"Allow me to introduce you. This is Mitsuru Asahina."

Kyon was naturally dumbfounded by this new addition to Haruhi's currently unnamed group. Yuki, on the other hand, still had yet to react to much of anything.

"I caught him daydreaming in a second year classroom," Haruhi continued. "I patrol the whole school during breaks, so his face was already familiar after a little while."

"And… why him?" Kyon said, already dreading the answer.

"Well just look at him!" Haruhi said. "Pretty short and unassuming, right? But…" She suddenly grabbed the end of his sleeve and, ignoring a brief yelp, started rolling it up until a surprisingly thick bicep became apparent. "...he's built like a tank! This is what we're looking for in this club! You already said it yourself; the unknown won't just come out of hiding and greet us, so we've got to force it into the open!"

"But what's he got to do with that?" Kyon's patience was wearing thin, and he was hoping an opportunity for both him and this pitiable boy to escape would soon present itself.

"It's symbolic!" Haruhi spoke with her usual 'how is this not obvious to you?' tone. "He may not be an alien or a time traveler, but he's still hiding something interesting, and if we can uncover something like that, it's only a matter of time before we uncover the really big stuff!"

Kyon shut his eyes tightly. "Please don't phrase it like that."

Haruhi ignored him. "And that's why he's going to be our mascot!"

Kyon and Mitsuru responded simultaneously and identically. "...mascot?"

"Don't tell me you still don't get it!" Haruhi looked Mitsuru up and down one more time, and Kyon was distraught to realize he already knew her well enough to see the lightbulb above her head.

"Hey Mitsuru, take off your shirt."

Without waiting for a response, Haruhi reached over and started to do it herself. More yelps and shrieks followed from Mitsuru, mainly because Haruhi's recklessness was getting his shoulder-length hair caught in his clothes and tugged every which way. Kyon was reaching his limit and getting ready to intervene, but his chance quickly disappeared.

"Stop it!"

The next thing Haruhi knew, her back was on the floor, and Mitsuru was struggling to untangle his clothes and get them back into place. Before he could get anywhere with that, he quickly noticed he was the center of attention, but even with three pairs of eyes now on him, he was reluctant to take his own off Haruhi.

"I… I'm sorry…" He mumbled. But with that out of the way, he did manage to notice something else. Something about three pairs of eyes being on him. Haruhi, Kyon, and… who else?

Finally, he noticed Yuki. He didn't recognize the significance of her looking up from her book just yet, but seeing her still changed a lot for him, including how he viewed the room around him. He was reminded that this was supposed to be the room for the literature club. And the thought that she could still sit and concentrate despite all the craziness… well, despite most of the craziness…

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I guess… I can quit the calligraphy club, and join this one."

It was certainly a strange offer, but only Kyon seemed to notice that at the time. The only thing suggesting to Mitsuru that he might have done something to upset Yuki was his higher level of anxiety than usual, and agreeing to allow more opportunities for this sort of thing to happen was a strange way of making up for it, to put it mildly. But there was still something about Yuki that interested him. Not necessarily in that way… or at least, he didn't think that was what it was.

"But I… I'm not sure what you'd do in the literature club…"

Nearby, Haruhi had just shrugged off her fall and silently accepted the apology, not realizing she hadn't heard the one actually intended for her. "Oh, we're not the Literature Club," she said.

Well… that did slightly explain her speech about making him the mascot. But there was still a lot to be confused about.

Fortunately, Kyon was there to explain as much as he could understand himself. "We're temporarily borrowing this room for Suzumiya's currently unnamed club. I don't know if she's decided what we actually do yet. The girl reading over there is the actual literature club member."

Once again, learning about the occupants seemed to change the whole room for Mitsuru. Did he just say 'Suzumiya'? Is that the real reason I'm here?

Surprisingly enough, it wasn't the first time he'd asked himself that. The first time was when she joined the calligraphy club, but once she left, he'd concluded it was nothing to worry about and went back to what he thought he was supposed to be doing.

By the time Haruhi swooped in and forced him into this group, all he could remember about her was that there was something unusual about her, more so than others in this school seemed to realize. Hearing her name again allowed the last piece of the puzzle to finally fall into place.

He looked at Yuki and wondered again about her place in all of this, suddenly suspecting there was more to it than what Kyon had just said.

As he finally left the clubroom, Mitsuru was startled by a hand on his shoulder, but quickly relaxed upon realizing it was Kyon.

