The Simulacrum

Some might say I was being a tad over-dramatic. After all, I had fought monsters, not-angels, not-demons, punched an Emergent, and, most daring of all, I even butted heads with child protective services. Compared to such mighty adversaries and foes, facing Judy's mother and father didn't seem such a big deal, but appearances could be deceiving.

They were normal. No magical heritage, no mysterious secrets, no nothing. In a sense, they represented 'normalcy' itself, as much as that could be applied to anything within the Simulacrum. A charging Chimera? A bit of a pickle, but nothing to write home about. A megalomaniacal bastard with a god-complex about to destroy the world? Been there, done that. A ruined relationship with my in-laws? Now we're talking real peril.

Fortunately, I came prepared, and they could've never expected my secret weapon! It was super-effective! They never ever saw it coming!

"You like LAGOs?"

"Yes!" the little beansprout declared proudly and grinned at the woman sitting on my couch. "Uncle brought me a lot! I've made pirate spaceships, and pirate robots, and robot spaceships, and…" He awkwardly scratched the back of his head and muttered, "I-I haven't figured out how to make them all three at the same time, but I'll do it one day!"

"Aw! You're adorable!" Judy's mom cooed, and Ollie let out a proud giggle in return.

In the meantime, her father continued to stare daggers at me, yet didn't interrupt the two just yet, allowing my girlfriends to bring in some snacks and refreshments to further blunt his ire. So far, everything was working as planned. You might even say it was according to the keikaku, which also meant plan.

"Orange juice, anyone?" Elly asked as soon as she placed the jug filled with a yellow liquid onto the table.

Judy's mom immediately replied with an upbeat, "Ah, thank you. I'll have some," followed by Ollie also scampering over to the table.

"Me too! Me too!"

"Just a moment," Judy added on as she put the tray of small confectionery down and picked up a pair of stout glasses. Where did she get the sweets at this hour? As usual, my kitchen and pantry were a land of mysteries. In fact, despite my best efforts, my old ninja maid hypothesis was yet to be conclusively disproven. Make of that what you will.

In any case, the orange juice was portioned, the snacks were snacked, the kid was cute, and after a few more minutes, we were all sitting down and waiting for the other shoe to drop. It didn't take long.

"Can we address the elephant in the room already?" Judy's dad grumbled a tad morosely, and when nobody objected, he glared at me again. "Leonard?"

"Yes, Clarke?" I asked back with an innocent smile.

"Did you take my daughter to another of those… what was the term? Pocket space?" He shook his head and redoubled his glaring efforts. "Never mind. The real question is this: did you knowingly expose my daughter to danger?"

"Technically speaking," Judy interjected with a finger raised, "We voluntarily entered the Abyss to follow after the Chief after he was captured."

"Hush, Sunshine, I want to hear what Leonard has to say for himself," Clarke said in a low voice, followed by a more cutting, "Also, from what I've heard, he was counting on you following after him, so it is a distinction without a difference."

"Excuse me?" I cut in with a frown of my own. "Where did you hear that?"

"From Abram," he told me flatly, and as if just reminded of something, his wife's face bloomed into a huge smile.

"Ah, now that you mention it, it's been a while since we last visited Emese and Abram." She turned to the little boy sitting between Judy and Elly and kindly asked, "Little Ollie? Do you want to come with us? They have a reeeally big house, you know?"

"How big?" he asked back, eyes already sparkling.

"Huge! The biggest you've ever seen!"

"Um… our castle was big too," he muttered, slightly downcast. "Until the Lord of Inanna came."

"You had a castle?" Clarke blurted out in turn, but then he hurriedly shook his head and glared at me again. "Never mind that. I'm still waiting for Leonard's answer."

I took a deep breath and started with, "First off, I would like to let you know that my reputation for being a Machiavellian schemer accounting for every variable is greatly exaggerated. Secondly, while it's true that I was aware that Judy came to the Abyss along with the others, I did everything in my limited capacity to make sure she wouldn’t be endangered." I almost tagged a 'too much' at the end of the sentence, but I thought better of it.

