The Simulacrum
~Chapter 168~ Part 3

Back when I first started shopping for locations for our secret base, I passed over a handful of places. Many of them were decent, and some were way more convenient to access than the abandoned bomb shelter in the mountainside, but after settling on the current site, I'd forgotten about most of them. Most being the operative word there, because one could never have too many backup black sites. Did saying that make me sound like a villainous mastermind, or what?

"Please focus."

Hearing the warning made me stifle a groan and I flourished the swords in my hand.

"I'm trying my best, but you of all people should know what condition I'm in right now."

"Of course I do, but this is important," my sparring partner told me flatly and made a beckoning gesture with his hand. "We don't have much time, so let's start from the top."

"Fine, I got it."

With that, I assumed an offensive stance again, one blade held high and one kept low. It wasn't very practical, but it looked cool, and for once that was the most important factor. A second later, the plain concrete walls of the old, abandoned factory were lit by flashes of magical sparks once again.

"Remember: Left, right, backstroke, and then spin."

"Got it."

Future-me was in his full Bel getup. It was technically my old gear, before I switched to the Leoformer, but by this point he customized it (that is to say, I will customize it) to the point it could no longer be called the same. As for what we were doing, I called it sparring just a moment ago, but it was closer to a rehearsal than anything else.

First I swung Teeny, then Cal. He dodged the first strike and blocked the second one with the back of his left hand, creating even more magical sparks. As soon as the blade connected with the wards, I let the counter-force push it back while simultaneously swinging Teeny again on the backstroke, which he dodged under and followed up with a roundhouse kick. At this point I used the momentum of the previous attack to carry me forward, did a simple pirouette while guarding my back with Cal, and then once we both stopped, we squared off again, but this time with our positions reversed.

"Good." Future-me let his fists down and circled his shoulder. "Let's work on the other repositioning exchanges next, but first…" He raised a hand over his head and snapped his finger. A second later, Pudding-kun skittered over to us with a pair of mineral water bottles balanced on his back. "Five-minute break."

"You won't hear me complaining about that," I spoke absently and picked up the bottles, then tossed one over to him. He caught it without any trouble and lifted the Bel mask to take a gulp. I was going to do the same, but first, I gave the little eldritch abomination a belly rub for a work well done.

"Nyuuuu…!"

Pudding-kun, or rather one member of the 'Pudding-kun collective', was here for a rather prosaic reason: I couldn't mark myself even if I tried (it must've been one of those totally-not-time-travel restrictions, or something), so he served as my anchor point in case I had to come here. Future-me revealed the location to me after our earlier talk today, and while it was lacking in amenities, it was perfectly suited for our purposes.

Speaking of comforts (or lack thereof), future-me unceremoniously took a seat on a bright yellow plastic box; the kind used to transport fruits and other perishable cargo. He turned it upside-down and was using it as a stool, and when he saw me looking at him, he gestured towards the pile of similar boxes behind him. I had no reason to be shy, so I picked one up and set it down next to his.

"So," I started between sips. "What's with the whole 'Axis of Evil' thing?"

"Oh, them?" He lightly shrugged. "They're people I recruited in the Abyss. They're good guys. You'll see."

"No, I don't mean that…" I started, then shook my head. "I mean, I meant that too, but I was meaning to ask about something else. Meaningfully."

Future-me took my jest in stride (naturally, since he must've seen it coming) and said, "You mean the outfits, right? I got the idea from one of those animes we watched for research. You know, the one with the big robots and the super-duper-genius protagonist hiding his identity behind a fancy helmet."

"Yeah, yeah. So that's why the concept felt so familiar."

"Yup." He finished up his bottle and handed it over to the eager Pudding-kun. "Every self-respecting villain needs a group of snazzily dressed minions, and it's not like I can rely on Crowy and his cronies at House Inanna to stick to the dress code."

"Wasn't the masked guy in the anime the hero though?"

