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The Simulacrum - Chapter 121 - Part 2
🕑 Added 2023-08-18 15:07:24 +0000 UTCMy mind was still a mess by the time I returned to my quarters, using the tried and true 'Phase out of the elevator' method to speed things up and to avoid any prying eyes. Since I had Josh in the apartment, I could arrive directly without having to manually Phase across the tower one storey at a time.
"Josh!"
"What!?" my friend yelped in surprise and poked his head through the walk-in wardrobe's door, only to freeze the moment he laid his eyes on us. "Holy crap! What happened?"
"I'll explain in a moment. First, let's put her down." I gestured at the door at the back. "Open that for me, will you? My hands are occupied."
"On it!"
Even though he was still half-dressed, Josh rushed out of the wardrobe and helped me lay Angie down onto the empty bed. He looked less frantic than expected, but when she remained motionless, that quickly changed.
"What's wrong with her? Is she going to be okay?"
"She's just unconscious. As for whether she'll be okay or not, I'll have to properly check first, but for now, keep an eye on her," I told him and rolled my shoulders. "Before anything else, I have to take care of a few things. If she wakes up and acts funny, don't be too alarmed, and try to play along and stall for time until I come back."
"O-Okay?"
Without further ado, Josh moved to the bedside, and only then did he deflate a little. It only lasted for a second, at which point his brows descended into a frown and he turned back to me.
"What happened to her outfit?"
"I'll explain that too. Just sit tight, okay?"
"… Fine," he grumbled and held Angie's hand in his own. It was sweet, but I didn't exactly have the time to gawk.
First and foremost, I had to make sure that no one would barge in on these two while I was away. While I didn't exactly envision a situation like this, I nevertheless had spent some time analysing the magitech devices of the apartment, including the door itself, and after turning a few non-Euclidian knobs inside its enchantment space with my phantom limbs, I more-or-less bricked the whole mechanism, so that it would take quite some time to unlock it again.
With that done, I focused on the red dot of Mountain Girl, and after waiting for the right opportunity, I Phased out of the room.
"… the situation is under c—!" Jaakobah bellowed on the other side of a corner on the ground floor of the tower, and he visibly twitched when I walked into view. "Archon Polemos is present! Salute!"
After the initial wave of confusion washed over the people in the atrium behind him, mostly composed of the volunteer Tower Guards peppered with a few other military types, they hastily formed something vaguely resembling a formation and saluted me to the best of their ability. I could also see the Praetorian Guards mingling in the crowd, and they were trying their best to come to the forefront, but I ignored them for the time being, and turned to Rinne, standing next to the stoic Celestial.
"You. Follow me." She nodded at once and walked over, and once she was close enough, I added in a whisper, "Once we're back in the hallway, dive into my shadow ASAP."
I waited for her to nod. In the meantime, Jaakobah pulled on his collar, and after collecting himself, he also stepped closer to me.
"Lord Archon? Are the rumors true?"
"What rumours?" I snapped back, but he wasn't fazed the slightest.
"According to the Seraphic Safeguard members present at the time, you have discovered the reborn Deus," he told me without mincing his words. "They also say you were so agitated and destroyed the Colossus because you have felt his return. Or… her return, as the rumors say." He paused for a while and tentatively whispered, "Is it true? Did Deus, venerated be his name, truly return in the body of a young girl?"
It took all my willpower not to groan. I was half-hoping that the news didn't spread too far yet and could be kept under a lid, but by the sound of it, everyone already knew broad outlines. Considering that the three Celestial head honchos were coincidentally present at the time, I shouldn't have expected anything less, but it was still annoying.
"Nothing is certain yet," I answered with as flat a voice as I could manage, and waved in the general direction of the allegedly elite octet clustering at the forefront of the crowd filling the entrance hall. "Take the Praetorian Guard, and lock down the fifty-second floor. I don't want anyone coming close to my suite until I say otherwise."
"As you command," the phlegmatic Praetorian Prefect saluted again and turned around.
Using the opportunity to slip away, I backed into the nearby hallway again, and the moment we were out of sight, Rinne slipped into my shadow. I didn't dally around either, and once she was gone, I immediately Phased away. However, instead of heading back to the side of our main characters, my target was Roland, who was currently in the dockyard hideout.
"Gah!"
Raven Boy let out an undignified sound when I materialized in the common room, and nearly fell out of his chair. I ignored him and turned to the similarly startled, yet infinitely more dignified, Sir Griffon.
