The Simulacrum

Chapter 39

My morning within the walls of the familiar classroom was decidedly normal, as far as such a word could even be applied to this weird little world I lived in at the moment. Our classes were all held by Mrs. Applebottom, as usual, and the curriculum was mind-numbingly boring, also as usual.

If there was one thing that might have changed, it was that the placeholders seemed to be just a tiny bit less vacuous than before, but considering that I have already seen a similar development in the average passersby on the streets, it was by no ways surprising. It wasn't until the brunch break (which, as the designated snack-time, was a few minutes longer than the rest of the breaks) that things started to proceed down in a pretty damn weird direction.

Right at the beginning of the break, the princess and Judy conspicuously left the classroom to discuss something between the two of them. If I had to make an educated guess, it was probably Judy laying the foundations to the anti-harem countermeasures we discussed the day before, or at least the parts we managed to agree upon before I got fed up with her making fun of the real and tangible threat of me being squeezed into the template of a battle harem protagonist and I chased her home.

Josh also left the place with Angie in tow, ostensibly to see how Snowy was doing. I didn't really see the point, as I have already entrusted Ammy to deal with the paperwork on the school's side of things the day before, and as for the social side, since she had the same cover story as us about catching a nasty flu, I didn't see how him checking on her would affect that in any shape or form. But then again, Josh seemed to subtly favor her over the other members of his entourage, so maybe it was just an excuse to see her again?

Speaking of Ammy though, she was apparently forced to 'take a day off' (her words, not mine) to rest, on her grandfather's orders, because she only finished dealing with my sister's paperwork late last night, even though I told her it wasn't particularly urgent at this point. Maybe she was a bit of a workaholic, I wondered? Anyways, that explained why I haven't met her in the morning, and I hoped she would get some actual rest and would be slightly less cranky by the next time we met.

Anyhow, I was just about to put my English books away and take out the science ones in preparation of the next, no doubt absolutely riveting lesson, when I became aware of the fact that someone was standing by my chair. In actual fact, there were multiple someones; a grand total of four of them, if I wanted to be precise. I reflexively straightened my back in my chair, a little apprehensive of the fact that I was suddenly surrounded by a small mob.

On closer look, all of them seemed to be my placeholder classmates; four guys with almost identical builds and simple haircuts denoting that they weren't particularly important in whatever grand scheme of things were pulling the strings of this world (if my dear assistant's insistence of such things to be believed at face value). Still, seeing them gathering around me like that was highly unusual, so after the first surprise wore off, I cautiously asked, "Can I help you with anything?"

"Say, Leo?" the guy on my right with unkempt, slightly greenish hair asked me in a very familiar tone, though for the life of me I couldn't remember if I ever talked to him in the past.

Still, after a bit of consideration, I prompted him to continue with a cautious, "Yes?"

The members of the small group shared a somewhat nervous look between each other, which incidentally managed to get me nervous as well, until the same guy took a shallow breath and asked, "Are you and the new girl, like an item?"

For the longest moment I could only blink at them in baffled silence, but at last my brain finally rebooted from its incredulity-induced blue screen of death and I answered with a flat, "If by 'the new girl' you mean Elly, then yes, we are."

"You see, I told you," another of the guys, this one sporting a brown-ish bowl cut, elbowed his comrade in the side with a somewhat robotic motion.

The lips of the target of said jab were bent in a smile that didn't really reach his eyes and he muttered a seemingly disinterested, "You did."

To be frank, I was getting really, really freaked out by this blatant deviation from placeholder behavior, but I somehow managed to keep my expression in check and only awarded them what I called a 'Single Eyebrow Raised in an Intrigued Manner; ver. 0.7.2'. In the meantime, another member of the group, this one with a short crew cut, grabbed hold of one of the empty chairs nearby and pulled it over so that he could sit down next to me.

"You lucky son of a bitch," he told me with a toothy yet at the same time wooden grin. "I can't believe you managed to nab one of the four goddesses of the school."

"Five goddesses," the last member of the troupe, a guy with short, spiky hair interjected with what I presumed was an indignant huff.

"Oh, right, she's there too," Mr. Crew Cut agreed immediately.

"Hold on for a moment," I awkwardly wedged myself into the slowly budding conversation and asked, "What exactly are we talking about again?"

"You don't know about the four goddesses?" Mr. Bedhair asked me as if I was the weird one.

"Five," Mr. Spiky automatically corrected him, but he didn't respond to him.

"Everybody knows who the goddesses are!" Mr. Bowl Cut asserted with rock-solid conviction, then he began to explain, "As we all know, the members of the photography club and the journalism club create the monthly rankings of the most popular girls of our school."

"Yes," Mr. Crew Cut agreed while mechanically nodding over and over again.

"It is common knowledge," Mr. Bowl Cut continued unabated, "that after collecting the votes, they are handed over to the dependable and entirely unbiased analytics club, who then hand the final results back to the journalism club. As we are all aware, any of the girls whose popularity reaches the threshold of 45.326% amongst the male population are considered to be one of the goddesses of Blue Cherry High."

"Indeed," Mr. Crew Cut agreed again.

It took me about this long to realize that I was on the receiving end of an honest to goodness infodump about the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my well, maybe not life, but the last couple of days, I'd reckon. Anyhow, since this little gaggle of placeholders went out of their way to share this vital and not at all banal information with me, I decided I might as well humor them a little further.

"Sorry, but I wasn't really keeping up with this um ranking-thing? You mean to tell me Elly is on it?"

"Of course she is," Mr. Bedhair confirmed with unenthusiastic fervor.

"And who are the rest?" I probed a little further, mostly out of a sense of bile fascination.

"As we all know," Mr. Bowl Cut started again while counting on his fingers, "We have the new girl, Eleanor, who took the rankings by storm and propelled herself to the top in record time! Her natural beauty, her demure temperament, and her high-class upbringing is a definitive hit with the voters."

I wondered just when the situation turned into a sales pitch, but for the time being I decided to just go with the flow.

"The next one would be Angeline," Mr. Spiky asserted himself with a still wooden grin. "Her natural, tomboyish charm and upbeat personality is a definite hit with the target demographic."

"Then we have Amelia," Mr. Bowl Cut spoke without leaving even a second of breathing space in their explanation. "She single-handedly brought back the academic type into popularity with her outstanding beauty and shy temperament. She is also popular with the crowd in love with the level headed, sisterly type."

