The rest of the first schoolday after the break was rather uneventful. The lunch under the flowers was novel, though it ended up less romantic than predicted, because the rest of the gang was already there by the ti I arrived, including my sisters. It was still fun, in a rowdy kind of way, though we had to cut the occasion short because the first afternoon class was PE and we needed to change for that.
Since the weather was nice, Rinne had us do so outdoor exercises, which was also fine. Josh hoped that we could play so basketball, or maybe soccer, but the end of the school year was steadily approaching, so it made sense that we would do more stuff that could be graded for our final report.
Last, but not least, we had horoom. Mrs Applebottom went through the usual gamut, asking us about what we did during the break and whatnot, reminded us about the upcoming events, and we had a short discussion about the looming sports festival. It was a pretty common trope, but I wasn't especially hyped up about it. We'd see how it turns out when we get to it, unless I'd get caught in sothing else beforehand.
Just like that, school was out for the day and we were all following the usual routine. Judy and Elly went ahead to hit the restroom, Angie roped Josh into helping her with so tennis club minutia, and I headed downstairs to the shoe lockers. What I would do afterwards was still up in the air, or rather, to the discretion of a certain allegedly sneaky individual I occasionally kept track of with my Far Sight.
Speaking of which, I was just about to check on her before switching my shoes, but my plans were interrupted by a rather peevish huff coming from my left.
"Brother! How could you!?"
Blinking, I turned to my fuming sister, closely followed by a rather confounded Snowy.
"How could I what?" I asked back by reflex and got a finger pointed at my nose for my trouble.
"Why didn't you tell us the twins were in the school?"
"Twins?" Snowy echoed her, and after a long beat, her face lit up with a pleasant surprise. "Do you an Kóre and Pais? They're here?"
"Yes! And Brother didn't tell us about it!"
In my defence, I only learned that today, but it was true that I completely forgot to tell my sisters about them. Oops?
"Sorry, it just slipped my mind," I apologized while my hands were already fiddling with the shoe locker's door.
"But… why are they here?" Snowy asked the obvious question, so I gave them a quick rundown of the events, and my other sister's face was practically shining with excitent by the end of it.
"Oh? Does that an that we can et them any ti we want?"
"Maybe not 'any ti', but if they stay with Jaakobah, they should be around in the nurse's office."
"Do you think they're still there?" she asked, but before I could respond, she grabbed Snowy's hand and turned on her heel. "Let's go and check!"
"Just do it in moderation, okay? Don't inconvenience the—" I was just about to tell her not to bother the Celestial Prefect too much, but I had to bite back the second half of the sentence when a simple, unadorned white envelope fell out of my shoe locker as soon as I opened it. "Oh? Well, that's quaint."
While I was buffeted by a sudden and inexplicable wave of nostalgia, my sisters froze in their tracks and Penny in particular completely paled in shock, followed by a series of distressed sounds.
"A-A-Awawawa! Snowy, it's an ergency! B-Brother got a love letter!"
"Oh, hush, you," I chided her even as I reached down and picked up the envelope. "Ever since the girls' performance at the cultural festival, the whole school knows that I'm dating them, so there's a bat's chance in hell that this is a confession."
"S-S-Still! Quick, dispose of it before Judy and Eleanor see it! It's an anti… um…" She faltered and tugged on Snowy's hand, followed by a hurried whisper. "Sis? What is that thing called?"
"What thing?" my Abyssal sister asked back with her head tilted slightly, causing Penny to get even more flustered.
"Y-You know! That thing that Judy keeps telling Brother to keep in mind."
"Oh. Do you… an the anti-harem counterasures?"
"Yes, that! Thanks!" She bead at my other sister and pointed a finger at my face again. "You must follow the anti-harem counterasures! Cast it into the fire! Destroy it!"
"Pipe down, Kiddo."
I lightly poked her forehead for emphasis, which she must've mistaken for the prelude of a forehead flick (or maybe a head pat), as she let out another cutesy noise and hid behind the back of an eminently amused Snowy. With the distraction out of the way, I finally managed to open the envelope and fish out the folded-up piece of paper within. On it, inscribed with remarkably ssy handwriting, were just four simple words forming a sentence.
"Co to the rooftop," Penny read it aloud and… wait, when did she even sidle over to my side again?
It didn't matter, though when I raised a brow at her, my knightly sister imdiately stepped away from and pointed at my face for the third ti today.
"N-Now that the cat's out of the bag, you have to respond! It's the right thing to do!" she vehently declared. Why was she so invested in this anyway, I wondered, but not for long, because she continued to pester . "You must go and turn her down! You have to be firm about it, and… Wait, knowing you, you would be too firm, so you have to be also careful! Girls are sensitive, so you mustn't be rude, and you have to…"
It was at this point that Snowy noticed my wordless signals for support, and she stepped up to Penny's side."
