The Genderbending Of Haruhi Suzumiya

Chapter 13 -- Old Nightmares

To my surprise, the rest of that day was pretty normal. Haruki did beat us back to the rendezvous point, but he was too dejected about not finding any leads on his search to complain about out tardiness, though his expression told me all too well what he thought of me at that particular moment in time. Mitsuru looked incredibly flustered, as if he had been dragged around by his shirt collar all over the city and exploited left and right (as he probably had been), Nagato seemed unaffected or, perhaps more accurately, uninterested in everything, and Koizumi had the concerned smile she always seemed to wear whenever Haruhi was having a bad day. I wouldn't be surprised if he would get called into his "part time job" once we all parted ways.

Tsuruya pretended to the best of his ability to seem as exhausted as possible in order to prevent Haruki from growing suspicious about how we spent our afternoon. I wasn't exhausted in the least, but I still was more then ready to go home. With the dejected mood Haruki seemed to be in, though, I didn't want to be forced into doing something because of the unusually good mood I seemed to be having. So I just kept a straight face as we all stared at each other in silence waiting for the verdict from our judge.

"As disappointed as I am with your findings today, I understand that it is our first full day of investigating as a team and I am willing to hold off penalties for the time being. But you won't be so lucky the next time. Especially not you, Kyonko," Haruki barked as he addressed us all. "Everyone is dismissed."

That has to be the most level headed thing I have ever heard you say, Haruhi.

"I have some other business to tend to here, so I won't be departing with you all I am afraid," Koizumi chimed as everyone else began to file into the station.

"Your job?" I asked, hoping that in this world Haruki had memory of Koizumi's excuse for having to go and slay the monstrous beings he creates when he is upset.

"I am afraid so." She smiled and waved before trotting toward whatever mayhem she would have to face.

The train ride home was silent; we parted ways at the station without speaking a word to each other. I hadn't seen Hauki this depressed in a long time. Not since... Not since before her and I shared the same dream. It almost seemed like there was something much more going on in his head. Not that there hasn't always been a bigger picture with him. Ever since we met, there has always been something far greater going on than what Haruhi would admit, whether she knew about it or not. What made this particular instance different, however, was just a strange gut feeling that there was some huge turmoil going on in Haruki's mind.

When I got home and plopped onto my mattress, I finally let myself delve into more thought about it. The first time anything like this event happened was shortly after the club formed. Haruhi had  grown totally uninterested in the world, to the point of giving up on, and decided it was time to create one of her own.  Though she remembers it now as a dream, I and the rest of the brigade know all too well how close the universe as we know it was to coming to an end and being replaced by Haruhi's vision for it. What stopped it was... well... I grabbed her and told her I didn't want anything to change. I wanted to be in the world I already had been in. With her. And then... I kissed her. After that everything went back to normal.

The most recent event like this was when Nagato stole Haruhi's powers to alter reality just enough to change most everything about how we lived our lives. Koizumi was never an esper, Nagato was never an alien, Ms. Asahina was never a time traveler, and Haruhi was never some data-manipulating-and-yet-totally-unaware-of-her power- deity. But I still remembered the old world. Nagato entrusted me with the power to chose between worlds and I set everything back to the way it was originally. What I couldn't understand about those situations, above anything else that seemed to defy all logic and science in the universe, was the fact that both times the decision was placed on me.