The Simulacrum

"Whoa!"

I nearly stumbled when I reappeared on the slanted rooftop of a building near the edge of the crater caused by Crowy's little outburst. I didn't nearly lose my footing because of the angle of the roof tiles, but because the way I Phased over was…

"That was weeeird."

Why? Well, this patently outside-context ability of mine always worked very consistently. The more phantom limbs I had, the larger the radius in which I could Phase became, and I could extend it further by targeting someone I marked for Far Sight. That's how it always worked, until now.

I didn't notice it when I Phased between Josh and Crowy, because it was a casual short-range hop, but this time it was different. I moved a good hundred or so meters, not counting the elevation, without the need for a mark to Far Glance to first. In fact, I could've Phased much, much further if I wanted to. It was kind of like I had… infinite range? That sounded cool, but it meant I had to 'scan' the area where I wanted to teleport to first in an expanding sphere of influence, and thanks to the square-cube law, getting the spatial data of like half the Abyss flashed before my eyes was a tad disorienting.

Oh well. At least now I have confirmed for one hundred percent certainty that my Phasing really was an extra-Simulacral ability all along. Or more like an Emergent ability? Wait, no. Oriole couldn't do that, and she would open portals whenever she Defined herself into the Simulacrum. Maybe it was more of a 'me ability', since the Simulacrum was technically 'inside me'. My Domain, I mean.

But wait, there's more! If my Phasing was an outside-context ability unique to me, essentially Defining myself (and others/objects/whatever) to different parts of the Simulacrum, then what about my Far Sight? It was clearly compatible, but it was a different ability altogether. Was it just a fluke? Something granted by another of my variable antagonist backstories that just happened to work together?

If so, then that explained why I couldn't mark people with my phantom limbs, and… oh, right! I actually developed Far Sight before I got my first phantom limb! Or at least before I was aware of it, and—

"{Chief? What's the situation?}"

"Huh?" I shook my head and tapped my ear out of habit. "A moment, Dormouse. I kind of accidentally distracted myself. Give me a second."

Right. Figuring out all of this could wait. First off, I needed to do something about the small army closing in on the others. Step one: take a closer look, meaning I Phased again, this time to a different roof, a bit further away from the edge of the remains of Castle Shamash, and…

"Ack! Okay, this is going to take some time to get used to," I whispered under my breath as I stood on a gargoyle. This time, I didn't bother to do a nocturnal echolocating mammal man impression and simply scanned the streets below with my eyes.

I mean, I already 'scanned' them with my spatial sense, or what have you, but I didn't exactly have the time or mental wherewithal to manually count all the Abyssals and Fauns in range. For the record, there were a whole lot of them. Chayson Enlil (I couldn't remember his middle name) was reliable most of the time, and after I rescued him from Crowy as Bel and let him join the team, he's been both very steadfast and enthusiastic. However, he was also occasionally prone to exaggeration, especially when in character, so it was better to double-check the numbers, just to be safe.

Turns out, he was more or less spot on.

"Seriously, Benjamin… Did you have to bring all of them here?"

"{You still haven't explained who this Benjamin is,}" Judy chimed in through the communicator once again, sounding just a bit peeved.

"The Predator Moon. He's Benjamin now. It's a long story."

She left it at that, and maybe for the better, because explaining all that would probably take all day, and we didn't have that sort of leisure time right now. So, the 'Noble Alliance' forces. My off-the-cuff estimate was that they were numbering somewhere in the ballpark of a thousand men, Fauns included. As I had noted several times before, warfare in the Abyss was a bit peculiar. Most of it was just flash raids, using fast-moving motorised squads and flyers to assault under-defended positions, while the individually powerful fighters, like the Lords and chief retainers of the various Houses, would only take the field for critical junctures.

In other words, these guys here were most of the combat-ready personnel of the Enlil and Gula houses combined.

"{How did they get here?} Judy asked, likely observing the small army on the ground through my eyes. "{Was this a retcon?}"

"Eh, not quite," I told her as I moved to a better wantage point. "Benjamin just put them here during our scuffle."

"{So… retcon?}"

"No. It's subtly different. Unlike the other Houses, they weren't anywhere near the focus of the scenario. That left them in a sort of limbo. A Schrödinger's Plot Device, if you will."

Just like before, like with the whole Ottawa School during my brief excursion there, if a part of the Simulacrum wasn't relevant to the scenario, it was left in a sketchy, malleable state. Similarly, since these two houses were fairly unimportant background-elements until now, they were somewhat undefined, meaning Benjamin could move them with relative ease.

"Benjamin didn't change something definitive that already happened in the past to something else. It was more like filling in the blanks. He, effectively, collapsed their narrative wave-function, so now they are just here and just hostile, because Benjamin said so."