I wanted to point out that I really didn't think she was either shy or particularly sisterly, but before I could do it, they dropped a minor bombshell.

"The fourth goddess is naturally Mrs. Applebottom," Mr. Crew Cut stated like it was obvious.

"Really?" the incredulous question slipped out of my mouth before I knew it, and the gaggle of sentient haircuts around me all nodded in unison.

"Of course!" Mr. Spiky exclaimed with something that I could be best described as dull indignation.

"Yes," Mr. Bowl Cut seconded with a serious nod. "Her mature charm and the excitement of a forbidden student-teacher affair naturally propels her to the top so that she can take her rightful place among the goddesses."

"And as for the fifth goddess," Mr. Spiky cut in before I could voice my nuanced opinion on the matter and said, "She is naturally no other than the true rising star of our school, the one and only Neige from class 1-A! She took the rankings by storm and propelled herself to the top in record time!" Under normal circumstances this would have been the point where I injected a snide comment about them using the exact same words to describe Elly, but considering it was a group of unusually animate placeholders we were talking about here, I decided it would have been wasted effort, so instead I let him continue, and he said, "Her pure, innocent charm and her natural grace and beauty immediately stole the hearts of all of her classmates, and the number of her fans swells by the day! Even if you don't pay attention to the rankings, you must have heard about her."

"Actually," I finally elbowed my way back into the conversation, then flatly stated, "She is my sister."

"Really?" Mr. Crew Cut asked in an astonished voice that didn't show on his face at all. "You are a lucky man! You are not only dating one of the goddesses, but you can also bask in the glory of another! How enviable!"

"Truer words have never been spoken," Mr. Bedhair said in a, dare I say, profound voice before he let out a theatrical sigh. "Alas, once we also considered ourselves lucky, by being in the same class as three of the goddesses and taught by the fourth one. Oh, the folly of youth!"

" Okay, let's put the community theater dramatics aside and just tell me what happened," I cut in, getting steadily more exasperated by the second.

"Joshua Bernstein happened!" Mr. Bedhair told me with a still needlessly theatrical scowl. "He single-handedly monopolized two of the goddesses from the very beginning, and rumors say that he already sank his fangs into the innocent flesh of Neige as well! He is the enemy of every single warm-blooded boy in our school!"

I gave the disturbingly enthusiastic 'warm-blooded boy' a Judy brand deadpan look and asked, in a strained but polite voice, "You are aware that I am friends with Josh, right?"

"Of course," Mr. Spiky confirmed with a nod. "That's why we want you to become our ally!"

"Your what again?"

"Our ally," Mr. Bowl Cut repeated with a meaningful nod. "Since you are close to the fire, metaphorically speaking, we want you to ensure that Joshua doesn't monopolize all our goddesses by himself."

" By that same logic, shouldn't you also dislike me for going out with Elly?" I asked the obvious question, but the four of them only shook their heads in unison.

"That is different," Mr. Bedhair explained, "We are not so petty as to stand in the way of true love."

"Everyone could see that you two had a thing for each other from the beginning," Mr. Spiky added without eliciting any reaction from the previous speaker, as he continued:

"So long as you do not intend to hog all the other goddesses too, you are okay in our book."

"If you do, then you are going to become the next number one public enemy of all boys in the school," Mr. Crew Cut added off-handedly.

"Think about it," Mr. Spiky concluded, and all of them seemed to agree with him, as they unceremoniously scattered without as much as a 'bye' or something, leaving me sitting all alone, and more than a little confused by the entire encounter.

"So, that just happened," I concluded my retelling of the brunch break's events to Judy with a tired shrug, and she handed me a neatly wrapped sandwich in return. It was lunch break o-clock, and while the others went to the cafeteria, Judy and I were having a separate meal on the rooftop. At first I was curious why Elly didn't insist on joining us, but as it turned out, it was all part of some kind of 'rotation' my two girlfriends agreed upon beforehand, so I didn't dwell on it too long.

"I have a hypothesis," my dear assistant stated while unwrapping her own food.

"Don't you always?" I jested with a smile, but gestured for her to speak it all the same.

"I believe we might have been mistaken about our initial assessment regarding the school's importance in the broader narrative," she told me while gesturing for me to come closer on the bench, so I did just that. She still seemed unsatisfied by the tiny distance between us, so she also slid towards me until our shoulders and hips both met. That seemed to finally mollify her and she continued by explaining, "We have already noted that the student body of the school is composed almost entirely of placeholders. In my opinion, this serves as a strong indicator towards the school itself not being considered a crucial element by the narrative."

"So, if I understand your reasoning right," I mused between two bites, "since Josh's school life wasn't supposed to be super-important, the world didn't spend the effort to populate this place with anything other than extra-rudimentary placeholders and annoying school nurses."

"In a nutshell," she confirmed.

"So the reason why the placeholders are suddenly making creepy lists about pretty girls in the school is because?" I nudged her a little.

"It's most likely because the narrative raised the importance of the school, and with it, the placeholders began to develop."

"So it's similar to our previous hypothesis about the 'simulation' adapting to our presence by raising the complexity of its visible parts," I mused aloud, only to pause when I noticed that Judy had an 'I really want to ask a question Leo is going to find annoying' look on her face. Still, since I noticed it, I was pretty much obliged to ask, "Is there a problem?"

"Was I on the list?" she asked with an unusually intense look, earning a tired roll of the eye from me.

"Not that I know of, no," I told her honestly, and when she visibly puffed her cheeks, I hastily added, "Come on Dormouse! Why do you even care about some silly list put together by some horndog placeholders? On my list, you are already number one."

"Oh?" her complexion momentarily brightened, only for it to return to its usual deadpan glory when she questioned, "What about Eleanor?"

"She is also number one, obviously," I told her with a wink before taking a large bite from the sandwich in my hand.

"That's a copout," she countered unabated.

"But true," I riposted with a smile, which finally seemed to put the topic at rest. "I wonder if our experiments with placeholder memory have anything to do with this sudden development," I pondered in order to bring the conversation back to its roots.

"Almost certainly," Judy affirmed with a nod. "We have already established that if you pay a lot of attention to a placeholder, they stop being one and become your girlfriend."

I gave her a pointed look and then pinched her side, which made her jump in surprise.

"Stay focused on the topic."

