The Simulacrum - Chapter 106 - Part 1 (Patreon)

In the end, Ammy didn't stay for too long, and after I shared a few anecdotes about what happened at the resort (and after she made me swear I would talk to Lord Grandpa about four more times), she left without too much hassle. In retrospect, I felt a little guilty about not bringing her along in the first place. The only reason why she was left out was because I knew she already had some plans with Mike, but thanks to that stupid letter, he ended up on our doorstep anyway. But then again, it was mainly hindsight speaking, so I didn't dwell too much on it. At most, I'd just have to make sure to invite her next time, which should be… well, the obligatory beach episode was half a year away at best, and I wasn't even sure Timaeus's summers were even warm enough to swim in the ocean.

That said, it was all mostly beside the point. With how things were progressing at the moment, I doubted we'd have the chance to have another vacation any time soon, so for the time being, it was probably prudent to focus on those issues instead. However, before anything else, I had to unpack my bags. That took about half an hour, during which Snowy also came home, just as I finished and was carrying the laundry over to the washing machine.

"I'm home," my sister announced when she walked into the living room, and I greeted her from the top of the stairs. "Ah. Do you need help?"

"Nah. I'll just put these into the laundry basket, and then I'm done."

Despite my answer, she still hurried upstairs and helped me unload anyway. Snowy was a treasure, as always.

"We have some laundry too, so I'll fire up Betsy right away!" That was the name of our washing machine, and no, I still had no idea why it was called that. I was ready to leave her to it, but just as I was about to turn on my heels, she called after me. "When is Penny coming home?"

"That's… actually a good question," I said, turning back. "Why? Do you miss her already?"

I was half-joking, considering that the two of them were practically glued together for the past couple of days. We had a similar situation going on with the girls, and while I reached the point where I could comfortably say I loved them to bits, after being joined at the hips for days on end (no innuendo intended), having some 'alone time' felt like a breath of fresh air.

Still, my sister considered my words like they were completely serious, and explained, "It's not that. We agreed to try something once we came home, but then I was invited by Angie, and I don't know if she still wants to do it or not."

"You could always call her on the phone, you know?" I pointed out, and she looked at me like I was some kind of genius. More importantly, her comment reminded me of a curious little question. "But speaking of Angie, where did you two go? You left in a hurry, and didn't say anything."

"Oh, that?" Snowy responded while her hands automatically stuffed the washing machine. "Do you remember that time when she asked for advice about… um… getting closer to Josh?"

"Yes. I think I told you to tell her to be blunt about it."

She nodded and snapped the door of the machine shut before she turned to me with a beaming smile.

"It worked, so she wanted to thank me by treating me to a cake at a confectionery."

"… Figures."

I had no idea how our resident friendly neighborhood Celestial could maintain her slim figure with a sweet tooth of that size, but I figured it could be chalked up to main character privileges and didn't dwell on it.

"She… also tried to ask about other things related to… doing that, but it's private, so I don't think I should talk about it."

"It's fine," I said and reflexively rubbed her head. I wondered; was her being an Abyssal Seducer, who was getting shy whenever the topic of sex came up, considered 'gap moe'? Did I have to update her profile in my documentation again?

But speaking of which, I still had to put all our onsen-episode-related observations to electronic paper, so I cut our customary head-patting session short.

"I still have lots of stuff to take care of, so I'll be in my room for a while longer. If you need anything you can find me there." She nodded in acknowledgement, and I was just about to turn around for a second time when I remembered something else, and added, "Also, I'm going to visit the arch-mage in the evening, so when you call Penny, ask her if she needs me to teleport her back home before I leave."

"The arch-mage? Is… Is it something serious?"

"Don't worry about it; it's just a courtesy call," I told her in the company of my most reassuring Big Brotherly Smile ver. 6.2 (we went through a lot of upgrades, didn't we?) and headed back to my room, this time for real.

After closing the door behind me, I crouched behind the desk to turn on the power and then pressed the button on the front of the PC. While it booted, I put away the bags and returned all the lewding supplies to their proper place inside my nightstand. By the time I was done, I was greeted by the login screen, and in a few short seconds, I was already sitting in my swivel chair in front of my monitor and loading up the secure browser I used to access the Celestial Hub.

