Chapter 189

The Simulacrum

"It's a Grand Rampart."

The Matron's indifferent tone raised a few brows among our group, currently clustered around the end of the passenger car.

"A Rampart? Of that size?"

The Ninhursag patriarch sounded a fair bit more incredulous in turn as he stared at the steadily nearing, shimmering dome in the distance.

The elderly woman let out a soft huff, then asked, "Is it truly so surprising?" When the big man didn't answer, she made a vague gesture towards the window and added, "We also have one of our own. Don't you, Lord Ninhursag?"

Before he could get a word in, Snowy blurted out a bewildered, "We do?"

The Matron directed an incredulous glance at her, but then her demeanour quickly thawed, and she put a hand on my sister's shoulder.

"Once this is over, we'll have to sit down with some sweets and refreshments and have a long talk about the various matters Noir may have kept from you."

It was at this point that Josh ran out of patience, and he loudly tapped his foot.

The old woman only glared at him, so it fell on the other Abyssal aristocrat present to provide an answer.

"A Rampart is a type of sustained Ward," he explained with yet another sweeping motion towards the dome in the distance. "One of this size is most likely fueled by the Mana Well of House Shamash."

Snowy chimed in at this point to further explain, "It's… um… It's like the Repelling Wards I set up back home, but much, much stronger."

Hearing the comparison, Judy immediately asked, "Does that mean only certain people can pass through it?"

"I… I don't know," Snowy admitted and turned to the Matron, punting the ball of the discussion into her court.

She uttered a flat, "Unlikely," followed by a slightly more contemplative, "Our Grand Rampart denies both entrance and exit while it's active."

"So the center of town is fully isolated from the outside…" Josh mused. "Where is Lili's brother?"

Angie gave his boyfriend a sideways look and pointed at the dome.

"There. Duh?"

"No, I mean, inside or outside?"

Judy let out a soft hum and whispered, "That's actually a good question," before turning to me. "Chief?"

"Inside," I answered without much thinking. "The class rep, too."

Now it was the Matron's turn to send a sideways look, this time at me, followed by an incredulous, "How would you…?" Her words trailed off into silence, and she apparently thought better of it, because she shook her head and uttered a flat, "Never mind."

"Okay, so that might be a problem," Josh pondered, his eyes glued to the scene outside. "There's a lot of fighting going on."

The patriarch on his left twisted the tip of his waxed beard, maybe as some kind of nervous tic.

"Most likely the men of the Herald battling the forces of the Noble Alliance caught on the outside of the Rampart."

"What are the chances of us getting attacked on the way there?" Judy asked the next pivotal question, prompting my knightly sister to let out an ambivalent noise.

"Erm… This is a train. It's not very sneaky."

She said, after they just tried to sneak into Eanna using the same train. But never mind.

"Meaning we should expect resistance," my dear assistant concluded and took out her little notepad. "Any ideas?"

A few eyes turned my way, but I tried my best to stay out of this unless it was absolutely necessary. This was Josh's show now, and I wanted to give him the chance to shine. I went as far as to meaningfully gaze at him, and he soon got the message, because he cleared his throat and proposed.

"It's safe to assume we're gonna have to pass through the big glowy cupola thing to rescue Ammy and take down Lili's brother. What are our options?"

"Can we ram it with the train?" Angie proposed off the cuff, much to the Ninhursag patriarch's chagrin.

"No. Absolutely not."

"But isn't the train engine warded?" Penny chimed in, her eyes practically shining. "It's practically screaming 'use me as a battering ram'!"

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," my princess interjected, acting as the voice of reason. "What if it doesn't work and the train gets damaged, or derails? People could get hurt."

"But…" Seeing that the others were agreeing with Elly, my sister turned to me for support, but when I also shook my head, her shoulders drooped and she muttered something along the lines of, "Dad would approve."

I still found it hard to believe, but Sir Arnwald was probably a bad influence on her, at least in this regard. Once this was over, I should probably sit down with him and discuss his penchant for 'dynamic entrances', but that was neither here nor there.

Meanwhile, Angie gave control to Deus, and she pointed at Elly.

"I have come up with an idea. Lover of Polemos!"

My princess blinked, then blurted out a dopey, "Ah, yeah! That's me!"

Deus ignored that and changed the way she was pointing at her.

"You are capable of using the True Fire of dragonkind, right?"

Elly hesitated for a second, but ultimately nodded.

"Yes, but—"

"Then the solution is clear!" Deus declared while folding her arms and flashing a smug grin. "This is what we'll do: we disembark from this vehicle, fly to the perimeter of the great barrier, use your Dragon Fire to pierce a hole in it, and then we'll send a team of elites through to disable the barrier from the inside. Then, as soon as it's done, we'll bring the brunt of our forces to bear and hit them while they're still confounded!"

"For that, we would need to split the party at least two ways," Josh mused with a hand on his chin. "No, three. We would also need some kind of distraction. Elly's breath attack is really bright, so it's bound to draw attention."

"Good thinking, Boy!" Deus flashed a toothy grin and gave him a thumbs-up.

It was at this point that my Abyssal sister poured cold water on their enthusiasm by asking, "Um… but, how do we turn it off from the inside? Isn't it… using the Mana Well for its power source?"

"An accurate assessment," came the next interjection from the Matron. "While a surgical strike is indeed a very… Celestial solution, unless you have a clear idea of how to approach the source of the Grand Rampart, it's not a viable strategy?"

"Oh, really?" Deus scoffed back and glared at the old woman. "Then do you have a better idea?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," the Matron stated blandly, looking none too amused by the (from her perspective) young Celestial's tone. "As bottomless a source of energy as a Mana Well can be, only so much power may be drawn from it at once. Strategic defensive constructs typically rely on a distributed reservoir of power meant to activate and maintain them for a set duration." She pointed at the steadily approaching dome in the distance. "A Grand Rampant of this size would necessarily consume a tremendous amount of Mana and resources and couldn't be maintained for long. I propose that we simply wait until it runs dry of its reserves, and in the meantime, focus on suppressing the fighting in the city and securing the outer perimeter."

The Ninhursag patriarch backed her up at once with a laconic, "Sounds sensible," and even the nondescript yet stubbornly present military liaison placeholder officer nodded along in approval.

In contrast, Josh furrowed his brows and stood his ground with a defiant, "No way!"

"Do you have an objection to my plan, young man?" the Matron inquired in a polite yet somehow still intimidating tone, but he didn't back down.

"Yes, I do. If Lili's brother…"

"Noir," she corrected him, but Josh didn't seem to care.

"Whatever! My point is, we can't let him take over the castle! Who knows what he's gonna do once he gets his hands on the Mana Well in there!"

"I sincerely doubt that it's going to be the end of the world."

Hearing her say that, my girlfriends shuddered and unison and shared a glance that said 'That was a jinx, right?', followed by another saying, 'See, I told you so.'

Putting their non-verbal communication aside, I was getting a bit impatient. I didn't expect that the discussion would turn into an outright argument, let alone a stalemate like this, so while I waited for them to come to an agreement, I leaned against the cabin wall and closed my eyes.

A moment later, my point of view was inside the red dome of the Grand Rampart, as the two Abyssals here called it. On the outside, I could see streaks of light and small explosions, both on the ground and in the air, a testament to the intensity of the battle raging in town, but much more importantly…

"Ugh…"

There were two winged combatants floating over the courtyard of Castle Shamash, high up in the air. One of them was unmistakably Crowy, with his distinct purple light-show surrounding him, while on the side, Fidèle Shamash was… holding the stump of her right arm. Wait, what?

"Hah!"

No, wait. False alarm. She let out a pained grunt, and then red mist exploded from her wound, rapidly forming into a limb, and when it dissipated, there was a brand-new arm there, with only the bloodied and torn sleeve showing that she suffered an injury.

"You will need more than that to defeat me, Herald of the False Emperor!" she bellowed, her voice carrying over the battlefield below, but it only made Crowy chuckle sinisterly, like a Saturday morning cartoon villain.

"You say that, Lady Shamash, but I can feel your power waning," he told her, and… Oh. Was he…? "Soon, the sun will rise, and your doom will be sealed."

Holy crap. The bastard was literally holding her severed arm and waving it around like a teacher brandishing one of those pointing sticks in the classroom. He jerked the limp appendage towards the dawning horizon, practically basking in the Shamash matriarch's hateful glare, before casually tossing it aside and conjuring a series of familiar, inky-black spears out of thin air.

