"I'll be—"

"Don't you dare just say 'I'll be right back' and leave me here with these two!" Josh cut me off before I could finish my sentence, and I couldn't help but groan in frustration as I turned back to him.

"We set up this Purple Zone to block all attempts for communicating with the outside world, so I have to go out to call the girls," I told him and pointed at the knightly duo sitting on the trunk of the first victim of today's impromptu logging efforts. "You can look after them for five minutes, can't you?"

"It's still two on one," Josh pointed out, and I raised my hand to show him the weapons I was holding.

"I'm taking their swords with me. What else do you want?"

"Idunno. Don't you have some rope, or a handcuff, or something?"

"Of course I don't. Where would I even keep those?" He was still giving me the stink eye, and I was too tired to argue, so I gave up and walked over to our… captives? I guess they were our captives, though we didn't really formalize it, and they were looking at us funny, which didn't exactly scream 'prisoner' either. Anyhow, this was all beside the point, and for the time being, I focused on Sir Griffon. "Don't move."

"… Okay," he answered, just a tad surprised. Not that whether he agreed or not changed anything, but I had to keep up appearances.

Anyhow, I turned to Josh with a smirk. It was a bit of a waste, because he couldn't see it due to my helmet, but I was too tired to care.

"See, now he can't move."

My comment was met with a crossfire of skeptical looks, but it all changed when Sir Griffon let out a subdued groan.

"Is something wrong?" Penny turned to the armor-clad man, yet he remained silent… for about three seconds.

"I can't seem to move a finger," he stated with a deadpan delivery that couldn't completely hide the alarm in his voice.

"Wait, are you serious?"

Josh's question prompted Sir Griffon to try again, and a few more grunts later he flatly stated, "Quite."

"Okay, that's unexpected, but I'll take it," my friend declared with an impressed expression. "Now, do the same to her, and you can leave for as long as you want."

"I can't."

My succinct answer washed the smirk off Josh's face and replaced it with a deep frown.

"Why? Don't tell me it's nepotism."

"No, it's more complicated than that," I answered a tad dourly. "Don't tell me you can't keep a single girl in check."

"It's a girl that managed to stab you," my dear friend pointed out, making the subject of our conversation visibly twitch in the background and avert her eyes. As for Sir Griffon, he was stoically bearing with the situation like a seasoned pro.

"Yeah, but I'm taking her sword with me. No sword, no stabby-stabby."

Josh rolled his eyes with a loud 'Bah,' but didn't argue any further, so I concluded our discussion and immediately disappeared from the clearing, only to appear in the clearing. In realspace, I mean. I didn't even have to Phase, as it was just an intuitive thing I could do as the 'owner' of the Purple Zone. I glanced around a bit, just to be sure there was nobody around, and then headed to the nearby bike racks. I left my phone in the trunk of Josh's moped, so if I wanted to contact Judy and Elly, I had to get it first.

Most Purple Zones actually allowed most radio frequencies through, thanks to a quirk in their basic design, but with the right know-how, it wasn't that hard to completely seal them off from electronic communication. Needless to say, that's exactly what we did, just to be on the safe side, and while I (or rather, Ammy) couldn't do much about the more magical means of communication, considering that the Knight duo was still sitting still meant they didn't have access to such methods.

While pondering so, I reached the bike racks and retrieved my phone. Technically I could just Phase home to give a status report to the girls, but I was a sorry sight at the moment, and I didn't want to scare them. The only injury I suffered was the stab wound under my shoulder, but the coat I wore on top of the armor got shredded in the scuffle, so I looked much worse than how I actually fared.

"Chief."

The call only took a single ring to connect, and my deadpan girlfriend's greeting was slightly more apprehensive than expected, so I quickly told her, "Hi, Dormouse. We're officially done with the duel. Guess who won?"

"You did," she told me matter-of-factly, and I couldn't help but let out a soft chuckle.

"You could've at least pretended to be uncertain for a moment."

"There was no need. I saw it."

"You did?" I blurted out, and it took me several seconds to realize what she was talking about. "You used the glasses."

"I did," came the immediate answer.

"So you saw the whole thing from Josh's perspective?"

