The rest of the first schoolday after the break was rather uneventful. The lunch under the flowers was novel, though it ended up less romantic than predicted, because the rest of the gang was already there by the time I arrived, including my sisters. It was still fun, in a rowdy kind of way, though we had to cut the occasion short because the first afternoon css was PE and we needed to change for that.

  Since the weather was nice, Rinne had us do some outdoor exercises, which was also fine. Josh hoped that we could py some basketball, or maybe soccer, but the end of the school year was steadily approaching, so it made sense that we would do more stuff that could be graded for our final report.

  Last, but not least, we had homeroom. Mrs Applebottom went through the usual gamut, asking us about what we did during the break and whatnot, reminded us about the upcoming events, and we had a short discussion about the looming sports festival. It was a pretty common trope, but I wasn't especially hyped up about it. We'd see how it turns out when we get to it, unless I'd get caught in something else beforehand.

  Just like that, school was out for the day and we were all following the usual routine. Judy and Elly went ahead to hit the restroom, Angie roped Josh into helping her with some tennis club minutia, and I headed downstairs to the shoe lockers. What I would do afterwards was still up in the air, or rather, to the discretion of a certain allegedly sneaky individual I occasionally kept track of with my Far Sight.

  Speaking of which, I was just about to check on her before switching my shoes, but my pns were interrupted by a rather peevish huff coming from my left.

  "Brother! How could you!?"

  Blinking, I turned to my fuming sister, closely followed by a rather confounded Snowy.

  "How could I what?" I asked back by reflex and got a finger pointed at my nose for my trouble.

  "Why didn't you tell us the twins were in the school?"

  "Twins?" Snowy echoed her, and after a long beat, her face lit up with a pleasant surprise. "Do you mean Kóre and Pais? They're here?"

  "Yes! And Brother didn't tell us about it!"

  In my defence, I only learned that today, but it was true that I completely forgot to tell my sisters about them. Oops?

  "Sorry, it just slipped my mind," I apologized while my hands were already fiddling with the shoe locker's door.

  "But… why are they here?" Snowy asked the obvious question, so I gave them a quick rundown of the events, and my other sister's face was practically shining with excitement by the end of it.

  "Oh? Does that mean that we can meet them any time we want?"

  "Maybe not 'any time', but if they stay with Jaakobah, they should be around in the nurse's office."

  "Do you think they're still there?" she asked, but before I could respond, she grabbed Snowy's hand and turned on her heel. "Let's go and check!"

  "Just do it in moderation, okay? Don't inconvenience the—" I was just about to tell her not to bother the Celestial Prefect too much, but I had to bite back the second half of the sentence when a simple, unadorned white envelope fell out of my shoe locker as soon as I opened it. "Oh? Well, that's quaint."

  While I was buffeted by a sudden and inexplicable wave of nostalgia, my sisters froze in their tracks and Penny in particur completely paled in shock, followed by a series of distressed sounds.

  "A-A-Awawawa! Snowy, it's an emergency! B-Brother got a love letter!"

  "Oh, hush, you," I chided her even as I reached down and picked up the envelope. "Ever since the girls' performance at the cultural festival, the whole school knows that I'm dating them, so there's a bat's chance in hell that this is a confession."

  "S-S-Still! Quick, dispose of it before Judy and Eleanor see it! It's an anti… um…" She faltered and tugged on Snowy's hand, followed by a hurried whisper. "Sis? What is that thing called?"

  "What thing?" my Abyssal sister asked back with her head tilted slightly, causing Penny to get even more flustered.

  "Y-You know! That thing that Judy keeps telling Brother to keep in mind."

  "Oh. Do you… mean the anti-harem countermeasures?"

  "Yes, that! Thanks!" She beamed at my other sister and pointed a finger at my face again. "You must follow the anti-harem countermeasures! Cast it into the fire! Destroy it!"

  "Pipe down, Kiddo."

  I lightly poked her forehead for emphasis, which she must've mistaken for the prelude of a forehead flick (or maybe a head pat), as she let out another cutesy noise and hid behind the back of an eminently amused Snowy. With the distraction out of the way, I finally managed to open the envelope and fish out the folded-up piece of paper within. On it, inscribed with remarkably messy handwriting, were just four simple words forming a sentence.

  "Come to the rooftop," Penny read it aloud and… wait, when did she even sidle over to my side again?

  It didn't matter, though when I raised a brow at her, my knightly sister immediately stepped away from me and pointed at my face for the third time today.

  "N-Now that the cat's out of the bag, you have to respond! It's the right thing to do!" she vehemently decred. Why was she so invested in this anyway, I wondered, but not for long, because she continued to pester me. "You must go and turn her down! You have to be firm about it, and… Wait, knowing you, you would be too firm, so you have to be also careful! Girls are sensitive, so you mustn't be rude, and you have to…"

  It was at this point that Snowy noticed my wordless signals for support, and she stepped up to Penny's side."

