A/N: This chapter is subject to future editing and changes. Future chapters are also not guaranteed.

The school day started normally. I seldom complain about normalcy but in this one instance I knew it was merely a calm before the storm.

Suzumiya behind me didn't so much as make a sound after she sat down. It was truly like she had gone back in time to when school just started; not a word out of her mouth, and the harshest of frowns on her face. This in and of itself caused a few heads to turn and look at her, including Asakura's.

For her part, Asakura continued to play the part of a completely non-alien class representative, and had even tried to approach Suzumiya to ask whatever was the matter, only to earn herself a stern glare.

Taniguchi and Kunikida both kept looking at me like I had done something wrong, but said nothing of it.

Even by lunchtime, Suzumiya remained rooted to her seat, sitting in the same position since she got there. The sheer amount of negative energy radiating from behind me started to make the whole classroom nervous.

Still. I didn't see any point in talking to her. I knew what was on her mind.

The bell rings to end the school day. As though all her prior energy that she didn't expend since morning was suddenly bursting from her Suzumiya suddenly grabbed the back of my collar and pulled upwards with the strength of an industrial crane.

"Come!" she ordered.

Barely able to breathe a refusal I find myself dragged towards the literature clubroom at a swift pace. Only when we get there am I able to break free of her grip. "Get off me you madwoman!"

I spit and cough, cursing her with as much annoyance as my face could muster. There wasn't really even any reason for her to drag me here, after all. As much as I despise her and everything about the situation I find myself wanting answers as much as she does, only different answers to different questions.

Already seated in the room was the alien Nagato, sitting with a book in her lap and glancing at us with mild confusion at the commotion. It was like the conversation last night had never happened for her. Also in the room was Asahina, who was seated by the table, fiddling with... some sort of small contraption with various wires and microchips, humming a merry tune to herself.

"Yuki," Suzumiya addressed the Martian that had revealed herself with surprising lack of interest, like a child disinterested in an older toy in favour of a potential newer one. "Out."

You can't just order her out of the room. She's still the literature club president. The world doesn't revolve around you. Burn yourself, for heaven's sake.

Despite the rudeness of Suzumiya's demand, Nagato got up as soon as she finished with her processing time. She made an expression as though she suddenly understood what all the fuss was about as she quietly left the room. She probably did.

Which left just Suzumiya, Asahina, and myself.

"How racist," Asahina said, half to us, half to herself. She still seemed more fixated with whatever it was she had in her hands than she was with us. "Discriminating against the foreign. Suddenly treating her like she's less of a person just because she isn't native."

She childishly smiled as she talked, thinking herself clever for making such a subtle joke.

"Cut the crap..." Suzumiya practically spat, taking a chair opposite to where Asahina was. You'd think she'd be a bit more excited having this sort of conversation. "Kyon."

What? Do I have to be part of this?

Suzumiya glares at me. "Just hurry up."

Fine.

I take out the small bookmark from my pocket and put it onto the desk, right in the middle between Suzumiya and Asahina. I don't take a seat yet. I don't want to be a part of this. I'm sure Suzumiya wants to ask all the questions herself anyway.

"Mikuru," Suzumiya asks. She noticeably dropped the '-chan' as she spoke. "What is this?"

"Hmm? Haven't you worked that one out by now?" was the reply. Asahina didn't so much as look up yet.

Yeah. I have an idea of what it is. It's some sort of technology that you got in the future. I don't know if it's man-made or Martian or if it's from the Galactic Empire in another dimension. Regardless, it's some sort of self-activating shield, and it protected me when Nagato shot at me with her laser/freeze-ray. You gave it to me because you knew I'd end up seeing the giant UFO.

"Eight points out of ten," Asahina said, giggling a little. "Martians are like that. Paranoid. Secretive. Hostile. Territorial. Apparently, according to future archeologists, they actually remain extremely pacifistic throughout all their history."

Eighty percent... less than I'd like, but more than I put in effort for.

"Heh. The other two points are for working out that it's also visual communication of signals," she further elaborates with absolute casualness. "As soon as your brain receives and decrypts the signals it lets you see past certain Martian stealth technologies."

Sure. Whatever.

Suzumiya shoots me a quick glare. Evidently she isn't happy about not being in on the conversation.

