***It was a point of revelation, of enlightenment. I felt like Satoru Gojo, who was tripping his balls out when he discovered Reversed Curse Energy, floating in the air with my eyes popping out of my eye sockets.This was it, the epiphany, the moment when it all clicked.I’ve been isekaid into a retarded fucking gacha game.The Dogshit Impact, the game that took my world by storm, the absolute shitstain as a game, and also, worse yet, a gacha.Gacha, how I hate those things. What sort of a loser would even engage with any content featuring gacha in it? Why would you ever ruin whatever entertainment you have by willingly accepting gambling as part of it? Do you have to have zero self-respect for it to happen?In any case, I wasn’t familiar with Genshin Impact outside of rage-baiting the fans online wherever I met them. Not beyond having promotions shoved down my throat by the CCP at gunpoint through YouTube, occasional Twitch ads, and wherever else they could catch me without AdBlock.There was also the doujinshis of the porn variety, of course. Genshin, much like Overwatch, was very much a setting most fans recognized due to porn.I observed the college-aged girl awkwardly start speaking, and tried to compare her face with ahegao-d drawn version in the hentai material that, for a year, my feed on nhentai was full of.It was mostly the sheer shock of it.I gave up on trying to think of this place as a world I could recognize. Because, well, there was nothing about it for me to recognize. Despite getting items from literal Marvel comics and such, I just assumed this world wasn’t depicted in any way back on my Earth.But turns out it was! I just didn’t know it!“Knightmare!” I blinked, feeling someone hiss and tug at my sleeve. “Not so loud!”I blinked, realizing that I may have blurted out some of those things. Yet at the moment I didn’t care, I just gestured towards Mobius, and from her pointed towards the woman - Raiden, I think.“Mobius, you don’t get it, I’ve seen her in porn!” I said, pointing towards the Raiden emphatically. Within 0.000001 seconds of the sound waves leaving Knightmare's mouth, the auditorium underwent a phenomenon that occurs perhaps once in a generation.A Dead Silence.Not the ordinary silence of a library, nor the polite hush of a funeral, no. It was the perfect, absolute, crystalline absence of sound that descends upon a room when every single human being within it has collectively decided, in the span of a single heartbeat, that they did not just hear what they thought they heard.It is said that achieving a true Dead Silence requires the flawless convergence of three conditions: an audience of sufficient prestige, a statement of sufficient depravity, and the instant. A correct moment, the perfect storm that could unite the two into a perfect blend of absurdity. The probability of all three aligning in a controlled environment is estimated at 1 in 400,000.Knightmare achieved it on his first try.At the 0.0003 second mark, the sensory input reached his auditory cortex. His own words, spoken mere milliseconds prior, echoed back to him with the pristine clarity of a studio recording: "Mobius, you don't get it, I've seen her in porn."At 0.0007 seconds, recognition.At 0.0012 seconds, comprehension.At 0.0018 seconds, the part of his brain responsible for long-term consequence modeling -dormant for most of his life- flickered on for the first time in recorded history, took one look at the situation, and immediately filed for retirement.Knightmare’s IQ briefly swelled to 400 before diminishing back to negative numbers, as any neurons responsible for intelligence promptly decided to not intake any oxygen or liquids and died.At the 0.002 second mark, his peripheral vision registered the turn of heads. Not one. Not two. The entire row. And the row behind it. And, somewhere in the distance, the unmistakable scrape of a chair being pushed back by a Nobel laureate who had decided that whatever this was, he wanted a better look at it.They say that in moments of supreme crisis, the human mind enters a state of perfect clarity. Time slows. The world sharpens. Every detail becomes crystalline.Knightmare, in this moment of perfect clarity, turned his head approximately fourteen degrees to the left and made direct, unbroken eye contact with the college-aged girl whose ahegao-drawn likeness he had just publicly confirmed was permanently lodged in his browser history.This is known, in certain esoteric circles, as the Losers' Flash.When a hand of a buffed security guard landed on my hand, I knew what I had to do before the words even left his mouth.I felt the absolute lightness in my body, the responsiveness of my cognitive functions, and the charisma I barely ever felt before; I operated on 120% of my normal capacity.