School athletics days like this had their own set of tropes. They were kind of like hot springs and beach episodes in a way, with their own conventions and expectations. In more down-to-earth slice-of-life or school-life comedy settings, they were often focused on the camaraderie within the csses and silly shenanigans.

  In more action-oriented ones, like most shounen battle series, the competition itself would take center stage, with its ups and downs providing an opportunity for the main characters to come out victorious through skill and quick thinking, or to lose in a low-stakes environment for the sake of character growth and whatnot.

  And of course, there were also the more suggestive kind of settings, such as most school life harem stories, where the focus was entirely on the girls and their bouncy bits obeying the ws of gravity and momentum. Occasionally in slow-motion.

  If we considered things under that lens, we were in a weird position, with the Simucrum's original scenario existing somewhere in the cross-section of those three genre-pie-charts. The fact that said scenario was also irrecoverably twisted by a certain someone didn't make it any more straightforward either, but at the very least I was pretty sure the harem-type no longer applied to us. Not just because the 'harem' stage of the plot was effectively dismantled by Josh picking Angie to be his main heroine, but also due to Blue Cherry High's PE uniforms not being very fttering.

  Both the boys and girls around me were wearing the same type of loose white T-shirts along with pin, unisex dark blue shorts. Not 'bloomers', those old school Japanese short shorts that somehow became fetish paraphernalia over time, but proper ones. Also, on second thought, there was a vague memory in the back of my mind saying that at one point I thought that the shirts of the girls were a size too small and hugging their bodies a bit too much, but that was no longer the case.

  So, was my initial thought wrong, did the shirts change because of the gradual genre shift taking us further and further away from the Japanese 'ecchi' tropes, or did they just get stretched in the wash over time? We may never know…

  "All right! We're at neck and neck now!" a certain Celestial girl excimed in excitement, her fingers balled up into fists and her eyes abze with fighting spirit.

  Metaphorically abze. I felt it important to point it out, because we lived in a world where that wasn't at all obvious. We were sitting on a bnket id out on the turf of the track field, not far from where the next race was unfolding.

  "Go, Judy, go!" Elly cheered on my side and I watched as my other girlfriend dashed down the tracks towards a series of flimsy scaffolds.

  They were made of PVC tubing arranged like free-standing arches over the paths, and there were a bunch of doughnut-sized pastries hanging from them on fishing lines. It was for a kind of rey race called the 'bread eating contest', where the students would have to run in and eat the hanging 'bread' without using their hands, then run back and switch to the next guy in line. They would do the same, with each subsequent pastry getting bigger and more exotically fvoured.

  Once a team finished all their bread, the contest was over, and then the score was tallied. Each finished bread was one point, any dropped or half-finished bread would result in a demerit, and the first team to complete the track got bonus points. It was a bit silly and overcomplicated, but then again, this wasn't a serious competition, and wacky stuff like this was more fun than just a boring, normal rey race.

  "Look, Leo! She already finished the bread with the chili filling!" Angie excimed while practically hopping in pce. "We've got it in the bag now!"

  "That's our Judy for you!" the princess, just as hyped by the atmosphere, joined in and excitedly hugged me.

  "Don't count our chickens until they hatch," Josh warned, sounding unusually stern, especially considering the circumstances. "We don't want a repeat of the cavalry battle."

  "Mou! Stop bringing that up!" the Celestial girl griped and tried to poke the guy with her elbow, but he was faster and dodged out of the way.

  The reason why we were sitting out this one wasn't just because we trusted in Judy's pastry-eating skills, but due to the rules. To allow everyone an opportunity to have fun, students couldn't compete consecutively. We had another one of the sports festival staples just before this bread-eating race thing in the form of the 'mock cavalry battle'. It required four people from each css; three of them served as the horse, holding up the st student as the rider. Each rider had a headband, and if it was taken, the team would be eliminated from the battle.

  From the start, Angie one-sidedly took charge of the css and decided that, since we were the 'golden team', the four of us would be reserved for this contest, with me, Josh, and Elly serving as the horse and Angie as the rider. Considering our individual specs, it was a solid pn, and we completely dominated the contest… until our Celestial leader got cocky, and Penny, leading their css, managed to snatch her headband in a daring manoeuvre.

