The Simularcrum - Chapter 50 - Part 1 & 2

Part 1

"All right. Preparations are complete," I declared as I dramatically rubbed my palms together. I was currently situated in the living room in the company of Judy and, for a change, I wasn't sitting on my favorite comfy chair but the sofa. It was mainly so that she could sit next to me, since the previous arrangement of her sitting on my lap, while really cozy, was not exactly conducive to our current activity. Once I felt suitably prepared, I picked up the brick phone on the table, turned to my girlfriend, and subsequently told her, "Let's begin the operation!"

"I still think this is dumb," my dearest assistant threw a bucket of cold water on my enthusiasm right away, and I couldn't help but shake my head in the face of her negativity.

"Come on, Dormouse; don't be like that! The plan is foolproof, and even if it doesn't work, we won't lose anything."

"True, but I think you have overcomplicated it," she told me, and after a momentary pause she added, "A lot," probably for extra emphasis.

"What? It's not overcomplicated," I denied just a touch defensively. "Let's go over it one more time: I pick up the phone and I will dial Mystery Number X."

"That part is self-evident," she agreed with the usual nod in tow.

"Yeah. So then, once the line connects, I will do this." As I said that, I raised my left hand and extended a single index finger, as if I was pointing at the ceiling. "And then, when I do this," I continued as I abruptly bend my finger, "You start shaking your melons. Simple."

Judy's brows imperceptibly sunk for a moment, and after a heavily implied sigh she raised her hands and asked, "I've been meaning to ask, but why do you keep calling these 'melons'?" 

Saying so, she shook the two maracas in her hands, making a distinct, sharp sound in the process and earning a confused glance from yours truly.

"I call them that because that's what the packaging says. Look." While I was speaking, put the phone back onto the table and then I reached over the arm-rest of the couch and picked up the discarded hard plastic package on the floor and showed it to her, "It says so right here: [Rumba melon childhood playmates. This will be a gift to give children the best. Clown. At home. Hurry up and collect!]. What is so hard to understand about that? It makes perfect sense to me."

My girlfriend rolled her eyes and she snatched the package out of my hands, and after observing it for a second she asked, "Just where did you even find Chinese bootleg toys like…?" Her words trailed off as she took a closer look at the other side of the container and instead she asked, with almost palpable levels of incredulity (at least by Judy standards), "What does [Unlimited joy makes children more lively and lovely! Infinite pleasure!] even mean, and what does it have to do with a pair of maracas?"

"Do we even really want to know?" I responded while shrugging my shoulders. "As for your previous question, I bought this at the same place where I got my fake moustache and wig during the 'let's get Snowy an ID' operation."

"You bought this back then?" she uttered in surprise as she finally put the silly, multi-colored package covered in incomprehensible machine-translated garbage aside, and I once again shook my head.

"No, of course not. I got it this morning, not long before you came over." 

"Good. I was afraid you wanted to do this so badly you bought these weeks in advance."

"Don't be silly, Dormouse. I didn't expect I would get an ominous call from MNX yesterday, let alone a week ago. Speaking of which…" I took the package from her, threw it behind me, then I got hold of the phone again and extended my left index finger one more time. "So, just to be clear: straight finger, silence, bent finger, artificial radio static noises."

"I got it," she answered, followed up by a quiet 'I got it the first four times you told me, I still think it's dumb' which I probably wasn't supposed to hear, so I pretended I didn't.

"Great. Let's get started then."

With that said, I took a huge breath, prepared myself, and dialed Mystery Number X. To my relief, the line actually connected, and there was even a ringback tone, so we already cleared the first hurdle. I held my breath as I waited for someone to accept the call on the other end aaaaaand… the call was forwarded to voice-mail. 

I didn't let that discourage me, so I terminated the line and I immediately dialed the mystery number again. The same thing repeated itself: connection, ringback, voice-mail. It was around this time that holding my breath became uncomfortable, so I let it out in the form of a sigh.

"Oh well. As they say, three times' the charm."

After I said that, I immediately dialed again, and one bated breath later… someone actually picked up the phone! I immediately signaled to Judy with my eyes and made sure that my finger was straight as an arrow, and as much as she complained about it, she dutifully raised her maracas high and stayed alert, her eyes glued to my signaling hand.

