Chapter 501 | My Captain’s Contempt

Chapter 501: 501 | My Captain’s Contempt

Six in the morning came the way it always did lately, which was too fast and with Misato’s voice already in my ears before I’d fully crossed the field.

"You’re four minutes late, Monroe. Four laps for four minutes. Move."

I stopped at the field’s edge. Misato waited there, lime green ponytail pulled tight, arms crossed in that specific way she had when she’d woken up spoiling for conflict. Her tactical shorts had grass stains from yesterday. The squad was scattered across the turf in various states of misery. Jordan lay flat on his back like someone had cut his strings. Belle stretched her hamstrings with all the enthusiasm of a tax audit. Naomi was already warm, loose, her braid actually holding because I’d fixed it this morning while she pretended to sleep.

Then there were the new additions.

Hikaru stood twenty paces from everyone else. Spine locked straight, red eyes forward. The male tactical suit fit tight across shoulders I knew were wrapped in binding underneath. I’d seen it three weeks back when there was blood on bathroom tile and fear in the air that wouldn’t translate to words.

Javier bounced near the track, notebook open, sketching what looked like trajectory math or possibly Misato’s effective kill radius.

Blair Davenport occupied the field’s center like she’d purchased the deed.

According to her, she had.

"Formations first." She addressed the group, not Misato. The words came out like a board resolution already passed by unanimous vote. Her father’s company manufactured half our gear. That bought a certain type of confidence. "Diamond spread. I’ll take point. Ayame handles rear coverage."

Misato’s jaw shifted.

I’d logged enough hours with her by now. Watched her run drills before dawn, bully Jordan into cardiovascular survival, cry into my shoulder about her mother’s job situation, hold two fractured squads together through stubbornness and a personal ban on failure. I recognized what that jaw did when someone else tried to commandeer her field.

It did exactly that.

"Laps first." Misato’s voice stayed level, controlled. The tone she used thirty seconds before violence became operational. "Then formations. Then breakfast. That order. The one I gave."

"That’s inefficient." Blair adjusted her left boot. Somehow spotless despite the wet grass, which was either prep or magic. "Formations while everyone’s fresh. Cardio last, when fatigue simulates actual gate conditions."

Blair’s logic wasn’t wrong. That was what made her insufferable. Every word came gift-wrapped in perfect reasoning and tied with a bow that said you are beneath my attention. The only difference between her advice and a board directive was a PowerPoint deck.

Jordan’s voice drifted up from the grass. "Oh good. Two of them now."

"Wayne, get up."

Both women spoke at once.

They stopped.

Blair’s perfect posture didn’t shift, but something in the air did. Misato’s temperature trick. Blair’s opposite number. The two canceled each other out and left behind the kind of quiet that made everyone else remember urgent business elsewhere.

Naomi moved closer. "This is going to be a problem."

"You think?"

"Misato’s going to run you dead today." Her voice stayed low, casual. "Blair’s here and untouchable, so you’re going to eat every lap Misato can’t make Blair run."

I glanced at her. Pink-striped hair still sleep-messy, eyes tracking the standoff with the focus of someone watching wolves size each other up. That B-rank Perception wasn’t decorative.

"That’s fucking fantastic."

"Is it?"

"MONROE." Misato’s arm shot out, finger aimed at the track like it personally offended her. She still hadn’t looked away from Blair. "Laps. Now. Six instead of four for making me repeat myself."

"I didn’t make you repeat anything."

"Eight."

I started moving.

The math was simple. Misato couldn’t touch Blair. Not without consequences that rippled straight up to employment termination for her mother. Nine years of dependency, family money, power structures that didn’t bend just because you were right. Blair could cite policy, invoke her father’s seat on the advisory board, make this whole situation Misato’s problem with three phone calls and a disappointed sigh.

But me?

I was safe. I was the field lead, which meant I was hers to break in the way captains break the person they trust to survive it. Every time Blair said something insufferable and Misato couldn’t respond, she added a lap to my count. Every time Blair tried to seize command and Misato had to swallow it, another set of burpees landed on my plate.

I was a stress ball. A living, breathing, cardiovascular stress ball with a divine parasite in his chest and eighteen days on the clock.

I ran the laps. My legs handled it better than they had any right to, C-rank endurance carrying me through where six weeks ago I’d have died on lap two and been buried where I fell. The Silver essence hummed in my blood, four flavors deep, and my body ate the distance like it was nothing.

By the time I finished, Blair had somehow taken over the formation drills entirely.

"No," Blair was saying, to Hikaru, of all people. "Your spacing is wrong. Detection specialists stay tight to the damage dealer. You’re drifting."

Hikaru didn’t move. She stared at Blair with red eyes that gave away exactly nothing, the same look she’d given Charles Leone before Charles Leone died, and said one word.

"No."

"Excuse me?"

"My spacing lets me cover both flanks. Tight to the damage dealer, I cover one." Hikaru’s voice was low, clipped, the trained-flat register she used to shave the femininity off her vowels. "Yours is worse."

Blair’s hands twitched. A little curl of blue-white heat flickered around her knuckles before she caught it.

I’d seen Blair burn a forest down. I’d watched her lose control in a Void Gate and set an ancient jungle on fire trying to protect her squad, and I’d dragged her off a cliff to keep the flames she’d started from becoming her cause of death. I knew what it looked like when Blair Davenport’s fear turned into fire.

This wasn’t that. This was worse in a smaller way. This was Blair trying to lead a squad that hadn’t chosen her, using the only management style she’d ever learned, which was her father’s, which was contempt dressed up as instruction.

She was terrible at it.

Not because she was stupid. Because she’d never once in eighteen years been part of a team instead of the top of a hierarchy. She didn’t know how to give an order that wasn’t a threat. She didn’t know how to correct someone without implying they were beneath correction. And every person on this squad had spent six weeks learning to move as a unit, and Blair kept trying to install herself as the head of a body that already knew how to breathe.

"Davenport." Misato’s voice came from behind me. Careful. Coiled. "Detection placement is my call. Movement and positioning. That was the deal."

"The deal was co-command."

"The deal was you handle offense and I handle everything else."

"And this affects offense. If Tanaka’s out of position, my target priority collapses."

They were both right. That was the whole disaster in one sentence. They were both right and neither of them could give an inch, and the squad stood there in the wet morning grass watching two people share a steering wheel while I did the driving nobody had asked me to do.

Jordan shuffled up beside me, hoodie inside out, one shoe untied. He looked at Blair and Misato circling each other, then at Hikaru refusing to move, then at me, sweat-soaked and breathing hard from eight unnecessary laps.

And he smiled.

Not at the argument. At me.

"You look good, man." He said it quiet, like he didn’t want the women to hear him being sincere.

"Thanks. I think."