The Vapor of Haruhi Suzumiya

Chapter 8

Well, it turned out that my little romp through Taniguchi's funhouse of absolutely unspeakable content was regrettable. Taniguchi's started hounding me about it before I even woke up the next day.

So it was Wednesday morning, and I awoke to a sharp rapping on the windows to my room. I probably don't need to remind you about this, but I'm in a 3rd floor apartment, and Taniguchi was lying on the ledge outside, knocking on my window. At thus point, I just try to take everything in stride, because honestly, I can't even begin to understand all of this crazy shit, excuse my Middle English.

I let him into my room after checking to see if he was attempting to kill me, but unless you consider a fancily written letter addressed to me from the administration office of North High dangerous, he was not there to kill me. In fact, he neatly wet himself when he saw my shelf full of weapons. Wait, no, make that several shelves. Or the wall of guns. Or was it the bookcases of what I have come to find out are spellbooks?

Oh, right, the lette-wait. If it's addressed to me, wouldn't it be in my postbox outside? I cast a side long look at him, and saw exactly what I was looking for: a set of lockpicks sticking out of his leather vest.

I sighed, going back to the letter. I cut it open with my fingernail and removed the crisp piece of parchment. It still smelled fresh, like it had been written only a few hours ago.

You're asking why I'm sniffing the paper? I have my own little quirks you know! It's not like it's harmful, r-right?

A-Anyways, the paper reads as follows, in overly formal cursive script.

"To Miss Yuki Nagato,

It has come to our concern that you caused wanton damage to the property of Mister Taniguchi, in the form of breaking and entering, destroying magical constructs, personal artifacts, and reputations. As a form of punishment, you are to work in the medical wing of North High for the school day of Wednesday, September 18, until 5:30 P.M. No other administative action will be required.

Sincerely,
Archmage Noctua"

I looked back at Taniguchi, brow furrowed.

"So, because I ruined your little survival games fun house, I have to work in the nurse's office for a day? Pushovers."

I gave a light laugh at that, and he began laughing as well, in an entirely different, and significantly more evil, tone. He walked around me before stopping right behind me.

"You haven't heard the horror stories, Yuki? That's even better. Your tendencies as a bookworm will leave you TOTALLY unprepared for this! Most people would known what to expect, but you're completely in the dark! Ha, and at first I thought Archmage Noctua-n was out of his senile, senile mind for letting you off easy. I hope you don't have a large breakfast, Yuki-chaaaaaan."

Okay, the way he sad -chan made me want to kick him in the nuts. So I did.

In my mind, anywas. He flinched in the real world though, so he must have caught the intent. Somehow. Whatever, I blame magic. I just gave him another look of utmost loathing, despite the fact that I felt no I'll will toward him. I just get a kick out of it. I'm terrible, huh?

"Uhhhhh, I'll...be...going...uh...now."

Without another word he jumped out the window, and I leaned out the window, watching his rapid descent. It turned out he was using some charm that he applied to his hands and feet, which were eneceloped in a glowing green light that kept him anchored firmly to the side of the stone building. I watched until he was on the ground and disappeared among the bland brown and black mess of morning commuters, before sighing, closing the windows, and getting ready for the day. I chose my so-called "lain" attire, but wore a plain white shirt that had more than a few stains on it, all of them blood. Skipping breakfast for the day, as Taniguchi MIGHT be right for once, I set off for school, noting Emiri has her alarm set for 9:45, obviously not planning on going to school until the classroom portion began. I let her sleep, and locked the door behind me, attempting to mentally prepare myself for what was sure to be a mentally exhausting day.

I arrived at school with plenty of time to spare, heading for the Administration building, which also housed the auditorium and medical wing. In a way that made no sense, the medical sing was on the 2nd and 3rd floors. I think it would make it more accessible to have an entrance on the ground floor, but I didn't think about it too much as I entered the waiting room at the front of the wing.

There were already no less than 6 students in various state of injury lined up on the wooden benches, with one of them holding his thumb in a clear bag full of ice.

I almost turned around and left right then, but I heard a familiar voice call out to me.

"Yuki-chan! You're the sempai that's going to be helping out here today?"

Tsuruya-chan had walked out of a closet on the side of the room carrying a myriad of medical supplies, most unsettlingly a bonesaw. I waved to her and walked towards her, trying not to look into any open wounds. Too bad they looked back at me.

"Um, I don't think I'm in the right place Tsuruya...and where's Tom?"

She grinned and led myself through a maze of hallways before we reached a room where an upperclassman was laying on a bed, covered in blisters, with a large cast around his leg.

"'Course you're supposed to be here Yuki! Archie himself came through here this little while ago, saying you'd be here all day! Well, Tom isn't nimble enough to work in these cramped quarters, so I built a more general purpose automaton in the past few days to assist in carrying stuff...and people...and some other things too! It's currently getting everything we'll need for the day for surgical supplies, and coming back here."

No sooner had she finished her explanation and set her armfuls of supplies onto a table next to blister guy, then a door on the other side of the room opened, and through it came the most...hm...to put it nicely...interesting robot I've seen.

