Chapter 196 |
Once again, the ebb and flow of my life slowly but surely found a casual rhythm. I would get up in the morning, have a nice big cup of refreshing breakfast tea… and then start putting out fires. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Lots of running around, approving or denying plans and operations, listening to endless meetings about political this and economic that and infrastructure whatever.
"Do the Speakers approve the Draconic Stimulus Package of the Abyssal Relief Plan?"
"Yes, yes. Just get on with it."
"Now, we just have to elect the members of the Abyssal Investment Committee to propose a budget to the Draconic Federation Fiscal Committee, then vote on that in the Draconic Council before forwarding in to the Portal Commerce Development Committee. Your signature, please?
"… Goddamn Draconian bureaucracy."
…
"Lord Peacemaker? Would you like your statue to be made of white marble or cast bronze?"
"I told you, don't make a statue of me. We have more important things to worry about."
"Then how about a memorial? Maybe something more abstract, like an obelisk or a stele or…?"
"Then how about a mausoleum? Just a small one?"
"… Do I look dead to you?"
"Um… no, but the pyramids weren't built overnight either, and… Oh! Actually, why don't we make one of those? Something imposing like that would certainly capture your greatness!"
"… Goddamn Abyssal sychopants."
…
"O Archon? I'm still of the opinion that we need at least sixteen bases to serve as a deterrent against the—"
"For the love of god, Mensah! If you don't stop scheming to turn this into a military occupation, I'll personally bury you along with Savir!"
"W-What did I do?"
"But Lord Archon! Please listen! We have to ensure that the Abyss would never pose a threat to— Prefect! Unhand me at once! I need to explain myself to the Lord Archon!"
"… Goddamn Celestials. Just, in general."
…
So yeah, something like that, day in and out. My mornings were kind of rough.
Then came lunchtime, which was usually in the company of a different segment of my rather wide inter-personal cycle. Dad-in-law, the Feilongs, the Knights, even the ex-Directors and Fidèle, along with various members of the Abyssal nobility… the list went on and on. Needless to say, these were also meetings, but at least they had the decency to keep most of the political topics out of the discussion. Not that there weren't enough other topics to choose from.
…
"So, Son? When are you going to hold the ceremony?"
"Abram, please don't pressure Leonard like that."
"Haha! Don't be like that, Arnwald! I'm just saying that, now is the perfect time to get married, before Naoren beats him to the punch!"
"It's not a contest, clan head."
…
"Listen, Celestial. This question was answered ages ago. According to historical records, countering a single Chimera required at least two Colossi. At least, meaning it could be more!"
"Bah! That's literally ancient history! Do you believe we haven't improved our Colossi over the centuries, Abyssal?"
"And do you believe that our Chimeras are the same as they were back then?"
"Maybe not. Maybe they're weaker."
"That's it! There's no need to talk about histories and hypotheticals! Bring your Colossus, Celestial, and we'll settle this debate once and for all!"
"Kihihi! Can we join, too? I've been itching to test our new Biomechanical Gigants."
"A new challenger?"
"Ha! We don't mind! Bring it on!"
…
So yeah, those weren't particularly quiet or peaceful either.
Then came more running around and paper-signing and whatnot in the afternoons, followed by some peace and quiet during the dinners. It was because I made it categorically clear that I was only going to spend them with my fiancées, so nobody bothered us during those times. Well, to be precise, we would be occasionally joined by my sisters, Arnwald and Morgana, and Ollie was a regular participant as well, but everyone had the good sense not to bring work to the dinner table, so things were peaceful. Mostly.
…
"Brotheeer! Snowy got a proposal letter again! Can I beat him up? Just a little?"
"P-Penny, please stop. You can't resol—"
"Penny-sama is right! We need to beat them up!"
"Yes! It's just another toad wanting to eat swan meat! Let's bring Bother Zihao along too, and beat them up!"
"Uuu… I got a letter as well."
"Oh no! Are they aiming at Ollie-kun, too!? Don't worry! Ichiko-oneechan will protect you!"
"Me too! Me too! I'll let them see Mount Tai!"
…
Then, once all of that was over, the girls would drag me to bed (sometimes in a more euphemistical way than just the literal, but I digress) and we would sleep together. Or rather, they would sleep, while I would… well…
…
"Argh! This is driving me crazy!"
"What's the problem, Fulgor?"
"The scenario! Or rather, what remains of it. I'm trying to archive it, to preserve it for later study, but the Simulacrum just isn't cooperating! It's like trying to negotiate with a cat!"
"Huh? Did you ever have a cat?"
"Erm… no, but I imagine this is what dealing with one would be like."
"… Have you tried asking Sol for help?"
"I would, but he's talking to the Venerate Benjamin right now."
…
"No, Benjamin. Just no."
"Why?"
"Because I say so. I know Oriole can be a handful, and even a bit annoying at times—"
"Hey!"
"— but it doesn't mean you can threaten to bite her."
"I wasn't threatening. I just announced what I was going to do ahead of time. I believe the term is 'fair play'."
"Doesn't matter. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. You're in my Domain, and I'm telling you; we don't bite people around here."
"Yeah! Take that, Venerated Benjamin! Bleee!"
"And you! Stop taunting him. What are you, child—? Wait, never mind."
…
So, yeah. Things weren't particularly peaceful on that side of the aisle either.
Like that, time slowly but inexorably marched on. Seconds dripped into minutes, minutes trickled into hours, hours streamed into days, days flowed into weeks, and the weeks into… Well, no, not months per se, but quite a lot of time had passed in the blink of an eye, and it took until the tail end of July for us to dot every 'i' and cross every 't'.
