"Hey, you ever notice how in anime and stuff, Tokyo is always getting, like, completely destroyed?" Konata asked.
It was lunch. She was eating her chocolate cornet, as usual. And, just as predictably, Kagami and Tsukasa were eating homemade bento lunches and Miyuki was eating the leftovers from her dinner last night - which were better than any of their lunches, and quite possibly the fanciest lunch in the entire school, for that matter. Jason was in the cafeteria waiting to buy a lunch. Life here was predictable. Konata couldn't decide if that was good or bad.
"You're right, it does seem that way," Kagami said.
"It always makes me nervous, since it's so close to where we live..." Tsukasa said. "But I guess that's silly, right? Those sort of things don't actually happen."
"If they did, I doubt we'd be sitting here right now," Kagami said. "The city would've been gone a long time ago."
"Actually, Tokyo has a history of sustaining major damage, especially in early history when buildings were often made of wood. Construction didn't hold up well to natural disasters such as storms and earthquakes," Miyuki said. "Although modern construction is much sturdier against threats of that kind."
"Well, I was thinking more like when they have giant monsters and things like that," Konata said. "Aliens. Robots. Ever wonder what it would be like to have something like that show up one day?"
"You always think of the strangest things, don't you..." Kagami sighed.
"Seriously, though. Giant monsters always go for Tokyo," Konata said. "No exceptions."
"People do seem to enjoy watching monster movies to see all the destruction..." Miyuki said.
"And there's a lot to destroy here, with all the buildings," Kagami said. "Isn't it weird, though? Why is that sort of thing so popular?"
"I don't like movies like that very much..." Tsukasa said.
Jason came into the room carrying a tray of beef curry. He pulled up a chair and sat next to Konata. "Hey, so what's our random topic of conversation today?"
"We were talking about why in anime and movies they always have Tokyo getting blown up and stuff," Kagami said. "Don't ask me how it started."
"I have noticed that..." Jason said. "It's either here or New York City, isn't it? I guess it depends on where the movie's made. People like to see their own major cities leveled."
"But then how do they end the movie? If everything gets destroyed..." Tsukasa asked.
"The military comes in, or something like that," Konata was speaking in between bites of her cornet. "You think the military has special giant-monster-defeating training? It takes a different strategy than fighting other human forces would."
"That would be one way to spend tax dollars," Kagami said. "But we all know that it's never going to happen, so just face it - the city's not going to be destroyed, so you're not getting out of taking exams."
Konata looked down and sighed.
Chapter 8
You've Really Made The Grade
"I forgot all about exams," Jason said as they left school that day. "When are those, again?"
"Right before summer break," Konata answered. "Middle of July. It's really nothing to worry about. I don't even study until the night before, and I've always done alright."
"So how do these compare with the mid-terms back in May?"
"Right, those... I remember. You didn't do so well, did you?"
He paused, then said, "I left my world when I was in sixth grade, so being here, in a higher grade, not to mention a different country... It's been difficult."
Konata was surprised to hear him say anything about where he came from. His entire past seemed to be a mystery, even what kind of missions he had done before showing up in Lucky Star. Of course she was curious, but he always dodged the questions if she asked them. "It doesn't even matter for you, does it? You're not even from this world, it's not going to count on your record even if you fail."
"Passing it is part of appearing to be a regular student," Jason said. Konata realized that was true. She had always wondered how it must be for those magical, time-traveling, or in this case interdimensional transfer students in manga and anime, trying to adapt to normal life. He continued, "That being said, I'm probably not going to be available to help you on missions for a while."
"Seriously?" She sighed. "So what do we do? We take a break?" Konata wasn't looking forward to that. Pre-exam weeks were when she needed to get away the most.
"I was actually thinking you could go by yourself."
Konata stared at him. "Wait, go alone? Are you... sure?"
"You've got talent. I think you'll be able to take this one mission... It's actually a specific request I recieved," Jason said. "I'm sure you remember Kamina?"
"Of course." All who face the Dai-Guren brigade and see the face of its mighty demon leader, the great Kamina, will remember him for as long as they live. Or something like that.
"He recently took a job in the Cowboy Bebop universe, taking down an elusive crime syndicate. Nobody could take them down, so Eclipse found them and sent someone in."
