Chapter 206: ~Chapter 70~ Part 2

When looking out the second-floor window, I had no choice but to admit that the cityscape of Timaeus was quite majestic. From this vantage point I could see the high-rise buildings of the central district, the tidy rows of houses in the residential area, and if I strained my eyes a little, I could even catch a glimpse of sunlight reflecting on the water of the docks. If I were to get up from my desk and poked my head out, I was sure I could even see the foot of the mountain in the middle of the island. All in all, the view put me in a very solemn, introspective mood. For about five seconds.

"Well, that's enough of that," I whispered in the empty classroom, and after stretching my arms a bit, I took a deep breath and decided to put my free time to good use. Today's last lesson was PE, and since I still had an exemption, I decided to stay in our homeroom instead of watching the others from the sideline. I had more than one reason for that, but let's not focus on that detail yet.

Once I felt decently comfortable in my seat and made sure there was nobody in the vicinity, I closed my eyes and began to make my customary rounds on my various marks using Far Sight. I was very tempted to start with the rest of the gang first, but I managed to restrain the urge. I held back until now, so waiting just a little longer was fine.

Since Snowy was in a different grade, I had no reservations about Far Glancing at her, and I found her in the art classroom, a spacious room with paintings of all kinds and styles covering the walls. They naturally had the corresponding class at the moment, with Mrs. Applebottom telling them how to sketch a still-life picture. Speaking of which, this was a good opportunity to point out something: Whenever we had a lesson, it was almost always taught by Mrs. Applebottom, regardless of the subject. In the past, I wondered how the other classes were proceeding when she was with us, and as it turned out, the students in the other classrooms seemed to be doing free study without any supervision. Well, for some measure of the word at least, since the placeholders in those classes were still fairly underdeveloped compared to our classmates, so it mostly resulted in them just blankly staring at the empty whiteboard for forty-five minutes.

However, here's where the really spooky part comes in: according to Snowy, Mrs. Applebottom was teaching her class about as often as ours. I was more than once tempted to check if she was at two places at once, but after I got a pretty bad headache from trying the first time, I figured this must be one of those mysteries of the Simulacrum like the ninja-maids, or people's lack of awareness of placeholders, that was better left unanswered. At least for the time being.

Anyhow, I was getting off-topic. So, at Snowy's classroom, she was also drawing, and… wow, the others weren't kidding. She really was good. I mean, I knew she could draw well already; I've seen a couple of her finished artworks, but I didn't know she could make them that fast and well. Note to self: praise her when we get home. Providing positive reinforcement as a big-brother figure was an important duty of mine after all.

That said, while watching her work was quite enthralling, I wasn't exactly learning anything new by observing her, so I reluctantly moved on to my next targets. The people in the secret base weren't doing anything particularly noteworthy. Ditto for the Dracis family. Mike was in his apartment playing a game, so same as usual. Weirdly enough, even though he was supposed to be a university student, I have never seen him attend a class. That wasn't the surprising part; people who were not directly linked to Josh or his entourage often had very simplistic daily routines unless they were entangled in the dreaded narrative's vile clutches. However, while he wasn't exactly living a productive university lifestyle, he still spent his whole day 'awake', so to speak, even if he was only lurking on the Hub and leveling his characters all day.

I couldn't help but wonder: did he have a complete personality and a semi-realistic 'off-screen' life because he was secretly always supposed to be an important player in the narrative, because he got connected to Ammy, or because he got connected to me? That last one was the most troubling option, but also the most realistic considering everything I have seen so far. I still refused the accept the idea of becoming a second protagonist beside Josh, but considering how much attention the nebulous narrative was paying to me as of late, maybe I could consider myself something of a wild-card the world was trying to accommodate.

