go away, do we?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

[Emiri:] "No need. Their instability makes them vulnerable to entropic resolution factors."

"I only need a minute to clear a path through the center," said Asakura, smiling sweetly. "Oh, but I started forty seven seconds ago. Just a few more now..."

Reimu stepped back abruptly, and everyone else followed suit. A handful of tiny red pinpricks began to glow in midair between us and the gymnasium, crackling and arcing a plasma-like energy between one another. The light and energy built up rapidly, and then dissipated into nothing just as quick. There was no noise, and no more sign that anything barred our path; uncertain if the way was actually clear, Reimu tossed a few more stones, and sure enough, only those that went wide of the hole ever impacted anything. Satisfied, Reimu turned to the rest of us.

"It's clear... I think."

...Convincing.

This was going to be tense, no matter how sure we were. At least we had some room for mistakes, as unreliable as the elixir had proven in the past. I pulled Chiyuri's gun partway out of its holster, resting my thumb next to the hammer so that I could be ready in case of a mistake. Even if I could only rewind one or two seconds, I'd make sure that we all made it across. This was as safe as it was ever going to be.

"It's awfully narrow though, isn't it?" Sanae piped up, looking at Okuu. "If you... Um, can you fly without the wings?"

Okuu tilted her head, confused by the question. "What do you mean? I'mma bird. Of course I use my wings..." She stared at the hole, then at her wings, which even folded against her back were taking up a good deal of space behind her. Once more, she looked back at the hole, and back at her wings, before her eyes widened in realization.

She's too big. And probably too heavy for Marisa to carry... That Third Leg and concrete boot looked almost too heavy for her to walk with, let alone bear through that tunnel of invisible shrapnel. Heck, can't she just take the concrete off? All we need is the cannon thing, right...?

[Asakura:] "Have you forgotten what happened to Jinwu? The Yatagarasu can't have fewer than three legs, you know."

...Right. Take one away, and her power stops working, or worse... Just remembering that huge black hole-like gravity well she created when she lost the Third Leg made me not want to try tempting fate inside of the death cage.

"...Shoot, how do we get her across?" I blurted out. "It's not like we can throw her..." I looked to the others, who seemed similarly lost. "Unless Asakura can shrink her or negate her gravity or something convenient like that..."

"Oh, good idea," said Seija. Still clenching her fist, she eyed Okuu up and down and creeping a mischievous smile onto her face that didn't reach her eyes. She began to walk towards us, putting a hand to the ribbon at her waist and saying, "Move over, I'll solve this for ya."

I didn't move, being immediately suspicious that she could do anything at all - mine had reversed my gravity once, but that wouldn't help us in a horizontal tunnel. She just brushed past me, drawing a spell card and grinning like she knew she was about to cause some mayhem.

"What are you-" I began to say. She didn't wait up.

[SPELL CARD: "ETERNAL REVOLUTION"]

Seija smacked Okuu upside the head with the spell, sending her falling backwards with unnatural force. She didn't hit the ground, however; her feet went up into the air, suspending her briefly upside down before flipping her right side up again in a single fluid motion. She continued revolving, a wheel of flailing limbs and feathers, smacking the floor with her arms, legs, and head as she continued to turn over and squeal in pain, having no idea what was now happening to her.

You- you couldn't have warned us before you did that?!

"Curl up, birdbrain!" Seija barked. Okuu complied, curling into a midair fetal position, more to protect her head than because Seija said so. In fact, I couldn't even be sure that she heard her. Either way, Seija walked behind Okuu, grinning with dead eyes like this was only mildly amusing to her, then raised her sandal and-

"Wait!" I cried, finally realizing what this was. "Seija, stop, she might-"

---

A series of booming thuds sounded from far below, the sound of something heavy and lopsided tumbling across the gymnasium floor. Hecatia's third body was seated on the far side roof, hidden by its peak and waiting for her enemy to travel the only route available to them. A tiny hole had been drilled in its top for her to watch them come in, but she needn't have bothered. In fact, she needn't have acquiesced to let them come in at all. If they were going to make themselves so obvious, it wouldn't be right not to harry them.

At least try to sneak up on me. Oh, how did they ever make it this far...?

Hecatia raised one hand, her open palm facing upward, and felt across her scattered energies for the old trap she'd laid. Even if it would be a futile gesture, she thought, it may at least convince them not to smash through everything she'd laid out ahead. Her fingers constricted, curling in towards her palm, and she felt her energies on the far side of the building move in kind.

---

I'll hand it to Seija, she was accurate with those kicks. Okuu sailed straight down the lane and into the center of the hole in the gymnasium's outer wall, where she rolled across the floor like a feathery tumbleweed, vanishing into the darkness just inside.

What the hell, Seija.

She got plenty of dirty looks for that one, but no one was much in the mood to start reprimanding her, especially now that we couldn't see Okuu anymore. "Come on," said Reimu, who hurried forward and began flying through the invisible tunnel as though seized by a sudden sense of urgency. Everyone else hesitated -

[Asakura:] "Hold on. There's something-"

[Nagato:] "Go. Now. Quickly."

The area lit up in red as the whole cloud of rune shards materialized around Reimu, who responded almost simultaneously; she twirled in the air, drawing a boundary around her with her gohei that spiraled outwards and pushed against the shards as they began to constrict. Asakura threw out her hands, warping the air at the edges of the boundary, yet despite their efforts, the red shards dug into their collaborative makeshift barrier, pushing their way steadily inwards. Those of us still in the hallway had two choices: Abandon Okuu and Reimu in the gym by themselves, or get through the tunnel in the next few seconds at risk to ourselves.

"Marisa!" I called out, pushing Seija aside to get closer to her.

"Got it!"

All of us were on the ball. Youmu flew ahead of us, with Marisa taking me across just behind her. Although she was slower than Marisa, there was no time for us to sort ourselves in order of anything but proximity to the edge, so behind us trailed Koizumi, whose similarly slow speed threatened to hold back the rest of them if they didn't push past. Sanae, seized by panic, was trying to do just that, as was Seija, who naturally was augmenting her own speed by pulling on whoever was in front of her, dragging them back in the process. Asakura and Tenshi were the last ones, and to Tenshi's credit, she kept her cool despite being in the most danger. It was almost chaos inside the tunnel, all of us keenly aware of the red spikes pushing their way past the barrier, their tips already inside. We'd crossed most of the way, with Reimu hanging back by the end to maintain her barrier and Sakuya - who must have gone through at heir own leisure - standing at the ready in case she needed to do something big. By now though, the differences in speed had caused a jam behind us, everyone pushing to get ahead, and just as Marisa landed on the far edge, a whole wall of people crashed into us, knocking us over causing us to spill over ourselves into the gym, sprawling across the floor. I, of course, ended up on the bottom of the resulting pile.

...If it weren't for this whole situation, I might have appreciated having so many girls on top of me. Koizumi, Asakura, and Seija notwithstanding, of course. As things stood, however, I had to extricate myself from the mound of bodies and get my bearings as quickly as possible; we didn't know what awaited us here, and although thankfully I didn't hit the floor too hard, if someone kicked me by accident, it'd complicate matters.

Are there more traps in here? Where's Okuu...?

Behind us, the tunnel of rune shards had become a clump, sparking with unstable energy and barring our exit through the hole. The gym seemed to be empty, though I couldn't tell for sure in the darkness. A small whine, however, revealed our new friend's location. She was sitting up a bit further in than the rest of us, rubbing her head with her left hand and keeping the right one firmly on the ground. When Seija clawed and scratched her way out of the body pile, though, Okuu stood up in a fury, the big eye on her chest beginning to glow, and she cried out, "What did you do that for?! That hurt so much!" Her strangled voice echoed through the giant room, as did the firing of an engine - her Third Leg began to warm up, and I saw flames flicker within the Yatagarasu's eye.

"Wait!" Sanae scrambled to her feet and threw out her hands at the two of them. Seija didn't look like she wanted to fight in the first place, but Okuu just directed her glare at Sanae instead. She opened her mouth, but Sanae pre-empted her: "Shh! Listen!"

Okuu's fire died down, allowing silence to creep back into the gym. The only sound was of the people still trying to untangle themselves. Reimu and Asakura, meanwhile, were scanning the ceiling with their eyes, as if having caught a strange scent.

Is someone here...?

[Asakura:] "Someone was here. They might still be."

Hecatia?

Somewhere nearby, to my left, I heard a whirring sound. When I looked, a bright, circular light shone back at me, like a flashlight. Actually, I almost thought it was a danmaku shot, and dodged to the side reflexively, but the light didn't move. It remained where it had appeared, flickering strange colors that shot harmlessly forward in tiny, barely-visible rays, heedless of our presence. I thought I heard Asakura say something, but her voice was all around me, and sounded strangely different.

What the...?

The next voice was much clearer, and more disturbing.

"Good job, Nagato!"

It was a voice that was both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. For a moment, I had no idea who it was, but I soon realized that I'd heard it many times before - among other instances, while I was editing that abominable film of Haruhi's. It was my voice.

"Huh? Nagato?"

Everyone's voice sounds different outside their own heads. On top of that, I sounded younger. That said, it was unmistakably a recording of my voice, and it hit me what I was looking at - the strange ball of light in the darkness was a projector, and the strands of wispy light that it cast ahead of itself were aimed at the wall behind me. I whirled around and beheld the stage at the back of the gym; the very same place where Haruhi and Nagato had once been commandeered by the school's rock club to play songs in ridiculous costumes. A film screen had been set up at the back, on which was displayed something that, at first, I couldn't quite comprehend.