"You know the saying: Every villain is the hero of their own story," future-me told me with a cheeky smirk. "More importantly though, you know how these things work. We need secondary antagonists for the side-casts to fight, and the Abyssal houses and their forces aren't trained to stick to the script."

"Fair enough." I also finished up my drink and we sat in silence for a while. That is until I remembered something else. "Say? Do we seriously have to start it tomorrow?"

"Yeah, we do," future-me responded on no uncertain terms. "We're on a very tight schedule here. The crazy arch-mage is coming on Monday, and then Crowy will start to move later next week. We have to lay down the foundation and have everything in place by then."

"She's coming here that soon?" I blurted out in surprise, then squinted at my future self. "Wait, isn't that a spoiler?"

"Nah, Tajana will tell you about it the first time next morning," he answered flippantly and rose to his feet, then continued on before I could even question why Tajana of all people would be telling me about it. "You'll be pretty busy after that, so we need to squeeze in a few more dramatic exchanges over the weekend. Speaking of which, let's practice the one where we trade a big hit and both fall back."

"When are we going to use that?"

"The big finale."

"Doesn't that mean we have some time to rehearse it?"

"Oh, come on. We both know that the finale is the most important part, so we can't mess it up."

"Yeah, yeah. I know…" I grumbled as I rose to my feet and picked up my swords again. "I don't even know why I'm bothering to argue with myself."

"I don't know either," future-me shrugged as he pulled the mask over his face again and tugged on his gloves. "I guess that's just my nature."

"Very philosophical."

"It sure is."

Meanwhile, we walked to our respective spots and took up some suitably dramatic fighting stances.

"We need to make it flashy, so let's push up the power output a little."

"Is that safe?" I asked back, but future-me just confidently nodded at me. "If you say so." I directed my attention at my weapons next. "You've heard him. Let's crank things up a notch."

"{Response: Affirmative. Interface:Teeny requests Interface:Caly to match the external mana-flow.}

"{Young knight, I implore you! Tell her to stop referring to me like that!}"

"{Insincere Inquiry: Interface:Caly isn't responding to Interface:Teeny's request. Is there an obstruction in communications?"

"{I told you to stop calling me 'Caly'! Young knight, help!}"

Sighing, I raised a finger to forestall future me and raised my blades to eye-level.

"Teeny?"

"{Reticent Response: Yes, Archon Polemos?}"

"Did I say 'Yes' when you asked me about giving Cal a nickname?"

"{Obfuscating Answer: According to Interface:Teeny's records, Archon Polemos didn't say 'No'.}"

"… It is just me, or you're getting cheekier over time?"

"{Insistent Reply: Interface:Teeny assures Archon Polemos that it's nothing but a misperception.}"

"If you say so…"

"{Young knight!}" Cal cut in, full of indignation. "{Don't entertain her! Just tell her to cease and desist at once!}"

"{Innocent Response: Interface:Teeny fails to understand why Interface:Caly objects to his new designation.}"

"{Why, you…!? How would you like it if I started calling you something like that? For example… how about… Teensy!}"

"{Polite Refusal: Interface:Teeny is flattered, but would like to remind Interface:Caly that the current designation was bestowed by Archon Polemos, and as such may not be altered without his consent.}"

"{What do you mean 'flattered' you… you…!?}"

"Cut it out." For emphasis, I also lightly tapped the flats of their blades together, startling the two swords. "Teeny, stop teasing Cal. Cal, stop getting caught up in Teeny's pace. Also, how about you two work this whole thing out between yourself when we're not in the middle of practice."

There was a long beat of silence, and then my Knightly sword let out a mortified grunt.

"{Ack! Please, forgive my indiscretion, young Knight! I don't know what came over me!}"

Teeny, on the other hand, remained silent. That said, the way my mana flow stabilized as soon as the two of them started working together told me they both got the message, so I lightly swung them again. As I did, the blades lit up with a pale white light that lingered just long enough to draw trails in the air. It was a rather useless feature in combat, but it looked cool from the outside, so it was fine.