It was low to the ground, with thickset limbs and a rather prehensile neck, leading to a face that had two large teeth fashioned out of railroad spikes, and a moving jaw that looked to have been part of the smokestack on a train. It's body was very smooth and round, and the top of it was aadorned with a flat platform, atop which a large quantity of bandages, surgical gauze, and bottles of pain medication sat. Despite it's loping gait, none of the suplies it carried were shaken around. It stopped in the middle of the room, before a quiet whirring sound could be heard from it, and the platform slid to the right of the machine, revealing a mechanical arm that had come out of its back and ended in a metallic human hand, which set the tray on the table , before retracting into itself.

"Arf!"

Tsuruya clapped her hands and smiled, before kneeling down and petting her creation.

"Good job Mel-nyan!"

She invited me to pet him, and I did, leading me to discover that despite the fact that he was constructed out of cold metal, he was quite warm to the touch. He made his little sounds when I petted him, and his eyes shone like that of a happy dog. After we were done, Tsuruya gave him new instructions, which he loped off to complete.

She turned back to me with a glassy look in her eyes.

"Melvin is the first automaton I've built entirely on my own. Tom's AI is powered by magic, and I didn't write the rune circle that first imbibed him with life. Melvin, on the other hand, I did one hundred percent. He's just as alive as Tom is, but he's a tad smarter than your trained hound. I tried getting him to be a pet that would be able to speak it's feelings, but I ran out of mana to be able to inscribe all 4096 registers of magic. I did only 1536 registers, which is more than enough for independent thought, feelings, and some vocalization, but it's not the end of days that I can't get him to recite Shakespeare."

She shook herself, looking to the guy with the blisters with a grimace.

"Alright, first order of business, Mr. Olzsta here needs to have that infected leg taken care of."

She grabbed the bomesaw and began spinning it up with a crazy look in her eye. The guy on the bed began trying to get out of the bed, but Tsuruya stopped the saw suddenly. She grabbed a large syringe full of amber colored liquid off the tray and stabbed it into the poor guy's stomach. He grunted in pain, but after a few seconds stopped struggling and fell back onto the bed.

Tsuruya threw the syringe backwards, which I grabbed an instant before it flew straight into the sensitive outer mebrane of my eyeball. I tossed it aside, where it landed neatly in the garbage can next to the door, because I am just that good.

Tsuruya waved me over to where she was, where she had removed this guy's pantleg, showing off a horribly disfigured leg, covered in blisters that were leaking a smelly yellow pus. Some of the blisters were so bad I could see the muscle tissue had dissolved and bone was easily visible. I felt my stomach attempt to retch, but my lack of eating made it impossible.

So I settled with gagging while Tsuruya remained unaffected. I swear, that's not natural. Tsuruya was pointing at the horrid thing while talking, so I drew in my revulsion for the moment and listened to my crazy friend.

"-are you even listening Yuki-nyan? Alright, I'll say it again. The reason we amputate so many thing isn't because we're all sick in the head. Well, not all of us anyways. It all has to do with the magical expenditure associated with each method of healing. When magic was first discovered, it was thought that we could stop amputating people because of the advent of restoration magic. But then it was discovered that it took an enormous emount of magical power to fix a grievous wound on a limb, like the tissue damage on Olzsta here. It was also determined that it was a much lesser amount of magical power spent when regenerating an entirely new, healthy limb. So it became obvious to the leading authorities of restoration magic to make amputation and subsequent rapid regneration the standard practice for serious injury, instead of simply attempting to restore an injured section of one's body to a previous state.

So what that means for is is that we're gonna lop off this guy's leg, and I'm going to regnerate it right quick. The blisters he has will be easily dispelled once the source of them, his leg, is no longer there. And he won't wake up until after I perform the regeneration technique either! Oh, the wonders of modern medicine, eh Yuki-nyoron?"

I just nodded, trying to wrap my head around the concept that trying to change the state of an already existing piece of matter could be more difficult than generating an entirely new piece of matter of the same size, shape, and composition. Giving up on that, I watched with a sense of morbid fascination as Tsuruya began to cut off the poor guy's leg. I wondered why he wasn't bleeding, even though she was cutting through major arteries like it was just a thong, but I noticed that the blood was clotted immensely on the inside of his artery. I fell over when Tsuruya told me to dispose of the leg, before throwing the whole limb at me, dripping pus and all. I had put on thick glves by this time, and gingerly picked up the severed limb, before proceeding to bring it to the chute that led to the incinerator.

Upo returning to the room, I was surprised to see The poor guy was not only awake, but walking around on his new leg, and he was no longer as pale as...well...me.

Anyways, he thanked us before requesting some privacy so he couldnput on his daily wear, which had been decontaminated last night, when he was apparently admitted, according to him.

"Yeah, I was helping my bud Marcel test a spell he was working on. It was supposed to get rid of acne, but you saw what it actually does...oh well, it happened to further the SCIENCE of magic!"

He had pointed a finger to the sky and shouted science, but he was allowed to leave after gathering his equipment from the medical lockup. He wore a fedora and had a belt that held a small ornamental sceptre and two long-barreled revolvers, each with a small bayonet affixed to them.

