The Simulacrum

"I refuse to accept this," I declared with all the vehemence of a wounded animal, yet my girlfriends only looked at me like I was some kind of oddball.

"Chief, please don't make a scene," Judy casually scolded me, sounding completely nonchalant as she proceeded to present me with a thermos. "Tea?"

"Yes, thank you very much," I offered my cup, and after quickly filling and then just as swiftly emptying it, I let out a satisfied sigh. Then raised a brow at her. "I can't make a scene. It's literally just the three of us here."

When I said 'literally', I didn't mean it in the newfangled, counter-intuitive way, but in the actual literal sense of the word. Despite the fantastic spring weather actively calling out to the youth, the roof of the school was as empty as it could be, with only the three of us sitting on the usual bench facing the roof access door. There were normally at least a few placeholders idling here during lunch break, but they collectively decided to eat somewhere else today.

"Aren't Josh and Angie coming too?" Elly voiced a rhetorical question, since we agreed on that in the classroom just ten minutes ago, but I nodded along anyway.

"Yes, but they aren't here yet," I pointed out, and then after taking a bite out of one of Judy's artisanal homemade sandwiches, I swallowed hard and continued on the track of my previous complaints. "No, I still refuse to accept this, and I mean it!"

"Calm down. Remember what we practiced?" the princess warned me and demonstrated it by closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. "Peace is fine. Nothing special happening is fine. Everything is fine."

"Right, and that's the problem!" I burst out a touch indignantly. "It's been two weeks! More than two weeks, actually, and nothing even remotely dramatic or interesting happened!"

"That just means the self-suggestion is working!" Elly declared with an ear-to-ear grin.

"I was under the impression that you wanted to have a break from the dramatics," Judy pointed out, and while I wanted to refute her on the spot, all I could manage at the moment was an angry grunt and a grimace.

"I mean… yes, I did say that I would've preferred if the Simulacrum would give me a break, but not like this! I put up with a whole lot of bloody crap coming from this dumb world, between placeholders and tropes and narrative influences, but I categorically refuse to accept that something as silly as self-hypnosis could have this profound of an effect on our lives!"

"Silly?" Elly echoed me, and I stopped mid-motion, just about to bite into my sandwich, to raise my hands.

"I strictly meant that in a scientific sense. I'm more than happy that you came up with the idea, and it's great for relaxation, but I'm much less happy about the fact that it actually works."

"Just ignore the Chief. He'll get over it," my dear assistant told my other girlfriend and offered her a cup as well.

Meanwhile I resumed my grumpy consumption of my lunch, feeling more than a little wronged. Not by my girlfriend, but by the world itself.

I mean, I knew that by effectively usurping the role of Narrative-me, my thoughts and expectations gained a profound effect on the world. Even more so than before, I mean, as my expectations dragging the Simulacrum into the Information Age already professed. No, the part that outraged me was just how stupidly easy it was to manipulate that effect!

Over the last two weeks, Elly and I had been regularly doing those self-suggestion-cum-meditation sessions, with Judy occasionally joining us as well, and their results were as profound as they were baffling. In short, nothing happened. Or at the very least nothing that even remotely involved or interested me.

Until recently, the civil war in the Abyss was at a standstill due to a combination of Crowy recuperating from his failed attempt to snatch another Mana Well and the Draconic Federation officially offering humanitarian aid for the alliance of Noble Houses. Speaking of which, those negotiations also proceeded like a well-oiled machine, and I didn't even have to do anything about them. Or at least nothing more than signing a few papers and giving a small speech in front of the Draconic Council about how this was not only the right thing to do, but it also screwed over Bel of the Abyss, all of which somehow earned me standing ovation.

Oh, and speaking of him, I'd yet to run into future-me either. I occasionally visited little OIlie at the bottom of the Inannas' dungeon, just to see how he was doing, but I was always just barely missing my 'good friend Uncle Antonio', to the point I was convinced he was dodging me on purpose. By the by, the kid was fine. If anything, he was acting like he was taking an early summer vacation, lazing around in his pyjamas and watching cartoons all day long. He even put on some weight from all the snacks, but that was beside the point.

In short, our main plot was on hold, and nothing even remotely relevant happened on the island, in the Abyss, or even in Elysium. Was this the 'slow life' all those isekai stories aimed at an older audience were always waxing lyrical about? Because if it was, I had to say, slow life was boring as f—

"Hey guys! Sorry, we're late!"

My thoughts were interrupted by Angie exploding into the scene, her boyfriend lagging a few steps behind her and carrying a bundle of food boxes from the cafeteria.

"There's no rush." Judy made a welcoming gesture towards the empty bench next to ours. "Lunch break's far from over."

"True," Josh noted absently, but then his steps slowed down and he frowned at me. "Why the long face, buddy?"

"Don't mind the Chief. He's just frustrated about silly things right now. He'll get over it before you know it."

"Hey! Don't just dismiss my concerns about the structural integrity of the universe like that!"

