~Chapter 79~ Part 2

"Make sure you stay safe."

"That's my line," my dear assistant deadpanned back at me as she straightened the XXL-sized coat strewn over my armor. For the record, I tried to buy one in a different color, but everything in this size was black. It's a conspiracy, I tell you.

On a more serious note, I carefully looked over everyone else gathered in my living room. The 'home sitter team', as I jokingly called it, was led by my dearest assistant, still in the process of arranging my apparel. Its members consisted of Snowy, currently serving hot cocoa in her maid outfit, a foxy miko fawning over her uniform, and unusually mellow class rep, with a mug in one hand and a hardcover book on another, and Elly. I'd have liked to give a nice description of my girlfriend as well, but at the moment she was looking a little silly while glaring at me with a dopey smile on her face. It apparently had something to do with some conflicting emotions about my armor.

But back to the home sitter team as a whole: their job, so to speak, was to hole up behind the wards in my house and stay put, just in case the dreaded Narrative decided to muck things up again. Originally it was only supposed to be Judy staying for the night, but one thing led to another, and before I knew it, things escalated into a full-on tea party. Well, cocoa party, but that's a distinction without a difference, really.

I didn't mind. If they'd be cooped up for the evening, they might as well have fun. I didn't feel left out at all, I swear.

"I know you have this planned out, but if things become too dangerous, don't be too proud to cheat."

"Cheating is like plan F already," I told Judy, but before I could explain the details, I noticed a familiar sound coming from outside and added, "I'll try my hand with plans A to G first, but I keep what you said in mind. Now, if you excuse me, I have to let my accomplice in. I'll be right back."

Saying so, I backed away from her and walked over to the front door, just in time for the doorbell to sound.

"Haha! I won!" Angie declared with a grin. I had no idea what she meant by that, but her already present grin widened even further when she took a closer look at me. "Whoa! Josh, come check this out! Leo looks really cool!"

"What? Oh, that's just the armor. Anyone would look good in that," Joshua grumbled as he also came over. He had a thick blue winter coat over his school uniform, plus a bright yellow, open-faced scooter helmet that didn't fit the rest of his outfit at all, but I wasn't going to hold it against him. Safety was important. It's even in my middle name. In any case, once he came to a stop, he looked me over and quietly murmured, "Seriously, man? Are we really doing this?"

"The duel?" I blurted out in understandable perplexity, and he promptly shook his head.

"No, I mean, going to the park on my bike? With you wearing that? We're going to look incredibly stupid."

"Oh, you mean that! What's the alternative? I can't exactly put it on in the middle of the forest. Those stupid buckles are a two-man job."

"Yes, I know, but…"

"Guys, can I go in first? My ears are gonna freeze off!" Angie cut in, and her childhood pal all but rolled his eyes at her.

"I told you to wear a beany under the helmet, but nooooo…"

The Celestial girl stuck her tongue out in place of a proper answer, and I stepped aside to let her in.

"Snowy already made hot cocoa. Cookies are in the usual cupboard. Have fun, but don't cause a ruckus."

"Got it, dad!" She skipped inside with an impish grin, but then after she crossed the threshold she turned on her heel gestured for me to lean closer and told me, "Make sure Josh gets home in one piece, or I'll be really mad at you. I mean, he already promised to give me a ride home and I don't want to walk in the cold, you know?"

"Yes, sure, I'm certain that's the only reason you're worried about him," I hit her with my best deadpan delivery. She looked a little perplexed by my comment, but then my girlfriends came over and more or less elbowed her out of the way. She shrugged it off without a word and headed for the coat racks.

"Remember Leo: never let your guard down!" Elly warned me and took my gauntleted hand into her own. "The accursed Knights are a nefarious lot. Always expect the worst!"

"I already do," I responded while squeezing her hand back, careful not to hurt her fingers.

"Also expect that they expect you to expect that, so expect their expectations so that you cannot be expected."

Judy's warning was slightly less useful, but I nodded along anyway. No matter how prepared I was, she probably couldn't help but be worried about me, so I did my best to reassure her.

"It's going to be fine, Dormouse. This time around, I'm not only expecting the unexpected, I'm planning for it."

"That's uncomfortably close to jinxing it."

"And that's why we're not talking about the details," I told her with a playful wink, and while she still didn't completely ease up, at least she flashed me a smile in return. A barely perceptible 'Judy smile', of course, but that goes without saying.

"Come on, let's get going," Josh suddenly called out to me from behind. "The only thing worse than looking stupid while riding a bike is being late while looking stupid riding a bike."

"Oh, cut it. We're not late from anywhere; they're still back at their base prepping for the duel."

To Josh's credit, by now he didn't even ask me how I knew that. That didn't mean he wouldn't direct a skeptical brow at me though, and he followed it up with the question, "Then why do we have to leave so early?"

