I knew it! I god-bloody-damn knew that the shifty old bastard was going to betray me! I knew it, and yet, somehow, I still didn't not trust him enough! How is that even possible!?

"This is stupid!" I growled as I let go of my head, and the archers on the catwalks readjusted their aim in response. Pausing for a breath, I let out a frustrated groan and firmly levelled my finger at them. "Put those bloody things down! You're going to poke someone's eyes out!"

To my momentary surprise, the Celestials started to murmur in bewilderment, and some of them even let their weapons down. It didn't last for long.

"No! You can't follow his orders yet!" the bald man in the middle exclaimed and hurriedly rose to his feet. "We can't let him leave!"

His orders caused another round of whispers and all the arrows to be trained on me again.

"Well, you can try to stop me, but you can't," I told them matter-of-factly, and the leader of the group straight up wiped the sweat on his forehead before speaking up again.

"Mister Dunning, I implore you. We came here in peace. We only wish to talk with you."

This time I aimed one of my flattest stares ever at the man, and even as I did so, I could feel my facial muscles slowly twist my expression into an infuriated grimace.

"Ah, yes. Because luring someone into an overly-elaborate ambush in the ass-end of nowhere and threatening them with bows and arrows of all things just screams 'We're reasonable people who just want to negotiate', huh?"

"We were pressed for time, and it was the only way," the bald guy excused himself in a strangely subservient tone. "I apologize for deceiving you, but we knew that if you suspected foul play, you would've never agreed to this meeting."

He was kind of right and wrong at the same time. From the very beginning, I did expect 'foul play', as he put it; I was just sorely mistaken about the details. I predicted that the Magi 'insiders' were just a convenient excuse Percival came up with to take me to a deserted location before the sudden-yet-inevitable-betrayal and equally anticipated backstab. Hell, I didn't just expect it; I actively baited him into it by pretending to be completely gullible and docile. I even went as far as to order the Kage ninjas to stay out of this one, lest the old bastard would realize the gig was up and abandon whatever nasty little plan he was cooking in the very last minute.

In retrospect, I should've at least brought Rinne along in my shadow, if for nothing else than to serve as a witness, but in my defense, I was quite sure I could resolve this without getting anyone else involved. Putting it simply, I didn't exactly consider Percival a threat. Between my gear, my danger sense, and my other assorted abilities, I felt rather confident, and in the case the old man showed his true colours, I was almost looking forward to beating him to an inch of his life without having to hold anything back. What I didn't predict was an entire ambush, and one by a squad of Celestials at that!

But speaking of Percival, a cursory Far Glance told me he was already on his way to another location, riding on a black sports motorbike no less! Was he seriously making one of those stylish getaways from a spy movie, I marvelled? If anything, it only made me want to leave without any further ado and then stomp dear Uncle Percy into the closest available curb (figuratively, but the literal version wasn't completely off the table either).

While I was nominally curious about what these bozos were here for, the traitorous old bastard was higher on my priority list, which meant it was about time I made my exit. As overused as it was, the most straightforward solution to the situation was the tried-and-true 'I wasn't really here' method, and while I didn't want to reuse it so soon after pulling it on Lord Grandpa just the other day, I—

"This was our one and only chance to make contact with you, so we had to be thorough," the four-winged man interrupted my thoughts and then sat down again. "We couldn't risk that you wouldn't show up in person, so we had to enlist the help of Agent Pendragon."

"Wait… how can you be so sure that I'm actually here?" I tried to initiate my getaway-line anyway, but he cut me short by casually pointing at my head.

"Agent Pendragon prepared an indicator."

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize what he was talking about, but then I reached under my chin and ripped off the face mask Percival gave me before we set out. I raised it up to face-level, but couldn't see any kind of magical glow, and a quick sweep with my phantom limb told me it had no enchantment on it whatsoever. When I looked up from it and turned a questioning glance at the man behind the desk, he awkwardly cleared his throat.

"I believe he used fluorescent invisible marker. It was clearly visible when you entered the room, and Agent Pendragon assured me that as long as I could see the mark on it, it was definitely your real body wearing it."

"Fluorescent marker…" I repeated after him in a daze, and a sudden memory elbowed its way into the forefront of my mind. Was… was Percival actually throwing shade at me when he was talking about how people used to magic were easier to deceive by simple tricks…? "Oh, that bloody motherfu—!"