It was at this stage that Elly decided to back me up.

"Mister Sennoma?"

"Yes, Eleanor?" he asked, sounding considerably more polite than when he was talking to me.

"We did end up saving the world," she pointed out, but seeing that he was only getting progressively more confused about that, she hastily clarified, "What I meant to say was that we all saved the world, together. From exploding. It was a team effort, and if Judy wasn't there, we couldn't have done it."

"I… understand that, to a degree," Clarke relented, though his tone said he had a hard time wrapping his head around the idea of his daughter contributing to something as abstract as 'saving the world', or what Elly meant by it 'exploding'. In fact, I had no idea exactly how much he was told by our families and how much he could comprehend of it, but that was a question for later. "But it still doesn't sit well with me."

Seeing that his attitude was shifting, I jumped in to hit the iron while it was hot.

"If it makes you feel any better, I can promise you with one hundred percent certainty that it was the very last time we would have to deal with such a dangerous scenario, so Judy and everyone else should be perfectly safe and secure from now on."

While my declaration was maybe a bit too insistent, it was anything but baseless. From a purely Watsonian perspective, no active threats were remaining on Critias, or anywhere else in the Simulacrum, for that matter. While some Draconian families and clans were still antagonistic towards the Draconic Federation, the vast majority had already joined up, and with the Knights of the Ordo Draconis on our side, they couldn't cause much of a ruckus. I was literally something like an absolute monarch of the Elysium, along with Angie/Deus, and since Judy was at this point effectively the shadow-eminence of our intelligence network, the Celestials didn't pose any threat either.

With the Canadian arch-mage taken down, and Ammy being the Conduit of the Grimoire, the Assembly was effectively on our side as well, and I pretty much employed the entire Research Society at this point. Now that the Abyssal Civil War was officially over and the New Noble Alliance signed an in-perpetuum treaty of friendship with both the Draconic Federation and the Elysium, there wasn't going to be any imminent trouble from that side either. Oh, and we also had their new Emperor (read: Ollie) and his Herald (read: Josh) on our side.

Add in the fact that, as Judy had demonstrated, all of us were tied together in a huge, if somewhat loose, web of familial connections, so maintaining friendly relations shouldn't be difficult at all.

But then, if that wasn't enough already, there was also the much more pertinent Doylist viewpoint backing up my statements. Namely that the scenario was over, and without it driving conflicts in the name of dramatics, the chances of any serious hostilities breaking out between the supernatural power-blocs of the World of Mystics was effectively nil, and if it was a smaller incident… Let's just say that as a newly minted Emergent and conditional reality-warper, I had anything less catastrophic than that completely covered.

Clarke must've felt the conviction in my voice, because he eventually crossed his arms and let out a soft huff.

"Can you really promise that?"

I responded with a snappy, "Absolutely."

"I want to believe in you, but…" He glanced over at Judy, and seeing the insistent (if somehow still deadpan) glare he was sending his way, he soon slouched his shoulders with a sigh. "Fine. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt one last time." He then narrowed his eyes and added, "But it really is the last time."

"Don't worry. It'll be fine," I asserted with a smile, and seeing that the immediate crisis was averted, I quickly steered the flow of the conversation into a different direction, lest Clarke would give it a second thought and change his mind. "Now, the reason why I asked you to come over as soon as we came home was because of something unrelated. Or… maybe not wholly unrelated, but…"

Just as I was about to broach the subject, we all looked up, hearing the engine of a car backing into our driveway. Just a few seconds after the sound of the handbrake, our front door was thrown open.

"Brother! That was mean! How could you leave without us like—?!" my knightly sister whined as soon as she came inside, only to freeze and throw her hands up as soon as she entered the living room. "A-Awawa! Mr Sennoma! Mrs Sennoma! What are you doing here?!"

"Uu… We're home?" Snowy chimed in from behind her, looking rather awkward.

Judy's mom beamed at the two with a happy-go-lucky, "Hi, cubbies! It's so nice to see you again!"