...A cartoon?

Some kind of animation was playing on the screen. A group of people, three girls and one boy, all of whom were wearing cutesy Santa Claus outfits, were standing in a rectangular room around a white-frocked table bearing what looked like a Christmas party spread. There was a little tree in one corner, and a backwards Merry Xmas was painted on the exterior windows, together with a bunch of star stickers and other such festive ornaments. Again, it was familiar, though it took a minute to click.

"Come to think of it, where did she run off to?"

The leftmost girl with blue hair spoke in Asakura's voice. No, that was Asakura - an animated version of Asakura, Tsuruya, Asahina, and myself were standing inside an animated version of the SOS Brigade clubroom, festooned with the same kinds of decorations that Haruhi had always brought in during the season. The camera changed angles, showing her more clearly as she put her hands together to make a plea of my animated self.

"Sorry, Kyon, but could I have you go look for her?"

"Sure." The me on the screen began walking past her, wearing a pleasant smile. "Well then, guess I'll get right to it."

Everyone else around me had pretty much the same incredulous expression - all except for Seija, who looked more bitter than usual, and Koizumi, who looked... not happy, exactly, but a lot less surprised and disturbed than the rest of us. The real Asakura's smile was vacant and uncomprehending as she watched her two-dimensional self waving after my counterpart as he left the clubroom. When the door shut, the camera cut in front of her, showing an uncharacteristic embarrassment while Asahina and Tsuruya looked on. "Asa-nyan, you'll make a great mother someday!" teased Tsuruya from behind her back.

"I'm sure she will," said Asahina.

What the hell is this?

"I've searched the whole room," said Sakuya next to me. "I couldn't find anyone or anything besides that projector."

I didn't know who she was talking to, but the only part of that I registered was that we were safe - meaning, I could keep watching whatever this was. I mean, I could've ignored it. If I were sensible, I'd reason that this must be a weird distraction and Hecatia was about to attack us while we were looking in the other direction. But I couldn't take my eyes off of it, especially after it cut to the next scene. I was walking down the darkened hallways of the culture building, which were drawn with shocking realism, calling out Nagato's name and mixing up honorifics seemingly for fun. The camera followed me, and me alone, until at last it took us downward into the space between the rows, almost to where I'd just fought Nagato.

...And there she was. Same Santa suit as the rest of us. She wore glasses and moved naturally, or at least as naturally as an animated character would, leaning up against one of the pillars at the side of the school and yawning. She gazed up at the Brigade club room window from the outside, and her voice - as soft and gentle as Fury's Nagato's - narrated, "I'm so glad the Literature Club still exists. I wonder if I'll ever see her again."

So... is this her universe?

But then, why is it...?

If it were real footage, I could understand, but this didn't make sense. It looked like a television show. Deliberate animation, clean and clear lines of dialogue - it was like someone had made a story out of it. Did Nagato herself make this? Because she was so obsessed? That was the only explanation that halfway made sense.

Further scenes played out, apparently in a flashback. Nagato walked down a street at night, now not wearing her glasses, where she was accosted by a long-haired, animated version of Haruhi herself wearing the Kouyouen uniform. In this world, she was her same, bubbly and unreasonable old self, roping Nagato into drawing another one of her weird messages in a public park, just as she'd done with "John Smith" in my world. My head swam with half-formed questions that I couldn't bother to answer, and I heard the others murmuring nearby.

"What's going on?"

"It's a trap, right?"

"Should we ignore it and move on?"

Koizumi seemed to want to stay, though, and as he and Seija were the only ones who seemed to have any idea what this was, we all just shut up and kept watching. Even Reimu seemed torn between continuing and being enchanted by the pictures on the screen. As it unfolded, I started to realize where the plot, such as it was, was going - inspired by Haruhi's impetuousness, the Nagato on the screen then went through a montage wherein she attempted to hand out invitations to the Literature Club, an effort that ended with an extended scene of her making the offer to me. There was no sound over this scene other than a slow violin melody, and the production of it all, from the tiny insert flashbacks of me, to her blushing face, to a shot in which I held out my hand so that she didn't have to take the initiative in providing me with one of the flyers, painted me quite clearly as a love interest. It was the most transparent storytelling possible. If any of this had ever really happened, it was almost certainly being told through a rosy tint, which only made it more likely that this was, in fact, a production by the Nagato who had just been killed outside.

"Uh... Did this happen?" Marisa whispered in my ear, a hint of something or other in her voice.

Not knowing how to explain it, I just shook my head and said, "Not in our universe."

Having now run for several minutes, the scene finally changed back to Nagato standing beneath the clubroom window in her Santa suit. I joined her, and the two of us chatted about the survival of the Literature Club. It was an oddly heartfelt conversation; Nagato was more open, cheerful, and, well, honest than I'd ever seen her, expressing earnest thanks to me for helping her club survive.

"What are you talking about Nagato? That's not right at all."

I, for my part, had a lackadaisical attitude that was not at all in line with how I'd come to see myself. I walked around her on the screen, acting all cool, and saying just the right thing to make her blush and hide her face.

"The one who took the first step to protect the Literature Club from being destroyed, the one who invited me to join, and convinced me to join... That was all you, right? You should hold out your chest in pride before you pass your gratitude on to me, Nagato."

It was straight out of a love story. Since when am I that smooth? If I had social skills like that, I'd have been one of the more popular guys back then...

[Nagato:] "It's not that different. At times."

Eh? Really? When have I ever talked like that?

She didn't answer. I could only stare at her animated self try to hide her happiness as the two of them did their awkward, cliché dance around one another like in every other high school romance. And then... Yep, he makes her look up at the falling snow. She must have written this, didn't she? Thinking that made me feel kind of ashamed, like I was mocking her the same way Seija had. Well, it wasn't bad, just... not like how I remembered my high school years, that was for sure.

Just then, my animated self placed something into Nagato's hands. When she opened her hands, the screen showed a little round snowman charm resting in her palm. She stared at it, as did the real me, and unconsciously, I slipped my fingers into my pocket and pulled out the real thing.

"She had this on her while we... fought," I said to Marisa. "She was squeezing it like it was precious."

Marisa squinted at it, then tilted her head and scratched her ear, saying, "So, this's how it happened for her?"

[Hecatia:] "Correct. This was her world."

The sound of the show coming from the speakers was muted, and in its place, Hecatia's own voice rang through the gym. All of us were put on edge, and all of us looked in vain for where she might be. She had to have been watching from somewhere. I stuffed the charm back into my pocket and closed my hand around the hilt of the Sword of Hisou.

[Hecatia:] "Nagato was nothing without Suzumiya. In your world, she was created as a reaction to Suzumiya's existence. In her world, it was Suzumiya's existence that drove her to claim what she wanted most. And in all of the worlds I know to exist, there is no Nagato without Suzumiya. It is simply impossible that one exist without the other."

The screen began to jump rapidly between yet more scenes. I saw Haruhi standing in the club room, as much a part of the club as ever despite wearing a different school's uniform. I saw her handing me a gift of chocolate, and after, me giving some back. Varying scenes of drama and romance, all centered around Nagato, Haruhi, and me played across the screen, hardly giving me time to understand them, yet painting a clear picture of a classic love triangle. The final image on which it froze was of Nagato in front of an oncoming car, its bright headlights flashing against a background of night.

[Hecatia:] "Fate conspired to keep her together with the one she hated most. And then, fate delivered her a cruel gift."

Her powers, that she said just "happened to her."

[Hecatia:] "I wanted a Nagato that could be controlled, and I was lucky enough to find this one. She had power enough to be useful, but that same power came with terrible knowledge - that everything exists, and does not exist."

The image changed again - this time, to a black spot on an out-of-focus skin-colored background. The spot moved around the screen, and a loud shuffling sound blew out the speakers, like someone was rubbing a microphone. It was definitely real footage this time, not part of the show, though the camera seemed to be pressing up against something. After a moment, it drew back far enough that I could see a pair of blurry red eyes peek in at the top, along with flowing blonde hair and another spot of black next to the first, and I realized that what I was seeing had been Clownpiece's nostril. Perhaps more accurately, I'd been watching her try to stick the camera up her nose. She stretched her lower face downward, then stuck out her tongue, contorting into all sorts of childish expressions, as behind her, I heard something rumbling, and the blowing of a high wind.

...Uh, what...

"It's starting. Piece, look up here."

Hecatia's voice, but this time, it was part of the footage. The camera jerked around, showing a darkened floor, before pointing up towards the sky. The camera set the scene - we were on top of a high building, and I saw Hecatia standing with her back to the camera, staring out at a sky that looked as if it were in twilight, but at the same time, was stained in so many colors that it resembled a decaying, oil-stained membrane, like might be found inside of some dying animal. Pieces were broken or burnt away, revealing a black void beyond. Cracks ran through the air, crisscrossing one another and opening up into a swirling crimson primordial soup, resembling a chaotic form of Yukari's gaps. It was a scene from a nightmare, and beneath it all, Nagato sat with her legs curled in and her hands around her knees, the same as the way I'd found her. She lifted her head briefly to look at the sky, and I saw her reddened, tear-stained eyes behind a pair of dirty glasses. Her head rocked in disbelief, and with shaking lips, she croaked out, "Why?"

"You failed to the follow the story," Hecatia replied. "Or someone failed you. Either way, a world like this just isn't strong enough."

