My capture caused much bigger waves than when I disappeared the last ti, during the whole 'got blindsided by the Polemos business' incident back in January. Part of it was due to the Draconic Federation being less of a coherent faction back then, with much looser connections to the rest of the big factions of the World of Mystics. The other part was that at that ti I didn't announce my departure in advance, so there were less eyes on .
All in all, it led to a whole lot of ergency etings all over the place. Ergency etings in the Dracis mansion, ergency etings under the school, more ergency etings in Elysium, and heck, there were even so in the Abyss, where Crowy and his lackeys were busy discussing how to counter-respond to whatever response the rest of the world would give to my imprisonnt.
It was all very exciting and interesting for the first couple of tis, but when all of them ultimately boiled down to a back and forth of 'Should we do sothing?', followed by 'We should do sothing!', countered by 'But should we do sothing?', and concluded by 'There's sothing we should do!' before soone asked 'But what should we do? Sothing?' and then the whole thing starting over from the beginning. Riveting stuff.
In light of that, I tried my damnedest to avoid watching more etings, but there was at least one gathering I couldn't help but feel curious about. Amidst all the exigency councils discussing the appointnt of special committees to deliberate the potential contingency asures that may or may not be implented in response to the current ergency, there was one group that had so slightly lower-stakes matters on their mind.
"I can't believe we're doing this while Brother's missing…"
Okay, so maybe only most of them had other things in mind, but it was still a breath of fresh air.
The 'extended gang', as I occasionally called it, all gathered together in living room of Josh's house. It included him, obviously, Angie, my girlfriends, my sisters, the class rep, and both Sahi and Pascal. I had no idea when the last two had wedged themselves into our group, but at this point they've been around enough to make their presence feel warranted.
They were all sitting around a familiar table from the kitchen, with piles and piles of notes and textbooks on display, plus the customary snacks in the middle. Forming a study group at this ti of year wasn't all that surprising, considering that they were in the middle of exam season. In a little over a week, the academic year would be over and it was ti for the sumr break.
That should've been sothing to look forward to, but the atmosphere in the room was gloomier than usual, and it wasn't just because of the mountains of study materials looming over them.
"We can't do anything about that," the class rep responded to Penny's previous words. She let her notebook down onto the table and adjusted her glasses. "Not yet, in any case."
"Right. We can't skip the exams," Angie spoke a tad wearily and picked up a small bundle of salty crackers from the middle. "I need to get at least decent results if I want to apply to a good college next year."
"The adults also haven't decided what to do yet," Josh comnted a touch dourly without looking up from his textbook.
"Yes, I get that, but…" Penny rubbed her face, clearly looking for words. Not for long though. "I an, can't we just do it ourselves?"
That question caused Ammy to tweak her glasses again. Now that she no longer had the floaty orbs around, she was back to her usual self, which also ant she was doing her best to act as the common sense of the group.
"I don't know what you an by 'it', but we can't act out of line now."
"Yeah, like…" Sahi chid in while twirling a pencil around one of her fingers. "We need to, like, wait until we totally understand the whole situation, and then, like, there are still negotiations, and we also totally need the cooperation of the Abyssals to, like, get in there. You know? Like, la stuff that takes ti."
"I understand that, but… Brother never had to worry about these things!"
That outburst made Pascal raise a brow and say, "I do not believe that using Dunning as an example of how to deal with complex political matters is a wise idea."
"You heard him," Ammy backed him up in a heartbeat and pointed at Penny with her eraser. "We're all used to Leo just cutting through all the red tape and doing whatever he wanted because nobody could stop him, but since he's not around, we have to get used to playing things by the book. It's as simple as that."
Penny continued to pout, while Angie let out a wistful sigh and whispered, "We never knew how good we had it, huh?"
"I'm pretty sure that wasn't what Ammy was hinting at," her boyfriend chid in from the side, but he was summarily ignored.
"Everyone seems to be distracted," my Abyssal sister spoke up next while placing her notes onto the table. "Why don't we take a short break?"
