NOVPUB<Okay, so...lying to our lord’s mother is now firmly out the window and buried in a ditch about six feet deep...>
=And buried in concrete, yes.=
<But we still got to come up with something in order to pull the wool over the eyes of our lord’s cousins...>
=Who we can’t get input from because his soul and formula are trying to reorganize a sentient embodiment of sin into something...new.=
<Meaning we have to come up with something to convince these youngsters into thinking that we’re something else other than an archive of forbidden, powerful knowledge. Luckily we have a collective five millenia worth of experience.>
=Correction, we have experience in either killing intruders or driving them into the brink of madness. This entirely new territory for us as a whole.=
<Not exactly...and I have a plan anyways.>
=Oh?=
<We got about several decades worth of "fantasy" and "sci-fi" films and series in the new pop culture section, and one of the things that always get people to shut up, is to put ons shoe that hfontjing to
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"Mi...my! It’s good to see that both of you are now up and about."
"Y-yeah..."
"To be fair, I hadn’t passed out, I was just paralyzed," Zhen Hai retorted. "I’m sorry that was rude Miss..."
"Neytri. Call me Neytri."
"Miss Neytri."
"Right."
At this moment in time, "Neytri" had just arrived to the medical ward containing Zhen Liu and Zhen Hai. The latter was currently paralyzed from the neck down and had been left wrapped in what appeared to be a several layers of self-heating bandages. Apparently whatever toxin was flowing through his veins at the moment, it could be treated with a judicious application of heat.
As for the former, well...Zhen Liu was doing his absolute damn best to maintain a neutral expression as Nepherage lied through her teeth about her identity as a warrior woman named Neytri. Unlike his cousin though, Zhen Liu wasn’t bound in any medical implements and could freely get off the bed at any moment.
Not that he wanted to right now given the current situation.
’Please don’t recognize her, please don’t recognize her...’
A small part of Zhen Liu had hoped Zhen Hai didn’t recognize Nepherage’s human disguise, but alas, that wasn’t the case.
"Wait a minute...," Zhen Hai muttered with his eyes narrowed, which looked rather comical given his paralyzed state, "have we met before?
’Dammit!’
"I...don’t think so, no," Neytri said with a slightly hesitant tone.
By a massive technicality, Zhen Hai had met "Neytri" back on the Roaring Tide continent, right when he and his other cousins needed rescuing from an awkward social situation that almost turned into a case of long distance fratricide. Granted, Neytri was pretending to be a one of the direct disciples of Zhen Liu’s "master" at the time.
It was dark that night, so there might’ve been a chance of her not getting recognized.
"Wait a minute...we have met! You were one of the direct disciples of that weird old master of Xiao Liu’s! You and like...two other fierce looking women that looked as if they would end up wrapping Xiao Liu around their fingers, no offense Xiao Liu."
"None taken," Zhen Liu replied with a flat tone of voice and an expression that was pure secondhand embarrassment.
This embarrassment was a mix of him feeling called out about his romantic tendencies involving women that could kick his ass, and the fact that he really should’ve buried the false master identity at some point earlier than this awkward ass meeting.
Either way, this would’ve been the point in time where Zhen Liu would feed the kaijin the lines to some lie that would make sense given greater context and previously established details, but right now, the kaijin were getting a whole lot of this.
...
[Milord, what do I say to Zhen Hai? Do I freely admit to actually having met him before or do I play dumb?]
’ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’
[Oh, fan-fucking-tastic...all of these interruptions in milord’s soul cannot be healthy for him, holy hells...]
...
Making matters worst, Zhen Liu couldn’t outright say anything directly to Neytri (Nepherage) to help her out, because based on the timeline of his own "apprenticeship", there was no way in hell he could justify saying he knew who Neytri was without messing up his own timeline. Then again, his timeline might’ve already been a mess due to Zhen Hai suddenly dropping the name of sect that had a very similar naming convention to the [Library of Nowhere].