"I told you not to call this number unless absolutely necessary," the deep, gravely, and still completely unfamiliar voice of a man answered my call with words that were practically dripping with annoyance. I took a deep breath, glanced at my assistant one last time, and then I promptly bent my finger.

"Hello? Are you there? The line is terrible, I can't hear a thing!" I spoke in a strained voice that was just on the verge of shouting, while at the same time Judy provided the background static to complement the illusion.

"What?" 

"Did you say something? I can't hear you!"

"I said I am here!" the impatient voice on the other side yelled into the phone, which signified the fact that he took the bait. It was too early to celebrate though, and so I continued with the information extraction.

"Oh, you are there! Finally! You called me yesterday but I couldn't hear a word!"

"I called you to tell you it is time!"

"Whine? I'm not whining! I'm asking because the line is absolutely terrible!"

"No, I said it is TIME!" he shouted so loudly it distorted his voice.

"Time? Did you say time?"

"Yes!"

"You want to know the time?"

"NO!"

"Then why did you say time?"

"I said IT. IS. TIME!" 

"Oh… Time for what!?"

"For the operation!"

"What? I couldn't hear that! Are you getting a surgery?"

"No, not that kind of operation! It's the attack on the dragonbloods!"

"Ooooooh! I get it now!"

"Good! Finally!"

"What? Did you say December!?"

"NO! I said FINALLY! How did you even mishear that?!"

"So the attack isn't in December!?"

"NO! It's as planned!"

"What?! I still can't hear you!? Is it in December or not?!"

"I said IT IS AS PLANNED! THE OPERATION IS ON THE THIRD OF NOVEMBER, AS PLANNED!!" 

The man on the other side bellowed so furiously I wouldn't have been surprised if his voice damaged the tiny speakers in the phone. That meant that I was probably drawing this out a little too much, so I decided to wrap things up as soon as possible.

"Ah, I think I got it! You wanted to tell me that the attack on the Dracis is on the third of November, right?"

"Yes! That's exactly what I wanted to tell you!"

"Okay, I got it! Thanks! Also, we should change carriers! The reception on this island is shit!"

"I hear you, brother! I'm hanging up now!"

"Wait, did you say you can't hear me?"

"No, I said I'm HANGING UP THE PHONE NOW!"

"Aaaah! Got it!"

And just like that, the line was cut, and for some reason I couldn't help but imagine the guy on the other side slamming the receiver down so hard he not only broke the telephone, but even the table it was sitting on, even though I logically knew he was probably using a mobile phone as well. Anyhow, I turned to my girlfriend, who was still steadily (if not exactly enthusiastically) shaking her so-called melons, and after straightening my finger I told her, "You can stop now, he hung up."

"Did it work?" she inquired the moment the sound of the maracas died down, and I responded by giving him a huge nod.

"Waaaay better than expected," I told her with a not at all cocky grin as I put the old phone away and leaned back in my seat. 

"You can't be serious."

"But I am! He took it hook, line, and sinker."

"So?" I didn't really get what she was asking, so I responded with an inquisitively raised brow, at which point she clarified, "I couldn't hear the other end of the conversation because you made me shake these. What did you learn?"

"I think it should have been pretty obvious from hearing just my end, but if you insist: apparently there is going to be an attack on the Dracis family next week. In fact, since today is the 26th, it means it will happen on the next Monday."

"Did you confirm that it's the knights?"

"I didn't want it to be too blatant, but considering he called them 'dragonbloods' and what I learned from the Hub, I would say it's about ninety-nine percent certain." I paused for a moment to breathe there, and then I tentatively added, "That said, I think the fact that we discovered the exact date of an attack is the more important detail we must focus on. We should just presume it was the Knights, just to err on the side of caution, and we're going to learn if it was them for sure when the time comes anyway."

"True," Judy nodded as she scrutinized me, apparently waiting for me to breach a certain topic, but since I wasn't in a hurry to do so, she ultimately let out an impatient grunt and said, "Since you refuse to address the elephant in the room, I will do it in your stead: does this mean that you are related to the Knights?"

"Probably," I answered, followed by an ambiguous shrug. "I mean, I can't say for sure due to my amnesia, but the fact that someone calling me 'brother' conveniently contacted me on my old phone just as I learned about how the Knights are coming to Critias is a bit too much to chalk up to coincidence."

"I agree. It would also explain the lack of a Knight in Joshua's harem."

"Please rephrase that."

