Chapter 152 - Dodged

"Wait here, please. We will process your emergency meeting with our leader in a moment," the commander said after dropping Venedette and the others off inside the checkpoint where they were welcomed by a little guest receiving area space.

"Please sit down," a female lobbyist said and motioned to the chairs in front of them while going to the counter.

Leviathan looked at each other before deciding to take a seat awkwardly but was immediately interrupted when their presence was called by another lady coming from the hallway.

"Your emergency meeting had been accepted by only the Princess could come," she said, which made the kids look at each other while Venedette nodded and immediately followed the lady to where she came from.

"Why aren't we invited? Aren't we supposed to help?" Von complained while looking around which Lei noticed and decided to pull him back to his seat beside him.

"Shh, Venedette can handle this. We should just stay quiet and pay attention to our Stat-huts, we never know when Petunia or Gem might contact us."

"We should've just stayed in that line, why do we even need to fall in line when I'm literally a Prince and my mom is a Princess?!"

"Shh." Lei tried to prevent Von from talking too loud again.

"We also shouldn't stay there, who knows if the attacker will attack us again?" Fily said while observing Von's reaction who, on the other hand, was totally oblivious of Lei's suspicion and was just focused on finding out who did that to Gem.

"Why would someone do that to Gem? Do you guys have any idea who did that? Because I don't. Even if Gem is a little bit famous, she's not as famous as me to get targeted like that, so why?" Von muttered to himself while the other two who were listening to him looked at each other with meaningful glances.

Fily's glance resembled the "Told you it's not him." tone while Lei's glance was just full of confusion to Fily about what Von just said.

"But weren't you also up there when that happened? Didn't you see anyone else besides or close to you? Because looking from the ice bullets, I'm fairly sure they came from the same angle where you were at that time," Lei said without sounding too suspicious at Von and a little bit of judgment at the same time.

Von's eyebrows furrowed because of what Lei said, but instead of defending himself, he went into a deep thinking stance which confused Lei even more.

[Fily: It's not him, why won't you believe me? Someone purposely made the bullets come from that angle so we would suspect Von but I'm not dumb to fall victim to that old trick.]

Lei read Fily's message and pouted.

"You're right, while I was watching the hail storm, I thought I felt something falling from the sky so I avoided it. Could it be perhaps the ice bullets that hit Gem?! Ahh! I didn't get to see it clearly because I wasn't paying attention and totally thought that those were just stray bullets from the storm! Why haven't I thought about this earlier?!" Von ranted, even more, confirming Fily's theory and scrapping Lei's suspicion.

"Wait, so you dodged those bullets without even thinking about it?" Lei said, asking for confirmation which he then got when Von nodded. 

"Which makes you the primary target of those bullets," Fily said without even looking at them.

"But what if they knew that Von would dodge the bullets in the first place and just really wanted to frame Von for it?" Lei asked the same thing that Fily was proposing earlier which made Fily look at him like he just stole her idea.

"If that's the case then they're probably smart," said Fily, which was then countered by Lei's pessimistic thoughts immediately.

"Or they could have been just really lucky," he said and shrugged.

A few moments of silence passed right after Lei's suggestion. But because there were still several things that were bothering Lei about his suspicion of Von, he decided to break the silence by directly asking Von about it instead of going to Fily and talking to her about Von behind his back.

"So you really didn't see anybody from up there?" Lei asked calmly while looking directly into Von's eyes to watch out for his body language.

"No…" Von responded regretfully.

"They were watching us, which means they could still be watching us right now," Fily suddenly said and stood up.

"Where are you going?" Lei asked while Von was still busy thinking on his own.

"I'll just grab a coffee." Fily did not even bother looking back at Lei while saying that and walked directly towards the vending machine which was also conveniently situated just beside the tower's window.

The headquarters were located on the highest floor of the checkpoint's tower which Fily thought was a great start to her mini-quest of finding who was behind the ice bullets that hit Gem and almost framed Von who would have also been her first suspect if she didn't notice Petunia's disappearance that Lei wouldn't also believe.

"I hope she finds what she's looking for and returns safely as soon as possible," Fily thought while waiting for her instant coffee.

Other than Gem and Petunia's problem and their problem with crossing the checkpoint, Fily also had to deal with her sleepiness that was already kicking earlier than her usual time.

"What's this? Why am I feeling sleepy already? I need to last until tomorrow, I shouldn't be feeling sleepy right now. Did I overwork myself? That couldn't be, I barely did anything tiring except for riding those roller coasters- oh. That could probably be the reason why I feel so tired and sleepy right now."

"Should I use this waiting time to sleep and just tell them to wake me up after?" Fily added to her thoughts and finally received the coffee that just finished mixing in her cup.

"Ahh, it's either I choose to sleep or find the culprits now…" Fily contemplated while sitting down back on her chair not far from Von and Lei before even getting the chance to drink her coffee which made her drowsy ultimately fall asleep in an instant the moment her legs went to rest.