"Let's see how much longer you can hold your ground!"

He pointed a palm at her, which caused the projectiles to shift in the air and take aim at her. Fidèle didn't falter and summoned her oversized scythe, then flew directly at Crowy with a high-pitched but by no means undaunting battle cry.

It was at this point that I cut my Far Glance short and stood straight again.

I whispered a soft, "Dammit," under my breath, and despite it being quiet as the sigh of a mouse, everyone overheard it anyway.

"Is there a problem, Lord Polemos-Dunning?" the portly patriarch asked, his voice audibly apprehensive and his eyes just a tad fretful, as if he was afraid to make me displeased. That was… sensible, actually, but misguided.

"As a matter of fact, there is," I confirmed and took a deep breath.

Fidèle was barely holding her own, and I had no idea for how much longer. That was a problem, because I actually liked her. Not in the way Judy would declare an anti-harem countermeasure emergency, of course. She was simply one of the very, very few genuinely reasonable people I knew, and so I didn't want to see her get beaten up like this. Or worse, which was unfortunately in the cards.

Of course, if I could just Phase over, I could've solved this whole conundrum in one go, or at least stall for time until the others caught up while preventing any casualties in the meantime, but future-me's restriction was still tying me down, so I had no choice but to work with what I had at my disposal.

"Dormouse? Go to the driver's cab and tell the guy at the wheel to speed up."

Penny hopped over with an excited, "Oh? Are we ramming?" so I gave her a light flick on the forehead and turned to Elly next.

"Princess? I need you to give me a boost to the roof."

She responded with an automatic, "Sure!" not even bothering to ask what I was planning.

The same couldn't be said about the rest, especially the Matron.

"What is the meaning of this?"

"Time is of the essence." My curt response didn't seem to please her much, so I paused just long enough to add, "I'll open the way. All of you, prepare for…" I was tempted to say 'impact', but that might've been jinxing it, so I changed it to, "… to engage as soon as we're through."

"Through the—?"

"You heard him!" Josh cut her short before she could object and started instructing the others. "Leo knows what he's doing. Lili, Deus?" The two of them perked up at once, and he told them, "We'll take to the air and keep watch for enemies until we reach the dome thingie."

The girls responded at the same time with, "O-Okay…"/"A sensible suggestion."

Meanwhile, Judy sidled up to me and whispered, "You should've done this from the beginning."

"I just didn't want to steal Josh's spotlight."

She gave me an upwards glance and said, in her deadpannest voice, "And he's been holding back because he was waiting for you to make a move."

"… Maybe?"

She shook her head and then inclined it towards the front of the train.

"I'll go talk to the driver."

"Aren't you going to ask what I'm planning?"

"You're going to use your phantom limbs to break the Grand Rampart."

Blinking, I whispered, "Am I that predictable?"

She subtly rolled her eyes and gestured towards the other end of the passenger car.

"Be careful, and don't keep Elly waiting."

"Right. On it."

She let out a soft hum and turned on her heel, so I did the same and approached the princess. She was already standing outside, in the small alcove at the rear of the car, and she waved for me to get closer.

"I think I can either give you a boost or throw you. Which one would you prefer?"

There was a hint of mischievousness in her voice, so I hastily told her, "A boost with be enough, thank you."

She didn't argue, just descended onto one knee and linked her fingers near the ground to serve as a foothold. I put my right foot in it, and on the count of three, she raised me with a single heave. It didn't even sound like she had a hard time.

Anyhow, I grabbed the rim of the roof over the alcove and pulled myself up. Elly further helped by pushing me from below, and before long, I was on top of the speeding train car, and…

"Bloody hell, everyone else made this look so easy…" I grumbled as I lowered my center of gravity, lest I would be pushed off by the wind.

"You should've just flown!" a voice berated me from the side, as Deus was making a circle around me. "You have wings, doofus!"

I didn't, and once again, that was a very Angie thing to say.

"Don't lag behind!" Josh yelled from higher up in the sky, and she exclaimed a loud, "I'm coming!" before beelining over to his side, soon followed by my Abyssal sister as well.

Meanwhile, I was still being annoyed by the headwind, so I activated my Leoformer and put on my Lion Knight armour. It not only protected me from the wind to a degree, but the boots had a nifty enchantment that let me cling to surfaces. It wasn't exactly to a degree I could walk on walls like some friendly neighbourhood arachnid person, but it was just enough extra friction to allow me to walk on the top of the train cars without fear of being blown off. And let us be honest: when else was I going to ever use that enchantment?

Anyhow, I walked across the passenger car and then gathered some momentum to hop over to the top of the driver's cab. Getting to the front of the engine was a bit trickier, because its top wasn't designed for people to walk on (though again, neither were the roofs of the passenger cars, but I digress), so that boot enchantment came extra handy.

By the time I reached the front of the machine, careful not to damage any of the tubes, components, or wards underfoot, we had already reached the outskirts of the settlement. From this vantage point, I could see that the Grand Rampart, as they called it, covered the entire castle and about a quarter of the town. It was a perfect half-sphere, its surface rippling and flashes of bright crimson rushing down from its top like countless falling stars. Most importantly, it was bloody humongous.

Also, Penny was entirely correct about one thing: a speeding train was hard to miss, so by the time we were nearing the edge of the giant barrier, there were quite a few flying Abyssals circling overhead. It was hard to tell friend from foe in this situation, especially in the air, so Josh and the girls were keeping everyone away on principle.

In the meantime, I had to make a choice. More and more buildings were whizzing by us as the train maintained its speed, and after one last shallow bend in the rails, I could finally see the spot where the Grand Rampart met the ground. By ear, I figured we would reach it under a minute, so… how should I do this?

Should I just cross my arms, stand all stoic and poised, and let my Phantom Limbs do their thing? Sure, it would've looked very imposing and whatever, but it's not like I was here to impress anyone watching. In fact, maybe it was better to exert some effort? Or at least appear so, for the sake of theatrics?

…

Ack, right! I almost forgot about it, because all my worries about the meta-implications of this whole situation, but this is the finale! Everything had to be dramatic, so I might as well go all out and make it as bombastic as possible!

I made up my mind just in time, as the edge of the Grand Rampart was right in front of us. Inhaling hard, I shifted my posture and pulled my fist back. I still had a couple of the 'pyrotechnics' enchantment on this outfit, left over from our rehearsed battles with future-me as Bel, and I quickly activated a few to create a bright, hazy clump of light around my right fist.

At the same time, I extended my phantom limbs forward and waited. Then, as soon as the train carried me close enough to touch the barrier, I began to indiscriminately tear at it, like a dozen whips lashing at a wall made of tofu, while simultaneously throwing a punch forward. It was an over-exaggerated haymaker, one I would never do in a serious situation, but the thespian arts demanded visibility over practicality, and oh boy, was this visible…

As soon as I was sure the Rampant in front of us was toast, I let the light around my fist explode forward in a cone. If I had some extra time, I might've given it some flair, like the shape of a lion-head, or some Celestial motifs, or just some extra concentric shock-waves, but hey, I had to work with what I had. I also internally debated if I should shout 'Lion Punch!' or something, but it would've been too embarrassing.

The cone of light had practically no destructive power, but since I already shredded the barrier, it still caused the whole Rampart to tremble. Then the front of the train hit it, and there was an ear-piercing noise that nearly made my knees buckle.

The wards on the locomotive flared to life, and while there was a small bump, we broke through all the same, and an explosion of scarlet shards followed in our wake like a comet's tail, illuminated by the first rays of the morning sun behind us. The fragments of the Grand Rampart were like pieces of jagged, broken plate glass, yet my danger sense didn't react to them, and true to form, they harmlessly bounced off my armour and turned into streams of red dust, like sand in the wind.

Was that theatrical enough? I sure hoped so, because there weren't any second takes from here on out. More importantly, though, we were at the finish line. Quite literally, as I could already see the train station, and just beyond it, the four majestic towers of Castle Sha—

"Aaaaa!"

Correction: the three towers of Castle Shamash. Because something bright and purple just catapulted a pale red-and-black speck through the last one. That… probably wasn't good.

"Snowy!" I yelled up, but my sister was a step ahead of me, and she drew a bright blue streak across the sky, making a circle around the remaining three towers, and then beelining towards the train station just as our ride's brakes cried out in an effort to bring it to a halt.