"In Joshua's circle of acquaintances," Judy did so right away, much to my appreciation.

"Much better, thank you." After saying that, I let out a shallow breath and attempted to get my thoughts in order, resulting in the words, "I think there is more to it than that though."

"What makes you say that?" Judy inquired, and before I knew it, she already had her phone on the ready.

"Well…" Instead of answering right away, I laboriously roused my aching body off the couch and began my usual routine of walking up and down while thinking, and only then did I say, "For one, while this new revelation tells us that I was probably linked to the Knights, I doubt I was one of them."

"Chief, you are tall, fit, know how to fight with medieval weaponry, and they called you 'brother'," Judy interjected. "All of that makes it fairly obvious you are one."

"True, but at the same time, I have abilities that don't require magical artifacts to work, I can speak Faunish, and the only available weapon that belonged to the knights not only doesn't give me super-powers, it actively rejects me," I countered. "All that points to the fact that I'm probably not a Knight."

"If so, then why did they contact you?"

"If I wanted to give you an educated guess, it could be that before I lost my memory, I was something like an informant or a sleeper agent; not necessarily clued into everything, but called in for support when the situation demands it."

"Kind of like the assets of the Celestial Intelligence Network," Judy noted while typing so furiously I was afraid she would break the screen of her phone.

"Precisely what I was thinking of," I told her with a nod. 

"That would still leave you with a connection to them though, and wouldn't explain any of the other idiosyncrasies you mentioned before," she pointed out, eliciting a slightly flummoxed 'Hrm' from me.

"I can't say much to that. I am just as lost as you are."

"Noted," she said as she literally committed my words to her notes. "Putting your origins aside for a moment, what do you plan to do about the information about the attack?"

"What to do about that…?" I pondered aloud as my pacing came to a slow halt. "I spent a lot of time thinking about it last night, and I think we don't really have much of a choice in the matter. Unlike with the sentai wannabes, the Knights mean business. We must warn Elly's family."

"I'm glad we agree on that," Judy approved without looking up from her notes. "What about Robatto?"

"Right, that," I muttered with no small amount of distaste as I resumed my pacing. "Considering the circumstances, we can't let them be any longer. We not only can't be sure of their motives beyond Lord Grandpa's vague plans, even though I have been observing them a lot, but considering they never used those gigants against the group, nor did Labcoat Guy or his android participate, we can't even be sure of their true combat potential. In short, they could prove to be a fatal distraction once the Knights also enter the picture, so we should try and sort them out before that."

"In other words, you want to neutralize Robatto before next Saturday," Judy posited, and I nodded in agreement.

"Neutralize… that's a very tactful way to put it, but yes, that's the plan. Unfortunately, that means we will have to confront Lord Grandpa on top of that, which is probably going to be a bit of a pain in the butt."

"And you want to do all that in the span of a single week?"

"Technically it's eight day, but putting pedantry aside, we don't have much of a choice, do we? I mean, the option of not interfering with the narrative and staying impartial observers has already sailed, so if we are going to meddle, we might as well do it swiftly as decisively."

"Is that your excuse for putting yourself in danger this time?" my dear assistant asked with just a tiiiiiny bit of an edge in her words, so I stopped once again and shook my head.

"Nope. We are going to do things slightly differently this time."

My comment elicited an interested 'Oh?' from my girlfriend, followed by the obvious question of, "They what are you going to do?"

"I will have Josh deal with Labcoat Guy," I told her straight away.

"How?"

"I… didn't quite work out the details yet, but it should be fairly straightforward," I elucidated to her while doing my best to project confidence. "It mainly involves getting Josh and company to storm Labcoat's hideout, catch him, and then bring him in front of Lord Grandpa."

"What if he denies his involvement?"

"Oh, I have a separate plan for that," I told her, this time with genuine confidence and just a little bit of mischief.

"Does it involve doing something dangerous?"

"It shouldn't. In theory, at the very least."

"… If you are trying to reassure me, you are doing a terrible job."

"Come on, Dormouse! I'm serious here. I learned my lesson, and I am only going to make my move when everything is perfectly safe. Trust me."

My girlfriend looked me in the eye for a second, then stated, "That's slightly better. You are learning."

"Thanks, I think?" I muttered in response to her compliment, but then I shook my head and declared, "Anyhow, it's not something I can do until I no longer feel like ten pounds of wet socks stuffed into a five pound bag."

