The Simulacrum - Chapter 36 - Parts 1 and 2 (Patreon)

Part 1

"All right kids, gather around!" I called out to the gang scattered in my living room. 

It was a little after four in the afternoon and, all things considered, our double-date was a resounding success even with the unexpected appearance of a certain creepy monster huntress. After the amusement park, we visited a nearby zoo (in fact, the two were apparently run by the same business, explaining all the various animal mascots) and then we all had a hearty dinner at a fancy restaurant Elly picked for us. We naturally had a lot of weird hijinks on the way, but for the sake of brevity, they will be omitted. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end sooner or later, so after we had our fun, all of us returned to my place as per our prior agreement.

"Uh-oh!" Angie exclaimed while sitting down. "Be careful guys. Leo has that look again."

"What look?" I asked back with a strategically raised eyebrow.

"You know? The kind that you have whenever you are about to say something shocking. Or scary. Like when you told me my cover sucked."

"Or when you told us there were multiple prophecies," Snowy chipped in as she also sat down with a cup in her hands.

"Or that those prophecies were about me," Josh added in a grumble while already sitting on the couch between the aforementioned two girls.

"Really? Do I have a specific 'look' for that?" I directed the question towards my assistant, only to immediately stop and give her a stern look. "What exactly are you two doing?"

By the looks of it, my two girlfriends were in the process of enacting some kind of miniature kaiju battle between their mascot plushies, but I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt for the moment and hear out their explanation.

"We are not doing anything suspicious," Elly stressed while still holding out her komodo dragon with a top hat (because obviously there was a komodo dragon plushie among the prices) like she was restraining it.

"Indeed. We are discussing very mature and serious topics," Judy agreed while raising her own owl with a monocle up and down in a sweeping motion.

Well, as it turned out, that was my last bit of benefit of the doubt I had on hand, and they just wasted it, so I decided to simply ignore whatever silly new contest they devised between the two of them. I decided to be just happy they were getting along. Speaking of which, Ammy finally sat down as well, and while she was still giving me a hard look, I decided to ignore her too and cleared my throat.

"Let's put away my alleged looks for a moment. I told you in the morning that we are going to do some light exercise in the afternoon, right?" The members of the gang looked at me funny for a moment, but ultimately they all nodded. "Good, good," I told them while nodding with my best impression of an all-knowing sage. "Did you all bring a change of clothes as we agreed?"

"I did," Angie confirmed with a fair bit of eagerness as she waved the PE bag she left beside the sofa during our morning assembly.

"So did I," Josh seconded with considerably less enthusiasm and a suspiciously similar-looking gym bag.

"I live here now, so my clothes are already here," Snowy muttered, seemingly embarrassed for some reason.

"I can use magic to change my clothes," Emmy finished the series of confirmations with a shrug.

"Oh, right! I can transform too!" Angie once again exclaimed in revelation.

"Now that you mention it…" Snowy began, but I cut her off immediately.

"Oh, no, you won't," I told her in no uncertain terms. "We just got your wardrobe in order, and the last time I saw you transform, you literally exploded your clothes off your back."

"I will take my clothes off before I do that."

"Sure you could, but you shouldn't. I told you we couldn't get the heating working yet, and your Abyssal getup doesn't exactly cover a lot of skin."

"Hah!" Angie let out a short guffaw and elbowed Josh in the side. "Look at that! He's been a big brother for just a day, and he is already trying to cover up his little sister!"

"Speaking of covering up!" I snapped while pointing at the surprised celestial girl. "Don't talk like your Celestial getup is even remotely winter-ready, young lady!"

"What?" she snapped back with a frown. "Those are the standard Celestial battle garments!"

"It's literally an undersized bedsheet and a pair of boots," I responded as flatly as I could.

"It's not a bedsheet! It also has a pair of bracers too! They are cool, right, Josh?"

"Um... Sure?" my friend responded quite uncertainly, but it was enough for Angie to puff up her chest in victory.

"You see? I told you it's cool."

"I would prefer if it was warm instead," I stated while maintaining the flatness of my voice from before, earning me an unenthusiastic 'Oh snap.' from Judy on the side. I pointedly ignored her and continued with, "Do you even need to transform?"

"If you want me to show all of my abilities, then duh," Angie answered me, her words further emphasized by a roll of her eyes.

"Okay, so you have to put on your Celestial clothes... Can you at least put a jacket on top?"

"Nuh-hu," the celestial girl shook her head defiantly at my proposed middle ground. "It would get torn off."

