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Silence... Before everyone even knew it, the Emperor had already left, leaving us kneeling down on the ground with Shizu shaking on her feet. There were no courtiers. No witnesses. Just us and the now absent Emperor...

And somehow, I felt like it was only going to get worse.

"W-We should go..."

Shade quickly spoke up. "Princess?"

"I-It\'s Shizu now..." she weakly stuttered. "We\'re no longer welcome here..."

The tension in the room somehow got thicker as Shizu\'s footsteps echoed with each step. She didn\'t even tell us to stand up, only that we should all leave without even so much as contesting her father\'s decision.

"Wait, what just happened?" Shen nervously asked.

"Nothing of importance," Shizu coldly replied. "Again, we\'ve overstayed our welcome."

I held in a sigh as I stood up. Likewise, the rest of the group stood up as well, with most of them all looking at me for our next move as I turned to face Shizu.

"Well, we heard her," I shrugged. "Let\'s go."

"Wait, you\'re really going to just let her do this?"

I turned my gaze towards Guidance, my girlfriend giving me a questioning glare as I slowed my pace. Still, I answered her glare with a deadpan stare as I replied, "She\'s our benefactor, remember? She was always our leader, even if that decision usually fell to us."

Guidance didn\'t seem to like that answer though. However, even with her misgivings, she sighed as she walked up to my side and followed my lead, which in turn made the others follow behind us as well. The walk outside the palace was both awkward and nerve-wracking as our group followed behind Shizu. The seemingly exiled princess was unresponsive. Even Gem\'s childlike wonder did little to defuse the cold icy air that now swallowed her entire being.

"Uhm... Does this mean that I won\'t get all the stuff you promised I\'d get?"

I snapped my head towards Nicole, her callous question making Shizu freeze midstep for a second before she dutifully continued to walk away. For those of us that were in on this venture to begin with, however...

"Shut up," Guidance growled, her eyes piercing through the Marquean with all of the subtlety of a billboard. "Things are far from over, and you\'ll get what you wanted eventually."

Shade and Maruki were both also seething, but they thankfully didn\'t bother further making a scene than we\'d already done in the throne room. Shen meanwhile, just stuck herself closely behind Shizu, the mechanic clearly worried at the unnatural coldness that the princess was showing.

"Moriya, we shall speak of things later," Carbuncle whispered to me. "Things have changed, and the terms of my family\'s stay might change as well."

Again, I could only sigh as I nodded. It would seem that there were a lot of things that need to be addressed after this whole debacle was settled. Not that I think that it would get settled within the day, but a bit of a lull was going to be needed if we wanted to see where we\'d be after today.

Still, even as we emerge back out onto the palace courtyard, I couldn\'t help but doubt the Emperor\'s words. The last time we spoke, he seemed very much proud of Shizu as a person. Sure, he chastised her for a small bit, but otherwise, he was pretty much a supportive father. To see him practically disown her like this was both a surprise and an anomaly. Surely, something was up beyond the potential conflict brewing with Marquee, but beyond political reasons, I just couldn\'t see why he\'d do this in the first place.

In silence, our group made our way to the palace gates, the guards not even giving us a curt nod anymore as we went past them. The cold reception was something to be expected, but to see them ignoring Shizu like this was just wrong somehow. Also, Guidance hadn\'t said anything about this happening at all.

"Could this happen in the story you wrote?" I discreetly asked the dev.

"No... This is wrong..." Guidance hauntingly sighed. "I never wrote anything like this happening in the game. Not like everything else would even follow the script at this point. What I know is pretty much useless to us now."

I frowned. Then again, wasn\'t that already a known constant in this world? All of our knowledge about it was just constantly being proven wrong either by some random chance or a glitch that just so happened to change this one thing that we needed to know. It wasn\'t even that fancy. All the glitches that we saw... All the bugs... None of them were even amusing. They were just straight-up inconvenient of infuriating.

"Everyone..."

We all froze midstep. Shizu had turned around to look at us, her eyes still brimming with tears even as a look of determination plastered itself on her face. On one hand, I was glad that she wasn\'t taking this as hard as she could, but on the other, the fact that she was disowned still hung over my own conscience as she gave us nothing more than her usual stare. She didn\'t even blame us. Blame me...

"As you\'ve all heard, I\'m... kind of disowned at the moment," Shizu began, playing off her horrible situation as a joke. "As such, I... We might not be able to do the things we might\'ve set off to do."

"What?!"

Everyone that wasn\'t the Vestygian couple flinched at Nicole\'s sudden outburst. Obviously, Shade was raring to try and cut the woman off, but Shizu quickly waved him off with a small smile.

"That\'s an understandable worry, and I\'m sure that Carbuncle and Alcian also have some issues with what just happened," Shizu diplomatically stated. "We\'ll get through this, and I\'ll be sure to arrange something that might suit our current arrangements."

I raised an eyebrow at the way that Shizu was speaking. It was like she was still stuck in her princess persona, but she was also doing little to hide her actual personality.

Hmm... Was this her way of addressing what her father said to her?

"I appreciate your commitment to our spoken agreements," Carbuncle smiled, though I could tell that she was also a bit worried from the small twitch by the corner of her mouth. "Alcian and I will continue with our current arrangements then. If only to help you in your endeavors."

"I as well shall continue to protect you, Princess!" Maruki shouted out loud, his conviction echoing across the empty streets of Yagokoro. "I have not been instructed to cease my duty, so I shall continue to do so where I can."

"Well, I suppose you can count me in as well," Shade chuckled. "I don\'t really care for the pay at the moment, and you know that I admire you, my princess."

Shizu blushed at that, and I couldn\'t help but chuckle as one by one, our entire group all but swore allegiance to the disowned princess.

"I-I\'ll be here as well, Shizu!" Shen declared. "I\'m gonna help ya!~"

"Me as well~" Gem brightly said, though I doubt that the girl even knew what was going on. "I wanna help Big Sis Shizu!~"

"T-Thank you, all..." Shizu teared up, her smile slowly starting to turn more genuine by the second. "I-I don\'t know where we\'ll go, but I\'m going to prove my father wrong!"

"That\'s the spirit," Guidance smiled. "We\'re far from done here, and we\'re with you every step of the way."

The dev\'s eyes then landed on mine, and I could tell that it was my turn to reaffirm my commitments.

"I as well," I stepped forward. "I was the one that got this thing together, and I\'d be remiss to leave you in this mess."

Shizu weakly nodded as she smiled. "I-It wasn\'t your fault, but I appreciate it, Moriya."

Opening my arms, everyone thankfully took it as it was as we all huddled in for a group hug. Well, most of us anyway. Three people were notably absent from our embrace, and they were Nicole, Carbuncle, and Alcian. To be fair, I expected them to not really care, what with their allegiance only being attached to just how much we could offer them. But while I could tell that the couple was just being polite, Nicole on the other hand looked like she was deliberating her continued membership on our party.

"Hmm... Well, if Shizu says that I\'ll still get the stuff I want, then I\'ll keep tagging along," she chuckled as if she hadn\'t just told us that she was that close to leaving. "Besides, Shen and I still have a ton of projects to make, and I\'d be damned if I left all of my innovations with her."

"That\'s all we can ask," Shizu giggled.

I let out a small sigh as I found myself looking up above us. With Kotosa\'s lights shining below, I couldn\'t help but wonder what would happen now. While it hasn\'t happened yet, I could only assume that our support would be slashed considerably, and Shizu would have to scramble to regain her power as an Imperial Princess.

Where to next, indeed...

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