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“No, I meant the other alliances.”

“Oh. So for starters, we have the alien warriors from my sister, the…”

CHAPTER 18: JUVENILE CORRECTIONAL FACILITY

The clusters of different armies start piling up as early as noon the next day.

Lily the Beauty watches in her newly gifted unzipped camouflage hoodie and thin pink camisole as Every’s beloved mafia gang arrives through the second gate.

Also known as the green slider tube.

The whole group of fifty or so tough-looking mafia cronies crowds the hall, making it somehow feel small and suffocating for her. They are clad in black from earpieces to boots, and colored in tattoos from head to toe, still looking a little disoriented.

Probably from sliding down through the winding tube, she guesses.

It must have been too unserious for these dark-hearted criminals.

The nutcracker guards in their neon tights greet the rest of the group with firm handshakes as the leader, a certain man with the exact same blonde stubble as Lactose, comes up to her and her man.

“Yo, boss.”

“Niko,” her man greets him with a wide grin.

He smiles back at Every before quickly turning to her, as if she made his mafia senses tingle from the potential danger she could unleash.

Not much, unfortunately.

She’s way too tiny and delicate and fragile to do any great harm.

“Lily, Kolyan. Kolyan, Lily,” Every introduces them simply. Kolyan, who Every calls ‘Niko’ for some reason unknown to Lily, gives her a small, barely there nod.

Then her man embraces Kolyan, who gives him a friendly smack on the ass.

Totally platonic.

Lily Lynola Lenorela just smiles blankly through the whole procession.

Nah, she sure isn’t jealous of them.

Though her man just showed more affection to a good friend of his than she had ever received from him.

But whatever.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, lady,” the very good friend of Every tells her. He brings her hand up to kiss the knuckles, and Lily guesses that perhaps he is simply an affectionate man in his nature, and she had misjudged his gestures to her boyfriend.

Yeah, that’s the case, all right.



“Were you just jealous? For me?” Every whispers into her ear all too smugly for her liking. The criminal brotherhood had long since left to go meet the sugar plum fairy, only to be replaced by another very peculiar group. An even more peculiar one, really.

“The Tuffman Lumberjacks,” Every introduces them as they start appearing at the bottom of the slide. “They come from the north, and are distant relatives of mine. They’re where I got my bear-shifter genes from, ya know, Lily?”

“So you are descended from them? They don’t look old enough to even be your grandparents.” Lily, the strange girl she is, manages to misunderstand him.

“Nah, they’re like, distant cousins, understand?”

Every, Every, ever patient with his sweet girl.