The Simulacrum

~Chapter 156~ Part 2

"You were a boy all along?"

My entirely reasonable and good-natured question made the girls… pardon, one girl and one boy cover in front of me.

"Brother! Don't be a bully!" Penny came to their defence, misunderstanding my shock for disapproval.

The four of us were standing not far from the bungalows, just outside the makeshift changing rooms set up by a group of busybody Celestials. It was a small building attached to a larger one, housing a plethora of swimsuits and other summer wear that Tsephanyah prepared in advance, being the biggest busybody of all.

Not all of us needed them; Judy, Elly, and the Magi knew that we were coming to the beach, so they prepared accordingly. So did Josh and Angie, and since they got my approval, the two of them were already horsing around in the shallows. I could see them from where I was standing, and while the guy didn't seem to have his whole heart in it, he was doing his best to accommodate the hyper girl and her whims.

I was getting sidetracked, wasn't I? Back to the four of us by the changing rooms… or rather, five, since Snowy also arrived. She was wearing a rather modest one-piece swimsuit with some frills, while Penny opted for a halter top and boyshorts. Of course, both of them were white. Everything was white, which shouldn't have surprised me at all. The same was true for the wardrobe they prepared for me when I first came to the Elysium.

"Ah! That's so cute!" my knightly sister exclaimed the moment she noticed Snowy coming out, and she awkwardly shuffled her feet on the white sand.

"T-Thanks…"

Penny beamed at her for a while, but then her expression froze and she turned back to me.

"W-Wait, we were in the middle of something!" She pointed an accusative finger at me. "You can't say something like that! It's hurtful!"

My other sister blinked in surprise.

"Something like what?"

Seeing that Snowy was out of the loop, Penny turned to her again.

"Brother didn't realize that Pais is a boy!"

"I-I don't mind!" the kid on the left said, his long hair tied in a low ponytail and wearing a baggy swimming trunk. "I-If the Second True Archon says so, then I'll be a girl!"

"Hush, that's not the point," I told him, and he shrank back.

Seriously though, who could blame me for making that mistake? Besides Penny, I mean?

Previously they were both wearing the same unisex mini-togas, they both had long hair reaching down to the small of their backs, and even now that I knew that he was a boy, he still looked like a girl at first glance. In fact, despite not being related, the two of them looked suspiciously similar, kind of like copy-pasted background extras. Which they kind of were until recently, now that I thought about it.

"He's a boy?" Snowy blurted out in surprise, and after a long beat, Penny's shoulders drooped in defeat.

"Not you too…"

"Vindication!" I exclaimed with a grin, startling the kids, so I quickly toned it back and crouched down to their eye level again. "Sorry about that. Listen, Pais…"

It only just dawned on me that I never caught the other kid's name, and she hastily bowed to me. She was wearing a one-piece swimsuit that was even frillier than Snowy's, and Penny tied her hair into pigtails. If nothing else, that made telling them apart significantly easier, so I approved of the effort.

"K-Kóre, O Lord Archon!"

"Pais and Kóre," I repeated, and the two of them timidly nodded. "How about we put this whole misunderstanding behind us for good? Go, and play."

"A-As the Second True Archon commands!" the boy declared with gusto, and while I could've pointed out it wasn't a command, I didn't want to get bogged down in that right now.

Especially since Penny already grabbed their hands and was pulling them towards the shore.

"Let's go! Come on Snowy, don't lag behind!"

"C-Coming!" my Abyssal sister sputtered and ran after them, though not before flashing a smile at me. Was there some meaning behind that, I wondered, but since I couldn't figure it out right away, I just chalked it up to her being giddy about the prospect of swimming in the sea.

Since they left me alone, I used the opportunity to reflect on the situation a little. While the meddling of the ex-directors had caused a small hiccup in the plans, things were more or less proceeding in the right direction. First, I'd let everyone settle down and relax, and then we'd start working on the usual beach episode tropes. Some of those would require some legwork, but it shouldn't be too much of a pain in the neck. Probably.

"Let's hope I can find some out-of-season watermelons…" I whispered as I belatedly followed after my sisters and the kids.

The four of them were already on the edge of the water, with Snowy lagging behind a bit. She was cautiously dipping her toes in the water like a cat, at least until Penny waded over and pulled her over into waist-deep waters. They were cute like little sisters ought to be.

A bit further down the shore, there was a small commotion. Half a dozen Celestials were running up and down the beach, busy putting together a row of sunbeds with giant parasols hanging over them, plus other related beach paraphernalia, following Arnwald's instructions. They weren't servants, at least not in the sense of the people working in the Dracis mansion, but volunteers who chose to come here and provide help out of their sense of duty and pseudo-religious fervour. Or so I've been told, at any rate.

