My Scumbag System-Chapter 343: Debriefing The Mission

The common room of Onyx House looked like a tornado had a baby with a gym locker and then that baby threw a house party.

Every available surface was covered with something that shouldn’t be there. Training weights on the coffee table. Textbooks stacked in precarious towers that defied basic physics. Someone’s laundry draped over a lamp. Empty Thunder-Strike cans formed a pyramid on the windowsill, a monument to poor hydration choices. The air smelled like sweat, cheap pizza, and teenage desperation.

Home sweet home.

Hikari had claimed an entire section of the couch as her personal feeding station. She was on what looked like her sixth slice of cold pepperoni, talking with her mouth full in a way that would have given etiquette teachers nightmares.

"See, the thing about pizza," she said between bites, cheese stretching in a string from her lips to the slice, "is that the ratio matters. Too much cheese and you lose the structural integrity. Too little and what’s even the point?"

Jaime sat across from her, shirtless as usual, somehow managing to flex his pecs while simultaneously devouring a slice in two bites. The man was a menace to dinner tables everywhere.

"You speak wisdom, small warrior!" His voice boomed loud enough to rattle the windows. "But you forget the most important ingredient. HONOR. Pizza consumed without honor is merely... bread with toppings."

"That’s literally what pizza is."

"WRONG." Jaime struck a pose that belonged on a protein powder advertisement. "Pizza is the fuel of champions. It must be earned through righteous battle. Only then does the cheese truly melt upon the tongue."

Hikari considered this. Shrugged. Grabbed another slice.

In the corner, Raphael had headphones on and was aggressively ignoring everyone while sharpening a knife.

The knife made slow, deliberate scrapes against the whetstone.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

Juan remained unconscious on the other couch. Or "unconscious." A slice of pizza rested on his chest like an offering to a particularly lazy deity. The pizza had been there long enough to have formed a small grease stain on his shirt. No one had moved it. No one dared.

The eternal question of whether Juan Navarro was actually sleeping or just pretending so he didn’t have to participate in life remained unanswered.

"Come ON, man!" Marco had Malachi cornered by the bookshelf, trying desperately to grab his hand for what looked like an arm wrestling match. "Just one round! That’s all I’m asking!"

Malachi’s response was to dissolve into shadow the moment Marco’s fingers got within an inch of contact.

"Bro!"

Malachi reformed three feet to the left, expression unchanged. His violet eyes held the enthusiasm of a man watching paint dry.

"Bro, that’s cheating!"

Malachi shrugged. Shadows pooled at his feet like they were waiting for their next command.

Marco lunged again. Malachi vanished. Reappeared behind the couch where Juan lay dead to the world.

"I will get you eventually!"

Another shrug. The ghost of what might have been a smile flickered across Malachi’s face before disappearing as quickly as it had come.

Akari had her phone out, filming the entire disaster.

"And here we see the noble Onyx Hound in its natural habitat," she purred into the camera, panning across the carnage. "Surrounded by carbs. Notice the alpha male attempting to assert dominance through arm wrestling. Observe the beta male using literal shadow magic to avoid physical contact. Truly, this is nature at its finest."

She zoomed in on the pizza stain on Juan’s shirt.

"Endangered species sighting. The Rare Sleeping Slacker."

That was the scene we walked into.

Team Alpha filed through the front door like the world’s most exhausted parade. Monica clutching her fern. Jacob looking like his soul had temporarily vacated his body. Emi somehow still bouncing despite the fact that she should have collapsed from energy expenditure hours ago. Skylar slinking past like a shadow that wanted nothing to do with anyone.

Natalia stayed pressed against my side because apparently that was her default position now.

The room went quiet. Just for a moment.

Then Isabelle’s voice drifted down from the second floor landing, where she stood with a book in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. Her expression suggested she was observing particularly interesting bacteria under a microscope.

"Ah. The conquering heroes return. I trust the shrubbery has been thoroughly vanquished?"

Before I could respond with something appropriately cutting, Emi exploded.

"We did SO GOOD!" She practically vibrated out of her skin. "Monica was AMAZING and she like talked to all the plants and they LISTENED to her and then Skylar did this thing with the smoke where she put visions in the boss monster’s HEAD and Jacob found the PERFECT route through the whole dungeon like he saw everything coming and Satori was all like BOOM with the bat and the boss just FELL APART and there was golden sap EVERYWHERE and—"

She was talking so fast that her words blurred together into one continuous stream of consciousness. I wasn’t sure she was breathing. I wasn’t sure she needed to.

Hikari, bless her simple soul, offered Emi a slice of cheese pizza.

Emi accepted it without pausing her monologue, shoving half of it into her mouth while continuing to talk.

"—and then the whole ECOSYSTEM just went CRAZY and—mmph—the vines were everywhere and Monica was GLOWING and—"

"Jesus," Raphael muttered from his corner, not looking up from his knife. "Someone put a muzzle on the healer."

Emi didn’t notice. Or didn’t care. The pizza disappeared. The monologue continued.

I left her to it.

Carmen dropped into a chair backwards, straddling it with her legs spread in a way that made her pencil skirt ride up. The bottle balanced on her knee. Her single visible eye swept across the room with the weariness of someone who had seen too much and been paid too little to care.

"Alright, puppies. Gather round. Official debrief time."

Nobody moved.

Carmen sighed. Took a long drink from her bottle. "That wasn’t a request."