Up above, a light shone from the moon that cut down its center. The moon split in two, and then began to crumble as though it were made of brittle chalk. The camera turned up to watch it shatter and fling its pieces across the dappled sky, the camera girl giggling with barely-contained glee.

"...Why does the story have to have her in it?" Nagato mumbled, barely heard over the distant chaos.

"Because no one would write a story about Yuki Nagato alone."

The sky roared, and more pieces of it vanished. An entire city in the distance was swallowed up, all at once, into the ground, and the building that the camera was on began to shake. Hecatia took this as a sign, and turned back to the camera.

"We are leaving," she said. "Come with us and live, or stay and meet your end. It's your choice."

Nagato didn't move, and the scene froze before cutting to black. The rest of us were silent, until Marisa decided to speak up. "So... That's what happens if she dies?" she asked nervously.

...If she's everything that Koizumi, Nagato, and Asahina think she is, then... I guess. I didn't want to believe it, but assuming that video wasn't doctored or staged for whatever reason, we all just saw the proof.

[Hecatia:] "Don't misunderstand. Nagato's universe ended because Suzumiya was removed, but that had little to do with her ability. There is no constant to what triggers a world's demise, but I suspect that if you disappeared, it may eventually herald the same. It all depends on what lies at the world's heart."

...What? I may not have heard that right. Is Hecatia saying that our world would end if Marisa were killed? I looked between everyone else, and as usual, Koizumi was the only one who was following along. Fed up with it all, I approached him and said, "Hey. If you're planning on sharing, now's a good time."

Koizumi smiled at me in the same painful way that he had back down in the field. Caught in a situation where he couldn't keep silent, he cleared his throat and said, "I'm afraid our host is more prepared to elucidate this than I am... but if she would be so kind, I'm... curious if she wouldn't share with us our own story? I think that would help illustrate matters rather well."

If you can't give a straight answer, then- Wait, what do you mean, "our story"?

Hecatia chuckled through the speakers. For a moment, that was her only response, but then the projector shut off, plunging us back into darkness, and she spoke one final time.

[Hecatia:] "If you insist. All of the answers are here with me. One way or another, you will see that Hell is not only the realms of bad karma."

I...

What the hell is going on. What the hell is going on?

I don't care for this song and dance. It doesn't matter! Let's just get to Hecatia and defeat her already!

Despite thinking that this was all a waste of time, I wanted to know. I wanted to know what had happened to that alternate Nagato, and what was happening to our universe, and what more there was to Hecatia's crusade that we had to be forced through all of this. Mayumi had told us that we didn't know the truth, and although I still didn't know quite what she meant by that, I had a horrible, foreboding feeling that something important was missing.

And Seija and Koizumi are still tight-lipped about it. Cripes. She's right there. Can't this whole nightmare just end...?

Still, I knew well that haste would destroy us, so I swallowed my impatience as best I could and waited for Asakura to take the initiative. What came next was her job. As she and Reimu studied the wall on which the projector had been casting its image, I decided that my solemn duty now was to nag Koizumi to say something more helpful. "What were you talking about Seija with earlier? I need to know," I said. It was too late for me not to be distracted by any unfortunate knowledge now, and I think he could see that, too. So could everyone else - Marisa and Sanae had gathered around us, giving Koizumi their full attention. There was no hiding anything now.

"Nothing important," he said, avoiding my gaze. "Just the nature of reality."

"I think that's pretty important," I said.

"Is it?" he put his hands in his pockets and grimaced. "It's nothing we don't already know. Youkai have vanished from our world, you know, because advances in society and science have made them irrelevant. No one believes in them, so they don't exist. Simple, right?"

It wasn't remotely simple. "And how does that connect to this?" I demanded.

"The Anthropic Principle. You know what that is, right?"

Yeah, somehow. I seem to remember an annoying conversation about that which boiled down to "the universe exists because humanity believes in it."

...Hang on, is he saying-

"Belief in something grants it form," Koizumi interrupted before I could speak again, "and faith grants it power. Whether a youkai, a god, or even another world, a powerful collective faith can give birth to anything. And faith can be many things."

...That... makes... sense? I mean, almost...

"So, Hecatia can create universes by making people in other universes believe in them?" I said.

Koizumi's smile came back, seemingly amused that I actually understood. "Anyone could, I suspect. Then again, I also suspect it isn't that simple. But either way, the heart of a world that Hecatia mentioned must be the faith that went into it. And I imagine it would take quite a few people to create enough faith for an entire universe."

...Yeah, probably. Gensokyo's youkai need a whole village of humans to sustain them.

"Then why would the universe die off if I did, ze?" Marisa piped up, giving voice to the next question that was on my mind. She didn't look particularly shocked about the revelation. If anything, she looked more like she didn't believe it, which was fair, because I didn't think I quite believed it, either.

"Hecatia said that would depend on 'the heart of the universe,'" Koizumi said. "And if I am correct, that 'heart'..."

CAUTION! CAUTION! CAUTION! CAUTION!

Koizumi trailed off and looked to the side, understandably distracted by the siren that had just gone off next to us accompanied by a roaring sound and a burst of light from Okuu's Third Leg. Heedless of our conversation, she had planted herself in front of the back wall of the gym and was pointing the Third Leg ahead at the stage, a manic grin on her face. "Everybody out of the way!" she called out above the racket. "I'll turn it all to ash right now!"

What, already?!

We didn't need more of an invitation, and judging by Asakura and Reimu's casual drift to the left side of the room, it would seem that this was part of the plan. While we were discussing Hecatia's presentation, they had been working on making more progress. We all hurried to the left, almost scrambling over one another again, and backed up as far as we could before an orange light emitted from beyond the tip of the Third Leg that annihilated the entire back wall of the gym, flooding the interior with noise and dust, forcing us to shield our faces.

I don't mind hurrying onward, but could you warn us a little sooner? I held my breath, afraid to move, but I soon felt a strangely cool breeze on my skin and somebody tapped my shoulder. When I risked opening my eyes, the air was clear, courtesy of Sanae, waving her stick around and directing the wind to expel the debris. Man, am I glad we have so many different abilities on our side.

"...You were saying?" I coughed a bit, directing the question at Koizumi. He just smiled.

"I was saying that if I'm correct, the 'heart' of our universe is up ahead." He inclined his head towards the new hole in the wall, where I could now see the inside of the culture department. It was practically a cross-section, as the entire outer wall facing the gym had been obliterated, along with some of the interior walls. There was a lot of rubble inside that I could see, and yet as usual, the ceiling and the outer walls to either side were perfectly intact, along with their windows.

Don't just say something that dramatic and not explain it. Asahina had once said of Koizumi that he could extract a whole story from just a few words, and he was really driving that home with all of this. This "heart of the universe" sounded impossible, unreasonable, and totally out of the blue, and yet here he was acting like it was the natural conclusion. If it turned out to be another philosophy thing, I'd rather just skip it.

That said, I had to accept moving forward. If it was easier to see it than to hear of it, then there was no reason not to keep going. Already, this sounded heavy - the idea that not just youkai or the gods, but everything in my universe was created by faith... well, it was easier to swallow than you might think, given what I'd already experienced. Hell, Koizumi had once said that some in the Agency believed our whole world to be nothing more than Haruhi's dream. Curious though I may have been, I was past caring about the particulars, and past believing in the words of an enemy. Last time I did that, I regretted it.

It didn't matter what lay ahead. There was no knowledge that could justify Hecatia's actions, nor make her the right person to rule over the multiverse. If we saw a chance to take her down, we had to take it. It was as simple as that.

...Right? There was something gnawing on the back of my brain, that at this point, anything was possible. I mean, I accepted that I didn't know everything. But whatever information I was missing, it sounded pretty vital to me. Another thing I'd learned from my trip to the future: A person's perspective on something can change pretty quickly by taking a good look at the other side. After so much time and pain spent on building up my convictions, maybe I was afraid to learn something that made me question them.

Reimu and Asakura went ahead, checking to make sure there were no runes in our way. That rune shard trap from earlier had confirmed that even if Hecatia couldn't make them in a hurry, she could move them around if she wanted to, which meant that she could have left some surprises in our path. Sure enough, they found something had changed; the runes which formerly protected the alley between the gym and the culture department had been moved to cover one of the interior clubroom walls on the top floor, protecting it, along with most of the rest of the floor, from Utsuho's blast. However, when we all flew over to join them inside, we found that more destruction had been wrought within.

All of the rooms on the right side of the top floor had the walls between them knocked down, and most of their furniture cleared out. The resulting rubble had all been shifted into the hallway, where a few borrowed runes had been haphazardly plastered over them to prevent us from blowing it away. The end product of it all was that the rooms had become a wide, clear corridor leading straight down to the intact wall of the Brigade club room, where the rubble was cleared enough that there was a path out to the hallway in front of the club room door. In other words: It was a big, linear path that we were being channeled into. An obvious killbox if there ever was one.

"We'll go first," said Reimu, pulling at Tenshi's arm to bring her along.

"Wait, Reimu! Shouldn't we try to find another way?" said Sanae, peering into the area with no small measure of apprehension. I had to agree, this looked like a perfect barrel for shooting fish. Maybe we can go down to the second floor and come back up the other side?

"Hecatia's a show-off, like any other youkai." Reimu nodded down the hallway. "Once she's started talking, she won't kill us until she's finished."

She tried to kill us right before she started talking, though... Even so, I couldn't help but trust Reimu's instincts. I, too, peeked into the makeshift corridor, trying to make out any sign of danger, but there was only one thing of note in the entire area. Right in the center, on the right side by the windows, a CRT television was sitting on top of a table from one of the club rooms, plugged into a black plastic box that must have been a battery or something. It was on, showing a blank blue screen that cast the only other light into the room that wasn't from the moon. There were a few other objects on top of the table in front, though I wasn't able to make them out.

