The Simulacrum

After a long day of ups and downs (and sideways, can't forget about those), I was finally ready to go home. Benjamin and the Emergents returned home, as much as the not-dark not-room counted as that, while Pudding was temporarily left in the care of Fred and Galatea. They were apparently in on Judy's whole 'magical girl narrative' ploy, which wasn't too surprising, and we needed a place to hide her until she could make her debut.

Of course, at the end of the day, she was an Emergent who wasn't quite aware of what it meant to be an Emergent, so I had to keep an eye on her, just in case, but so far she was fairly harmless. For once, I dared to be nominally optimistic and hoped that things wouldn't go monumentally awry with her. Not right away, at least. Pudding-kun was always pretty reasonable and helpful, and she was technically just another facet of the Pudding-hivemind, so I was at least halfway confident she wouldn't do anything outrageous with whatever ill-defined anti-Benjamin powers she had.

Oh, right. We still had to figure out what that meant in practice. And she needed a different name, too. I mean, I wasn't afraid that Ichiko would immediately deduce, 'Ah, yes, this girl called Pudding is obviously the same as the mini-shoggoth Pudding-kun' on the spot, but it certainly felt… inappropriate? Yeah, let's go with that word. It just felt inappropriate to call her Pudding when we already had a ‘Pudding’ established.

"Wasn't that one of those soft rules in writing?" I whispered as I stepped out of the shower and wiped myself off.

It was a rhetorical question, of course, because it obviously was. It's because it was confusing for the audience, so it was a general rule-of-thumb advice to avoid multiple characters with the same, or even similar, names.

That, of course, was one of those conventions that reality had no obligation to follow. It's like how, probabilistically speaking, if you had twenty-three random people in a room, there was a fifty percent chance that at least two of them would share the same birthday. Similarly, most classes in school had multiple kids with either the same first name or the same family name (in rare cases, maybe both), but that kind of thing didn't show up in fiction because of the aforementioned rule of thumb.

While I mused over all this, I finished dressing myself and headed downstairs, where my girlfriends had already taken ownership of the living room. Arnwald and Morgana were working overtime in the HNC. It was short for 'Haven of New Camelot', because while it was a mouthful, it was still better than listening to the endless bickering of the 'Havenist' and 'Camelotian' factions. Anyhow, the two of them would only come home in the morning. I also 'coincidentally' gave my sisters some extra allowance his morning, so they were out watching a movie with some friends before a sleepover party, and Tajana already moved in with Roland, full time. In other words, we had the house all for ourselves until tomorrow morning.

"Oh, hi, class rep," I greeted the third girl sitting by the coffee table in the living room. She must've arrived while I was washing up. She was back to her usual school uniform, not even the Magiformer, and… oh, that reminded me! "You really surprised me, you know? It's been ages since I last saw you in your old Magi outfit with the witch hat. It's still pretty cute."

"Chief?" my dear assistant uttered in a rather chilling tone, accompanied by a pair of slightly squinty eyes. "Why are you flirting with Amelia in front of us?"

"I'm not flirting, I'm just saying that her outfit was cute. Wasn't it?"

That question was aimed at my other girlfriend, and Elly enthusiastically nodded along.

"It sure was!"

I gestured at her with a "See?" and then changed the direction of the conversation by picking up one of the handwritten pages on the table. "What's this?"

"Notes," Ammy responded with a squint of her own, apparently also finding my attempt to praise her frilly Magi outfit inappropriate. It's so hard to please girls sometimes... "Also, drafts for the script."

"Drafts," I repeated after her as I skimmed the contents of the page, but it was mostly just technical stuff with a lot of bullet points and arrows pointing all over the place I couldn't quite decipher without the context, so I just nodded knowingly and nudged the conversation onto another track again. "Neat. By the way, how did the girls coax you into this?"

"I wanted to get involved ever since we had that talk," she started to explain, but seeing that I didn't quite pick up what she was putting down, she further clarified, "After I found your old notebook."

"Oh, right. That."

Let's just say that I more-or-less memory-holed that particular incident, because her hyper-nihilistic reaction to the Simulacrum and its underlying workings was just… ugh. It also didn't help that, since I was strapped for time, I decided to get her out of it with some impromptu shock therapy, which was also a bit cringe-inducing in retrospect, so… Yeah, let's just forget about that whole incident again, shall we?

