Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 929: Fearmongering Ladies

”So. Real talk.” Luna spoke up as Doug left to take care of Yuna’s buyout. ”That was our suit walking out the door. Who’s going to read the fine print now? I can’t do it, I get bored two sentences in.”

”I’ll call-” Kaiden already had his phone out, scrolling for a name.

Gravel crunched outside, enthusiastically.

A car cleared the compound gate, took the drive with more speed than the drive deserved, and parked at an angle that technically counted.

Kira and Rika spilled out of it already talking.

”Boss!”

”Boss!!”

They crossed the packed dirt at a jog, Kira with a tablet under one arm, Rika hauling a camera bag and a folding tripod, and arrived in front of the table in step. Then, in perfect sync, both twins bowed to him from the waist and stayed down.

”We’re sorry!” they announced together.

Kaiden looked at the crowns of two identical heads. ”For what?”

”The Claimant.” Kira straightened first, and the usual shine on her was crumpled at the edges. ”When the mountain moved and everyone rushed to the dungeon to stand with you, we weren’t there. We were in a studio. A warm, safe studio with good coffee, cutting footage while you fought that thing.”

”We talked about it the whole drive here,” Rika said, rising beside her sister with no grin to accompany it for once. ”Everyone else has a story from the defense. Where they stood, what they saw. And we-”

”Enough. We already discussed this.”

Both mouths closed.

”While my girls and I fought, you two kept the world’s eyes exactly where I needed them, and you did it perfectly.” Kaiden set the roster down and gave them the full weight of his attention. ”Your job is to see us reach never before seen numbers, not to fight by our side.”

The twins processed that for one second. Then the guilt left them at terminal velocity.

”Best boss ever,” Kira whispered to Rika.

”Best boss EVER,” Rika agreed, and they high-fived without looking at each other.

”So why are you yappers here?” Luna asked, cracking open an energy drink and taking the first sip.

”We were coming to take supporting footage of the construction to be used for later videos!” Rika huffed, puffing her chest out. ”And to set up our studio! Construction happens now, so we need to be here to direct the efforts.”

”And because Doug messaged us on the drive over.” Kira consulted her tablet. ”We are to, quote, ’substitute him with the same diligence and none of the commentary.’”

”You already failed,” Luna grinned, taking a second sip.

”... No. Not yet.” Rika snorted, grinning back.

Kaiden put his phone back in his pocket, the call already unnecessary.

Luna lowered her can. ”Wait. Aren’t you two media personnel? We need lawyer people not video editors.”

”We know more than editing videos, thank you very much.” Kira’s grin returned to factory settings. ”We ran talent intake at Pinnacle for years. Auditions, screenings, contracts.”

”We also certified ourselves in HR fundamentals last night,” Rika added, unfolding the tripod. ”There was an online quiz. We both passed on the first try.”

”The first try,” Kira confirmed solemnly.

They colonized the end of the table in under two minutes. Tablet propped, Doug’s question list loaded, and a hidden camera angled at the interview chair, its red light already on.

”For the archive,” Rika explained sweetly. ”Everything gets recorded. It’s proper procedure.”

...

The line outside stretched past the scaffolding in the morning sun, and there was not a single random name in it.

Every person waiting had already survived the exam.

They had stood in a padded hall while the great doors ground open and darkness walked in wearing six burning eyes. They had held their ground while Luna shit-talked five hundred people hoarse and Calypso grinned her way through their formations, then stayed standing long enough for Kaiden’s own measure to find what lived underneath their training.

Fortitude was the entry fee. The folding chair decided the rest.

”Next!” Luna hollered.

The second candidate of the day was a C-tier lancer who had taken one of Calypso’s shockwaves on her shield arm during the exam and stayed on her feet, a feat perhaps thirty people in her batch could claim. She marched to the chair with parade-ground posture, sat, raised her eyes to Kaiden Grey, and stopped functioning.

”Good morning,” Kaiden said.

The lancer turned the color of a stop sign. ”M-m-m-morning, Mister Grey...”

It was easy to forget, inside the tent, what the man behind the folding table looked like from the outside: the most watched human being alive, the face on every feed, the voice in a billion clips, the Anomaly who had stared down a hole in the sky while the rest of the species hid under its furniture.

And also the man countless women fawned over without reservation, obsessed enough to put K-drama fandoms to shame.

Candidates spent their lives preparing for the kaiju, the gremlin’s shit-talking, the demon’s grin. Then the poster from their bedroom wall said good morning and asked about their gate experience, and entire nervous systems filed for early retirement.

”Your file says you main defensive formations,” Kaiden prompted.

”Yes,” the lancer whispered.

”Anchor or rotation?”

”Anchor,” she whispered at an even lower volume.

”She anchors,” Luna translated, without looking up from the file. ”Miss lancer, we can barely hear you. Blink twice if you need a microphone.”

”Hie!” The lancer yelped, realizing the error of her ways, then looked at Kaiden with pleading eyes, begging for a second chance.