"So..." the self declared SOS brigade leader continues. "You're a time traveller, right?"

"Mmhmm." Asahina hummed with a nod, still not glancing up.

"And you're from the future?"

"Yep."

"With a time machine?"

"If that's what you call it."

"And you've already met Yuki and Itsuki in other periods of time?"

"I thought that one was obvious."

She answered every one of Suzumiya's questions with the rapid ease and disinterest as she would if she was asked basic addition of single digit integers. Despite her beauty in every other way her attitude was something that was really starting to get on my nerves. From the look on Suzumiya's face, it must be getting to her as well.

"There we go," Asahina said, wiping dust off of her hands and flicking a switch on whatever it was that she was working on.

And from the small contraption appeared a semi-transparent, three dimensional hologram. What the diagram was I wasn't sure of. It was made up of odd geometric shapes interlocking one another, and just rotating slowly, to allow us to get the view all around.

Asahina looks at us with a look of pride. "Impressive isn't it? I made it using a bunch of junk I bought when I was travelling the silk road fifteen hundred years ago."

Enough showing off. Get to the point.

Pouting a little for our lack of appreciation of her handicraft, Asahina begins her lengthy explanation. As she does so the 3D hologram changes, like animated slides to a seminar power point. She begins to regard us with the most seriousness that I've heard her speak with from the moment I met her.

"There are three dimensions of space, as you know. Length, width, height. Moving by rail is like one dimensional movement; a straight line, set by the rail. Movement by car is like movement in the second dimension; forward back as well as left and right. Aircraft is the third dimension, letting you go up and down.

"The fourth dimension of time, too, is something that can be moved through. Other mechanics are involved too... it requires a lot of mathematical working, but to be honest, humans have been time travelling as early as the second century AD, but those were some terrible vehicles; only going one way, or only having one passenger. This one guy I met ended up getting sacrificed in Mesoamerica because his time travel device was a one use contraption.

"Anyway, so I'm from the far future. I'll tell you this now: it's a bleak place in the future. I myself grew up in the ghettos no less. Part of the reason I decided to travel to the 21st century was because it's considered the golden age of humanity. After the year 2100, though, everything started going downhill: Fossil fuels run out. Pollution causes the sea to be completely toxic. Space programmes go awry, causing satellites to fall into the sea, which lead to toxic tsunamis around the world. There was even a nuclear war over in Europe; I think it was something about working conditions. Anyway... by the 23rd century, anything that could've gone wrong had gone wrong. One would think that's about the time things start lightening up a little, right? Except they didn't. In fact, they got worse.

"You see, humanity survived through the apocalyptic century through all sorts of nonsense; cybernetic implants, genetic engineering, enhancement drugs... by the time the human race was no longer in danger we were no longer really the human race anymore. Everyone had too many modifications to be considered 'human', and we were all too dependent on technology. What happens afterwards is the creation of the 'World Government', and then segregation of humans based on how much modifications they had.

"I don't really know what happens afterwards to be honest, because everything that happens afterwards is clouded by so much brainwashing and World Government propaganda, and it's hard to tell truth from lies. That and the fact that the invention of cyberspace started to make it harder and harder to tell reality from VR; I'm not even sure if all this is just a simulation right now. I do know, however, that there's a significant amount of drug abuse, cyber crime, backstabbing, exploiting... I actually had to do a few terrible things myself to get the parts of my time machine from the black market. I wanted to go back in time to try and find a way to prevent the future I was from, so I kept going further and further back to try and find the point where it all started.

"Then I failed. Time is a funny thing; it's a surprisingly solidly locked loop. It's all consistent. You can go back and forth between time, but I'm still not sure you can go left right and up down; in other words, create and travel to alternate universes. Every time I try to change the future by altering the past it just happens that whatever I did was what actually caused that same future. If I try to go back a second time to try and do something completely different it ends up like it didn't happen, and I still go forward into the same future. I don't really know why. I suppose my mind is just not set to the mathematical calculations needed to make it possible yet. So now that I find it's impossible to change the future I ended up deciding to just spend the rest of my life somewhere relaxing.

"And that brought me to you guys. Met you guys in the past, actually. Not that you know yet. Time travel trouble. You'll see one day. Any questions? "

She smiled with the conclusion of her presentation, losing her tone of seriousness once again, and switching back to lightheartedness. The hologram disappears like someone hit the 'off' button to the television.