I didn't wait for a full stop and jumped off, hitting the pavement with enough force to crack it under me. I looked up again, trying to follow Snowy's descent with my eyes, but instead my attention was grabbed by a burning purple spot in the sky. I knew we were too far away, and that it was probably just my imagination, but I could swear our gazes met, and if this were a comic or a manga, this would've been the point where we got a two-page spread to show our faces for contrast and drama and whatnot.

I had better things to do than pose for that, and so did Crowy, because he suddenly dived down, turning into a purple streak of light and disappearing into the castle. In any case, we've completed the first step and made our way to the scene of the final showdown. As for how things would develop here… I had a feeling it wasn't going to be pretty, but I could only put my dwindling faith in future-me for now and play my role, whatever it was…

The sudden and inexplicable vanishing of the big glowing dome thingamabob caused quite a stir, especially among the Abyssals duking it out in the air. The chaos of the aerial skirmishes died down almost immediately as the two sides scrambled to regroup and rearrange their ranks. Or so I figured, based on the magic missiles and explosions in the sky being replaced by bright flashes and different kinds of explosions shaking the ground under my feet instead.

If we followed the Matron's advice, I supposed we would've cleaned out the mess outside the dome, and then encircled the town center and pushed in as soon as the barriers came down, which would've likely led to a more organised battle, but there was no point wracking my head over what-ifs. Especially since even with us successfully breaking through on the double, it ended up an uncomfortably close call.

Case in point:

"Lady Shamash! Please, stay awake!"

Snowy landed near the edge of the train platform, her bloodied hands holding onto the limp body of the Shamash matriarch. She had all of her bits attached (as far as I could tell), but her elegant dress was in tatters, and the flagstones under her were steadily being painted red. My sister tried her best to prop her up, but she looked rather out of it. No wonder; even if she wasn't injured, getting caught mid-fall like that probably resulted in enough G-forces to make even the average astronaut wince.

I rushed (or rather jogged, but same difference) over, and while she looked half-conscious, Fidèle's expression tensed up when she noticed my approach. I mean, as much as it could, while teetering on the brink of unconsciousness.

Did he not recognise me in my Lion Knight armour? Had she never seen it? I couldn't remember, but I figured it was quicker to just change than to try to explain myself, so I poked my Leoformer and donned my Polemos outfit. As soon as I did and descended to one knee next to them, her eyes opened wide, and the corners of her lips tugged upwards into a weak smile.

"Lord… Polemos. I did not expect to see you here."

"We tried to get back here as soon as we could, but…" I started, but she interrupted me.

"I see. It seems I won't have to leave so many regrets behind as I feared. It's good to—"

This time, it was my turn to cut her off with a forceful, "With all due respect," as I put a finger in front of her mouth. "Hush." No melancholic death scenes on my watch.

She blinked in surprise, but I was already focusing elsewhere.

"Good job, sis. Keep her from moving until the medic gets here."

"M-Medic?" Snowy repeated after me, and I was just about to point at the bright yellow dots flying high over our heads when Judy's voice sounded in my ears.

"{Chief? Can you hear me?}"

"Great timing," I noted with a hand automatically moving to my ear. "Please tell Angie to get over here ASAP. We need some medical attention right now."

"{Roger. What about the rest of the team?}"

"Don't look at me. Have Josh lead them around. He's been doing a good enough job until now."

"{Understood. Beluga, out.}"

I echoed, "Beluga?" in surprise, but I quickly figured out that it was probably her newest designation in whatever code-naming scheme she dreamt up on our way here. Ignoring that for the moment, I turned to Fidèle again and told her, "We're going to patch you up in a second. In the meantime, can you explain what exactly happened here?"

She inhaled deeply, which made her grimace, but then her expression eased up, and she began to speak in a quiet, detached voice.

"The forces of the False Emperor and House Nergal arrived right after sunset. Nobody expected such a brazen, suicidal attack, nor for them to be so ferocious in their assault. We were unprepared. I activated the Rampart we constructed around the castle, but I was too late, and the Lord of Inanna had already made it inside the perimeter by then." She let out a soft cough, and it looked like she could barely keep her eyes open. "We sent an emergency call to House Gula and House Enlil, but I knew it would take too long for the Lords to arrive. I did my best to stall the Herald, but…"

She glanced down at her own tattered body and let out a weak chuckle.

"It seems I've shown you an embarrassing display. I hope you'll remember me not in this pitiable state once I'm no longer—"

I stopped her with a terse, "Hush, again." No poignant last words on my watch, either. Anyhow, Angie should've gotten the message by now, so where was she?

"Sorry! I got held up!" Oh, speak of the devil. She descended in a dive and abruptly broke her fall the last minute by spreading all her wings, then she softly touched down on the ground. It would've looked majestic if only her eyes hadn't opened wide as saucers a moment later, and she stumbled on her hurry. "Oh no! Mrs Shamash!"

Mrs? Was Fidèle married? I never bothered to check, and it wasn't even all that important considering the circumstances, but it still gave me a moment of pause. Meanwhile, Angie came to an almost skidding halt next to us and also kneeled, followed by a short, almost jazzy hum.

My ashen Abyssal sister impatiently asked, "How is she?" but the Celestial girl's brows only furrowed, and it took her a couple of seconds to formulate an answer.

"It's not good. There's something dangerous in her body. It's like a poison. Even if I heal her now, it will keep damaging her from the inside out."

Snowy's expression grew dire, and she looked at me for help. I would've loved to provide it right away, if not for a new voice joining our fray.

"It's Noir's power," stated a familiar raspy voice, and when I glanced over, I saw the Matron approaching us with a couple of bodyguards in tow. She stopped a few steps to our left and levelled a complicated gaze at the injured woman in my sister's arms. "It's been a while, old friend. I didn't expect to meet you like this."

Despite her condition, Fidèle managed to forcefully bend her lips into a smile, and she answered with, "I don't recall us ever being friends, Tsarah," which… wait, was that the Matron's name? Why was I learning all of these things only at this time? Anyhow, she continued with, "… however, I suppose it's poetic that we get to meet again like this, one last ti—"

"For the third time, hush!" I interjected, followed by an un-stiflable groan and a stern, "Lady Fidèle, I say this with the duest of all respects: stop that, or I'll be forced to flick your forehead, seniority be damned!" The injured matriarch looked at me with eyes wide open, so startled she momentarily forgot to keep up the whole wounded-gazelle act, but I ignored her reaction and turned to the old Matron. "Please elaborate."

The old woman looked at me funny, but then patiently explained, "Noir's powers are capable of igniting the mana of others. After being exposed to the Udug Blood Amalgam, he further refined this ability so that it can corrode wards and even one's astral body over time, and becoming the Herald of the Emperor only further—"

I cut her short with a curt, "Okay, thanks," which she obviously didn't appreciate, but I didn't ask for a whole essay. Long story short, it was like a magical poison, and if it was magic, it meant I could deal with it. "Give me a second."

I reached out and waved my hand over the injured matriarch's stomach, though it was mostly for show. While I was doing that, I also poked her body with my phantom limbs, making sure not to poke too deep and end up getting sucked into the lower layer of the Simulacrum, with the rainbow-yarn-ball representations of souls and everything.

I soon found something abnormal. It was like a spider-web made of the nasty, inky substance that served as the medium for most of Crowy's spell, and after tearing it to tiny little pieces with my phantom limbs, Fidèle's bearing visibly relaxed. I took that as a sign of success, so I snapped my hand shut into a fist (mostly for theatrics) and said, "That should take care of it. Angie?"

"O-On it!" She started humming again with one hand on the matriarch's forehead and another on her stomach, and after a few seconds, her face lit up, and she beamed at me. "Wow! You did it!" followed by a slightly more reserved, "I expected nothing less of you, Polemos."

That last bit was clearly from Deus, but since Angie was our healing specialist, they immediately switched back, and she started quietly singing, enveloping both of their bodies in a thin sheet of the pale glow of magic.

I was just about to get up, but then my communicator came to life again.

"{Narwhal, this is Beluga. Can you hear me, over?}"

"Of course I can, and… Why 'narwhal'?"

My words made everyone present give me odd looks, so I belatedly put my fingers to my ear.

Meanwhile, Judy told me, "Because narwhals are swimming in the ocean, causing a commotion, because they are so awesome."

"… I don't get it."

There was a long pause in the communications, followed by, "{Chief. Once this is all over, we'll have to sit down and get you familiarized with classic internet culture.}"

"I don't think this is the time for that."

