Chapter 184: ~Chapter 64~ Part 3

"So she's like a familiar," Ammy concluded after hearing my explanation regarding how Ichiko ended up in our group, and at the end of the day I resorted to an ambivalent shrug to convey my answer.

"Something like that, I suppose."

"Interesting," she whispered, and then picked up another tea biscuit to nibble on. Incidentally, by this point it was almost noon, and everyone was sitting in a close circle around me made possible by taking all the dining chairs from the kitchen. I spent most of the morning explaining the previous day's events, and due to a quick agreement we made before I started, they listened to me without interruptions. That was a nice change of pace, but talking for so long made my throat a tad sore, so I didn't mind the slight lull in the conversation.

But then again, while I make it sound like the last few hours were just me dryly describing the events of the past evening, there were plenty of breaks in there. Such as when the girls convinced Ichiko to transform, and then…

"Yip!"

"Haha! She's so cute!"

… Yeah, that. She was currently in her fox form, lying on her back, and enjoying the attention of Judy, Snowy, and Elly. Not only that, but even the ever-serious class rep and the currently preoccupied Angie couldn't help but occasionally glance at the furry little menace with longing eyes. In the end, I had to conclude that women really were remarkably weak to cute, fluffy animals. This was, of course, terribly clichéd, so to save them from becoming so stereotypical, I had no choice but to keep her in my lap, and yet even so, she still commanded all the girls' attention. As such, I was forced to scratch her behind the ears, because… um… Wait, why was I doing this again? Damn, my brain must be malfunctioning again. That's the only reasonable explanation.

Okay, let's put silly stuff like that aside for a moment, and let's be serious. Like Joshua, who actually listened to my explanation from beginning to end without ever letting himself be distracted by the fox's perky ears or her fluffy tail. Truly a man of principles. Or he was just afraid of her because she bit him. One or the other.

Anyhow, after doing his best to absorb everything I had said, Josh crossed his arms in front of his chest and said, "All right, I suppose I'll break the ice and ask the obvious, though I would bet my left kidney you won't give me a straight answer."

"Give it a go, you might be surprised," I replied with some forced playfulness in my voice, and my friend gave me a mirthless smile in return.

"Fine. If I get this right, we attacked Robatto, the hunter woman attacked the base, and the The Knightly Brotherhood of the Most Heroic Bloodlines attacked Elly's house all at the same time."

"Yes, but don't say 'the the' like that. It's giving me 'the The Gathering' flashbacks."

"What's that?" Elly asked while she sneakily leaned over to pat the little fox's snout, and I immediately shook my head.

"You're better off not knowing, right, Josh?"

"Yeah, we can agree on that," he concurred with a troubled nod, but then he quickly re-focused himself and said, "But that's not important. What I want to know is how you could be at all three places at once."

"Four," Ammy corrected him and adjusted her glasses. "He also was there with me in the room where they locked up Mike."

"That's even more confusing then!" Josh exclaimed with smoldering indignation, as if somehow being at three places at once was less impossible than being at four places. "Don't tell me it was an illusion or something like that; I saw you throw a rifle at someone and it hit her squarely in the head. Illusions don't cause concussions."

"Some can," Snowy added, but then didn't elaborate, so the class rep took the stand in her place.

"She's right. Some very high-level illusions can not only fool your eyes and ears, but all of your body, and they can cause actual harm that way. That said…" She paused here to tweak her glasses again and ominously added, "I doubt even the world's most powerful illusionist could make steel bars believe they were cut."

Figures. I hoped I might've been able to use the 'master illusionist' misunderstanding to my advantage, but they've seen too much for that to work anymore. The cat was well and truly out of the bag. As such, I had no other choice but to take a bigger bag made out of subtle misdirections and stuff the cat into that instead.

But first, I needed to set the scene. Step one, I had to act like I was really reluctant, so I spent a couple of seconds glancing around the room with my best 'I'm totally conflicted and stuff' expression. Then, once they were getting suitably impatient, I let out a long, lung-rattling sigh and hunched my shoulders in an obvious, if maybe slightly overdone, show of resignation.

"Listen up guys; what I'm going to tell you now cannot leave these four walls. Am I clear?" They obviously expected that I would say that, as everyone nodded right away, including not only the fox in my lap, but even Judy and Showy, who were already aware of my Phasing ability. "Fine then, let's not beat around the bush. I'm sure you already figured it out on your own, but I can, with some restrictions, teleport on my own."

