Chapter 113: ~Chapter 39~ Part 3

The sound of the last bell of the day filled me with, of all things, trepidation, all thanks to a certain workaholic class representative. This might come off as a surprise, but I really, really didn't want to meet the weird school nurse with his annoying laugh and his stupid mallet. Unfortunately for me, Ammy spent an uncomfortable amount of time nagging me about how I had to go there first thing after school before she left.

It might have been an exercise in delaying the inevitable, but I waited until Mrs. Applebottom left the classroom before I managed to will myself to rise to my feet.

"Are we going to have another meeting at 'your place'?" Joshua asked me while packing his bag with one hand and making air quotes with the other.

"Yes," I told him while glancing around, and noticed that Angie was already by his side. How she managed to get to our row just a few seconds after the bell rang, I'll never know.

"Are we going there right away?" she asked while hefting her own bag. "I have my spare clothes ready."

"No, I have to visit with someone first. Let's meet up at my house later."

"Really?" the celestial girl leaned forward with an impish grin. "Are you having a clandestine meeting behind your girlfriends' back already?"

My first reaction was to flick her forehead in retaliation, but then I recalled what we discussed with Judy about being way too casual about physical contact with girls. But then again, do forehead flicks actually count as 'physical contact'? Not to mention, it was Angie we were talking about here. It wasn't as if a small gesture like that could be misunderstood or somehow misconstrued as flirting, right? In fact, considering our association was of the 'good friends' variety, not doing it would have been more conspicuous than doing it!

Like that, I finally reasoned myself into inflicting light corporeal punishment on the nosy girl, but unfortunately getting there took so long I lost the opportunity to do so, with one of my aforementioned girlfriends suddenly leaning into my field of vision and asking, "What were you talking about? Some kind of meeting?"

"Yeah," I answered the curious Elly with a smile, and since I had no reason to be reserved with her, I repurposed my flicking-finger into a poking one and I gently nudged her nose with it. "Don't worry; I'm only visiting the school nurse."

"Shouldn't that make me more worried?" she asked as she tilted her head to the side.

"Nah," I shook my own and told her, "It's probably something silly, like the last time."

"When was the last time?" came the next question, though this time from my dear assistant, who made her way over to us in the meantime.

"It was…" I paused for a moment as I tried to remember, then I said, "I think it was just around the time Elly transferred in."

"Now that I think about it," Josh mused while thoughtfully rubbing his chin. "The last time I saw him was when Judy got sick and had to be taken to the infirmary. I don't think I met him ever since."

"Me neither," Angie echoed his sentiment while mimicking his chin-rubbing, prompting Josh to poke her in the side. See? I wasn't the only one who wasn't reserved about physical contact! … But then again, it was Josh we were talking about here, so if I wanted to avoid being a harem protagonist, maybe I following his lead wasn't the most prudent idea.

Anyways, while the childhood friends entered into a silly little slap fight (which was cute and all, but when I looked at them, I could kind of understand why the sentient haircut troupe considered him their enemy), I shrugged my shoulders and told no one in particular, "The school nurse is a rare and cautious animal. You are unlikely to meet in in the wild unless you walk into its lair."

Elly gave me a blank stare for a moment, but Judy just subtly rolled her eyes, leaned closer to the draconic girl and whispered to her, "The Chief is doing a skit now. This is the point where you are supposed to either give a punchline, or provide him with something he can follow up on to get to a punchline."

"Oooooh!" the princess' eyes opened wide with revelation for a moment, then she glanced at me, then back at Judy, and asked, "So… what am I supposed to say now?"

"Something that fits," my assistant told her while nudging her forward. "Just say whatever comes to your mind, as we practiced."

I would be lying if I said I wasn't curious about what Judy meant by 'practice', but I decided not to interrupt them for the time being. After a few seconds of hesitation, Elly finally looked me in the eye and asked, "So… um… is he… endangered?"

"Unfortunately, no," I answered without missing a beat. "School nurses are rare simply because they are very territorial, you see. So long as ours is here, no other would dare to enter his territory."

"Then how do they breed?" Judy kept the ball rolling.

"Ah, I'm glad you asked," I told him with my best professorial smile. "You see, young lady, like all species of the Healthcareus Workeriensis genus, the School Nurse does all its breeding during a period colloquially referred to as 'college'. After they grow out of the college years and establish their territory, the common School Nurse is a rather solitary creature."

"Fascinating," Judy concluded with a profound nod.

