Chapter 92: ~Chapter 31~ Part 2

"Hi Dormouse, I'm home!" I loudly announced as I arrived back in my room while simultaneously clamping onto a certain deadpan girl's waist from behind. I didn't know whether it was the voice or the sudden physical contact, but Judy immediately let out an uncharacteristic (if admittedly pretty gosh darn cute) 'Eep!' sound, followed by a moment of silence.

"Chiiiief?" my assistant asked in a flat yet somehow still pretty threatening voice as she glanced over her shoulder. "Could you stop doing that? Do you want to give me a heart attack?"

"Oh, please! You complained that I wasn't acting like a proper boyfriend, so the first thing I did after coming home was to embrace you, and yet this is the reaction I get? I'm hurt."

"No, you are not." Saying so, Judy deftly turned around while still in my embrace so that we were face to face. Or rather, face to neck due to the height difference, but I decided it was a semantic question worth ignoring. There was something slightly harder to ignore happening at the same time though: due to our close proximity, I was once again reminded of the fact that while Judy might not have had the glamorous proportions of Elly or the sheer bust size of a certain class rep, she sure as hell wasn't flat either, as the soft sensation on my abdomen readily testified. That, combined with her upturned eyes made me smile wryly back at her, and so she stated, "You are in high spirits."

"Does it really look like that?" I asked back absent-mindedly.

"Yes," my dear girlfriend nodded while still looking me in the eye, then her brows ever so slightly furrowed for a moment. "Where have you been?"

"Didn't I tell you?"

Judy immediately shook her head.

"No. We were talking about doing something about Neige's missing papers, then you said 'I happen to know a guy who does' something. After that you stared at the wall for a few seconds, then you told me, 'I have to go now, I will be back in a moment', and then you stood up and disappeared."

"… That was a terrible impression of me," I grumbled.

"Really? I think it was very accurate."

I wanted to ask 'Since when do I sound like a posh British aristocrat!?', but seeing her completely serious expression, I decided not to press the issue, lest the discussion would get derailed into oblivion, so I gave a noncommittal, "If you say so," and called it a day with that.

"So, where did you go?" Judy inquired again, so I let her go, took a step towards my bed, and then gestured for her to sit down with me.

"Okay, listen to this! It all started with using Far Sight on Brang," I told her with a mischievous smirk as I took a seat.

"Wait," Judy stopped me in my tracks as she stood before me. "Brang was the Faun," she stated.

"Yes," I answered with a small nod, though I quickly realized it was a statement instead of a question.

"The Faun who returned to the Abyss with the rest," she stated again, brows slowly slanting down into an angry frown I couldn't really understand. Still, I nodded in the affirmative, at which point her expression went even more deadpan than usual, and then a moment later she raised a hand for a somewhat clumsy facepalm combined with a frustrated groan. "Chief, please tell me you didn't actually teleport into the Abyss."

"Um… I actually did," I responded uncertainly, still not understanding why she was making such a fuss.

"The actual Abyss. Where Neige came from," she stressed again with an expression that was getting closer to helpless than angry.

"Yes. Is there another one?"

Judy apparently didn't find my comment amusing, as she kept staring deadpan daggers at me.

"Chief," she suddenly started, then just as abruptly paused, only to then finally grumble, "Do you ever think anything through before doing it?"

"Excuse me?" I asked back, a little baffled by her reaction.

"You still don't understand," came the next condemning statement. "I still don't know how you can be so smart and yet so careless at the same time."

"… Okay, let's say I admit that I am a bit of an idiot and I have absolutely no idea what you are going on about right now. Would you please explain it to me if I asked nicely?"

Judy gave me a withering look (once again, by her standards), crossed her arms, and ultimately said, "Very well. I will walk you through this one. Where did you go?"

"Um… to meet Brang?" I reiterated with a slightly guarded voice, but she only gestured for me to continue, so I ventured, "To the Abyss?"

"Yes," she said with a stern nod. "What is the defining characteristic of the Abyss?"

"It's full of Abyssals?" I guessed, still a little lost. Since that didn't seem to be the answer she was looking for, I continued with, "It's a prison? For the Abyssals?"

"Close enough," she relented. "What keeps them there?"

"The barrier," I answered reflexively.

