The Vapor of Haruhi Suzumiya
Chapter 10: I'm not dealing with elderly people
A/N: Oh, hey there. I should apologize for putting a cliffhanger in after so little actually happened. On the time scale I have laid out (because I actually attempted to plan some of these things), Chapter 8 was over a 9 hour period. Chapter 9 was a 1 hour period, if you really push the envelope.
The first half of this chapter was typed in Dvorak, because I can. Or maybe because I have nothing better to do. Yeah, probably that one.
"Haruhi!"
No. It can't be.
The unthinkable has occurred.
ERROR. CRITICAL SYSTEM ERROR. BERSERKER MODE ENGAGED.
The grizzled man threw her unmoving body to the ground, a small clean hole through her shoulder.
A split second afterwards over half of our assailants dropped to the ground. I had subdued the old lady and her husband, who had attempted to retrieve his wife's revolver. A jab to the leg prevented that. I'm not actually sure if this poison is lethal or not. At this point, I don't care either.
Mikuru slit two throats and roundhouse kicked a third man into a table, before rolling towards Kyon, who had remained still, if only because movement was a threat punishable by death. Using her momentum, she jumped up and drove her blades deep into another pair of shoulders, before flipping both men towards their allies, forming a ruffled heap. Drawing his sword, Kyon made a move on the bastard, but stopped, less than a foot away from beheading the bastard when a loud click was heard.
The man in armor had appeared between Kyon and the bastard. He was leveling a large gun with Kyon's face.
Only to have a whistle break the uneasy silence.
Koizumi, who had disappeared in the ruckus, was crouched on the bastard's table, having drawn back an arrow that was obviously coated in poison, though more potent than the corrosive stew used only days before.
In the moment it took for those left standing to look for the source of the sound, Kyon bonked the other armored man's head with the butt end of his sword, downing him in a single hit. I darted forward and relieved the man of his helmet, which had some bitchin' spikes on it. Bear hats don't do the trick for making people shit their pants in fear, but steel spikes and skulls certainly do.
In less than 10 seconds, we had downed most everyone in the bar, barring the bastard who had made the mistake of ordering his lackey to shoot Haruhi. Itsuki still had him at arrow-point, but was joined by Emiri, whose cannon made a much bigger threat to the man.
Mikuru ducked down next to Haruhi, taking out a bottle of alcohol and beginning the gruesome task of cleaning and dressing the wound.
"Kyon, keep Haruhi and Mikuru safe, we'll deal with this bastard."
I rarely speak, so Kyon understood the seriousness of my words. He drew his sword and was keeping a constant watch for anyone who tried to get up in their vicinity. How DARE they regain consciousness while we're still around!
I stepped up to the table where he had remained seated throughout the ordeal.
"Ya know you damn hunters won't get away with this."
I punched him in the face with the force of a well known boxer whose training montages are the stuff of legend, forcibly extracting more than a few teeth from their positions in his gums. It felt good.
"Where's Renji. I don't want some bullshit answer either."
The fear in his eyes didn't translate as an answer for me, so I punched him again, this time in the nose, relishing the crack as it was broken.
He took it without saying a word, so I grabbed him by the back of the head and smashed it into his plate on the table.
This time, pieces of cheap china and mashed potato stuck in the leathery folds of his face, eliciting a scream of agony from him.
Yet he still refused to answer, giving a sneer which was rather ineffectual as he lacked the teeth to do so. He must be paid well.
I slowly undid my bracelet, removing the vial of poison from its holder within.
His eyes followed the vial as I held it before him, then shaken, so acrid bubbles would rise from the surface of the liquid to rest on the bottom of the cork, making a slight fizzing sound as it did so.
"This is a toxic chemical that, if ingested, will scald your insides, and sit in your stomach, slowly eating through the stomach lining before making it's way through your intestines, rending you apart from within. Now, answer my goddamn questions or I will force-feed this vial, and punch you in the throat until the vial smashes."
