"I'm thinking about a collar," I told Judy just as we sat down at one of the tables in the dining hall of the school. It was only the two of us for the time being, since Josh and the rest of the gang stayed behind in the classroom to finish up their English homework. Between the four of them, including my other girlfriend, they read about a third of Moby Dick, so the class rep was giving them a last-minute lecture on the themes and literary devices and stuff. Snowy also stayed with them, probably to provide spiritual support or something.

In conclusion, this left me with the increasingly unusual situation of having a lunch break with only the two of us present. What can I say? Actually doing your required reading had some unexpected perks from time to time.

"How would that work?" my dear assistant asked without her hands stopping as she unpacked the large lunchbox in front of us. I ordered some drinks and two big slices of apple pie for dessert, but the main menu was provided by her today.

"More or less the same as the Magiformers," I answered while helping her unfold the napkins. "Specifically, Josh's version. It automatically activates when he does his fluid-induced-transformation, so I'm planning on replicating it onto a pet collar, so that when Ichiko transforms, it would automatically form some clothes on her. I can't do it yet, because I still need a base enchantment to modify, but I'm actually on pretty good terms with the local artificers, so I should be able to work something out."

"It would be certainly helpful for when she has to jump in and out of my shadow," Judy mused aloud, but before I could agree with her, she took the lid off the lunch box, and I couldn't help but sigh at the sight.

"Don't take this the wrong way, Dormouse; I love your sandwiches, but can't we have some variety for once?"

"This is variety, Chief" my girlfriend stated in the most emphatically deadpan voice I have ever heard, following which she picked up one of the wrapped-up bundles and handed it over to me. "It's a cemita poblana."

"… Still looks like a sandwich to me," I admitted, only for her to let out a sharp breath through her nose in disapproval.

"It's because your palate is too narrow. It's a type of Mexican torta from the Pueblo region."

I gave my lovely (if currently slightly difficult) assistant the mother of all skeptical looks, but since she looked entirely serious, I had no choice but to shake my head and tell her, "I have to have a talk with Josh one of these days. He's having a really bad influence on you."

"Hush, Chief, or I'm going to start to feel slightly irritated with you."

"Slightly irritated?" I asked back with a smile. "Isn't this the point where you usually claim you would start hating me?"

"I'm not small-minded enough to go that far over some sandwiches," she answered with a shrug before picking up her own share and taking a huge bite out of it.

"Ah-ha! I knew it was just a fancy sandwich after all!"

My victorious declaration elicited no dramatic reaction from the girl in front of me (probably because her mouth was full), so I grudgingly picked up another piece of food my dear girlfriend prepared and unwrapped it. I mean, all that grumbling aside, Judy's sandwiches were always good, so I was sure this wasn't going to be an exception either, and more importantly, I didn't want anyone to accuse me of being an anti-cemita.

… That was a terrible pun, even by my standards. If anyone heard it, I would've had to apologize, but since I only tortured myself with it, I quickly shrugged it off and took a quick whiff of the multi-layered food in front of me. It wasn't half bad, but as they say, the proof is in the pudding. Or rather, in the… never mind. Food puns were apparently the bane of my existence. I had to make sure Judy never learned about it.

Anyhow, I took a large bite following her example, and I had to admit, while my initial impression of the mixture of flavors was a little perturbing, after some further chewing it actually turned out to be pretty damn tasty.

"Look at that. This is actually pretty—" I began, only for my eyes to open wide for a split second as I involuntarily hissed out a surprised, "—Shit!"

"Excuse me?" Judy raised her voice in response, and her brows were already showing the first signs of an extremely rare and equally thunderous full-blown frown, forcing me to put the sandwich down and hastily explain myself.

"I don't mean the food, it's really good, but we have a situation on our hands!"

"What kind of si—?"

"Leonard!"

My girlfriend's question was abruptly and quite rudely cut short by a new voice exploding into the scene, followed by its owner's arrival a moment later. The girl in question was young, tall-ish, with brown skin, had a long sparkling thread extending from the tip of her head like an infinitely long fishing line, and for some reason, she was wearing our school's winter uniform.

"Sahi." My acknowledgment of her presence was flatter than the great salt plains, but she didn't seem to mind at all. In fact, she flashed me a delighted smile and sat down beside me without even asking for permission.

