The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya (7 page)

Why are you talking like a shrink? Don’t try to explain my mental state with your funny theories. Besides, if you want to talk motive, you should look in the mirror. Koizumi is more or less passive when Haruhi’s involved.

“We are here of our own volition. Have you forgotten? Nagato, Asahina, and I may follow different doctrines, but we are all here for the same purpose. I shouldn’t need to tell you that we have the vital task of observing Suzumiya.”

Meaning that I was the only person who’d been dragged into the SOS Brigade without a purpose and forced to run around in circles. Seriously, who’s behind this mess?

“I wouldn’t know.”

Koizumi gave me an amused look.

“Speaking of which, Suzumiya is no longer our only target of observation. You have been included. While I remain fearful of the havoc you and Suzumiya may wreak, I have been given an opportunity to open my mind, which I truly appreciate. No, I do not jest. I am very grateful.”

Must be fun to watch other people suffer.

The seasons must have straightened themselves out during the cultural festival, as the mountain winds carried an autumn chill. A season I couldn’t stand. When I realized that it would only get colder from here on out, I was tempted to think that I’d rather suffer Haruhi’s oppression.

The sky had grown dark as Haruhi jabbered away by herself ahead of us in a cluster with Asahina, who occasionally nodded in agreement, and Nagato, whose functional capacity was apparently limited to walking when heading home from school. Nagato’s bag was bulging because it contained the laptop she had received. When I asked her why she was taking it home with her, she merely slipped the game CD into the bottom of her bag and said that she was going to “analyze” it. As I watched her silhouette, a thought crossed my mind.

“By the way, Koizumi. I have a suggestion to make.”

“How unusual. I can’t wait to hear it.”

I lowered my voice to be safe.

“About the contest with the computer society. Can we skip the cheating this time?”

“What do you mean by cheating?”

Koizumi also responded in a soft voice.

“Anything like what Nagato did during the baseball game.”

Don’t tell me you forgot.

“I want to make this clear up front. If you happen to have a special power that gives you an advantage at simulation games, don’t use it. This isn’t limited to special powers. I won’t allow the use of any gimmicks that are against the rules.”

Koizumi smiled as he shot me a questioning look.

“What are you expecting to happen? Do you mean to say that it’s all right for us to lose?”

“That’s right.”

I conceded that point.

“For once, all cosmic stuff, future stuff, or ESP is off-limits. Fight honestly and accept the honest result. That would be the best way.”

“I would like to know your reasoning.”

“The only thing we’ll lose is the computer we stole. And it’ll be returned to its original owner. That won’t hurt us.”

Though I’ll need to move the Asahina image collection somewhere first.

“I’m not concerned about the computer.”

Koizumi sounded amused.

“You should know that Suzumiya doesn’t like to lose. If she feels that all is lost and defeat is near, she will produce closed space and cause another rampage that nobody is aware of. You don’t mind if this happens?”

“I don’t care.”

I glanced at Haruhi’s back.

“She has to learn her lesson one of these days. She can’t have her way all the time. Especially since Haruhi isn’t the instigator this time. She shouldn’t be too concerned about the outcome.”

I’ll need to tell Nagato tomorrow that supernatural powers will be off-limits. Guess I should also tell Asahina. I seriously doubt that she has access to any exceptional powers or items, since she confessed to being completely clueless about machines, but just to be safe.

Koizumi chuckled softly. The hell was that? You’re creeping me out.

“No, I wasn’t laughing at you. I was just feeling envious.”

Envious of what?

“Of the invisible bond of trust between you and Suzumiya.”

I have no idea what you’re talking about.

“You’re going to feign ignorance? No, it’s possible that you don’t realize how Suzumiya trusts you and you, in turn, trust her.”

How would you know who I trust?

“Let us assume that we lose the game next week. However, you believe that Suzumiya will not produce closed space as a result. This would be an example of your trust. Likewise, Suzumiya also believes that you will surely lead us to victory. Another example of trust. She was willing to bet brigade members because she genuinely believes that we cannot lose. Neither of you may express it in words, but the two of you are connected by an almost ideal bond of trust.”

