6. Settling In

Kyon awoke in what he slowly realised was a four-poster bed. There were no windows, but the room was softly-lit by cunningly-concealed lights in the walls and ceiling. The rest of it was similarly opulent – the bedside tables and cabinets were made of ornately carved mahogany, and book-cases lined those walls that were otherwise unoccupied.

He got up, took a moment to admire the silk pyjamas, and set off to explore the rest of the apartment. It was likewise well-appointed – the bath was huge, with a terrifying array of mysterious nozzles, whilst the sofas in the main lounge looked so comfortable that they practically exerted their own gravitic field. There were only two indicators that this place was a prison – the thick apartment door with the large flap halfway up, and the little spherical drone that he found hovering in the kitchen, which greeted him with a cascade of eye-hurting symbols, and proceeded to follow him around from then onwards.

After a bit more poking around and a couple of fruitless attempts to open the door, he sat back down on the bed and opened one of the books – The Prisoner of Zenda, which someone had obligingly translated into Japanese, and which he rapidly put down once he realised that (a) it was providing uncomfortably ironic commentary on his own situation, and (b) that was probably why the gods had put it there. Eventually, though, he picked it up again. It wasn't as if he had much else to do.

Over the next couple of days, life in the gilded cage developed into a regular routine. Three times a day, the guard outside would open the flap and pass through a tray of food. It was simple stuff (surprisingly so given his surroundings, like a favourite back-home recipe for the nouveau riche), but nourishing, and the waste disposal unit in the kitchen dealt with what was left over. He wasn't sure he wanted to know how, though – there was a weird chomping noise that came from it whenever he pushed the tray down.

The drone proved to be entirely invulnerable to his assaults – all he got out of it was some bruised knuckles and broken furniture. These vanished the next morning, though – again, he doubted he wanted to know the details of that.

On the third day, he tried to start a conversation with the guard.

"Umm... hi. My name's Kyon. What's yours?"

Silence.

"Ah. I see. I'm a student at North High School, in Nishinomiya City, on the shore of Osaka Bay in Japan. Do you have a Nishinomiya here? I would have thought so."

More silence.

"Well, I suppose Kyon isn't my real name. More of a nickname. It sort of stuck, though. I really can't imagine being called anything else."

The silence continued.

"I wonder how my friends are doing? That is to say, my fellow-supervisors. Dealing with Haruhi is a full-time job. Literally."

Yet more silence.

"You wouldn't know about Haruhi, would you? She's this girl I met... must have been a year ago, now. Roped me into this weird club, the SOS Brigade, along with a couple of others. No, I'm not going to dignify that acronym by explaining what it stands for. She's... not exactly normal, you see. And by 'not exactly normal', I mean 'borderline-sociopathic'. Sees people as things. At least, she used to. She's getting a bit better these days. Still not exactly an easy person to be around, though. Of course, I would have dropped the whole thing like a live grenade first chance I got, but joy of joys, it turns out that she's a deity-level reality-warper. Could rewrite the entire universe without even knowing she was doing it. The Brigade turned into a way to keep her distracted, to prevent her from causing too much damage. We could have told her what she was, I suppose, but well... she's Haruhi. I don't think she's ready for that sort of thing. I don't think anyone is."

He wondered if the gods were listening, but decided it didn't matter. He wasn't telling them anything they didn't already know.

"One thing I will say, though – being with Haruhi is never dull." He smiled. "She's always cooking up some crazy scheme that'll likely get some or all of us exhausted, hurt, or otherwise in trouble, but never, ever bored. We may spend our entire lives rigging sports matches, solving staged murder mysteries, and fighting off overgrown virtual camel crickets, but... sometimes, it can be fun. Not that I'd ever let her know that, though. I'd be up to my armpits in physics-violating weirdness in no time flat. More so."

The drone buzzed a little too close, and he idly swatted it away.

"Then there's the rest of the Brigade. None of them are exactly normal, either. Haruhi probably had something to do with that, whether she knows it or not. Nagato – Yuki Nagato, to be precise – is an artificial human, a living interface for this alien computer-thing called the Integrated Data Entity. She's quiet, she hardly ever shows anything even resembling emotion, and she once rebuilt the universe into some sort of present for me (long story), but... I trust her. When Nagato's around, you know everything's going to be all right. Stick her in a library, though, and you'd best wave goodbye, because she's not coming out for several hours. I swear, it's like an addiction."

