EXTRA: Lucy

Then... a woman stumbled through from that portal. Lucy.

She was wearing loose sleepwear beneath a cream-colored robe, and her slippers didn't match. Her hair was untidy, her eyes red-rimmed, and one arm was pressed against her stomach.

She looked exhausted. More importantly, she looked nauseous.

For the past three hours, Lucy had been lying in bed thinking about salted roasted peanuts.

Specifically, the salted roasted peanuts Kaito had promised to bring her.

She'd tried to sleep, to ignore the craving, and she even sent him a message.

When he hadn't answered, she'd sent another. Then another, this time entirely in capital letters.

The final message consisted of the word PEANUTS repeated eleven times.

By the time her nausea became unbearable, Lucy had decided she'd waited long enough.

If Kaito wasn't coming home, she'd go and find him herself.

Hence the portal.

"Kaito!" she called as soon as her slippers touched the grass. "I don't feel we—"

She stopped. Her mouth remained open, while her hand was still pressed against her stomach.

And her eyes were fixed on the scene before her.

Kaito.

Standing on a secluded hilltop, at night, beneath a sky still hazy with firework smoke, with a dark love hotel behind him.

And wrapped around his neck was a tall, toned, blushing muscle mommy, her face pressed affectionately against his chest, with faint traces of tears on her cheeks.

And, for reasons Lucy couldn't begin to comprehend, she had little glowing hearts in her eyes.

For several seconds, nobody spoke.

Somewhere beyond the hill, a cricket began chirping.

Mordecai looked at Lucy. Then at Egel, who remained blissfully unaware of the approaching catastrophe. Then back at Lucy.

"Oh, no," he murmured.

He recognized this particular disaster.

Of course he did.

After all the romantic clichés he'd suffered through tonight, there was only one logical way for the evening to end.

'The misunderstanding cliché.'

[Yes,]

[Right on schedule. It's a classic.]

'You planned this.'

[I would never.]

'You absolutely planned this.'

Lucy slowly lowered her hand from her stomach.

Her gaze traveled from Egel's arms around Mordecai's neck to the drying tears on her cheeks. She noticed the hearts in the woman's eyes, the flushed face, and the way she was pressed against him.

Then she looked at Kaito, and her eyes narrowed.

"Kaito."

Her voice was quiet. Very quiet. Ultra quiet. Pro Max Quiet.

"What is going on here?"

Mordecai recognized that tone almost immediately.

Lucy had been sick all evening. She'd dragged herself through a portal because she wanted him, and probably the peanuts he'd promised her.

Instead, she'd found him on a moonlit hill with another woman clinging to him in front of a suspiciously convenient hotel.

From her perspective, he had to admit, the evidence was rather unfortunate.

"Lucy, this isn't—" But Egel tightened her embrace, almost breaking four ribs.

She hadn't even noticed Lucy.

Her eyes were closed, her cheek resting against Mordecai's collarbone as she hummed happily to herself.

Lucy's eyebrow twitched.

Mordecai looked down at Egel, and then at Lucy.

He considered the thirty-five thousand Soul Coins he'd just lost, the Cringe Overload debuff currently affecting his body, and the bag of salted roasted peanuts still sitting forgotten in his coat pocket.

He'd spent the entire evening trying to avoid a romantic disaster.

Now he had two women in front of him, neither of whom was likely to appreciate his explanation.

And only one thought came to mind.

'I'm going to need a bigger calendar.'

Lucy kept standing still, not moving an inch. She stood on the grass in her mismatched slippers, one hand still pressed to her stomach. Mordecai watched the realization creep across her face and recognized the look immediately.

Lucy never shouted when she was angry. Back in Tokyo, during her university years, she'd dealt with girls who laughed too hard at Kaito's stupid jokes, smiling with far too many teeth. She'd simply appear with two coffees, hand one to Kaito, and stand exactly forty centimeters closer than necessary while sweetly asking the girl how her thesis was coming along.