"I'm sure Leo's got this. Let's visit the twins."
"Y-Yeah, but…"
"Shoo, shoo. Off you go," I said, waving at them, and with so effort, Snowy finally managed to pull Penny away, leaving … well, not alone, because these were the shoe lockers and everyone was heading ho, but it was close enough. I glanced at the ssage again, and couldn't help but exhale a wistful breath. "The rooftop, huh?"
It's been a while since I last went up there, and it was probably the most aningful place for on this whole damn island. In fact, the sa could be said about most of us, really. It was special, and so being called over there didn't quite sit well with , but what could I do at this point? I couldn't just ignore it.
…
Or could I? I Far Glance over, and… Yep. As expected. She was right there, black catsuit and all, and as much as I found the prospect of this encounter tedious, I would've been lying if I said I wasn't at least a bit curious about what she was all about. As such, I pocketed the letter, closed my shoe locker's door, and headed upstairs. With so luck, I should be able to quickly resolve this and still et up with the girls without making them wait for .
I quickly skipped up the stairs, two steps at a ti, which turned a few placeholder heads on the way. I ignored them and rushed to the top, and it was only when I reached the door leading to the rooftop that I ran into another nostalgic tidbit that I probably should've considered ahead of ti: it was locked. In retrospect, it was silly of to overlook that detail, but there was no point dwelling over this, so I didn't.
It wasn't that big of a deal, considering I could just Phase to the other side, but since I ran into this situation, I figured I should first try sothing I was curious about for a while. The idea originally ca to during one of our extracurricular lessons with Lord Taika, and since the opportunity presented itself like this, I figured I might as well give it a go.
As for what I was doing, it was effectively 'just' an application of my temporary retcon ability. The one where I only changed the form or function of sothing for a short while. So far I had little use for it beyond using it to fake my super-special-aweso illusion powers in front of experts, and its practical applications were… dubious at best, but it still didn't hurt to experint with it a bit. It was kind of slow, taxing, and literally headache-inducing, but I figured I might as well practice it, just in case it could co in handy one of these days.
So, let's look at the problem: the door's locked and I want to get to the other side without Phasing. First option: make a key. Problem: I didn't rember what the key looked like, so that's off the table.
Second option: turn the door into Styrofoam and then jump through while holding a jug of trademarked red juice and shout 'Oh yeaaaah!'. Problem: I had no jug of trademarked red juice on . Also, the broken parts of temporarily retconned items didn't reassemble themselves, and I didn't want to explain why I shattered a tal door just for a gag.
Third option: Just make it so that the door isn't locked. Problem: … None that I could see, so I did just that.
First off, I took a phantom limb and plunged it into the door. After a short yet subjectively long perspective shift through non-Euclidian fractal space later, I had to fine-tune the range of my modification. Because the door was part of the building, I had to first narrow the scope down to just the door and its fra, since it was technically part of the locking chanism. Then I just had to find a fractal iteration that wasn't locked, grab it with my other phantom limbs, overlay it on the original, and presto!
A mont later, I was back in my body and, after exhaling a pent-up breath, I reached out and turned the handle in front of , opening the door without any resistance. That went… smoother than expected. And my head only hurt a little bit. Must've been because of the tolerance I built up over the months, I concluded and stepped onto the rooftop without any further ado.
"Ah? You're here already."
I was greeted by a sultry voice, and it wasn't hard to find its owner, since there weren't any other people up here.
"Corbeau, if I'm not mistaken," I spoke flatly, and the woman flashed a grin at .
"I'm surprised you recognized right away," she responded coquettishly, and… was she doing so kind of fem fatale impression, I wondered.
Who could say for sure? That said, her surprise was understandable, as her current getup was rather unusual. She was wearing a skin-tight black catsuit made of so kind of matte, leathery material. It covered her whole body, including her hands and feet, and while it had so thicker material with red highlights around the forearms and the soles, a couple of areas around her chest, shoulder, and thighs only had a thin, semi-transparent layer over them. It almost looked like a bodystocking peeking out of under the strategically placed holes of the surface layer, revealing quite a lot of skin underneath.
Her lower face was partially covered by a neck gaiter attached to her hood, and she was also wearing a pair of large, bright red goggles that were currently pulled up to her forehead. While I might've certainly had a hard ti recognizing her at a distance without my mark on her, up close, I could imdiately spot the beauty mark under her left eye.
"I'm here." I cut to the chase and closed the door behind . "What do you want?"