"I knew it!" the class rep yelled out with unusual intensity and leaned closer, as if afraid that she would somehow miss some small detail of my clarification if she was a few centimeters further from me.

"Simply put," I began with an expression of utmost sincerity plastered on my face, "I can create anchor points, and with some effort, I can move between those points instantaneously."

"So that thing in your closet really isn't a proper magic circle after all, right?"

"No, it's not," I admitted, much to Ammy's triumphant delight. "It's just the point from where I teleport people between here and the secret base."

"So the circle is your anchor," Josh mused as he rubbed his chin, then he slightly tilted his head and asked, "But then how did you teleport around in the middle of the battle? There were no circles there."

"Oh, I get it!" Elly suddenly exclaimed with an enlightened look on her face. "Leo made the magiformers, so they must double as his anchors."

"That makes sense," Ammy agreed, and I patiently waited for them to 'figure out' the rest.

"Hold on. None of us were at Elly's house, so how could Leo teleport there?"

"I think I already know," the princess declared a tad smugly. "Leo gave me a charm to put on the doorknob of Sebastian's study! It was an anchor too, wasn't it?"

"Yes, I used that bracelet as a way to get into his room and take the spear before the Knights would show up and could take it," I told them in my most truthfullyest voice, which wasn't hard considering I technically didn't tell a single actual lie so far.

"You could've told me," Elly stated with a frown, so I mouthed a silent 'Sorry' in her direction, but by then the conversation already moved along.

"So you could move between these 'anchors', even when they were inside a Restricted Space?" Ammy pondered aloud while sizing me up. "But how? Teleporting to a designated target without a proper receiver array is theoretically possible, but incredibly risky and wasteful. Just doing it once could sapp a lesser ley-line dry for days, but you did it repeatedly. How did you…?" It was at this point he recalled a crucial detail, and she pointed at my face. "That mask. The one you were wearing back then! You said something about it being a unique artifact that could affect space-time."

"Yes, that's what I said," I agreed with a small smile, playing into her preconceived notions.

"That was something like that?" Elly spoke up on the side, and for a while she was deep in thought. "I could swear I've seen that mask somewhere…"

"It looked like one of those jester masks," Josh contributed, and the others nodded at once.

"Where is it now, anyway? Can I take a look at it?" Ammy inquired, and I shook my head with a pained grimace.

"The mask is powerless at the moment, and it needs a lot of work if I want it to do more than just hide my face. You see, I kind of overexerted my powers while wearing it," I said two truths, which added up to one lie, so to speak.

"Did it fizzle out from overuse?" The class rep was suddenly crestfallen upon hearing the 'news', but then she suddenly perked up as another question came to her mind. "Does that mean that you cannot freely use your power anymore?"

"To put it mildly, currently I can't even teleport between here and the secret base. That's why I had the Faun take our two 'guests' to there on foot."

"Speaking of which, do you think they arrived there in one piece?" came the next question from Josh, who still seemed to have some reservations towards Fauns, especially when they had tied-up people draped over their shoulders. It probably gave him some unpleasant flashbacks.

"More importantly, how are we going to move there in the future?" came the next perfectly reasonable question from Amelia.

"Don't worry, I'll figure something out," I told so to reassure her, and she apparently took my words at face value, but only to pause when she noticed that Snowy was still busy playing with Ichiko, and her eyes soon narrowed into apprehensive slits.

"You three are suspiciously silent," she addressed Judy, Snowy, and Angie at once.

"Hm? What?" the celestial mumbled as she looked up in mild confusion.

"Did you know that Leo can teleport?" Josh reiterated the question, and his childhood friend's eyes opened wide in surprise as she looked at me.

"You can?"

"Yep. With some limitations," I stressed, but she was strangely impressed all the same.

"Weren't you paying attention?"

"Sorry, I was kind of busy," she answered Josh a smidgen half-heartedly, yet he didn't press the issue, and instead he turned to the others.

"What about you two?" he inquired in a polite yet somewhat critical tone, and after a moment of hesitation, Snowy raised her hand.

"I… I knew about it," she admitted as she awkwardly averted her eyes.

"I also obviously did," Judy added while she patted my sister's head. "I'm his girlfriend."

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"What do you mean 'obviously'?" the princess suddenly burst out in protest. "I'm also his girlfriend; why didn't I know about this?"

"Because you are terrible at keeping secrets," Judy told her with the bluntness of a boxing glove, and even though at first she wanted to object, at the end of the day the princess closed her half-open mouth, crossed her arms, and began to sulk with the power of a thousand suns.