Suzumiya once again wore an expression of great conflict as she was deep in thought.

"What about the Martians?" she asks.

Perhaps I blinked, or it was the lighting... but Asahina's permanently cheerful smile seemingly twitched for a moment. "From what I've learnt they're like intelligent, telepathic cloudlets held together by electromagnetic energy and radiation. Much smaller than human microbes. Capable of infiltrating bodies of humans and rapidly assimilating them. Didn't Yuki-chan already tell you about this?"

No, frankly, she didn't. I suppose, then, technically Nagato and Asakura are just human bodies dominated by Martian souls, or something of that like.

"Yuki said she's here as part of an invasion force," Suzumiya says. "What happens?"

"My my... straight to the point..." Asahina murmurs to herself, shaking her head for a while. She then paused to look at the closed door nervously, fearing that Nagato may be overhearing our conversation. As she does so Suzumiya finds herself also glancing in the same direction, having forgotten that the very alien she speaks of is probably at the other end of that door.

The hologram reappears once again, showing a perfect, reddish sphere. "Not everything I can say about the Martians is necessarily true, since the topic was subject to a lot of World Government propaganda and cover up," Asahina starts with a disclaimer. "I've also been told by several Martians I've crossed paths with that to them time travelling or telling the future to the past is taboo. So... in respect of Yuki-chan, I don't really think I should say too much. I can tell you, though, they do certainly invade, and the invasion was quite devastating."

As she talked, though, Asahina shot another glance at the door. At the same time I noticed the hologram flicker for a brief moment, and was replaced by barely legible characters which I only just managed to read.

'They die out. Don't tell Yuki.'

After a while Asahina once again clears up, and smiles in her chipper manner. "Still. If there's anything else you want to know I'll probably tell you more than Yuki-chan does, but I'm not sure if what I say is true or not," she says, once again speaking like she treats life a joke. "I'd probably tell you just to annoy her. Oh, that applies about anything about the future as well."

"Okay..." Suzumiya continues. "So why are you telling us all this? Why reveal yourself to us?"

Asahina looked at Suzumiya with, for once, what seems like the same expression Suzumiya has whenever I ask her a question that she finds stupid. "If we're going to be friends then we're going to have to properly know each other first, right? Besides; when I met you guys you already knew I was from the future. Might as well be the person to tell it to you."

Simple as that.

Suzumiya returned to her silence as she tried to take in all this information. For her the entire idea may be a mixture of 'it's too simple', and 'this is exciting'. Just about everything Asahina said about the future was so typical, like it was dragged out of an science fiction film from the 80s or the 90s.

Me... I still didn't care about all that. Maybe these big things will happen in my lifetime, and maybe they won't. It's not my place to bother. Instead... I worried about other things.

"You said you met us in the past..." I said, finally speaking my share. I should keep it brief; Suzumiya doesn't like it when I take charge, and neither do I. The less I say the better. "When exactly did you meet us?"

Asahina smiled at me slyly. Surprisingly, she didn't speak at all with the usual pity that I receive when talking on this topic. It was nice, I think, not being pitied. "Oh, don't play coy," she teased with a wink. "You should know better than I do. It was on that day three years ago, of course!"

Of course. When else?

Suzumiya once again turned to look at me, increasingly displeased that I always seemed further ahead in getting myself wrapped into it all than she is. I want to say 'it's not my fault! I don't even want to be here!', but the very fact that she doesn't ask me to spit out what I know has already proven that she knows that.

"Don't feel jealous, Haru-chan," Asahina perkily comments on Suzumiya's obvious envy. "You'll be there too. In fact, you were the exact reason I was there. I'm sure it's the same for Yuki-chan. Probably for Itsuki-chan too."

Suzumiya gives out a small 'humph!', showing that while she is still unhappy she is temporarily satisfied with the promise that she'll be focus of the world one day. Most likely, though, she's still going to end up demanding whatever information I have, no matter how much I'd rather not think about it.

"Whatever..." Suzumiya ends up saying, standing from her chair. "We still have to talk to Itsuki. Come." She storms out the door, expecting me to follow.

