The Simulacrum

"I be still not sure 'bout this, ye know?" the captain of the ship groused while pacing up and down in front of the door of a small utility room near the stern of the vessel. "Ye youngsters didn't need to be intervenin' at all. I'd have only gotten a few wee scratches 'n' been done with it, but now, who knows what'll happen to ol' Vieuxloup Demer, arr..."

"Don't worry, captain! We'll take full responsibility!" Penny declared with solemn gravitas, but it didn't seem to make the man feel much better.

The rest of the group was waiting outside as well, and they all perked up when the door opened… only for their anticipation to turn into confusion when Josh walked out holding Angie in a bridal carry.

"P-Put me down! I told you this is embarrassing!"

"Not until you're calm."

"I'm calm!" the Celestial girl yelped in a decidedly non-calm manner.

Meanwhile, Josh used his feet to close the door behind him, and after considering his options, he carried Angie over to the class rep's side and finally let her down, with the words, "Please look after her and make sure she doesn't do anything counter-productive," in tow.

Angie protested with a resounding "Boo!", yet didn't offer any counter-argument, and seeing that the rest of the group (including the captain) were waiting for an explanation, Josh turned to face them.

"Wasn't Angeline supposed to heal the captive?"

Judy's deadpan question made him flinch, followed by a sigh.

"She already did. Twice."

"Twice?" Snowy repeated after him, and this time Josh's face twisted into an awkward grimace.

"It's a long story."

"Is he conscious?" Judy pressed on, and Josh nodded, but then she also asked, "Did you question him already?", at which point the guy reflexively shook his head, so she imperceptibly raised a brow in a way probably nobody else in the room noticed. "Then what were you doing in there? Wasn't Deus supposed to interrogate the captive?"

"She was really insistent about it, too," Elly commented, making Josh send a sideways glance at the girl by Ammy's side.

"That was the plan, but then she almost killed him, so I had to resort to… drastic measures." His words sounded heavy, but considering that he just carried her in his hands, it just sounded all the more comical. Seeing that the onlookers were also on my wavelength, he exhaled a shallow sigh and jerked his head towards the door. "You'll get it when you see it. By the by, who's gonna try to interrogate him next?"

"Oh, me!" Penny volunteered with a hand over her head. "I learned about this from Uncle Percy!" She then turned to the owner of the ship and asked, "Captain! Can you lend me some tools from the engine room? I need some pliers and hammers and clamps and—"

"Anyone other than her?" Josh cut in before my knightly sister could gather steam and, ignoring her petulant 'Hey!', he addressed my other sister next. "Lili? Do you think you can maybe work your… erm… magic on him? In the literal sense, I mean."

"I… could try," she confirmed a touch hesitantly, but then my dear assistant forcefully cleared her throat.

"Why don't we try to question him normally first before we jump to the…" She glanced at my sisters and concluded with an extra-flat, "… 'advanced interrogation techniques'?"

"Yeah, let's start small," Josh agreed and swept his gaze over the group. "Let's all just go in and put some pressure on the guy."

It was at this point that the captain let out an ambivalent noise, followed by, "Aye, shiver me timbers, lads, but I be wantin' no part o' this here."

"Perfectly understandable," Judy responded at once and gestured towards the stairs leading to the deck. "Please attend to your duties in peace. We'll take care of this ourselves."

By this point, the captain must've long since realised that he wasn't dealing with just an average group of young nobles having a joy trip in the countryside, so he made a swift decision.

"Aye, that sounds shipshape to me, matey. I be wishin' ye fair winds, I reckon."

With that, he bowed out of both the conversation and the scene, trotting up the stairs just fast enough not to look like he was running away. In the meantime, the class rep raised a hand over her head and asked, "What about me?"

"You keep holding onto her," Josh instructed without batting an eyelid, much to his girlfriend's chagrin.

"Hey! Don't act like I wasn't entirely justified! You wanted to hit him, too!"

"Right, but not with a magic missile to the head," he griped back, then slouched his shoulders and turned to the rest. "On that note, you guys should prepare yourself before we go in."

"Is he that bad?" Elly inquired, sounding more curious than anything else.

Josh responded with a mysterious, "You're gonna see for yourselves," before stepping up to the door again.

"Can I be the bad cop?" the princess asked with a grin, probably to ease the mood, and after a short beat, my other girlfriend nodded.

"Mm. I'll be the good cop then."

"Then what will we be?" Penny inquired while pointing at herself and Snowy.

"The worse and better cops?" Josh quipped, much to her unusual delight.

"I like the sound of that!"

Meanwhile, he steeled his nerves and opened the door. On the other side, surrounded by the humming of the engine at the other side of the partition wall, sat a shirtless man on a plain wooden chair. He was no longer transformed, and his wet blonde hair clung to his forehead as he looked up at the group streaming into the room.

This was something of a storage room with metal shelves on both sides. Those, as well as their contents, were secured tightly so that they wouldn't fly all over the place when the waters were rough. There were also a couple of pipes in the back, or maybe just structural metal bars, and the Abyssal's chair was currently secured to one of them, his arms tied behind his back with the same kind of thick ropes the ship crew used to fasten the cargo.