"I'll go, too," said Koizumi as soon as he laid eyes on it.

"Me, too, ze." Marisa pushed to the front, and soon after, everyone else started vying to be in the advance party, which quickly turned into just "the party." All of us wanted to go in there, regardless of the danger.

Is this safe? If I can't reset far enough...

[Nagato:] "It is possible that the elixir will keep you from saving others if it means putting yourself in danger."

Yeah. If it does two seconds again, we might all be screwed.

[Nagato:] "But if saving yourself will also save everyone else, then it will grant you that chance. It's more optimal that you be close to everyone else."

...You're right. If Hecatia shows up and kills us with a big attack, then I'll reset to a place where I can avoid it. If I tell everyone else to run, they'll have enough time, too. It seemed sensible enough, but there was also another possibility - that the elixir was wearing off. The last reset had been the shortest by far. Maybe it wouldn't matter if I could save myself with a longer reset next time. And if it had limited uses, testing it right now seemed like a bad idea.

I collected myself and stepped forward as well, leaving just one person - Reisen. Disapproval was written on her face, but rather than argue the point, she said to the rest of us, "You guys can go ahead. I'll find a perch and cover the outside." She nodded her head towards the hole in the wall behind us, and the now-empty space where Hecatia's runes had once barred our passage between this building and the gym.

Oh, good idea. I mean, it'd be better if we could shoot through the windows, but even if we can't, she can tell us where Hecatia is.

...Though, what if...

"There's three of Hecatia," I said. "What happens if they sneak up on you?"

Reisen's response was to open the corner of her mouth and make a small clicking noise with her tongue against her cheek, which she repeated in a steady rhythm. I didn't really get it, and that was all she did for several seconds, until she stopped, closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and said, "She's not outside right now. But someone's moving down the hall just beyond." She pointed at the space between the rubble and the ceiling, into the darkness where we couldn't see a thing. The fact that she could so matter-of-factly say that someone was watching us made me slightly frightened, as well.

...How does she...?

[Asakura:] "Aha. She's manipulating her own sound waves. Very clever."

"Like a bat?" I said out loud.

"Something I should've thought of doing a long time ago," Reisen said, looking bitter. "We might not've been taken by surprise so many times. I'm not about to let it happen again."

"And if Hecatia tries to run, you'll be ready to shoot her," said Marisa. When she put it that way, it sounded like a good idea to me. Hell, she might run outside even if she's planning to fight. Hard to do danmaku in a building.

"I'll keep everyone updated," said Asakura. "Oh, and I'll make sure you don't fly into any of those runes outside."

Reisen nodded appreciatively, and everyone else seemed fine with it. I was still anxious to see her go off by herself, but at least Asakura could tell me to reset if something bad happened. We just had to trust that she'd do more good out there than in here. With a final wave, she took to the air and flew out around the sides of the buildings, clicking as she went.

...And so, it was down to us. Nothing for it but to proceed. Nobody else seemed to want to make any detours, even to try the stairs, so we gathered up and headed into the classrooms. There wasn't anybody waiting for us, nor did the simple shape of the passage offer any chance for further strategizing. We all just silently walked forward, wary of even the slightest hint that something might spring on us.

What do you make of this, Nagato? This... faith creating the universe, or whatever. And your alternate self. I noticed she had been silent during that whole episode, and didn't much want to pry into it at the time, but I had to wonder what she thought of it all.

[Nagato:] "...I think I understand what my other self was feeling. And what the 'heart of the universe' might be."

Really? Can you tell me? Because Koizumi's as helpful as ever.

[Nagato:] "Just look. It's right in front of you."

I stopped, realizing that I'd been unconsciously drifting towards the television set with the blue screen. Some of those around me stopped as well, but Reimu kept walking until she was right in front of it, staring down at the shadowed objects on the table. Slowly, she picked up what looked like a jewel case on top of a small stack of them and studied it, her face remaining like stone.

[Nagato:] "My other self made few decisions of her own. Those that she did, she made in reaction to someone else. Almost everything else simply 'happened.' Her abilities, the destruction of her universe, and the revelation that she never had a choice in the matter at all. She could not exist by herself, because from the very start, she was enslaved to someone else's will."

Koizumi was the next to advance, and as if conditioned, I walked with him. I didn't even really think about it. Koizumi looked over Reimu's shoulder at what she was looking at; as for me, as soon as I came in front of the television, it changed channels and went black before gradually fading in to a blurry image of falling white cherry blossoms.

[Nagato:] "She probably saw the same story unfold countless times, either through a screen, or with her own eyes..."

The cherry blossoms came into focus, and once again, I heard my own voice come out of the speakers on the television. It was some type of narration, and although I couldn't remember ever saying it, the words themselves sounded familiar.

"How long you believed in Santa Claus is so meaningless it won't even serve as idle chatter."

White lines came into view on the black, which transformed into the image of the spinning spokes of a bicycle wheel.

"If you still ask how long I believed in a made-up red-suited old man named Santa, I say this for sure."

...And as I was saying this, a grainy, washed-out image of myself - animated again, but this time in a different art style, riding my bike up the hill towards the school came up, and beneath it, English lettering that read, "The melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya."

[Nagato:] "...No, it didn't matter whether it was through a screen or not. Because somewhere, that world really existed. To her, reality and fiction were one and the same."

...What... the hell...?

The animated me continued to drone on, "I knew the Santa at my kindergarten Christmas event was a fake. I didn't even witness Mom kissing Santa or anything, but shrewdly, I doubted an old man who only worked on Christmas. But aliens, time travelers, ghosts, youkai, espers, evil cartels and anime, manga, and live-action heroes that fight them... It wasn't till later in my life that I realized they all don't exist."

Everyone else had come up as well, and were watching from behind me as my counterpart walked along my usual route, hand-painted beneath the characters in true-to-life accuracy, yet with exceptionally muted colors, talking about my own history with the supernatural with just as much precision. I was sure I had never put voice to any of those thoughts, and yet, in this scene that once again appeared to be from a TV show, here they all were. Beside me, Koizumi was outwardly keeping his cool, but I felt him tense up with excitement when my next lines were delivered.

"No, I probably noticed it. I just didn't want to accept it. I longed for aliens, time travelers, ghosts, youkai, espers, and evil cartels to just appear from the bottom of my heart."

"You want to tell me what I'm looking at?" I asked him, with an instinct like I was both starting to understand and completely ignorant of everything.

Koizumi hesitated, then smiled wide. "Faith can be many things, I said. The wishes of those who want something desperately, yet know that it can't be real... Suzumiya's common sense, or perhaps that of humanity altogether, is what keeps our world bound by strict physical laws."

[Hecatia:] "And yet, people develop passion towards fiction. They think of those worlds as if they truly exist beyond the boundaries of their own. They have conversations about them, imagine new scenarios, and treat the characters as if they are real. Unconsciously, the boundary of reality and fiction is broken."

"And so everything exists, and does not exist," Koizumi finished in a tone of both happiness and fear.

...You're kidding.

No, no, no, this is...

What?

I know I said I could accept anything at this point, but isn't this too much?

And yet, it was playing out in front of me. My other self had completed both his monologue and his commute, and with the pacing of a story that was hurrying to introduce its principal characters, it reached the point of my first meeting with Haruhi - and, in a moment of perfect symbolism, her self-introduction shocked my animated world - and the picture on the screen - into full color, the image becoming as crisp and bright as Fury Nagato's world had been. It was an immaculate representation of my own memories. No, it was even better - in fact, it flowed so well that one would think it was written for this format, even though it was showing a record of real events.

...Right? I mean... I remember this. I remember making the choice to talk to her...

[Nagato:] "A choice that nearly every other version of yourself also made."

I couldn't really think anymore. I just stared dumbly at the screen while the character of Haruhi Suzumiya was introduced to the viewer. I saw Reimu raise an arm to gesture to her right, and Sanae left my side to go and look at whatever she was studying - at which point, she gasped aloud. I hardly noticed.

[Hecatia:] "In all of the versions of your universe I have visited, these events played out exactly the same. The only exceptions were significant branches, or entire alternative premises, as if those worlds were born purely from the question, 'What if?'"

"The console isn't different, just the year. They had to update the adaptation." That had been Fury Nagato's seemingly nonsensical explanation of the alien game console in her hands.

[Nagato:] "A story that was created many years after the original."

I don't get it. I don't... get it... I wanted to sit down, but that seemed like a bad idea at present. Hecatia had not even been gracious enough to provide us with chairs. Just a television set, and some books and CDs in front of it. I caught a glimpse of one - a light novel with a picture of Haruhi on the front, on top of a stack of several other volumes. There was no question what it could be.

"...So, what happens..." Sanae began to speak in a shaky voice, still huddling with Reimu. "Say, in a universe based on a game with only one true ending, what happens if the hero dies?"

[Hecatia:] "In all stories, there is a past before the main character is born, and there is a future after they are dead. That much is at least implicit. Yet a story can't be told without its main cast, and without being told, it cannot exist. We all learned that the hard way."