"Yes, the impenetrable barrier designed to keep the Abyssals sealed inside. Do you start to see the issue yet?"

"I… um… It's only mostly impenetrable," I protested somewhat feebly. "I mean, I got in without too much problem."

"But you didn't know that ahead of time," she once again stated with one hundred percent certainty, and while I wanted to protest, I really couldn't, as she was correct. Judy let out a tired breath and added, "Furthermore, even if you knew you could enter with your teleportation ability, there was no way for you to know you could come back. Am I right?"

"Well… yes, you are right" I admitted, and as I did so, I unconsciously averted my eyes.

"Did you consider this before you teleported there?"

"… No."

"Do you understand now why I am angry with you?"

"… Kinda."

For a few seconds, there was a heavy silence between us, but thankfully it didn't last too long, as Judy once again raised her hand to her forehead.

"Chief, I suspected this much in the past, but this incident made it certain: you lack even a semblance of risk assessment. You jump into action on a whim without first measuring the possible negative consequences. For example, imagine that you could teleport into the Abyss, but the barrier did what it was designed for and stopped you on the way out. What would you have done then, trapped in there? You had no money, no way to contact us, no connections over there, and one of the Lords absolutely hates you with a passion. Did you think about how you could've been hunted, captured, or worse? Did you think about how that would've affected the rest of us? Did you even consider how it would affect me if you suddenly disappeared with no way to contact you?"

"I… I'm sorry," I apologized before I even knew it. I was thinking about multiple ways to refute her words while she was talking, but in the end I couldn't say any of them. "I suppose I really didn't think this through. At all." At this point I glanced back at her and tried to give her a winning smile while saying, "But on the bright side, things turned out fine, and we even learned that I can enter and exit the Abyss at will."

"Yes, but what about the next time? Or the time after that? If you don't think things through and keep jumping into possible danger like that, it's only a question of time before things don't turn out so well, and then what? Chief, you have only one life; you can't risk it like that."

"Yeah, but… what am I supposed to do? I'm not a supercomputer that can predict the outcomes of my every action."

"That's why, from now on, every time you make a decision, you have to turn it in for me to approve. In triplicate."

That comment immediately made me raise a clumsy eyebrow.

"Are we still having a serious discussion? I could swear that a moment ago we were having a serious discussion? Did I miss a page? Is this still on?"

My girlfriend gave me an unsubtle roll of the eye and she promptly sat down by my side, which simultaneously drained a lot of tension out of me.

"No, we are still having a serious discussion, I just know that if I don't lighten the mood every once in a while, you're going to throw in a non-sequitur to do so and it would completely derail the conversation for the foreseeable future."

"I wouldn't…" I began, but then I thought about it for a moment. "Actually, now that I think about it, I probably would. Huh. It appears you know me better than even I do."

"Naturally," Judy nodded as she sidled closer to me on the bed, then her expression became serious again as she told me, "I just want you to be aware of the fact that you are an irredeemable hothead who doesn't think anything through and because of that he ends up in ridiculous situations. Like almost voluntarily trapping himself in our local underworld. Or having two girlfriends."

"I get it, I get it! Geez!" I moaned with a bit of theatrical flair.

"I'm glad to hear it," Judy responded with a nod and an expression that didn't seem confident in me at all. "So, what did you do in the Abyss?"

"Oh, right, I haven't told you that yet, have I?" I mused very thoughtfully, which definitely wasn't a ploy to buy me some time to gather my wits and figure out how to break some of the news to her.

"You haven't," she replied matter-of-factly.

"Soooo… I told you that I went to see Brang, right?"

"Yes. I reckon it was because Neige mentioned him earlier today."

"That's right. I went to the Abyss to learn the identity of the document forger they used the last time." After I said so, Judy gave me a blank look, followed by a defeated sigh, so my next words might have come out a little nervous when I asked her, "What? What's the problem?"

"Chief, we have the Celestial Hub at our fingertips. If you gave me half an hour, I could get you three of those."

"Yes, but if those guys are connected to the Celestials. It would leave a trace," I countered. "If we used one of their contacts, some hyperactive overachiever on the site might wonder where we learned of them, and even if they can't trace things back to us in particular, they might think there's a leak in the Hub and could become more vigilant in the future."