Judy let out a hum and then told me, "{Fair. Listen, Gray Whale and Northern Bottlenose—}"

"Dormouse, please drop the codenames. Just this once," I pleaded, and after a soft huff, she grudgingly obliged.

"{Lord Moindre Masu Ninhursag and Penelope are organizing the Fauns at the station. Elly is helping Joshua scout the vicinity of the castle from the air. They have encountered minor resistance, but nothing serious. He's asking you to meet up in front of the castle's main gates as soon as possible.}"

"Got it." I turned to Angie. "How is she?"

"She's… in a bad shape, but she'll live. I think." She let out another jaunty tune, then added, "I don't think she can fight for a while."

"I'm ashamed that I cannot support you in this time of need, so I'll…" Fidèle's words trailed off when she noticed the look I was giving her, and she wisely added, "… I'll just remain silent for now."

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Nodding, I gestured to Angie again.

"How long will it take to patch her up? Josh wants us to rally at the gates."

"I don't know. This is gonna take a while, and if I leave it half-way finished, it could cause more harm than—"

It was at this point that the Matron walked over and knelt down by Snowy's side, gingerly taking the Shamash matriarch's shoulders and propping her up in my sister's stead.

"Just go. I'll take care of her."

"Will you?" Fidèle asked with a sideways look, prompting the other woman to snort through her nose, a decidedly unladylike gesture.

"We're both too old to hold grudges over ancient rivalries. Also…" Her whole body lit up, and she unfurled three pairs of translucent silver wings behind his back. "I may have retired, but that doesn't mean I can't sing a healing aria or two." She then turned to face Snowy, her expression a mixture of worry and determination hidden under multiple layers of stoic façade, and jerked her head towards the three remaining towers of the castle in the distance. "Go. This is a matter of House Inanna, so it is your duty to see it through."

"Y-Yes…"

Despite her best efforts, my sister didn't quite manage to make that sound convincing, so I also gave her a pat on the shoulder and got up. Angie followed my example (including the shoulder pat), and then as soon as we were all on our feet, we were joined by my other sister, dashing over from the far end of the platform like she was planning to drop-kick us.

"Snowy! Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

It took her a moment to realise the problem, and then my Abyssal sister hurriedly explained, "D-Don't worry! It's not my blood! It's… um…"

"Don't make a fuss, Kiddo." I lightly poked Penny's head, for good measure, and then tapped my ear. "Dormouse? Are you listening?"

"{Just a moment.}" It really was just a second or two, and then she said, "{I'm listening,}" with an expectant voice.

"We're going to rendezvous with Josh and Elly. You stay back and keep acting as mission control."

"{That was the plan.}" I thought that was the end of it, but then she also added, "{I'm going to stay with Eolienne and Lord Ninhursag until we secure the area, and then we'll meet up with you in the castle.}"

"Fine. Be careful."

"{You took the words out of my mouth. Beluga, out.}"

Subtly rolling my eyes at her insistent code-naming, I turned to the girls waiting for me.

"Let's head to the castle, and—"

"Let's fly!" Angie proposed right away, but I shot it down.

"No. Things are too chaotic up there, and Penny can't even fly anyway." Neither could I, but that was beside the point. "It's hard to tell friend from foe in this mess, so we'll ignore everyone and punch right through until we find Josh and Elly. Any questions?" There was none, so I concluded the impromptu briefing with a curt, "Good. Move out."

We did, and it was just as I expected. Between the soldiers and Fauns stationed here by the various Noble Houses, Crowy's guys drawing from Nergal and Ninurta forces, and now the Ninhursag and Inanna Fauns also joining the fray, identifying people was a nightmare. They seemed to have less of a problem with it, probably because they were more used to recognising heraldries and house-colours, but we were less so, and had no time to ask Snowy after every new encounter, so we just ignored the fighting on the streets and barrelled right through.

"Halt, in the name of—!"

"Sorry, not interested!" I yelled back as I knocked the Abyssal officer aside, spearheading our charge with the girls behind me in a wedge formation.

"Brother! That wasn't very nice!"

I glanced over my shoulder and asked, "Do you want to punch the next guy who gets in the way then?"

"Yes!"

What can I say? My knightly sister was rather complicated in some ways, but very simple in others.

"We're almost there!" Angie exclaimed from the back, as if I couldn't see the gates at the end of the road.

Then the gates exploded at the end of the road. Huh. Go figure.

"Look out!"

Even at this distance, we were getting showered in shrapnel from the fragments of the gate, with sharp bits and pieces of black rock mixed in. On closer look, the explosion was caused by a giant, spiky pillar of obsidian erupting from the ground, but I didn't have time to observe it for long, because the hail of falling rubble was getting annoying, so I quickly switched back to my Lion Knight outfit and picked up the pace. Penny was easily keeping up with me (obviously), while Angie and Snowy took to the air, both to gain speed and to avoid the bulk of the low-flying shrapnel.

I could hear a loud, "They're here!" from the other side of the walls, and when I made my way past the obsidian pillar, I found Josh and Elly engaged in battle with a familiar face.

"Careful, Leo! That's Belette Nergal! He's dangerous!" my friend yelled over, hunkered down with shield raised to brace for impact. Did… Did he think I wouldn't know?

Or maybe that was just for the Nergal patriarch, as it made him focus on me right away. He was fully transformed, though that was probably stating the obvious, and he was lugging around a stone hammer similar to the one he used during his last battle with Fidèle. When he saw me, his eyes opened wide, and he bellowed, "What? What are you doing here?!"

His outrage only lasted for a second, and then he followed it up with an equally loud but less aggressive, "Listen to me, Lord Archon Polemos Peacemaker Dunning Chimer—"

Without much consideration, I roared, "Still not interested!" as I retrieved Cal from my storage.

"{Oh? Finally, a battle!}" he exclaimed with some glee, but I was already focusing on something else.

I pumped the blade with mana, and after a long beat for consolidation, I leapt into the air and released it all in a single, silvery surge of force. It was, by my ballpark estimate, about a quarter of my maximum output, but it was enough. The sword beam (more of a sword wave, really) hit the bullish patriarch head-on.

He raised his weapon in a hurry to guard against it, but it was fine. The goal was to keep him from moving for a moment while I closed the distance. Still blinded by the flash of my attack, he was late to defend himself from my gauntleted punch. My left fist, loosely wrapped with my phantom limbs, passed through his natural Barrier effectively unobstructed and landed on his right cheek with a meaty thud, and…

"One hit KO!" Elly exclaimed in the back, followed by Penny moaning, "Brother! You said it was my turn next!"

Ignoring the fact that I was slightly annoyed by the distinct lack of seriousness and tension in the moment, I also wasn't expecting the guy to get laid out by a single punch, and had to stop and take a second look when he crumpled and fell over like a sack of bricks. Only for a short moment though, and right after I was sure he was out cold, I gestured for the gang to follow after me.

"Stop gawking, guys! We have an asshole to catch and a class rep to rescue, remember?"

Josh belatedly backed me up by waving his sword overhead and yelling, "You heard him! Form up and let's go!"

"Yes, let's go!" Elly joined in while simultaneously sidling up to me, but then she stopped and asked, "Go… where, exactly?"

I looked at Josh, only to find that he was looking at me. In fact, all of them were looking at me, as if I were the only one who could answer such a profound question.

"To the Mana Well Chamber. Obviously."

"Exactly!" Josh declared and pointed his weapon at the entrance of the castle. "Penelope and I will take point! Deus, Lili, cover us at range! Elly, you bring up the rear! Leo! … Erm…"

It took some effort not to roll my eyes, but I managed and told him, "I'll follow your lead and intervene when necessary."

"Yeah. Please do that."

Thus concluded, our group kicked down the entrance of the main building (literally, since Penny had some pent-up energy), and we immediately encountered some resistance in the foyer. By the looks of it, the soldiers and Fauns Crowy and Belette brought along spared no effort to fortify the area, probably to buy as much time for Crowy to do his thing with Ammy and the Mana Well as possible.

Of course, barricades and wards or not, they stood very little chance against our little gang. I mean, practically all the 'main characters' were here, while they were just run-of-the-mill placeholder types. It was hard not to feel at least a little sorry for them, but I didn't really have time for that either, so as soon as the rest engaged in battle, I called out to my Abyssal sister.

"Snowy?"

"Y-Yes?" she responded with a startle, and I gestured for her to stop floating around and listen to me.

