Chapter 101: ~Chapter 35~ Part 1

It was a beautiful Sunday morning. The picturesque blue sky was dotted with a herd of fluffy white clouds, there was absolutely no wind, and most importantly, the temperature sneakily climbed up by about ten degrees Celsius. It still wasn't exactly warm per se, but it was just balmy enough for a great outing with my girlfriends. Or wait… I think an outing was supposed to be the platonic version of a date, so this technically wasn't an outing anymore… but I've been using the word to refer to hanging out with Judy and/or Elly so much that the two words meant roughly the same at this point. Language drift in motion, huh?

"Chief, would you care to explain what's going on?"

I decided to put the capriciousness of our ever-changing vocabulary aside and faced my dearest assistant. It was probably due to the special occasion, but she looked a bit prettier than usual. She was not only wearing a surprisingly stylish ensemble, but she also had her hair done up (though it wasn't that different from her usual hairdo, to be honest) and she even had a hint of makeup on her face. We were currently in my living room, and while I had a distinct hunch about the subject of her question, I decided to play dumb for the moment.

"What exactly do you mean?" I asked with a mostly innocent expression, which elicited a small groan from her, following which she extended her index finger and she swept her arm horizontally.

"I'm asking about them," she stated with an extra-deadpan expression. "Why are they here?"

"Oh, you mean the rest of the gang?" I mused as I glanced over at Josh, Angie, and the class rep awkwardly fidgeting on my couch. Well, at least Josh and Angie were. Ammy was mostly just giving me a silent, disapproving frown. Anyways, I flashed a smile at Judy and told her, "I invited them."

"Yes, I could figure that much out on my own," she grumbled. "I wanted you to tell me why you did that."

"I want to know too!" Elly chimed in from the side. Just like Judy, she also made preparations for today's date, so she was not only wearing an expensive set of a one-piece dress, white leggings, and a pair of knee boots, but her hair was once again in the familiar drills from the time we first met. Maybe it was because of that hairstyle, but she seemed to regain some of her recently tarnished outward dignity, as she appeared like a true noble lady elegantly holding a porcelain cup in her hand. Then, of course, she immediately shattered the image by hunching over her drink as she began to loudly blow on it.

"If it's too hot, I can use magic to cool it a little," Snowy offered with a modest smile.

"No need!" the princess declared, but then she continued to blow on her drink with renewed vigor.

"Are you sure? You are going to burn your tongue…" I told her on the side, but she only shook her head.

"Nonsense! I am a descendant of dragons! We don't burn our tongues!" she huffed and, probably to prove the point, she took a sip from her cup, only to twitch and follow it up with a string of "Owowowowow!"

I failed to stifle my laughter at the sight, which naturally earned me a wounded glare from Elly, but instead of addressing me, she looked away, extended her cup, and muttered a sulky "Pwease…" towards Snowy, who immediately proceeded to wave her hands around the cup with a brilliant smile, apparently tremendously enjoying herself.

Before I knew it, the corners of my lips rose even further, but before it could turn into an actual smile, I was shaken out of the moment by a certain, somewhat upset girl standing on her tiptoes and grabbing my ear to get my attention.

"Chief," Judy forcefully addressed me after she got me to face her again. "Stop trying to use her antics to sweep my question under the rug."

"I wasn't," I protested, but she didn't seem to care.

"Tell me why you invited everyone to our date," my assistant insisted with a visible frown, so I decided it was about time I stopped teasing her.

"Fine, fine," I mumbled as I gently removed her hand from my ear, then I leaned closer and whispered, "I'm just trying to get ahead of the tropes for a change."

"Which trope?" she inquired, and her previous frown was immediately displaced by an intrigued expression.

"The date-stalking," I answered, still in a whisper. "It's likely that, since they know about our date, they would stalk us like the last time, so I figured I might as well invite them along. I'll pay for the tickets and snacks, and once we are at the date spots, we will break into two groups. This way we can have our date in peace, and they will have more fun too." I paused here to let her digest my words, then I added, "Also, after the date, I was planning to show everyone the secret base, introduce Brang and company, and then do some preliminary combat tests to figure out everyone's strengths and weaknesses, and it's simpler to do if everyone is already with us."

