The Simulacrum - Chapter 62 - Part 3

When Leonard Dunning exited the transplanar space, his eyes were still focused on the blade held in front of his face by a slightly trembling arm. The once black sword was now pure, matte white, as if covered by a fine layer of frost. The familiar purple shroud still grasped his hand like a vice, but it was of little concern at the moment.

After observing the weapon for three more seconds, Leonard Dunning's face clouded. There was a pervasive, acrid odor that stung his nostrils with every breath. It was the combination of the bloodied stench of the writhing Chimera and the black bile covering the ground around his feet. Leonard Dunning stepped away from the puddle of black, bubbling tar slowly eating into the concrete floor and focused his gaze upon the fallen life form.

His advance was momentarily stalled by a body blocking his path. He glanced at the being in front of him; Brang of Shadowfoot of the Faun Inanna-Dunning. He attempted to communicate, but Leonard Dunning simply walked around him and stopped next to the Chimera. He lowered himself to one knee and momentarily observed the weakly flailing creature, and he ultimately utilized his ******** to completely disable the artificial intelligence governing its actions.

The creature's body became completely limp and lifeless in short order. Leonard Dunning's expression didn't show any change as he patiently waited for its heart to finish its last beat, and then he carefully placed the tip of the blade against an already present wound on its torso and inserted it into the chest cavity of the Chimera. Karukk of Thunderer of the Faun Inanna-Dunning uttered an inconsequential comment, which he completely ignored while focusing on the task at hand. From the outside, it appeared he was only staring at the motionless body in front of him, which lasted for several long minutes before he exhaled a long breath, retrieved the blade from the insides of the Chimera and--

"Chief?"

...

I blinked once. Then two more times for good measure while I tried to stop the world from spinning in front of my eyes. Finally, after I no longer felt like I was sitting on a carousel, I glanced up at the girl nervously tugging at the collar of my coat.

"Hi, Dormouse. I thought you weren't going to come out of the closet until things calmed down."

My girlfriend let out a subtly relieved breath in response to my words and let go of my coat, only to immediately grab onto me again when I tried to stand up and almost faceplanted when my internal merry go round suddenly went in reverse.

"He told me you were acting strange," she explained to me while clumsily trying to use the hand holding onto mine to point at Karukk.

I sent the Faun a questioning glance, but since the only reaction I got out of him was a sheepishly averted face, I decided to ignore him and focus on the girl holding onto me.

"You are not possessed, right?" she asked, her eyes suspiciously measuring me from head to toe.

"Nah, I was just..." I wanted to say 'spaced out', but the expression didn't feel exactly right so, after some consideration, I settled on, "I was kind of detached for a moment."

"Are you better now?"

"'Better'is a relative term, but at least my head is comparatively clear."

"How's your headache?"

"It's... actually not that bad. That said, my entire body is pretty numb right now, so that doesn't mean much."

Now, truth be told, I wasn't entirely truthful with Judy at the moment, as while my head was indeed tolerable (or at the very least it only felt like I was standing by the speakers at a death metal concert with earplugs that could fall out at any second), my right forearm was stinging pretty badly, which considering my current state probably wasn't a good sign. Speaking of which, the shroud was still wrapped around my hand, so I shook it to loosen the fabric up and, after a couple additional tries, I successfully managed to get it off. The skin under it was unnaturally red, but after wiggling my fingers a little to confirm they still functioned, I decided to disregard the problem for the time being and have Angie take a look at it once the universe finished using me as its chew-toy.

In the meantime I also couldn't help but notice that the Chimera next to us started breathing again, so to avoid any future misunderstandings, I loudly cleared my throat to get everyone's attention.

"Listen up, everyone! If the Chimera starts moving again, don't be alarmed. She is probably going to start transforming soon. I think she's not a bad kid, but keep an eye on her anyway."

"She?" Judy leveled the question at me with a sharp look, earning her an especially tired eye-roll for her trouble.

"It's a long story, I will explain the nitty-gritty details once things calmed down. If you still feel insecure even after you see her, feel free to apply some countermeasures at your convenience."

"I'm not insecure, I'm just not sitting on my laurels," my assistant responded with a microscopic pout, but a blink of an eye later her expression abruptly changed and, without any warning, she began dragging me along. Normally this would be the point where I would make an affectionate joke about how she looked like some kind of traditionally adorable small animal while she was ineffectually tugging at me, but it probably spoke volumes about my current state that it actually worked.