"Which way can we get to the Mana Well the fastest?" At this point, my sixth sense warned me, so I reflexively swatted a stray magic missile out of the air with Cal. "All of these castles are practically the same. You should know how to get there."

She nodded and pointed a large double-door at the far end of the entrance hall, though for some reason she didn't take her eyes off me.

"That way… That should lead to the—"

She was interrupted by my arm lashing out to deflect another magical projectile.

"The stairs going down?"

My guess was confirmed by another nod, and she was just about to open her mouth when a third attack came my way, and…

"Bloody hell! Which prick is taking potshots at me?!"

My bellow after slapping the third magic pellet away caused everyone on the other side to twitch, which apparently gave Penny an opening to dash up some marble railings and then roundhouse-kick a big, burly Abyssal. Presumably the one who kept shooting at me.

"Did you see that, Brother?" she yelled over, only to duck when someone else came at her and she brandished her zweihander again.

"Everyone is really excited to have you with us again," Snowy noted with a soft smile, in sharp contrast with the icicle-spears forming behind her, and as soon as she finished saying it, she let loose a salvo that exploded into a translucent sheet of ice covering much of the balcony overlooking the foyer on the left.

At the same time, Elly let loose a burst of dragon breath, the crimson blast exploding the mirrored balcony on the right, all the while Josh was pushing some Fauns around, and Deus was raining flame-swords on the stragglers from the ceiling.

"Maybe they are a bit too enthusiastic…" I muttered, then raised my sword over my head and exclaimed, "Guys! Ignore the small fries! The Mana Well is that way!"

I used Cal to point at the doors indicated by Snowy, and everyone collectively followed my lead, knocking over some hapless opponents and trying to be the first to get there. I ended up lagging behind, and by the time I caught up, Josh already kicked them open (I guess it was his turn), and we all rushed towards the wide stairs, ignoring the disrupted and disoriented enemies behind us. Strictly speaking, it wasn't a tactically sound thing to do, but again, we had priorities.

So far, things were proceeding relatively smoothly, and I couldn't help but wonder when something unexpected was going to happen to change things up a bit. Though again, maybe I shouldn't have, because the Simulacrum had a way to play into my expectations just as often as it subverted them. Case in point…

"Look out!" Josh yelped and braced himself, followed by a loud thud and something round bouncing off his shield.

We had no time to check what it was, though it wasn't hard to figure it out in retrospect. At the bottom of the stairs was a small hall, with a pair of large, broken and bent metal doors set into the plain grey stone walls. From the other side seeped a stark blue light, but it was barely visible, overpowered by the violently churning purple aura between us and the doorway.

There, in the middle of the hall, was a grotesque display of a large, mangled body partially encased in a viscous tar-like material, like a giant insect trapped in pitch-black amber. That was already eerie, but on its headless shoulders stood a man wreathed in sinister purple flames, his fingers still bent like claws of a bird of prey and covered in a mixture of the same material that encased the rest of the creature under him, as well as copious amounts of blood.

Oh, and he was glaring at me in particular. With eye sockets shining like a pair of small flashlights. I'm not going to lie, that was creepy as hell, but this wasn't my first rodeo (plus I had appearances to keep up), so I lightly cleared my throat and greeted him as cheerfully as possible.

"Hello, Crowy!" The word made him flinch, and his gaze grew even more hateful, as impossible as it seemed at first, but I kept up the momentum and added, "Long time no see. Are you up for a rematch? Best of three?"

There was a certain trope, especially prevalent in long-running works, called the 'Worf effect'. It's named after a specific character who exemplified the trope, but it's reasonably generic, and it went something like this: when a new adversary first shows up, they often beat someone considered 'tough', just to establish for the audience that they mean business.

On the surface, this implied fighting, but it could be in many other contexts, too. For example, let's say it's a series about cooking, and then a new antagonist sauntered in and beat a seasoned chef in, like… a cooking competition? Cooking duel? I had no idea how culinary shows worked, but the point was that they established themselves and their 'power level', to borrow Judy's favourite term, so the main character would know they were a serious opponent and they needed to give one hundred and ten percent when facing them in, like… a soufflé-baking race? Or something.

Okay, let's just ignore the cooking-show analogy and focus on the actual situation here. Exhibit A: The new adversary was… Crowy, I suppose? He wasn't new to me, but the rest of the guys haven't fought him since back during the original kidnapping incident (not counting the ambush where he nabbed the class rep), so re-establishing him as a big deal might've been warranted.

That brought us to our 'Worf'. Exhibit B: A very dead Chimera. Honestly, I didn't consider Chimeras to be that big of a deal anymore, but we had to look at the full context here: just the other week, the whole gang had to fight tooth and nail to beat one, and it only went down for good when they had a whole-ass train run it over. In contrast, Crowy here just soloed one of them, and he didn't look much worse for wear.

Put all of that together, and you get an antagonist establishing his power level by savaging someone (or in this case, something) already recognised to be very tough, so now the main character (read: Josh) had to give his one hundred and ten percent to face him. It's all very obvious stuff that follows the trope.

Now that we've established the point of all this, let's look at the bastard himself and—

"You miserable cretins! How dare you show your face in front of me!?"

"Easy there, Crowy. You're going to get a heart attack at this rate. Heaven forbid we get so lucky."

Josh hissed an upset, "Dude!" so I turned to him with an implied 'What?' in the bend of my eyebrows.

Then I realised I had my helmet on, so I properly vocalized, "What?" followed by a clearly not-defensive, "It's just smack-talk. It's tradition."

Before he could respond, we were interrupted by Crowy stepping off the mangled back of the dead Chimera, the solidified black substance cracking under his feet with each step.

"No. You're right. I really shouldn't be upset." He stopped right around the middle of the chamber and spread his arms, along with his wings. "What better way to celebrate my inevitable ascension than meting out the long-overdue punishment upon you curs!"

"Ascension, huh?" I shook my head and considered my options for a moment.

From what I could see, this was something of a 'race against the clock' kind of scenario, where the boss had to be defeated before the timer ran out. That being, him getting linked to the entire Mana Well network of the Abyss and gaining semi-phenomenal nearly-cosmic power or something. For that to happen, he would need…

"Amelia should be in the Mana Well Chamber! This is it!" Josh roared and pointed his sword forward. "Let's stick to the plan from before! Penelope, Elly, follow me! Snowy, Deus, cover us from the back!"

Now, look at that. Josh was giving out orders like it was perfectly natural. Actually, it kind of was, considering he was the protagonist and all, but with how much he'd been waiting around for my say-so, I was still happy to see some independent decision-making. It all seemed perfectly fine so far, except for an unexpected variable choosing to enter the fray at this point.

"Ah! So this is what you were up to all this time!"

A new yet familiar voice joined the fray, and everyone was startled and unnerved by future-me's sudden (but by no means unexpected) arrival. That included Crowy as well.

"Bel of the Abyss!" Deus roared, momentarily taking control from Angie, and she was already in the process of readying her bow when Josh put out his left arm, holding the shield, in front of her.

"No! We need to focus! Don't act out and stick to the plan!"

Deus grimaced, her eyes going back and forth between future-me and Josh, but she eventually let her weapon down and grumbled, "You owe me one, Boy!"

Josh muttered something about 'Owe you for what?', but while that was going on, Crowy and future-me were also doing their thing.

"My Emperor. Please forgive me for not kneeling, but considering the situation…"

"Ah, it's fine. Fine," future-me insisted and patted him on the shoulder. "I don't remember us talking about invading this castle here, but I love the initiative! How fun!" It was at this point that he turned to me and said, "Hey, Polemos! You're here, too? Took you long enough. I almost lost a bet because…"

He kept prattling, but I wasn't listening, because I had already connected to his communication enchantment and I was too busy messaging him.

"{Goddamit, me! What the hell is this whole situation?}"

"… and as much as I'd like to see how…"

His response came a few seconds later, and it only said, "{No time. We need to finish this up ASAP. Just follow my lead.}"

"{Follow your lead, my ass! At least give me some—}"

I couldn't finish the message, as he suddenly clapped his hands, causing a deafening shockwave to spread across the room. He exclaimed, "… with a goddamn pig!" followed by a long beat and a playful, "Oh, but enough about me. Should we wrap this up?"

Crowy cut in with a startled, "Wait, My Emperor! The Mana Well is almost in our control!"

