After everything that had happened today, I was glad to finally be home. Unfortunately, it wasn't long after I arrived at my house and had changed into the sweatsuit I had been using as pajamas that Akira appeared again. She was sitting on my bed with a troubled expression.
"A lie." That was the first thing she said.
"What...?" My mind wasn't functioning right, I was too tired to realize just how strange it was that she was sitting on my bed at this time of night.
"A portion of what I've told you up until now was a lie. Also, I left out a few things," She said in a tone that matched her expression, "Even if you aren't working with me, you still deserve to know the full truth, or at least the full extent of what i know and believe to be the truth. I'm sorry for coming at this hour but my time in this world is limited, and with certain circumstances I can't be sure that I'll be able to stay as long as was originally predicted."
That sounds a bit similar to what Nagato said to me during that whole movie escapade, what was it she said again, 'any truth I tell you will grant no proof, because there is no guarantee that I am telling the truth. Not for you at least.' That's the basic idea of what Akira just said isn't it? Well the first part at least.
Apparently, I was taking too long to respond, so she began talking again.
"I'll start this at the beginning of my real situation. It didn't take long for me to notice there was a distorted world affecting the dimensional balance, I knew as soon as strange things began happening in my world, but it took me a while to locate the distortion. By that time my power alone wasn't enough to enter this world, but I wasn't alone, my two... apprentices lent me their power and with that I was able to arrive here three days ago," Akira said with a very serious gaze, "it took a lot more energy than dimensional travel normally does, because this world is special."
"Special?" I couldn't help but ask, "How?"
"It shouldn't exist," Akira replied, now looking downward, her eyes avoiding mine, "It's has been recreated so many times that it's beginning to detach from the worlds original settings. Allow me to explain: The original version of this world to me is a series of light novels with several events in a somewhat mixed up order, it was later adapted to a manga that differed greatly from the novel and was canceled after it's first volume, next there was an anime with 14 episodes that skipped over several events and played a great deal of the remaining ones out of order, not long after that came the second manga adaption which held all the events in order and is still ongoing now, the anime was rebroadcast in chronological order with an additional 14 episodes to fill the gaps skipped by the first broadcast, several video games were released many being 're-dos' of some of the better arcs or visual novels with branching scenarios, two gag animes were created, a gag manga version was published, then a spin-off/parallel storyline manga was published, and a movie has been made. That makes at least eleven deviations not counting dijoshi and fan fiction. There are so many places they overlap, and many more where they don't, because of this all versions of this world are highly unstable. This particular one... shouldn't exist, it exists on the dimensional plane in exact center of all versions of this world I mentioned before, that said it isn't any of them but rather the space where they overlap. There was no gateway that I could have used to arrive in this variation of your world. Do you understand?"
Not really. She had made about as much sense as Koizumi or Nagato usually do, so I kind of understood some of her spiel, but most of it just went over my head. A normal person wouldn't understand it, right? I mean if she needs a gateway to travel between dimensions, and there was no gateway that would bring her here... How is she here? She didn't even explain why she seems to think this world shouldn't exist, she just said that it was where the others overlapped. What on Earth is she trying to say?
"A little bit," I answered, hoping she was about to explain the things that she'd left out before.
"I had calculated that this variation of the world was the source of the twists in the dimensional plane affecting my world and several others, and I was able to notice that the 'infection' (so to speak) was spreading itself. Haruhi's immense power has been said to to include the ability to create and destroy worlds, the infection took advantage of this and thus made many variations of itself come into existence, those being many of the same ones I mentioned before. Having noticed a dimensional infection on this scale, despite my own power being lessened by it, I knew I had to correct it while I was still able to do so as I was one of the few who could. The only issue was that the infection existed in a place that no gateways led, using my gateways I could only get close to it, I needed a way to 'bridge' a gateway that I had and the infected point on the dimensional plane. Luckily I had the limited edition English version of the first light novel and the English version of the first volume of the second manga, those two worlds are across from each other in the plane around which all the aforementioned variations of this world are circling the single point that is the infected world, these particular books (the ones I said I was lucky to have) just so happen to contain previews of each other a weak link between the two passing directly through the infected point."
She paused, probably to give me a moment to think, as if I would be able to think after hearing all that nonsense.
"I had to divide myself and enter the two gates simultaneously to reach the midpoint -the bridge. Doing so cut all my capabilities in half, and left me nearly powerless upon arrival. Additionally because of the distortions in the time space continuum caused me to overshoot my temporal destination. The infection has probably spread more in the time between when I'd meant to arrive and now. I'm sorry, if I hadn't..."
"Wait!" I said, she immediately stopped talking, "You're going way too fast! What do you mean you 'split' yourself? You came late, by how much? Why are you apologizing to me?"
I'm not sure what good randomly throwing out questions would do, but I was getting caught up in the moment.
"A year," She said, catching me off guard.
"Excuse me?"
"I was a year late."
A year, that's a pretty long time. Wait... a year ago... that would be my first year in high school... the same time my life became chaos. Wouldn't that mean... "...but last year was..."
"The infection began on your first day of high school, it activated the day you started to talk to Haruhi, it began spreading the day the SOS Brigade was created, and has continued to spread ever since by . If I hadn't come so late, then I wouldn't have had so much trouble with something like this... I wouldn't be looked at as an enemy by the SOS Brigade because you all wouldn't have already been so set against me as an outsider changing the flow of events, I could have even changed things without getting directly involved... but because I'm late the situation's escalated to the degree that I can't stop it on my own anymore... I need your help. Please."
"And... All of this is because of Haruhi?" I asked when my mind finally managed to reason out what she'd been saying. She came here to stop a dimensional infection of some sort but she was late, it stated on the first day of my high school life last year, and now she's asking for my help even though she's been acting so high-and-mighty up until now...