"We already took a break not too long ago," ca the objection from the class rep right away. "We shouldn't lose our focus now."
"Oh?" Sahi's lips curved into a smirk and she reached out to poke her with the blunt end of her pencil. "Like, is Miss Honor Student worried about her grades, I wonder?"
"Of course I am!" she snapped back at her and let out an indignant huff. "I missed over a month's worth of classes, not counting the spring break! I need to catch up!"
After saying her piece, she picked up her notebook and purposefully raised it up to cover her face, effectively signalling how serious she was about the subject.
"That reminds …" Penny spoke up again, her voice barely more than a whisper. "I wonder what's going to happen to Brother's exam results. Is he going to have to repeat a year?"
"Oh, that's, like, not gonna happen." The rejuvenated arch-mage's words caused a lot of eyebrows to rise around the table, so she hastily gestured at the class rep. "Like, didn't she tell you?"
"Tell us what?"
Josh's question prompted Ammy to let out a soft groan and let her notebook-shield down.
"Leo made a deal with Grandfather." Her voice was unusually glum, and she punctuated her sentence with another grunt. "I knew that he got an exemption for missing too many days on his attendance, but they went as far as to fake his exam results in advance."
"aning, he knew that he would be stuck down there before he ever set foot in the Abyss," Angie proclaid as if she was revealing so universal truth, and slowly shook her head. "As Grandpa Deus would say it, it's such a Polemos thing to do." She paused and cocked her head to the side. "Though it's also a very Leo kinda thing to do too."
"Is there, like, even a difference?"
Sahi's question made the Celestial girl fall into deep consideration, but before she could co up with a response, Snowy raised her hand again.
"We're all being distracted right now. I really think we should take a short break."
"… Oh, fine," the class rep relented at last and put down her book.
"Good," Josh followed her example right away and put his hands on the table. "Since we're already talking about this, let make sure we're all on the sa page. Do we all agree that Leo got himself into this whole ss on purpose as part of one of his multi-step gambits?"
"Duh," Angie agreed with a cracker sticking out of her mouth.
"Then what are we going to do about it?"
Ammy turned to face him, her brows furrowed and her hand ready to reach for her glasses at any second.
"Didn't you hear Sahi? We can't do anything until the Draconic Federation, Elysium, and the Assembly reach a common ground. Not to ntion, we need soone in the Abyss to even get inside, and arranging that will also take ti, so…"
"I disagree." Ammy clearly didn't expect Josh to argue back, and he capitalized on her surprise to push on. "I don't an I wanna invade the Abyss overnight. I get that we can't do that, but that doesn't an we can't do anything."
"Ah! I agree!" Penny backed him up, and so he pushed even harder.
"Listen, guys. Before Leo left, he said I should take charge in his absence, and knowing him, this is precisely the kind of thing he was thinking about. We can't just sit back and let the adults argue it out between each other; we'll go nowhere like that!"
"Yeah! I can't believe I'm saying this, but I still agree!" my knightly sister was getting more hyped up by the second. In a way, they were steadily amplifying each other.
"Totally!"
Okay, make that three, with Sahi in tow. Seeing her enthusiastically raised fist, armband guy let out a shallow sigh and turned to Josh.
"I understand your sentint, Bernstein, but you have to be more deliberate. If you act without a plan, then it would only sow more chaos and cause the decision-making process of the leadership to suffer even more setbacks."
"We already have a plan," he argued back and pointed at the class rep. "Right, Ammy?"
"W-What are you talking about?"
"You know? That thing you said in front of the Council and the rest," Josh insisted, sounding unusually forceful.
"That was just a theoretical idea." Seeing that he wouldn't relent, the class rep let out a sigh and readjusted her glasses. "Listen, I asked the Grimoire, and it should be possible, but to do it, I would need to go into the Abyss in person. I can't do that while being investigated."
She also tagged a quiet 'Not to ntion, the exam season,' at the end of it, but Josh completely ignored it and kept pushing.
