7.  Hungry

Yuffie was on her own, separated from the others, and she was not about to underestimate the goofy little blue creature in front of her. Even if it did look crazy.

Googly eyes. A long rasping tounge. Short stubby limbs A mouth almost as large as the creature was wide, meaning the upper head that resembled a blue, bobble-less Christmas hat was practically on a hinge. It was like an animated trash bin.

And under the right circumstances, it was very, very, dangerous.

It was called a Hungry, for it always was. Despite being tiny, it had eyes larger than it's stomach, in a manner of speaking. Of course, in comparison to the rest of the creature it had a very large stomach. But it was quite small, barely about five feet high.

It had a trick though. Larger things could be made into smaller things, with the Mini spell.  And then, the shrunken target would be whipped up by the tiny tongue and swallowed whole.

Yuffie tensed, ready to attack the creature, distract it, and run. She was low on MP, had no protection against Mini bar her own Transform materia, and no way to cure herself other than that.

She was about to throw her boomerang, as it cast a spell. She felt herself shrinking, and watched in horror as the creature grew larger before her, her shrinking weapon bouncing off the now-gargantuan blue thing. She was inches tall, and it towered over her.

And then, before she could try and cure herself with her last dregs of MP, it pounced forward. The spell she was aiming at herself, instead was used in a panic attack on the leaping creature.

To her brief delight, it worked. The creature shrank in mid-bound, tongue falling far short as it became too small. It stood, puzzled, as Yuffie gathered her wits for a second.

"Cloud! Tifa!" She screamed. It was almost pointless, for her voice would be barely a high pitched squeal to them if they were close, but she had to try.  Luckily for her, the cave echoed quite well, and her squeaks were amplified.

"Yuffie?" A louder voice replied, so loud to her tiny ears she had to cover them.

The Hungry had only a sense of smell that was any use, the ears of the creature practically deaf. It also was not the smartest of creatures, with a small brain that focused on eating and sleeping.

This one had an idea, on how to eat the prey it had shrunk. It jumped up while it covered its ears, and opened wide. The prey looked up as it uncovered her ears, and in horror, could only watch as the Hungry descended

It was, however, too small. It barely managed to fit her head inside, and the confused creature plopped down with a bemused rasp.

Yuffie stood for a moment, and then screamed with her head stuck inside the beast. She tugged it off and threw it away, feeling sick from the smell of it's insides. The creature was in considerable pain now, but that simple brain demanded it feed. It tried again.

Yuffie bolted, chased by the tiny blue monster until she eventually found her salvation in the form of Cloud and Tifa, and a well-aimed kick from the (now hugely) taller woman hurled the unfortunate monster away.

"Thanks guys..." Yuffie squeaked, wiping some of the goo from the creature's failed attempt to eat her head away as Tifa gently picked up the shrunken Wutaian.

"What did you get yourself into this time?" Tifa whispered. Yuffie had to shout back.

"Never mind! Do you guys have any Transform? I'm out of MP..."  

They shook their heads.

"...Cornucopia?"

"Uh, Yuffie..." Cloud spoke, at a normal volume. Yuffie cried out before the idiot spiky-haired blond realised his error and whispered instead.

"Yuffie... We don't have anything to cure Mini. We don't even have any Ethers..."

Yuffie stared in shock.

"B-But... I can't be tiny until we find the others! That means that..."

Tifa sighed.

"Don't worry. We won't drop you this time. Unlike Barret we're not going to be dumb enough to have you sit on our shoulders..."

Yuffie relaxed, then tensed upon realising an alternative.

"No pockets!" She demanded.


8.  Kaa-tastrophe

There was an intruder in his domain. He slithered down his tree, as silent as a ghost, and put his currently-yellow eyes to use in examining the interloper.

A man-cub, with brown fur on its head but just as pink and stupid as the rest wearing the strange fabrics. And most notably, a yellow ribbon in her fur.

He slid down a branch, awaiting her passing, and dropped down in front of her. His eyes began spiralling an array of colours as he made eye contact.

The snake danced back and forth, hissing gleefully. This man-cub with the yellow ribbon would soon be under his spell. And then, soon be his lunch...

At least, that had been the plan until she produced a metal tube and shot him.

***

"Aw... Gun beats Snake." Kamiya-san pouted as Haruhi grinned. The younger girl held her arm up, her hand curled like the head of a snake, while the SOS-Brigade leader held her own hand in the traditional shape of someone making a gun with their fingers.

Why the hell couldn't they just play it with rock, paper, and scissors like the rest of the world?

