The Vapor of Haruhi Suzumiya

Chapter 5: Consultation

A/N: Ack, this is late for me, but it's worth it! :3 Actually, who am I kidding, I write this author's notes before I write the chapter. So I actually have no idea what you're about to experience, but seeing as I actually did pretty okay on this one, I expect it shall be excellent. Cheers! Oh, and a review wouldn't hurt either. ;)

The longer I waited for her to move, the more I questioned my situation. I was lying in my bed, in the dead of night, staring at a fellow interface, who was standing in the threshold of my personal quarters. She made no move to enter, and did not appear to know I was conscious. The seconds stretched into minutes, and then into hours, as the passing of the moon lit her face in different fashions, never touching her eyes. Not a single sound was made, nor movement from both sides.

This stalemate was shattered by the grating sound of claws on the window. Taking my eyes off Emiri for just a second, I saw Shamisen looking in at our battle of attrition, mewling unhappily. After a moment, he swished his tail and left the ledge. I looked back to Emiri, only to discover she was no longer in her place. She now stood at the foot of my bed, looking directly at me.

"Hello Ms. Nagato, did I displease you with my appearance?" She cocked her said to the side as she said quietly, as she played with a bracelet the same turquoise color as her hair. She made no attempt to attack me, and indeed seemed concerned for my well-being. I chose my words carefully, possibly having taken several seconds too long, before answering.

"...No, I am not displeased, only...surprised."

She nodded in understanding, hopefully, before beginning to speak again.

"I'm sure you are aware that we no longer have contact with the Thought Entity. In fact, we are not even interfaces by the standard definition any more. Our bodies are no longer imitation shells for us to inhabit, but actual containers for our very beings. This has brought about the change of the development of genuine emotions, as I'm sure you have observed and experienced for yourself."

Stretching out her hand, she pulled me out of the bed and bent over to look at me closely. Standing up, she gave a small smile, apparently satisfied with whatever it was she was looking for.

"So, would it be okay if I stayed here? My boyfriend's parents are coming home from a trip to Austria-Hungary, so I won't have a place to sleep."

And out comes the real reason she was here. Even when we were but simple human data interfaces, Emiri Kimidori would always be a sly type, living off of the land...and by that I mean off of others. However, she would carry her weight, as humans would say, so I shrugged and nodded.

She giggled and clapped her hands.

"Great! I've actually been hanging around here for food for a few days now, I managed to stay out of your way and you never even noticed me!" She adopted a frown and put her index finger to her mouth.

"Well, I did spill rice last night, but I had to run and hide because you were coming back into the room."

I sweatdropped. Now that I thought about it, I had been correct in the rice on the floor and the feelings that someone had been watching me! Except it was just this girl who couldn't decide whether she was bubbly or stoic like yours truly. She seems to be leaning towards bubbly now. Not that that's a bad thing.

Emiri made her way out of the room, while I could only sigh and shake my head. I stretched contentedly after fixing the bedsheets, walking over to the window. No scratch marks were discernible, so it could be assumed that either Shamisen had scratched on the wall outside, or was capable of using restorative magic to generate a new stretch of glass. Seeing as Miss Suzumiya has turned into a Batllemage Ninja, it would actually be safe to assume the second option. Which appealed in several ways, if Haruhi were truly getting us involved with what she claimed to be...which would, looking back on our previous misadventures, actually be LESS dangerous than the former SOS Brigade. Though our old routines resulted in the deaths of less people...or any, really. Unfortunately, I cannot relate to how these people will feel, for dead organics are incapable of feeling anything, if only for the simple fact that they are dead.

Pulling myself from my daydreams and ponderings on the windowsill, I freshened up at my dresser and changed into a similar outfit as the day before, albeit the colors being inverted. Even after having our creepy standoff that should not have been a standoff at all, and was more of myself being paranoid, it was only 06:00 hours, while it had been almost 23:50 hours when Emiri had made her presence known. I was mildly surprised to discover that I was not distraught and morbidly tired, as my body still retained some traits from its time as an interface. However, I did feel pangs of hunger, and satiated these feelings with a large heaping bowl of ramen, though I made an additional bowl for Emiri to consume as well.

She came in to eat after I began washing my now-empty bowl. I noted that she was now wearing a pair of heavy pants, similar in fashion to those worn by Arctic explorers. It had a belt with consisted of multiple large cloth loops that were rimmed with a dull green metallic material. She bounded over to me in an uncharacteristically happy manner, took her bowl with a word of thanks, and proceeded to inhale it in a fashion I had only seen Miss Suzumiya accomplish.

Though none of the other members of the SOS Brigade know/knew (?) this, Emiri was actually a very outgoing person, and simply maintained a stoic persona when dealing with humans of North High, so as to not look out of place while observing Miss Suzumiya.

Emiri handed me the bowl to wash, but remained on hand and dried the bowls once I finished washing and rinsing them.

