The Simulacrum

~Chapter 150~ Part 3

"Ah. You're back."

That unenthusiastic response to my return came from Judy, who was looking at me with quite a critical squint as I Phased into the room. At some point, everyone was moved inside the Lotan mansion, probably so that the Ordo Draconis would have an easier time securing the premises, and my girlfriends were now in a pretty nice guest-room near the center of the building.

"Leo!" The princess was considerably more enthusiastic about my arrival, and she immediately caught me in a bear hug, but only so that she could drag me to the corner where Judy was sitting. "Quick, tell us what this was all about! Was it time travel?"

I was honestly a bit shocked by her question, not only because of how straightforward it was, but also because of how she hit the nail on the head without any reservations. My other girlfriend looked considerably less enthused by this whole situation.

"I told you, it can't be time travel," she spoke in her usual deadpan tone, though maybe with just a smidge of exasperation. "It's not only impossible by the metaphysical standards of the world, we have already discussed how it's also denied by the hard-coded rules of the Simulacrum itself. Right, Chief?"

"Erm… Sorry to disappoint you, but it was actually time travel," I admitted a touch sheepishly. Her eyes opened a bit wider in surprise, but then she squinted even harder at me, so I hastily added, "I mean, I'm not completely sure whether what happened qualifies on the literal or metaphorical level, but I'm—"

I didn't get the opportunity to finish that sentence, because a suddenly excited Elly let go of me and turned to my girlfriend with a triumphant smirk.

"A-ha! I told you! I won the bet!" she declared with the kind of glee usually reserved for winning the lottery and held out a hand. "Pay up."

My other girlfriend clicked her tongue and grudgingly handed over a crumpled ten Jen bill, and Elly accepted it with such excitement, I wouldn't have been surprised if she started hopping in place at any second.

"Why are you so happy?" Judy grumbled while also trying to appear above it all. "It's just ten Jens."

"That's not the important part! This was the first time I won a bet about tropes! It's a trophy, and I'm going to frame it and hang it on my wall!"

"I… can actually see you doing that," I interjected and gestured for her to settle down. "But before we get to that, how about I give you an update on what just happened."

"I would appreciate that," Judy noted with just a hint of annoyance while pointedly frowning at the other girl still giggling by my side. "So, where was that Bel from? The past, or the future?"

"Future," I confirmed, causing her to click her tongue again. "Also, he's technically me."

Now, that made my girlfriends stop giggling and fuming respectively, and they both looked at me funny.

"You'll travel back in time in the future?"

"Not technically." My response sounded a bit too defensive, so I amended it. "I mean, technically future-me retconned a Bel into the past to exploit some loophole in how the Emergents perceive time, so it's—"

"Hold on," Judy interrupted me with a raised palm and levelled a hawkish gaze at Elly. "Give me back my ten Jens."

"What? No! I won it fair and square!"

"Didn't you hear the Chief just now? Things turned out like this because of a retcon, so I won the bet."

"Nooo! You said it happened because Leo accidentally created a Bel with the last retcon! There was no mention of future retcons in our bet!"

"Maybe not the letter of it, but the spirit of the bet implied it. Now, give it to me."

"No!"

I not only couldn't get a word in there, but the arguments between my girlfriends also caused quite a ruckus and I could already hear footsteps outside the guest room.

"Keep it down, you two. I'll continue the explanation later, but for now, we should—"

As per the rule of three demanded, I was interrupted for the third time, this time by Angie throwing the door wide open with a loud "Leooo! Did you get him?"

She was closely followed by Josh and my sisters. The Celestial girl looked full of bluster and outrage, and so did my knightly sister, while Snowy was trying to keep the latter from getting out of hand. As for the guy in the group, he looked unusually sombre and maybe just a little bit glum as he held onto his girlfriend's shoulder.

I waited for them to get inside, and after hesitating for a second, I let out a suitably dramatic sigh.

"He slipped away."

"Ah, that b-bastard!" Angie exclaimed, and for a moment I couldn't decide whether that was her or Deus speaking. It certainly sounded like something he would yell, but the small stutter there didn't fit him. I was just about to ask, but this time, I couldn't even get started before Penny grabbed hold of both my attention and arm.

