Chapter 153: ~Chapter 54~ Part 3

I checked my phone one more time as I was waiting for Josh by the shoe lockers. It was a little after four, and I've been standing around while twiddling my thumbs for a little more than fifteen minutes by this point. Last I checked on him, Josh almost finished his customary verbal sparring session with Armband Guy, so I figured he should be coming my way soon. I wished he'd hurry up a bit, but then again, I was also a bit of an aficionado when it came to the craft of heckling people I didn't like, so I graciously allowed him to take his time.

I was still getting bored though, so I decided to quickly check on everyone else with Far Sight, partially out of habit, but mostly just to make time go faster. First and foremost, I checked on our resident mad scientist, and I found him in his evil lab, busy building something obviously evil with his evil robotic accomplice. By the looks of it, it was either some kind of infrared death ray super-weapon or a toaster. Based on their discussion, it could've gone either way.

There was nothing else to see there, so I checked Peabody, and he was still taking care of the injured placeholder. Oh, wait. Armband guy just arrived to interrogate the guy on the bed. That meant Josh should've been already on his way, or at the very least I sincerely hoped so.

I didn't check on him just yet (where's the fun in that?), but instead I moved on to the members of our little collection of magical misfits first. My first target was Angie, and she was… coming right towards me?

I blinked in a hurry, both due to surprise and as a way to readjust my vision, but by the time I found my bearings she already passed by me and stormed out of the school building. She didn't even bother to say hello. Or change her shoes, if we were at that. I wondered what her problem was, but at the end of the day I decided that if it was important, I would learn of it soon enough away, so I moved on with my remote observations.

The class rep was in the School underground doing more paperwork. Go figure. I watched her for a while, but it wasn't exactly what I'd consider riveting, so I quickly moved on. To my momentary surprise, I found the Dracis couple and their butler-cum-secret-ancestor inside a lavish local coffee shop. More baffling still was the fact that they were discussing the details of Abram's and Sebastian's urgent business trip out in the open, and with the enthusiasm (and 'natural' delivery) of a group of community theater actors. It took me a while to figure out what they were doing, but after listening to them a little longer, I had to conclude that they had to be trying to unsubtly spread the info in public, hoping it would reach the Knights' ears.

I had mixed feelings about this kind of approach, and even planned to make a mental note about trying to discuss more effective (and less hammy) methods of spreading disinformation with Abram later. Alas, the idea was soon drowned out by tepid exasperation when I checked on Snowy and found her discussing something with my girlfriends inside my living room. I listened in, and it didn't take long for a groan to escape my lips.

"You can't be serious…" I muttered under my lips without meaning to, not expecting anyone would hear it.

"About what?" A voice from my side jolted me out of my Far Sight session with a perfectly reasonable question that once again reminded me that I should get rid of my bad habit of muttering to myself when I was alone.

I blinked in surprise, and it took my brain a long second to recognize Josh, who for some reason sneaked up to me while I was zoned out. I already had a simple excuse on the tip of my tongue, but then my eyes focused on my friend, and the words immediately dissolved as I noticed that his downcast face had a comically visible hand-imprint on it.

"Never mind that. On the other hand, I have a feeling you might have a story to tell me," I told him in place of a greeting, and he immediately rolled his eyes while wincing.

"Yeah, unfortunately, I do. Let me get my stuff first, I'll tell you what happened on the way home," he told me just a touch dourly, so I let him do that.

It took only a minute for him to change his shoes and grab his bag, during which I quickly checked off all the boxes on my 'people to Far Glance at' list. In short, Rinne was 'patrolling' with a burger in one hand and an extra-large paper cup of coke in the other, Crowey was sitting at his desk for a change but with the same vacant eyes as usual, and Armband Guy was still interrogating the hapless Mr. Bedhair in the infirmary. In other words, nothing particularly noteworthy.

At long last, Josh got changed and he walked up to me again, just as I finished my own business. He looked at me as if he was daring me to ask him how he got that handprint. So I did. Because I was a daring kind of fellow.

"So," I spoke up in an upbeat voice that was only a little strained as I gestured for him to follow me. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the state of your face has something to do with Angie. Am I right or am I correct?"

Initially Josh only responded with a nod and a grumpy grunt, but once we passed through the front doors and were in the open, he mus've noticed I was expecting something slightly more verbose than that, and so he whispered, "Where do I even begin?"

"Try at the start. I've heard that's how most people do it," I advised him, but the look he gave me in return was about as flat as the Dead Sea, so after a small cough I hastily added, "Or wherever else you want. Your call."

My friend took a deep breath, which he immediately exhaled in an exasperated sigh, and then he finally began to recount his no doubt very riveting tale.

"So, from the beginning, huh? Okay. In that case, I'll start with what happened after you left the classroom." He paused momentarily as we passed through the school gates, then he told me, "A minute or so later Pascal and four other Disciplinary Committee members came to pick me up. All of them were from other classes, so it was a little awkward at first, but then he introduced me and I joined the group. He led us to the social sciences classroom on the first floor, and we just walked there without any fanfare. We didn't even bother to be sneaky about it, which was odd, but he told me we were in the right, so there was no reason to hide. Anyway, once we got there, we were joined by two more members keeping an eye on them from the other end of the hallway."