"I've been, like, looking for you all over the place! You'd think it should be easy to find someone as big as you are, but naaah! You just had to be at the last place I decided to look!"

"This is lunch break," I stated while pointing at the clock on the nearby column. "It's when people eat."

"I know, gosh!" the brown girl fumed as she sidled closer to me, so I deliberately slinked away to maintain the distance. "I just don't know my way around yet! It's, like, my first day here!" All of a sudden her eyes lit up and she opened her arms wide. "By the way, what do you think? Does it suit me?"

I was fairly sure she was talking about her uniform, so I decided on the very diplomatic response of, "It emphasizes your personality. Also, does that mean you enrolled in our school?"

"Naaah, I'm just, like, taking a tour." As she said that, she waved her hand in front of her face like she was chasing a fly or something. Maybe it was for emphasis? Either way, she soon let it down and tugged at her own sleeves while telling me, "I was told that I can't walk around in the building without a uniform, so I had to borrow one."

"How riveting. In that case, I recommend you visit the library next before it closes. You better hurry up and go, preferably right now."

"Like, don't worry about me! I have the whole day to explore, so why don't we talk now that we ran into each other by accident?"

"I can distinctly remember you just mentioned that you were looking for the Chief," my girlfriend interjected with a voice chillier than the wind blowing outside. Weirdly enough, the remote-controlled girl by my side appeared to be genuinely surprised by her comment, but it only lasted for a moment before she flashed a toothy smile at her.

"Oh, hi! Sorry I didn't greet you, but I didn't think you were with Leonard."

After that non-excuse, she spent a long second inspecting my dear assistant before she leaned closer to me.

"Pssst! Leonard!" she whispered to me on a volume level where I was sure even people on the other side of the hall could hear her.

"What?

"I, like, wasn't looking into your background or anything, but aren't you totally sweet on the dragon girl? You know? Rich, blonde, and with huge boobies?"

"I believe they are only above average, but otherwise you are correct," I responded a tad suspiciously, which naturally fell on tone-deaf ears.

"She isn't blonde," the incognito arch-mage stated so in the same high-volume whisper as before, except this time she was at least trying to cover her mouth with one hand. The other one was quite conspicuously pointing at Judy though, so I had no idea what she was thinking, but to be fair, I didn't really like to put myself into the headspace of weird old women pretending to be cutesy teenage girls.

"A very astute observation."

She let out an appreciative grunt, apparently willfully unaware of the oceans of industrial-strength sarcasm roiling under the thin sheet of civility I showed her.

"Does your girlfriend know that you are totally having a romantic lunch with her?"

"Erm... I don't know about romantic per se, but yes, my girlfriend is very much aware of us having lunch here."

"That's bogus! If you're in a relationship, you mustn't flirt around with other girls!"

"I get that a lot, and that's why I'm doing my best to stay away from pushy girls," I told her and pointedly put some distance between us again.

"That's good," she declared with a solemn nod. "Like, no one likes an indecisive man who is followed around by a lot of girls."

My first reaction was to disagree, considering the whole harem-compliant setting and all, but I managed to swallow my objection. In fact, considering the way Judy's brows were imperceptibly twitching, I had a feeling it was in my best interest to steer the conversation towards less Dormouse-infuriating waters.

"Noted. So, why were you looking for me again?"

"Ooooh, that's right!" The uncomfortably friendly girl beamed at me for a moment, only to then quickly shake her head. "Wait. I wasn't, like, really looking for or anything, I was just, like, looking around and figured that if we met, it would be fate and stuff! Don't misunderstand!"

And now she was spouting clichéd tsundere lines. What is this I don't even...

"A-ny-way! Now that we met like this, how about we chill? I've also heard you were attacked by an army of robots, and that sounds gnarly! Can you tell me about it? Oh, you could totally do it while you show me around the school! It would be totally efficient and stuff!"

"No."

My straightforward answer only took her aback for a second, after which she redoubled her efforts without a shred of self-awareness.

"Pleeease? I totally don't know my way around! What if I, like, get lost and some evil Abyssal kidnaps me?"

"There are no 'evil Abyssals' walking around the school in broad daylight, but even if they were, I don't see how it's my problem."