Before I would start working on the observation records, I figured it was best to check the current state of the Hub first. Another quick login later I was greeted by the familiar, minimalistic interface, which made the bright red exclamation marks around the PM button and the Recent Changes list look downright glaring. In a sense, that was their purpose, but if I could, I would've replaced them with something less conspicuous anyway.

Anyhow, I started with the PMs, and it didn't take long to skim through them. About half of them were asking database-related questions from the newly appointed moderators, but considering the dates, I figured they already solved them, or some of the old guards did it for them. Speaking of said old guard, I got a message from MoroseMoose, telling me to contact him once I finished moving base. It was the cover story for my absence during our vacation, and while I was sure he was only asking out of concern, I put the message away for now.

While at this point I was one hundred percent sure that the Celestial higher-ups had absolutely no idea about how I was Admin, it was best to avoid getting complacent, so to make sure nobody would link Admin's absence to the four days Leonard Dunning spent at a hot spring resort, I planned to wait a couple of days before I would reappear on the site. Incognito mode was useful for situations like this.

As for the rest of the PMs, they were mostly just some of the more prolific users congratulating me on my promotion, which meant that, despite the Hub getting locked down due to the turmoil in the Celestial hierarchy, news were still spreading the same as always. Most of these were innocent, though there were a few covert and at least one fairly shameless attempt to use the opportunity to curry favors, but in any case, since I wasn't back 'officially', I ignored all of them equally and moved on.

Now, the next thing to check out was the Recent Changes list. Thanks to the template I used to cobble the site together, it had a handy function in the database that let me mark entries as 'watched', and any time anyone edited them, I would get notified. I reserved this to just a few documents pertaining to me and the island, and considering the unexpected letter Mike gave me, I figured that my own entry getting some kind of update was a given. After all, while most of the Hub's services were restricted, it only applied to the common users, and there were quite a few privileged ones to whom the rules didn't really apply and were still able to peruse the database. What I didn't expect, however, was that my whole file was deleted.

It wasn't a sloppy job either, as scrolling through the other notifications told me that not only the file and database entry were scrubbed, but every single entry referencing me or my activities on the island was redacted as well. Hell, the entry of the Draconic Federation went as far as to replace me with 'the Oathbreakers' unknown leader'. This was all kinds of fishy, so it warranted a deeper look.

First off, while the editing history of the entries was also wiped clean, that alone told me that it had to be done by Moose, as he was the only one I gave full reign over the database. He was a by-the-books type of person, and he wouldn't have done something like this on a whim, which meant that he was most likely ordered to do so by one of the higher-ups. Since I, as Admin, was officially the 'Deputy Director of Clandestine Services', an upper-mid spot on the Celestial totem pole, there were plenty of people with the authority above mine to do that, but my hunch said the person responsible for this was most likely the proper Director of Clandestine Services, my direct superior I've never seen or heard of ever since I was surprise-promoted a while back.

Anyhow, completely removing someone from the database, especially someone as prolific as a certain Leonard S. Dunning, sure as hell wasn't standard procedure. It was troubling enough that I almost considered abandoning my plan and directly asking Moose about what happened, but I ultimately decided against it. There was a good chance he was operating on a need-to-know basis and couldn't tell me anything new anyway, and so it wasn't worth breaking my cover over.

Honestly speaking, lately the Hub became more of a hassle than it was worth, and the only thing it consistently told me about was how little I knew about the internal workings and plans of the Celestial high command. One of these days, I definitely had to take another trip into the Elysium and try to mark at least one of the shady council members I'd caught talking with Jaacobah that one time. They seemed to be both knowledgeable about what was going on, as well as sufficiently nefarious, which made them just the kind of people I had to pay attention to.