"Sorry for the holdup, I'm ready now," I told future-me, and he didn't mind at all.

"No problem. This is around the time when those two have a thing going on, right? With the nicknames and everything?"

"…Yeah."

Future-me let out a guffaw that told me there was something funny going on, but he didn't elaborate. Chances are, if I asked him about it, he would've just deflected it with some cryptic nonsense about spoilers, so I didn't even bother to speak up.

What followed was a solid twenty minutes of complicated exchanges that didn't leave me much time to think about anything else. Not necessarily because I it was all that complicated or especially dangerous, but due to a combination of not yet fully recovering from my weird sleepwalking condition and, more importantly, the lack of sixth sense warnings.

Honestly speaking, the latter was the bigger problem. I would recover from my astral-body-induced scatterbrainedness sooner or later, but my danger sense not triggering in this situation was something I needed to get used to. Even when I was sparring with Josh or the Fauns, it always warned me about incoming dangers, so I became reliant on it over time. The problem in this case was that it only reacted to 'danger'; even during training, my opponent would actively want to hit me, so it got a reaction from my sixth sense.

It would say 'Hey, dumbass! If you don't duck right now, you'll get whacked in the head!', just with less words and more gut feelings. Not when 'fighting' myself though, because the whole point of this exercise was to make sure that I wouldn't accidentally hurt myself, which meant my danger sense would only trigger when one of us messed up. Ideally that would never happen while we were on the 'stage', so to speak, so our goal here was to rehearse the moves, counter-moves, and flashy finishers until they became second nature and we could perform them live in front of an audience.

And we weren't talking about some silly community theatre swashbuckling choreography here. We might have twisted the genre of the scenario into a pretzel and back, but at its core, this was still a battle harem narrative, and those required some impressive, high-powered battles, not some harmless Flynning.

…

Though, on second thought, wasn't that exactly what we were trying to do here? Flynning, I mean? Sure, it's usually associated with the whole 'strike high, parry high, strike low, parry low, rinse and repeat' thing from theatre and old movies, but the principle of what we were doing was essentially the same. We just had more impressive pyrotechnics and acrobatics and high-impact moves and…

"Wait…" I blurted out in the middle of a spinning move, and once I landed after future-me pushed me back, I belatedly added, "… are we doing pro wrestling right now?"

"Yeah," he responded without missing a beat and took up a boxing stance. "Now, get back into kayfabe and focus. This is the tricky part."

"I don't know how to feel about this…" I muttered as I also took up an offensive stance and we continued our high-flying exchanges.

Our rehearsal lasted for another twenty or so minutes after that, and by the time we finished, we were both heaving, and my head was starting to hurt.

"Ugh. Incorporating Phasing into the choreography is a pain in the neck."

"Yeah, but it would look unnatural if we didn't use it every once in a while," future-me told me while rubbing the back of his neck. "Look on the bright side: we won't be repeating it back-to-back like this when we do it live."

"That's less of a bright side and more of a silver lining."

Future-me didn't say anything to that, just picked up Pudding-kun and started petting him instead.

"I think that's enough for now. It's getting late, and the girls are already waiting for you back home. Go take a shower and rest. We'll be busy tomorrow."

"What about you?"

"I'll take a breather too, and then I'll go and pester Crowy a little. Just to keep him on his toes."

"Have fun with that."

"Oh, don't worry. I will."

I couldn't see his face, but I was pretty sure future-me was grinning. I could perfectly understand him; there were few things as relaxing as trolling a bastard after a long day of hard work. Speaking of which…

"Crap, it's this late already?" The numbers on my phone didn't lie. By this point I already put my bickering weapons away and turned my Leoformer off, returning to my school uniform, and as soon as the physical enhancements were out of the picture, I was hit by a new wave of fatigue. "Damn. It's on days like these that I really wish I could sleep."

"Ah, right!" Future-me snapped his fingers and pointed a finger gun at me, startling Pudding-kun for a moment before he resumed petting him. "It was today when you were bothered by The Girl, right?"

