To reviewers of chapter 2:

Dark-ranmaru: I'm glad that you liked Denzel. I will try to update fast, but my brain's slightly fried right now from all the standardized tests and the outings I've taken with my family in celebration of no more tests, haha.

A-dizzle: Well, Sora is a genius after all (wink). And truthfully, I doubt he has any normal hobbies. I mean, he's as eccentric as they come. If he has a hobby, it might be staring into space with a powerful telescope in hopes of finding an UFO. And yeah, no more new members. I think I've covered all of the grounds that Sora talked about with the four people now.


Chapter 3 – The Literature Club Publication


About a month into the school year, it was time to turn in the application to renew the SOS Brigade as a club at Radiant Garden High. And as usual, the job to do that was delegated to me.

Fine by me, I had a copy of the original completed application anyways.

So, after filling the forms out, I turned it in to the student council office.

A week later, the results came back in the shape of a fourth year student by the name of Setzer Gabbiani.

When I went to the SOS Brigade clubroom that fateful afternoon, I could hear loud voices in the clubroom. Having missed the fact that the sign that hung over the door to the clubroom was no longer "The SOS Brigade", I stepped into a room where tension was so high that I could feel myself cowering. Sora's fists were on his hips and his lips were set in a thin line.

Oh yeah, Sora was angry.

Off to the side, Denzel seemed upset by whatever was happening while Kairi looked back and forth between Sora and the silver-haired teen. Naminé had gone to "La-la land" reading her latest encyclopedic book. And strangely enough, Riku was nowhere to be found.

"What's going on here?" I asked. "Who are you?"

The man looked at me with a pair of cold eyes. His lips were also set in a thin line. Underneath the long hair, I could see a couple of scars here and there, which made me wonder what kind of person this guy was to have so many scars. He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up and cleared his throat.

"I'm Setzer Gabbiani," he said. "I'm the new Student Council President."

I never remembered voting for him…

Actually, I don't think I voted for the student council at all last year. Oops.

"As for the reason why I'm here," he said coolly. "The student council has decided to reject the SOS Brigade's renewal for club registration."

"What?" I blurted. "Why?"

"This club did not do anything worthy last year that would garner another year of legitimacy. This clubroom is now officially the Literature Club room. However."

I waited for him to go on.

"Since the Literature Club did absolutely nothing last year, the Literature Club is going to be forced to disband unless you guys produce a publication for the school once a month for the rest of the school year."

"Once a month!?" I exclaimed in shock. Naminé had looked up from her book with a thoughtful look upon her face. Obviously she was finding this idea rather intriguing.

"Yes," he replied simply. "I look forward to the first publication a month from today."

"Can't we just make one large publication and publish it at the end of the year?" I suggested.

The fourth year hummed. "Very well. You may do that. But if there is no publication at the end of the year, this room will be cleared out before next semester and access to this room will be given to another club."

He seemed to be talking to me more than he is to Sora. What the hell?

"Alright," I replied.

He pushed his glasses back up.

"Good day," he said in a rather patronizing tone before leaving the room.

With the departure of the fourth year, I breathed a sigh of relief and turned around to a most disturbing scene once again.

On Sora's face was an eerie smile, it was as if he was really excited about the project that we had no choice but to accept it.

"That was brilliant, Roxas!" he exclaimed.

Wait a minute, did he just compliment me?

"I've always wanted to be an editor in chief for a publication." He began rubbing his hands together in excitement. Oh boy, what the hell have I gotten us into this time?

He leaned toward me with that excited face of his and a great wide grin on it. "Do some publicity to get some people to submit some work of their own. I'm going to go home early to work on the layout of the magazine."

He skipped over to his chair and threw his bookbag over his shoulder. Before he left the room however, he quickly turned his head.

"Oh, don't forget the personal ads too."

With that, he disappeared out of the room.

I grumbled at the thought of needing to make several flyers to advertise for the Literature Club's publication and ruffled my hair in annoyance.

"I'll deal with the flyer," said Kairi with a smile on her face.