"Because rocks, paper, and scissors are boring, Kyon! Now you try, and if you keep using Body Armour like last time it's a penalty!" Haruhi ordered.

"I still don't get how it can stop a bullet but not a snake..."

"It gets inside the body armour and bites you." Kamiya-san explained

At least it wasn't Esper zaps Time Traveller, Time Traveller sends Alien back in time, Alien abducts Esper...

"Hmm... Good idea, but what would be the hand signs?" Haruhi pondered.

Takeru gave me a look. I agreed with it. I did need to stop thinking out loud.

"Damn straight." The blond nodded.


9.  Nine Hours

I smirked when I saw the envelope jutting out of my shoe locker, and I know Hikari had her own knowing smile when she saw it. It was another birthday card. I'd had two shoved in my mailbox without a stamp, and there might be more in the mail when I go home. A benefit of being a good player on the Basketball team, I guess.


But that wasn't why I was smiling. Oh sure, getting the cards was nice, but... They were a day early.

It's November the Eighth. I wasn't born on November the Eighth.

Well,  I was. But I wasn't. See, where I was born, it was the Eighth, but where I live, it wasn't. And when I was born it was complicated, so I just treat the Ninth as my birthday. Besides, all my relatives and my parents friends learned I'd been born on the Ninth.

Somehow, everyone else learned it as the eighth, since that's what the certificate says. Well, the one from the country I was born in, at least. In confusion, my parents had my birth registered in both countries, and to this day, don't know if they were supposed to or not. For all I know they might have accidentally registered my birth in East Germany, despite it not existing at the time.

Throughout the day a few other cards wound up working their way to me, but at least one of them was someone who wasn't able to make my party tomorrow.

However, as it was NOT the day of my party, the SOS-Brigade was in session and was not, for example:
-Making the world's most bizarre sandwich out of the party food (Haruhi) or,
-Nearly maiming people playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey (Mikuru) or,
-Becoming disappointed to find absolutely nothing lost down the side of my couch then proclaiming it to be a mysterious atypical couch (Haruhi again) or,
-Reading random things from the bookshelf (Yuki) or,
-Trying to argue it was or was not too early to put up Mistletoe (Haruhi again and Kyon) or...

You get the idea.

Entering the brigade room, Haruhi spoke up first.

"TK, how come your party is tomorrow, but people gave you cards today?" She asked.

"Didn't he explain this last week when he invited us?" Kyon interjected.

"...He might have, but I've forgotten. I want to hear it again."

Kyon sighed, and I rolled my eyes before explaining it.

"Well, it's like this. I wasn't actually born here in Japan, but in Europe... But my parents were Japanese, so we treat the date I was born in Japan as my birthday." I said.

"Oh. It's a time zone thing. You and your parents have a Japanese nationality so you count the time in Japan as your birthday, but in Europe it was the eighth, but because they're eight or nine hours behind you were born on the ninth in Japan?" Haruhi said.

That was pretty much it summed up nicely.

"Uh, yeah. Pretty much."

At this, her eyes widened.

"So, technically speaking, you're partially a foreigner!"

Yes, my French-born mother has in no way allowed the heritage of her genetic material to affect my appearance. It does not result in people in places such as stores talking slowly and hastily trying to use English phrasebooks before I start talking to them. It also does not result in bewilderment from actual foreigners who are stunned I do not speak very much French, English, German, or Welsh.

Don't ask about that last one. I still don't know why she thought I was Welsh too

"Why were you born in Europe? And whereabouts?" Itsuki asked his questions, just as Kari arrived.

"Oh, hey, story of your birth again?" She said. I nodded.

"You should add a dragon to it this time. Or Godzilla."

For the last time, Kari, Godzilla was not present when I was born.

It was Mothra. Get it right.

"Anyway, the reason I was born in Europe is that my father was sent by the TV station to cover the opening of the Channel Tunnel for passengers in the UK and France, and he took the whole family along with him to London."

"Oh, I see..." Haruhi nodded. Kari frowned.

"London? I thought you were born in Paris..."

"No, Kari, I was born in London." I repeated.

"But every other time you said this... Wait, you never mentioned which side of the English Channel you were on when you dad was covering it!" She realised.

Come to think of it, that was right. I'd just assumed everyone knew I'd been born in London. Whoops. Oh well...

"Wait, so your mother flew to London and went into labour? Surely they shouldn't have let her fly?" Mikuru said, adding her voice to the conversation.

"Well, the Airline was apparently a little paranoid I'd be born six thousand feet over Korea or something but a letter from a Doctor convinced them to let my mother fly. I wasn't due until two weeks after we were meant to come back home anyway." I explained.