"It would?" I asked back for clarification, and it was the class rep who promptly provided it.

"Yes," she confirmed, emphasized by a slight nod. "When the winged ones unseal their suppressed powers, the excess mana forms a defensive layer over their skin. It tends to vaporize any mundane clothing."

"Then where do the new clothes come from?" Judy interjected, somehow typing on her phone with her left hand while still enacting some kind of miniature monster battle with the owl in her other hand. I was tempted to ask her what she was doing, but I had a feeling she would respond with a deadpan non-answer, like 'I'm multitasking.', so instead I wisely stayed silent and waited for the class rep's answer.

"They are part of their transformation," Ammy stated offhandedly. "I don't know the details though, as our outfits work differently. I am directly transmuting my own clothes with a spell."

"Um... I have a question?" Josh interjected with a raised hand. "I don't remember my clothes 'vaporizing' at any point last Sunday."

"To be fair, you weren't wearing much to begin with," I mumbled, but then I exhaled hard and continued, "Still, the question is valid. Does that mean that the whole exploding thing doesn't happen to draconians?"

"That's correct," the class rep confirmed it with another nod. "Draconians reinforce their bodies internally with the excess mana instead of creating a defensive barrier. They still have their scales though, and those are usually more than enough to protect them."

"I see. So instead of magical clothes, you get a power boost," I addressed the princess, only to immediately fall silent, my brows knitting themselves into a frown all on their own.

"Rawr!" Elly let out an admittedly pretty cute growl while pushing her plushie forward, only to stop with a confused expression. After a while she finally noticed that she was in the center of attention, whereupon her face reddened in the blink of an eye. I half-expected her to freeze up, or at the very least she would let out one of her classic strings of cutesy noises, yet instead she lightly cleared her throat and said, in an almost mechanical tone, "Excuse me, but could you repeat the question? I'm afraid I wasn't paying attention."

"... Okay, time out," I raised my hands in a T towards the rest of the group before I addressed my girlfriends again. "You know what? I bite. Could you please tell me just what you two are doing?"

Elly blinked at me with a surprised expression, then she glanced over at Judy. It seemed like they were having a small conversation with their eyes for a second, after which she turned back at me and said, in a mousy voice, "We are playing with our plushies?"

"Yes, I can see that," I answered with a groan. "But why?"

"B-Because plushies are girly, right? So playing with them is girly too, right?"

I slowly narrowed my eyes at her answer, and finally asked, "Is this another of those femininity-point nonsense things you two were going on about last time?"

"That is correct," Judy answered in Elly's stead.

"But then why are you acting like your plushies are battling?" I asked my next, incrementally more exasperated question.

"It's a re-enactment of the finale of the famous sixteenth King of Monsters movie, aka, the best one," Judy told me like it was something self-evident.

I gave my dear assistant a skeptical look, then shook my head and said, "Okay, for the sake of my sanity, let's ignore what it is, and let's focus on why you are re-enacting it with your plushies."

"For femininity points!" Elly suddenly declared, only to shrink back when I glanced back at her, at which point she hastily added, "I-I mean... I didn't get it either at first, but Judy seemed really confident about it, and she said that if we kept it up then you would get curious, and then it would be funny, though to be honest, it's actually pretty fun anyway, though I still don't understand what it has to do with femininity or points, but… Do… Do I make sense?"

I let the silence after her explanation linger for a few seconds on purpose, then I let out a dramatic sigh before facing Judy again and telling her, "Dormouse, I can't help but feel that you are a bad influence on the princess."

"That's just your opinion, Chief," she answered with an implied stuck out tongue before she returned to their little re-enactment, now all but confirmed to be just an elaborate ploy to annoy me. Maybe she still wasn't entirely over my encounter with the crazy huntress from earlier?

At any rate, I decided to once again completely ignore them for the time being and so I returned to the previous conversation.

"So, my occasionally weird girlfriends aside, where were we?"

"We were discussing a change of clothes, magical transformations, and things being vaporized," Josh reminded me with his face set in an odd mixture of empathy a schadenfreude.

"Right, that," I uttered with a knowing nod before facing the class rep and asking, "So, different folks do the transformation differently, right? Celestials and Abyssals explode their clothes and replace it with their fancy battle garbs or whatever, Draconians only transform their body, while you only transform your clothes. What about the knights?"

"As I said, I don't know the details, but I think they actually have to manually put on their enchanted armors and charms," Ammy answered without reservations.

"Good to know. That means they should be easy to recognize ahead of time," I mused for a moment before snapping out of it and saying, "All right then. Everyone, still grab your change of clothes, just to be on the safe side, and follow me."