"Brother, are you all right? You weren't hurt, right? Did you at least manage to sock Bel in the face? Or the mask? You were gone for a long time, so did you chase him all this time? Speaking of which, how did you pursue him? Since when can you disappear like that?"

Right. In the heat of the moment, I Phased right after Bel in front of a bunch of eye-witnesses. To be fair though, it was high time this particular cat got out of the bag. However, before I could answer any of Penny's questions, Angie let out a soft huff.

"Leo could do that since forever!" It was only after she said it out loud that she froze up for a moment, and turned a borderline panicked face my way. "A-Aw shucks… I was supposed to keep that a secret, wasn't I?"

"It doesn't matter now," Josh interjected, still looking as glum as when he entered the room. "Everyone already saw it, so it's no longer a secret."

"I-I know, but… we still promised, right?"

While the childhood friend couple was whispering about the etiquette of keeping secrets, and Penny was still shocked by the fact that I could teleport, I noticed that my other sister was conspicuously absent from the conversation. When I glanced around, I found her mediating between my girlfriends behind my back.

"I-I don't understand the full context, but if I got the gist of it, you've made a bet with each other, and you… both won?"

"No, I won, and Judy is trying to bend the rules," Elly huffed.

"I'm not. You just jumped to a conclusion before hearing the Chief's full explanation, and you're refusing to back down."

"H-Hauu! Please don't fight! Here, let's sit down and come to a compromise."

"Leo? Are you listening?"

Josh's question made me blink and turn back to them, where he, Angie, and Penny were all looking at me intently.

"Sorry, I'm a bit out of it. Could you repeat that again?"

"I asked how badly we screwed up."

He no longer sounded just glum, but borderline grim, and his girlfriend patted him on the shoulder.

"Oh, come on, buddy! Don't be too hard on yourself! We were just caught with our pants down. I mean, I didn't have my bow with me either, and you… um… it was a chaotic situation, okay?"

"You're right. Our performance against Bel of the Abyss was sad, but that's not what I'm talking about."

"Whose performance are you calling sad?!" came a sudden outburst from Angie, followed by a sucked-up breath, and a hissy, "That's it, Grandpa! If you're picking a fight with Josh, you're not allowed to come out!"

"I'm sorry, I kind of lost the thread," Penny interjected, looking as confused as she sounded. "I couldn't pay much attention to what was happening on stage, but didn't you manage to rout Bel of the Abyss? I thought that was a good thing. What did I miss?"

"We didn't want to chase him away," Josh told her, followed by a dejected sigh. He rubbed his face and simultaneously continued with, "We were supposed to catch him while Leo pinned him down, but in the end, we just got in each other's way." He finally let his hand down and looked me in the eye. "So, let me ask again: how badly did we mess up? That saturation thing was supposed to be your ace in the hole against Bel of the Abyss, and we completely wasted it, didn't we?"

"Wait, was it like that?" Angie rejoined the conversation after she finished scolding the ancient Celestial messiah living in her head, and she sounded more than just alarmed. "Did… did we screw the pooch?"

"H-Hold on!" Penny cut in before I could reassure them, her eyes swimming as she was finding it difficult to keep track of the conversation. "So you're saying that Brother had this ability to teleport like Bel of the Abyss, but he kept it a secret to catch him off-guard, but then because you couldn't catch him and he got away, now he knows, and it's going to be much harder to pin him down the next time?"

"That's precisely what happened," Josh stated with audible distaste, and Penny's face scrunched up.

"Wow. You messed up."

"I know," the guy growled, and it was about time I put a stop to this, so I put a hand between the two of them.

"Stop. You're blowing this out of proportion. It's not that bad."

"Isn't it?" Angie blurted out, sounding like she didn't believe me.

"That sounds like exactly what you would say if you tried to make us feel better about our cock-up."

"Jooosh! Language!" the Celestial girl hissed and punched him in the shoulder. "I knew it. Grandpa Deus is a bad influence on you."

