General All-Purpose Crossover Fiction Thread

Yotsuba Satsuki wasn't easily surprised, but when she was, it was usually quite obvious. Certainly she seemed very surprised as she asked Midori if she was sure about what she'd just said.

Midori nodded. "I still have to get through the last interview, Yotsuba-kacho, but it's really a sure thing. Today is probably my last day here."

Satsuki cautioned her that one should never be too certain about a supposedly sure thing when it came to one's employment. However, she also hoped that Midori would continue to be as much of an asset to her new employers as she'd been for her, this past two years. If it didn't work out, there would always be a place for her at the Chao Bao Zi.

Feeling herself blushing, Midori fought the impulse to say something funny. It was a difficult battle, but she managed, and nodded again. "Thank you, kacho. But next time I come here, I expect that I'll be a customer. I'm looking forward to it, really!"

Satsuki assured her that she felt the same way. But right now, there were customers waiting, so they'd better get to work. She did hope that Midori would give her best to the Headmaster when she saw him, though.

On hearing that, Midori stopped dead in her tracks as she headed out to take some orders. "Right," she stammered.

She hadn't said anything about the Headmaster. And she would have sworn that Satsuki was surprised by her news. How in the world had the girl known that her job interview was with him? How could someone so young be so sharp? Midori had a reasonably high opinion of herself, but she knew perfectly well that she hadn't been that sharp when she was that age, humhum years ago. If she had been ... well, she probably still would have slept with that guy, but she'd have known to break it off with him before he started cheating on her.

Or possibly pre-emptively cheat on him.

Midori let these concerns evaporate as she worked the lunch crowd, consisting mostly of students. As it happened, those students included two of her coworkers, Akane and Kazuya. She decided that she could take a little time to let them know that she wasn't going to be joining them on their evening shift.

"Eh? You have a job interview?" asked Akane, even more surprised than Satsuki had been.

"Where will you be working now?" Kazuya asked. "I hope it's not Searrbucks. I'd hate to think you'll be competing with Yotsuba-kacho."

"I really can't talk about it," Midori said, shrugging. "Well, I could, but I'd have to kill you."

Kazuya laughed at the comment, but the laugh became strained and awkward when he saw that Midori's face was perfectly deadpan. "Eh-heh," he finished. "Very funny."

"I thought so," Midori said, grinning. "Anyway, gotta go."

Of course, she probably wouldn't have to kill him if she told him about her new job. Then again, if one considered one's life to be the product of one's memories, she supposed that arranging for someone to erase those memories was probably like having them killed. Well, some might view it that way. Personally, Midori had enough bad memories that she could afford to lose a few, whether or not that would change who she was.

She was betting on not, though.

Anyway, she guessed that Akane and Kazuya were going to have to tell Mai when they saw her, since she didn't look to be eating here this lunch. Ah well. She hadn't really developed the same close relationship with the new girl that she had with the two of them, but she had a hunch that was going to change, if her guess was right about what Mai and/or that roommate of hers, Mikoto, got up to at night.

They were going to be seeing a lot of each other in the months to come, considering the job she was aiming for.

Mai was bone tired. A long day of classes, followed by a shift at the Chao Bao Zi where she suddenly had to do a larger share of the work after Midori's departure, would do that to a person. She was in no mood to play games, regardless of what sort of games were available.

So coming home to find that Mikoto was nowhere to be found didn't do anything good for her mood. Neither did knocking on Aoi's door to find her and Chie together (clothes slightly disarranged, she did her best not to notice) but with no idea where Nao was to be found. "She didn't come home after classes," Aoi told her, a bit of worry showing in her tone.

"Okay, sorry to disturb you," Mai said, fighting the urge to pat her head, which was starting to hurt. "I'll go look for both of them. Call it a hunch, but I have a feeling they're together."

"Sounds like a good hunch," Chie agreed. "Would you like some help? The three of us could cover a lot more ground if we worked together."

On the one hand, that sounded like a bad idea. On the other hand, that sounded like a horrendous idea. "No, uh, no, you should both stay here, in case they come back while I'm searching. That way you can call me and tell me about it," Mai improvised, hoping to heck that neither of them would question why they needed two people to do that.

Then she saw them exchanging glances and realized that wasn't going to be a problem. Of course.

"But, you're going out alone? Mai-san, that's not a good idea. It's not safe," Aoi said. It had the feel of a protest for the form of the thing, but there was genuine concern there. It would have been warming if Mai hadn't been in a rush.

"It's okay, I know someone who can help," Mai reassured her.

"Who?" Chie asked bluntly. "Don't take this the wrong way, Mai-san, but you haven't really gotten close to anyone in class, except for us."

Mai flinched at the implied rebuke, but soldiered on regardless. "It's someone I know who's in the same line of work," she explained.

---

A few moments later, she was knocking on a door, just a bit frantically. Her efforts were rewarded when it was flung open and the barrel of a snub-nosed gun with a weird, ball-shaped magazine was pressed to her forehead.

"How did you find out where I live?" Natsuki asked, voice as cold as usual.

"You're in the student directory," Mai snapped. "And your name is on the nameplate of this door!"

Natsuki appeared to be considering the value of shooting Mai regardless of the honest answer she'd just been given. The moment passed, though, and she lowered the gun, rolling it up out of sight. "What do you want?"