Judy looked at me with a slightly skeptical look in her eyes, but she soon relented with a reserved, "It makes sense. So much so that I think it's just another one of your post-hoc rationalizations."

"Hey! I do consider things carefully… from time to time."

"You sure do," she replied with a voice made extremely biting by the lack of overt sarcasm, then she continued with, "So, did you learn where we can find a forger?"

"Erm, actually…" I stuttered for a moment, so I cleared my throat and spoke in a slightly more audible tone. "Actually, you know how Crowey shifted all the blame of his colossal failure onto us in general and yours truly in particular?" Judy gave me a suspicious nod, so I continued, "Well, as it turns out Brang was also made into a fall guy, and when I met him, he was locked up in this really old-school dungeon."

"The kind with goblins and treasure chests?"

"Nah, the medieval kind."

"Oh. The kind with chains, metal bars, and buckets then."

"Precisely," I answered with a toothy grin.

"So?"

"Weeeell…" I began while absent-mindedly scratching the back of my neck. "You see, he got screwed over by Crowey and was about to be executed, and as we all know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so we had a long talk, and then…"

"And then you helped him break out of prison," Judy finished my line for me.

"Yup, though only a little. I just got him out of his cell; he said he can take care of the rest."

My girlfriend gave me another one of those really critical looks of hers, then she let out a small breath, presumably either in defeat or disappointment.

"So in short, you used your as-of-yet not fully tested teleportation ability to go into the Abyss to talk with a scary Faun who looks like a demon and who already tried to kill you once, and then you set him free."

"Yes, that is more or less accurate… except I wouldn't call Brang 'demonic' per se. I mean, he is big and kinda rammy, plus he has glowy eyes, and he lives in not-hell with the not-demons, and I'm going to shut up now before I dig myself even deeper."

My dear assistant shook her head again, and although the tiny twitch in the corner of her mouth didn't escape my notice, a moment later she was looking at me sternly once again.

"Did you at least get the identity of the forger out of him?"

"Well…"

Judy's eyes once again shone with naked skepticism as she stared at me.

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"You forgot."

"Not really, I was just a little distracted by the whole jailbreak business." Judy didn't take my excuse well, so I hastily added, "Not to mention, it doesn't really matter, because we already agreed that I'd get him out of the Abyss and he would join us. After that, I can even get him to show me where to go in person."

"… You hired the Faun that tried to kill you just a few days ago," Judy stated with a voice so flat it could be faxed.

"Technically I only convinced him that it is in his best interest to swear allegiance to Snowy instead of her brother."

Over the span of several seconds, my assistant's gaze slowly transformed from critical to resigned, and eventually she said, "Please tell me he isn't going to live in your house too."

"Hell no!" I answered without thinking. "I mean, I like the guy, but there is no way he can fit in here."

"So?"

"I was thinking about having him live in our future secret base," I answered confidently. "After all, I need someone I can Far See to be present there so that I could teleport to the site. He can also guard the place against intruders, and he would have a roof over his head. Everyone wins."

"… Another post-hoc rationalization?"

"No, I… Wait, why was that a question?"

"Because I can't tell."

"Then how am I supposed to know? Didn't we already establish that you know me better than I do?"

"Now that you mention it, I suppose I do," Judy concluded with a nod, but then her eyes quickly narrowed in suspicion as she added, "And that's why I know you are not telling something and trying to change the subject."

"Wait, really?" I blurted out in surprise. "I mean… I don't know what you are talking about."

"Come on Chief, just say it. I promise I won't be too mad."

"That still means you are going to be a little mad."

"Oh?" Judy gave me a triumphant look. "So it is something I would be mad about. I knew it."

"… I walked into that one, didn't I?"

"Splendidly," she agreed with a nod. "So, are you telling?"

"After this, I'm not sure anymore."

Judy didn't say anything for a while, and instead she reached out and gently pinched my two cheeks and began ineffectually tugging at them. I let her do so for a few seconds while getting increasingly baffled, but in the end I couldn't take it anymore and asked, "Okay, so, I know you are doing a 'thing' now, but for the love of me I cannot figure out what it is."

"I'm pulling your cheeks," she stated as if it was self-evident.

"Yes, I get that part," I grumbled, "I just don't get why."

"My research says it's a form of playful punishment that is also a sign of affection, particularly between couples."