Meanwhile, the class rep nodded along and told me, "Since the opportunity presented itself, and Judy said I could be helpful in this experiment, I volunteered."

"It's not an experiment, it's a play. For the kids," Elly tried to correct her.

"Technically, it's a pseudo-scenario," Judy did the same, but their objections only made the class rep frown and tweak her glasses.

"The original destiny guiding us has vanished with the final confrontation in the Abyss, and we're attempting to create a new one by kick-starting these events. I think we should call it an experiment. At the very least."

"How about we decide on the official name of this magical girl narrative thing after the meeting?" I proposed, but Judy immediately shook her head.

Joined her, exclaiming, "We can't start yet! Not everyone's here yet!" and just as the rules of timing demanded, he…

…

Wait, did those apply to Emergents? Actually, since they were 'synced up' with me right now, maybe they did? There were enough examples of this to make it potentially true, but let's not jump the gun yet.

Anyhow, Fulgor appeared with a flash and the sound of distant thunder, which startled not only the class rep but my girls, too. You'd think that they would be used to someone popping into existence out of thin air after living with me for over a year, but is seems that the special effects made all the difference.

So, there he was, in all his seventies family sitcom dad glory, though this time with a few added accessories, such as a pair of tiny reading spectacles on his nose, a thin brown strap hanging from the edges of the frame looped around the back of his neck, and a thick book under his left arm. It certainly gave him a more intellectual vibe, and… wait.

Maybe I was mistaken in my first impression, and his Definition wasn't supposed to be a grumpy old-timey sitcom dad archetype, but a grumpy old-timey university professor one? Food for thought.

"Please excuse my tardiness. My colleagues required my help with the recent development." There was an odd emphasis on the word 'colleagues', but I couldn't figure out if it was supposed to be sarcastic, or something else, because he put down his book and turned to face me. "Hello, Sol. Eleanor, Judy." He greeted us with one nod at a time, until eventually settling on Ammy. "And…"

"It's a pleasure to meet you, mister Fulgor. Judy has already told me about you." She got up and offered a hand. "I'm Amelia Rhearn."

He responded with a flat, "Yes, I know," but accepted the hand and shook it. He kept muttering, "Amelia. A-me-lia?"

Right. Emergents had some trouble using our in-Simulacrum names, due to language reasons I still couldn't quite understand, so I commented, "I call her class rep."

Our subject squinted at me with a displeased, "Leo?" while the Emergent had a considerably more positive response.

"Yes, that definitely rolls off the tongue much easier, if I can say so. Would you mind if I used that name as well?"

"It's not a name, it's a…" the class rep tried to object, but ultimately shook her head and said, "No, it's fine. Let's just get the meeting started."

"Very well, class rep," Fulgor said, and… oh dear goodness gracious, that sounded sooo weird coming from his mouth.

The girls must've felt the same, because even Elly was giving me the stink-eye, so I was guaranteed to get scolded for this later. For now, though, we had better things to do.

"Let's start the first strategy meeting of 'Operation: Magisches Mädchen'," Judy announced, and while I still wasn't entirely on board with the whole 'gratuitous German' thing, she was the one in charge, so I just let it go. At least Fulgor seemed to approve wholeheartedly, because he let out a pleased hum and opened up his big book somewhere in the middle.

"I'm glad to see that this undertaking is receiving the gravitas it deserves," he started and poked the pages a few times, causing some sentences to literally fly off the paper and start hovering around him. "As the first experimental project within the new framework of the Simulacrum, we must strive to treat it seriously, with great attention to detail."

"Ah, but we can't make it too serious!" Elly objected, giving the Emergent a pause. "It's important for the children to have fun, right?"

"Yes, and that's why we have to be serious," he reiterated, then poked his book a few more times, causing a whole flock of flat, two-dimensional sentences to circle around him like a bunch of tiny birds. "Speaking of tone, while inputting a genre into the Simulacrum was never a straightforward affair, even during the previous system, I always found it prudent to establish it early in development."

Feeling prompted, Judy casually explained, "Traditional Japanese mahou shoujo narrative, with a basic MacGuffin collecting slice of life plot-line. No genre deconstruction or fanservice, although we are leaving some room open for later developments or a sequel narrative shifting the scenario into a more action-oriented Magical Girl Warrior genre."