However, the rest of the day was an absolute nightmare.

Especially after Tsuruya ran out of magic and she had to tap into me to continue patching people up.

I swear, how is it that in one day, 46 people need to have limbs amputated and regrown, 128 people need painkillers for various injuries, and a whopping 51 people need bullets, arrows, knives, and other high-speed projectiles removed from them!

The worst part was definitely when a patient paid Tsuruya to not only allow him to keep his severed arm, but to request that we simply knock him out for the amputation, and to cut off the arm with his sword.

His sword was not the cleanest thing in the world. It was a massive sword, probably 3 meters long, and almost half a meter wide. Two tone black and gray steel, it had more than a few spits of dried blood, rust, moss, and other disgusting substances on it. It was so heavy that Tsuruya couldn't lift it, forcing me to cut off the creep's arm, which I found a strange enjoyment in. That is, until a spider crawled from the hilt onto my hand. I flipped out then, and dropped the sword, almost bisecting the weirdo at the waist. Speaking of weird, this guy has blonde hair that levitates. Like, even after I knocked him ournwith a rabbit punch to the nose, his hair still sat in the same position. It didn't help that his piercing blue eyes stayed open for the entirety of the regeneration of his arm.

So yeah, pretty boy with a huge sword was pretty creepy. I mean, we all know that the big sword was just overcompensating for something...in that case, was that even a guy?

Never mind, that's not important. What is important is the fact that I am now an expert in removing small caliber bullets from live patients. It turns out that most of the shooting range targets were actually duelist looking to heighten their situational awareness, though how that's done by getting shot at I'm not sure.

Most of the bullets were between 5mm and 10mm wide, but this one poor sucker got hit by a rifle round that would've killed the girl, if it hadn't been in her hand. She had been boxing some dude when she was hit. I don't know what's worse, the fact that I'm not even surprised at this point, or the fact that shooting range boxing is an acceptable substitutebti physical education in this school. I'd say it's a pretty close call.

Though the creepiest thing I saw all day was definitely the blonde...person, the most graphic, gory, absolutely not meant for human eyes thing I saw all day was the corrosive arrow I had to dig out of a freshman's...buttock. It had been angled in such a way that the tip of the arrowmwas
Deep inside the left leg, and the feathers if the arrow were just barely visible on her buttock. I wouldn't have seen it as exceptionally bad until I made the incision in her thigh to remove the tip of the arrow. You know how I just said it was corrosive, right? Well, it rendered an entire chunk of the interior of her leg a dissolved purée of flesh, guts, and marrow with the consistency of toothpaste. Her cartoid artery poured out of a hole I poked in the bottom of her leg, into a jar. The muscle had been reduced to a pinkish film that had distinct lumps in it. The bone? It looked like and had the same consistency of whole milk. Bone should NOT be that way! Thankfully, this was before Tsuruya ran out of steam, so I didn't have to be on hand for the regeneration. I was too busy disposing of the poor freshman's left leg, as well as her left buttock, and a section of her groin.

I literally took a cart with half of this girl's lower body and dumped it into a fire pit. BY HAND. I was thankful for the clotting agent used, which prevented almost all bleeding. That's why the flow of...fluids from her leg was so unexpected. We're still not sure why the blood flowed freely as well.

At least I watched her walk out of the medical wing about an hour later. She claimed she was going to go kick the ever-loving shit out of the bastard who used corrosive arrows. It was Koizumi, as it turned out, but I didn't feel like trying to tell him to avoid a silver-haired-ass-kicking.

Anyways, after everything that happened, I was glad to finally be done with my day of servitude at the North High Medical Wing. It turns out Tsuruya had been there for the previous day as well because she was being punished as well. She had rigged a club room of an opposing group to the one she was part of with smoke bombs, but had neglected to make them with things that WOULDN'T cause itching and burning upon prolonged exposure. Which is totally what happened.

I laughed it off, and reminded myself to never offend Tsuruya or make her otherwise want to hurt me, ever. She's a mad scientist, and I respect that. Not to mention the fact that she builds sentient walrus robots in the space of 3 days like anyone could do it.

Well, I'm going to go to sleep now. I still haven't eaten anything yet today, because this one image of this girl's ankle snapped right off and the bone sticking out of her leg keeps on flashing into my mind and...it's not pretty. I should be fine by tomorrow. Maybe.

Oh, that reminds me. Right before the day ended Haruhi came and visited me in the Medical wing. First she berated me for getting into trouble, then told me that the SOS Brigade would be going on a little 'trip' tomorrow. She had given me a wink and a look that obviously meant that we were going to be going on a job tomorrow, and said we would meet up for our trip in the lobby of my apartment building again.

Ugh, that ankle image just happened again. Sleep Now!

A/N: Sorry for the hiatus, had some 'technical difficulties' on my end. (Hope I fixed the wall of text though. So hard to read my insanity all at once like that.)

Reviews are greatly appreciated, it's like author crack!

Bye-nii~ (yup, that's a habit now)