"Hello, Mai, who's been moderately helpful in the last couple of weeks," Mai said, imitating Natsuki's tone.

"What do you want?" Natsuki repeated.

"I need your help. Mikoto's out doing something, and I think she might be getting into trouble."

"So?"

Mai sighed. "I am asking you for your help to find her."

"I understand what you're doing. I am asking why I should help you. All that I want out of either of you is that you stay out of my way, remember? And before you go pointing out that you've been helpful in the past, again, I think we're pretty much even on everything that's happened —"

"Fine," Mai interjected. "After this we won't be. After this I'll owe you one. Do you honestly mean to tell me you can't envision any circumstances where having some backup wouldn't be a little bit helpful?"

Natsuki answered the question with a long, level stare at Mai, who had the very clear impression that she was being weighed and measured.

But as the girl with the long blue-black hair opened her mouth to say something, there came a delicate cough from the side. "Good evening, gentles all," said a soft voice with a distinctive Kyoto-ben accent.

As one, Mai and Natsuki turned to see that a pale figure in a distinctive grey-white version of the school uniform was regarding them with interest as she stood a few feet away, one eyebrow delicately lifted above her strange reddish-brown eyes. "Might there be something the matter on this fine evening?"

"Shizuru," Natsuki said.

"Student Council President," Mai said at the same moment, then did a double take at Natsuki. Natsuki was on first name basis with the Student Council President? Natsuki engaged in yobisute with the Student Council President?

"No, nothing's the matter. I'm just having a discussion with, with my friend, Mai, here," Natsuki explained.

Since when are we friends?

"Oh, Tokiha-san has become a friend of yours. I'm glad to hear that. It's not good for a person to go through life without friends. Or even just a single close friend," the vision in grey and white said placidly, turning the stress of her regard directly onto Mai. "Tokiha-san. You're looking well. Thank you for taking the time to befriend my Natsuki."

... my Natsuki? "Um, right," Mai said aloud. Maybe I didn't hear it right. Maybe she meant to say 'our Natsuki' and she just dropped the plural. That's plausible.

"Well, Mai needs my help with, with a school project, so I'm going to go do that now," Natsuki explained, coming the rest of the way out of her dorm room and closing the door behind her. "I'm sorry we don't have more time to talk."

"Such is life," Shizuru said, spreading her hands in a gesture of helplessness. "I look forward to hearing about the project one of these days. Good evening."

"Good evening," Mai answered as Natsuki started to pull her off.

Shizuru watched them go, the smile never once leaving her face.

"So, you and the Student Council President are friends, huh?" Mai asked as they headed out into the night.

"No," Natsuki said bluntly. "She's been useful a time or two. That's all."

"Oh," Mai said. "It's just that you seemed, well, a little bit flustered and confused when she was —"

"She's. Just. Useful."

"Got it. It's clear," Mai said, nodding. It's clear that you're full of it.

Prologue

The Concordance Extraction Corporation’s LongJump shockpoint drive was humanity’s most sophisticated form of faster-than light travel. It functioned using wormhole technology, folding space-time between two points, tearing a hole in both, and travelling through the resultant ‘tunnel’. It was fast, energy-efficient, and offered a ninety-eight per cent chance that its users would arrive where they were supposed to – less if the appropriate maintenance procedures were not carried out every three weeks.

Needless to say, the CEC liked to keep quiet about that last bit.

This particular shockpoint drive was not well-maintained. It had, in fact, been quite comprehensively sabotaged, before being patched together with components from a completely different class of ship. Furthermore, the only crew-member on the shuttle it was presently attached to had locked himself in one of the stasis-pods and was quietly waiting for the hallucinations to go away.

The autopilot, being an autopilot, was not concerned by any of this. It simply counted down with its onboard timer, then activated the drive at the pre-programmed time.

It was at that moment, of course, that everything went wrong.

The drive core started to shudder, rattling around in its mangled containment cage. A trio of cables caught on the frame and whipped loose, their spark-spewing tips scorching dark trails across the surrounding machinery. A portal formed in front of the shuttle – not clean and smooth, but turbulent and ragged, pulsating in an unnervingly organic manner. Thrusters sputtered into life as an uncontrolled power surge sent the ship’s AI into its death throes, sending the little craft tumbling end over end into the wormhole’s waiting maw.

Thirty seconds later, the portal collapsed, leaving no trace of the shuttle except for a few fragments of drifting, sparking debris.

***

The space between dimensions is indescribable, impossible for the human eye to even process. To look upon it is to invite blindness, insanity, and worse. It was perhaps fortunate, then, that the shuttle’s passenger saw nothing of it, absorbed as he was with his own, more private nightmares.

Eventually, though, the visions that danced before his eyes, engraved into his brain, began to change, the alien script twisting and writhing like a field of mating snakes. Technical specifications began to emerge alongside scientific principles, names and shapes searing across his half-awake mind.

MINOVSKY PARTICLE.

I-FIELD.

PARTICLE CANNON.

BINDER SYSTEM.

MOBILE SUIT.

The shuttle wheeled onwards, towards its new destination.