"I am," she protested while pinching my side in turn, though as usual, her attempt at physical violence only tickled a little. "I am the walking, talking proof that if you interact with someone long enough, they stop being generic placeholders and rapidly develop a personality. Unlike Joshua, who is still blinded by some form of perception filtering, we have been actively interacting with the placeholder population. After all the stimuli we provided, it makes perfect sense that they would develop their own personalities and quirks as well."

"I think making lists about their 'goddesses' is a little bit beyond something I would call a simple 'quirk'."

"It could be worse," Judy told me with shrug. "They could be convinced that we live in a simulation and try to investigate it."

"Touch," I muttered while wiping my mouth with the napkin provided by my thoughtful assistant, and after a few seconds of silence I decided to break the ice on a certain topic that we couldn't resolve the day before. "So, speaking of roles and meta-stuff, did you have any idea about how I could avoid turning into a protagonist?"

Judy gave me an odd look for a moment or five.

"Why are you so fixated on that?"

"I can't help it," I answered with my earnestest gaze. "Whether it's because of the designs of your pet narrative theory, or just due to the tropey laws of this universe, but at this rate, if I'm not careful, I could end up usurping Josh's rightful place as the main character."

"I still don't see why you are making such a huge fuss about the prospect," Judy said, seemingly disinterested, and she took out a thermos from her bag.

"For a start, it would be an enormous pain in the arse," I grumbled while leaning my back against the bench. "For example, all the bad guys would want a piece of me."

"Don't they already do that?"

"Well, I suppose Crowey would, but that's a special case," I dismissed her objection with a small wave of my hand. "I am talking about prospective antagonists and villains and other assorted miscreants who would inevitably show up to complicate the protagonist's life."

"What would you do if they showed up to complicate Joshua's life?" Judy suddenly asked, taking me aback for a moment.

"Um Well, I would probably try to deal with them before they could cause major trouble," I answered truthfully, earning me a triumphant 'A-ha!' from my girlfriend.

"Then it doesn't make much of a difference, now does it?"

"Yes, it does!" I protested, albeit maybe just a little more feebly than I would have liked, so I picked another approach, one towards which I hoped she would show more of a reaction. "Bad guys aside, if I get shoehorned into the role of a battle harem protagonist, I will also have to deal with a constant stream of prospective harem members showing up to further complicate my life!"

"Once again, it doesn't sound too different from your current situation."

"Then why don't you stop being cheeky about it and instead try to help me?" I finally snapped at her. Judy once again sent me an odd glance, but at last she shrugged her shoulders with an expression that said 'Might as well.'

"Might as well." She whispered, and I almost told her she was being redundant, but I managed to stay silent and instead I patiently waited for her to say her piece, which came in the form of the question, "What is the definition of a protagonist?"

"Pardon?" I asked back by reflex, so she repeated again.

"I asked, what is the definition of a protagonist?"

"The main character of a story?" I guessed, but she shook her head.

"I mean the etymological definition," she clarified. "The protagonist is the 'first mover' in a play or tale," she explained to me with a serious expression. "They, by definition, move the plot forward." She paused here and dramatically pointed at my face. "That is you right now."

"Errr" I stammered for a moment, looking for words.

Since I couldn't find them in time, she continued by saying, "Ever since you woke up last week, you grabbed the rein of the situation and never let it go. You set up a relationship, you set yourself up as the leader of our group, you made a deal with the most important person in town, you secured a secret base and rescued a group of fugitive warriors, you adopted someone, and then you made contact with a monster hunter who invited you to a hunt, and then you flirted with her." She paused here again, probably waiting for my reaction, but I only rolled my eyes at her last point, so she added, "In the same timespan, Joshua, our alleged harem protagonist, didn't advance his relationships, got dragged around by you, and didn't really accomplish anything beyond learning about the rules and elements of the setting, most of which was also provided by you."

"Well, sure, if you compare things so directly like that, then it's obvious that I would appear to 'move the plot' more than Josh, but this should be only temporary." I countered with a frown. "If anything, I am running him through the express boot-camp specifically so that he could assume his role as the protagonist as quickly and as safely as possible."

"Intentions don't change the facts," Judy said with a small shake of her head.

"Fine, fine," I grudgingly relented. "Let's say I grant all of that to you. Do you have any advice I could use?"

"Of course I do," she answered with startling confidence, following which she took out her phone and, after some customary poking, she began by saying, "It is very simple actually. You just have to move the plot forward."

" And how do I do that? No, scratch that! How would I even know if I was moving the 'plot' forward without knowing what it is or whether it even exists?"

"I see two options," she told me while raising her hand and giving me a peace-sign for illustration. "First, you could completely remove yourself from Joshua's circle and become an independent observer."

"That's not very likely to happen," I told her frankly. I have already gone above and beyond the duty of a simple friend in order to keep everyone safe and working together, so completely abandoning them would have been the equivalent of flushing all my hard work down the drain. Not to mention, since Snowy was my sister at this point, and she was firmly entrenched in Josh's entourage, I probably couldn't separate myself from the group without cutting all ties with them, something I wasn't willing to do.

"In that case the second option," Judy began, then paused as she tried to bend only her middle finger. For some weird reason she couldn't seem to manage, so she used her other hand to bend it and then continued like nothing happened by saying, "The second option is that you let others, in this case Joshua in particular, move the plot in your stead. This alternative only requires that you loosen your iron grip on Joshua and the others."

"Wait, what?" I muttered as my brows involuntarily descended into a frown. "You are saying that like I'm some sort of tyrant"

"No, not a tyrant," Judy acknowledged. "You are more like a mother hen."

"That's actually not much better," I grumbled, but got completely ignored.

"If you don't allow them to progress the plot on their own, you cannot expect them to shoulder protagonist duties in your stead."

"True," I admitted, though without much conviction in my words. I mean, I still didn't think I was having an 'iron grip' on the group, but at the same time letting them run free before I thought they were ready simply made me too worried for their safety, so maybe I was acting like a mother hen after all? Damn.

"If you pick option too and want to shed your prospects of becoming the protagonist, I recommend you should decide upon another role in the group, with a fitting character archetype to go along with it," Judy continued while completely disregarding my inner turmoil. "I believe the 'idiot friend' position is still open.

"Ha. Ha. Ha. Very funny."

"Thank you, I'm trying," Judy answered with tiny-miny little smirk. "If that's out of the question, how about becoming a mentor?"

"No good," I shook my head. "They have a nasty habit of coming down with a sudden case of 'poignant death-itis'."

"Are you sure?" she slightly cocked her head to the side and added, "You are already fulfilling most of the criteria."