"That was probably no problem for him." Konata imagined his giant mecha, armed with even giant-er drills, against... wait, people in the Bebop universe had nothing to compare to a fighting robot. It would have been over in seconds. If the mission guidelines allowed him to do that, she reminded herself. "What does this have to do with us?"
"We lost contact with him. He never filed the mission as completed, and attempts to call him have all failed. Knowing him, he's probably fine, but... We need to get him back."
"He... lost his Talisman, I'm guessing?" Konata asked. She always kept hers close by, but to lose it... that really would be a problem. In fact, that had very nearly happened to her once.
"It was destroyed, most likely. Your job is to find him and take him back to headquarters so that he can get a replacement."
"We have... well, Eclipse has... a headquarters? Why was I unaware of that?" Konata was in shock.
"It's not like we do very much there..." Jason said. "It's not that interesting a place. It's mostly just for research and management. I'll give you the coordinates so that you can go there once you've found Kamina."
"Okay..." Konata was looking forward to this now. Seeing the Eclipse headquarters could be enlightening. What sort of universe did they center their operations in? And more importantly... what could she learn there? "Anything else I need to know?"
"When you meet up with Spike, just mention my name to him. He should understand."
"Hola, amigos! It's time again for Big Shot! And we've got news for you regarding the elusive Miro Syndicate!"
Spike stared at the screen, unimpressed by Punch and Judy's over-the-top enthusiasm for criminals. He was kicked back on the couch, his jacket hung over the back and his feet up on the table while he watched the television.
Had somebody already stopped those guys over at Miro? It was a low-key operation, with brilliant computer hacking skills. They had stolen millions of woolongs out of the banks. The ISSP had offered a fifty million woolong bounty for anyone able to find and arrest the leader. They had been trying to track them down for weeks. Another opportunity, down the toilet.
"The Miro Syndicate? You mean the guys with the fifty million bounty?" Judy asked.
Yes, anyone who has watched this show in the past three months would know about them, Spike thought. Once again, thank you for being so informative.
"Si! The very same! It appears that they have been stopped by an unidentified bounty hunter - and, even more interesting, he has actually refused to accept the reward money!" Punch said, in that godawful fake Mexican accent.
"How surprising!" Judy said.
Spike was growing increasingly annoyed. How could someone just take that fifty million out from everyone else - from him - and then not even accept it? He wasn't even in the mood to hear the new bounties. He turned the TV off and lit a cigarette.
"Did I just hear that somebody caught Stephen Miro?" His longtime partner, Jet Black, stepped into the room. "How on Earth did they manage that? Those guys had absolutely no leads on their location, no information available anywhere... They were practically invisible. Whoever caught them must be good."
"And richer than us. They turned down the money," Spike said.
"I'll be damned." Jet scratched his bald head. "So what job do we take next?"
"No clue," Spike replied. That was when his phone rang. His other phone, for what Spike considered his side project. He stepped into another room to answer it.
"Hello?"
"Is this... Spike Spiegel?" He didn't recognize the voice.
"Yeah. And, seeing as you're on this line, I'm guessing you're calling about something with Eclipse. Well, I've got some free time now." Now that he didn't have a fifty million woolong bounty left to worry about earning. "What's this about?"
"Yeah, I'm with the organization, Spike... Oh wow, this is so cool... Well, umm... anyway, I'm supposed to meet up with you. I'm on Mars right now... that's kind of weird... Oh, right. I've got a location here that I'm supposed to meet you at."
Spike could tell a few things from how this person was speaking. She apparently knew him from somewhere, so maybe she was... a fan of that show? He remembered when he had first found out that there was an animated TV show about the Bebop. It had taken some getting used to... especially when his life reverted to the animated style of said TV show. That aside, based on her comment about being on Mars as "weird," Spike could also infer that she was from one of those universes where she had only ever lived on Earth.
"Fine then. I can probably meet up with you..." Spike thought for a moment, calculating. "Tomorrow."
"Huh?"
"Well, you see, we're kind of out of the way at the moment. If you're on Mars, it'll take me a while to get over there."
"Right... Sorry, I'm not used to this whole space travel thing. I'm Konata, by the way. It's going to be so awesome working with you!"
"Great, then..." A part of him wished he shared her excitement. "Now what was that location?"
Spike looked around. It seemed to be a rough part of town. The buildings here were showing their age, and graffiti had been scrawled across most of them. This was where he was supposed to meet his contact. Some sort of assignment from Eclipse that took place right here, in his own universe. That didn't happen often.
