Chapter 54: ~Chapter 17~ Part 3

"No!" Josh yelled at me while he stood in front of me with his arms spread out, as if guarding the girl behind his back from a vicious predator. "We just talked about this kind of thing this morning! First you do it with Judy, then with Elly, then with Angie, and now Lili?! I am drawing the line right here and now!"

I suppose the situation probably requires some explanation. It all started with the ringing of the lunchtime bell. As per my morning plans (before they were derailed by the girls), I was planning to probe Snowy, since now I had enough knowledge about the supernatural world to go beyond the basics.

The problems started right away. First off, when I tried to ask Judy to come with me and take notes, she declined saying she already had plans with the princess. The last time I saw them, they were heading to the cafeteria while arguing about whether we should go to the zoo or ice-skating. I was secretly a little happy about that and left them to their own devices, but then when I tried to leave for the ground floor classrooms I was hijacked by Angie, who pulled me aside (quite literally, if I may add; my shoulder was still a little sore from all the tugging) to inform me in code-words that the Celestial Hub was resetting everyone's passwords and that it was a great chance for me to get an account.

According to her, I could get one without any problems as long as she vouched for me. Sure, it would've been a basic account like hers, but it would still be something. By the way, I checked last night, and she really wasn't part of any of the spy rings, or a centuries-old conspiracy if we were at that, so she only had access to the site's basic functions. I pretended to be really interested and thanked her for the opportunity, but at the same time, I also made a mental note about the whole ‘vouching' thing. It was an obvious security risk.

Anyways, after she let me go, I continued on my way to Snowy's classroom, but by the time I got there, Joshua was already talking with the girl. The rest speaks for itself.

"You are just being irrational," I told Josh as I tried to take a step towards the confused girl, but he stood his ground and drew a half-circle in front of him with his feet. It was probably supposed to be the proverbial line in the sand, but taken that we were in a hallway, it was more than a little silly.

"I am serious. I am not letting you past this line until you promise to—"

"Snowy, would you come here for a moment?"

"Huh? Sure."

The still puzzled girl walked right past Josh and over his imaginary line without a moment of hesitation. He looked betrayed, but for the moment I couldn't care less and I turned to Snowy instead.

"Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?"

"You too?"

I chuckled and smiled at her in reassurance.

"Yeah, me too. There are a few things about your... ‘family situation' I'm curious about."

She agreed, if a little hesitantly, and I was just about to grab her hand and lead her to a quieter area when Josh inserted himself between the two of us again.

"Dude, I'm serious! You really need to stop hitting on the girls and..."

He continued with what suspiciously sounded like a heartfelt intervention. I summarily ignored him and instead checked out who was the closest scapegoat with my Far Sight. Once I found one, I raised an open palm to halt his tirade and turned on my heel without a word. I rushed down the corridor and grabbed hold of the class rep's hand as she was about to reach the bottom of the stairs. She let out a surprised yelp, but by then I was already towing her back to the others. It was only once we got there that she wormed her hand out of my grasp and glared at me in a manner that was about 70% petulant and 40% curious. Yes, that added up to 110%, but I feel that expressed her over-the-top reaction perfectly. Anyways, she set her feet, arms on her hips, and leaned into her disapproving class representative persona before she spoke.

"Leo, what do you think you are doing?"

"Getting Josh a replacement lunch partner. He feels terribly lonely lately, please remedy that," I told her smoothly as I sidestepped her burning gaze, grabbed hold of Snowy's shoulder, and pulled her over to my side. "Now if you excuse me, we have things to discuss, right Snowy?"

"Y-Yes?"

"That is not an excuse to... hey, where are you going!? I haven't finished with—!"

It was at this point we got out of earshot and rounded the corner leading to the back exit. Thankfully, neither the class rep nor Joshua tried to follow after us. We were almost at the courtyard by the time Snowy finally spoke out.

"Uuuuu... Y-You can let go of my hand. I'm not running away."

"Oh, right. Sorry. Not that I ever considered you would," I answered and let go of her. She immediately rubbed her fingers with her other hand. Maybe I was squeezing too hard? Oops. I tried not to get too hung up on that and smiled at her again. "Let's head to the cafeteria and find a quiet corner, shall we?"

She nodded curtly and we proceeded with our march towards the hall. Once we got in the line I turned to her and asked, "What would you like?"

"I... don't have much pocket money, so I think will go with the ‘A' menu."

"No, you don't get it. I am paying, so what would you actually like?"

