TMoHS: The Anagram of Suzumiya Kurumi 3
Title: The Anagram of Suzumiya Kurumi
Rating: PG
Length: 3479
Warnings: Time travel, spoilers, book canon, some coarse language and science fiction themes.
Summary: Assuming her code name, Suzumiya Kurumi is sent on her first mission as a time travel agent. ( Earlier chapters 01| 02)
2003, Asahina Residence, Tokyo
I could mention the various days of my training; the strange glitches and hints that should have made me more suspicious than they did. The clues that I should have noticed. But it's so obvious, and so embarrassing that I didn't pick up on it earlier, that I'd rather skip straight to the day that everything became clear to me.
It was my first big, real mission. All of my trips through time so far had been incredibly dull. Forwards and backwards as an “exchange student” in various classrooms. Aside from training in time travel protocol and device usage, I'd only received what would amount to a basic school experience. The only difference was that there were no parents in the apartments that I inhabited; no terrifying mother figure to half-poison me with her innovative cooking or strongarm me into her latest Loch Ness Monster Detection scheme.
So, in other words, I lived in bliss. I had nice food, and nice tea. I had some friends in each school I visited. I had weekend courses with Miss Miruku Mizuyasu, I had peace. Aside from the events I should have been wise to, life was quiet. I wasn't expecting much more from my first mission, though I knew it would be a step beyond what I'd ever done before. When I emerged at the co-ordinates and began to read through my mission background documents in my new apartment, I felt the slow beginnings of realisation curdling in my stomach. The documents themselves had come in a hardcopy dump; although my wetware was capable of fast data exchange, hardcopy was still more resilient throughout time and space.
First, there was the basic outline of the Ideal Timeline. The most stable succession of events that would be my goal to uphold and actualise. It involved mainly a list of natural disasters, political events, and early warning signs. There was a sealed section, though. Marked with red tape, highly dangerous. I'd never been involved with a dangerous section of time before. It sent a shiver down my back, as my mother's words echoed in my mind.
No, Mum. No time paradoxes here, I promise! Oh please let that be true! I'd have prayed to a god, if I believed in one, but instead I sent my heartfelt hopes forwards in time to my mother. I hoped that I would not make her proud. That I would have the most mundane and boring mission possible. That I would not jeopardise time or space, let alone both of them at once.
I set the sealed section aside. I could brush up on the things to be wary of another day. I could keep myself up-to-date with the threats daily if I needed to; there was no rush. I wouldn't be active for a week, while I settled into my cover persona. Instead I turned to the dossiers of my mission target and other persons of interest.
My mission objective was to observe a central Person of Interest to the time-plane. No action, no direct interaction. Just observation and regular reports, checking their events against the Ideal Timeline. Requesting backup when things began to destabilise. Though the sealed documents made it seem like a slightly more volatile task than I had expected...
I slid open the envelope and pulled out the information on my target. He was a high school student, and I was to be stationed a year above him, so that I could observe his activities from a distance unnoticed. But as I withdrew his photograph from the file, my heart stopped. It stuttered. I held my breath, as tears welled into my eyes.
I'd been planning, bit by minute bit, to find a way to insinuate myself into their timeline. I'd been so preoccupied with the setup for my mission, however, that I hadn't checked the dates or location well enough before I'd arrived. This was... I was living in his suburb. I was enrolled in his school. My father! My job was to do what I'd wanted to do for my entire lifetime: to finally discover what sort of a person he had been. To see him in all of his best and worst days, to know his voice and his body language. Sure, I wouldn't be able to reveal my identity to him. And I wouldn't be able to even talk to him, contact was right out. But I'd be close to him. Breathing the same air as him. I wasn't exactly close to finding out how or why he disappeared, but it was one step. I might see something that contributed to everything later on. It wasn't too big an assumption to make; the slightest changes to a conversation or experience can have very exaggerated effects later in a person's life.