"Where?" the class rep questioned with a curious glint in her eyes, but I dismissed her with a wave.

"We are not going far, just to my magical closet," I told her while trying to keep my smile in check.

"Your magical what?" Josh exclaimed just a split-second faster than Angie. In fact, everyone seemed to be equally surprised, save for Judy and Snowy, who were already in on the plan.

"Closet," I repeated while gesturing for them to follow.

Now, that likely requires some explanation. Judy and I spent a considerable amount of time yesterday debating how we should facilitate moving to and from our shiny new secret base without outright disclosing its location. I mean, if we did that, it wouldn't have been a secret base anymore, now would it? 

Jokes aside, the real issue was that, while we created a few false entries on the Hub discussing how the Magi have discovered a number of celestial safe-houses, with the abandoned shelter being just one of them, it still didn't mean that our base was completely off their radar. As such, I really didn't want to have any visible signs of use that could betray our presence. 

That meant just hitching a ride on the bus to the mountainside was out of the question, which left us with utilizing my teleportation ability to ferry people as the most obvious solution. Unfortunately said ability was also supposed to be a secret, leading to a long series of back and forth between the two of us resulting in the final compromise.

As Sun Tzu once said, in order to deceive your enemies, first you have to deceive your friends. Or at least I think Sun Tzu said that. It's kind of vague, and I don't think it's from the Art of War, but… whatever! The point is that I was just about to deceive my friends. For their own good. And mine. But mostly theirs. 

Anyhow, while I was pondering on the widespread misappropriation of various famous quotes, I reached the small closet under the stairs, and I waited for the rest of the gang to catch up to me before I put my hand on the doorknob and told them in a low, conspiratorial voice, "Listen up guys, what I am going to show you now is a huge secret. I expect everyone to keep it."

I waited until everyone, including my fellow accomplices, gave me a nod or some other kind of confirmation, then after a satisfied grunt I threw the door open, revealing… a fairly mundane coat closet, about one meter by two meters in dimensions and just high enough for me to enter without having to bend forward. At the moment it had no clothes on any kind of lighting inside, the latter of which due to the fact that I removed the light-bulb beforehand so that everyone could clearly see the softly glowing circle of sigils on the floor. 

The last bit was all thanks to the hard work of Snowy. I asked her to make them visible for everyone, and although it was just a series of meaningless magical marks that didn't actually have any effect, I hoped they would look sufficiently authentic at first glance to convince, say, a grumpy mage girl that it was a genuine magic circle.

"That's not an authentic magic circle," Ammy declared the moment she laid her eyes on the insides of my closet.

"Like hell it isn't," I countered indignantly without much thinking.

"Half of it doesn't mean anything, and the other half is about water-purification, scaring off wild animals, and that sigil looks like a distorted…" she began her critique, but I quickly cut her off.

"Hey, class rep? Would it actually kill you to listen to my explanation first?" I asked her with a slight strain in my voice.

Ammy gave me a skeptical look, but in the end she shrugged, as if to say, 'Be my guest.'

I let out a small breath and then pointed towards my closet again.

"So, as I was about to say before I got interrupted, this is my magical closet," I recited my pre-planned explanation. "It cost me an arm and a leg and quite a few favors to set up, but it was a necessary investment."

I paused here on purpose, as this was the point where Judy was supposed to ask me about what the circle did, but instead it was Josh who voiced his question first by saying, "Hey, is this one of those teleport circles we talked about when meeting Ammy's grandfather?"

"Bingo!" I exclaimed and gave my friend a grateful thumb up.

"This? A teleport circle?" Ammy muttered while glancing between me and the glowing symbols on the floor. 

"Yep," I confirmed with what I hoped was a confident smile.

"You are joking," she stated quite categorically. "That's not how a teleport circle looks like."

"Well, probably because this is kind of a special one," I replied with a coy smile as I stepped into my closet. "You see, this circle allows a maximum of two people to move between this place and our secret base."

"Wait a moment!" Josh suddenly cut in with a surprisingly enthusiastic voice. "You have a secret base? Really?"

"Yup," I told him, this time with one hundred percent honesty. "It's a super-secret hideout I just recently obtained."

"A hideout? Like the ones in those spy movies?" Angie elbowed her way to the front to ask her questions. "With henchmen? And traps? And torture rooms?"

"Yes, yes, kinda, no, and hell no," I answered her in order. "Why would we even need a torture room? We are not the bad guys!"