"It seems a big risk to take... What if you had been born in the air and something went wrong?" Kyon said, pessimistic as always.

"Well, nothing did, at least, not until we were in London. For some reason Dad managed to get the TV station to let him go over about a week before he was actually needed so my mother apparently wound up freaking out everyone on a Tube train when she started having contractions. About twelve hours later I was born at just after Ten PM on the 8th in London."

"About Seven AM in Japan. Wait, that means it really is your birthday tomorrow, it was a Wednesday then and it's Wednesday tomorrow." Haruhi said, doing the math surprisingly quickly.

"Yeah. That's pretty much it."

She seemed quite happy with all this.

"You should have told us that sooner, Takeru! Not only do you have two birthdays, but you're the only Brigade Member born in a different country, and, you're the only Brigade member who is a Londoner!"

I knew I was going to regret this at the time, but I asked anyway.

"Why is London so interesting?" I asked.

Haruhi smirked.

"All the best aliens go there. You'll see... I want to start with the new season of course, then we can go all the way back to the revival season..."

I sighed. It seemed Haruhi was about to rave about her favourite imported show for the rest of the day, so I managed to zone out. I therefore managed to complete an uneventful rest-of-not-Birthday as she and Kyon started talking animatedly about dialects or something.


10.  Ten Minutes

Back from school, Haruhi Suzumiya wasted not one second of her precious time in getting down to the most important duty possible.

Not her homework, that was lame. And easy.

Starting the download!

She had startled Kyon and the others by dashing out of the Brigade room, true, but she knew that telling them it was vital Brigade Chief duties would do the trick to ensure they understood. She'd got the text message from her friend saying that when she was back home she just needed to get online and the transfer would begin.

After a few minutes of chatting away, Haruhi was downloading her files, as her friend confirmed nothing else in her house was going to affect her upload speeds at the moment, and that it was a good hour before anyone else from her gaming clan would be ready to play anything.

The trouble was, even with a fairly good connection speed at both ends, the files would take ten minutes or so to get across. Not too shabby given that when she'd been five or six it sometimes seemed to take that long to download a single page of the website for her favourite TV shows on the crappy old 56k modem they had back then...

Now it was starting, and she had to be patient. She had to wait, and, being paranoid, refused to look at websites  in case it slowed the download, er, down.

She sat watching for a full sixty seconds before she reached for the mouse and tried to open up a page. She caught herself, and decided to distract herself.

"I'll go make a snack or something..." She murmured to herself.

Another minute later, she was back, bored of waiting on the pot of noodles to be ready. She kept wanting to stir it there and then but that would break the noodles. She liked longer noodles, even if her mother disliked how she slurped them.

And so she spent the fourth minute back at the computer.

The fifth minute, she had forgotten about her snack, now well overdue. By the sixth, she remembered it, but the noodles had absorbed too much water to be able to add the flavour sachet and let it taste right. Any more water added so there would be a sauce and it would be too soggy for her tastes.

Discarding the noodles any sane person would simply eat, she made another, keeping an eye on it.

By the eighth minute she had gave up again, watching the download. Fate and the internet and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, patron god of all noodle products, had joined forces to ensure that when her download was nearly ready, so were her noodles so she simply had to run, fetch them, and come back... Just watch the clock for when she was to go back...

Before the ninth minute had started, she dashed back and forth, checking noodles and download.

By the tenth, she had the snack ready and had returned to find her download...

...Needed fifteen more minutes?! It had slowed to a crawl!

A conspiracy! Dishonourable alien thieves had began stealing the earth's internet bandwidth to carry out some nefarious scheme! Probably downloading volume after volume of manga and anime! They probably didn't even pay for it...

"Hey! You guys, just buy it! Don't they licence them on your planet?!" She shouted out the window, to the bemusement of a passing cyclist.

She fumed, looking back at the download. Now she thought about it, it was silly to blame aliens. They probably just had the time travellers bring them copies from the future. Or had Espers give them the spoilers in advance by reading the author's mind.

That meant a human cause. She went down the hall of her home to the third bedroom of the house, converted into a home office for her father, through the fact only two bedrooms had been needed.

Well, that and the fact a younger Haruhi had insisted that any playroom she was given had to be underground or she'd play on the roof instead, and so the basement had been hers until she was twelve, and she finally gave up on the idea of a fireman's pole from her bedroom, through the kitchen and down into the basement.

"...Daaad? Are you downloading something?" She shouted through the door.