Meanwhile, the car left the driveway, so I figured nobody else was coming. For once, Penny's timing was pretty great, and I waved at her to get her attention.

"Welcome home, Kiddo? Hey, can I ask a favour? Would you show Ollie around upstairs?"

"Show what?" she blurted out, but then her eyes lit up in excitement, and she completely forgot about her previous grievances. "Hey, Éolienne? Do you wanna come up to our room? I'll show you my PC! We have games!"

That immediately caught the little boy's attention.

"Games? What games?"

"Fun ones!" She grinned at him, then poked my other sister. "Snowy can show you her artwork, too! It's really cool!"

"Is it?"

"Um… I-I'm still learning," my Abyssal sister mumbled, half modest and half shy, but Penny was already in her groove.

"Come on, it'll be fun!"

Like that, the three of them rushed up the stairs and left the conversation, though not before Penny remembered that she was supposed to be mad at me and stuck her tongue out while leaning over the railing. Once they left, I turned to my in-laws and flashed a (what I hoped to be) disarming smile.

"So… Since it's just us now, I have a proposal. Or maybe more of a favour to ask, depending on how you look at it."

Clarke eyed me for a few seconds, as if trying to read my mind, but he eventually gestured at me with a curt, "Out with it."

So, over the next couple of minutes, I gave a quick and rather surface-level description of the recent events in the Abyss, mostly focusing on how I was 'locked up' along with Ollie and how, after many twists and turns, he was appointed as the new Emperor. Judy's mom absorbed it all with rapt attention, while her husband was still a bit skeptical and more than a tad impatient. He didn't interrupt and let us finish though, listening to every bit of colour commentary provided by my girlfriends as well.

Then, at last, when we finally reached the end of the recap, Clarke let out a low hum and directly asked, "So? Why did you go out of your way to explain all this first?"

"To make sure you understand the context in which I'm making this request," I told him in a diplomatic tone right out of Lord Barnabas's handbook.

"Which is?" Judy's mom prompted me, but it was her daughter who responded to him in my stead.

"We're adopting Ollie."

That was a bit of a shocker, so I hurriedly added, "Or rather, we were considering the option of you adopting the kid."

Clarke was shocked, while his wife was…

"Really? Can we?"

"Dear, please calm down," he told her and looked me in the eye. "Leonard? Is this part of another one of those plans I keep hearing about?"

Oh god. I'm never going to live down this stupid schemer reputation, am I?

"No, not really. I just want the kid to grow up in a normal family, and ours is already a bit… crowded."

"Ah, but don't worry," Elly chimed in with a smirk. "If you say you can't, my mum also said she wouldn't mind adopting him!"

It took some effort not to blurt out a deadpan, 'Normal family,' to Elly's proposal, but I managed to hold myself back. Seriously though, while originally the idea of adopting Ollie was nothing more than just an inside joke, the more we thought about it, the more realistic it became. Leaving him in the Abyss was not a great idea, as he was guaranteed to end up getting entangled in politics and factional struggles, and as much as I liked my Draconian in-laws, having them adopt Ollie could be easily misconstrued as holding the Emperor of the Abyss hostage, which wasn't great for faction relations.

On the other hand, we already had a precedent in Angie deciding not to stay in the Elysium and instead pursue higher education and prepare herself for leading her people in earnest. Since Josh was serving as both her boyfriend/Justicar and Ollie's Herald, I could mount a semi-convincing argument on letting the three of them all stay on Critias to further strengthen the bonds between our realms and wipe away the mistrust built up over the centuries and other high-minded stuff.

However, for this to work, Ollie needed to be adopted for real, and while there were a couple of options available, I wasn't one hundred percent comfortable with most of them. Why? Because the kid, despite being Abyssal high-nobility and losing his entire family just a few months ago, was the most normal kid I've ever met, and I preferred he'd stay that way. So, who else would serve better as his foster parents than Judy's family, the only fully human, non-mystical couple I knew?