Again, silence.

"Then there's Miss Asahina. Sweet, innocent, a real angel. She's a time-traveller, sent from the future as an observer. Unfortunately, Haruhi decided she'd make the perfect club mascot, and has this bad habit of using her as her personal plaything. Honestly, I don't know how she puts up with it."

The clock on the mantelpiece, he saw, was slightly out of sync. Sometimes it ticked slightly too slow, sometimes too fast. Now he'd noticed it, it was really rather distracting.

"The last is Itsuki Koizumi. He's an esper, tasked with defeating the giant monsters Haruhi spawns whenever she's frustrated, depressed, or just plain bored. Sounds like a superhero, right? Not exactly. You know how it is when someone's perfectly nice, but just sets your teeth on edge for some reason? That's Koizumi all over. He always stands a bit too close, smiles a bit too often, and has this weird sense of humour. He'll talk your ear off about some obscure philosophical concept, then dismiss the entire thing just when you're starting to get creeped out. Matter of fact, I think he'd get on pretty well with your gods. That, or they'd do the multiverse a favour and pull something horrible on each other."

He sighed.

"No, no, I suppose he isn't that bad, really. I just wish he'd back off sometimes, is all. Hah, look at me, rambling on like this. You're probably not even listening, are you? I'm sure issuing prison guards with earplugs is somewhere on the Evil Overlord List. Guess I'm just compensating for not having Haruhi yapping in my ear twenty-four-seven. Never know what you've got 'til it's gone, huh? Anyway, we should do this again some time. Same time, same place? Think my schedule's pretty clear for the next couple of days. Or months. See you."

As he got up from the sofa, he heard a voice from beyond the door.

"My name's Maria Vargas," the guard said in heavily-accented Japanese. "Pleased to meet you, Kyon."

Kyon grinned. "Pleased to meet you too, Maria."


The day after that, Tzintchi paid a visit. He was in his accustomed human form, complete with the omnipresent blue suit. He didn't bother with the door, instead appearing out of thin air with the now-familiar shimmer.

"Morning, Kyon. Hope you're enjoying your stay. I apologise for not popping over earlier – pan-universal conquest is pretty time-consuming."

Kyon's response was succinct and obscene.

"Oh, don't be like that. See, I thought that you might want some questions answered. Why we're doing this, for a start."

"This is going to be more of that 'good interdimensional citizens' bullshit, isn't it?"

Tzintchi laughed. "Nah, I respect you too much for that, kid. Tell you what; let's go for eighty percent truth and twenty percent bullshit. I'll even let you figure out which bits are which. Come on, it'll be fun!"

"I don't have much choice in this, do I?"

"Well, I suppose I could just bugger off and practice with the telekinetic one-man orchestra, but that'd be a waste of both our time. Speaking as a surface-level mind-reader, I can see your curiosity bubbling away in that head of yours, and I'm offering you a prime opportunity to let it out. Fire away, kid."

"Fine, then. What exactly is your goal here? Conquest just for the hell of it seems a little too clichéd."

Tzintchi nodded. "Sharp as always. I told you that we hijacked Third Impact, the cataclysm that would have wiped out the human race, becoming gods in the process. What I didn't tell you was how. We had outside help, you see. An entire pantheon of gods from the distant future had travelled back in time and shaped events so that we would succeed. We were the product of an experiment centuries in the making, imbued with their power and their wisdom to rule over humanity. Why, do you ask? Quite simple. The future they had come from was doomed. An ancient threat had arisen, the C'tan. Soul-eaters. Star-vampires. Alien gods with an undying mechanical army at their beck and call. The most terrible threat encountered in this or any other reality. The gods' plan was to let them win early and prevent the conflict from escalating, whilst forging us into a weapon to strike at their unprotected backs. That's why we began to explore other universes – we needed equipment and allies with which to oppose the C'tan wherever they might appear. Quite apart from the literal divine mandate, they're just too dangerous to ignore. Warp help us if they ever figure out how to traverse dimensions."

The student processed this. "I... see."