"We have to set up the Purple Zone."

"Didn't you already do that with Ammy yesterday?"

"No, we just set up the boundaries and the anchor point. I still have to prime it before it's usable."

My brief explanation was sufficient enough for Josh, though I suppose it could use some further elaboration. Long story short, as the challenged party, it was my job to set up the arena. That didn't mean just the venue, but the convenient little pocket dimension as well.

Now, here's the thing: apparently there were two kinds of those. One was a temporary version with fuzzy boundaries that could be invoked in a pinch, and it wasn't particularly hard to do. For others, I mean. I still couldn't do it, because it required Mana, and while I had access to it now, the actual process was fairly involved and I didn't have time to learn it. This was the kind that Elly and Snowy invoked during their somewhat violent disagreement a while back, and it automatically popped out of existence and ejected everyone and everything from the 'real world' in it after a while

The other kind was the one set up around the school and what Labcoat Guy used during his ambushes. It required considerably more setup, but in exchange it was semi-permanent, so long as the 'anchors' were routinely renewed. Needless to say, I couldn't make one of these either, but I had lots of people around me who could.

But back to the types. For simplicity's sake, let's call the first one Instant Purple Zone, and the second one Permanent Purple Zone. The rules were as follows: no two Purple Zones of the same type can coexist in the same place. In other words, you can put down an Instant Zone inside the area of a Permanent Zone, but it would be a separate space, and you can't make another Permanent Zone there. At best, you could only go into the already existing Purple Zone and try to wrestle control away from its owner by capturing the anchor point. That's what we did when we tried to capture Fred, and that's what Crowey did to the School's Permanent Zone.

So, with all those technical details out of the way, let's return to the original topic: why did we need to go there early? Simply put, I had Ammy do all the heavy lifting for me by setting up a small Permanent Zone within the park. However, to actually use it, it had to be 'primed', which was... well, the best way I can describe it is the magical equivalent of solving a long series of simple algebraic equations. Not too complicated, but kind of tedious, and since yesterday was the first time I tried it, it took me a couple of minutes to do it, so I figured I'd warm it up before the knightly duo arrives.

Anyhow, once I explained myself, Josh turned on his heel and walked over to his moped. Since he was raring to go, I bid my girlfriends farewell one last time, including a couple of chaste comfort-kisses, and then I followed after him at once, only to come to a halt when I was suddenly offered a sky-blue biker helmet.

"... Dude. How am I supposed to wear a helmet on my helmet?"

"We're going to look dumb anyway, so put this on. The last thing we need is to be stopped and fined by a cop on our way to the park."

"Then where do I put my actual helmet?"

"Idunno. Just put it into the front basket or something."

"Wouldn't that look silly?"

"... Are you picking a fight with me, mate?"

"Nah, just arguing on principle."

Saying so, I took the bike helmet from him and casually put the knight helmet into the aforementioned basket. My friend wasn't fully satisfied by my response, but he wordlessly got onto his bike and fired up its engine. I did the same. The first part, I mean. I couldn't exactly ignite an already running engine. Well, okay, technically I could be doing it literally, dousing it in gasoline and lighting it up and all, but it would be a bit of an overkill for just a pun.

More importantly, getting onto the moped was a little tricky, considering I was already bigger and heavier than Josh, and now my armor and the coat over it added some extra bulk to me. We still had to work with what we had, and after a few tries (and nearly falling over once), we finally gathered momentum and were on our way to our destination.

It was a short ride, and despite Josh's worries, we weren't turning any heads on our way and arrived in the nick of time. On a side note, the class rep was right. Josh indeed drove like a lunatic, though part of it was probably just the scooter being unbalanced because of me. Hopefully. Otherwise, I have to wonder what kind of madman gave him his license.

Putting my friend's peculiar driving habits aside, once we reached the park, we left our ride at the nearby bike racks and changed outfits. In my case it was over quick, since I only had to switch helmets, while Josh just handed over his coat and beany while he activated his Magiformer, and then took them back and wore them over it. Once fully prepared, we headed to the designated location without a word. This wasn't my first time wandering around here after sunset, but Josh apparently found the dark, winding footpaths under the loose canopy of the nearly bare late-autumn trees at least a little spooky, as he was so tense he put piano wires to shame.

"You okay buddy?"

"No?" he responded with just a hint of a petulant edge. "I'm currently feeling very nervous about the fact that I'm being more nervous than you are."

"Ah, you should stop that. It's bad for your health." He didn't quite appreciate my quip, so a shallow sigh later I adopted a slightly more serious tone and told him, "Just take a few deep breaths and relax. We made all the necessary preparations. There's absolutely no reason to be anxious about a foregone conclusion."

