Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 755: Unexpected Call

The group chat had been on fire since 6 AM.

Emilia saw it first because Emilia always saw it first. Unable to get a wink of sleep in the wake of the recent, universe-shattering news, she’d been watering her succulents by the window when her phone lit up, and two minutes later the succulents were on their own because the Global Awakened News notification was more important than any plant had ever been or ever would be.

ECLIPSE: KAIDEN GREY REGISTERS NEW GUILD WITH VESPERA ASHBORN AS REGENT

She called the others.

Sarah picked up mid-chew. Nutella jar open, spoon in hand, because Sarah had also seen the notification and her body had responded before her brain caught up.

Leia picked up from bed. Hair perfect, pajamas barely qualifying as clothing, phone held above her face at an angle that would’ve gotten ten thousand likes if she’d posted it.

They’d been talking for over an hour. The Eclipse announcement. The forum reactions. MyExLeftMeNowITrackGuilds hitting eight hundred thousand likes and probably ascending to a higher plane of existence. The fact that ”Eclipsing Dawn” was trending as its own hashtag even though it wasn’t the actual name. Nova Circuit dissolving. Runewoven restructured. Dozens of New Dawn staff defecting overnight.

It was, by any reasonable measure, the most eventful few hours in the history of their fandom, and all three of them were handling it with the grace and composure of women who had been professionally losing their minds over Kaiden Grey for months straight.

”I can’t breathe,” Leia announced for the fourth time. ”My lungs have stopped working. ’Eclipsing Dawn’ is way too good of a ’fuck you, Father,’ for me to shut up.”

”You’ve been saying that for forty minutes and you’re still yapping,” Sarah noted.

”Yeah. And I don’t think I’m stopping anytime soon.”

”...”

Emilia was curled up on her couch, it propped against a cushion, her floral sundress tucked around her knees. She had her awakened interface open as she was monitoring the subscriber count on Kaiden’s platform page, which had been climbing even faster than before since the announcement dropped.

”A hundred thousand new followers in the last hour,” she said quietly. ”And the stream hasn’t even started yet.”

”It’s going to be insane,” Sarah said. ”First stream as Eclipse. Everyone is going to tune in. Everyone.”

”I already blocked fourteen accounts that were spamming anti-Ashborn conspiracy stuff in the pre-chat,” Emilia added. ”They’re not even creative about it.”

”Good.” Leia stretched on her bed. ”Squash them.”

Then the incoming call notification chimed over the group chat.

All three of them saw it at the same time. Unknown number, video call, routed through the Sinners’ internal contact system. Which meant...

”Oh my god,” Leia sat up. ”Is it Kai?”

”It’s really from their end,” Emilia confirmed, checking the routing tag. Her eyes went wide. ”Could be one of the girls, though. Maybe Calypso is messing with the ’human tech’ again.”

”Pick up pick up pick up pick up-”

Sarah tapped accept.

Two identical faces filled the screen.

Split-dye hair, red on one side and blue on the other, mirrored between them. Matching grins. Mismatched contact lenses, also mirrored. They looked like a magazine editorial about twins that had gotten lost and ended up in a guild hall corridor.

”Good morning!” the one on the left said brightly.

”Who the hell are you two rainbow wannabes?” Leia hissed with narrowed eyes, clearly beyond disappointed that she didn’t get a good morning call from Kaiden.

The twins grinned wider.

”Kira,” said the left one.

”Rika,” said the right one.

”Your new coworkers,” they said together.

A beat of silence.

”Huh?” Sarah tilted her head.

”We just got hired last night.” Kira waved at the camera with her fingers. ”Media personnel for Valhalla’s Sinners. We wanted to introduce ourselves to the rest of the team since, you know, we’ll be working together from now on.”

The three moderators stared at them.

Leia was typing on her phone with one hand, searching while the call was still live. Her eyes flicked between the search results and the twin faces on screen, and after about ten seconds her thumbs stopped.

”Kira and Rika Vaughn,” she read aloud. ”Former media coordinators for New Dawn’s content division. Executive-level production staff under the guild’s direct media team.” She looked up. ”You two ran New Dawn’s content machine.”