"Ew."

"You are welcome for the mental image," I said as a flashed a grin at my girlfriend, and then I added, "But putting that aside, our primary concern should be warning Abram, and doing so in a way so that it wouldn't raise suspicion. I mean, we can't be sure that I used to be the only sleeper agent on the island."

"That's right. If they notice that the Dracis family is preparing to defend themselves, they might realize that there was a leak, postpone their plans, and then we would be back to square one."

"Precisely. And that's why I'm going to Phase over there and discuss this in person."

"When?"

"As soon as possible."

After hearing my answer, Judy glanced over at the clock (which was probably done for my benefit, as she could have just as easily checked the time on her phone). It was just a little after ten in the morning, so I wasn't exactly late from anywhere, yet once she confirmed the time, she let out a determined huff and put her phone away.

"Be back by lunchtime."

I observed the unnecessarily resolute glint in my dear assistant's eyes, and after comparing it to the last time I have seen her like that, I quickly draw my conclusion.

"… Do you plan to cook?"

"Yes," she confirmed as she stood up. "You are sick, and sick people need home cooking to recover faster."

"I'm not entirely sure that applies to enchantment-tweaking induced exhaustion as well, but I am not going to stop you."

"Don't even try," she told me on no uncertain terms as she headed towards the kitchen. 

I didn't even bother to try and stifle my chuckles, and once she was out of the room, I took out my phone. Before anything else, I quickly checked on Abram using Far Sight, and I found him in his mansion, or to be more precise, his study within the mansion. I had little trouble recognizing the room even though I had never been there, considering the place was stacked almost to the ceiling with boxes upon boxes of music records, including actual honest to goodness vinyls. 

I only spent a few seconds gawking at the sight before I moved on to my actual target and confirmed that there was no one else around. As such, I quickly returned to my body and dialed the number Papa Dracis gave me a while back. After a few short seconds the line connected, and I was greeted by my self-described father-in-law's usual enthusiasm.

"Hello, son! What do I owe the—"

"Hello, Abram," I cut in before he could start babbling. "Can I ask you a little favor?"

"Depends," he answered. "If you ask for my permission to elope with my daughter, I am afraid I must say no! Everything else is fair game!"

"I just want you to walk over to the door and stay there for five seconds."

"… I can do that!" he declared, and a quick Far Glance told me he did just that. "I'm here! Hello?"

Instead of answering him, I put my phone away and, after waving at Judy in the kitchen to let her know I was leaving, I immediately Phased over to the other side of the study's door. Once I reoriented myself, I took a deep breath and knocked on the door. I could hear shuffling from the other side, though it only lasted for a moment before Abram threw the door open and looked at me as if I was a ghost.

"Erm… Son? Is this a prank?"

"No," I told him, and he let out a breath of relief right away.

"Good! I'm not good with pranks..." His relief only lasted for a moment though, as his brows soon descended into a curious frown. "But if it's not that, then why did you sneak into our house like this?"

"I will tell you later. First, let's go get Emese and Elly. Sebastian too," I added after a little hesitation. "What I'm about to tell you concerns all of you."

Part 2

After the initial confusion over my unannounced arrival died down a little, we decided to change the scenery, as Abram's office was not only stuffy, but I considered the haphazardly piled up boxes a serious health hazard. After considering the dining room and Sebastian's study first, we ultimately decided on a third option in the form of the trophy room where I met with the family head for the first time.

The first one to heed the summons was, surprisingly enough, the mother of the household, and she made quite an entrance at that. Emese was already (or maybe still) partially transformed (as in, there was a conspicuous lack of wings on her back), and unlike her usual modest and dignified appearance, she was currently wearing a low cut blouse and shorts that left little to the imagination and showed off the flat, light-red scales covering her arms, thighs, and the area between her neck and her cleavage. She also wore her hair in a thick, somewhat loose braid that reached down to the small of her back and it momentarily made me wonder about how Elly would look with the same hair style.

The moment she entered the room she locked her eyes on me, and before I could properly react, she dashed over to my side with a beaming smile and glomped me in an embrace that was simultaneously too hard and unnecessarily squishy.

"Leonard! I didn't know you were coming over!"

"It was kind of the point," I tried to object and worm my way out of her hug, but she just clamped down on me even harder, followed by a mirthful giggle that made me feel just a tad embarrassed.