"Oh, right," Angie whispered like she just realized that, but before she could say anything more, Ammy once again wedged herself into the conversation.

"So you want to tell me that this garbled circle, unconnected to any ley line, is actually a long-range teleportation conduit?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I am telling you, miss arbitrary skeptic," I shot back at her.

"I don't believe you," she said outright, making the atmosphere a little tense for a moment.

"Okay, then I will prove it," I told her while inviting her in. "Unfortunately the circle is keyed to me, so you have to hitch a ride with me."

"Fine with me," Ammy huffed and stepped inside as well. "So?"

"Just a moment," I responded while sending a sneaky wink at the rest of the group, then closed the door on us.

"… Why did you close the door?" the class rep asked, apparently quite startled by my sudden action.

"I told you, it's special," I answered with a grin, probably barely visible in the dim chamber. "It has a few inconvenient rules. First, it can only transport at most two people at a time. Secondly, it's keyed to me, so only I can use it. Thirdly, it also only works with the door closed. Finally, you should step a little closer."

"… Why?" She sounded quite suspicious, but I only shrugged at her, which she most likely also couldn't see in the dark.

"Because you need to be closer for the circle to register you." Saying so, I extended a hand towards her shoulder and pulled her towards me, eliciting a tiny, surprised 'Eep!' from her. I naturally ignored her protests and quietly wrapped my phantom limb around her waist in preparation. Speaking of which, just when did things like wrapping phantom limbs around people become so normal for me? Was I getting weird? I let out a silent, self-derisive snort at the thought and decided to worry about it later.

"Okay, this should work. Close your eyes for a second," I instructed my passenger, and while at first she gave me such an intense glare I could feel it even in the dark, she still followed my directions faithfully, though not silently.

"I swear to god Leo, if this is just some kind of prank, I am going to charge you for harassment and…" she began to grumble, but before she could gather any steam, I already let her go with my extra limb.

"All right Amelia, we arrived!" I raised my voice high, cutting her tirade short and making her eyes pop right open in surprise. She quickly glanced around and tried to step back, but I still held onto her shoulder for the time being.

We were still in a small, dark compartment, though this one was slightly larger than my closet at home. To be perfectly honest though, this was also a closet. A utility one, to be precise. I had the Fauns empty it out and then Snowy set up the same faux magic circle in it as she did back at my place. Speaking of the Fauns…

"I will now open the door! Don't worry! There should be no one on the other side!" I exclaimed again, but I still held onto Ammy's shoulder and waited until I could hear the sound of a series of heavy footsteps followed by scraping metal noises coming from the other side. Only then did I let out a small breath and unhanded the increasingly baffled class rep.

I wordlessly pushed the heavy steel door open, revealing a large, fairly bare concrete room on the other side. It used to be one of the smaller side-rooms of the shelter, and based on the remaining furniture, it was most likely supposed to be a recreational or communal room. Not that anyone could tell that at this point, as I had the Faun, led by my enthusiastic little sister, completely empty it and it clean it up as well. I am not going to lie; considering that they were literally designed to be terrifying, muscle-bound warriors and shock-troopers, I was shocked by how well they were doing as housekeepers. 

None of them were around at this point though, as having them wait just outside the 'teleport room' was just a bloody incident in the waiting so, for the time being, I told them to remain in the central hall.

"Wow…" In the meantime, Ammy drew my attention back to her by sounding strangely amazed by the empty space. "Did we really teleport?"

"What does it look like?" I responded with a provocative smirk, but she didn't seem to mind, or possibly notice.

"That's amazing… I didn't feel any disturbance in the ambient mana. I didn't even notice when you activated the circle…" Suddenly she looked at me with a strangely fervent look in her eyes and took a heavy step forward, making me almost flinch in reflex. "Hey, Leo? Did we really use that circle? Did we?"

"Y-Yes," I answered her a little less decisively than I wanted, still a smidgen off-balance by her sudden spike of passion. 

"Really? Can… Can I study it?" she requested, suddenly turning bashful in a second. "Please?"

"Um… no?" I told her, once again a little less decisively than I originally planned. Since I figured that wasn't enough to convince her, I proceeded to give her some of my pre-written excuses. "I mean, I told you it's a special one, right? It wasn't exactly cheap, and I have no way of replacing it."

"I'll be careful," she insisted. "I won't break it; I only want to look at it. And maybe take a few mana samples…. and an imprint. No, two imprints!"

"I said no, and that's final," I stood my ground, not at all bothered or wary of her torrent of uncomfortably zealous gazes. "For now, stay inside this room until I get the others. Don't go outside yet."