***

“It is now 23:40 Greenwich Mean Time. We are about to witness the end of the world as we know it, and usher in a new world as never before imagined. The Earth Federation Government is about to host a ceremony at the Prime Minister’s residence, Laplace, to celebrate the birth of a new era. The ingenuity of mankind has allowed us to move beyond Mother Earth and build worlds of our own to inhabit. Tonight will mark the beginning of a new epoch. Let us come together in this joyous moment to honour the past, the era of Anno Domini, and greet the dawn of the Universal Century with open hearts and minds. So with great enthusiasm, let us open the door to our future together. Farewell Anno Domini, and welcome, Universal Century!”

The news broadcast echoed through Syam Vist’s helmet radio as he attached the bomb to the solar panel. The three rings of the Laplace station were spread out below him, the vast blue-green mass of Earth shining through the gaps. His own native Armenia had just dipped past the terminator, the last light of day fading and dying from its sky. The Federation’s soldiers would be moving soon, herding the dispossessed, the unwanted, and the unlucky to their new ghettos amongst the stars.

He secured the last cable, giving it an experimental tug to make sure that the knot was sound, and then turned back to his crewmates, flashing them a quick thumbs-up. Acknowledging radio-blips sounded off, and they began to move back towards the little maintenance shuttle they’d ‘liberated’ from the station dock.

“Hold on – we’ve got a problem here.”

The voice was loud and sudden enough to almost make Syam lose his grip on the panel’s handholds. Abbas, the leader of the operation, sent out a long, reproachful blip – keep it quiet, idiot.

“Look, this is serious.” It was Meruzhan, their explosives expert, his voice strained and curt. “The warhead’s missing. I say again, the warhead is missing.”

“Zhan, do I need to remind you that the Feddies are probably monitoring every channel in this airspace?” Abbas growled. “So we got sold a dud. Keep going. The other stuff works, and that’s more than enough.”

“You don’t get it.” Even through the static of the radio system, Meruzhan’s voice was shaky. “I checked the device on the way here, and it was fine. Someone took it out. Someone on this crew sabotaged our fucking bomb.”

“Shuttle Thirty-Seven, we are not reading you as scheduled for a maintenance session at this hour.” The new voice was in English, with a broad American accent. “Please respond.”

“Oh, for the love of-” Abbas growled. “Everyone switch to channel thirty. Should buy us some time. Zhan, relax. We’ll sort this out.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not trained in that language,” the station operator said. “Please wait while I get a translator from another division.”

Tinny muzak crackled through the speakers, only to be cut off abruptly as Syam adjusted the frequency. He glanced up across the vast expanse of the solar panel. Their shuttle suddenly seemed to be a very long way away. Abbas’s exasperated voice cut in a second later. “OK, people, who’s seen that warhead? It’s shiny, metal, and about the size of a football. Anyone?”

“Haven’t seen it, sir,” Syam replied.

“Nope, sorry.”

“Nothing here.”

“Not a clue. Sorry.”

“It will make us whole.”

“Shuttle Thirty-Seven, be advised that changing channels whilst on duty is in strict contravention of station radio protocols.” This announcement was in perfect Armenian, though still with a distinctly foreign accent. “I say again, please respond.”

“Sorry, Poghos, what was that?” Abbas asked, pointedly ignoring the operator.

“The bomb. It will make us whole. It told me so. Don’t you hear it? Aren’t you listening?”

“Thirty-Seven, what was that about a bomb?”

“Shut the fuck up, you Federation pig!” Abbas screamed. Static rasped down the line as he took a few deep breaths to calm himself. “Poghos, slow down. You’re not making any sense.”

“All will become one. That’s what it said. The thing inside the station. It’s been whispering to me. Whispering since we arrived.” A weirdly high-pitched giggle. “It’s shown me such beautiful things.”

“All units, this is Laplace Control. We have a terrorist alert on the station. I repeat, we have a terrorist alert on the station. Shuttle Thirty-Seven, you are asked to surrender immediately, or we cannot guarantee your safety.”

Through the gaps in the panel, Syam could see lights begin to move. Federation gunboats.

“Everybody, get back to the shuttle!” Abbas yelled over the rising wave of radio interference. “Get back to the fucking shuttle!”

“You don’t understand, do you?” Poghos continued. “You won’t end anything here. This is a beginning, a wonderful beginning. And I get to push the button.”

The shuttle exploded soundlessly. The crewmen nearest to it simply disintegrated whilst those further away spun outwards, bits and pieces detaching from their bodies as the concussive force shook them apart. Syam was shoved through the shattered remains of the solar panel as if by the fist of an angry god, his suit’s armour shielding him from the whirling debris as he fell towards the station.

Their other devices had been triggered as well. The shuttle engine they’d strapped to the main habitation ring was careering round its tight little orbit, the backwash peeling open the hull like a knife, whilst the second solar panel was now nothing but gleaming wreckage. Laplace Station burst open when he was less than five hundred metres away, the pressure of the escaping air too much for its abused frame. A corpse struck his back and flopped away, its broken limbs waving almost comically. A shard of glass scored a fine, bright scratch across his visor. And then he saw it, and everything else seemed to vanish at once. It was a broad, tapering double-helix like two intertwined tongues, laterally segmented and covered in glowing runes. It arced past gracefully, catching the light reflected off the station’s punctured mechanical entrails. Syam tried to follow it, craning his neck… and then a wall of dull, grey metal slammed into him, and he blacked out.