"Well, if nothing else, you sound annoyingly confident," my friend grumbled back, and after a quiet sight of his own he asked, "Are you sure you can win?"

"It's not really a question of 'can'," I answered just a tad mischievously. "If there was a chance of me losing here, we wouldn't be having this leisurely walk through the park here. The only real questions are about how smoothly I'd do it and how many cards I could keep hidden until the end."

Josh remained silent for a while, and we already reached the designated location, a clearing a short distance away from one of the footpaths, when the curiosity got the better of him.

"Just for the record, in case it turned out you couldn't be sure about your chances, what was your plan B?"

"It's more like a plan L, but if you really want to know..." I paused here as I crouched down near one of the larger trees and began circulating mana in preparation of priming the anchor. While I did that, I also collected my thoughts a little, and then told him, "There were a couple of options. The simplest one was to just break off the Arbitration. I would've probably lost an Oath or two, but so far I already managed without my Knight gear, so it was an acceptable sacrifice. Of course, doing so would torpedo my future plans, but that's why it was so down the priority list."

"Future plans, you say?"

"Call it a pet project for my girlfriend. If everything works out, you'll see it soon enough. Anyhow, where was I?"

"Plan L, I believe."

"Nah, forfeiting the Arbitration was plan N. Plan L was about kidnapping the Knight girl's witness to disqualify her and win by default."

"Shouldn't that be much higher on the list?"

"Not really. Resolving it that way is anticlimactic."

"Anticlimactic," Josh repeated after me with subdued skepticism. I didn't respond right away, as I was still busy with connecting to the anchor. If only it was in this plane of existence so that I could touch it with my Phantom Limbs, I could've finished this in a second, but nooo. Anyhow, once I succeeded, I glanced back and found him still eagerly awaiting my explanation.

"Simply put, if we resolved this the easy way, without any action or combat, you can bet your spleen that something contrived would happen to force a confrontation anyway, so it's better to just put up a show and go through the whole song and dance routine than to try dealing with something like that."

"… Is that one of those superstition things?"

"I wish it was, but it's a bit more tangible than that. Can't explain the details though. Too meta."

My non-explanation obviously didn't sit well with the guy, but in the meantime I reached a critical juncture where I had to pay some attention, so I raised a finger to stall him and focused on the task at hand. As I mentioned before, it wasn't particularly tasking, but boy was it tedious, and if I slipped up, I'd have to start the whole process from the beginning.

Thankfully nothing of the like happened, and after a solid minute of sending the equivalent of mana morse code back and forth, the small Permanent Purple Zone was ready for use. It even came with a simple but nifty magical augmented reality thingie that allowed me to mark people I wanted to move over, so I quickly marked myself and Josh before I forgot about it. Speaking of my friend, seeing that I was done, he lightly cleared his throat to gain my attention.

"Just out of curiosity, you mentioned plans L and N. What about the one in-between?"

"Ah, yes. Plan M," I spoke as I stood back up and dusted off the hems of my coat. "It was creating a distraction and bogging down the knight girl so that she couldn't show up, therefore automatically making her lose. My original idea involved the Fauns, a certain mysterious Abyssal, and some bombs, but it was a little convoluted, so Judy told me to shelf it." As I finished saying that, I noticed that Josh's brows have long since descended into a troubled frown, prompting me to ask, "What?"

"I'm just… kinda freaked out by how I'm no longer freaked out by you talking about kidnappings and bombs like they were completely normal stuff."

"I don't know what to say to that, but to be fair, compared to all the magical bollocks around us, they do feel a little mundane, don't they?"

"A fair point, but it doesn't make me feel any less freaked out." Josh looked around and, after seeing no movement, turned back to me. "Are they even coming?"

"They're on their way already."

Just to be sure, I checked with Far Sight, and sure enough, they were only a couple of blocks away. Also, they were in a minivan, with both Miss Unicorn and Sir Griffon already fully decked out in their armors. I would've made fun of them, but then again, I rode on a scooter while wearing my own armor, so doing so would've been too hypocritical even for me.

Since we still had a couple of minutes, Josh used the opportunity to do a couple of stretches and warm-up exercises, while I quickly Far Glanced at the usual suspects. Since everything was in order, I decided to sit down onto a nearby tree stump, close my eyes, and circulate my mana as my own way of warming up. Like this, a good ten minutes trickled by in silence as we waited. Well, at least until Josh began running out of patience.

"Did they get lost or something?"

"A little," I told him without opening my eyes. "They should be back on the right track already and… Actually, they are quite close." Saying so, I stood up and limbered up my arms a little, and then pointed to our left. "Unless they take another wrong turn, we should be able to see them coming from that direction soon."