"You're wondering why we use the methods we do, aren't you? Put simply, it's in our nature. The gods who empowered us were not pleasant beings, Kyon. They were formed from the darkest recesses of the human psyche, and it is that power which we wield. Tzintchi, god of ambition. Asukhon, goddess of rage. Reigle, goddess of despair. Mislaato, goddess of lust. Emotion is our medium, and a potent medium it is indeed."

Kyon shook his head. "Sorry, but I'm not buying it. How is emotion fundamentally evil?"

"It isn't, in moderation. It's when it's pushed to extremes that the fun starts. Love becomes obsession, hope becomes megalomania, and righteous fury becomes murderous wrath. The more we exert our powers, the worse things get."

"So haven't you considered... I don't know... limiting yourselves? Letting other people help out?"

"Considered, and rejected. We have been betrayed and manipulated for most of our mortal lives, if not all. Now we have real, world-changing power, we have no intention of subordinating ourselves to others ever again. We do try to exercise a measure of damage-limitation, though – that's the other reason that we prefer to operate behind the scenes, you see, and we prefer to only unleash our true might in the most exceptional circumstances, or when the targets, frankly, deserve everything coming to them."

The drone pulled up next to them, and projected what looked like some sort of star-map, along with a series of intelligence articles.

"This is the Federation," Tzintchi explained. "It's a reasonably sophisticated galaxy-spanning civilisation in another dimension, most notable for its employment of the so-called 'Prime Directive', which forbade interference with the natural development of any species or similar below a certain tech-level. When our scouts discovered one of their outposts, they had condemned millions to death through inaction. They had the technology of hundreds of star systems at their disposal, and they did nothing with it."

For the first time, Kyon saw real anger in the god's eyes.

"A few surgical strikes taught them the error of their ways. I believe they are currently undergoing an ideological civil war. Maybe it will wake them up a little – they were far too complacent."

"So... you attempted to invalidate their non-interference policy by showing them precisely the sort of damage a technologically-superior civilisation could inflict?" Kyon remarked sarcastically. "Genius, Ikari, pure genius."

Tzintchi said nothing.

"Look, I think I see where you're coming from. You want to save the multiverse, but your methods are rather limited by personal issues and problems with your abilities. Nevertheless, you're trying to make the best of it, in your own way. It's logical. It's fairly consistent."

The god smiled. "I'm glad you think so."

"That still doesn't change the fact that you have to be stopped, though."

"Oh?"

"Do you seriously think I'd support a bunch of lying, emotionally-damaged deities as they try to turn reality itself into their personal playground? If there's one thing I've learned from living with Haruhi, it's that when the gods are assholes, mortals suffer. I'd be fine with you carrying out your juvenile vigilante fantasies if nobody else was affected, but that isn't the case. Not only are you letting your paranoid delusions affect the fate of trillions, but you're setting yourselves up as judges, jury and executioners of all you survey, enforcing your twisted ideals no matter how much blood must be spilt. You- mmf!"

Kyon suddenly found that he could no longer open his mouth. Tzintchi checked his watch theatrically.

"Sorry, kid, I'd love to stay, but I'm afraid I've got more pressing matters to attend to than listening to a schoolboy rant straight out of an ethics textbook. Don't worry; I'll leave you a few friends to play with. Ta-ta."

He disappeared with a little wave. A moment later, the rest of the SOS Brigade appeared where he had stood. All of them were naked. All of them wore expressions of savage, inhuman delight. Kyon tried to flee to the bathroom, but found the door inexplicably locked. He backed up against a wall, holding a lamp as a weapon, as the simulacra of his friends closed in.


Author's Notes: Well, I said I'd be providing weekly updates, and so I am. Better yet, this one's a double-bill, you lucky people.

'When the gods are assholes, mortals suffer'. It's a quote from the original story, Thousand Shinji, which kept popping up in my head whilst I was reading The Open Door. I kept feeling that it was a lesson the protagonists had rather forgotten by the sequel, and I wanted to write something exploring the reasons for and consequences of that. Thus, The Doorstop.

For those who hadn't read those stories, and I'm sure there's plenty, I hope that this chapter started to give you a better idea of just what the hell's going on in this fic. I'm a Steven Erikson fan, you see, and it's from him that I picked up the unfortunate habit of littering my exposition and background all over the story rather than dumping it all in at the earliest opportunity. I don't do 'As you know, Bob' conversations if I can avoid it, you see. Hope it doesn't drive you too far up the wall.