I threw the flimsy piece of cloth at the ground and got ready to Phase after the bastard in a fit of justified, but in retrospect somewhat impulsive, rage. The Celestial in the middle must've realized I was about to do something, as he rose to his feet for the second time and pointed his palms at me.

"No! Please, Mister Dunning, sir! We did all of this for your sake! We can help you regain your memories!"

I was already locked onto the old man's location, but those words made both my body and my mind freeze.

"Pardon?" I uttered in mild bewilderment as I fully returned to my body, and the bald guy let out a relieved breath like he just defused a bomb at the one-second mark.

"We can help you. I swear on Deus that we can return your lost memories to you and make you whole again. Please, trust us."

I won't lie, that sent me on quite a loop.

"Are you serious?"

"Yes. Please, I implore you."

Before I knew it, I had one of those moments. The kind where all of a sudden about ten minutes worth of thoughts rushed through my mind in the span of a single second, and all of them were fighting tooth and nail to be in the limelight.

The first one that managed to claw its way into my conscious mind was the question, 'Is he telling the truth?'. This was a Celestial agent of some flavour we were talking about here, and while I rationally knew that not all Celestials were scheming, deceitful asshats, it didn't mean their reputation was unwarranted. This could've very well been just a ruse to pique my interest and make me easier to manipulate… but at the very least, he sounded genuine, so at the very least he believed they were here to help me. So… maybe he was telling the truth?

Just as I reached this point, another thought caught the first one in a chokehold and yelled, 'Then why are they holding me at gunpoint, or arrow-point, or whatever! Think, you dingus!', making me seriously reconsider the idea. However, before I could get anywhere with that, a third thought barrelled into the forefront and drop-kicked the previous ones out of my mind with a battle-cry of 'Context! Think about the context!'.

Considering the broader situation for a moment, a new question came to mind: didn't this put Percival's actions in a completely new light? If I presumed that he lured me here to let the Celestials recover my memories, then it would've meant that, from his perspective, he wasn't betraying me, but helping me instead. It would certainly explain the thumbs up he gave me at the end, and—

Before that thought could be concluded, its legs were pulled out of under it by two other notions, screaming 'Then why did he run away from the scene of the crime!?' and 'Don't you dare to give the benefit of the doubt of that fuckmotherer!', respectively. I could hardly argue with that, and while those three thoughts duked it out, a new one sneaked its way into the forefront and gently whispered, 'Even if they're telling the truth, do I actually want to have my memories back?'.

That… actually made all the other congested thoughts in my head stop in their tracks to give it the consideration it deserved. From what I'd gathered, I wasn't exactly the nicest person before I lost my memories. If I got them back, wouldn't it fundamentally change my personality? Sure, maybe it could've shed some light on one or more of the persistent mysteries I was still struggling with, such as where my initial 'allowance' came from, or what my original plans were when coming to the island, but were such questions worth risking the integrity of my ego?

My answer to that question was a resounding no, and upon reaching that consensus, the original brainwave sunk back, only to be replaced by another one bursting into my thought-palace, asking, 'So, even if I don't care about my memories, could I still use these guys to my advantage?', and it was definitely a pertinent question.

They called Percival 'Agent Pendragon', meaning he was directly connected to them. That meant the Brotherhood was still linked to the Celestials, and it also explained the detailed list of strongholds I found on the Celestial Hub way back when; after all, one of their most highly regarded and highest-ranking member was a Celestial mole! Not only that, but since I was his protégé, there was a good chance that I was also supposed to be in on the secret, which meant…

Holy crapbasket! Could it be that I wasn't on the island to recruit Josh into the Brotherhood, but because of his Celestial Chosen One status? Angie knew very little about why she was designated to look after Josh, and though I had a feeling she completely forgot about her mission as a Celestial asset, the guy was supposed to be one of the candidates as the reincarnation of Deus, the Elysium's god-slash-messiah-slash-cult-leader. Considering that it was Josh we were talking about, aka the protagonist of the Simulacrum, it was practically guaranteed that he was just that, short of a last-minute twist.

What did that make me then? If we presumed that we were in the Angie route, then it would logically follow that Josh's status as the Chosen One would have to be revealed, and who else would be better for the job than the Celestial double-agent hidden in plain sight, aka me? However, I lost my memories, so maybe this entire incident was the Simulacrum or the Narrative trying to course-correct things in the last possible second.

'Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself,' another thought said as it elbowed its way into my frontal lobe. 'Yes, let's consider if I can use this situation to my advantage first, and then ponder the narrative implications,' the previous thought agreed, and so I took a deep breath and observed the situation again. What were my options?

For a start, I could potentially pretend to switch sides and milk these guys for information. I wasn't sure how much I could get out of them per se, but maybe they could put me in contact with someone higher up on the Celestial totem pole, and maybe marking them would be useful in the future. That… was a lot of 'maybes' though; a bit too many for my liking.

Were there any alternatives? Well, I could also try to beat them up and interrogate them. While I didn't have any backup, so long as I went all-out, I was confident I could make short work of them, especially if I caught them by surprise. That said, the only remotely-relevant person in this gaggle of winged idiots was the bald negotiator, and he barely qualified as a 'side-character' by my metrics. The rest were straight-up placeholders, so I doubted I could get anything worthwhile out of them.

Okay, so working with them, pretending to work with them, and subduing them were all more trouble than it was worth. Did I have any other options?

For one thing, I already got rid of the facemask, so I could still pull my disappearing act. All I needed to do was to keep them busy for a few minutes, and then tell them 'Hey, while you were talking, I already left through the back door five minutes ago, so bye'. It wouldn't be particularly elegant at that point, but on the flipside, it wouldn't break the rules of my illusionist cover story either, and so long as they didn't suddenly erect one of those locked Purple Zones around the building, everything would work out just fine.

…

"Me and my big mouth…"

Apparently, the universe just couldn't resist dashing my hopes, and without prior warning, everyone and everything flashed in negative colours and then settled into an unsettling violet hue. More alarmingly, the ambient light not only kept flickering between purple and red, the Celestials in front of me seemed to be even more surprised by the development than I was.

"What is this? Didn't we already deploy the Restricted Space suppressors?" the bald Celestial bellowed with palpable apprehension in his voice, but before any of his subordinates could respond, there was a bright blue light at the back of the warehouse floor, followed by the sound of blustering wind and the crackling of static electricity.

Before the Celestials on the catwalks could meaningfully react, a swirling, round hole opened in space and a person leaped out of the newly formed portal, followed by about a dozen more. They were all wearing similar brass hoplite armours as the archers, except theirs covered less skin, and the moment they arrived, they brandished magitech spears, swords, and altogether oversized handguns.

"Move out! We must secure the VIP!"

Yep. The guy with the crested helmet at the front was definitely Jaakobah.

"What is this I don't even…" I muttered under my breath as the two groups of Celestials clashed in combat. The ones on the catwalks were already at a disadvantage, as they didn't have enough space to maneuver, and by the time they switched to their melee weapons, the second group already gained a substantial lead. My ears also absently noted that the moment the battle broke out, both sides started singing; one side sounded like a Gregorian hymn, while the other was closer to a folk song, but I couldn't tell which group sang which. I didn't really have much time to even think about it, as Jaakobah rushed straight at me, only to be intercepted by the bald guy, who produced a pair of curved silver swords from the bracelets on his wrists.

"Leonard! Stay back!" the Celestial agent yelled at me as he engaged the dual-wielding man with his own sword and gun. "We'll deal with them! Don't get involved!"

To be fair, I had no intention to do that whatsoever. I had absolutely no idea what this was all about, didn't know who were the good guys in this conflict, and since my danger sense was completely inactive, I didn't feel the need to even move from the spot where I was standing.

"Renegades!" the bald man drew my attention back to him by roaring while randomly flourishing his swords as if asking to be shot by Jaakobah.

Instead, the dour healer took up some kind of strange gun-kata pose and said, "If there's a renegade here, it's you, vice-director. Your greed got the better of you."

"You dare to talk about greed, Reformist scum!"

Instead of responding with words, Jaakobah did a completely impractical three-hundred-and-sixty degrees pirouette before bringing down his short sword onto the roaring man, a move which would've been incredibly easy to exploit if not for the bald guy being more preoccupied with twirling his blades than actually attacking him. The incoming strike was parried with one blade, and then the hairless Celestial used his other sword to strike at Jaakobah's side. However, before the attack could connect, it got parried by the agent's impractically large handgun, followed by several shots that impacted the other man's chest.

As I already noted while spying on their training, these guns were firing small arrows of light instead of bullets, and weren't exactly impressive. The projectiles exploded on the hair-follicle deficient Celestial's Barrier, but it only staggered him for a second before he jumped back in the fray.

