As Jonathan kites the Ankle Annihilator around the area and passes Lucas once more, Lucas sighs and starts following behind the aggressor, far enough back that he’ll be out of reach if he were to suddenly change targets.

“Whelp, if no one has any other ideas, I guess that’s our plan? Oh, when I jump him, make a whole lotta noise, yeah? Maybe it’ll help slow him down another second or two to gimme more time to pin ‘em.” Lucas is answered by multiple agreeable hums.

The conversation’s topic is completely clueless as to the content of their chatter as he combatively crawls after Jonathan.

After the three-man lineup moves a bit further past Miss Masher’s current position, she walks over to intercept at a different angle than Lucas. Whilst en-route, she glances at her sister across the room.

“Hey, where do ya wanna cut him? I’ll try to hold that area still for ya.” Upon Miss Masher asking this, Miss Chievous gains a sinister grin.

“Well, since he hates loud noises so much, one of his ears, obviously.” As Miss Chievous is saying this, she starts walking in their direction, vanishing while she is in the middle of her second step.

Miss Masher snorts and shakes her head, not commenting any further. Lucas grimaces and subconsciously reaches up to rub one of his ears.

‘Remind me not to piss her off. At least, not too much, yeah? I don’t want to even know where she thinks I supposedly obviously need to get shanked.’

[...You’re probably only a few more crude jokes away from that decision being made, if it hasn’t been already. If you were looking forward to having any children in the future… Let’s just say that it’s a good thing you already adopted Jonathan.]

‘DUDE! Don’t even joke about that! Even knowin’ I could rollback outta it, I don’t wanna experience gettin’ ‘Lorena Bobbitt’ed’!’

[..? That’s clearly a specific example, and I can guess from context but… It’s almost alarming that your world had an idiom for it? Never mind, I really don’t need to hear that explanation.]

‘Eh, it’s just the name of someone that got famous for… doin’ just that. Ugh. Aaanyway, do ya think there’s any particular positionin’ or somethin’ that I should aim for before goin’ at ‘im?’

[Apart from ensuring you’re fully in his blind spot before making your move, and to not make any notable noise before you’ve already made contact, not particularly. Though, if Miss Masher will be focused on keeping his head still, you should probably aim lower, such as around his center mass. Just focus on stopping his mobility, and let her worry about holding him still.]

‘Yeah, makes sense. …I guess there’s no time like the present?’

Lucas looks over to Miss Masher, nodding once when she notices him. After she nods back, he goes to start taking a few running steps, but then immediately becomes self-conscious of how loudly his leather shoes are clicking on the tile flooring.

‘Ah, crap.’

Before he even makes it into range, the Floor Fiend stops and turns to look behind him, snarling at Lucas upon noticing his close proximity.

‘Seriously!? Because of my fucking shoes!?’

[...They are the same style that Jonathan is wearing, and you were taking rapid, heavy, steps. Between his time spent chasing after both you and Jonathan, he probably understands at some primal level what the sound is made from.]

Realizing that Lucas is within a much more attainable reach than Jonathan, the Terror of All Things Close to the Ground awkwardly turns in place and changes his target to Lucas.

“Oh come on!” Lucas shouts out as he starts taking a few running steps away to increase the distance between them.

Miss Masher cautiously backs away as well while barely suppressing her laughter.

Miss Chievous, however, is far less polite than her younger sister.

“Good going, fancy pants!” She cracks up laughing after shouting this, which momentarily causes their Crawling Contender to pause as he looks in the direction of the sound of her voice, searching for its unseen source.

Lucas huffs before managing to reclaim his target’s agro.

“It’s not my fault that MF’s only has formal clothes made outta enhanced stuff! And, I didn’t think that’d be enough to get his attention!” Lucas then swears under his breath once he’s done saying this, as he is now stuck kiting the Cross Crawler once more.

Miss Chievous snorts, the sound coming from only a short distance to Lucas’s side.

“Tch, do you even think at all?” Upon Miss Chievous making her gibe remark, Lucas gasps dramatically while Jonathan stifles a giggle as he stands off to the side, interrupting his musings on what he should do to build threat once more.

“How dare you! JON, STOP LAUGHING! Whenever I figure out how to do it, you’re grounded, young man!” Lucas’s threat only tips Jonathan over the edge, making him break out into full-blown laughter.

Though, Miss Chievous’s delighted cackling manages to be even louder.

At least Miss Masher is managing to hold back. Even if it is moreso out trying not to attract the Ruiner of Ankles’ wrath, rather than out of any concern for Lucas’s fragile feelings.

The OD’d Delinquent angrily slaps the ground a few times in Lucas’s direction in response to his yelling, ruining all of the tile flooring in the vicinity.

However, he then turns to face Jonathan’s direction, which also includes a hidden, hysterical, Miss Chievous. Their combined volume manages to agitate the Aggressor enough to abandon his pursuit of Lucas.

There’s a partially suppressed, “Ack!” from Miss Chievous as she chokes back her laughter and hastens to get out of the wriggly warpath.

Lucas sighs as he stops his retreat, turning to resume his own pursuit once he’s confident it will be safe to do so.