Maybe I'd even discover the identity of the mystery girl from the photographs. All of these years, and I still had no idea who she was. Long hair, gentle terrified smile, oddly fetishistic clothing...
I sorted through the dossiers of the other persons of interest. If my father was my central target, then obviously the dossiers would cover his closest acquaintances. The thick file on my mother was unsurprising, and I shoved it quickly aside to see what else there was.
Not much. Uncle Itsuki, with some very strange comments about... supernatural events. Though I'd been briefed to expect very strange situations at times, this sudden revelation about my Uncle, of all people, was startling. There wasn't much to his dossier. Name, date of birth, home address, and one sentence in the additional notes: May be an ESPer, appears to be attached to their organisation. Exercise caution and avoid all contact if possible.
Alarmed, I read through the rest of the page. It was all just basic info, and a lot of it I already knew. His home life, his personal history. A little unsure as to whether I wanted to read any of the other dossiers, I fetched myself a glass of water and tried to calm my frantic heart before I pushed onwards. It couldn't be possible, could it? That Mum had spent the last decade or so of her life chasing down supernatural events - and failing to find them, every time - with an ESPer at her side?
It sounded like a bad joke. I couldn't wash the bitter taste of it from my mouth. His smiles, his laughter... what had seemed like highly insightful and gentle amusement from the only male role-model in my life... it had become tainted. Uncle Itsuki had known, most probably, at least some of what I was thinking. How did ESP work, anyway? There were gaps in my training that I had to fill as soon as possible. Before I enrolled in the school, even! No way could I risk betraying classified information and, and...
Maybe this was it. Maybe my mission here was to become compromised by exposure through Uncle Itsuki, and that upset time enough to destabilise everything, throwing my father into some convoluted and poorly explained vortex!
No, that was just stupid. I was just channelling my mother again, going off on all kinds of stupid tangents of thought. I slapped myself on the hand, and said “Bad me. No more thinking like that madwoman!” aloud in the empty apartment.
I had to find out about ESP, but first I should work through the rest of the dossiers, and make a list of anything else that I should look up. I was going to have a very long night ahead of myself.
The next dossier was of Nagato Yuki. Aunt Yuki, who rarely smiled and who would have seemed too rational to be a supernatural enthusiast, if she didn't always carry the latest Sci-Fi short fiction anthology around in her pocket. And what I saw there made my blood run cold in my veins. This woman had held me as an infant. Had babysat me more times than Mum had ranted about drop-bears!
Synthetic human body, suspected to be a biological interface for transmissions from an extra-terrestrial being. Appears to be capable of atemporal synchronicity, extreme caution advised.
I stared at that. Just stared at the page. Did that mean what I thought it meant? Yes, yes it must. So, ahah, Uncle Itsuki was an ESPer who might be conspiring against me. Aunt Yuki was... atemporally synchronous. That meant, I supposed, that she could reconcile her knowledge or consciousness with that of her future self.
Which, if she was representing alien interests, also a threat. With less than two A4 pages of paper and only a few hundred words, I had been robbed of the stability and warmth of what I had thought to be my family. We hadn't been blood related, but I had felt a love for and connection with these people, these strangers...
I cried, getting splotchy tearstains all over my files. I didn't care. This was my first mission. This was supposed to be the easy one! Just sit tight, and make observations. Objective observations. Of my father, and the people that had helped to raise me.
The sobs choked out of my throat, bubbled up. A long time later when I had exhausted myself my throat felt bruised from it all, my face hot, my eyes and sinuses wrung dry and stinging. I did the only thing I could think to do. I boiled the kettle, and made myself a pot of tea. I didn't make it well at all. The water wasn't quite hot enough. I used too much tea, and then forgot and let it steep too long. It came out bitter and wrong and left a sour aftertaste in my mouth.
It was just like my mother's tea, brewed haphazardly while she rushed about doing a hundred thousand other things at once. It comforted me and made me homesick at the same time, and I scowled down at my cup. Who on earth would have ever known that hideous taste would be comforting?
