“Lune!” Cecily ran up to me in a panic.

“Dad!” Nelly cried out, “Awe we gonna be alwight?!”

“Don’t worry guys.” I chuckled, “Everything’s under control.”

“Alright, guy, you got your wish.” The soldier scoffed at me as he continued, “Now for you to uphold your end of the bargain. Tell me everything you know about the Lis army, that is, if you really do know anything about them.”

“Lune, don’t you dare tell them anything!” Cecily pleaded, “Those guys took us in, they took care of Nelly when we couldn’t…!”

“Cecily, they aren’t our friends.” I shushed her, “And neither are they of any importance to us. We hold no obligation to keep what we know from the people who wanna know.”

“But Jorgen will be devastated!” She cried out.

“Will Sewge be alwight, dad?” Nelly fidgeted with Sir Teddington in her arms, “He’s good, don’t betway him!”

Gah, these guys really aren’t getting my hints, are they? Do I really strike them as such a bad person? That kind of makes me sad, but also kind of glad, because now I know that I’m convincing enough to even fool these two. Surely the soldier here will have no other choice but to believe me as well, no?

“Ladies, I don’t know what kind of life you lived up until now, but get real.” He sighed, “Lune, was it? Yeah, Lune here’s being smart. If you really left the army, then you have no reason to hide anything from us, especially if we’re offering you safe passage to the dock if you do choose to cooperate.”

“But how could we trust you?” Cecily took a standoffish stance, “Who says you guys aren’t just gonna dispose of us the moment you get the info you need?”

“Do you not realize what we’re fighting for in the first place?!” The soldier shot back, “We’re the Meior Army! We’re fighting for the liberation of slaves working on the canal without any pay and all the worst living conditions!”

“Eh?”

“Yeah! A couple years ago the Kingdom of Carmen began work on a giant canal that was meant to cut through the entire northern part of Abyssus Solis, effectively creating a new trade route. But the way they’re going about the construction is too inhumane! The people that are working tirelessly there are slaves they find and kidnap all around the world!”

“That’s…!” I gasped, “That’s horrible! But then why would the Lis army defend such actions?”

“You don’t know?” He raised an eyebrow at my ignorance, “It’s because of the good relations between Carmen and Lis. Back in a previous war, the Lis army won solely because Carmen provided backup, thus putting Lis in their debt.”

A solid, I thought, Just like the one I had forced on the Golden God Auros. Thinking back, I had done the exact same thing as the Kingdom back in that cave, since I too acted like I helped in order to get him to owe us. So what, are the Lis genuinely for slaves, or are they being forced to defend Carmen’s stance?

“That being the case, we do not backstab or treat the common folk poorly.” He explained, “If you’re willing to help us, then you’re also helping the thousands of slaves that those damned devils captured.”

“Y’know, I’m really inclined to take your word for that…” I shrugged, “But you literally just tricked us about an hour ago back in the cafeteria.”

“T-That was just because your entire situation was suspicious from start to finish!” He tried to defend himself, “If it wasn’t for you just up and showing up out of nowhere in the middle of the room everyone was in, I certainly wouldn’t have had to interrogate you this much!”

“Cecily, what do we do?” I asked.

“I dunno.” She replied, “On one hand, we’d be putting the lives of Pierre and his men at risk if we told these guys everything we knew, but on the other hand, those slaves…”

“I’d suggest you think rationally about this.” The soldier once again snarkily replied, “If anything, think about your daughter’s safety before anything. Just know that we sure as hell won’t let you pass and leave the country if you don’t first earn right to do so. We’re just fighting to save some slaves, but you’ve put us in a situation where even we have to play the role of the bad guys and interrogate you like this.”

“Cecily, I’m gonna tell them.”

“Don’t!” She yelled out.

“I’m doing it for Nelly!” I shot back, “I know it’s a horrible thing to do, and I’ll probably feel horrible for Jorgen if his brother dies because of us, but we have no other choice if we wanna make it out of here! We’re so close, and to top it all off, we don’t even have any loyalty to anyone in Sulfury anymore!”

“Daddy!” Nelly began crying, “Don’t let Sewge die!”

Ugh, this whole situation is turning really tense. I never wanted it to come to this, but I guess I’ll just have to use Rule 4 of lying once again.

“Listen here!” I yelled out proudly to the soldier, “The leader of the Lis army… is a giant slob!”

At this, all three of them made a weird sound resembling that of pure unadulterated confusion. Looks like they weren’t expecting me to badmouth Pierre like this at all. Heh, now all that’s left is to hope that Nelly and Cecily understand my intentions with this little plan of mine!

“A slob?” The soldier raised a single eyebrow, “What does that even have to do with anything?”

“It does indeed! It has everything to do with everything!” I said as a matter of fact, “He’s the furthest thing from an early bird that I’ve ever seen! In fact, he’s always so slow to get out of bed that some soldiers actually had to wake him up so that he could wake the rest of us up!”