"{… I understand that, but I have a hard time taking this explanation seriously when you keep calling him Benjamin.}"

"That's the point, really."

I could hear a soft sigh from the other end of the communications line, followed by a tired, "{I'll have you explain that too, later. For now, what can you do about them?}"

That was a good question. What could I do?

I mean, I was Leo Prime, with fully-phenomenal totally-cosmic powers. If I really wanted to, I could just retcon this whole situation, and then…

"Ah, a moment... New info just came in," I whispered as I internalised yet another bit of knowledge from my many, many compartmentalised pieces. "Retcons are off the table for a while. That bony wanker mauled the heck out of the Simulacrum, and it's a bit fragile right now, especially without a scenario running to lock in its parameters. I'll have to fix that as soon as we're done here."

"{You'll have to fix it?}" my dear assistant inquired, followed by a soft hum. "{I'm adding that to the list of questions for later.}"

"Sure. By the by, how's the class rep doing with the Mana Wells?"

Judy didn't answer right away, and while I could just Far Glance over, doing that after specifically asking her about it felt wrong. Before long, the communications line connected again, and she told me, "{The magic holograms are still arguing, and she says she needs some time to untangle the Ley Lines she tied up before.}"

"Right. That was a thing." Shaking my head, I tapped my Leoformer's storage enchantment and retrieved my weapons. "They started to move towards the crater en masse. I'll go and keep them busy. Call me when the class rep's ready."

"{Roger. Beluga, out.}"

"Wait, are you still doing the code-names?" I got no response because she already cut the line, so I exhaled hard and brandished my oddly silent weapons. "Never mind. Are you two ready?"

"{I'm terribly confused, young knight,}" Cal admitted. "{I can distinctly remember getting ready to fight, but then your opponent was struck in the back, then we were in a basement, but now we're on a rooftop. I'm starting to feel like my memory is failing me.}"

"{Comment: Interface:Teeny corroborates Interface:Caly's recollection.}"

Right. I put these two in my storage enchantment at the same time I switched out of my Lion Knight armour before initiating the big retcon. More importantly though, my 'representation' from back then was erased by Benjamin, including everything I was wearing at the time, such as my Leoformer. That meant these two were also erased along with the storage, but now that I re-Defined myself into the Simulacrum, they were also back… but were they the same Cal and Teeny, or perfect copies? Was this kind of like the Space Trek transporter dilemma? And…

"Ack. I'm side-tracking myself again," I mumbled as I hefted my swords and also shifted into my Polemos outfit. "I'll let you sit in when I explain everything to the girls, but for now, please focus. We have an army to stop."

"{And army? Where?}" That was all it took to make Cal forget about his gripes, and if he had a neck, I was sure he would've been craning it left and right. "{Oooh! Finally, a proper challenge, worthy of our young knight!}"

"Don't get too hyped. We won't fight them unless absolutely necessary."

With that said, I closed my eyes for a moment to 'read' the spatial data around the city, and then I promptly Phased down to street level. Specifically, I was standing in the middle of the road leading to the crater. There were a whooole lot of Fauns at the forefront, marching more-or-less in lock step. Was it some kind of intimidation-tactic, I wondered.

Either way, I needed to get their attention, so…

"I think I should still have the loudspeaker-enchantment somewhere here… ah, here it is." It was the same one I sometimes used as Bel, though this one was a legacy version I just copied over from the old suits, along with some other enchantments, because it didn't take up much 'space', so to say. So, I turned it on and yelled, "WHOEVER IS LEADING THIS INSURGENCY, STOP THIS ADVANCE AND GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE!"

There was a lot of screaming and windows breaking and my ear was ringing and… Okay, so maybe that was a bit too loud, but at least it got everyone's attention. Still not enough, because they just started running around like headless chickens on the road, stumbling over each other instead of sending a representative. Should I try getting their attention a different way?

What about wings? Forcefully bringing out some Celestial wings usually did the trick, but without the scenario and my narrative privileges in place, I wasn't entirely sure I could—

"Ah, right."

I Defined myself into the Simulacrum, so nothing was stopping me from Defining myself into a full-on Celestial with all the wings and the halos and the shiny stuff. It didn't even take that much effort. I just had to think of it, and then I suddenly got wings. Not just wing-looking special effects, but genuine ones, and they felt…

"Ack! How does Angie live with these things…?"

Yeah, maybe suddenly growing new body parts I wasn't familiar with wasn't the smartest idea, but I still managed to somehow spread all eight of them and create a nice light-show to finally draw everyone's attention to me. As soon as that was done, I immediately got rid of them, because they were waaay too uncomfortable.

