"It's about time," I thought aloud as I interlinked my fingers and stretched my arms over my head. I have no idea why that felt so satisfying, but it did, so I did it a second time, just for good measure. Once the blood rush died down a little, I shook my hands and quickly closed my useless browser tabs of the Celestial Hub.

I was actually still a little miffed about that. I've spent several long hours browsing the hub and interviewing the regulars, and after all that, I had to close my inquiries on whether or not Celestials had anything to do with the Abrahamic religions with a resounding 'Who knows?', which was just plain damn irritating. But enough about that, I was about to have visitors, so I had to prepare.

Thinking so, I jumped to my feet… or rather, since I was still sore all over, I carefully rose to my feet, slipped into my slippers, and I put my PC into standby mode, after which I had a quick shower. The water felt a little lukewarm even though it was the same temperature as usual, so I figured I probably still had a fever. I already took some medicine in the morning, so there wasn't much else I could do about it, hence after I finished washing up I quickly got dressed, walked down to the ground floor, filled the water heater, prepared a couple of mugs and a box of teabags, and then I waited.

Fortunately I didn't have to do so for long, and I didn't even need to use my Far Sight to figure out that the gang arrived, as they made enough noise to wake the dead. I consequently turned the heater off, walked over to the front door, and casually opened it just as my dear assistant was about to insert her key into the lock.

The unexpected, slightly uncomfortable silence that followed hung in the air for only a few seconds, as Judy slowly let her hand down and spoke up in a flat and yet at the same time distinctly disapproving voice.

"Why aren't you in bed?"

"Hi, Dormouse, I'm happy to see you too," I responded with a toothy grin and gestured for the group to come inside.

My non-draconic girlfriend might have huffed and puffed, but at the end of the day she still obediently crossed the doorsill, if only so that the others could follow without having to push her out of the way. My friends all looked quite cold, so I didn't blame them for trying to get inside in a hurry; it was late autumn already after all and the weather was especially chilly on this day. There was also another reason why they were all flushed, but I wasn't supposed to know about it at this time, so I didn't mention it yet and I simply directed them towards my living room.

In order of arrival, we had Josh, who was in strangely high spirits, then Elly, who immediately sidled up to me with the excuse to check my temperature (even though Judy was already doing the same, but I digress), then the ever-tired class rep followed by Snowy and an unusually downcast Angie.

"Hi, Leo…"

My impression was further solidified when the Celestial girl only gave me a shallow greeting, followed by a depressed sigh. Not only that, but Snowy seemed to be in the process of consoling her. Considering she was completely fine when I last spied *cough* I mean, observed her, her behavior was pretty suspicious, so while the others were putting their coats onto the racks, I waved towards her and casually asked her, "Why's the long face?"

"Nothing…" she replied in the same dour voice as she crammed her beany into the sleeve of her coat. I waited for a bit, just in case she would add something else, but instead she just exhaled another sigh and headed into the living room after the rest of the girls without saying another word.

Now that was slightly disconcerting, so after a moment of consideration I subtly gestured for Josh to come over to my side. By then my girlfriends have already left my side in order to prepare drinks for everyone, so I picked a slightly more secluded spot (which wasn't an easy task considering my home wasn't that spacious), which was pretty much just the corner by the coat rack.

"Is there a problem?" came the question from Josh before I could get a word in, and while I wanted to just shake my head, in the end it ended up as a noncommittal shrug instead.

"That's what I wanted to ask. Angie seems unusually down," I breached the question right away, and to my sincere surprise, my friend's face instantly twisted as if he just bit into a lemon.

"Oh, you mean that," he spoke in an abnormally flat voice as he simultaneously slouched his shoulders. "Where do I even begin?"

"At the beginning?" I proposed, and he did just that.

"Okay, here goes. So, you were sick and didn't come to school. When Elly told us it was for real and you had a fever, Angie had the idea to buy you some get-well cakes on the way home."

"'Get-well cakes'?" I repeated after him as I raised a skeptical brow for further emphasis, but he didn't seem to notice, as he simply nodded.

"I think she just recently learned that there was a new kind of Jaffa cake available in our favorite sweets shop, and she just wanted an excuse to try them. Anyways, we took a detour there on our way here, and she bought a whole box of them, but then right after that we were ambushed by Doctor Robatto."

