Demonic Po*nstar System Chapter 906: Should I?

Kaiden turned to look at his little sister. He stared at her for a long, even moment.

Alice’s lower lip trembled. Her eyes grew large and dangerously wet.

"Good try," he said, grinning.

"Hmph!" Alice’s face crumpled into a pout so aggressive it bordered on structural damage. "You’re picking impossible things on purpose! This is foul play! Sadistic big brother!"

"It’s not impossible. You just need to pay at least some attention."

"I-I can’t! The headpats..." Alice leaned into his hand that was idly tracing her scalp. "They make it impossible..."

"I can stop it if you want."

"Don’t you dare!!" Alice cried, reaching up to lock his hand on her head.

"Still as unhinged as ever. Way to go, little sis." Calypso thumped the armrest before turning her attention to Kaiden. "Is it a test?"

"Sort of."

Bastet’s tail went still. She was narrowing it down, her golden eyes sharp. "People evaluate you."

"Yes."

"A tribunal."

"No."

Calypso’s eyes lit up. "A submission ritual."

"Nope."

"Are you sure? Because it sounds exactly like-"

"I’m sure, Cali."

Luna stared at the four of them.

The Original Sin had looked down at the planet not long ago and these lunatics were playing a guessing game, completely unbothered, as if one of the biggest events in human history was just a bit of weather they’d already moved past.

"Unreal," Luna said. "We’re having a discussion of the future and the monster squad is playing."

Nyx’s lips twitched. "Two of them aren’t monsters."

"Alice is absolutely a monster. And Kai..." Luna gestured vaguely at the man who had broken the sky. "Kai is whatever comes after monster."

Alexandra was staring at the back row with open confusion. "A-are they not... worried? At all?"

Aria watched Kaiden. His shoulders were loose, his expression easy, one arm draped behind Alice’s seat while Bastet and Calypso argued over whether a submission ritual counted as a social interaction. He’d been genuinely rattled not long ago. He’d told Luna he felt fine, but Aria had felt the tension in his arm.

Now it was gone. The game, the bickering, the girls around him. That was what settled him.

"He’s fine," Aria said softly, and the relief in her smile outweighed the wryness.

Vespera, who had been sitting in the passenger seat with the quiet patience of a woman surrounded by a gang of loud children out on a picnic, reached into her coat and pulled out a phone.

She set it on the center console and turned up the volume.

The van filled with noise.

Notifications rolled in one after another, a cascade of vibrations and chimes that blurred into a single continuous tone. Missed calls stacked in the notification bar, the counter climbing past thirty, past fifty, names and numbers scrolling faster than anyone could read. Text messages arrived in clusters. Emails piled into the inbox with the urgency of a system that had been ignored for exactly as long as Vespera intended.

She placed both hands in her lap and kept her eyes on the road.

The game died. Conversations stopped. Every head in the van snapped toward the phone buzzing against the console like an angry insect.

Vespera did not pick it up.

A call came in. She let it ring. Another followed immediately, overlapping the first notification before it could finish. She let that one ring too.

Luna raised an eyebrow. "Uh... What’s going on?"

"Mother." Kaiden eyed the phone from the back row. "Shouldn’t you pick that up?"

Vespera’s gaze did not leave the windshield. "I don’t know. Should I?"

The question sat in the air, small and precise, and it took Kaiden a full three seconds to hear what was underneath it.

"...Is that a personal phone?"

"No." Vespera’s tone didn’t change. "It’s the line I use to manage Eclipse’s affairs."

The van went quiet in a different way.

Kaiden looked at the phone, at the calls stacking, at the names in the notification bar. Association officials. Federal liaisons. Sponsor contacts. Names that carried institutional weight, people who called this number because it reached the highest authority Eclipse had.

Guild Regent Vespera Ashborn had been handling all of it. Every call, every negotiation, every decision that needed someone with the rank and the presence to speak for the guild. She had built the compound, coordinated with the Association, filed the legal frameworks, and dealt with the human resources side of things... Among many other tasks the leader of a new guild had to busy herself with.

And now she was sitting with the phone on the console, letting it scream, and asking her son if she should answer it.

’Should I?’

Not ’do you want me to?’ Just the question, bare and clean.

Kaiden’s smile came slow.

"Guild Regent Vespera."

She looked at him for the first time since pulling out the phone.

"I’d like to ask for your continued guidance," he said.

Vespera studied her son’s face for a long, measured moment. The line between her brows eased. For one unguarded moment, her expression softened, and then it was gone.

Her shadows picked up the phone and placed it in his hand.

"Naturally."

Kaiden leaned back with the phone buzzing in his palm, pulled up the notifications, and started scrolling.

"God damn," he said after four seconds.

Luna scrambled over two seats. "What? What is it?"

"There are three hundred and twelve unread messages."

"From today???"

"From the last hour."

At that, the Valkyries perked up as well, moving to the back row, creating a pile of human bodies as each of them leaned close to read the phone’s contents.

Nyx appeared at his other shoulder, pink hair falling forward as she angled for a view of the screen. "Scroll down. I want to see the sponsors."

Aria’s hand tightened into a fist. "Kai, is that a message from a woman?"

"It’s from the Federal Bureau of Awakened Affairs."

"Oh... Is the Bureau staffed by women?"

"Aria."

"...You can never be safe enough." The Moon Valkyrie did not seem to be in an apologetic mood.

Kaiden sighed, shaking his head, then returned his attention to the topic at hand.

It was time to finally make good on his prior resolution to work hard as the guild leader of America’s newest and most watched guild.

...

Author: What did Kaiden think of?