Ugh!! My head HURTS! It feels like a vacuum cleaner just went through it! My mind's telling me to do this chapter and the Rozen Maiden fanfic, AND a Zero no Tsukaima fanfic. BTW, I hope this chapter will give you enough info and help you decided whether he should be an antagonist or not… AAAAAAHHHHH HEAD HURTS!! pukes all over the floor
Shura: I prefer to be a supporti –
Misaki: Shut up or it'll be one week without your Xbox 360!
Shura: …
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Chapter 04: First Doubt
Nagato Yuki: As I have already explained, the situation as it is is already as stable as it can possibly be, despite the factor that is you, Kyon, which appeared to Suzumiya Haruhi, changing the way her mind functioned and thought. Though unconditionally, the Data Integration Thought Entity have decided upon a vote of the majority that you remain intact to this world and reality. Though, there are those who voted for the opposite; to take action and terminate you and see how Suzumiya Haruhi responds. That group became the radicals, which also included Ryoko Asakura; my backup, and thus, the additional responsibility I've been given to protect you, including Suzumiya Haruhi, which concluded Ryoko Asakura's termination.
Kyon: …
Nagato Yuki: Three years ago, exactly four things occurred; all unconsciously instigated by Suzumiya Haruhi. You already possess data about three of the events that involved me, Koizumi Itsuki, and Asahina Mikuru. But, the data you lack is about the fourth event that took place 0.9200129187 hours after the three other events.
Kyon: Screw three years ago!
Nagato Yuki: Three years ago, roughly an hour after the explosion of data the Data Integration Thought Entity observed a torrent of dimensional vortexes the size of Antarctica appeared at exactly the opposite end of the world where Suzumiya Haruhi was located. Though there was insufficient evidence, the Data Integration Thought Entity concluded that Suzumiya Haruhi was also the cause of that phenomenon.
Kyon: -sighs-
Nagato Yuki: Seven-hundred forty five people were affected by the dimensional vortexes. All of them gained the ability to travel between dimensions and control the time in which they travel to and from them. Like the espers, they gained the knowledge that Suzumiya Haruhi was the cause of their change, made an agency and started observing Suzumiya Haruhi and her unusual fluctuations and influences on the surrounding environmental data. Though, they were quickly annihilated by one of their own kind…
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Kyon was deeply troubled now; probably more troubled than he has ever been. The little conversation he had with Itsuki and Nagato burdened him greatly. Their warning made his mind fragile, ready to break at any given shock. Stay away from Shura, they told him. They didn't say anything when he asked them why. They just repeated the warning. Stay away from Shura. The words kept repeating itself on his mind like a broken tape recorder. It almost drove him crazy.
Shaking himself, he decided that it wasn't the time to blow. Today was Saturday and he only had a couple more minutes before the said meeting time. With that thought in mind, his heart started beating faster, nervous as to what was to come. What would he say? What should they do? Where should they go? So many questions filled his mind and he was rushing to find answers to it. He wished that Haruhi could've desired him a bigger brain than what he already had now. He sighed in defeat, finding no answers to his questions.
Haruhi arrived in the nick of time; only two seconds late and she'd be considered late. Kyon had hoped that she'd be at least a second late so that he'd get to penalize her. Hell, that's why he'd arrived an hour earlier that the said time. And again, he felt defeated.
Looking at Haruhi, he noticed that she was fairly tired; sweat was running down her neck and she was a bit out of breath. She had been running, no doubt about it. Running to avoid getting penalized by a lower member as Kyon presumed. Or, did the thought of penalizing Haruhi actually came from her? Again, he shook himself. The past incidents already exhausted his mind, so he wasn't ready to do any more hard thinking.
"What's the matter? Kyon."
"Ah, no, it's nothing. I just asked myself a few things."
"Oh, so you DO talk to yourself?" she asked as intimidating as the word can describe it. "Little Kyon feels lonely sometimes?"
"… Shut up…"
Haruhi laughed and cuddled snugly beside him. "Ah, it feels great to tease you again after all this time…"
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Midday passed by. They've spent an hour and a half with each other and the only thing they've managed to do is to eat lunch together while talking about life's ups and downs. Kyon regretted the fact that he didn't plan anything out before that day and, oblivious to him, Haruhi was also doing the same. Both of them sighed. Being it their first real date, they were inexperienced at anything romantic. Even though Kyon occasionally read romance mangas, he was too much of a coward to ask her about anything he knew, fearing rejection.
Haruhi, who was also new to dating whole-heartedly, pondered on how to spend their afternoon. Occasionally, she would drift back to her past dates where she would ruthlessly dump the guy she's with saying, "If you're not an alien, then I have no interest in you!" or "I couldn't care less about someone as normal as you!" Now that she thought about it, Kyon's an ordinary human so-to-speak. So, why does she care about him so much? Thinking about it made her head hurt.