"You mean... you are treating me?"

"Of course. I dragged you away, so this is the least I could do," I told her, but then I paused, thinking. "Just for the record though, no matter what Josh says, don't ask for caviar. It's not bad, but it isn't filling at all."

"I see..." She nodded solemnly like I just said something really profound and she looked over the menu as we inched forwards. "Uuuum..."

"Yes?"

She looked up at me and was about to say something, but then she shook her head. "Never mind."

"Never mind what? I thought there was something you liked."

"Yes, but..." She raised a hand to her mouth, which meant that for some reason she was regretting blurting that out. I gave her a wry look and tried to find what she was looking at, but it was hard to tell on the crowded menu. At last, she let her hand down and gave me an upturned look. "Promise me you wouldn't laugh."

"Is it something I would laugh at?"

"I... don't know?"

"Was that a question?"

She shook her head so vigorously the tips of her twin-tails nearly hit her in the face. For a moment I almost wondered what kind of conditioner she used that kept her hair flowing together like that, but then I remembered my ‘hairdo theory of importance' and it seemed quite obvious why it would act like that. Anyways, she looked up at me with a little pout and said, "Do you promise?"

"Fine, I promise. What would you like?"

She leaned closer, balled up her fists in front of her chest, and declared, "Apple pie!"

"Apple pie?"

"Apple pie," she repeated with an enthusiastic nod. To be perfectly honest, I very nearly broke my promise. Not because of what she asked for, but because of how excited and innocent she sounded while doing so. I tempered the laughter trying to escape my lungs into a broad smile and nodded.

"Very well, and apple pie it is."

Before I knew it, we already reached the counter and I swiftly placed my orders. I bought a fairly boring fried chicken dish and, amidst the frantic (but wholly unconvincing) protests of my current companion, an entire pie fresh out of the oven. I had to wonder where those ovens actually were though. In fact, I had to wonder just how big the kitchens had to be to supply the entire school with freshly made dishes, but I digressed. I turned around instead and scouted an empty table in the far corner of the hall. It was fairly deserted, and I figured it was a good enough place to have our conversation in something approaching privacy. Snowy didn't seem to care though, as she was completely mesmerized by the still steaming pie in her hands. She was all wide-eyed and sparkly, like a little kid holding her unwrapped Christmas present. I couldn't help but smile at her as we made our way over to our seats and sat down.

"You didn't have to..." She started again as she put down the tray in her hands, but I gestured for her to stop talking and start eating. She immediately complied... or would have, but she didn't know how to cut the pie. I sighed and helped her out, all the while feeling like a single father spending quality time with his daughter. It was a weird but not necessarily unpleasant experience.

She took out the first slice, and she naturally managed to burn her tongue even though I warned her. After a little blowing and excited waiting, it finally reached edible temperatures and she took a large bite. Her face was so blissful I wanted to take a photo and use it as the background on my phone, but I refrained. It was just the kind of thing the girls would misunderstand and would lead to all kinds of annoying hijinks.

"Is it really that good?" I asked, a little dubious about the objective quality of the mass-produced pastry, but she only nodded at me, her cheeks still bathed in bliss.

"Yes, it's great!"

"You act like you've never eaten one before."

"Um..." She paused, looking embarrassed for some reason. "I really haven't. I just saw Joshua eat one the other day and I wanted to try it."

"Really? Don't tell me there are no apple trees in the Abyss."

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She twitched a little, automatically checking if anyone was listening, and put down the slice in her hand.

"There are. It's just that..." Her voice trailed off before she took a sharp breath and continued. "You see, my brother says it's commoner food, so we never eat it at home, and I never have enough pocket money to buy it myself."

"Oh come on, it's not ‘that' expensive." She fell into a depressed silence, which told me I said something I probably shouldn't have, so I entered into backpedal mode and pointed at her tray with a smile. "Let's eat before it gets cold. I haven't even touched my plate yet."

"Let's do that." She nodded resolutely (what she was resolute about, I had no idea) and she picked up her pie again, and as she started eating her face once more mellowed out into an expression of pure bliss. I couldn't help but grin as I began raiding my own plate. I was always a fan of multitasking though, so I never stopped thinking while I did so.

I joked about the apple trees, but as far as the pictures in the reports I read were concerned, the Abyss actually looked remarkably similar to the island we inhabited at the moment. There were even some notes about it being a mirror image with corresponding landscape and all, but I didn't know the extent of that. Either way, for something called ‘The Abyss', it seemed relatively cozy, especially considering it was supposed to be something of a supernatural prison for the entire Abyssal race.