"I'm fairly sure that I'm not nearly old enough to become a mentor character," I retorted, but Judy shook her head in return.

"I said 'most' of the criteria. Also, it's not a problem a fake beard cannot fix," she stated with perfect seriousness. "I also have a handy list of pithy yet profound last words I can mail over to you if you are interested."

"Thanks, but no, thanks," I told her bluntly. "Also, hold your horses for a moment. Do I really have to try and adhere to some kind of character trope? Can't I just be myself?"

"You are yourself right now, and that's why you are worried you will turn into a protagonist," Judy answered while she unscrewed the top of the thermos she took out not too long ago and she began to pour tea for the both of us.

"Yes, but Do I really have to change up how I act? I mean, we already discussed how I should change my behavior around the opposite sex to avoid further romantic complications, but this sound uncomfortably more comprehensive."

"Either that, or if you cannot stop yourself from meddling, you should do it more covertly and in a way that from the outside you wouldn't seem to be in the center of attention," she mused as she handed a portable cup to me.

"Thank you," I spoke with a grateful smile, then after taking a sip from the warm beverage I continued with, "Getting out of the spotlight sounds way more reasonable."

"In that case, you should aim to become a Hypercompetent Sidekick."

"A sidekick to whom?"

"Joshua, obviously," she stated before taking a big sip from her tea and letting out a satisfied sigh, then she added, "Or if you want to be less obvious about it, you can always become an Almighty Janitor."

I gave my girlfriend a flat look and told her, in a voice swinging between impressed and exasperated, "I rue the day I introduced the troper site to you."

"No point crying over spilled milk," she told me coyly. "So, what will you be?"

I shook my head, accentuated by a tired groan, and told her, "All jokes aside, you know how much I hate considering people as walking character archetypes. Do you really think I want to purposefully become one?"

"You don't need to become one, only act like one in public," she pointed out. "For example, you have already built up a reputation as an 'information broker'. Use that as an excuse to stay back, support the others from the background, and let them deal with the villain of the week."

"For that to work, we will have to get Josh to the point where he could actually deal with something like that on his own," I muttered, not entirely convinced by her reasoning.

"You also need to put a stop to your Chronic Hero Syndrome," Judy warned me, which only earned her another roll of the eye.

"Stop it. That's already too much trope talk for the day."

Judy stuck out her tongue at me, an expression that was once again made infinitely funnier by the fact the rest of her face remained aloof as usual, then she leaned closer to me and rested her head well, not on my shoulder, but more against my upper arm, really.

"Fine. If you don't want further advice, I will proceed to our next order of business."

"Cuddling?" I asked, slightly apprehensive.

"Yes," she answered while repeatedly rubbing her head against me. "We skipped the sanctioned cuddling time yesterday, so we should at least try to catch up to our quota."

"Be my guest, then," I yielded with a small chuckle, finding her unusual way for showing her affection strangely amusing.

While I wasn't exactly satisfied with the results of this conversation, I had to admit that Judy's viewpoint was once again a valuable one. I didn't think I had something as silly as a 'chronic hero syndrome' going on, but it was hard to deny that, in my mad scramble to ensure everyone's safety, I probably overdid things a little. Maybe toning back my efforts to maintain a semblance of control over the unfolding situation wasn't such a bad idea.

In fact, as much as I hated to admit it, Judy's suggestion of being an 'Almighty Janitor' held a kind of juvenile attraction for me. I mean, who wouldn't want to be an underestimated, hidden badass who would show up in the nick of time to save the protagonist? Not to mention, it came with the benefit of, by definition, not being the protagonist. It was a win-win for me.

As to how to accomplish this, or at least pretend to be one that was a question for another time.

Unfortunately, our tranquil little moment didn't last long, as the single roof access door was suddenly (and borderline violently) pushed open by an unexpected person.

"There you are!" an exhausted and visibly irate class rep, dressed in her casual clothes, declared the moment she laid her eyes on us, which, considering we were sitting on the bench right in front of the exit, wasn't a tough feat at all.

"Hi, class rep," I greeted her with a purposefully wooden expression.

"Don't 'hi' me!" Ammy fumed as she walked over to us. "Why are you here?"

That question made me glance at Judy, but she seemed to be as lost as I was, so I answered by stating the obvious.

"We are having lunch. Speaking of which, what are you doing here? I thought you had a day off?"

"I would have, if someone would just pick up his phone!" Ammy declared with a scowl aimed at me, taking me aback for a second. I reached into my pocket to get my phone, and lo and behold, it indeed had about half a dozen missed calls on it.

"Oh? Sorry, I have my phone automatically muted during school hours. It's regulation, you know?"

"I know," the class rep fumed while placing her hands on her hips. "What I also want to know is why you are eating outside in the cold instead of in the cafeteria, like normal people!"

"It's not that could, right, Judy?"

"I don't know, I'm being warmed," she responded by pointedly rubbing her head against my arms, eliciting a small chuckle from me.

"You guys are very cute, but it doesn't change the fact that I had to run over the entire school to find you," Ammy continued to gripe, this time while crossing her arms in front of her chest.

"Fine, I'm listening," I told her at last. "Why were you looking for us?"

"I wasn't the one looking for you," she denied immediately, much to my surprise. "Mr. Peabody wanted to see you for a medical examination."

" And he sent you to talk to me?"

"No, he told grandfather, and he sent me to talk to you," Ammy clarified with an annoyed huff.

"Seriously? Are you the only person in the entire school than can be entrusted with any task?"

"Don't get me started!" Ammy began to fume once again as she sat down next to me and complains began spilling out of her like smoke out of a chimney. I glanced at Judy again, but she didn't seem to mind, so I decided to listen to her woes. It didn't cost anything but time, and since it was our unscheduled cuddling-time anyway, it wasn't like I had anything better to do.

The sound of the last bell of the day filled me with, of all things, trepidation, all thanks to a certain workaholic class representative. This might come off as a surprise, but I really, really didn't want to meet the weird school nurse with his annoying laugh and his stupid mallet. Unfortunately for me, Ammy spent an uncomfortable amount of time nagging me about how I had to go there first thing after school before she left.

It might have been an exercise in delaying the inevitable, but I waited until Mrs. Applebottom left the classroom before I managed to will myself to rise to my feet.

"Are we going to have another meeting at 'your place'?" Joshua asked me while packing his bag with one hand and making air quotes with the other.