"Really?" I wondered aloud for a moment, and on second thought I did recall something similar, though the image that came to mind actually involved stretching the cheeks instead of, well, whatever she was doing at the moment. "I suppose there might really be something like that, but isn't that usually done to the girls?"

"That's sexist, and now you should be ashamed of your horrid male-chauvinist ways," Judy stated with a deadpan voice as she continued to ineffectually try to pinch my cheek without actually causing even the mildest discomfort.

"Okay, we are getting nowhere fast at this rate," I told her with a subtle roll of the eye, but then I raised my hands to her face and pinched her cheeks in turn. "See, I think this is how you are supposed to do it." Saying so, I very carefully stretched her cheeks a little, earning me a small frown.

"So I just have to put more strength into it," she concluded, somehow, and then she proceeded to lean in closer to me. Now, I would like to point out that at this point I kind of realized we were evoking a situation that would lead to either an awkward conclusion or a bucketload of sexual tension, but before I could do something about it, Judy put too much strength into her arms and not enough into her fingers, which led to her losing her grip on my face and then on her own balance as she fell forwards. Since I had my hands up at her face, which wasn't exactly the best body part to grab onto to stop someone's tumble, and since I knew that if I tried to lower my hands it was guaranteed to lead to some embarrassing breast-related shenanigans, I wisely decided to open my arms instead and catch Judy in a bear hug.

She let out a soft, if quite obviously distressed sound, then she looked up from my chest with a strange expression on her face and asked, "What just happened?"

"Well, if I had to guess—" I began, but then the mysterious, yet at this point practically tangible forces of dramatic timing reared their ugly heads once again as a certain Abyssal girl opened my door without even knocking.

"Leo, I wanted to ask if—" Snowy began as she stuck her head through the gap, but then her words came to an abrupt halt as she noticed us on the bed. "Am… am I intruding?"

I closed my eye for a moment as I stifled a slightly annoyed chuckle and then gestured for her to stay.

"Nah, you aren't," I calmly told Snowy while letting go of Judy, but then once we both sat down properly I still grabbed hold of her waist again and pulled her a little closer, and said, "We are just being close like usual."

"I see that," the slightly flushed girl responded with an awkward smile.

"You said you wanted to ask something?" I quickly prompted her before we could lapse into a tense silence.

"Oh, you are right," my new housemate exclaimed with eyes wide open. "I want something clarified."

"I'm listening."

"So... Uuu... You said I can have everything in the room, right?"

"Yes, that's what I said," I confirmed with a small nod, slightly intrigued by her constant fidgeting.

"When you said 'everything', did you mean... all of it?"

"... That's the definition of the word, yes."

"Really? Great!" she suddenly beamed at me in genuine delight, but then she quickly toned it back to her previous, slightly embarrassed expression. "I-I mean, thanks for the clarification! I'll go now and let you... um... be close? B-Bye!"

Saying so, Snowy abruptly pulled her head back and shut the door with slightly more vigor than strictly necessary, leaving us in a strange silence.

"So, what do you think that was?" I cautiously asked to break the delicate atmosphere in the room.

"Very embarrassing," came the blunt answer from my ever so slightly flushed girlfriend.

"Really?" I reacted with measured incredulity. "I was a little surprised, but I wouldn't say it was that embarrassing."

"And that fills me with a profound sense of worry for our future," Judy continued to softly grumble, but then a moment later he glanced up at me again and said, "Also, you still didn't tell me what else you did in the Abyss."

"Oh, fine," I grumbled. "It's wasn't even that big a deal."

"Then you should have no reason to keep it from me," she countered, earning a defeated groan from me in the process.

"Okay, so here it is in a nutshell: I was already in the Abyss, right?" Judy gave me a firm nod even though it was just a rhetorical question, so I continued, "So, after I parted with Brang, I realized if I was in the neighborhood, I might as well pay a visit to Crowey."

"Please tell me you didn't do what I think you did…"

"Unfortunately I don't know what you think about, so I'll just tell what happened: I spied on him for a while, and when the opportunity presented itself, I used my teleportation ability to sneak into his study just as he was leaving and I made a bit of a mess there."

"Such as?" Judy asked, though the small twitch in the corner of her left eye told me she wasn't sure she wanted to hear the answer.