“Si-” I acted faster than he could react.I landed on my knees in a full dogeza, striking my head into the floor.“Please arrest me,” I said, presenting to him both of my wrists, before I thought better. “No, better yet, pretend that I am resisting an arrest and shoot me right now. Imagine for a second that you are an American mall cop seeing a minority steal a 2$ pair of socks. Double tap.” I begged.“Excuse my companion,” Mobius spoke up loudly, and a single glance at her told me that she was beyond pissed, yet, surprisingly, completely locked in. Even her anger was hidden well under the cold mask. “It was a long flight, and he had a lot to drink. Get him some fresh air,” she addressed the security guys.I really wished I could just hide behind the costume-clad dudes with shades and com-piece in their ears, but unfortunately, I was too tall for that, so I could enjoy the entire creme of the crop of the scientific community giving me a disgusted stare on my way out.I literally am killing myself the moment I am out. Gacha ruined my life, and I didn’t even fucking play it.I’ve been escorted out of the hall, out of the building, out of the fucking fire escape exit, and roughly pushed out, into some alleyway between the expo buildings that had huge garbage bins.“Don’t try to come back in,” one of the dudes said, I think trying to act cool, but I wasn’t in the mood to argue as the door swung closed in my face.I just sighed.“Man, I think I may have a clinical case of being a loser…” I muttered to myself, turning around and…“Hey,” a guy said awkwardly. A guy with a bouquet, in a white suit. It matched his stupid Ato-like white hair and pretty-boy face. He looked surprisingly… wet. I could see stains on his knees.“Did you get thrown out, too?” I asked, willing to do literally ANYTHING right now over thinking that my colleagues and friends were present in my generational fucking humiliation.I imagined for a second what a college girl that had a chance to actually show her worth before the best in the world felt like and…“Aaaah!” I tried to hide my face for a moment before realizing that I looked like a weirdo, so I ended up dragging my fingers across my face with a groan, “I want to fucking die.”The guy seemed a bit surprised by my outburst, but offered me a weak, somewhat self-deprecating smile.“I… can relate, I think.” Now that I paid attention, his accent was a bit weird. “To answer your question, I was late coming here, and couldn’t get to the hall where the speech that I absolutely had to attend was conducted,” he said, sounding embarrassed and angry at himself, “When I got insistent that I had to be there… I got thrown out.”I focused on the man’s story like a lifeline that saved me from wishing that the ground could swallow me whole.“I see,” I said, nodding a bit too quickly, “I see you are dressed up pretty well, I guess you were expecting a job opportunity?”The man blinked somewhat before chuckling awkwardly.“N-not really? I mean, I am barely qualified to be here at all,” he said, scratching the back of his head, “It’s… well, you probably don’t really care about the whole stor-”I was by the man’s side in an instant, placing a hand on his shoulder, and trying to smile supportively.“Man, you may not believe me,” I told him with a very soulful tone, “But I would literally do anything to hear you out right now, as long as it helps me not to think about what the fuck I just did. Please tell me all about it and yourself.”The guy seemed a bit taken aback by how pushy I was, and laughed awkwardly, gently pushing my hand away from his shoulder.“Ah-ha, okay, I understand.” Judging by the sweat on his brow, I freaked him out quite a bit. I understood, I did, but I needed this. “Can you please not get so close?”I considered him for a moment and how likely he was to run if I did.I stepped back.“Knightmare, I work for M.O.T.H. Mostly classified stuff,” I said, giving him my hand, and making the man freeze in shock.“A-ah, I am Kevin, a high school student…” He said with an easy smile. The what?! This fucker is almost as tall as me, has a jawline to die for, and is overall a handsome bastard. What is this Ichigo shenanigans? ‘Dude I am totally 15’ - 25-year-old looking bodybuilder ass.“When you say, high-school student…?” “I am seventeen,” Kevin said, sighing as he saw something on my face, “I get this reaction a lot.”“Neat,” I replied, approaching the nearest wall and leaning against it, “So, how did a seventeen-year-old get to one of the most exclusive scientific events in the world? I mean, a second seventeen-year-old that is…” I muttered, not actually sure how old the girl was.And now I was thinking of the girl again.Repress REPRESS REPRESS.