He didn't have any sort of visual clue to find his contact with. Konata, that had been her name. It sounded Asian - Japanese, to be exact. And her voice suggested she was young, maybe in her teens, but he couldn't be sure. Spike wasn't enthusiastic about working with some kid. There had been that other time, though...
He noticed a girl with long, bright blue hair flagging him down. That had to be her. Way to keep a low profile. He sighed and ambled over to meet her.
"You're my contact?" he asked, examining her. She couldn't possibly look more out-of-place in these back alleys. At least that hair was probably a more normal color to the casual observer.
"Yeah! It's great to meet you in person," she said. "By the way, I'm supposed to mention that I've been working with Jason Ellis, if that name means anything to you."
"Ellis?" Spike did remember, in fact. He'd been working with... her? "Yeah, I remember him. How's he doing?"
"He couldn't come tonight because he's studying for exams, back in my universe," she explained. "But usually he comes on every mission I do to help me. I just started a few months ago."
"I couldn't tell." There was dry sarcasm in his voice. "I just can't imagine him sitting down to do school work, though. It's good to hear back from him."
Konata was in a cheerful mood, which Spike envied. "It's going to be so fun working with you on this."
"Personally I could be doing a lot better than I am right now," he said, thinking of that lost bounty. Fifty million woolongs. That was no small change. "What's this assignment about? We're taking it in this universe, so... Anything that'll pay?"
"They said it was search and recovery. We sent in a guy to take down some crime group - Miro something or other - "
Spike put a hand up. "Hold on a minute. Eclipse sent in somebody else to take down a fifty million woolong bounty head?"
She reached into a pocket of her jacket and took out a picture of a confident-looking young man with spiky blue hair and flashy triangular sunglasses. "Yeah. His name's Kamina, I've worked with him before so - "
"Why the hell didn't they just tell me where he was? No wonder this guy turned down the bounty, but I could have used that!" Spike was fuming. "I don't suppose I'd be able to accept the bounty from him, it's probably too late for that..."
"I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it, but you never seem to get much money from bounties. I've seen your show before. It's kind of an ongoing theme, you know?" Konata offered.
Just as he had expected - he had a fan. Apparently she got some sort of sick enjoyment out of watching Spike and his crew starve. "An ongoing theme... Yeah, I can see that. Either way, I'm not too enthusiastic about how this show plays out."
"Really?" Konata said. "I've appreciated my life much more since I realized it was an anime. Like, how boys in my universe never pay any attention to me or my friends, but we've got tons of fans of our anime and stuff."
"So what you mean is... I should be completely fine with not getting any bounty money, because the people who make the Cowboy Bebop television series in some other world are making tons of money off of it that I'll never see a single penny of."
"Well, yeah."
Spike groaned. "I wish I could be that optimistic, but I'm too hungry for that."
Here he was, in some random slum on Mars, with an overenthusiastic fan. He wondered exactly how long it had been since Konata had started working with Eclipse. More importantly, why had they let her? Add that to the fact that they had taken fifty million out from under him... He just couldn't let that go. With that much money he could have taken it easy for a few months, at least.
"So what's the deal with meeting up with you here?" he asked. On top of everything else, the atmosphere of this depressing little corner of the solar system wasn't doing much for him.
"This is where the syndicate was located, so we're supposed to start looking here for information." She started leading him down the street, so he followed. Reaching a locked side door on one of the buildings, they stopped. "This should be the right place..."
Spike looked at the door. It was dark, unmarked, insignificant... If this was really where the syndicate had been working from, no wonder nobody had found them. There was also a lock on the door. "Did they give you a key, too?"
Konata said nothing, but instead took out a pistol and fired a few shots directly at the lock until it broke.
"Jesus! Someone's going to hear you if you go around doing things like that!" But nobody was coming after them, and Spike figured they were probably used to hearing things like that anyway.
"It's open. Let's check it out," Konata said with a grin. As they stepped inside the dark interior, Konata lit a fire - directly in her hand, apparently with magic. Spike had always just used guns and his own physical strength, even on alternate-world missions. It was what he was comfortable with. But he had to admit, those magic abilities did come in handy.
The orange glow of the flame didn't reveal much - from the looks of it, this place had already seen enough fire. Probably not too long ago. The walls were blackened, and scraps of charred paper were all over the floor. A desk had been knocked over. If this had been anyone's headquarters, it had been abandoned some time ago.
