Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 967: Problematic News

Kaiden brought the SUV up to the compound checkpoint at half past seven, and Bastet was still purring.

She had not stopped since the highway. The man on the gate was one of theirs now, a C-tier with a decade of logged hours and a clipboard nobody had asked him to carry. He leaned down to wave them through, heard it rolling out of the middle row, and lost his place in his own sentence.

”Evening, sir. Good- good day out?”

”Very good,” Kaiden said.

The barrier went up.

The gravel had gone blue, and the headquarters stood over the lot with three stories of dark glass holding the last of the light. Dorm windows ran in rows above it. The mess hall was still lit at the far end, with somebody’s music coming out of it.

Yuna Park was out of the third row before the vehicle finished rocking on its springs.

”Guild leader.” She was already walking backward toward the building. ”Nothing followed us in. I’ll file tonight.”

”That can wait until tomorrow. Great job today, Park.”

”...Thank you!” she beamed, bowed to him, and went to file it that night.

Calypso came out of the passenger door with the shopping, which was most of the shopping, because she had appointed herself to it somewhere around the third floor of the mall and had refused all offers since.

Bags hung off both arms to the elbow. She had the smoothie cups stacked inside one of them, empty, because she had decided they were coming home too.

Bastet took considerably longer, on the grounds that she had a system.

The sandals went on first. Then the anklets rose out of the cupholder in one gold handful, and she put them back on her ankles there in the doorway of the vehicle, one at a time, with the caramel cat tucked under her chin the entire time so it did not touch the seat.

The photo strip went into the front of her silks last, where queens put things.

”Master,” she said, when she was assembled. ”I need the cat washed.”

”Ask Alexandra who does it.”

”Mm.” She thought about that for a moment, and whatever she landed on pleased her, because her ears went up with it. ”She’ll want to know about the machine.”

Kaiden looked up.

The whole ops floor was lit.

Every panel of it, top to bottom, and the glass wall that faced the lot had one silhouette standing in the middle of it with her arms folded, watching the drive.

Nyx had been standing there long enough to be waiting for headlights, and the moment his came up the drive she turned away from the glass and said something over her shoulder to a room he could not see into.

”There’s a problem,” Nyx sighed.

Calypso dropped the bags in the gravel, all of them, in one heap.

”Is it a fight?” she asked, and there was hope all the way through it.

”No. Well... Not yet.”

Doug had the list.

That was the first thing Kaiden saw when he came up onto the ops floor, and it told him most of it before anybody opened a mouth. Doug loved a page of numbers. He was holding this one at arm’s length, like it had come up out of a drain.

Ms. Rook stood at the map table with her tablet squared to its edge. Nyx had come off the glass and propped herself against the corner of her own desk.

”Guild leader,” Ms. Rook said. ”There were fourteen resignations.”

Kaiden stopped walking. ”What?”

”Resignation. Filed today. The earliest landed at one twenty, the last at four fifty. All of them effective immediately, all of them citing a competing offer.” She scrolled once.

”Buyout terms?”

”Paid, where applicable.” She looked up. ”They spent significant money on this move.”

Kaiden had never wanted to run Eclipse like some modern-day slaver. He had not put buyout clauses on anybody he could not afford to buy out himself, so people who came freely could leave freely, with the confidentiality terms still standing and the guild’s gear coming back at the door.

”...Fourteen.” He crossed the rest of the way to the table.

”Six of your twenty-six A-tiers,” Ms. Rook said. ”Eight B-tiers.”

”Nothing under B. Not a single name off the low end,” Aria murmured, yandere princess mode initiated. She had gone very still, and she was smiling.

The floor fell quiet enough that the building noise rose through it, some pump running away to itself below the stairs.

Kaiden put both hands on the map table, on the battered folding legs Calypso had carried up from the tent, surrounded by all that new glass, and looked at the page in Doug’s hand from six feet away without asking for it yet.

”Competing offers, huh? So they were poached. By whom?”

”Nine of them signed with Crimson Dominion. Five with Radiant Order.” Ms. Rook set the tablet down. ”The two lists do not overlap anywhere. They did not bid against each other for a single name.”