"Mooom!" my girlfriend suddenly burst into the scene and grabbed hold of her mother's shoulder. "Let go of Leo! You are smothering him!"

"Oh my? Could it be that you are jealous of your own mother?" Emese teased her, yet it wasn't Elly who answered first.

"To be fair, darling, even I'm getting a little bit jealous..." Papa Dracis mumbled behind me, at which point Emese finally let go of me with a breathy 'Oh, you!' and she subsequently attached herself to her husband instead.

My un-hugged state lasted for only a split second though, as Elly immediately replaced her. Not only that, she more or less hung from my neck with a defiant expression and rubbed her face against mine like a cat desperately trying to mark its over after he petted the neighbor's kitten.

"It appears everyone is here already," came a stray comment from the last arrival as Sebastian quietly closed the door behind him.

"Right. Let's get started," I addressed everyone with a slightly raised voice as I simultaneously peeled the princess off my neck. "Please sit down."

The Dracis family shared a few curious glances between each other, but at the end of the day they obediently followed my instructions and formed a small cluster on the nearby canape... except for Sebastian, who defiantly kept standing by them, ramrod straight like a British palace guard.

I didn't take a seat either,but instead I stood before them and, after taking a deep breath, I decided to stop delaying and began by telling them, "First off, there is something important I want all of you to know. Elly is already aware of this, but I suffer from a case of retrograde amnesia."

"Amnesia?" Sebastian repeated after me while raising a single incredulous brow at my expense.

"Yes. I have absolutely no memory about practically anything before the first of September."

For some reason, the Dracis parents seemed absolutely shocked and mortified by this, yet Sebastian only looked at me funny.

"I am sorry to hear that, but was this truly the reason why you asked us to gather on such short notice?"

"No. It's just something that I wanted to make clear before we move on to the actual reason why we are all here." I paused here for a long moment as I considered how I should breach the topic, and at last I decided to employ the blunt approach. "I'm not going to mince my words here: until last night, I was entirely unaware of my own background. Unfortunately, all evidence points to the fact that I'm related to the Knights of the unnecessarily long name."

Despite my feeble effort to dampen the impact, the atmosphere in the room immediately turned tense like a piano wire.

"You are one of the accursed knights?" Abram promptly broke the developing silence, his voice more incredulous than anything else.

"Maybe, though I find it a little doubtful," I told him honestly and shrugged my shoulder. "The one thing that is certain is that I was contacted by them yesterday."

"That's... Unreal," Lady Emese muttered, and for some odd reason, she seemed to be the one who took the news the hardest. "So... Are you a spy, or an infiltrator, or something?"

"I'll be damned if I knew. I had more important things to focus on, so I didn't bother to ask."

"What could be more important than learning your own history, my boy?" Sebastian asked me with an unexpectedly concerned look in his eyes.

"Thank you for asking," I replied with a bit of forced enthusiasm, and then I cleared my throat and explained, "My background also wasn't the main reason why I came over to talk to all of you, just another detail I wanted you to know in order to explain where I got the following information: the Knights are coming to Critias, and they are planning an attack on you."

"When?" Sebastian leveled the question at me right away, and I answered on the spot.

"On the third of next month. I couldn't narrow it down any further without raising suspicion."

"We need to prepare then!" Abram declared without a hint of hesitation, and it was my turn to feel a little odd. I mean, even knowing their respective personalities, considering this incident was related to the Knights, I expected at least a little bit of suspicion.

"Actually, could you not?" That comment earned me an almost comically baffled expression from Papa Dracis, so I hastily clarified, "What I meant to say was; please make sure to be subtle, so that they wouldn't know that you are expecting the attack."

"Oh, I get it!" the Dracis patriarch exclaimed with an excited grin. "We are going to ambush them! Give them a good taste of their own medicine!" He paused there, only for as long as it took to give me a thumbs-up, and then he added, "I approve!"

I gave my self-imposed father in law a wry look, but since he didn't respond to it, I noted, "To be perfectly honest with you, after telling you about my connection to the Knights, I expected slightly more apprehension than none at all."

"Oh please, son!" Abram scoffed at my comment, and he even emphasized his words with a dismissive wave of the hand. "If you can't trust family, then who can you trust?"