"Leonard? I don't think we have a meeting scheduled today."
"We do now," I hissed a touch bellicosely. "We have another major situation. Josh and Angie got kidnapped by the Celestials."
"What? Are they okay?" Raven Boy blurted out, rising to his feet at once, and I gestured at him to calm down.
"They're mostly fine. I managed to nab them before they could get hurt, but there were a few complications on the way."
"Are they in the Elysium?" Roland inquired, and I nodded back.
"I'll give you the full story later. For now, I want you to talk with Brang and patch up the hole in our surveillance network. Also, make sure the news doesn't spread too fast; the last thing we need is another side track."
"As you command."
I accepted Roland's response with a nod and turned to the other guy in the room.
"You're pretty sneaky, right?"
"I… am rather decent at stealth, yes," Raven Boy answered with a hint of apprehension in his eyes.
"Good. Listen, I need you to get into Josh's house. See if the Celestials left any incriminating evidence behind, and get rid of them as much as you can. More importantly, pick up Josh's and Angie's Magiformers. They'll probably need them in the future."
"I'll… do as you say," Agrawain responded a touch hesitantly, but it was good enough, so I turned back to Roland.
"If anything else comes up, I leave it to your discretion. I'll be probably busy for a while, but I'll try to keep in touch."
I didn't even wait for them to respond, as I was already honing in on my next target, and a moment later, I reappeared in Elly's singing room.
"Ah!"
My draconic girlfriend let out a cute little yelp when I arrived, followed by a slightly less startled but still amusing noise from my other girlfriend.
"Sorry to interrupt," I told them a tad wearily and unceremoniously turned off the music by pulling down a slider on the soundboard in front of me. While I called it the 'singing room', it was pretty much a small recording studio, complete with acoustic panels covering the walls and professional audio equipment, and since Judy was practically living with the Princess for the last week and a half, I have caught them practising duets here from time to time, so I wasn't at all surprised.
"Leo!" the princess exclaimed in delight once she got over the first surprise, followed by an eminently impressed noise. "Are these the clothes you wear in the Elysium? That Polemos disguise you talked about? It looks surprisingly good on you."
"It's not surprising at all," my other girlfriend chimed in, conspicuously putting away the huge studio headphones that were sitting on her head until this point. "The Chief looks good in everything."
"You know, Dormouse, while I appreciate your unexpected positive feedback, we don't really have the time for this," I interjected, and my girlfriends' expressions instantly shifted into serious mode.
"Did something happen?" Judy spoke up first, earning her a nod.
"The plot kicked in."
"As in?" Elly nudged me a bit more, so I took a very, very deep breath.
"The Celestial higher-ups set up a plot, which may or may not have been Narratively influenced to distract me, all so that they could kidnap Josh and Angie, but then it turns out Angie is Deus, I barely managed to abscond with the two of them and hide them in my quarters, and now the whole Elysium is in an uproar."
"Hold on! Wasn't that supposed to be Josh?" the princess interjected, and I shrugged in return.
"The whole thing happened literally ten minutes ago, so I'm not clear on the small details yet. I just wanted to drop by and give you the news. Once things calm down a little over there, I'll drop by for a proper meta-discussion. Consider this visit me giving you a head start."
"Hm. This twist certainly cracks the plot of the Angeline Route wide open," Judy whispered with a thoughtful tilt of her head and gestured for my other girlfriend. "Let's go back to your room. We need to discuss this in detail."
"Aw.. but we just started…" the princess complained, but followed after her anyway.
"I can't promise when I'll be back, but I'll try to be swift. See you soon."
I waved at the girls, and after a short beat, I disappeared again, this time inside my Celestial suite's living room, and I promptly gestured at my shadow.
"You can come out now."
My shadow wavered, and just like before, Mountain Girl was catapulted back into realspace and she did a three-point hero landing before rising to her feet.
"Were Joshua-kun and Angie-chan truly kidnapped?"
"You've heard that right," I told her with a sigh. "Please guard the room. I locked the door, but just in case, if anyone tries to enter the apartment, kick them out."
"Rinne will do so!" she exclaimed with completely undue enthusiasm, and since I had nothing else to add, I turned on my heel and returned to the bedroom.
"Look, he's back!" Josh perked up the moment I walked in, and to my surprise, Angie was sitting up on the bed and was looking at me.