"Hey, easy there," I grumbled, barely managing to stop myself from stumbling. She helped me keep my balance, but was just as insistent as before, so it didn't take long for me to just go with the flow and ask, "Where exactly are we going?"

"You reminded me of something, so we are going to do it now, before you find a convenient excuse to avoid it and then tell me that you couldn't do it because of the circumstances."

I wanted to argue at first, but after considering my options, I ultimately folded and obediently let her lead me along. Seeing us walking, Brang and Karukk immediately fell in line behind us doing their best honor guard impression, and on our way to our destination, we passed by a couple of other, currently hard to identify Fauns, as they were doing their best mummy impression. Speaking of which, the injured seemed to have been fully bandaged (maybe even excessively so, if you ask me), so I couldn't help but wonder how much time has passed outside while I was fiddling with Onikiri and the little miko inside it.

"Hey, Dormouse? How long was I 'in' this time?"

Judy fumbled for a second as she used her free hand to fish her phone out of her breast pocket, and to my surprise, she actually had a timer running on it, which she immediately stopped.

"A little over fifteen minutes," she stated after a glance, then hurriedly pocketed the device again so that she could use both hands to support me. It wasn't exactly necessary anymore, but I appreciated the gesture.

"Really? Everyone got their wounds treated in just fifteen minutes?" I spared one more glance at the Faun standing at attendance, and noted, "You guys are really efficient as usual."

My words made all the Fauns present subtly puff up their chests with more than a hint of pride, so much so that my hard-to-restrain teasing instincts wanted me to add a line about how I wished they were half as useful in combat, but my grumpy comment never managed to leave my mouth once we arrived at our destination. In front of us, Rinne was sitting on one of the benches around the training area, her arms still tied behind her back with the extension cord and she was flanked by a grim-looking Pip, who was apparently on guard duty.

"Chief, please introduce us," Judy much less asked than demanded, and to further set the scene, she clamped her arms around mine and snuggled even closer than before.

"Wait; are we really going to be doing what I think we are doing right now?"

"If you mean implementing countermeasures, then yes," Judy noted with an expression that said she would hear no objection to this. I tried anyway.

"We are still in the middle of something. Is this really necessary?"

"Yes, because if we don't do it now, then you are just going to say 'It's a long story, I'll explain later', but then you never do it, so that it will lead to a series of increasingly ludicrous misunderstandings. I'm not having any of that."

"... Well, if you put it like that, I can't really argue," I griped while observing the far corner of the hall, because it was really interesting, and nothing else. It had nothing to do with what Judy said, and even if it did, I could absolutely look her in the eye with confidence any time I wanted; I just found that corner really thought-provoking at the moment and decided not to so at the moment. Scout's honor.

"You better not," Judy commented following a triumphant little 'Hmpf!' noise, and she tugged on my arm again. "So, what are you waiting for? Introduce us."

One short yet infinitely exhausted sigh later I turned to the woman on the bench, and I was about to just get it over with a few words when I noticed that she was staring at me with eyes like saucers.

"Um… Hey, Mountain Girl. I see you calmed down a little," I opened with a bit of small-talk which, based on how Judy's elbow poked my side, my girlfriend didn't really appreciate it. The abnormally overwhelmed huntress didn't say anything, but I decided to interpret the way she slightly lowered her head as a nod, so I swiftly continued with, "Neat. Anyhow, this is Judy Sennoma."

"And I'm your…?" my dear assistant prompted me, followed by another unsubtle prodding with her elbow.

"And she is my girlfriend," I uttered a tad wearily, and then we both waited for her to respond.

For the next two seconds, she kept staring at me without as much as blinking, but at last she looked me directly in the eye.

"Leonard-san… have you… purified Onikiri?"

Now it was my turn to stare at her in puzzlement for a long while, but before I could answer her, Judy cut in with an indignant look in her eyes.

"Don't change the subject. Did you hear what the Chief said? Did you actually understand it? Have you properly internalized it?"

"Wow, easy there, Dormouse," I chided her while simultaneously rubbing the hand that was holding onto mine. "You are coming on a bit too strong, don't you think?"

"No Chief, this is important. I don't want to run into a situation where she could claim 'Oh, I, like, totally spaced out or whatever, and I, like, seriously don't remember like anything you said'."

"I don't think that would happen. Also, why do you make her sound like a valley girl? She's Japanese."