  It was all very dramatic and stuff, but I personally wasn't too involved, as my whole contribution could be boiled down to carrying Angie around and trying to make sure we didn't bump into others too hard. Since we eliminated so many other teams, we still got second pce, but it made Angie double down on her competitive streak, and Josh did little to keep her in check.

  Anyhow, the bread contest thingie was almost over, and it was Judy's turn again, so I did a bit of cheering on principle. I was sure this situation was supposed to be all kinds of tense and filled with the spirit of youth and whatnot, but to me, watching Judy do her chipmunk impression was just too hirious to take any of this in any way seriously.

  "Great work, guys! We're back in the lead again!" Angie welcomed the team back and gave each of them a high-five. "I tell you; we've totally got this in the bag!"

  "Chief. You're a bad influence on Angeline," my dear assistant told me the moment she got within earshot.

  "Because she's jinxing it?" I asked innocently, and she nodded with undue solemnity.

  "Here, have some caramel milk," the princess cut in and handed her a small brown carton box with a straw already sticking out of it. "I've heard that milk helps the burning go away after eating spicy foods."

  "Thanks, I appreciate it." Judy accepted the beverage, yet at the same time she already had her phone in her hand.

  "Are you going to document whether Elly's folk remedy works?" I teased her a bit, but she gave me a ft look and, after taking a gulp, showed the screen to me.

  "I'm looking at reports on the Hub. Since you've been so worried about it, I had the CIN agents stationed in the Ottawa School of Restoration keep an ear out for any news, and the test intel says that Lord Ambrose finally got an appointment with the local arch-mage."

  "It's about damn time," I grumbled. "Maybe I should keep an eye on him now."

  "Don't bother. The appointment is two weeks from now."

  "… You have to be joking."

  "No, see?" she showed her phone screen to me. "The middle of May. They even got a photo of the official correspondence."

  "Dammit, are we seriously going to have two more weeks of downtime before that whole sub-plot would advance again? That's just nuts."

  "You say that, but if I had to choose between things happening at unpredictable intervals or there being a clear time-table, I'll pick the tter," Judy argued back, and as much as I would've liked to object to that, this hill wasn't worth dying for, so I threw my hands into the air and gave up.

  "Fair point. I just hope we aren't simply bottling things up by my self-suggestion and cause an even bigger—"

  "Leo! Stop flirting and come quick!" Angie barrelled into our conversation and grabbed my arm. "It's time for the fetch race, and we need you!"

  "Do you really?" I grumbled on principle, but got up all the same.

  "Yes! You're our secret weapon!" she decred proudly.

  "I agree with her on this one," Josh joined us and gave me a sagely look. "The fetch race list always has at least a few weird and embarrassing things on it, but since you have no sense of shame, it's gonna be a piece of cake for you!"

  "… Dude, do you want me to punch you?"

  "No. That's why I'm standing all the way over here," he shot back with a smirk.

  "Guys, guys! Fight after we win the competition, okay?" Angie scolded us, and we both fell in line.

  "Fine. What are the rules?" My inquiry made them look at me funny. "You know that this is my first-ever sports festival, right?"

  "But you knew about the cavalry battle," Josh pointed out, but I dismissed him with a huff.

  "Because that's a common tro— I mean, knowledge."

  "And the fetch race isn't?" he asked back, and when I gave him a ft look, he quickly surrendered. "Fine. I'll expin on the way to the judges."

  "So it has judges," I echoed him, and the Celestial girl at our side hummed in the affirmative as we started walking.

  "Yep! It's kinda like a scavenger hunt with extra rules."

  "Three-man teams, each gets a list of items," Josh continued where she left off, sounding unusually serious and matter-of-factly. "It's gonna have all kinds of stuff on it. Some are easy to find, some are difficult, and some are gonna be just weird and vague. The goal is to bring them back to the judges, and they will vote on whether it's acceptable or not. The first team who crosses off all the items on the list wins."

  "Sounds simple enough."

  "It's never simple," Angie spoke with gravitas, followed by a sigh. "Last year, we had to fetch stuff like fresh lichen and eggs."

  "… Where did you even get those?"

  "The roof and the kitchen," Josh answered nonchantly. "We also had to fetch a 'funny person'. That was more of a hassle."