"That's right! In other words, once that's done with, then you can do it, and we can get things rolling." He pointedly glanced at Pascal and flashed a daredevil grin. "There. We've got the first stage of our plan: we need to get Ammy to be officially accepted as the Conduit's Grimoire."
"The Conduit of the Grimoire of the Last Truth," he corrected him, but before he could get another word in, he was overtaken by his enthusiastic… what was his relationship with Sahi again?
"But, like, Marzanna's totally not going to just accept that without a fight!"
"Lord Marzanna," armband-guy insisted, and his… companion let out a soft huff and rolled her eyes at him. He didn't take it to heart, probably because most of his attention was still on Josh.
"Then we'll take the fight to her!" he declared, making everyone around the table fall silent. "What? Guys, we've been fighting all kinds of stuff! Friedrich's giant robots and Draconians and assassins and those Celestial statue monsters and Bel of the freaking Abyss! A single arch-mage is not that big of a deal anymore."
"Stop that!" Ammy not only snapped at him, but she rose to her feet and planted her hands onto the table for extra oomph. "You can't resolve everything with brute violence! And even if you could, and beating up Lord Marzanna would sohow result in her turning a new leaf, dropping the charges, and I would get officially designated as the Conduit of the Grimoire, I still couldn't just leave for the Abyss whenever I wanted!"
"Why?" ca the oblivious question from Penny, and when all eyes turned to her, she sputtered. "I-I an, a-aren't the Conduit sothing like the legendary leaders of the Magi?"
"There was even a prophecy about it," Snowy added to support my knightly sister, and she repeatedly nodded for further emphasis.
"Right, that!"
Now all eyes were focused on Ammy, waiting for her reaction, and it was her turn to get flustered by the attention.
"E-Even if that's true, such positions co with great responsibility! Making a reckless and one-sided decision like that is just impossible, 'legendary leader' or not!"
There was a long beat of silence hanging over the table, soon broken when Josh leisurely pushed his chair back, rose to his feet, and then took half a step back, but only so that he could descend to one knee and present his girlfriend like an especially dramatic quiz show host showing off the big prize. Angie, currently in the process of stuffing her cheeks full of cheese puffs, was startled for a second, but then she quickly downed her half-finished can of coke and turned in her seat so that she could lightly kick at her boyfriend.
"Stop it! You're embarrassing !"
"He's not wrong though," Snowy pointed out, followed by Penny nodding along a couple dozen tis like the world's most agreeable bobblehead.
"That's, like, totally a precedent," Sahi agreed, and most of the group nodded along.
"Even if it is, you can't expect to just demand the Assembly to do what I want!"
"Why not?" Josh fired the armour-piercing question as soon as he sat down again.
"Because…" The class rep tried her best to co up with a snappy answer, but before she could do so, she got interrupted by Angie's voice.
"Listen, girl," she spoke, though considering her golden eyes, it was Deus talking. "In tis of peace, power and authority are restrained by the rules of society to ensure everyone's prosperity. In tis of turmoil, power and authority exist to be wielded like a blade to cut through fear and indecision and reach directly for the heart of matters. This was a lesson Polemos taught a long, long ti ago, and one he lived by even in his second life. I recomnd you also learn by his example."
Deus's world-weary words were followed by a spell of silence, unceremoniously dispelled by her pointing at the center of the table.
"Boy. Get another bag of onion chips."
"Sure, sure…" Josh didn't argue and leaned forward to grab a pack, but then he imdiately turned to the class rep again. "You heard the word. Let's do this."
The two of them locked eyes for a while, and for once, it was Ammy who flinched first.
"Fine!"
"All right!"
Before he could celebrate, she suddenly pointed a finger at him.
"However, only after we're done with the exams!"
"… Really?"
"I kinda agree," Angie, now back to her usual self, tore the bag of chips open and used one to gesture at Joshua. "I told you, I wanna get good grades this year."
"Fine, fine," the guy grumbled with his palms raised in surrender. "So first we finish the school year, then we force that Canadian arch-mage lady to drop her charges, and then we follow Ammy's suggestion. I dunno what you think, but that almost sounds like a plan to ."
