LTSV - Harbinger of Change - 34 (Patreon)

At least he only makes me deal with one body at a time,' Mira allowed.

Adra stepped into the space that Mason left behind and she was tempted to take his arm, but decided not to. Adra had gone to a lot of trouble to keep the Bellamys sweet through the use of his alternate identity and she didn't want to risk messing that up until she was ready to cut them free altogether. Soneares still needed time to finish studying up on local law without Virgil flexing his power over Mira's legal standing just to prove he could, otherwise Mira would have ditched this party altogether.

"Illya," Julian greeted Adra. "I don't know if you'll remember, but I was a year behind you at Tanford. Your brother Lev and I were in the same cohort."

Adra looked him over. "This does not speak in your favor," he said coolly. "Lev ran with a bad set in school and still does."

To give him all due credit, Julian didn't flinch. "I recall from seeing him at parties. I was hoping he'd calmed down after graduation. It sounds like he hasn't. I'm sorry to hear that."

"He has his uses," Adra allowed. "Our father finds work for him that suits his nature. He turned to address Alan and the others. "Gentlemen, would you be so kind as to find a seat for the ladies? I'm sure they're tired of staying in one place by now."

"I see a table over there with places for all of us," Randall volunteered. He offered Cece his arm and she took it. "Let's grab it."

As a group, they abandoned Julian to Adra's tender mercies.

"I'm seeing what you mean about the Volkovs," Randall muttered to Alan once they were out of earshot. "I didn't before. I see it now."

"I'm glad Luca stayed home," Bryn muttered. Then he looked at Mira. "Did you try the beef pastries? What do you think about the sauce?"

Mira sighed. "You saw me eat in the car."

Still, she tried one and—huh. That was an interesting taste. It had the full bodied tang of red wine and it reminded her of something she'd had before. Not the garum-like fish sauce she'd originally grown up with, but something similar. "I think they soaked the mustard seeds in a fortified red wine rather than vinegar and then ground it with olive oil to make an emulsion."

Will snapped his fingers and pointed at Bryn. "That's it. See, I told you she'd know."

Randall squinted at Mira. "Are you sure you don't cook?"

"You don't have to cook in order to have an educated palate," Mira muttered and ate another pastry. The beef was a little dry, but the sauce helped with that.

Thankfully, the Bellamys were fully occupied with hosting for once and Viola didn't get any more time to come bother Mira, so they were able to stay for an appropriate length of time and then sneak out of the party without Helena noticing they'd gone.

Adra drove them back, having shaken off Julian Cross.

Mira checked her phone and was pleased to see a bounty of likes and comments on the post she'd made before the party. It had been a quick snippet showing off her dress for the event, but there were already some questions about Viola's awakening.

She'd seen people with their phones out, livestreaming, when Viola busted out her butterflies. They'd been fast enough that she'd probably done that trick a couple of times and had evidently gone viral.

Mira put together a quick all-bulletin message across all her socials about how proud she was of her sister and how happy she was that she could finally talk about Viola's big news. It was meaningless positivity fluff, but she knew from past experience that she'd be judged harshly for anything else in her initial reaction.

It wasn't until she could get into the comment section that she could air her 'concerns' about Viola being so young and what if she doesn't get to finish high school?

The majority of followers tended to be in their late twenties and early thirties, so she didn't have to wait long before someone threw her the line she needed.

[MrryBrry89: Hey, I'm looking at this picture and V looks kind of young. Sorry to pry, but how old is she? Is she old enough to be doing this?]

Mira scarcely had time to compose her reply before MrryBrry89's comment got pushed to the top of the comment section with replies.

[1PunchMan: Somebody said it!]

[AmandaK: I heard LS hired a bunch of teens, but not for frontline combat. There was something about a passive XP share?]

[1PunchMan: Yeah, apparently the Guild Permits let active hunters share XP with everyone on the bench. It's so they can get some levels without having to kill monsters right away. One of the moms was on the Morning Show today talking about it. I guess she got a lot of hate mail about letting her kid sign up and she wanted to say her piece.]