At this point, I took a long sip from my drink to introduce a break into the conversation, yet my cold shoulder tactics still didn't seem to have much of an effect, as she kept pressing on with unwavering determination.

"How can you say that to a fragile, young girl? That isn't gentlemanly at all!"

I wanted to throw a wisecrack at her about her not being either young or fragile, or that I never claimed to be a gentleman, but I had a sneaking suspicion that neither of those objections would have been very effective at actually getting rid of the nuisance. The real question was: what would? I imagined that anything short of literally kicking her out of her chair wouldn't get the message across, but antagonizing another arch-mage like that was probably not a great idea. Judy didn't seem too keen on helping me out with the situation, so I had to come up with something on my own.

After wracking my brain over the issue for a short while, I decided to first see what tools I had at my disposal, so I used my Far Sight to quickly glance around. Out of all of the useful marked people in the school, the gang was still cooped up in the classroom, Peabody was having a coffee break with Lord Grandpa in the principal's office, and as for Armband Guy...

"Oh, perfect," I blurted out in surprise before I quickly rose to my feet and waved my hand over my head with a loud, "Hey, Pascal! Come here for a second!"

The young man with the tiny spectacles came to an abrupt halt just when he was about to leave the hall. I could practically see the internal debate written all over his face, but when I waved my hand even harder, he finally resigned himself to his fate and made his way over to our side.

"Yes, Dunning? Is there a problem?"

"In a manner of speaking," I told him not-so-straight while subtly gesturing towards the girl by my side. "Can I ask you for a favor?"

"I would certainly love to help you, but the Lord is already waiting for me," he tried to bounce me off, but such an amateurish attempt would never work on me.

"Oh, don't worry about that! He is still on a coffee break with the nurse and they are reminiscing about their college days. Are you really so heartless you want to interrupt their good times?"

I flashed the guy the most threateningly harmless smile I could conjure up at the moment, and after staring daggers at me for a while, he ultimately abandoned the last vestiges of his resistance and clicked his tongue.

"Fine, what do you want?"

"Let me explain, but first: you two already know each other, right?"

I deliberately glanced between him and Sahi a couple of times, and in the end, it was Armband Guy who broke the ice with a somewhat uncomfortable, "We have… met."

"He is Endy—I mean, Uncle Amadeus's apprentice, right?" the incognito arch-mage followed suit, with a small gaffe in the process.

"So you at least know each other's faces. Great. So, the thing is, she asked me to show her around the school, but I'm already in the middle of lunch here, so I wondered if you could fill in for me." It wasn't hard to read his expression, and it said he was once again desperately looking for an excuse, so I quickly pushed forth with, "I mean, you're part of the student council, while I just transferred in at the end of the last semester, so I'm sure you're way more knowledgeable about the school's facilities than I am."

A quick glance at the brown girl beside me told me she wasn't a fan of the idea either, so I used the opportunity to do something I should've already done during our first meeting, and I extended a finger to poke her between her brows.

"Don't frown so much, you are going to get wrinkles," I told her in a light-hearted tone, and after registering what happened, she immediately leaned back and covered her forehead with both hands.

"Gosh, Leonard! You can't just do that to a girl! What if I misunderstood or something!?" she complained, but I already got my mark, so I didn't really care. Instead, I leaned a little closer and spoke to her in a low voice.

"Never mind that. Listen, you said you wanted to hear about the fight with the robots?" She gave me a suspicious look, made slightly comical by the way she was still holding her forehead, but at last she nodded. "As luck would have it, Pascal was there!"

"He was? Really?"

"Yep. He was even there during the fight against the giant robot! A whole high-rise building got destroyed that day!"

"Really-really? Were there any homunculi fighting that time too?"

"Nah, it was more of a small skirmish, but Pascal can tell you all about it."

The incognito old lady stared at me for a long time, then looked over at Armband Guy, and in the end she let her hands down, jumped to her feet with a small huff, and pointed a finger at the guy's nose.

"All right then! Lead the way!"

The target of said declaration gave me a sour look, and I could tell he was still trying to find a way to wriggle out of this situation, so I decided to pre-empt him by addressing him first.