  "If Leo didn't transfer just after the st sports festival, we could've picked him," his girlfriend commented with a grin aimed at me.

  I got it. It's because I used to be the idiot friend (or at least pying that role) at the time. Funny.

  "Let's hope this year we won't get any esoteric requests like that," the guy concluded, right as we reached the table where the judges were sitting.

  In order, from left to right, we had Taika, Barnabas, Mrs Applebottom, Jaakobah, and Rinne of all people. That was the majority of the faculty, wasn't it? I was almost surprised that Lord Grandpa wasn't here.

  "So we meet again!" a spirited voice called out to us from our left, and I soon found Penny in the company of two pceholder students. She was pretty hyped up by the contest, and she pointed at me in particur. "Be prepared, Brother! I won't take it easy on you just because you're family!"

  "Sure, Kiddo, sure," I responded with an easy-going smile and left it at that.

  She was clearly a bit drunk on the atmosphere, and her css coming out on top during the cavalry battle only made it worse, but I let it slide. Little sisters were best when they were energetic, and she even had a smug little smirk, the kind Elly occasionally showed, and Penny's was almost half as adorable as my girlfriend's version, so it was fine. I was just happy that she was having fun.

  "Oh, now you've done it!" Angie clearly didn't share my sentiment, because she pointed right back at her. "Just. You. Wait! We'll avenge our previous humiliation, and wipe that smirk off your face!"

  "Yeah!" Josh cried out and stepped up to his girlfriend before dramatically crossing his arms, and I could practically see the sparks flying between them and my sister.

  …

  Oh well. So long as everyone was having fun.

  In the meantime, Mrs Applebottom picked up a microphone and, after quickly expining the same rules that Josh just outlined to me, she raised her hand over her head.

  "Now, children! Please come over and pick up the envelopes. And remember: no peeking!"

  Angie responded first and dashed over to the table, returning with a sealed mani envelope in a matter of seconds. We had to wait for all the csses to pick up their own lists and the cue to start, but before that…

  "Okay, here's the pn," Josh whispered, as if afraid that the other teams would overhear us. "We divide the list into three parts and act independently. Leo's in charge of the weird and embarrassing stuff, we take care of all the others, as we agreed."

  "Hold on. I don't remember agreeing to that."

  My protests fell on deaf ears, and before I knew it, there was a loud beep coming from the speakers, and the Celestial girl practically tore the envelope apart to get to the list inside.

  "Lemme see, lemme see… Okay, we don't have that many bad ones this year."

  "Let's start with Leo's share, and then we divide the rest," Josh proposed, and after a few short seconds, he decred, "You take care of the 'cutest girl' and the 'mahogany chair' ones."

  "Wow. That second one is oddly specific," Angie muttered, but then she squinted. "But that way we have an odd number of items between the two of us. How about you also take care of…" Her eyes scanned the list and then poked the paper. "Gsses. Sounds easy enough."

  I wanted to yell 'Don't I get a say in this?', but being a crotchety and difficult in this situation would've been me, so I swallowed my objections and nodded along.

  "Fine, I'm on it."

  With that, I turned around and dashed back the way we came, where the rest of our cssmates were idling on the grass, and they parted to give me way.

  "Back already?" Judy asked a touch incredulously, but instead of answering, I simply picked her up and carefully slung her over my shoulder.

  "Sorry girls, I need to borrow you for a second," I apologized in a hurry, making Elly's eyes open wide.

  "Wait, you mean me toooo—?"

  Her surprised yelp turned into a tinkling giggle, which itself was repced by a surprised yelp as soon as I turned around and jogged back the way I came, this time with two girls on my shoulders.

  "We could've walked, you know?" Judy pointed out around the halfway point, and I would've shrugged if I wasn't afraid that I could hurt them by doing so.

  "Where's the fun in that?"

  "… You make a fair point," my dear assistant relented surprisingly fast and wiggled her butt to get into a more comfortable position. "Carry on."

  She didn't need to say that twice, and we reached the judges' table in record time. Unfortunately, I wasn't the quickest, as I was beaten to the punch by Penny, holding a blushing Snowy's hand in front of the five faculty members.

  "We have our second item delivered, just in the nick of time!" Mrs Applebottom narrated through the speakers, sounding unusually fired up. Everyone was affected by the atmosphere, it seemed. Meanwhile, I put the girls down, and she addressed me directly. "So? Which one of the lucky girls is the cutest?"

