Chapter 206 - First Meeting

"Well, that was fun!" Fily said when Von let her down in the entrance of the castle's stairs and then suddenly went silent when Gem unintentionally bumped into her and almost fell down if it wasn't for her instinctive super puff.

"Whoa! That was close," Gem said upon recovering her balance by clinging on to Fily.

But not even a moment later, Petunia came shouting at them to "Watch out!" as her speed was not decreasing even after Gem had already stopped running.

"Whoa, calm down!" Von said as his hawk's eye caught up to what was going to happen and immediately flew to pull Petunia's gummy cloud higher so that she wouldn't hit the two girls on the face.

"Ahhhh!" Petunia screamed and then covered her face with her Gummy cloud-made carpet she was riding on to freeride behind Gem's anger speeding.

"Watch out!" Fily said and shielded Gem with her body, preparing to use her super puff if it was necessary, but when she saw Von zooming back to their location, she knew she wouldn't need it anymore and just hugged Gem until they were safe.

"Are you guys okay?" Lei came rushing to them after seeing what happened and worried even more when he saw Von carrying the Gummy cloud with something small inside of it.

"What happened?" he asked, shifting his focus from Gem and Fily to the Gummy cloud carpet that Von was carrying like a sack of coconuts which also caught the two girl's attention..

"Hey! Put me down! Did I shrink? Why do I feel so small?" Petunia's voice said, sounding thinner than her normal human voice which was the most familiar to the rest of them instead of her normal human voice.

"Petunia?" Fily asked and stepped forward as Von was laying the carpet-made Gummy cloud to the ground carefully, exposing a furry white cat inside of it, curled like a soft ball of fluff coming out of her egg for the first time.

"Petunia! You're back!" Gem said and ran to her excitedly.

"I'm back? Did I go somewhere? Was I gone?" Petunia asked with her big cat eyes that everyone missed while Gem was hugging her little furry body and carrying her up.

"I don't know if I should be happy about this but I missed your cat version more, Petunia," Von said and flew three steps away from them while Fily and Lei were just speechless.

"Is this a good thing for us?" Lei muttered to Fily while still watching Gem play with the cat version of Petunia like she had not seen her for over a decade already.

"Technically yes, but also no," Fily said, a little bit conflicted about the results of the potion that Heize made for Petunia before disappearing.

"What do you mean?" Lei said, finally looking at Fily and paying attention to what she was going to say.

"Well, this means that the effect of the potion from Heize would only last for one to two days, but on the other hand, at least Petunia would still be able to use the perks that she has collected with her feline body for so long instead of starting again from zero."

"So are you saying Petunia's powers are back and she's now back to normal?"

"Yes, but she's still not safe. We need to have that foreign machine that Heize was using as soon as possible so we can finally save Petunia for real. Things would be really hard for us if Petunia's formula runs out even before the tournament."

"But the tournament's still far, what do we plan on doing now?" Lei said worriedly and looked back at Gem and Von who were tossing Petunia back and forth to each other.

"We need to train her human form and do something to make her shapeshift more predictable or even controllable," Fily said even though she knew Lei would not understand everything that she was saying before moving closer to the group and starting to play with them as if nothing just happened.

"So nothing? We can't do anything about it now?" Lei said before going inside the castle instead of playing with them.

"I heard what you two were talking about," Gem whispered to Fily while still tossing Petunia back and forth from Von, "And don't worry, I made sure to distract her so she wouldn't be worried about it," Gem added and laughed while hearing Petunia's high pitched screams.

"ENOUGH!!" Petunia shouted and was immediately surrounded with her giant gummy cloud in a defensive form, suddenly gaining her gummy manipulation powers back as if it was a memory that was just suddenly recalled.

"Oh, peace!" Gem said with a cute little peace sign and quickly hid behind Fily who was not involved in their naughty little shenanigans at all.

"I'll let this go since you helped me get out of that basement, but try to play with me again and you'll see who exactly it is you're dealing with!" Petunia said firmly and pivoted her gummy around to take her back inside the palace slowly while it was fixing herself which made Gem relieved while Von was just avoiding their gazes and flying away as if he was not involved in any of that at all.

[Venedette: Please come to the first room to the right of the second floor, Sir Fred could not find any of you so let's not make things harder for him and just come here on your own, okay?] Venedette suddenly sent them a message calling for their presence in a room that they had never visited before.

"First room to the right of the second floor… the communication room?" Fily said and noticed Gem looking at her as if she wanted to ask her something.

"What is it?" Fily said and fixed her expression to look less haggard and more like the old Fily who was always smiling despite the situation around them.

"Did Venedette just really call us for a meeting again? After all those days of not talking to us very well?" Gem asked with puppy eyes.

"Of course, I'm guessing there was something important that happened while we were sleeping ahead of her and she's going to share it with us now."

"Like what?" Gem said while skipping around and around Fily to not get ahead of her and match her walking speed.

"Like…" Fily trailed off and only showered Gem with her signature smile before running ahead to the second floor.

But of course, because her speed was far less inferior than Gem's she was able to come to the meeting room last where Lei was already at the farthest corner opposite Petunia while Von was just sitting patiently on one of the sculptures at the ceiling.

"Wow, I have never seen a room so digital before," Gem said while marveling the shiny black floor and walls up to the ceiling, probably a screen but since there was nothing showing on it yet, Gem was only preparing herself for the digital shift later, especially when Venedette clicked a button on the remote that she was holding, automatically making the ceiling open and drop a whole 360 black screen that immediately turned into an open screen of a meeting platform the second it stopped moving.

"Are we all ready?" Venedette asked without even context which made Gem and the others very much curious.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, we're going to meet with three other squads in five minutes now and I want you to stay true to yourselves. We don't want to show them something fake. We need to be real and credible enough to be their teammates."

"We're going to have new teammates?" Gem said while being the only one to take a proper seat in the room where Venedette was still walking around and looking very nervous.

"No, we were offered a temporary partnership for the early stages of the game," Venedette said, which only made Gem even more confused.

"That's allowed?" 

"Yes, it's just not popular since backstabbing is very common in this industry," Fily said and then finally sat beside Gem as the second member to finally sit in the proper chair in front of the circular table around the digital globe screen in the middle of the black digital room.

"Please go down from there, Von," Venedette said to Von who was sitting on one of the tall golem statues beside the entrance door.

"Tch," Von said and then jumped down to sit beside Gem.

"You too please," Venedette added, pointing to Lei and Petunia who was on the opposite corners of the room.

One hiding in the dark and one looking like a lost ball of shining white fluff in the dark.

"Who are these groups we're having a meeting with?" Fily asked, making all eyes look at Venedette who was still obviously still nervous about their first meeting.

"The group of Anais, Pearl of the east, and KumaReina's team," Venedette said before making a swiping motion with her finger and filling the whole room with different colors and light.