"Hmm," Konata said. "You think Kamina did this? He'd be likely to go over the top in defeating them."
"Looks more to me like they wanted to get rid of evidence," Spike replied, sifting through the ashes on the ground for anything left intact. "Miro was arrested, but he still refuses to tell anything about what they were doing. All we know for sure is that they needed millions to fund it. Chances are, one of his members came by and torched the place so that nobody would find anything. Which suggests there was something much worse than robbing banks going on."
Konata looked around some more, but it was all wrecked. "I guess there's no leads here, then. No idea where we should go next."
"He's probably still on this planet. In this town, in fact. You can't get out of these cities without a spacecraft." He was about to give up looking through the rubble when he found something. "Wait, look at this. Shine the light over here so I can read it."
It was a scrap of paper, charred but still partially legible. The phrase "would allow for feasible temporal" were visible, written in a messy hand, along with the next line which read "system for displacement of matter among multiple." Below that was the top of a concept sketch, some kind of archway.
Konata examined it carefully. "I don't get it, what's this about?"
"Looks to me like they were doing research here. And from the looks of it, this is what Eclipse was interested in them for. 'Temporal displacement' is just another word for time travel. Possibly something bigger was in the works."
"They were going to develop a device to travel to other universes," Konata guessed.
"Possibly. That's actually the kind of thing someone else was trying on the mission where I worked with Ellis. Some research facility created a resonance cascade, I don't really know how they managed it... but it caused some trouble for them. The government was in on it, all sorts of crazy stuff - but Eclipse is very sensitive about these things. If Miro was even a minor potential threat they would have stopped him before he made any kind of progress."
"I see..." Konata said. "Jason never told me about that."
"He handled it excellently. There was even talk of moving him to a higher position when it happened." Spike paused for a moment. "But you say that right now he's back in your universe taking final exams, so maybe he didn't get so far with that."
It was interesting, though, as Spike considered it - in that other mission, which would be two years ago now, scientists had developed that technology in 1999. Here they were now, in the middle of the twenty-first century, and it was only now being developed. By criminals, no less. This was what they meant by things happening in an infinite number of possible ways, wasn't it?
Konata looked over the scrap of notes one more time. Resonance cascades, temporal displacement... This was all too scientific for her to care about. "It's all over, though. So now... where do you think Kamina would go? If he finished here, and arrested Miro... You said something about possibly trying to get a spacecraft to leave the city?"
"That's just a possibility."
"That's exactly the kind of thing he would do, though." If he could hijack giant robots, Konata just knew that a spacecraft would be no problem for him. "That would be fairly simple for him, to tell the truth."
"...Shit," Spike remarked.
"So where would he go? What's the nearest space port, or whatever it is?"
"Probably the place I parked. Come on," he said. He dropped his cigarette, smothered it with his foot, then walked out the door.
The Swordfish II was where Spike had left it, various other spacecraft were landed nearby. How long had Konata said this guy - Kamina - had been here? A week, by now? There was a chance that he was still in the area nearby. After all, he probably wanted to get back to wherever it was he came from. Spike got an impression of extreme eccentricity from the photograph, but when you'd seen as much of the solar system as he had, people like that were almost commonplace.
"You think you saw this guy somewhere, then?" Spike was questioning a local barkeep, using the single photo they had of their subject.
"I wouldn't forget someone like that, trust me," he replied. "He was spouting something crazy about the spacecraft not having enough drills or something like that. Now what would someone want a drill for? What're you gonna dig through in space? Would you try flying through asteroids or something like that?"
"I don't know. Look, just tell me when you saw him," Spike said.
"You're a bounty hunter, ain't you? What'd this guy do?"
"Nothing. This is search and rescue, you could say."
"Rescue? He sure needed some help, I can tell you that."
"When did you see him?" Spike said, more insistently than before.
The barkeep shrugged. "I don't know, maybe a few days ago."
"And he was interested in taking one of the spacecraft? Do you know if he might have stolen one or anything like that?"
"Nah, like I said, he wasn't too impressed by 'em."
Spike thanked him and left the bar. At least they had a lead now. A few days ago Kamina had been browsing around, looking at spacecraft, like someone would shop for a car or something, albeit with some very strange preferences. But in the space of a few days, he could have settled for something else, something without drills just to get out of this town. After all, who wouldn't want to leave here?