"It's because I can't do a Japanese accent," she retorted as if the answer was blatantly obvious.

"I’m sorry that you had to learn it like this, but you can't do valley-speak either," I shot back, only to get my foot stomped for my trouble.

"Chief, stop being a contrarian. You are already on my bad side for making me worried. Now, let's stop this sidetrack and focus on explaining to her how you only have space for one relationship in your life."

"Um… You mean two, right? There is also E—mfff…"

She… actually covered my mouth. As in, she literally put her hand over it. What the heck?

"Chief, she doesn't need to know that," Judy all but hissed at me, only to glance over to the still strangely unresponsive huntress and hastily add, "So, as we were saying, we are in a steady relationship, and there is absolutely no space for someone else between us. Zero. Nil. Nada. Are we clear?"

This time Rinne actually gave us a proper, if still absolutely befuddled nod, and at last my girlfriend removed her hand from my face as well while muttering, "How come you are so smart, yet you make the dumbest mistakes from time to time?"

"Hey, I take umbrage to that accusation, young lady!" I raised my voice with an exaggeratedly wronged frown on my face, culminating in, "I'm most definitely not smart."

"It takes a smart person to claim to be dumb to avoid being accused of making a mistake they shouldn’t have made," my dearest assistant countered with an indignant huff, practically forcing me to roll my eyes.

"Oh please, stop that! Catch 22's are unbecoming of you!"

"A not-smart person wouldn't even know what that is. I’m sorry that you had to learn it like this, but I'm afraid you suck at being dumb."

We would have continued that for a while longer, but I was starting to feel sorry for Mountain Girl, who looked positively lost at the moment, so I decided to graciously let Judy win our not-argument (which meant that technically I didn't lose, because I did it on purpose; elementary logic, my dear).

"So, you were asking something, weren't you?"

The de-creepyfied huntress blinked in surprise when she realized I was talking to her, and she nodded no less than three times in rapid succession.

"Yes, Leonard-san. Ri— I asked if you purified Onikiri."

Since she couldn't use her hands at the moment, she used her chin to gesture towards the white blade in my hand. I glanced down at it too, and after a short beat I let my fatigued shoulders droop a little before facing her again.

"Well, let's just say it's a long…" I couldn't finish my sentence, as my side abruptly got reacquainted with Judy's elbow again. "Oh, right. I wasn't supposed to say that anymore." My whispered words were then further punctuated by lightly bumping my unusually pokey girlfriend with my hip, following which I turned back to my conversational partner and ultimately told her, "In a manner of speaking, yes, I have purified the sword. You can get the details from her later."

She gave me an ambivalent grunt in lieu of an answer, which I interpreted as some form of acknowledgment. With that settled, I turned back to Judy again, and while ignoring her repeated efforts for trying to hip-check me back, I squeezed her hand to get her attention.

"Say, Dormouse? Now that we are done with the countermeasures, can I get going?"

"Depends," she replied after one last, hopping hip-bump that still bounced off me like a tennis ball. "Do you feel better?"

"Well, my headache is still there, if kind of fuzzy, and my body is numb from head to toe, and I kind of feel like a floating about two centimeters off the ground, and for some inexpicable reason the inside of my mouth tastes like turpentine, but otherwise I'm perfectly fine."

"Chief, be serious."

"I am. I doubt I am going to get any better from just standing around, so I might as well get things down while I can stand."

Judy stared daggers at me for a second or five, but at the end of the day she grudgingly surrendered with a click of her tongue and separated from me.

"Fine, but let me check the situation first."

Saying so, she reached into one of her pockets, and with one smooth motion, she put on her magical party glasses as if she was the main lead in a crime scene investigation show. After drinking in the sight for a moment, I glanced around, and immediately noticed the weird looks the Faun were directing our way.

"[The injunction on merriment at the expense of my substantial other is still in effect.]" Karukk and the others immediately averted their eyes, while Brang was still giving us an affectionate and disturbingly grandfatherly look, which I decided to simply ignore. That left only one person, so I turned to Rinne and added, "That applies to you too. No laughing."

"… Okay?"

Her response was a tad uncertain, but good enough. Once that was done, I quickly turned on my Far Sight. Out of courtesy, I didn't use it look at anyone Judy could, and instead of focused on the Dracis first. For a second I couldn't decide whether I should focus on Emese or Abram, but in the end it ended up completely moot, as they were both at the same place.

