Astrovoid Shower- Celestial University Book 2: A Bully Romance

Chapter 74: Divided Coalition

"Mom, is that true?"

Delphine was shocked to see her potential mother-in-law's less than stellar response.

"No, of course not! The incident brought more Void attention and the filtration system could only do so much. Dryad and I tried to manage resources but we feared for assassins. Even during an event, one of Taylor's suitors passed out and became ill."

Taylor recalled her smacking the food out of his fork before he could take it and blasted it out of the window.

"There were real villains attempting to sell poisoned food to us. Mommy was trying to protect me and everyone else!"

Sehki screamed. "By targeting the person trying to fix the problem?"

"You've never had people attempt to assassinate you before?"

"Taylor: you tried to kill me last year!"

"Oh yeah. Hey wait!"

"Wait for what? Austrina, you thought a child was going to steal a truck of poisoned food and sell it to rich people for cheap to murder you?"

"But-"

"No, he's right," Mechion said. "This could've escalated into a global crisis and you ran the means for a cure out of the window! You could've asked the Justice Council for an investigation. Even if those attempts were true, we could've prevented any more."

"That's part of what led Dryad and Taylor to start targeting anyone who spoke or did anything remotely tangential to acting against Coalition. Even if you had the wrong person," Lorena admitted. "I could've saved her. We all could've saved her."

Mechion saw everyone but Ainsley was angry at one another, with the Shadow Brawlers going to Lorena's aid, gesturing to them to get them to leave.

"We can talk about this on the way," shaking the floors and turning them into slides everyone could ride out onto the transportation ships on the way to Taylor's country.

Lorena tried shaking off the guilt. "Easel's parents? Do you know if they're still alive."

"Oh dear. I believe we let the last member of our orbit be in charge of the prisons."

"So you wouldn't know."

Ainsley brought Lorena and a livid Sehki over. "Same with Fari. I checked the registry for all known civilians, I can't find their parents anywhere."

"Either they were turned to Voids, were destroyed, died, or are missing. If Proxim took Easel-"

"Then we have to see if they're alive. That might calm her down, but, we're still gonna have to fight her."

While Austrina watched them with some guilt in her eye, Taylor yawned, napping while the rest of the Water Majors admired his beauty, including Arian asking him to sign her content featuring him, which he did with no second guesses.

"We did nothing wrong."

Delphine and Nyla looked down.

"I wouldn't say that. Remember when one of those fish Voids turned up alive and I jumped in to protect you? That could've been me."

Nyla raised a finger. "I got bedridden for days," yawning. Oh yeah, that's when I started barely being able to get out of bed."

Kayla looked around at Tenshia getting ready to fight, and Ruben starting to record Sehki and Lorena.

They think this guy's a good fit for me? Well if Taylor can date three of us at once, why can't I go for another scoop, walking in front of his video camera.

"Sorry, could you get out of my way? You're um- uh." She saw his mouth water once she shifted up her top to the side.

"So you've been in my class for almost four months and can't even remember my name," getting in his face. "How rude! You're just as mean as a chain girl!"

"I have a name."

"No one cares," turning back to him. "You're going to explain why you're recording my friend. You gotta crush on Lorena or something," genuinely confused as commotion led to some people wondering what she was talking about, including one asking for the video.

"She has a boyfriend. Lemme guess, you Saiban jerks haven't even talked to someone outside your own country. That's gonna change."

"Hey, let me go!"

Sehki, Lorena, and Ainsley looked up to see her dragging him verbally and physically to their seat, ranging from satisfaction to understanding.

"Oh this is working better than I thought, that annoying pest finally got a taste of his own medicine."

"I'm having second thoughts about this."

"Guess some of them aren't as good socially."

They finally arrived in Coastrosity Coalition for their Coastrosity Cultural Festival: watching the giant turtle with a snake statue have skeletal confetti exploding, and the difference between the edge and insides of the city was apparent with the amount of fanfare.

That being said, Sehki, Lorena, and the girls were elated to see most of the buildings were rebuilt with more land built, asking the pilot to stop there, and hopped out, shocked to see range and defenses of the near open slums had grown in size and scale, with monitors around.

And a series of twin racers on top of the water with most of the kids watching them prepare at a startling line, with a familiar face.

"Yessenia?"

"Hey, surprised? Diplomatic immunity can get you a lot of leeway. We've built this place up. Filming for the show ended so I figured I'd give these out of touch producers a step up for the festival," yawning.

Lorena explained people could compete in duos for a snoop race, using their magic partners to race them and the ship across the moving torrent to get first place.

"Why there's only four racers?"

"Some rich background extras are mad I extended the full race over here so they told people not to show up behind the scenes," eyeing their queen. "Austrina, you have something to say?"

Sehki raised an eye brow, and jumped on one of the extras, with Damien popping out of his bag to take the place of a dolphin to the surprise of the crowd watching and in front of them.