As soon as I stepped through the door, the main hall erupted into cacophonous noise.
"Haha! See, honey? I told you he'd be all right!" dad-in-law's voice rose above the wall of sound as he hugged his wife to his side.
"Kihihi! Galatea, quick! Bring the detectors!" Fred exclaid in the back, lugging so kind of device on his back.
"Brother Leonard is back!" a tiny dragonette squeezed her way through the forest of legs rooted in front of the door, only to be picked up by a pair of huge fingers by the scruff of her neck.
"Careful. Could get hurt."
Karukk gently placed Odango Girl onto his left shoulder, since his right one was already occupied by Ichiko, who was animatedly waving to with one hand, while the other was holding onto the Faun's horn.
"Everybody! Please quiet down!"
Roland, Arnwald, and Morgana tried their best to keep the rowdy crowd under control, to little avail.
"What a nuisance," Sebastian muttered on the edge of the group, yet I could still perfectly hear him, and the familiar maid with the twin braids was nodding along by his side.
"He's back. Can we go ho now?"
"Zihao. Behave yourself. We're in public," Naoren scolded his younger brother, but then he saw that Xiao was still sitting on Karukk's shoulder, and he promptly buried his face in his palm.
Let's count, shall we? First, there were the girls. Then the Knights with all the squires, my in-laws along with the butler and linda, the Fauns, the entirety of the Research Division, the three Feilongs, the Kage ninjas led by Rinne, the mini-miko, and…
"Leooo!"
My headcount was interrupted by a certain Celestial elbowing her way through the crowd and making a beeline right at . I was getting ready for another tackle, but thankfully she ca to a halt before we could collide and grabbed hold of my hand. On closer look, was she prettier than usual? She had a kind of glow to her. Maybe so kind of makeup, I wondered?
Not that I had much ti for that, as a mont later, her mouth opened.
"Are you all right? Are you hurt? How did you escape? No, wait! How did they even kidnap you in the first place? Can't you do that thing of yours anymore without the mask? Was that how you got away? Wait! Your hand is cold! Let check! Josh was sooo worried about you, you know?"
"No, I wasn't."
Her torrent of questions was damd up by the appearance of our resident protagonist, using the gap she made to follow her to the forefront, and he was closely trailed by the class rep, and…
"Wow! Like, you look like a totally different person in white!"
The question, "What are you doing here?" slipped through my teeth before I could catch it, but Sahi, dressed in her school uniform, didn't take offence.
"We're here to represent the Critias School of Conjuration. Plus, like, Endy."
Before I could ask what she ant by 'we', I finally noticed a distinctly exhausted Armband Guy, still stuck in the crowd between the Fauns and the squires and unable to follow after her.
"I'm glad to see that you're all right," Ammy addressed before I could ask who invited those two, and she casually readjusted my collar that got dishevelled by the girls and their various tackles and hugs. "Everyone was really worried about you when you disappeared. Especially Joshua."
"No, I wasn't!" the guy protested and crossed his arms. "I told you that he should be back in a day or two, and I was right."
"Yes, you did," Ammy agreed with a slight tweak of her glasses. "Then you started making plans to invade the Abyss and rescue him in case he didn't return on his own."
That was unusually proactive of the guy, but once again, the conversation moved on before I could get a word in.
"How's he?" the class rep inquired, her eyes fixed on Angie, and… yep, she was definitely cuter than before. Was it sothing about her eyes? Or maybe her cheeks?
"He has internal injuries all over his astral body, but it's nothing major," our unlicensed healer noted, and after a bit more humming, she added, "His right arm is in the worst shape, but it's already healing."
"Like, mana burns?" Sahi butted in, sounding more curious than worried.
"Yes. The kind you get from using too much power for too long," Angie explained, and yet again, they moved on before I could explain myself.
"Is that true?" Penny raised an alard voice and grabbed my free hand. "Have you been fighting for your life all this ti?"
"No, I really wasn't," I squeezed out, only to then be interrupted when Judy and Elly moved in unison and pushed everyone back.
"Give the Chief so breathing room."