"Nothing serious. I mixed up a few of his parchments in the drawers, I arranged the paperclips on his desk to look like a giant penis, I wrote him a letter in fake blood, I drew mustaches on the paintings in the room, that kind of stuff. Just harmless pranks."

The skepticism in Judy's disapproving stare was palpable as she questioned, "Chief, did you honestly think I would skim over the part with the fake blood?"

"Well, no, but it was worth a try," I answered with fake sheepishness.

"Where did you get the fake blood? And more importantly, what did you write?"

"Crowey had some… or at the very least I really hope it wasn't real blood, but with him, you can never know. As for the contents of the letter…" I paused for a moment, mostly just to tease the cautiously expectant girl by my side, then I ultimately explained, "Well, I figured causing some headache to the guy would help us in the long run, so I wrote him a very loquacious letter filled to the brim with ye-olde-English. You know, full of 'thy' and 'thou' and the like? Kinda how the Faun talk, but even more obnoxious."

"I understand, but what did you actually write?" Judy prompted me, obviously getting a little impatient.

"Oh, you know, just more prank stuff about how I was letting him know that his security was crap and that our assassins could end his life whenever we wanted but decided not to because he is so pathetic that keeping him as a Lord is better for us so that his place couldn't be taken by someone actually competent. Oh, and I also made fun of his face and called him a nincompoop."

"You keep saying 'us'…" Judy implied a question, though her tone told me she once again wasn't certain she wanted to know.

"Ah, that's the best part," I told her with a toothy grin. "I actually signed the letter in Celestial Script. Or at least I think I did. You know even I don't really understand my knack for languages, right? Anyway, I wrote some random gibberish, though it probably won't matter, as the important bit is that he would think it was done by the Celestials. Put all of that together, and I'm pretty sure he will freak out for a while, focus on tightening his security, and hopefully even further delay his inevitable comeback. So, what do you think?"

Judy gave me the silent treatment for several seconds with a really withering look. At the end of the day, she let out a sharp breath and declared, with perfect seriousness, "You are making me consider actually making those triplicate forms."

"Oh, come on, Dormouse!" I complained, but my pleas apparently fell on deaf ears as she shook her head in response.

"I'm serious. You need to learn how to rein in your troublemaking impulses," as she said that she reached into her pocket and took out her phone. "I'll start by setting a few rules. Rule number one: 'If it would make Judy angry at you, don't do it'."

"Wait, are you actually writing those down?"

"Rule number two: 'If it would make Judy annoyed, don't do it'."

"You are serious…" I concluded as she kept going.

"Rule number three: 'If it would cause a scandal between the supernatural powers, don't do it'."

"Okay, just how many of these rules do you want to make?!"

That question finally got her to pause as she thoughtfully raised her index finger to her chin, then she stated, "About two hundred twenty-one right now." Seeing my flabbergasted reaction, Judy gave me her version of a small smile and added, "Don't worry, we can discuss them all today. I already called my mother earlier and told her I'll be sleeping over at a friend's house."

"Hold on!" I objected with a raised hand. "You want to tell me your parents agreed to stay over at my place just like that?"

"Technically I am staying with Neige tonight, you just happen to live in the same house," she told me with a neutral expression that I was two hundred percent sure had an impish grin hidden behind it, and then she casually raised her phone again and continued with, "Rule number four: 'If it would—'"

As they say, desperate times call for desperate measures, and so I did the first thing that came to mind and suddenly grabbed hold of my assistant, much to her shock and surprise, and then with a small heave I placed her on my lap while hastily declaring, "Oh look at the time it's actually cuddling-o-clock we almost missed it how about we continue this conversation never?"

Judy was quite flustered at first, then seemingly annoyed as she looked back over her shoulder and stared me in the eye, but when I flashed her my most winningest smile that has ever been smiled in the history of winning smiles, she looked as if she resigned herself and she leaned back against my chest with a small shrug and an understated 'Fine.'

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was how I managed to avert disaster once again. Yay me.

However, just as I was about to congratulate myself, Judy whispered while typing, "Six in the evening is cuddling-o-clock. Noted."

And that ladies and gentlemen, was how I managed to accidentally invent sanctioned daily cuddling time. Yay me?

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