"Ah, finally!" Angie exclaimed by my side as our little group stood in front of the big portal leading out of the Abyss. "I can't believe we got stuck here for so long! Summer break is almost over, and we haven't done anything summer-break-y yet!"
Josh, standing by her side as usual, muttered a quiet, "I wish all our problems were that serious," yet somehow she still overheard him.
"Boo! It is a serious problem! It's our very last summer break!"
The fact that she could hear him over the background noise was almost impressive, considering we were standing in the middle of New Surratu Square. The freshly paved circular plaza took up roughly the same spot where Crowy's craters used to be. It was completely impeccable and flat as a pancake, with the remains of the old Castle Shamash already deconstructed, to be rebuilt at a different spot.
The Mana Well was nowhere to be seen, which was to be expected. It used to be underground, so the square was built on top of it, and now it had to be accessed by a secure tunnel starting from the construction site of the future Castle Shamash. And all of it was done in a matter of weeks. Give a sufficient number of sufficiently motivated Fauns sufficient resources, and watch the magic happen.
Sidenote: this, and all the other projects they've been involved in lately, made my impression of them being a Proud Construction Crew before they became a Proud Warrior Race all the more credible. Anyhow, the point was that we were standing in more or less the middle of the new plaza, surrounded by a capital-C crowd.
Not just hundreds, but literal thousands of people, Abyssal and Celestial and Draconians alike, held at a respectable distance by our security detail and lots of cordons, both the mundane and the magical variety. It kept the onlookers at bay, but not their voices, and in the noise, I could barely hear my thoughts at times.
"B-But, you know, we did a lot of camping!" Penny chimed in, picking up the thread of the conversation where Angie left it hanging. "That counts, doesn't it?"
The Celestial girl uttered an uncertain, "Maybe…" in response, and my other sister also tried to give her five cents.
"Also… um… technically speaking, we… I mean, you visited a foreign nation, in a sense, so…"
"Neige isn't wrong," the class rep chimed in on my other side. "The Abyss technically counts as its own country, and we did engage in cultural exchange as well."
"If you put it like that…" For a moment, Angie looked like she was going to accept that, but then she vehemently shook her head. "No, that still doesn't count! First, it was a rescue operation, then we were fighting, and then we had to sign papers and stuff! It wasn't a proper vacation; it's a business trip! It's not the same!"
"Ease up, silly-hedgehog," Josh cut in and put a hand on top of her head. "We still have almost a month of summer vacation left. Plenty of time."
"You're right, but…" Her eyes abruptly opened wide, and she ducked out from under his palm. "Wait, why hedgehog? Did my hair get frizzy again? I swear, I combed it properly this morning!"
Meanwhile, Judy tugged on my sleeve, and I turned to face her. She, Elly, and Ollie were sticking close to me, as if afraid to get lost in the crowd. Not the capital-C one, but all the dignitaries and nobles and whatnot who came to see us off in an official capacity, plus the mandatory security detail.
"Should we have another beach episode?" she asked, and while her tone didn't betray her excitement, the way she (and especially the princess) looked at me spoke otherwise.
"Technically speaking, since the scenario's over, it wouldn't be a beach episode, only a regular trip." I let that hang in the air for a moment, then amended, "But yeah, we could have another one. I had my eyes on a couple of really nice beach-front properties here in the Abyss."
A small part of me was still somewhat alienated by the idea, thinking that we already 'blew our load' with the beach trip in Elysium and doing it a second time would be repetitive, but that was probably just habit speaking. I spent the last year steeped in tropes and analysing everything in narrative terms, so it would probably take some time to unlearn all that.
More importantly, I noticed that Jaakobah was signalling to me from the direction of the Gateway, meaning we were in the clear. Honestly, all of this spectacle and ceremony was tiresome, but I promised Roland not to leave the Abyss on my own until everything stabilised and we've gotten an interim government in place, so I had to play along. Thankfully, at least I managed to get us out of giving a speech before we left. That took some effort, but none of us was in the mood for that. I just wanted to get home, put my feet up, and have a proper rest for once, and I was pretty sure everyone else shared my sentiment.
As such, we collectively marched over to the portal, listened to the security debriefing, and while that was going on, I decided to turn around and take one last good look at the Abyss.
That… might've been a bad idea, as it only made me slightly irritated. Why? Well, at the far end of the square, there was a semi-circular colonnade, with four prominent statues framed by the ancient Greek-style columns. From left to right, we had a generic Abyssal, a Magi, a Draconian, and a Celestial, each fully geared and transformed (where applicable) like they were preparing to take on an enemy. They weren't made in anyone's image, and were supposed to represent the supernatural races/factions in general.
However, the centrepiece was another story entirely.
Towering over the colonnade, standing on a tall stele in the middle, three bronze figures stood back-to-back. A Celestial with four pairs of wings nocking an arrow, an armoured knight wielding a sword and a spear, and finally an Abyssal with a shield and a sword raised over his head and pointed at the sky. Needless to say, those were supposed to be me, Deus, and Josh. It was tacky as all hell, but if there was a silver lining, it was that Josh's statue was the most prominent one when the whole composition was viewed head-on. Of course, that just drew attention to the fact that, since his black sword was destroyed in the battle and thus the artist had no reference, his metallic facsimile was holding an oversized, jagged monstrosity right out of some old MMO raid's drop table.
In other words, despite my best efforts, I couldn't stop them from giving me a statue. Oh well. It could've been worse.
"Leo! Hurry up, we're leaving!" Elly called out to me, shaking me out of my thoughts, and I hurriedly turned on my heel. Then, seeing they were all waving at the crowd behind us, I resigned myself to do so as well, and once our departure was at hand, we finally left the Abyss amidst thunderous cheers.