"While I would like to object under normal circumstances," Sebastian cut in after a letting out a shallow sigh, "It is an undeniable fact that you have already proved your loyalty without a shadow of a doubt. It's to such a degree that I can't help but wonder why you found it necessary to preface this discussion with the reveal of your background." I must have looked either really curious or really confused at this moment, because after taking a single glance at my face, the old butler's shoulders drooped in resignation, and he clarified, "What I am trying to tell you is that, as much as I loathe to admit it, if you came to us by saying that your alleged information network warned you about an incoming attack, I would have believed your words just as readily as I do them now."

I stayed silent for a moment as I let Sebastian's comment sink in, then eventually I told him, "I am not going to lie, I am frankly flattered by the amount of trust that you place in me, yet I think you are all misunderstanding something."

"How so?" Emese poked the conversation ball to keep it rolling, and so I told them:

"I told you all that mainly to forestall any predictable complications in the future. For example, imagine that the Knights show up, with all their shiny armor and swords and all, and everyone is squaring up against each other, and just then… Bam! One of the knights looks at me, and then yells something like 'Let's go, brother! Stab them in the back, for great justice!'"

"That… was certainly something they would say," Emese commented, putting me off my original train of thought right away.

"They would? I thought I was lampooning them… Anyhow, let's say I didn't tell you about my background and you heard that. You would probably get surprised, maybe even stunned for a second, and then you actually get stabbed in the back while you are paying attention to me, and let me tell you, fixing you up once was hard enough, so I would prefer if that wouldn't happen."

For some reason Abram found my description of a possible life-or-death battle amusing, as he could barely contain his chuckles. Meanwhile, Sebastian raised his hand to his chin in one of those ever-so-slightly insufferable 'sophisticated intellectual' poses and stated, "That is a possible situation that slipped my mind. I shall grant you the point."

"You better," I told the old man with a smirk, but even while I was doing that, my attention was being drawn to something else, or rather, the lack of something. While we were having this whole conversation, Elly stayed suspiciously silent, so I sent a questioning glance at her and quickly noticed that she seemed to be straining herself quite a bit. "Is there… a problem?"

Mama Dracis followed the direction of my eyes, and a moment later she giggled out loud and told me, "Oh, you mean her? I am holding her back right now."

"… I can't decide whether I am more curious about the 'how' or the 'why'…"

"It's just bloodline suppression. Anyone with a pure enough draconic heritage can do it," Sebastian supplied the answer, which somehow only made me more confused.

"Okay, I bite: why did you use this suppression thing on her?"

"Because if I didn't, she would have jumped on you the moment you told us about your connection to the Knights, and then we couldn't have had a proper discussion," Mama Dracis explained to me as dryly and straightforwardly as if she was talking about the weather.

"So… can you please stop that? She looks really uncomfortable."

"Are you sure you want that?" she asked, and I immediately nodded.

Without further ado, my girlfriend twitched and then she practically flew off the canapé (which, incidentally, was also the point when Abram was no longer able to stifle his laughter and he began heartily chuckling at… something), and then she turned on her heel and glared at her mother.

"Mom, you are in idiot! Meanie! Nincompoop!"

Oh, that was her rule of three of silly insults! I haven't heard that in a while… I might have even felt nostalgic, if not for the fact that in the blink of an eye the princess put me in her crosshairs and she leaped at me with such gusto I was afraid she wanted to tackle me off my feet. My first instinct told me to do that thing where I casually step out of her way the last moment and watch her fall flat on her face as she missed her lunge, but then a more rational part of me concluded that doing that would have been mean, so instead I decided to dust off my slightly rusty girl-catching reflexes.

Just like that, I managed to slip my hands under her armpits and, by turning a full 360 degrees on my feet, I managed to disperse all the momentum so that in the end I could simply set her down onto the ground in front of me. Hm? That actually sounded a little familiar.

"Hey, princess? Didn't we already do something like this in the—?"

I got that far with my question before Elly grabbed hold of my clothes and began shaking me.

"Leo, you jerk! Why didn't you tell me!?"

"Easy there!" I rebuked her as I hastily unclamped her fingers and, after a brief consideration, I decided to keep holding onto her hands, just in case she wanted to grab onto me again in the future. "If you mean about me being related to the Knights, even I only learned about that yesterday."

"That's no excuse! You should have told me right away!"

"Yes, and that's why I came over to tell all of you about it today," I spoke in a level, soft voice while looking Elly right in the eye, and it didn't take long for her to avert hers.