Feeling drained, I sighed and shuffled through the rest of the paperwork. I wasn't going to be up to any research tonight, but at least I knew to keep secluded until I was prepared. I would need a lot of emotional strength to survive the few years of my assignment. I scanned across the names of various schoolmates, a very young girl who must be my biological aunt (my father's little sister), and some adults I did not recognise at all. But nowhere in the pile was the girl that I'd initially expected to see. I sifted back through them, keeping Mum and my father and Nagato and Koizumi separate. Nothing. No bright brownish hair shining long and soft like in the photographs. No soft smile. There was nothing of her there.
Baffled and more than a little shell-shocked, I gave up on it all and decided to try to get some sleep. The first night in any new time-plane was pretty rough and disorienting, but I desperately needed rest. I went to the bathroom to deal with the necessaries and wash my tear soaked face clean. It wasn't until I'd lifted my head from the sink and was about to reach for the towel to dry myself off that I saw it. The resemblance, right there in front of me. That same stressed and frantic gaze, forced into a calm and stoic half-smile. That hair, that frame.
Why hadn't I noticed before?! I hadn't been home in a while, but the memory of those photographs was hardwired into my brain, I'd gazed longingly at them so often! It couldn't possibly be! But there I was, Suzumiya Kurumi, code-name Asahina Mikuru, red-eyed and terrified at the sight of my own reflection.
It was a chilling realisation. It meant that something was going to go wrong very soon. That my mission was going to change - and probably for the worse - before the end of the year. Not only that, but I was somehow going to be forced into close proximity with Nagato and Koizumi. If they didn't already know about my arrival... I wouldn't put it past Aunt Yuki to inform herself of something like that, or past Uncle Itsuki to pry into Yuki's mind... then they'd find out soon enough. How was I to protect my classified information? Had I been sent here for this reason alone, to jeopardise my own mission?
I couldn't bear to think of it. They must have known. There were photographs, and anecdotes of my involvement with their club. Miss Mizuyasu must have known, before she assigned my task to me. Why had they misled me? Why hadn't they warned me? I felt confused and betrayed and very hard done by. Unprepared. My new bed and new sheets and new clothes were all a little too crisp and clean against my skin. I hadn't been allowed to bring anything from home with me. Not a single photograph. Everything was strange, and though I'd grown used to the routine of it over the years of my schooling, it felt as wrong and awkward and confronting as the first night I'd spent away from my Mum.
But worse. Much worse. All of the unexpected isolation and depression, and none of the promise or hope. These things? This bed beneath me, all new and smelling like the plastic it had come wrapped up in? It would be rotting cold wet muck by the time I was born. These sheets would be decomposing and soiled in a tip, probably washed threadbare from the years I'd end up living here. My clothes would be discarded, everything forlorn and irrecognisably stale. The secret files would be torn and destroyed. I felt so impermanent and lost in the size of time itself, so distant from even my own life and self, that everything seemed ludicrous and meaningless.
I couldn't see any sense in anything. None of it. I'd have cried, alone in the dark, if I had any tears left in me. That first night felt like it lasted forever. When I got out of bed and set about gathering as much information about ESPers and aliens as I could, my muscles ached in protest.
There wasn't much information to be had, in the end. The pack claimed I had all the information that I needed in the files, and I'd looked through everything else before I glanced once more at the thick envelope containing my mother's - Suzumiya Haruhi's - information. Though it seemed a highly unintuitive place to stick all the important information, it made sense in a strange way. I would have rather read anything other than more information about my mother's mad antics, and one sure-fire way to make sure I read her file was to mix in all the information I wanted to read with it.
I was a little too scared of running into Nagato or Koizumi to venture out of the apartment, so I looked up delivery services in the phone book and had some food brought up to the building. I worked my way through biographical details that were at times familiar (Oh Mum, why did you do that to your cousin? I never found that story funny!) and other times surprising (She knew how to sew? But she always made Aunt Yuki do all that sort of work for her...). It wasn't until I was well into the descriptions of her more adventurous experiences in childhood that I came across the real meat of the problem.