Elly, on the other hand, only looked us funny, and then she concluded, "I just can't keep up with you two."

"You just need practice," Judy encouraged her with a few mechanical pats on the back, which was a surprisingly heartwarming sight, all things considered.

In the meantime the childhood friend duo also stopped bickering, so I turned to them and said, "In conclusion, I will be visiting the nurse. I don't know how long it will take, so I want to ask you a favor."

"Ooookay," Josh answered in the positive, yet for some reason he seemed really guarded, as if he was expecting some kind of trick. "What is it?

"Can I ask you guys to escort Snowy home?"

"Sure! We are going to your place anyway," Angie answered in Josh's stead.

"Thanks. Just remember; if you catch even a whiff of an annoying monster huntress, press the button."

"Ugh," Josh groaned as he rolled his eyes. "You have been repeating that line so many times it's going to show up in my dreams."

"Even if she only shows up in your dreams, you should still press the button," I told him with a smirk. I picked up my bag and added, "I will catch up to you guys as soon as I'm finished. Judy has my spare keys, so you should be able to get in."

"Since when do you have a key?" Elly questioned my assistant as I walked out, and I could hear the beginning of her explanation concerning how it was necessary because a certain someone broke my lock in the past. After I exited the classroom I headed towards the nurse's office while weaving between the torrent of placeholders filling the familiar hallways.

At first I didn't exactly know why, but as I walked, I started feeling something similar to déja vu, and it took me a while to figure out what it was about. I recalled my first day in school, right after I woke up in this weird, terrifying yet strangely interesting world, and how I just 'followed my legs' and let them take me wherever I was supposed to go. Funnily enough, I realized I was doing something similar again, but this time not because I was lost and strangely compelled; quite the opposite, really. I was walking on autopilot precisely because I was so familiar with the school at this point. It made me feel… happy wasn't the right word. Content? Maybe. It was a strange yet not at all unpleasant feeling of realizing that I had a familiar place where I felt grounded.

While pondering on this I reached the nurse's office before long, and for a few seconds I silently lingered before the door while weighing my options. If I wanted to be honest, I had to admit that I was actually a little curious about what the annoying nurse wanted from me, but at the same time I was more than a little apprehensive about it too. But as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Though again, they also say curiosity killed the cat…

Either way, at the end of the day I firmly knocked on the door, and soon I could hear a familiar voice from the other side.

"O-ho-ho. Come on in, it's open."

"Oh great. I'm not even in yet, and I'm already annoyed," I quietly griped as I cautiously entered the infirmary.

The place was… exactly the same as the last time I came by. I don't even know what I was expecting. The portly man sitting by his desk was also the same. He glanced over his shoulder when he heard the door open and gave me a welcoming smile before he stood up and straightened his white coat.

"O-ho-ho. The dean said you would be coming over, but I didn't expect you would show up so early. What a pleasant surprise."

His mention of the 'dean' made me pause on my track for a moment. Was the good nurse actually a mage under Lord Grandpa's payroll, or just an ordinary school employee? I knew that the student council was apparently in on the whole masquerade, but I never asked the class rep about the man in front of me. Maybe it was time I poked him a little…

"Really? Did he get his door fixed yet?"

"Pardon?" Mr. Peabody muttered as he looked upon me with confusion. At least it wasn't a thousand-yard stare as in the past.

"I meant the big, fancy door of his underground study. I've… heard someone might have accidentally broken it."

"Underground study?" The man's eyes opened wide for a moment under his bushy eyebrows, then he let out another grating laugh and told me, "O-ho-ho. What a peculiar thing to say! Could it be your memories are still missing? But wait, even if they do, you should know that his office is on the first floor. Truly peculiar!"

His short outburst made me come to a dead halt as a cold shiver of recognition ran down my spine. After recollecting myself, I took a deep breath and tentatively asked him, "Now that you mention it, I told you about my amnesia, didn't I?"

"O-ho-ho. You most certainly did, and I most certainly didn't forget," Mr. Peabody tapped his temple with his index finger and responded with an affectionate smile of all things. "Indeed, such an uncommon ailment is hard to forget."

"Did you tell Lo… I mean, did you tell the dean about it?"

The nurse gave me an odd look for a moment, then he told me, with a deadly serious expression, "Young man! How could you think I would break my oath of medical confidentiality!"

"What oath?" I responded reflexively, earning me a huff from the nurse.

