But after looking from Haruhi to me and back again, she worked it out.
“Oh, okay,” she said.
Haruhi flipped her arm, looking at her wristwatch.
“Look at the time! It’s almost sunset.”
Wristwatch? When’d she get one of those?
Haruhi looked me over from head to toe.
“Look at you, already dressed. Eager much?”
Then turned to Nagato.
“Oh, nice,” she said, eying up the pointy hat. “That does look good on you,” she added. “Is that owl your familiar? Not the worst, but better swap that out for a cat.”
“Ho! Ho!”
The former old man shook a wing at her in protest, but nobody cared.
“Asahina.”
Perhaps this was the primary reason I was already in uniform.
Aphrodite still seemed cut up about the play.
“The drinks here aren’t to my taste. Doesn’t seem like they’ve got tea here.”
“Oh,” she said, blinking.
“The tea you make in our clubroom is four thousand times as good as this heavenly concoction.”
Our lovely, ditzy upperclassman looked momentarily taken aback but then smiled like a blooming rose.
“Okay!” She nodded. Then, for the first time, she appeared to notice she was glowing. “Huh? Huh? Wh-what? Why am I all warm?”
The glow of four goddesses (net total) was steadily increasing.
“What’s this mean?” Haruhi said, squinting. “I feel like I can do anything right now. I could probably jump across the Pacific to America.”
Right, Haruhi was literally a goddess right now. So were Asahina and Nagato. If Asahina amplified Haruhi’s disorderly power and Nagato kept it under control, nothing was impossible. I dunno who was responsible for it, but casting the SOS Brigade’s ladies as goddesses was a huge mistake.
“…………”
Nagato was staring down at the glow on her palms. Her head slowly came up.
“A new power is attempting to join in.”
I squinted. I could see a different shade in there, not matching any of the goddesses.
This light was trying to take shape, writhing like an amorphous being.
Halos appeared above their heads; wings on their backs. As if seeping out of space, overlapping their goddess forms. They were goddesses and angels. Superpositioned?
“Perhaps a transition to the next story,” Koizumi said grimly. “We’d better act fast.”
Three angels might mean a biblical setting. The sight of monotheistic angels melded with Greek goddesses was likely so blasphemous it’d give fundamentalists a heart attack.
“This world’s creator is likely far less particular than the one described in the Bible.”
It simply doesn’t care. No consideration for humankind.
Onstage, night had fallen on the center of Troy. The whole town was fast asleep. Greek soldiers began filing out of the giant wooden horse brought in as spoils of war. Certain of their victory, the Trojans had partied hard, worn themselves out, and were now sound asleep. Successfully inside the walls, the suicide squad acted swiftly. One climbed a tower, waving a torch at the ships waiting offshore. Another got the gates open, while others started fires or slaughtered soldiers in their sleep. Menelaus went straight for Helen.
I peeled my eyes off the impending tragedy and looked at Nagato. She looked at me.
That eye contact was everything; I knew what I had to do.
“Haruhi, Asahina, take Nagato’s hands.”
“We calling a UFO?” Haruhi joked, but her right hand took Asahina’s hand, and her left took Nagato’s. I took Nagato’s free hand, then put my left on Koizumi’s. He and Asahina joined hands, and we formed a circle. I couldn’t exactly sense the flow of energy Nagato had shown us earlier, but I bet there was a massive swirl of it all around us.
I could almost feel it crackling behind my head. Perhaps the best a layperson could manage.
“Close your eyes,” Nagato whispered. “Impossible to predict what we’ll see during an emergency escape. Unknown what effects this will have on the optic nerves or related brain cells. Some risk of madness.”
Ominous words. Before obeying, I took one last look at the stage.
The Trojan horse. A Trojan virus. That was basically our effect upon this world. Was this world’s creator satisfied?
As the fortress city of Troy went down in flames, Menelaus and Helen were tearfully reunited. They ran over to each other—and then things got awkward. Neither looked exactly at ease. It sort of felt like actors who’d received a last-minute script change. Perhaps they weren’t originally meant to get back together.
I called out, “Sorry, but we’re outta here. Do what you please! You ought to be free now.”
They looked at each other, then turned to us—smiling and hesitantly waving. As if the last shred of doubt was gone, they stepped closer and threw their arms around each other.
It was like the last panel of a happy ending. As long as you didn’t mind the slaughter and raging inferno behind them.
Nagato’s thin fingers squeezed my hand like plucking a tuft of cotton candy, and I closed my eyes. (My other hand was coated in Koizumi’s clammy palm sweat.)
She was that close to me—but her voice felt so far away, like it was echoing through time everlasting.
“Commencing SOS (r) + SOS (f) = 1 actualization process.”
As she spoke, we became simultaneously anyone and no one. We no longer existed at all. And yet, we were everywhere all at once. We tapped into all-world knowledge and forgot it instantly. We were rising and falling. Spinning while staying still. Eternity and fleeting existence were of equal value. The darkness behind my eyelids was replaced with blinding light. The light and darkness mingled, swirling, becoming one. It converged into a single point, becoming both infinite and infinitesimal.
As everything blacked out, the voice of no one in particular intoned:
“Mission Complete”