He noticed that now-familiar flicker of blue hair out of the corner of his vision. "Hey, Spike! You find anything?"
"He was here, alright. Sometime in the past few days, looking for a ride with added drills. I can't imagine he got too far with that."
"You think he took one?" She realized what that would mean. "If he did... how are we going to find him in this entire solar system?"
Spike shrugged. "Go to the next crater over. Ask around if anyone's seen him, like we have been. When somebody gets stranded on a foreign universe it'll be a long, tedious job finding them. If he could've just stayed in one place - "
"This sucks. I'll have to come back later then... I don't have much longer before I have to get back home. Maybe just an hour or so. There's school tomorrow." Konata sighed.
"Sounds fun. At this rate, we'll be working on this for a few weeks, maybe months..." Konata groaned. He continued,"What do you say we start looking around for a bit before then?" Spike turned and walked back down the street, feeling increasingly hopeless about this assignment. Maybe in the meantime Jet would have some luck, get some bounty money and share it with his close friend and partner... "Say, you got a job or something that you do for cash? Sure, this kind of thing is thrilling, but I'm sure you need to get some extra money."
"I'm a cosplay waitress," Konata said, with pride.
"You're - ?" He stared at her. A waitress, who by night took down criminals and monsters in other universes. This girl was absolutely insane. "I see. Just full of surprises, aren't you?"
"You bet."
They were almost back at the ship. Konata seemed excited to have the opportunity to see it in real life, and Spike was surprised how much she knew about it. The fact that it was a re-purposed racing ship, the modified heavy-artillery weapons...
Once the Swordfish II was in sight, Spike realized that was probably what had caught Kamina's eye. All of those machine guns, heavy weaponry, making it obviously much more dangerous than most of these crafts. And much more suited to Kamina's tastes. He was standing on the top of the ship, trying to force the cockpit open.
"Hey, nice seeing you here," Spike said. He was somewhere in between pissed off and truly happy - this cut days, no, weeks off this godforsaken assignment. What were the chances of this happening? It was almost too unlikely to be a coincidence, but what else would it be?
Kamina whirled around. "Who the hell are you?!" he demanded, pointing down at them.
"I'm the guy who owns that ship. Hey, be gentle with that, I don't have the money to get repairs."
"As of today, this ship belongs to me! Kamina! This is the only one in this lousy place deserving of the honor of being mine! So back off!"
"Hey, Kamina!" Konata said, waving him down.
"Hmm? Hey, you're that girl! I remember you!"
"We we were looking for you, so that I could get you out," Konata said. "So, if you wouldn't mind not totally wrecking Spike's ship..."
Kamina jumped down. "You came through for me, eh? I like it! I'm ready to get out of here!"
Spike put a hand up. "Just a minute. If you wouldn't mind, what exactly happened while you were on this mission? And, more importantly, what did you do when they offered you the reward money?"
"The great Kamina has no need of this reward money! I don't even know what the hell a 'woolong' is supposed to be! I came in to arrest some punk, and that's all I did!"
"You didn't take any of it..." Spike was visibly disappointed. "Just like they said."
"And how did you get stuck here?" Konata asked.
"I was too busy kicking ass to keep track of that little Talisman thingy!" Kamina said. Spike was shocked, reevaluating his opinions of Eclipse's criteria for employment. "I don't even know when I dropped it, but it was gone when I tried to go back, and I've been stuck in the middle of nowhere ever since! Speaking of which, everyone just shut up! I want to get out of here already!"
"Fine by me," Spike said. "See you, then."
Konata got out her own Talisman - making a mental note to always keep track of it, she would never let this happen to her, not when she actually had a home world she was supposed to be in every day. Using the coordinates Jason had given her, she and Kamina departed.
They arrived in a large room full of people - people who ignored their sudden appearance out of nowhere. That would be considered normal here, wouldn't it? The Eclipse headquarters was in three-dimensional live action. By this point Konata wasn't used to her old appearance, black hair and... whatever her eyes used to be. She couldn't even remember.
"Alright!" Kamina said. "I appreciate your help. Let's work together again sometime."
Konata was looking around. This structure was made out of what looked like polished black marble. It was roughly the size of her school's gymnasium, including the height of the arched ceiling. It was lit by some slots running along the walls emanating soft, sky blue light - whether it was by magic or technology, Konata couldn't tell. A large emblem of a solar eclipse was glowing on one wall.