"Hi, Leo," she greeted me, and while her face was still pale and her voice a little shaky, she was unmistakably Angie.
"I'm glad to see you're up," I told her and made my way over to her. "How do you feel?"
"My head hurts. I mean, a lot." She rubbed her forehead, probably for emphasis. "I also feel queasy, and I can't undo my transformation, but otherwise, I think I'll live."
"What about Deus?" I asked point-blank, and she blinked at me like I just asked something weird.
"What about him?"
Narrowing my eyes, I let out a shallow sigh and turned to Josh.
"Haven't you talked about what happened yet?"
"She just woke up," my friend protested at once, then after a beat, he followed it up with a bit more diplomatic, "I… also wanted to wait for you to come back before we discussed it, because I'm not entirely sure what happened either."
"Let's start there then." Saying so, I turned back to Angie. "How much do you remember?"
"Do you mean, after we were kidnapped?" I nodded, and she fell silent for a short while. "I mean, I was pretty shocked at the time, so it all kinda blurs together, but after we got taken through the portal, I remember that Josh was struggling a lot, and then there was this bright light and he threw one of the bad guys across the room. I think that's when my head started to hurt…"
"And then?"
"And then… I think he told me to run, and I didn't wanna, but there were something like ten goons in the room and they were all focused on Josh, and then I think someone pushed me outside. I… can't recall who it was, but it hurt a lot, so it was probably one of the baddies," Angie concluded, and I couldn't help but notice the way her boyfriend audibly gulped in the background. I didn't bring attention to it though, but gestured for her to continue. "I think that's when my head started really throbbing, and someone said I should beat up the bad guys because they were just mongrels or something… I really can't remember much after that, but then I saw you, and I think I tried to tell you to help Josh, and then the next thing I know, I was lying on this bed."
"So that's all you can recall?"
"Sorry," Angie shrunk back, and I hastily shook my head.
"I'm not blaming you, just making sure there's nothing else."
"No, that's all," she insisted, and let out a troubled sigh, only to immediately bounce back with a smile. "Oh well! At least Josh is safe, and you're here too! That means everything's gonna be all right!"
When she smiled, I could feel fireworks going off in the back of my mind, followed by a distinct sense of elation that threatened to overwhelm my self-control and bend my lips into one of those dopey smiles in direct opposition to my higher brain functions. We couldn't have something like that happening, so I raised my arm and delivered a smarting blow to the side of my head with the heel of my hand, startling my friends.
"What… are you doing?" Josh blurted out with a skeptical look in his eyes, and Angie was pretty much the same.
"A stupid part of my brain was acting up, so I had to give it a reality check," I answered curtly, causing the girl on the bed to let out a chuckle.
"Your brain has stupid parts?" she asked between giggles, and after some consideration, I shrugged.
"I picked it up not too long ago. Anyhow, that's not important right now. What is, is your current condition."
"Tell me doc, am I gonna make it?" she jested, and when I remained silent, her expression quickly withered. "Hey! Say something! This isn't funny."
"No, it's not," I agreed, and closed my eyes for a moment to collect my thoughts. "Let's not beat around the bush. Angie. You are most likely the second advent of Deus."
"… Still not funny."
"Do I look like I'm joking to you?" I responded a touch too forcefully to her words, and seeing that Josh was already glaring at me, I toned things back a little. "Listen. Do you remember those prophecies we discussed a while back?"
Angie only nodded, but the question got a considerably bigger rise out of Josh.
"Yeah, thanks for bringing that up! What the actual hell is going on here? Didn't you say that I was supposed to be this Deus guy? How can it suddenly be Angie? How does that make any sense!?"
I waited for him to get it out of his system, and once there was a lull in his barrage of questions, I raised a palm to stall him.
"Josh, pal. I can't believe I have to say this again, but you're apparently still labouring under the misconception that I'm omniscient. I'm not. When we were presented with the prophecies, combined with your ability to absorb and manifest the powers of other supernatural people, I simply jumped to the most obvious conclusion. Unfortunately, it seems like I misread the prophecy."
"Wait, you guys," Angie cut in, her confusion reaching critical mass. "Are you serious? Am I… am I Deus?"
I wanted to nod right away, but I just admitted that I jumped to conclusions once before, so I figured I should confirm it first. Just to be sure.
"Let me check." I stepped closer, and put a hand on Angie's forehead. It was mostly just for show, but she didn't even flinch and only stared at me expectantly.
