"Repeat after !" the princess demanded with a severe look while standing on my front porch, her extended finger pointing at in a very princess-like pose. "NO," she stressed the word, then her finger moved over to my dear assistant standing right next to with her arm awkwardly entwined in mine, "LEWDING!"
Both of us gave her a flat look in return, and Judy voiced my thoughts by telling her, "'Lewding' is still not a word."
"I don't care," my girlfriend told my girlfriend with a huff. "I want you to promise you won't get up to anything while I'm away."
"So it's fine when you are around?" I asked in a very innocent voice that was completely genuine and in no way mischievous.
"Yes! I an, no! No lewd things are allowed yet!" the flustered girl replied with a pout.
"She said 'yet'," Judy stated at my side with a strange light in her eyes.
It didn't go unnoticed by the princess, as she grabbed hold of my assistant and leaned closer to whisper, "We are going to discuss this later, you hear ? Between the two of us. As girls. Understood?"
I had no idea what she was referring to (maybe so 'girl thing', as Josh would put it), nor did I know if my assistant understood, but after a while she gave the princess a shrug, which she conveniently accepted as a sign of agreent.
"Good." Saying so, she turned to and poked in the chest. "As for you, Leo: You are still recuperating, so go and rest. Don't go outside. Don't move too much. Do not do any… activity that requires you to move your body a lot." She paused, then repeated her words with extra emphasis: "Any. such.activity."
I gave my girlfriend a wry look and sighed.
"I got it, we are not going to tear our off clothes and jump into the bed the mont you leave, I promise."
Elly's ears went crimson again, which of course didn't secretly amuse or give any kind of satisfaction, but she quickly overca her embarrassnt and mumbled sothing along the lines of, "So long as you understand."
It was around this ti that her usual limo rounded the corner, and after so final farewells and a peck on the cheek, my girlfriend left the premises, leaving alone with my girlfriend.
… Yeah, I know, this is confusing, but this was the bed I made, now I had to lie in it. That aside, Judy and I closed the door behind us and I imdiately exhaled a small sigh.
"All right, it's just the two of us now," I said before I glanced down at the girl still holding onto my arm and continued with, "You know what that ans, right?"
"We are going to tear off each other's clothes and jump into the bed?"
I gave my dear assistant a flat look and said, "I am going to flick your forehead now."
She only blinked at my statent, so I proceeded to do just as I said, earning a frown and an unenthusiastic 'ow'.
"Chief, that hurt," she told while rubbing her forehead, but I scoffed at her protests.
"No it didn't, I barely touched you. Not to ntion, even if it did, you would've deserved it. Now stop ssing around and please get your notes."
My assistant let go of my arm with what I presud to be mock reluctance before she clicked her tongue and mumbled, "Spoilsport." Still, in just a few seconds she bounced back and we both took up our customary places in the living room; she sat on the sofa with her phone in hand, while I paced up and down all around the place.
It was at this point when I took a huge breath and tried to clear my head from unimportant thoughts as much as I could. After I felt adequately prepared, I gestured for Judy to pay attention.
"Let's not beat around the bush: the events at the school last Sunday were a disaster, and I believe we are to bla for it." I paused to see if Judy would like to add sothing, but she was only looking at expectantly, so I continued, "The writing was on the wall, yet we… No, I ignored it all. One mistake and we could have ended up with one of our friends dying."
"You almost died yourself," Judy told with a hint of disapproval, and I could only nod.
"Yes, unfortunately. I have nothing to say in my defense. I ssed up, and I paid the price," I told her while placing my hand on the still tender scar on my stomach. "In retrospect, there were many opportunities to prevent that night. I should have interrogated Snowy better, or looked into Crowey's movents after I learned that he was out for my blood, but I guess I just didn't take the situation seriously enough." I paused to let my words sink in before I finished with, "That changes now."
The expression on Judy's face sohow felt conflicted, and I had a feeling she wanted to say sothing, but after waiting for her for a few seconds she just closed her eyes, and when she opened them she was back to normal and simply asked, "How so?"