"Can I look at the circle while you are gone?"

"No!" I exclaimed in exasperation, then I toned things back a little and spelled out, "I mean, I need the door to be closed, so no."

"Aw," she sighed, sounding genuinely dejected. Honestly, the longer I knew her, the less of a grasp I had on the class rep's character. Was she a shrinking violet? A strict honor student? An overburdened secretary? An easily excitable researcher type? None of these? All of the above? 

Either way, I once again told her to stay put as I all but escaped into the 'teleport room' and promptly returned to my closet. I let out a relieved sigh and opened the door, at which point the whole gang (or at least the ones not in on the scheme) let out a collective gasp. Were they holding their breaths until now?

"Wow! Ammy's really gone!" Angie exclaimed while sticking her head into the closet, then she faced me with a grin that revealed even her molars. "Awesome! I'm next!" 

"Sorry, but nope," I told you with a fake grin mirroring hers before gesturing for Snowy to step up. "You were supposed to be first, so let's get moving."

I wasn't lying. Originally Snowy was supposed to serve as a 'gatekeeper' of sorts, so that she would be on hand on the other side to mediate between the Faun and the gang in case something unexpected happened, but the class rep's challenge threw a minor monkey wrench into the works. 

Snowy squeezed between the others to get into the closet, accompanied by a disappointed 'Muu…' from Angie. After moving her over without any incident, I ferried the rest as well one by one, starting with the eager Celestial and concluding with Judy. As I came back from the last return trip, I found my assistant standing in front of the door with a conflicted expression.

"Chief?"

"Yes, Dormouse?" 

"I was curious," she began as she glanced around. "If we both move over, how are we going to come back?"

I couldn't help but let out a deep and not at all ominous laugh I prepared well in advance.

"I am so glad you asked!" I told her with a grin and gestured for her to follow after me, which she did, though for some reason a bit reluctantly. Anyhow, I led her to the back door of the kitchen, which incidentally opened to the garage, and I knocked on it three times.

There was a short but meaningful pause, and then, just as my assistant was about to say something, the door suddenly opened, revealing a large, hairy shape on the other side.

"[Is it time, boss?]" Karukk, one of the friendlier members of Snowy's retinue, asked with an upbeat grin, but then he noticed Judy standing next to me, at which point he quickly added, "Oh? To you, I say evening," in our native tongue. His voice was incredibly deep, raspy, yet well-defined, and his words were accompanied by a polite nod that made her shiver for some reason.

"[Aye, the time is nigh indeed,]" I answered while gesturing for him to come into the kitchen. "[I shall entrust my domicile to your care and vigilance. You may find various forms of nourishment in the frigid box yonder, though I warn you! You shall wash your hands, and wash them well, before reaching into its bowels. You also possess my permission to peruse the various channels of the device of audiovisual telegraphy within the lounge, and to do so in any manner you may find suitable for your tastes.]"

"[Got it, boss. When are you coming back?]"

"[That, I cannot say, nor can I fathom. We shall return when our activities are finished, and no sooner.]"

"[Okay. Have fun,]" the Faun gave me a casual wave before taking a few steps to the side and hunching down in front of the fridge.

"You can't be serious," Judy complained behind me, and I only just noticed that she was hiding there the whole time.

"That's my line," I responded with a tired expression. "You still act like this is the first time you met Karukk. Or any other Faun, for that matter."

"It's because they are scary," Judy said with a huff, but then the Faun by the fridge glanced at her and she hid behind my back again.

"Come on, they are not that scary," I told her while patting her on the back to reassure her.

"Can we just get going?" she urged me with a pleading look so obvious maybe even someone else could recognize it. I couldn't help but wonder though…

"You know that there are even more Fauns at the hideout, right?"

Judy gave me a conflicted look for a moment, but then she bravely(?) declared, "Don't worry about me, I will just hide behind you again."

"You do that," I told her as I tried to grab her by the waist, but for some reason she stepped back. "What? Didn't you want to get going?"

"We are not in the magical closet," she stated while pointing towards the stairs.

"No, we aren't… but that was just part of the charade. We don't actually have to be there to teleport."

"I know," Judy huffed softly. "But Eleanor already got to hug you in a dark room, so now it's my turn."

"Are you serious?"

Instead of answering, Judy gingerly grabbed hold of my hand with just three fingers and began to pull me after her… well, 'pull' was a strong word. 'Attempting to lead' might have been a more accurate one. At any rate, I had no reason to resist, but as I followed after her, I glanced back and my eyes met with Karukk's. 

