The Vapor of Haruhi Suzumiya
A/N: Well hello there, how've you been? I was alerted via a PM that my updates are "sporadic" and I should be more "constant/reliable" and I will admit that I usually have no real plan on when I update anything I write nowadays (it usually takes less than a week….usually), so taking the level-headed route in replying, I replied "Yeah, and I'm wearing a Princess Leia mask right now, what are you going to do, sue me for cross-dressing? "
I have not received a reply yet. Anyways, time to write this chapter! (Yeah, I write this A/N before the chapter itself, then do the end one afterwards, and don't usually tweak their contents. Hell yeah bad practice!)
On with the plot!
Chapter 11: In Soviet Russia, Physics obey YOU!
It was extremely plain to see that Kyon was not happy. Not only was he wearing a different suit of armor than he had become accustomed to, he was carrying Haruhi in his arms, along with her book of magical crazy things. I actually was able to take a look at it, and all of the pages are blank. Not written in invisible ink either, I tried that. They are absolutely blank.
Anyways, we were walking down the streets of the city, heading into a rather seedy industrial district.
"Remind me again Haruhi, why the hell am I carrying you, when you got shot in the shoulder and got that fixed up yesterday?" Kyon's face was so scrunched he could give that General who takes offense to his PS3 breaking a run for his money.
"Silly Kyon! This is punishment for not taking the bullet for me! You weren't even really useful, from what Emiri tells me; you didn't even go into Guts mode like Yuki-chan!" She waved her hands around exaggeratedly as she said this, and from behind them, I could see her hand come up and rap on the faceplate of Kyon's helmet. No one even bothered to point out that this made little to no sense, and I wasn't about to bring up the subject myself.
Oh yeah, Kyon's new armor that Haruhi managed to summon for him has a helmet. Not only does it look pretty badass, even by my standards, Haruhi also assured him that it was specially designed to keep all of his intelligence from flowing out any more than it already has. I giggled at this statement, while Kyon was understandably antagonized. He was told by a (possibly former?) pseudo-God that his head wasn't the greatest vessel for his brains, and he needed a helmet with no less than 27 horns on it to keep it all there. I still think it's amazing that Haruhi knew Kyon's measurements well enough to yank a suit of armor from another dimension that doesn't crush his manliness, if you get what I mean. Makes you wonder what actually is up with them…trying not to think of it now. No no, go away thoughts! BAD THOUGHTS! BAD!
….anyways….
We began to talk ever so slightly louder when we finally entered the district. The machinery was all operating within buildings, but still managed to produce quite a racket. Haruhi had instructed us to go to a certain address in this portion of the city, because she apparently knew someone who could assist us in getting to that Ono sonofabitch.
Haruhi had given me a radar of sorts and I had gone back into the Under in the early morning to drop it into the water. The radar output to a screen that showed a graph of how deep the water was and any objects in the water. Sure as shit, the water was much, much, much deeper than we expected, upwards of 30 meters deep, and there was a large object that was moving around at the bottom of this.
"Take the next left you guys!" Haruhi was now giving us ever-more precise directions, leading us to a single large house that was situated in-between an Industrial Automaton factory and a Czerka Corporation building that had a large glass façade, and was staffed entirely by mechanical beings of various sizes.
Upon getting to the gate in front of the mansion of a house, Haruhi pulled herself out of Kyon's hands and ran up to a speaker that was inlaid in the left pillar that supported the tall gate.
I noted the postbox just inside the gate, a chibi cat head, the flap to open it being the mouth, and the ear that bent down being the flag.
I was utterly fixated on the postbox. It was soooo cute! I HAD TO HAVE IT.
I kind of walked through the gate, sending it flying into the yard and smashing an ornamental fountain, and causing everyone else to freak right the hell out, but I had it! I had the postbox shaped like a cat head!
Only then did I find out that it was also a burglar alarm, and administered a large dosage of electricity. As the ground jumped up to reach my face I vaguely saw what appeared to be mechanical birds sitting in the remains of the destroyed bird bath.
"Nyoron~! She's waking up!"
My heart was beating at a million kilometers a minute and I squeaked in surprise and rolled from where I had been lying, falling onto the floor. Okay, since when did the hard ground turn into soft carpeted ground?
