The Simulacrum

Spring break was almost over. It was essentially two weeks long due to the dates lining up, the first of which we spent in Elysium. The beach episode was a nice change of pace, even if it was followed by a predictable rush of work, but that wasn't all.

Put frankly, I wasn't sure how much time we had before the proverbial shit would hit the proverbial fan. Future-me could probably tell me, but he was still too busy running the show in the Abyss, and while the notebook he handed to me had an outline of how things should progress, it had no time table. It had to be on purpose, or at the very least I was sure I wouldn't troll myself with something like this without a reason.

Considering all that, I wanted to tie off a couple of the threads we still had hanging. I couldn't do much about Ammy's resurgent spellcasting difficulties, but I figured that once she got her third magical Grimoire Key orb, it would be resolved in due time. As for when that would happen, I didn't have the foggiest clue about it, because it was related to some internal rivalry within the Assembly, and the last Key Holder may or may not had been related to the assassination attempt on Angie too.

In other words, it was major plot material, so I was pretty sure it would come up soon whether I did anything about it or not. As such, I decided to focus on other things for the time being. 'Powerups' was the current name of the game, and while the class rep's had to be put on hold, there were plenty of others to work on.

"Hey, guys?"

Speaking of the devil, Josh poked his head into my office. It was late in the afternoon, and I was just about to finish up my paperwork, with Elly sitting in my lap and messaging Judy on her phone. My friend raised a brow at us, followed by an amused smirk.

"Hard at work, or hardly working?"

"A bit of one, a bit of the other," I told him with a shrug, eliciting a cute giggle from the girl on my lap.

"I'm providing moral support," she declared with a grin.

"You sure do, princess." In truth, trying to work around her was a bit troublesome, but there was no way I could tell her that. Skinship was also important, and sacrificing some work efficiency for it was worth it. But more importantly, I turned a questioning gaze at the guy in the doorway. "What's up?"

"Nothing much. I'm just running out of blood capsules, and Galatea told me that Elly's here, so I wanted to ask for some replenishments."

"You already used up all of them from yesterday?" I blurted out in surprise, and he finally let go of the door and scratched the back of his head.

"Hey, cut me some slack. You know that taking one of them only lasts for a few minutes now, and I still need to figure out how to mix powers properly to use that beam attack move you taught me. Without being blown away, I mean."

Ever since he had gained an epiphany during our vacation, Josh had been training hard every day. This, of course, also meant that he needed more blood capsules to mix his transformations, and said blood mainly came from the princess.

"Are you okay with that?" I asked my girlfriend, and she let out a soft whine.

"I don't like it, but… it's for the greater good, right?" She extended a hand towards Josh and shut her eyes tightly. "G-Go ahead."

I found it a bit odd that she wouldn't even flinch when getting scrapes and bruises during training, but she was always squeamish when it came to getting her finger pricked. Was it gap moe, I wondered.

"Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience," Josh apologized and took out his leather pouch. Its compartments were practically empty, attesting to the rate at which he consumed those capsules, and from the bottom of it, he retrieved a specialized tool.

We originally used lancets designed for people with diabetes to test their blood glucose levels, but Mr. Plague Doctor from the Research Department decided to improve upon it as a side-project. What Josh had between his fingers was like a bulky laser pointer or one of those newfangled 'vape' things. He loaded a small needle into the upper part, and then a transparent, gel-filled capsule into the bottom.

"Ready?" he asked, and my girlfriend reached out with his other hand to hold mine before she nodded. Without further ado, Josh pressed the tip of the device to the pad of her outstretched index finger and she shuddered in my lap when it let out a soft mechanical click.

"Owie…"

The whole process only lasted for a few seconds, and then he retrieved the gadget. He pressed on the capsule at the bottom, now tinted red, and it popped right out, only for him to replace it with another. It also got infused with just a drop of Elly's blood in a moment, and he kept repeating the process with practised motions and loading the filled ones into his pouch like a cowboy would prepare his bullets.