  "That's not my job to figure out," I answered flippantly, earning me a couple of chuckles (and some boos) from the crowd.

  "Approved!" Lord Taika raised a hand right away, signalling that she accepted my 'item', and the rest soon followed suit.

  "Rinne approves!"

  "I more or less expected you to do this," Lord Barnabas noted, and also raised a hand. "Approved."

  "Approved. Naturally."

  With Jaakobah's vote, I could already cross off the first article from the list. Now, it was time for the second one.

  "Now, where to find a mahogany chair around here?" I mused aloud, and it took my dear assistant to realize what I was doing.

  "Library, ground floor, the ones around the long table in the back," she told me in a deadpan voice.

  "Thanks, Dormouse. I love you."

  "I know."

  I sent my girlfriends a wave and then immediately dashed off towards the detached building next to the school. Luckily, the library was open despite the sports day. Or maybe it was left open on purpose, to give access to the specified scavenger hunt item. Though again, I was pretty sure the faculty office also had wooden chairs, but I trusted Judy on this one.

  The school's unnecessarily big library had an unnecessarily rge number of reading tables in tow, but I sought out the ones in the back in particur. Picking out the slightly differently coloured wooden chairs wasn't too hard once I got there. What I wasn't expecting was to find someone else already idling there.

  "Oh, Leonard? Perfect timing!" Lord Gulliver smiled at me from under his red mop of a hairdo, his voice a mix of surprise and relief.

  "I'm a bit busy right now, but can I help you with something?" I asked while simultaneously inspecting the chairs.

  He walked over to my side and awkwardly cleared his throat.

  "You see, Ambrose sent me a cryptic message about an hour ago, and I can't reach him."

  "Cryptic message," I echoed him absent-mindedly and picked up a chair. "About his appointment?"

  "You already know?" I didn't get the opportunity to answer, because he shook his head and continued with, "Of course you do. I'm just a little worried about him. He wrote very angrily. He was using all caps and lots of excmation marks."

  "I can sympathize. I would be pretty mad if I was stalled for another two weeks," I told him offhandedly and raised the chair over my head. "I'm a bit busy with this scavenger hunt right now, but if it'll give you some peace of mind, I'll figure out what he's up to as soon as I'm done."

  "Thank you, I would appreciate that."

  "Don't even mention it."

  I left the library with those parting words and rushed back to the judges' table. All of this would've been so much quicker if I could just teleport over, but I obviously couldn't do that. I was spoiled by my Phasing ability, wasn't I?

  In any case, I delivered the second item on our list, just in time to see Angie return from the direction of the cafeteria with a handful of bright orange carrots. Since she still had two items on her list, I let her go first, and once we were both approved, I headed out once more. This time I was pretty clear on my target. Except…

  "The early bird gets the worm, Brother!" Penny told me with a shit-eating grin and ran away, leaving me in the company of a slightly confoundedly and prominently gssesless Naoren.

  "Please accept my apologies, Brother Leonard," he told me, but I dismissed him with a wave of my hand.

  "It's fine. It's just a game."

  Penny beat me to the punch here and borrowed Naoren's spectacles first, leaving me empty handed. That's just how the cookie crumbled sometimes, and I absolutely wasn't going to be holding a grudge over this. I might have been tempted to give her a looot of head pats after this was all over though, but that was something entirely unreted.

  More importantly, what was I supposed to do? When the subject of gsses came up, I just automatically considered it a done deal, because I knew that Naoren was here, but now that he was out of the equation, I was drawing a bnk. Some of our cssmates had gsses, but nobody was wearing those right now, because of safety and whatnot. Even if I got one of them to let me borrow theirs, it would've meant we would've had to go back to the cssroom together, and then back here, and that was guaranteed to eat up too much time. Not that I was all that invested in this competition or anything, but come on; if I was doing this, I might as well do it properly.

  But what alternatives did I have? Maybe I could try to rules-wyer this and borrow a pair of gss cups from the cafeteria? That would've technically fulfilled the letter of the challenge, but… Nah. While I was pretty sure Jaakobah and Rinne would've accepted that, relying on them doing that just because it was me doing the bit would've felt like cheating. But if not that, then…

  "Time for a Pn C," I muttered under my breath and bid farewell to the currently not-bespectacled patriarch before rushing over to the main building. My destination was the ground floor restroom, and as soon as I was inside an empty stall, I Phased away.

