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Asakura vs Yuki, novel edition
She held her knife by her waist, and started rushing towards me. She's fast! This time I was prepared, because long before Asakura made her move, I had set sights on escaping through the door - yet I ended up hitting a wall.
????
That's strange, where'd the door go? Even the windows are gone! There were supposed to be windows on the wall facing the corridor, now it's just a thick grey wall.
Impossible!
"It's useless."
Asakura's voice grew closer from behind.
"I now have control of this area of space, so all exits have been blocked. It's quite easy actually,all I needed to do was tamper with the molecular structure of the buildings on this planet and I can change its matter at will. This room has now become a sealed room, and there's no way in or out now."
I turned around and noticed that the sunset has gone as well. The whole room is surrounded by concrete walls, leaving only the white lamps shining coldly on the desks.
This can't be!
Asakura's silhouette moved slowly towards me.
"I advise you to stop resisting; you're going to die, anyway."
"......Who exactly are you?"
No matter how I looked, there were walls around me. There's not a single door, a single window, nothing! Is something wrong with my brain?I frantically moved between the desks, trying to get as far from Asakura as possible. Yet Asakura walked towards me in a straight line, moving the desks and chairs from her path at will. Compared to her, my path was always blocked by the desks.
This cat and mouse chase didn't last long, and eventually I was cornered.
If that's the case......
I decided to take a risk and threw a chair at Asakura, yet the chair turned in the air right in front of Asakura, and flew off to the other end of the room. How can this be possible!?
"Didn't I tell you it's useless? Everything in this room now moves according to my will."
Wait... Wait!
What is going on here? If this isn't a joke or a prank, and neither me nor Asakura were crazy, then what is going on?
I have to kill you, and see what sort of reaction Suzumiya Haruhi would have.
Why is it Haruhi again? Haruhi, my, aren't you getting a bit too popular?
"I should've done this from the beginning."
My body froze after Asakura said that. You can't do that! That's cheating!
My feet are rooted to the ground like a tree, unable to move. My arms are fixed like a wax statue - I can't even move my fingers. My face, stuck pointing towards the ground, could see Asakura's indoor shoes slowly entering my field of vision.
"Once you die, Suzumiya Haruhi is bound to have some sort of reaction. This might create a massive data explosion from which we could salvage something. This could be the chance in a lifetime for us."
I don't really care about that!
"Now die."
I could feel Asakura lifting her knife up. Where would she start? The throat arteries, heart? If I knew how I was going to die, I could at least be prepared. At least let me close my eyes...... No, I can't do that. W... what's this!?
I suddenly felt the air shake. The knife began to fall upon me......
At this moment, the ceiling gave out a loud cracking noise, followed by debris falling down. Some of which fell on my head - that hurts! Dammit! I was covered in white dust by the large amount of continuously falling debris, so I guess Asakura is covered in white as well. I wanted to see what she looked like now, but I couldn't move......no, wait! I can move again!
I lifted my head and discovered......!
A shocked Asakura - just as she's about to slice my neck. Standing in front, catching the blade with her bare hands, is the slim figure of Nagato Yuki.
(Wow, she can catch the blade with just her bare hands.)
"Your programs are too basic." Nagato said in her usual expressionless tone, "The data lockdown around the ceiling area was incomplete. That is why I was able to discover it and enter."
"You want to get in my way?" Asakura sounded calm. "Once I kill this person, Suzumiya Haruhi is bound to have some sort of reaction. Only then can we obtain more data."
"You are supposed to be my backup." Nagato said in a mantra-like tone, "This sort of insubordination is forbidden; you must obey my commands."
"What if I refuse?"
"Then I will disconnect your data interface."
"Would you like to try? I have the advantage here, since this classroom belongs to the scope of my data control."
"Processing application for data interface disconnection."
As Nagato finished, the knife in her hand started glowing brightly. Then, like the sugar cube being placed into a cup of tea, it slowly crystallized and dissolved and fell towards the floor like powder.
"!!"
Asakura released the knife and jumped five meters away. Seeing this scene, I couldn't help but realize - whoa, these two really aren't human.
Opening up the distance in an instant, Asakura landed elegantly and continued smiling as usual. The space around began to distort - I can only describe it as such. Asakura, the desks, the ceiling and floor all shook vigorously; overall, it had the appearance of what seemed like liquid metal, though I couldn't really see that clearly.
Just as I was wondering how it's just this space that's slowly being turned into what seemed like spears, a crystallized explosion occurred in front of Nagato's raised palms.
The next second, there were continuous crystallized explosions around Nagato, followed by powder dropping onto the ground. The crystallized spear-like objects flew from all directions towards us with lightning fast speed. It was already a moment later when I discovered Nagato facing those spears with the same speed.
"Do not move away."
Nagato dodged Asakura's attacks while pulling my tie so that I would kneel and hide behind her.
"Whoa!"
An unknown object flew over my head and smashed the blackboard to pieces.
Nagato looked upwards a little, and in an instant many icicles grew from the ceiling and fell on Asakura's head. Asakura moved away with a speed that couldn't be seen with the naked eye, and instantly an icicle forest formed from the ground.
"There's no way you can beat me in this area of space." Asakura said calmly. She and Nagato stood a few meters apart, facing each other, while I could only kneel on the ground hopelessly, not daring to stand up.