The girl would remember an urgent appointment. Oh, and that wasn't even one of the funniest things. Lucy once 'accidentally' threw milk on Kaito's HR leader, a gorgeous woman who had the bad habit of texting him every single morning.

Tonight, Lucy wasn't smiling.

"Excuse me," she said.

Egel kept her eyes closed and her cheek against Mordecai's collarbone. She was humming a slow, happy little tune, arms snug around his neck.

"Mmm. Five more minutes, Kaitoyama."

Lucy's eyebrow twitched.

"Egel."

One of Egel's eyes opened. She regarded Lucy over Mordecai's shoulder with the idle curiosity of a cat watching a moth, then closed it again and snuggled closer.

The night breeze died. A lantern near Lucy flickered, followed by another, as darkness spread across the grass beneath her slippers. Black and violet light curled around her ankles and climbed the sleeves of her robe. Inside the widening circle, the grass turned gray. A bird in the trees broke off its song and fled.

Lucy lifted her head, her gaze locked on Egel. She had the cold, level expression of a woman who'd reached a decision and was waiting for the paperwork to catch up.

Oh no. The Demonic Saintess aura. She's only supposed to use that when an SSS-level threat shows up.

[She's using it for you,]

[That's so romantic.]

"Lucy, please." Mordecai raised a hand. "There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this."

"I'm completely sure there is, K-a-i-t-o."

"Egel is just—"

The muscle mommy released him.

Then she set her feet on the grass and marched three steps to the side, where she turned to face Lucy. Back straight, chin lifted, she slammed her fist into her palm and struck a pose worthy of a shonen protagonist facing his final rival on a windswept cliff.

"Kaitoyama and I just promised to marry each other," she declared. "And even you can't stop that, Lucy."

'I'm so fucking done. I never said that.'

[Legally, you did, in Anime's Logic]

[It's a gray area.]

'It is not a gray area.'

[The Higher Realms have classified it as one.]

Egel's aura erupted before Mordecai could argue further.

Blue and gold light shot skyward, staining the fireworks smoke the color of sunrise. The earth split in a neat circle around her boots, and her red hair streamed upward. Two thousand years of cultivation, compressed into fifteen minutes and not yet fully housebroken, rolled across the hilltop.

The light above her took shape. An enormous golden retriever. It sat upright in the sky, tongue hanging out, tail sweeping from side to side, its eyes alight with fierce devotion.

Mordecai stared.

Is that a dog?

[It's what she is emotionally.]

[The Higher Realms voted on the aura animal. It was a landslide.]

Behind Lucy, her ribbons of darkness twisted into a sleek black panther with eyes like cold coins. It lowered its head in a soundless hiss.

The retriever cocked its head while the panther narrowed its eyes.

[HIGHER REALMS LIVE CHAT]

Gooner_King: THE AURA ANIMALS 😭😭😭

LUKAS_THE_GREAT: DOG VS CAT. THIS IS THE FIGHT I PAID FOR.

Dibbs57: i have a favorite and i'm not telling you who

Power_Scaler99: ok but what's the power level...? can they solo goku?

"Oh?" Lucy tilted her head, and the panther mirrored her. "Egel?"

Her voice was almost tender.

"What did we all agree on two weeks ago in the break room? Remember the signed document? Brenda was there as the notary." She stepped forward, crushing dead grass beneath her slipper. "Did you really break the pact?"

'A pact? They made a pact? A signed pact? With a notary?'

Mordecai hadn't even been invited despite being the CEO. He could already imagine the title: The Ravenloft Holdings Accords on Equitable Access.

He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, neither woman had disappeared.

"No," Egel said, standing firm as the gold light pulsed around her. "I didn't break anything. I was officially chosen by Kaitoyama."

A window popped up in front of Mordecai's nose.

[FACT CHECK: It's true.]

[Egel received approximately 85% of the votes for Ideal First Love Interest.]

'There was a vote?'