In any case, once I once again suppressed the Polemos-shaped bundle of annoyance at the back of my mind, I plunged a phantom limb into Angie, and after a brief yet infinitely long journey down a river made of irrational numbers and pies (as in, the number, not the pastry), I gazed upon the yarn ball representing her soul, and it didn't take a genius to figure out something was wrong.
The innumerable rainbow-coloured threads, usually wound tightly into a sphere, were loose and tangled- Some segments had a flatter colour, while others were positively shining, and I could even see a few stray ends dangling limply. Others were seemingly reaching for each other, as if trying to reconnect, and a few were outright frayed, as if something tore a piece out of them.
On closer inspection, I discovered two more things: the lustreless threads were fewer, but they were interwoven into the entirety of the loose yarn ball, and more alarmingly, when I tried to touch on them, I got a familiar warning.
"Oh, there you were…" I grumbled, my words causing the non-space around me to tremble, yet the corner of my mind that kept giving me warnings about plot devices remained conspicuously silent.
In the end, this was the best I could do on short notice, and it more or less confirmed my initial conjecture, so I retreated from Angie's soul-space and let out a shallow groan.
"Yep. You're imprinted with someone's soul all right, and considering the recent events, it's practically guaranteed to be Deus."
"That's… messed up, man," Josh griped, his hand clenched around his girlfriend's fingers. The latter seemed more surprised than alarmed by the revelation, and after I removed my hand from her forehead, she let out a thoughtful hum.
"Now that you mention it, I do feel like that if I don't concentrate, I keep having these stray thoughts. It's like when I caught the flu, and I had all these weird fever dreams. Is that bad?"
"It's definitely not good, but let's hope it'll stay at that level until we figure out what to do about this situation."
Angie nodded along, accepting my words without problem, while Josh was considerably more conflicted.
"How did this happen?"
"We'll probably have to ask Fred to run a few proper tests on you to figure it out, but if you're asking for an educated guess…" I pointed a finger at the girl on the bed. "Chances are, you were always supposed to be the second advent of Deus. You said the headache started after Josh transformed into a Celestial on his own, right?"
She nodded.
"It's just my ad-hoc conjecture, but based on the state of your soul, this is what I think happened: Josh's ability lets him absorb the powers of others. He was probably supposed to draw just enough out of you to make Deus surface, but since your relationship progressed pretty fast and you kept doing the horizontal gene transfer, Josh absorbed too much of Deus's powers. Then, when he transformed under duress, it caused your half of the powers to resonate as well, and it brought out the Deus personality inside you."
"Is that what happened?" she mused, seemingly accepting my explanation at face value.
"Possibly. Don't take my words as the gospel," I warned her, and yet she remained undaunted.
"But you sound so reliable right now. I mean, I'm not saying you don't sound reliable at other times, but you're, like, super-convincing right now."
"Is he?" Josh asked with a critically raised brow, and I had to agree with him this time.
"You see, that's probably your inner Deus talking. Keep an eye on it, so that it doesn't give you silly ideas."
"I still don't get it," Josh cut in before his girlfriend could respond. "This situation feels so messy. It's like… just too convenient. It's like the whole world conspired against us to get us into this situation, don't you agree?"
"It sure did," I nodded along, which visibly startled the guy.
"Wait, really? I thought you would tell me how everything makes perfect sense, and I just don't get the big picture or something. You know? The thing you always do when things don't make sense at all?"
"You're not entirely wrong about that, but…" I fell silent for a while, internally debating whether I should say anything more, but I figured that we were deep enough in the 'plot' where revealing some meta-details didn't matter anymore. I just had to figure out how to word it right. "Listen, Josh. You know that this is all related to those stupid prophecies, right?"
"Well, duh," the guy responded with just a hint of exasperation. "Except it was a bunk, because it wasn't about me after all."
"Don't dismiss it that easily." Warning him so, I waved a finger and explained, "Imagine this: we've got our prophecy about Deus and whatnot, but it's not an ironclad prediction. We know this, because there are multiple, mutually exclusive prophecies, so by definition, neither one of them can be necessarily true."
"I get that, but what does it have to do with this topic?"
"We're getting there, but first answer me this: let's say we have a prophecy where it says someone would absolutely have to do something in the future. It's their…?"
"Destiny,"/"Fate," the two of them said at once, and I nodded along.
