The Simulacrum - Chapter 88~ Part 3

“… Excuse me? Could you repeat that?”

I made an effort to sound calm, but Snowy still shuddered like I was scolding her.

“I… I didn’t do it on purpose!” she burst out, and her panicked words flooded over me like water from a broken dam. “It just happened! I don’t know why! I-I mean, think I know, but I’m not sure! I wanted to get along with her because she’s your sister, and I was afraid that if we kept arguing, you would take her side, and then I would have nowhere to go, so… m-maybe I did it unconsciously, and before I knew it, there was a connection, and I wanted to cut it, but if I did, I was afraid we would start fighting again, and then I didn’t know what to do, and, and…”

“Snowy!” She flinched, and now that I finally managed to get a word in, I raised a finger in front of her mouth and said, “Breathe.”

After the first moment of confusion, she balled her fingers into fists and rapidly inhaled and exhaled with a serious expression. She did it so vehemently that I was afraid she was going to hyperventilate, so I turned the single extended finger into a palm to make her stop.

“All right. Are we calm now?”

“N-No, but… better?”

“Good enough. So, from the beginning: Penny used to antagonize you when she transferred in.” She gave me a nod. “Because you didn’t want to cause trouble, you tried to befriend her, but then you accidentally did your Seducer thing.”

“Yes. It was an accidental connection,” she stressed.

“Easy there, sis. I believe you. So, when did you notice this connection thing?”

“… Last week,” she meekly admitted, and when I didn’t respond right away, she hastily added, “I-I know I should’ve told you sooner, but I didn’t know what to do, and I was afraid, and—”

“Easy, easy.” I rubbed her back, both for emphasis and to calm her, and once she settled down a little, I asked, “What exactly are the effects of this ‘connection’?”

“It’s… not very strong, so it should be just a mild fascination. A feeling of closeness, trust, comfort… those kinds of things.”

I exhaled a sneaky sigh of relief. For a moment I was afraid it was something more substantial, like a love spell, but on second thought, if Snowy never used something like that on Josh, there was no way she would hit Penny with one. Still, it was better to leave no stone unturned, so I asked anyway.

“In other words, when you said you ‘seduced’ her, you meant the ability, not that you made her romantically interested.”

“N-No! Strong emotions require a much stronger connection! There’s no way I could do something like that on accident. I mean, it was an accident. Really. I swear.”

“I know. I already told you I believe in you.”

My sister shyly averted her eyes, and I used the silence to think. Not that there was much to consider in this situation, as there was only one reasonable thing to do.

“All right then. You stay here, I’ll go get Penny, and we’re going to explain things to her together.”

“Do we… really have to?”

“Of course we do. It’s the reason why you came to me, isn’t it? You could’ve kept this a secret, but you didn’t, so we should go the whole mile and resolve this entire situation in one go.”

“… I suppose you’re right.”

“Yup. Trust your big bro, and we’ll fix this in a jiffy.”

I flashed her a reassuring smile, and she gave me one in return, even if hers was a little strained. I figured a brotherly head pat was in order, and after delivering one, I left the reception room to look for my other sister. It wasn’t hard to find her, as she was still bouncing around in the sparring arena, though since I’ve last seen her, she replaced her partner with an eager Josh. By the looks of it, their match was going surprisingly even.

“Guys, could you—?”

“I’ll get you this time!” Josh cut me off with a roar and rushed Penny.

“In your dreams!” my sister answered with a fearless grin and did that zig-zag move she used against me during our Arbitration. They met in the middle, and Josh blocked her strike with a semi-transparent green barrier covering his left forearm. He tried to push on, aiming for a grapple, but Penny pushed him aside and did a completely superfluous backwards somersault to gain some distance.

“I said, could you two st—?”

This time I was cut short by a spirited roar coming from Josh. Once he regained his balance, he cupped his hands in front of his chest, and I could already see the seed of a large air bullet forming between them. Penny responded by brandishing her training sword and taking up a guard point. She yelled out, and her whole body started shining, a side-effect of cycling her mana. Weirdly enough, they did this whole power-up stand-off while they were only about three steps apart, and by the looks of it, they didn’t even register that I was there. Rude.

Since I still had my testing gear equipped, I revved it up and briskly walked between the two while they were still busy channeling their super special awesome attacks or whatnot. Without further ado, I reached out and grabbed Penny’s sword near the tip. I had my gauntlet on, and she was using a blunt training sword, so there was no way I’d get cut. She still panicked for a moment when she realized what was happening, which allowed me to easily yank the weapon out of her grasp.