"Oh, fine…" Future-me relented with mock reluctance and made a vague gesture towards the chamber on the other side of the doors. "Go and do your thing. The doctor told me I need to exercise more anyway, so I'll entertain our guests."

A shadow flickered across Crowy's face, but then he deferentially bowed his head and swept his arm to the side. The solidified black substance covering the floor and encasing the dead Chimera melted at a breakneck pace and was all rapidly sucked into the bastard's shadow, like he was one of those all-purpose vacuums from a TV shop commercial.

"As you wish, My Emperor. Your humble servant will take a step back."

He then did that, literally, allowing future-me to take centre stage, which he did with great enthusiasm.

"Ah, here we go again! It seems the tangled strings of fate have led us to one last fateful encounter after all this time. I hate it when they do that."

"Silence!" Penny stepped forth resolutely and waved her sword in a slow, deliberate motion before settling into a stance that looked way too much like how Rinne would hold Onikiri. "On this day, I will avenge all the h-humiliation of the past! Right, Brother?"

Sure, Kiddo. That was very imposing, and would've been even better if you didn't stumble at the end, but what in the nine layers of hell did any of this have to do with our finale?!

"Oh, really? That sounds fabulous!" my future-self exclaimed with glee and raised a hand, fingers poised to snap, and he looked directly at me. "But before that, we can't have our dear Polemos leave too early, can we? Since you came all the way here, it's only right that I entertain you all properly, like a good host." He paused, then added, "Did I say 'entertain'? I meant 'kill'. The two are more or less the same thing, a very easy mistake to make."

The moment he finished speaking, he snapped his fingers and also sent me a message, "{Don't make me do all the talking. Tell them how we can't teleport now and it'll all come down to a duel, like the last time.}"

"Oh, for the love of…" I bit back the end of that and took a deep breath. I decided to be the bigger man and said, "You do realise that—"

"{Louder,}" came the message, and I didn't bother to hold back myself from rolling my eyes. Nobody could see them behind the helmet, anyway.

"You do realise that you have cut down your own escape route as well, right?!" I exclaimed loud enough for everyone to hear, and pointed Cal at him for good measure. "Last time, you caught me off-guard, but now, you're outnumbered and outgunned. This time, I'm the one who won't let you retreat!"

"Well said, Brother!"/"Good one, Polemos!"/"Let's rescue our friend and get back home, everyone!"

Penny, Deus, and Josh were all really, really pumped for this fight, and they were all raring to go, yet politely waited for me to finish and make the first move. Elly also put up a strong front, but I could see that she was visibly wondering where all of this was going, while Snowy looked a bit more hesitant, staying near the back of the group as if trying to avoid being seen.

More importantly, since they were waiting for my cue to start the battle, I used the opportunity to fire up the communicator again, as we probably wouldn't have the time to do so while fighting.

"{Would it have killed you to give me a heads-up? This whole finale is a mess!}"

"{Timey-wimey stuff.}"

"{Screw that! You can't use that as an excuse every time, and then turn around and orchestrate something like this! This is batshit insanity! No, it's worse! It's sloppy! We don't do sloppy like this!}"

"{Everything will make sense once you're in my shoes.}"

"{Don't give me that zen bullshit!}"

"{Listen, this is the finale. We're going to be out of each other's hair soon, so just bear with it.}"

"{And when is that going to happen?}"

His response was a rather infuriating, "{You'll know it when you see it.}"

"{Just give me a straight answer for once, you goddamn…}"

I couldn't finish that reply, because there was someone else on the line, and a second later Judy's deadpan voice replaced the blandly modulated artificial sound of our messaging.

"{We're encountering heavier resistance than expected. The garrison left behind by House Gula retreated out of town during the first assault. The forces of House Enlil are uncounted for. It may take a while to send reinforcements to the castle, over.}" A beat later, he asked, "{Are you fighting Bel of the Abyss? I'll try to connect to him and ask a few questions.}"

"Not now, Dormouse," I hissed, mostly so that Penny would know I wasn't talking to myself. "Just focus on coordinating the others and staying out of trouble."

She responded with a curt, "{Understood. Beluga, out.}"

This intermezzo seemed to serve as the final signal, as everyone behind me got ready to rumble. I did so as well, if annoyedly, and I retrieved Teeny from storage. Future-me waited for me to flourish my swords and then he spread his arms wide and let out a villainous cackle.

"Come, Polemos! Entertain me!"

Being prompted like that, I had no choice but to take the limelight, so I exhaled hard, locked onto future-me, and then lunged forward. As I did, the guys behind me also began to move. Penny followed half a step behind me and brandished her zweihander. Deus and Snowy took to the air. Josh approached from the right, and by process of elimination, Elly rushed in from the left. Meanwhile, future-me took up a boxing stance, one that I recognised from our rehearsals, so muscle memory took control, and I automatically angled my swords so he would have an easier time deflecting them.

Enchanted gloves met safety-magic wrapped metal with a clang. Right hand, left hand, then I was getting ready to combo into Variant H-12 from Scene 3-B, like we practised, when I was suddenly hit by a warning. My danger sense blared at me, and it wasn't just a mild warning either. It was one of those 'get out of the way, or you die' kind of alerts, and my mind blanked out for a moment.

Was I in the way of one of the guys' attacks? Didn't seem like it. Was future-me trying to hit me for real? No, we didn't give each other warnings unless we messed up something by accident; that's why we needed to rehearse everything in detail. But then what?

My first instinct was to Phase away, but I was still restricted, so my second instinct was to reel back with everything, jerking my upped body backwards so hard it felt like my spine was going to snap. It was then, while my brain was still caught in a loop, that a spray of red mist exploded in front of me, stopping not just me in my tracks, but everyone else too.

Future me was still standing in the exact same position as before, but there was a huge black spike jutting out of the left side of his chest. It was an inky black thing that tapered into a long, needle-like point covered in a layer of red blood, and if I didn't twist out of the way in time, it would've skewered me just as well. It was a familiar weapon, nay, magic, and its source was rather obvious.

Two steps behind future-me stood Crowy, his hands pointed at his back with his fingers spread. The other end of the sharp spike impaling my future self was jutting out from under his arm, as if extending from his sleeve.

"My ascension… is inevitable," he said, breaking the stunned silence, then he twisted his arm, and the magical thorn with it. "Long live… the Emperor!"

Future-me didn't as much as make a single sound until this point, but he couldn't hold it in any longer, and something halfway between a chuckle and a cough escaped his mouth, along with some blood tricking down from under his mask.

"Crowy, Crowy, Crowy…" He shook his head and looked over his shoulder. "I thought I taught you everything you needed to know, but alas, I failed to teach you how to come up with effective wisecracks. My only regret in life." He paused, then looked back at me. "Well, maybe not the only one." He suddenly reached out and grabbed my upper arm. "Come. Let's finish this."

And with that, I suddenly felt the world distort around me. It was a familiar sensation, yet it's been so long since I'd been under lockdown, it felt oddly alien to Phase again. Then again, maybe it was because future-me was the one Phasing me, and the moment the world around me stopped twisting like an oil painting with a bucket of thinner thrown on it, we were standing in an unfamiliar room.

Based on the architecture, it looked like we were still in the Abyss, in a small chamber with tiny windows. On my left, a long table with lots of scattered chairs around it. On my right, some crates and a big metal contraption covered in a tarp. Finally, in front of me…

The words, "Bloody hell!" slipped out of my mouth. A long beat later, I pointed at the hole in future-me's chest. "That looks like it hurts a lot."

"Nah," he answered nonchalantly and took off his mask, revealing an ashen face. "This homunculus body is pretty sturdy, so it's fine." He said that, but then he started coughing and splattering blood everywhere. "Ugh. Can you believe that guy? I spent all this time coaching him, and then he flubbed the dramatic one-liner. What am I, a cartoon lion?"

Feeling a bit impatient, poked my Leoformer and put away my Lion Knight armour so we could talk face to face.

"Okay, be honest with me: was that part of the plan?"

"Yes."

"Was the whole messy bullshit surrounding it also part of the plan?"

"More or less."

I threw my hands in the air with a groan at this point.

"Would it kill you to give me a straight answer for once?"

"Give me a break. I've got a hole in my chest; I'm not in the mood for chit-chatting."

"Didn't you say it wasn't a big deal?"

He ignored me and walked over to the tarp-covered mess on our right, and with a dramatic flourish, he pulled it off to reveal a shockingly familiar sight.

"Holy crap. When did you take the whole homunculus incubator down here?"