Even further ahead, a strange scene was unfolding.

"Come on, Paz! Let's go scuba diving!"

"We do not have the necessary equipment," armband guy pointed out the obvious, but the brown girl only scoffed at him.

"Like, don't be lame! We're Magi! That totally isn't a problem for us!"

"But if we do not use scuba tanks, is it truly scuba diving?" he asked morosely, and that finally put a damper on Sahi's enthusiasm.

"That's, like, a totally valid point. But where do we get scuba gear here?"

"I think we should ask the Celestial with the earpiece."

"Uuu… But he's talking with old man Barnie," Sahi whined, and following her line of sight, I saw that Lord Barnabas and Mensah were indeed engrossed in a discussion under the shade of a tree a fair distance away from the shore. "If we go there, we're totally getting scolded again."

"For a good reason." When she glared at him, he doubled down with, "You threw Amelia into the sea."

"Like, on whose side are you, Paz? Are you really going to take Barnie's side instead of your cute underclassman's?"

"… I repeat: You threw Amelia. Into the sea."

"Oh, come on! We were just having a cow!" Seeing that he wasn't budging, she soon gave up, but only to suddenly throw her fist into the air and exclaim. "Whatever! We have, like, a whole week to do it! Let's make a sandcastle first! I always wanted to make a big one!"

Looking unmotivated, yet somehow also very attentive, Pascal accompanied her to the edge of the water, and she soon brought out her magic hands and began piling up sand like a magical excavator. Just how big of a sandcastle she was planning to make, I wondered. Not for long though, because my attention was drawn to the pair strolling merrily a bit further down the shore.

I was too far away to hear them, but Ammy and Mike seemed to be having a great time. She changed into a sundress after getting soaked, but kept the same straw hat. The guy, on the other hand, was in a garish Hawaiian shirt and shorts, with a pair of large sunglasses sitting on his nose. He was like the embodiment of the stereotypical tourist.

They looked like they were having fun, so I didn't interrupt them, and instead headed towards the row of beach houses, where I saw Judy and her parents idling around while staring at the sky. When I approached them, Judy's mom flashed a warm smile at me and exclaimed, "Ah, Sunshine? Your hubby is here."

My girlfriend blinked in surprise, and realizing that I was standing almost right next to her, she automatically sidled closer and grabbed hold of my arm. She was originally planning to wear a very 'adult' sling bikini, but when we pointed out that there were children here, she changed into a considerably more modest swimsuit. I had a feeling it wasn't the last time I'd see the first one though.

"What are you looking at?" I asked absently, and she pointed at the sky in lieu of answering.

"You know, Leonard…" Clarke spoke in a distant, almost detached tone of voice, drawing my attention back to him. He was also looking up, and after a short pause, he finally faced me with an almost Buddha-like countenance. "… hearing about all of these…"

"Fairy-tale people," his wife chimed in, and he nodded.

"Yes, these supra-natural things, was one thing, but seeing them with my own two eyes…" He glanced up again, and let out a heavy sigh. "I liked it better when I thought you were only involved in plain old organized crime."

"Hey, I told you it was more complicated."

"No, you told me it was politics, not…" Looking for words, he ultimately pointed up. "That. Not that."

Raising my gaze to the sky again, I finally recognized what they were looking at. High up in the air, three distant shapes were flying circles over the beach. Out in the 'normal' word, I would've pegged them as large birds. In here, I would've first presumed they were Celestials. Both of those answers were wrong.

"Emese and Abram are teaching Elly how to fly at high altitude," Judy revealed the identities of the three fliers, and quite casually at that.

"Normally people come to the beach to learn how to swim, not how to fly," Clarke grumbled, but his words had no bite, and if anything, he almost sounded like he was in awe of the trio in the sky.

Now that I thought about it, I couldn't recall Elly using her dragon wings to fly until now. At most, I've only seen her use them to break her fall during the battle with Fred's robots, back in the sentai-shenanigans days. More surprising was the fact that Abram could take to the sky, considering how heavy he was. In a good-ish sense of the word, of course.

That said, seeing them like that put a different idea in my head: could I also fly now? I've used Narrative fiat to force my Celestial wings to manifest, because I was technically Polemos, and Polemos was supposed to have wings, but I never used them to actually fly. Heck, I never even tried it before, so I wasn't even sure I could. I mean, so far I only used said wings for the sake of dramatics, so I didn't know if they were functional, or just the magical equivalent of a peacock's tail.