"Come here, princess," I waved for her, and although she was still pouting, she stood up and walked over to me nevertheless, so that I could hold her in a one-handed hug. After I pulled her close enough, I directly whispered into her ear. "I'll tell you some other stuff Judy already knows later, so don't sulk."

"I'm not sulking," she muttered, but then instead of returning to her seat, she sat down onto the arm-rest of my chair and stuck close to me. I didn't mind that the slightest, though the fact that she used the opportunity to monopolize the attention of Ichiko in the process has drawn the ire of the other girls in the room. Maybe keeping her was a bad idea after all…?

"So we've finally learned another of Leo's secrets," the class rep mused on the side, apparently feeling quite satisfied with the 'truth' they have uncovered, only to then abruptly raise her hand to her glasses. "But you still haven’t told all your secrets to everyone."

"We talked about this before; secrets are a resource like any other, and it's best not to waste them."

My answer obviously didn't satisfy her, but Josh came to my rescue.

"Considering how sick Leo gets every time he uses his powers, I suppose it makes sense he keeps them a secret." Ammy now directed her oh-so-intimidated glasses at him, so my friend hastily added, "I mean, knowing about this would've made some things easier, but if we took it for granted that he could swoop in at any moment to bail us out of a sticky situation, it would put a lot of pressure on him."

"I suppose you're not wrong," the class rep conceded, if begrudgingly, and Josh took this opportunity to move things along.

"So, Robatto is now going to work for Leo, and the Chimera is a fluffy fox. Does that mean things are going to calm down a little?"

"Hopefully," I said, though I had a feeling it was just wishful thinking. "There's still some fallout after yesterday's kerfuffle that we have to clean up, and I still have to explain to a certain butler why I borrowed the spear from his collection…"

"Sebastian's going to be maaaaaaad," the princess said something really scary with a cheery smile, which felt really foreboding, but for the time being I put it out of my mind and focused on Josh's original question.

"We still have a couple of loose ends. The Knights are still on the island, and while I have a deal with Lord Grandpa, it might actually draw us into Assembly politics in the long run, and then there's always the possibility of an outside context problem rearing its ugly head… but for the short term, yes, things should settle down a bit."

"Good," Josh sighed in relief. "I was getting really tired of all the ambushes and fighting."

"Tell me about it," I concurred. "I think we all need some downtime."

"Mainly you, Chief," Judy interjected with her eyes locked on my face. "Somehow you're looking even worse than you did this morning."

"Should we continue this conversation later?" Josh proposed on the spot. "Leo needs rest, and Angie's dad already called me because they were worried about where we disappeared to."

"Why did he call you instead of her?" came the entirely logical question from my draconic girlfriend, prompting Josh to let out a tired groan.

"It's because she is a total scatterbrain who left her phone home."

"Hey!" the subject of our conversation protested with palpable indignation. "Don't blame this one me! I wouldn't have left it behind if I didn't have to kick you out of your bed last morning, you freaking opossum!"

"Wha…? Why 'opossum' of all things!?" Josh objected to the weirdest thing, as usual when it came to these two's arguments, so I decided to summarily disregard them and rest my eyes for a moment. My eyelids felt unusually heavy, and if I didn't know I didn't need it, I would've thought I was being sleep-deprived.

Anyhow, the spat between the childhood friends didn't last long, and once it was concluded that if anything, Josh was a marmot, everyone decided to head home for the day and continue this conversation at a time when I no longer looked like a zombie. I appreciated the gesture, and in the following minutes, one car after the other pulled up to my driveway to ferry my friends and one significant other home. Speaking of which, Sebastian personally came to pick her up, but once he saw my condition, he graciously agreed to strangle me another day. How nice of him.

Anyhow, even though they were the ones who prompted the exodus from my house, somehow Angie and Josh ended up staying the longest. Even Judy left before them, though only after she once again hammered into me that I should rest up and not do any Phasing shenanigans, no matter the circumstances. That was more or less what I expected, but the way Angie subtly nudged her to go almost made me suspicious of her.

"Hey, Josh? Dad is about to arrive, why don't you wait for him outside?"

"Because it's cold out there?" my friend responded with reasonable bafflement, but then his childhood friend all but pushed him out of the room.

"Don't be such a baby! Just go, I'll follow after you in a minute."

My friend didn't even have time to protest before he was mercilessly kicked out of the house, and soon Angie came back while dusting her hands. Okay, scratch it, I was no longer 'almost' suspicious of her.

"Time out," I called out, making her stop in her tracks. "What exactly are you doing?"