"The Hippocratic oath, of course," he clarified. "It is the most fundamental oath all health care providers must adhere to, and I am going to do so as well. Wait, could it be that you didn't know because of you amne—?"

"No, not that," I cut him off with a sharp gesture and a groan. "I just thought it was some more specific oath instead of the Hippocratic one because you made it sound like it was a huge deal."

"O-ho-ho! But it is a big deal, isn't it? Do you think I want to be hunted down by the Brotherhood of Hippocrates for my breach of the oath?"

"… Wait, what?" I blurted out the moment his words registered with me.

Mr. Peabody looked me in the eye with a dead serious expression… for about a second, then he burst into an especially high-pitched version of his signature grating laughter.

"O-HO-HO! I'm only joking, young man! Don't worry, there is no chance such an organization would…"

"Stop right there!" I exclaimed while pointing at him, visibly startling him. "Don't deny it outright, because that's just tempting fate. Don't talk about it either, because that just increases the chances that it will become real. Just keep silent, move on, and pretend you never even made that joke. Are we clear?"

I must have looked at least half as hysterically angry as I felt at the moment, because the nurse immediately nodded in the affirmative. Good. The last thing I needed to complicate this world (and my life by extension) was a secret brotherhood of assassin doctors running around.

Once I recollected my nerves into a semblance of stability, I took a deep breath and asked, "So, why did you want to see me?"

"Well, to be perfectly honest, while I did want to talk with you, I didn't expect you would show up so soon," the still slightly apprehensive nurse explained while gesturing for me to take a seat. "However, Mr. Amadeus said that I should conduct a comprehensive medical survey if you were to come here, so why don't we do just that?"

"Is that really necessary?"

"O-ho-ho. I was told you suffered some injuries not too long ago. Is that right?"

"Well, yes…"

"O-ho-ho. And I was also told you didn't visit the hospital, right?"

"No, I didn't…"

"Oh-ho-ho. Then I would say it is very, very necessary."

After a short while I let out a defeated sigh and complied by taking a seat on the bed. Peabody let out another, supremely grating chuckle and began to rummage through the various cabinets in the room, retrieve all kinds of tool and medical instruments from them, and then create a big pile on top of his desk.

As I quickly learned, he wasn't joking when he said he wanted to do a full checkup. The process, which started rather innocently by measuring my height and weight, slowly escalated until I found myself lying half-naked on the bed with a series of wires with suction cups on their ends attached to me and the alleged medical professional making profound humming noises while fiddling with the EKG machine on their other end. Under normal circumstances I might have questioned why on god's green earth would a high school infirmary have an EKG machine, but by this point I felt that pointing out such mundane idiosyncrasies was below me.

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Anyhow, the whole medical survey lasted for about half an hour, and after we were done, Peabody finally took off the electrodes and allowed me to stand up and get dressed.

"How fascinating," he murmured while looking over the page where he was collecting my results. I had a feeling that he was speaking up just to prompt me to ask, but since I was tired of dealing with him, I decided not to try and engage in any mind games and addressed him right away.

"How are my results?"

"Outstanding," he told me straight away. "Are you part of the track club, by any chance?"

"No, I’m not."

"Really? O-ho-ho. How curious. Your records are like that of a professional athlete, so I thought you must have practiced regularly."

"Well, I do my fair share of pushups every day, but I am certainly not an athlete," I told him just as I finished dressing up. "I gather there were no problems with my vitals."

"O-ho-ho. None at all," he reassured me, then paused as he glanced over me one more time. "Both your physical condition and your parameters seem to be perfect. Those old scars bother me a little, but there isn’t much we can do about them. Although, on second thought, I believe I can introduce you to a great plastic surgeon."

"Thanks, but no thanks," I told him bluntly. "If everything is fine, can I go now?"

Peabody took another look at my results, and at last he nodded.

"Certainly. If not for the dean's insistence, I would have never thought you were injured." He paused for a moment, then asked, "Were you?"

"It wasn't a big deal," I answered dismissively. I even meant it, since if he thought my injuries from a week ago were 'old' and his biggest concern was about how they looked, I felt entirely justified in calling them a 'flesh wound'. Speaking of which, why is it 'flesh' would? Wouldn't that mean that the injury cut into one's, well, flesh? That sounds serious, so why is it used to dismiss injuries?

My random irritation at silly phrases from Monty Python aside, I decided it was high time I left, so I said my goodbyes and left before the good nurse suddenly recalled another test of five he wanted to perform on me. My stay in the infirmary lasted longer than I expected, but shorter than I feared, and now I was reassured that the secret of my amnesia was being kept confidential.