"I figure nothing serious happened," I said out of courtesy, though I was already well aware of the recent even that could be generously called a 'battle'.

"Nah, nothing. There were a bit more of the yellow Sprockets, but we mopped the floor with them." Oddly enough Josh sounded almost proud for a moment, but then he quickly caught himself and continued in a more neutral tone. "The point I was getting at is that in the commotion, Angie lost the cakes. We would have been here a good ten minutes ago if we didn't have to look for them, but they were completely gone."

"Maybe Labcoat Guy took them?"

"Who knows?" Joshua granted it to me with a shrug. "Angie was pretty mad about it at first, but by the time we got here she calmed down a bit."

"She still seems pretty downcast to me."

"Don't worry, she is going to bounce back in no time," my friend reassured me, and just as if to prove his point, Angie suddenly poked her head through the doorway leading inside, and the moment our eyes met her lips immediately curved into a giant grin.

"Hey, Leo? Neige let me look through the kitchen, and I found three full boxes of cat's tongue biscuits! Can I have some? Pretty please?"

At first I gave the suddenly energetic celestial girl a blank look, but eventually I told her, "Sure. You already know where you can find the milk and the instant cocoa, right?"

"Of course! Thanks!"

After beaming at me one more time she immediately left the premises, with my friend giving me a somewhat smug 'See, I told you,' look. I graciously ignored him and was just about to tell him to follow after me into the living room when Angie's place was suddenly filled by the princess peeking over to us in the exact same manner.

"What are you two doing over there?"

"Oh, nothing. Just discussing our diabolical plans for world domination as usual, right, Josh?"

He only looked at me funny, so I gently elbowed my friend in the side, at which point he spoke in a staggered, mechanical voice. "Yes, plans. About what he said. Domination and stuff. Very diabolical."

Josh's acting was so stilted it would give wader birds a run for their money, but my girlfriend didn’t seem to mind, as instead she walked over to me, grabbed my hand and proceeded to more or less drag me along while telling me, "Stop joking around and come inside. It's cold here in the entryway and you are still sick."

"Maybe, but it's not because of the cold…" I protested ever so feebly, but my words fell on deaf ears as she pulled me into the living room and practically forced me to sit on my slightly battered comfy chair.

"There!" she declared with a satisfied huff, following which she turned towards the kitchen and called out, "Is the tea ready yet?"

"Just a moment!" came the instant answer from Snowy, and a few short seconds later she emerged from the kitchen with a tray carrying a single steaming mug. Even more inexplicably, she somehow managed to find the opportunity to put on her maid outfit between the time she arrived and the time I came back to the living room. Her dedication to her hobby was admirable yet baffling all the same. "One mug of herbal tea, as requested."

Saying so, she placed the suspiciously dark cup of liquid in front of me, but before I could voice my qualms about it, I noticed Judy tottering down the stairs with a staggeringly large pile of spare pillows and blankets. I was just about to get up to help her, but the princess beat me to the punch and she took about half of them before they both came back down and began to wordlessly cushion me into my sofa.

"Is this really necessary?" I asked maybe a little less intensely than the situation demanded, for Judy immediately rebuked me by placing a blanket on my lap.

"You are sick, and since you are horrible at taking care of yourself, we have to do it."

"Yes, but… I mean, no, I am perfectly capable of… Princess! I do not need another pillow behind my back!"

"Better to be safe than sorry!" she told me with an irreverent smirk before attempting to wedge another pillow under me.

"Speaking of sickness," the class rep intruded into our domestic horseplay, accompanied by her customary adjustment of her glasses. "I don't believe we have been told what happened to you yet."

"There's not much to explain, really," I attempted to deflect the question, but it was unable to redirect her attention, so at the end of the day I told her, "Oh, fine! So, you remember how I tweaked the Magiformers yesterday so that you guys wouldn't look absolutely ridiculous while using them?"

"You actually use the name we came up with! Yay!" a certain Celestial interjected at the most inappropriate of times, only to turn to the guy on her side and exclaim, "High-five!"