Maybe I should ask for some flying lessons from my in-laws? Or wait… I was pretty sure the flight mechanics of Draconians and Celestials were different, so asking the childhood friend couple might've been the better idea. It couldn't be that hard to figure out; Josh learned how to fly in a matter of days, after all.

…

But then again, he was the protagonist, so maybe he wasn't the best yardstick. He could've been supported by some plot armour and whatnot. I'd have to look into that later.

Speaking of them, the childhood friends were out of the water and coming over to our side. Angie had a spring in her steps, going as far as to hum a jaunty little tune that may or may not have been a commercial jingle, while Josh… looked slightly less enthused. Or maybe 'tense' would've been the better word?

"Leo! Judy!" the Celestial girl called out to us as soon as they got close enough and waved a hand over her head. "Guess what we found?"

Seeing how happy she was, I figured it wasn't just a seashell.

"Something cute?" I ventured a guess, and she flashed a toothy grin.

"A turtle! We found the guy loafing around, and he's biiig! And funny!"

"Turtles are funny?" Judy asked, and Angie looked at her like it was a preposterous question.

"Of course they are! This guy was just completely ignoring us and shuffled around in the sand, and when I stepped in front of it, it raised its head, and it was like…" She used her fingers to stretch her mouth and eyes and mumbled. "'Wot, mate? Are you picking a fight, ya muppet?' It was hilarious!"

"I'm pretty sure it was just looking for the best way to go around your feet. And why did you give it a British accent, anyway?"

"Boo!" Angie stuck out her tongue at her boyfriend, and it was only then that she noticed that Judy's mom and dad were still starting at the sky. Following their example, she soon exclaimed, "Wow, that looks fun!"

Without further ado, she summoned her wings and floated off the sand, much to Clarke's surprise. The rest of us took it in stride.

"Come on, slowpoke! Let's see who can catch up with them first! It's a race!"

"I'll follow after you in a second. I have something to ask Leo first."

"Don't take long!"

And with that, like an arrow loosened from a bow, the Celestial girl took to the skies in a straight line.

"No, I'm still not used to this…" Judy's dad grumbled, and his wife patted his back with a slightly perplexed smile of her own.

In the meantime, I raised a brow at the guy. He not only looked unusually fidgety, but the moment Angie was out of earshot, he slouched like a weight was taken off his shoulders and he no longer needed to maintain an outer veneer.

"What's on your mind, pal?"

"It's just…" He started, then faltered, and looked across our group scattered all over the beach before his eyes returned to me. "Are we seriously here just to play around?"

"Is there a problem with that?" I asked back, and his countenance shifted again, this time appearing guarded.

"No… or… maybe a little?" He forcefully shook his head and looked me in the eye. "I mean, I thought we're here to train, you know? It feels like I've spent the last couple of days hyping myself up, and then we just… I mean… I dunno man, maybe the problem's with me, but I thought there would be something more. You know? Like some high-tech training ground, or a tricky obstacle course, or maybe some hidden mystical monastery in the mountains where we learn how to harness our inner power or something."

"Are you really that hellbent on starting the training arc right away?"

While my choice of words gave him a pause, he soon nodded. Despite my previous efforts to assuage some of his misgivings, it seemed like Josh's anxiety, building up ever since the assassination attempt on Angie, wasn't that easy to dislodge.

I glanced at Judy, and she responded by untwining our arms with an unspoken 'Go, do your thing, don't mind me'. I flashed an appreciative smile at her and faced Josh again.

"Fine. I'll take you to the training grounds, but first…" I pointed up. "Go and play with your girlfriend a bit more, would you? And relax while you're at it. Have a work/life balance."

"That's rich, coming from you," he griped.

"He has a point," Judy noted on the side, and her comment hit me considerably harder.

"Hey! No heckling during vacation!" A beat later, I literally kicked Josh in the ass to get him moving. "Shoo, you! Go and catch up with her!"

"I'm going, I'm going! Geez!"

At last, he also took to the air and soon became yet another dot in the sky. In the meantime, I rubbed my face and looked at the horizon. The original schedule I planned for our spring break was getting more and more distorted with every passing hour, but this much was manageable. I was anything if not adaptable, and so long as it wasn't an emerg—

"Ack!"

"What?" Judy blurted out in surprise, so I waved to show that everything was fine.

"It's nothing. I just almost jinxed myself again."

"You really need to stop doing that."

"Working on it."

With those words, I bid my farewells to the Sennoma family, off to prepare the stage for the parallel training arc.