"So there were eight of you in total."

"Yep. Is that important?" he inquired while showing off his eyebrow-raising mastery.

"No. I just said that to show you I'm paying attention," I responded with a small smile, and Josh all but huffed at me in return.

"Whatever then. Where was I?"

"When you arrived at the The Gathering," I responded as helpfully as ever.

"Right. So, once we were there, the committee members started taking up positions around the doors like they were a SWAT team; they even had hand signals and code names and everything."

"That sounds both odd and yet surprisingly fitting for that bunch," I mused as we stopped at a crosswalk for a moment. "So, what happened after that? Did they break the door with one of those portable battering rams and throw in a flash-bang grenade?"

"Nah, it wasn't that exciting. Pascal just threw the door open and they rushed in while shouting something about the guys inside being a disgrace to public morals."

"You're right; that's considerably less impressive than I imagined. I also gather you didn't go in with them," I prompted him, and he nodded in the affirmative.

"My job was to stay outside and catch anyone trying to slip out. For a while it looked like I would only keep watch, but then one of the guys inside jumped out the window."

"Yeah, I know." My friend gave me a curious look, so I clarified, "I met the guy in the infirmary."

Josh acknowledged my comment with an absent-minded nod and continued with, "So, as you can guess, there was total chaos inside, and when Pascal wasn't looking, one of the guys grabbed a small backpack and escaped through the back door."

"Oh, right. These classrooms had two of those dumb sliding doors," I noted with middling interest, hoping we would soon get to the point. "I guess you jumped after him."

"That's why I was there," Josh confirmed with a small shrug. "I guess the guy was on the track team or something, because he dashed down the stairs and out through the back entrance of the main building so fast I could barely keep up. I only managed to tackle him in the courtyard." I figured this was the point where the plot would thicken, so after we crossed another crosswalk, I gestured for him to go on, which he did after another sigh. "So, I tackled the guy and took the bag from him. Then one of the guys from the disciplinary committee called out to me from one of the first-floor windows, so I raised the bag over my head to show him that I got it... Don't look at me like that! It sounded like a good idea at the time!"

"I'm sure it did," I responded with my most innocentest look that I've ever innocented, but he still seemed less than impressed.

Josh continued to scowl at me, but when I didn't stop beaming innocentism at him, he finally gave up and told me, "Anyway, I didn't notice at the time, because I was looking up, but Angie came over at one point. She probably heard the shouting and wanted to see what the commotion was about or something." Here, he paused again as his face twisted like he just bit into the world's sourest lemon. "Of course this was the moment that the stupid buckle of the stupid bag decided to fall apart and everything in it spilled over my head! It was full of gym clothes and underwear and all kinds of girly stuff, and it all ended up on me!"

"Odd, but not entirely unexpected," I noted as we came to a stop at the intersection where we usually parted ways after school. "Then what?"

"Then Angie grabbed me by the shoulder, turned me around, called me a pervert, and slapped me before she stormed away," my friend blurted out in a genuinely aggravated voice, following which there was a long beat of silence as I waited for him to continue. To my deepest puzzlement, he only fumed without uttering another word.

"That's it?" I asked with palpable incredulity.

"Yeah."

"... She just slapped you and left?" I asked to be sure, and he nodded. "Didn't she ask or say anything else?" This time he shook his head. "You didn't make any excuses she could misunderstand? Or say something she would get mad about?"

"I didn't even get a chance to get a word in!" Josh exclaimed in frustration as he threw his hands into the air.

I couldn't help but whisper a shocked "Wow..." under my breath. That was... considerably dumber than what I expected, and my expectations were already so low they were right next to dinosaur bones.

I mean, silly misunderstandings and being an accidental pervert were the bread and butter of being a dense harem protagonist, but this was just straight-up forced. This situation required not one, not two, but at least five contrived things to happen in rapid succession, from Josh being the one on lookout duty to Angie's completely irrational reaction at the end.

Now, if Judy heard this, I could already picture her giving me a smug smile and declaring 'Witness the might of the Narrative, oh ye unbeliever, and despair!'. There was just one issue though: if it was indeed a somewhat conscious effort to enforce this event then why would the nebulous Narrative make it happen in such an unnatural way? Was it to reach some kind of 'the harem protagonist must get into a perverted misunderstanding with a love interest' quota? Or was it something more insidious, like trying to sneakily sabotage our plans for tomorrow by driving a wedge between Angie and Josh the day before? Or maybe the world is reacting to Angie being interested in the viability of a harem ending on her own, and trying to strain their friendship to push Josh towards a relationship with another member of his entourage?

Or maybe, just maybe, I was getting paranoid. I mean, coincidences are a thing. They happen, and they happen a lot around us anyway, so maybe I'm overthinking this? Maybe there was no malicious intelligence behind this contrivance, just the usual tropes playing off each other and resulting in a mind-boggling result?