"That… is unusually well thought out by your standards," she muttered, then a moment later she reached out and grabbed my ear again. "Who are you, and what did you do to my Chief?"

"It's 'our' chief! I mean, our Leo!" Elly interrupted between two elegant sips from her newly cooled cup of tea.

Judy gave her a withering glance, by her standards, then she looked back at me with the closest thing of the famous 'puppy eyes' I have ever seen on her and said, "Chieeeef. Eleanor ruined our skit. I'm devastated right now."

"Here, here," I playfully consoled her by patting her shoulder. "We have the whole day ahead of us; there will be a lot of opportunities to do them."

"But the first skit of the day is the most important of them all. Also, she'll ruin the rest too. She has absolutely no sense of comedic timing."

"Hey!" Elly immediately protested while placing her cup onto the table. "I have a sense of humor!"

"Prove it," my assistant challenged her with a determined expression, which immediately threw my other girlfriend off-balance.

"Ve-Very well!" the princess declared after stumbling over her words a few times, then she fell silent for few seconds while her eyes scanned the room. At last, her gaze landed on her tea, at which point her face immediately lit up. She faced me, cleared her throat, and said, "So, I have a question! Why did the tea call the police?"

For a moment I had no idea what to say, but Elly was looking at me so expectantly I couldn't help but repeat after her, "I don't know. Why did the tea call the police?"

"Because it was mugged!" Elly exclaimed with a bombastic grin, which only met with dead silence. Well, almost, as I could hear Angie suppress a giggle in the back, but I didn't turn around to check.

"Was that a dad joke just now?" I asked, fully expecting her to get disheartened, but instead she just gave me a giant nod.

"Yes, I learned it from dad. How did you know?"

Judy looked at my other girlfriend like she couldn't decide how to react, and eventually she looked back to me and told me, with an entirely inappropriate amount of gravitas, "This is much worse than I expected. I have to borrow Eleanor for a moment and fix this before her complete lack of comedy would tear our relationship asunder."

"Um… You do that?" I agreed quite uncertainly, at which point Judy grabbed hold of the completely confused dragon girl and dragged her into the kitchen before she even realized what was going on.

Once my girlfriends vacated the area, the atmosphere in the room became strangely tense, and as I glanced around, I noticed Josh waving a hand over his head to get my attention. Correction: I actually noticed it a long time ago, I was just ignoring him. Regrettably, that didn't seem to be an option anymore, so I faced my friend and asked, "Yes, Josh? Is there a problem?"

"Of course there's a problem!" he declared with a look in his eyes that was rapidly shifting between disgruntled, skeptical, and embarrassed. "Now that you're done flirting with your girlfriends, would you please address the elephant in the room?"

"I'm curious about your explanation too," Ammy joined is as she once again began to menacingly adjust her glasses in my direction.

"You have to be more specific than that," I told them without a shred of shame, though I once again had a very good idea what they were referring to.

"It's Lili! What else could we be talking about?!" Josh burst out while gesturing towards the girl standing by the coffee table with a gentle (if somewhat embarrassed) smile on her lips.

"Oh, riiiiight!" I exclaimed in turn as I theatrically slapped my forehead. "Thank you for reminding me. With all the commotion, this has almost slipped my mind. Do you remember how the class rep's grandpa dumped the responsibility of figuring out how to get a new identity for Snowy?" I spoke as I walked over to the Abyssal girl in question, all the while struggling to keep myself from breaking into laughter, and then once I was beside her, I presented her as, "Well, it's done. Allow me to introduce you to Neige Liliam Inanna-Dunning!"

There was a very long moment of silence in the living room after I finished her introduction, which was thankfully soon broken by Angie tentatively asking, "You… married her?"

"What? No, of course not!" I denied it on the spot while giving the Celestial girl a stern look. "I adopted her! Well, technically my parents adopted her, but that's only on paper. In practice, I'm her unofficial caregiver."

"Wait, hold on!" Ammy cut in before the obviously confused Josh could get a word in. "You actually adopted her into your family?"

"Yes, that's what I just said," I answered her with a nod.