The Faun, who just happened to have an entire salami in his hands, gave me a knowing smile and softly said, "[Women, am I right?]"

At first I was quite surprised by his comment, but then I let out a small chuckle and answered, "[You most certainly are,]" before following after Judy for an unscheduled cuddling session. At least it seemed like she finally got over her grudge from before, so I decided to put on a stiff upper lip and endure her snuggling like a man. Oh, the crosses I had to bear!

Part 2

"Hey, Leo! Leo!" Angie rushed up to me with sparkling eyes the moment I opened the door of the 'teleport closet', almost pushing me back in with her childlike fervor. "We are really underground, right? Right?"

"Um… Yes?" I answered after a moment of understandable hesitation.

"See, I told you!" the hyperactive Celestial girl flashed a victorious grin as she turned to the only other guy in the room. "It's a secret underground base! It's so cool!"

"I already told you that," Snowy quietly sulked on the side after apparently being ignored by the childhood friend duo, and I found it my big brotherly duty to pat her on the head to reassure her… except a certain deadpan girl was just a step quicker than me. Judy ducked under my arm as she exited the closet, then she began to woodenly tussle the Abyssal girl's hair with an equally flat 'Don't worry about it.'

I didn't have time to be bothered by her stealing my thunder though, as the moment I stepped forward, I was startled by a certain class representative abruptly popping out of my blind spot, and she immediately requested, "Can I look at the circle now?"

"No!" I denied her on the spot after the first fright. It had been a while since she caught me off-guard like that, so it took me a moment to collect myself, but then I told her, "We have more important things to do."

"But… this could revolutionize transportation theory! If I could figure out how it works, I could even get a research grant from the Assembly!" Ammy pressed on as she pleaded with upturned eyes and her hands in fists in front of her chest. "Come on Leo! Just a tiny-little look! I will only take four… no, wait, seven! Seven samples! You already promised you would help me with my psychic research!"

"I don't remember ever doing that," I answered her after just the briefest of baffled pauses.

"Actually, you are right. You never helped me, so now's the perfect time to make up for it! Just nine samples, it's all I ask!"

"No, I meant I don't remember making a promise!"

"The number of samples also went up," Judy casually added on the side while still petting my new sister. 

"Judy, please don't interrupt the negotiations," Ammy suddenly lapsed back into her strict authority persona, only to turn back at me and continued in a pleading, "Please, Leo! If I get a research grant, I can finally have my own workshop! Then I will no longer have to do grandfather's paperwork! Speaking of which, you owe me this much for all the paperwork you caused!"

"I thought we were over this already," I groaned and took a step away from the class rep, but she followed right after me.

"Come on! Just ten samples!"

"The number of samples rose again," Judy helpfully informed me while not even trying to help me. So typical.

"I said no, and that's final," I told the class rep on no uncertain terms. "I told you already, but I cannot replace this circle, so if it's broken, we are screwed. No tinkering with it. Are we clear?"

If glares had weight, I would have been flat as a pancake under the one Amelia was sending my way, but after a fairly short stalemate she finally relented with a dispirited, "Yes, we are clear."

I had a feeling that she would hold a grudge, so I was just about to give her an olive branch. Unfortunately, my efforts for upholding something even remotely resembling a coherent conversation were once again torpedoed, this time by the princess all but pushing Ammy to the side just to stand in front of me and declare, "Leo, this place smells weird!"

I gave my draconian girlfriend a wry look (which was, I would like to stress, fairly low-key considering the circumstances), and after taking a huge breath I courteously asked her, "Would you please elaborate?"

Elly scrunched up her nose as she took a few overt sniffs, then she stated, "This whole place smells like Abyssals."

"Well, that's not surprising at all," I told her with an affectionate voice, as she just happened accidentally hand me the cue required to move things forward. "You see, this place originally belonged to Crowey," I revealed our cover-story with the just the right amount of nonchalance to make it sound legitimate.

"It did?" Elly and Ammy leveled the same question at me almost simultaneously. 

"It's true. Right, Snowy?" I threw the ball into the court of the Abyssal girl, and while her acting was quite wooden (to put it very mildly), she followed her script to the letter. Maybe even too closely…

"Y-Yes. This abandoned u-underground facility was m-most certain a hidden hideout that my other older brother, who is not Leonard Dunning, ap-appro…" she paused here for a moment, then she suddenly exclaimed, "Appropriated! That's the word!"

