My Scumbag System Chapter 699: A Kettle That Learned Fear

Six in the morning at Onyx House smelled like scorched coffee, Jaime’s protein powder, and the specific desperation of seventeen teenagers who had been told to be somewhere on time.

I got there first. Natalia got there before first, which shouldn’t be mathematically possible, and she had the holographic map already projected over the coffee table with two formations drafted in her handwriting. Purple combat suit. Hair braided so tight it looked like a weapon on its own. She’d slept maybe two hours and she looked better than every person in the room who’d slept eight.

"You’re late," she said.

"I’m four minutes early."

"You’re late by my clock."

"Your clock is a personality disorder."

She didn’t dignify that. She adjusted the map, and the intersection at Sector 12 rotated slow above the pizza boxes nobody had thrown out.

The others filtered in. Raphael came down shirtless with his knuckles wrapped, because he wrapped his knuckles to eat breakfast now. Marco carried Malachi’s tea and Malachi carried nothing, arriving through the shadow under the bookshelf like a rumor. Hikari came down the banister. Actually down it, on her feet, arms out. Jaime applauded. Juan arrived horizontal, which I still don’t fully understand as a method of transportation, and located the couch by echolocation.

Emi came out of the kitchen with a tray and the apron and her hair in that knot that always fell apart by noon. She’d made cardamom rolls. At five in the morning. Because she’d heard the word briefing and immediately assumed people would need feeding through a crisis.

"You should eat before we start," she said, already pushing a plate into my hands. "You always forget."

"I ate two of your cookies last night."

"Cookies aren’t breakfast."

"Cookies are the most important meal of the day."

"Two of them?" Her eyes narrowed and her antenna strands twitched. "I left six."

Maki, curled on the windowsill in cat form, did not move a muscle and did not look at anyone.

Skylar dropped into the armchair by the fireplace with her headphones around her neck, which meant she was listening. Black on black, boots on the armrest, violet eyes half-lidded like she’d already read the file and found it disappointing. Soomin came last, hovering in the doorway with a sketchbook clutched to her chest like a shield, pink hair falling forward to hide most of her face.

Isabelle didn’t arrive. She was already there, in the wingback chair by the window, and I genuinely could not tell you when she’d sat down. She had tea. She had a book. She had the bearing of a monarch attending a peasant’s dispute over a goat.

Akari came in twelve minutes late in a uniform skirt that violated at least three regulations, took one look at the map, and said, "Ooh. Are we committing crimes."

"Yes," Natalia said.

"Then I’m awake."

I let the room settle. Then I stood up and put my bat across my shoulders and told them the truth, or the version of it that fit inside a common room.

"Wednesday, zero six hundred. We have a B-Rank contract in Sector 7. Braxton handed it to me. First official Onyx Hounds guild operation, which means the VHC and four rival guilds are going to read the after-action report like it’s a horoscope."

Marco whooped. Jaime flexed at nobody.

"That’s the part that goes on paper," I said. "Here’s the part that doesn’t. There’s a second Gate forming in Sector 12. Meridian Heights, block four. Residential. It stabilizes Wednesday morning inside the same window as our contract."

Jacob’s head came up from his datapad. "That’s not, um, that’s not possible. Sector 12 has no fault-line proximity, no industrial residue, no historical formation events. The predictive model puts spontaneous manifestation there at zero point zero zero four percent, and even that’s generous because it assumes—"

"It’s not spontaneous," I said.

The room went quiet in that particular way where you can hear the refrigerator.

"Somebody made it," I said. "On purpose. Under a community center with a daycare on the ground floor that holds sixty kids and opens at seven."

Raphael’s hands unclenched, then clenched harder. "Say a name."

"Don’t have one yet."

"Then get one."

"Working on it."

Isabelle turned a page in her book, which was how she interrupted people. "You are proposing that we split the guild. One team fulfills the sanctioned contract. The other commits an unauthorized field operation against an artificially generated Gate, with no VHC clearance, no medical support, and no legal cover if anyone dies."

"That’s the shape of it."

"And you have assigned yourself to the illegal half."

"Command oversight," I said. "It’s a real designation. I checked."

"It is a real designation used by administrators who sit in chairs."

"Then I’ll sit in a chair aggressively."

Skylar snorted from the fireplace. Isabelle closed her book, which was worse than shouting.

"Give me the roster," she said.

Natalia handed it over without looking up. Isabelle read it once, and I watched her eyes stop on her own name at the top of the contract team.

"You are giving me full command of the B-Rank."

"I’m giving you full command of the B-Rank."

"Because I am the only person you trust to run an operation without you standing behind them."

"Because you’re the only person I trust to run an operation without me standing behind them," I said, "and because if the report has your name on it as field commander, nobody in the VHC is going to look twice at how clean the timeline is."

Something moved behind those wine-red eyes. Not gratitude. She didn’t do gratitude. It was closer to a merchant recognizing that the price offered was fair.

"Four hours," she said.

"Four hours to clear a B-Rank."

"Four hours, twelve minutes, if Raphael refrains from detonating load-bearing structures. Four hours forty if he does not." She stood, smoothed her skirt, and the tea vanished somewhere. "I will require Jacob for pathing."

Here we go.

"Jacob’s with me," I said.

Every head turned. Jacob’s included, and he made a sound like a kettle that had learned fear.

"M-me?"

"You."

"I don’t. Okay. I don’t fight. I have a documented history of not fighting. Last time I fought a thing it was a goblin and I cried afterward, and it wasn’t even a good goblin, it was one of the small ones, and I still have the—"

"You’re not fighting."

"Then what am I doing?"