Meanwhile, the princess finally opened her eyes and showed me her finger. There was no trace of any injury on it; the device drew so little blood that the prick healed in a matter of seconds.

"I don't like needles," she mumbled, and continued to hold out her finger, so I did the first thing that came to mind and lightly chomped down on it. "A-Awawa! What are you doing!?"

"Disinfecting," I said with her finger still in my mouth.

"You were only supposed to kiss it!"

I had to admit, seeing her flustered like that brought back many fun memories from the past. It was getting increasingly harder to embarrass her (not that I was trying to do that on purpose or anything), but any throwbacks to her early tsundere days made me feel strangely giddy.

"Can you do the flirting after I'm gone? Geez," Josh muttered, looking a bit flustered himself.

"Sure, sure." I let go of the princess's hand, and she immediately hid it behind her back, as if afraid that I was going to eat it. Meanwhile, Josh finished loading his newly filled blood capsules and put away both the pouch and the tool. "Anything else you need help with?" I asked just to be polite, and he shook his head.

"Nah, I'm fine. I'll leave you two to do whatever you do behind closed doors and…" He abruptly trailed off and furrowed his brows, followed by a soft 'Ah, right.' "I nearly forgot, but one of the mad scientist guys wanted me to pass on a message."

"Which one? Mr. Plague Doctor?"

"Nah. It's the short guy with the top hat and the weird gear monocle."

"Oh, you mean Steampunk Kid." I was waiting for him to relay said message, but he was only looking at me funny. "What?"

"Dude, you really need to start remembering the names of your subordinates."

"Give me a break. You know I'm bad with those." He was still silently judging me, so I waved my hand to get things going. "Whatever. So, what did he say?"

"Something about the test subject arriving at six, I think."

"… When did he say that?"

"Idunno. About an hour ago?" He must've mistaken my lack of reaction to disapproval, because he hastily excused himself. "I got side-tracked before coming here, okay?"

It didn't matter, so I turned to my quietly pouting girlfriend instead.

"Elly, love? What's the time?" She didn't respond right away, but then she turned on her phone again and showed the screen to me. "Five-fifty, huh?"

I kicked my chair back and gestured for the princess to hop off before getting up myself.

"I think we can still make it in time." I offered her my arm and she automatically took it, proving that her pouting was entirely performative. "I guess I'll finish up the rest of these papers later."

"Sure but… what's this 'test-subject' thing about, anyway?" Josh inquired with a critical look in his eyes.

"Nothing major." I urged him to get going, and once we were out of the office, I locked the door behind me. "Thanks for the info; you can get back to your training now if you want. Just make sure not to blow up anything."

"Oh, come on man," he griped, arms crossed defiantly. "I accidentally break one bench, and I never hear the end of it."

"Hey. It was more than just 'one' bench, and between you and Ammy, we're starting to run out of spares," I grumbled, and he soon relented with a sigh.

"Fine. I'll ask Brang to open a Restricted Space for me, or something." With that, he turned around and gave us a lazy wave before heading back to the main floor.

"So? What is this about?" Elly levelled the question at me the moment he was out of earshot. "Is it a new experiment?"

"Sort of. You'll see."

She wasn't too enthused by my answer (note to self: practice being less evasive and mysterious), but she gave me the benefit of the doubt and we both headed deeper into the second floor of the base. Our destination was the workshop complex. As of this moment, we had four 'departments' of the Research Division housed there.

Our 'Applied Sufficiently Advanced Science Department' was led by Fred, and he was in charge of the main workshop, where all our magitech tools and devices came from, enchanted and otherwise. Then we had the 'Astral Consciousness Investigation Subdivision' helmed by Mr Plague Doctor, and he was spending most of his time refining the soul-scanning equipment they originally hammered together during the whole Elysium and Polemos fiasco. Then there was the 'Abnormal Biology Laboratories', the place where Pudding-kun originated from, led by the weird woman with the Einstein hairdo and the swirly goggles. Last, but certainly not least, we had the 'Transcendent Reinforcement Phenomena Research Group'.

