"This is insanity!" Director Mensah hissed, holding his head in his hands, much to his co-conspirators' annoyance. "That was an antique, third-generation Colossus, in mint condition!"

"Don't be so melodramatic, Dolion," Director Savir scoffed at him and would've probably said more if not for a small hitch in the road causing their ride to shake.

In keeping with the stupidly anachronistic theme of the Elysium, the three head directors were riding a simple horse-drawn carriage right out of a Victorian era. Unlike my lavishly decorated parade chariot, their vehicle was closed, with even its small windows draped with thick blinds, so they could barely be seen inside the fairly cramped cabin.

"Losing a single Colossus is an acceptable price," Savir continued where she left off, causing the third passenger to let out an annoyed grunt.

"A price for what?" Tsephanyah asked, sounding as living as I'd even heard him. "For making the Archon even more popular with the masses?"

"Don't be daft, Acacius." Savir rolled her eyes and made a vague gesture with her right hand. "All of this was within expectations."

"Not mine," the bespectacled director continued to fume.

"It's because you're only focusing on the Colossus," she responded with barely disguised exasperation. "You have to look at the bigger picture, and once you do that, you'll realize the plan was, while not smooth, ultimately successful."

I was waiting for them to discuss what said plan was, but since the three of them were already aware, they naturally didn't go into any 'As you know'-style exposition dumps. Instead, Tsephanyah let out a sigh and crossed his arms.

"What should we do about Primus Kane?"

"He seems to be firmly on the Archon's side," Director Mensah followed him up, seemingly done with sulking. "That means he now has the Seraphic Safeguard."

"I've already set things in motion to keep him in check, so you don't need to worry about him," Savir answered with a thin-lipped smile, prompting Tsephanyah to sharply exhale through his nose.

"Another of your 'leverage' plans, I presume."

"Indeed. Am I that predictable?" she responded with a broader smile that didn't reach her eyes at all, and now it was the other male director who exhaled hard.

"Leverage this, leverage that. I still don't think it was worth exchanging a Colossus for it."

This time, Savir levelled a borderline disgusted stare at the man and rubbed her forehead.

"I thought we were over this, Dolion. The Colossus was an integral part of the plan, and its loss was entirely within reasonable expectations. It's not my fault you didn't take me seriously when I told you he would choose to fight it."

"To be fair, Eris, his skepticism wasn't unfounded," Tsephanyah cut in, his tone sounding a little weary all of a sudden. "If I didn't see it with my own two eyes, I wouldn't have believed anyone would be foolish enough to face a Colossus in single combat."

"That's because your lack the necessary insight into these matters." Savir's off-handed response made the man's brows descend into a frown, and after a beat, she decided to elaborate. "Whether it is Leonard Dunning or Archon Polemos, neither of them would be able to hold themselves back in that situation. It was only natural that the moment we presented him with a powerful opponent, he would come up with an excuse to fight it. It's in his nature."

"Really? And since when did you know the Archon so well?" Mensah's eyes narrowed into suspicious slits behind his glasses, but the female director brushed him off with a throaty chuckle.

"I'm simply good at uncovering people's depths," she answered with a self-satisfied smirk, and couldn't keep herself from gloating further. "Our Archon is a simple man. He craves validation and danger, the fame of a hero and the adoration of the masses. I knew for a fact that so long as we set the stage for him, he would forget about everything else and jump at the first opportunity to save his underlings, fight the Colossus, and bask in the glory of the moment."

…

As confident as that sounded, she was evidently a terrible judge of character. Who would've thought, right?

In any case, whether her plan was based on a misunderstanding of my motivations, my self-propagating fame as the Chimera Slayer of Critias, or our pre-amnesia interactions, was not very important in the grand scheme of things. The significant piece of this whole discussion was the plan itself, and by the sound of it, they set me up with the expectation that I would personally fight the Colossus. Now, I just had to piece together the rest of the puzzle and figure out why they thought that was a good idea.

"Did you also know that he would pick the Colossus apart in a matter of seconds after he took the stage?" Tsephanyah levelled another pointed question at her, and this time, her smug bravado fell back to give way to an ambivalent shrug.