"Haruhi? Are you?" Her father shouted back.

"Yes! I started it ten minutes ago!" She yelled back.

"So that's why my Playstation.... Er, work download is lagging. Going slow..."

She sighed.

"Dad, we didn't believe it the first time, just admit you're playing games. And can you wait a couple of minutes? My download was nearly done..." She whined.

"What were you downloading?"

"The new season. My friend from Kasukabe got the subtitles finished for the DVD rip..."

There was a pause from the person behind the door.

"Why didn't you say so?! When can we watch?!"  Came the reply.

"Well, I'm watching them at Kyon's house this Saturday with the rest of my friends but I can put them on the shared folder for you..."

Haruhi wondered what bonus she would get this time for bribing her dad.

She failed to realise the irony of her impatience to have the download done. She was willing to wait to Saturday to watch them herself.

It was only Monday.


11. The Eleventh Hour of Haruhi Suzumiya

It's Saturday, about 10:40 AM, and I'm not very pleased with my best friend just now. How can he not just get the message, so we can get on with the plan? Not that misunderstanding in the ranks was slowing Haruhi down as she was connecting her laptop to the TV, of course. But somehow, Takeru didn't understand the appeal of the show that Suzumiya wanted the SOS Brigade to watch this weekend instead of a city-wide search.

After all, what was he? He was a Time Traveller. He was an Alien. He was also a little bit Psychic, so he qualified as an Esper.

Quite frankly, to Haruhi Suzumiya, he was perfect.

But for some reason, Takeru was not understanding any of it.

"I don't get what's so appealing about some British TV show. It'll be in English, won't it?"

"Takeru, Koushiro's cousin and her American friend put subtitles on the files. We'll be able to understand it." Kyon interjected.

For once, the Brigade's deadpan snarker was supportive of Haruhi's scheme, not least because he wanted to avoid the whole city-search thing, even if his house had been the chosen location for the marathon viewing of the TV show that most definitely had not been stolen from the catch-up website and subtitled by Izzy's cousin from Kasukabe.

It also helped that he was a fan of the series himself, or so he had confided in me. He was for some reason a little worried about the fact Haruhi was too, but he'd muttered that it had "just figured, come to think of it" and something about it maybe being better the alias was that obvious.

As a final added bonus for Kyon, his little sister hadn't wanted to watch, and she and her big cousin had instead went to the park for the day. It reminded me again not all siblings are quite as happy to spend time with their little whatevers, and for a moment I pondered what it would have been like if I had been a middle child...

So, anyway, Me (That's Hikari, by the way), Kyon, Haruhi, Mikuru, and Yuki were sitting in Kyon's house, as Haurhi was readying the laptop to play on a screen closer to fifty inches instead of five, and with surround sound instead of speakers that tried to pretend they were stereo. Itsuki had volunteered to go and fetch additional snacks when Haruhi had noted they might run out of the snacks in Kyon's house since his little sister and cousin had taken some with them on their trip.

Apparently, Kyon's fandom of the show and the fact it was his house trumped Haruhi's usual insistence Kyon do everything. Moving on though, back to the fact Takeru's a moron.

"So we can understand it, but what if it's one of those things that doesn't translate well? It might be great to the British but it could just be a load of confusing junk to me." He tried to say. Haruhi's head turned, but out-of-character-obedient Kyon was there first.

"It translates. It's universal." He almost growled.

You can do it, Kyon! Harness your inner fan-boy and defeat the blonde troll!

"I'm just saying, I mean... I don't watch TV much..." Takeru tried to defend himself.

"Look, Takeru, it's not a complicated thing. I can explain it while the laptop boots up."  Haruhi added.

"Okay..." Came the sceptical reply, the additional words you don't know the meaning of complicated in the first place so how do you know what isn't complicated wisely left off.

"Okay, the main character in the show is a time travelling alien from the planet Gallifrey. He's a Time Lord, and his real name isn't ever revealed in the show..."

"But the show calls him Doctor Who, doesn't it?" Takeru said, confused.

"No, that's the entire reason for the title. It's not a name, it's a question.  Anyway, most of the Time Lord stuff wasn't really developed in the first episodes in the sixties, but..."

"Wait, the sixties?!"

"The original series run occurred from the twenty-third of November, nineteen sixty-three, to the sixth of November nineteen eighty-nine." Yuki helpfully gave us the facts.

"But that's over a quarter century. Wouldn't the lead actor have been getting a bit old?" Takeru was still confused, then he seemed to understand.

"Oh, I get it. That was the original series, right? This one's just a remake..."