But speaking of the Celestial special agent, it's been a while since I last checked on him, so I figured I might as well hit the iron while it was hot and Far Glanced his way. To my surprise, I found him in a completely new environment, among a couple of new faces, all of them dressed in high-tech armor sets that, predictably, covered way too little skin. In practical terms, they looked similar to the ancient Greek style equipment of the guard I'd encountered the last time I ventured into the Elysium; forearm- and shin guards, a small breast place, and helmets with those plumed crests that looked like mohawks. I knew that they probably relied mostly one their magical barriers to defend themselves against damage, but the impracticality of their gear still didn't sit well with me. Case in point, one of the female agents/soldiers/officers/whatever in the back had a gap in her armor to show off her navel. What was even the point of wearing a chest plate when you do that!?

Putting my continued annoyance over the impracticality of the supernatural folks' combat outfits aside, I focused on the situation itself, and after a few minutes of observations, I had to conclude that they were doing something similar to riot-police training. Breaking down doors with magical doodads, moving together under the cover of magical smoke grenades, shooting dummies with magical guns firing magical arrows… All in all, a fairly sensible set of training exercises made infinitely weirder by their equipment only covering half their bodies, the open-faced hoplite helmets, and their long white capes routinely getting in the way of the action.

Adding two and two together, I figured they were some kind of spec-ops team, and they were preparing for an operation, but that was as far as I could gather, since they remained remarkably tight-lipped from beginning to end, only barking and responding to orders as the situation demanded.

"Well, that's another thing I need to keep an eye on in the future," I grumbled as I returned to my body.

In conclusion, the Celestials were definitely on the move, and I needed more information if I wanted to out-plan them. In other words, I absolutely needed to make that trip to the Elysium, and soon. Not today though; I already had a bunch of things to do. Such as writing those observation reports.

Another cursory glance later I minimized the browser and opened up the hidden folder with all the documents related to the Simulacrum and what we learned about it. For the next couple of hours, I put on some music, dutifully organized my own notes, combined them with the text file that Judy sent over, and by the time I finished, there was one inescapable conclusion I had to reach: while it was nice, the hot springs arc didn't achieve the effect we were hoping for.

It didn't put a proper stop to the other plot threads running in the background, and the number of onsen-related tropes we encountered wasn't especially high, nor particularly impactful. All things considered, the only major development it introduced was the finalization of Josh's and Angie's relationship, which was… Actually, wasn't that really important?

Sometimes it was easy to forget, between all the crazy stuff going on around me and all the planning I had to do to work around the nebulous Narrative's latest whims, but Josh was still the protagonist. Could it be argued that the whole point of our hot springs episode was to allow him and Angie to become a 'proper couple'? After all, in the visual novel routes Judy always used as a template when talking about her route-theory, it wasn't uncommon for the early parts of a heroine's route to have a honeymoon period, a sort of calm-before-the-storm episode for the main characters to act cute and/or have a few sexual encounters (depending on the genre) before the proverbial shit would hit the proverbial fan.

If so, were we influenced into orchestrating this arc, or was the Simulacrum simply taking advantage of our efforts? Seriously, as annoying as the Celestials' plotting was, I would've taken them on any day over trying to make heads or tails of our narrative. And no, I didn't mean the capital-N-Narrative, but just the regular, trope-regulated ebb and flow of cause-and-effect within the Simulacrum. The former was its own can of worms I still didn't really want to touch unless absolutely necessary, especially when the latter gave me enough headaches already.

In the end, I added this to my notes as well. I would have to discuss this with the girls tomorrow, I reckoned, but for the time being, I was content with just writing the idea down along with all the other observations. Such as the odd and seemingly one-sided UST between my sisters (of which I still wasn't one hundred convinced, despite Judy's insistence), the just as odd budding friendship between Naoren and Mountain Girl based entirely on centuries-old East-Asian literature (side-note: Rinne was apparently not only the head of the handicrafts club in her high-school days, but also an honorary member of the literature club, because of course she had the time to do all that while monster-hunting), and the still ongoing rivalry between Josh and Zihao.