"Riku's waiting for you at the library," added Naminé as she flipped yet another page.

I blinked with confusion at the two. "What?"

"I think you heard them right…" said Denzel, raising an eyebrow at me.

"Yeah, I did. But why?"

"You'll see," said Naminé simply.

"Great," I muttered with annoyance. "Fine. I'm going." I slung the bookbag over my shoulder with irritation and left the room where three smiling faces seemed to mock me.

Maybe I'm just bitter that I'm going to have more work to do over the next couple of months. With the PCAE and generally being in second year of high school, my life is just peachy isn't it.

I think someone up there must really like to torture me. Or maybe it's all Sora's fault. Yeah, I'll accept that. It's all Sora's fault.

So, following Naminé's instructions, I made my way over to the school library and stopped short when I saw a familiar face standing next to Riku in front of the glass doors.

It was none other than the guy who had just visited the SOS Brigade club room.

Setzer Gabbiani.

"I trust that you have already made each other's acquaintance," commented Riku with that creepy grin of his.

"Uh… yeah," I said lamely. I scrutinized the taller silver-haired teen, noticing that he was taller than Riku by a head, and found the same grin on his face. The glasses he had been wearing were no longer on his face. In fact, the man had pulled out a deck of cards and was playing with it before I arrived.

"Let's go to the roof," Setzer said lightly. "I'm itching for a smoke."

The crap?

"Eh, might as well," shrugged Riku. The three of us then began our way up three flights of stairs in the library building—which also contained the orchestra rehearsal rooms and a small screening theater. You know, for a public high school, this place surely has a lot of extra random rooms.

We came out of the building at the roof and immediately, Setzer pulled out a cigarette from his pants pocket and lighted it.

"So, what the hell is going on here?" I decided to ask.

"The agency has hired Setzer here to serve as a source of tension for Sora," said Riku simply.

"Tension? What the hell for?"

"Have you noticed that Sora has been rather bored and frustrated for the last month?" he asked.

Now that you mention it… He has been rather irked by the fact that our website was still rather unpopular with only a thousand or so visits since we last updated it and I'm willing to be half of that was from Sora constantly clicking on it to check the counter. And with him being preoccupied by the lame website that he has often grumbled about, he apparently hasn't had the time to come up with things that would actually interest him.

"So?"

"Do you remember what happens when Sora gets frustrated or bored?"

"Oh." Closed space. "So how many occurrences of Closed space has been showing up lately?"

"Too many to allow my colleagues and I to have a normal life," he replied solemnly. "We've hired Setzer so that Sora would feel the need to do everything to keep the SOS Brigade a club."

"And thus you can control the number of Closed space, am I right?" I leaned against the mesh fence that enclosed the rooftop. Apparently this was a suicide hotspot a long time ago.

"You are absolutely correct," he replied.

"How did Sora react after I left?" asked Setzer, blowing out a cloud of smoke from his cigarette.

"He was excited," I replied. "Do we actually have to publish this?" I asked wearily.

"Well, if you don't, I'll be forced to take action," the silver-haired president said. "I have to keep up the image for Sora after all." He grinned at me.

I could only sigh. Everything is always seemed to be about Sora, isn't it?

"You could publish it earlier. I'm not particularly looking for a grandiose thing," he added.

"Knowing Sora, he'd want to make it perfect," I muttered.

"Take as long as you need," he replied with another smoke. "I actually look forward to it."

"Just pile more work on me, why don't you?" I grumbled, running my hands through my hair exasperatedly. Setzer laughed heartily.

"I'll pull some strings to get some submissions in. I'm assuming you'll be taking on most of the editing?"

"Probably. If there's some crazy stuff though, I'd just give it to Sora."

"Any clue as to how you guys are going to present it?"

"Absolutely no clue," I replied simply.

"I'm sure Sora will come up with some way," grinned Setzer.

I wouldn't doubt it.


The following day after class, I was mildly surprised to see the number of flyers that had been posted throughout the campus. Either Kairi was a genius at publicity or Naminé helped her out with all the publicity stuff.