Future-me glared at me and tapped on the glass tube filled with green liquid and an adult body floating in the middle, its body curled up in a foetal position.

"Dude, just stop asking questions and get on with the program. Retcon this into the past, close the loop, and then you'll get all your answers in a second. Literally speaking, not subjectively, but…" He lost his balance for a second and had to lean against the glass to stay upright. "Hurry up, will you?"

I had a million and one questions, but he wasn't entirely wrong. Once I did that, then I would be 'future-me', and then I would finally get to see the big picture. There was no need to hesitate, so I reached out with my phantom limbs, watched as my future self did his best to smile and give me a thumbs up, and then I finally made contact.

All right. Let's find out what the hell is going on, why future-me was a dick all this time, and why this whole finale was a sloppy mess of epic proportions.

"… I hope we aren't being axed. That would be just the worst…" I whispered under my breath as I plunged into the homunculus's body, and the whole world was consumed by white. Not the colour, but the concept itself, a fitting tabula rasa before the retcon to come.

They say that doing something the second time is always easier than the first. It made logical sense, but I wasn't sure it applied to this situation. My first attempt at a big retcon was under duress, and I couldn't remember most of what happened due to… honestly, probably some kind of self-imposed mental barrier. Human minds weren't designed to understand that kind of scope, and so my brain shut it all away.

Whether it was to protect my sanity or my status as a 'human mind' was an academic question for another time. For now, I followed the usual footsteps of a temporary retcon. I pushed my phantom limbs into the core of the homunculus, and there I found its core, the bundle of records my mind usually conceptualised as an enormous multi-coloured yarn-ball of light.

In this case, since it was an empty body specifically prepared for this purpose, there was no 'soul' in there. It was by delving into Angie's, as she was being overwritten by Deus, that I enacted my first big retcon, but this situation was slightly different. For a start, back then, my goal was to retroactively change Angie's past and the way her body-sharing with Deus worked in a way that would still lead to more or less the same outcome, just without the grisly bits and the whole body-snatching thing.

Anyhow, while time was a mostly meaningless concept here, I still had to begin somewhere, and I decided to follow in my own footsteps from the last time. First off, I used my phantom limbs to firmly anchor myself into the… lack of space, I guess. It was kind of like the space-between-spaces where the not-dark not-room was, but also fundamentally different in a way I couldn't quite explain. So I didn't even try.

Once I was anchored (which felt way more secure than back then, probably because I had so many phantom limbs now), came the second step: I had to designate a starting point. Just like how I used the Deus-ified Angie back then, I designated the currently soulless homunculus body as the zero on my imaginary number line. From there, I could work backwards, though this time it was slightly different.

Last time, it was akin to moving down an infinitely branching tree until I found the closest branching point that could lead me to a desired outcome, and then following it back up while snipping off all unwanted forks, like pruning a galaxy-sized bonsai tree. That was already bloody difficult, but what I was trying to do now was substantially different: I was about to insert the homunculus body into a point of time it didn't exist, and then… remote-control it, I supposed?

I had a feeling this was going to be incredibly, mind-meltingly, reason-shatteringly difficult, and it… really wasn't. Unlike with a temporary-retcon, where the initial state of an object had to share more than nominal resemblance to the desired one, the infinitely branching paths of this retcon-space contained every iteration of the homunculus I was operating on, including ones that weren't logically consistent. I simply had to find a branch that said 'this body existed before it existed', then follow it back to the point where I wanted it to first exist in the timeline, and presto!

Well, to be fair, the process was a fair bit more involved than that, but maybe the saying was right, and doing something for the second time was indeed easier. Not just that, but while I was working on that, I discovered something peculiar: I wanted to see how far back I could insert the homunculus into the past, and it turned out it wasn't all that far.

I fairly quickly ran into what felt like a wall, or… more like a point, really, from which all the new branching paths sprang forth. Curiosity took the better of me, and I decided to investigate this odd phenomenon, which resulted in a subjectively very, very long side-track. Even then, while I could draw some conclusions, I couldn't quite uncover the entire mystery.

Long story short, the point in time that I couldn't move beyond happened to be the moment of the previous retcon. It was impossible to move beyond that, but I couldn't quite figure out why. Was it that the retcon itself prevented me, creating a sort of organic checkpoint? Or maybe it was when Predator Moon 'paused' the Simulacrum, and it collapsed all possibilities into the one we were experiencing at the time? Heck, as far as I knew, it could've been because it was the time I merged with other-me, the incessant voice in the back of my head trying to keep me on the track of the scenario, and so I couldn't interact with a time frame where we weren't merged.

I couldn't say for sure, but once my curiosity was sated, I moved on and returned to the original task at hand. It wasn't wasted effort, either. This semi-eternal intermezzo essentially established the beginning- and end-points of the period I could work with: one was the Angie-retcon, the other was the 'present', the moment of the current retcon. Of course, because the branches between those two points were still effectively infinite (or at least infinitely approaching infinite, however much or little sense that made), it didn't exactly narrow my options laterally, but at least I had this block… of time… to work with.

…

Goddamit, here's that term again. I thought if there was one place where I could escape it, it would be here, but that was apparently wishful thinking. Looking at it right from this perspective did make a bit more sense, admittedly, but I still didn't like it.

But enough about the side-tracks, let's get moving. Since I had the notes that future-me (which is present-me, I guess) gave to me memorised, I leafed through them in my mind, looking for clues, and before long, I decided on the 'insertion point'. It was effectively right at the beginning of the time-block, a day after the encounter between the Predator Moon and the Crowned Coalescence.

In more concrete terms, that was the 24th of February, and it was a rather… peculiar experience.

Unlike last time, when I completed the retcon and then all the infinite 'possibilities' snapped together into one instance of 'certainty', establishing the new de facto continuity, this worked differently. I was, for all intents and purposes, still inside the retcon-space, but at the same time, 'I' was also inside the time-block I was manipulating.

When I opened my eyes, 'I' was in the familiar storeroom within the underground base. I was naked, time-travelling robot style, which wasn't ideal, but I was about to rectify that in a moment. The reason why I chose this place and time was so that I could pick up my old Bel gear stashed in here, the one I used before I switched to the Leoformer.

However, just as I started to rummage through the containers hidden in the corner, I was discovered by… an angry little shoggoth.

"Nyuuu!"

I paused and looked at the small ball of flesh glaring at me from a stack of chairs, and it was at this point that I fully understood what future-me meant when he said it was kind of like playing a video game, but also kind of not.

The 'me' inside the scenario playing out in the time-block was observing the world from a normal time-frame, but 'I' in the retcon-space was looking at this ever-churning fractal-cloud tree of possibilities while operating outside of the constraints of linear time. Because of this, from my outsider perspective, I could simultaneously see all the countless possible timelines that could branch out from every action and reaction that I could take from the inside.

In this case, the way 'I' responded to Pudding-kun wouldn't necessarily have universe-altering repercussions, but the thing about infinite is that it was infinite, and even small and insignificant changes created more infinities. Of course, nobody had time to go through all of those, so after spending a small eternity inspecting the situation, I decided to take it slow and run mostly on intuition, only reserving this kind of scrutiny for really important turning points in the scenario.

As such, 'I' gave a signal to 'me', and responded with a genial, "Hi, Pudding-kun. Don't worry, it's just me."

That immediately collapsed one set of infinities, but there were still infinite other options left, so it didn't make much of a difference. More importantly, the whole experience was just weird. In this context, there were two 'me-s', and we shared a consciousness, but 'Bel of the Abyss me' wasn't seeing and understanding the same fractal continuity-branches and fractal time-blocks 'retconning-in-process me' was interacting with.

In a sense, it was kind of like the relationship between other-me and me-me in the past, where other-me obviously knew way more about the workings of the Simulacrum and the scenario, but was only giving me info on a need-to-know basis, mostly in the form of signalling me whenever I was about to do something dangerous.

…

Hold on. Maybe it wasn't just a similar situation, but the exact same one? Maybe the whole scenario as I knew it was a ginormous retcon by other-me? Now, wait. I merged with other-me, so I would know, but… what if other-me was just a separate instance of some even bigger other-other-me and was only given partial information the same way I'm only sharing partial information with Bel-me?

Was… was the whole universe retcons all the way down? And maybe more importantly, just how many layers of 'me-s' were out there? I mean, there was that yet-another-me who intervened when transferring Saahira to her new body, so…

"Focus!"