***

The Federation picked up Syam Vist two hours later, during its third and final sweep for survivors of the Laplace Massacre. He did not speak for two days, instead concentrating on folding paper napkins into strangely bulbous, twisting spire-shapes. When he finally talked to a crew-member, it was to request more paper. His captors assumed that his mind had been damaged by the incident, perhaps because of guilt over the massive loss of life he had helped cause.

That would come later.

The first serious sign of trouble came at the very start of the interview, when, as she'd said she'd do, Midori passed on well-wishes from Satsuki. For a frighteningly long moment, she saw a baffled look on Konoemon's face, as though he had no notion of who this Satsuki person was or why she was wishing him well. The moment quickly passed, though. He thanked her with perfect politeness, and inquired of doings at the Chao Bao Zi.

The fact that the old man had clearly not known what a Chao Bao Zi was, for a few seconds, caused her a great deal of concern. She wasn't sure just how old he was; it wasn't the done thing to ask that question. But he'd never seemed aged until just this moment.

Some more small talk followed, and her anxiety gradually eased. Then she watched him settle back in his chair. "So," he said. "I was somewhat surprised when I read your application for the post. Any teacher, of course, hopes to have his students follow in his footsteps — in education, at least. And I am no different. It would please me a great deal if one of the last students I personally supervised became a teacher at this institution."

"I would hope to live up to the example that you set, Konoemon-sensei," she said, smiling warmly.

He answered her smile with one of his own. "Then why, Midori-kun, are you insulting me with this transparently fraudulent and fabricated teaching certificate?"

She blinked. "Transparently? I thought it was a pretty good forgery. I certainly paid enough for one."

"Evidently not," he said, scanning the alleged certificate. "The Minister of Education hasn't been the fellow who supposedly signed this for a few years now."

"I was robbed," she said, visibly stunned. "Unbelievable. So much for the notion that to live outside the law, you must be honest. Well. I guess you've got to give me the job, because I'm going to need a steady paycheque to be able to afford to get a better fake."

They stared at each other across the desk for a few moments, before Konoemon leaned back, resting his oddly shaped head against the top of his specially-designed chair as he looked up at the ceilling. "We've certainly had our share of unusual teachers here at Mahora. Negi-kun isn't the most remarkable, just the most recent. Well, I suppose he is, actually, among the most remarkable, but there have been others almost as ... but that's not what I was trying to say, really. All of these teachers have always, always been fully accredited teachers in addition to whatever odd skills or talents they might possess. We have never hired someone simply for being ... gifted," he said at length, then fell silent.

"Neither am I pleased to be the one who breaks that admirable record, sensei," Midori said, in a tone vastly removed from her usually easy-going manner of speaking. She could do formal when necessary, and if she was to keep him from talking himself into refusing her the job, it was necessary. "But the situation which now confronts us will not wait for me to finish my education. You've read my report. I still don't have the full picture, but the frame and outline are bad enough."

"Can things really be that dire?" he asked, voice almost a whisper. "Our security teams seem to be dealing with these hobgoblins."

"Not without injury, sir," she said. Hearing about the stream of increasingly serious injuries from Yohko was what had convinced her of this course of action. "An they're going to get worse. The Orphans are called the invisible children of an invisible star for a reason, sensei, and it's not because they can't be seen. It's because fortune telling spells won't suffice to predict where or when they come into being or attack. They can't be predicted. They can't be prepared for. Ultimately, they can only be fought by the other side of this cycle of myth.

"So doesn't it make sense, sir, to have one of them working for you? Keeping an eye on the others who aren't?"

She'd never seen him looking so weary and lost as right then. "I —"

Please don't say you're too old for this shit. Please don't talk about retirement. Please don't go there. We all know what comes after that. Please. Please. I don't want that, even if I do want to be a hero more than anything, but I don't want it to be at that price.

"I suppose that you're right," he said at last. "You will keep me in the loop." It was not a request.

She kept the exultation under control. "Yes, sir."

"You start classes tomorrow. Japanese History, at the Coed School." He smiled a small smile. "You were always good at that, as I recall."

She nodded, trying very hard to stop herself from dancing. "Yes, sir. Thank you sir. I'll be in your care."

"Rather the contrary, I think." Konoemon mused aloud.

---

She finally let out the grin when she walked out of the offices.

"Congratulations on the new job, Midori-chan!" came a voice from a nearby tree.

Of course, circumstances would insist on ruining her good mood. She turned to glower up at Nagi, for indeed it was he. "Thank you," she said acidly. "Now beat it."

Normally, there'd be a lot of talk here about how attractive and sexy and cute Midori deep-down found Nagi to be, despite her obvious hostility. But some people are just blind to the obvious charm that others possess, and that was where Midori was when it came to me I mean him. It's sort of sad, really.

"Oh, harsh. And I was really trying to be nice, too," Nagi said.

"It would be nice if you stopped breathing," she told him frankly. "It would be nicer if you'd never troubled this place with your presence, but there's no point in wishing for the past to be changed. But I can wish that you were gone, or better yet, dead. And I'm gonna start working on bringing that about real soon now," she promised, smiling grimly.

"How heroic," he sighed, shaking his head. "Anyway, other than wishing you well on the new job, I actually came to get you started on part of it. You're supposed to be keeping an eye on the other Hi ME, right? Well, there's going to be a bit of a confrontation between a number of them this evening, and you might want to intervene."