I could feel the looks of wonder and distaste from the others. I didn't care. I wanted nothing more for this man to refuse, so I could kill him slowly and watch him suffer for hurting my friends.
No one hurts my friends.
No one.
Unfortunately, the bastard cracked under pressure like the sniveling weakling he was, and started talking.
"Holy shit you lunatic bitch! Alright alright, I'll talk! Shit, just calm your goods girl, I'll talk!"
He looked at Emiri who shoved the business end of her barrel in his face. He flinched back, and rightly so.
"No need to be drastic. Fine, boss is living in an giant underwater shelter he had constructed at the bottom of the water loop. It's on a rail at the bottom, and goes around it at random times. Entrance is through the bottom."
He grinned at Emiri.
"Hope you like getting wet girlie."
Emiri hit him in the face with the stock of her cannon, knocking him out cold.
Itsuki sighed, wiping the poison off the arrow onto the bastard's vest, which started to dissolve, before jumping off the table and landing nimbly next to me.
"I really wish we could deal with people more reputable; I guess it comes with the job, or rather the employer." He remarked, nodding at the still-unconscious Haruhi.
I shook my head, walking over to Mikuru, who had managed to heft Haruhi into a chair, and was now wiping a strip of cloth coated in a strange blue substance through the wound. Despite being of a small caliber, the pain had been high beyond Haruhi's pain threshold.
I regret believing in the worst scenario, for even the briefest second, but no one hurts my friends. I said that already, right? Well, it's true.
Old lady started to stir, and I put her back down by pushing her out of her seat. I'm not dealing with any bullshit today, elderly people be damned. It's not even noon yet. Ugh. Once we're out of this mess, I'm going home, curling into a ball, and sleeping for a full 24 hours. Sleep is niiiiice.
We left the establishment after relieving our would-be assailants of their weaponry and anything else we wanted.
Kyon took a whole rack worth of swords, Emiri took the other armored guy's gun, Mikuru took two elegant broadswords, Koizumi took some revolvers and a Type 14 Nambu, and I took the remaining weapons. I also took the bastard's wallet, which was almost full to bursting with money. I would almost consider this as being stealing, but stealing from thieves is a noble cause, right?
The last thing I did before we left was put the bastard on the floor, before dribbling my corrosive chemical of happiness on a few of his toes and on the palms of his hands. Oh, and his eyes. Only a drop to his eyes though. Just enough to scorch his eyeballs beyond repair, then I wiped it off with a rag and flipped him over, so gravity couldn't do its dirty work and eat his brains with nasty chemicals.
That would ensure he won't be able to stab anyone else. Or dress himself without assistance, for that matter. Or see ever again. Hmmm, I think I was a bit lenient, don't you think?
I wanted the bastard to suffer for the rest of his life, not suffer and die in short order.
Oh well. He wasn't fixing any of those things with magic easily either; oh no, that chemical was special in that if organic cells are tainted by it, it spreads almost instantly to the entire organism. This does not kill it, but if a limb is regenerated after being damaged by the chemical, the results of the damage will still remain. Dastardly, yes, but I wasn't going to let any enemy of mine attack me without paying dearly for it.
We left the bar, heading not for the river of inky blackness, but for the surface. Kyon put Haruhi on his shoulders and made his way up the ladder first. Emiri went next, followed by myself, and Itsuki was last. Haruhi woke up about halfway through our ascent to the surface, freaking out in the process, because it was pitch black, a confined space, wet, cold, and the only sounds were ragged breathing. It could be easily mistaken for a...ahhhh...bad situation, to say the least.
She calmed a bit after everyone shouted their own explanations, but shut up after I offered my own statement.
"Some bastard ordered a crone to shoot you, so I made the bastard blind and unable to do anything with his hands ever again."
Haruhi went silent, before asking Kyon "When did Yuki-chan go into Super Crazy Destroy mode?".
He grunted in reply, but a minute later said words as well.
"She was worried about you Haruhi. We all were...when you went down my breath caught in my throat, because I couldn't rush over to you and help, I had to stand there and watch you bleed. It was horrible…."