At chronological age two years, Suzumiya H. encountered the focal subject - my father was unnamed in all the official documents. While Miss Miruku had warned me about this, and reassured me it was all just standard mission behaviour, I had a little trouble reminding myself every time - and they engaged in the first transferral of transcendental powers for this incarnation. While further information regarding this event is restricted, please keep in mind for future briefings that the following events are anchored in a far deeper and older time-plane than the one your mission is concerned with.
Official mission briefing is as follows: I am very sorry to have forced you to read through all of this first, but I wanted to ensure you had certain important facts established before we began the true description of your status. You are to act as a sleeper agent for the time being, and your task is to observe your assigned subject. In particular, be on the lookout for any supernatural occurrences. These are likely to agitate Suzumiya, and she may involve your subject in dangerous activities.
Three years before your current time-plane, something interrupted and altered reality. This coincided with a meeting between your target and Suzumiya, about which you will later receive full information. Be alert and cautious of any time-sensitive events, as it is possible that other curious agents will be investigating. As a junior agent, you are subordinate to them all and your mission may be altered without warning according to their needs.
The report continued on in a similar manner. Stuffy and long-winded. The basic gist of it was that I should sit tight and not panic, in a world full of people I had once known as family and friends... who were dangerous and volatile strangers. That my mission was harmless... unless my mother did anything dangerous or stupid. And do I even have to explain the tone of my voice as I write that? Of course she would do something dangerous and stupid! She took the Milliways approach to life: Three impossible things before breakfast. Since I actually was, apparently, quite close to the end of our universe (or anomaly, I suppose, if we were in a twisted weird time bubble), this didn't reassure me at all.
I went into shock. I could feel my muscles shaking, and the greasy food I had been eating felt heavy and uncomfortable in my gut. My hands began to sweat. I stared down at the papers before me, not really seeing them at all. I found myself missing the good old days, when I'd just been sitting in a classroom feeling overwhelmed by the complicated nature of the TPDD and the emergency code signals.
If anything went wrong, I'd... I'd be endangering not only my current life, but maybe all of our lives. Our timeline. What if I was the one who had caused the situation with my father? Oh hell, oh god, oh fuck.
I didn't often swear. I hate vulgar language. But I spat out all the vile words I could think of and felt my face heat up red with fury. That was something that I absolutely refused to let happen. I'd just have to take my duties very seriously, and be willing to admit fault. Be prepared to do whatever it took to protect him. And only then, if I was sure it was safe and stable and possible, would I dare attempt to find out what had happened. What would happen. I wouldn't try to save him unless I was certain it was within my mission parameters and within the bounds of human sanity. I'd have to be very tentative about it all, because there was a passion in my heart that ached for a normal home life. I wanted to recover my father so badly... I knew in that moment that that was probably the most dangerous thing of all in this time-plane.
Me, and my desires. My technology and knowledge of the future, and the temptation to change things. Sure, it was one of the first things I was taught during my education. And it was also something I'd learnt from observation of television and film alone: meddling in time causes nothing but trouble. Especially your own timeline. I'd learnt it all before, but to be in that situation and to feel that knowledge in your bones, feel it so personally, was a profound experience for me.
The following information in my mother's dossier was far less surprising, given all the other startled realisations of the night. She was somehow directly related to whatever was causing problems in the timeline. She was a volatile individual, who could perhaps maybe we think potentially have the possibility of one day bending the fabric of the universe to suit her own ends.
Having lived with my mother, I wasn't surprised at all. Even though it was couched in very careful official language, she was Dangerous with a capital D. Capable of erasing me from existence, or destroying me slowly and painfully. Of rewriting who I was, and forcing me into situations and behaviours that I wouldn't feel comfortable in.
