Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 941: Enemy Play

”By order of the Federal Bureau of Awakened Affairs, the guild Eclipse is scheduled for a comprehensive compliance inspection. Premises, personnel, contracts, and all registered assets.” He paused, the first pause he’d taken. ”Effective immediately. I will be conducting the preliminary walkthrough now.”

The page carried a federal seal, and under the seal, a name buried somewhere in the guild’s very first inbox.

Doug read the document twice, and by the second pass his face had folded into deep professional revulsion, like he’d found a cockroach pressed between the pages of otherwise good paperwork. Effective immediately, on the guild’s first day of intake, with the cameras still overhead.

Not to mention that this was Eclipse, the guild led by the Anomaly the government had been making deals with for months now. Instead of throwing the book at him on day one, they should be looking the other way - as they so often did when it came to the Ashborn family.

Doug set the page down on top of the master roster and squared its corners with the table edge, which bought him three seconds to decide how this was going to go.

”This is a restricted intake area on an active construction site,” he said, polite and immovable. ”You’ll wait for management to arrive, and then you’ll be allowed to conduct your inspection.”

”That’s the correct procedure.” The inspector sounded quietly pleased about it, which was the first thing he’d sounded since stepping out of the sedan. He took one step back from the table and stood there, in no hurry at all.

Ms. Rook rose from her own table, crossed to him, and held out a laminated visitor badge until he took it. ”Wear it visibly. You’re seventh in the queue.”

He looked down the drive at the six recruits ahead of him, then back at Rook, and clipped the badge to his breast pocket. ”Seventh.”

Rook’s expression thawed a fraction of a degree, roughly her version of an embrace.

News traveled up the lot the way news travels through hundreds of nervous people, fast, wrong, and improving with every retelling, so that by the time it reached the far scaffolding, the government had come to shut down the guild, arrest the dog, and draft the survivors.

Luna had been narrating the squad postings to her stream from a lawn chair, and the moment the word federal crossed the lot she ended the feed mid-sentence, no sign-off, no explanation, which told her regulars more about the situation than any commentary could have.

Under the scaffolding, six amber eyes that had been sweeping the crowd all morning stopped, one after another, on the gray sedan and its prior occupant, and stayed there.

...

Kaiden crossed from the north end of the lot before Doug’s runner was halfway to him, because hundreds of people staring at one folding table has its own gravity. He read the order standing in the gravel, twice, and the second read only made it worse.

”Where is he now?” he asked.

”The refreshment tables. Ms. Rook moved her station next to his seat, so he is currently the most supervised man in the area.” Doug tapped the seal with one finger. ”Sir, nobody inspects a guild that is a week old, let alone one that just fought a nation-ending calamity two days ago.”

”Hmm...” Kaiden remained silent, pondering, which prompted Doug to add, ”There’s nothing to inspect yet. It’s weighing a cake that’s still batter. This is far out of standard protocol.”

”Then someone wanted us weighed.” Kaiden read the scope line one more time, and the anger arrived, low and quiet, the kind he’d learned to bank rather than spend. Hundreds of hopeful new recruits out there had polished their armor for this morning, and somebody in a federal office had signed a piece of paper to smear it, timed to the hour.

”Keep the line moving, Doug. The newcomers don’t need to deal with this. I’ll take care of it.”

He did just that, namely, calling for a family meeting.

The command tent gathered them inside two minutes.

Vespera read the order once, which for her was thorough.

”Comprehensive scope. No named complainant. Signed by a deputy director, countersigned by no one, dated one hour ago.” She laid the page flat on the table and turned it with one finger to face Kaiden. ”The Bureau’s compliance office takes six weeks to approve its own stationery. This cleared in an hour. Somebody walked it through by hand.”

”It’s aimed,” Kaiden sighed.

”Yes.”

”Twenty bucks says it’s that sorry excuse of a father,” Luna said.

”He couldn’t afford the stamp,” Vespera said.

”I do not see the difficulty here.” Calypso had claimed a corner of the map table, tail swaying behind her in slow, honest puzzlement. ”We are far stronger than that pest. If the little man is a bother, I will carry him to the property line, gently, and we can go back to our nice first day.”

”And that is why you are not allowed to answer the official mail.” Bastet was draped across the only decent chair in the tent, but her tail had gone still, which meant she was working.

”Human packs do not settle things the way dungeons do. The little man is a claw. Swat the claw, and the beast behind it limps in front of the whole herd and wails that we are exactly the monsters it always warned them about. Then the herd writes new laws for us. Paper, unlike claws, does not bleed.”

”Hm.” Calypso weighed that with genuine interest. ”Devious. So we let the claw scratch around until it gets bored?”

”We let it scratch exactly where the law says it may.” Nyx was at the tent flap, watching the man in the shade fill out his own forms against his knee, patient as furniture. ”Nothing more, nothing warmer. And someone stays on his hands the entire visit. A man alone in a corridor can find all sorts of things in his own pockets, and I’d hate for him to discover any of them on our property.”