"Hm. I see, I see," Fulgor… noted down? Was that what he was doing with the book? I couldn't be sure, but after a while he looked up and said, "A very orthodox choice, but perfectly understandable. While we have Sol on our side, we can't be certain of how the… new underlying structures governing the Simulacrum would react, so it's better to start with something low-stakes."

When he mentioned the 'underlying structures', he was unsubtly glancing at me, so I figured he was probably referring to Superego-me and Id-me. Although neither of them was entirely tangible, we’ve started to take their existence for granted, to explain how and why certain tropes and unusual events were cropping up around us despite the lack of a proper, ongoing scenario.

"I'm taking the lead scenario designer role," Judy said casually, then pointed at my other girlfriend. "Elly is our lead artist."

"Right!" She beamed at us and picked up a couple of pages from the table. "I've been practicing with Neige, and I have a couple of prototypes for magical girl outfits." She waved the papers in my direction, and… huh. I could only take a glance, but those sketches looked pretty good. Not quite up to professional level, but better than expected. "I also wrote a theme song, and I'm almost finished with the background track for the transformation sequences! We just have to decide how long those are going to be before I put in the finishing touches."

Seeing that she finished talking, the class rep lightly cleared her throat and quietly explained, "I'm not very experienced with such… creative work, so for now, I'll serve as the inside operative. I'll give information to the participants when necessary to keep them on the tracks of the experiment."

"So you're going to be the team's Zordan," I noted, and it caused everyone to look at me funny, so I had no choice but to explain myself. "You know? Zordan? From Powerful Transforming Might Commandos, the sentai franchise."

"Chief, don't mix genres," Judy warned me with an extra-deadpan look and a wag of her finger. "In this context, it would be more appropriate to call her the mascot."

Fulgor let out a soft hum and adjusted his glasses, saying, "I admit, I have yet to tackle a scenario in this genre before, but wouldn't a mascot usually be some form of marketable animal or fairy-type companion?"

"We couldn't find one," Elly admitted with a sigh, then started counting on her fingers. "First, we considered Ichiko in her fox form, but she's part of the main cast already, so she's out. Then we thought about Pudding-kun, but they couldn't talk before, and now… You know?" Judy and I both nodded, while the class rep looked a bit puzzled, so there's a chance the whole Pudding-situation hadn't been explained to her yet. Meanwhile, Elly pinched her left ring finger between her right thumb and forefinger, and after groaning a bit, she admitted, "And that's it. We don't have any other potential mascots. Isn't that just weird?"

"You could have transformed miss class rep," Fulgor proposed, once again making everyone flinch. Yeah, giving him permission to call her that was definitely a bad idea. "Only temporarily, of course."

"That would be unethical," Judy stated emphatically (or at least as strongly as she could while somehow still remaining deadpan) and pointed at the class rep. "Even presuming that the Chief could do that, to keep the scenario consistent, it would require Amelia to stay transformed until the end, which would mean she couldn't attend school, which would consequently negatively affect her academic, social, and romantic life. Denied."

"Denied!" Elly echoed with a fist in the air, and the way they said that eerily reminded me of the grandma quartet. I really hoped they wouldn't pick up any other habits from them.

"Speaking of Sol, what is his role in the operation?" Fulgor asked, looking at me, and I flashed a toothy grin in return.

"I'm the big, red button with 'Push in case of emergency' written on it with bold letters." He looked both very skeptical and yet not skeptical enough of my claim, so I quickly added, "On a more serious note, I'm in charge of setting up the props and the special effects."

"But also emergency support," Elly stressed on the side. "It's important. We don't want anyone to get hurt."

"And as for Mister Fulgor, as someone with considerable world-building and scenario-writing experience, we were hoping to have you on board as a general adviser."

Fulgor uttered a curt, "I'm honored," and then caught a few of the flying sentences and pushed them back into his book before asking, "How far are we into the pseudo-scenario?"

"Just the beginning," Elly said, while my other girlfriend let out a soft hum.

"Due to the Venerated Benjamin's requests, we decided to push the opening act of the scenario forward, but since we're still missing some pivotal structural elements, the main plot is currently on hold until they are resolved."