"How come this is the first time I've heard of this?" came an unexpected question from the direction of the kitchen, where a certain blonde girl just stuck her head through the door, but before I could answer her, she was dragged back inside by my assistant. It was weird, but then again, at this point weird was becoming the new normal in my household, so I decided to ignore them for the time being and I faced the incredulous trio on the couch again.

"Sooo…" Josh spoke up after he finally overcame his shock, and asked, "Does that mean that Lili is your…?"

"My legal stepsister, yes," I answered with a grin while simultaneously tussling the hair of my newly minted little sister. Snowy let out an embarrassed noise, but to her credit, she stood tall and endured my overbearing big-brotherly head pats like a champ.

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"You still didn't explain how you arranged to adopt her into your family," Ammy reiterated her previous question, but I only shrugged my shoulders at her insistent interrogation.

"It wasn't that big a deal. Snowy knew a guy who knew a guy, and then I and the guy and the guy's guys met with the guy and then we persuaded the guy to call a guy he knew to speed things up, and so Snowy is now my sis and her new ID card and other assorted papers should arrive in the mail within a week or so."

The trio on the couch was still giving me skeptical looks, but at least Ammy was satisfied with my answer, or at least she didn't want to pursue the topic anymore. To be perfectly honest though, my explanation, meticulously detailed as it was, didn't exactly reflect the events in their entirety.

For a start, while it was true that I had Brang lead me to the document forger, who turned out to be a fairly mundane middle-aged placeholder who worked at a government office, I didn't actually let the two of them meet. Since it was damn time I started reflecting on Judy's constant stream of complaints about my impulsive behavior, I decided to put some extra thought into my affairs, and I figured that if this guy was someone who already worked with the Abyssals, they might make contact with him in the future as well, so I decided to plant some misdirection in his head while I was there.

Since Brang was way too conspicuous with his, size, limping, spear, and fancy new armor, I decided to have him follow after me while using his cloaking ability (more on that later) and I only took the wolfish Faun with me to the meeting, and I even went ahead and disguised myself by using a wig and a fake mustache I picked up in a costume shop on the way.

Once my preparations were complete, I introduced myself as an agent of the Nergals, another Abyssal family, and then I wove a long tale of conspiracy, where foisting Snowy onto a certain Leonard Dunning was but step forty-two in a grand and elaborate plan to ruin the Inannas and take over their mana-well, and I told it with an appropriate amount of mustache-twirling. The document-forger had very little presence and was quite mechanical in his actions, even by placeholder standards, but I figured it was better to be safe than sorry, so I kept up the fake supernatural Mafioso act till the end. By the way, no matter what Brang says, I definitely wasn't having so much fun I forgot the time, nor did I ramble. That Faun is a compulsive liar, I tell you.

Where was I? Ah, yes, the forger. So, after greasing the cogs of the system by a few wads of cash plus some highly descriptive threats, the man called his coworkers, and in just a few hours we managed to get our hands on a temporary ID. I was tempted to joke about how the illegal channels worked more efficiently than the actual government, but then I was informed that Snowy's records were sneaked back into the central system and that we would be receiving her new proper ID from them, so I wisely shut up.

Speaking of not talking, my friend on the couch wasn't following my example, as he once again waved his hand high over his head to get my attention, so I gestured for him to speak up.

"Okay guys," he began as he glanced at the two girls at his sides, then said, "Please tell me if I'm wrong, but isn't Lili wearing a maid uniform?"

"Uuum… Yes, she does?" Angie agreed.

"Then why is it that none of you seem to find it strange?! I mean, it's strange, right?!" Josh burst out, his eyes moving back and forth between Angie and Ammy, as if searching for validation.

"Ooooh?" I said very slowly as I dramatically cracked my knuckles. "What did you say, punk? Did you just call my sister weird?"

"What? No!" Josh denied vehemently while waving his hands like an idiot. "It's the maid clothes! I mean, isn't it weird to dress up like a maid if you are not one?"

"So you are saying that my sister's hobby is weird?" I growled while trying to crack my knuckles again, though they didn't make much noise this time.

"No, not at all!" Josh denied once again, but before I could continue my act, it was interrupted by Snowy suddenly clinging onto my arm.

"Don't fight!" she called out, stunning me for a moment, but then I let out a small sigh and once again placed my hand on the top of her head.