Josh immediately raised his right hand, as if by muscle reflex, and their palms met mid-way with a satisfyingly sharp sound. Putting the childhood friends doing their childhood friend things aside, I shook my head and turned back to the increasingly impatient Amelia.

"So, as I was saying, I revised the enchantments a little," I could see that Ammy was just about to cut in to ask about that, so I quickly raised my voice and continued with, "NOW, as you might imagine, modifying an already placed enchantment without any specialized tools is pretty damn hard, but in my excitement I did it anyway, and I might have overexerted myself a little. You can see the results with your own eyes."

The class rep opened her mouth to respond, but after some hesitation she closed it without uttering a word while looking both conflicted and maybe just a tiny bit suspicious. I would have liked to chalk this up as a victory for myself, but whatever satisfaction I could derive from the verbal sparring was immediately disrupted by Elly shoving the mug of strange-smelling concoction under my nose.

"If you are overworked, then it's all the more reason you should drink this! It's the ultimate herbal remedy my great-grandfather learned from an Indian yogi. It should be great both for colds, joint pains, sore throats, and receding hairlines!"

"That last one has nothing to do with the rest, and even then…" I began, but I was interrupted by Judy coming back to pile yet another blanket on me. "Oh come on, Dormouse! At this point it's starting to look like I'm sitting inside a fortress of cushions!"

My reprimands fell on deaf ears, as my girlfriend proceeded to tuck me in anyway, an experience that would have been embarrassing as is, but then it was made a hundred times worse by the fact that I had an audience watching… though, to be fair, they were having fairly odd reactions to my plight.

Ammy was mostly disinterested, though I could swear I saw some schadenfreude in her eyes. Angie, on the other hand, was grinning like a well-fed cat with a bunch elongated of biscuits in one hand and an open jar of peanut butter in the other, and she was giving me a revoltingly warm gaze, as if my situation was 'cozy' or 'heartwarming' or, heaven forbid, 'wholesome'. Ugh.

Well, at least Josh was on my side… or so I thought, but it didn't take long for me to realize that there was more to his sympathetic expression than met the eye.

"Do you want to say something, Joshua?"

My ever-so tactful prompt was quickly answered by my friend awkwardly scratching his chin and telling me, "Well, you know… I was just thinking that you are living the life, being pampered by three girls and all."

In return for his forthcoming answer I awarded him the flattest look three-dimensional space could possibly represent before exhaling a shallow groan and turning to my sister instead.

"Did you hear that, Snowy? Josh is disappointed because I'm the only one who is being 'pampered'? Why don't you go over and 'pamper' him a bit."

"I didn't say that," Josh called out in alarm.

"Now, now, don't be modest. Not to mention, it's a maid's duty to entertain guests, isn't it?"

"I… I think you are right?" my sister responded after a long moment of hesitation and she turned to Josh, her cheeks maybe a tad rosier than usual.

"Wait, Lili! You don't actually have to take everything that Leo says seriously!" Josh tried to avoid the coming embarrassing shenanigans, but it was too late! I have already used the magic word, so it was inevitable that our resident maid-enthusiast would heed the call without fail…!

Or, at the very least she would have, if not for a certain class representative clearing her throat in the most pointed of fashions.

"I’m glad to see you are all full of energy, but can we actually address the reason why we all gathered here in the first place?"

"Didn't we come here to visit Leo and wish him a swift recovery," Angie cut in, her reasonable words only slightly undermined by the fact that she somehow managed to get peanut butter onto the tip of her nose.

"Well… Certainly, I admit that was the original plan," Ammy acknowledged in an unusually flustered display before our eyes met again and, after adjusting her glasses, she swiftly declared, "However, as you can see it, he seems perfectly okay, doesn't he?"

"I guess?" Angie muttered under her breath while she absent-mindedly dunked another biscuit into the jar in her hand. "But then why are Judy and Elly piling so many blankets on him?"

"That is a really good question!" I burst out, only to be summarily ignored when Ammy shook his head and pointed at me.

"Doesn't really matter either way. What does is the fact that we were attacked once again!"

"I've heard," I responded just a smidgen begrudgingly as I tried to ignore Elly's insistent attempts to make me drink her family's suspicious 'traditional herbal tea mix'. "So?"