I made sure to keep my eyes closed until we reached the other end of the tunnel. I learned from the last time, so no magical flash-banging for me. Yes, when I opened my eyes on the other side, I was still a bit stumped and had to blink a couple of times.
"Welcome, Blackcloak."
The one greeting us on the other side was Brang, probably in charge of the security on the Critias end of the gateway, and behind him a smaller but by no means less excited crowd filling the large hall. In fact…
"Holy cow…" I muttered as I looked up.
So, for the record: we had a portalport in the underground base. To ensure fast mobilisation, I cooperated with Roland and even did some very subtle retcon-tweakery, so when the class rep opened the gateway, it would lead straight here. Except, the portal was pretty damn huge, meaning…
"Ah, surprised?" Brang asked with a toothy grin. "Large gate. Cut into ceiling."
At this point, another Faun chimed in, namely Pip, his wolfish ears twitching as he cheekily told us, "Not pleasing to eyes. Had to do remodeling."
"I can see that," Josh noted on the side, and nobody argued.
The portalport area was expanded to about double the original diameter and three times the height. I was sure there had to be some magical engineering going on here to keep the whole place from collapsing, but then I noticed something else, this time closer to the ground.
"Are those reliefs on the wall?"
It wasn't just one or two, but a whole ribbon of them, depicting battles and people with stylised, epic gravitas. There was someone fighting a Chimera, and then someone with a bunch of Fauns kneeling in front of them, then the same person with stereotypical ninjas and… Wait a minute…
"Aye," Brand spoke with thinly disguised pride. "History in stone."
"Aesthetically pleasing," Pip added, also sounding smug, and… yeah. That settled it.
The Fauns were absolutely a Proud Construction Crew race, and nobody could convince me otherwise.
Anyhow, once the gang was done gawking, we all headed to the main hall (which now felt oddly small, compared to the portalport), and then finally outside, where Josh had something to say.
"Goddamit."
"What?" I asked, glancing around to find the source of his displeasure. "Is there a problem?"
"Yeah." He pointed up, and when I still didn't get it, he let out an exasperated sigh and explained, "The sky, man. The red one in the Abyss felt so weird for so long, but then I got used to it, and now that we're back, the blue one feels weird!"
There was a long beat of silence, but then his girlfriend let out a giggle and playfully punched him in the shoulder.
"Oh, don't be a silly-hedgehog!"
"Wait, why am I the silly-hedgehog now?"
Ignoring the childhood friend couple's usual antics, I turned to my girlfriends and said, "We're leaving first. Any objections?"
Judy responded with a curt, "None," and sidled up to me, and she was hurriedly followed by the princess and, yes, Ollie as well. More on that later.
"W-Wait, Brother! What about us!" Penny stopped me just as I finished putting my phantom limbs around the girls, so I stopped and took out my wallet.
"Right. Here." I handed her a hundred-Jen bill. "Go and have some ice cream on the way home. My treat."
"That wasn't what I…!" Penny started, but then once she took the money, her tune immediately changed as she turned to my other sister. "On second thought, let's have some cake too!"
"Did someone say 'cake'?" Angie butted into the conversation by literally poking her head between the two, and while they were busy with that, I finished wrapping up my group and, after saying one last goodbye, we immediately reappeared inside my home.
"Ah! Let's open a window!" Elly spoke the moment we arrived. "Did Sir Arnwald and Lady Morgana not air the house at all while we were gone?"
"I don't know, don't ask me."
While my girlfriends were busy with housekeeping, Ollie was completely in awe.
"Wow! How did we get here so fast? Ah, what's that?"
And of course, the first thing he noticed in the whole living room was Penny's game console under the television. Kids be kids, am I right?
Anyhow, while the boy explored my home, I said my greetings to Pudding-kun (currently disguised as an ornamental vase on the kitchen counter), took Cal and Teeny out of storage and placed them on their usual racks in my room, checked my e-mails on the PC, and then… it was finally time.
I glanced at the clock. The time has finally come. The time to face the final boss. The last challenge. The true endgame, if you will. There was no turning back now, and—
"Someone's at the door!" Elly called out from downstairs, and I hurriedly called out to her.
"I'll be right there!"
Exhaling hard, I rushed down the stairs, passed by the slightly confused Ollie, came to a stop in the entryway, and, after steeling my nerves, I finally turned the doorknob in front of me. And then, on the other side of the door…
"Leonard? Care to explain yourself?"
… Judy's parents, with her dad looking especially miffed. Oh dear. This might be my greatest challenge yet.
Some might say I was being a tad over-dramatic. After all, I had fought monsters, not-angels, not-demons, punched an Emergent, and, most daring of all, I even butted heads with child protective services. Compared to such mighty adversaries and foes, facing Judy's mother and father didn't seem such a big deal, but appearances could be deceiving.
They were normal. No magical heritage, no mysterious secrets, no nothing. In a sense, they represented 'normalcy' itself, as much as that could be applied to anything within the Simulacrum. A charging Chimera? A bit of a pickle, but nothing to write home about. A megalomaniacal bastard with a god-complex about to destroy the world? Been there, done that. A ruined relationship with my in-laws? Now we're talking real peril.
Fortunately, I came prepared, and they could've never expected my secret weapon! It was super-effective! They never ever saw it coming!
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
"You like LAGOs?"
"Yes!" the little beansprout declared proudly and grinned at the woman sitting on my couch. "Uncle brought me a lot! I've made pirate spaceships, and pirate robots, and robot spaceships, and…" He awkwardly scratched the back of his head and muttered, "I-I haven't figured out how to make them all three at the same time, but I'll do it one day!"
"Aw! You're adorable!" Judy's mom cooed, and Ollie let out a proud giggle in return.