"We are not fighting, you dummy," I chided her while roughly ruffling her hair. "I'm just bantering with Josh."

"Are you sure?" Snowy asked with round, wide-open eyes.

"Of course. I was obviously just joking, right guys?" I asked as I sent a glance at the trio, and while Josh giving me a weird look was expected, the actual words coming from Ammy really surprised me.

"In fact, you looked like a violently overprotective brother for a moment."

"Really?" I asked back by reflex, at which point it was Angie's turn to repeatedly nod at me.

"Yeah, totally! It was kinda cool how it looked like you were just about to beat up Josh!"

"What's cool about that!?" my friend protested, but his childhood friend completely ignored him in favor of giving me a sparkly-eyed gaze.

"Now I wanna have a big brother too! Can you adopt me?" she asked with an impish smile that was contrasted with her deadly serious eyes.

I let out an awkward cough and ultimately I told her, "No. You have perfectly fine adoptive parents already, don't you?"

"Wait, hold on!" Josh suddenly interrupted us. "You knew Angie was adopted?"

"Well, duh," I answered, accompanied by a dismissive shrug. "She looks nothing like her mom and dad."

"Are you seriously telling me I was the only one who didn't notice?!" Josh exclaimed with just a hint of despair. On the other hand, the Celestial girl only gave me a sideways look.

"Leo, I don't think you've ever met my parents," she told me while furrowing her brows.

I was just about to give her a suitable excuse, but then a new deadpan voice joined the fray.

"You shouldn't point out the Chief's blunders like that," Judy declared while she came out of the kitchen, followed by a strangely unfocused princess. If we were in a cartoon, I was sure she would've had those weird, swirly eyes with large question marks over her head. While I observed her, Judy came up to me and continued, with complete seriousness, "That's my job." Saying so, she turned towards me and told me, with the same stern expression, "Chief, you never actually met with Angeline's parents."

"… No, I haven't."

My girlfriend gave me a flat look (well, flatter than usual, at the least), and said, "No, Chief. This is the point where you're supposed to come up with a harebrained excuse so that we can have a back and forth skit and distract everyone from your slip of the tongue, and then Eleanor would join in to show off the results of our comedic training. It's common sense."

"Well, excuse me for not being able to read your mind," I huffed. "How was I supposed to know you made this elaborate plan?"

"People in a relationship are supposed to be on the same wavelength. You should know these things just by looking at me."

"Well, I'm looking at you right now, and I still don't see it. Are you sure you have your wavelengths tuned right?"

"Of course," Judy nodded so hard it looked like a small bow. "It's part of my morning routine. I brush my teeth, I comb my hair, charge my internal batteries, and then I tune my built-in radio to your wavelength."

"Wait, are you using FM or AM?"

"AM, obviously."

"Well, that's your problem!" I exclaimed while gesturing with my hands. "I'm using FM. That's why we have a hard time communicating!"

"Oh, I see," Judy nodded twice, for emphasis, then puckered her lips a few times. I was just about to ask what she was doing, but then she stopped, and instead she made some kind of wholly unconvincing whirring sounds and said, "Judy-bot's whistling update has been delayed, so Judy-bot set her broadcast to FM manually. Can you receive my feelings now?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," I told her with a smile, then I quickly leaned down, embraced her, and then straightened myself, lifting her into the air in the process, following which I whispered to her, "Are you back at that Judy-bot thing again? I thought we agreed that was a dead horse already; stop beating it."

"You have no appreciation for the classics," she whispered back while her feet were still comically dangling a couple of centimeters above the floor, then she added aloud, "Beep-boop. Judy-bot's internal batteries are being recharged by the power of love. Judy-bot is pleased."

I was just about to respond with something about whether the power of love was a renewable energy source, but then we were interrupted by Ammy raising her voice all of a sudden.

"What are you talking about?! Wavelengths? Batteries? What is going on? What even is this?"

Before either of us could say anything, the class rep's words seemed to have triggered something in Elly, as she suddenly shook off her stupor and exclaimed, "The Aristocrats!"

There were a good five seconds worth of flabbergasted silence in the room, ultimately broken by my assistant letting out a defeated groan and muttering, "Still needs work. Lots of it…"

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