Once my point of view stabilized, I found myself in a currently very purple rendition of the Dracis mansion's courtyard, where the draconic couple was currently clashing with the two Entitled Knights. I observed things for a while to see if they needed any help, but by the looks of it, the Knights were already in a retreat. On a closer look, the Squires were in the process of setting up some kind of magical emergency exit out of the Purple Zone using a bunch of glowing metal rods, while the two important guys kept the owners of the estate at bay. They also didn't suffer any casualties, which was something I was being in two minds about. On one hand, reducing the number of dangerous aggressors aiming for the lives of my girlfriend and inlaws wasn't exactly a bad thing, but on the other hand, people dying was not only always a tragedy, but something I considered to be best avoided just in case it would escalate things and shift the world into a more grim-dark direction, with considerably less plot-armor to go around.

Anyhow, since they seemed to have everything handled over there, I moved my perspective over to Armband Guy… and found him in another Purple Zone. More alarmingly, he wasn't only inside the same one as Josh and the others, but he had Lord Grandpa right next to him.

"Chief, we have trouble," Judy called out to me, and I immediately snapped out of my Far Sight. While I was about ninety-five percent sure about what she wanted to tell me, I still waited for her to say it. "Lord Endymonion arrived at the scene and captured Robatto and Galatea. Elly said he was currently arguing with Josh about the nature of justice for some reason. Neige thinks that once they are done, the magi are likely to take them into custody as well."

"Well, crap," I muttered, my words laced with industrial-strength exasperation, following which I rubbed my deeply prickling temples and asked, "Did they find the class rep and wingedninja?"

"Give me a moment," Judy responded while tweaking the hinges of her glasses, which was how she could cycle between targets linked to her artifacts, and after a few long seconds of silence, she shook her head. "They are still locked up in the basement. I think the Arch-mage focused on subduing Robatto first, so they haven't searched the building yet."

"Good, then I still have some wiggle room."

With that said, I pulled down the mask onto my face again, and I was about to give my girlfriend a suitably cool exit line when I was suddenly hit in the back hard enough that I almost tumbled forward.

"Ue-sama!"

The moment the tinkling voice resounded in my ears, my whole body froze up, only to then straighten itself with sheer force of annoyance. I glanced over my shoulder and found a completely naked little girl clinging to my back, with her arms linked around my neck. It might have been because the mask was hiding my currently quite irate expression, but she immediately flashed an ear-to-ear grin the moment our eyes met.

"Ichiko, let go of my neck."

She immediately followed my order and landed on the ground with the characteristic sound of bare feet meeting the ground.

"Look ue-sama, look! I did it! I already got a human fo— Owie!"

One well-placed forehead-flick later the tiny troublemaker hunched over and used both of her hands to protect her forehead.

"Don't you 'ue-sama' me! Why the hell are you naked again!? No, wait, I have a better question! Didn't I expressly told you not to turn into a human yet!?"

"But… I couldn't help it!" she retorted against my indignant words with a pitiful voice and a pair of large, tear-filled eyes. "I haven't had a real body for so long! How can you expect me to turn into something else for my first time?! That's just cruel!"

I was about to reward her back-talk with yet another flick of the finger, but then my attention was grabbed by a single, positively chilling presence locking its attention onto me.

"Chief?" my dear assistant inquired with an innocent voice underlined by a pair of ice-cold eyes partially hidden behind her star-shaped glasses, and she pointed an accusative finger right out of the princess' repertoire at the still very naked little girl covering in front of me. "Would you care to explain what's going on?"

First I glanced at her finger, then at the teary-eyes yet still strangely energetic girl, then at the Fauns standing a couple of steps behind her. I used my eyes to direct the unspoken question of 'I told you idiots to keep an eye on the Chimera! What the hell were you doing!?', which they answered with shamefully averting their gazes, which pretty much meant, 'W-We looked…'. Feeling completely browbeaten by the situation, I finally returned my attention to my expectant girlfriend, and after carefully considering my options…

"It's a long story. I will explain later."

And just like that, I esca—, I mean I retre—, *cough*. What I'm trying to say, is that I Phased away in a hurry to help poor class rep and Mike as soon as possible. I mean, I had no choice in the matter; as a leader, it was my duty to do it right away, without wasting time on explaining unimportant things. Yes, it was perfectly reasonable.

…

God, I'm so dead…