"Yes," I told him while glancing around, and noticed that Angie was already by his side. How she managed to get to our row just a few seconds after the bell rang, I'll never know.

"Are we going there right away?" she asked while hefting her own bag. "I have my spare clothes ready."

"No, I have to visit with someone first. Let's meet up at my house later."

"Really?" the celestial girl leaned forward with an impish grin. "Are you having a clandestine meeting behind your girlfriends' back already?"

My first reaction was to flick her forehead in retaliation, but then I recalled what we discussed with Judy about being way too casual about physical contact with girls. But then again, do forehead flicks actually count as 'physical contact'? Not to mention, it was Angie we were talking about here. It wasn't as if a small gesture like that could be misunderstood or somehow misconstrued as flirting, right? In fact, considering our association was of the 'good friends' variety, not doing it would have been more conspicuous than doing it!

Like that, I finally reasoned myself into inflicting light corporeal punishment on the nosy girl, but unfortunately getting there took so long I lost the opportunity to do so, with one of my aforementioned girlfriends suddenly leaning into my field of vision and asking, "What were you talking about? Some kind of meeting?"

"Yeah," I answered the curious Elly with a smile, and since I had no reason to be reserved with her, I repurposed my flicking-finger into a poking one and I gently nudged her nose with it. "Don't worry; I'm only visiting the school nurse."

"Shouldn't that make me more worried?" she asked as she tilted her head to the side.

"Nah," I shook my own and told her, "It's probably something silly, like the last time."

"When was the last time?" came the next question, though this time from my dear assistant, who made her way over to us in the meantime.

"It was" I paused for a moment as I tried to remember, then I said, "I think it was just around the time Elly transferred in."

"Now that I think about it," Josh mused while thoughtfully rubbing his chin. "The last time I saw him was when Judy got sick and had to be taken to the infirmary. I don't think I met him ever since."

"Me neither," Angie echoed his sentiment while mimicking his chin-rubbing, prompting Josh to poke her in the side. See? I wasn't the only one who wasn't reserved about physical contact! But then again, it was Josh we were talking about here, so if I wanted to avoid being a harem protagonist, maybe I following his lead wasn't the most prudent idea.

Anyways, while the childhood friends entered into a silly little slap fight (which was cute and all, but when I looked at them, I could kind of understand why the sentient haircut troupe considered him their enemy), I shrugged my shoulders and told no one in particular, "The school nurse is a rare and cautious animal. You are unlikely to meet in in the wild unless you walk into its lair."

Elly gave me a blank stare for a moment, but Judy just subtly rolled her eyes, leaned closer to the draconic girl and whispered to her, "The Chief is doing a skit now. This is the point where you are supposed to either give a punchline, or provide him with something he can follow up on to get to a punchline."

"Oooooh!" the princess' eyes opened wide with revelation for a moment, then she glanced at me, then back at Judy, and asked, "So what am I supposed to say now?"

"Something that fits," my assistant told her while nudging her forward. "Just say whatever comes to your mind, as we practiced."

I would be lying if I said I wasn't curious about what Judy meant by 'practice', but I decided not to interrupt them for the time being. After a few seconds of hesitation, Elly finally looked me in the eye and asked, "So um is he endangered?"

"Unfortunately, no," I answered without missing a beat. "School nurses are rare simply because they are very territorial, you see. So long as ours is here, no other would dare to enter his territory."

"Then how do they breed?" Judy kept the ball rolling.

"Ah, I'm glad you asked," I told him with my best professorial smile. "You see, young lady, like all species of the Healthcareus Workeriensis genus, the School Nurse does all its breeding during a period colloquially referred to as 'college'. After they grow out of the college years and establish their territory, the common School Nurse is a rather solitary creature."

"Fascinating," Judy concluded with a profound nod.

Elly, on the other hand, only looked us funny, and then she concluded, "I just can't keep up with you two."

"You just need practice," Judy encouraged her with a few mechanical pats on the back, which was a surprisingly heartwarming sight, all things considered.

In the meantime the childhood friend duo also stopped bickering, so I turned to them and said, "In conclusion, I will be visiting the nurse. I don't know how long it will take, so I want to ask you a favor."

"Ooookay," Josh answered in the positive, yet for some reason he seemed really guarded, as if he was expecting some kind of trick. "What is it?

"Can I ask you guys to escort Snowy home?"

"Sure! We are going to your place anyway," Angie answered in Josh's stead.

"Thanks. Just remember; if you catch even a whiff of an annoying monster huntress, press the button."

"Ugh," Josh groaned as he rolled his eyes. "You have been repeating that line so many times it's going to show up in my dreams."

"Even if she only shows up in your dreams, you should still press the button," I told him with a smirk. I picked up my bag and added, "I will catch up to you guys as soon as I'm finished. Judy has my spare keys, so you should be able to get in."

"Since when do you have a key?" Elly questioned my assistant as I walked out, and I could hear the beginning of her explanation concerning how it was necessary because a certain someone broke my lock in the past. After I exited the classroom I headed towards the nurse's office while weaving between the torrent of placeholders filling the familiar hallways.

At first I didn't exactly know why, but as I walked, I started feeling something similar to dja vu, and it took me a while to figure out what it was about. I recalled my first day in school, right after I woke up in this weird, terrifying yet strangely interesting world, and how I just 'followed my legs' and let them take me wherever I was supposed to go. Funnily enough, I realized I was doing something similar again, but this time not because I was lost and strangely compelled; quite the opposite, really. I was walking on autopilot precisely because I was so familiar with the school at this point. It made me feel happy wasn't the right word. Content? Maybe. It was a strange yet not at all unpleasant feeling of realizing that I had a familiar place where I felt grounded.

While pondering on this I reached the nurse's office before long, and for a few seconds I silently lingered before the door while weighing my options. If I wanted to be honest, I had to admit that I was actually a little curious about what the annoying nurse wanted from me, but at the same time I was more than a little apprehensive about it too. But as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Though again, they also say curiosity killed the cat

Either way, at the end of the day I firmly knocked on the door, and soon I could hear a familiar voice from the other side.

"O-ho-ho. Come on in, it's open."

"Oh great. I'm not even in yet, and I'm already annoyed," I quietly griped as I cautiously entered the infirmary.

The place was exactly the same as the last time I came by. I don't even know what I was expecting. The portly man sitting by his desk was also the same. He glanced over his shoulder when he heard the door open and gave me a welcoming smile before he stood up and straightened his white coat.