“Funny you mentioned that,” Kevin said awkwardly, scratching his cheek, “See, I originally was going to go here with my g-girlfriend,” he said, looking a bit embarrassed.I meanwhile locked the fuck in.“Girlfriend?” I asked supportively, “I see, I see. Can you tell me her name, age, and where the police may find her?”Kevin blinked. Then shook his free left hand helplessly in a ‘stop please’ gesture.“Ah, no-no-no, you misunderstood Knightmare-san,” The fuck did he just call me? “...nobody took advantage of me or anything!” He coughed into his fist awkwardly, “Please let me explain from the start?”I considered him for a moment before nodding to myself. Worst-case scenario, I will be able to catch the local Epstein myself.“Proceed,” I told him, folding my fingers in a certified Gendo Ikari gesture.Kevin either didn’t notice or already realized that I am a human waste that should be shot on sight-“I’ve been invited here by my girlfriend who was supposed to present her project here, and passed me an invitation, we planned the trip together but,” the dude scratched the back of his head awkwardly, “Believe it or not, I’ve also been asked to represent Japan in the Youth Olympic Games in Korea this year…” I actually took a double-take.This guy… was an Olympic athlete? Well, a youth Olympic athlete, but still!“And you still managed to get here despite running late?” I asked, feeling a bit impressed if anything, “That’s pretty impressive all things considered.”Kevin winced at that.“The competition I was supposed to participate in… should be happening right now,” he said embarrassedly, “I just… when I called Mei last, I saw how nervous she was, and I realized she needed me, so I took the first flight I could to get here, because I know how important it is for her… and yet I am late.”As the genuine self-deprecation and grief in his voice registered, I also couldn’t help but note the name again, and remember that this young, attractive male athlete was probably groomed by some researcher or CEO hag.I suppose it is fitting for a gacha game for Epstein to be fucking female, I guess he would be SSR rainbow rarity, with a special damage bonus against children. Honestly, I should just get in my armour, go in, and slaughter everyone inside to make sure. Totally not because I needed the witnesses gone. In and out, twenty-minute adventure…“Don’t worry, man, you quite literally have thrown your career away for that woman,” I told the man, looking up at him, and giving him an honest nod, “You quite literally have nothing to feel bad about.”Kevin slowly blinked.“I… It’s a misunderstanding, Knightmare-san, I don’t… really have a career?” he tried, making me remember Elysia with his stupid fucking honorifics while speaking English.Then again, he is actually a Japanese person and not a literal Siberian weeb who larps as an anime-person for no reason whatsoever. “Well, prospects? I don’t know how you athletes call that,” I said, waving away the minor differences.Kevin just shook his head.“No-no, I mean to say I am not an athlete,” I blinked, before staring at him. He clearly noticed. “Well, I am, but not for the sport. I was invited to its…” He sighed, shaking his head, “Complicated, but I am a bit of a freak?”I just lifted my own hands up and massaged my temples, trying to keep the headache away. “Wait-wait-wait… so what, you like, do kendo, and were invited to compete in swimming because you are that much of a chad?” I asked.Kevin blinked.“I do basketaball and a bit of baseball, actually,” he said with an awkward chuckle, “But yes, I was invited to do swimming.”I just stared at the guy. He can’t be for real, can he? This is, like, anime-super-genius level of bullshit, but for sports instead of sciences. ‘Ah, yes, I actually do basketball, but out of nowhere I’ve been asked to go to the YOUTH OLYMPICS for SWIMMING instead.’What the fuck? Am I in a simulation? This can’t be for real.“Okay,” I told him, staring into his eyes soullessly as I tried to find my ground. “So, you are a genius athlete and…” I struggled to find any words that wouldn’t sound like a hentai plot to continue my guesses.“My girlfriend should be giving a speech on the project she works on, about the Sea of Quanta,” he said warmly.I froze.“...she was working on this theory of hers for years, and had the best institutions across the whole country try to get her to apply even when she was fifteen… she didn’t because she wanted to stay with me,” he said quietly, his grip on the flowers growing white, “And I am such a messed up person that I can’t even be with her now.” He chuckled weakly, shaking his head, and glancing up at me.