I finally realized that Reimu and Sanae had been occupied with something entirely different this whole time. I glanced at Marisa, who was looking their way as well, and in silent agreement, we both wandered over to look at what Reimu was holding. She actually had two of them now; a pair of jewel cases for holding CDs, the second one placed over the first. On it was an abstract image, a sort of miasma that was divided in two by a blue diagonal border, red on top and violet on the bottom. Butterfly shapes filled the background, while the foreground was taken up by a silhouette of a person that, in spite of being a drawing, I recognized instantly from the shape of the parasol she was holding. It was Yukari. Written in the bottom right in kanji and furigana was Touhou Youyoumu, and beneath that in English letters, Perfect Cherry Blossom. Within the blue border, also in English, was written 7th Project Shrine Maiden Shooting Game of Ghastry Dream.

You're kidding me.

Sanae pressed her fingers against the edge of the case and prized it open, revealing a bluish disc inside, on which was printed a drawing of another character, this one in full detail.

"It's Youmu..." Sanae breathed. Hearing her name, Youmu sidled nervously over to us and pushed between Marisa and I, beholding the image on the disc with wide eyes and an otherwise blank expression. She didn't know what to say. Neither did I. It was clearly an amateur drawing, at least more so than what was playing on the television. It had the feeling of a doujin game rather than a commercial product. Even so, it was clearly Youmu, both swords drawn in an action pose with her phantom half drifting behind her. There was some writing on the inside of the case as well, but I didn't get to read it before Sanae flipped it up to look at the backside - on which was printed a drawing of Reimu in the same style, posed before screenshots of a typical danmaku game. I mean, a real danmaku game, like DoDonPachi. Only, unlike most of those games, the beauty of the bullet patterns themselves were touted as a selling point. Meanwhile, in flipping it up, Sanae had revealed the one beneath it; this one had a silhouette of Flandre and her distinctive wings on it in scarlet and white, and was titled Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.

...This is too much to be a prank. I leaned forward and looked through the other cases on the table - they seemed to be arranged in chronological order, each one reminiscent of an incident in Gensokyo's history, past and future. There was one for the Eternal Night Incident, and the incident where we met Tenshi. There were spinoffs, too - including one called Danmaku Amanojaku ~ Impossible Spell Card. Even the incident today was here - a clear silhouette of Utsuho, with her wide wings and cape, and dark color scheme that evoked the underground. Touhou Chireiden ~ Subterranean Animism.

"These are our two original universes," I said, a bit in shock. "Those books, and these games."

[Hecatia:] "Both very popular, in their own ways. The kind of popularity that might give rise to not just one universe, but many different interpretations. Some of them are even strong enough to become separate universes of their own. One needs only establish their reality - to assert their objective existence by bridging the gap between our universe and theirs, to make them truly real. Much power is needed to accomplish such a feat, but we had power aplenty."

"Out of curiosity," said Koizumi, "what universes were these media pulled from? Is there a single universe that serves as a source, is it more like a network, where each supports the existence of the others?"

[Hecatia:] "If there's a source, I haven't found it. However, these games exist in your base universe - and your books in the world of the games. In all the worlds I've visited, at some point in their timeline, the others have normally existed as fiction."

Koizumi grinned, looking way too happy about it. "A network, then, as far as we know. The faith of each universe, flowing out to all the others like a cosmic mandala... How fascinating."

That's one word for it.

I didn't know how I felt. If I believed in any of this - and I didn't really see what Hecatia would gain from such an elaborate lie - then that had a lot of implications. For starters, I was apparently the main character, which was both incomprehensible and more than a little bit of a jolt to the ego... but then again, having been forced into bizarre situation after bizarre situation all my life, it sort of rang true. The improbably lucky detective who keeps happening upon unusual cases, to borrow an example from one of Koizumi's diatribes. Was it really because someone else wrote that into a script? What did that mean now that the Furies had interfered? This couldn't have been part of their script, so did that mean I now had free will, where I didn't before? How could I tell? It was a rabbit hole of questions without answers, and I was starting to feel anxious about how long we'd been standing in one spot, among a mountain of other things.

What was this feeling? I couldn't tell, and that scared me more than anything. It was like I wanted to accept it all just to get it over with, but I felt like if I did, it would be Hecatia's victory. Did it even mean anything, in the end? Nothing... Nothing can justify what Hecatia is doing. All of this is just a big distraction...

[Hecatia:] "To know of this is to hold Prometheus' torch, for you will then have the will to change the world, but in changing it, you will destroy it, as Nagato did hers. Then shall Hell be visited upon you, for you will know of your own powerlessness before a multiverse of inevitable suffering. The only world that can exist after such a change is this one; a sterile, empty world of death. The only story in which all can have faith, regardless of their universe."

This world... this empty place that had once been a mirror of my own universe was still stable, even though everyone in it was dead. There was no more story to be told here, yet it continued to exist. A story of nothingness. A pure land.

No matter what, we can't go against the story that was written for us. Is that the real reason that Yukari was trying so hard to preserve the order of events...?

...She had to have known about all this from the start, right?

Asahina had described moments in time as being frames of an animation. Did she know? Was that just an analogy, or did the time travelers actually have that big of a perspective?

Reimu spoke up, her voice cracking a little bit as she set down the jewel cases back on the table. "...I don't get how this thing is supposed to be a story, but..." She cleared her throat and straightened her back, "If I'd known I could be a famous character, I'd have tried marketing myself at the shrine."

Her joke fell into silence. Everyone was standing still, apprehension hanging over us, the question of moving forward put off for the moment. It's one thing to think that free will may not exist, but we'd fought with, and come to understand the Furies to some extent. We knew how this had affected them all. All of them were trying to escape a fate that had been written for them by someone else. And if they had written out our world in the same way, then nearly all of our struggles up until this incident were...

...But no, they didn't plan for everything. They couldn't have predicted our shadow memories, nor Yukari's gambit with Seija. Which means we've already changed their story.

Does that mean...?

There's no constant for what triggers a collapse, she said...

"...Maybe we can charge royalties when we get back," posited Sanae, forcing a tiny smile.

Marisa followed up with a strained grin of her own, and elbowed Reimu in the hip. "I dunno. If ya start makin' money, it might be the end of the world. I always knew it, ze."

"Ahahaha, I get it!" Tenshi had snatched up one of the jewel cases - Touhou Hisouten ~ Scarlet Weather Rhapsody - and was reading the back of it, looking more genuinely pleased about it than they did. "So, I only lost to you because it was part of the plot! I knew something was fishy!"

Sakuya kept her poise, striding elegantly to the front of the room to wait for the rest of us. "Fate has always steered the course of our lives," she said. "Although I sympathize with your desires, this changes nothing."

"...I think so, too," said Youmu, nodding in agreement.

"Am I popular?" asked Koishi, rocking back and forth on her heels with a vacant smile.

Everyone gradually began to chime in, adding their own voice to the growing chatter. Most of us still didn't look happy. I was still reeling, not sure what it all meant. But still, by some miracle, everyone began talking as if all we'd found were some new curiosity to be admired and forgotten. Asakura was casually speed-reading the light novels by flipping all of their pages too quickly for any human to pick up a single word, her thumb a complete blur. Okuu seemed to have become enraptured by the show still playing on the television, and was sitting cross-legged in front of it while she watched, almost without blinking. Behind all of us, Seija was leaning against the back wall, looking disgusted by how well we were dealing with it.

[Asakura:] "Miss Inaba would like you to know that she is still resolved to destroying the Furies. She has always known they were responsible for our hardships, she says."

...It's that simple for them, huh.

If they were able to accept it, then I had no choice, right? It was a lot to think about, but right now, what it meant was this: If even one of us dying meant the end of the universe, then none of us were allowed to die. We couldn't accept anything but a perfect victory. Maybe not all of us were essential to the universe - after all, some people weren't there in the future - but we had no real way of knowing who was and who wasn't. I wasn't about to start making guesses about how all this worked. Who even knows how long it would take for the world to be destroyed? How would we know if we screwed up, and when?

Koizumi seemed to understand that just as well as me. Our eyes met, and he walked over and whispered, "You may need to protect everyone with that power you've got." I just nodded in response. I didn't need his permission, nor any big revelation to do that.

Hecatia underestimated us.

While everyone was coming to grips with the truth, if that really was what it was, the episode on the television ended and began to play the end credits, which somewhat to my dismay contained clips of myself and the other animated Brigade members performing some kind of dance. Seeing that, oddly enough, started to restore the mood in the room a little bit.

"You look like you're having fun," giggled Marisa. In fact a lot of the girls started to giggle over the SOS Brigade doing that dance. The animated me looked like he wanted none of it, a feeling which I reciprocated.

Stop. Please.

"Did you guys actually dance like that?" asked Sanae, a smug look on her face.

Hell no.

Koishi began to imitate it, and Okuu followed suit... poorly. Forgetting once again that she had a weapon strapped to her arm, she swung it forward and it caved in the front of the TV, sending a shower of sparks onto the floor and causing her to jump back with a yelp as we lost our primary light source. Despite this, the song kept playing, now electronically garbled and with a buzzing static sound behind it.

...Are we not right in front of our greatest enemy?

I can't say it was a bad thing that most of us were now laughing instead of sulking, even if it was half directed at me. Screw it - I'm with Sanae. If she gets royalties, I'm suing for all I'm worth, too. I'm a main character, right? Reimu passed by, and in the moonlight, I could see she was trying not to smile, as well. "Come on, everyone," she said. "We're wasting time."

It must have been a miracle that we'd managed to get some morale back. Hecatia's little show had the complete opposite effect, and Seija was positively disappointed. She skulked along with the rest of us, her hands tucked into the ribbon at her waist.