"The Literature Club publication?" inquired Demyx as he looked at a pink sheet of paper that had been passed out during homeroom.

"50 munny for a five lined ad and 500 munny for a half page personal ad…" read Axel. "That sounds rather cheap."

I can only shrug.

"I wonder what the Literature Club's looking for exactly," pondered my musician friend out loud.

"Whatever you want to write about," I replied with boredom. Demyx raised an eyebrow at me.

"And how would you know?" he asked.

"I'm working on the publication," I answered.

"What happened to Sora's club?" blinked Axel.

"It's not legitimate. So I'm a member of the Literature club."

"You're a member of the Literature club?" snickered Demyx. I shot him an evil eye.

"I've learned to read for fun," I muttered with annoyance. "Naminé's a great influence." Well, part of that was a lie, but I wasn't going to tell them that.

"In any case," I said with a dismissive wave. "If you're going to submit something, drop it off at the Literature club room or the Literature club box in the student center." I then went back to the book that we needed to read for English.

"Yeah. I'll put in a personal ad to look for a date for you, Roxas," grinned Axel. I blushed and sputtered.

"Axel! This isn't a dating publication!"

"So? We're in high school. I'm willing to even post the 500 munny for a full page ad," he grinned.

"Asshole," I muttered. "I'll put in a half-page ad posing as you to confess your love for Demyx then," I replied with a straight face. Axel's mouth dropped open as Demyx blushed profusely.

"Roxas!" he cried in embarrassment. I could only snicker wickedly at my two friends.

"You're on, Uchiyama," grinned Axel with a competitive glint in his eyes. I returned the challenge with one of my own and smiled in anticipation of our antics.

Demyx could only groan exasperatedly at the two of us.


That afternoon, I was mildly surprised to see several submissions already made for the publication. Several were personal ads, ranging from the very personal ads like Axel's, to simple shout-outs to friends.

As if any of that would really matter. But whatever, we get free money, that's all I care.

Quickly separating the article submissions from the ads, I went to my designated seat and began working on my homework like the others. Naminé, surprisingly, wasn't reading that afternoon. Instead, she was writing down a string of sentences in such a pace that I thought she was writing a five paragraph in-class essay in thirty minutes or something.

It was also rather strange that Sora didn't show up in that first hour right after classes officially ended.

At about four o'clock, the door to the Literature club suddenly slammed open to reveal a smiling Sora.

That could only mean something bad has happened to someone.

"Sorry I'm late!" he announced cheerfully.

"What did you do this time?" I immediately asked with suspicion.

"Just because I'm late, that doesn't mean I did something wrong!" he retorted defensively. Now I knew something definitely was wrong.

"Anyways," he continued on, pulling out a stack of papers with many boxes on them. "I drew out a general outline as to what we're going to be putting in the newspaper." Since when was this thing a newspaper!? "I've also managed to convince the Journalism club to let us use their printing machines to print out five thousand copies of this."

"Did you plan on circulating it beyond the school?" I asked.

"Look over it," he said as he threw the layout at me. As expected of course, goddamn slave driver!

Heaving a sigh, I looked over the ten paged layout while Sora went through the meager submissions that we received that afternoon.

So far, so good. Front page, check. Title, check. Shameless advertisement to get more members for the SOS Brigade, check.

Wait, WHAT!?

As it appears, right smack in the middle of the thirty paged newspaper Sora's laid out for us was a two-paged spread advertising for the SOS Brigade. I have no clue how it's going to look, but that's what Sora had written down.

I lifted my head to glare at Sora, who was currently reading through some of the articles, tossing yet another into the wastebasket across the room from him.

It was rather distracting.

I flipped through the rest of the pages, noticing that Sora seemed to have made the entire newspaper layout with symmetry in mind. The first page and the last page of the newspaper appeared to be exactly the same, just mirrored. With that done, I set the plan aside just as Sora threw out the last submission into the wastebasket. Apparently only one out of the some ten submissions passed the test.