I fell into a well of silence. Why didn’t I have a response for him? Because Koizumi’s speculation more or less hit the nail on the head? I’ll let the experts handle the question of whether or not I trust her, but it’s true that I don’t expect a rampage to break out in Haruhi’s mental world. This is a good thing when you consider what’s happened over the past six months. Many things have happened during the period between the founding of the SOS Brigade and the movie filming. Personally, I would say that I’ve matured a bit over the past few months, so I’m sure that the same could be said for Haruhi, who essentially had the same experiences I did. Or else she’d be a true idiot in every sense of the word. Beyond help.

“It’s worth a shot.”

I finally managed to string together a response.

“If we lose this game to the computer society and Haruhi ends up creating that disturbing gray world again, you can count me out of your scheme. I’m going to join Haruhi in messing up the world.”

Koizumi merely smiled. And then he continued in a matter-of-fact tone.

“This shows the trust you share. Do you now understand the source of my envy?”

I didn’t respond as I focused on trudging along the path. Koizumi looked like he had something else to add, but he must have sensed that I wasn’t interested in listening, since he kept his mouth shut.

Oh well. I’m used to Koizumi’s insinuating looks. They were as commonplace as Asahina’s wearing a maid outfit in the clubroom or Haruhi’s bursting with baseless confidence.

Or Nagato’s being so low-profile that you could never tell if she was around…which was another parallel that came to mind—

But I would witness something completely unexpected during the match with the computer society a week later.

And so our training began the next day against virtual opponents representing our neighbors. Though our training basically consisted of playing games, I should probably give a brief introduction to the original game made by the computer society.

.

That was the title of the game. It feels like they were going for something that sounded cool, but ended up with something that doesn’t make sense. Still, the actual game is what matters here, since the SOS Brigade name isn’t better by any means. I doubt there are many groups on this planet that can beat us when it comes to having a meaningless name and a pointless purpose. Still, the 3 would suggest that there were also a 1 and a 2.

In any case, I’ll start by explaining the background setting of —

I don’t know what year it was. Though it was probably sometime in the distant future. The human race had ventured into outer space to expand its territory considerably. This was an interplanetary territorial conflict that was occurring in a certain star system. There were two galactic powers in this sector engaged in a border dispute with no end in sight. For convenience’s sake, we’ll call one side the and the other side the . Each nation was armed with its own fleet of spaceships, as warfare was conducted in the void of space, and a critical situation was intensifying as both sides sent all available forces to the front lines because this inane battle would continue until the credits rolled. There were no diplomatic or strategic commands to interfere with raw combat. Total annihilation was the only solution. This game sounds like it’s right up Haruhi’s alley.

The screen was completely dark at the start of the game. The blue flashing dots at the bottom of the monitor represented the fleet units we controlled. I could see a total of five isosceles triangles that had a shorter bottom edge lined up together. This was the entire force of the , led by Haruhi. Each unit represented fifteen thousand spaceships, for a total of seventy-five thousand, plus a few extra supply vessels. We would satisfy the conditions for victory by controlling our ships to destroy an enemy armada of a similar size, or in the case of the special rules for this match, the enemy commander’s fleet. In other words, we would lose, regardless of the damage or losses suffered by the rest of the armada, if the flagship of ☆
Haruhi
☆
Fleet> was taken out, and our opponents would lose if the flagship of the president’s fleet was destroyed.

Each person was assigned a fleet in the armada, which meant that my fleet could only be controlled from my own computer. I wouldn’t be able to do anything from my laptop if and when Haruhi ran off by herself.

One of the odd features of this game was the fact that you had to do a thorough search to learn not only the position of the enemy, but any potential obstacles in the terrain. In any case, if we wanted to move into a different sector, we would have to dispatch scouts on a scan and wait for them to return before we could learn anything about our surroundings. Pretty convoluted.

Each fleet had its own field of vision, which was only an area with a radius of a few centimeters (on the screen), so if you were to advance without scouting ahead, you might find yourself under attack from an unexpected direction with no way of knowing where the enemy was.

