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With the notion of getting funny brownies dangled over his head like a carrot over a horse, or perhaps simply because he too feels like the place is getting crowded, the warlord gives them a toothy smile and a thumbs up.

The non-man, whose height rivals Every the CEO’s but looks more like a friendly fisherman uncle than a mysterious billionaire, snaps his fingers. At once, all the aliens quiet down their chit-chat and turn to him.

Lily raises her left eyebrow in surprise at the obedience and coordination of the swordsmen and women, so unlike her and her fellow university students. Last summer, when there was a fire evacuation rehearsal, some even stayed up in class, ignoring the alarms, in favor of protecting their chrome dinosaur from the cactus.

If there’s a real fire, they’re all so fucked.

Unlike the blue bird alien folk.

In a file of two by two, them good folks follow Queeny Darling, Lily Lesire Lesirana, and their leader down the hall into a grand ballroom Lily had never seen before. “It’s not used often, but it’s in pretty good shape,” the sugar plum fairy assures her guests as they arrive.

Nah, being in good shape is too low of a description for it. The whole hall is massive, bigger than Lily’s middle school and college auditoriums combined. Melted sugar shaped into glassy orchids and leaves twirl around the massive columns around the hall, columns even thicker than Every’s tree trunk thighs, or corded biceps. Or even his infamously wide shoulders. Probably big enough to fit a small shed in each, actually. And Lily counted either twenty-five or twenty-seven of these.

“I’m impressed,” she mutters out loud, feeding into Queeny’s ever-growing ego.

“Of course you are.”

CHAPTER 19: LILY THE WEIRDO

“Every, why is the plot scattered everywhere? I don’t even know what we’re gonna do next.” Lily asks her man as they are waiting back at the same old place the next morning, ready to greet the last of the rag-tag travelers. Their alliance sure is strong now, after having Evera’s warriors join them.

“Because our story is an ultimate stereotype mashup, sugartits. So it sure can get a little insane.”

Lily nods because her man is always right, then teases him. “You sound like an ad selling me some unusable product, Every.”

Love, young, innocent love, sure has this strong effect on people: makes you blind and deaf to your baby’s faults, they say.

Every grins down at her, his puppy eyes shining with pride.

And that’s enough to stop her pounding little heart for a second or two.

“Good morning,” says a random salaryman who shows up out of nowhere, shattering the blissful moment completely. “And greetings from Everhard Pharmaceutical Corporation. Would you like some blue pills for twenty dollars a packet?”

Lily just stares at him, genuinely surprised.

On further inspection, Lily finds out that he has, in fact, slid down from the green tube like all the others. A phone call from Every’s brother had also informed them since this morning of these folks’ coming, but still, it is quite a bummer.

“These people are getting more and more random, Every. Why’s there even a salaryman here?” She asks her man. “Ain’t the icy alien folk more than enough?”

Every pats her messy hair. “Technically, they’re more than enough, sugar, but papa insisted that my brother send them. And those are bio-chemists, by the way.”

Just like the subject Lily failed in high school, among all the others.

And no wonder they all look super boring, just like how Lily envisioned scientists to be, not that she’s ever seen one in real life, outside of pop-culture media.

“I cannot believe that magic is, in fact, reality,” the random salaryman—correction, scientist—continues to say to them. “Although I fathom that it may simply be a higher level of science and understanding than our knowledge on Earth.”

Cool.

Now that Lily looks closely, he sure enough is wearing a bleached white lab coat and goggles. How the photoreceptors in her eyes first mistook him for a plain Jim of a salaryman, she does not know.

More plain Jims and plain Janes filter in through the tube, looking ever more confused than the ones before them. And just about time, when Lily is about to ask her man the thirtieth question of that morning, his phone rings.

Every swipes up his phone, the newest edition of the year, so unlike Lily’s old one with its permanently cracked screen and no case. And it’s his papa on the line, as always, checking in on his sweet little baby boy, all grown up now.

It is quite sappy, but who wouldn’t sell their house and car and degree for an impossibly nice parent like that.

Every really is privileged.