Speaking of which, I glanced up from my food and nearly choked as I laid my eyes upon our resident Abyssal. Her eyes were still lost in a sea of bliss, but her face was stuffed to the point it reminded me of a particularly desperate hamster. Was this really one of the famous Seducers of the Inanna family? Though again, this was probably the most ‘seductive' act I've ever seen from her, and even this only made me want to take her home and adopt her as a little sister.

I actually looked into her family background, if only a little. The Inanna's were one of the seven dynasties of the abyss clamoring for dominance like warring noble houses ought to do. That made me wonder; just what reason would have both her and her brother leaving that kind of backstabbing-prone situation behind, even if temporarily? Disappearing to the sidelines is usually bad for a political career. Oh, and there was still the question of how. I still didn't know how they got through the not-at-all-contrived impenetrable barrier of utter impenetrableness. Though again, I supposed the more one insisted on something being impossible to do in a world like this, the more likely it would happen sooner or later.

Then something quite obvious occurred to me: Why don't I just ask her? That's what we were here for, weren't we? I waited for her to finish her current slice before I drew her attention with a deliberate clatter of utensils.

"So... If I may be a little indiscreet, can I ask you what you are doing here?"

She seemed more than a little conflicted for a moment before she put her own fork down and began talking while her finger absent-mindedly tugged at her choker.

"If you mean why we are in the outside world... It has to do with our prophecy."

I had to gulp in surprise. That was... refreshingly direct. I smiled at her and pressed on.

"Prophecy, you say? That word seems to come up a lot lately."

"Really?"

"Yeah, annoyingly so." I put my hands onto the table and linked my fingers. "What is yours about?"

"Uuuu..." she groaned while she continued to awkwardly tug at her neckwear. "I suppose I can tell you. It's about the Emperor of the Abyss."

"The Emperor?" I interrupted before I suddenly recalled a footnote I had read last night and I let out a soft ‘oh'. "Wait, wasn't that supposed to be your version of that Deus fellow?"

Snowy twitched before she smiled at me awkwardly. "You could say that. The prophecy says there would be a human capable of absorbing the power of the Abyss and use this power to usher in the Emperor."

"So he wasn't supposed to be the emperor himself?" Snowy shook her head. "And you say he ‘absorbs' the power of the Abyss? You mean the mana wells?"

She shook her head again.

"No, it's rather..." She paused and fell silent for a long time, only her finger tugging, before she continued. "It's more like he has a lot of power and it can be swayed towards the Abyss by... um...." I waited for her to continue, and once it was obvious I was doing so she hunched over a little and she told me in a low voice. "He can be revealed by injecting a little power into him and then looking for a reaction."

"Injecting power? That sounds a little vague. How would you even do that?"

Snowy fell completely silent and her cheeks flushed slightly. The confusion must have been visible on my face, for she looked up at me and after a few seconds she mouthed, "E-Exchanging of essences?"

"Essences? What exactly are we talking about here?"

"S-S-Saliva..." She muttered before she lowered her face in what seemed like shame. I was just about to ask her how one would do that, but then the question got caught in my throat as my brain began to reassemble the pieces at Mach 3.

"Okay, let me see if I got this straight: To reveal this Emperor fellow, or rather the one who would reveal the Emperor..." I silently muttered ‘convoluted crap' under my breath before I continued, "you need to give him some essence?" She nodded. "And to do that, you need to share... fluids." She nodded again. "Was the reason why you kissed Josh the first time you met? To look for a reaction?" There was a longer pause this time, but she nodded once again. "But how? You didn't know it was Josh until you kissed him, and there was no reason for you to kiss him unless you knew it already, so..." She lowered her face even further in shame, so I ventured an educated guess. "Don't tell me you were going around kissing random guys on the street and just stumbled on Josh."

"Girls too..." she told me feebly, and her body language made me feel a little guilty for bringing the topic up in the first place. She must've taken my momentary silence as a sign of disapproval, for she lowered her head even further, to the point her forehead nearly touched the table, and in a mutter she added: "My brother said it was the only way."

I looked at her trembling shoulders and once again got reminded that, while she might've been an Abyssal and a Seducer and whatnot, at the end of the day she was still a fragile teenage girl. I suppressed a self-derisive grimace and reached out a hand to rustle the top of her head. She twitched as I touched her, but then a moment later she stopped trembling and looked up at me, her wet eyes open wide and a little incredulous. I smiled at her reassuringly and continued patting her head.