”Let’s have the twins record everything,” Nyx added. ”They’ve been recording the whole day for the archive anyway, cameras on every corner of the lot. If his hand wanders anywhere interesting, we’ll have it from three angles.”

”Can we at least confirm the thing is real before he starts?” Kaiden asked. ”It doesn’t have all the forms filled out properly. What happens if we just tell him to come back next month with better paperwork?”

”Obstruction,” Vespera said.

Doug was happy to expand on that for the Ashborn Matriarch. ”Obstruction which becomes a finding, which becomes a headline, which is likely the entire point of sending him.”

Aria hadn’t said a word through any of it, for she wasn’t here to begin with.

The obsessive yandere was busy, evidenced by the family’s interfaces pinging with a shared feed, showing her view.

The compound from the scaffolding’s highest crossbeam, the shade tables small and sharp below, one man sitting at the center of the frame like an insect pinned to a board. The frame never drifted a degree off him, and everyone who knew Aria understood exactly what that stillness was holding back.

”Got it,” Kaiden exhaled and looked around the tent at the rest of them.

”It’s supposed to be their first day, and instead we’re hosting a man with a clipboard because somebody out there is scared enough of us to spend money on it.”

He folded the order and slid it into his jacket.

”We always knew that dealing with sniffing inspectors is going to be part of our lives moving forward, as long as we have a president who wants to retain at least a semblance of control.”

The deal with the president had made his dungeon sovereign territory, declared by the Association’s Chairman in front of the whole world, but that sovereignty ended at the dungeon’s threshold. Eclipse itself was an officially registered guild under the Awakened Association, and paperwork could reach a guild just fine.

”It came earlier than expected, but an inspection is an inspection. That’s why the inspector gets exactly what the law entitles him to and nothing else.”

Everyone at the table listened to him attentively. He sounded genuinely at peace with hosting a federal audit on his first morning.

Then his eyes flashed, deep, menacing crimson. ”And when we find out who’s truly behind today, I want their name in my hands before the Bureau even knows we’re looking.”

”On it~” Nyx purred, phone out.

”Leave it to me, sir,” Doug said, pen already clicking.

”...” Vespera’s eyes mimicked her son’s as she watched Aria’s footage of a rancid rat. She knew their enemies wouldn’t sit still as Eclipse grew impossibly big, but that didn’t mean she needed to like what was happening.

”Good,” Kaiden smiled. ”Let’s get to work, then.”

...

Vespera made her call from the quiet end of the tent as soon as it emptied out.

”Explain,” she said coldly.

”It’s real. Wrong, but real. Deputy Director Reeves, Compliance. He’s been in that building since before the first gate opened,” Grace sighed tiredly from her private and encrypted line.

”And what will you do about it?”

”Well... Nothing. It’s a different building, under a different statute, housing far older grudges than the association. The Bureau hates that we exist more than anything. If the Chairman leans on them, the leaning becomes their next budget request.”

One federal body could not simply order another to heel, however much it soured their awakened relationships.

”...” Vespera let the silence sit on the line until it turned awkward.

”...For what it’s worth, this thing moved too fast to be clean.” Papers moved on Grace’s end of the line. ”Two skipped steps means two people who didn’t ask questions, and people who don’t ask questions get paid. Somebody bought this, and buyers leave receipts.”

”I’ve already sent for the receipts.”

”Then the last thing.” Grace’s voice lost its official finish. ”The Bureau writes policy for people who are frightened of awakened superhumans, of the inevitable shift in power that they’re already feeling and doing their utmost to resist. But more than anything, they’re afraid of your guild leader. Every impressive thing he does in front of them becomes a new weight on the scale, forcing balance to tip toward the superhuman side away from the old politician side.”

Vespera, of course, was fully aware. ”My son...”

”...Has become the icon of the new age,” Grace smiled on the other end of the line. ”A listless boy went from being a dejected college student to being the world’s most famous human to have ever lived in the span of a few months. He’s the perfect poster child of our new reality, where anything can happen. Which is exactly what the suits fear the most.”

Silence returned to the line, before Grace sighed one more time. ”That’s why the best thing he can be today is dull: a plain, old, reliable guild master who resists the unlawful demands and abides by the lawful ones.”

”He arrived there on his own,” Vespera said, and made no particular effort to keep the pride out of it.

...

The inspector’s queue number came up at half past eleven.

He presented his credentials across Doug’s folding table without being asked. The ID named him Gerald Hobbes, Compliance Division, Federal Bureau of Awakened Affairs. In person he was heavyset and gray-suited, with a face that had outlasted four administrations while appearing in nothing but ID photos.

Kaiden had taken the seat beside Doug ten minutes earlier, and the inspector’s eyes found him without needing an introduction.

”Mister Grey.”