So in other words, It was like coming home.
( part four)
Rating: PG
Length: 3479
Warnings: Time travel, spoilers, book canon, some coarse language and science fiction themes.
Summary: Assuming her code name, Suzumiya Kurumi is sent on her first mission as a time travel agent. ( Earlier chapters 01| 02)
2003, Asahina Residence, Tokyo
I could mention the various days of my training; the strange glitches and hints that should have made me more suspicious than they did. The clues that I should have noticed. But it's so obvious, and so embarrassing that I didn't pick up on it earlier, that I'd rather skip straight to the day that everything became clear to me.
It was my first big, real mission. All of my trips through time so far had been incredibly dull. Forwards and backwards as an “exchange student” in various classrooms. Aside from training in time travel protocol and device usage, I'd only received what would amount to a basic school experience. The only difference was that there were no parents in the apartments that I inhabited; no terrifying mother figure to half-poison me with her innovative cooking or strongarm me into her latest Loch Ness Monster Detection scheme.
So, in other words, I lived in bliss. I had nice food, and nice tea. I had some friends in each school I visited. I had weekend courses with Miss Miruku Mizuyasu, I had peace. Aside from the events I should have been wise to, life was quiet. I wasn't expecting much more from my first mission, though I knew it would be a step beyond what I'd ever done before. When I emerged at the co-ordinates and began to read through my mission background documents in my new apartment, I felt the slow beginnings of realisation curdling in my stomach. The documents themselves had come in a hardcopy dump; although my wetware was capable of fast data exchange, hardcopy was still more resilient throughout time and space.
First, there was the basic outline of the Ideal Timeline. The most stable succession of events that would be my goal to uphold and actualise. It involved mainly a list of natural disasters, political events, and early warning signs. There was a sealed section, though. Marked with red tape, highly dangerous. I'd never been involved with a dangerous section of time before. It sent a shiver down my back, as my mother's words echoed in my mind.
No, Mum. No time paradoxes here, I promise! Oh please let that be true! I'd have prayed to a god, if I believed in one, but instead I sent my heartfelt hopes forwards in time to my mother. I hoped that I would not make her proud. That I would have the most mundane and boring mission possible. That I would not jeopardise time or space, let alone both of them at once.
I set the sealed section aside. I could brush up on the things to be wary of another day. I could keep myself up-to-date with the threats daily if I needed to; there was no rush. I wouldn't be active for a week, while I settled into my cover persona. Instead I turned to the dossiers of my mission target and other persons of interest.
My mission objective was to observe a central Person of Interest to the time-plane. No action, no direct interaction. Just observation and regular reports, checking their events against the Ideal Timeline. Requesting backup when things began to destabilise. Though the sealed documents made it seem like a slightly more volatile task than I had expected...
I slid open the envelope and pulled out the information on my target. He was a high school student, and I was to be stationed a year above him, so that I could observe his activities from a distance unnoticed. But as I withdrew his photograph from the file, my heart stopped. It stuttered. I held my breath, as tears welled into my eyes.
I'd been planning, bit by minute bit, to find a way to insinuate myself into their timeline. I'd been so preoccupied with the setup for my mission, however, that I hadn't checked the dates or location well enough before I'd arrived. This was... I was living in his suburb. I was enrolled in his school. My father! My job was to do what I'd wanted to do for my entire lifetime: to finally discover what sort of a person he had been. To see him in all of his best and worst days, to know his voice and his body language. Sure, I wouldn't be able to reveal my identity to him. And I wouldn't be able to even talk to him, contact was right out. But I'd be close to him. Breathing the same air as him. I wasn't exactly close to finding out how or why he disappeared, but it was one step. I might see something that contributed to everything later on. It wasn't too big an assumption to make; the slightest changes to a conversation or experience can have very exaggerated effects later in a person's life.
Maybe I'd even discover the identity of the mystery girl from the photographs. All of these years, and I still had no idea who she was. Long hair, gentle terrified smile, oddly fetishistic clothing...