It was getting hard to keep track of all of the relationships, even if I only considered the ones with visible evidence, as opposed to all the random ships Judy told me about, but that's why I had these notes, to begin with. All in all, I'd spent quite some time jotting down everything, and it was past four in the afternoon by the time I more-or-less finished everything up. Penny still wasn't home yet, and Snowy didn't call me over either, so I figured I didn't need to Phase her home. It felt a little early, but the sky outside was already getting darker. Despite the days steadily getting longer, we were still in the middle of January, so the sun set fairly early, and after some pondering, I decided I might as well head over to talk with Lord Grandpa while there was still light outside.

First things first though, I had to make a few preparations. Step one: grab something to eat. While we had a big breakfast before leaving the resort, it's been nearly half a day since then, so I was getting a bit peckish. Thankfully, the invisible ninja maids kept our fridge stocked with fresh produce, whether we were around or not, so after a quick look around the kitchen, I settled on making a few grilled cheese sandwiches.

It wasn't exactly the most luxurious of meals, but while I didn't want to brag or anything, I was a bit of an expert when it came to making them, and in a few short minutes, the first pair was already sizzling on the stove.

"Snowy? Do you want grilled cheese?" I called upstairs, out of courtesy.

"Thank you, but I'm fine," my sister's muffled voice answered from behind her closed door. "I ate too much at the confectionery."

"Your call."

Saying so, I turned the sandwiches over in the pan, and then packed the rest I prepared, just in case, into aluminium foil and stocked them aside in the fridge. In the meantime, my snacks were ready, and while I cleaned up after myself, they cooled enough for me to wolf them down. That took care of my metabolism for the time being, so the next step was to clean up a bit and change my clothes.

As much as I initially loathed the whole 'Blackcloak' moniker, by this point I resolved myself to just embrace it and use it to my own advantage, so after putting on a slightly more businesslike pair of trousers and a sweater-and-shirt combination, I draped one of my many woolen black long coats. Since I had no plans to stay outside in the cold, this one wasn't particularly thick and only reached down above my knees, but I figured it would still complete my trademark appearance. The girls told me the look suited me, but personally, I liked the tailcoat I wore as Bel better.

But putting my fashion gripes aside, I needed one more thing before I headed out, and after crouching down by the nigh-stand, I retrieved Cal from under the bed. It might not have been the best practice to keep my enormously important kingmaker magic sword there, but I kind of got used to it during the past couple of days, and I just automatically tossed them under there.

"{Are we returning to the stronghold, young knight?}"

I presumed they meant the not-so-secret-anymore base, but I shook my head.

"No, not yet. I'm going to visit the local arch-mage first, and I need your support."

"{Are you about to attack him? Should you not bring along your equipment then, young knight? Masters of the arcane arts of the Magi are not to be trifled with! In fact, I recommend you reconsider your course of action and—}"

"I'm not planning to attack him, that's not why I need you," I cut them off before they could work themselves up even more. "As for my equipment…"

That actually made me pause for a moment. I obviously wasn't going to wear my armor, because that was just asking for a misunderstanding, but I did have an alternative. While I focused all my efforts on the Knights' Uniformers in preparation of their big reveal during the tournament-interruption, it didn't mean I forgot about making one for myself. After all, I was technically a Knight as well, with my own Oath-receptacles, so there was nothing stopping me from wearing and using one myself. Of course, it was just a prototype, because I was still waiting for Gowan to finish preparing the base plate I asked for in order to make my very own custom Uniformer, but it was technically functional…

…

But to get it, I would've had to Phase to base, and then fix up the enchantment arrays I left half-finished the last time I worked on it, and then while I was there I was guaranteed to get held up by Brang showing off one of the knives he made, or someone in the research division would ask for help with one of their project, and it would all turn into a big hassle, so…

"Nah, there's no need for that. It's not like Lord Grandpa would attack me or anything."

"… Young knight. I believe this is what Lady Judy often refers to as 'jinxing it'."

"Oh, hush, you," I chided the naggy sword in my hands and then turned to the nearby wall and raised my voice. "Snowy? I'm leaving for a while. Take care of the house until I'm back."

"Okay! Stay safe!" my sister answered from the other side, and after hefting Cal over my shoulder, I promptly disappeared from the room.