"Oh, good. I was about to start getting cold," my friend griped before popping another blood-capsule into his mouth. After all our training, a single one of those was enough to keep him transformed for quite a while, even if it wasn't apparent because of the Magiformer, so I figured he only took it so that he wouldn't accidentally run dry in the middle of a possible fight. That was some commendable foresight, so I made a mental note to pat him in the back once we were done here. The only reason why I didn't do it right away was that I could already see some movement from the direction I was pointing.

"Here they are. Act very sure of yourself and unflappable."

"How do I even do that?"

"Just pretend you're holding back a huge dump. That's how actors do it."

"… Okay, that sounded just plausible enough to be true, but once we get home I'm going to check, and if you're pulling my leg, I'm going to kick your plated ass."

"Joke's on you then; it'll only make your foot hurt," I told him and tapped against the metal on my thigh for good measure. In reality, the armor didn't directly cover my butt, because then I wouldn't have been able to move properly, but he didn't need to know that.

More importantly, with that short exchange, Josh sounded considerably less high-strung than before, so I focused my attention on the incoming duo of armor-enthusiasts instead. Since we could see them, I presumed they also noticed us as well, but when they nearly started going down the wrong footpath, I had no choice but to call out to them. The effect was immediate and even a little overblown, as Miss Unicorn tried to get to us in a straight line, right through the underbrush, if not for Sir Griffon catching her by the scruff of her neck (or gorget, same difference) and forced her to the much more reasonable decision of using the road to get near us before crossing over to the clearing the same way we did.

"Brother!" The girl in the unicorn armor greeted me the moment she got close to us, and her tone made Josh visibly confused. She didn't care though, as she pointed at me and continued with, "This is your last chance! I must commend you for honoring the sacred rules of Arbitration, but you must know that once we begin, I must fight you with all I have!"

"Yes, I'm very much aware," I told her while also sending a small nod towards the man arriving behind her. He returned the gesture, and even though I couldn't see his face, I had a distinct feeling that he was extremely tired.

"Then… Then I have no choice but to prove you wrong by defeating you!" she declared with much gusto yet also a certain sense of reluctance, and once even the last echoes of her voice died down, my friend suddenly turned to me.

"Hey, Leo? Why's she talking like that?"

"You mean the voice?" I asked back, and when he nodded, I couldn't help but wonder myself. "I honestly don't know. Why are you still talking like that?"

"… What?"

Seeing that she was too surprised to process the question, I went ahead and reiterated it.

"We're asking why you're bothering with the deep voice. All of us here know how you naturally sound like, so what's the point?"

"It just sounds silly," Josh added, and for once I was starting to feel that he might've been too relaxed. "Also, what she just said doesn't make any sense either. How does defeating you prove you wrong? If anything, it proves you weaker."

"Are you questioning the rules of Arbitration?" Miss Unicorn hissed at my friend, but he didn't back down.

"As a matter of fact, I do. I mean, what if you disagreed on a math problem and did one of these Arbitration things to decide who was right? Would two plus two suddenly equal five just because the winner said so?"

"Well, no, but that's not the point…"

"But then what's the point? I mean, trying to change someone's mind about something just by defeating them in a duel doesn't sound very reasonable to me. Wouldn't you first try to reason with them before resorting to violence?"

"Youuuuu! Who are you to question me like that!?" Miss Unicorn cried out while turning her finger on my friend this time, and I graciously answered her question.

"He's Josh, my witness. I'm fairly sure you've already seen him at school."

"Ah, right. He's the one sitting behind you in class, isn't he?" the armored girl mused, only to hurriedly shake her head and redouble her pointing effort. "But that doesn't mean you can question our traditions or my voice! This is a matter between us members of the Brotherhood!"

"Your voice is a matter of the Brotherhood?" Josh blurted out, but before she could respond, the fourth member of our little group forcefully cleared his throat to get our attention.

"How about we leave the question of Penelope's voice for a later date and focus on the current quandary. Leonard, are you sure you want to go through with this?"

"Yes. She didn't really leave me much wriggling room."

"Says the guy with like fourteen plans," Josh grumbled under his breath, so I sent him a glance that said 'Not now' before facing Sir Griffon again.

"I still can't fathom what kind of disagreement arose between the two of you, where neither of you would even consider backing down, but since we're all here already, I reckon we should just get things over with. I'd also appreciate it if you'd explain yourself after the duel is over."

"Oh, don't worry," I told him with my best nefarious grin thankfully hidden by my own helmet. "Once we're done here, we're all going to have a very long and in-depth discussion about many things."

I didn't wait for him to respond, but instead I swiftly tapped into the anchor of the Purple Zone, and a split second later we all disappeared from realspace on that not-at-all ominous note. Insert mustache-twirling here.

...

Is it just me, or is my Bel persona rubbing off on me? Eh, probably just my imagination.