"Now, listen; I know what you are thinking. Is a simple favor worth sacrificing my lunch break? I can assure you, the answer is yes. I don't want to brag, but most people would do more than that just to get a favor from me down the line."

For a moment I internally debated whether I should tack a knowing wink at the end of that sentence, but decided it would've been too cheesy. It would've also been unnecessary, as Armband Guy reached his own conclusion and gestured for Sahi to follow after him, but no before giving me one last meaningful look.

"You owe me one, Dunning."

"Sure, that's the point," I agreed with a smile, and after waving them goodbye, the two left the hall with the new girl already pestering him about the details of our epic battle against the nefarious Doctor Robatto.

I waited until they were completely out of sight before I finally let the tension drain out of my shoulders. I exhaled a long sigh, which turned into a protracted groan halfway through.

"You know, Dormouse, I could have really used some help back there," I grumbled while I picked up my sandwich, still only missing a single bite.

"That would've ruined your grade," Judy answered between two sips from her drink, and I couldn't help but raise a brow at her remark.

"I was being graded? On what?"

"On your anti-harem measures," she stated like it was obvious.

"Oh." There was a long beat at this point, until I tentatively asked, "How did I do?"

"C plus."

The answer was as baffling as it was straightforward, and for a moment I didn't know how to react.

"Come on, Dormouse! I was doing better than that!" I objected, yet my girlfriend only shook her head.

"The score doesn't lie. You got extra points for passing her onto someone else, but your attitude wasn't decisive enough, and I had to dock a lot of points for that flirty forehead poke."

"Hold your horses right there! That was just how I justified making physical contact to properly mark her."

"Is that so?" My girlfriend muttered as she absent-mindedly sloshed the remaining soda in her paper cup, and she concluded with the words, "It was still unnecessarily suggestive, but I can accept that excuse. I can raise your grade to B minus, but only because I can see promise in you."

"Can we maybe figure out a way to raise that grade a little higher?"

"Maybe. See me after classes, and we can work something out."

"Oh my, miss Dormouse! Are you maybe soliciting me? How shameless of you!" I teased her a little, but she apparently wasn't in the mood to do a proper skit, as she only shrugged her shoulder.

"You can also pay me off with kisses, cuddles, a massage, or any combination of the three."

"In that case, I retract my previous moral objection."

With our discussion successfully concluded, I proceeded to devour the sandwich in front of me before lunch break would be over. Judy patiently waited for me, even though she already finished her share, and she only addressed me again when I took a quick break to drink something.

"Just for the record: do you think this 'Sahi' girl is interested in you?"

"Probably not," I answered with a shrug. "I figure she's just enjoying having a younger body and flaunts it around. The first time I saw her through Far Sight, she was even trying to hit on Lord Grandpa."

"Gross."

"Agreed, but again, she does it on purpose to tease people, and if you know that, it's not that hard to ignore her. That said, I wonder if she's going to try and play with Armband Guy's head as well."

"If you're that curious, you could always check with your Far Sight," Judy pointed out the obvious. Or rather, what should have been obvious, but when I tried to reflexively Far Glance at them, I could only perceive Pascal's 'dot' clearly, in the direction of the library. The one next to him, on the other hand, was flickering like an analog TV signal during a thunderstorm.

"Huh. That's weird," I muttered as I set my sandwich down and directed my full attention onto the newest mark I had. When I did that, I had a feeling that I could probably use the flickering dot, but it wasn't the 'real' mark, so to speak. As for where that was supposed to be, I tried looking for it by following the way my mind was drawn when I was trying to focus on 'Sahi', and I soon found another, much stronger dot on the other end of the island. However, once my vision cleared, I couldn't help but let out a small gasp and immediately cut the connection to return to my body.

"What happened?" my dear assistant asked the moment she noticed the change in my expression.

"Two things," I said as I rubbed my temple. "My theory about my Far Sight latching onto the local equivalent of 'souls' instead of bodies just gained another strong proof. Also, on the same note, apparently I can trace remote-controlled bodies back to the controller."

"And why are you white as a sheet of paper?"

"Because I just saw a naked old lady pickled in a giant jar of glowing green goo," I told her, and after some hesitation, I pushed my remaining sandwich aside and added, "On an unrelated note, I'm no longer hungry."