Seeing her in that mood made me curious, so I drifted in her direction. "What's the matter?"

Seija didn't answer me, she still gave me a sneer, obviously upset.

"Don't tell me you were looking forward to us falling into despair or whatever." I said it half as a joke, but when I did, she looked away, making me realize that I was right all along. I blew air through my nose, not sure if I wanted to laugh, and said, "You did, didn't you?"

Seija looked away, gritting her teeth. "Always did, the last times. Shocked the hell outta me." She let out a grunt. "You know how badly it hurt to know that I'm not supposed to win? No matter how hard I pulled, no matter how much I managed to break the rules, it'd never last. That sucks, man. Even in that spinoff game, even when I win in that, I still lose, because..." She shook her head quickly, dropping that subject. "Nah. I just... ah, forget it. Talking to you about it is just depressing."

And you wanted us to share in your pain. Both this Seija and my Seija really did give it their all towards their revolutions. As much as both of them pissed me off, she really did put in the effort. I can't deny that.

"But..." A curious look appeared on her face, as she glanced out the window. A few extra curious faces were looking our way, or looking somewhere to the side, pretending not to listen. "Then again, none of us were from a crossover. And you all are the first to ever reach this far." She looked down. "...Must've prepared you, being shoved together like that. And having to fight us all to get here, too. Usually, they straight-up deny it. Some of 'em get real existential. It breaks 'em." Seija gave Reimu a small glare, and raised her voice to try and get her attention, saying, "Reimu... I was really looking forward to seeing that happen to you, but... you never did care about anything but making more money. That's all this really means to you, ain't it? Being marketable?" She spat the words at Reimu, who didn't reply, and didn't even deign to look at Seija, even though her voice was loud enough that everyone could hear her. "You're really amazing, y'know that? So amazing, I wanna puke."

Charming as ever.

With no one wanting to respond to her, we at least reached the end of the wrecked classrooms, still with no sign of attack. We all moved out into the hallway, where we found ourselves just outside the door of the former Literature Club. It even still had the paper over the sign above the door, declaring it to be the club room of the SOS Brigade. All of us stopped to look on it, no one quite ready to face what was inside.

We're here.

I'd had long days, and long incidents, but today had been the longest. Almost since I woke up, I'd been fighting and running and clawing for every inch that we advanced into the underground, and even into this other universe. We found things we never expected to find, and were pushed to, and beyond, our absolute limits multiple times. It was only all the help we'd gotten that we managed to survive, and it was only the peaches and nanomachines that had kept us from falling apart from fatigue. I still felt some tiredness creeping into my body, barely kept at bay, and considering my body had been remade, I could only imagine how the others were feeling. I still felt the dread that I'd had when I went down the hole, and when I learned I died, and when I was made to cross over into this universe. But whether through those nanomachines, or my own resolve, it had changed.

I was still angry, but it wasn't blind. I was still fearful, but now I knew when to run and when to fight. And even though it seemed like I'd run out of acceptable sacrifices, I knew that if I had to make them, I could at least do so without losing my head. If I'd managed to learn one thing today, it was how to control myself. How to act. No matter how strong and terrible our enemy was, I could at least face her head-on.

[Asakura:] "There are runes protecting the walls, but the door looks clear. It might take a moment to make sure."

"I'll go first," I said. Me walking into a rune wouldn't matter, and for all we knew, there could be more inside that Asakura might not be able to detect. I grasped the handle of the club room door and pushed it open, as ready as I could possibly make myself.

It was the same old club room that I knew. At the very back, behind the computer monitor, the chair was turned away, and I could just see the top of Hecatia's head over it along with the globe on top. She didn't move or say anything, even when I stepped inside. The moonlight illuminated the table in the center, which had been cluttered with various media; magazines with drawings of Reimu or Haruhi on their covers, DVD cases for various shows and movies centered around Haruhi, and even a stack of music albums in the middle, which was topped by another stack of computer games. The top game, which was all I could see, looked like it had a completely different art style from the games we'd seen earlier. In fact, there were several other cases here and there which appeared to be games based on the same world, but made by many different people.

...Different interpretations, she said.

I was starting to understand the bigger picture. Each of these may have gathered enough faith to become their own universe. Ours was probably the same - a crossover story created for the express purpose of finding a Haruhi that was compatible with Hecatia. This might even have been where it was written.

And if it was written here, how fitting, considering this was actually a literature club in the first place.

I drew the Sword of Hisou and walked forward, uninterested in giving her another chance for a monologue. If there was a trap, I'd be okay. If that was a straw dummy in the chair instead of Hecatia, so what? The only way to find out would be to do it.

Between the table and the computer desk, a pair of runes appeared in midair before me, spanning the width of the room. I stopped and backed up a bit, having expected as much, but still fuming that I wasn't sure how to get around it. I didn't want to get too close to them either, in case she could sucker-punch me with them or something.

Asakura...

[Asakura:] "Give me a few minutes."

We might not have a few minutes.

The chair squeaked and turned, and Hecatia herself came round to face me. She was completely healed, with the only trace of wear on her whole body being her countenance; her eyes were dull and lidded, her expression dead. For a moment, or maybe I imagined it, she looked like she was dreading every movement she made. Even when she'd turned around, she did so with hesitation, like it was painful to look me in the eye. After she did, though, she drew in a breath and seemed to come back to life, the defiant, condescending spark returning to her eyes. Even her clothing looked new, though it was the exact same ensemble from before, with the black T-shirt with white English lettering. It was a bizarre choice of fashion from the moment I'd first laid eyes on it, but especially now, it didn't seem to suit her.

"You must really like that shirt," I said without emotion. Stalling seemed like my only good option, even if it might also have been what Hecatia wanted.

"I hate it," she replied with a hard edge to her voice. "Do you have any idea how long it's been since this was trendy?"

Was it ever?

Hecatia crossed her legs and put both hands on the arms of the chair, never breaking eye contact with me as she said, "This is what I wore back then. The me in your universe likes this kind of thing, so it's my whole wardrobe now. To do otherwise would be to tell the universe that Hecatia Lapislazuli is not as she should be."

And as we've learned, reality just can't handle things not being right. Seems it's pretty temperamental.

"Sorry you had to suffer so much," I replied, putting a bit of extra sarcasm into it.

"Don't worry. I'll make new clothes once I have the power to," she said, the corner of her lip turning up into a slight smirk. "If I can't avenge my friends, I can at least avenge good taste."

"Your friends? Like Nagato?" I kept myself from shouting, squeezing the hilt in my hand instead. Reimu came up at my shoulder, though she didn't say anything, and Hecatia ignored her presence to continue staring at me.

"Yes. Like Nagato," she said coolly. "Such is the trust between us that the dead shall not remain as such. Nagato was my writer, you see - she had the creativity for it, and more importantly, a small amount of Suzumiya's power. With these gifts, she gave birth to our new universes, including yours." Hecatia pursed her lips, taking a moment to think. "Yours is... a copy of a copy. One of several interpretations of a script of her creation, which was given to Clownpiece to prepare as she would. Nagato needed the rest of us, and the rest of us needed her. Though she never would form a relationship with the rest of us, there still existed faith between she and I."

Are you serious-

"Faith that you betrayed!" I hit the wall to my right with the hilt, wishing that I could have directed it forward instead. "The moment she couldn't fight any more, you stabbed her in the back just to get at us! What gives you the right to play around with people like that? To just execute them whenever you feel like it?!"

"Someone must. That is why the gods exist." Hecatia's eyes turned on Reimu's now instead, and she frowned. "But your gods are absent. Suzumiya will do nothing with her power, and neither will Sasaki. They could remake this world, all worlds, into a paradise, free of hunger and fear. They could abolish karma, and fill our hearts with peace. But by never acting, it is they who are dooming us to suffer. It is they who are toying with our lives, executing us, and binding us to this cruel and unreasonable existence. Their only excuse is ignorance; and what will happen on the day when Suzumiya wakes up to her power, and Sasaki comes to accept the reality of it?" Hecatia raised her right hand slightly off the arm of the chair and made a fist. "They will continue to make excuses, and the world will not change. That is what happened when I attempted to reason with them myself."

...And that's what led to another Yasumi chasing you across universes. The time that Seija mentioned, the first and only time you tried to recruit someone more powerful than you.

Even though it came to me in fragments, I had a pretty good picture of the Furies' history now. Naturally, they must have tried everything, and failure after failure had driven Hecatia to try and remake the whole multiverse. It wasn't that I couldn't understand. But still...

Hecatia continued to speak, more boldly than before. "Parents, leaders, rulers, gods, and buddhas must always exist above people. They must always guide them towards the right view, resolve, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and samadhi. Only then can we be enlightened and free from the torment of existence. A god that does not act is no god at all; and though my title as a goddess of Hell was once nothing more than that, I will step in now, with all of my borrowed power, to fill that empty seat."

Contrary to her words, Hecatia now stood up, facing me head-on with her burning gaze. I glared back with as much resolve, but felt my passion falter as hers arose. I couldn't say anything, and nor could Reimu, because she didn't give us an opening. She kept talking, authority in her voice and will in her words.

"I'll share a secret with you. The world you know, the world you are fighting for, has ended. Nothing you do can change its fate." She stared me right in the eyes as she said that, nothing but sincerity in her voice.

"Wha-" Again, I couldn't get in a word.