  "Css rep!"

  "Eeep!" My sudden appearance in her room was met with a suitably shocked yelp, followed by a scalding, "Leo! What are you doing here?!"

  "Listen, I need to borrow your gsses for a bit. Or if you have spares, I'm good with those as well." I only received a long and withering gre in return. "By the way, cute room you've got here. Very girly."

  "I don't have the patience for this right now!" she exploded at me, holding her temples. "My head feels like it's about to explode!"

  "What? Why?"

  "How should I know?" she griped and pointed at magical marbles floating around her head. "These guys are also driving me crazy! I thought I finally had a little bit of control over them, but they don't listen anymore and they keep sending out mana waves and giving me this ominous feeling, and are you even listening to me?"

  "Of course I do," I responded, though I admit that my expression might've been bnk for a moment there. "When did it start?"

  "I don't know… About ten minutes ago? A quarter of an hour, maybe? I already called Grandfather, but I don't know what's happening." Without warning, the two magic marbles came to a halt and started violently vibrating. Looking at them closely, I could see the faint colourless light surrounding them undute. I had a hunch that those were the 'mana waves' Ammy just mentioned, but then they stopped when she spped the left orb, and they both started circling her head again. "Quit it! I can't understand you!"

  "Do you think they're trying to communicate with you?" I asked the obvious question, and after a long beat, she let out an ambivalent noise.

  "Maybe? I'm not sure. It's hard to expin how it feels without experiencing it yourself, and…" She abruptly stopped and squinted at me. "You showed up here out of the blue and have been asking a lot of questions. Do you know something? Is what's happening reted to 'destiny'?"

  "Let's not jump to conclusions like that. For now, let me just borrow this, and…" Before she could react, I deftly snatched the gsses right off her nose. "Thank you! I'll look into this, I promise, but I gotta go!"

  "Wait, Leo! You can't just—!"

  Except I could, and a moment ter I was back in the toilet stall. Not for long, as I practically exploded out of the restroom and rushed towards the judges' table for the st time. While it wasn't exactly 'destiny' in the way the css rep meant it, encountering the 'rule of three' so btantly was the next closest thing I could think of, and I would've bet my left foot that something was up with Lord Ambrose and the third Grimoire Key. But first, I had to complete my previous obligations by delivering the third item on our list.

  As soon as I got close, Judy tried to fg me down by subtly gesturing at her phone, but I quickly passed by her and spped the gsses onto the table first. Gently, of course. The css rep was going to be mad at me already; I didn't need to add to it by accidentally breaking them.

  "Chief?" Judy followed after me and tried to get my attention by holding onto my hand, but I slipped out of her grasp and pnted a quick peck on her forehead instead.

  "Something's going pear-shaped in Ottawa. I'm already on it. Excuse me in front of the others until I'm back, please?"

  My dear assistant was clearly none too pleased by the way I brushed her off, but she patiently nodded along all the same. Elly was about to come over too, but by then I dashed off again. I couldn't remember the st time I was running this much on the school grounds. Maybe during the Chimera incident? Except back then I was running all over the pce, but just springing back and forth like this. Case in point: in just half a minute, I was back in the exact same stall of the exact same restroom again.

  "I knew that this would happen…" I muttered under my breath as I plunged a phantom limb into my outfit, and the Leoformer switched into the usual school uniform. "I knew that whole 'self-suggestion' stuff was too good to be true."

  I was wearing it pretty much twenty-four-seven at this point, even when I wasn't actively using it, because taking it off for PE csses or this sports day was just asking for trouble. It was much easier to just make another outfit slot for my PE uniform than to risk my belt, along with my Leoformer, Cal and Teeny in its storage, and future-me's notes getting dispced.

  Inhaling deeply, I cast my point of view at Lord Ambrose's location, and after just a few short seconds, I exhaled hard.

  "I sure hope someone picks up that phone…" I uttered morosely, and then with another flick of my phantom limbs, all the physical enchantments and defensive wards were pushed to their redline just before I disappeared with an equally glum, "… because I called it."