The guy let out a low grunt and rubbed his arm, but his eyes remained on me as if waiting for me to come clean. Just why was he so insistent on this, I wondered.

Not for long though. After considering the situation from the ground up, I shifted my thought processes to a more narrativistic perspective. Let's forget about the time-travel-technicalities and whatnot for the moment. That was something related to me. When viewed through the lens of 'This is Josh's and Angie's story', this encounter with Bel had very different implications.

First off, it was the two of them who insisted that we could take on Bel of the Abyss together. However, from their perspective, they wedged themselves into a fight between Bel and me and even implored that I would use my 'trump card' against him. Then, they couldn't even touch him, distracted me during combat, and he not only got away, but he now knew that I could stop him from teleporting, making catching him even more difficult. In other words, it was a failure of their own making.

To boil down the tropes even further, Bel was the Big Bad, I was the Big Good, while Josh and Angie were the Battle Shounen Heroes in over their heads, who caused the Big Bad to discover the weakness of the Big Good, putting everyone at risk. It was, if not exactly a cliché, but a fairly straightforward development, which also made this the low point of the arc. Now, what was the Big Good supposed to do in this situation to nudge the plot forward?

I would've loved to get a second opinion from Judy (or even Elly, as she was also getting into the groove of trope discussions), but…

"… and then you give Judy five Jens, and Judy gives you five Jens," Snowy explained in the background, causing my draconic girlfriend to tilt her head like her gears just got stuck.

"But… then we're both at zero."

"Y-Yes, but this way, you both acknowledge that you were both technically right, so you both get half the bet."

"Oh, I think I get it." Elly reached into her dress's skirt and produced a small purse. Colour me surprised; that meant her gown had pockets. What a revolutionary idea. Anyhow, she produced a five Jen bill and handed it over to Judy. "Here. This way, we're even."

"No, we aren't," my dear assistant very nearly glared at her. "I gave you ten Jens. If you give me five, I'm at minus five."

"Come on, Judy! Don't be a scrooge!"

"I'm not a scrooge, you're just trying to keep my ten Jen bill!"

"P-Please don't fight!"

…

Yeah, that was still going on in the background. Anyhow, lacking second opinions, I had to use my head, and decided to go with a fairly orthodox development. As such, I straightened my back, squared my shoulders, and then let out a theatrical sigh.

"Okay, Josh. Do you want me to be one hundred percent honest with you?" My friend nodded, while the girl next to her nervously swallowed. And by that, I meant Penny, even though she had nothing to do with this conversation. Ignoring that, I raised my hand to my temple and, after a dramatic pause, blandly uttered, "You're not ready."

As if waiting for those words, Josh visibly deflated and stared at the floor.

"Yeah, I know."

"And that's important," I continued on, causing him to stop deflating and glance back at me. "You must know your limits if you want to improve, so you'll be better prepared next time."

"Next time?" Angie echoed me with considerably more excitement, and I nodded deeply.

"You need to be better prepared, so let's do just that." I crossed my arms and jerked my head towards him. "So? Are you up for some training?"

It was a rhetorical question, as I could already see Josh's determination getting reignited in his eyes. Some things are just simple like that. When the protagonist of a battle shounen story suffers a setback and reaches a low point, there are only two ways to go after that: either receiving a sudden inspiration to power up or going on a training mini-arc. I had no control over the first option, but the second one was easy to trigger, so long as he was willing to cooperate.

"Sure, partner," Josh responded curtly and offered a hand. Oh, damn. He's now turning this into one of those memetic two-page spread scenes, where we have a manly handshake to celebrate his newfound resolve or somesuch. It was a bit trite, but as other-me would say, it was a trope because it worked, so I felt obliged to play along and I grasped his hand.

"Me too!" Angie declared with extra gusto, and placed her hand on ours. "Let's take him down!"

I was just about to nod, but then another hand landed on ours.

"Yeah! Let's beat him to an inch of his life!"

"… Kiddo? What are you doing?"

Penny looked startled for a moment, but then she quickly doubled down.

