I still love the responses I'm getting from this fic. It certainly is a good thing that you guys are still enjoying my work.

Enough talk though. Time to get the next chapter on the road.

Chapter 11

All through out the night, I was having some of the most vivid dreams I have had in a while. One of them was even stranger than the dream I had burying my cat.

In this dream, I was a dog. That's right, a dog. And not a big dog, either. I was one of those little terriers. I wasn't alone, though. With me at first was Haruhi, who was dressed in a blue and white dress and was wearing red, glittery slippers. Later we ran into Koizumi who was a scarecrow, Nagato, who was some kind of tin woman, and Asahina-san, who was a cowardly but cute lioness. We were walking along this weird yellow brick road to some weird city.

Along the way, we ran into the older Asahina-san, who was the good witch of the north, Tsuruya-san, who was the wicked witch of the west, Taniguchi and Kunikida, who were some blue colored ape-men with wings, and even the Computer club president, who was the door man to the city. We even met up with the Wizard, whoever he was supposed to be. He looked like some giant evil head. Oh, and Haruhi's father was playing his role.

Unfortunately, before I could find out the conclusion of that ridiculous dream, I started to feel a tremendous pain in my left eye. It continuously got worse and worse until eventually I had to wake up.

I soon discovered that Haruhi, who was already dressed I her school clothes, was poking me right in my eye, the same one that was badly damaged the night before. Just as I was about to scream in pain, Haruhi placed her hand on my mouth to silence me. She then held her finger to her lips to emphasize this point with a shush.

I removed her hand from my mouth and hissed. "Why'd the hell did you do that?"

"What? I was trying to wake you up," said Haruhi, her voice at a whisper.

"Did you have to poke my eye?"

Haruhi shrugged and stood up. "It worked didn't it. Hurry up and get ready."

I gave a large yawn before looking at the clock…Hey, it's an hour earlier than when we usually get up. What's the big deal?

I finally got out of bed and…felt an enormous about of pain all over my body. The endorphins that were flowing through my body last night were now gone, and my body was now feeling the actual damage that it had received. Even my wrist and tailbone hurt, likely from impact of falling on them several times last night. Doing what I could to bear the pain, I moved slowly towards the door. Just as I got out of my door, I saw something fly at my face. I instinctually caught it, and discovered that it was my school clothes. They were all clean.

"Looks like my mother finished cleaning them last night," said Haruhi as she began to walk down the stairs. I put my clothes down on my bed and made my way to the bathroom.

The first thing I did was look at myself in the mirror. And to my complete lack of surprise, I discovered that I had a nice looking shiner right on my left eye. That and my eye was completely red now from all the blood vessels in it being popped. My right cheek was puffy as well. When I began to take a shower, I found my chest had several bruises as well. One thing was for sure. Everyone at school was going to be able to see that I got the crap beaten out of me. Man it's going to be annoying.

After I finished showering and getting dressed, I slowly made my way down the stairs and into the kitchen. Haruhi had already made breakfast, even though it was just one of those crap microwavable breakfasts. She even made our lunches, too.

"Why the hell are we in such a rush to get out of here?"

Haruhi made a scowl. She wasn't scowling at me, though. She was just scowling at whatever she felt like scowling at. "Because I don't want to look at him, that's why."

It didn't take long to figure out who she was referring to. To be quite honest, I didn't want to look at him, either. The two of us finished our breakfast as quickly as possible before we finally left.

The sidewalks were deserted as we made our way to school. I guess it shouldn't surprise us, as almost no one would go to school this early in the morning. The walk there was very quiet. Haruhi never bothered to say anything to me, and continued to be in a bit of a daze as we made our way to school. It felt a bit awkward, really.

When we finally made it to the school, we found that the door hadn't opened yet. As a result, we were forced to sit outside while we waited. Once we were situated, I noticed Haruhi opening her bag. "Did you ever do your homework?"

"Nope."

"Neither did I," said Haruhi. I guess that doesn't come as a surprise considering how she must've felt last night. It's rare for Haruhi to put off things. "We should do it now. It shouldn't take too long."