"First, we have to expand our intelligence network," I answered after just a mont of hesitation. "We've been wasting the potential of the Celestial Hub. We only used it as a source of background information. We need to start using it to monitor the movents of the other factions. We need to know if sothing is about to happen so we can prepare."
"Sounds reasonable."
"I'm glad you agree. By the way, I want to leave that part to you. I have other plans."
"Such as?"
I paused. In fact, I even stopped pacing up and down for a mont before I told her, "Judy, I'm a ss. I have all kinds of powers, but I have no idea how to use them effectively. Hell, I almost died that night, multiple tis, because I kept forgetting about my various abilities at critical monts. I need training. I need to learn how to deal with whatever supernatural nastiness will throw at us next."
"If that happens, do you plan to get involved again?"
"Only if necessary," I answered uncertainly, but then I steeled my voice and added, "No, chances are, I will have to. We have already established that this world is running on the conventions of so kind of 'supernatural-battle-harem-school-life-cody' genre. I'm afraid what we have seen is just the tip of the iceberg of the 'supernatural battle' part, and I need to be able to hold my own when the next crisis cos knocking around the corner."
Judy pursed her lips almost imperceptibly, but in the end she just wrote a few more notes. I waited for her to finish, then she finally asked, "Which power did you forget about? Your Far Sight?"
"Actually…" I paused again, then I shook my head and began pacing once more. "Actually, open up the file on my powers. I have a lot of new entries."
"Oh?" Judy voiced curiously before she began to furiously poke at her phone for a mont, then she gave the go-ahead.
"Okay, so my Far Sight is a given, no changes there. I also told you about my ability to see magic. I can apparently also see through magic, such as camouflage, and I can disrupt magic by cutting it with my fingers."
"I got all that," Judy inford .
"All right. First off, I have precognitive reflexes."
"Didn't we test that already?" she inquired while glancing up at , and I shook my head.
"There might be so kind of condition to it, such as only reacting to actual danger or intention to harm . Either way, it was thanks to it that I could survive against Brang and the chira."
"Who's Brang?"
"The leader of the Faun. The one with the spear."
"You an the one you growled at?"
That remark made freeze for a mont before I told her, "Actually, that's another thing. Apparently I can fluently speak Faunish, and started doing it without realizing it was a different language at first. It might be just that I already knew it from before my amnesia, or it could be another power or ability. Maybe I have one of those convenient magical translation suites common in stories where soone travels to another world."
My assistant gave a strange look, then she gestured for to co closer. I did so, and after a few seconds of poking her phone, she showed the screen to .
"What does this say?" she asked.
I took a close look at the symbols on the screen, but I only shook my head.
"I don't know. What is this?"
"Traditional Chinese," she said as she returned to the phone, and after so more screen-prodding, she turned it my way again. "What about this?"
"'Si vis amari, ama…' Is that Latin?"
"Yes. Do you know what it ans?"
"No."
For so reason, she clicked her tongue as if I spoiled another of her jokes before she returned to her phone, this ti for more than a minute, before she showed it to again. Even at a glance, I recognized the familiar interface of the Celestial Hub, which earned my assistant a curiously raised brow, but she urged to read on.
"'… Incident at twelve and ten under zone of school Magi…' … No, wait, it's 'inside the territory of the Magi', I think, and…" My voice trailed off as I focused more closely on the screen. "Judy, what language is this?"
"Celestial Script," my assistant answered without missing a beat. "It's a type of magical cipher only Celestials can read. I thought you told MoroseMoose to organize the classified reports because you couldn't read them either."
"Well, I can. Apparently." I squinted at the letters, which were sowhat hazy on a second look, and asked, "What does it look like to you?"
Judy paused for a mont, then she told , "Like angular hieroglyphs. What do you see?"
"Normal letters," I answered absent-mindedly. "Though if I look at it really hard, I can see the words kinda… shimr and move around? It's hard to explain."