Nagato stood in front of me with her legs slightly opened, and it's only now that I notice she's so serious that she even wrote her own name on her indoor shoes. Then, as if chanting a prayer, Nagato mumbled softly,
SELECT serial_code
FROM database
WHERE code='data'
ORDER BY aggressive_combat_data
HAVING terminate_mode
"Target name Asakura Ryoko, hostility confirmed. Disconnecting target's organic information interface."
Normal space no longer exists in the classroom. Everything has turned into geometric shapes, appearing twisted or cone-like. Seeing this surreal scenery is like entering one of those theme park house of horrors, I'm getting dizzy already from watching.
"You would stop functioning before I would."
I have no idea where Asakura's voice is coming from in all this colorful mirage.
Whoosh, the sound of the wind slicing through the air.
Nagato kicked me hard with the back of her heel.
"What are you......"
Before I could finish, there was a spear so fast, I could just barely see it as it went past the tip of my nose and fell on the ground.
"We'll see how much longer you can protect him. Try this!"
The next second, Nagato stood in front of me, impaled by about twelve brownish looking long spears.
"......"
In other words, Asakura attacked Nagato and me from all directions at the same time. Nagato managed to crystallize some of the spears and smash them, but trying to prevent me from getting hit by the remaining spears, she'd shielded me with her body. But I didn't know that then, since it all happened so quickly.
Nagato's glasses fell from her face and softly bounced as they hit the ground.
"NAGATO!"
"You should not move." Nagato said calmly, pointing to the spears stuck on her chest and stomach. A pool of blood began to form under her feet.
"I'm fine."
God, how can this be fine?
Nagato pulled out the spears from her body without even flinching once. The bloody spears fell onto the ground with an icy sound, and instantly turned into a desk. So that's what the spears are made from!
"Being this injured, I don't suppose you can stop me now. Here's the finishing blow!"
At the other end of the twisted space, Asakura's silhouette faded in and out. I could see a smile from her face, she then slowly raised her hands - if I'm not mistaken, her arms glowed all the way from her fingertips, and then extended to twice as long. No, not just twice as long...
"Please die!"
Asakura's arms kept on extending, wriggling like a bunch of tentacles, and then closing in from both directions. Unable to move, Nagato's small figure shook violently...... The next instant, my face was splattered with blood.
Asakura's left arm clawed into Nagato's right abdomen, while her right arm clawed into Nagato's left chest, piercing through her back and stopping at the classroom wall. Blood spattered from Nagato's mouth and down along her white legs, making the blood pool below even wider.
"It's over." Nagato said softly, then grabbed onto the tentacles. Nothing happened.
"What's over?" Asakura said, sounding as though she'd won. "You mean your three years of life?"
"No." said a seriously wounded Nagato, as though nothing had happened to her. "Commencing data interface disconnection."
Almost instantly, everything in the classroom began glowing brightly, and then crystallized and dissolved within the next second, the desk beside me also turned into sand and collapsed.
"How can this be......"
Crystallized sand fell from the ceiling nonstop, this time it is Asakura's turn to be stunned. "You truly are outstanding."
The spears within Nagato's body also turned into sand.
"It took me some time to penetrate the program. But, everything will end now."
"......You've already planted destructive factors around long before I penetrated this place, haven't you? No wonder you looked rather weak. It was because you've used attacking data beforehand......" Asakura said despondently as her arms began to crystallize.
"Sigh, it's such a pity, after all I'm just backup. I thought this would be a chance to break free from this deadlock."
Asakura reverted back to her normal classmate self and looked at me cheerfully.
"I lost. It's great that you can survive. But you'd better be careful, the Integrated Data Entity isn't as united as you think, there are quite a number like me with dissenting opinions. It's just like humans, there will be extremists like me next time. And who knows, even those who control Nagato-san might change their thinking and turn to kill you instead."
She's now covered from chest to toe by the glowing crystallized substance.
"Before that happens, I wish you and Suzumiya-san the best of luck. Farewell."
Saying that, Asakura silently dissolved into small sandy dunes. And then, the smaller crystallized sand dunes continued to dissolve until they completely vanished.
Under a rain of crystallized sand, the high school girl known as Asakura Ryouko vanished completely from this school.
There was a loud thud, suddenly. I was quick to find Nagato lying on the floor, so I frantically got up.
"Nagato! Hang in there! I'll call the ambulance!"
"There is no need."
Nagato glanced at the ceiling with her wide open eyes.
"Physical damage doesn't mean anything to me. Our priority is to restore this area of space back to its original state."
The sand crystals around stopped falling.
"Removing impure substances, reconstructing classroom."
As she finished, the familiar 1-5 classroom reappeared before our eyes. It was like a tape rewinding: everything in the room reverted to the way it had been before.
The blackboard, the teacher's desk, the remaining chairs and desks all grew from the white sand and back to their original form as I had seen before school ended today. I can't describe what was going through my mind then. If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would've thought all these images were made with state-of-the-art CG special effects.
Windows grew from the walls, with the half-stained glasses intact; the sunset reappeared outside, bathing me and Nagato in an orange-red light. I tried looking inside my desk drawers, all the contents were still there intact, and all the blood that had spattered onto my face had now completely disappeared. This was too amazing. I could only describe it as magic!
"Are you really okay?"
I knelt beside Nagato who remained lying on the floor. I had thought she would have many wounds and holes in her uniform after being impaled by those spears, but they were all gone now.
"As processing power has been converted into data operation, I have just reversed the linking interface for a bit."