So Haruhi and I decided to do our homework while we waited for the doors to the school to open. I found this to be quite a chore, since the wrist that I wrote with was also the one that hurt like hell. I guess the good news was that doing homework with Haruhi meant that it would be done as fast as possible. Damn I wish I was a smart as her.

Around the time we were finishing up, we saw the doors to the school being unlocked. We went in right after that and went straight to our class. We were the first to enter the classroom, which I had to admit was a pretty weird feeling. Haruhi immediately sat in her seat and buried her head in her arms. Yep, she's in melancholy mode. Man this sucks. I really can't stand it when she's like this.

I decided to talk to her anyway, if only to pass the time and maybe get mind off her melancholy. "So…how did you manage to convince your parents that you were in the Literary Club?"

Haruhi lifted her head slightly to look at me. She was silent for a few seconds, as if she was fighting to find the will to talk. "It was hard at first. In the beginning, I went and bought random books and pretended I was supposed to read them for the club. It was enough for my parents at first, but my dad got suspicious eventually when he discovered that some of his stuff had gone missing. I told him we needed it for the club, but he started asking for proof. He really started breathing down my neck about it until I gave a copy of that journal that we worked on to save Yuki's Literary Club."

That's right. I remember that now. To prevent the Literary Club from being shutdown and us from losing the clubroom, the Student Counsel President forced us to write up a literary journal. Although it was a bit of a pain to write that stupid non-romance story that I eventually came up with, I thought the whole experience was really interesting. No wonder Haruhi's parents were fooled. The journal had all of our names on it, so it would easy to think it was legitimate.

"They stopped bothering me about it after that, until you moved in." She then sighed deeply and buried her head further into her arms. She kept talking however, but her voice was somewhat muffled. "I don't know why they have to push me so hard to join a regular club, anyway. I'm not a kid anymore. Why can't I have the freedom to do what I want with my free time? The two of them get to goof off whenever they want. It drives me nuts. I can't stand either of them…"

"Your mother, too?" I asked. "Now that I think about it, what wrong with your mom? I mean, I can understand you not getting along with your dad, but I figured you'd be a lot closer to her."

Haruhi turned her head to look out the window before answering. "She always takes his side. No matter what it is, she never once takes my side. And a few times, I confided in her about some things that I wanted to keep only between me and her, but she would go and tell him anyway. I couldn't believe that she would do that. After that, I realized that I couldn't trust her. She would always choose him over me."

"I see," I said as I discovered another piece of the Suzumiya puzzle. I had no idea that the relationship between Haruhi and her parents would be so complicated. I wished I could've told her that I could relate, but that would be a lie. I never had these kinds of problems with my parents. There was a part of me that wished I could do something, but the other part quickly told me that there was little I could do. It would ultimately be up to those three to settle things in the end. I just hoped it happened before the untimely destruction of the universe.

Haruhi then sat up and grabbed a piece of paper from her bag as well as a marker. "I better take care of this now." She then quickly wrote something on it. When she was finished, she put it down for me to see. On it she wrote:

"Attention Brigade Members: All Brigade activities are suspended until further notice."

She stared at the paper painfully for about a minute. She closed her eyes tightly to try and avoid what appeared to be tears from coming out. "I'll have to put this up on the clubroom door during lunch." She then put the paper carefully in her desk and proceeded to bury her head in her arms again.

After that, other classmates began to enter the room, and it wasn't long before everyone began to notice my condition. I groaned quietly in exasperation every time a classmate entered the room and noticed the black eye and the puffy right cheek I had. Eventually, I started trying to hide my eye behind my hand, but it was really too late. Those who saw my eye earlier were quick to tell their classmates about it. By the time Taniguchi and Kunikida had entered the class, I'd given up on hiding my eye and accepted my fate. Rumors were going to fly about the school. Everyone will probably think I was in a fight. It wasn't a fight, dammit! It's only a fight if I tried to fight back.

After they put their bags down, both Taniguchi and Kunikida approached me.

"What the heck happened to you?" asked Kunikida.

"You look like you got into a fight with a truck," said Taniguchi.