In the meantime, her father continued to stare daggers at me, yet didn't interrupt the two just yet, allowing my girlfriends to bring in some snacks and refreshments to further blunt his ire. So far, everything was working as planned. You might even say it was according to the keikaku, which also meant plan.
"Orange juice, anyone?" Elly asked as soon as she placed the jug filled with a yellow liquid onto the table.
Judy's mom immediately replied with an upbeat, "Ah, thank you. I'll have some," followed by Ollie also scampering over to the table.
"Me too! Me too!"
"Just a moment," Judy added on as she put the tray of small confectionery down and picked up a pair of stout glasses. Where did she get the sweets at this hour? As usual, my kitchen and pantry were a land of mysteries. In fact, despite my best efforts, my old ninja maid hypothesis was yet to be conclusively disproven. Make of that what you will.
In any case, the orange juice was portioned, the snacks were snacked, the kid was cute, and after a few more minutes, we were all sitting down and waiting for the other shoe to drop. It didn't take long.
"Can we address the elephant in the room already?" Judy's dad grumbled a tad morosely, and when nobody objected, he glared at me again. "Leonard?"
"Yes, Clarke?" I asked back with an innocent smile.
"Did you take my daughter to another of those… what was the term? Pocket space?" He shook his head and redoubled his glaring efforts. "Never mind. The real question is this: did you knowingly expose my daughter to danger?"
"Technically speaking," Judy interjected with a finger raised, "We voluntarily entered the Abyss to follow after the Chief after he was captured."
"Hush, Sunshine, I want to hear what Leonard has to say for himself," Clarke said in a low voice, followed by a more cutting, "Also, from what I've heard, he was counting on you following after him, so it is a distinction without a difference."
"Excuse me?" I cut in with a frown of my own. "Where did you hear that?"
"From Abram," he told me flatly, and as if just reminded of something, his wife's face bloomed into a huge smile.
"Ah, now that you mention it, it's been a while since we last visited Emese and Abram." She turned to the little boy sitting between Judy and Elly and kindly asked, "Little Ollie? Do you want to come with us? They have a reeeally big house, you know?"
"How big?" he asked back, eyes already sparkling.
"Huge! The biggest you've ever seen!"
"Um… our castle was big too," he muttered, slightly downcast. "Until the Lord of Inanna came."
"You had a castle?" Clarke blurted out in turn, but then he hurriedly shook his head and glared at me again. "Never mind that. I'm still waiting for Leonard's answer."
I took a deep breath and started with, "First off, I would like to let you know that my reputation for being a Machiavellian schemer accounting for every variable is greatly exaggerated. Secondly, while it's true that I was aware that Judy came to the Abyss along with the others, I did everything in my limited capacity to make sure she wouldn’t be endangered." I almost tagged a 'too much' at the end of the sentence, but I thought better of it.
It was at this stage that Elly decided to back me up.
"Mister Sennoma?"
"Yes, Eleanor?" he asked, sounding considerably more polite than when he was talking to me.
"We did end up saving the world," she pointed out, but seeing that he was only getting progressively more confused about that, she hastily clarified, "What I meant to say was that we all saved the world, together. From exploding. It was a team effort, and if Judy wasn't there, we couldn't have done it."
"I… understand that, to a degree," Clarke relented, though his tone said he had a hard time wrapping his head around the idea of his daughter contributing to something as abstract as 'saving the world', or what Elly meant by it 'exploding'. In fact, I had no idea exactly how much he was told by our families and how much he could comprehend of it, but that was a question for later. "But it still doesn't sit well with me."
Seeing that his attitude was shifting, I jumped in to hit the iron while it was hot.
"If it makes you feel any better, I can promise you with one hundred percent certainty that it was the very last time we would have to deal with such a dangerous scenario, so Judy and everyone else should be perfectly safe and secure from now on."
While my declaration was maybe a bit too insistent, it was anything but baseless. From a purely Watsonian perspective, no active threats were remaining on Critias, or anywhere else in the Simulacrum, for that matter. While some Draconian families and clans were still antagonistic towards the Draconic Federation, the vast majority had already joined up, and with the Knights of the Ordo Draconis on our side, they couldn't cause much of a ruckus. I was literally something like an absolute monarch of the Elysium, along with Angie/Deus, and since Judy was at this point effectively the shadow-eminence of our intelligence network, the Celestials didn't pose any threat either.
With the Canadian arch-mage taken down, and Ammy being the Conduit of the Grimoire, the Assembly was effectively on our side as well, and I pretty much employed the entire Research Society at this point. Now that the Abyssal Civil War was officially over and the New Noble Alliance signed an in-perpetuum treaty of friendship with both the Draconic Federation and the Elysium, there wasn't going to be any imminent trouble from that side either. Oh, and we also had their new Emperor (read: Ollie) and his Herald (read: Josh) on our side.
Add in the fact that, as Judy had demonstrated, all of us were tied together in a huge, if somewhat loose, web of familial connections, so maintaining friendly relations shouldn't be difficult at all.
But then, if that wasn't enough already, there was also the much more pertinent Doylist viewpoint backing up my statements. Namely that the scenario was over, and without it driving conflicts in the name of dramatics, the chances of any serious hostilities breaking out between the supernatural power-blocs of the World of Mystics was effectively nil, and if it was a smaller incident… Let's just say that as a newly minted Emergent and conditional reality-warper, I had anything less catastrophic than that completely covered.
Clarke must've felt the conviction in my voice, because he eventually crossed his arms and let out a soft huff.
"Can you really promise that?"
I responded with a snappy, "Absolutely."
"I want to believe in you, but…" He glanced over at Judy, and seeing the insistent (if somehow still deadpan) glare he was sending his way, he soon slouched his shoulders with a sigh. "Fine. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt one last time." He then narrowed his eyes and added, "But it really is the last time."