Saying that, my dear assistant peeled Angie's hands off my own and shooed her away. In the anti, Elly did the sa to the rest, with literally 'Shoo! Shoo!' noises. It barely worked, and while our friends took a step back, the rest of the peanut gallery used the opportunity to try and replace them, forcing to raise my hands.
"Everyone, calm down, please! Stop acting like I just ca back from the dead and could keel over at any second, would you?"
"My boy, returning from the Abyss is, in many ways, just as miraculous," Sebastian pointed out on one side, and many seed to agree with him.
"Well then, it's even less reasonable, because I didn't co back from the Abyss either."
"You didn't?" mom-in-law raised her voice, along with a brow that was half shocked and half skeptical. "Then where were you?"
"It's a long story, so how about we first move over to the briefing area and sit down?" I proposed, and while everyone agreed with , the process of actually getting there lasted longer than expected, because, despite my best efforts, I still got surrounded all over again.
First, it was my in-laws, along with Sebastian and the Feilongs.
"Why do you always have to stir up trouble wherever you go?" mom-in-law sulked while playfully pinching my cheek, eliciting a series of chuckles from her husband and daughter.
"I think we were all very much aware of how much of a troublemaker he was when we accepted him into the family," Sebastian noted blandly, yet I could see a tiny hint of concern in his eyes, which… frankly, gave shivers.
"Leonard. Be honest with . Was this part of another one of your sches?" Naoren levelled a question at the mont he could get in front of , and I didn't quite know how to answer him.
"It wasn't, but now it kind of is, I suppose? I'll try to explain it later."
"As expected." The bespectacled patriarch exhaled a long sigh, and once his eyes cleared up a bit, he looked over and left with the words, "For the record, darker colours suit you better."
Before I could even respond, he was practically shoved out of the way by Mountain Girl, and while that was quite rude, he didn't seem to mind much.
"Rinne wishes to apologize, Leonard-dono! As Leonard-dono's retainer, Rinne should have been—"
"Ue-sama isn't mad at you, Rinne-san!" Ichiko ca to the rescue and stopped her from trying to genuflect in front of . "Isn't that right, Ue-sama?"
"Yeah, what she said. I left you out and got caught up in this ss on my own, so it would be monuntally hypocritical of to bla you for anything."
Mountain Girl's face lit up like I just took a literal mountain off her shoulders, but we couldn't share another word, as Fred elbowed his way into the conversation.
"Kihihi! Boss, please stand still for a mont!"
Saying so, he aid a large device with a parabolic antenna on one end and a tangle of wires connecting it to a large backpack on the other. Both the tool in his hand and the thingamabob on his back were covered in twirling chanical gizmos, blinking lights, and a bunch of knobs and dials.
"Fred? What are you doing?"
"Science!" he responded loudly, with zero self-awareness, and he would've probably continued to do… whatever he was doing, if not for Galatea dragging him away.
"Master, please don't bother Grandmaster. You can scan his manatronic signature after he told us what happened."
"L-Let go! We have to do it while the traces are fresh!"
Whatever that was about got fully resolved when both the Fauns and the Knights pushed him back to get to .
"Blackcloak. Welco," Brang spoke up softly and gave a salute.
"Welco back, my liege," Arnwald represented the Ordo Draconis mbers, and while they didn't all greet individually or salute, they all nodded more or less in unison. "I'm glad you are back."
"For the ti being," I pointed out before they would get their hopes up, and it prompted Roland to raise a brow.
"What do you an by that?"
"I just told you, it's a long story. I'll explain everything shortly. Why don't we just move on?"
"Uh-oh. Brace yoorselves, a' fowk. Ah bit thes is gonna be a pain in th' crease again…"
"Duncan! Language!" my sister hissed under her breath, while Morgana used a much more direct thod and slapped the big guy on the back of his head.
"Choose your words more carefully, Sir Duncan," she scolded him, only to then say, "Whether it's a pain in the ass or not, you should not question His Majesty in public."
"Was 'at serioosly th' hin' ye burst fur?"