That one was officially led by Steampunk Kid, but in truth, it was more of a joint effort. Kind of like my secret homunculus project, but on an even larger scale, attested to by the fact that the department took up two of the 'segments' around the central lounge of the Research Division. On that note, we entered said circular lounge, currently occupied by a small gaggle of people.

The place was Galatea's playground, so the room was dominated by aquariums of various shapes and sizes, full of brightly coloured exotic fishes. That wasn't all though, as the place also had an eclectic mixture of colourful carpets, large bean bag chairs, and a row of shelves filled to the brim with paperback novels, comic books, and even manga volumes. This was a place for relaxation, and it certainly looked the part.

"Grandmaster is here," the previously mentioned androidess announced our arrival from the middle of the group, and all eyes turned to us.

For some entirely inexplicable reason, she was wearing a white nurse costume. Not an actual nurse uniform, but the kind someone would don for a costume party, complete with a short skirt, long white stockings, and a plain headdress. As for the rest, from left to right, we had Steampunk Kid looking the same as usual (read: a middle schooler boy in a white shirt, fancy top hat, and a monocle), Friedrich and Peabody in their usual white coats, and then the nurse-cosplaying Galatea in the middle. On her other side, we had a Naoren Feilong and Odango Girl, accompanied by an elder and two of those guards in black martial artist tunics.

That was an eclectic group all right, but I was already used to such sights, so I brushed it off and we approached them.

"Good afternoon," I greeted everyone present at once and asked the first thing that came to mind when my eyes landed on the young dragoness. "Where's Ichiko?"

"Ichi is upstairs with Big Sister Rinne!" she responded with a toothy grin. "They're talking about the bees!"

That made me stop in my tracks. Remembering the scene from the morning made Elly giggle, but Naoren obviously didn't share the sentiment.

"Brother Leonard? What exactly are you teaching Xiao Xiao while I'm not looking?"

"Don't worry about it. It makes perfect… some… modicum. Let's go with 'a modicum of sense'."

"You're not filling me with confidence," the young patriarch stated, but if you asked me, he should've been more worried about the conversation going on 'upstairs', as Odango Girl put it. But then again, considering it was Mountain Girl we were talking about, I wouldn't have been surprised if she had an even worse understanding of the birds and the bees than the little girls. It must've showed on my face, because he added, "… Why are you looking at me with sympathy?"

Naoren's question made me smile, which only put him more on guard. Ignoring him for the moment, I turned to the science group.

"Is everything ready and prepared?"

"Kihihi! Of course!" Fred rubbed his hands together, his lips set in a wild grin that befitted his original mad scientist image. "Just give us the go, and we can rock!"

"What Master meant to say was that the equipment is in prime condition and there's only a zero-point-twently-one percent chance of catastrophic failure," Galatea chimed in, which then caused Peabody to laugh out loud.

"O-ho-ho? And what are the chances of a non-catastrophic failure?"

"Don't dwell on the odds," the last member, the kid with the steampunk getup, spoke sagely. He looked young, yet his voice was that of an adult's, and he turned towards us and gave me an elegant bow. "Monsieur Dunning, I implore you to disregard my esteemed colleagues' dreary predictions. I assure you, the chance of a malfunction of catastrophic proportions is only one in five-hundred and ninety-five."

"Isn't that more of less the same?" Elly commented, and I had to admit, I had no idea if they were. She was clearly much better at calculating fractions than I was.

"Negative."/"Most definitely not!" Galatea and Steampunk Kid responded in unison, and then glared at each other, forcing the portly ex-nurse to play mediator between them.

While that was going on, I turned to the other side, and finally addressed the elephant in the room staring us in the face all this time.

