“So, what’s the next move?” I asked.
Koizumi looked at Nagato, then looked faintly surprised.
Only then did I realize she was looking at Haruhi. I recognized that look. She’d been staring at her with equal intensity not long before. What about Haruhi’s couch potato act had her so concerned?
Picking up on my doubt, she looked at me.
“We should hurry.”
A rare voluntary opinion—and her next words made me gulp.
“The analysis-defying energy Haruhi Suzumiya radiates is increasing.”
I shot another look her way but saw nothing but our chief, playing the world’s most slovenly goddess. Perhaps looking didn’t do much. It wasn’t like I could detect the energy.
“Oh,” Koizumi said, leaning in. “She’s attempting to activate her reality alteration powers?”
“The outcome of this energy buildup is unclear,” Nagato said. “This is not reality.”
“Oh-ho.”
Koizumi scratched his head.
“But Suzumiya likely perceives it to be real… But even if she perceives it as such, it is fundamentally not real…”
He groaned a bit, then looked at me.
“What do you think?”
Dunno. But there’s one thing bugging me.
“Why is Haruhi only starting to emit that energy now?”
“Unclear.” Nagato wasn’t helpful, but her eyes were like black diamonds. “Perhaps you can tell.”
Not like I’m her press secretary. Nor am I a mind reader; if the chief ain’t said it, how am I supposed to know?
Nagato’s eyes bore through me.
“Each time we shifted worlds in this virtual space, her energy radiation increased incrementally. That curve rose sharply recently.”
“How recently?”
“Since our arrival in Troy.”
So really recently. That would make for an alarming graph.
“And that’s why we should hurry?”
Nagato returned a slight nod.
“Estimated time till that reaches the limit is in flux, but given the exponential speed of growth, odds are high she’ll use her power for something before we reach the next world.”
We could gamble on her powers turning things around?
“……If that’s what you want.”
Sorry, forget I said anything.
“Still,” I said, trying to act like I was thinking. “Haruhi’s been stockpiling mystery power all this time? She didn’t seem like she had any questions about the world-hopping.”
“They might fool her conscious mind, but it’s hardly surprising that her unconscious mind detected something amiss,” Koizumi said, making so much sense it was rather dull to sit through. “That said, we can conjecture about the source of Suzumiya’s energy later. Nagato, on that privateer vessel, you said you were waiting for the right moment to escape. Can we assume that moment has arrived?”
She gave a silent nod measurable in millimeters.
“Then this situation is what you were waiting for?”
“It was a necessary condition.”
“And that condition is?”
“Power beyond human understanding.”
Athena, one of the goddesses from the Judgment of Paris.
“I am a goddess now.”
Her petite frame glowing, for a brief second I saw a statue of Athena overlapping her.
“In this setting, with these abilities, I can use unrealistic, supernatural powers without it seeming contradictory.”
Her quiet voice was oddly convincing. A divine proclamation.
Koizumi narrowed his eyes, looking Nagato Athena over.
“To do what, specifically? Does the divine power within you allow you to force SOS (r) + SOS (f) = 1?”
“Not on my own.”
Nagato glanced at Haruhi and Asahina. Hera and Aphrodite, down from heaven to watch Greece and Troy go at it—I could almost see that.
“I’ll borrow theirs, too.”
Could you just ask and receive?
“Emergency mode. No request required. Forcibly requisitioned.”
I guess you couldn’t just walk up to Haruhi and go, ‘You’re about to unleash your unconscious power and maybe destroy the world so lend the power of the goddess you’re inhabiting to Nagato.’ Asahina… Well, she’d get it if we explained later. Not that we’d remember any of this by then.
“Still, I guess even Nagato voices proactive opinions sometimes,” I said, impressed.
Her brow furrowed slightly.
“I cannot fulfill my role when out of contact with the Data Overmind.”
Her role being observing Haruhi? Aren’t you doing just that here?
“Observation data transmission.”
Oh, right. Just watching doesn’t mean much.
“It means nothing,” she said.
She looked genuinely upset by it, which was a shocking development. Maybe syncing with Athena left her more emotional.
At this point, the orchestra started playing an especially powerful piece.
Onstage, Menelaus had discovered his wife’s infidelity. He and his brother Agamemnon had sent word to all of Greece and were mustering an army to conquer Troy. A ton of actors were onstage, and somehow, in my mind’s eye, I could totally see thousands of ships on the water. They’d skipped Odysseus’s scheming, but that supplementary information came flooding into my brain like it was tagged on. At long last, the world-renowned hero Achilles appeared; he and a troop of heavily armored soldiers boarded a ship, and the stage went dark. When the lights came back on, the Greek fleet was already anchored off the coast of Troy. There was like a decade of relationship drama truncated here in an attempt to get this war underway.