"Today was more of a teaser," Elly chimed in, and since she brought it up, I turned to the class rep.

"By the way, how did the kids take what happened?"

She responded with a simple, "Fine," but seeing that I was looking for a bit more detailed answer, she tweaked her glasses, straightened her back, and began to elaborate. "Their reactions were well within expectations, and they readily accepted my explanation of the events. I had more trouble convincing the Praetorian Guard on patrol at the time that nothing dangerous happened in the Restricted Zone."

"I thought we made sure they wouldn’t be present at the time, but we were wrong," Judy noted, and I shrugged.

"Jaakobah must've had someone keep an eye on his totally-not-kids," I guessed, then addressed the class rep again. "How did you get out of that mess?"

"I used the Conduit of the Grimoire card, and insisted that this was top secret Magi business," Ammy stated with some gusto, only to then sheepishly amend, "I also told them that if it was really serious, you would've already done something about it. I hope you don't mind."

"Nah, it's good. We're probably going to have to use my authority to cover up a lot in the future, so there's no harm in starting early."

Ammy nodded in agreement, while Fulgor shuffled his… notes?

The point is, he put a few flying sentences back into his book, took out a few more, and then addressed Judy directly.

"Do we have a plot outline?"

She replied with a confident, "Of course," and gestured at the class rep. "Amelia, please?"

"Hm?" She looked a bit puzzled at first, but then she hastily readjusted her glasses with an "Oh, right!" and started info-dumping.

"According to the script, the plot will revolve around the return of the Elfenbeinprinz of Nachtkönigreich. The Elfenbeinprinz, or 'Ivory Prince', is an ancient Fey entity who ruled the Walpurgis Kingdom of the Fey millennia ago. He was a tyrant and was overthrown by a group of warriors from the land of Sonnenwendenkönigreich, the Solstice Kingdom. Now he's returning, and we made a prophecy that says only by gathering the legacies of these Sonnenwenderetter, the Fey Heroes, can he be stopped. We also established that Fiia is the reincarnation of the legendary princess of Sonnenwendenkönigreich and thus the leader of the Sonnenwenderetter, but it still has to be elaborated and solidified."

…

And that was apparently the footnote version. Conclusion: German was a mistake.

Fulgor didn't seem to mind though, and he even hummed in approval.

"A very strong naming scheme. Can you explain what the term 'Fey' refers to in this context?"

"An ancient race of fairy-like beings," Judy answered in Ammy's stead. "I have mainly patterned them on the áes sídhe and seelie courts of Irish and Scottish folklore, adapted to our needs. We required an outside-context supernatural group that could serve as the linchpin of our plot, and we're planning to introduce the rule of 'only Fey magic can counter Fey magic' in order to keep the already established power systems away from the plot. We are mainly planning to accomplish this through the Chief's help, as well as Benjamin's and Pudding's cooperation."

Oh? Judy didn't let me in on this, but it suddenly made her insistence on getting Emergents involved in the plan make infinitely more sense. I mean, we know for a fact some of my 'mystical properties', such as my immunity to magic, were due to my Emergent nature, so it should apply to them as well. In fact, having Emergent 'actors' was even safer, because they couldn't really get hurt inside the Simulacrum. Even if their Definitions got 'damaged' in any way, they could just reform them without any cost or trouble. Heck, they would only get hurt in the first place if they acknowledged the damage, which… actually explained why I managed to get banged up so many times in the past while I was still fully 'immersed' and unaware of my true nature. Oops?

Anyhow, the point was that getting Benjamin and Pudding to work with us on this project would be genuinely pretty convenient… if we could convince them to do as we asked while also tolerating each other's presence. That might be a problem, but it's something for later.

"Ah, clever," Fulgor noted. "It's also a very convenient way to keep this new scenario from being contaminated by the previous one, so it would give us a clearer result on the long-term viability of this 'internal scripting' approach." He made a few sweeping motions and caught a couple more paragraphs in the air, then asked, "There were two kingdoms mentioned. Is the scenario going to take place somewhere other than this island?"

"No, no," Elly shook her head and made a vague gesture towards the sky. "They are going to be like Elysium and the Abyss."

The Emergent raised a brow with an intrigued, "Going to be?"