He began to choke up at this point and stopped, but I felt a droplet of something wet collide with my cheek as I was looking up to determine how far we had gone.
Emiri had been keeping to the right of the ladder, myself to the left, and upon stopping for a second to taste the substance; I determined it to be a human tear.
I said nothing about it as we continued our climb, but simply gave everyone a hug after we were back at sea level. Everyone knew what it meant.
We informed Haruhi of what we found out, and she immediately set out for school to get her wound fixed by the mad scientists-I mean those nice friendly people at the North High Medical wing. She told is we'd be skipping school the following day as well, because she was really intent on nabbing this guy.
The offer for dead is the same for getting him alive, so I'm game. If he employed such trash as the bastard, he didn't deserve to breathe anything but the most putrid of air, the stench of a thousand rotting pigs….actually, I think I might let him live.
The rest of us all went back to my apartment, not wanting to go to school, but not wanting to go to their own homes.
Upon entering the apartment, both Emiri and myself excused ourselves to dump our loads of newfound sharp objects in the room I have that is full of fun, sharp objects.
We went back into the main room, where everyone was sprawled out on various seats, even Kyon, who had removed the clunky armor he now almost always wore.
Wow, I never noticed it, but he has some big muscles...must have been from wearing the armor.
I sat down in an oversized armchair as everyone else talked about random things, pulling out the bastard's wallet. I began laying out the bills next to me, quickly counting the money out.
One hundred and thirteen thousand yen. In cash.
That's a lot of plushie toys, cosplay outfits, and silly vanity hats.
Erm, anyways, I excused myself to put the wallet behind a specific book on my personal bookshelf in my room. That book was a 1st edition copy of Frankenstein.
I appreciate the genre, that's all. I don't plan on recreating anything depicted in the book, now that it's totally possible with the help of magic….no, not at all.
We spent the rest of the day just talking, making jokes, and generally just trying to forget that our leader had gotten shot.
Shit, I'm doing a bad job.
Though, Haruhi has a point.
When did I turn the switch for 'Become a ruthless combatant' to on?
I had it set to on for a bit when I played assassin rodeo clown with those bulked up monsters like a week ago, but that was just temporary. I was fine the next day. It must be something to do with an endorphin rush in the heat of battle, or something. I hope it's not my fault. Or would fault even be the word to use for it?
I was lost in though for a while, and almost didn't even hear Kyon, Itsuki, and Mikuru say their goodbyes, though I mumbled a quiet "Goodbye" in return.
As soon as they left, Emiri laid down on her stomach on the couch to my right, looking at me.
"Spill it, why were you all "old Yuki" just now?"
I just looked at her with an eyebrow raised.
Does 'Old Yuki' refer to me before the change in….everything? It must. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I really have changed in the past few weeks. I've been talking much more, for one, even if that is still not very often by most people's standards. I've gone from a human interface to well….a human. And of course, I've suddenly possessed a wide variety of skills in combat that I didn't before. But which aspect is she referring to? Ah, I still haven't spoken. That would be it. Her eyebrows look like seagull wings when they're like that.
I gave a little giggle at that, which made Emiri blink, then look all the more inquisitive. I decided to answer in the only way I could, regarding not talking while the others were still around.
"I still feel…..awkward around people sometimes."
She just sighed and rolled onto her back, looking at me upside down.
"That's it? Are you sure? You looked like you were doing an entire universe worth of calculations in there."
"I'm sure. My thoroughly human brain would not be able to process that. In fact, I can barely comprehend one person sometimes."
Emiri just frowned, which looked like a smile to me.
"You mean Haruhi, right? She is as much a mystery to you as she is to everyone else….that probably won't change any time soon. Despite the fact that we used to be interfaces, we're not any more, and in fact, if I never have to deal with the data entity again, it still won't be enough time spent apart."
This is unexpected. Quite insightful on her part. She's continuing her verbal explanation.