Instead of words, she showed his disapproval with another light bonk to his head. It was odd, but then I noticed that Raven Boy was giving them a 'Here we go again…' kind of look in the background, so maybe these kinds of interactions were common? If mory served right, Duncan used to be her squire before he got his own title, so it wasn't out of the question.
anwhile, Agrawain noticed that I was staring at him, and gave a glare that said, 'What are you looking at, punk?', and even after he noticed the disapproving frown on his aunt's face, it only softened into a 'What are you looking at, sir?'.
As a matter of fact, I had much better things to look at, so I turned my gaze away. In particular, I was looking for Sahi in the crowd, as I still wanted to know exactly what she was doing here, yet tried as I might, sohow my eyes were drawn back to Angie ti and ti again. Worse yet, it didn't escape a certain Dormouse's notice.
"Chief? Why do you keep staring at Angeline?"
"I'll be damned if I knew," I admitted without trying to avoid the issue, lest she would misunderstand and we'd get into another one of those 'anti-harem counter-asures' dialogue spirals. "She just looks different from usual. She's kind of… extra pretty, I suppose?"
"Isn't that the baseline?" The princess's whisper caused both of us to turn questioning gazes at her, so she hastily clarified, "You know? That thing about how everyone is pretty because of the Si—… that thing we don't talk about in public?"
"Yeah, but she's… how should I put it…?"
"You find her attractive?" Judy proposed, and after tasting the word for a while, I shook my head.
"Nah, not really. It's more like there's this sense of familiarity."
"Oh, I think I got it!" Elly exclaid, drawing nominal attention before shielding her mouth with her hand and whispering, "Maybe it's because of those mories you absorbed. She's a Celestial, and you're feeling kinship."
"Potentially," Judy agreed, if tentatively, then suddenly poked with, "Or it might've reawakened the Chief's dormant harem seeker tendencies."
"Not funny."
My response earned a light shrug.
"You better keep your eyes under control, before Josh notices and thinks we're in a netorare story. Or worse yet, you make jealous."
"You? Jealous? No way," I jested, and this ti I got my foot lightly stomped for my trouble.
anwhile, Elly tugged on my sleeve, and when I turned to her, I found her other hand on her hips and a pair of stern eyes gazing into mine.
"That 'netorare' thing is no good! You have to be careful about it!"
"Please, princess. Who do you take for?"
"The single most influential and powerful person I know, who also happens to be rich and ridiculously handso?"
Her straightforward answer made freeze up for a second, but then I turned to Judy and timidly asked, "Dormouse? I'm not 'ridiculously' handso, am I?"
"Sorry Chief, it's the truth. I'm sorry you had to learn it this way."
I didn't know how much I could trust her on that, considering even while she said that, she was still tapping the sole of her feet against my shoes in a distant facsimile of a stomp. In any case, I made a ntal note about avoiding eye contact with the friendly neighbourhood Celestial for the ti being, and once things cald down, ask Fred to run so tests on to figure out whether my newfound fondness of her really had sothing to do with the fragnts of Polemos embedded into my subconscious.
"Unhand at once! There's data at stake! You're obstructing science!"
… Maybe after the Kage ninjas finished restraining him, I guessed?
In any case, despite having to constantly weave in and out of conversations while we walked, we finally reached the briefing area of the great hall. It was the sa as usual, except for maybe the first ti since its construction, almost all the seats on the circular benches surrounding the whiteboard had been filled up with people. On a side note, I finally managed to find Sahi in the crowd, but she was sitting in the back, and when our gazes crossed, she flashed a grin and waved at , completely unaware of how much her presence bothered .
At last, the girls detached themselves from and joined Snowy and Penny in the first row. There was a sort of naturally-ford hierarchy in the seating arrangents; my family and friends, including Josh and the usual suspects, the girls, my inlaws, and Sebastian (for so reason) occupied the first row, followed by the Feilongs, the Fauns, and the Knights (for the record, Odango Girl and Ichiko were still on Karukk's shoulders), with Rinne in the middle. Then, behind them, were all the squires, the ninjas, the research division, and then in the corner, Sahi and Pascal.
Looking at all of them at once like this… I touched many lives in these few short months, haven't I? So for the better, I hoped. At the very least, a eting between this many forr rivals and enemies would've been outright impossible, and the less said about the weirdoes and outliers, the better.