”Guilty,” Rika said cheerfully.

Emilia’s expression cooled. The warmth she’d had thirty seconds ago was gone. New Dawn.

Enemies.

Sarah saw it and stepped in.

”It’s not like everyone at New Dawn is rotten! Alice is a real ray of sunshine and Vespera seems like a really cool mom.”

Kira giggled. ”Yeah, yeah. We were on the dark side, helping the empire enrich themselves while you, members of the resistance, did your best. But we’re on your side now. Vespera called us personally.”

Emilia studied them for a long moment, then exhaled through her nose and uncrossed her arms. She wasn’t convinced, but Sarah’s word carried weight and the twins’ energy was hard to distrust.

”So,” Leia said, putting it down and giving them her full attention. ”What’s it like? Working for Kai in person?”

Rika’s face answered before her mouth did. She looked tired. Happily tired. The kind you get from not sleeping because you loved every second of the night that kept you up.

”Aria had me doing her makeup at six in the morning,” she said. ”An hour. One full hour of foundation, concealer, blending, setting, while she talked to her mom on a call about how amazing Kaiden is.”

”At six in the morning,” Kira repeated from beside her, just so the number landed twice.

”She told her mom about a place he took her to once and I thought she was going to start crying from how happy the memory made her,” Rika continued. ”While I was doing her lower lash line. I almost poked her eye out.”

Leia’s laugh came out as a bark. ”That’s the most Aria thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

”Luna is a blast,” Rika went on. ”She was gaming on a handheld twenty minutes before a combat sortie and trash-talking a lobby full of strangers who had no idea they were getting flamed by the Storm Valkyrie.”

”Nyx is...” Kira tilted her hand. ”Sly. She watches everything and says very little and then drops one sentence that makes you realize she understood the entire situation before you finished explaining it.”

”And the monster girls...” Rika paused, and a visible shiver ran through her shoulders. ”I helped Calypso adjust her armor straps this morning. A real demoness. Red skin, horns, tail swaying behind her, muscles that could snap me in half. She called me a ’resourceful minion who shows a lot of promise’ and I think I liked it? And Bastet was sunbathing by the window, purring, actual purring, with her tail doing that slow cat thing, and I had to remind myself that both of these women are boss-level monsters that would normally kill humans on sight.”

Kira shook her head. ”What Kaiden pulled off with those two... there’s nothing else like it in the world. It’s still surreal.”

The moderators were quiet for a moment. Hearing about these women through streams and videos was one thing. Hearing someone describe brushing shoulders with them that same day was another.

Emilia spoke first, and her voice was very small.

”I want to rub Bastet’s ears so bad.”

”They twitch,” Kira said. ”When she’s happy, they twitch. It took everything I had not to reach out.”

”I would simply die,” Emilia whispered.

”You know what I want?” Leia said, and her voice had that particular tone that made Sarah instinctively reach for her Nutella jar. ”I want to take Calypso to the beach. I want the sun beating down on her gorgeous red skin and I want to use her thick, muscular thighs as a lap pillow while the waves crash behind us and she feeds me tasty coconut juice and calls me a good girl who should get some shut eye.”

She wasn’t done just yet.

”And then, obviously, five giant muscled dudes with giant egos would approach to hit on us, seeing two absolute bombshells vulnerable. Calypso would lash out, saying ’my Darling will take your heads off blah blah blah.’ But I’d challenge them for a game of beach volleyball, two against five. Me and Cali versus all five. And we absolutely destroy them. Total domination. They don’t score a single point. And then as they feel their dicks shrink and shrivel into nothingness, I high-five my hot demon friend and then go right back to my lap pillow.”

She delivered this entire fantasy without pausing for breath, staring into the middle distance, as if she could see the beach and the volleyball net and Calypso’s thighs with perfect clarity.

”...”

”...”

”...”

”...”

Four faces on the call. None of them had words yet.

Leia blinked and came back to reality. ”What? Did my internet time out?”