“So Knightmare-san, whatever you did… it can’t be worse than my own failure,” he said, smiling sadly, as a ray of light reflected from some window above to shower on him like a halo of light from the heavens. I need to kill myself, I realized. God himself is giving me a sign.My first instinct was to tell that guy to beat the living shit out of me, and to explain to him exactly how I humiliated his girlfriend, but when I opened my mouth to explain I… didn’t fucking know how.‘So yeah, dude, I just pointed at your girlfriend the moment she set things up for her speech and called her a whore who I have seen being railed by a dozen or so black dudes. Oopsie.’ And I realized that I can’t tell him the truth.The embarrassment of telling the story will cause much more agony before he will manage to crack my skull open with a baseball bat I can conjure for him.So no, not killing myself using a proxy.Yet, Kevin looked so sad when he told the story. Like a sad Golden Retriever devastated by… whatever the hell they get devastated by. How do I get him to…Wait. Slowly, a plan started to form in my head.“Kevin, I have an idea how you can make it up to your girl,” I told him, getting the man to look at me instantly, “I need you to not ask me any questions and do exactly as I tell you.” I told him with my utmost sincerity as I approached and looked him in the eyes. “Can you believe me that I am not punking you? With your gut?”Kevin looked taken aback by the sudden intensity, but nodded firmly. “I… yes, I can,” he said, his face growing resolved, “As long as it can help Mei…”“Oh,” I placed a hand on his shoulder, “Trust me, it will. She will fucking love it.”***Mobius,Mobius had attended exactly four hundred and sixty-two scientific conferences in her life, give or take a handful she had deliberately erased from her memory for reasons of personal dignity, and not once, not a single time across decades of watching pompous old men fumble their way through presentations they barely understood, had she witnessed a disaster of this particular flavor.A technical mishap? Common. A drunken outburst from a sleep-deprived, coffee-fueled PhD candidate? It’s weird when this doesn’t happen. A physical fight between two rival labs over not being included in citations? She'd seen it twice, and the second time had been more entertaining than the entire event.And yet Knightmare had a particular ability to exceed even the bravest expectations she set for him.This was, she suspected, going to be a spectacular story for quite a while for everyone involved.She caught up with the Mei girl in the corridor just past the auditorium doors, where the poor thing had fled after somehow, impressively, finishing her speech. Mobius had sat through the entire thing with her hands folded in her lap and her expression locked into the kind of polite academic interest, and she could say with professional certainty that the girl had actually done quite well, all things considered. The opening had been shaky for about ninety seconds, which anyone with half a brain would attribute to the obvious cause, and then something in the girl had simply… clicked into place. She had straightened her back, adjusted her glasses, and proceeded to deliver a competent, coherent, and occasionally elegant defense of a theory that Mobius personally found to be well reasoned out… even if it required work of practical variety to be worth anything.The girl, Mei, was standing by one of the tall windows with her arms wrapped around herself and a laminated name badge clutched in one fist like a talisman. She looked like she was on the verge of crying. Humiliation, nerves, lack of self-confidence, and sheer stress, she could tell it was all of it combined, crashing down on her. Mobius approached at a measured pace before allowing herself to loudly click her heels to attract attention."Miss Mei," Mobius said, her voice pitched low and warm, a register she reserved for funerals, apologies, and the occasional grant committee. "May I have a moment of your time?"The girl turned, and for a split second Mobius watched her eyes widen in recognition, which meant that on top of everything else, she was now also going to have to manage the girl's professional starstruck panic. Wonderful. A full bingo card.She should’ve known better than to believe this was going well. "Doctor Mobius, I… I am so sorry, I don't even know what-" She said quietly, her voice shaking a bit."Stop," Mobius said gently, and held up one slender hand. "Please. Whatever you are about to apologize for, I can assure you with absolute certainty that the culpability for this evening's events does not rest with you, not in any measurable quantity, and if you continue down this path, you are going to make me