I gave my relieved sister an appreciative nod, then smoothly continued my explanation to the rest of the gang… although, technically it was only Ammy and Elly, as Judy and Snowy were already in on the gig, while Josh and Angie were too busy wondering at a pile of old tables in the corner to pay attention to us. Those two were weird. 

Anyways, I began to confidently recite my own script, saying, "So, as she said, since Crowey is out of town, and we are not exactly on good terms anyway, I decided I might as well take this place and make it our little secret base where we can plan, train and just generally hang out without any prying eyes hovering over our heads."

That last comment was mainly aimed at the class rep, but instead of responding to me, she faced Snowy and said, "Was this where you were hiding?"

"I… um…" Snowy stammered for a moment when faced with the unexpected question and sent a helpless glance at me. I lightly shook my head as a signal, so she answered in kind. "No, I wasn't."

"And since when did you have this secret base on our island? Was house Inanna preparing to establish a foothold here? What was your plan?" came the next series of increasingly incriminating questions from Ammy, not even bothering to respond to the first answer.

"I… I don't know," Snowy muttered with round eyes, just about to cave under the pressure. I figured it was about time I intervened, so I quickly inserted myself between the two of them without further ado.

"Easy there, class rep," I reproached her while gesturing 'tone it back' with my hands. "You already know about Snowy's situation, so you can't expect her to be privy to Crowey's plans."

"She was still her sister," Ammy countered, making me shake my head at her defiance.

"Yes, and now she is mine, so I would appreciate if you stopped bullying her."

"I'm not bullying her; I'm asking perfectly legitimate and reasonable questions!" Amelia protested as she, for the first time in a while, reached her hand up to her face and tweaked her glasses in a strangely ominous fashion.

"Here, here," I turned my back on her as I reached for my visibly confused adopted sister's head and gently rubbed its crown with my warmest smile on my face. "Don't worry about the mean class rep. Your big bro won't let her bully you."

"I'm not bullying her!" 

"You better not," I told her with a stern voice hiding my satisfaction. Another day, another uncomfortable topic derailed. Anyhow, after confirming that I still had my touch, I cleared my throat and raised the hand previously on Snowy's head over my own to get everyone's attention. "Listen, guys! At this rate we will be stuck in this room till the cows come home, so how about we leave the legitimate and reasonable questions for later and focus on why we came here for once?"

"That reminds me, why did we come here again?" Josh inquired as he returned with Angie, who somehow already managed to get a giant smudge of dust on her face. 

Judy also noticed it and was already taking care of the spot, so I decided to only focus on Joshua, thus I told him, "I think I already mentioned this, but just to be clear: we are here to experiment with our abilities and train for the possible dangers we might face in the near future."

"Train?" Elly, who was in something of a strange stupor while I was talking with Elly, suddenly perked up at the mere mention of the word. "Are we going to work out?"

"Not really," I told her, at the risk of disappointing her. "My plan was to dedicate the rest of this day discussing our abilities, testing any synergies, experimenting with Josh's transformations, and if we had the time, we would then do some light sparring to put things into practice."

"You want to spar here?" Elly looked around, and I could tell by her expression that she wasn't exactly satisfied with what she was seeing. "We don't have enough space."

Actually, the cleaned-up communal room we were standing in easily had an area of fifty square meters, minus the space that was taken up by the furniture in the corner. For normal people, that was probably more than enough for 'exercising', but considering how high-spec the gaggle of supernatural scions I had surrounding me, the chamber did feel a little stifling.

"Well, it's a good thing we aren't going to be training here then!" I responded with a flippant voice and a toothy grin, and for some reason Elly's eyes opened wide for a moment and then she averted them with a blush. I had no idea what I did to make her embarrassed like that, but I decided not to dwell on the mysteries of her mind for long, and instead I raised my voice again to address everyone at once, "Listen up! We are now going to move on to the main hall. I want to remind everyone that this place used to belong to Crowey. Everyone got that?" I waited for them to voice or gesture their confirmation before I continued with, "Okay then. I just want to warn you that the place came with staff, so don't get too surprised when we go over, okay?"

"Staff? What kind of staff?" Ammy latched onto the word, but for the time being I only waved for her to follow me.

"It will be quicker to show you," I responded with a fairly clichéd (yet accurate) line and gestured for everyone to follow after me. I led the group to the steel blast door separating the two areas, and after some fiddling (I had Brang and company oil the hinges, but they were still a little rusty) we found ourselves face to face with a row of Fauns.