"So?!" she repeated after me with a pretty hefty amount of indignation.

"Yes, that's what I just said," I responded very diplomatically. "I said so because I have no control over whether or not Labcoat Guy will harass you."

"I never implied you had," Ammy told me after toning her voice back a little. "I brought it up because it's a threat we have to deal with!"

"Do we?" I asked a little coyly before clarifying, "Shouldn't you ask your grandfather about to deal with him? After all, it is his 'territory'."

I must have hit the nail on the head, as she visibly reeled back, if only for a moment, before ultimately admitting, "I… tried to ask grandfather about it."

"You did?"

That was mildly surprising. Now, I admittedly didn't have the capability to keep tabs of everyone 24/7, but I was pretty sure I never saw her in the vicinity of the old man yesterday. In the meantime the class rep nodded and began to tell me what happened in a dour voice.

"I called him over to discuss the threat these attacks posed to us and the people of the city. I… I didn't tell him about your claims. I thought I should first confirm his reaction before accusing him."

"And? What happened?" came the prompt from an inexplicably attentive Joshua of all people, and Ammy immediately let out a defeated sigh in response.

"He was evasive and claimed that the School couldn't afford to divert resources on a wild goose chase right after the incident with the Abyssals."

"Even though you were also in 'danger'?" I inquired, earning me a dispirited nod.

"He didn't seem to care about my safety either," the class rep muttered under her breath, to which I immediately answered:

"Or rather, he knows that there is no danger, so he is not worried about you at all."

"Maybe," she granted me a little begrudgingly.

"Oh? Does that mean you actually believe me?" I asked her with a barely restrained grin, and she gave me a weak nod in return.

"Maybe," she repeated, this time a little more firmly than the last time.

There was a short spell of silence in the room, which I used to organize my thoughts. As a matter of fact, the old man's behavior felt fairly odd to me. He flagrantly ignored the 'threat' the Research Society posed, at least to the ones unaware of the fact they were working together, even in front of his own granddaughter. If it was me, I would have at least attempted to try and make a show of combating their flamboyant menace, even if just on the surface, but instead he just dismissed it.

No matter how I tried, I couldn't make heads or tails of the old man's motivations. Maybe it was some sort of test? Like, was he actually dropping clues for us to figure out it was him behind it all, waiting for us to kick down his door only to reveal it was just an elaborate ruse to see if we were worthy of joining the School? Or alternatively, was it Judy's version of the narrative making him act stupid just to create clues that point at him as the current antagonist so that they could be claimed as foreshadowing once we reach some kind of climactic reveal? It was a topic Judy and I could probably discuss for hours, but at the moment we had more important things at hand.

"All right then, let's discuss Labcoat Guy after all," I declared, earning me a few curious looks from the gang. "What? You said you wanted to talk about his attacks, so here we go." After I said that, I got my hands out of under the blankets and linked my fingers in my trademarked 'diabolical mastermind' pose before I continued by explaining them, "So, as far as I can see, we have three options. First, we could try and avoid further confrontations."

"Can we do that?" came the doubtful question from Josh, so I gave him a solid nod to reassure him.

"Certainly. I have my eyes on the guy, in more ways than one, so while it would be a little tricky, I could probably give you advance notice on whenever he would try to ambush you. Since he is contractually obligated to use the Purple Zone to attack you, and considering that those have a limit to their sizes, you can simply avoid them on your way home and leave him fiddling his thumbs inside."

"That sounds reasonable," Josh mumbled on the side, but I ignored him for the time being.

"The second option is that we nip the problem at its root by storming Labcoat Guy's hideout and putting an end to his mustache-twirling antics once and for all."

"Can we actually do that?" Judy asked me, just as she finally gave up on trying to pile another blanket on me (at this point I was pretty sure she was only doing it for the attention), and I nodded in the affirmative.

"Sure. I have the location, we have both our group and Brang's Faun, and I'm fairly sure we could rush their base and blitzkrieg them before they could put up too much of a resistance."

"It still sounds dangerous," my assistant commented, and I could only shrug in response.

"Well, it would be more or less a paramilitary operation, so of course things could get dicey. That said, we also have one more option left."

