It was already getting rather late by the time the most unconventional interrogation of the night finally began, yet the three and a half beings responsible for everyone’s collective heart attacks looked far more relaxed than anyone felt they had the right to be.
Or well... two and a half of them did.
Luca, who was still stubbornly using the Empire’s future monarch as his glorified chair, wore a fluffy sleeping mask over his eyes while leisurely sipping hot chocolate through a straw because, just as he’d wanted, he couldn’t actually see where the cup was.
Then there was Jax, who’d taken a similarly peculiar approach to the confrontation.
He casually sipped his own drink while maintaining suspiciously shifty eye contact with the baby queen bee perched on the table, looking very much like someone silently trying to coordinate a version of events they could both commit to.
Then there was Marshal Julian.
Compared to the other two—and that literal short half who honestly counted for more like a quarter in height—the seasoned Marshal might’ve been the only one who looked truly dead to the world.
Instead of being on the other side facilitating this question-and-answer portion, he just sat there in complete silence, genuinely wondering where he was even supposed to begin. After spending years believing there wasn’t much that could truly overwhelm him, today had finally forced him to accept one rather painful truth.
He did, in fact, have a weakness.
Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately for him, there was that golden-eyed cadet and his rather dramatic system who seemed entirely too okay with having to explain it all.
__
The soft sound of someone decisively slurping hot chocolate through a straw echoed throughout the room before the most profound retelling of the night finally began.
Now then.
Where was he supposed to start?
Well, if the events leading up to that deeply controversial moment had to be summarized through still images, they’d probably look something like this.
At Luca’s prompting, D-29 projected a series of holographic snapshots that he had personally selected as the highlights of the earlier confrontation. Rather than simply replaying the footage, however, the dramatic System had apparently decided to enhance the presentation.
Every image was supplemented with hastily drawn doodles, oversized arrows, giant red X marks, and enough frantic exclamation points to suggest the entire incident had been documented by someone who’d consumed far too much virtual sugar—or by a system with far too much time on its proverbial hands.
The first image showed Luca, Jax—who had little Isabelle with him—and Marshal Julian crouched beside the entrance, quietly waiting for a signal that ultimately never came.
The next captured the exact moment all three were caught completely off guard by the arrival of an angry mob of elderly women, otherwise known as the master mechanics’ wives. D-29 had thoughtfully drawn enormous exclamation marks above everyone’s heads to properly convey the magnitude of their collective shock as Luca narrated that particular part of the story.
The following image showed Marshal Julian stepping forward in an earnest attempt to de-escalate the situation, only to be unceremoniously swallowed by the very same angry mob that, for reasons both practical and political, he couldn’t exactly fend off physically.
As the golden-eyed cadet demonstrated what had happened, a massive red X had been drawn over the Marshal, complete with dramatic motion lines illustrating how he’d quite literally been swept into the crowd while his three younger companions looked on in undisguised horror.


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