As for me, I was currently shocked, confused, and quite possibly even bamboozled by this turn of events. What exactly was going on? Where did these guys come from? What was that about 'renegades' and 'reformists'? And last, but not necessarily least, what was the point of making a huge magitech pistol that made your average gas-operated fifty-caliber semi-automatic magnum handgun seem puny in comparison, when it could barely inconvenience someone at point-blank range?

Okay, maybe that last one was the least important thing to wonder about in this situation, but seriously, what the hell was that? What the hell was any of this?

While my mind was still reeling from the unforeseen development, Jaakobah and the nameless badly kicked over the table in the heat of their fight, and the battle over our heads also gained momentum, with at least one of the catwalks teetering on the edge of collapse after one of the suspension cables got cut in the scuffle. By the looks of it, Jaakobah's group still held the advantage, which was… good? Maybe?

As a matter of fact, I still didn't know who the good guys were. Since he was the only person I knew in this royal mess, my gut said I should probably root for the Celestial healer's squad of Peloponnesian War re-enactors, but one's digestive track wasn't necessarily the most trustworthy advisor, and since the losing group was the underdog, I kind of wanted to cheer for them to make a heroic comeback, and…

"… Okay, screw this," I muttered as a rising sense of indignation kicked all other stray thoughts out of my mind and asserted itself into the cockpit of my mind. Taking a step forward, I inhaled deeply and bellowed from the bottom of my lungs. "Enough!"

My intervention was more effective than I could've ever imagined, and in the momentary silence, every eye was glued onto me, which… well, it took me back for a moment, right until 'Refuge in Audacity' unceremoniously kicked 'Indignation' out of the driver's seat.

"You!" I said, pointing at the group on the left catwalk. "Yes, I'm talking to you, knobheads! Get off that god-forsaken walkway before it all collapses and the rest of your mates will have to collect your brains from the floor with a teaspoon! Oh, and while you're at it, put the wings away already; they are a bloody eyesore!"

"Mister Leonard, I—"

"And you two!" I cut in with a reprimanding finger right out of the princess' handbook, and it shut the bald guy up before he could even get started. "Stop this meaningless battle at once!"

"But we are—" Jaakobah tried to speak of this time, so I turned my finger at him.

"No buts! I didn't come here to watch you idiots murder each other for no adequately explained reason. Spill as much as a single drop of blood, and I'm leaving, and at that point, you can all rot in hell for all I care."

"We're in a Restricted Space. You can't leave," the phlegmatic agent pointed out, and I chose to respond with a melodramatic growl.

"Can't I? Try me."

To be honest, this was a borderline bluff. Sure, I could leave at any time; there was no issue with that. However, giving a believable explanation as to how I could leave from a seemingly malfunctioning Locked Restricted Space was far trickier, and the Celestials were the last people I wanted to learn about my teleportation ability.

All of that was a moot problem though, as Jaakobah released his weapons at once and they returned to their standard issue bracelet forms. Seeing his actions, the bald guy hesitated for a while, but peer pressure was a harsh mistress, and so he also dismissed his weapons.

"Very well. We are all reasonable adults here, I'm sure we can reach a compro—"

Before he could even finish a single sentence, Jaakobah lashed out without warning and sucker-punched the man right in the gut. Before I could even wonder why his Barrier didn't stop that, the agent dashed behind the bald man and caught his head in a chokehold. I was pretty sure it took something like half a minute to knock someone out like that, but in just a matter of seconds, the man went limp and Jaakobah carefully laid his body onto the floor. Then, as if to punctuate the moment, the empty catwalk on the left finally collapsed with a cacophony of snapping cables and groaning steel.

"There was no blood," Jaakobah stated blithely as he stood up and made a few gestures with his hands, at which point the rest of his squad rushed in to apprehend the shocked archers. Just like that, the battle ended in a matter of seconds with the swift surrender of the first group. In the meantime, the dour agent removed his helmet and stood in front of me, so we were seeing eye to eye.

"I really hope that you were the good guys," I grumbled after clicking my tongue, and he let out a thoughtful grunt in response.

"Good is relative, but as far as you should be concerned, all you need to know is that we're here to help you."