"I can't expect much today," he said aloud. "We've only started requesting for submissions today after all. By the way, good job on the flyer."

Oh hey, a Sora compliment. Who is it to anyways?

He stretched in his seat and swiveled around before yawning.

"I'm bored. I'm going home," he said and promptly left the room. "Don't forget to write your articles too!" he added right before he went out the room.

Great. Just wonderful. I have to write an article too!?


Whether Setzer did manage to pull strings or Sora had willed it subconsciously—I shall give Sora the reason of doubt this time, since Setzer had actually told me he was going to do it, on the day after we had posted flyers advertising the Literature club publication, also titled the Radiant Garden High Chronicle, the SOS Brigade, I mean Literature, club room had turned into something out of the nightmare of a famous celebrity.

"Wow!" exclaimed Sora as he and I stood in the doorway. I stared at the mountain of paper on top of the rectangular table in the room with shock, dread, and annoyance. Without needing prompting from Sora, since I knew perfectly well that Sora would've tossed 90 to 99 percent of all the submissions out, I went over to the pile of papers on the table and began sorting through, tossing a couple stupid entries into the wastebasket.

It was only lucky for me that Naminé had handed Sora her work, a godly five paged thing.

"This is from you?" Sora asked. Naminé nodded quietly.

Sora hummed with interest as he then sat down in his swivel chair and began reading.

While he read, the other three arrived and as if they all read my mind, helped me to sort out the entries, creating two piles: one for Sora, one for us.

As I picked up one of the entries, I was mildly surprised to see the stack of entries that Sora might approve of to be a sizeable height. Oh well, more work for Sora. Yes!

The latest entry was titled "The Sighs of Haruhi Suzumiya". Okay… strange title, but whatever.

As I read through the first half page of the entry, which included the paragraphs "Haruhi seems like the kind of person who shouldn't have any worries. But, she does. Only the thing that's bothering her is that 'The world is too mundane.'" and "To her, the "Non-mundane things" are any kind of supernatural phenomena, meaning she often thinks things like 'I can't believe there's not even half a ghost appearing before me.'", I was suddenly reminded of my own strange situation, being caught in the middle of a supernatural tornado and at the center of it all was, instead of this girl called Haruhi Suzumiya, Sora Kazano. I wonder if my life was just a record on paper… I quickly looked at the author of the entry and found no name.

What the crap?

Looking up at Sora, who had started perusing the entries that we delegated to him, and then back at the entry, I wondered if I should let Sora read this. On one hand, it would be interesting if Sora picked up on the parallels and maybe I'd have a better time convincing him that the world was revolving around him than this Kyon character. Yet, on the other hand, I'd be losing my trump card, right?

Still, my curiosity about his reaction wins out. Hey, who knows, maybe he would be dense enough to think that there was absolutely no parallel between us and that fictional world. And so, I placed the entry on the stack for Sora.

After an hour of sorting, we managed to finished sorting through the mess of papers and while the others began reading some of the more "mundane" and stupid stuff as Sora would aptly label it, I began working on my own paper, opting to detail my foray in the alternate world nearly a year ago.

Of course, it was only proper that I renamed everyone.

So Sora will be Monica, I will be Ross, Riku can be Chandler, Naminé shall be Phoebe, Kairi can be Rachel, and Hayner can be Joey. Excellent.

Three pages into my fantastical tale, I began smiling at the various mishaps that I had experienced back then. I was so engrossed in my work that I never realized that someone was standing behind me peering over my shoulder until I felt an excited exhale on the back of my neck.

I jumped in my seat and slowly turned to see a smile glaring back at me.

"This looks interesting!" Sora exclaimed. "When are you going to finish it?"

"When you stop breathing down my shoulder," I muttered to myself.

"What?"

"Tomorrow," I replied more clearly.

"I'll be waiting!" he announced.

I turned my attention up to look at the others and the pile of papers that had been in the room. Even with the others, it would appear that more than half of the submissions weren't publishable either. Still, from the height of the papers, we could easily fill half of the paper as Sora had laid out for the publication.