"Yeah, that sounds - " Turning around, she noticed that Kamina had vanished into the crowd already. "Good," she finished.
The crowd of people was even more interesting. All different styles of clothing were present. Some were historical, like armor or wizard's robes, while others were futuristic. A few were even modern-day casual clothes, like what Konata was wearing herself. Not many people she recognized, but she supposed that a vast majority of universes weren't animes. Just the ones she was interested in visiting. And all the different languages being spoken... It was hard to focus in here. And she had something she was looking for.
She often thought of this whole setup like an MMO... Here was the hub location, where you could meet up with a party to take on a particularly difficult mission. And if her reasoning was correct, there would be a place to find specific interest groups - guilds, as she thought of them - to join.
Working her way through the crowd, she reached a door into a hallway, lit by the same blue glow. On the wall was a list of floors, lit up green. They were directly on the wall, but when Konata reached out to touch them she realized it was actually a scrolling list, like a computer screen that was directly part of the wall itself. There was a mundane-sounding Executive Offices floor, even though she knew it was anything but mundane. There were also the more unusual floors like Universal Reconnaissance... Portal Development... Maybe it would be interesting to look at the Mecha Storage Dock, but there wasn't time for that. She looked through the list until she found Surveillance of Reality Warping Beings. That would be the one.
She remembered what Jason had told her: "Don't take more time than you have to. They don't want anyone interrupting their work." But this was what she wanted to do - she knew that she could find out something about this department. All she wanted to know was how to be considered for the position.
The directory list only said that the department was on the nineteenth floor. What floor was she on? And how did she get there? She reached out to touch the words again, and as she did the other lines vanished, leaving only Floor 19 displayed for a second before it too faded away. And then what had seemed like a solid, seamless wall of stone opened up revealing a small, about five-foot square room. An elevator, maybe?
The interior matched the rest of the complex - black marble, blue lights set back into the surface. The number 19 was lit up on the wall, similar to the directory list, glowing deep purple. The wall closed behind her as she stepped inside, just like the doors of a regular elevator, although it left the walls flat and seamless. Rather than moving up, as she had expected, she was surprised to feel it start to move downwards, smoothly and soundlessly. So what floor had she started on? This place didn't make much sense. Konata leaned against the back wall as she waited for it to stop.
It made even less sense after five minutes of continuous descent. No building could possibly be - No, wait. Anything was possible, wasn't it? It was entirely possible for Eclipse to build a thousand, no, a million story headquarters if they wanted.
This place was making even the Cowboy Bebop universe, with its holographic television screens and publicly-available space travel, look primitive. And it was quickly moving up in Konata's mental list of "places nobody would ever believe I've visited."
Suddenly the motion stopped, and the 19 on the wall pulsed brighter for a second before fading away and being replaced with a line of text.
Limited Access Area. Please State Name.
Jason had mentioned that observing reality warpers was a highly specialized and secretive division. These precautions made sense. Around people who were, in effect, gods in human form, you couldn't be too careful. Especially those who didn't know it.
She looked around, for some sort of keyboard or input device. There was nothing, the walls were bare. "Izumi Konata?" she said aloud, hoping for the best. But as soon as the words "limited access" had appeared she just knew she wouldn't get very far.
The words switched to red. Access Forbidden. Please Select Other Floor. The list of floors appeared again, as they had done in the first hallway, but she didn't have any interest in trying to visit the others.
They weren't even going to let her in to visit, to learn anything possible about how to start working in a new division of the organization. It had been worth a shot, at least. She was about to go back home when her phone rang.
She took it out and answered it. "Hello?"
"Izumi, you had better be on your way here right now!" On the other end of the line, Kuroi sounded furious.
"Huh?" Konata took a moment to register why her teacher was calling her.
"You know what I mean! Get your butt to school this instant!"
What time was it back home? Konata had completely lost track, but apparently school had already begun for the day. "Yeah, I'll be right over! By the way, thanks for reminding me!"
"Don't get smart with me! And I don't want another one of your ridiculous excuses this time, either!" Kuroi hung up.
Ridiculous excuses? Konata examined her surroundings. She had no intention of telling Kuroi where she had been this morning, so she was going to have to make something more normal up. Telling the truth would be the more ridiculous option in this case. But first, to get home and change into her uniform. Another exciting day of ordinary high school life awaited...