I turned my eyes towards the window, trying to make it obvious that I wanted to be left alone. "I'll talk about it later."

They left me alone and class started soon after that. Every teacher that came into our class had to pause briefly every time they saw me. Yes, it's a black eye! So what? Please stop staring at it! It's so annoying!

When lunch finally came, Haruhi quietly left the room in a manner that lacked even the slightest amount of energy. She was sure to take the paper she wrote with her. This of course meant that I had to sit with the other two while eating lunch. My wrist was still bothering me too, so eating was a pain.

"So tell us what happened," said Taniguchi without wasting time. "Who'd you get into a fight with?"

"It wasn't a fight. It's more accurate to say that I was attacked."

"Who would do that?" asked Kunikida.

I somewhat reluctantly answered. "Haruhi's father…"

"Ouch!" yelled Taniguchi with a bit of a cringe. "What, did he catch you making out with Suzumiya-san?"

"No!" I yelled in total exasperation. Damn he's so obnoxious. "It turns out that Haruhi never told her parents about the SOS Brigade, and they found out about it. She got banned from her club, and in trying to talk her father out of it, he beat the crap out of me."

"Man, he sounds like a huge jerk," said Kunikida. "I noticed that she looked really down, today."

"Yep…" I said as I looked at my lunch. I noticed that it was made from what we had for dinner last night. Knowing that the Suzumiyas almost never have leftovers, I started to suspect that Haruhi never ate her dinner last night and instead used what was on her plate to make lunch for the both of us. I mentally shrugged and ate it anyway. Even if it was leftovers, it was still damn good.

School was now over, and for only the second time since the club was first started, I found myself walking home when class ended instead of going to the club. I was reminded of how weird it was walking home with so many people also on the streets also walking home. I had to imagine it was weird for Haruhi, too. She was quiet the whole time, though, so I wasn't really sure what was going through her mind. The sounds of idle chatter from other students and cars racing by were the only things I heard the entire way home.

I couldn't help but notice that even though we were going down hill the whole time that Haruhi was walking considerably slower than her normal pace. And as we came closer and closer to home, her pace became slower and slower. By the time we got to the street she lived on, her pace was at almost a crawl. I then realized that Haruhi was simply delaying having to get home, likely because she didn't want to run into her father.

I tried to reassure her as best as I could. "Maybe if we're lucky, we won't run into your dad when we get back."

I heard Haruhi sigh deeply as she picked up her pace ever so slightly, perhaps to get it over with.

Unfortunately for us, the moment we opened the door, Oruki was waiting on the other side. Wonderful… I noticed that Haruhi brought her eyes to the floor, never bothering to look at her father in the face.

"Hold it right there," he said with his hand up. "Your mother and I talked about what we should do about your club, and we came up with this." I noticed Naru-san approach from behind, giving us a light smile before her husband continued. "The truth of the matter is that you lied to us. That cannot go unpunished. As a result, you're grounded for the rest of the week. You are to come home immediately after school and go straight to your room. On Saturday, however…"

We were then hit with a bombshell.

"…You're going to have one of your club meetings here."

Haruhi's and my eyes shot wide open when we heard this. Wait, he wants us to have a club meeting…here? In Haruhi's house?

Oruki crossed his arms and gave a smug smirk. "Your mother and I want to see this club for ourselves. After all, Kyon-kun here said himself that you guys are in charge of solving mysteries for others, right? We want to see you guys in action. We want to see this…what the name of you club again?"

"The SOS Brigade," I answered.

Oruki paused for a second upon being reminded of the name. "R…right…If this…SOS Brigade is everything he said it was, then you're free to continue with it. If not, then you're to never go to it again."

Haruhi and I looked at each other when we heard this. I wasn't sure what she was feeling, but I was feeling a mixture of relief and nervousness. After all, even though this was a chance to save the club, most of what I said about the club was a huge stretch at best. Most of the time we just goofed off.

"You guys okay with that? Shouldn't be a problem after all. You were telling me the truth about your club yesterday, riiiggghhht?"

"R…right," I said. "I…it sounds like a great idea."

