Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 707: Illegal Statements

”A week ago...” Brittany started, then stopped herself. Her brow creased. ”No. Further back than that.”

She looked at Trisha, who gave a small nod.

”Eight days ago,” Brittany said, ”a representative from New Dawn contacted our guild leadership with an offer to coordinate against Valhalla’s Sinners.”

In the command room, three phones started buzzing at the same time.

Not the priority alert tone from before. These were direct calls, personal lines, the kind that only rang when someone on the other end already had your number and a reason to use it. Henrik glanced at the screen. His face went tight.

”New Dawn is calling...”

”Don’t answer,” Maeve said without looking away from the video. Her fists were balled and trembling.

The ringing continued.

”We don’t know the full details of the arrangement,” Brittany continued on screen. ”We weren’t in the room when it was made. But we were told the strategy changed after that meeting. The approach shifted from competing with Valhalla’s Sinners to actively undermining them.”

”A week ago, our team was called into a strategy meeting with guild leadership. We were told that competing against Valhalla’s Sinners through normal content wasn’t working. The exact words used were ’direct engagement to maximize friction and visibility.’” She paused. ”In plain language: harass them. Start fights on stream. Provoke them into reactions that make them look bad and generate clips that boost our metrics.”

”We followed those orders,” Trisha took over. ”We antagonized them during the competition. We treated them like enemies because the guild made it clear that our positions depended on results.”

Henrik’s artifact buzzed again. Then Gabriel’s. Then Maeve’s personal line, which she hadn’t heard ring in weeks because the number was restricted to a list shorter than her fingers.

She didn’t touch it.

”Two days ago,” Trisha continued, and her voice hardened, ”New Dawn stopped coordinating from the sidelines and joined us on the field. Their rookie-track fighters followed Valhalla’s Sinners into active combat zones and stole their kills, using their high-level scout to keep tabs on the group. They tracked them across deployment areas and intercepted targets that were already engaged. It was organized, and it happened with the knowledge of both guilds’ leadership.”

Gabriel pulled his glasses off and set them aside. Henrik was staring at his vibrating artifact like it might bite him.

”They’re going to crucify us,” Henrik said quietly. ”New Dawn is going to say they never authorized anything and throw us under the bus.”

”I said don’t answer!” Maeve hissed just as Trisha teared up.

”And our friend Stacy followed those orders too.”

The name landed and Brittany’s composure shattered. Her face seized and she pressed her hand over it and the sob that came through her fingers was guttural, ugly, the sound of someone mourning in a way they’d been trying not to since the moment it happened.

Alexandra pulled her closer. Trisha’s eyes were fixed on the lens and wet.

”Stacy Renault was our teammate and our best friend,” Trisha said, and her voice had changed. The precision was still there but it came through clenched teeth, each word dragged past grief. ”She trained with us every morning for three years. She was the first one up. She made terrible coffee and she drank it like it was a religion and she’d leave a cup outside your door at five AM whether you wanted it or not.”

She stopped. Her jaw worked.

”Stacy died in that basin following the same orders we followed. Fighting the same people we were told to fight. And the guild’s first communication after her death was a financial summons. We were called to a meeting to discuss cost allocation before Stacy’s body had been processed by the Association’s medical unit.”

Brittany was crying openly now, her face pressed into Alexandra’s shoulder.

”She deserved better than us,” Brittany managed, muffled against the fabric. She lifted her head, eyes wrecked. ”She deserved better than teammates who couldn’t protect her. She deserved to go home.”

The video held on them, Brittany weeping against Alexandra’s shoulder, Trisha rigid and wet-eyed, the three of them held together by grief and the camera’s unblinking lens.

Trisha inhaled and steadied herself.

”We owe an apology. To Valhalla’s Sinners. To their community. To every person whose experience we ruined with our behavior during the competition. We were greedy and we were wrong, and Stacy paid the highest price for all of it.”

”I’m sorry,” Brittany whispered into the camera. Her face was swollen and blotched and she didn’t wipe it. ”I’m so sorry.”

”I’m sorry,” Trisha said, and her composure finally broke. Her jaw stopped clenching and her shoulders dropped and the tears she’d been holding spilled down her cheeks. ”We’re so sorry.”

They crumbled at the same time. Brittany’s mouth twisted and Trisha’s breath hitched. They both reached for each other and found Alexandra’s hands already waiting. Alexandra pulled them in, one arm around each of them, her palms cradling their cheeks and guiding their heads against her shoulders. Brittany folded into her left side and Trisha into her right, and Alexandra held them there with her eyes glistening and her lips pressed together and the kind of tenderness that belonged to a woman twice her age.

None of them spoke. The camera held on three women tangled together and trembling, and the silence said everything that words would have ruined.

Then the screen went dark.

...

”Those bitches are using fake tears to manipulate public opinion!”

Henrik was on his feet. His chair had scraped back hard enough to leave marks on the floor and his face was the color of a man whose blood pressure had left the building three minutes ago.

”They sat down next to the most famous rape victim in the country and cried so the audience would associate them with her! That’s what this is! They want sympathy by proximity, and are banking on that the idiots watching will give it to them because they can’t tell the difference between a girl who was actually trafficked and blackmailed as a child and two greedy whores who signed a contract for quick money!”

He jabbed a finger at the dark screen. ”They’re not victims of us! They’re victims of their own stupidity! Nobody forced them to sign! Nobody held a gun to their heads! They read the terms and they took the deal because they wanted the money and the clout and now they’re crying about the consequences!”

Gabriel’s glasses sat crooked on his nose and he hadn’t touched them through the entire video. He touched them now, pulling them off and pressing his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose.

”They’ve lost their minds if they think this is acceptable, if they think they can breach confidentiality on a live broadcast and walk away clean, they’re delusional. We will bury them in lawsuits for the rest of their miserable lives. Every firm in the country will see what happens when you break a binding agreement with the Ashbound guild on camera.”

”Enough.”

Maeve’s voice cut through both of them. She stood behind the table with both hands pressed flat against the surface, her weight forward, her eyes bloodshot and the tendons in her wrists standing out against the backs of her hands. A vein in her temple pulsed visibly.

”This is revenge,” she said. ”Kaiden Grey’s revenge.”