"When?" Midori snapped. "Where?"

"All questions that I might have answered if you hadn't been such a meanie," Nagi answered reprovingly. "Bye now!" And then he was gone.

Midori felt her teeth clench, and then shook her head. "No time for this." She started running.

"You've found another one?" Mikoto asked hesitantly.

Nao nodded. "I put out signals and drew him in. We're supposed to meet in just a few minutes. I'll lure him into one of the alleys, and then you come in after a little bit. With your help, I'm sure that we'll be able to get this one to tell us where the Orphan behind all of this is hiding out."

"And there's really no other way to do this?"

Nao let out a hiss of annoyance, and shook her head. "Does your Miroku have Orphan detection powers that you haven't mentioned yet? Because my Juliet certainly doesn't. If we're going to find the thing that's doing this, we have to interrogate its pawns to find out where they might have encountered it. This is a war, Mikoto. You've got to do what you've got to do."

"I understand that," Mikoto said, her reluctance still readily apparent. Her next words were more of a whine than she really liked. "But, Nao —"

"What if it was your brother?" Nao asked abruptly.

"Eh?" Mikoto said, blinking in sudden befuddlement.

"What if it was your brother under the control of this thing? The brother you've told me about, the one you've gone to all this trouble to find. Wouldn't you want someone to do whatever it took to free him from that influence?" Nao's voice started to get very passionate as she leaned down to look right into Mikoto's eyes. "If you look at it like that, this is really a holy thing that we're doing. People shouldn't be made into slaves like this Orphan is doing. This is like an exorcism. Yes, they're hurt, but it's better to be free and hurt than well and a slave, don't you think?"

"Uh," Mikoto answered. This was all too deep for her.

Just as suddenly, Nao turned to survey the crowd outside the college nightclub where they were waiting. "There he is, gotta go. Follow us in a few, okay?"

And then she was gone, leaving Mikoto alone with her concerns.

Thinking about aniue under the control of some hidden Orphan was utterly revolting to her. But on the other hand ... what Nao did in the name of freeing them was pretty disturbing, and the thought of someone doing that to aniue was pretty disgusting too.

It was just a bit too much for her. But she had to keep going.

She'd said that she would. And Mikoto always kept her promises.

---

What a sap that girl is, Nao thought as she ran up to her prey for the evening. "Hiiiii," she squealed, drawing his attention to her. "You're Ken-niichan, right?"

The guy was fairly pudgy, like most of her prey were, but he wasn't exactly packing it on, either. He blinked behind his glasses as he considered her. "Wow, you really came!" he said. "I was almost sure that you were going to stand me up."

"Oh, I'd never do that," Nao said, with more sincerity than there'd been in anything she'd said that evening. "You were just sooo charming in your e-mail, I couldn't hardly wait to see you tonight." And back to complete insincerity it was.

"That's really very flattering," he said, with just a smidgen of disbelief in his tone.

Add butter. "No, really, I mean it. All the boys at my school are such geeks and losers, I was despairing of ever meeting a guy who was mature enough for me. And then I read your posts, and I knew that you were just the kind of guy I wanted to meet. The sort of guy who knows what a girl wants." She stared up at him, green eyes wide and guileless, lips slightly pursed.

The disbelief wasn't there anymore. "Well, I guess that's understandable. Girls mature a lot faster than guys do, after all."

She'd sucked him in quite perfectly, and now he was doubtless convinced that she was going to suck him in quite literally. Sucker.

"So, what would you like to do this evening?" he asked, glancing at the night club; no doubt wondering whether or not he had enough bribe money to get the doorman to let him bring in an obviously underage companion.

"Actually, there's this place I know that's supposedly really great. I've never been there myself, but my friends all say that it's a lot of fun. Why don't we go there?" she asked, pressing up against him, taking care so that he could feel her thigh pressed up against his hip.

"Hey, sure. If you know a cool place —"

"It's very cool," she said, pulling away and guiding him by the hand.

It didn't take too long to reach the entryway to the alley, and the place of concealment that she'd used so many times before. "This is the place?" he asked, looking around. If she'd had any doubts about the fundamental rightness of what she was doing, they'd have been shattered by the fact that he didn't look disturbed to be led into an alley, but rather excited.

Fucking asshole.

"This is the place," Nao said, pressing up against him, starting to push him backwards towards the wall. "This is the time. This is the company I choose."

His smile wavered at that last bit. "Huh? What do you —"

And then his back ran into something that was a bit harder than he was expecting a wall to be. Confused, he turned to look over his shoulder.

The breasts probably grabbed his attention first. They'd certainly grabbed Nao's attention when she first saw them. But then he looked up at the eight glowing red eyes on the half-hidden face, and the four long arm-legs stretching out to either side, and the strand of webbing holding all of this suspended from a position just a bit above the ground.

Then the human-looking mouth opened, and a pair of mandibles spouted.

That was when he let out the first gasp of terror. It turned into a scream when he turned around to look at Nao and saw that she'd produced her claws, and was licking one delicately. "We're going to have some fun tonight," she told him. "I'm a girl of my word."