"Don't worry. It'll be fine," I asserted with a smile, and seeing that the immediate crisis was averted, I quickly steered the flow of the conversation into a different direction, lest Clarke would give it a second thought and change his mind. "Now, the reason why I asked you to come over as soon as we came home was because of something unrelated. Or… maybe not wholly unrelated, but…"
Just as I was about to broach the subject, we all looked up, hearing the engine of a car backing into our driveway. Just a few seconds after the sound of the handbrake, our front door was thrown open.
"Brother! That was mean! How could you leave without us like—?!" my knightly sister whined as soon as she came inside, only to freeze and throw her hands up as soon as she entered the living room. "A-Awawa! Mr Sennoma! Mrs Sennoma! What are you doing here?!"
"Uu… We're home?" Snowy chimed in from behind her, looking rather awkward.
Judy's mom beamed at the two with a happy-go-lucky, "Hi, cubbies! It's so nice to see you again!"
Meanwhile, the car left the driveway, so I figured nobody else was coming. For once, Penny's timing was pretty great, and I waved at her to get her attention.
"Welcome home, Kiddo? Hey, can I ask a favour? Would you show Ollie around upstairs?"
"Show what?" she blurted out, but then her eyes lit up in excitement, and she completely forgot about her previous grievances. "Hey, Éolienne? Do you wanna come up to our room? I'll show you my PC! We have games!"
That immediately caught the little boy's attention.
"Games? What games?"
"Fun ones!" She grinned at him, then poked my other sister. "Snowy can show you her artwork, too! It's really cool!"
"Is it?"
"Um… I-I'm still learning," my Abyssal sister mumbled, half modest and half shy, but Penny was already in her groove.
"Come on, it'll be fun!"
Like that, the three of them rushed up the stairs and left the conversation, though not before Penny remembered that she was supposed to be mad at me and stuck her tongue out while leaning over the railing. Once they left, I turned to my in-laws and flashed a (what I hoped to be) disarming smile.
"So… Since it's just us now, I have a proposal. Or maybe more of a favour to ask, depending on how you look at it."
Clarke eyed me for a few seconds, as if trying to read my mind, but he eventually gestured at me with a curt, "Out with it."
So, over the next couple of minutes, I gave a quick and rather surface-level description of the recent events in the Abyss, mostly focusing on how I was 'locked up' along with Ollie and how, after many twists and turns, he was appointed as the new Emperor. Judy's mom absorbed it all with rapt attention, while her husband was still a bit skeptical and more than a tad impatient. He didn't interrupt and let us finish though, listening to every bit of colour commentary provided by my girlfriends as well.
Then, at last, when we finally reached the end of the recap, Clarke let out a low hum and directly asked, "So? Why did you go out of your way to explain all this first?"
"To make sure you understand the context in which I'm making this request," I told him in a diplomatic tone right out of Lord Barnabas's handbook.
"Which is?" Judy's mom prompted me, but it was her daughter who responded to him in my stead.
"We're adopting Ollie."
That was a bit of a shocker, so I hurriedly added, "Or rather, we were considering the option of you adopting the kid."
Clarke was shocked, while his wife was…
"Really? Can we?"
"Dear, please calm down," he told her and looked me in the eye. "Leonard? Is this part of another one of those plans I keep hearing about?"
Oh god. I'm never going to live down this stupid schemer reputation, am I?
"No, not really. I just want the kid to grow up in a normal family, and ours is already a bit… crowded."
"Ah, but don't worry," Elly chimed in with a smirk. "If you say you can't, my mum also said she wouldn't mind adopting him!"
It took some effort not to blurt out a deadpan, 'Normal family,' to Elly's proposal, but I managed to hold myself back. Seriously though, while originally the idea of adopting Ollie was nothing more than just an inside joke, the more we thought about it, the more realistic it became. Leaving him in the Abyss was not a great idea, as he was guaranteed to end up getting entangled in politics and factional struggles, and as much as I liked my Draconian in-laws, having them adopt Ollie could be easily misconstrued as holding the Emperor of the Abyss hostage, which wasn't great for faction relations.
On the other hand, we already had a precedent in Angie deciding not to stay in the Elysium and instead pursue higher education and prepare herself for leading her people in earnest. Since Josh was serving as both her boyfriend/Justicar and Ollie's Herald, I could mount a semi-convincing argument on letting the three of them all stay on Critias to further strengthen the bonds between our realms and wipe away the mistrust built up over the centuries and other high-minded stuff.
However, for this to work, Ollie needed to be adopted for real, and while there were a couple of options available, I wasn't one hundred percent comfortable with most of them. Why? Because the kid, despite being Abyssal high-nobility and losing his entire family just a few months ago, was the most normal kid I've ever met, and I preferred he'd stay that way. So, who else would serve better as his foster parents than Judy's family, the only fully human, non-mystical couple I knew?
And no, this definitely wasn't motivated reasoning fuelled by the fact that Judy kept pestering me about this for weeks. Not at all.
"I don't know…" Clarke said, his fingers absently pinching his chin. "This is rather sudden, and…"
"Dear?" Judy's mom interjected, sidling up to her husband and giving him the puppy dog eyes treatment.
"Dad?" my dear assistant also joined the fray, and while I was sure she was trying to follow her mother's example, her deadpan stare was so intense it had kind of the opposite effect.
Clarke held up valiantly under their siege, but at last, it only took a couple of seconds for him to sigh in defeat and say, "Let's not jump into this blind. We should discuss this again back home, and maybe sleep on it, and if you still think it's feasible, we can consider it."
"Yay!"/"Yay."
Mother and daughter exclaimed in unison, though their tones weren't exactly on the same wavelength. Meanwhile, my princess clicked her tongue in defeat, so I reached around her and patted her shoulder.
