My Scumbag System Chapter 716: A Queen Addressing Her Court

The silence that followed contained multitudes. I watched it move through the room like weather. Raphael’s jaw working. Marco’s hand finding Malachi’s shoulder. Hikari’s smile flickering out like a candle. Soomin hugging her knees. Jacob’s fingers frozen above his datapad.

Natalia broke it.

"We have six days to build a plan for infiltrating the most secure facility in the nation." She walked to the center of the room and stood beside me, close enough that her shoulder touched my arm. The cold of the Cryo-Lich Ring bled through my combat suit. Each breath she took synchronized with mine—we had spent enough time entangled that our rhythms had aligned without conscious effort. "We will build that plan. We will refine that plan. We will run drills on that plan until every person in this room can execute their role unconscious."

She swept the room with her violet gaze, and I saw what she had become in those eyes—not just my lover, not just my weapon, but something far more dangerous. A queen addressing her court.

"Questions."

"Yeah." Skylar pushed off the doorframe with the lazy grace of a predator who had been waiting for this moment. "Who’s going in?"

Natalia looked at me. The room looked at me. The weight of fourteen lives pressed against my chest like a physical thing.

I hadn’t decided. That was a lie. I had decided three hours ago while standing in an intersection surrounded by dead things, watching Soomin’s transformed state tear through corrupted flesh. The plan had been forming in the back of my mind since the moment the Key had shown me that door. But saying it out loud meant making it real. It meant accepting that I was about to lead people I cared about—people who trusted me—into the heart of Seraphina Vance’s kingdom.

"Small team. Maximum four inside the building. Everyone else provides external support." The words came out steady. Controlled. Like I wasn’t gambling with lives. "We go in light and fast. If we get compromised, a small team can vanish. A full squad leaves bodies."

"I’m in." Skylar. No hesitation. Just that bored drawl that meant she had already run the scenarios in her head and liked the odds.

"I’m your healer." Emi. Voice shaking like a plucked string. Hands steady as stone. Her eyes held mine with an intensity that reminded me she had volunteered for the Gate raid that had killed people. She knew what she was signing up for.

"The Fox wants blood." Soomin’s voice carried a dangerous edge, that predator underneath surfacing for just a moment. Then she caught herself, flushing pink to her earlobes, her shy mask snapping back into place like armor. "I mean. I. I would like to participate. If that’s. If you’ll have me."

I remembered the way she had moved this morning. The elegance of violence. The joy in her transformed face.

"You killed an A-Rank this morning," I said. "You’re in."

Soomin’s face cycled through three colors before settling on a shade of red that suggested her circulatory system had opinions about the compliment.

"Four," Natalia said. "You, Skylar, Emi, Soomin."

"And you."

"Five." She didn’t argue. She had known from the beginning she would be inside that building with me. The only question had been whether I would waste time pretending otherwise.

"I require a role." Isabelle’s voice carried from the wingback chair with the weight of a judicial ruling.

"External command. You run the operation from the outside. If we go dark, you pull the plug and get everyone clear."

Isabelle considered this. Her wine-red eyes held mine for three seconds.

"Acceptable."

"I want in." Raphael, standing now, fists clenched.

"You’re on Isabelle’s exterior team. If something comes out of that building that shouldn’t, you’re the wall."

The gold in Raphael’s veins pulsed. "I can be a wall."

Assignments flowed after that. Juan on comms and tactical analysis. Jacob on data interception. Marco and Malachi as mobile response. Hikari and Jaime as the hard stop if everything collapsed. Akari would manage civilian-facing complications and ensure that no witnesses recorded anything traceable. Noah would maintain Celeste’s cover story and keep Seraphina’s surveillance pointed in the wrong direction.

Monica would talk to the plants. Because there were always plants. Even in basements that didn’t exist.

When the briefing ended and people dispersed to their assigned prep tasks, I remained standing in the common room. The onigiri plate sat on the coffee table, five survivors remaining from the original seventeen. The winking one had been eaten by Jaime, who consumed it while delivering a monologue about its warrior spirit.

Maki dropped from my shoulder to the couch, stretched in that boneless way cats achieved, and transformed into human form without warning. She wore nothing, as was tradition. Bartholomew continued his eternal lettuce pilgrimage in the terrarium, unbothered.

"Master."

"Clothes."

"Your mother called while you were talking."

I grabbed my phone from the table. One missed call from Kimiko. One voicemail.

Her voice, when I played it, was warm and careful and contained the particular frequency she used when she knew I was about to do something dangerous and had already decided she could not stop me.

"Satori. I know you won’t tell me everything. I know there are things you carry that I can’t help with. But I need you to hear this."

A pause. The sound of dishes in the background. Normal life. Normal sounds.

"Your father built you to be a weapon. The VHC wanted to use you as an experiment. Some entity from another dimension chose you before you were born. None of that changes what I know."

Another pause. Longer.

"You are my son. You were my son before any of this happened. You will be my son after all of it is over. Whatever you find in that basement, whatever truth waits for you down there, bring it home. Bring yourself home. I’ll have dinner ready."

The voicemail ended.

I stood in my common room. My house. My people. My kingdom of broken, beautiful, dangerous lunatics who had followed me into an intersection at dawn and come out the other side carrying monster blood and righteous fury and onigiri with motivational faces drawn in sesame seeds.

The pendant burned cold against my chest. Through the bond, three rooms away, Natalia mapped tactical routes on a holographic display while the Cryo-Lich Ring threw blue light across her cheekbones.

Six days.

Maki, still naked, padded to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.

"The tuna is gone."

"Jaime ate it."

"I will kill Jaime."

"After the mission."

She considered this. Her golden eyes narrowed. Her twin tails lashed once.

"Acceptable."