"Sorry about your gate Tsuruya. She saw your postbox and went all Uber-Schinken on it…"
"Not a problem Haru-nyan! Tom can fix it up, and failing that, I'll just make a new one; one that can tell people not to smash through its!"
I got up from the floor on unsteady legs, looking around. We were seated in a large room that distinctly stank of wealth. Everything had floral patterns, and the furniture had more detail to it then your average sculpture. I had been on a large white couch, and on the couch next to me Haruhi and Tsuruya (who else?) were talking away. It would have been absolutely innocent in nature if Tsuruya wasn't working on some form of gun that appeared big enough to make Emiri's back hurt. Yeah, that big.
Tsuruya's fang is d'aww-able, so I'm going to do that RIGHT NOW.
"D'awwwwwww."
….
"You okay Yuki-nyan? I hear that stunbox hit you goods." Flashing a smile and waving at me with coils of red steel in her hands, I just chuckled at the sheer absurdity of the situation, totally ignoring the fact that the first thing I had spoken today was not the words "Wait, he was wanted alive? Shit.". Haruhi turned back to Tsuruya, watching as she continued working on her….project? There's no literal safe way to refer to that thing.
"So Tsuruya-san, you'll help us with our job if we track down the thief?" Tsuruya's eyes instantly were on Haruhi in an instant, her head moving so fast I got whiplash from her hair, throwing me into a chair at the end of the room…..a very comfortable chair, might I add.
"You know who stole it?" Holy shit, I could sink the Titanic with that voice. Ahaha, bad inter-universe pun, the Titanic didn't sink here. Anyways…..
"Of course I do, and it would be in our interests to work together to accomplish both of our goals simultaneously." Tsuruya's eyes lit up with such intensity that I could see them illuminating dust particles in the air. I'm 3 meters away. Her head is facing towards Haruhi, away from me. Haruhi is now suddenly wearing a welding mask. I'm thinking in small sentences. YOU ARE NOW BREATHING MANUALLY.
Anyways, Haruhi replied to Tsuruya's unspoken question with a maniac grin that would make The Joker cower in fear, "It's none other than the globe-trotting con Ryoko Asakura! She took your coveted item!"
Man, the room just got cold enough to…yup, my breath just formed icicles that fell to floor and shattered like glass. This isn't going to end well.
"Asa…..kura? THAT BITCH!" This was made even more ridiculous by the fact that she was still tinkering with her big-ass gun, screaming into it with a wholly exaggerated face to boot. I moved to another seat directly across from them as she slapped a panel on her gun shut and dropped it to the floor, shaking the entire house on its foundations.
Kyon and that other guy walked in the room, Kyon looking like he was about to cry.
Huh.
"Fufufufufu…..Suzumiya-san, did I hear you correctly through 4 walls and several rooms? Ryoko Asakura is going to cross our paths again?"
Haruhi nodded, blatantly ignoring the fact that Koizumi brought to the foreground a rather glaring inconsistency. Hell, even I noticed it, and I usually have trouble realizing when I'm supposed to not stab things! Well, makes me more like Asakura after all…..except for that part with the creepy stalkers. I just have Kyon. Who is more afraid of me stalking him than I am of the opposite scenario.
Anyways, Tsuruya jumped up and Action Girl'd all over the room with renewed vigor, for some odd reason.
"Let's go kick that trendy bitch six ways to Sunday!" Haruhi sweatdropped and I grabbed her by the collar as she flew by me, stopping her quite suddenly and causing her to choke and flail about, before regaining her footing. I let her go, and she righted herself and bonked herself on the head.
"Eh, sorry about that….so, can we go kill her and get it back before she eats it?"
Woah woah woah. Hold up. We're helping her get FOOD back? I voiced my doubts right then and there, oddly. I thought I was the silent character!
"What item did Asakura steal from you Tsuruya-chan?"
Tsuruya steepled her fingers in a fashion that would make a super-villain proud, leaned in to my ear in a conspiracy-like fashion, and said in the quietest, still slurred voice due to that d'aw fang, "My wheel of smoked cheese-nyoron."
I drew back into cold unfeeling stare, but she just stared right back, totally oblivious to the concept of how ridiculous this whole thing was. Apparently, the only ones in the room that caught it was myself and Kyon, and all we got out of it was an annoyed sigh and a blink of the eyes.