"It's been a long time since we last met, Grand Elder Xinji."

The elderly man in the back acknowledged me with a soft grunt. The old fellow was responsible for the tournament arc, as well as a whole lot of headaches I suffered due to his constant scheming during that time, and while he was cleared of most of the charges related to treason against the Feilong clan, he had been under house arrest since then and stripped of his official position.

The only reason he retained his 'Grand Elder' title was because it was honorary, and the Feilongs had no official way to strip him of it. That said, while I said he was in 'house arrest', if anything, he looked healthier than the last time I'd seen him, and he might've even put on a bit of weight.

Seeing that he refused to greet me back, a pouting Odango Girl unsubtly tugged on his sleeve, and the old man let out a defeated sigh. He patted down his long, wispy beard and cupped his fist in his other hand, performing one of those martial artist salutes that the Eastern Draconians were so fond of.

"Xinji Feilong greets Leonard Dunning." He sounded like he wanted to be anywhere else right now, and he soon followed that up with a soft, defeated sigh. "I had eyes, but I refused to see Mt. Tai."

Before I could ask what he meant by that (I knew the idiom, I just had no idea how it applied to this situation), Xiao proudly grinned at me, so I swallowed my objection and turned it into an inquiry.

"Are you ready to undergo the experiment?"

"If it lets me leave my estate, this elder is willing to take the risk," he responded dourly, and his words made me raise a brow at Naoren.

"I don't think that was part of the deal."

"Xiao Xiao insisted," the young patriarch admitted a touch sheepishly, and seeing the grinning child, I could already picture what happened.

"So long as you know what you're doing," I concluded the conversation with a shrug and gestured towards the nearby door. "If everything's ready, we might as well get started."

"Khihi! I couldn't have said so better myself! Follow me!"

Fred took the lead as we stepped out of the round lounge, and after just half a minute of walking, we entered the third door to the left; the one leading into the Transcendent Reinforcement Phenomena Research Group's workshop. This particular place reflected on its lead researcher's aesthetics, as the place was teeming with brass steampunk machinery, large tubes filled with brightly coloured liquids, and most importantly, a pair of metal beds with clamps on them, standing at a roughly seventy-degree angle. The only thing missing was a Frankenstein's monster or two tied to them, and we would've had the full set of an old-school horror movie.

"Please, come this way," Steampunk Kid guided the Grand Elder to one of the beds, while xiao, who was more familiar with the setting, already picked up a stool from the corner of the room and brought it to the other bed, so that by standing on it she would be at the right height.

"Is this entirely safe?" Naoren whispered by my side, suddenly sounding a bit apprehensive, and the weird electric globes with plasma arcing in them descending from the ceiling didn't fill him with more confidence either.

"You've heard them in the lounge. When mad science is involved, the chance of something, or someone, exploding is never zero."

"We prefer the term, 'Unconventional Science'," Steampunk Kid corrected me without looking up from his work, which currently involved attaching electrodes to the old Draconian's temples while Peabody locked him in place with the previously mentioned clamps.

On the other side, Xiao giggled as Galatea did the same to her. In retrospect, maybe she was dressed in the nurse outfit to put the child at ease. It was probably a good call; nobody wanted her to lose her cool and transform indoors. Things would get really stuffy really fast like that.

Anyhow, I turned back to the still eminently worried Naoren and insisted, "Don't worry. If anyone explodes, it won't be her."

"I… still don't know how to feel about that."

I couldn't add anything to that, so I just observed the process of getting our test subjects ready for the first Draconian bloodline reinforcement experiment in the history of ever. One might look at this and say, 'Wait. Why are you powering up the Grand Elder of all people?', and it would be a valid question.