We simply stood there for a quiet minute before Emiri commented that we still had a couple hours before we had to leave for school. I stood there trying and failing to ascertain what we could do to occupy ourselves, when it came to me. I turned to Emiri in Phoenix Wright style. Arm and everything.

"What do you know about the timeline we are in?" My words came out jumbled, but I think she got the point.

Emiri led me to the room with all of the assorted weaponry, before pointing me to a leather chair in the corner, sitting down in a congruent chair herself. Crossing her legs, she began to gain a small smirk.

"So, what did you want to ask your sempai?"

I felt my eyebrow twitch. Despite the fact that we were created at the same time, Emiri was enrolled a year ahead of myself, to prevent a grouping of interfaces and potentially arousing suspicion from Miss Suzumiya. I sighed, before phrasing my question as eloquently as possible.

"You know what I want to ask. What do you know about this...environment? Or more specifically, how it works and why things have happened the way they have. A brief history, if you will."

Emiri wiggled her eyebrows like she was enjoying toying with me (she was), but nevertheless began to talk.

"Well, the whole lack of adoption of DC current caused a whole slew of unrealized changes in the way everything happened. In 1892 the existence of cosmic energy was discovered and documented extensively. This can be known as 'magic' for common use. Magic can be used for almost any purpose, and allows the very properties of existence to be changed and melded to a users' will. People who mastered the usage of magic in various fields became known as sages of their patron art, like a blacksmithing sage, or an engineering sage. Advances such as magical lights and magic engines occurred, while weaponry stayed mostly the same as it had been at 1890, but with a lot more emphasis placed on individual skill.

Magic caused World War I in an entirely different fashion, making mustard gas obsolete, yet still facilitating large scale trench warfare and massive loss of life for both sides. Actually, the sides were different in this world as well. Instead of being the Central Powers and Allied Powers, it was the Coalition of Free Mages and the Empire of Magic. Germany and Austria-Hungary, along with Poland, Austria, Japan, and China formed the Empire, while the rest of Europe and North America formed the Coalition.

The Coalition used despicable methods of fighting, such as necromancy to turn dead enemy soldiers into unwilling allies, and would poison the land if they expected to lose it. An aspiring Imperial battlemage turned the tide of the war in 1919 when he discovered that he was able to force the undead to shirk their captor's will and fight for what they had believed in. By this time, the Coalition had turned millions of corpses to their cause, unknowingly signing their own execution order.

This young mage was known as Adolf Hitler, who had joined the Imperial Army after completing his Magical arts degree at a state school in Vienna, Austria. He was first made aware of such an ability when a transfer student, a priest from Japan, showed him how to dispel the impure magic from an undead. ...am I boring you?"

She looked at me, as I had been sitting back with an odd expression. I didn't want to say how ridiculous it sounded to me, so I nodded and asked her to continue.

"Alrighty then...as I was saying, he learned the skill from a priest, and quickly taught it to the other men in his unit, who were known as the Blitzkreigers, for they would utilize shielding magic to infiltrate an enemy area, then strike out with large amounts of physically damaging arts. When the war finally ended in 1922, the majority of Western Europe was a tattered mess. The Coalition was reduced to consisting solely of France and Spain, as the other member countries had refused to surrender to the "Imperial do-gooders", and had thusly been wiped out of existence and re-formed as Imperial colonies. The United States fared the worst, with the majority of population centers having been sacked by Imperial forces. Only Boston was left intact among major cities, as it served as the new capital of the Imperial States of the West, as the now-colony was christened. The Empire consisted of almost every country on the planet by this point, as they were offered protection and economic prosperity under the Imperial Charter.

Things went smoothly for almost 30 years before cracks began to form in the Imperial system."

Emiri looked to the clock beside an unfamiliar cannon I hadn't noticed, tucked behind a door. It was almost 7:30 A.M.

"Alright, I have enough time to tell you the second part as well.

In 1951, the first conflict between Imperial nations occurred. At first it was nothing but a trade dispute between Canada and the Imperial States. Canada wanted the States to assist in enforcing their law of no enchanted weaponry being allowed across borders, as a safety issue. This was insanely difficult to enforce, because any decent mage would be able to teleport themselves over the geographical border with ease. Canada created a picket line on the border to enforce their views, while the States did the same.

A cannon misfired on one side, no one knows which, and within seconds the entire 3-mile stretch of border they were standing on had devolved into a battle. Imperial battlemages quickly dispatched the Canadians with a powerful Holy spell, but the backlash from the incident led the Canadians to secede and declare war on the Empire and all of Her member states.