"Wrong. This is still the same canon, just with a gap between the Seventh Doctor, the TV movie, and then the Ninth. The Christopher Eccleston ninth, that is." Kyon said.

"Wait... Oh, it's like James Bond, the actors were replaced?"

"Actually, yes and no. The Doctor can regenerate when he's mortally wounded, all Time Lords can. Every new actor is a new Doctor, and each new Doctor has a different personality. I'd explain more about that, but there's a problem." Haruhi said.

"What problem?" Takeru said.

The Brigade Chief smiled.

"Spoilers!"

Takeru sighed, then realised why he had been so surprised to hear the word "sixties" mentioned.

"Wait! You said you wanted to watch the other seasons with the brigade at some point! How many episodes is that?!"

"Well, all of them at once counting the new and older series..." Haruhi began, but Yuki took the hint as she paused.

"Seven hundred and sixty nine, with normal runtimes ranging from approximately twenty-five minutes in the original series to approximately forty-five minutes in the new revival series. In addition, a number of longer specials, generally one hour in length, have been aired."

Takeru was frozen stiff at Yuki's words until his brain caught up with the overload of what he realised.

"That's... We're watching all that? That'll take..."

"Oh, no, we're not watching all of them! Just the newest ones! So, we watch Season Five today, then go back to the Eccleston episodes, then through the Tennant ones, and then we've seen all of New Who." Haruhi grinned.

Kyon actually looked quite disappointed at that, but Takeru was a little relieved.

"That's much more manageable..."

The laptop had long since booted up, but Takeru's need to ask stupid questions had meant he didn't get the explanation of the show.

"Anyway, these episodes are the Eleventh Doctor. He's just regenerated in the first episode and it sets up the new character, which won't mean much to you because you haven't seen any of the previous Doctors at all. But basically, the show is about him and his human companions going from place to place, time to time, finding alien and supernatural problems and saving people in the middle of it all." Haruhi finished.

"There's a lot more backstory about the Time War and stuff but most of it gets explained in the other episodes before these ones." Kyon added.

"Time War?"  Takeru said.

Huh. for some reason Mikuru seemed a little alarmed just now.

"Basically, the Daleks and the Time Lords had a war that nearly wiped them both out. Only one Time Lord lived, but they sell a lot of Dalek toys so they keep coming back." Kyon replied.

Haruhi glared.

"I mean, the Daleks are iconic and they're the greatest threat to The Doctor, so the fans enjoy seeing them come back even if it's just for a few episodes before they get wiped out again." He corrected himself.

Takeru just sat there, his whole body language just saying I'm not convinced...

Haruhi ignored the fact he was still in the dark over it all as Itsuki returned with his customary slightly-creepy smile, and soon enough, she started the show.

***

I watched, and I was kind of impressed by the quality of the subtitles given that this was the work of two high-school girls. They were full-blown Otakus though, I remember meeting them at Comiket last year. The American spoke odd Japanese though. I guess she just handled the basic translating and Izzy's cousin got it right.

I also observed the rest of the brigade. Kyon and Haruhi were both as enthralled as each other, making me wish I'd brought my camera to show the pair how alike they were at that moment. Yuki looked indifferent to a casual observer, but I could see she was also entertained. Mikuru seemed to be quite enjoying herself even during some of the scarier parts, and Itsuki... Well, he just smiled as usual. I have no clue if he actually liked it or like the fact the rest of us were having fun.

But Takeru's reactions were interesting... And not actually surprising come to think of it. When The Eleventh Doctor was rushing around at night, post-regeneration, speaking to Amelia, trying different foods and then looking at the crack in the wall, he just seemed confused.

Then the Doctor went into his TARDIS to have it repair properly, and left Amelia behind to do so. He seemed bored by that point.

But when The Doctor returned into the house, at daytime now, he noticed that The Doctor hadn't been gone for five minutes. He smirked at that. Then The Doctor was knocked out trying to find Amelia. That didn't get him interested.

The Policewoman did. And when it turned out that it was Amelia all grown up, and he realised Amy Pond was going to be in the rest of the show from now on, he actually became interested.

Trust Takeru. He's not as obvious about it as most guys, but he's a sucker for a pretty woman in the end. He might not stare as much or ogle, but at heart he's still a boy and boys will be boys.

Plus, this is Takeru. When his friends need him, he comes through, and I guess we needed him to not ruin the day by sitting there bored while we had fun.  And really, it's only fitting he came through at the eleventh hour.

Just wish he'd done it for us and not the hot red-head on the screen...