"I have shown her everything. While we were one, I revealed to Suzumiya within our minds all that you had done to control her. That you toyed with her, lied to her, used her, and treated her like a thing as you now accuse of me. If I should somehow fall here, and she wakes up, she will do nothing, just like the other one... or she will do something, and it will not be pleasant. Which one do you think will be worse? No matter what, you will suffer, and it will be at her hands, for she has the power, and the responsibility, to save us all, and I pray she will find the sense to finish what I began. If it is not me, it must be her. If it is not her, it must be Sasaki. Someone must act, or condemn us all." Hecatia curled in her fingers at her sides, shaking a bit with indignation. She folded her arms against her body, perhaps as much to calm herself as to judge us, silent as we were. I, and apparently Reimu, found ourselves a bit stunned.

"I am sorry to do this, I truly am," she said, a little more measured now. "But your story has long ended, and you cannot remain clinging to the world you once knew. You have nothing left to fight for from your end - I took that away from you. The only good that can come is from my end. The dead shall be restored, and all evils undone. It is only your own memories that you truly protect."

...

...Is it sad to say that she had a point? I mean... Yeah, I didn't want Haruhi to go crazy with her powers, but...

She told Haruhi.

She told Haruhi everything. All that we've done. All my efforts, our efforts, were undone, and we couldn't do anything.

All my effort meant nothing. If she was telling the truth, and it sure as hell sounded like she was, then she just negated all the time and effort that I had put into the Brigade. Gone, all in an instant. And it felt like I had been hit in the gut with a sledgehammer.

What have I been doing with my life?

I sat in a room with a being who had the power to change the world. To end it as well, but still, I'd already convinced her not to let go of it entirely. I had sat with her, played her games, did her little requests, all to appease her, placate her, not to use her powers. I mean, I get it, my world wasn't perfect. Far from it. It was messy, complicated, and full of loss. Hatred. I'd seen plenty of hatred first-hand, and indulged in it myself.

Should I have done something? Should I have taken it upon myself to make the world a better place? Maybe if I did, I wouldn't have been in that situation.

Hecatia was right. The world that I'd known had ended. I couldn't go back to that imperfect world, even if I tried.

When Haruhi woke up from her shock, she'd...

It really wouldn't matter if we won, would it? But if we just used Asahina to...

To...

To what? To find a way to undo all this? Time travel so Haruhi becomes ignorant again, or pull some time loop trick so she never really learns? To keep lying to her? To keep her locked away? To live this life of not doing anything for the world just because I was content with how my own life was going? If I wasn't content, would I be on Hecatia's side right now instead? Was that really all there was to my motivation? Just a selfish man, a boy even, struggling against change?

[Nagato:] "I do not think that is the case."

But how can you say that? She's right, isn't she?

[Nagato:] "Do you not remember your reason for fighting against her when she offered you mercy back in Former Hell?"

Flashes of the Furies appeared in my mind. Clownpiece delighting in beating me with the baseball bat, Junko declaring her intention to torment Chang'e forever, Jinwu standing in the ruins of a world she'd destroyed, and the visage of Quarter, her body crumbling away because of Mayumi's rage.

...Because I didn't think she was telling the truth. Because their group was full of such ugly people, there was no way their world could be a paradise. But even that was just emotional reasoning, wasn't it? I said myself that Clownpiece would probably be remade. Hecatia said to Junko that she would free her from her grudge, which means that her plans for Chang'e probably wouldn't happen... In other words, she'll make them all good. Then again, that's kind of a form of brainwashing, but again, is that really so bad...?

[Nagato:] "Answer these two questions: Do you believe that she is telling the truth? And do you believe, as she does, that Haruhi Suzumiya's full power is sufficient to recreate the entire multiverse as cleanly as she claims?"

...To be honest, I've learned to stop doubting what Haruhi is capable of.

I couldn't possibly answer the second question, which might have been an answer in and of itself - how could Hecatia know? As for the first one, her words seemed to be consistent, but...

[Asakura:] "You should know that it's easy to pretend to be someone that you're not."

...Yeah. Thanks to you.

The difference between Hecatia's actions and Hecatia's words was the key. Many of her actions could be explained by saying, "she had to remain resolved to her mission," or "she was pushed this far because anything less would fail." I understood that. But still, if there was something else to it that I couldn't see...

...Well, I'll admit it. I wasn't the best person to be making this final decision. If I was to have the resolve to do this for real, I'd need to rely on the judgment of those I trusted, rather than the words of my own enemy. I had friends. Nagato obviously wasn't convinced, and judging by Reimu's hardened expression next to me, she wasn't either, even if she didn't say anything about it.

[Asakura:] "Her exact words on the matter were, 'Get out of my head and get to work on opening this rune so I can exterminate her!'"

Sounds like her.

If Reimu's intuition said that was right, that was compelling by itself, but I needed more. I saw Tenshi and Youmu behind me when I looked, while the others were hanging out just outside the door. Koizumi, of note, was leaning against the door frame and keeping the greater part of his attention on one of the books from the other room while Asakura looked on. They didn't speak, but it looked like they must have been communicating in his head. When I spotted them, Asakura smiled, and seemingly prompted by her, Koizumi looked up from the book at me, then left the wall to join us in front of Hecatia, apparently in good spirits.

"Something to say?" I asked.

"A few things. Well, to begin with, another question of curiosity," said Koizumi as he shuffled around the front of the room, fingering the book in his hands and eyeing the bookcase to our left. There, in front of a series of books, was a figurine of me standing alongside one of Marisa, holding her broom. "I mean, this sounds complicated, and I'll admit I don't know the intricacies of all aspects of creating a universe. I'm nowhere near understanding such a thing. But... why write it? Why create Suzumiya just to steal her power? If you can write any story and have it come true, there must have been other ways." He turned to Hecatia, still giving a fake smile.

"I tried. We all tried everything before resorting to this," Hecatia said bitterly. "Nagato's power is insufficient to give birth to a godlike ability not near to her own. Even so much as a change in personality - she could have created a Suzumiya that was subservient to me, but such a change in her character would rob her of what I needed. And it did."

"What... Like, it just doesn't work?" I said.

"Haruhi Suzumiya must be Haruhi Suzumiya," said Hecatia. "The only way to change who she is - I would have to alter the way that all the multiverse imagines her. Even I do not know how many worlds there are." She folded her hands, becoming solemn. "As did mankind learn to split the atom, harnessing her power productively took trial after trial. Any world in which she is written to have those powers, but does not, will swiftly collapse under the weight of paradox. In the end, it became more about changing what was around her instead of the girl herself."

...How about that. She's stubborn even across the multiverse. If she can't be herself, then the world can't exist.

"And so, her worlds can only be combined with those that are similar. Your world-" she glanced at Reimu, "- Our world, was useful enough. Already, it had more faith than we could have gotten with an original story, and it was highly compatible with Suzumiya's mythos. Suzumiya must establish herself as the cause of all things - any magic, any advanced technology, anything not within the mundane must be linked to her. Do you see why her power is so worth fighting for?" her eyes seemed to shine, and she almost looked happy for a moment. "Worth wielding as my own? Even in a multiverse such as ours, it is beyond all else."

"I see. Thank you for your answer," said Koizumi, as politely as if we were having a friendly evening chat. He then lifted up the book in his hands, and said, "But that isn't the only facet you can't change, is it? Miss Asakura has been sharing some interesting points of data with me. This one in particular caught my eye." He held it up, showing off the cover, which had another picture of Haruhi on the front and was titled The Dissociation of Haruhi Suzumiya. I noticed that it had a few more creases on the cover than the volume I'd looked at, and the binding of the book was worn to the point that it remained open to a certain page even as he handed it over to me. When he did so, I thought I sensed Hecatia's body go stiff. Koizumi pointed to a particular passage.

---

I shook my head to clear it of the pointless notion.

"So," I said, my voice finally recovered, "what do you want me to do about it? Transfer Haruhi's power to Sasaki? That's totally impossible."

Kyoko Tachibana looked at me seriously for a while, then giggled.

"Not necessarily. If you cooperate, it can be done. If you and Sasaki both say you'll do it. That's all we want. Simple, isn't it?"

---

I had a vague memory of that conversation. It was my first trip into Sasaki's closed space, when Kyouko Tachibana took me away from my meeting with her, Sasaki, Fujiwara, and Suou. Strange to think that it only happened because millions of people or more across the multiverse had read it on a page like this one.

Yeah, for some reason, they needed my help in order to do it...

...

"One point that intrigued me," said Koizumi to me, "was the fact that you were not among the Furies. Not even the clay soldiers. I had thought the reason to be your lack of... power, but I begin to wonder now if there isn't some other reason for it."

Power can mean a lot of things, though.

I looked up at Koizumi, only to find that Seija was standing behind him, with her back almost pressed against his. Her eyes were on Hecatia over both their shoulders, and her face was twisted between a smirk and a scowl.

...And even the weak, in some ways...

I looked back at Hecatia, who was now holding a smile that looked just like Koizumi's. I remembered how she always seemed to fixate on me. She singled me out to beat me down with all three of her selves, before finally killing me with her own hands. She left the others, who were all more powerful, to her minions. She spoke to me the most out of anyone. Maybe it was just because she saw me as the "main character" of my universe, or maybe...

"Hecatia..." I took in a deep breath, my chest tightening, as I held the book closer to me. "It's me, isn't it? I can somehow get Haruhi's power to move, can't I?"

She sat there, still smiling at me. "You do not need to concern-"

"Which means even if you got it, I could somehow get it back from you-"

Her mouth pressed into a tight line. "You do not need to concern yourselves with what will happen afterwards."