[There's always a vote.]

'Who voted?'

[Everyone.]

'Who is everyone?'

[I'm not allowed to say. But a lot of them have usernames.]

Lucy's aura surged. The panther rose to its full height, fur bristling like black fire, and the grass around her crumbled to dust. A lantern burst. Glass struck the railing with a sharp ping.

"Eighty-five," Lucy said.

"Eighty-five," Egel confirmed.

The retriever answered with a thunderous WOOF that shook leaves off the trees.

Of course.

Mordecai knew this scene. He'd sat through it in every mediocre anime he'd been forced to watch in his previous life, usually around episode eleven. Two girls, two auras, one moonlit hill. The boy between them would raise his hands and cry, 'Stop! Please, both of you!' Nobody would listen. Someone would shout a name, someone would throw a punch, and the credits would roll.

Ah wait, I forgot that you already know these things, so there was no need to explain the joke/clichè/whatever it was... Damn. I forgot. I'll take notes for the next book, I swear.

Mordecai had spent months telling this world to stop. It hadn't listened once... or maybe it had... uh... I don't remember.

So the fake necromancer raised his right hand, pressed his thumb to his middle finger, and snapped.

The sound was almost disappointingly small.

"Enough."

Lucy hadn't heard him use that voice in a long time. It came out a full two octaves below his usual register, a deep baritone that seemed to rise from under the hill.

Both girls froze as if he'd shouted directly into their ears.

Lucy's ribbons hung motionless while Egel's column of gold light trembled and stopped, leaving the hill so quiet that Mordecai heard the faint tick of cooling glass from the broken lantern.

Then both auras went out.

The panther yawned, looking mildly embarrassed, and dissolved. Egel's retriever settled down in the sky, rested its chin on its paws, and disappeared with a sigh. The grass stopped crumbling. One by one, the surviving lanterns brightened.

[HIGHER REALMS LIVE CHAT]

LUKAS_THE_GREAT: THE SNAP. THE VOICE. THE SNAP.

Gooner_King: I'M NOT OKAY

Dibbs57: he has absolutely no right to do that.

Mordecai lowered his hand. His cringe meter, which had been stuck at 100% for the past ten minutes, blinked once and politely went quiet.

Egel was the first to move. She made a small, breathless noise, took an uncertain step toward him, then hurried over and seized his arm with both hands. She buried her face in his sleeve, ears bright red.

Lucy let out a shaky breath. The last strands of violet light slipped from her shoulders as she put a hand back on her stomach. She swayed, caught herself, and rubbed her eyes with her wrist. When she spoke, her voice had lost its edge. She sounded exhausted.

"Egel. P-please let go of him." Her hand reached her own belly again.

Egel peered at her over Mordecai's arm and stuck out her tongue.

Lucy's eye twitched, and her fingers curled.

"Egel," Mordecai said before the panther could make a second appearance. He looked down at her and tried for his gentlest voice. "Lucy wouldn't open a portal in the middle of the night unless she had a serious reason. I think there's something important she needs to tell me."

The bag of salted roasted peanuts in his coat pocket crinkled as he moved. Lucy glanced toward the sound. Almost immediately, her stomach gave a long, unmistakable growl.

Neither of them acknowledged it.

"Could you let go for just a second?"

Egel searched his face, her eyes wide and a little wounded. Then she glanced at Lucy, who had gone pale and was gripping a freshly AI-generated railing for support. Her lower lip pushed out. Her cheeks puffed, and she began to loosen her hold with all the reluctance of someone surrendering a priceless treasure to the authorities.

She stepped away, folded her arms, and turned her head with an outrageously cute pout. Mordecai resented how effective it was.

"...Fine," she muttered. "But only for a second."

"Thank you."

Lucy released a long breath of relief and pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. Without the aura, she looked younger, smaller. Frightened, even.

"Yes," she said quietly, meeting his eyes. "Kaito. We need to talk."

She swallowed.

"Urgently."