"Nothing Tsuruya-san. We'll go get Asakura right after the girls get back from their erran-" Kyon got cut off once again (thankfully not in the slasher fic literal sense) by the door opening directly into his spine, downing him like a lumberjack into a crowd of fanboys. Emiri stepped out from behind the door, carrying a large burlap bag on her bag that was so cartoonishly large that Mikuru had to squeeze around her to get into the room, giving all of us a fantastic shot of her chest.
What, I can appreciate another girl's goods, can't I? You think that's a change from before? Oho, you never really knew me that well then…um, nevermindIdidn'tsayanythingincriminating.
Anyways, Mikuru was slightly less ridiculous with her cloth parcel that was nearly a meter long and half a meter wide. Tsuruya ripped it open, using her fang as a razor, no less, to reveal a crisscrossing coil of green pulsing thread….you know, radioactive thread. I hope this reality knows what radiation is…..
"Thank you Miku-nyan! Now I can finish this needlessly large and dangerous gun I conveniently had sitting around, waiting to be finished!" Mikuru and myself sweatdropped. "W-What was that?"
"I said, now I can finish my Super Photonic Electromagnet Conductive Ultra Logarithmic Arx Ricocheting Gun! SPECULAR Gun for short! This Half-Life string is internally coiled around the barrel to give the chaff an extra oomph to get through magical barriers!"
Now the only people in the know for that were myself and Emiri. The art of Ridiculously Long Named Weaponry was thought to be lost on humans for another couple of centuries! They even had Good Acronym Creation Skills down! Truly, this reality was more and more becoming my preferred one. That and the large availability of things that go bang, boom, whiz, slice, crunch, shing, bizzoogle, and yeomyeom.
Tsuruya hefted the gun so large it shifted her totally off-balance, and Emiri had to step forward and grab it to keep it from falling and causing a small nuclear explosion. Yeah, we're talking unfreakingstable here. Though the best things in life usually are! You know, nuclear isotopes, insane scientists, the stock market, most government leaders, the Illuminati, Aisan freeways, China in general, global warming, Dragon-type Pokemon, aluminum cans, can openers, Tom and Jerry cartoons, hovercrafts full of eels…..I could go on all day, but we have a man to kill and a ridiculously oversized gun to test-fire underground!
-
. . :
However long it took them to bring the SPECULAR Gun underground (disassembles for easy transport!): 45 minutes
Current time: 14:19
Location: The Under, in the clearing under the long-ass ladder
Objective(s): Kill/detain/kill Renji Ono; Retrieve item "Tsuruya's Smoked Cheese" from Ryoko Asakura
"Alright Haru-nyan, where is Ryoko? You said we'd be going after her first….but this isn't her usual 'pick up guys so she can rob them dry in more ways than one' grounds….."
Haruhi led us to the center of the clearing, before turning to Tsuruya. "Tsuruya-san, how destructive is this SPECULAR Gun of yours?"
Vampires need to step up their grin with the monster that Tsuruya just grew. "I haven't tested its yet Haru-nyan! You want to find out right here? How about that building over there?" She pointed to none other than the dilapidated bar that was still functioning, despite having had its ass handed to it only the day before. The crappy "OPeN" sign was smashed all to hell, but the O still flickered occasionally to indicate it was still getting power.
Haruhi clapped her hands in glee, and the rest of us exchanged looks that bordered between "lawl guys" and "oh noes gais, property damage!"
Tsuruya promptly began to set up her gun-no wait, no she didn't. She pulled a lever on the side of it back, and the whole length of the weapon began to pulse in green, obviously radiation-producing light. It started emitting a high-pitched whine, before settling into a slow clunking sound, similar to that which Tom makes…..oh no, Tom with one of these things? Call the poli-never mind.
We all were just standing right behind Tsuruya, with Haruhi right behind her, the back of the Gun right in front of her. I grabbed Kyon and wisely dragged him to the ground, but used him as a shield.
The gun fired an electromagnetic rail similar to the one portrayed in Quake III, but this one had the added feature of not only being hotter than the goddamn Sun, it also BOUNCED.
It ripped a hole a meter wide in the building, while simultaneously dissolved it into ash, and then proceeded to bounce back and enter the frothing river next to us.
It evaporated all of the water in the whole river, causing an instant condensation cloud to form above us, rise up to hit the cold ceiling of the cavern, and form into raindrops, causing us all to take a shower.