Now, to be perfectly clear, I did not actually tell them to form an orderly line in front of the door, and while I did find their display imposing, at the moment it was pretty much the worst impression they could have picked to convey, as the surprised gasps behind my back testified. In the end, I couldn't help but let out an involuntary groan.

"[General,]" I addressed the big bloke in the middle, and he immediately responded with a toothy grin that made the guys behind me audibly inhale once again. I held back another groan and instead told him, "[Your display is impeccable, yet entirely unwarranted.]"

If his expression was any indication, Brang obviously had some kind of fitting answer on the tip of his tongue, but before he could grace us (or, considering only I seemed to be fluent in Faunish here, just me) with its brilliance, we were once again interrupted by the class rep dryly asking, "Aren't these the Faun from last Sunday? Didn't they go back to the Abyss?"

"… Why do you have to be so damn observant today?" I glanced over my shoulder in exasperation, only for Ammy to once again adjust her glasses and reply with a question of her own.

"I don't know. Why do you have to be so uncooperative today?"

My instincts told me to say 'Touché', but that would have been as good as admitting defeat, so at the end of the day we just stared daggers at each other for a few seconds. It didn't serve any purpose though, as I couldn't come up with any snappy retorts on the moment's notice, so I ultimately just clicked my tongue and told her, "Yes, they are one and the same, but no, they are obviously not in the Abyss. You can think of them as Snowy's retinue."

"Are you sure they are not spies," the Magi girl questioned aloud, and to his credit, Brang's only reaction to the accusation was his left ear swiveling in a curious manner.

"They are definitely not spies," I replied by filling my voice with so much conviction I hoped it would browbeat her into compliance.

"Are they safe?" came the next question, this time from Angie, who was for some reason hiding behind Snowy of all people.

"Yes, they are," I answered her, this time a bit more naturally. "They might seem scary, but they are nice guys." Saying so, I stepped forth and began to introduce the group one by one. "This is Uncle Brang, ex-general and the current leader of this group. The others are, from left to right: Gram, Rabom, Hrul, Vurrok and Pip." I could hear Josh mutter 'Pip? Seriously?' in the back, but I ignored him and continued, "They can understand you perfectly, but for some reason they can only speak in caveman-syntax. Don't ask why, nobody knows. Still, you should be able to communicate with each other well enough. If you hit a roadblock, call for me and I will translate."

"Actually, that reminds me: since when can you speak their language?" came the next unwanted question from the class rep.

Judy must have realized I was getting quite fed up with her questions, as she stepped up to the plate and told her, "The Chief is a man of many talents. Linguistics is just one of them."

"I think I've heard that before…" Josh pondered, but before anyone else could cut in again, I promptly turned my back on them and gestured for Brang to come closer.

"[I am afraid our training excursion shall forever be akin to a fish aground so long as your kin is present. If I may be so presumptuous, might I request that you vacate the premises of this hall, if ever so temporarily?]"

The large Faun let out a slow, subdued chuckle and gave me a small bow, much to my surprise.

"[Nay. There lies no presumption in thine words. We shall follow thine command.]"

I wanted to point out that it wasn't really a command per se, but I had a feeling his insistence most likely had to do with my adoption of Snowy and consecutively wedging myself into their hierarchy. I really wasn't in the mood to clear that up at the moment, so I let it slide and instead told him, "[I require your aid shortly, so please equip yourself for battle and return to my side at your earliest convenience.]"

Instead of a proper answer, Brang and company gave me a salute, followed by another one aimed at their actual liege in the back, then they turned around and marched out of the main hall and into one of the side chambers with a striking and yet at the same time borderline comical lockstep. I waited for them to close the door behind them before I faced my friends again and clapped my hands to hype myself up, making them shudder so hard I was afraid some of them (read: the princess) might fall over. 

I waited for the echo of my clap to die down, then finally told them, "All right guys, I had it with these distractions! I want you to change into your spare clothes and then we will get started! The girls will change in that room, Josh and I will change here. Any questions?"

"Do I have to change?" Judy raised her hand, and I gave her a deadpan glance in return.

"Why would you?"

"Just checking," she answered unabashedly before grabbing hold of Snowy and pulling her back into the room where we came from. They were just about to close the door behind themselves when I remembered something, and I quickly called out after them.

"Just a reminder: don't let the class rep mess with the magic circle!"

"Understood," my assistant responded, followed by some unwarranted grouses from the Magi in question cut mercifully short by the closing of the door, leaving just me and Josh behind. I glanced at my hapless friend, and I couldn't help but let out the mother of all groans. If I was already this tired before even got started, I had to wonder just how busted I would be by the end of this day…