[AmandaK: OK, but those kids are all like 19 and about to turn 20. I'm looking at V's socials and she JUST turned 17, like a month ago.]

[Oroboros88: yikes.gif]

[TimTamtheJimJam: Hey, didn't LS release a statement that Samira is signed on with them? Why different guilds?]

[TimTamtheJimJam: Also, did Samira get a party? If so I wanna see the outfit!]

[Oroboros88: lol, new meat]

[1PunchMan: Tell me ur new here without telling me ur new here.]

[TimTamtheJimJam: ???]

[1PunchMan: Her family is weird. We ignore them because our Queen is too classy for that **.]

"We might want to push a statement about hiring underaged hunters," Mira commented out loud to no one in particular. "Viola went viral and people on my page just figured out she's seventeen. It's not going over well."

"Surprise, surprise," Alan sighed. He leaned forward in his seat to spy on her screen. "What else are they saying?"

"Mostly comments about my dress," Mira told him. "Next time we do an event, I'll post a group shot. People are running out of questions to ask about the Dungeon, but they are requesting a Q&A video."

"Oh yeah, you should do one," Alan told her. "You've already got the platform and you're already comfortable on screen."

Mira squinted at him. "I think the Guild will want that to go through official channels."

He shrugged. "Maybe, but I think it's a waste to not take advantage of what you've already got. People are scared. They want a hot girl to come tell them everything is under control."

"That would be a lie," Mira scoffed.

"Not entirely," Adra interjected, surprising her. "We have a reasonable plan of action. Syrith tells me that the public doesn't entirely trust the reassurances they're getting from the government. As long as you don't speak for regions outside of San Aurelio, it might help calm the city and get the press off of the barricade before a goblin gets one of them."

Mira pursed her lips and set her phone down. "I'll think about it."

The problem with thinking about it was that thinking about it led to Mira a realization that Adra was right, at least in part.

She'd retreated to the penthouse as soon as they got back and pretended to go to bed. Adra followed her, but he let her be quiet with her whirling thoughts. Eventually, she stopped pretending to sleep and got her laptop out.

She did another review of the public announcements that the president had made recently. He said a lot of pretty things about maintaining order and returning to work, but he didn't give a lot of raw information about why anyone should do that. It was clear that he wanted to turn the economy back on and that was his sole agenda.

This world had experienced a recent epidemic. It had been some kind of flu variant that shut down the entire world for nearly two years before heroic international efforts finally produced an effective treatment for it. It was clear that the president was terrified of having his economy power back off just as soon as he'd gotten it started again. So no one really trusted him when he said it was safe to go about your life, so long as you stayed outside of the barricades.

People were scared. They had a lot of questions. They weren't getting any answers. Pretty soon, they'd start looking for those answers themselves and that was how you got civil unrest. That was the last thing they needed right now.

As loathe as she was to insert herself into the narrative of this crisis, Alan was right. She had a good platform and people already recognized her from the global alerts.

"I can't do this by myself," she muttered to herself.

"What do you need?" Adra asked as he laid his arm across her lap. She caught his hand and threaded their fingers together. "You have only to ask."

"I'll need to draft an announcement," Mira was half thinking outloud and half replying. "I'll need someone to review it and we'll probably need to set up an email address to receive questions. Depending on the response, I'll need help sifting through the replies to choose our list. I should probably not shoot this on my phone, either. We'll need a better camera and a spot to film."

Adra thought on that for a moment. "It's it a good thing that one of my new hunters is living with a videographer, then."

Mira paused and turned to stare. "Who? How do I not know this?"

He smirked at her. "It's the young man who came with the Shield."

Note:

Luca coming in clutch. He's not just Bryn's boytoy, although I'm sure he wouldn't mind it if he were.

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Tanford - Stanford