Either way, this wasn't the right moment to contemplate my place in whatever grand design may or may not exist around me (I was still an advocate of the 'loosely directed chaos' school of thought, as opposed to Judy's 'omnipresent overmind director' and Elly's 'who cares, tell me how we can exploit things instead'). Once I was sure nothing interesting was happening around the clumsy Celestial, I moved on to my next target. Peabody was… exactly where I expected him to be: sitting inside the infirmary, all alone. What I wasn't expecting was that he was reading one of those dime-a-dozen romance novels you can buy for a pittance. I was almost tempted to take a peek at the contents, but in the end decided against it and moved onto the more interesting targets.

A moment later, I found myself staring down at Crowey from above. His outward injuries have been completely healed, or at the very least they were hidden by the fancy, embroidered black overcoat and leather gloves he was wearing at the moment. He was sitting behind an unexpectedly simple wooden desk inside a similarly austere, small study room, with a group of Abyssals currently in the process of vacating the premises. They just finished negotiating by the looks of it, and based on the expression on the Abyssal Lord's face, he wasn't entirely satisfied with the state of affairs. Served him right, I say, but the fact that things were actually happening around him meant that sooner or later he, or maybe someone connected to him, would probably make a move that should affect us in the near future.

That was bad news for us, especially since we still had the Knights, the Assembly investigators, and potentially the Chinese Draconians on our hands, so I decided to pay more attention to him from now on. From what I have gathered, him getting beaten by our ragtag group of misfits and 'losing' his sister shook the Inanna house to its foundations, and having to deal with the politics of the Abyss forced him to refrain from coming out of the Abyss for a rematch, but it was only a question of time before he felt his position was solid enough for him to come after us again. That is if we presumed that the narrative wouldn't yank on his strings at any moment and have him act anyway, of course, but that just gave me all the more reason to keep an eye on him.

Anyhow, I spent a few minutes observing the hand-written papers on the table, while also listening in on the man ordering his subordinates around, and I soon figured out he just made some kind of trade deal with another house. The details didn't seem too important, so I soon moved on to greener pastures. Or in this case, run-down, eastern bloc aesthetic pastures…

"— because of the lockdown," the familiar voice of Mr. Griffon concluded whatever briefing he was giving to his fellow dastardly knights in the abandoned house that served as their current hidey-hole, though not for long if all the packed up equipment was any indication. Regrettably I could only tag a squire for my Far Sight, and he was currently sleeping in another room (he was probably on night shift or something), so I could only listen to their discussion by moving my point of view as close to the living room as I could.

"We shuid stairt pack'n! This steid isnae solid tae defend, sae we better shift tae th' freish fort ah foun!" Mr. Minotaur, with his unmistakable accent, declared with his usual gusto. At this point I expected the third knight, the one in the red armor, to say something, but instead it was a brand new voice entering the fray.

"What about Leonard? Does he know where the new base is?"

The newcomer was a young-ish girl by the sound of it, and listening to her felt like she was purposefully trying to talk in a lower voice than her natural tone. For a second I almost considered that she might have been trying to hide her voice, but there was no reason why they should suspect that anyone could hear them. Not to mention, with such a clumsy effort, I was ninety percent sure I would recognize her voice if we accidentally met on the street anyway. Maybe it was so that she sounded more mature and authoritative? Or maybe it was just a weird quirk. At least she didn't have a funky accent, which was admittedly a pretty low bar to clear, but hey, it was something.

"He is still in deep cover, so we didn't make contact with him yet," the Griffon Knight stated, and I could immediately hear the new girl clicking her tongue.

"So you are telling me he doesn't know where to retreat in case of an emergency?"

"I doubt brother Leonard doesn't have an escape plan of his own," the red-armored knight stated as he entered the conversation for the first time. "He did an outstanding job when it comes to blending into the environment of the candidate, so he undoubtedly planned for emergencies as well."