"Which is?" Elly urged me to go on, and so I explained:

"The third option is that we do nothing." Most of the gang was obviously confused by my statement, so I hastily clarified, "By that I mean we would simply allow the ambushes to continue, with maybe one or two emergency plans in place. As you have probably noticed, Labcoat Guy and his cronies do not actually pose a serious threat, however they serve as great punching bags. We might actually run into real threats in the future, so I think it would be beneficial for you to gain some combat experience this way and learn how to support each other and work together as a group."

"I agree." All of the heads turned towards the unexpected source of agreement, and Joshua visibly flinched from all the sudden attention. He managed to quickly collect himself, and after forcefully clearing his throat he explained to us, "I mean, I do think that Leo is right. If we are ever going to run into a situation like when I was almost kidnapped, we need to learn how to efficiently work together, and these attacks are providing a great opportunity to do that."

"There is one more option you are ignoring," Judy abruptly cut in just as I was about to respond to Josh. "We could also directly confront Lord Endymonion about his involvement."

"True," I tacitly agreed, "Unfortunately, I don't think we have enough presentable evidence yet to put him in a corner."

"So, you think we should allow Doctor Robatto to continue his operations in order to gather more evidence," my assistant stated as if she was reading my mind.

"More or less."

"Also, it's not like we cannot do the whole 'storm the enemy's secret hideout' thing later, right?" Angie commented between two bites, earning her a nod from me.

"Sure. If playing around with the silly robots gets out of hand, the other options still remain perfectly viable."

"I'm in favor," came the next baffling vote of agreement, this time from Amelia of all people. "If grandfather is truly responsible for Robatto's actions, he must have a good reason. I want to learn why he is doing this."

"Let's hope you will have the opportunity," I responded before looking at everyone in turn and requesting, "All right, let's put this to vote. All who are in favor of exploiting our attackers, raise your hands."

I raised mine, followed by Josh and the class rep. Judy and Snowy followed suit, the latter probably because she was just deferring to my decision.

"I don't mind either way, but I am kind of curious about what a 'biomechanical gigant' is, so count me in!" the resident Celestial declared as she raised a hand over her head.

"What is a 'biomechanical gigant' anyway?" Elly mused as she belatedly raised her hand.

"I don't know, but Robatto said he was going to 'strike fear into our feeble hearts' with them, and their name sounds kind of cool, right, Josh?"

"I suppose," my friend tentatively agreed, yet it was still enough to make Angie giggle in mirth.

"All right then," I punctuated the discussion by raising my voice. "I suppose we are finished with this topic. What now?" There was no answer coming forth to my question, so I said, "You guys said you originally wanted to come over to see how I was doing. Did you really have no plans beyond that?"

"We had snacks, but they disappeared," Angie told me in the company of a sad sigh, only to immediately bounce back and declare, "But Leo is right! Since we are all gathered here, it's the perfect time for some group activity! All we have been doing for the past couple of days were sparring matches and serious discussions upon discussions! I'm sick of it!"

"Okay then, group activity it is," I responded with a smile, only to pause and ask, "What do you have in mind?"

"Well, I… um… do you have any board games?"

"I can't say I do," I told her, though considering how many unexpected things I have found in the house already, it wasn't entirely out of the question.

"How about card games?" Elly proposed, earning her a curious raised brow from yours truly.

"Such as?"

"Dad plays Poker a lot, and he occasionally let me join in. It's a fun game," the princess insisted, but I could only shake my head.

"I'm sorry, but I don't think we have cards either."

"No problem! I will call Melinda and ask her to bring our spare set over. It has a mat and tokens and everything."

"That sounds really nice, but… Do any of us know how to play Poker?" I raised my next objection, only for Elly to flash me a grin in return.

"Don't worry, I will teach you!"

"… Oh well then. Any objections?" Everyone seemed to be fine with the idea, so the princess immediately fished out her phone from her bag and made the call.

In the meantime I had to admit that maybe playing around like this every once in a while wasn't such a bad idea. Maybe after all the recent stressful events, a few friendly rounds of cards were all we needed to unwind. Yes, a friendly card game where everyone had the same chance of winning. Yeees.

"No cheating," Judy abruptly warned me, her eyes already set in a suspicious squint, and I have to say, I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. Not one bit.