Despite his sorry state, his eyes lit up at once when he saw everyone gather around him, and he tried his best to flash a suave smile.

"Ah, hello, my fellows! Has the misunderstanding been finally resolved?"

"Misunderstanding?" Elly echoed him, but then she seemingly remembered that she was supposed to be the bad cop, and she hastily crossed his arms with a harrumph. "W-What foolishness are you talking about, fool!?"

Okay, so… on one hand, she was pretty bad at being the bad cop (which was surprising, considering how cutthroat she was when arranging contracts), but on the other hand, the way she was trying to glare and glower at the guy was bloody adorable, so I couldn't complain in good conscience.

"Yeah! What a foolish fool!" Penny chimed in from the back and… eh, also kinda adorable, so she also got a pass.

Judy showed a palm to make them stop, and once they calmed down, she looked the Abyssal in the eyes.

"You're Hareng Asag Ninurta," she stated, and I was once again impressed by how she could remember that. I completely forgot about the guy's name already.

"Yes, that's me!" he responded with a cheeky smile and a wink. "Now that we're clear on that, could you please untie me?"

"Not so fast!" Elly cut in to uphold her role, and she let out another harrumph. "We're not letting you go until we've wrung you dry!"

"Ah, what a pleasurable predicament!" The Abyssal beamed an even brighter smile at my girlfriends, followed by a chuckle. "My lovely lady, I completely understand your feelings, and while I absolutely and categorically respect your taste in bondage play, I would much rather you wrung me dry under different circumstances. Could you please visit me in my private chambers after—"

Before he could finish, the princess abruptly slapped him across the face so hard the only reason he didn't fall off the chair was because he was tied to it.

Judy turned to her with a reproachful, "Elly," but my other girlfriend was more startled than anything.

"S-Sorry, he just really creeped me out and my hand moved on its own!"

"We're trying to question him in a civilized manner. Corporal punishment is beneath us."

"I-Indeed, my ferocious fair lady," the guy responded, still trying to look suave even though his smile was getting a bit lopsided. "Listen to your handmaiden. Her looks may pale in comparison to your violent charms, but her head is certainly in the right place."

"… Elly, I changed my mind. Slap him again."

"With pleasure!"

What happened to the good-cop-bad-cop routine? Not that I wasn't in full agreement with Judy on this one, but come on, they didn't even last five minutes!

Luckily, Josh was ready to intervene right away, probably because he was already foreseeing that something like this would happen, and he stopped the princess before she could turn the guy into pulp.

"Come on, guys! We aren't getting anywhere like this!"

"Right! How about you leave him to me, after all?" Penny proposed as he stepped forth and theatrically cracked her knuckles, yet even that didn't seem to deter the bruised Abyssal, and he immediately put on his game-face again.

"Ah, my fierce young lady, please be gentle with me! Your passion may burn brighter than the fiery red of your beautiful hair, but as you can see, I'm in no shape to accept your fervour!"

That made Penny stop in her tracks. By the looks of it, her brain was momentarily engaged in a fight-or-flight response, and while I would've honestly expected her to punch the guy's lights out, the latter won the tug of war, and she hastily hid behind Elly of all people.

"A-Awawawa! W-What's wrong with the head of this pervert!?"

"I told you to be ready," Josh commented on the side, instantly earning my sister's ire.

"You didn't tell us to prepare for this!"

Before they could start arguing, Snowy inserted herself into the conversation by noting, "Uuu… I might be wrong, but… I think he's a Seducer."

That made the conversation come to a screeching halt, right until Josh blurted out, "But he's a guy, right?"

"T-There are male Seducers too," Snowy insisted, and so the guy let out a slightly baffled hum.

"Huh. I learn something new every day."

Putting that thought-terminating cliché aside, everyone turned to the Abyssal again, and while his expression didn't change much, she still muttered a somewhat dispirited, "Busted already…"

While they were dealing with that, I also couldn't help but grumble. I mean, Seducers were supposed to be super-rare. The entirety of House Inanna had two, yet the Nergal patriarch not only managed to round up a small gaggle of them, allegedly just to distract me until Crowy and future-me arrived at the scene, but now the gang just randomly ran into one in the wild.

Gripes aside, Judy focused down on the captive and seemingly returned to her good cop routine by saying, "Listen. We can either do this the easy way or the hard way. We have no grudges with you…" She paused to glance at Elly and Penny staring daggers at the guy, then amended, "We have no serious grudges with you, so as long as you cooperate with us, you'll come to no harm."

The young man on the chair stared at my dear assistant, as if trying to weigh her words, and for a moment, I thought he was finally going to give a proper answer. I was wrong.

"Please accept my apologies, my lady. I failed to look past your appearance and realize that your sharp mind and eloquence shine brightly, elevating your looks from within!"

His words were followed by a long silence, then Judy mechanically turned to my other girlfriend.

"Elly. Two or three more."

"Slaps?"

"Yes."

"Two or three more it is!"

Once the painful echoes of his face getting flattened died down, Josh stifled a groan, held his face in his palm, and asked, "Should we leave it to Lili after all?" Seeing that Snowy was about as reluctant as it got, he followed that with an un-stifled groan. "Scratch that. I'm gonna give it a go first."