I don't know if it's because I'm close to both of them or what, but I have something to do with that power. I can affect it. That's the only thing that makes sense. Which means-

"She was never gonna let you live." Seija finally spoke, skulking out from Koizumi's shadow to leer at Hecatia properly. She grinned, even though her eyes stayed dead, and said, "I finally get it. I always wondered, y'know? What'll you do when you gotta mash together a bunch of worlds that don't fit right? Are you gonna meld with all of your other selves...? Or just destroy 'em so you can keep your identity? You always gotta make exceptions for yourself, just like Reimu."

"I do wish I had killed you earlier," said Hecatia. Her tone sounded calm, but underneath, I sensed restraint.

"Well, you didn't." Seija bugged out one of her eyes, and her face almost started to resemble the Seija of my universe. A little bit of life crept back into her, and she started to flex her hand again. "If only one world exists, then everything not wanted gets erased. And if that power ain't enough to rewrite the laws of reality, then you know, there's only one way to erase something for good. Is that why I saw you practicing? Making all those tests on those other doomed universes?"

"'Implant this story into the public consciousness...'" Youmu mumbled, her eyes full of sorrow and dread. "'Then replace it with this variation. Erase every trace of the original from existence. Kill the author, and anyone who speaks of it...' She gave Mayumi an order like that once."

Seija clapped her hands together, now with a full-on mad, manic grin. "All to retcon a small part of it out of existence. Erase the inconvenient bits, and keep what you want. If Hecatia had those girls' powers, then she could do something like that across the entire multiverse, and remove anything - or anyone - she wanted."

...In other words...

Me. Because as long as I'm connected to that power, then no matter how small, I'll always be a threat.

She's really that afraid of me?

[Nagato:] "By the state of the book in your hands, it would seem so."

It was almost unbelievable. In that case, she'd have to either kill or alter the memories of anyone who knew about me.

Everyone who knew of me. Everyone I had met, and not met, but who'd heard of me. Anyone who had seen those animations, listened to my voice.

Anyone who had even read about me would be a target.

They'd all be a threat to her perfect world. In fact, if one were making a "perfect" world, then after everything gets melded, it'd be a pain to have everyone with so many alternate memories of themselves, right? But removing those memories is the same as killing all of the people they used to be, if not the act of melding itself.

...And if she'd do it to me, she'd do it to anyone. Even after making her so-called perfect world... if that world is even really possible to begin with.

The more I thought about this perfect universe, the less it seemed to make sense. Her goal wasn't just creation, but the destruction of all things she considered to be evil. Practically speaking, that would mean destroying a lot of good things, too. Maybe Hecatia thought it would be worth that, but...

...But I couldn't. I hated the idea of making something good by sacrificing others. I always had. That's why I couldn't agree with Haruhi's remake of the world. It would have sacrificed everyone else. That's why I could never agree with Sasaki's group - it would have come at Haruhi's expense. Where would ideals like that end up? Sure, we had to kill the Furies in order to save our universe, I could accept that much. But on this scale, in this way, overseen by this person - no. This was the same thing for which the Yama had been judging me - the threat of genocide. Even so, I only made that threat in defense of someone that they were going to destroy. I'm not the most righteous person in the world, but at least I know how to follow the law that says we can only fight in self-defense. There wasn't a court in all existence that would pardon Hecatia for what she'd done, nor for what she was still planning to do.

"Every sacrifice will, in the end, be towards the good," said Hecatia. "After all is said and done, there will be no more need for further sacrifices ever again."

"Screw that," I said. I turned back to her, tempering my rage so as not to lash out, but to direct it squarely where it was needed. "You don't have the right to decide that!"

"And you do?"

"No one does."

"Inaction is a decision," she seethed beneath her smile. "You choose Hell over Paradise, and call it right."

"You choose genocide, and call it fine!"

Hecatia's facade began to falter, and more and more of her anger began to reveal itself on her face. "So would you stand before Jehovah and tell Him off for His flooding of the world? Pick a fight with the Pantheon for all they unleashed on the people? Destroy Izanami for her curse on the world?"

I couldn't move. I wanted to rush forward, but doing so would mean my death. I just stood where I was, facing her from behind the rune. "Honestly... I don't give a damn about any of them. They're not in front of me. You are. You wanted me to stand up and do something for the world, well, here I am."

Hecatia showed her teeth, gritted and tense. "You stupid little boy. I just told you, you don't have a world to go back to. I am so very tired of your ignorance-"

"And I'm tired of you laying waste to everything while pretending to be the good guys!" I finally started shouting, forgetting the people around me. "Everything you say is a lie! Your people are sadistic and tyrants! Clownpiece, Jinwu, and... and Junko! Junko, what the absolute hell! Where did you find her?!"

I saw the spark of absolute rage flash through Hecatia's eyes. I had hit a nerve. "You speak of my dearest friend, boy-"

"Yeah, well, she never spoke of you very much! All she seemed to care about was who she could torture or kill! And you know what? She died believing that you'd let her keep on doing it forever!" I had so much spite in my words. I stepped closer to her, right up next to the rune. "And Nagato! Nagato! You said she had faith in you, but you went and killed her for no reason at all!"

Hecatia's mouth opened a bit wider and turned into a smile. A real one, this time. My body's temperature dropped a few degrees, and I momentarily froze, not sure if she was bluffing. "Oh, that?" she said. "I didn't kill her for no reason. Unlike your life, it actually served a purpose." She raised her right hand again, pressing her middle finger against her thumb, ready to snap.

"I used that spell card to see who wasn't flinching."

[Nagato:] "Move away from there, now!"

Hecatia snapped her fingers before I could respond... and beneath me, a red glow lit up. I instantly felt sick to my stomach, like those peaches I'd eaten had begun to revolt against my guts. There was no pain, but an intense feeling of nausea that sent me to my knees, and a gurgling sensation rushed up my esophagus, along with the taste of lime-flavored sewage-

Oh, no.

It all came up. It was, indeed, a deep ultramarine color that burst up out of me as pure liquid. It splashed all over my front, and the ground, and I felt Reimu's, Koizumi's, and Youmu's hands on my back, pulling me away from the firing rune. The liquid that hit it, along with part of the soles of my shoes, evaporated instantly - I was just barely spared the same fate, and a sharp pain followed as I hit the floor behind me at the wrong angle with my elbow.

Pain. Real, lasting pain. I sucked in my breath in horror. My hand shot up to my cheek and I pinched it as hard as I could - just pain. No foresight, no second chance.

It was gone.

No... No... She... She took it away...

Hecatia spread her arms, and the walls of the room blew apart, the runes inside them shattering into more shards like before. The roof peeled off, and all the rest of the walls on the third floor were flung aside, a stinging, dusty wind blowing in and around us all like a miniature hurricane. The desk, the table, and all of the merchandise were flung in every direction, and I couldn't react. I could only raise my arms to protect myself on the ground as I continued to retch, spewing out peach chunks mixed with what remained of the Lunarian medicine.

She took another thing away from me...

Hecatia stood amidst it all, her hair and chains flapping in the wind. She took a step forward, and looked up to see her standing tall behind her runes, triumphant.

"Now..." she said, taking the globe on her head into her palm. "...What was that you said about Junko?

---

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing was here.

And then-

She gasped, her lungs flooding once more with air and pain. Blood pumped agonizingly through her veins, the sound of life tore at her eardrums, and she opened her eyes to a searing light. Thoughts began to churn in her head; memories of pain and despair, and her very own death. In her long, long existence, she had lost count of how many times she had died and been reborn. Every time, it was the same. It was nothing but pain.

Every time, she thought, if only she wouldn't wake up again.

Master's plan was so perfect. She said she would erase the pain. Gone forever it would be, and together, they could live in an eternal paradise, as gods of a beautiful new world. That dream had meant everything. Everyone else seemed to love their own pain, and so Clownpiece had to love it, too.

"Do not regret hurting them," she had said to her once. "It is a greater mercy that they die now than live to see what happens."

Master was right. To live is to suffer, and to erase all suffering was the greatest, best thing in the world.

But she was wrong.

About so many things, she was terribly, awfully wrong.

She stood up in a world of nothing. All was black; the sky, the ground, and everything but the light of a red teleportation rune before her. It was the only thing here that existed; a small spark of life amidst perfect oblivion. She had seen this universe meet its end; Master had wanted her to appreciate the enormity of what it was they did, and she understood. The whole Wheel of Life, from Hell to Paradise; she had seen it all, and she understood. One world out of all of them had faith above all; for only one kind of world had the faith of all. The only world for which everyone longed.

"You must not be selfish," Master had always said.

Sensation came back to her, but then faded back away as she fed upon the nature of this empty place. It grew inside her, a deep and powerful void. The power of all that existed here was the power of all that did not. It ate away at everything. It swallowed the pain. Usually, there was so much more pain.

It felt good. It felt right.

Clownpiece tried to stretch her wings, but found that she did not have any. Her tongue passed over her teeth, but one was missing.

...That's right.

I still have... to finish him...

She rose to her feet, feeling the heat vanish from her legs, the void reaching down all the way to her toes.

He needs to die for what he... No... No, he just needs to die.

They all...

There was just one more thing here besides her and the rune - a fresh suit. She always had to wear the same clothes, but that was fine. It didn't matter. Nothing really mattered, actually. She started pulling it on, but it didn't feel warm. In the darkness, it was hard to tell if she was even doing it right, but she managed it eventually. The only thing left was to use the rune.

It only had one use, but that was fine. There wouldn't be a next time.

I'm going to do the right thing, Master. Just like you.

---

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