Prologue

The pedestrian tunnel was poorly lit, a state of affairs only exacerbated by the dull, rainy sky outside. Nevertheless, sufficient illumination remained to distinguish three humanoid figures a short way inside the entrance, all dressed in heavy rain-gear. They spoke amongst themselves, the oppressive weather drowning out their words – not that their sole witness, a half-asleep and very damp pigeon on the fence outside, would have been able to understand them anyway.

Tiny though its avian brain was, even it could recognise that the beings inside the tunnel were rather unusual – indeed, two of them, despite their appearance, were very obviously not human, and it wasn’t all that sure about the third, either. It did not pause to consider whether or not all of them knew this, though, seeing as the gnawing emptiness in its stomach was a rather more pressing concern.

Eventually, two of the figures walked back out, their features becoming more apparent as they stepped back into the grey morning light. Both were young (or, at least, had the appearance of youth), but that was all they had in common. One was a male of slightly above-average height whose floppy brown hair was plastered to his scalp by the rain and whose aura of world-weary lethargy projected some distance from his actual body. The other was immaculate by contrast, a diminutive, expressionless female who appeared quite unaffected by the weather. Her hair was the same lavender-grey as the pigeon’s feathers, a most unusual hue for a human, and appeared, from the bird’s limited perspective, to be completely dry.

The remaining figure stayed where he was until sometime after they left, before retreating noiselessly into the shadows, which embraced him as if he were an old friend. By that point, though, the pigeon had left to examine a discarded bento box, and saw none of it. Indeed, what it had seen was swiftly forgotten – barely-digestible detritus, as ever, proved far more interesting than first contact with extradimensional life.

***

The star system had once been home to a prosperous trading world, a commercial hub for its entire subsector. Ships from tens of light-years away had voyaged to and from its massive orbital docks, flooding its markets with exotic goods and its citizens’ pockets with abundant wealth.

Now, though, it was a graveyard. The once-bustling docks were silent, their twisted, ruptured metal guts spilling out into the void and the mangled saucer-hulls of wrecked defence craft lazily orbiting them like flies around a corpse. Through it all glided the vessel responsible for the carnage, otherworldly energies dancing across its cathedral-like form. The last of the prisoners had been brought on board hours earlier, time enough for the lengthy explanation of how their lives would be from now on and why they deserved every little bit of it. There weren’t many of them left, which simplified matters a great deal.

At last, only one task remained.

The enormous spacecraft approached the battle-scarred planet, its shields sparkling as they shunted away debris from the fight. It came to a halt just outside the outermost limits of the atmosphere, retro-thrusters puffing away gamely, and hung there a moment as if to admire the view.

A dorsal laser swivelled into position and opened fire. Though the beam itself was invisible, its sheer intensity created a pillar of flame as the oxygen it interacted with spontaneously combusted. The turret swept back and forth, inscribing a message in the landscape that just happened to occupy the same space as the ruins of the planetary capital. It was short and crude, as much a threat as an announcement, as much a challenge as a boast.

Aboard the bridge, the captain watched, her eyes ablaze with flickering hellfire. She held a small, numbered cube in one clawed hand, which she tossed idly up and down as she observed the weapon’s handiwork.

A flick of her wrist, and the die skittered across her command desk, attracting the attention of all crew present. A broad, toothy grin spread across her face, and she theatrically glanced down at its result.

“Right then,” she said. “Who’s next?”

***

Across the multiverse, strange events began to crop up with increasing regularity. A fortress-city with a world-shaking secret at its heart lay at the mercy of incomprehensible invaders, only to receive aid from a most unexpected direction. A sleepy Californian town was shaken to its core when one of the occasional skirmishes amongst its supernatural community turned into something much, much worse. A fanatical theocracy’s display of power went horribly wrong, creating something new and terrible whose birth-cries echoed across time and space...

... And far, far away, four beings that had once been human and now were considerably more watched their children’s progress with hungry anticipation. They had millions of new worlds to explore and trillions of new souls to bend to their will, and were ready to seize the opportunity with both hands and whatever other appendages they could muster.

Things were not going to go entirely their way, of course. But then again, they were never supposed to.

1. Meet the Neighbours

The brown-haired teenager stared out of the classroom window, pensively tapping his forehead with his index finger as the teacher droned away in the background. The subject was history, or perhaps geography – the elderly woman’s spiel was so vague and uninformative that she might as well have been a figment of his imagination for all the educational benefit she was providing. Odds were that she was a figment of someone’s, anyway.

Several days had passed since his encounter with the emissary from another dimension, and Kyon was still wondering if he had indeed made the right decision in granting them passage. The thing was, he hadn’t been entirely honest when he had said that they had no way of stopping said emissary’s masters. He did indeed have several options for doing just that, but was rather reluctant to use any of them given that (a) he wasn’t in the habit of starting interstellar wars with people he’d only just met, and (b) several of those options could quite likely result in the destruction of the universe. Again. Weighty concerns for a high-school student, but after a while in the SOS Brigade, you got used to them.

Nagato’s contributions to the situation had been particularly disheartening – the Integrated Data Entity had been tracking the movement of heavily-armed warships quite in excess of what was likely required for the ‘exploration’ the emissary had mentioned, and when he had asked her for some sort of explanation as to what exactly their visitors were after their initial meeting with them, she had handed him an H.P. Lovecraft anthology and said, in her usual deadpan monotone, “Like that – but worse.”