No seriously. I won't talk about Mountain Girl still acting like a caricature of a dishonoured samurai from so cheap historical drama, or Labcoat Guy still sulking after his techno-backpack was taken away. I won't.
Anyhow, what I was trying to say was that, while all of them coming together like this because they were worried about felt nice, it was also a little overwhelming. I couldn't just stand in the middle of the crossfire of their gazes like a buffoon. Thankfully, I didn't have to worry about stage fright, since I was pretty used to speaking in front of crowds of various degrees of weirdness, which at least made things a little easier on . On the flip side, I had no voice amplification, and the ambient noise level remained the sa no matter how much I waited.
It didn't take long to run out of patience, and lacking a better option, I pulled out both of my weapons and banged their blades against each other over my head. Since they were both top-of-the-line enchanted artifacts, the clash not only caused a loud sound but also so bright sparks that should've been visible to everyone, not just my magic-attuned eyes.
"Can I get started?"
That, combined with the loud question, did the trick, and once everyone quieted down, I sheathed my complaining blades and cleared my throat.
"First of all, thank you for attending this ergency eting on such a short notice. I didn't think all of you could make it, or expect all of you to be invited, to be honest, but since we're all here… let start with a question that's been on my mind for a while." Pausing, I turned to the front row, with Josh's group and the girls in particular. "Shouldn't you still be in school?"
While I thought that was an entirely reasonable question, it was followed by a confused beat, then barely stifled snickers.
"What?"
"Nothing," Josh said with his hand in front of his mouth. "It's just that… we have this big eting, about you getting kidnapped and everything, and that is your first question."
"That was sooo Leo of you," Angie followed him up with a giggle, and Ammy nodded along like it made perfect sense.
"We got the whole week off," Judy ca to the rescue, but when I gestured for her to elaborate, it was the class rep who spoke up first.
"I told grandfather what happened, and that Judy and Eleanor were in protective custody. Since we're already busy with the Assembly delegation, I proposed that we should shut down Blue Cherry High for the ti being."
"And he agreed just like that?"
"Grandfather naturally realized the gravitas of the situation. Also, we didn't want you to miss too many marks on your attendance records." As if rehearsed ahead of ti, she shared a aningful glance with Judy, and puffed out her chest. "I was very persuasive."
There was a biting comnt on the tip of my tongue, sothing about calling other people's priorities ssed up and then pulling a stunt like that, but I swallowed it down and uttered a soft, "Well, thanks, I guess."
"Don't even ntion it."
Ammy still sounded rather pleased with herself. I didn't press the issue, but instead I roughly cleared my throat and swept my gaze across the seats in front of .
"Now, I'm sure you're all aware of the hubbub that's been going on for the past couple of days. Before we start, let's make one thing clear: rumours of my kidnapping were grossly exaggerated. You might even go as far as to say, 'fabricated'."
"Which part?" Roland cut in with an inquisitive frown. "The part where you were kidnapped, or the part where it was done by the Abyssals?"
"Both!" I exclaid and raised a finger for emphasis. "As a matter of fact, it was a Celestial operation, and while they technically were trying to snatch up, I let them take along by my own free will."
"But… why?" Snowy raised a question, and my other sister repeatedly nodded in support of it, all the while looking eminently confused. Which reminded …
"Well, it was mostly to scout out the Elysium and so other stuff, but don't worry, I'll explain everything in detail. However, before we get to that… Snowy? Roland?"
"Y-Yes?/At your command."
Putting their radically different responses aside, I pointed at my knightly sister in the middle.
"Please sit next to Penny and, if necessary, grab her."
Snowy was already right next to her, and despite looking rather skeptical of my request, our Mr Griffon followed it to the letter and grabbed hold of the shoulders of the confused redhead in the middle. I waited for everyone to settle down, and then took a large breath and began my (mostly) sincere, (more or less) accurate, and rather (absurdly) long explanation of the events that started on an unassuming Sunday morning and led us to the current situation.
Also, for the record…
"Uncle Percy did whaaat?!"
… my choice to box Penny in ahead of ti, so that she wouldn't interrupt my recollection more than necessary, was on the money. Ha! Suck it up, hindsight; this ti, I won!
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