You don't have to order me around.

After all, Koizumi is the one out of the three I want to know about the most.

Suzumiya and I walk side by side down the hallway, neither speaking nor looking at each other. Whatever it is she has to say to me she must be saving it for last. Of course... I don't have anything I want to say to her, but I'm starting to get the feeling that I'm not in charge of my own fate.

"Do you think that's really the future of humanity?" Suzumiya asks abruptly, stopping dead in her tracks at the bottom of the stairway.

Interesting that you aren't even questioning the idea that she's from the future.

"It seems too predictable..." Suzumiya continued. "It's like everything she said was from reading sci-fi future cliches. All that about the terrible future and time travelling back to try and find a way to fix things. It isn't original at all."

So? Aren't you satisfied with the fact that you even got to meet a time traveller? Or is there something else that's bugging you?

Suzumiya starts to say something before she switches gears. "Never mind. Let's just find Itsuki. Well... where do you suppose he is?"

Well he wasn't at the clubroom. Perhaps he's even decided to drop the club altogether and is heading home right now, or he might be looking around at other clubs. Who knows? Maybe he even transferred out of school already. There's a million possibilities like that.

But I doubt it.

On a normal occasion I'd have just said any of the above excuses, shrugged, and ignored Suzumiya. But not today. Even I have something I want to say to him. For that reason I muster every bit of my resolve, and decide to try something that seems completely insane, yet I'm somehow sure will work.

"Hey. Koizumi." I call out in a voice much louder than I'm used to hearing myself in. "Come over here for a minute. We need to talk."

The sound of my voice seems to echo through the empty hallway of the first floor. There was no response.

It didn't work. I thought to myself, half disappointed, while also half relieved.

I was about to pass the whole thing off with a shrug when I see Koizumi's face peeping at us from beneath the stairs.

Why on Earth are you sitting down there? I thought. Suzumiya is probably thinking the same thing too.

Koizumi crawled out of the small, dark area beneath the stairs, quietly murmuring to us. "H... hey guys. I was just... sitting down there. Nothing strange."

He tried for a moment to smile at us politely, but soon he realised his explanation failed to actually explain anything.

"Err... well I was actually going to the clubroom... then I saw this area down here, and felt like just sitting down for a while. The... the darkness is actually quite nice, and it's pretty quiet and peaceful... and nobody can see me down here, so..." Koizumi elaborated in a shaky voice, desperate to avoid being judged, but really his attempts to explain himself only end up sounding more and more strange. In the end Koizumi just gave up, and stared glumly at his own feet.

I keep my silence, and surprisingly so does Suzumiya. It's amazing that she's able to muster up the compassion to not force Koizumi to hurry up. Maybe she's expecting him to tell him her whole story anyway, and doesn't mind the wait. Maybe she's just... testing him.

"Yes..." Koizumi mumbles, after a long while of silence. "I'm an ESPer."

His statement was not surprising to anyone, so we simply wait for him to continue.

Koizumi took several deep breathes before continuing, shuffling and shifting several times, thinking of a way to build upon his statement. When he did pick up once again he spoke in a way that seemed like he was apologising that he kept it a secret.

"T... to be honest... I didn't know when it all started. I don't actually know much about any of this myself. In fact... I think Nagato-san and Asahina-san know more about me than I do. Still... I always remembered things would happen to me ever since I was little. Weird things, I mean. Some of them still feel like they're dreams...

"At first I don't think I didn't understand. I thought they were all pretty normal, because I was used to it. Overtime, though... I started to realise I was different from everyone else. People started to avoid me, or throw things at me, or call me names. Bad things also happen to me more often than other people. There are also a lot of things that I see that other people don't... so much that I'm not actually exactly sure what normal people can see, so I'm often to afraid to talk about any of it...

"Every time something terrible or drastic happens that other people consider 'abnormal' my family ends up moving, and I transfer schools. The more I moved the less frequent things happened. I used to have to transfer every few weeks, but I stayed at my last school for almost a full year. Since I transferred to this school, though, weird things are happening again. They aren't bad things... but... I can tell they aren't normal. I don't know why... there just seems to be a large concentration of energy in this place.