Josh also recognized my presence, at last, and tried to redirect his attack. He was within the reach of my Phantom Limbs, so I figured it was simpler to just cut his oversized air-ball in half with one swipe, and it disappeared with a limp whooshing noise. Now, since he was in phantom-limb range, it naturally meant he was also in sword range, so I raised the recently snatched weapon over my head and lightly bonked him on the forehead for emphasis.

“Ow! What gives?” my friend complained and vigorously rubbed his forehead with the kind of look a big dog would show when you took its favorite toy.

“Pay attention to people when they’re talking to you.” Right after saying that, I held out the sword pommel-first, and it took him a second to recognize what I wanted. I let him pull the weapon out of my grasp, then grabbed my sister by the scruff of her neck and said, “I’m borrowing Penny for a minute.”

“Brother, wait! We’re not finished yet!”

“You can continue sparring after we’re done talking.”

With that, I dragged her off the training field, leaving an eminently baffled Josh in our wake, plus a couple of intrigued bystanders. We ignored them all, and before long I was back in the reception room with a resigned girl following me.

Once she noticed Snowy, she let out a stifled cough and asked, “Is… this about the computer?”

“No, it’s something more important,” I answered, and gestured for Snowy to speak up. She didn’t. Instead, she just stared at the floor and awkwardly shuffled her feet, so a sigh later I broke the ice with, “You know that by Abyssal standards, Snowy is something called a ‘Seducer’, right?”

“Yes?”

“Seducers have this ability to make people like them.”

“I figured,” Penny muttered, suddenly sounding apprehensive.  “So… Are you trying to tell me she used that on you?”

She even pointed at me, and I could barely hold back the impulse to flick her forehead.

“No, you blockhead. She used it on you. You, not me.”

“She did?”

She looked at Snowy in alarm, and my Abyssal sister finally spoke up.

“It wasn’t on purpose! It was by complete accident, I swear!”

By the looks of it, my knightly sister was hit by a classic blue screen of death, but after rebooting, her face went red as a lobster and she practically hid herself behind my back and pointed a finger at the other girl.

“No way! We’re both girls! Girls!”

“That doesn’t really matter,” Snowy explained, and Penny’s brows climbed even higher up her forehead in alarm.

“It… It doesn’t?”

“What she meant,” I cut in before she’d develop some kind of weird misunderstanding, “is that she only wanted you to like her as a friend, so whether you are both girls or not is completely irrelevant.”

“Really? Phew!” Penny theatrically wiped her forehead, and finally stopped trying to hide behind me.  “So… it didn’t work?” We both gave her odd looks, so she hurriedly added, “I mean, I already told you it’s not like I like her a lot or anything, so it obviously didn’t work on me, right? Because of my awesome magic resistance as the Unicorn Knight, right? Right?”

I had no idea what kind of resistance she was talking about outside her armor, but before anything else, I gently pointed out, “That means you do like her, at least a little.”

“It’s semantics!” she pouted, her face flushing again just as it was about to return to normal. “It’s not like we get along particularly well, right, Snowy?” Before my other sister could answer, Penny let out a triumphant huff and declared, “You see? This isn’t a biggie at all.”

Honestly, I hoped she wouldn’t make a huge deal out of being subtly manipulated like that, but the passion by which she tried to ignore the whole issue was a little suspicious.

“Just to be clear, Snowy here unconsciously used magic to influence you. Are you really okay with that?”

“I don’t feel influenced at all,” she declared, almost sounding proud.

This time I turned to my other sister, and asked, “For the record, you still have that Seducer connection with her, right?”

“Yes. I… didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t want to forcefully cut it.”

“Can you do it now?”

Instead of answering, Snowy clasped her hands together with a determined look in her eyes. There was a soft glow around her, and for a moment I could see something in the air between my sisters. It was faint and wispy, kind of like when a ray of sunlight poking through the holes on a shutter illuminated the dust in the air, but before I could take a better look, it completely dissipated.

Maybe she was expecting something more dramatic to happen, as Penny repeatedly blinked and glanced around, ultimately settling on me. She flashed a cheeky grin and declared, “You see? Nothing changed. I still only like her this much.”

She illustrated her point by parting her thumb and index fingers. I leaned closer to take a better look, pointed at it, and turned to Snowy.

“Say, sis? Isn’t that more than the last time?”

“I’m… not sure. Maybe a little?”

“That’s just your imagination,” Penny declared with a pout and hid her hand behind her back.

“So… You’re not mad at me?” Snowy sounded a touch sheepish, and after some thinking, my other sister shook her head.