That said, it opened up a couple of new considerations. If I could Define myself into a proper Celestial to complete the Polemos-look, could I also Define myself in another way? Maybe I could Define all my Oaths to be working just fine, or to make myself literally invincible, or I could even turn into a giant radioactive lizard and stomp around the city like a big playground.

Well, maybe not the last one, but still, food for thought.

"Are you Polemos, the Peacebringer?!" a voice called out to me from above, and a group of Abyssals approached me, stopping and lining up at about the halfway point between me and the various Fauns and Abyssal soldiers piled up on the street.

All of these boss-types were already transformed and ready for battle, with half of them coming over on foot, while the other half flew over the crowd to join them. It was easy to tell that they were high-ranking Abyssals, though I had no bloody idea who they were. I could maybe kinda-sorta recognise one of the men from the Noble Alliance emergency meetings after Ammy was taken, but I wasn't entirely sure about that either.

Anyhow, I was asked, so I turned on the loudspeaker again, this time on a slightly less ear-piercing volume.

"Yes, it's me. Leonard S. Polemos-Dunning," I announced and pointed Cal at the group, by this point numbering around ten people of various shapes and ages. "Are you the people responsible for this sedition?"

"Sedition?!" a different man cried out. This one had a thick neck and a blue-ish skin with… gills? Was he a land-shark?

Whatever. Before he could say anything else, I increased the volume again.

"HAVE YOU NOT INVADED THE CITY OF NEW LARSA, ATTACKING THE SOLDIERS OF EVERY HOUSE PRESENT INDISCRIMINATELY, INCLUDING THE FORCES OF THE RIGHTFUL RULER?" I bellowed, but then my ears started ringing again, so I took it down a notch. "You back-stabbed House Shamash. What is that if not treason?"

Right, this volume felt about right. Where was I?

"Fool!" a third Abyssal roared as he stepped out of line and pointed at me. "The war is over! The Emperor and his dog are dead, and the Noble Alliance is no more! 'Tis all men for themselves!"

Okay, so there should've been really no way for him to know that. I mean, maybe they could've figured out that Crowy died by some long-distance surveillance of the crater, but they had no way to know that Bel was out of the picture… which once again reminded me that these guys were forcefully plucked out of whatever ill-defined corner of the Abyss they were chilling in by Benjamin and forcefully given this role.

I mean, I felt nominally bad about turning Crowy into our big bad and it leading to his death, but to be perfectly fair, the guy was an irredeemable asshole from day one, and if anything, I had to temper his murderous tendencies for the sake of the plot. Hence 'nominally'. I had no idea if these guys were also assholes or just caught up in this, so…

"This is the era of revolution!" the potentially land-shark guy exclaimed with his hands up in the air. "The weak shall fall, and the strong shall rise! We're the harbingers of the new age, and all who stand in our way shall be trampled!"

"And die!" yet another Abyssal called out, this time a woman with a weird hairdo that looked like a big bloody spider.

These two were very heavily weighing my opinion on the 'asshole' side of the scale, but I figured I shouldn't write them off too quickly. It was better to at least try to negotiate with them first, to see if they can see reason. Dot my i-s and cross my t-s. Just basic due diligence stuff for my peace of mind.

So, how would a very wise and peace-maker-ish Polemos type respond in this situation?

I was just about to come up with something, but then yet another guy roared, "All the traitorous houses of Inanna, Ashur, and Negal shall be exterminated to the last man, woman, and child, and from their ashes, our new order will—!"

Okay, screw politeness, because, "ARE YOU LISTENING TO YOURSELF, YOU BLOODY MUPPETS!?"

Also, ow. I reflexively cranked up the volume again. Why do I keep doing this to myself?

More importantly, I exhaled an exasperated groan and waved Teeny in a wide arc to indicate all of them as I continued with a slightly less uber-loud, "LISTEN TO ME, YOU DAFT BASTARDS! I'M TRYING TO BE NICE HERE! YOU'RE ALL CAUGHT UP IN THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT, SO I WANT YOU TO STOP FOR JUST A BLOODY MINUTE, UNTWIST YOUR BLEEDING PANTIES, AND THINK! YOU UTTER COCKWOMBLES!"

"Or what?" land-shark-adjacent guy taunted me back the moment I stopped speaking, and the only reason I didn't facepalm was because both my hands were occupied.

"Or I'll be forced to be very impolite," I said in a slightly more diplomatic tone, and yet the bastards didn't even ruminate on my words for a few seconds.

"You have no power here, Celestial!"

"Yes!" another Abyssal called out. "You're but one man, and we're many!"

I was just about to respond when my communicator flared to life, and Judy's voice interrupted me.