"Ah... there are others like me too. I found out when I started getting older, I started to hear more and more voices in my head... there are actually quite a few of us around the country, and we try to help each other out, mostly. Most of them are very nice people, and they've often helped me adjust whenever I encountered a problem. It's kind of like... a forum network in our minds.

"Yeah... yeah I can read your minds, yes. Not always. I try to avoid reading people's minds... it's not polite, and it's also quite scary what other people think sometimes. Sometimes I can't ignore it, though, and other times I can't hear no matter how hard I try. That sort of thing happens with all my extrasensory perceptive powers. Sometimes they work, other times they don't. Sometimes I see and hear visions, other times I don't. It's all very murky.

"I think... I think there's definitely a pattern behind it all though. The universe should have a plan, I think. I mean... I often get a sort of 'gut feeling', and I always follow it... and that's what brought me to you guys, and to Nagato-san and Asahina-san, and I'm very thankful for that. You guys are the first friends I've made at school since I was six.

"That's... that's everything, I think..." Koizumi ended his speech, his voice trailing off into obscurity. "Ah... I'm not keeping any secrets, by the way... unlike the other two," he began again, somehow convinced that we didn't believe him. "So that really is everything... but I think the other two have their own reasons for not telling you about themselves."

As with the Martians and the time traveller, Suzumiya paused to take in Koizumi's story. After considering what he had said she follows with the same sort of question drilling that she had taken with Nagato, Asakura and Asahina.

"So that's really everything, huh...?" she asked rhetorically, evidently readying herself to see if she could pry more out of him. "What kind of powers do you have?"

"... Just... typical psychic powers. I'm not too sure... sometimes I have some of them, other times I don't..." Koizumi said, a repeat of what he had already told us.

"So do you get visions of the future?"

"...Sometimes...?"

"How far into the future?"

"... I don't know..."

"What time is Mikuru-chan is from?"

"I don't know..."

"What about Yuki-chan? Where is she from?"

"I... I still think she's from someplace else..."

"How can you tell?"

"I... it's like she has a cloud all around her... and a lot of harmless radiation... I don't know..."

"Where is she from?"

"I don't know..."

"What is she here for?"

"I don't know...

"How did you get your powers?"

"I... I don't know..."

Koizumi's voice seemed to diminish with each 'I don't know' he said, and he seemed to get increasingly nervous, like a child being asked extremely hard Maths equations with the threat of being smacked.

Suzumiya lets out a disappointed sigh. "Doesn't look like you're lying, but you really don't seem to know much," she comments. "Why does there have to be an inverse proportion to the amount of information known and amount of information willing to say?"

Koizumi, slouches into a small bow, barely making out a 'sorry'. Not that he has to apologise for anything.

There was still one more thing that I had to ask him, though. There was one thing I still needed to know, and only Koizumi could tell me the answer.

"Hey, Koizumi," I began. "Sorry to bother you. I know it's hard for all this to be dumped on you only the second day here at this school, but..."

Before I could actually ask my question, though, Koizumi had cut me off, managing to glance up at me, making eye contact with me for the first time throughout the conversation.

"Yes," he said.

Is he just saying that...? I began to ask myself. Or does he really...?

Perhaps reading my mind, Koizumi eliminated the doubt I had in my voice with his following sentence. "I could hear her," he said. His voice was sad, which it usually was, but somehow... it also seemed consoling. "We all could."

Suzumiya glanced at me, probably to ask 'who is this 'her'?' or something. It wasn't important. She kept her mouth shut. I've already got my answer.

"Look... Kyon..." Koizumi forced himself to continue, his face twisted with pain. From his expression I could easily tell that he was not lying when he said he heard it. He was probably closer to her than I was. "We're all really sorry... I mean..."

"Don't worry about it. I'm sure you didn't mean anything bad anyway." I save him the need to give an obligatory apology for something that probably wasn't his fault.

For a moment Koizumi hesitated. Since he's probably reading my mind this instant he can probably tell I'm hesitant myself. Thankfully, though, he stops talking about it. He turns instead to Suzumiya. "Sorry..." he apologises to her once again, despite not really needing to. "It's rude of us to not include you in our conversation... but you shouldn't mind too much. I have a strong feeling that you'll be more connected to the rest of us in future."

He ended with a bow, and headed up towards the literature clubroom.

Which left me, once again alone with Suzumiya.