“You said it was an accident, and that you were sorry, and it wasn’t that big of a deal anyway, and forgiveness is a virtue, so…” She suddenly stuck out a hand and asked, “Water under the bridge?”

Snowy stared at the outstretched hand like she’d never seen on in her life, and glanced at me for encouragement. Instead, I shook my head and told them, “I don’t want to rain on your parade, but this isn’t something you should sweep under the rug like that.”

“But why? There was no harm done,” Penny pointed out, but I stood my ground.

“I don’t want this incident to crop up again and bite us in the butt in the future, so I’d like you to talk it out properly. I want you to open your hearts, spill out your feelings, and all kinds of other mushy stuff, so that you two would be on the same page for sure, without any possibility of a misunderstanding.”

“That’s… difficult,” Snowy muttered, so I turned to her.

“Why?” Instead of answering, she pointed at me. “It’s difficult because I’m here?”

“It would be embarrassing.”

I couldn’t really argue with that, so I gestured towards the bench by the teleport closet. “In that case, I’ll leave it to you two. Be nice, be honest, be thorough.”

My sisters shared a confused look, but under my urging, they obediently sat down side by side. A soft grunt of approval later I waved them goodbye and left the room, only to run into my girlfriends loitering in front of the entrance.

“What’s the scoop?” Elly asked after sidling up to me, and after a moment of consideration, I shrugged and gave them the footnotes version of the events.

“So, she really used her powers on Penny after all,” Judy concluded without looking up from her phone.

“I knew it!” Elly agreed, causing my brows to knit on their own.

“You did?”

“Well, fine, I didn’t know, but I had a strong feeling that was the case,” the princess clarified herself. “That’s why I only hinted at it in front of Neige, to see her reaction.”

“I believe that’s why she decided to consult you,” Judy commented on the side, still typing.

“For the better. The last thing I needed right now was something like this to drive a wedge between my sisters,” I noted a tad dourly, but Judy only responded with an absentminded hum and continued to type away. “Dormouse? What exactly are you doing right now?”

“I’m in the process of factoring in your recent intervention against Penelope and Joshua into our internal power ranking matrix.”

I had many words to say about her strange fascination with power levels, but in the end, I only acknowledged her with a deadpan “I see,” and left it at that. Everybody needed a hobby, and who was I to judge?

“What’s the plan for the rest of the day?” Elly inquired and I seriously considered her question.

“The girls should work this out between themselves, but let’s stay around until they’re done, just in case. After that, we have to test Josh’s mana ripples, and then I plan to finish Judy’s artifacts today.” That finally made my dear assistant look up from her notes, so I gave her a toothy smile and added, “Look forward to them.”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

“Once I’m done with that, it’s probably going to be time to ferry everyone home, and then I’ll visit Sahi to chat with her about the tournament.”

“Are you going to talk her out of it?”

At first, I didn’t quite know how to answer that, so I shrugged.

“We’ll see. I still have to figure out how to approach this whole tournament arc, and I want to hear her out too.”

“No sabotaging,” Judy warned me.

“At least not before I get to the semi-finals,” Elly added on, earning a frown from my assistant for her trouble.

“Don’t loosen the terms for no reason.”

“I’m not. Not to mention, Leo promised that he’ll watch my matches in the semi-finals, so he obviously shouldn’t do any sabotaging before that,” the princess explained, and while I could’ve pointed out I only promised to think about watching, I let it slide this time.

“Unless it turns out it’s dangerous, I’ll probably leave the tournament to chug along. If anything, I should come up with a way to make it work for us.”

“That’s what I like to hear!” the princess exclaimed and patted me on the back, only to let out a pained hiss. “Owie! Sharp!”

“Oh right. I still have the harness on me,” I mused and pulled on my glove. “I supposed I should get out of my gear. I don’t need any more experimental data today, and—”

Then, just as my hand was about to slip out, my sixth sense gave me a mild warning, and I reflexively stepped back, pulling the girls along with me. It was just in time too, as a split-second later a stray air bullet careened past us and hit the heavy metal door of the reception room with a dull thud.

“Akuryo no Senmai!”

I could faintly hear Josh exclaiming ‘Crap!’ in the distance, followed by a heavy impact. A second later, there was a much more distinct yell of, “Ha! Missed me!”

It was roughly around this time that the door behind us opened and Penny poked her head through the crack.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, don’t worry about it.” With a solid tug, I pulled my gauntlet back onto my hand and hissed, “Just continue your discussion. I’ll be right back after instilling some discipline…”