Regardless, this meant that for all intents and purposes, the kaijin could only rely on each other or themselves to come up with their lies as of this moment...which wasn’t necessarily a good thing since one of their best liars was currently staring to the abyss of pure terror that can only be generated by doting mothers.
In other words, Neytri was at a bit of a loss for words.
Her innate nature compelled her to be upright and honest, even in conversation, but her loyalty to her lord, Zhen Liu, also compelled her to lie through her teeth and keep up her lord’s wishes of secrecy, despite personally finding such a thing to be incredibly dumb.
"Oi! Neytri! What’s taking so long in there?"
Thankfully for her mentally and morally conflicted ass, a kaijin with a more glib tongue arrived to the scene.
Approaching from directly behind Neytri, a woman with tanned skin and blue bob cut arrived to the infirmary room.
"Are you trying to and failing to flirt with-ah! Looks like you’re finally awake mae...fellow apprentice! That said, you also look like you’ve been through hell and back," Harriet (Hurricroak) said with a laughing joy to her voice.
Zhen Hai for his part was once again struck with a dim sense of deja vu, but Zhen Liu recognized an escape opportunity when he saw one.
Especially when Hurricroak said this next bit.
"The sect leader is having a closer look at the people who were going wild in the Library earlier. I understand that Master Zhen Hai is too paralyzed in his current state, so I’m here to escort you, Master Zhen Liu."
"O-okay..."
Needless to say, Zhen Liu was more or less incredibly confused.
’Godsdamn twelve hour adjustment period...’
____Literally less than a minute later...______
"Good to see you up and about...again, maestro."
"Yes, good to be up...again."
"I just have a quick question."
"Is it about the fact that you’re hearing nothing but Zs over the-"
"Yes, it’s the fact that I’m hearing nothing but Zs over our connection, are you sure you’re okay?!"
"Well, this is a first."
As Zhen Liu and Harriet (Hurricroak) we’re making their way to wherever the latter was leading, they took this opportunity to do a bit of sit rep. After all, while this wasn’t the first time their connections got fuzzy, this was the first time where a fuzzy connection was actively detrimental to a situation.
Fighting and killing doesn’t require communication between multiple allies, lying through their teeth in a coordinated manner does.
Either way, Zhen Liu had to use Hurricroak as a telephone for the time being.
"Alright, as far as I can tell, when Paralust came into contact with the chunk of my soul that was connected to those fused aether flames, there was yet another reaction that caused things to get...weird. I think you guys have a new comrade that is now hitchhiking inside of me like a parasite of the soul. Parasol, I guess," Zhen Liu quickly explained as best as he could in this situation.
"How...how the fuck does this keep happen-"
"I don’t know, Logos and Pathos said it’s because concentrated [Chaos] leads to increased chances of bullshit happening to me, both good and ill, but at this point I’m assuming my life is just being subjected to the whims of some bored divinity with an attention span shorter than a rodent’s."
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...
|What?|
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"Anyways...would you mind giving me the rundown on what the fuck kind of lie you guys got going on right now? It sounds like y’all took the false sect idea I had a while back and ran with it. Nowhere Sect, really?"
"Funny you say that, maestro," Hurricroak replied. "Because that’s...more or less what we did, but we did add our own little twist to it."
"Twist...how?"
"Well...remember back on the S.S. Nimona, you had us lie and told your grandfather that the lot of us were formally inanimate puppets that were given life and thought later on after some weird sect related shenanigans?"
"More or less, yes, because y’all were in your more monstrous form when we were fighting Marlancer and his merry band of coral zombies."
"Yeah, good time...anyways! We lied to your cousins and told them that we were actually puppet masters like you, and that this place, the [The Library of Nowhere], was actually our base of operations."
"Cool...one question."
"Yes?"
"Your statement implies puppets are being employed in some capacity...what kind of puppets?"