However, all data was linked between allied fleets (at least, that’s how it was supposed to work), so, for example, the field of vision for Nagato’s fleet along with any data retrieved by her scout vessels would be shared with the rest of us. The game was set up so I could sit around and stare at the faint illumination of my field of vision on the black screen while learning the locations of planets and asteroid belts as well as enemy positions.

Still, the map was so big that the battle would be determined by one side’s swiftly determining the enemy’s position and taking action.

There were two types of weapons available, beams and missiles. Beams would hit enemies as soon as they were in range, while missiles were slower but came with a homing function. Missiles were impossible to evade, so you had to shoot each one down.

Generally speaking, this was a 2D fleet simulation game set in space. And this was in real time, not turn-based, so if you wasted too much time searching around the stars, you’d eventually find yourself surrounded by enemies. That aspect of the game was rather unforgiving.

In preparation for the upcoming contest, we got started on our week of gaming. Haruhi was the only one with a desktop computer at her desk while the rest of us sat along the table and stared at our laptops while mouse-clicking furiously. This surreal scene would be a part of SOS Brigade activity for a while. We were practicing against the computer instead of actual opponents, but it still took us three days before we could even score a win with the difficulty set to very easy. Our gaming skills were creeping along as fast as it would take to dig below Earth’s mantle with a hand drill.

“Ah! I got blown up again! Kyon, this game is starting to piss me off.”

Pretty pathetic showing against a computer opponent. Haruhi wasn’t the only one getting ticked off, but the problem here wasn’t game balance. The problem is that you keep charging forward with your flagship to get bombarded by concentrated enemy fire.

“Though we also need to change our strategy.”

I looked away from the LCD monitor, which showed a
GAME OVER
screen accompanied by mournful music.

“We should probably readjust the parameters for each fleet. Especially for your flagship fleet.”

Each fleet unit can assign three combat parameters. [Speed], [Defense], and [Attack]. Each player starts with 100 points, which are allocated among the three parameters on the start screen. Something like [Speed · 30], [Defense · 40], [Attack · 30]. And Haruhi was playing with her parameters set to [Speed · 50], [Defense · 0], [Attack · 50], so the armor on her flagship was thin as cardboard. I was dying to tell her to show more respect for outer space. In any case, it was clear that she only cared about smashing enemy ships as quickly as possible. We aren’t going to make any progress if Haruhi gets her flagship totaled before Koizumi and I have a chance to do anything.

“Man! This is such a pain. What’s the point in making a game that’s no fun? I like things that are easy to understand!”

Despite her grumbling, Haruhi continued to start up another game. I didn’t comment as the logo appeared on the screen of my laptop.

Haruhi cheerfully clicked away with her mouse as she talked.

“They should have made an RPG instead. They would represent the Devil or some evil god while I play the hero. I would prefer a game where the last boss fight starts right after the opening scene. I’ve always wondered why the boss waits at the end of a dungeon instead of showing up at the very beginning. That’s what I would do if I were the Devil. The hero wouldn’t have to waste a bunch of time wandering around a dungeon this way, and the story would end quickly.”

I ignored Haruhi’s nonsense as I looked around at the other members. Chief Officer Koizumi sat closest to Haruhi, then me, Asahina next to me, and Nagato at the end of the table.

“This is rather difficult. Well, it may simply be my lack of familiarity with such games. The design itself is simple, but the controls are insane.”

The pointless commentary by Koizumi was accompanied by the same easy smile he always had when we played Othello. Meanwhile, Asahina was wearing her maid outfit when there wasn’t any need.

“Wah-wah, my flashing light won’t move the way I’m telling it to. Why are we limited to moving in two dimensions when this takes place in space?”

She asked a very fundamental question as she fumbled around with her mouse.

These two wouldn’t be a problem. The remaining member was my primary concern at the moment.

“…”

Yuki Nagato stared at her monitor the way a mathematician would stare at an extremely advanced math problem. She was the first to adapt to this game: our only victory, which came despite Haruhi’s method of recklessly charging forward in a straight line, could be attributed to her precise execution of fleet maneuvers.