"Yes." There was a long pause, and then she added, "Including the part where you got stabbed."

"It was just a tiny stab. Barely penetrated the skin," I told her in a hurry, only to receive an even longer pause in return.

"The moment you come home, you're getting treated by Angeline."

"… Yes, ma'am." My dear assistant let out a satisfied grunt on the other end of the line, so I quickly moved the conversation along by telling her, "So, since you've seen the whole battle, I guess I don't have to give you much of a sit rep."

"I only saw the end of your duel. Joshua was preoccupied with the man in the armor most of the time."

"Too bad. I hoped you would comment on how cool I was."

"I think guys who don't get hurt are the coolest… but you get a passing grade."

"How gracious of you."

"I'm always gracious. When are you coming back?"

"Let me see…" That wasn't just verbal filler, as I literally used Far Sight to check on the general state of affairs. "Things are wrapping up, but I still have to explain a few things to these two, and then we have the culmination of the whole plan we very definitely don't talk about. I don't know how long that will take, but I think I'll be home before ten."

"That's too late. Phase come home first to get your injury treated, then you can culminate all your plans however you want."

"Oh, fine. I'll have to stash away these swords anyway, so I'll stop by."

"You better. See you soon." I thought that was the end of it, but then she added, "Elly told me to tell you we love you."

"Ah, yes. I can perfectly understand the sentiment, for you see, I also happen to love myself." I waited for a long beat, and then hastily amended, "I'm kidding. I love you too."

"… Chief, you're aware that you're going to be kicked for that, right?"

"Still worth it," I answered between two snickers and then said my goodbyes, this time properly, and pocketed the phone. I didn't bother walking back to the clearing, as moving in and out of a Purple Zone looked functionally identical to Phasing in, so I did just that. What welcomed me was loud, obnoxious, but by no means unexpected.

"—no difference?! They are wyrmbloods! Wyrm! Bloods!" yelled the helmetless Knight on the left, without bothering with her fake baritone.

"So? Why exactly is that a crime?" Josh asked back with his arms crossed and a scowl on his brows.

"They aren't human! They treat human lives as toys!" Penny insisted with a glare of her own, and the guy gave her a look like she was talking Swahili.

"What are you even talking about? Aren't you the people who run around ramming cars into gates and stabbing people? All the Draconians I know are teddy bears compared to you… well, except for this one butler, I suppose."

"Sebastian is a unique case, so he doesn't count," I added to draw their attention, but it only half-succeeded, as Josh nodded along and pointed at me.

"Right! If they were really callous monsters, Leo wouldn't date one of them, now would he?"

"T-That's just…!" Penny glanced over to me, and even though I didn't make a sound, she fully faced me and turned an accusative finger on me. "I still don't acknowledge it! I-I mean, I acknowledge your determination, but I don't acknowledge her! It must be some kind of trick! And… And… And I especially don't acknowledge that Seducer!"

"Her name is Lili," our resident protagonist pointed out, and then got hissed at for his trouble.

"You stay out of this! This has nothing to do with you!"

"Am I the only one who feels like we're going in circles?" he asked as he raised a sardonic brow at me, and I agreed with a sigh.

"How about we shelve this topic for now and talk about why we are here and how we got to this point," I proposed, and Penny sulkily agreed after a short stare down.

"I like the sound of that, but could you please undo whatever you did to me?" Sir Griffon cut in with a straight-faced question. "My neck is itching something awful."

"Fine," I half spoke and half groaned as I made my way over to his side and roughly patted him on the shoulder. "There, you can scratch your neck now."

The man let out a surprised noise, but then he raised his hands, and after clenching and unclenching his fists a few times, he turned to me and said, "Much obliged. Would you mind telling me just how you did that?"

"Maybe later. We have bigger fish to fry first," I replied and moved to the front again.

To be honest, what I did wasn't that complicated. As I've already demonstrated, tweaking the output setting of the Knight equipment wasn't hard, so long as it wasn't a plot device that I felt I shouldn't touch. I've also shown that it was possible to reduce the individual boosts provided. So, what would happen if you took the arrays responsible for said boosts, and tuned them down into negative values? Simply put, the more effort the wearer put into moving, the more the armor hindered their movements, essentially paralyzing them in the process. I was already familiar with how this worked, as I sneakily tweaked Sir Griffon's gear before the duel, just in case he would enter the fray, and it allowed Josh to match him in combat and eventually triumph. In fact, I might have lowered his boosts a bit too much, as the guy won without suffering more than a few scratches, but it was better to err on the side of caution.