"Maybe that's for the better," Judy acceded and stepped aside to allow him to stand in front of the captive. She didn't go far though, because she took out her notebook and instructed, "Ask him about the situation in House Ninhursag first."

"On it." Josh inhaled hard and glared at the blonde guy. "Hey, shithead? I'm already a bit miffed after you hit on my girlfriend before… sorta… Anyhow, I don't have the patience for this shit, so give me a straight answer, or being slapped around a bit is gonna be the least of your problems. Understood?"

While the Abyssal didn't look too frightened, at least he didn't have that stupid Casanova grin on his face anymore. Also, with that threat, was Josh the 'worst cop' of the group, and if he was, would that make the class rep the 'best cop' by process of elimination? Food for thought, but for later, because the guy in the chair nodded along.

"Good. You've heard the question, so answer it. What's going on in House Ninhursag?"

"We're taking over," he said, but then he quickly corrected himself. "We've taken over."

"And by 'we', are you referring to the Ninurta family?" Judy continued her questioning, with Josh's intermittent interjections to keep the conversation on track and to stop him from bombarding my Dormouse with terrible pickup lines, and over time, a picture started to emerge.

"So to summarize," Elly spoke up at the end, trying her best to put things into a context she could parse. "You're the sixth heir of this clan that's like a branch-line of the main clan, and your clans have been fighting over the control of the estate for generations, and then the Inanna clan offered a deal to legitimize your takeover so long as you joined them in the war, and your clan took it and overthrew the main clan. Did I get that right?"

"Yes, my fair lady," the guy responded with a cheesy grin, but by this point, everyone was used to his weirdness enough to just ignore it.

"Meaning, you already dethroned House Ninhursag," Josh concluded, looking just a tad skeptical of the claim. "Then what were you doing out here?"

"Oh, that…" The Abyssal hesitated for a moment, but eventually admitted, "While we control Castle Ninhursag, there were some… other matters to consider. I was…. regrettably busy elsewhere until recently, so I thought I would build some merit for myself by attending to them up, but…"

"But?" Josh prompted him, and he let out a bitter sigh.

"I didn't expect to run into more than half the Faun Ninhursag out here in the middle of nowhere! All my retainers were subdued, and I barely escaped myself!"

"Oh… So that's why he had no Barrier…" Josh mused with a hand rubbing his chin. "That explains why he was so easy to knock out."

"I-I don't think that was the reason," Snowy tried to interject, but by then Judy was already asking the next question.

"Why would the Fauns of House Ninhursag be stationed outside of the city, especially during a coup d'état?" She imperceptibly narrowed her eyes at the man. "You also tried to immediately press-gang us and have us follow you somewhere. What are you not telling us?"

"My fair lady, your intellect is—"

"Answer the damn question," Josh growled, and this time the man in the chair flinched.

"What I was trying to say is that…" He weighed his options, and eventually he forced a grin onto his face and explained, "The Emperor and his Herald really care about the Mana Wells, right? You see, the Ninhursag patriarch locked himself in, and since his family escaped the castle, we had no one from the direct bloodline to open the Mana Well Chamber from the outside. My father didn't care much for this development, as it would hardly stop the Emperor and his Herald, but my dear brothers convinced him that we should still try to track down the fugitives, and so I volunteered… well, I was volunteered, but same difference, eh?"

"So the Faun Ninhursag were protecting the survivors of the coup," Snowy concluded in the back, and didn't seem surprised at all by the information.

"Interesting…" Josh followed her up, sounding just a tad nefarious. "Since there was a battle just the other day, and all the Fauns left, everything should still be chaotic, and the security around the Mana Well must be full of holes. Veeery interesting…"

"That same chaos should make sneaking into Castle Ninhursag exponentially more difficult," Judy pointed out quite studiously, but Josh's expression didn't change at all.

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," he insisted, followed by a not-at-all ominous chuckle. "In fact, I think I already have the outlines of a plan that will not only let us get to the Mana Well, but also screws over Lili's bastard ex-older-brother and Bel at the same time!"

"W-Wait… Are you serious?" the guy in the middle blurted out, sounding like he just realised the situation he was in. "Are you… Are you from the Noble Alliance?"

"Kinda, but not quite," Josh responded flippantly, making the Abyssal pale at once.

I was wondering why he was so forthcoming, but by the looks of it, he was labouring under some kind of weird misunderstanding until this point. Maybe he still was, because he exclaimed, "H-Hey, listen! I'm actually pretty influential around here, you know? I can make a great hostage! O-Or do you want me to show you where the Ninhursags are? I can do that too!"

"That… might not be a bad idea," Snowy whispered quietly in the back, but when the others turned to her, she raised her voice a bit to say, "Maybe we could use their help to get to the Mana Well?"

Josh responded with an ambivalent, "Maybe…" before looking at the Abyssal man again and declaring, "… or maybe we can hit two birds with one stone."

In retrospect, I might have set a bad example for Josh to follow, but at this point, it was hard to imagine how big of a kerfuffle this would turn out to be in the near future…