"No," She said continuing her earlier serious tone, "That's the part I'd lied about before. The infection... isn't Haruhi's fault, it's yours."
I must have looked confused because she started flailing her arms as she tried to explain.
"Ah, Sorry! I don't mean you caused it... It's just... It has more relation to you than anyone else! Even if you had known, you couldn't have...!" She calmed herself down, and looked downward, "forgive me, even after all these years of experience, I'm still no good at explaining things of an inhuman nature to normal humans."
"Um..." is all I managed as a reply. I don't understand, but it doesn't looking like Akira is expecting me too at this point, that's kind of convenient in a weird way.
Something about her seemed completely different from before though. Up until now she had mostly acted playful or haughty, and she was a bit convicting in the clubroom earlier today, but now she seemed... I don't know... sincere. What was the reason she lied in the first place? She never said did she?
I tried asking.
"I didn't want you all to be involved with my affairs, I was trying to make sure that you would want nothing to do with me and would be trying to fight a lie while I handled the real problem behind the scenes," She couldn't look me in the eyes, "It's back fired, earlier I though I'd still be able to fix this on my own even though I'm like this, but I can't there's only one way to fix this now and I need your help. I'll still be doing most of the work, but I need some help from Mikuru... or if that's not okay... then I'd like to barrow your library card."
With what she's said her power is, I'd hate to see what she can do in a library... but if it's Asahina she's asking for then that means she probably intends to time travel, and I know from experience that gets pretty complicated. Wait... I'm getting ahead of myself, I never said I'd help her! Actually I said I'd never help her... well that was because of something she was doing to protect us.
So, is she good or bad? "This could all just be a trick! From the time that we met her she's been telling lies right and left, she defiantly can't be trusted!" is what I'd like to say, but that would also mean that she's telling the truth by saying everything she said before was a lie, so that would mean I can trust her now right? Frankly what she had been saying earlier was somehow beginning to make sense, and she seemed sincere enough...
How am I supposed to react to someone who has admitted to being a liar saying something unreasonable? I mean I kind of want to help her, but... I can't tell if shes telling the truth or not. Should I go out on a limb and trust her, or do I stubbornly decide she's up to no good?
"What'll happen if the 'infection' isn't stopped?" I asked suddenly. If she says nothing will happen then she's most likely telling the truth, but then trying to fix it would be pointless. Although if she says it'll become something catastrophic then she may be lying to get her way, but on the off chance that she's not lying I may have to help her anyway, because we may not have much time left.
When did I become a criminal psychology expert?
"I don't know."
What a blunt answer. What happened to the long-winded-ness from before? No more long spiels of nonsense that didn't quite seem to fit with any form of common sense?
"I haven't had the chance to witness a world line where that happens, because the infection is draining my powers I only get one chance to do this and all the clairvoyance abilities were cut of near the beginning of this problem, the only way I would be able to know how this ends would be to live through it and then use time travel to arrive back at this point in time or an earlier one," her tone was a bit strained but she kept going anyway, "although if you want a prediction, I guarantee that something will happen. Possibly simple chaos, possible normalization, possibly total reversal, or the world may even simply collapse in on itself; but those are just theories, at this point anything can happen except nothing. This world should be the last one the effects become evident in but after the infection has spread to cover all other worlds it'll defiantly take an effect in this one as well as all the others."
Oh... I guess that makes sense, well up until the part about 'world line's and 'clairvoyance' and after that I didn't understand again until 'something will happen' but I was lost after that.
I knew I'd probably get another incomprehensible answer, but I had to ask, "what happens if you can't fix this infection-thing?"
"If I fail? It's possible that this world could fall apart. Often I'm seen as an unpredictable element world line record, It's likely that I shouldn't exist... but I've prevented chaos is the world so many times that If I were to disappear it would be a disaster, anyway the point is; I'm basically an incomprehensible variable and when I'm thrown into a situation if I change things to much from how they were meant to be then the world is likely to collapse upon itself. My Failing this mission would likely push this world over it's edge and cause it to collapse causing a chain reaction resulting in the destruction of all infected worlds because to cure the infection I need to fix the problem here. No matter where a person goes there will always be a certain protocol to follow, that's why I need your help."
That last part sounds a lot like something she'd said to me before. Her second day in the club I think. What was it she'd said? Never mind it probably doesn't matter.
"Please, help me change the future."
"What's in it for me?" I asked. Well, it wasn't a serious question, I didn't expect much, besides she'd probably lie.
"Is the knowledge that you'd helped save all worlds from either absolute destruction or true chaos sound good enough? You're more of a pessimist than I thought."
I muttered something along the lines of, "...um... well..."
"But if that's not enough... I'll grant a wish for you, as long as it's something I can do," Akira said in a tone that gave the impression that she really didn't want to.
A wish? Did she just say she was going to grant a wish for me if I helped her? What is she, a Greek goddess, a fairy, a lying otaku? I could figure out what happens next... wait if all of Akira's powers return then what would she be capable of? From the way she talks she's probably pretty incredible.
I guess I was taking to long to respond, "Think about it. Okay? I'll talk to you at school in the morning. On the off chance that you choose to help me and I'm not there... use this."
She handed me a a piece of cloth that was folded over several times and tied up with a blue ribbon. She didn't explain. In fact after handing it to me she muttered, "...not much time..." and then left through my window.
I was left speechless. What do I do now? Should I unwrap whatever was in this bundle, or would something happen if I do?
I guess the better question is, do I want to help her?
Stupid question.
Akira defiantly believed that everything she just told me was true, and if it is I'm doomed. Of course I'm going to help her, even though I'm not really sure what she thinks I can do.