Of course, explaining all of this without revealing my phantom limbs would've been tricky, and they might've even considered it cheating, so I pushed the task of coming up with a suitable excuse to future me and focused on the discussion at hand.

"Now that we're all more or less comfortable, let's quickly discuss why we had this Arbitration in the first place." Saying so, I addressed Mr. Griffon directly. "Since you're the only one not in the loop yet, let's clarify one thing: I'm actually, one hundred percent sincerely, dating Eleanor Dracis."

I don't know exactly what reaction I was expecting, but a thoughtful 'Hm.' was fairly down on the list.

"I've gathered as much from their argument," the Griffon knight stated as he gestured at Josh and Penny, "but hearing it from you certainly makes the situation impossible to misinterpret."

"That's the point," I told him, and he nodded along. Considering he wanted to cut Josh down for being a 'collaborator', I anticipated a stronger reaction. Maybe he was adopting a 'wait and see' approach, or just recognized that there was no point trying to make a move when I could paralyze him. Either way, he looked receptive enough, so I began my explanation by calmly stating, "First things first, there's something you need to know. I have amnesia."

"… I remember when that used to be a secret," Josh spoke on the side, and I shrugged.

"These two knew me way longer than any of you guys, so they would figure it out sooner or later anyway. It's better to let them know now before any of them start coming up with harebrained ideas about mind control and the like."

"Fair enough," he granted me, but the end of his sentence was drowned out by Penny's shouts.

"Wha-Wha-Whaaat? Wait, how, when, why, how?"

"You asked 'how' twice, but staying on topic, I've no memories from before the first of September."

"This year?" Sir Griffon asked, and I nodded.

"But… no, that's impossible! You called me 'kiddo'! You always called me that since we were kids!"

"Did I? Josh, did I call her that?"

"A couple of times," he told me a touch incredulously.

"Seriously?" When he nodded, I let out a thoughtful 'Huh' and faced my alleged sister again. "To be fair, she has kind of a 'kiddo' look to her, doesn't she?"

"I don't even know what that means," Josh griped, and I had to agree with him.

"Me neither, but that's just kind of the vibe I get from looking at her."

"Dude, are you sure you're all right? Maybe you've lost more blood than we thought."

"Nah, my wound stopped bleeding a while ago."

"So just to summarize," Sir Griffon abruptly interjected by rising to his feet. "You say you've lost your memories, and then you met the scion of the wyrmbloods on this island and you two fell in love without knowing about your affiliations."

"More or less," I granted him. "Though I was aware of her being a Draconian for a while before we discovered that I was a Knight, but it doesn't really matter."

"Of course it matters!" Penny exclaimed in horror. "They are our enemies!"

"Yes, but why?" Josh asked, this time his skeptical brow turned on the girl. "Why are they your enemies? You still haven't answered my question from before."

"Because they're evil!"

"… Could you be a bit less uselessly broad?" I asked in turn, and it was the Griffon Knight who answered.

"The wyrmbloods are known for manipulating humanity and instigating various conflicts." I gestured for him to continue, and he added, "Such as the Boxer Rebellion and the Thirty Years War."

"Also the Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' war," Penny added, if a touch unnecessarily.

"Okay, let's narrow it down a bit: what exactly did they do recently? No, let's make it even clearer: has the Dracis family done anything in recent memory that would warrant attacking them on sight?"

The two Knights shared an uncertain glance between each other, and it was Penny who stated, "They crippled Sir Mallory!"

"Who?"

"The last wielder of Ascalon," Sir Griffon clarified.

"Asc— Oh, you mean the dragon-slaying spear. Wait, wasn't that when he used it to stab Emese in the back. It was on a boat restaurant or something."

"Yes! That's when they crippled him and stole Ascalon!" Penny doubled down, entirely oblivious to the look I was giving her.