"Half a plan, at most," armband guy quipped on the side, while my sisters looked rather crestfallen.
"But… But that's two more weeks!" Penny cried out in abject horror. "We can't leave Brother suffering for that long!"
"Please, do not be so over-dramatic," Pascal turned to her next, but the only thing that achieved was making him her primary target.
"I'm not! Don't you know? The Chasm of Desolation is a terrible place, filled with the worst criminals of the Abyss! Right, Snowy?"
My other sister, not expecting to be addressed like that out of the blue, could only muster a weak, "Y-Yes, sure…"
"You hear?" Penny barrelled on, practically swooning. "Imagine being trapped down there, without anyone to talk to or anything to do, and at the complete rcy of your enemies! We can't let him down like that!"
"I… agree with you, but the exams…" Ammy, caught between a rock and a hard place, was trying to reason herself out of this situation, but it was Snowy who managed to hit up a compromise first.
"H-How about this? We can do both at once? I-I an, we don't really need to have good grades, just to pass the end-of-the-year exams, so we study with that in mind while also working on the arch-mage and the Conduit of the Grimoire position?"
"That sounds kinda iffy, but I don't think we have any other option," Josh concluded and swept his eyes over the whole group. "Does anyone have any objections?" There was none, so he let out a relieved breath and sat up straight in his seat, only to freeze up for a mont when he saw Sahi provocatively eyeing him. "Yes? Is there sothing else?"
"Like, I know you're totally stoked, but like, do you really think you can take on an arch-mage?"
Josh eyed her back and defiantly crossed his arms.
"I'm sure we can manage."
"Like, you couldn't beat ."
"Sahi…"
Armband guy's hiss of a warning went in one ear and out the other. anwhile, Josh raised a single eyebrow at her provocation and responded with a daredevil smirk.
"Oh? Is that a challenge?" He unfurled one hand and lazily pointed at her. "You do realize that I'm not the sa as I was back then."
"Like, big words, tough guy."
While those two continued to bicker, Ammy shook her head and gestured at Angie.
"Let's get back to studying."
"Aye, aye, capt'n!"
The class rep subtly rolled her eyes at the cheeky response and muttered, "Why can't everyone be serious about the exams like…"
Her words ended up trailing off into silence and she aid a suspicious squint at my girlfriends. Judy and Elly, sitting at the other end of the table, were completely imrsed in so math exercises as if the previous conversation had nothing to do with them. She ended up addressing them directly after but a second of hesitation.
"You two have been quiet for a while now."
"Ah, sorry. We're kind of caught up in this geotry problem," the princess responded glibly and showed off her worksheet. "Judy says this isn't the right answer, but she's refusing to tell where I made a mistake."
"Because realizing it on your own is a learning experience," my other girlfriend noted with mild disinterest, her eyes moving back and forth between her phone's screen and her textbook.
anwhile, Ammy continued to scrutinize them, and after about half a minute, she couldn't hold it in anymore.
"You don't seem too worried about what's going on with Leo."
"Erm…" Elly put her pen down and scratched her chin. "It's Leo, so… you know?"
"What she's trying to say," Judy interjected without looking up, "Is that we trust that the Chief is all right and that he'll co back in one piece, so we try not to stress over it."
In reality, we kind of agreed in advance that trying to act constantly concerned about my fate in public was too much of a hassle, so I told them not to even bother with it and just act natural. With our track record, I doubted anyone would really drill them about getting desensitised to these kinds of situations, and it was better to appear consistently unfazed than inconsistently distressed.
In the back, Angie had been listening in on the three and she cupped her cheeks with her hands, framing a silly grin.
"Oooh? Is this the power of love?"
Caught off-guard by the question, Elly only giggled, while Judy finally looked up and responded with an extra deadpan, "More like the power of patience."
Uh-oh. Nobody else in the room realized, but that was extraordinarily sulky by Judy's standards. Did that an that future- didn't notify them about the sudden change of plans?
…
Note to self: put so extra elbow grease into my contingency plan, before Judy would get genuinely mad at for once.
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