"I admit, that part caught me off-guard as well, but it was by no means beyond expectations. If he was easy to handle through force, we wouldn't need to go out of our way to gain leverage over him."

"I get that part, but was it necessary to sacrifice a Colossus for it?" Mensah echoed himself again, and this time, even Tsephanyah seemed tired of him acting like a broken record.

"Yes, it was." After stressing that point, Savir extended her right palm and forcefully poked it with her left index finger, probably for further emphasis. "We needed to focus his attention. So long as both the Archon and all of his allies within the Elysium were paying attention to the Colossus, my agents could move without fear of interruption."

Okay, so just to summarize: They set up this whole public spectacle and created a fake crisis with the Colossus to keep me busy, just so that I wouldn't be able to pay attention to whatever else they were doing. For ten whole minutes. What the heck could they achieve in that time, I wondered as I exited from Far Sight for a moment and rubbed my eyes.

I was already back in my quarters and sitting on the couch, in my regular, non-Leoformer clothes. My body was stinging all over after going into overdrive like that, so I had to take them off to make sure I won't end up with those mana burns or whatever all over my body again. More importantly, I glanced around and tried to continue my previous train of thought.

Did they use the opportunity to bug this place? While that sounded plausible, they didn't need to go through all that trouble to do that; there were more than enough opportunities to do it whenever I wasn't around. But then what else could they have meant?  The word 'leverage' came up a bunch of times, and if it wasn't some kind of secret, or the lives of my self-nominated underlings, then what else could it be?

I mean, technically they could've threatened my friends back at Critias, but they also didn't need to do this whole song-and-dance routine to try that. As far as they knew, I wasn't aware of whatever was going on outside of the Elysium, so there was no need to distract me from…

"…"

Feeling a sudden chill running down my spine, I paused and examined that thought a bit closer. If I looked at it objectively, the only reason why they would've wanted to bog me down was to keep me from using Far Sight, or to Phase somewhere else. Of course, they didn't know about either of those abilities, so they couldn't have planned any counter-measures against it… but the Narrative did.

As much as I hated to jump to Doylist conclusions, the number of times I was interrupted while using Far Sight was quite high, and more than a few of them were suspiciously convenient, cutting me off just as I was about to learn something critical. Looking at it impartially, everything made much more sense if I presumed Narrative influence trying to keep my out-of-context abilities in check.

Let's take that presumption a step further. If my hunch was right, it meant that the Narrative itself wanted to distract me from using my abilities today. That meant that whatever it wanted to keep away from my attention had to be not only plot-critical, but also an event I would've unquestionably interrupted if I'd gotten wind of it. However, I was distracted, which meant that I didn't interrupt whatever the Narrative was brewing, which meant that…

Even as the chill still kept running laps on my back, I hastily closed my eyes and Far Glanced at Judy. To my imminent relief, I found her in the company of Elly, back in the Dracis mansion where I left them. Next, I checked my sisters, but they were also safe and sound, with Penny and Tajana arguing about something insignificant and Snowy trying to mediate between them. Okay, so whatever happened, it wasn't about my family.

My next obvious option was Sir Percival. If they could somehow get their hands on him, then he could certainly serve as a form of leverage against me, though not in the way they might've expected. That made way too much sense, but to my surprise, I found him in his cell, chilling while reading a book he requested from Snowy the last time she interrogated him.

So, if it wasn't the old bastard, then who could—?

Before I could even fully formulate that thought, I finally noticed the obvious elephant in the room, and a quick Far Glance later I sprung to my feet, startling the swords laid on my lap.

"{What happened, young kn—?}"

I couldn't catch the end of that, as I split-second later I was already in a room on one of the lower floors of the tower. With a flick of my phantom limb, I turned on the lights, while another opened the automatic door in front of me. Without any ceremony, I reached outside, grabbed hold of the person dashing down the hallway, and forcefully yanked them into the room. The moment they were inside, another flick of my phantom limb closed and hard-locked the door, and then I ducked under a clumsy punch blindly aimed at my face and put a hand over the panicked face in front of me.

In the meantime, I could hear a bunch of angry feet thundering down the same hallways and waited until their sound died down before staring into the eyes of the guy in front of me.

"Josh," I uttered flatly, using every fiber of my self-restraint not to shout. "What the fuck are you doing here?"