"Don't worry. You're still going to be Aunty Ellie."
"I know, but…"
Before she could start grumbling, Clarke loudly cleared his throat again and addressed me.
"So, Leonard? Could you please continue where you left off? About this Abyss place, and its customs?" When I only tilted my head to the side a little, he hurriedly clarified, "Just… in the off-chance that we do end up taking care of the boy, I want to be well-informed. Would you, please?"
Since he was asking nicely, I had no reason to turn him down, but I only got a couple of sentences in, about the structure of Abyssal nobility and their castles (since the topic came up beforehand), when we were unexpectedly interrupted by…
"Oh, bollocks. What is it this time?" I griped under my breath, looking at the flat, two-dimensional black hole in space abruptly materialising in the middle of my living room.
A second or so later, a blonde head appeared from the hole, and Oriole exclaimed, "Sol! Quick, come with me! We have a—!" She abruptly fell silent when she noticed all the eyes on her, and she sheepishly added, her voice overlapping with the peeping of a herd of ducklings, "Ah, sorry to interrupt, but this is, like, really-really important! Can I borrow Sol for a moment?"
"Sol?" Clarke echoed her, while I raised a palm.
"She means me. It's a long story." As soon as I finished saying that, I turned back to the pig-tailed Emergent and hissed, "Do you mind? We're in the middle of something here."
"I know, I know, but this is really urgent! Fulgor is reeeally freaking out right now!"
"Fulgor?" I repeated after her, and she vigorously nodded, making her hair distort and sparkle like her orbital rings.
While I internally debated what to do, I glanced around. The princess looked more curious than anything, while my dear assistant was already busy taking notes on her freshly charged phone. As for her parents.
"Dear? Are you all right?"
"Yes, yes," Clarke said in a quiet voice. "I'm slowly getting used to things like… planets appearing like this..."
Meanwhile, my internal debate came to a conclusion, and I wearily got up from my seat and turned to my girlfriends.
"This shouldn't take too long. Can you please pick up the discussion where I left off?"
Judy responded with a tacit, "Sure," so I stepped over to the portal… and pushed Oriole back inside.
"I'll be with you shortly, so please stop distressing my in-laws."
Credit where credit is due, she didn't argue, and a moment later, her portal popped out of existence. A sigh and some heavy steps later, I headed upstairs and opened the door to my room. If it was absolutely urgent, I could've slipped out of the Simulacrum and into the Emergents' commons room right on the spot, but I had no idea how doing that looked from the outside, and Clarke might've already received some SAN damage from Oriole suddenly popping up like that, so I didn't want to take my chances.
As such, I closed the door behind me, lay down on my bed, and closed my eyes, wondering just what could've made Fulgor of all people 'freak out'.
"Sheesh," I whispered as I readied my primary phantom limb. "And just when I finished convincing them that there should be no more emergencies…"
Then, just as I slipped out of the Simulacrum, a new idea raised its ugly head, and I couldn’t help but groan aloud, "Ugh… Please tell me Id-me isn't in charge of jinxing consequences…" as my consciousness was already heading towards the not-dark not-room.
"I'm here, what's the si—?" I spoke up as soon as I arrived in the un-dark anti-room (renovations were underway), only to fall silent when the whole place was filled with the planetary avatars of the Emergents like a bloody clown car.
"We're so screwed! We're so screwed!" a ringed planet bawled in the voice of a thousand ornery sparrows.
"Stop fretting, guys," a red sun crowned by countless spikes made of the starry sky spoke in a nonchalant tone as it lazily floated over the rest. "This wasn't entirely unexpected."
"What do you mean it wasn't 'unexpected'?!" a planet covered with stormy red seas yelled back from below. "You knew this would happen?!"
"I knew it could happen," the red star corrected her, then tagged on a flippant. "How does the saying go? You can't make an omelette without cracking open a few eggs, I think?"
"You can't be serious…!"
"Argue quietly! I'm trying to work here!" A lightning flashed between the two, only for its source to shrink back as soon as they turned their attention to him. "Erm… Please?"
While all that was going on in one metaphorical corner, the other one had… well…
"Venerated Emergent, please! Can't you do anything?" an unusually dim planetoid pleaded to the bleached moon next to him.
"I already have," the gravitationally bound bundle of bones and fangs responded calmly, currently busy nibbling on something that resembled the tail of a comet. "I had given my best attempt to avert the singularity, and my efforts have proven insufficient. The situation is completely out of my control and jurisdiction at this point, and therefore, I see no reason to attempt another intervention."
"But… but the Simulacrum is—!"
"It's over! We're doomed, and…!" Oriole yelped again, only to finally notice me and start speeding towards me. As in, her planetary form was hurtling towards me, like something out of a cosmic horror story, or maybe some sci-fi work about a culture on the higher end of the Kardashev Scale. I had a hard time deciding if the fact that she still sounded like a young girl as she yelled, "Sol! Quick, do something!" made it better or worse, but it certainly made it something.
Anyhow, I was growing a bit impatient, so I clapped my hands hard. There was a sound, but more importantly, it made the whole neither-dark nor-room shake and waver, like someone had just sat on the special effects controls of a movie, and then with a snap and a pop, all the celestial objects around me disappeared, and in their place was a familiar, if currently a little skew-morphic, round table.
One by one, the Emergents fell onto their seats, some with more dignity than others, and once I was sure I had everyone's attention, I put both my hands on said table and raised my voice.
"Can we please stop panicking for five minutes, and can someone tell me exactly what's going on?"
There was a long beat of silence in the wake of my request, and for a moment, I was almost worried I had messed up something with the Definitions when the Crowned Coalescence let out a jaunty whistle and started tapping the table as well.