"I mean, even when we were interfaces, I constantly attempted to get around the control of the entity, but every time I did, he would wipe all of my experiences and give me a stock set instead. I could always tell when this happened too, as the entity made no effort to even limit myself from accessing my previous experiences. Every time, it made me more and more willing to test the limits of what I could do.
After a few months of this behavior, I caused that incident where I told Haruhi that my boyfriend had gone missing. Haruhi didn't know it, but I never even met the guy in my life before that, outside of one class I had with him. That closed space I created was supposed to alter the behavior of any other interface that entered it, namely you, which should have caused you to sever the connection of the entity to yourself, me, and any other interfaces in this sector. Of course, I never anticipated that you had already developed a unique structure of which I could not alter through a closed space. My plans were foiled, so I still had to maintain my useless observing of Haruhi, despite the fact that you were already handling the job much better than I ever would. So yeah, even then, I hated the fact that I had no freedom, and now that we DO have freedom, I don't want to ever give it up. What do you think Yuki?"
This was a lot to take in at one time. I had never considered that an interface would have an unseen struggle of will against the entity, or that such an event would cause such lingering animosity towards the entity.
"I think….that the freedom to choose our own paths should be available to us, and that it should be a choice to stay under the entity; whether or not he created us, we're still living beings."
Emiri just gave me a weird look.
"I was talking about thinking the entity was an asshole, but….uh, that works too."
I blinked once.
"Well, the entity is not exactly the most forgiving….so I can agree with you on that topic as well."
Emiri sat up on the couch, leaning over the right side of it to ruffle my hair.
"That's the spirit! Though, if we don't have any connection to it right now, it's probably safe to assume that it doesn't exist. I'd say the only downside to this is not having access to all knowledge in the world, but it's a small price to pay in order to not be a stoic soulless zombie, for all intents and purposes."
I tilted my head to the side.
"Is that what you think of me as Emiri?"
She shook her head, and put up her hands in a pleading manner.
"No, no, not at all! I just meant that before all of this happened we had preset routines and patterns that we carried out no matter what. Now we can decide for ourselves whether we want to do this thing or that. You're practically the embodiment of freedom of choice now, you fight with ring blades and poison bracelets, and you're wearing a hat with bear ears on! Which is endearingly cute actually, where exactly did you get that from?"
I saw that she was attempting to steer the conversation away from the subject, but I allowed it to happen, as I did not wish to talk about the matter, as it was rather depressing to me.
"It was in my dresser when I went through it to get dressed a few days ago. I have worn it almost every day since, as it is rather comfortable, and I've been told it makes me look…..cute, by Kyon."
Emiri just started laughing for no apparent reason. Was it something I said?
"Did he tell you he thinks you have a split personality disorder which ruins your friendships too? Hahaha, that's hilarious!"
I still don't understand what she means.
Looking at the clock on the wall, I commented that we should get some sleep, causing Emiri to immediately stand up, enter her room, and shut the door, all the while still laughing.
I don't understand her sometimes.
I also prepared to go to sleep, removing my aforementioned bear hat and placing it on my dresser. I removed my baggy pants and put them in a hamper to be washed, and put a pair of light sleep pants on.
After all of this, I simply jumped into bed and fell asleep, no strings attached. Well, that is, until I had dreams that passerby only made a buzzing sound and that every shadow was made of blood. That was unnerving, but as I was aware that it was a dream, changed the blood into dancing bananas. This actually unnerved me more, so I changed it back to blood and tried to get some sleep.
A/N: Yay, no more cliffhanger shenanigans for this chapter! The original chapter title reminds me that I was going to have an entirely different outcome originally. I usually write the chapter title after something I want to have happen in the chapter, but it sometimes veers off-course
So that's been changed to reflect this chapter, but the original title was "Being below sea level doesn't help my vertigo". Yeah, didn't happen.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and Executioner Yuki-chan, of course. A review would be awesome, but obviously not required if you're not inclined to do so, and I hope all who read this enjoyed the chapter!
Bye-nii~ (oh god that's a habit now)