Chapter 749: Pitch

Kira and Rika looked at each other. Their grins matched.

"Glad you asked."

Kaiden watched the shift happen. The fangirl energy turned focused.

"Frankly, the mood isn’t good for a proper pitch we’re used to giving. It’ll just sound overly desperate and too pushy for this setting." Kira waved her own word away before looking at Aria with a small smile. "I’ll just ask. Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone do your makeup before streams? Someone who actually knows how skin tones and lighting work together?"

Aria’s chin lifted.

’What kind of girl wouldn’t want to look as pretty as possible on camera? Especially my beautiful moon’ Kaiden thought warmly, instantly understanding that these twins were truly no amateurs.

Of all the women in the room, the Moon Valkyrie was the one who had the most to say about this particular topic. Kaiden felt her grip on his arm tighten by a fraction, and he smiled inwardly because he knew exactly what was coming.

"I’ve been doing my own makeup since I was sixteen," Aria said. Her voice was measured, pleasant, and carried the undertone of a woman who was not asking for feedback. "I did my research. I know what my face looks like under every kind of lighting. I’ve been doing fine."

The only time someone else had handled makeup for her was the first intimate video she’d ever recorded, back when she was strapped for cash and was forced to make decisions she did not want to. Kaiden’s presence back then turned the experience pleasant and a good memory to look back to, but back then, while the makeup was applied onto her face by the artist, a random female employee of Untainted Holes, she was deathly anxious.

The end result had been gorgeous. Breathtaking, even. But the memory lived next to the knot in her stomach, the shakiness in her fingers, and the girl in the mirror who wasn’t sure she could go through with what she’d agreed to do.

"You’ve been doing better than fine," Kira replied, nodding along. "You’re stunning. All of you are. That’s not in question."

"But?" Aria’s silver eyes sharpened.

"No buts!" Kira raised her palms, grinning wide. "Genuinely. You do great work. We just noticed a few things while studying your content and we thought it might be worth bringing up, if you’re open to it."

Rika was already reaching into her crossbody bag, a sly little smile on her face that said she’d been waiting for this part. She pulled out a tablet, tapped it twice, and turned it around. The screen showed a page of notes, dense, color-coded, organized by date. She flipped to a second page. A third. The handwriting was small and the margins were full.

"Video fourteen, at the twenty-two-minute mark." Rika glanced up from the screen with a knowing look. "The overhead light created a glare across your forehead that washed out the highlight you’d applied to your cheekbones. You’d set the contour perfectly, but the bounce light flattened it."

Aria blinked, opened her media platform, navigated to the video in question and through a lot of scrutinizing squinting, she saw what she did not want to see: a mistake.

"Video twenty-one, at the fifth minute mark. Your base matched your skin tone in warm light, but when the sun dropped and the ambient shifted cooler, the foundation pulled slightly orange against your neck."

The room was quiet.

Rika winked. "There are a lot more, but look. We all know that these are minor nitpicks that barely any viewer notices, much less cares about. We also know you don’t always ’need’ perfect makeup. For lengthy combat streams, it’ll become smeared from sweat and blood... Ideally just sweat. Same for your other type of content..."

"It’s still good to set a perfect baseline!" Aria protested. "It’s not like I wear obstructive helmets, so on combat streams I do want to look pretty..."

"You’re all really pretty with no makeup at all," Kaiden spoke up, then received a side-eye from his loving Moon Valkyrie, telling him that, well, his opinion did not hold much weight in this conversation.

After all, Aria knew that her boyfriend was utterly bewitched by her, makeup or no makeup.

But she wasn’t a girl who’d settle for ’more than beautiful enough’ - she had to be more beautiful than all other women in existence.

How else could she proudly stand by Kaiden’s side and show off the most amazing man in the universe as hers?

"Bruh, can we move on?" Luna yawned.

"Shush!" Aria hissed, continuing, "As for the adult videos... Well, my face is rarely the focus, but I think Kai really likes it when my makeup gets slightly runny in bed, so..."

She bashfully elected to stop there.

The twins just grinned before Kira moved on. "There’s also the time factor. You spend how long on your routine before each appearance? Forty minutes? An hour? Blending, setting, checking yourself on the preview feed, adjusting..."

"... A lot." Aria murmured reluctantly.

"What if instead of doing all of that yourself," Kira said, "you just sat in a chair? Chatted with the girls. Browsed your phone. Discussed important stuff. You’re all businesswomen, running your own business that has profit margins I can’t even begin to imagine. Your time is extremely valuable, and it’ll only become a scarcer and scarcer commodity."

Rika took over with the sliest of sparks in her eyes. "But perhaps most important of all... What if you could..." She glanced at Kaiden, and the look she gave him was all mischief and no apology. "Call someone and give him your full attention while we handled the rest?"

Aria looked at Kaiden.

He looked back.

Her silver eyes had gone from territorial to calculating to openly interested in the span of twenty seconds, and Kaiden could see the exact thought crossing her mind: an extra hour before every stream where she wasn’t hunched over a mirror blending concealer, but was instead curled up on a call with him, talking, laughing, just being close.

"...You’ve made a few good points," Aria spoke, trying her best to resist the urge to hire the twins on the spot.

Kira and Rika exchanged a quick look of triumph that was not one bit subtle.

"Now, a completely different note!" Kira clapped her hands together once. "We’ve seen your monster cooking streams, and honestly? Some of our absolute favorites. But here’s the thing." She held up a finger, her expression turning curious. "How long does the prep actually take? Not the cooking. The everything-before-the-cooking."

Kaiden’s hand paused in Bastet’s hair for a moment.

He thought about it. The monster cookbook first, flipping through pages and debating recipes. Then the market trip. Browsing the stalls, comparing cuts, haggling with vendors who knew awakened fighters had deep pockets and priced accordingly. Then hauling everything back. Setting up the kitchen. Prepping the workspace.

Six hours, give or take. For one cooking session.

Six hours he could spend training. Grinding. Working on strategies.

Or just sitting on this couch with Bastet in his lap and Aria on his arm and nothing to do until tomorrow besides the actual fun part: cooking some tasty monster dishes with his cheerful girls by his side.

"It takes a while," Kaiden admitted.

"And the post-production side," Rika added, shifting forward on the armrest. "Editing. Thumbnails. We’ve been tipped off that you’re doing those yourself."

He was. Every stream, every video. He’d finish a twelve-hour day of fighting monsters, drag himself back, shower, eat, and then lie in bed, trimming footage and building thumbnails until his mind begged to be put to sleep.

How much better would it be to just hug his girls tightly and put his overworked brain to rest?

Furthermore...

Editing was one thing. He’d always worried that handing it off would kill the feel of the channel, the roughness that made it authentic. But frankly, he was doing it half passed out in bed at two in the morning. There was no secret sauce. There was just a tired man making cuts and transitions while fighting to keep his eyes open. Two industry professionals could replicate that in their sleep and probably elevate it without making it feel alien.

Thumbnails were another. His worked fine for the audience he already had, but better visual hooks could reach wider, pull in viewers from communities who hadn’t found Valhalla’s Sinners yet or, most likely, just didn’t care enough to click.

By now, thanks to the many alien occurrences that happened, Kaiden and co had made the news too many times for most people not to know about them.

But actually having those people organically click on their videos, interested in its contents, that was different.

Kaiden kept his expression neutral, but the math was simple.

"Now for the fun part." Kira flapped her hand as if physically shooing the practical talk aside, and her smile sharpened, eyes glinting. "Because we’ve saved the best for last."