"Wow, kid! You're learning fast! This is almost as solid as when Carmine makes it! Attaboy!"
"Don't try to change the subject!" the woman sitting opposite me glared at him, her hair flaring into a brilliant crimson before settling into a slightly warmer red when her eyes moved to me. "Hello, Sol. Sorry for dragging you over in a hurry like this, but we have a small—"
"A big problem!" Fulgor cut in, literal lightning sparks dancing on his moustache.
Wow. Oriole wasn't kidding. He really was freaking out. I wasn't talking about the electrified facial hair; that tended to happen from time to time. No. The shocking part (no pun intended) was his interrupting Carmine. Fulgor had a bit of a temper at times, but I'd never seen him snap at her before.
Luckily for him, she remained calm and collected (or, at least, didn't get more agitated than she already was) and continued to talk to me.
"A rather significant problem," she stated, followed by yet another annoyed squint at the happy-go-lucky man at her side, the only one without a fully human-like shape. "An 'unforeseen development' that, as it turns out, wasn't entirely unexpected to some of us."
"Oh, please," the Crowned Coalescence responded with an implied roll of the eyes. "Don't pin this on me. It's just how things turn out sometimes."
"Okay, stop," I interjected with a palm pointing at the two. "Can someone get me on the same page as you all first, please? What is this 'significant problem'?"
"L-Let me try!" Obsidius called out, and after tapping the table a few times, the ever-shifting polyhedron (that, in some way or form I still wasn't entirely sure about, represented the workings of the Simulacrum) flew over from its usual pedestal at another part of the chamber. It came to a sudden stop right over the middle of the table and then Obsidius waved his hand at it. "You see… The Simulacrum is expanding."
"Does it?" I tried feeling around inside myself, as gross as it sounded, but I couldn't feel anything particularly off. Before I could ask though, Oriole chimed in from the side to answer my unspoken question.
"Not literally! It's more like… um…"
"The scope of the Simualcrum is growing in complexity," our venerable Benjamin noted with audible disinterest, as if this had nothing to do with him. He… probably wasn't entirely wrong about that. Then he added, "I don't know what else you were expecting. It is a rather obvious turn of events."
"See?" the Crowned Coalescence cut in with a… grin? Kind of? Again, he still had no face, but I could distinctly feel him grinning. Maybe I should do something about that one day, but for now, he just pointed at the white-haired boy with vindication. "Even little Benny says that it was obvious this would happen!"
"Call me 'little Benny' one more time…" Benjamin hissed, but got interrupted by Fulgor, and…
Holy crap. Interrupting Carmine was already bad, but he also cut off Benjamin? He must've been really freaking out.
Anyhow, he said, "That's not the issue!" He then turned to me and directly told me, "Listen, Sol! We can't start a new scenario!"
"… Do we want to?" I asked back, trying not to sound too confused.
"No, but even if we did want to, we couldn't, because…" He trailed off, then crossed his arms with a huff. "Actually, we don't quite know why. That's the problem."
"As a matter of fact, that's still not the main problem," Carmine commented, then gestured to Obsidius to continue where he left off.
"R-Right! You see, Sol," he started, and… it was official now. No matter how much I insisted on Leo, I would never convince them to call me anything else other than 'Sol'. More importantly, Obsidius waved at the multi-coloured polyhedron a few more times, and after spinning and shifting a few times, it settled into a languid green icosahedron. "Here! Do you see this?"
"Erm…" I squinted hard at the spinny platonic solid, but it didn't take me long to give up and say, "No? Can you explain to me like I'm five?"
"Technically, you're waaay younger than that," the Crowned Coalescence jested on the side, and so I did the only reasonable thing under the circumstances. "H-Hey! Stop!"
While he was busy trying to untangle his crown I Defined into a ridiculous pompadour (threats are meaningless if you aren't willing to go through with them), I gestured for Obsidius to get on with it, and he did so, though only after taking a nervous gulp.
"R-Right. Where do I…? Uuu…" He made the icosahedron spin a few more times, probably just to collect his thoughts, and then he pointed at it again. "You see this spot here? It's getting more ********** on its own. Normally, that only happens when a Free Actor is interacting with the *************…"
Oh, wait. I got this one. He was referring to something like a 'simulation layer'. Yeah, I was familiar with that one. It was why placeholders got more 'normal' and less one-note extras the more we interacted with them, and why the more time I spent in the School of Ottawa during my little jaunt with Ambrose, the more stable and distinct the environment became.
Translation time!
"So if I'm getting this right, the simulation is getting more complex and defined."
"Yes!" Obsidius exclaimed, followed by a breath of relief, as if afraid that I would Define him into a duck if he displeased me. Was I that threatening? Maybe I should work on my image. "It's obviously most pronounced at the site of the last scenario, but it's also happening all over the rest of the Simulacrum."
I cut in with a curt, "Question," and raised a hand to stall him. "Do you mean the version of Earth where our scenario took place, or the Simulacrum as a whole?"
"A-Again, it's most visible when it comes to… um… y-your scenario, but yes, it's happening to a lot of other ************ as well."
Okay, time out. That one was a bit harder to discern. Something about a 'husk'. Something that's been set aside after is served its purpose, so if I were a betting man, I'd say…
"Do you mean old scenarios?"
"Yes!" Fulgor cut in again, sounding just as miffed as before. "They are starting up on their own!"
"And that's a problem?" I guessed. "Can the Simulacrum not handle that, or…?"
Again, I didn't feel anything out of place, but as the Crowned Coalescence had graciously pointed out, I was really, really new to this, so maybe I was just unaware of the symptoms, or…
"Ah, no." Oriole's answer sent me on a loop, but then she hurriedly explained, "I mean, your Domain is humongous, and the Simulacrum is only taking up a small part of it! Even if it keeps growing, you should be fine!"