However, most of the water did not land back inside the river, going through the slummy section of the Under and overflowing into the Caverns. The slums were at the top of the Under, ironically enough, and now there had to be a good 15 meters of water inside the basin, with no where to drain out to. I sure hope these guys can swim.
After we all gathered our, in everyone else's cases, wet (did I mention my goofy raver-esque outfit is waterproof?) selves, Tsuruya and Haruhi had a good laugh, while we just shared a group "Holy Shit" moment.
We just created the next (possibly first) Atlantis. With a rail gun. You know, this is plain ridiculous, even by my standards. God Only Knows my standards are ridiculous anyways. Emiri was just wet and trying not to think about how dangerous this made Tsuruya, and that other guy was trying to find the feather that had been knocked out of his cap.
Looking away from the group's attempts to dry themselves, I walked to the edge of the cliff, formerly the edge of the river.
There was a large, dimly illuminated egg-shaped metallic object sitting at the bottom of the barely wet chasm. It had been on what appeared to be a rail system, but the sheer weight of it when not underwater had seemingly crushed the rails, leaving it immobile, and a sitting duck. The rest of our rag-tag wrecking crew joined me in looking down into the chasm, with only Tsuruya making a comment.
"I can smell my cheese from here!"
I restrained laughter for some reason, before Haruhi spoke up in a method that obviously indicated she was trying to salvage the situation.
"Well, yeah, Ryoko is down there too! I knew that….obviously…..eh, screw it, let's go kick some ass!"
Haruhi straight jumped off the cliff¸ only to float down to the bottom, using her Lolita-esque dress Mary Poppins style.
I…you….we….this…what…..you know what, I'm not even going to ask.
Tsuruya obviously thought she was people too, because she jumped off too, but her mechanic's overalls didn't give her the same drag as Haruhi.
No matter, because she just aimed her Gun at the ground and fired it right before she made a Green Pancake on the ground….hmmmm….pancakes.
Er, anyways, the recoil somehow made Tsuruya decelerate almost entirely, setting down at the bottom and walking up to the giant metal egg where Haruhi was banging on it.
I looked to the rest of the 'crew, where Emiri was handing out parachutes.
I just sighed.
"You actually assumed this to be a possibility and prepared for it?"
Emiri shook her head.
"Hell no, but what kind of steampunk adventurer are you if you don't carry around instant-refolding magical parachutes?"
….."Guess I'm not much of an adventurer then."
One parachuting montage later, we were all safely at the bottom of the chasm, which was pitch black outside of the light illuminating from the giant oblong shape laying in about half a meter of water. I was still laughing at everyone else internally, thankful for my waterproof clothing. Mikuru had worn hotpants and so was not affected by this, but Kyon looked to be taking water into his armor, giving him a low center of gravity. Emiri tried to shove him out of the way when he wasn't moving fast enough, but he just swung forward like a punching bag, then came right back up and smacked her in the face.
It was the funniest thing I'd seen in….about an hour? Yeah, around there.
We were now in the bottom of a 150 meter deep chasm, surrounded by inky blackness, and the only light source was a metal egg that was also supposedly holding a murderer that needed to get murdered, as well as a fellow former Interface and current classmate that had stolen our friend's smoked cheese wheel, which was somehow valuable enough to sink half an underground city and cause millions in property damage to retrieve.
Thank Haruhi this will be over soon….wait, world, don't make me retract my statement! You won't like me when I do that!
Thankfully the World was listening, and a small door opened on the bottom of the Egg, big enough for us to walk into.
Which, being the bishonen idiots we were, we totally did. Right into a pitch-black room. Really guys? Really?
Well, you don't need me to tell you how this turns out.
A/N: ZING! You totally do need Yuki, actually. She's the narrator, and I'm not switching perspectives to another character when we're this far in. This had to happen this way because the next chapter has too much epic to try to clump into one chapter. I don't want to break any laws of physics here. Haruhi is doing a good enough job for two people, and then some!
All of the nerds will probably catch that the acronym SPECULAR is referring to specular reflection, which is when a singular incoming ray of light is reflected off of a surface in one outgoing ray of light. Think of a mirror.
Anyways, next chapter:
Asakura and Tsuruya have a laser-tag influenced mixed martial arts battle to the (almost) death! I wish I was making this shit up. I really do. Also, Koizumi gets into an archery contest with a bodyguard, except the bodyguard's bow is a musket, and Yuki….well, you'll find out.