  "I'm sure Leo's got this. Let's visit the twins."

  "Y-Yeah, but…"

  "Shoo, shoo. Off you go," I said, waving at them, and with some effort, Snowy finally managed to pull Penny away, leaving me… well, not alone, because these were the shoe lockers and everyone was heading home, but it was close enough. I gnced at the message again, and couldn't help but exhale a wistful breath. "The rooftop, huh?"

  It's been a while since I st went up there, and it was probably the most meaningful pce for me on this whole damn isnd. In fact, the same could be said about most of us, really. It was special, and so being called over there didn't quite sit well with me, but what could I do at this point? I couldn't just ignore it.

  …

  Or could I? I Far Gnce over, and… Yep. As expected. She was right there, bck catsuit and all, and as much as I found the prospect of this encounter tedious, I would've been lying if I said I wasn't at least a bit curious about what she was all about. As such, I pocketed the letter, closed my shoe locker's door, and headed upstairs. With some luck, I should be able to quickly resolve this and still meet up with the girls without making them wait for me.

  I quickly skipped up the stairs, two steps at a time, which turned a few pceholder heads on the way. I ignored them and rushed to the top, and it was only when I reached the door leading to the rooftop that I ran into another nostalgic tidbit that I probably should've considered ahead of time: it was locked. In retrospect, it was silly of me to overlook that detail, but there was no point dwelling over this, so I didn't.

  It wasn't that big of a deal, considering I could just Phase to the other side, but since I ran into this situation, I figured I should first try something I was curious about for a while. The idea originally came to me during one of our extracurricur lessons with Lord Taika, and since the opportunity presented itself like this, I figured I might as well give it a go.

  As for what I was doing, it was effectively 'just' an application of my temporary retcon ability. The one where I only changed the form or function of something for a short while. So far I had little use for it beyond using it to fake my super-special-awesome illusion powers in front of experts, and its practical applications were… dubious at best, but it still didn't hurt to experiment with it a bit. It was kind of slow, taxing, and literally headache-inducing, but I figured I might as well practice it, just in case it could come in handy one of these days.

  So, let's look at the problem: the door's locked and I want to get to the other side without Phasing. First option: make a key. Problem: I didn't remember what the key looked like, so that's off the table.

  Second option: turn the door into Styrofoam and then jump through while holding a jug of trademarked red juice and shout 'Oh yeaaaah!'. Problem: I had no jug of trademarked red juice on me. Also, the broken parts of temporarily retconned items didn't reassemble themselves, and I didn't want to expin why I shattered a metal door just for a gag.

  Third option: Just make it so that the door isn't locked. Problem: … None that I could see, so I did just that.

  First off, I took a phantom limb and plunged it into the door. After a short yet subjectively long perspective shift through non-Euclidian fractal space ter, I had to fine-tune the range of my modification. Because the door was part of the building, I had to first narrow the scope down to just the door and its frame, since it was technically part of the locking mechanism. Then I just had to find a fractal iteration that wasn't locked, grab it with my other phantom limbs, overy it on the original, and presto!

  A moment ter, I was back in my body and, after exhaling a pent-up breath, I reached out and turned the handle in front of me, opening the door without any resistance. That went… smoother than expected. And my head only hurt a little bit. Must've been because of the tolerance I built up over the months, I concluded and stepped onto the rooftop without any further ado.

  "Ah? You're here already."

  I was greeted by a sultry voice, and it wasn't hard to find its owner, since there weren't any other people up here.

  "Corbeau, if I'm not mistaken," I spoke ftly, and the woman fshed a grin at me.

  "I'm surprised you recognized me right away," she responded coquettishly, and… was she doing some kind of femme fatale impression, I wondered.

  Who could say for sure? That said, her surprise was understandable, as her current getup was rather unusual. She was wearing a skin-tight bck catsuit made of some kind of matte, leathery material. It covered her whole body, including her hands and feet, and while it had some thicker material with red highlights around the forearms and the soles, a couple of areas around her chest, shoulder, and thighs only had a thin, semi-transparent yer over them. It almost looked like a bodystocking peeking out of under the strategically pced holes of the surface yer, revealing quite a lot of skin underneath.

  Her lower face was partially covered by a neck gaiter attached to her hood, and she was also wearing a pair of rge, bright red goggles that were currently pulled up to her forehead. While I might've certainly had a hard time recognizing her at a distance without my mark on her, up close, I could immediately spot the beauty mark under her left eye.

  "I'm here." I cut to the chase and closed the door behind me. "What do you want?"

  "Right to point. I like men who are direct like that," she purred, making me feel just a bit uncomfortable. A moment ter, she let out a chuckle and told me, "Fidèle Basmu Shamash wanted to meet you."

