My Scumbag System Chapter 522: The Queen’s Council Assembles

Natalia stood in the prep room with her girls, which was how she’d started thinking about them despite the absurdity of the concept. Her girls. Her pack. Her competition for the heart of the most infuriating man she’d ever met.

The room reeked of antiseptic and nervous sweat, the kind of sterile anxiety that clung to concrete walls and fluorescent lighting. Every surface felt too clean, too bright, like they were being prepped for surgery rather than combat.

Skylar leaned against the wall wearing her trademark don’t-fucking-talk-to-me expression, violet eyes tracking every micro-movement Natalia made with predatory focus. Emi sat hunched on a bench, her blue hair pulled back in twin braids that made her look younger than eighteen, while her healing aura pulsed around her hands like a nervous tic she couldn’t control. Cel stood by the door with perfect posture that probably required actual effort to maintain, her silver-white hair catching the harsh fluorescent lights and throwing them back in prismatic fragments. Akari sprawled across another bench like she owned the place, examining her nails with studied indifference that fooled absolutely nobody in the room.

The silence stretched taut as a bowstring, broken only by the distant roar of the crowd bleeding through the concrete walls. Twenty thousand people waiting for blood. Waiting for her to either triumph or get her ass handed to her by New Vein Academy’s golden girl.

"So," Akari said without looking up from her manicure. "You’re fighting La Sirena."

"Obviously." Natalia’s voice came out flatter than intended, her nerves fraying at the edges.

"She’s going to try and kill you."

Natalia smiled, and frost spread across the metal bench beneath her thighs in delicate spiraling patterns. "Let her try."

Emi made a small distressed sound, like a wounded bird. "Natalia, Reyna’s ranked second in the entire program. She has S-Rank potential. Her sister is literally Veronica Cabana. Do you know what that means? Olympic-level trainers since she could walk. Professional sparring partners. The best equipment money can buy—"

"I’m aware."

"She’s been training since she was five years old with people who’ve killed monsters we’ve never even heard of, and—"

"I said I’m aware, Emi."

The healer flinched like Natalia had slapped her, her antenna-like hair strands drooping with wounded disappointment. The guilt hit immediately, a sharp twist in Natalia’s chest that made her want to take it back. But apologies had never come easily to her, and right now she couldn’t afford to look weak. Not with what was coming.

Natalia reached out and touched Emi’s shoulder, forcing her voice into something gentler. Something that wouldn’t make the girl cry. "I know what she is. I know what I’m walking into. But I also know what I am."

"And what’s that?" Skylar drawled from her corner, though her eyes held genuine curiosity beneath the layers of sarcasm and cigarette smoke.

Natalia met her gaze directly, unflinching. "I’m the girl who froze an entire battlefield to save Satori’s life. The one who tore reality apart because the alternative was watching him die. I’m Rank Ten, soul-bonded, and absolutely done pretending I’m not dangerous."

The temperature dropped another ten degrees. Frost began forming on the overhead pipes, creating delicate crystalline patterns that caught the light like trapped starlight.

"Well," Akari purred, swinging her legs off the bench with feline grace. "That was actually kind of hot. Scary, but hot."

Cel stepped forward, her periwinkle eyes soft with the kind of concern that came from genuinely caring rather than obligation. "Natalia. We’re not questioning your power. We’ve all seen what you can do when you’re pushed past your breaking point. But Reyna fights differently than the monsters in Gates. She’s intelligent. Tactical. And she’s been studying you for weeks."

"I’ve been studying her too."

"Have you?" Cel tilted her head slightly, silver hair shifting like liquid mercury. "Because from where I’m standing, you’ve spent the past three weeks either training with Satori or killing things in Gates. When exactly did you find time to analyze her combat patterns?"

Natalia pulled up the footage on her phone, the screen reflecting the fluorescent lights as she scrolled through her meticulously organized files. All seventeen matches. Time-stamped, annotated, with notes scribbled in the margins about reaction times and behavioral patterns. She’d stayed up until three AM for the past week, watching Reyna fight over and over until she could predict every movement.

Skylar pushed off the wall and crossed to look over Natalia’s shoulder, close enough that her clove cigarette scent mixed with Natalia’s winter roses perfume. The combination should have been nauseating but somehow worked, like opposites finding balance in proximity.

"Holy shit," Skylar breathed, genuinely impressed. "You actually did your homework."

"Unlike Satori, I don’t improvise everything five seconds before it kills me." Natalia scrolled through the footage with practiced ease, stopping on a clip from Reyna’s match against a Viper team. "Look here. When pressured from the left, she defaults to creating a marionette to block while she repositions right. It’s consistent across every match. Muscle memory from years of professional training."

Akari leaned in, her emerald eyes bright with genuine interest now. "So you bait her left and hit her right."

"Exactly."

"Unless she’s smart enough to break her own patterns," Skylar pointed out, her violet eyes sharp as broken glass. "Which she probably is, given she just watched you analyze Julian’s entire psychological profile during one fight and turn him into a sobbing mess."

Natalia’s jaw tightened. Skylar was right, obviously. Reyna wasn’t Julian Valerius. She wouldn’t collapse under basic psychological pressure or charge in like a wounded bull seeking revenge. Reyna Cabana was a predator trained by other predators, raised in an environment where weakness meant death and adaptation meant survival.

Just like Natalia herself.

The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it made her stomach twist with recognition. They were too similar, she and Reyna. Both daughters of famous parents, both carrying the weight of expectations that could crush mountains. Both fighting not just for victory, but for the right to exist as something more than someone else’s shadow.

"That’s why I need you," Natalia said, turning to face Skylar directly. "Your illusions can make her second-guess everything she sees. If she can’t trust her own perception, her patterns don’t matter."

Skylar’s smirk widened into something genuinely appreciative, the kind of expression she reserved for particularly elegant solutions to violent problems. "You want to gaslight her into a nervous breakdown."

"I want to win."

"Those can be the same thing."