“Okay, fine. You’re not grounded for quite as long. Still, though…” Lucas lowers his voice a touch as he says this. The sound carries through the room without quite triggering the Lout Down Low.

Lucas only takes two steps before he is interrupted by Miss Chievous speaking up from reasonably close to him.

“Hold up. The last thing we need is for you to try to jump on him and miss. Mess this up enough times and even gelatin-brain will eventually figure out that something’s up.” Over the course of her speaking, the source of Miss Chievous’s voice approaches Lucas.

“I mean, to be fair, it probably wouldn’t be that hard of a jump to- Oh!” Before Lucas can finish talking, he suddenly vanishes.

‘Wooooah! This is so weird…’

[Thanks to your proprioception, you shouldn’t have all that much trouble adapting? You should have a pretty good feel for exactly where you are, without actually seeing yourself at all, right?]

Lucas flexes his arm other than the one that Miss Chievous is currently grabbing, while wiggling his fingers around as well.

‘Ooh, yeah, noice. Still a strange sensation. It’s pretty cool though.’

“Haha, sweet. Let’s go.” As soon as Lucas says this he goes to resume walking, and Miss Chievous makes a curious hum while standing in place for a moment.

[...You shouldn’t have made it so obvious that you weren’t having any issues adapting though.]

‘Huh? Oh. Whoopsie-daisy.’

427 replicates a sigh.

[Not that it’s even worth worrying about at this point. You’ve essentially directly admitted that you have more powers than you should to Miss Masher, this is just one more example further reinforcing it. It’s a good thing they seem to have decided they’re on your side. If they ever betray you, though, you’ll probably end up with a strangely-timed rollback point.]

‘...I don’t even remember when the first clue woulda been…’

[If Boss System wanted to ensure Miss Calculated had no reason to be suspicious… Probably further back than you would think.]

‘...Er, probably, now that you say it…’

Once Miss Chievous had gotten over her surprise of Lucas not being surprised, she began walking alongside him on a path to intercept the next orbit of the Circular Crawl Chase.

As they’re en-route, she quietly addresses Miss Masher when they’re within a comfortable enough speaking distance of her.

“Hey, we’re gonna probably meet up with him at around his 9 when he’s kinda close to the doors. Do you think you could go for his 3 since we’re trying to stay quiet? He hasn’t seemed particularly aggressive against you so far, so you should be okay moving around normally, unlike Mr. Clicky Fancy Shoes.” After Miss Chievous finished speaking, Miss Masher nods her head, then glances off to her left.

Lucas sighs over his new nickname, but doesn’t bother protesting.

‘Oooh, nice system. I guess it makes sense that they’d use clock positions to give relative directions when one of them is constantly invisible, though.’

“Sure. You’re, uh, somewhere around here, right?” As Miss Masher asks this, she waves her left hand around vaguely.

Miss Chievous laughs at her gesticulations.

“Yeah, we shouldn’t be in your way.” Upon Miss Chievous’s answer, Miss Masher nods once again and then marches away.

[I wouldn’t be surprised if they had gone through a sizable amount of trial and error of them constantly bumping into her before they finally settled on this methodology, back while her power was erratic and Miss Calculated didn’t have any real stability for her power yet either.]

‘Heh, yeah. No kiddin’. Must’ve been pretty funny… and annoyin’. Er, and dangerous. Okay, yeah, it probably sucked.’

-----

Lucas’s total kills: 8

Lucas’s total deaths: 12

Lucas’s total assists: 1

Lucas’s current GDV: 17.43 [Recalculating...]

Lucas’s fame level: 6.0* (Local fame is completely maxed, he’s creeping up on minor celebrity status even on a global scale. Thanks, internet.)

Lucas's hero suspicion level: 2.0*

Jonathan’s total kills: 7

Jonathan’s total deaths: 4

Jonathan’s current GDV: 6.10 [Recalculating...]

Jonathan's fame level: 4.0* (Local fame is near-max, but everyone thinks of him via his affiliation with Lucas, and not often just for him, alone.)

Jonathan's hero suspicion level: 2.5*

Willy's fame level: 5.0* (Another round of the latest memes featuring him and Mr. Quacks has bloomed.)

Mr. Quacks’s fame level: 5.5* (Another round of the latest memes featuring him and Willy has bloomed.)

Supervillain social circle size: 15

-----

Little character theater:

Jonathan, now purposely stomping his feet while he’s walking briskly, intentionally making as much noise as possible while kiting the drug-filled destructive dude: Hehe.

Willy is receiving some high-quality Miss Calculated brand cuddles, making up for earlier in the day when she was too busy with dumb ol’ work to pay proper attention to him.

Lucas, accidentally rubbing two brain cells together and making a realization: Wait, without propi-whatever, didn’t MARIA keep bumpin’ into things, too, until she finally got used to it?

427, pausing for a moment as he imagines the scenario: [...Yes, most likely. That… must have been quite the nuisance.]

Author, laughing after seeing Miss Calculated sitting directly on the ground with Willy on her lap, their foreheads resting against each other’s, her hands buried in his fur as she yields scritches unto him, and resting her back against 23: Best day ever, amirite?

Mr. Quacks and Quackette have finally decided to just call their cake challenge a draw, embracing their mutual greatness: Quack!