"We can't be sure of that," Carmine objected, sounding just worried enough to make me worried as well, but then she quickly backpedalled and tried to reassure me with, "Or rather, so far there don't seem to be any adverse effects, so there's no need to panic, but don't ignore it either. We are in uncharted waters, and we have to be careful."
"I get that, but…" I paused while I scratched the back of my head. "So not being able to make more scenarios isn't the problem, and the Simulacrum growing isn't the problem, and old scenarios starting up on their own isn't the problem, so… what is the problem?"
"Those scenarios, technically speaking, aren't running on their own," Fulgor answered with a huff, and since he didn't spill the beans, Benjamin of all people decided to do it in his stead.
"Listen, newborn. You seem to completely ignore the reason why the Simulacrum exists."
"To help Submerged Ones come out of the Noise, whatever that is, and become Emergents, right?" I said, and he gave me a flat look that said I still didn't get it. But then I did, and I felt kind of stupid. "Wait. Is all of this happening because of the Submerged Ones?"
"In a sense," Carmine admitted with a troubled expression, her eyes once again on the Crowned Coalescence, who just finished twisting his crown of starry nights back into their usual shape.
He must've taken it as a prompt to speak up, because he lazily pointed a finger at me and said, "The ones linked to the scenario where you germinated aren't Submerged Ones anymore. They fully Emerged; they just aren't coming out."
"… Why?"
He shrugged at my question.
"Who knows? Maybe you're just cozy?"
"Or, more likely," Carmine took the baton of the conversation with a frown, and also pointed at me, "they are simply following your example, and instead of coming out of the Simulacrum to the rest of us, they are making it their home instead."
Benjamin chose this moment to utter a blasé, "The singularity," followed by a slightly more contemplative, "You are observing the new paradigm. Just as the ******** of the Simulacrum changed the process of Emerging forever, the Emergence of Leonard Sol Dunning has fundamentally altered the process of Emerging once again. There is no turning back now."
"Let's just say we all got that," I said, though I wasn't entirely truthful about that. "Where does that leave us?"
"Unable to start any new scenarios, for one," Fulgor started, still fuming.
"Which isn't that big a deal," the Crowned Coalescence commented with a shrug. "Aren't there already a bunch of them running right now?"
"Yes, but we don't know how it will affect future Submerged Ones," came the immediate response from Carmine. "The ones attached to the last scenario successfully Emerged along with Sol, but they are following in his footsteps a little too closely, some of them even choosing to define themselves back into the Simulacrum as Free Actors in their own scenarios instead of coming out."
"Which also makes Sol's Domain even bigger! See? Everything ties together!" Oriole added with a grin, but nobody responded.
In fact, there was complete silence while the rest waited for me to digest all this, and once I did, I placed my hands on the table again.
"Okay, so now we have a whole bunch of newly minted Emergents doing the same thing I did and doing… what? Self-insert fanfiction?"
"That is a gross oversimplification," Fulgor snapped back at me, only to then pause and add, "But… not entirely incorrect?"
That made me wonder if whatever Emergent language we were speaking somehow just turned my jest into something serious, but before I could get anywhere with that, someone else picked up the ball and started running with hit.
"Actually, can we do that?" Oriole chirped on the side, sounding pretty excited by the prospect. "That sounds way more fun than running a scenario from the outside!"
"This isn't about fun," Carmine griped, followed by a loud tap on the table. "Please focus. If this new… paradigm, as the Venerated Benjamin put it, negatively affects the Submerged Ones, then the Venerated Ones will…" She paused, eyes narrowing as if a new idea just occurred to her, and she turned to the boy on her left. "Actually, hold that thought. Obsidius?"
"Y-Yes?"
"Do we even have signs of Submerged Ones in the Simulacrum right now?"
He didn't ask back and started waving his hands right away.
"Ah, that shouldn't be hard to…" He trailed off as the polyhedron changed shapes multiple times, its hue going from a gentle green to a vibrant yellow, and then all kinds of colours bleeding together like a big kaleidoscope. Everyone held their breaths (except for me, because I still didn't quite understand what I was looking at) until the light-show suddenly stopped and Obsidius let out a startled noise. "Ah! Yes, we have them! Right here!"
Fulgor asked, "Where?" making the boy squint hard at the geometric shape in front of us.
"That's… harder to say, but if I read this right, they are all attached to the husk that Sol is maintaining."
Oriole cocked her head to the side and muttered, "Is it right to call it that when it's actively in use?"
"M-Maybe not, but…" Obsidius started wiggling his fingers, like a leet hacker in a sci-fi movie trying to hack the mainframe, and after a few short seconds, he slouched back in his seat. "Yes, I'm sure of now. They are still following Sol's… erm… post-scenario?"
He looked at me for approval, so I nodded. Obsidius exhaled a relieved breath, while the others were looking considerably tenser.
Fulgor blurted out, "What does that mean?" and Carmine soon followed him up with a just as uncertain, "What are we supposed to do now?"
Once again, they were all looking at me for answers, which was both understandable (I was technically the new management) and annoying (since I was the least experienced Emergent in the not-room, by far), but I was getting used to this as well. As such, I crossed my arms, inhaled deeply, and gave a solid five seconds of silent consideration to the question before coming to the obvious conclusion.
"Ladies and gentlemen. I understand your worries, about how the other Emergents outside would react to the changes in the Simulacrum's operation. However, if the Submerged Ones are still here, and the post-scenario is still running, then there really is only one reasonable thing we can do under these circumstances."
"Which is…?" Carmine prompted me, and I adopted my best faux-wise tone to respond.
"Simple. The show must go on."