feel worse than I already do, which I promise you is significantly worse than you are imagining." Mobius paused, mostly to take a breath, and partially to acknowledge that she was talking too much. She was lecturing the girl. She sighed.Mei's mouth closed with a small click."Walk with me," Mobius said, gesturing lightly towards the far end of the corridor. "The air in here is dreadful, and I find I cannot bear the smell of cologne for another minute. Nobel laureates, I have concluded, all shop at the same duty-free," she said mercilessly, somehow earning a small laugh from the girl.It was watery and a little broken, but it was a laugh, which meant Mobius had a working foothold.Mobius headed first, and soon heard Mei follow."Firstly," Mobius began, folding her hands behind her back as they moved, "Your speech. Let us address it directly, because I suspect you have been replaying the first ninety seconds on a loop in your head and mentally crucifying yourself for them, and I would like you to stop," Mobius commanded. “You did well.”"It was a disaster," Mei whispered."It was not. I was present for the Bohr-Einstein debates, young lady, this turned into calling into question each other’s lineage and openly calling each other incest-babies. And the debate still, for the most part, was taken seriously, because the ideas discussed had merit. So did yours, with far less glaring embarrassment, not even of your own making." Mobius shamelessly resorted to name-dropping and pushing with authority, because the trick of impressing young academics was allusion to greatness. "Your opening was shaky, but not your own fault. Your recovery, however, was excellent. From minute two onwards, you were lucid, structured, and occasionally even poetic, which I personally consider a sin in a scientific presentation, but I am told the Americans find it charming. Doctor Fujiwara was taking notes. Make of that what you will." She offered, referencing the head of the largest engineering-based Zaibatsu of Japan. Mei stopped walking.Mobius stopped with her and waited."He… he was taking notes?" the girl said, in a very small voice.Mobius allowed herself the faintest smile. "The content of your talk reached the people it needed to reach, Miss Mei. The incident at the start will be forgotten by everyone in that room within a week, because the people in that room have the attention spans of hummingbirds and the memories of goldfish when it comes to anything that is not their own research. Your work will not be forgotten. That, I can promise you," she said sincerely, “Humans are shortsighted and stupid; it’s a general rule, academics aren’t an exception, but even they can recognize greatness when they see it,” she said, meaning every word.Mei's eyes were wet, but she nodded, a small jerky nod. Mobius could swear she saw gratitude and resolve both as the woman finally picked herself up.They passed through the main atrium, past clusters of attendees whose heads turned and whose conversations paused in that unmistakable way that told Mobius the story had already begun its journey through the grapevine. She ignored them with practiced indifference."Secondly," she continued, as they approached the front doors, "and this is the part for which I must apologize personally, and sincerely, and without any of the usual caveats I deploy when apologizing on behalf of my subordinates." She paused. "My colleague. The gentleman who… announced his familiarity with certain works of art."Mei turned and stared blankly at her. Mobius couldn’t blame her."Yes," Mobius said dryly. "That one. He is, I want you to understand, one of the most talented individuals I have ever had the misfortune of employing. He is also, by any reasonable metric, a catastrophe in human form. I knew this when I brought him here. I made a calculated decision that the benefits of his presence outweighed the risks, and I was… as it turns out, spectacularly wrong.” Mobius turned to Mei and executed a perfect Japanese bow. “I don’t expect you to accept the apology, but please believe that neither I, nor M.O.T.H. had any ill intentions for you.”Mei stared at her. Then, slowly, she shook her head."Doctor Mobius, you don't have to-" Mobius simply brought her hand up, asking her to pause."I do, actually,” she responded blandly, “That said, I don’t expect you to accept my apology or accept them in any capacity.”Mei looked at her for a few moments; the young woman’s eyes were cold and calculating as she seemed to analyze her. Finally, she nodded slowly. “I’ve… heard you, doctor,” she finally said. "Thank you," Mobius said quietly, and pushed open the door.The afternoon light hit them both in the face, and Mobius took a moment to appreciate the simple fact of being outside and away from the recycled air of the venue.Her eyes adjusted just in time to hear the shout.