Chapter One

Scene Twelve the Ninth Big Fight

Haruhi bounced on her heels with a wide grin, holding Kyon's cell phone in both hands as she remained in the center of the glowing circle.

"I knew it!" she cheered.

"There was something off about Asakura! What is it?"

"Um..." the onetime class representative said, frowning.

"She's alien," Kyon volunteered.

"From the same place as Yuki-chan and Kimidori, but she tried to kill me once."

"Whaaaat? What did you do to make her mad?" Haruhi asked, looking at him in bemusement.

"Er," Asakura said, crossing her arms beneath her chest.

"Evidently my information requires an update. I was sent to dispatch Kyon-kun, because he's become an undesirable element for my superiors."

"Really, I'd hoped to see a new state, maybe even provoke it with his death.

"But, those toys seem to say that's already happened! So disappointing ... I suppose if I'd been more patient, I could see it anyway?"

"I personally like to see it as a lesson on the effects of randomly stabbing people," Kyon muttered.

"Oh, it wasn't random," she countered.

"It was highly specific! I put a whole two hours of thought into it, you know. For us, that's quite a while!"

"I'm touched," he said dryly.

"Blah blah blah," Haruhi muttered, crossing her arms over her chest and rolling her eyes.

"Skip the speeches — if I don't know the complete back story, it's all meaningless to me. I think it's about time we get down to business, right?"

"Happy to oblige!" Asakura said brightly, as their surroundings pulsed, the window turning into a gunmetal gray steel barrier, strange patterns coalescing across the walls.

The circle on the floor around Haruhi abruptly winked out.

"Now, I've converted the entire space of this stairwell into-"

Kyon spun on one foot, crying out with a great "Ki-yah!"

Kyon spun on one foot, crying out with a great "Ki-yah!" and kicking the door halfway across the roof.

Sparing no more time, he swept Haruhi up in one arm and dashed through the opening.

"Waaah!" she protested. "Why are you running away!?"

"Confined spaces," he answered, sliding to a halt in the middle of the roof and setting her down. "Speed dial two again."

"Right, right," she mumbled, reactivating the circle of light.

"So, what's so great about this if she can just turn it off, anyway?"

"It's a barrier and emergency help function," he answered, reactivating the beam saber and reassuming a defensive stance.

"Unless she seals this space off — again — she can't disable it."

Asakura gave a pained sigh as she stepped through the jagged distortion between her controlled dataspace and the rooftop.

"You shouldn't be able to manipulate data like that," she said reprovingly.

"I suppose that means it's time to stop holding back."

She clapped her hands together before her and drew them apart, flinging a fan of dozens of identical knives outward.

Kyon maintained his guard position, his free hand already clenched into a fist, the metal ridges of his skinsuit facing outward.

The knives adjusted their course, most homing in on him to suddenly be halted by a semi-circular barrier of glowing blue force before shattering into nothingness, but a handful stopping suddenly in the space over the circle around Haruhi.

He opened his mouth to retort, but Asakura was already within his guard, driving yet another blade into his stomach.

The inner carbon-nano-weave of the greatcoat and the force field of the skinsuit beneath it converted the stabbing force into a distributed shock wave, so instead of being pierced, Kyon was merely hit with the force of a speeding minivan, flying clear across the roof with a choked grunt.

"In the end," Asakura remarked, watching his form tumble off the edge of the school building, "all those toys are pretty silly if you don't actually know how to use them."

"You have to give him credit, though," Haruhi said, peering very closely at the knives frozen over her barrier, not even glancing back to where Kyon had vanished.

"He comes up with one hell of a distraction ploy, doesn't he?"