But instead of being dissatisfied, Kaiden reached over and patted Luna on the head. She scoffed under his palm but allowed it, and his eyes settled on the lancer as he spoke.

”Stop pressuring her.”

The lancer’s blush went nuclear.

”Didn’t we test their resolve or whatever yesterday?” Luna murmured, unrepentant. ”Is she still passing if she can’t get one coherent sentence out?”

The lancer’s eyes went wide, terror arriving from a brand-new direction.

”I need combatants, not politicians,” Kaiden said. ”She communicates just fine when it matters, and her heart is made of steel. Isn’t that right?”

The lancer blushed furiously and nodded even more furiously.

Luna took her third sip. ”Bruh...”

The lancer answered every question after that correctly, completely, and at a volume otherwise reserved for confessing sins in church.

When Kira’s tablet chimed her approval through to processing, she stood, snapped a bow at the panel deep enough to fold her in half, whispered ”thank you for existing” in Kaiden’s direction, and walked into the tent pole on her way out.

”I love this job,” Rika said.

She was no outlier, either. By mid-morning, Luna had started a tally in the corner of the roster titled ’furious blush count,’ and it was climbing.

The veterans were a different flavor of entertainment.

A middle-aged man named Garrick, gray at the temples with a tank’s scarred forearms, gave measured answers about clear rates and crew preservation. Behind the panel, the tent flap darkened, and one of Pebble’s amber eyes, big as a dinner table, slid into view to observe the proceedings.

Garrick’s pen stopped. Then resumed.

”As I was saying,” he continued, with heroic vocal control, ”When trusted with leadership responsibilities, I always prioritize survivability over speed. Losing youngsters to brash decisions is not something I want to experience again.”

”Smart,” Kaiden nodded. ”The apocalypse is not a speedrun competition.” Then he shrugged, ”Unless your home is attacked by a mountain-range sized enemy there to take it all.”

”Heh...” Garrick chuckled dryly, sending the giant eye at the flap a glance before nodding. ”I was speaking in general. Sometimes, making rash decisions can’t be helped.”

”Chip?” Calypso had appeared at Kaiden’s shoulder with a family-size bag of paprika chips, torn open and extended toward the candidate in genuine hospitality.

Garrick regarded the offered bag with visible caution, took one chip, and ate it.

”He accepted the chip,” Rika whispered into her notes. ”Hired?”

”Hired,” said Kaiden and Luna at the same time.

...

At seven forty that morning, on the executive floor of Marlowe & Finch, chairwoman Camille Marlowe had stood in front of eleven of her best people and run the morning like a war briefing, whiteboard in hand.

The whiteboard said, in red marker: WORDS THAT END THE MEETING.

”Performers,” she read aloud. ”Girls. Lovely. Women. Ladies, if preceded by ’lovely.’ Sweetheart, honey, darling, missy, young lady, and every other word you would use on a niece. Hot. Sexy. Porn. Star. Pornstar. Corn. Cornstar. Adult. Content. Adult content. Body of work. Assets. Talent. Exposure. Flexible, stamina, and physique, in any context whatsoever. Lingerie, and yes, I know we are a fashion house, the lingerie line does not exist until they invent it themselves. New Dawn. Ashbound. Maximilian. Any sentence beginning with ’you have to understand’.”

She capped the marker. The whiteboard had run out of room two items earlier.

”Also banned: their relationship structure, their ages, and whether anyone at this table has watched their streams. We have all watched their streams. It will not come up.”

A hand rose. ”The fragrance memo. Was that serious?”

”Dominique, the felinid ended a negotiation in the hallway because a man skipped his morning shower.” Camille didn’t blink. ”She has an extremely sensitive nose, hence why you were ordered to shower properly without using perfume, as that might push us into the other end of the spectrum.”

Nobody laughed, because the industry had spent the previous evening on the phone, and everyone in the room knew the numbers by heart.

Corvant, fourteen minutes. Hale Industries, twenty and change, plus one heir functionally removed from a line of succession.

House Veyrand had lasted the longest and lost the most. Their design team’s pitch now existed as a ball of compressed metal the size of an orange, and the story of how it got that shape had crossed the Atlantic before midnight.

Three young women had needed one afternoon to accomplish what a decade of regulators never managed. Corporate America had bathed, minded its eyes, and read its own contracts, all before breakfast.

”They confirmed for nine,” an assistant reported from the doorway. ”All three. No Regent.”

The room’s collective relief lasted right up until it reached Camille, and curdled.

”No Regent,” she repeated, and the good news settled in her stomach like a bad clause.

A day ago that sentence would have been the best news of the quarter. The Shadow Monarch not attending. Everyone in the building had once prayed for exactly this.

Now Camille found herself, absurdly, wishing the woman were coming after all, and she was self-aware enough to hear how insane the thought was even as she had it.

Because she’d done the reading. Vespera Ashborn was a monster, yes, but a legible one; you could lose to her and still understand, afterward, exactly how and why. She operated on money, leverage, and outcomes. A businesswoman could survive a businesswoman.

The three coming instead did not operate on money.