Haruhi never responded. Perhaps she didn't know what to say. She certainly seemed a bit off guard by the idea.

"Great!" said Oruki as he pointed upstairs with his thumb. "In that case, time for you to head upstairs. We'll call you down when it's time for dinner."

Haruhi and I began to walk towards the stairs, but a hand grabbed my shoulder before I could go any further. Oruki's hand in fact.

"Where do you think you're going? You've got work to do."

Are you kidding me? After all you did to me last night, you're still going to make me work? I was wrong. You truly are an evil person.

"Quit your belly aching! It's not going to be that hard!"

That's not the point. You're lucky I didn't call the police or something over that.

"Look, all I need you to do is shampoo the carpets. I even took the liberty of moving the furniture and setting up the carpet shampooer. The rest is easy."

When I went and looked in the living room, I found that he did in fact move the furniture. The only thing that was still in the room was the shampooer. After Oruki showed me how to use the machine, I went about using it. Of course, Oruki was down my neck the whole time, constantly yelling at me for going too fast or for missing a spot. What should have been have been a quick simple job took that much longer because of him. Eventually, I got the job done and had to wait for the carpet to dry. While we were waiting for it to dry, Oruki decided to say something to me.

"Look…about last night. I know that I went too far."

Oh, you think? You know, until you said something I wasn't so sure.

"I was just so mad that I was lied to, not just by you, but my daughter, too."

And this justifies assault how?

"But I realize now that you did that to protect my daughter and your club."

Well. I mainly did it to protect the club…well and maybe Haruhi by extension. Wait, did I really care about the club that much? I…I guess I do.

"Obviously if this club wasn't so important to you, you wouldn't have allowed yourself to take the beating that you did. That's why I'm allowing you guys to prove yourselves. In any case, I'd say that we should call it even. You lied to me, I beat you up. And that evens things out."

What? On what planet does that even things out? There's no way that what I did equals to what you did. Not even close…

"I think it's best that we forget that the whole thing happened."

I agree. I would love to forget the whole thing. There's one problem, though. You see, my body is not so forgetful. In fact, right now it's sending me painful reminders of what happened last night. So until it stops reminding me, you can bet that I'm not forgetting anything, Captain Caveman!

In the end, I realized that this was about as close to an apology that Oruki was ever going to get. After he'd finished giving me his awkward speech, I went into the kitchen to get something to drink. In there, I found Naru-san preparing dinner. She was in the process of peeling potatoes. Just as I was about to open the refrigerator, she spoke to me.

"What'd you think about the idea of you guys having your club here? It was my idea."

I blinked in surprise as I grabbed a soda from the fridge. "Really?"

She nodded with glee. "I thought the idea of your club sounded so much fun that I wanted to see it for myself. The idea of a club that helps solve mysteries." I could see her bounce with growing excitement. "Oh, I wish I had a club like that when I was in high school! I'm so jealous! And I love the name of your club! SOS Brigade! Yay!"

You would, wouldn't you? You and your daughter are probably the only people in the entire universe who would like that name.

"I think I'm going to make a banner and decorations! Maybe we can make it a huge party and have lots of fun! What do you think the banner should say?"

I swallowed hard, trying to think of what to say. "Uh…I think a banner might be a little too much."

Naru-san gave a cute frown when I said that. "Aw…okay…" She then went and started peeling her potato again. "It's just that…I figured it was the least I could do…"

"What do you mean?"

She turned around to me with an even larger frown. "It was my fault that everything happened yesterday!" After giving a deep sigh, she continued. "I was worried when you told me that only one person actually read anything in your club, so I told Oruki about it."

It figures. Haruhi was right. She tells her husband everything.

"And because of that, Oruki eventually went and looked through your room and discovered that stuff, and it all went down hill from there. Oh, I'm such a terrible person!"

I smiled at her reassuringly. "There's no way you could have known that would've happened. You were just being a concerned parent."

Naru-san appeared almost in tears at this point. "My daughter probably hates me now."

"No she doesn't."

"Yes she does. She never talks to me anymore. She must hate me."