He was pretty sure she wasn’t talking about the purple prose and howling racism, either.

As if on cue, North High School’s own resident cosmic horror stuck her head over his shoulder and gave him a bright, cheerful smile. “Hey, Kyon! What’re you drawing? Can I see?”

Kyon looked down and realised, with a ghastly sense of impending dread, that he had been idly sketching out the name the emissary had given him. He’d tried to forget it – the last thing he wanted to do was summon those... things, whatever they were, but it had kept creeping back like that oddly squidgy burger that you’d downed a bit too fast, fervently hoping that the green bits were some sort of herb. Desperately, he tried to tug the sheet of paper out of sight, but Haruhi was far too fast.

“Aww, c’mon. Why so secretive? It’s just some writing, for crying out loud. Wait – what is that? Zinchy... Zeen-chee... Tzintchi...”

“Oh, it’s just the username of a guy on a forum I visit,” Kyon replied airily. “Potato farming – my family’s looking to start a vegetable garden, you see. So, you hear about that newspaper contest?”

“Newspaper contest?” Haruhi’s eyes lit up. Appealing to her competitive streak was always a safe bet.

“Umm... yes.” Kyon scrambled for ideas. Damn it, Koizumi, where are you? This is supposed to be your job. “They wanted people to send in pictures of interesting and unusual things happening in their neighbourhood. Winners would get a cash prize and their photos printed in the paper. I thought you’d heard about it, to be honest.”

“What? Of course I didn’t! It’s your duty as a loyal member of the SOS Brigade to keep me informed of these things! Honestly, why do I have to deal with such incompetent underlings? Come on, Kyon – we’re going to show the world our photographic expertise!”

That was the nice thing about dealing with Haruhi, Kyon thought as he was dragged out of the room by his elbow, the teacher’s ineffectual protests ringing in his ears. Even if the distraction you came up with was entirely fabricated, you could be fairly sure it would exist by the time you got to it. Normally the idea of a Suzumiya-coordinated photo op would fill him with quiet dread, but it was infinitely better than tentacular horribleness creeping out from the walls or whatever.

I mean, that can’t possibly have counted. She didn’t even pronounce it properly the first couple of times. I’ve got nothing to worry about. Right?

That evening, once he had finally staggered back home, he got his answer.

***

The invite was majestic in its simplicity – a gold-embossed card bearing the logo of one of the most punitively expensive hotels in town, adorned with a few brief lines of extravagantly-flowing script.

Main Lounge

5:30 p.m.

Your fellow potato enthusiast, Tzintchi

Kyon couldn’t resist having another glance at it as he approached the hotel’s main entrance. It wasn’t every day that he got to handle something quite so forebodingly expensive, after all.

A quick chat with Nagato had provided him with some typically efficient (if curt) directions, and once school had finished he had made a quick stop by the bathrooms to wash his face and comb his hair, before setting out to meet his enigmatic hosts.

The lobby was as spectacular as he had expected – a carefully-designed riot of rare woods, intricate carpeting, and tastefully-applied gilt. He stood around in it for a moment, feeling deeply awkward, before one of the immaculately-dressed porters bustled up to him.

“Ah, hello, Master Kyon. Your friend Master Shinji said to expect you. Please follow me.”

Shinji? Ah, right, Tzintchi. Imaginative alias, there.

Nodding his thanks in what he hoped was an appropriately dignified manner, Kyon did so. He briefly wondered how the man had recognised him on sight, but dismissed it as a simple demonstration of the service the hotel’s patrons paid for. After all, it wasn’t as if they likely had that many North High School students wandering through their doors.

The porter stopped at the door to the lounge, held it open, and gestured for him to go through. The room beyond was a warm, low-ceilinged place whose aura of homeliness would have been rather more convincing if its array of armchairs, sofas, and coffee tables had not been entirely uninhabited apart from the four beings slouching casually in the centre.

There was something... off about them, Kyon saw as he walked closer. They were human yet not, standing out against the background of the room like bad special effects. One wore the appearance of an attractive, dark-haired woman in her late twenties, squeezed into a deep purple dress that was practically sin incarnate. Another was a quiet, reserved-looking girl who looked like Nagato’s more personable older sister. The third was another teenage girl, this time an inhumanly confident-looking redhead in a bright scarlet gown that subtly warred with that of the older woman for the title of ‘Most Likely To Make Kyon Swallow His Own Tongue’. The last was the only male of the group, a short, thoughtful-looking young man in a deep blue dinner jacket who looked vaguely lawyerly to Kyon’s inexperienced eye, and who looked up and gave him a friendly wave as he approached.

“Afternoon, Kyon. How’s it going?”

“You’d be Tzintchi, right?”

“Please, call me Shinji. Or Mr. Ikari, if you want to be formal. It used to be my name, after all, when I was human.”

“Ah? So how did you get the extra consonants?” Mocking the eldritch abomination was, of course, the smart thing to do.

“By being able to do things like this.”

The besuited apparition made a complicated hand gesture, and a not-unpleasant but otherwise indescribable sensation washed across Kyon’s body. He looked down, and saw that his school uniform had been replaced by immaculately-tailored black tie garb. A couple of seconds passed, and then his neatly-folded uniform appeared in front of his eyes with a loud pop, before falling into his outstretched arms.