  "… Then why didn't she meet me?" I asked the obvious question, but the woman in front of me scoffed like it was a silly thing to say.

  "She's a vamp. She's not good with the sun."

  "So you're just the messenger."

  "Yes," Corbeau responded dourly, apparently finding the arrangement less than satisfactory. "We're in the same boat right now, but calling upon someone of my caliber for something so simple is still a bit demeaning, don't you agree?"

  She went as far as to flutter her eyeshes at me, and the only reason why I didn't roll my eyes at her was because I was too busy being confounded by her comment.

  "If that's all, then why didn't you just send me a message." She was looking at me funny, so I crified. "On the phone." She was looking even funnier, so this time I actually rolled my eyes. "Oh, for the love of…! Don't any of you people have phones?"

  "I don't have your number," she pointed out, and then a beat ter she added, "Wait, is this your attempt to get my contact info?"

  "You don't need my number to contact me!" I cut her off and took out my phone. I raised a finger to forestall her while I loaded up my browser, and after a few seconds of poking the screen, I presented it to her. "Look! My office's number is right here, on the Draconic Federation's website!"

  "You… have a website?"

  "Of course we do! It's current year!" I huffed and gestured at the screen. "Look, it's very intuitive. You just go to the site, and then tap on the cute little animated dragon in the upper left corner. My sister drew it, by the way. That opens the Draggie's Help Corner menu. That's the dragon's name; it's kind of our mascot. Anyhow, you tap on 'I want to contact someone', then it gives you a list of offices, and look! Leonard S. Dunning, the third button from the top. It has all my contact info and…" I frowned and turned the screen back towards myself to take a second look. "Wait, I have a fax number? Since when?" After getting over the first shock, I shook my head and turned the phone back to her. "Never mind. See? You can just contact me here, and someone will tell me about it. There's no need for eborate shoe-box letters and cndestine rooftop meetings like this."

  "I… see…"

  The Abyssal spy looked rather overwhelmed by my expnation, so I decided to cut it short for now and pocked my phone.

  "My point is, use the proper channels next time. So? What was the exact message?"

  My prompting made her twitch and clear her throat.

  "Yes, that. The head of House Shamash wanted me to tell you that she wanted to meet you in person to discuss the current state of the Abyss in private."

  "Private," I repeated after her. This sounded like some shady stuff done behind everyone else's backs, so I inquired, "Does Tracas know about this?" just to be sure.

  "It doesn't have anything to do with him," Corbeau responded with a knowing smile. "You know, I work with him, but it doesn't mean I work for him. There's room for more than one man… Oh, pardon. More than one partner in my life, you know?"

  There was an implied wink-wink-nudge-nudge in her words, and… Why was she acting like this? I mean, she was a Seducer according to Tajana, so… maybe speaking in innuendoes and being clumsy with them was a racial trait? Or maybe it was some kind of genius 5D gap moe gambit that was really effective, and I just wasn't the right demographic for it? Whatever the case might've been, I continued to doggedly ignore her weird advances and moved on.

  "Charming. Where does she want to meet?"

  She looked just a hint annoyed by my attitude, but then she just crossed her arms and uttered, "Do you know the information board in the local park?"

  "Of course I do."

  "Tonight, at nine, in front of it."

  "Sounds fine to me."

  Corbeau eyed me for a moment and then let out a soft huff and turned on her heel.

  "Message delivered."

  I was mildly surprised by her response, which then quickly turned into being startled when she did a couple of elegant, dance-like motions, causing magical lights to swirl around her for a few seconds before her form was overid by a very retro flying saucer right off the cover of an old pulp fiction magazine. Then, as if that wasn't enough, she suddenly sprouted a pair of rge, leathery wings from her back.

  "Arrivederci, Lord Archon," she said with a wink, and then pulled her goggles over her eyes and took off into the air, leaving me all alone on the rooftop.

  Well, at least that expined how she got here when the door was locked, but it meant little when I had so. Many. Questions.

  She only sprouted wings at the end, and her catsuit didn't explode, so was she in her Abyssal form all along? Was that her Abyssal form? And what was that UFO disguise at the end? Who came up with that one first; was it the Draconians, or the Abyssals? And how could she just fly in and out of here when this was technically the heart of Magi territory? And the way she bid farewell was—

  …

  I shook my head and swiftly left the way I came before the temporary retcon could expire and I ended up locked out. Not that it would've mattered, but if I had to Phase away after all the trouble I went through with the door, I would've felt rather silly.

  After making sure the door was closed behind me, I made my way down the stairs and… where was I? Oh, right: 'arrivederci'? That was Italian, wasn't it?

  "Watsonian expnation about accents in the Abyss, my arse!"