I mentally sighed in exasperation. Sometimes, talking to Naru-san was like talking to a child. She's way too innocent for her age. It's cute, I'll admit, but it constantly makes me wonder how many screws are loose in her head. Nevertheless, I remembered my talk with Haruhi earlier and tried to use what I knew from that to help.

"Look, I won't claim that I know everything that goes on in your daughter's head. But…I don't know…sometimes I think that even she needs a role model. Someone…to talk to when she confused…about 'girl' stuff…"

Naru-san blinked in confusion at my suggestion. "Huh?"

She can't be this dense. Seriously. I can tell now where all the brains in the family came from.

"She needs to know that if she talks to you about stuff that you won't go and tell everything about it to your husband."

"Oh…" she said as she began to nod. "You're right. I shouldn't do that, but it's hard for me. I have this habit of wanting to tell people what's on my mind, and it's really hard for me to hold it in. Whenever I have a secret, it's impossible for me to keep it in. No wonder Haru-chan hates me." I could see the tears well up in her eyes again as she began pulling on her hair.

I once again tried what I could to calm her down. "Look, maybe you could write it down, instead, or find something to keep you busy when you feel the need to tell a secret. Or maybe you can tell me, instead. I'm good at keeping secrets." Hell, I've been keeping some huge ones for over a year now. Okay, so I did technically tell Haruhi the truth about the other members of the SOS Brigade quite some time ago, but she didn't believe me, and I never went out of my way to prove that I wasn't messing with her.

Naru-san sighed deeply again before she gave a large smile. "Thank you, Kyon-kun! You're the best!" She then gave me a really big hug. At first I was worried about her husband, who was in the other room, catching us, but when I felt the pain of my bruises being pressed on, my concerns changed.

"Uh…Naru-san…you're hurting me…"

Naru-san paused for a second, likely from confusion before she realized what was happening. "Oh, I'm sorry." She then let go and gave an embarrassed smile. "I hope I didn't hurt you."

I tried to play it off as no big deal. "I'm fine. See ya, Naru-san."

Wait, was having her tell me Haruhi's secrets a good idea? Maybe, I should tell her not to do that…But then again, learning some secrets wouldn't…ah, maybe she won't say anything to me.

After leaving the kitchen, I saw Oruki beginning to struggle with getting the couch back into the living room. As strong as I knew he was, even he was having difficulty getting it in.

"You okay?" I asked.

"I'm fine," said while tugging on the couch. "This is nothing I can't handle. I got it out. I can get it back in."

Maybe I was crazy, but seeing him struggle with the couch made me feel bad for him. I really shouldn't feel bad for him. He did deserve to suffer after all. However, something inside me told me I should help, even if I was in pain. Maybe I wanted to be on his good side or something.

"Let me help."

"Forget it!" yelled Oruki the moment I made the suggestion. Eventually he let go of the couch to catch his breath. "I'm not so old that I need help with every little thing."

There's a big difference between every little thing and lifting a couch.

"Besides, aren't you still hurting from last night?"

"I'll live."

He gave me a smirk after I said that. "I get it. You're trying to look tough, right?"

No, I'm not! Are you so pumped up with ridiculous amounts of testosterone that you're unable to figure out when someone's actually trying to be nice? I give up…

"Fine, go ahead and help. I'd like to get this done before the game starts tonight anyway."

The two of us went and began to move the couch and the rest of the furniture into the living room. I once again was forced to ignore the pain in my wrist, which was starting to make me think that it was sprained or close to it. What made things worse was the fact that Oruki seemed to want to take advantage of the furniture being moved around to find a new set up for the living room.

"I was getting sick of the old set up anyway."

Can't we just get this over with? Who cares how your living room is set up? If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were taking advantage of my kindness.

It took about half an hour before we finally finished…and the living room was almost the same as it was before. Damn, I'm really starting to hate this guy.

I went back to my room before I could find any more reasons to want to brutally murder Oruki (Not that I could if I wanted to). I had just started to pull out my homework when my phone went off. When I looked at it, I discovered it was Koizumi.

"What's up?" I asked.

"We're finally finished with shutting down the closed space," said Koizumi, who was only barely able to hide his obvious exhaustion. "I called because I wanted to get an update on what was happening on your end."