"Sure. That's what the other guy said as well," I told him while priming my danger sense. We were in sucker-punching range, and he had already shown me that such things weren't beneath him. Thankfully, for the moment he remained docile and only nodded like I just stated the obvious.

"He wasn't lying. We both want to help you retrieve your memories."

"… Then what was this whole thing about?" I inquired with a wave of my hand, mainly aggravated and just a touch intrigued.

"Our short-term goal might be the same, but our long-term goals don't align. I'll let the directors explain everything to you once we're in Elysium."

"Whoa there, cowboy! Slow down! Who said anything about going anywhere with you?"

Jaakobah's expression said he was expecting this kind of answer, and he took a deep breath.

"I'm not allowed to tell you the details, but you are important, Leonard. Extremely important. We purposefully didn't make contact until now, so that no attention would be drawn to you, but now that the Unorthodox faction broke the agreement, we can't wait any longer. You are of vital importance to the people of Elysium, and we can't let either the Magi or Bel of the Abyss learn of this."

"Excuse me, but you do know who I am, right?" I asked, feeling a tad flabbergasted by his insistence. "I'm currently in the center of the Draconic Alliance, the head of the Ordo Draconis, and a bunch of other titles I can't be bothered to list here. I think I can take care of myself, thank you very much."

"That might be, but if there's even a one percent chance that your life could be in danger, it's a risk we cannot afford to take. You must come with us, both for the sake of your own protection as well as for the sake of all Celestials."

"Oookay, you're getting a bit carried away here," I tried to object, but before I could get any further, Jaakobah suddenly brought forth his sword. My danger sense gave me no warning, so I just blankly watched as he raised it to his own neck. "… What are you doing?"

"I'm staking my life," he told me like we were discussing the weather and placing the semi-transparent edge against his skin.

"That's idiotic."

"It may well be, but it is the only way I can show you my sincerity."

Saying so, his face tensed up as the blade bit into his skin, drawing a few drops of blood.

"Stop that!" I yelled by reflex and used a phantom limb to snap the enchantment that was holding his weapon together in half, at which point the whole magitech sword collapsed and the pieces fell onto the floor, much to his shock.

Meanwhile, I took a closer look at the wound, but it was only skin deep. Still, I never pictured this guy would do something like that. That meant that he was either crazier than I thought, or that the whole situation was bigger and crazier than I could've ever imagined.

Considering they needed me in particular, and both wanted to recover my memories, it told me that there was something in my pre-amnesiac backstory that was vitally important to these guys. Whatever it was, Jaakobah was willing to take himself hostage just to force me to cooperate, which was… well, we were acquaintances at best, but I didn't want to see the guy bleed himself to death in front of me, so it was unexpectedly effective. Damn. Was I really that soft?

Never mind, let's focus on more important questions. Such as what I should do now? I broke Jaakobah's weapon by reflex, but how exactly was I supposed to explain to him what I just did?

That should've been a major issue, yet it ended up rhetorical a moment later when he stated, "So I was right," and looked at me with a profound sense of respect.

I waited for him to continue and shed some light on what the thing he was right about actually was, but he just continued to quietly stare at me instead, with dispassionate yet at the same time insistent eyes.

"Okay, let me see if I get this right," I spoke up once I ran out of patience. "You want to take me to the Elysium."

"Yes."

"Because the memories I'm missing make me too important to leave me alone."

"That's correct."

"But you can't tell me why, or what those memories are about."

"I can't."

"But your directors can."

"Yes."

"And you're going to take me to them."

"Those were my orders."

In short, as much as this whole situation had the Narrative's fingerprints all over it, it was also a major situation that went far beyond my original expectations, and on top of that, this was probably my best opportunity by far to find, meet, and mark the top dogs of the Celestials, which was an extremely tempting prospect. After all, if I already had my marks on them, an out-of-the-left-field situation like this would've never even happened, and doing so now would allow me to get ahead of any future complications like this.

So long as I kept my guard up, I could probably do this relatively safely, and after I marked everyone I could, it was just a question of biding my time until I would be left alone, and then I could get by pretending that I was kidnapped by Bel or something. At the very least, I didn't have to worry about being stuck there for long, and…

"Ah, fine. Just… let's get this over with," I gave in at the end, the potential gains finally outweighing my sense of caution on my personal scale, and while Jaakobah looked like he wanted to grab me and carry me through the portal right away, I raised a hand to stop him. "However, before any of that, give me five minutes. I need to send a text to my girlfriend."