“You bastard!”She stopped.Mei, who had taken another half-step forward, stopped as well, and made a small sound that Mobius could not immediately classify.Approximately fifteen meters away, in the narrow service alley between the expo building and its neighbor, a very tall young man in a slightly damp white suit was in the process of beating the ever-loving shit out of Knightmare.Mobius processed the tableau with the calm, rapid precision she brought to all unexpected stimuli. The young man was broad-shouldered, athletic, with a jawline that belonged on the cover of a magazine and white hair whipping about his face in a manner that Mobius grudgingly had to admit was cinematically flattering. He had Knightmare by the collar with one hand and was, as she watched, driving a fist into his stomach with the other, and Knightmare was folding around the blow in the exact manner of a man who had just been hit very hard by someone who knew what they were doing.Except that Mobius could tell that the man striking him was holding back, and acted awkward, and that Knightmare wore his shadow-clothes, so he likely barely felt a thing in the first place. A bouquet of flowers lay scattered on the pavement near the dumpster, crushed petals and green stems strewn across the concrete like the aftermath of a wedding that had gone very wrong."Oh," Mei said, in a voice that had gone completely flat with shock. "Oh no.""You know him?" Mobius asked, not taking her eyes off the scene."That's Kevin. That's my boyfriend." She quickly bowed to Mobius. “I am sorry I have to stop him!” And she rushed towards the scene, as Mobius watched. She narrowed her eyes slightly.Kevin, if that was his name, hauled Knightmare upright by the collar and said something through his teeth that Mobius could not quite make out at this distance but which, from the cadence, seemed like an accusation. Knightmare, for his part, was saying nothing, which in itself was suspicious, because the one thing Knightmare was reliably incapable of in situations of physical duress was silence. The man ran his mouth when he was being shot at. He ran his mouth when he was on fire, she checked. He had once, to Mobius's certain knowledge, run his mouth while having his heart crushed by the Herscher. And yet now, being pummeled by a teenager in a wetsuit, he was simply taking it, his head snapping back with each blow loosely.Mobius immediately recognized what was going on, and folded her arms under her impressive chest.Then Kevin wound up for what was clearly meant to be the finishing blow. His stance shifted, his weight loaded into his back foot, his shoulders squared, and his fist came around in a wide, telegraphed arc that any trained fighter in the world would have slipped in their sleep. Knightmare, who was, whatever else one could say about him, an extremely trained fighter, stood perfectly still and watched it coming with the patient acceptance of a man waiting for a bus.The punch connected with his jaw.Knightmare's head snapped sideways with what Mobius was almost certain was a small, cooperative flourish of the neck, his eyes rolled back theatrically, and his entire body went limp and crumpled backwards into the side of the dumpster before sliding down to the pavement in a heap.Mei gasped and took an involuntary step forward.Kevin stood over the unconscious body, breathing hard, his fists still clenched, and then slowly, deliberately, he turned his head and locked eyes with Mei across the fifteen meters of concrete between them, and his entire face transformed from righteous avenging boyfriend to wounded puppy in a rainstorm in the span of a single heartbeat."Mei," he called, his voice cracking in a way that was, Mobius noted clinically, almost suspiciously on-cue. "Mei, I am so sorry I was late, I… I heard what he said. I couldn't let him get away with it."Mei made a small, strangled noise and started towards him at a run.Mobius stood very still in the doorway, her arms folded across her chest, and watched the two teenagers collide in a tearful embrace with the bouquet of scattered flowers at their feet and the late afternoon sun gilding them both in the exact tones of a romance novel cover, and she let her gaze drift, slowly, inexorably, down to the crumpled body of her colleague lying in a heap beside the dumpster.Knightmare's face was turned towards the wall, away from the reuniting couple.Mobius raised one hand very slowly and pinched the bridge of her nose.Somewhere behind her, inside the venue, four hundred of the greatest scientific minds on Earth were presumably still discussing what they had witnessed. Somewhere in front of her, a seventeen-year-old girl was sobbing into the chest of a seventeen-year-old boy who had just publicly avenged her honor. Mobius approached, already feeling tired from the antics. “You two may not worry,” she addressed both Mei and Kevin, who snapped to attention towards her, “M.O.T.H. will elect to ignore what happened to Knightmare,” she said simply. It galled her to play along with the Lab Rat, but at this point, she didn’t really have better cards to play.