"So he attacked a couple during their anniversary dinner, got beaten up in self-defense, and it's somehow the couple's fault?"

"Yes!" the girl declared like it was entirely obvious.

"… You see, Josh? This is why we need to get rid of this stupid feud. It rots people's common sense."

"Are you sure she even had one, to begin with?" my friend jested (I think), earning him an enormous huff from the subject in question.

"Are you picking a fight with me?"

"Nah. I don't want others to think I'm picking on an idiot."

"Who are you calling an idiot you idiot?"

I wanted to get between the two, but couldn't manage to do so before Sir Griffon addressed me again.

"I hope you know that the others won't approve of your relationship."

"Does this mean you do?"

"I can't say, but I'm willing to hear you out. Arnwald and Duncan most likely won't give you the same courtesy."

"Well, then I suppose it's a good thing that I'm not going to give them a choice," I told the composed Knight, and I could see his eyes slowly narrow behind his visor.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Don't worry, you'll see soon enough." My elusive answer obviously didn't satisfy him, so after some consideration, I also told him, "I promised you a long discussion after the Arbitration, didn't I? Everything will be explained there."

"I was under the impression that we're already doing that."

"No, this is just a bit of a preamble while the rest of the pieces assemble themselves on the board."

I was sure the man had more questions, but before he could ask them, someone roughly yanked on my frayed coat, demanding my attention.

"Brother! Hand me back my sword! I must teach this oaf a lesson!"

"Oh, sure. Since you can't win with words, you immediately resort to violence. That's going to prove that you're reasonable for sure."

"Silence, you unchivalrous lout!"

"Yeah, because trying to attack an unarmed guy with a sword is what chivalry is all about. Typical."

"You two, stop fighting," I reprimanded them, but my warning fell on deaf ears.

"Brotheeer! He's picking on me!"

"And now she's trying to get someone else involved," Josh grumbled while rolling his eyes. "I can't believe I almost thought you were cute until you opened your mouth…"

"Hey! I'm cute whether my mouth is open or closed, right, brother?"

"What even are we arguing about at this point?"

"That's a very good question," I told the guy and raised my voice. "Last warning! Read my lips! No! More! Fighting! Got it?"

The two of them both looked startled, but then Josh cautiously told me, "I got it, but… It's kinda hard to read your lips with your helmet on."

"Oh for the love of…! Fine!" Saying so, I unbuckled my helm and took it off. "Here, are you happy now? Do I have to repeat myself?" I got no answer. In fact, they were both looking at me with slack jaws, prompting me to utter a confused, "What?"

"Brother, you look terrible!"

Josh also nodded along, so I quickly Far Glanced using his mark, and even I was taken aback for a moment. My hair was a mess, though that was to be expected after wearing a helmet, and more alarmingly, there were caked over red lines running down from my nostrils, and my skin was deathly pale. Suffice to say, I wasn't easily scared, but if someone looking like me jumped out at me from an alley at night, I would've run.

Stranger still, I didn't actually feel as bad as I looked. In fact, I was perfectly fine. I touched my upper lip, and it came away dry, meaning that even if I had a nosebleed, it was long over. Speaking of which, just when did that happen? I couldn't remember feeling anything running down my face or tasting metal, but to be fair, I was fairly preoccupied.

"So you've been pushing yourself past your limit after all," Sir Griffon noted on the side like it was something he was expecting.

"I really haven't though," I responded while checking my right hand, but it felt perfectly satisfactory. I also circulated some mana, just to be sure, but there was no adverse effect. No matter how I looked at it, I was fine. I imagined that the undersuit might not have taken all the backlash after all, but that was impossible to tell without making Fred inspect it first. "More importantly, I have to go away for a moment."

"What? Why?"

I turned to the alarmed Josh and his built-in live-cam, and a tired sigh later I showed him my phone and said, "I have to call my girlfriends again and tell them this looks waaay worse than it actually is and that I'm all right. Please behave, I'll be right back."

And with that, I promptly Phased out of the Purple Zone, barely catching an echo of the world 'Girlfriends?' coming from Sir Griffon. That was going to be another lengthy explanation, but let's focus on one thing at a time.