And no, this definitely wasn't motivated reasoning fuelled by the fact that Judy kept pestering me about this for weeks. Not at all.

"I don't know…" Clarke said, his fingers absently pinching his chin. "This is rather sudden, and…"

"Dear?" Judy's mom interjected, sidling up to her husband and giving him the puppy dog eyes treatment.

"Dad?" my dear assistant also joined the fray, and while I was sure she was trying to follow her mother's example, her deadpan stare was so intense it had kind of the opposite effect.

Clarke held up valiantly under their siege, but at last, it only took a couple of seconds for him to sigh in defeat and say, "Let's not jump into this blind. We should discuss this again back home, and maybe sleep on it, and if you still think it's feasible, we can consider it."

"Yay!"/"Yay."

Mother and daughter exclaimed in unison, though their tones weren't exactly on the same wavelength. Meanwhile, my princess clicked her tongue in defeat, so I reached around her and patted her shoulder.

"Don't worry. You're still going to be Aunty Ellie."

"I know, but…"

Before she could start grumbling, Clarke loudly cleared his throat again and addressed me.

"So, Leonard? Could you please continue where you left off? About this Abyss place, and its customs?" When I only tilted my head to the side a little, he hurriedly clarified, "Just… in the off-chance that we do end up taking care of the boy, I want to be well-informed. Would you, please?"

Since he was asking nicely, I had no reason to turn him down, but I only got a couple of sentences in, about the structure of Abyssal nobility and their castles (since the topic came up beforehand), when we were unexpectedly interrupted by…

"Oh, bollocks. What is it this time?" I griped under my breath, looking at the flat, two-dimensional black hole in space abruptly materialising in the middle of my living room.

A second or so later, a blonde head appeared from the hole, and Oriole exclaimed, "Sol! Quick, come with me! We have a—!" She abruptly fell silent when she noticed all the eyes on her, and she sheepishly added, her voice overlapping with the peeping of a herd of ducklings, "Ah, sorry to interrupt, but this is, like, really-really important! Can I borrow Sol for a moment?"

"Sol?" Clarke echoed her, while I raised a palm.

"She means me. It's a long story." As soon as I finished saying that, I turned back to the pig-tailed Emergent and hissed, "Do you mind? We're in the middle of something here."

"I know, I know, but this is really urgent! Fulgor is reeeally freaking out right now!"

"Fulgor?" I repeated after her, and she vigorously nodded, making her hair distort and sparkle like her orbital rings.

While I internally debated what to do, I glanced around. The princess looked more curious than anything, while my dear assistant was already busy taking notes on her freshly charged phone. As for her parents.

"Dear? Are you all right?"

"Yes, yes," Clarke said in a quiet voice. "I'm slowly getting used to things like… planets appearing like this..."

Meanwhile, my internal debate came to a conclusion, and I wearily got up from my seat and turned to my girlfriends.

"This shouldn't take too long. Can you please pick up the discussion where I left off?"

Judy responded with a tacit, "Sure," so I stepped over to the portal… and pushed Oriole back inside.

"I'll be with you shortly, so please stop distressing my in-laws."

Credit where credit is due, she didn't argue, and a moment later, her portal popped out of existence. A sigh and some heavy steps later, I headed upstairs and opened the door to my room. If it was absolutely urgent, I could've slipped out of the Simulacrum and into the Emergents' commons room right on the spot, but I had no idea how doing that looked from the outside, and Clarke might've already received some SAN damage from Oriole suddenly popping up like that, so I didn't want to take my chances.

As such, I closed the door behind me, lay down on my bed, and closed my eyes, wondering just what could've made Fulgor of all people 'freak out'.

"Sheesh," I whispered as I readied my primary phantom limb. "And just when I finished convincing them that there should be no more emergencies…"

Then, just as I slipped out of the Simulacrum, a new idea raised its ugly head, and I couldn’t help but groan aloud, "Ugh… Please tell me Id-me isn't in charge of jinxing consequences…"  as my consciousness was already heading towards the not-dark not-room.

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