"Yes, but…" she began to grumble, only to ultimately lean her head against my chest… or so I have thought, but instead she headbutted me! It was probably since I was still holding onto her hands, but it was still harsh. She repeated the process a couple more times and then she burst out, "Argh! This is so weird! Why does everything have to be so complicated!?"

"I don't know about weird," I mused as I tried to position myself to be out of the way of her headbutts. "I mean, isn't everyone and everything around us pretty weird already? This doesn't seem particularly special."

"Maybe… I mean, I get your point, but… Argh!" 

Just like that, we were back to head-inflicted trauma county. Lovely. Not to mention, as if that wasn't enough, I couldn't help but notice the parents of the household sharing a laugh at my expense, and while their harmonious little huddle was cute and all, I was way past the point where I could appreciate it.

"Lady Emese? Can you please teach me that bloodline suppression thing? I could really use it right now..."

"Call me mom," my previously taciturn alleged mother-in-law declared, but then she amended her words with an impish smile. "Not to mention, you are doing fine without it."

"If that's what this looks like from there, you should—" I began, only for my words to get cut short by Elly suddenly crying out.

"Ouu! I don't care! Knight or not, I still love you!"

I was almost relieved by that remarkably quick turn-around on her dilemma, but my happiness was short-lived, as she quickly yanked her hands out of mine and proceeded to catch me in a hug that would have made a fully grown Siberian bear skulk away in shame and embarrassment. To be fair, I would have loved to join said theoretical bear, as spending time in the corner in the company of a vicious predator felt vastly preferable to standing in the crossfire of the sickeningly affectionate gazes directed at me.

"Awww. Look, honey! Elly is having a forbidden romance right in front of our eyes," Mama Dracis commented while snuggling up to her husband, careful so that she wouldn't poke his eyes out with the tip of her horns.

"It's nice, isn't it?! Oh, the fire of youth!"

I really wondered what Papa Dracis considered 'fiery youth', considering the way he was hugging and flirting with his wife was pretty much the dictionary definition of hormone-addled lovebirds, but instead I exclaimed, "Could I humbly ask the peanut gallery to at least pretend that we are having a serious discussion about an impending threat to the lives of everyone in the room?"

"That definitely sounds rich coming from you, my boy, considering your current situation," Sebastian commented with his usual, unflappable voice, after which he quickly added, "However, I do find your choice of words curious. Bearing in mind you said 'everyone in the room', could it be that you are already considering yourself part of the family after all?"

The look which I gave the old man at this point had its exasperatedness-levels measured in giga-class-reps (a novel metric I was still developing, patent pending), then I sent a considerably softer and maybe just a teensy bit defeated glance at the girl still trying to crush my chest, and at last I said, "It's not like I have much of a choice in the matter at this point, do I?"

"Did you hear that, honey?!" Papa Dracis suddenly exclaimed, followed by a mirthful giggle from her wife.

"I sure did! Leonard finally willing to be accepted into the family!"

"We must toast to this!"

"I advise against drinking just before lunchtime," the incognito butler intervened, earning him a thoughtful huff from the patriarch.

"You are right, grandpa! Let's have lunch, and then a toast!" Abram beamed at Sebastian first, then at me, which I considered his own way of asking if that was a good idea.

"I can't stay for lunch, I already have an appointment," I stated without any reservations, but instead of its intended effect, it only made Emese jump to her feet (she really, really enjoyed being able to walk again, I supposed).

"In that case, I'll go and tell the staff to arrange a cold cuts buffet."

"How is that better than…" I began, but then my words got overwhelmed by Abram also rising to his feet with a merry bellow.

"I'm going to the cellar and pick a great vintage for the occasion! See you kids in the dining room!"

And just like that, both parents rushed out of the trophy room, leaving me with the slightly-less-grouchy-than-usual butler and the involuntary lung-compressor I affectionately call my girlfriend. After the dust settled, I decided to ask a question that had been on my mind for a while, and I directed it to Sebastian.

"How the hell did these happy-go-lucky people manage to survive being hunted by a whole knighthood of angry dragon hunters for so long?"

"Listen, my boy," Sebastian raised his voice, apparently by reflex, then he fell silent for a long beat before finally admitting, "That… is a question I often asked myself in the past, yet I am no closer to an answer than you are."