Before the Empire could even unite a force to take on the Canadians, the Coalition, having been left alone for years, declared allegiance with Canada and revealed its revamped and imposing army, at the ready to march into Germany. This caused several Imperial nations to take the chance to settle old grudges, and before long, only Japan, Korea, China, and Scandinavia were the whole of the Empire. No less than 8 different alliances had formed between two or three or four countries, and Europe, North America, and Western Asia simultaneously dissolved into a massive battle Royal. The Empire was now relatively defenseless, and was all but wiped from the face of Terra by a surprise Italian attack on Sweden. A coordinated attack from over 400 Italian commandos resulted in the utter annihilation of the power structure, and Sweden was quickly absorbed by Norway, who wisely chose to remain neutral in this conflict.

To keep it simple, and for lack of time, by the end of the conflict, almost a decade later, over half of Europe was reduced to nothing more than an inhospitable mess, of which parts of it still are, and there are only 7 countries which have not wiped each other out. Those being Spain, Germany, Poland, Croatia, Greece, and Switzerland. The United Kingdom had remained as well, but not wanting to be in such a hostile area any longer, used teleportation magic and relocated the whole island to a location slightly east of Japan. Ireland was poisoned to the point of no return, and to this day, corpses still roam the dusty remains of fields. Both Canada and the States wiped each other out through biological destruction magic, leaving the whole American continent devoid of human life, a reminder of the spitefulness of man.

After all of this happened, the World Self-governing Treaty of 1968 was signed in...well...1968. It stated that no country may have its own military force, or any armed force outside of city and town militias. IT also placed a huge, huge, huge level of importance on the individual being able to defend themselves, therefore not needing to invest in a military. This also legalized bounty-hunting and paid assassinations, as the weak and cowardly individuals should not be able to hold onto their positions through nothing other than merit alone. Every single country signed the document, and no one has broken it since. The whole world lives in peace, and the people are the only defense force anyone ever needs.

Any questions?"

By this time my head was close to bursting from all of this information, but I only had one question.

"How do you know all of this?"

Emiri grinned and pointed to the corner.

"I read all of those history texts you brought home a couple days ago. I had nothing better to do, and they were quite informative."

I looked around to the place in the corner she was pointing to, and sure enough, the books I had skimmed through were stacked neatly next to the odd cannon I had seen before. Which must mean...

"Emiri, is that cannon type thing sitting next to the books yours?"

Emiri giggled before standing up, walking over to said cannon, and lifting it up by the barrel. It had a short barrel, possibly only 18 inches long, but the width of it indicated a very large round. The part that puzzled me was the revolver-type magazine at the end. It appeared to be from a revolver, if a revolver used anti-tank round. The weapon used a pistol grip, while apparently using a lever-action that was to the rear of the weapon.

"Yes it is. It's a revolver cannon that I found in my boyfriend's closet; he let me have it."

A revolver cannon. Interesting. Although I must note that she says boyfriend in a condescending fashion; she isn't actually in any form of relationship with him, other than being friends.

I peered at the time, seeing it to be 08:55 A.M., telling Emiri that it was time for us to leave. She agreed, hoisting the cannon into her arms, and putting a large round retrieved from her pants into the chamber before snapping it shut. We walked out into the main room, where I quickly retrieved the chakram from my room, when she shook her head.

"Yuki-chan, you shouldn't use something that light." She snatched the chakram faster than I could blink, before dashing into the room of weaponry, but before I could make a move after her, she returned with a large and rather menacing looking double-ended dagger, but still carrying the chakram. It was serrated on both ends and seemed to crackle with a blue light, as it made my hair stand on edge. She handed me the electrically charged dagger, but also returned the chakram to my back.

"You'll need them at some point though." Emiri giggled, as though taking pleasure at the thought of myself, or her, needing to use a weapon against another living creature at some point. Though, she always was a weird one. I have no qualms about it, but I would not try to force it to happen unless it was absolutely necessary.

Then again, this could be an excellent opportunity to deal with Koizumi...joking! I was joking. Yeah, bad taste on my part. Koizumi can be annoying sometimes, but now that I l no longer have an agenda, he's just a friend. Though he can be extremely annoying at times. Actually, make that overpoweringly so.

I then began to ponder my own weapons compared to hers. I had one ranged and one close quarter s weapon, whilst Emiri only had the absurdly powerful ranged weapon. I voiced my concerns in the form of a question.

"What are you using if an enemy defeats your advantage of range? That cannon is useless close up."

Her form of replying was surprising. In a flash she had pulled a pair of crescent-shaped tonfa from underneath her uniform, showing off their elegant curves. She smiled at me, winked, then put them away under her shirt.

We made our way out of the apartment, and I locked the door, and we headed off for the insanity-filled high-school of North High.

It's going to be a fun day.

A/N: And there you have it! Absolutely on the spot thinking with the World Wars and...well...everything, actually. Emiri is never highlighted upon, so I decided to take some creative merit and not make her stoic as all balls like lovely Yuki is.

Reviews would be greatly appreciated, and help my insane thought process greatly!

Until next time, keep it classy, like a duck with a french fry. :3