"Right to point. I like n who are direct like that," she purred, making feel just a bit uncomfortable. A mont later, she let out a chuckle and told , "Fidèle Basmu Shamash wanted to et you."
"… Then why didn't she et ?" I asked the obvious question, but the woman in front of scoffed like it was a silly thing to say.
"She's a vamp. She's not good with the sun."
"So you're just the ssenger."
"Yes," Corbeau responded dourly, apparently finding the arrangent less than satisfactory. "We're in the sa boat right now, but calling upon soone of my caliber for sothing so simple is still a bit deaning, don't you agree?"
She went as far as to flutter her eyelashes at , and the only reason why I didn't roll my eyes at her was because I was too busy being confounded by her comnt.
"If that's all, then why didn't you just send a ssage." She was looking at funny, so I clarified. "On the phone." She was looking even funnier, so this ti I actually rolled my eyes. "Oh, for the love of…! Don't any of you people have phones?"
"I don't have your number," she pointed out, and then a beat later she added, "Wait, is this your attempt to get my contact info?"
"You don't need my number to contact !" I cut her off and took out my phone. I raised a finger to forestall her while I loaded up my browser, and after a few seconds of poking the screen, I presented it to her. "Look! My office's number is right here, on the Draconic Federation's website!"
"You… have a website?"
"Of course we do! It's current year!" I huffed and gestured at the screen. "Look, it's very intuitive. You just go to the site, and then tap on the cute little animated dragon in the upper left corner. My sister drew it, by the way. That opens the Draggie's Help Corner nu. That's the dragon's na; it's kind of our mascot. Anyhow, you tap on 'I want to contact soone', then it gives you a list of offices, and look! Leonard S. Dunning, the third button from the top. It has all my contact info and…" I frowned and turned the screen back towards myself to take a second look. "Wait, I have a fax number? Since when?" After getting over the first shock, I shook my head and turned the phone back to her. "Never mind. See? You can just contact here, and soone will tell about it. There's no need for elaborate shoe-box letters and clandestine rooftop etings like this."
"I… see…"
The Abyssal spy looked rather overwheld by my explanation, so I decided to cut it short for now and pocked my phone.
"My point is, use the proper channels next ti. So? What was the exact ssage?"
My prompting made her twitch and clear her throat.
"Yes, that. The head of House Shamash wanted to tell you that she wanted to et you in person to discuss the current state of the Abyss in private."
"Private," I repeated after her. This sounded like so shady stuff done behind everyone else's backs, so I inquired, "Does Tracas know about this?" just to be sure.
"It doesn't have anything to do with him," Corbeau responded with a knowing smile. "You know, I work with him, but it doesn't an I work for him. There's room for more than one man… Oh, pardon. More than one partner in my life, you know?"
There was an implied wink-wink-nudge-nudge in her words, and… Why was she acting like this? I an, she was a Seducer according to Tajana, so… maybe speaking in innuendoes and being clumsy with them was a racial trait? Or maybe it was so kind of genius 5D gap moe gambit that was really effective, and I just wasn't the right demographic for it? Whatever the case might've been, I continued to doggedly ignore her weird advances and moved on.
"Charming. Where does she want to et?"
She looked just a hint annoyed by my attitude, but then she just crossed her arms and uttered, "Do you know the information board in the local park?"
"Of course I do."
"Tonight, at nine, in front of it."
"Sounds fine to ."
Corbeau eyed for a mont and then let out a soft huff and turned on her heel.
"ssage delivered."
I was mildly surprised by her response, which then quickly turned into being startled when she did a couple of elegant, dance-like motions, causing magical lights to swirl around her for a few seconds before her form was overlaid by a very retro flying saucer right off the cover of an old pulp fiction magazine. Then, as if that wasn't enough, she suddenly sprouted a pair of large, leathery wings from her back.
"Arrivederci, Lord Archon," she said with a wink, and then pulled her goggles over her eyes and took off into the air, leaving all alone on the rooftop.
Well, at least that explained how she got here when the door was locked, but it ant little when I had so. Many. Questions.
She only sprouted wings at the end, and her catsuit didn't explode, so was she in her Abyssal form all along? Was that her Abyssal form? And what was that UFO disguise at the end? Who ca up with that one first; was it the Draconians, or the Abyssals? And how could she just fly in and out of here when this was technically the heart of Magi territory? And the way she bid farewell was—
…
I shook my head and swiftly left the way I ca before the temporary retcon could expire and I ended up locked out. Not that it would've mattered, but if I had to Phase away after all the trouble I went through with the door, I would've felt rather silly.
After making sure the door was closed behind , I made my way down the stairs and… where was I? Oh, right: 'arrivederci'? That was Italian, wasn't it?
"Watsonian explanation about accents in the Abyss, my arse!"
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