Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 969: Fallout

"Stop talking already, you disgusting creep."

Something went over on the far end of the line. A chair, possibly a small table.

"Give me the phone."

"Dear-"

"Give me the phone."

There followed a brief physical negotiation, a great deal of wounded dignity, and a woman winning it.

"Bruh. He said that while she could hear it?" Luna muttered.

"Guild Master Grey. Viera Crane." She had been listening for some time. "I would apologize for my father, but I’ve stopped believing it accomplishes anything."

"What’s done is done."

Paper moved. "The offer on your nine was real and it stands for seventy-two hours regardless of anything said in the last two minutes. Your refusal is on record, and for whatever it’s worth to you, I’d have made the same one."

"None of that helps me right now, but thanks."

"Understood," Viera replied. "If you ever change your mind, please call my office, not his."

In a completely different register:

"Miss Aria."

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

"...Hang in there."

"It’s not me who needs words of support right now."

"Dear?!"

"YOU DAMNED IMBECILE, YOU FUCK-"

The line went dead.

"Boss." Doug had his glasses back on. "Two days ago I stood in that tent and made a joke about doing this. Word for word. Shopping for promising awakened trained at the expense of our competitors." His mouth twisted. "I was so pleased with myself I didn’t even take it back."

"You were right, though," Nyx said. "That’s the business. It just works better when you’re the one with the deeper pockets. We pushed our way around the smaller guilds, and now the big fish did the same to us."

Kaiden turned that over.

"So why these fourteen? I get that they’re promising and all, don’t get me wrong. But isn’t it weird that they poached so many without us being any wiser about it?"

Nyx was already back at her desk, and she had three windows open across it before he finished asking.

"Yes. Somebody picked them one at a time. Like they’re a shopping list."

"They’re spineless is what they are." Luna had her boots up on the corner of the map table and no intention of moving them.

"They were picked." Nyx dragged one window to the middle of her screen and read off it instead of turning it around. "Somebody went looking for people who’d be easy to move, and this is what came back."

"Every one of the fourteen is a blank where their fan history should be. I ran accounts, internet activity, forum comments. All three came back empty on all fourteen, and we know our fans aren’t the... quietest bunch."

"Out of the four hundred people who signed with us, they’re almost the only ones where I couldn’t tell which stream they started on."

Another window came forward. "That’s what got them looked at. Then it’s guild history. Six of them have moved houses three times or more in four years. One’s been in five, all inside the last three years."

"So Gramps found the ones who’d leave," Luna said.

"Not quite."

Nyx had stopped scrolling.

"The last filter is money."

Nobody in the room said anything, and the pump under the stairs ran on to itself for a few seconds.

"Every name on this page is carrying something. Gear loans on equipment that got wrecked in a gate and never paid out. Medical. Two of them are each the only earner in a household with serious debt."

She sat back in the chair.

"Eleven of the fourteen are behind on a payment as of this month. I can see that from a desk in four hours. Crimson’s had it in a file for years."

"That’s the file I’d have pulled," Doug said, to nobody in particular. "If it were me. That’s exactly the file."

Calypso had come off the wall to look at the screen, and she was frowning at it in a way that had nothing to do with reading it.

"What does that mean. Behind on a payment." Then, before she was rewarded with the most condescending info drop ever, the demoness added, "I understand the words, I’m asking for specifics."

"Their assets will be seized, their homes taken. Their sick family members pulled off medical plans," Nyx said.

"I see..."

Calypso’s tail had gone still against the floor.

"Where I come from, a debt is a fight or it’s a favor. It finishes." She looked at Doug, and then at Kaiden. "Yours just follows people around?"

Doug took his glasses off and did not put them back on.

Aria came away from the glass and stopped at the corner of Nyx’s desk.

"I worked six days a week for years, and there were months in there where I had to decide if my siblings ate properly or we fell behind on rent." Aria said it in the same voice she used for everything else, and the room heard exactly what it cost her.

Kaiden let go of the edge of the table.

"If a stranger had called me in one of those months and offered me guaranteed pay above what I was making, I would have taken it." She was looking directly at Luna now. "Before he finished the sentence. I’d have cried about it that night."

Luna’s boots came off the table and hit the floor.

"...Fuck," she said, to the ceiling. "Guess you’re saying this so I stop cursing at them. After all, you and me and Fatty were once upon a time also..."

"A most acute observation," Aria smiled, as condescending as possible, and promptly received a middle finger. "We’re past having petty squabbles with poor awakened. It was the two remaining top-tier guilds who slighted us."

Nyx pushed back from the desk. "I agree, but that doesn’t change anything from our perspective. We need to tighten our recruitment processes so such a thing doesn’t blindside us ever again."

Bastet had been listening from the corner of the map table with her arms folded, and she waited until the room had gone quiet before she used it.

"Master."

"...Yeah."

"A lord who cannot pay his people does not have people yet. He has volunteers who like him." There was no unkindness anywhere in it, and her hand had come back to rest on his forearm while she said it.

Ms. Rook set the page back down in front of him, and Kaiden picked it up.

Fourteen names. He had read all of them twice tonight while he worked out how to feel about being betrayed.

It was a list of people who couldn’t afford him.

"What did Crimson offer them?"

"Six times what we pay. Four years guaranteed, and a signing figure on top."

"...Damn."

"Yeah," Nyx chuckled wryly. "Even with our new sponsor deals, we can’t fight against their coffers."

Kaiden looked at the page a while longer, then set it down on the table.

"...Haaah. To think I’d feel like a beggar when insane generational wealth sits in my account."

"I know, right..." Luna murmured under her breath.

Ms. Rook’s tablet chimed.

She read it standing where she was, and she kept hold of it when she had finished.

"Guild leader."

"...What now."

"We have another problem." Her features darkened. "This is..."