Demonic Po*nstar System Chapter 935: Breaking News

"I’m sorry," Vanessa said, and her voice broke on the second word.

"I know." Alexandra rose, brushed the dirt off her knees, and straightened her apron. "I hope to see you on Monday. And Miss Sloan?" She smiled, and it reached her eyes. "The lemonade is self-serve from now on."

Vanessa left the tent on unsteady legs, past the silent line, past the scaffolding, and she didn’t look back because if she had, the tears she was barely holding would have won.

"She’s going to be a problem," Luna muttered. "Vaelira 2.0."

"She’s going to be fine," Alexandra said, and went to make more lemonade.

...

The story hit the networks at four, and it hit wrong.

Someone in the line had filmed what they could see from outside the tent: killing intent rolling through the flap, Luna dragging a woman across the gravel by her ankle, and the question that followed. The footage cut before anyone went back inside.

’ECLIPSE INTERVIEW TURNS VIOLENT’ ran the first banner, over a still of Vanessa Sloan hitting the dirt.

By half past four, her agent had a statement out: an unprovoked assault on a promising young candidate by guild personnel, during a formal interview, fully unprofessional, and referred to the Association for review.

By five, two talk panels were asking whether a guild staffed by monsters and legal anomalies had any business processing human applicants at all, and a former guild executive somewhere called it, with relish, "exactly what I have been warning about."

At five fifteen, Vanessa Sloan called her agent and told him to pull the statement. The agent, who had been fielding interview requests for forty-five minutes and had dollar signs tattooed on the inside of his eyelids, declined, and was promptly dismissed, his contract voided.

The internet, notably, reserved judgment. It had seen Eclipse’s tapes before.

The one who’d filmed it was identified by evening, and their signed application was voided on the spot. One day as a member of Eclipse, spent breaking the rules.

...

The gate flared at half past seven, and the sponsor delegation came home to the smell of Alexandra’s cooking.

Nyx crossed the common hall first and laid a folio on the table in front of Kaiden with both hands, then stayed put, radiating cat-that-caught-the-canary smugness while she waited to be praised.

"Three," she said.

Kaiden opened the folio. Marlowe & Finch for apparel, Warner Solutions for equipment, Granger Heavy Industries for construction, but for now, only cash funding, all three signed. Between the advance, the outfitting, and the material terms, the numbers added up to breathing room measured in months instead of days.

"Three," he agreed, and looked up at her with exactly as much admiration as she’d come to collect. "I’ve heard some rumors through the grapevines... You three terrorized the business district into decency."

Three innocent maidens all blinked together with perfect pretend innocence.

Then Nyx’s giggle broke the theatrical act. "We prefer ’educated.’ We did a favor for the rest of the world."

"They discovered the cushion, Master," Bastet reported en route to the deepest seat in the hall. "There is hope for your people yet."

Aria said nothing at all, instead electing to step forward and fasten herself to his arm with her cheek on his shoulder. "Nobody misbehaved today," she murmured there. "It was almost boring."

Alice, meanwhile, had wedged her chair in on Kaiden’s other side, clipboard in hand from a full day of culinary tribunal, briefing her big brother on Monday’s two new cooks and her planned waffle supervision.

Dinner assembled around them, and it was somewhere between the first course and the second that Luna’s fork stopped halfway to her mouth. Her eyes had gone unfocused, the way they did when something on the social feed of her interface caught her attention mid-bite.

"Oh shit." She swallowed. "I’m famous again."

Everyone summoned their own interface, curious.

UNPROVOKED ASSAULT AT ECLIPSE TRYOUT, the agent’s statement quoted beneath it. The table watched the word UNPROVOKED scroll past, and nobody stopped eating.

Alexandra stepped out of the kitchen doorway, drying her hands on her apron. She had a look on her face that Luna had learned to recognize, the one that meant the softie was about to do something that would make everyone in the room feel things.

"I received a message," Alexandra said. "Before we came inside."

"Why didn’t you tell us sooner?" Nyx asked slyly.

"I’ve been waiting for the right moment to make the reveal," she replied with dancing eyes.

"Ooh~ Very dramatic~"

The blonde beauty ignored her purring childhood friend and instead held up her phone and read aloud.

"’Miss Seren. I apologize for bothering you. Kira gave me your phone number... My former agent released a statement today that does not reflect what happened, and while I terminated his contract, what’s out there cannot be deleted. Thankfully, your producers captured what happened inside the tent. At my request, they agreed to release it, should you give the green light. I hope the full recording will show the truth so Luna, Kaiden, and Eclipse at large won’t suffer backlash. I am asking you to allow your producers to release it. The public should see the truth, and I should face it. I’m sorry. Vanessa Sloan.’"

The table was quiet for a moment.

"She sent this to you," Kaiden said. Not a question.

"To me." Alexandra smiled, small and warm. "I always knew she was a good girl underneath all that thorn..."

The internet did what it always does when someone hands it the whole truth in high definition.

The first wave was Luna. The slap heard round the world, the speed that turned an A-tier striker into a piñata, the drag across the gravel. The comments came fast, hot, and overwhelmingly on Eclipse’s side, because the full tape showed what the outside footage had missed: the killing intent aimed at an unarmed woman, the contempt that preceded it, and exactly how little the "lemonade girl" had been provoked.

The second wave was Kaiden. A man who hadn’t moved, hadn’t stood, hadn’t raised his voice, and the A-tier who’d been flexing on his cherished ally had simply stopped breathing. The analysts pulled the clip and ran it back. Social media discovered a new fear.

The third wave broke the internet.

People watched a maid kneel in the dirt with golden light in her hands, heal the woman who had tried to humiliate her, and offer her a job.

The clip of Alexandra healing Vanessa crossed ten million views before dessert.

By nine, the former agent’s statement had been buried under Vanessa’s own, posted from her personal account, three lines long, no spin, no legal positioning: she had been wrong, she had been shown grace she did not deserve, and she would be reporting to Eclipse on Monday.

And the tag that owned the night was four words long, and it had a maid in it.

HANDS OFF THE MAID.

At nine thirty, Camille Marlowe emailed Nyx directly, asking in the politest corporate language available whether the phrase could be licensed for a shirt.

"Tell her yes," Alexandra said faintly, from behind both hands.

Luna kicked her feet up on the bench and raised her glass past the head of the table, at the kitchen doorway, at Alexandra. "Well. We got richer, we got scarier, and I’m trending for bitch slapping a bitch. Cheers to the maid."

"TO THE MAID!" the girls echoed at full volume, glasses high toward her.

"Guys, stop!!" Alexandra begged, cheeks red.

Kaiden raised his glass with them.

"To our cherished Hearth Valkyrie."

Alexandra squealed, turned, and ran into the kitchen.