I sorted through the dossiers of the other persons of interest. If my father was my central target, then obviously the dossiers would cover his closest acquaintances. The thick file on my mother was unsurprising, and I shoved it quickly aside to see what else there was.
Not much. Uncle Itsuki, with some very strange comments about... supernatural events. Though I'd been briefed to expect very strange situations at times, this sudden revelation about my Uncle, of all people, was startling. There wasn't much to his dossier. Name, date of birth, home address, and one sentence in the additional notes: May be an ESPer, appears to be attached to their organisation. Exercise caution and avoid all contact if possible.
Alarmed, I read through the rest of the page. It was all just basic info, and a lot of it I already knew. His home life, his personal history. A little unsure as to whether I wanted to read any of the other dossiers, I fetched myself a glass of water and tried to calm my frantic heart before I pushed onwards. It couldn't be possible, could it? That Mum had spent the last decade or so of her life chasing down supernatural events - and failing to find them, every time - with an ESPer at her side?
It sounded like a bad joke. I couldn't wash the bitter taste of it from my mouth. His smiles, his laughter... what had seemed like highly insightful and gentle amusement from the only male role-model in my life... it had become tainted. Uncle Itsuki had known, most probably, at least some of what I was thinking. How did ESP work, anyway? There were gaps in my training that I had to fill as soon as possible. Before I enrolled in the school, even! No way could I risk betraying classified information and, and...
Maybe this was it. Maybe my mission here was to become compromised by exposure through Uncle Itsuki, and that upset time enough to destabilise everything, throwing my father into some convoluted and poorly explained vortex!
No, that was just stupid. I was just channelling my mother again, going off on all kinds of stupid tangents of thought. I slapped myself on the hand, and said “Bad me. No more thinking like that madwoman!” aloud in the empty apartment.
I had to find out about ESP, but first I should work through the rest of the dossiers, and make a list of anything else that I should look up. I was going to have a very long night ahead of myself.
The next dossier was of Nagato Yuki. Aunt Yuki, who rarely smiled and who would have seemed too rational to be a supernatural enthusiast, if she didn't always carry the latest Sci-Fi short fiction anthology around in her pocket. And what I saw there made my blood run cold in my veins. This woman had held me as an infant. Had babysat me more times than Mum had ranted about drop-bears!
Synthetic human body, suspected to be a biological interface for transmissions from an extra-terrestrial being. Appears to be capable of atemporal synchronicity, extreme caution advised.
I stared at that. Just stared at the page. Did that mean what I thought it meant? Yes, yes it must. So, ahah, Uncle Itsuki was an ESPer who might be conspiring against me. Aunt Yuki was... atemporally synchronous. That meant, I supposed, that she could reconcile her knowledge or consciousness with that of her future self.
Which, if she was representing alien interests, also a threat. With less than two A4 pages of paper and only a few hundred words, I had been robbed of the stability and warmth of what I had thought to be my family. We hadn't been blood related, but I had felt a love for and connection with these people, these strangers...
I cried, getting splotchy tearstains all over my files. I didn't care. This was my first mission. This was supposed to be the easy one! Just sit tight, and make observations. Objective observations. Of my father, and the people that had helped to raise me.
The sobs choked out of my throat, bubbled up. A long time later when I had exhausted myself my throat felt bruised from it all, my face hot, my eyes and sinuses wrung dry and stinging. I did the only thing I could think to do. I boiled the kettle, and made myself a pot of tea. I didn't make it well at all. The water wasn't quite hot enough. I used too much tea, and then forgot and let it steep too long. It came out bitter and wrong and left a sour aftertaste in my mouth.
It was just like my mother's tea, brewed haphazardly while she rushed about doing a hundred thousand other things at once. It comforted me and made me homesick at the same time, and I scowled down at my cup. Who on earth would have ever known that hideous taste would be comforting?