"The structural what of the what?" My friend blurted out in mild alarm, but before we could get anywhere with that, Angie took one of his food boxes.

"It must be some 'destiny thing' again. I'm sure Leo will figure it out, whatever it is, and…" Without warning, her eyes opened wide and she hurriedly placed the box onto the bench, just so that she could do that thing where she hammered her open palm with her other fist. "That reminds me! Ammy made me promise to call her! She's getting stir-crazy after being stuck at home for so long!"

She turned away and started messing with her phone. On a side note, she upgraded her phone a while back (probably on Josh's tournament money) and so everyone had smartphones now. Yay for technological leapfrogging.

Josh also put down his food in the meantime and turned to us again, still looking for an explanation.

"Seriously, is there an actual problem? With universal integrity and stuff?"

"Leo's just being a bit dramatic," my draconic girlfriend answered between giggles and lightly pinched my cheek.

"He thinks things are being too quiet and it's making him antsy," Judy responded with a more digestible answer, not that it helped Josh's understanding much.

I added a huff to that, and concluded with, "That's not really the core of the problem, but it indeed annoys me that nothing's going on."

"What do you mean 'nothing'?" my friend burst out and folded his arms to further accentuate his disapproval. "You arranged a whole-ass historical treaty between the Abyss and the rest of the world, Ms Yamako and Mr Feilong are now officially engaged, and I won my exhibition match, and it was awesome." He raised a critical brow at me in particular. "Which you should've known, but you didn't attend."

"But I congratulated you afterwards, didn't I? I was confident you had it in the bag, so there was no need to loiter around. Good job, good job."

"The Chief is bad with tournaments," Judy noted in a low voice, only paying half-attention while trying to decide which sandwich she should eat next. She made like ten different varieties, and she ultimately settled on the bacon and cheese one before turning back to Josh. "It's one of his less-amazing qualities, but nobody's perfect."

"Hey!"

My protest was drowned out by Elly's giggling, and I soon dropped the issue. Lately, I had a feeling my Dormouse was taking advantage of the fact that she knew I couldn't stay mad at her.

"Hi, everyone," a distorted voice interjected into our conversation, and when I glanced over, I was met with the class rep's face on a small screen. She was wearing a light blue hoodie and had the two magical orbs, the culprits behind her extended school leave, lazily circling around her head, but otherwise, she seemed as hale and hearty as ever. "How's everyone doing?"

"Nothing special."

 Hearing my reflexive response made Angie stifle a chuckle and she turned her phone to face herself.

"Leo's grumpy because he's bored."

"Bored?" Ammy asked back incredulously. "He's running multiple organizations and attending school on top of that! If he's bored, then what am I supposed to be!?"

"It's some destiny thing, I think," our friendly neighbourhood Celestial told her, and the girl on the phone let out a pensive hum, as if what she just heard somehow explained everything.

"He's just mad because nothing world-shaking happened for two weeks!" Josh commented on the side with (what I hoped was) mock outrage. "Can you believe the gall of this guy?"

"We all have our own troubles," Ammy moderated as soon as Angie turned the phone to face us again. "What have you been up to lately? It's been a while since you last visited."

"It hasn't been that long." Elly put a finger on her lips and muttered, "Or was it? When was the last time we met up?"

"Last Friday, at the base," I provided the answer, and my draconic girlfriend resolutely raised her fist.

"Then it's time for a proper visit at Ammy's house!"

"Only if the class rep is free in the afternoon," I said and pointedly glanced at the girl on the screen.

"Of course I'm free. Until these…" She poked at the marbles circling her head, yet they continued their orbit with lazy indifference. "So long as this isn't resolved, I can't do anything but sit here and twiddle my thumbs! Ever since Leo told Grandfather not to burden me with the School's documentation, I can't even do that anymore!"

"Oh. She's at the point where she's missing the paperwork." Judy turned to me and continued in an extra-deadpan manner. "Chief, I think it's serious. We really need to visit her."

"I thought that was already decided with her answer, and…" I rubbed my temple and muttered, "We wouldn't be having this conversation if things didn't stall in Ottawa."

Contrary to my initial expectations, Lord Ambrose not only didn't kick down the gates of the local School, but he spent the last two weeks hanging out in Canada, meeting up with old friends, and delivering a polite official request to see the last Grimoire Key and discuss its fate with the local arch-mage. That last bit was still going through the 'normal' bureaucratic channels, and they were taking their sweet time with it.

As for whether this development happened because of Watsonian (read: Lord Gulliver managing to reach the bearded arch-mage on the phone and making him promise not to cause a scene) or Doylist (read: my clumsy self-suggestion sessions with Elly) reasons were up for interpretations.

"If that's decided, then I'll start!" the princess declared, and it took until she began her explanation for me to realize she was answering Ammy's question from like two tangents ago. "We've been experimenting with meditation and mental discipline, and it's actually a lot of fun!"