Both of us fell silent for several seconds.
"So," I asked tentatively, "you said it's like a magical cipher? So does this fall under seeing through magic or understanding languages I have no business understanding?"
"Which is the weirder?"
"The latter," I answered reflexively.
"Then it's that," she told with a kind of unwarranted sagely wisdom that made shake my head.
"Doesn't really matter right now, but we are going to test this to hell and back later. For now, let's focus on my other new abilities."
"Roger," Judy answered as she closed the browser and returned to her notes. "So far we have Far Sight, Magic Perception, Anti-Magic Swipes, Spider-sense—"
"Okay, stop! I will talk to you about the other nas too, but that last one is just blatant copyright infringent!"
She clicked her tongue again.
"Fine, I will call it 'Chief-sense' then."
"That's… only marginally better."
My complaints fell on deaf ears as she continued, "Then we have 'Maybe Magic Maybe Mundane Multilingualism'. Anything else?"
I took a long, deep breath, and just let it go.
"Yes, I can also teleport now."
My previously pouting assistant's expression took a 180-degree turn in a split second.
"Really?"
Instead of answering right away, I took a deep breath and tried to rember how I did it. I had a feeling the process was incredibly complex, but sohow it also felt really intuitive, like riding a bicycle, and after a mont or two of fiddling in the proverbial saddle, I could feel my surrounding blur for a mont before my vision returned to normalcy and I found myself standing behind the sofa. I let out the aforentioned breath, and then quietly placed my palm on the top of Judy's head.
My dear assistant visibly flinched, then she very slowly looked over her shoulder and told , "That's new," in a deadpan voice made hilarious by her decidedly not deadpan expression. The whole thing was worth it just for that. I stifled a small chuckle and then walked around the sofa to be face to face with her again.
"Yes, it's new. I just discovered it during my Dominance with Brang."
"Another new term. What's a 'Dominance'?"
"A kind of ritualistic magical duel fought with apparitions. More on that later," I told her before I began pacing again. "So, I obviously haven't done any controlled experints, but as far as I can tell, I do not have too many limitations on this one. Using it is like my Far Sight; a little disorienting, but not particularly straining at short distances. I do not know how far I can teleport, but based on my experiences during my chase with the chira, I was moving anywhere between two to five ters without any issues. Anything more than that, and it beca much harder and made lightheaded." I halted for a mont and asked sothing that bothered a little, "Hey, Judy? How does this look like from the outside? Did I just disappear? Did it make a noise?"
She was still in sothing of a daze, but she quickly shook her head and answered, "First you blurred, like you were out of focus, then you were gone. There was no sound accompanying it."
"Is that so? So it's stealthy as well. We are probably going to focus on testing the limits of this ability, because I think this has the most potential utility both in and outside of combat, but before that, there's one more thing." I extended my hand towards her, palm pointing up. "First, do you see this?"
Judy gave a funny look, but then she squinted at my hand and observed it from multiple angles. At long last, she shook her head and told , "I don't know. Am I supposed to see sothing other than your hand?"
"So you can't see it, huh?" I mused as I made my brand new phantom tendril limb thing wriggle a bit. For a second or two I pondered how I could explain it to her, but eventually I decided to be blunt. "You see, after I woke up today, I found myself with a phantom limb of so sort. It feels sothing like a… tentacle, I guess?"
"Tentacle? Really?" Judy asked with a critical frown.
"Hey, I don't like it either," I protested. "Thing is, I can't seem to do anything with it because it's completely intangible."
"So it's like a real phantom limb," Judy told expressionlessly, and it was my turn to return her critical look.
"Yes, Judy. It's like that."
"So you can't use it to grab things? Or touch things? Or do tentacle-things with it?"
"No, no, and I don't even know what you an by the third one," I grumbled as I waved my phantom limb around. "Look, if I try to use it to grab, say, my mug, it just—"
I got this far in my sentence. As I attempted to demonstrate my point and swipe my invisible appendage across my beloved 'I
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