"… Yeah?"

"You can bother her back."

"… Is that advice, or a spoiler, or…?"

He didn't respond, though I could once again feel that he was grinning under his Bel mask. At last, he put the mini-shoggoth down and gave me a nonchalant wave, along with a cheeky, "You have fun too!" before promptly Phasing away.

Shaking my head, I crouched down to give a few pats to Pudding-kun as well.

"See you later, buddy."

"Nyu!"

The oddly adorable eldritch horror waved his stubby tentacles in something resembling a salute, then climbed on top of the plastic box from before and then made a few more wild gestures… before turning into an identical yellow plastic container with a puff of smoke. That was probably his way of saying that he'd look after the place in our absence, so I gave him a thumbs up and then also Phased away, directly into my bathroom.

I checked first to make sure no one else was around, of course, so I could take a quick shower without any interruptions and put on a fresh set of indoor leisure clothes I had stashed away near the washing machine before stepping outside and heading to my room.

"Welcome back, Chief."/"Hi, Leo!"

My girlfriends, god bless their hearts, didn't even bat an eye when I walked in like that. Though again, compared to just showing up out of thin air, this kind of entrance probably felt a bit mundane. They were both in their pyjamas and, from the looks of it, browsing the Celestial Hub on my PC.

"Sorry for being late. I kind of lost track of time," I apologized reflexively, but they didn't take me to task, so I walked over to their side and peeked at the screen. "Anything interesting?"

"We're reading reports on what happened at Ottawa!" Elly responded in a lively voice, followed by a slightly less enthusiastic, "There's not much yet."

"Well, obviously. I told you that place is pretty undefined, so the local Celestial agents must be about as placeholder as it gets."

"Then what about that report?" she insisted, and seeing that I didn't get it, she pointed at Judy. "The one that made you go over to Canada. That one was very detailed."

"It might be because it was plot-related," my dear assistant noted, but before I could get a word in, she turned off the PC, made a one-eighty turn in my swivel chair, and grabbed my hand. "Let's talk about it tomorrow. It's late, and we all need some rest."

She was already pulling me towards the bed, and Elly soon joined in on the tug-of-war as well.

"You do realize that I still can't sleep, right?"

"That was the previous paradigm," Judy told me emphatically while dragging me under the blankets. "You said your body is technically asleep right now, so you might be able to have genuine sleep for the first time today."

"And that means we'll sleep together!" Elly doubled down with a grin and flipped the light switch, plunging the room into darkness. "We never did that before!"

"Technically, we did sleep together in the other meaning of the word, but…" My idle objection was overruled when my princess also slipped under the covers and they each grabbed hold of one of my arms. "… We'll just call it an experiment."

"That's right. Experiment." Elly let out a giggle and nuzzled closer to me. Judy did the same on my other side.

And like that, dead tired and sandwiched between my girlfriends, I fell asleep…

…

Yeah, no. Half an hour later, I was still staring at the ceiling and listening to the rhythmic breathing of the girls. It apparently didn't matter whether my brain was asleep or not, my consciousness stubbornly refused to take a break. And to think that for a moment I was almost expectant…

I mean, they say that robots dream with electric sheep, so what kind of ruminant would show up in my dreams? It was almost like one of those Zen koans, and I was sure Judy would be curious about the answer too.

But alas, I was still awake, and each passing second was slowly taking me closer to the next day and the beginning of the end. In narrative terms, at the very least. Very slowly. Veeery slowly. Veeeeeeeery slooooo—

"Oh, to hell with it," I whispered under my breath and readied my stubby phantom limb.

It quickly became obvious that future-me's timing, telling me about The Girl and how I should pester her back, was anything but coincidental. I wasn't exactly in the mood for it, but at this point I felt like I was just delaying the inevitable for no reason, so I exhaled hard and plunged my phantom limb into my head.

Let's go and see what shakes loose, shall we?