Feeling drained, I sighed and shuffled through the rest of the paperwork. I wasn't going to be up to any research tonight, but at least I knew to keep secluded until I was prepared. I would need a lot of emotional strength to survive the few years of my assignment. I scanned across the names of various schoolmates, a very young girl who must be my biological aunt (my father's little sister), and some adults I did not recognise at all. But nowhere in the pile was the girl that I'd initially expected to see. I sifted back through them, keeping Mum and my father and Nagato and Koizumi separate. Nothing. No bright brownish hair shining long and soft like in the photographs. No soft smile. There was nothing of her there.
Baffled and more than a little shell-shocked, I gave up on it all and decided to try to get some sleep. The first night in any new time-plane was pretty rough and disorienting, but I desperately needed rest. I went to the bathroom to deal with the necessaries and wash my tear soaked face clean. It wasn't until I'd lifted my head from the sink and was about to reach for the towel to dry myself off that I saw it. The resemblance, right there in front of me. That same stressed and frantic gaze, forced into a calm and stoic half-smile. That hair, that frame.
Why hadn't I noticed before?! I hadn't been home in a while, but the memory of those photographs was hardwired into my brain, I'd gazed longingly at them so often! It couldn't possibly be! But there I was, Suzumiya Kurumi, code-name Asahina Mikuru, red-eyed and terrified at the sight of my own reflection.
It was a chilling realisation. It meant that something was going to go wrong very soon. That my mission was going to change - and probably for the worse - before the end of the year. Not only that, but I was somehow going to be forced into close proximity with Nagato and Koizumi. If they didn't already know about my arrival... I wouldn't put it past Aunt Yuki to inform herself of something like that, or past Uncle Itsuki to pry into Yuki's mind... then they'd find out soon enough. How was I to protect my classified information? Had I been sent here for this reason alone, to jeopardise my own mission?
I couldn't bear to think of it. They must have known. There were photographs, and anecdotes of my involvement with their club. Miss Mizuyasu must have known, before she assigned my task to me. Why had they misled me? Why hadn't they warned me? I felt confused and betrayed and very hard done by. Unprepared. My new bed and new sheets and new clothes were all a little too crisp and clean against my skin. I hadn't been allowed to bring anything from home with me. Not a single photograph. Everything was strange, and though I'd grown used to the routine of it over the years of my schooling, it felt as wrong and awkward and confronting as the first night I'd spent away from my Mum.
But worse. Much worse. All of the unexpected isolation and depression, and none of the promise or hope. These things? This bed beneath me, all new and smelling like the plastic it had come wrapped up in? It would be rotting cold wet muck by the time I was born. These sheets would be decomposing and soiled in a tip, probably washed threadbare from the years I'd end up living here. My clothes would be discarded, everything forlorn and irrecognisably stale. The secret files would be torn and destroyed. I felt so impermanent and lost in the size of time itself, so distant from even my own life and self, that everything seemed ludicrous and meaningless.
I couldn't see any sense in anything. None of it. I'd have cried, alone in the dark, if I had any tears left in me. That first night felt like it lasted forever. When I got out of bed and set about gathering as much information about ESPers and aliens as I could, my muscles ached in protest.
There wasn't much information to be had, in the end. The pack claimed I had all the information that I needed in the files, and I'd looked through everything else before I glanced once more at the thick envelope containing my mother's - Suzumiya Haruhi's - information. Though it seemed a highly unintuitive place to stick all the important information, it made sense in a strange way. I would have rather read anything other than more information about my mother's mad antics, and one sure-fire way to make sure I read her file was to mix in all the information I wanted to read with it.
I was a little too scared of running into Nagato or Koizumi to venture out of the apartment, so I looked up delivery services in the phone book and had some food brought up to the building. I worked my way through biographical details that were at times familiar (Oh Mum, why did you do that to your cousin? I never found that story funny!) and other times surprising (She knew how to sew? But she always made Aunt Yuki do all that sort of work for her...). It wasn't until I was well into the descriptions of her more adventurous experiences in childhood that I came across the real meat of the problem.
