"You do that," Halma said carelessly which she immediately regretted upon seeing an aggressive message from Riveth.
[Riveth: No!! Why did you let her stay there?! Who gave you the permission to permit her to stay over there? Take it back!]
"I mean, no. You're not allowed to stay here anymore." Halma said after getting her pride stomped by Riveth for recklessly voicing out her opinions.
"Fily is not staying here anymore? Why? Where are you going, Fily?" Gem suddenly spoke which surprised the both of them even if Fily was already anticipating for her to wake up.
"T-That's just nonsense. I'm not going anywhere, I'll stay here with you." Fily said and placed her cheek beside Gem's for a greeting while Gem was still stretching and yawning from being woken up from her slumber.
"Let's talk more about this outside," Halma said with a more serious tone now after just realizing why Fily was insisting on making her talk beside Gem.
"Yes, my Queen." Fily suddenly said with a very polite tone which almost shocked Halma, only if she didn't know Fily's real identities.
"Come," Halma motioned Fily to follow her and so she did, leaving Gem alone in her room to continue her suffering once again.
"Wait, what time is it?" Gem thought to herself before proceeding to look at her Stat-hut with sleepy eyes which immediately turned awake after seeing 8:00 pm on the clock.
"Four hours till midnight!" Gem panicked and stood up to proceed with the next batch of her daily exercises to complete today which were mostly the discipline exercises and more physical exercises which were always time-consuming.
***
"Do you realize what you just did, Fily?" Halma said and faced Fily with a frown.
"What? I just needed to make sure you didn't give Gem the sleeping potion I put in your wine."
"And do you think I'm that irresponsible to give a literal child a wine to drink?" Halma countered with an annoyed face.
"Oh, right…" Fily said and scratched the back of her head while laughing nervously.
"What happened to you, Fily? Did you go through some malfunction down there? Is the battery I gave you not working? Why are you so out of it-?"
"I'm fine. I just configured some of my systems to malfunction because apparently, Mom is spying on me without my permission, so I thought I needed to do something about it by myself."
"Why didn't you just tell me? I could order for your mom to stop spying on you…" Halma said with concern which Fily never even thought about as a possible solution to her problem.
"It's okay. I'll just fix myself in my sleep." Fily said and flashed a small smile to Halma before moving on to their next topic. 'As if she wasn't the one who benefited from mom's spying on me.'
"Did you know about my brother's involvement in all of this?" Fily asked while also giving Halma the benefit of the doubt. 'No way she put the island in danger while she was still here, did she?'
"I didn't know about it, but I gave permission to Riveth to do whatever she thinks she needed to help those crooks reaching this overly secured island. I just thought Venedette was getting too comfortable in here-"
"Oh no, you didn't…" Fily denied while shaking her head.
"Oh yes I did, that's my specialty after all," Halma said with that wicked smile of hers which almost made Fily cry.
"You put my friends and all the people on this island in danger! What kind of Queen are you!?" Fily lashed out and immediately fixed her posture for getting carried away and too emotional for someone intelligent.
"I should have let them burn this place down to the ground, I don't know what it is but ever since you stepped on this island, you've become too emotional just like Venedette! Remember Fily, you're not supposed to get too attached. I let you join this team for only one reason and that doesn't include you investing too much in human emotions! Got it!?" Halma lashed out and immediately shifted back to her elegant self.
"You let me join this tournament, so that means you can't make me go back there, can you?" Fily tried her patience once again but Riveth was the only one who became furious about what she said.
"Just let her be, Riveth." Halma tried to convince Riveth too but Fily's mom even threatened to go to Yvandir instead just to take her child down.
"Then do that. I'll stay here and complete the tournament whether you like it or not, Mom." Fily said to Halma which she know was having a call with her mother right now.
"She said just you wait." Halma delivered the message before turning off the noisy call to redeem her Queenly self away from Riveth's insights and nagging most of the time.
"I want to have one last bonding time with you guys before leaving next week, would that be possible?" Halma asked formally and immediately stopped Fily from answering. "I should ask Venedette." She said and proceeded to go down the hallway and on her own way now, leaving Fily confused and bothered them most about the thought of her mom coming here just to get her to come back to the Queen's castle against her will.
"Thank goodness I turned off most of my recording system for the meantime." Fily thought to herself before proceeding back to Gem's clinic room to tell her the story of what just happened in the span of eight hours while she was suffering on her own in this room.
"Did the potion work?"
"Yep, thank you for that. It still feels weird tho," Gem said which immediately made her embarrassed about the fact that she was now growing.
"It's okay, you'll get used to it, soon," Fily said and patted her head.
'Thank goodness the potions did not make my evolution malfunction.' Gem thought to herself while keeping the fact that every time she uses a potion, she had a chance of having a malfunction with her evolution in doing so.