"O-ho-ho. The dean said you would be coming over, but I didn't expect you would show up so early. What a pleasant surprise."

His mention of the 'dean' made me pause on my track for a moment. Was the good nurse actually a mage under Lord Grandpa's payroll, or just an ordinary school employee? I knew that the student council was apparently in on the whole masquerade, but I never asked the class rep about the man in front of me. Maybe it was time I poked him a little

"Really? Did he get his door fixed yet?"

"Pardon?" Mr. Peabody muttered as he looked upon me with confusion. At least it wasn't a thousand-yard stare as in the past.

"I meant the big, fancy door of his underground study. I've heard someone might have accidentally broken it."

"Underground study?" The man's eyes opened wide for a moment under his bushy eyebrows, then he let out another grating laugh and told me, "O-ho-ho. What a peculiar thing to say! Could it be your memories are still missing? But wait, even if they do, you should know that his office is on the first floor. Truly peculiar!"

His short outburst made me come to a dead halt as a cold shiver of recognition ran down my spine. After recollecting myself, I took a deep breath and tentatively asked him, "Now that you mention it, I told you about my amnesia, didn't I?"

"O-ho-ho. You most certainly did, and I most certainly didn't forget," Mr. Peabody tapped his temple with his index finger and responded with an affectionate smile of all things. "Indeed, such an uncommon ailment is hard to forget."

"Did you tell Lo I mean, did you tell the dean about it?"

The nurse gave me an odd look for a moment, then he told me, with a deadly serious expression, "Young man! How could you think I would break my oath of medical confidentiality!"

"What oath?" I responded reflexively, earning me a huff from the nurse.

"The Hippocratic oath, of course," he clarified. "It is the most fundamental oath all health care providers must adhere to, and I am going to do so as well. Wait, could it be that you didn't know because of you amne?"

"No, not that," I cut him off with a sharp gesture and a groan. "I just thought it was some more specific oath instead of the Hippocratic one because you made it sound like it was a huge deal."

"O-ho-ho! But it is a big deal, isn't it? Do you think I want to be hunted down by the Brotherhood of Hippocrates for my breach of the oath?"

" Wait, what?" I blurted out the moment his words registered with me.

Mr. Peabody looked me in the eye with a dead serious expression for about a second, then he burst into an especially high-pitched version of his signature grating laughter.

"O-HO-HO! I'm only joking, young man! Don't worry, there is no chance such an organization would"

"Stop right there!" I exclaimed while pointing at him, visibly startling him. "Don't deny it outright, because that's just tempting fate. Don't talk about it either, because that just increases the chances that it will become real. Just keep silent, move on, and pretend you never even made that joke. Are we clear?"

I must have looked at least half as hysterically angry as I felt at the moment, because the nurse immediately nodded in the affirmative. Good. The last thing I needed to complicate this world (and my life by extension) was a secret brotherhood of assassin doctors running around.

Once I recollected my nerves into a semblance of stability, I took a deep breath and asked, "So, why did you want to see me?"

"Well, to be perfectly honest, while I did want to talk with you, I didn't expect you would show up so soon," the still slightly apprehensive nurse explained while gesturing for me to take a seat. "However, Mr. Amadeus said that I should conduct a comprehensive medical survey if you were to come here, so why don't we do just that?"

"Is that really necessary?"

"O-ho-ho. I was told you suffered some injuries not too long ago. Is that right?"

"Well, yes"

"O-ho-ho. And I was also told you didn't visit the hospital, right?"

"No, I didn't"

"Oh-ho-ho. Then I would say it is very, very necessary."

After a short while I let out a defeated sigh and complied by taking a seat on the bed. Peabody let out another, supremely grating chuckle and began to rummage through the various cabinets in the room, retrieve all kinds of tool and medical instruments from them, and then create a big pile on top of his desk.

As I quickly learned, he wasn't joking when he said he wanted to do a full checkup. The process, which started rather innocently by measuring my height and weight, slowly escalated until I found myself lying half-naked on the bed with a series of wires with suction cups on their ends attached to me and the alleged medical professional making profound humming noises while fiddling with the EKG machine on their other end. Under normal circumstances I might have questioned why on god's green earth would a high school infirmary have an EKG machine, but by this point I felt that pointing out such mundane idiosyncrasies was below me.

Anyhow, the whole medical survey lasted for about half an hour, and after we were done, Peabody finally took off the electrodes and allowed me to stand up and get dressed.

"How fascinating," he murmured while looking over the page where he was collecting my results. I had a feeling that he was speaking up just to prompt me to ask, but since I was tired of dealing with him, I decided not to try and engage in any mind games and addressed him right away.

"How are my results?"

"Outstanding," he told me straight away. "Are you part of the track club, by any chance?"

"No, Im not."

"Really? O-ho-ho. How curious. Your records are like that of a professional athlete, so I thought you must have practiced regularly."

"Well, I do my fair share of pushups every day, but I am certainly not an athlete," I told him just as I finished dressing up. "I gather there were no problems with my vitals."

"O-ho-ho. None at all," he reassured me, then paused as he glanced over me one more time. "Both your physical condition and your parameters seem to be perfect. Those old scars bother me a little, but there isnt much we can do about them. Although, on second thought, I believe I can introduce you to a great plastic surgeon."

"Thanks, but no thanks," I told him bluntly. "If everything is fine, can I go now?"

Peabody took another look at my results, and at last he nodded.

"Certainly. If not for the dean's insistence, I would have never thought you were injured." He paused for a moment, then asked, "Were you?"

"It wasn't a big deal," I answered dismissively. I even meant it, since if he thought my injuries from a week ago were 'old' and his biggest concern was about how they looked, I felt entirely justified in calling them a 'flesh wound'. Speaking of which, why is it 'flesh' would? Wouldn't that mean that the injury cut into one's, well, flesh? That sounds serious, so why is it used to dismiss injuries?

My random irritation at silly phrases from Monty Python aside, I decided it was high time I left, so I said my goodbyes and left before the good nurse suddenly recalled another test of five he wanted to perform on me. My stay in the infirmary lasted longer than I expected, but shorter than I feared, and now I was reassured that the secret of my amnesia was being kept confidential.

Nah, who am I kidding? While he was ever so slightly less annoying than the last time I met him, I wouldn't trust the nurse as far as I could throw him, and considering how fat he was, that wasn't very far. Since most of the tests required some amount of physical contact, I naturally marked him for Far Sight and planned to keep tabs on his activities in the near future, just to be on the safe side.