"I-I-I also want to punch Bel! We all want to do that, right?"

"Yeah! All five of us wanna do that!" Angie backed her up on the spot, eliciting a relieved breath from my sister.

"Yes, all five of… Wait, are you counting Deus separately? I-It doesn't matter! We're all united in purpose, so let's do our best together!"

As such, my knightly sister shoehorned herself into our training mini-arc. Oh well. I could work with that.

"So?" Josh drew my attention back to him, sounding just a tiny bit pensive. "Are you going to train us?"

"Nah, that would be dangerous," I told them frankly, and the girls gulped nervously, more or less in unison. I had no idea why; I wasn't talking about them, but invoking the Mentor Occupational Hazard trope this late into the game. Knowing that the Simulacrum was doing its trope enforcement on top of my own subconscious Narrative reality-warping, it wouldn't have been just foolish, but outright suicidal. "I'm going to show you the ropes, but you'll have to do the heavy lifting yourselves."

"Let's do it." Josh looked me in the eye, and shook my hand again. "Let's get him next time."

"And this makes us the Fellowship of the Bel!" Angie exclaimed, and Josh's previous serious expression immediately fell away to give way to a critically raised brow, aimed right at his girlfriend. "What?"

"You ruined it," he uttered flatly and let go of my hand, only so that he could facepalm. "You totally ruined it."

"No, I didn't! It was a classy movie reference, right? Leo, back me up!"

"… I don't get it," Penny muttered in the background.

"Sorry, I'm with Josh on this one," I said absently, and the Celestial girl puffed up her cheeks like a hamster.

"Mou! You guys are mean!"

Ignoring the fuming girl, I exhaled a long breath and closed my eyes for the moment. So, I would need to set up a training mini-arc for these three. What did those need? The training part was obvious, but it would also require the right context. Maybe I could set them up with the Ordo Draconis members to improve specific aspects of their skills? Arnwald would be a good fit for Angie, since they both used bows, while Roland could serve as a guide to help Josh with his aerial manoeuvres. Penny was… maybe I should get Morgana to supervise her?

Oh, we'll also need some power-ups as well, so Snowy could maybe use her Sigils on them? I knew she was already experimenting on Penny, so hopefully she could help, and powerups should also come with new outfits. Altering these two's Deus outfits was a tall order, but with some image training, it could be theoretically done. As for my sister, adjusting her Uniformer was easy, but to have it reflect a power-up and development… Should I just give up and give her that combat miniskirt she's been asking since the beginning?

…

Nah. Let's not get carried away. I could just make her a fancy new sword, or something. Oh, and speaking of which, Josh could probably also use a proper weapon. That was also a staple in battle shounen stories, along with evolving weapons and secret super techniques that may or may not involve transformation sequences. In retrospect, training arcs were quite complex, weren't they?

But speaking of arcs… wasn't I forgetting something?

"Ah, right. Where's Rinne and Naoren?"

"Them? They're in the room down the hallway, with that Albion woman," Penny told me while gesturing with her thumb over her shoulder. "You could hear them all the way over here."

"Wait, what? They're still at it?" Rolling my eyes, I turned to the corner of the room, where Judy and Elly were still in the process of playing tug-of-war with a poor ten Jen bill, my Abyssal sister caught between them. "Girls?"

"Yes?"/"Hm?"

They both looked at me but didn't let go of the bill.

"I'll have to step out and take care of something. If you still haven't resolved this silly argument of yours by the time I'm back, I'm not telling you the rest of what happened until you're back to normal again." They both looked at me like I just provided them with a difficult math problem, while Snowy let out a relieved breath in the background. I gestured for her, and added, "Hold the fort, sis. I'll be back in a minute."

With that, I turned on my heel and headed towards the door, passing by the childhood friend couple who were still bogged down in…

"Maybe I should've said, 'What are we, some sort of Belicide Squad?'…"

"No, that's worse! Somehow, that's actually worse!"

… that. So, I ignored them and decided to just head outside, and nip the whole villainess shoujo romance arc angle in the bud, before it was too late.