"You are a good kid. It's not your fault your brother is a prick."

She didn't answer, so I continued patting her until she calmed down. Doing so also made me realize why Judy got into the habit as well. Rubbing her head was strangely relaxing. Anyways, I finally stopped and waited for her to get her bearings before I hit her with my next inquiry.

"Staying on the topic of your quest for this usherer of emperors or whatnot, just what kind of reaction were you looking for?"

Snowy looked at me thoughtfully as she began tugging at her choker again and ultimately told me, "It's mostly magic. He just... absorbs magic and tunes his own to it... It's hard to explain."

"So he turns into an Abyssal?"

"Kind of?" She answered with a question, obviously unsure. "I only saw it once, and it only happened very briefly." She suddenly flushed again and shyly averted her eyes. "I-It was only a peck... on the lips."

"So you say that if you two, say, French kissed, the effect would be more pronounced?"

She turned a shade of crimson that, for some reason, reminded me of the princess, and nodded several times in place of an answer.

"Interesting. Do you think it would work with the other girls too?"

"I... don't want to kiss any of them."

I snorted and shook my head with a little smirk.

"No, I don't mean you. I mean, you said this useherer of yours should be able to tune his own power to the one that was 'injected' into him. Would the same reaction happen if he was kissed by another kind of magical folk?"

Snowy thought hard for several long seconds, but at the end of it she only shook her head.

"I don't know. I didn't even think it would work until it happened."

"Just checking." I nodded to myself as I thought about the implications of all this. So, Josh could theoretically become an Abyssal with a kiss, and since no one else mentioned anything about this the first time around, the transformation was only temporary. Furthermore, the same thing might work with others as well. The latter was just my conjecture, but it made sense from a narrative standpoint.

I didn't know if this trope had a name or not (though it probably did, I just had to look it up later), but this sounded suspiciously like a convenient power-up that's going to come to light at a suitably dramatic moment. I decided to file this information under ‘important stuff to keep track of' and returned to the conversation, only to find Snowy still tugging at her choker.

"Is it too tight?" She was puzzled by my question, so I reached out to point at her neck. Her eyes opened wide and she reeled back so hard that for a moment I was afraid she would fall over with her chair in tow. She didn't, but the resounding ‘No!' she yelled out made me lurch back just as hard. For a couple of seconds we only stared at each other in silence until I threw out a feeler question. "Is there a reason why you don't want me to touch it?" Snowy hesitated for only a moment before she nodded. "Does it have some sort of sentimental value?" This time she didn't hesitate before she would shake her head. "So it's not sentimental. Dangerous?" This time she actually thought about her non-verbal answer for a while before giving another tentative nod. "I see..." I muttered as I linked my fingers again in thought.

So it was something that was dangerous to remove. Or maybe something dangerous to me in particular? Either way, it was probably enchanted or somesuch. Truthfully, when I looked closer, I could swear I could see a dim glow surrounding it. It was hard to notice at a glance due to the background light, but after seeing Angie's light show the day before, I was fairly certain it was magic... which of course meant it was high time I admitted that ‘Holy crap, I can see invisible magic stuff!', but I still haven't done any controlled tests, so I only considered it a strong possibility and filed it under my ever-growing ‘stuff to look into later' corner of my poor, overexerted brain.

But back to the choker. I couldn't help but wonder what it was about. If I had to guess, I would've guessed it was a power-limiter, or at least something to that effect. Those things were fairly common in supernatural harem narratives like this, only existing to be released at an opportune moment to provide a sudden boost in power and save the day. A little cheap, but effective, I supposed. Although, on second thought, it might've been a safety power-limiter instead. For example, Snowy could be unconsciously drinking the souls of everyone around her without it. Or worse yet, it might hold back a cruel and vicious split personality that would take over Snowy and destroy the world. So yeah, there were lots of weird possibilities there, ranging from silly to outright scary, but that's how these things usually worked.

Anyways, I slowly exhaled before I addressed Snowy again.

"Let's forget about your choker for now. Your pie is getting cold."

She suddenly perked up at the mention of her treat and quickly put a hand over the pastry. The relief was clearly visible on her face when it turned out it was still warm. I cut her another slice as a symbol of leaving the previous topic behind and allowed both of us a little breather before we returned to the heavy topics.

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