Nah, who am I kidding? While he was ever so slightly less annoying than the last time I met him, I wouldn't trust the nurse as far as I could throw him, and considering how fat he was, that wasn't very far. Since most of the tests required some amount of physical contact, I naturally marked him for Far Sight and planned to keep tabs on his activities in the near future, just to be on the safe side.

Once I left the good nurse's company, I took my sweet time getting to the shoe lockers, most of which was actually spent wondering just why we even had them. It wasn't like the island had a custom for taking one's shoes off indoors, so having to switch shoes in school actually stood out quite a bit.

As far as I knew this was a Japanese thing, or at the very least it was most commonly seen in Japanese school life settings, so maybe the custom existed here just because of that. Not to mention, the whole 'love letter in the shoe locker' cliché, of which I was already on the receiving end more than once (though neither of them was an actual love letter, now that I thought about it), just wouldn't work without an actual shoe locker.

But then again, didn't Judy recently theorize that the school itself was largely unimportant in the grand scheme of things? If so, then why would the narrative go out of its way to include lockers? Just to facilitate the cliché? Or maybe there was some other reason?

…

Wow. Look at me now, actually seriously considering the existence and intentions of the nebulous 'narrative'… Judy's insistence must have begun to rub off on me.

Anyhow, I finished putting on my outdoor shoes and I was just about to walk through the main entrance when my musings were interrupted with dramatic abruptness by the sound of a siren. I twitched in surprise, but managed to regain my cool and I immediately took out my phone.

"Crap. I didn't expect it would be so soon," I muttered to myself as a way to keep my rising anxiety in check. "The ID is... number three, so... Judy?"

That was ever so slightly shocking, but I didn't dwell on it and instead I immediately used Far Sight while refusing to give a flying fudge cycle about the fact that I was standing in the middle of the doorway or that the placeholders were giving me odd looks. After a very short, and by now not even particularly disorienting, change of scenery, I found myself looking at my somewhat disheveled assistant accompanied by an equally scruffy Angie. They were half-hidden in the back of an alley in what I recognized was one of the shopping streets I have seen many times on our daily commute, and even more troublingly, I couldn't see anyone else.

My first instinct was to immediately transfer over there, but I reigned in the impulse and instead I turned on my heel and dashed into the nearest toilet on the ground floor. This also turned a few placeholder heads, but considering the circumstances, I am sure they would understand why I didn't give a bloody damn about them.

Once inside a booth, I used Far Sight again and a moment later I reappeared not too far from the two of them. I briefly contemplated doing something flashy, like appearing right behind them, or on one of the nearby rooftops from whence I could swoop down like a certain nocturnal echo-locating flying mammal man, but I quickly discarded the idea, or rather I shelved it for a less uncertain occasion.

"What's the situation?" I asked in a calm yet stern voice that didn't reflect my actual state of mind at all, my eyes covertly scanning the perimeter for any signs of the monster huntress.

"Oh, my Deus!" Angie exclaimed in a borderline shriek as she shoved Judy behind herself. Now that I could take a look at her in person, I finally realized that she wasn't wearing her school uniform anymore, but a set of gym clothes. Now, I wasn't a detective or anything, but even a cursory observation like that told me a few things. First off, it meant she probably had to transform to her combat gear in a hurry, vaporized her school uniform, and then she had to change into her spare outfit afterwards. That consequently meant that she was in a combat situation until not too long ago, but the fact that she had the time and leisure to undo the transformation and then change her clothes meant that the crisis was already over. Furthermore, while she looked a little rattled (though I had no idea how much of that had to do with my unexpected appearance), she was unharmed, so I reckoned that whatever incident must have happened, it wasn't the life-threatening kind. After concluding my deduction with that, I have finally let the pent up tension slowly seep out of my shoulders… right until I was startled by a certain celestial girl.

"Where did you come from?! We just called you!" Angie exclaimed with a glower and stomped her feet. "You scared me so bad I almost transformed by reflex!"

"Sorry. I was already on my way," I told her before glancing around again, pointedly ignoring her tantrum. "Where are the others?"

"Inside the Restricted Space," Judy informed me while swiping her phone. I paused for a moment, and true enough, a quick and shallow immersion into Far Sight told me that the others were indeed nearby, except not really.