It took him that long to shut it down? Just how close were we from having the world end?

"Haruhi's grounded until Saturday. And then her parents wanted us to have a Brigade meeting here."

"I see," said Koizumi as he pondered the new update. "I've already contacted Nagato-san and Asahina-san. They wanted us to meet together as soon as possible to discuss the recent events. And of course we wanted you there as well."

That goes without saying, doesn't it? Or are you guys having secret meetings behind my back when I wasn't looking.

"When is the earliest you can meet with us?"

"I don't think I could do it tonight without making Haruhi or her parents suspicious. I might be able to meet with you guys after school tomorrow."

"Good. I think it'll be best if we meet at that café we usually hang out at. We have a lot to discuss. Things have become very…uncertain. We need to prepare for the worst."

"Sounds good," I said, preparing to hang up the phone. "I'll see you guys then."

I then hung up the phone, sighing deeply from mental exhaustion. Why can't things be simpler, even for a week? Anyway, I wouldn't want to be Haruhi right about now. Knowing her, being cooped up in her room all day would count as torture, even if her room had a computer.

I was suddenly startled by the sound of knocking on my window. Window? Wait, that could only mean…

Sure enough, when I opened the window, Haruhi's head could be seen popping out from the side of the roof. I knew she couldn't sit still in her room. I had to admit also that seeing he head upside down with all her hair falling towards the ground was quite amusing.

"I wanted to talk to you about Saturday," she said.

"Okay, what's on your mind?"

Haruhi displayed a look of concern on her face. "I know that this meeting this Saturday would be a great way to finally get my parents to leave me alone about the club, but what are we going to do? In the whole year we've had the club, we've only had two clients. What are the chances that we'll get another by Saturday?"

She's right. We've only had two people come to us the entire time the SOS Brigade has existed. The first was Emiri Kimidori, who was actually another human interface like Nagato. She got us to look for the missing Computer Club President when he was "captured" by some giant camel cricket…thing. And then there was Sakanaka-san, who wanted us to investigate that strange location that all the dogs in the neighborhood were afraid of. And later, she and someone else's dog were attacked by data lifeforms, making them lethargic and sickly. Thanks to the help of Nagato, though, we were able to remove the data lifeforms and place them on my cat…wait, Shamisen still has those things on him doesn't he? I hope nothing happens to him while I'm not around.

I looked at Haruhi and tried to come up with some ideas. "Maybe we can pass out flyers again. Who knows, maybe we'll get lucky and someone will come forth."

Haruhi didn't seem encouraged by the idea. "There's no way I'd find the time to do that. I have to come straight home after school for the rest of the week, remember? And even if we did, what are the chances it'll work. It didn't work before…"

It rare to see Haruhi so pessimistic. She always gets this way when she's depressed, though. I really wished I could reassure her somehow.

"We'll think of something, Haruhi. We still have three days left. Maybe something will turn up."

Haruhi nodded when I said that, still looking discouraged. Her eyes shot wide open all of a sudden and she quickly got up out of view. I then heard a knock on the door. Naru-san then opened the door and peeked her head in.

"Dinner's ready, Kyon-kun."

"Okay, thank you, Naru-san." I could hear Haruhi quickly trying to sneak back into her room while this was happening. Man, her ears must be sharp.

Dinner was a simple stew that was cooked up by Naru-san. It was American night, but I figured this kind of stew could've been served almost anywhere. Not that I'm complaining, as it was delicious as always, but perhaps Naru-san wasn't feeling as creative tonight was usual.

The rest of the night and all of school the next day was uneventful. When school was over, I explained to Haruhi that I was going to meet up with the rest of the Brigade to explain to them what had happened and what our plans for Saturday were. She didn't seem to care too much, as her melancholy was still in full swing. After we parted ways, I began to make my way towards the café, where I was sure the others were already waiting for me.

I could only begin to imagine what they we're planning…

So Haruhi's parents are going to meet the SOS Brigade! Who knows what'll happen when they do!

Hope you enjoyed the chapter. ^^