Whatever the answer was, one thing was for sure: if this was indeed the result of a conscious narrative force or entity, then I had no choice but to conclude that it was an absolute hack, as this was some of the worst written, most blatantly overengineered trite in existence. Needless to say, I really hoped I was overthinking this. I would've preferred any other alternative, but if Judy was right all along and I had to live in a world governed by a nebulous super-intelligence, I sure as hell hoped it wasn't an incompetent one.

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But putting all of that theoretical pondering about the unconfirmed nature of an unconfirmed narrative overseer aside for a moment, I still couldn't help but roll my eyes at the timing of this event, and I also voiced my exasperation.

"You know that tomorrow is going to be a very important day, right?"

"Yeah," Josh responded a tad late, apparently taken aback by my sudden change of topics.

"Then you know that we can't have you two fighting over a dumb misunderstanding like that."

"I know, but... what am I supposed to do? Apologize again? Like when Lili kissed me?"

"What? No, of course not," I denied his supposition while I opened my bag and reached inside. "That time you were partially at fault for being dense. This time it's entirely on Angie."

"Sooo... No apologies then? Good. But in that case, what am I supposed to do again?"

"Just give me a minute," I told him just as I finally found my phone.

I fished it out of my bag, unlocked the screen, and immediately tapped on my contact list. The list was in alphabetical order, so I picked the very first entry and raised the phone to my ear.

After a few seconds of ringing, the line connected and I was greeted by a dour, "Yes, Leo?"

I decided to open strong, so I took a deep breath and answered in a low yet forceful voice, "Shame on you."

"Um... What?" came a confused mutter from the other side, so I promptly repeated myself.

"I said shame on you. You messed up and caused unnecessary drama. My disappointment is palpable, and my day is ruined. Take responsibility."

"What did I do!?" Angie blurted out in a fit of confusion, and so I went ahead and explained the entire situation to her from the beginning, starting with the purpose of the 'The Gathering' and ending with Josh's heroic actions resulting in the recovering of the 'artifacts' inside the backpack. Once I finished, there was a brief spell of tense silence, and then she meekly asked me, "So... The contraband you guys were talking about were... panties and stuff?"

"Yes," I confirmed in a firm tone.

"And Josh took them from the bad guys."

"That's also correct."

With that came another moment of silence, followed by what sounded like a forehead hitting a desk.

"... Aw maaaan..." Angie exclaimed on the other side, followed by a muffled, "Am I a jerk now?"

"No. You are The Jerk. Capital T and J and all," I told her, this time in an ever so slightly lighter tone.

"... Aaaawww maaaaaaan..." she echoed herself, followed by another suspicious thud from her end of the line. "This is soooo awkward! Is Josh there with you?"

"Yes," I responded as I reflexively glanced over to my skeptical friend.

"Could you... maybe tell him I'm sorry?" she asked me with the hopefulness of a drowning man grabbing onto a dangling rope, but I quickly yanked it out of her reach.

"No," I declared on no uncertain terms. "You're going to tell him, in person, and within the day."

"Do I really have to?" the Celestial girl pleaded, and I could totally picture her puppy eyes even without using Far Sight on her.

"Yes, you do."

"Aw, fine," she relented at last, and much faster than I expected. "Tell Josh to call me when he gets home and I'll go over to talk."

"You do that. See you tomorrow."

"Yep. Bye, Leo!"

And with that, I cut the line. The whole conversation took less than five minutes, and all things considered, it went about as smoothly as I could have ever asked for.

I put the phone away and turned to Josh, saying, "She told me that-"

"I heard," he cut me off with a peculiar expression on his face.

"You're welcome," I pointedly told him, and he honest to goodness winced in response.

"Errr... Thanks, I guess, but... isn't this totally weird?"

Now it was my turn to give an odd look.

"Weird how?"

"I don't know, man," he mumbled as he scratched the back of his head. "Usually when I have an argument with Angie, we stay mad at each other for a couple of days, then forget about the whole thing afterward. Doing it this way just feels… I don't even know. Anticlimactic, I guess?"

"What kind of climax were you expecting?" I asked him, single eyebrow raised and completely baffled. "It was a dumb misunderstanding, it got resolved, so there's nothing to be mad about anymore. End of story."

"Yeah, but..."

It was at this point that I let out an unsubtle snort and ever so gently whacked my friend on the shoulder.

"Stop asking for more useless drama and go home already. By tomorrow morning I want you two to be ready for action as your usual selves, all childhood-friend-y and swimming in UST, understood?"

"Yeah, yeah," Josh dismissed me with a wave of his hand as he turned around and walked away without saying his goodbyes. I have heard him mutter something along the lines of "What the hell is 'UST' anyway?", and I was tempted to yell after him that it was the thing he wouldn't recognize if it hit him in the nose, but I refrained.

But speaking of unresolved sexual tension, it reminded me to check on Judy, and what I saw made my brows furrow without my consent.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me..." I whispered under my breath, but after another long sigh I resigned myself to my inevitable fate and headed to the closest hidden alleyway I scouted out and marked for occasions like this.

Once I arrived, I checked to see if I was followed, then used Far Sight again to see the whereabouts of Mountain Girl, and once I locked onto her, I quickly Phased over. I had to talk with her first, because based on what I saw just now, I was pretty sure I was not going to be able to go hunting with her tonight...

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