”They coordinated... The two top-tier guilds that always butt heads?”

”Yes,” Nyx said. ”Just to put us down.”

”They’re fucking terrified of us,” Luna said.

”Afraid enough to shake hands...” Bastet muttered.

Kaiden had come up those stairs with the whole day still on him, the mall and the sun and two women laughing over smoothies. The people watching his face saw the last of it go.

Doug made a small sound.

”Read it,” Kaiden said.

”Boss, perhaps-”

”Read me the list.”

Doug read the list.

He got through eleven names in a voice that stayed level, and the twelfth was a barrier specialist he had personally walked through her contract twice because she kept apologizing for asking questions, and after that it didn’t.

He finished all fourteen anyway. He laid the page down on the table and took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers.

”They were ours for less than five days,” he said.

”Three days and an afternoon,” said Ms. Rook.

”Thank you, Rook.”

Kaiden picked up the page.

He knew nine of the fourteen on sight. One had raised a hand at the roster briefing and asked a question so good that Trisha had written it down.

He read all fourteen twice. Then he set the page back on the table and did not say anything for a while, and nobody in that room filled the gap for him.

”I liked the old man,” he said.

Ms. Rook waited.

”Lazarus. I liked him. I thought he’d be like those old carefree geezers in the movies, just a lot more bloodthirsty.”

He had not raised his voice once. The quiet followed anyway.

”He’s had a request for a sit-down in our inbox for days. And while I’m out buying couches he takes nine of my people off my page in an afternoon.”

Her bags were still in a heap down in the gravel, and Calypso had stopped wanting a fight.

”He will take your call,” Ms. Rook said. ”If that is where this is going.”

”... Might as well.”

”Ringing.” Nyx was already on the job.

It rang twice.

”Well, look at that.” The voice rolled up out of the floor’s speakers warm and unhurried, with a television going somewhere behind it. ”The man himself. I watched your afternoon, lad. The little girl on the horns, steering Calypso. Even my wife warmed up at the sight. You certainly know how to turn people-”

”Lazarus.”

”Mm. That’s the tone, is it.” Something creaked, and the television went off. ”All right. Let’s talk man to man.”

”You took nine of my people today.”

”I did.”

Kaiden waited for the rest of it.

There was no rest of it.

”That’s all you’ve got?”

”What would you like, bucko, a denial? I’d have to work at it and I’ve had a long day.” He sounded bored with the question.

”You told me you were a fan.”

”I am a fan. Watching your content is my favorite after-battle hobby.”

It came back instantly, and he meant every word of it.

”I’ve been in your chat since the Mauler days, when there were twenty of us in there and half of them were those weird kids trying to guess my identity. I’ve watched you burn eggs. I watched your girls argue about seasoning for forty minutes and I have not enjoyed anything that much in twenty years.”

The warmth stayed exactly where it was. ”I’m a fan of the Sinners, lad.”

His voice hardened. ”But I never once said that I was a fan of Eclipse.”

Doug’s eyes lifted off the table.

”You’ve had the luxury of not knowing the difference. So has everybody in that building.”

”I stood in the dirt at that gate of yours, ready to battle the Kaiju to the death. When the threat was dealt with, I asked you to come to my house. Just the two of us, drinking beers in a couple of chairs while an old man talked your ear off about his glory days.”

A short laugh came through, and it was completely genuine. ”What came at me was your mother. Terrifying woman, but I’d have done the same in her shoes.”

”I’d have probably attacked you randomly to test your strength and have an amazing fight to the death, and she must’ve smelled it. But it’s all good. As a parent, I understand.”

Bastet’s tail had stopped moving.

”And that’s worth nine of my people to you,” Kaiden said.

”So we settle on neutral ground like adults, two guild leaders representing one of the biggest guilds in the world and the single greatest upcoming guild, establishing relations properly. I put the request for a meeting in writing like a gentleman, and my letter has been sitting in your inbox ever since.”

”I’ve had a federal bureau in my building and four hundred people to house. Are you serious?”

”I’m deadly serious, Guild Master Grey. You’ve had time to buy furniture but not to answer my letter. I know what that tells me, and I know what it tells Crimson Dominion.”