Once I left the good nurse's company, I took my sweet time getting to the shoe lockers, most of which was actually spent wondering just why we even had them. It wasn't like the island had a custom for taking one's shoes off indoors, so having to switch shoes in school actually stood out quite a bit.

As far as I knew this was a Japanese thing, or at the very least it was most commonly seen in Japanese school life settings, so maybe the custom existed here just because of that. Not to mention, the whole 'love letter in the shoe locker' clich, of which I was already on the receiving end more than once (though neither of them was an actual love letter, now that I thought about it), just wouldn't work without an actual shoe locker.

But then again, didn't Judy recently theorize that the school itself was largely unimportant in the grand scheme of things? If so, then why would the narrative go out of its way to include lockers? Just to facilitate the clich? Or maybe there was some other reason?

Wow. Look at me now, actually seriously considering the existence and intentions of the nebulous 'narrative' Judy's insistence must have begun to rub off on me.

Anyhow, I finished putting on my outdoor shoes and I was just about to walk through the main entrance when my musings were interrupted with dramatic abruptness by the sound of a siren. I twitched in surprise, but managed to regain my cool and I immediately took out my phone.

"Crap. I didn't expect it would be so soon," I muttered to myself as a way to keep my rising anxiety in check. "The ID is... number three, so... Judy?"

That was ever so slightly shocking, but I didn't dwell on it and instead I immediately used Far Sight while refusing to give a flying fudge cycle about the fact that I was standing in the middle of the doorway or that the placeholders were giving me odd looks. After a very short, and by now not even particularly disorienting, change of scenery, I found myself looking at my somewhat disheveled assistant accompanied by an equally scruffy Angie. They were half-hidden in the back of an alley in what I recognized was one of the shopping streets I have seen many times on our daily commute, and even more troublingly, I couldn't see anyone else.

My first instinct was to immediately transfer over there, but I reigned in the impulse and instead I turned on my heel and dashed into the nearest toilet on the ground floor. This also turned a few placeholder heads, but considering the circumstances, I am sure they would understand why I didn't give a bloody damn about them.

Once inside a booth, I used Far Sight again and a moment later I reappeared not too far from the two of them. I briefly contemplated doing something flashy, like appearing right behind them, or on one of the nearby rooftops from whence I could swoop down like a certain nocturnal echo-locating flying mammal man, but I quickly discarded the idea, or rather I shelved it for a less uncertain occasion.

"What's the situation?" I asked in a calm yet stern voice that didn't reflect my actual state of mind at all, my eyes covertly scanning the perimeter for any signs of the monster huntress.

"Oh, my Deus!" Angie exclaimed in a borderline shriek as she shoved Judy behind herself. Now that I could take a look at her in person, I finally realized that she wasn't wearing her school uniform anymore, but a set of gym clothes. Now, I wasn't a detective or anything, but even a cursory observation like that told me a few things. First off, it meant she probably had to transform to her combat gear in a hurry, vaporized her school uniform, and then she had to change into her spare outfit afterwards. That consequently meant that she was in a combat situation until not too long ago, but the fact that she had the time and leisure to undo the transformation and then change her clothes meant that the crisis was already over. Furthermore, while she looked a little rattled (though I had no idea how much of that had to do with my unexpected appearance), she was unharmed, so I reckoned that whatever incident must have happened, it wasn't the life-threatening kind. After concluding my deduction with that, I have finally let the pent up tension slowly seep out of my shoulders right until I was startled by a certain celestial girl.

"Where did you come from?! We just called you!" Angie exclaimed with a glower and stomped her feet. "You scared me so bad I almost transformed by reflex!"

"Sorry. I was already on my way," I told her before glancing around again, pointedly ignoring her tantrum. "Where are the others?"

"Inside the Restricted Space," Judy informed me while swiping her phone. I paused for a moment, and true enough, a quick and shallow immersion into Far Sight told me that the others were indeed nearby, except not really.

"I gather there was a battle then. Did she attack you?" I asked a question I thought was fairly obvious, but to my complete shock, she immediately shook her head. "What? Then what happened?"

"It's hard to describe," Angie told me after she finally calmed down a tad bit, though she still glanced around every once in a while with an unusually cautious demeanor. "We were going to your house when we were pulled into a Restricted Space. There was an entire group waiting for us there and they ambushed us."

"What kind of group?" I urged her to get to the point, but it was Judy who answered in her stead.

"About twenty identical robots led by this man," she told me while showing me her phone screen. Truth to be told, I couldn't decide whether I should praise my girlfriend's mental fortitude for staying collected and taking a snapshot of the attackers, or chide her for mismatched priorities while in danger.

In the end I decided both praises and reproaches had to wait and instead I focused on the photo on the screen. In the middle of the image the was a fairly short, slender man. He was wearing a white lab coat strategically torn at its edges so that it would appeal wild instead of just sloppy. He also had a wild mane of black hair, and his face was entirely covered by well, the closest thing I could liken it to was a welding mask, except instead of the singe rectangular shade lens in the middle, it had two circular holes on it with what looked like one of those swirly party goggles set in them.

That was weird enough even by the recent standards of this world, but then I also noticed the alleged robots in the background, and let's just say that if I was drinking anything at the moment, I would have taken an honest to goodness spit-take, clich be damned.

"Okay, I have to see this in person," I stated before I immediately vanished and reappeared in the same alley, except it was all purple. I did so in the field of view of Angie, but I already knew that moving in and out of the Purple Zone was similar to my teleportation, so I felt confident in excusing myself to her. Anyhow, I walked out onto the street and I immediately found myself face to face with a startling amount of destruction. Practically all the storefronts on my left were wrecked with glass scattered all over the torn and scattered paving stones of the sidewalk. The actual road ahead of me had actual craters on it, and just on my left I could see the bent remains of what I could only presume used to be a streetlamp torn from the ground and used as a blunt instrument of war. Furthermore, all around the place, both in the ground and in the walls, I could see several dozens of long, translucent ice spears that somehow, against all the laws of physics, managed to embed themselves into solid concrete and brick walls like they were made of play dough.

I would have continued to drink in the scenery, its savaged state feeling oddly fascinating, but I was stopped on my tracks when I laid my eyes upon a certain thing. It looked exactly the same as on the picture Judy showed me, except at the moment it was pinned to a nearby wall by about five ice spears like the ugliest butterfly in one's bug collection.