As they strolled through a business district they had no idea where, they passed by a very tempting movie theatre that was previewing a similarly tempting romantic movie. Haruhi, sensing a chance to refuel their day, locked eyes with Kyon with her puppy-dog look. Kyon, right after seeing her face screaming, "Let's watch a movie!" sighed and smiled at his waiting company. Finally, something normal, he thought
"Why not, my princess?"
With that, Haruhi's face beamed with joy, half of it was because she'd see a movie with him. The other half was because she'd finally have her much-needed private time with him. Kyon also smiled, but with other reasons for doing so. One was because, apparently, she didn't notice the possessive pronoun he used on his last sentence. And two, he'd secretly wanted to see that movie ever since it began to show…
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Nagato Yuki: At exactly seven hours, thirty-seven minutes and nine seconds after the creation of the sliders' agency, a slider visited a dimension almost parallel to this one, tasked in finding out if a factor in that world somehow affected or bestowed the power Suzumiya Haruhi currently has. There he found a world dominated by humans and beasts alike, a massive ruin that contained an ancient power and its vanguard, an exceptionally powerful Ruin Demon.
Kyon: A… demon…?
Nagato Yuki: In human terminology, her external appearance does not classify her as a 'demon'. She is only a half-demon hybrid; having a human mother and a demonic father; thus, her human appearance and abnormal silence. She was called a demon due to tendency to kill anyone whom she sees.
Kyon: I could say the same thing to you… When you say 'her', then that would mean that this 'Ruin Demon' is a woman or a girl? I see… not a thing…
Nagato Yuki: Inside the ruins, the slider attempted in vain to study the ruins in the blind hope of discovering Suzumiya Haruhi's origins when the Ruin Demon confronted and almost killed him. But before it did, she gave him the ancient power sealed in the structure willingly and submitted herself to him as his servant. The reason why the Ruin Demon did that is still unknown. The Data Integration Thought Entity made several hypotheses concerning the matter in order to find a way to relieve him of his powers. The power that slider gained from the Ruin Demon surpasses that of the combined abilities of the Data Integration Thought Entities, hence, the high priority of the power's relief from anyone. Also, although insufficient data has been gathered, the Data Integration Thought Entity has basis to believe that the power that slider received from the Ruin Demon had fragments of junk data originating from Suzumiya Haruhi. With this newfound power, both the slider and the demon returned to this dimension and quietly and quickly terminated the whole sliders' agency and blotted their existence from this reality, heretofore, their unexplainable disappearance from this world. The reason behind their actions is still unknown. Three days, one hour and five minutes and thirteen seconds later after the slider genocide, they made contact with the espers' Agency
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Koizumi Itsuki: When they came to the Agency, he introduced himself as the survivor of the slider genocide. Of course, due to our full-time occupation of destroying Closed Spaces, we had almost no knowledge about there being a sliders' agency and, since he was able to demonstrate his slider abilities well, we believed him to be telling the truth. The young woman he brought along didn't speak a word except the times when she and that slider were having a simple, unsuspicious conversation. But, however impossible it may seem, we were not successful in retrieving information from anything regarding an all-sliders Agency. Truth be told, I've personally had a lot of bad feelings whenever I was close to those mysterious pair. Even so, despite similar reports of that bad feeling to the higher-ups, they decided to trust him and place him on routine missions with the others.
Kyon: Wait a minute. If you guys really are espers, then, why weren't you able to find out more about him?
Koizumi Itsuki: Well, suffice to say that something hindered us from using our esper abilities in that particular investigation. It was as if we were not meant to find out about that subject. At first, we thought that the interference came from Suzumiya Haruhi, who we hypothesized had greater plans in her unconscious mind.
Kyon: …
Koizumi Itsuki: During their uneventful stay, I, together with that particular slider and woman, accomplished several missions without fail. Until one day, on a mission where I was unavailable at that moment, the whole team that was tasked to deal with a mediocre-level Closed Space disappeared without trace, along with the Closed Space and the Celestial that wreaked havoc inside it. What was more surprising is that they disappeared in abnormal time intervals where one disappeared after the next every three hours when the whole event only took five minutes. The Agency frantically searched for anything that'd help us find out why they had disappeared. We were shocked at what we found. Inside the remnants of the closed space lied a huge inter-dimensional time gate that such it was made was so intricately done, it was close to impossible to detect it using even our abilities. The gateway lead to a void dimension; a space with infinite volume and temperature but has zero mass. Anything sucked into it would blow up instantly. That was a fact, however, deep inside the void, we saw those two standing below, smiling at us like nothing even happened. After that, with just a snap of his finger, he made the remnants of the closed space collapse. That was the last we ever saw him.