"Ye ur sellin' heem cuttie!" Mr. Minotaur cut in with a boisterous voice that kind of reminded me of Abram. I wondered if these two would get along if not for the while thousand years old blood feud thing. Oh, and the ridiculous accent, of course. "Ye wilnae hawp this, Penny-gurl, but he hid his-sel sae weel, thaur ur e'en rumors abit heem datin' a body ay th' wyrmbloods!"

"No way," the girl, whom I presumed was the previously mentioned 'Penny-girl', gasped in audible horror at the mere idea.

"I do not doubt the existence of such rumors," Mr. Red commented on the side. "Brother Leonard was always very adept with his words. Even if he only managed to maintain his cover in front of the scion of the wyrmbloods, it would certainly help him maintain his secret identity."

"No, it's the exact opposite!" the girl protested, her voice almost cracking under the pressure of her anger. "It would only draw more attention to him and put him in more danger. He would never do something so risky!"

"We, unfortunately, do not know of his circumstances," Mr. Griffon lamented. "However, we all know him well enough to trust his judgment. He must've had his reasons to get so intimate with the young wyrmblood."

"Hauld yer horses! Ur ye suggestin' he se'uced th' wyrmbluid gurl fo real? Ur ye oot o` yer min'?!"

"Don't discard the possibility, brother Duncan. I can scarcely imagine a better way to hide one's identity as one of our own, and if anyone can perform such a subterfuge, it would definitely be brother Leonard."

"I still can't believe it," the knight girl denied quite vehemently. "He would never do something so risky."

"Where there is smoke, there is fire," Mr. Griffon remarked, barely audible under the noise of metal plates sliding on each other. By my guess, he either sat down, or got up; one or the other. "There is certainly some basis for these rumors. Whether they are true or not, we will learn once the time to test the candidate is nigh."

"That's another thing I don't understand," the girl grumbled while making rhythmic metallic noises, most likely by packing up and down. "Why hasn't he tested the candidate yet?"

"If I had to make an educated guess," Mr. Griffon mused aloud, "it is most likely because of the appearance of the Dracis wyrmbloods on the island. Drawing their attention to the candidate too soon would be disastrous."

"'N' then thare wis a' that chimera business 'n' him hidin' a seducin` bint o' th' Abyss! Whit's th' deal wi' that, anyway?"

"He's sheltering a what?!"

"There was an incident on the island a while back, apparently caused by one of the Abyssal Lords," Mr. Red explained, completely unperturbed by the knight girl's unnecessarily loud reaction. "According to what we learned, brother Leonard took one of the perpetrators under his wings, and she is now living with him."

"It was an odd choice, but I believe he must have done so either to further solidify his cover, or to further split the attention of the Arch-Mage and the wyrmbloods on the island," Mr. Griffon speculated, but his words apparently fell on deaf ears.

"That's it! I don't care about his cover or what have you! I will not have him live under the same roof with an Abyssal Seducer!"

"Whoa thaur, Penny-gurl! Calm doon!"

"Listen to brother Duncan, sister Penelope! Please put your sword away!"

The situation seemed hairy for a moment, but then the three men managed to somehow calm the temper of the knight girl by taking her mind off yours truly and focusing on their plans for the future instead. Unfortunately they have decided to do the latter while they moved over to their new base of operations inside the city, and left my marked squire (and subsequently, me) back in the old house.

Nevertheless, I still learned a couple of new things from this short excursion. First off, the knights finished reorganizing their ranks and might make a move soon. Two, the knight girl arrived on the island. Three, considering her reactions, she is apparently going to be a pain in the neck to deal with. Lovely.

Anyhow, all of this meant that I would have to pay a lot of extra attention to the knights in the future as well. In fact, I should really try to either sneakily mark one of the important guys, or at the very least track down their new headquarters on the island and have some of my people stake out the place to warn me if they started to move.

All of this was for later though. For now, I had nothing more to see here, so I decided to move on to my next target, and this time my timing couldn't have been better, as my disembodied viewpoint arrived in Lord Grandpa's office exactly at the same time when a certain annoying Arch-Mage proxy entered the scene.