"I gather there was a battle then. Did she attack you?" I asked a question I thought was fairly obvious, but to my complete shock, she immediately shook her head. "What? Then what happened?"

"It's hard to describe," Angie told me after she finally calmed down a tad bit, though she still glanced around every once in a while with an unusually cautious demeanor. "We were going to your house when we were pulled into a Restricted Space. There was an entire group waiting for us there and they ambushed us."

"What kind of group?" I urged her to get to the point, but it was Judy who answered in her stead.

"About twenty identical robots led by this man," she told me while showing me her phone screen. Truth to be told, I couldn't decide whether I should praise my girlfriend's mental fortitude for staying collected and taking a snapshot of the attackers, or chide her for mismatched priorities while in danger.

In the end I decided both praises and reproaches had to wait and instead I focused on the photo on the screen. In the middle of the image the was a fairly short, slender man. He was wearing a white lab coat strategically torn at its edges so that it would appeal wild instead of just sloppy. He also had a wild mane of black hair, and his face was entirely covered by… well, the closest thing I could liken it to was a welding mask, except instead of the singe rectangular shade lens in the middle, it had two circular holes on it with what looked like one of those swirly party goggles set in them.

That was weird enough even by the recent standards of this world, but then I also noticed the alleged robots in the background, and let's just say that if I was drinking anything at the moment, I would have taken an honest to goodness spit-take, cliché be damned.

"Okay, I have to see this in person," I stated before I immediately vanished and reappeared in the same alley, except it was all purple. I did so in the field of view of Angie, but I already knew that moving in and out of the Purple Zone was similar to my teleportation, so I felt confident in excusing myself to her. Anyhow, I walked out onto the street and I immediately found myself face to face with a startling amount of destruction. Practically all the storefronts on my left were wrecked with glass scattered all over the torn and scattered paving stones of the sidewalk. The actual road ahead of me had actual craters on it, and just on my left I could see the bent remains of what I could only presume used to be a streetlamp torn from the ground and used as a blunt instrument of war. Furthermore, all around the place, both in the ground and in the walls, I could see several dozens of long, translucent ice spears that somehow, against all the laws of physics, managed to embed themselves into solid concrete and brick walls like they were made of play dough.

I would have continued to drink in the scenery, its savaged state feeling oddly fascinating, but I was stopped on my tracks when I laid my eyes upon a certain thing. It looked exactly the same as on the picture Judy showed me, except at the moment it was pinned to a nearby wall by about five ice spears like the ugliest butterfly in one's bug collection.

The robot, to use Judy's terminology, was humanoid in shape. It was also covered in lime green spandex from head to toe, except for what looked like a large, stylized cogwheel insignia on its chest made out of metal. It also had a matching pair of black leather boots and gloves, reaching up to its knees and elbows, respectively, and decorated with a series of silver spikes. Its head had no eyes; instead it was covered with something like a motorcycle helmet with a black and blue decoration that, at a cursory glance, looked kind of like the zodiac sign for Pisces. Moreover, it was grasping a large, weirdly proportioned butcher's knife in one of its hands, its gloved fingers still holding it tightly even after its obvious demise.

Now, I wasn't one to jump at conclusions, but after some preliminary observations, I had to conclude that it looked, without a shadow of a doubt, incredibly stupid. More alarmingly though, it looked eerily familiar for some reason, though for at the time being I couldn't put my finger on the source of the feeling at the time.

I didn't have much time to think though, as my attention was drawn to a small group huddled around one of the slightly less wrecked part of the scenery. It didn't take them long to notice me either, and when they did, Elly immediately rushed towards me so hard I was afraid she would tackle me off my feet.

Thankfully she managed to stop her momentum just before she would have impacted me, and instead she exclaimed, "Leo! You won't believe what just happened!"

"Won't I?" I jested a little wearily as the rest of the group also made their way over to me. Elly was no longer transformed, yet the damage to her clothes showed that she probably didn't shy away from whatever combat scenario unfolded here. Snowy, on the other hand, was still in her Abyssal form. If I had to guess, I would have said it was because she also transformed in a hurry like Angie, except she didn't have any spare clothes to change into. She also looked unusually sheepish, but I couldn't spare the time to ask her about it. More importantly, both of them seemed to be entirely uninjured.

The same could not be said about the last member of the group. Josh was also still transformed, into his own Abyssal for, and he was only wearing his inexplicably vaporization-proof hulk pants. He also didn't have any major injuries, but based on the number of scrapes and bruises on his skin, he was obviously worse off than the girls. Once all three of them gathered around me, I took a deep breath and addressed them at once.