“That said, you two should probably…” She nodded towards the exit. “A-ah, thank you,” Mei said weakly, and Kevin nodded to her resolutely, but incredibly awkwardly. She could tell the man wasn’t sure what was going on and why she was letting this go. Mobius waited for the pair to leave, and when they did, she kicked Knightmare in the ribs as hard as she could. It hurt.“Get up, you clown,” she said without much anger at this point.Knightmare chuckled sadly before exploding into motion and catapulting himself to his feet.Despite the genuinely terrifying superhuman display of speed and coordination, the man was scratching the back of his head and looked… embarrassed enough to die.Good.“Listen, Mobius, I… sort of can explain?” he tried. “The whole porn thing is-”She interrupted him, having no patience, nor willingness to tolerate another one of his awkward explanations.“You decided you recognized Miss Mei from somewhere,” she stated, and seeing his eyes widen slightly, knew she was right, “Likely from some sort of media in your world. It shocked you. So you screamed about the ‘porn’.” Mobius did the quotation marks with her fingers.Knightmare looked about ready to run away.“Somehow, you being able to just connect it like that makes me feel even worse…” He mumbled, looking aside.Mobius sighed. “Let’s go,” she said, turning around and heading outside the venue. Knightmare’s footsteps followed hers in exactly two seconds. She didn’t see the dumb expression on his face that turned to confusion as he followed her commands instinctively, like a good doggie, but she certainly could imagine it.“Wait, wait, where are we going?” he asked as he started to move by her side, pointing back, “Didn’t you have a speech too? Also, shouldn’t we be with the rest?” he asked, glancing from the venue to her and back.Mobius allowed herself to savour his confusion greatly.“Knowing the otherworldly knowledge you occasionally possess about my- that is, our world takes priority,” she said simply, turning to him and lifting a single eyebrow, “And do you think even I can pull a magic trick of getting you back inside?”He stared at her for a moment, and by the dumb expression on his face, she could tell that he was lost looking into her eyes. Mobius grew a little less annoyed at him.“Well, I can probably punch my way through?” he offered it as an awkward joke, flexing theatrically, “One-two punch us to success.”She allowed herself a snort. “You already have almost ‘one-two punched’ M.O.T.H.’s credibility.” Seeing him wince brought a little guilt, as it did satisfaction, “So I would rather you not. Besides, rejoice, Lab Rat, you did want us to go to the restaurant together, did you not?”She saw the exact moment when realization hit him. That this, in truth, was technically a date with just the two of them.She kept walking when he stopped for a few seconds. She pretended not to notice him pumping his hand and quietly whispering ‘yess!’ even as the amused smile she hid from him widened. She resolved to actually castrate him in the next experiment if he somehow ruined the dinner too. She didn’t have many days off to allow such a complete waste of one.It’s too bad Klein will have to present her latest findings for her, but to be fair, she was cited as an assistant in all her recent research. The girl can enjoy the attention of the geriatric ward to her heart’s content. Mobius now had a much more interesting problem to tackle……she meant the mystery of Knightmare’s eldritch knowledge, of course. The romantic dinner just happened to be a lure. A trap, one may say, to get to her real goal.Nothing else, certainly. This wasn’t the attempt to salvage a date gone wrong. That would be preposterous. ----Author Note: This chapter was so self-contained that I simply had to cut it there. Ahem; YESSS-YES!! Holy nest-temple under Snake-Lady heart-mind is COMPLETE-DONE! I weep-cry with joy-joy!
, and such.In any case, I may write one more chapter out of schedule soon. Maybe not. Let’s see where the muse takes me. Tell me what you think, because I am very proud of how this flowed, and it was a very high-effort chapter. Also fuck my beta, Elysia will be lewded eventually. I will get to it.