"Whoa! You look, like, a total wreck! Did you party all night?"

The local Arch-Mage (who, for the record, really did look terrible at the moment) sent his colleague a wry glance, followed by a long groan and the sound of glass tinkling as he unceremoniously poured some milky liqueur into a large glass on his desk.

"What do you want? I thought you were still busy gallivanting around in your new body."

"Oh gosh, Endy! Don't be so grouchy! I just came to pay you a visit and maaaaaybe ask about a few things! Two, no, wait… three things! Like the stuff missing from your record books."

"What are you talking about?" Lord Grandpa growled, putting his glass back down before it could reach his lips.

"Oh, you know? Stuff? Like research materials and junk? They were supposed to be with the rest of the items we confiscated for the investigation, but they are nowhere to be found." 'Sahi' let out a small giggle at this point and then skipped over to the Arch-Mage's side just so that he could poke him with her elbow and then say, "Maybe you just misplaced them? I mean, at your age, people tend to forget things? If only you were a little younger, eh? Eh?"

"… You really enjoy showing off this new body of yours," Endymonion noted, which elicited yet another chuckle from the 'girl'.

"Of course I do! Isn't that, like, obvious?"

"Even though it is not really your body yet," Lord Grandpa dropped a bombshell, and it immediately made the smile on the brown girl's face wither.

To her credit, instead of trying to play dumb, she simply asked, "When did you notice?"

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"It pains me to admit it, but I was not the one who realized it first," the old man lamented while theatrically sloshing his drink in his glass. "It was the young mister Dunning who brought it to my attention."

"Really? Wow. That boy is full of surprises."

"Tell me about it," the Arch-Mage griped aloud before taking a long sip from his glass.

In the meantime the other Arch-Mage dragged a chair over from the corner of the room and sat down in from of the owner of the place.

"Fine, I admit I still have some kinks to iron out, but as you can see, the prototype is almost complete!" She opened her arms wide, as if to show herself off, then added, "Once I figure out how to permanently store a soul in the host body, it's going to be totally perfect."

"If you can manage to do so," the old man pointed out, apparently finally feeling back in the saddle, much to Sahi's chagrin.

"Boo! Stop being a party-pooper you old coot! It's not like you managed to put anything down onto the table in the past couple of years! I'm still waaay ahead of you!"

"Childishly competitive, as always," Lord Grandpa whispered just loud enough for her to hear, and she immediately puffed out her cheeks in response.

"You are a mean old man! That's why you never had a girlfriend in your life!"

"I fail to understand what any of this has to do with the conversation at hand."

"Of course you wouldn't," Sahi scoffed, but then a second later her eyes opened wide and she snapped her fingers. "Right, that reminds me of the second thing I wanted to ask you about! You know, I couldn't help but notice that your protégé looks eeeeeerily familiar. In fact, you could say he looks toooootally like you when you were younger! Isn't that weird?"

"I have no idea what you are talking about, and I will not entertain any further questions on this topic," Lord Grandpa retorted in a hurry, which only resulted in the other person in the room looking even more suspicious of him.

"But I want to ask anyway! Like, not just him, but your granddaughter too! How do you even have a granddaughter?"

"Quit it, Saahira. I had a rough night, and I am not in the mood to entertain your inane questions," the old man declared so in no uncertain terms, and after staring daggers at each other for a couple of moments, it was the girl who gave up first.

"Fine! Have it your way, you old scrooge! I'll just ask my third question then."

"See to it that you do, and then leave at once."

"You are a terrible host, you know that, right?" Sahi fumed, but the old man refused to give her a reaction. "So, I was curious about one last thing. You said that the head of the Kage clan used to be on the island, right?"

"Yes?"

Lord Grandpa's response sounded a little uncertain, probably worried about why she was asking, but the brown girl either didn't notice, or didn't care. Probably the latter.