So? Do you doubt Koizumi's an esper?

Suzumiya shook her head. "No, not at all," she said wearily. "I mean, it's a typical story of a boy who suddenly develops ESPer powers and gets picked on and constantly has to transfer schools... boring, but I don't think he's lying."

How do you know he isn't hypnotising you into thinking that way?

Suzumiya shook her head again. "More importantly..." she began to look at me once again with the expectation that I'm to tell her everything about myself. Though... it was less of a demand to tell her, and more of a casual, half-hearted questioning look.

What? Is this where I tell you my life story?"

"Well I've already got an alien, a time traveller and an ESPer. So what does that make you? A slider?"

Where on Earth did you get that notion?

I sigh, opening my mouth to speak. "I'm just an ordinary human."

It was an honest truth, and was something that I said with probably a bit more bitterness than I intended.

Suzumiya looked at me with a degree of suspicion, which I once again choose to ignore. I've answered my fill. I don't like to elaborate on my past... or elaborate at all. I've had enough 'supernatural' for one day. I turn and leave.

Surprisingly... and thankfully, Suzumiya makes no attempt to stop me.

I end up walking aimlessly until the sun begins to set before I finally make my way home. When I get back in through the door I am once again greeted by silence. Having no energy or will left in me to cook I decide that I'll survive without dinner.

As I lie on my bed, staring at my ceiling, I can't help but feel numb. Everything is coming to me. Everything I've tried to suppress is starting to surface. I can't help but laugh a little at the irony. Just a small smile at first... then a small chuckle. I suppose letting some expression show on my face doesn't hurt if nobody's around to see it... I decide to laugh some more. Soon, the sound of my mad cackling begins to echo across the house, without anyone around to hear.

"Oh the irony! Oh the goddamned irony!" I start to hoot. "After all this time! After all that's happened! This is happening to me now of all times!"

I hate you all. I want nothing to do with you anymore. I just want a normal life as a normal high school student doing normal things. I want to stop standing out above the crowd. I want people to stop staring. I want to stop staring. Now suddenly everything starts popping up at me, and somehow thatday three years ago becomes the biggest thing in the universe.

After all this time... after all that's happened... why now? WHY NOW!?

Jump of a bridge. Suffer and burn. Just die. Go to hell. All of you.

A/N: I'm posting up these chapters far faster than I expect myself to normally, but don't get too used to it. The speed is already starting to drop. The upside of that is that these updates come out faster. The downside is that they may be rushed, so poorer quality, and more subject to future change (it's a bad habit of mine to rush these things).

This chapter ended up in the unfortunate position of a mostly uninteresting exposition chapter. There's simply so much that I want to explain and it's hard to find places to explain them.

Asahina and time travellers I had originally wanted to base off of H.G. Wells' Time Machine (which I still draw some inspiration from), but I already used H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds for the Martians. I then looked to 1950s and 60s ideals of the future, but came to realise that there's a pretty big gap between their ideals and what is plausible to happen in the future (we're already far ahead). I also noted that much retro-future sci-fi is heavily American influenced, whereas Japanese science fiction only started to be a thing later on, so I ended up having the future that Asahina was from as based off of cyberpunk genre.

I had some extreme difficulty working out the exact relation between the Martians and time travellers, and to some extent, with the ESPers as well, because this chapter lays a lot of the foundations that they have to work on in future.

Another hard thing was making the ESPers interesting... since compared to Martians and the future, there's surprisingly little that can be elaborated on with typical psychic powers that isn't already explored in common fictional works. It's still hard to try and wedge Koizumi into a place in my planning, but I'm slowly getting there.

And since I'm on a rant of difficult things when writing here; it's also really hard to work with Kyon in this, due to the fact that I'm still not altogether sure what the effects of the root change (which I'm hoping you guys are starting to pick up on, but also hoping you don't spoil for others) have on him. Contrast with Suzumiya, who seems like she's unchanged at all, making her difficult to write as well since I keep running out of ways to describe the Suzumiya Haruhi that everyone else already knows.

Also, to the reviewers that had asked for more development of the characters and whether there was an ending: Development will become more obvious in future (not sure how far in the future chapters, but definitely more obvious), and yes, I'm trying to work out an 'ending' of sorts.