That came from Bel-me, and I was right. I'd have ample opportunities to figure all of this out once the scenario concluded, but to do that, first I'd have to finish it.

After this point, time became a hazy concept. Even hazier than usual, I mean. Sharing a point of view between my Bel-self operating in linear causality and my retconning-self operating outside of it had that kind of effect. There were lots of things to take care of, so I couldn't be bothered to feel too concerned about that.

Once I assumed my role as Bel of the Abyss within the framework of the scenario, I immediately got busy. The first time Bel-me would make his appearance was during the Draconian party, with Naoren and Mountain Girl, which was in the middle of March. That meant I had less than three weeks to set things up, and I started working overtime.

There was much to do. I had to set Crowy up as our main villain, nab Ollie and make him comfortable at the bottom of the Chasm of Desolation, set the Celestial archives on fire, and so on. It was that last bit that proved to be the source of my first encounter with a persistent annoyance I had to work around: past-me.

All my machinations in the Abyss were mostly out of past-me's view, but the arson plot wasn't, and it affected my past actions and suspicions, which was a problem. I never fully understood the whole 'Free Actor' thing before, but now that I had an outside view, it all made sense. Simply put, past-me was kind of 'dissolved' between all the various branches of the possible continuities, and they could steer things into any of those paths and forks, often pulling events in otherwise unlikely or downright impossible directions. And that was before we added in the whole Narrative-thing, which further twisted the timeline-tree outside of the range of their direct intervention.

That was annoying to work around and caused me a lot of headaches in the process. In contrast, while Josh had the same kind of potential, he was already snugly set on the 'Angie/Deus route', and so he didn't stir much trouble for me. Which I appreciated, because dealing with past-me alone was a nightmare. I mean, I thought I needed to reveal my Bel-self at the Draconian party because the love-triangle and arranged-marriage sub-plots were cringy, but it was much worse than that! If I didn't manually intervene, it would've literally cut off the succession of branching futures that would lead to the end of the time-block, aka the present, meaning it would've unravelled the entire retcon!

It was at this point that limiting the disastrous plot-derailing effects of past-me's presence became something I had to constantly work towards, mostly by bringing my old self in on the general outline of the plan so that he wouldn't do anything stupid. It even worked for a while, and I got some breathing room during the spring vacation, where past-me was in the Elysium. His focus on beach-episode related tropes gave me lots of space to manoeuvre in the Abyss and on Critias. It was around this time that I started gathering my Axis of Evil and making back-room deals with the various Noble Houses.

There was enough downtime to even engage in some fun side-projects, like building Coepi Urbs, or inventing Paradox-Billiards-Siberian-Roulette-Fourth-Dimensional-Hypercube-Chess-Hopscotch.

It wasn't until the beach episode was over and the plot picked up again that my headaches multiplied once more, because seriously, past-me was such a dick! I was trying my damnedest here to hammer together a fully functional scenario with all the ups and downs, and he was just being such an annoying, paranoid blockhead, it made me… itchy?

That was weird.

I focused on the sensation, expecting that it was coming from Bel-me, but it wasn't. Instead, it was… my phantom limbs? It was hard to tell, because the sensations they transmitted were fundamentally different from any tactile or audio-visual senses, but no matter how much I tried to explain it, 'itchy' was still the best way I could describe it.

Was it because I spent too much time in the retcon-space, I wondered. I was using my phantom limbs to anchor myself, so maybe they were getting tired. I was still stable, and so was the retcon, so I put it out of my mind and focused on the task at hand.

It was around the time when we had the big battle at Castle Nergal, and past-me snapped at me when Tracas died, that the itchiness started to get distracting. I even entertained the thought of retrieving one of them from the lack of space I used for anchoring myself, but I discarded the idea. It wasn't like I could even see them, so I couldn't tell if anything was wrong with it. For the time being, I just put up with it and moved on with the plan.

Not for long.

I couldn't remember where I'd heard it, but it's said that 'itchiness' wasn't a separate sensation, but the lightest form of pain, transmitted through the same receptors. I sincerely doubted my phantom limbs had nerve endings for something like that, but maybe it was how my mind interpreted whatever signals they were sending, and once those signals crossed a certain threshold…

"Ow… What the hell…?"

It was once again Bel-me who voiced my thoughts, and it was a wee bit less dramatic than how I felt at the moment. Probably because I only signalled the concept of pain to him, not the actual thing, which was getting pretty intense at this point. It felt like… kind of like as if my phantom limbs were being bitten by a thousand angry termites. It only started with one, but the itchy sensation spread between them, and at this point, more than half of my intangible appendages felt like they were slowly eaten by a swarm, which…

"Oh… Oh no."

I didn't need to be a genius to put two and two together, and it immediately shifted my priorities.

It took some effort to find the right branch that allowed me to get Josh and the gang into the Abyss ASAP, so I had to push the confrontation with Marzanna forward a bit. Of course, past-me was already interfering at this point, but I knew it would happen, so I worked around him and quickly set up the circumstances to allow the guys to move the plot to the Abyss.

That, unfortunately, created a whole lot of problems. Even though I limited past-me's meddling by restricting his Phasing through a carefully curated choice of branches and manipulating the scenario a bit, his Narrative Influence was still a pain in the ass to deal with, and I had to send in Bel-me to knock some sense into him from time to time. On the bright side, this gave me an excuse to play with Ollie a bit, which was a balm to the soul, though it helped very little with the pain of my phantom limbs.

Still, I soldiered on, as best as I could. I needed to reach the end of the scenario and return to the 'present' as soon as possible, and as baffling as some of the developments felt when I was past-me, they made perfect sense now. I couldn't exactly be picky, so as long as I could maintain the continuity and 'close the loop', elegant plot developments and twists were a luxury I didn't need (or more accurately, couldn't afford).

It didn't stop past-me from being a prick though. Like, mate. I'm being literally eaten alive here! I'm sorry things aren't living up to your lofty standards!

Putting that aside, by the time I managed to manoeuvre Crowy into attacking Castle Shamash and set everyone up for the final battle, all of my phantom limbs were being gnawed on, and it was bloody excruciating. I wasn't exaggerating about that whole 'being eaten alive' thing, and it was getting worse the closer we got to the present. I couldn't be picky anymore, so I purposefully set Bel-me up in a vulnerable position to goad Crowy into literally back-stabbing him, and not a moment too soon.

Honestly, compared to what retconning-me was experiencing at the moment, being pierced through by the bastard's black ink thorn thing really didn't feel all that bad. As soon as we were done with that, I grabbed past-me and Phased him over to the last in my long line of secret hideouts, this one in the Abyss and set up by the Axis of Evil, and presented him with the homunculus body in the tank.

The last few seconds while I waited for past-me to finally initiate the retcon were the absolute worst, but as soon as his phantom limb entered, I could feel a shift in the entire time-block as it snapped into a 'canon', and then I was pushed out and landed on the other side of the 'wall'.

I blinked.

From where I was standing, it felt like an eternity has passed, yet also less than a second. The homunculus, previously floating in the tube of amniotic fluid in front of me, was gone without a trace, as if the container never held anything other than the green goop. For a long moment, I was looking at the scene from two viewpoints at the same time, the second one being Bel-me, but now that the retcon was over, his consciousness was… 'returning' wasn't the right word, because he never stopped being 'me', but I had no better way to describe how our perspectives seamlessly merged.

There was no need for a goodbye, but I felt that just letting the body fade into nothing like that would've been anticlimactic, so seeing that the homunculus was still in the same position, giving me a thumbs-up, I mirrored the gesture. The unwritten laws of dramatic timing took it from there, as just a second later he started soundlessly breaking into tiny particles of magical light and sublimating out of existence, leaving only his blood-stained outfit behind.

And that was the end of th—

"Ow… What the…?" Feeling an odd, stinging sensation, I reflexively glanced down. There was something on my thumb. It was like… a hundred small mouths filled with sharp white fangs, endlessly gnawing and chewing until half my hand was gone, and… "Son of a bi—!"

~~~

It was over before he could even finish his last words. He was gone, without a sound. Not just his body, or his presence, but his entirely conceptual existence was suddenly and inexplicably erased by a torrent of gnashing bone and teeth washing over him.

That, was how Leonard S. Dunning, Polemos of Elysium, the King of Knights, Third Speaker of the Draconic Federation, Master of Clan Kage, Chimera Slayer, and the Second Free Actor, disappeared from the scenario without a trace.