There was sothing magical about a warm cup of tea in the middle of a snowy winter night, with the only sound in the room coming from the spoon slowly stirring my drink as I gazed out the window. Three in the morning was always my customary 'thinking ti', when I could subrse myself into my own thoughts for a while. There wasn't much else to do, and since everyone was fast asleep, I didn't feel the pressure to use Far Sight either, aning I could focus on the here and now without any disruptions.
Taking a sip, I leaned back in my chair and silently exhaled. I hoped that getting Roland directly involved with my more clandestine operations would help clear things up, but it had the opposite effect instead, and I was feeling more lost than before we began. I an, I knew that Bel was a big deal. While the character started out as a single-use stop-gap disguise, I was the one who built up his reputation over ti, and since my goal was to create a fake villain for the Simulacrum to latch onto, I did my best to make him the most powerful, most mysterious, most flamboyant eminence in the shadows archetype possible.
The problem was, I might've gone too far.
As much as I loathed admitting it, Roland was right. Bel already took on a life of his own, and worse yet, if anyone ever suspected that I was anything more than a begrudging trade partner to him, it could crack not only my own reputation but the foundation of the entire Draconic Federation as well. Not that I cared much about the forr, but the latter had many people's work poured into it already (plus the peace it enforced was a pre-requisite for Elly's dream to co true), so the last thing I wanted was to undermine it.
But how do you get rid of an implacable, teleporting, potentially ti-traveling super Abyssal not-demon-king? And more importantly, when? After all, Bel was a useful tool, so it would be foolish to discard him too soon.
Even so, let's say the identity outlived its usefulness, and we fully established that I'm not Bel for the onlookers. Now what? How do I take this chess piece off the board?
The simplest and most straightforward way was to have Leonard Dunning kill Bel in a big, stupidly dramatic climactic battle. With pyrotechnics and trailer music and the whole nine yards.
Two issues with that: for a start, I needed to play Bel, because I was the only one who could pull off all the Phasing shenanigans (for obvious reasons), so who was going to play ? Secondly, it had to be a battle in front of witnesses, as defeating Bel 'off screen' would just raise a whole bunch of flags. Also, I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to add 'Bel Annihilator' to my list of unwanted titles.
Another option was to have Josh do the deed. He was the protagonist, and with him being on the Celestial route (if Judy's insistence was to be believed) due to settling on Angie, a classic not-angel vs. not-demon final confrontation was pretty much writing itself. There was only one issue: even after all that training and the many combat encounters he got himself into, Josh still wasn't exactly at a high enough power level to take on Bel. Now, there was always a chance for a literal Deus Ex Machina to show up and give him an eleventh-hour power-up, but considering I would be the one who'll have to orchestrate the final climactic battle, unpredictable elents like that were the last thing I wanted.
That left one last option: get a suitably powerful third party to deal with Bel. That sounded nice on paper, but the number of such individuals beca alarmingly low, considering my tussle with Xiao raising Bel's stock well above 'average dragon' territory, which was bloody damn high. My first idea was to get Sebastian involved, but considering how adamantly Roland was against involving any more conspirators, I had to refrain from proposing it. That, unfortunately, left with the question of where I could find an OP supernatural opponent for Bel short of making one myself.
I kid, of course. That would've just put us back into square one unless I sohow prepared a whole scripted encounter ending in mutual annihilation, but after how big of a pain in the neck the tournant arc ended up being, I really, really wasn't in the mood to set up yet another big scene like that. Maybe if the opportunity presented itself on a silver platter, I'd think about it.
I coincidentally reached that conclusion just around the sa ti my cup ran dry, so I shelved both for the ti being. I figured we would discuss this with the girls during our stay at the resort again, so there was no reason to wrack my head over it on my loneso. It was a research trip after all (at least on paper), and many things concerning Bel fell under the 'Narrative counter-manipulation' umbrella, so what better ti to discuss it than while soaking in a hot bath?
That said, it was still late (or early, depending on perspective), and I had little else to do. I'd already finished setting up my temporary substitutes on the Hub after Roland left, I already packed all the essential and non-essential things for tomorrow, and while looking at funny cat videos or studying was always an option, I was in a rare introspective mood at the mont. It was best to capitalize on those on the spot, so after putting my 'I
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