"Sorry about that," he said. "You know, you don't have to do this. I'm sure I can talk her out of it."

"No, that's okay," Mitsuru said. "This must have been a fixed event…" He was too busy staring into space to notice Kyon's confused expression. "Also, I'm concerned about why Nagato is here…"

Somehow, he had a feeling he'd learn more about that when he got home.

Six months later…

"I've finally figured it out!"

Kyon tried to maintain a poker face as he silently acknowledged Haruhi's statement. He always hoped whenever she said something like that that it wouldn't be anything too world-changing… literally.

"It's about Mitsuru," she said. "The way he's so tough but acts so timid. There was always something it reminded me of. Some connection that was always on the tip of my tongue, but just out of reach. It was only last night I figured it out!"

Kyon simply waited for her to continue.

"He's like Clark Kent if he really was just Clark Kent!"

The comparison was interesting enough to finally break Kyon's silence. "Hm. I've never really thought about it that way."

"Well of course you wouldn't!" Haruhi said. "But that's the thing. Isn't that what a superhero would want you to think?"

Kyon realized he might have let his guard down too soon, but didn't see any way out of the conversation now. "Don't read too deeply into this, but I think if he was a superhero, he'd prefer if people never made the connection in the first place, rather than thinking 'he can't be a superhero… can he?'"

"I guess," Haruhi said, "but that's not the point. The point is he'd be absolutely perfect for that movie we talked about yesterday! Brawn and brains clash in… The Labors of Mitsuru Asahina."

"Labors…?" Kyon said. "What, does he have some kind of soul-crushing job?"

"Like the Labors of Hercules!" Haruhi snapped. "I should have known you'd be so uncultured!"

Kyon tried to ignore that. "So I'm guessing you're casting Nagato as 'brains' then." He thought back to all the times Mitsuru seemed unreasonably nervous around Yuki. "That could work."

"There's no 'could' about it!" Haruhi said. "Now I just need to figure out where Koizumi fits into this."

"Clumsy comic relief?" Kyon said, rather frustrated that he was actually getting into this idea.

"Maybe," Haruhi said. "He does have the kind of face that'd make girls forgive any mistake he made… but then again, so does Mitsuru!"

Once again, Kyon found himself wishing he'd kept his mouth shut. He recalled the many times Haruhi had scolded Mitsuru whenever he made a mistake while wearing his butler outfit, claiming the "ideal" maid would trip and spill tea about one in five times, but butlers didn't get that kind of leniency. The saddest part was, Mitsuru seemed to take these criticisms seriously, if his close study of Arakawa during their remote island trip was any indication.

"Besides," Haruhi said, "it wouldn't be much of a 'brains versus brawn' conflict if the brawny one also had brains."

Kyon suddenly remembered that this discussion had begun with Superman, who he didn't think was really a case of all brawn and no brains. But considering the mistakes he'd already made in this conversation, he definitely didn't want to become the kind of person who debates the capability of Western comic characters, especially with someone like Haruhi.

Unfortunately, Haruhi's train of thought was making a lack of input from him just as regrettable. "Don't you hate it when the star of a movie is so insufferably overconfident, like nothing's a challenge for him? Don't you just want to take him down a peg?"

Kyon sadly had to keep his retort to that one to himself. You tell me, Miss 'Great Grades, Great Athletic Skill, and, oh yeah, World Destroying Power'. Thankfully, another occurred to him. "And why should you take out that frustration on Asahina?"

"What else would I do?" Haruhi snapped. "Hire the actors who pissed me off like that in the first place? Can't you think at least a little before asking questions that stupid?"

"Or," Kyon said, "you could just not make the movie."

Finally, the two had the same thought. There is no way of getting through to this idiot. I'd better stop wasting my time before I go completely insane.

Author's note: "Clark Kent if he really was just Clark Kent" is how I've always described my interpretation of Mitsuru, or it would be if I actually talked about it with anyone else. At first, Haruhi made the more awkward observation that "he's like a superhero's secret identity, but without the other identity attached to it," but then I reread the series and Superman was directly referenced in one of the later books, so I figured it'd be okay to namedrop Clark specifically.

Also, I do have a cover image for this, but I'm worried it might be too dumb. It's basically Mitsuru's face pasted on top of Duke Nukem's body, with the title in bright green comic sans underneath.