"Seconded." I turned to Judy, not expecting her to say that. The glint in her eye told me she was probably referring to how our self-suggestion sessions, taking place in private, often developed into a different kind of session, but the people present here didn't need to hear about our sex life. Meanwhile, my dear assistant's eyes remained on Angie's phone. "I was also promoted Demarchos, and I've been given full rein over the Celestial Intelligence Network, so that kept me busy over the past couple of days."

"Oh, I've heard about that from Mike," Ammy nodded on the screen, but then a second later she let out a soft groan. "I can't believe just how used I got to you guys and your outrageous antics. I'm shocked that I'm not shocked by how you just casually took over the Celestial's infamous spy network."

"Humans are very adaptable," I spoke sagely, but nobly paid me attention, so I shrugged and picked up another sandwich.

"For me," Josh started, and Angie automatically turned the phone screen his way. "Since I won the exhibition match, Zihao's been pestering me to train together again. He says I'm his rival now, or something. I dunno, he's kinda high maintenance…" He suddenly snapped his fingers and added, "Oh, and I've also been sparring with the Ordo Draconis Knights lately. It's good training, and since now I use a sword, I've been even asked to give pointers to the new recruits. Most of them recognized my face right off the bat, you know?"

He bashfully rubbed his nose, but to be fair, it would've been weirder if they didn't recognize him at this point. He was a VIP, and winning a tournament and another high-profile match in front of everyone would've made him memorable even if it wasn't the rambunctious, duel-loving Draconians we're talking about here.

"That's really impressive. I'm happy for you," Ammy told him, and despite the stock choice of words, sounded like she meant it.

"Hehe. Thanks."

"My turn!" Angie declared and faced the phone herself. "Guess what? I've been training too, and I developed a completely unique aria!"

"Oh?"

The class rep wasn't the only one who was surprised by that, as this was the first time I've heard about that too.

"Lemme show you!"

I was expecting her to start singing, or something, but instead she just blinked, and a moment later a deep frown settled on her face.

"Girl. I told you not to wake me up just to demonstrate this—" There was a momentary break, and then her lips parted into a grin. "Did you see it?"

"See what?" Ammy asked, and so she brought the camera closer to her face.

"It's like this…!" Short pause. "Girl! What did I just…!?" Another short pause. "And back!"

"Eye color," Judy noted, and I had to admit, I didn't catch it.

"Exactly!" the hyper Celestial laughed and pointed at her face. "Josh complained that sometimes it was hard to recognize when Grandpa Deus was speaking, so we made this continuous aria!"

"And it turns your eyes golden when you trade control," Judy said as it if was self-evident, but again, I didn't even notice the difference, let alone the actual colour.

"Is that a trope?" Elly whispered into my ear, and after some thinking, I nodded in the affirmative.

"Yes. I didn't expect that we'd get a Watsonian justification for it though."

Normally this kind of thing was just a given. I imagined it was so that the audience could tell who was in the pilot seat at a glance, yet Angie's appearance didn't change when Deus was in control. Actually, on second thought, maybe we got this development only now because the two of them were never supposed to 'share' her body in the original scenario, and the Simulacrum was matching up the necessary secondary tropes during the downtime.

"Making notes, we'll discuss this later," Judy added to our whispered discussion, then raised her voice so the others could hear her too. "You see, Chief? There is always something novel happening. We don't need something big to occur every week."

"We do have something big this week though," Josh interjected, drawing everyone's attention to him. "You know? The sports festival. It's on Friday."

"Oh, that's right!" Angie waved her phone around frantically, which I imagined wasn't riveting to see on the class rep's end. "Ammy's gonna miss it!"

"Yeah. It's a shame," Josh agreed, yet the subject of their conversation sounded rather blasé about it.

"I don't mind. The sports days have never been my thing, and I would've probably been helping Pascal and the student council with organizing things anyway."

"But you're still missing out! It's, like, a precious memory of our youth and stuff!"

That… sounded suspiciously like something Sahi would've said. Was Angie hanging out with her lately, or was I just getting paranoid?

"Guys, guys. Before we get into the whole sports festival thing, can we first sit down and start eating?" Josh proposed, one hand overly tapping his stomach. "I'm kinda starving."

And with that one comment, everyone switched into 'lunch mode' and the discussion moved onto more light-hearted topics, and… maybe Judy was right. Maybe I was overthinking this. Being able to calm the waves of the Simulacrum by keeping myself under control was… Well, I still didn't make my peace with that idea, but it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It wasn't like every sub-plot came to a halt; things were still happening to Josh and Angie and the others. Maybe it was fine to let them have their own spotlight, and considering how ubiquitous sports festivals were in all kinds of high-school adjacent genres, I was sure it would let the Simulacrum have its fill with common tropes. Not to mention, so long as nothing unexpected or subversive happened, it might be fun too.

Wait. Crap, I just jinxed it, didn't I? Bloody hell! You'd think I'd learn by this point…

…

Oh well. Let's just meditate on this with the girls, then secretly make some contingency plans. Just in case.