At chronological age two years, Suzumiya H. encountered the focal subject - my father was unnamed in all the official documents. While Miss Miruku had warned me about this, and reassured me it was all just standard mission behaviour, I had a little trouble reminding myself every time - and they engaged in the first transferral of transcendental powers for this incarnation. While further information regarding this event is restricted, please keep in mind for future briefings that the following events are anchored in a far deeper and older time-plane than the one your mission is concerned with.
Official mission briefing is as follows: I am very sorry to have forced you to read through all of this first, but I wanted to ensure you had certain important facts established before we began the true description of your status. You are to act as a sleeper agent for the time being, and your task is to observe your assigned subject. In particular, be on the lookout for any supernatural occurrences. These are likely to agitate Suzumiya, and she may involve your subject in dangerous activities.
Three years before your current time-plane, something interrupted and altered reality. This coincided with a meeting between your target and Suzumiya, about which you will later receive full information. Be alert and cautious of any time-sensitive events, as it is possible that other curious agents will be investigating. As a junior agent, you are subordinate to them all and your mission may be altered without warning according to their needs.
The report continued on in a similar manner. Stuffy and long-winded. The basic gist of it was that I should sit tight and not panic, in a world full of people I had once known as family and friends... who were dangerous and volatile strangers. That my mission was harmless... unless my mother did anything dangerous or stupid. And do I even have to explain the tone of my voice as I write that? Of course she would do something dangerous and stupid! She took the Milliways approach to life: Three impossible things before breakfast. Since I actually was, apparently, quite close to the end of our universe (or anomaly, I suppose, if we were in a twisted weird time bubble), this didn't reassure me at all.
I went into shock. I could feel my muscles shaking, and the greasy food I had been eating felt heavy and uncomfortable in my gut. My hands began to sweat. I stared down at the papers before me, not really seeing them at all. I found myself missing the good old days, when I'd just been sitting in a classroom feeling overwhelmed by the complicated nature of the TPDD and the emergency code signals.
If anything went wrong, I'd... I'd be endangering not only my current life, but maybe all of our lives. Our timeline. What if I was the one who had caused the situation with my father? Oh hell, oh god, oh fuck.
I didn't often swear. I hate vulgar language. But I spat out all the vile words I could think of and felt my face heat up red with fury. That was something that I absolutely refused to let happen. I'd just have to take my duties very seriously, and be willing to admit fault. Be prepared to do whatever it took to protect him. And only then, if I was sure it was safe and stable and possible, would I dare attempt to find out what had happened. What would happen. I wouldn't try to save him unless I was certain it was within my mission parameters and within the bounds of human sanity. I'd have to be very tentative about it all, because there was a passion in my heart that ached for a normal home life. I wanted to recover my father so badly... I knew in that moment that that was probably the most dangerous thing of all in this time-plane.
Me, and my desires. My technology and knowledge of the future, and the temptation to change things. Sure, it was one of the first things I was taught during my education. And it was also something I'd learnt from observation of television and film alone: meddling in time causes nothing but trouble. Especially your own timeline. I'd learnt it all before, but to be in that situation and to feel that knowledge in your bones, feel it so personally, was a profound experience for me.
The following information in my mother's dossier was far less surprising, given all the other startled realisations of the night. She was somehow directly related to whatever was causing problems in the timeline. She was a volatile individual, who could perhaps maybe we think potentially have the possibility of one day bending the fabric of the universe to suit her own ends.
Having lived with my mother, I wasn't surprised at all. Even though it was couched in very careful official language, she was Dangerous with a capital D. Capable of erasing me from existence, or destroying me slowly and painfully. Of rewriting who I was, and forcing me into situations and behaviours that I wouldn't feel comfortable in.
So in other words, It was like coming home.
( part four)