"Both works, but what exactly are they? What does it mean that, say, 'You're destined to become Deus'?"
The childhood friend couple fell silent for a bit, in much deeper thought than expected, until Angie raised her voice first.
"Does it mean that… it's unavoidable?"
"And why is that?" I asked back, trying to guide them to the right answer.
"It's because you don't have a choice in the matter?" Josh proposed next.
"But why? Let's say, you're 'destined to eat a sandwich for lunch'. What is stopping you to defy that and eat spaghetti, or a baguette, or maybe nothing at all?"
"Well, it's destiny. Duh," Angie responded dismissively, but then the words sank in and she looked at me funny. "Wait… are you saying…?"
"Fate is actually a thing?" Josh took the word out of her mouth, and after opening and closing his own a couple of times, the guy threw his hand in the air (since the other was still holding onto Angie), in the company of a groan. "You've gotta be kidding me!"
"I'm not though. What you may call 'fate' or 'destiny' is an actual force in this world, and since things have reached this stage, it's actively trying to steer events to fulfill the Celestials' prophecy."
"And how exactly do you know any of this, mister 'I'm totally not omnipotent'?" Josh huffed and crossed his arms, at least as much as he could.
"It's 'omniscient', and I know this because I've been struggling with it for a while now."
"Wait! Slow down!" Angie cut in, raising her free hand in the process. "You're fighting destiny?"
"By any other name, sure," I told her in the company of a light shrug.
"But… you can't do that! That's the whole point of destiny! That you can't fight it!"
"Well then, do you want to have your body taken over by a grouchy old Celestial from millennia ago?" I shot back, and she opened her mouth to protest again, only to then immediately close it with an audible clanking of teeth. "There you go. I suggest you wrap your head around the concept, because you'll have to do a lot of it from now on."
"Aw, man…" Josh grumbled under his breath, so it was time to focus on him.
"That goes for you too, buddy."
"Does it?"
"Of course it does! You absorbed part of her power, so you're about half-Deus right now. Or maybe closer to a quarter? Hard to tell yet, but the point is, while the prophecy might not be about 'you' as the person, it's still about 'you' as the couple, so you better pull up your socks and get ready for a bumpy ride."
"Gee, thanks, man. That's exactly what I wanted to hear right now," he continued to grumble, but his expression softened when Angie let out a small giggle. "So, what's next?"
"Next, I'll have to calm down the storm brewing in the Elysium. We also have to do something about you."
"Me in particular?" he asked back, earning a nod.
"Yep. Angie, unfortunately, doesn't have much of a choice in the matter; since the head directors have seen her, and the rumours about her are already spreading, she's stuck here for the time being." I turned to her and added, "Even if I sent you home, you can expect an entire army of Celestials to storm the island to get you back, so you're probably better off staying here for now."
"Understood!"
There was precisely zero angst or apprehension in her response, but to be fair, Josh was providing enough for both of them.
"Damn. I guess that means I'll also have to stay here…"
"I'm afraid it does." He clicked his tongue, and when he had nothing else to add, I continued instead. "I guess we'll have to come up with a disguise and an identity for you while you stay here. I'll figure something out. Other than that, we just have to—"
Before I could finish that thought, we were all startled by a loud, grinding noise coming from the living room.
"… Stay put."
Saying so, I turned on my heel and left the bedroom. On the other side of the door, I found Mountain Girl, with her sword drawn, standing near the entrance. The big sliding door was partially open, and on the other side, I could see Jaakobah's mug, along with Director Savir, seemingly in the process of manually wrenching the door open.
"Prefect?" I addressed the man through squinted eyes. "I believe I told you to lock down the floor."
In the meantime, the slightly dishevelled female director readjusted her clothes and hair and directed a chilling glare at me through the gap.
"Archon Polemos. We need to talk, right now."
I levelled a dispassionate stare at her, then my eyes wandered back to the poker-faced guard captain, only just noticing the slap mark on his cheek, and he simply uttered, "Director Savir was very insistent."
"I can see that." I spent the next couple of seconds considering my options, but at last, I gestured for Rinne to guard the bedroom's door instead, and undid my lock on the main entrance, with the words. "She also isn't wrong. We definitely need to talk…"
Comments
Terry Stevens
In any case, once I once again (this can be shortened to ‘In any case, I once again’)
Terry Stevens
these two while I was away (I think Whilst may work better)