"Our backstory is that the Walpurgis-Nachtkönigreich and the Sonnenwendenkönigreich were the original pocket spaces that the Celestials imitated while creating Elysium and the Abyss," Judy clarified. "It's also why Amelia, as the Conduit of the Grimoire and the administrator of the Mana Well Network, is our contact insider, as it makes sense for her to know about this."

Ammy let out a soft sound in the affirmative, then added, "I've also asked Grimmy about it, and now that the two Mana Well Networks are syncronized, we have enough of a surplus to create a pair of smaller pocket dimensions… but we haven't tried it yet, and it will take some trial and error to do it safely, so it's for the future."

"Hm. Quite an intriguing way to integrate your own scenario into the already established setting," Fulgor spoke with audible approval. "What about the main plot?"

"We'll start with an episodic slice of life narrative structure," Judy responded immediately, followed by Ammy.

"During which the children must collect the heritages of the Fey heroes one after the other."

Elly chimed in with, "This will space out the encounters and give us time to finalize some things, like the outfits and locations."

Judy picked up the thread, saying, "We'll set up an appropriate challenge for each one of them in turn, and then they will receive their individualized transformation artifacts, courtesy of the Chief."

"Also," I interjected, "considering who we are talking about here, providing 'appropriate challenges' might be harder than it looks on paper."

"Come on, Leo! Don't be negative!" Elly chided me in turn, while the class rep spoke up again.

"There might also be a need for… what was the term?"

She looked at Judy, and my dear assistant said, "Mid-season upgrade," without missing a beat.

"Yes. We might need to give them upgrades as well, justified by first acquiring and then mastering the heritage of the Fey Heroes."

"Oh, and that'll come with a costume change, too!" the princess added with glee. "Also, new transformation sequences and theme songs! It's…" Suddenly her enthusiasm took an audible hit, and she muttered, "It's going to be a lot of work…"

"That's why I said we should've started the scenario after the finals," the class rep grumbled, while Judy only shrugged in a way that said 'it couldn't be helped' and turned to Fulgor again.

"How does it sound so far?"

The Emergent remained silent for a bit while he considered the question, but then he unexpectedly said, "Good. Great, even, especially for your first scenario. Your basics are solid, and the world-building works perfectly, considering the limitations of an already established setting. However…"

Well, here it comes. I knew that pattern. That was exactly the same a teacher would use to lull you into a false sense of security before dressing down the homework project you spent weeks building, and Fulgor had exactly that look in his eyes.

"You have forgotten about the most important aspect of a scenario. Do you know what I'm referring to?" He glanced around, and… yep. One hundred percent teacher mode. "Anyone?"

"C-Contingency plans?" Elly guesses, but the man shook his head.

"Those are good to have, but no, it's not what I'm talking about."

Since the girls looked stumped and a bit too tense, I decided to crack a joke by blurting out, "The heart."

I expected Fulgor to roll his eyes at me, but instead he pointed over and explained, "Exactly! Sol gets it! A scenario needs a heart! Characters, motivations, interpersonal drama, romance!"

Feeling obligated, I quickly interjected with, "They're children," but then Judy interjected back at me with, "So only very wholesome and age-appropriate romance."

"Obviously," Fulgor huffed, as if saying that out loud was just wasting time by stating the obvious. "What I'm trying to say is that, while you have developed the technical details of your first scenario, you've fallen into the trap that many first-time Emergents make by ignoring the human element. You need to create situations, conflicts, and resolutions that let your actors shine and resonate with the Submerged Ones."

"Right, right," my princess nodded along, her enthusiasm back to one hundred and ten percent. "We must make Ollie and the girls shine!"

"Indeed!" Fulgor nodded deeply, then raised his right hand and said, "And for that…"

All of a sudden, he theatrically snapped his finger, and all of the floating letters, sentences, and paragraphs circling around him started gathering into one spot in front of him. A few seconds later, they took the form of a smaller book, and then he grabbed it out of the air, cracked it open, and stated a not-at-all-ominous, "I have a few suggestions…"

A bit startled, I glanced around and found the class rep looking really intrigued by the booklet, my princess still hyped up, and my dear assistant taking out her phone to take notes, so…

"Darn. We're going to be here until midnight, aren't we…?"

As it turned out, that was an overly optimistic estimate, but all of that was a tale for another time.

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