"{Chief? Amelia says they managed to jury-rig the two Mana Wells together, and they are ready when you are. What should I tell her, over?}"

It took a second to turn off the voice amplification, but then I told her, "Go ahead. There's probably going to be some confusion on the other side, so I'll buy you some more time until everyone's ready."

"{Roger. Beluga, out.}"

Loudspeaker back on, I yelled, "SERIOUSLY, THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING! I'M TRYING TO BE AS NICE AND DIPLOMATIC HERE AS POSSIBLE, BUT IF YOU DON'T EVEN CONSIDER—!"

"Enough talking! Chaaarge!" the spider-hairdo woman yelled, and she started running towards me.

"For the future of House Enlil!"

"For the new order!"

She was soon joined by others. Well, fine. Negotiations had officially broken down; it was time for a more direct approach.

"{At last, a proper battle, young knight! A fight for the ballads and the history books is upon us!}"

"{Warning: Interface:Caly, please calm down.}"

Ignoring the two, I channelled my mana and immediately came up with a plan of action. From what I'd seen, this whole neighbourhood had been already evacuated, no doubt because of the protracted aerial battle between Crowy and Fidèle. Two-thirds of the castle in the center of the town disappearing probably also sent people running, so there shouldn't be any civilians left here. Or at least I couldn't 'detect' any when I was Phasing, though I couldn't be sure how reliable that was.

Anyhow, the idea was simple.

Step one: use a sword-beam to destroy the façade of the nearby buildings.

Step two: under the cover of the dust and chaos, Phase in and out to subdue the ringleaders.

Step three: once the nobles and officers were down, make another show of force to cow the ordinary soldiers until reinforcements arrive.

Not too complicated, all things considered. As such, I pumped Teeny and Cal full of mana, took up a well-rehearsed stance, and then… music?

…

"Wait, what?"

I wasn't the only one shocked, because the charging Abyssals and their little army all faltered as well, and when I looked over my shoulder…

"Kihihi! Did you think having a theme song made you special?! Two can play this game, bitches!"

… there was a huge mecha, with enormous boxy shoulders made to look like a pair of giant old-timey speakers blasting some kind of high-energy J-pop song all around; something right out of the opening of an anime, or more likely a Saturday morning sentai series.

If that was all, I could've lived with that. Barely. But then…

"Charge! For the glory of the King and the Ordo Draconis!"

"Don't worry, Son! We're here to rescue you!"

"Where's Leonard-dono!?"

"Calm down, dear. We'll find Brother Leonard as soon as possible."

"Like, out of my way! Let me at them! I'm gonna gag you all with a spoon today!"

"For Deus!"

"[Secure the perimeter! Go, go, go!]"

"For the Second True Archon!"

"My Lady! Where are y-y-y-yaaah! M-Mistress Matron! W-What are you doing here!?"

…

"…"

"{Chief? Are we invading the Abyss right now?}"

That was, without a doubt, a rhetorical question. In the middle of the crater, not far from the Mana Well and its pedestal, was an enormous gate. As in, easily at least ten meters tall, and it was spewing forth EVERYONE.

On the ground, Arnwald and Morgana were leading the charge, right behind Fred and his horde of Sprocket robots. Behind the two, the entirety of the Ordo Draconis; every single Knight, squire, and even the Kage ninjas. Speaking of which, they were flanked by Rinne and Naoren on the left, and my in-laws on the right, leading detachments of already transformed Draconians. Sahi, the arch-mages, Brang and the Fauns, hell, even Ichiko and Xiao were here!

But that wasn't the crazy part. No, that was the fact that the sky was positively swarming with hundreds of Celestial soldiers, with dozens more pouring through the portal every passing second, and…

"Deploy the Colossi! Crush all resistance and secure the Archons!"

…

You've got to be kidding me.

…

To be perfectly fair, I did give instructions to Roland as Bel, so I knew he was preparing for a big 'here comes the cavalry' moment, but… How? How the hell did he manage to get literally everyone ready and raring to go? We weren't even on schedule! And—

"{Chief? Please respond, over?}"

I sighed and, since I had already charged them up, I swung Cal and Teeny towards the sky to serve as a beacon of light. Soon, all the Knights and Draconians and ninjas and Celestials and magi and big mechas and little girls and a bloody partridge in a bleeding pear tree came rushing my way. In other words…

"Yes, Dormouse. We're, apparently, invading the Abyss today."

"{… Roger. Just checking. Beluga, out.}"

As for me, I let my disappointed weapons down, Phased out of the way back to a nearby roof, and quietly muttered, "I swear to god, if this somehow spirals into a full-blown takeover and someone tries to pin being the big boss of the Abyss onto me too, I'll blow a fuse…"