"I gather this had nothing to do with the monster huntress?"

"No," Snowy promptly shook her head.

"So it really is a brand new flavor of what-the-hell. Lovely," I muttered, ending it with a groan. "Can you tell me what just happened?"

What followed after my question was several minutes of disjointed, oftentimes contradictory testimonies, including some overly dramatic descriptions of the battle, including sound effects. After they finished, I took another huge breath, held it in for a moment, and then let it out in the mother of all sighs.

"So, just to summarize," I began while absent-mindedly rubbing my temple. "You got dragged into the purple zone. You got challenged by some guy calling himself 'Dr. Robatto' and his minions called the 'Sprockets'. Then he said he had something really important to do and left without telling you why he challenged you. Then you fought his minions, who were waving butcher knives but never managed to hit any of you, until there were none left standing. Is that the gist of it?"

"Yes," Josh approved my summary. "We also tried to look for Dr. Robatto after the fight, but he was gone by then."

"He probably left the Restricted Space very early on," Snowy theorized.

"Two questions," I raised my hand with two fingers outstretched. "First off, why didn't you call me right away?"

"You cannot call people on the phone inside a Restricted Space, silly!" the princess explained with a cheeky smile while simultaneously wrapping her arms around me. I had a hunch that she was unusually giddy because she was still riding on the adrenaline high after the battle, so I didn't protest. Instead I just clicked my tongue as I realized this was another blind spot I didn't consider before, which made my clever solution with the emergency app significantly less useful than I hoped.

"The second question," I asked grumpily while dramatically bending one of my fingers. "Why are you still in here?"

"We don't have spare clothes," Josh told me with a shrug. He was surprisingly less upset than I expected, but I figured it wasn't exactly a bad thing.

"We told Judy and Angie to go out and call you and bring us something to wear," Snowy elaborated, earning her a small nod from me.

"I see," I began, only to be immediately interrupted by a high pitched sneeze from the girl still embracing me. I glanced at her and then said, "I suppose I better do that before you all catch a cold."

"To be honest, I don't really feel it," Josh stated absent-mindedly, only for his body to abruptly shudder and shrink as his transformation ended. He gave me a wide-eyed look for a second, then he hastily amended, "Actually, never mind what I just said. I would really appreciate some clothes after all," his words accented by the audible clanking of his teeth. I had a feeling he might have played it up a bit, but I wasn't in the mood to call him out on it, so instead I gently unwrapped Elly's arms from around my waist.

"All right, I'll try to be quick. Stay put and keep each other warm."

I ignored the easily misinterpretable nature of my comment and hastily walked back into the alley, then I immediately and unceremoniously teleported behind Angie and Judy again.

"Dormouse, walk with me," I instructed her while conveniently ignoring the startled celestial girl giving me the evil eye. Or rather I would have, but then I remembered I needed someone to be on teleport anchor duty, so I told her, "Angie, please hold the fort. We are going to be back in a few minutes."

"Whatever," she pouted in response while folding her arms. I really wasn't in the mood for this, so I subtly rolled my eyes and added, in lieu of the proverbial carrot, "Once everyone's dressed, let's go and have some snacks to let the events sink in a little. You pick the place."

"Really?" her eyes suddenly sparkled, her previous grudge all but forgotten in a split second.

"Sure," I told her with a nod before gesturing for Judy to follow after me. She did just so, and we hastily left the scene.

Once we were out of sight, I cleared my throat and told her, with my calmest voice, "Judy, I hope you are aware that what just happened means war."

My dear assistant sent me a surprised glance and stated, "You probably don't mean a war against Dr. Robatto."

"No, of course not," I scoffed. "I meant a war against your narrative."

Judy's eyes actually opened wider for a second and she said, deadpan and yet astonished at the same time, "You are serious."

"Of course I am," I answered through gritted teeth at first, but with my voice slowly rising with every word, "Say what you will about harem shenanigans and shounen battles, but at least those I can stomach. But look at what we got here! A stupid-looking villain leading an army of equally stupid-looking and ineffectual goons that get defeated in minutes by a group of overbearing and overemotional teenagers. Does that ring any bells?"

"… Is it the series with the morphing time and the annoying robot?"

"Yeah," I answered with a low growl, "And I will be bloody damned before I would just roll over and allow this world to genre-shift us into a bloody sentai!"

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