Long story short, we had three reasons. Number one being that, for the experiment to work, we needed a Draconian and a full-blooded dragon of matching bloodlines. Since I couldn't ask Sebastian (as he was technically still incognito), that left us with Xiao, meaning we needed an Eastern Draconian to be the recipient of the treatment. Since there was a small yet not zero chance of something going awry, the test subject couldn't have been anyone from our 'main cast', and we couldn't just order some placeholder Draconian to do it, because that would've been just plain unethical.

By process of elimination, we settled on the Grand Elder, and he willingly 'volunteered' to be our lab rat in exchange for dropping some of the charges against him and, apparently, for lifting his house arrest. He stoically accepted being locked onto the bed, and after getting a few more electrodes attached, the science crew gestured for me to come to the large, boxy machinery at the far end of the room.

"Kihihi! Boss, you do the honors!" Fred presented a large sliding handle to me, once again right out of a Frankenstein movie. "Go ahead! Pull the lever!"

"Am I also required to yell 'It's alive!' after the experiment is done?" I jested, yet Galatea responded with perfect seriousness.

"Don't be silly, Grandmaster. That's Master's job. As well as being struck by lightning and getting destroyed by his own hubris."

"No, it isn't!" Fred snapped at her, while Peabody chuckled and muttered, "It always warms my heart to see you get along."

Ignoring the peculiar shenanigans of that trio, Elly tugged at my arm with unconcealed excitement.

"Can I do it?"

"Sure, be my guest."

My draconic girlfriend let out a soft squee and grabbed the lever with both hands, and then tugged on it so hard I was afraid that he would wrench it off the machine. That was followed by a loud hum, the lights dimmed, and… not much else.

"Hehe. It tickles," Xiao squirmed on the bed, while the Grand Elder closed his eyes and remained stone-faced throughout the whole endeavour.

"Well, at least nothing exploded," Naoren noted on the side, and I couldn't help but chime in with a jaunty, "Yet."

"Is it done?" Elly asked, her gaze jumping between the two beds and the mad scientists.

"My fair lady, I'm afraid the process just began," Steampunk Kid responded without taking his eyes off the readings on the large CRT screen embedded in the side of the machine. "According to my conservative estimates, the full procedure will take at least an hour."

"Oh. That's longer than expected…" she whispered, trying not to sound too disappointed. "Do we just… wait?"

"We don't have much of a choice." I said that, but then I recalled something and added, "Actually, there's one more thing I just remembered. Is Penny still down here?"

"Hm? Your sister should be undergoing treatment in the other workshop," Peabody told me absently, and seeing that not much else was happening here, I turned to the princess.

"Since we have some time, I'll go and check on her. Do you want to come along?"

My princess was unexpectedly hesitant and ultimately shook her head.

"I… think I'll stay here. I'm curious about this experiment and want to see it through. Sorry."

"Nah, it's fine." I gave her a peck on the top of her head for emphasis before addressing the rest. "I'll step out for a moment. If there's an emergency, shout."

"Will do," Fred nodded, apparently not paying much attention to me, his eyes being focused on some kind of readout another machine was spitting out on a long strip of paper.

With the experiment firmly underway, I left this workshop and circled half the Research Division before stopping in front of the door leading to the Astral Consciousness Investigation Subdivision, aka the place with the soul-scanning machine and all other related equipment. Over here, we were doing a different kind of research that was just as important as the Draconian bloodline revivification. I was assured that things were going fine, but since I had nothing better to do, I figured I might as well see it for myself and stepped through the door.

"Hi, Kiddo. How are things—?"

"Kyaa!"

Before I could even respond, I was hit on the head by a breastplate flung at me by my Knightly sister. Why didn't my danger sense warn me, I wondered as it bounced off my forehead and landed in the hallway outside. Was it because it wasn't dangerous? Or because it didn't have any intent behind it? Or maybe because it counted as slapstick comedy and the universe decided it would be funny if I got hit?

"Awawawaaa! B-Brother, c-close your eyes! D-Don't look at my butt!"

Whatever the case might've been, this surprise checkup was off to a rough start…