After that strange compliment Sora gave me, our fearless leader then proceeded to clear her throat to criticize the piece of work that Denzel had submitted for publication.

I kind of feel sorry for the first year. But, at least it isn't me.

Besides, Denzel didn't seem at all flustered by the reprimand that Sora was giving him. I doubt I could ever be that accepting with Sora.


For the next week, we continued our filtering of the submissions, passing the more interesting ones to Sora while leaving the more mundane ones to us.

Surprisingly, Sora seemed willing to take on the majority of the work. Besides just reading the submission drafts, and then proceeding to edit the hell out of some of the submissions—with inputs from Riku and Kairi, he also decided to undertake the design of the paper, choosing where to put which article would go where. It was also a shocker that he decided to put in a bunch of mundane articles rather than the articles that we had thought would've made it into the publication.

In the process, we also managed to accumulate over than 3000 munny just from the personal ads. As Sora aptly put it, "We'll beat the school system and get money anyway!"

Though, I'll bet that if Sora had his way, he'd just use the money allocated by the student council for the Literature club. He's just that sneaky.

With the SOS Brigade working so hard, it wasn't long before we completed the draft of the paper and was ready to put it on actual newspaper.

And so, in a remarkable two weeks after Setzer Gabbiani first set the project for the Literature club, the Radiant Garden High Chronicle was published. I, personally, had to pull some last minute adjustments to pull my work off of the paper, which Sora had believed to be worthy of front page. That personal decision was made under the advice of everyone else. In replacement, we put in one of Naminé's works, which was authored under an alias. In fact, a vast majority of the articles that Sora ended up accepting were from Naminé herself. It would appear that she has a penchant for writing.

When the paper was distributed, it was difficult to walk around the campus without seeing the newspaper. Each student was reading the 30 paged thick thing and while some read the articles, others were more eager to look at the personal ads. It was, how shall I say it, the rage of the times—at least for a week or so.

"This paper looks more like the Sunday magazine that comes with the Radiant Garden Times," commented Axel.

"I think that was the point," I retorted.

"By the way," Axel said with a glare. "I hate you."

I simply grinned at him.

As you might as suspected, I did indeed put in a small personal ad for Axel and Demyx. On the 17th page, almost right smack in the middle of the paper, was a simple three lined block:

"Less than three.

From the Flurry of Dancing Flames

To the Melodious Nocturne"

I'm pretty proud of myself there, even though Axel hadn't actually bothered with the personal ad for me.

And yes, I had to pay 50 munny for the stupid thing, but it was worth watching Axel glare at me and Demyx scowl at me with a blush on his face. Insert maniacal laughter.

That afternoon when I saw Setzer, he gave me a thumb's up for the paper. I could only surmise that the Literature club is safe for now.

Although the publication was a success—so successful that not one newspaper was seen littered on the ground or left untouched on the counter of the student council office, I was more than surprised to find a gleaming copy of it in magazine form some two weeks after the publication was sent out. Someone had gone through the troubles of actually making a magazine out of this.

What the hell?

As I picked it out from my locker, I flipped through the pages with weariness. Especially since my story was the cover story.

There was no indication as to who made the thing, but I have inkling that it might've been Riku.

After all, this entire thing had been orchestrated by his organization, right?

Oh, how wrong I was two months later.


Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and Haruhi Suzumiya do not belong to me. This piece of work is purely fictional and free to readers. That doesn't give anyone the right to post this on a separate website without my permission though.

A/N: Oh my gosh. This took forever! I kept getting caught up with other stuff to focus my brain on this chapter. So very sorry this took a long time to update. In any case, I felt that the entire publication process was slightly rushed. Maybe I should've put in some specific article quotes, but meh, it's better to just wonder about what's actually being written and being put into the publication, right? And yes, I deliberately put in an excerpt from Baka-tsuki's translation of The Sighs of Haruhi Suzumiya in here. Roxas's reaction reminds me of existentialism (sweatdrops).

Oh yeah. Props to whoever can pick up what other reference I made in this chapter, haha.