The robot, to use Judy's terminology, was humanoid in shape. It was also covered in lime green spandex from head to toe, except for what looked like a large, stylized cogwheel insignia on its chest made out of metal. It also had a matching pair of black leather boots and gloves, reaching up to its knees and elbows, respectively, and decorated with a series of silver spikes. Its head had no eyes; instead it was covered with something like a motorcycle helmet with a black and blue decoration that, at a cursory glance, looked kind of like the zodiac sign for Pisces. Moreover, it was grasping a large, weirdly proportioned butcher's knife in one of its hands, its gloved fingers still holding it tightly even after its obvious demise.

Now, I wasn't one to jump at conclusions, but after some preliminary observations, I had to conclude that it looked, without a shadow of a doubt, incredibly stupid. More alarmingly though, it looked eerily familiar for some reason, though for at the time being I couldn't put my finger on the source of the feeling at the time.

I didn't have much time to think though, as my attention was drawn to a small group huddled around one of the slightly less wrecked part of the scenery. It didn't take them long to notice me either, and when they did, Elly immediately rushed towards me so hard I was afraid she would tackle me off my feet.

Thankfully she managed to stop her momentum just before she would have impacted me, and instead she exclaimed, "Leo! You won't believe what just happened!"

"Won't I?" I jested a little wearily as the rest of the group also made their way over to me. Elly was no longer transformed, yet the damage to her clothes showed that she probably didn't shy away from whatever combat scenario unfolded here. Snowy, on the other hand, was still in her Abyssal form. If I had to guess, I would have said it was because she also transformed in a hurry like Angie, except she didn't have any spare clothes to change into. She also looked unusually sheepish, but I couldn't spare the time to ask her about it. More importantly, both of them seemed to be entirely uninjured.

The same could not be said about the last member of the group. Josh was also still transformed, into his own Abyssal for, and he was only wearing his inexplicably vaporization-proof hulk pants. He also didn't have any major injuries, but based on the number of scrapes and bruises on his skin, he was obviously worse off than the girls. Once all three of them gathered around me, I took a deep breath and addressed them at once.

"I gather this had nothing to do with the monster huntress?"

"No," Snowy promptly shook her head.

"So it really is a brand new flavor of what-the-hell. Lovely," I muttered, ending it with a groan. "Can you tell me what just happened?"

What followed after my question was several minutes of disjointed, oftentimes contradictory testimonies, including some overly dramatic descriptions of the battle, including sound effects. After they finished, I took another huge breath, held it in for a moment, and then let it out in the mother of all sighs.

"So, just to summarize," I began while absent-mindedly rubbing my temple. "You got dragged into the purple zone. You got challenged by some guy calling himself 'Dr. Robatto' and his minions called the 'Sprockets'. Then he said he had something really important to do and left without telling you why he challenged you. Then you fought his minions, who were waving butcher knives but never managed to hit any of you, until there were none left standing. Is that the gist of it?"

"Yes," Josh approved my summary. "We also tried to look for Dr. Robatto after the fight, but he was gone by then."

"He probably left the Restricted Space very early on," Snowy theorized.

"Two questions," I raised my hand with two fingers outstretched. "First off, why didn't you call me right away?"

"You cannot call people on the phone inside a Restricted Space, silly!" the princess explained with a cheeky smile while simultaneously wrapping her arms around me. I had a hunch that she was unusually giddy because she was still riding on the adrenaline high after the battle, so I didn't protest. Instead I just clicked my tongue as I realized this was another blind spot I didn't consider before, which made my clever solution with the emergency app significantly less useful than I hoped.

"The second question," I asked grumpily while dramatically bending one of my fingers. "Why are you still in here?"

"We don't have spare clothes," Josh told me with a shrug. He was surprisingly less upset than I expected, but I figured it wasn't exactly a bad thing.

"We told Judy and Angie to go out and call you and bring us something to wear," Snowy elaborated, earning her a small nod from me.

"I see," I began, only to be immediately interrupted by a high pitched sneeze from the girl still embracing me. I glanced at her and then said, "I suppose I better do that before you all catch a cold."

"To be honest, I don't really feel it," Josh stated absent-mindedly, only for his body to abruptly shudder and shrink as his transformation ended. He gave me a wide-eyed look for a second, then he hastily amended, "Actually, never mind what I just said. I would really appreciate some clothes after all," his words accented by the audible clanking of his teeth. I had a feeling he might have played it up a bit, but I wasn't in the mood to call him out on it, so instead I gently unwrapped Elly's arms from around my waist.

"All right, I'll try to be quick. Stay put and keep each other warm."

I ignored the easily misinterpretable nature of my comment and hastily walked back into the alley, then I immediately and unceremoniously teleported behind Angie and Judy again.

"Dormouse, walk with me," I instructed her while conveniently ignoring the startled celestial girl giving me the evil eye. Or rather I would have, but then I remembered I needed someone to be on teleport anchor duty, so I told her, "Angie, please hold the fort. We are going to be back in a few minutes."

"Whatever," she pouted in response while folding her arms. I really wasn't in the mood for this, so I subtly rolled my eyes and added, in lieu of the proverbial carrot, "Once everyone's dressed, let's go and have some snacks to let the events sink in a little. You pick the place."

"Really?" her eyes suddenly sparkled, her previous grudge all but forgotten in a split second.

"Sure," I told her with a nod before gesturing for Judy to follow after me. She did just so, and we hastily left the scene.

Once we were out of sight, I cleared my throat and told her, with my calmest voice, "Judy, I hope you are aware that what just happened means war."

My dear assistant sent me a surprised glance and stated, "You probably don't mean a war against Dr. Robatto."

"No, of course not," I scoffed. "I meant a war against your narrative."

Judy's eyes actually opened wider for a second and she said, deadpan and yet astonished at the same time, "You are serious."

"Of course I am," I answered through gritted teeth at first, but with my voice slowly rising with every word, "Say what you will about harem shenanigans and shounen battles, but at least those I can stomach. But look at what we got here! A stupid-looking villain leading an army of equally stupid-looking and ineffectual goons that get defeated in minutes by a group of overbearing and overemotional teenagers. Does that ring any bells?"

" Is it the series with the morphing time and the annoying robot?"

"Yeah," I answered with a low growl, "And I will be bloody damned before I would just roll over and allow this world to genre-shift us into a bloody sentai!"

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