"The one with the ancient sword housing the soul of a priestess and stuff?"

"Yes, though—"

"So… why is she working for you now?"

"She is not," the old coot stated very emphatically, and it made the girl in front of him cross her arms in front of her chest, with her face twisted in the kind of pouting expression only young girls of a certain age could manage.

"Like heck she isn't! I just met her at the school! … Well, I think I did, at least. I'm pretty sure it was her. About eighty— no, ninety-five percent sure!"

There was another short stalemate between the two, but it only lasted until the Arch-Mage emptied the rest of his glass in a single gulp and roughly placed it onto the desk.

"As a matter of fact—"

I was actually a little curious about how he would explain things to the incognito Arch-Mage, but I never got the opportunity to hear it, as the sliding door of the classroom was suddenly slammed open, jolting me out of my Far Sight.

"Chief," my girlfriend addressed me from the doorway. She was wearing her uniform a little sloppily, probably because she dressed in a hurry, and I could see droplets of sweat running down her otherwise expressionless face.

"Hi, Judy. Is PE already over?" I asked with a smile, doing my best to play dumb.

"Explain," she demanded, and when I didn't answer right away, she walked over to me with heavy steps and repeated. "Please explain why Rinne is our new PE teacher."

"Substitute PE teacher," I corrected her, but she apparently didn't care about the small details at the moment. "I… was kind-sorta forced into a situation and had to make the best of it. It had to do with giving her the sword making her my retainer and an oath of fidelity and being required to be around me to act as my bodyguard and all kinds of other honor-bound bushido stuff."

"Bushido is for samurai, not ninjas."

"Oh come on, Dormouse! You just got mad at me for correcting you, don't turn around and do it yourself!"

"I'm not mad about that," she stated very, very flatly. "I just want to know why you didn't tell me about it ahead of time."

"Because I wanted to see your reaction to it," I admitted without reservations, and for the first time, my dear assistant was thrown for a loop.

"Are you serious?"

"Yes, of course. It's a brother's duty to spoil their little sister, and it's a boyfriend's duty to tease their girlfriend. Didn't you read the rules in the Grand Book of Everything?"

It was around this time that we both took note of the rapidly approaching footsteps from the direction of the hallway, culminating in Elly practically exploding into the classroom.

"Leo! I just talked with the new PE teacher! Is it true? Is she really your personal ninja?"

I let out a long sigh, after which I told her, "Yes, princess, it's true. In a roundabout way, I do have my very own ninja clan. In a fashion. It's complicated."

She really didn't seem to mind that, as before I could properly react to her movements, she dashed over to me and caught me in a huge hug.

"I knew you would come around!"

I graciously allowed my more energetic girlfriend to continue squeezing the breath out of me and turned my attention to Judy instead.

"You see, Dormouse? Why can't you be happy about it like Elly?"

"I'm never going to be happy about it, but I will overlook your mischief, just this once." After saying so, my dear assistant also walked over to me and proclaimed, quite categorically, "After we go home, we are going to sit down, and you are going to explain how she ended up as a teacher in detail."

"Yes ma'am."

"Also," she continued while once again trying, and failing, to punctuate her words by pinching my good hand, "If you try to pull a stunt like this again just to mess with me, I will tell Elly about all the embarrassing things I have seen you do before we started going out."

The princess's ears immediately perked up and she even stopped squeezing me for a second. "What embarrassing things?"

"Never mind that," I told her before hastily facing Judy again. "I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, but even if I did, I'm sure you would not do such a thing since you are such a nice, kind-hearted girl and all."

"But Chief, didn't you know that it's a girlfriend's duty to tease her boyfriend in front of other girls? You should really read the revised edition of the Grand Book of Everything one of these days."

I wanted to say something snappy in response, but considering how curious Elly looked about whatever story Judy had hidden under her sleeve, I had no choice but to utter a defeated, "Touché," and prepare myself to a long afternoon.

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