Tzintchi grinned. “Like it? It’s yours now. Borrowed the design from a little place in London I visited once back home. Can’t have the staff giving you the stink-eye because you’re violating their dress-code, can we?”

Kyon tried desperately to regain control of the situation. “Um... thanks. And your friends are...?”

“Oh, sorry, we should have said, shouldn’t we? Ladies?”

“Misato Katsuragi. Pleased to meet you,” said the dark-haired woman in a voice that made the wonderful new suit suddenly feel uncomfortably tight.

“Rei Ayanami,” stated the blue-haired girl flatly, with an odd bubbling undertone that made him wonder about her health.

“Asuka Langley Soryuu,” the redhead announced with unassailable smugness. “So, Shinji, this is the guy? Doesn’t look like much.”

Temper, Kyon... He forced an awkward smile. “Nice to meet you, everyone. So, may I ask why you wanted to pay me a visit?”

The redhead, Asuka, raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me? It was you who summoned us.”

Kyon sighed and pinched his nose. “Right. Which is why you used a summoning-word that wormed into the recipient’s head, and didn’t even need to be pronounced properly. And why you all turned up at once rather than just Mr. Ikari. And why the invite you sent me referred to something that happened at about the same time as the summoning, implying prior observation. I’m not an idiot, you know.”

Ikari chuckled genially. “All right, you caught us. Mostly, we just wanted to meet the neighbours, see if you had any questions that needed asking. You know, being good interdimensional citizens.”

And if that’s the truth, then I’m one of Miss Asahina's teacups. “I... see. Actually, I did have one question. You’ve been sending through a lot of military vessels lately. Why is that?”

“Oh, it’s quite simple, really,” Shinji replied. “We want to safeguard our own interests. Do you know how many people are still alive on our world, excluding daemons?”

“Wait – daemons?”

“It’s a bit snappier than ‘sentient psychic constructs’, don’t you think? Anyway, our current population is two billion – and yes, we do indeed come from a parallel Earth. In the past eighteen years, we have managed to rise from a low point of nine hundred and fifty million through careful social management after a group of scared, greedy old men nearly ended up killing everyone. The only way we were able to prevent it was by hijacking the process to fuel our own apotheosis.”

“And fifteen years before that,” Misato interjected, “half the human race – three billion people – died in a disaster that shattered the world. Same people responsible.”

“Indeed so. You will understand, therefore, Kyon, that we have no intention of allowing another catastrophe of that magnitude to befall us. Our policy is to act on our own terms – firmly, decisively, and with overwhelming force. We understand that you are likewise. That business with the Integrated Data Entity a while ago impressed us greatly.”

All four politely applauded him with eerie unison.

“That’s one of the reasons we want to help you,” Misato explained. “So far, you’ve been doing pretty well when it comes to keeping Haruhi occupied, but how long can you keep it up? How long can you hold the fate of the universe in your hands?”

Kyon said nothing.

“Let me tell you a little story. A long time ago, in a place far from here, there was a race called the Eldar. They ruled their galaxy without question. Their fleets were invincible, their civilisation unassailable, and their scientific achievements unmatched. Every planet was a paradise, every citizen a model of aesthetic and intellectual perfection. Of course, it couldn’t last. It wasn’t political strife or an external threat that did them in, though. They were beyond that. It was boredom. The myriad wonders of thousands of star systems were at their very fingertips, and it still wasn’t enough. They experimented with ancient rites and forbidden pleasures. Blood flowed in the streets, and the empire slowly tore itself apart. Some saw their doom approaching and escaped, but most remained, only realising their mistake as their race died in darkness and fire, its final agonised, ecstatic screams giving birth to a new and terrible god.”

She rose from her chair and sashayed towards him.

“Do you understand me? You can’t do this forever. People change. It’s how they are. Will Haruhi always be satisfied with her cosy little prison of a high school? Will you? Sooner or later, she will demand something you are unable or unwilling to give her. It needn’t even be something particularly big. She once nearly destroyed the world over a baseball game without noticing, remember? It will happen, though, and everything – your friends, your family, your home – will be gone.”

She was standing in front of him now. Her voice had dropped to a husky whisper, and he could faintly detect the scent of unnamed, exotic spices. He clutched his uniform in front of him like a protective blanket.

“We can help you, Kyon. We have power at our disposal, and the willingness to use it. Having your universe destroyed won’t benefit us either, after all. We can make your life easier; buy you a few more years of existence...”

She smiled seductively, and plucked a hair from his head. “And we can teach you how to fuck three girls up the ass at the same time and blow their minds.”

Kyon’s expression froze. “This conversation is over.”

He turned and walked out of the room. As the door closed behind him, he heard Shinji’s voice.

“Just remember – if you ever change your mind, give us a call. We’ll be waiting.”

***

Once he left, the four young gods turned to each other.

“Did you get it?” Tzintchi asked.

Mislaato smiled and showed them the short brown hair in her hand. “Could you ever doubt me?”

Asukhon peered at it dubiously. “You think this’ll be enough? I mean, given that he’s... you know.”

Their leader grinned and stretched his arms out behind his head, not noticing as they passed through the chair he was supposed to be seated on.

“With Chaos, all things are possible,” he said confidently. “Think of it as a Plan B.”