"Making sure the others won't overhear what I'm about to tell you," she answered with an unexpectedly serious voice, but just after that she conspicuously glanced around. "Is your sis and the fox still upstairs?"

"Yeah," I said, slightly weirded out by the girl, and she didn't make me feel any better by the way she sidled up to me.

"Good. Listen up, there is something I really need to tell you, but I didn't want to freak everyone else out."

"Is it Celestial related?" I guessed, but she immediately shook her head.

"No, of course not. It's about your hand," she told me while simultaneously pointing at the offending appendage. A moment later her brows knit in frustration and she continued in angry whispers. "Just what the heck did you do to it?"

"I… think I already explained that it happened when I grabbed Onikiri, and Ichiko tried to make me her wielder or somesuch. Weren't you listening?"

"No, of course I wasn't!" She exclaimed, only to tone her voice back down right away. "I was way too busy trying to save your hand, you dunderhead!"

"… Was it that bad?"

"It still is. It's like you lit up a separate blow-torch in every single bone in your hand!"

"That… sounds pretty bad," I uttered in mild alarm and glanced down at the offending limb in question. "I mean… it hurts, but not that much…"

"It's because you also frayed most of your nerves there!" Angie huffed before poking the back of my hand with her index finger. "I did the best that I could, but you really need to have a professional look at it."

"I guess you don't mean a physician."

"No, I'm talking about a magical expert who can heal nerve damage. The longer you wait, the higher the chance that it may never heal properly."

"Oh, great. Another thing to worry about," I grumbled, and my Celestial friend must have taken pity on me, as she stopped scowling and instead put her hands on her hips with an expression that would have been right at home on the face of a put upon mother scolding a rambunctious child.

"For now, don't worry about anything. Just go and have a good rest; it's very important for recovery. I can help you look for someone qualified once you no longer look like you're about to fall asleep at any moment."

"Trust me, I won't," I told her, but she only smiled at me in return. Maybe she thought I was acting tough in front of her? I really wasn't though, and before I could get another word in, Josh yelled in through the door.

"Angie! Your dad says that if you don't hurry up, you won't get any dessert at dinner."

"Aaaaand that is my cue to leave!" she declared with a toothy grin, her previous intensity all but gone, and she pointed a pair of finger-guns at, saying, "See you later, cowboy! And make sure you get your eight hours of beauty sleep!"

"Yeah, sure, whatever," I dismissed her with a wave of my good hand, and a short giggle later she dashed out of the room to join her childhood friend waiting outside.

The moment I heard the front door close, somehow all the tension escaped from my shoulders in the form of an exhausted breath. Maybe Angie was right. Maybe I should really try and rest a bit. With such thoughts in mind, I forced myself off the chair and dragged my legs up the stairs one step at a time. As I passed by her room, I could hear Snowy and Ichiko animatedly discussing something. I could only hear a few snippets through the closed door, but by the sound of it, they were getting along. That was nice.

Once I passed by them, I momentarily vacillated whether I should first wash my face with some cold water, but after a short but kind of blurry amount of time later I simply entered my room and immediately fell onto my bed. I lied on my back while staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, my brain slowly turning into one of those grainy snowstorms you see on TV when there's no broadcast. This was weird, as I actually had a lot of things to think about, including what to do with Labcoat Guy, how to proceed with Lord Grandpa, whether or not I should feel just a tiny bit guilty about misleading my friends today (for the record, I shouldn't, because I technically didn't tell even a single lie), or the apparent fact that my hand needs professional healing. All of these things kind of slipped through the cracks, like dry sand through my fingers, and my eyelids were starting to feel really heavy again.

My eyes must be tired, I concluded, and I saw no reason why I shouldn't close them. Just for a minute, to let them rest. Then I would get up and load in the Hub to see what's going on there. Or at least that was the plan until, against predictions and prior precedent… I fell asleep.

…

The fact that I was still aware and looking at myself lying on the bed probably wasn't a good sign, was it?

Well, under normal circumstances this would've been the point where I felt it was entirely reasonable to contemplate whether I should start panicking or not, but then as time went on, my consciousness slowly dulled as well, and before I knew it, I was… somewhere. It was a… kind of room, except not really? It was also pitch black, yet lit by a distant yet ever-present warm light at the same time. It felt weird, but also strangely safe and comfortable, and before I knew it, I slowly drifted into a state that was both sleeping, and yet not. And that was how I, for the first time since I could remember, dreamed under the light of a red sun.

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