Kyon: You're freaking me out now…
Koizumi Itsuki: I'm sorry. Point of the matter is, we want you to stay away from him.
Kyon: You mean away from Shura and that girl who's stuck to his arm like a permanent accessory?
Koizumi Itsuki: Yes. We have yet to discover his plan. But, to be on the safe side, stay away from him as often and as normally as you can.
Kyon: Is there a catch?
Koizumi Itsuki: No catch. Just that…
Kyon: …
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The movie took up about a couple hours of their time. Even so, Haruhi and Kyon had the time of their lives. Watching the last parts of the story where the man confessed his love to the woman got them both leaning from their seats and hold their breaths. Only after the man finally confessed after three minutes were they able to finally breathe again, which Kyon made wonder as to how they were able to hold their breaths for that long. Honestly, Kyon didn't feel the need to breathe in the middle of the suspense; he just hoped that Haruhi felt the same, which she did. Satisfied, they left the theatre smiling and holding each other's hands and started walking on a random direction that seemed right to them… and coincidentally… met them again…
"Well, we meet again. Good afternoon, Kyon-kun and Suzumiya-san."
Dark hair, dark eyes, irritating smile, and a grey-haired beauty latched on to his arm; it had to be him, Kyon yelled at him mentally. The warning Nagato and Itsuki gave him started repeating itself all over again inside his brain. It drove him nuts beyond proportion.
"What are you two doing here?" Kyon asked. Unknown to him, his voice had an obvious tint of anger and fear on it, making Haruhi and, not too surprisingly, Shura, a bit concerned.
"Come on, now. Don't ruin our date with your annoyance. We're here, enjoying each other's presence and trying to get as much fun out of it." Shura was direct-to-the-point indeed.
"You two are on a date?" Kyon asked, looking surprised and all.. Then again, noting how they looked good together, he calmed himself down a bit, knowing that he was right and he had no right to ruin their day, so maybe it wouldn't hurt to have met them this once. Then, looking at them closer, he noticed how different their tastes in clothing are; Shura wore an extremely normal set of clothes; a dark-blue collared t-shirt and cargo pants while Sarah wore a black, hooded sweater with the zipper pulled up and slim-fit jeans; Kyon could only guess that she wore something black underneath her sweater. "How could these two be the ones Nagato and Koizumi mentioned? They look okay; and they act pretty normal…" Shaking himself back to reality, he met Haruhi's probing eyes like they were scanning his innards, though he didn't think there was much to see except muscles, veins and bones; not to mention a bunch of overworked organs.
"Yeah…" Shura answered while innocently scratching the back of his head like he was embarrassed or something. "I kinda made a promise to… Sarah here that we'd… uh… spend the whole day together… Heheh…" His face had the word 'embarrassed' written in underlined bold letters all over it.
"So, is this your first date?" Haruhi asked right after a second of uneasy silence between the groups. Apparently, the word 'consideration' in Haruhi's dictionary also meant 'experimentation'; and that the word 'guilt' or 'pity' was unsurprisingly missing from that particular vocabulary. Without budging at all, Shura's face became all red as he tried to laugh her question off.
"Well, anyway, we have to go now. We still have a long afternoon ahead of us…" was his response to try and get away from her roused interest and they walked away from the wondering couple. Their leave managed to calm Kyon a bit more; but, oh, was it brief. A second later, Haruhi had one of her usual brilliant and selfish ideas. Well, not as brilliant as she think it is, but at least it's a start.
"Hey, Shura-kun! Why don't we come with you? A double date! How about it?"
In unison, the two young men quickly reacted similarly with a "WHAT!?" Haruhi smiled. She ignored their rejection, went up to Kyon and, since he didn't have a tie to grab on to, dragged him by his arm towards Sarah's side, not wanting to side at the other male; Haruhi's body pressed against Kyon's left arm. Kyon could've sworn that her smile would be able to light up a ghost town completely. He smiled and, since he liked the feeling pressing against his left limb, mentally asked the other guy if it was okay. Unable to do anything about the matter now, Shura was only able to nod, trying his best to calm Sarah down who was already acting up when Haruhi got close to him. However, needless to say, both of them didn't understand or know Haruhi's reason for wanting a double date. Either just letting it slide or not noticing it, both of them didn't ask her about it.
"It's obvious that it's not his first date with a girl today. Maybe I'll learn a few things if we tag along…" Haruhi thought with a snicker as they walked deeper into the city. Unknown to them, two individuals were hot on their trail, following them since they exited the theatre…
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Actually, this chapter only explains half of my original character. Sarah just tags along and obeys everything Shura says. Anyway, it has come to my mind that Haruhi only acts out-of-character when he's with Kyon…