“I-Is that so?” The soldier didn’t get what I was getting at.

“That means your best time of attack would be the morning!” I explained, “The morning, because that’s when everyone’s asleep. Think about it, there’s like a total of 10 night guards surrounding the base, and that’s it! You could surround them while they have their pants down and then checkmate – instant victory!”

Soon enough it seems that Nelly too understood what I was trying to accomplish, but the same couldn’t be said for Cecily. She tried desperately to compute all the logjc behind my words, not realizing I was making all of this up on the spot, meanwhile Nelly had immediately joined me.

“Oh oh! And don’t forget that Sewge, hehe… He weally likes to go poop a lot!”

“Right Nelly!” I snapped finger guns at her as if I recalled such an important detail, “The leader there is lactose intolerant, so he has to take a ton of bathroom breaks. Can you imagine?”

“He does?” Cecily questioned us, “Did I miss something?”

“Of course he does, Cecily! That guy’s only drinking that tea of his, and he always puts some milk in it despite his predisposition. He’s just stubborn like that.”

“Again, I fail to realize how any of this ties into us somehow getting an advantage over them.” The soldier couldn’t fathom mine and Nelly’s flawless plans.

“Seriously, do we have to spell it out for you?” I clicked my tongue at him, “Obviously, the army will be in disarray when their leader has to go to the toilet, thus giving you guys enough time to advance in the battlefield. This way you could easily get into position as long as you have someone monitor him from the inside. Like a spy or something like that.”

“At that point we would just assassinate him and be done with it!” He yelled out.

“Oh dear, assassinate?!” I yelped, “Oh no no no, that’s a horrible idea! If you kill General Fakeman, then everyone will immediately take the spy as a hostage, torture him to near-death, and then extract all the intel about you guys the same way you’re doing to me right now!”

“Then it’d be an endless loop…” Nelly elaborated on my words.

This is amazing. The guy fell for all of these lies, hook line and sinker! Actually, I was kind of having some fun with it if you didn’t already notice. I mean, General Fakeman, come on! How did he not notice that?!

“A-Alright… Anything else?” The soldier was all but ready to give up.

“Yeah! You should also know that there’s a group of evil guys under the command of Silvia Quartz.” I finished it off, “If you happen to see any of those guys, they’re objective enemies of humanity. Kill them without remorse for us, will ya?”

“Quartz?” He figured something out, “As in, the guys that hold the decennial Mobius Awards? Why would they be enemies? And more importantly, if you guys have been at the Lis base for the past 4-6 years at least (judging from your daughter’s apparent age), then how would you even know them good enough to deem them objective enemies of humanity?”

“A-Ahm, u-uhh…!” I began sweating out of nervousness, “S-See, the thing is…”

“Ooooh!” Cecily finally cracked the code, “I see what’s going on, Lune! Heh, wink wink, nudge nudge…! Ahem! Sir, the Lis army is just full of cowards, so feel free to just waltz in there without any weapons!”

Dammit, Cecily! What the hell was that?! Was that seriously her best attempt at acting? And what kind of a lie is that? Just what kind of bozo army would head into war without weapons? This isn’t a gang dispute, Cecily!

“Full of cowar…! Okay, now you’re just making fun of me!” The soldier finally noticed, “That’s it, you guys are coming with me! I tried to play the nice guy, but even still you guys are being horrible about it!”

“Hey, where are you taking us?!” Cecily yelped as this guy dragged us by the chains all the way to the jail cells, “Enjoy your time here, because you certainly deserve it for being assholes!”

Sitting together in a gray empty room with only a small window leading to the outside just so the people here could get to breathe as they please, both Nelly and I turned to Cecily and gave her a look of simultaneous disappointment and anger. And to think, if it wasn’t for her terrible lying skills, then we might’ve actually gotten through this way!

Goddammit, Cecily! Did you really have to speak out of line in exactly this time of all times?! Well, judging from her sulky attitude, I can accurately surmise that even she felt a bit bad for ruining our plans, but that’s still not something we’ll die over, so it shouldn’t be as bad as she makes it out to be.

“Nelly… My dear Nel…” She murmured to herself with tears in her eyes, “My dear daughter is disappointed in me…”

Ah, so it’s that. Well, now I can at least feel sympathetic for your pain. After all, I too felt the pain of having Nelly tell me I hate you! so I can at least understand you. That being the case, I don’t even think Nelly’s that angry anymore. She’s just admiring the room around her.

“Whoaaa! Look, mom! A toilet!” She smiled while she tugged on her mother’s clothes.

“I’m a failure of a mother…” Cecily only cried some more, “How did I not manage to realize how bad I am at lying? Aren’t I supposed to be a stone-cold killer?”

Dear God, looks like lunacy runs in the family…