Chapter 836: Stages to become a mean Elf girl

A transport cut low over a residential district, sun sliding gold across rooftops, two stream drones trailing a comfortable distance behind.

"So where exactly are we going," Sera asked, wings tucked against the seat, watching houses scroll past below.

"To pay a friend of yours a visit." Diana didn’t look up from the tablet in her lap, thumb scrolling through an address Kelvin had flagged an hour earlier.

"I do not have a friend out here."

"Sure you do. Guy named Stanley." Diana glanced sideways, smirking. "Ring a bell?"

Sera’s wings stiffened. "Diana."

"Kelvin traced the account this morning. Real name, real address, real everything. Turns out our sad little internet friend isn’t actually homeless or dying or whatever tragic backstory he fed you this week." She tapped the screen, pulling up a residential record. "Lives with his mother. Steady job. No emergencies on file anywhere that would explain needing money from a stranger every other week."

Sera’s mouth pressed into a thin line. "I do not think this is necessary. I already blocked him."

"Blocking isn’t the lesson, Sera. The lesson is you learning what it actually feels like to tell someone no to their face and watch nothing bad happen to you for it." Diana set the tablet down. "Which brings us to today’s little field trip. Lesson one of becoming a mean elf girl."

"I did not agree to lessons."

"You don’t have to agree. You just have to survive them." Diana grinned, entirely too pleased with herself. "Lesson one. Boundaries aren’t rude. They’re just boundaries. You can say no without apologizing seven times after."

Sera exhaled slowly through her nose. "I do not believe I have ever apologized seven times for anything."

"You apologized to me twice this morning for a fight that wasn’t your fault, so, yes, you have."

The transport began its descent, angling toward a modest house at the end of a cul-de-sac, tidy lawn, a small garden along the front walk. Ordinary in every way that made the last few weeks feel even more ridiculous.

"This is his house," Sera said, staring down at it.

"This is his house."

They landed a block over, out of easy sightline, and walked the rest of the way, drones drifting overhead, discreet but recording.

Diana knocked.

A woman answered, maybe sixty, apron still on, flour dusted along one forearm like she’d been pulled straight out of baking something.

"Can I help you?"

"Hi." Diana’s voice shifted instantly, warm, disarming, nothing like the flat edge she’d been carrying the whole flight over. "We’re actually looking for Stanley. Is he home?"

The woman’s face lit with genuine delight. "Oh, you’re— you’re Eclipse, aren’t you? Oh my goodness. Stanley! Stanley, come here, you will not believe who’s at the door!"

Footsteps thundered down a staircase somewhere inside, and a young man appeared in the hallway, mid-twenties, soft around the middle, wearing a shirt with Sera’s own face printed across the front.

His expression went through several stages very fast. Excitement first. Then recognition of exactly who was standing beside Diana. Then something closer to panic.

"Sera," he said, voice cracking slightly. "Hi. Hi, wow, I didn’t— this is— did you get my messages?"

"Lesson two," Diana murmured under her breath, just for Sera. "You don’t owe him comfort right now. Let it be awkward. Awkward is allowed."

Sera’s jaw tightened, but she held Diana’s eyes for a second, drawing something from it, then turned back to Stanley.

"I did," Sera said. "All of them."

His mother beamed, oblivious. "Would you two like to come in? I just pulled cookies out—"

"Actually," Diana said, smooth and pleasant, "we’d love it if you sat in on this too, ma’am. Might be relevant."

The woman blinked, confused but agreeable, and ushered them all into a modest living room, walls covered in printed Eclipse merchandise, a shelf dedicated entirely to Sera figures in various poses.

Stanley sat on the edge of the couch, hands twisting in his lap. His mother settled beside him, still smiling, still entirely unaware of the shape of what was coming.

"So." Diana crossed her arms, standing rather than sitting, letting the height do some of the work. "Stanley. Real name confirmed. Real address confirmed. Real, steady, employed life confirmed. Which raises a question."

"I don’t— what’s this about?"

"It’s about the emergencies," Sera said, and her voice came out steadier than she expected, something Diana’s lessons had apparently already started sinking into. "The ones you kept having. The ones I kept sending things for."

Stanley’s face went pale.

"Sera, I— those were real, I swear, I’ve been going through a lot—"

"Have you," Diana said. "Because your bank records, which Kelvin pulled with a warrant Angel’s task force was very happy to sign off on, show a pretty healthy savings account for someone perpetually one crisis away from disaster."

His mother’s smile finally faltered. "Stanley. What is she talking about."

"Mom, it’s not— it’s complicated—"

"He’s been asking your daughter’s favorite dragon rider for money," Diana said pleasantly, redirecting to the mother with the same disarming warmth from the front door. "For months. Merch, ice cream she personally made, cash transfers, whenever he felt sad enough to ask. And he also asked her for some pictures a few weeks back. The kind of pictures."

The room went very still.

"Stanley," his mother said, voice dropping into something cold Sera hadn’t expected from someone who’d offered cookies thirty seconds earlier. "Is this true."

"It’s not— I wasn’t trying to—"

"Answer the question."

He didn’t answer. His silence answered for him.

His mother turned to Sera, mortified, hands pressed to her mouth. "I am so sorry. I had no idea, I swear to you, I had no idea he was doing any of this."

"I believe you," Sera said, and meant it.

"He will pay every cent of that back," his mother said, sharp now, glaring at her son with an expression that suggested this conversation was going to continue long after the guests left. "Every single cent, do you hear me. And you will apologize. Properly. Right now."

Stanley, red-faced, mumbled something that technically qualified as an apology.

"Lesson three," Diana murmured to Sera. "You don’t have to accept an apology just because someone finally offers one."

Sera looked at him a long moment.

"I do not accept that," she said. "Not yet. Perhaps once the money is actually returned."

His mother nodded firmly, approving, already reaching for her son’s arm to march him toward whatever came next.

Diana clapped her hands together, businesslike, already turning for the door. "Great. Glad we cleared that up. We’ll let Angel’s people follow up on the financial side."

They said their goodbyes, polite and clipped, and stepped back out into the afternoon light, the door closing behind them on the muffled sound of a mother’s voice rising sharply inside.

Sera exhaled once they’d cleared the front walk, wings loosening from where they’d drawn tight through the whole exchange.

"That was..." she started.

"Satisfying?"

"Uncomfortable."

"Same thing, early on." Diana bumped her shoulder lightly. "Gets easier."

They walked in silence back toward the transport, and Diana pulled out her tablet again once they were airborne, pulling up the stream feed from the drones.

"Here." She handed it over. "Lesson four. Check the comments."

Sera scrolled, hesitant.

The chat scrolled past fast, message after message stacking on top of each other.

*queen protecting her people*

*Diana absolutely eating that entire conversation up*

*"the kind of pictures" I’m WHEEZING*

*mans got exposed in front of his own MOM*

*Diana for president* ℯℯ𝑙.

*not diana redirecting straight to the mom like a heat seeking missile*

Sera looked up, genuinely startled. "They love this."

"They love it." Diana grinned. "Every single time I do something you’d call mean, chat goes insane for it. Every time you’re too nice, half of them are in there begging you to grow a spine."

Sera scrolled further, disbelief plain on her face at just how enthusiastically the internet had embraced watching someone get quietly dismantled in front of his own mother.

"Lesson five," Diana said, watching her reaction with open satisfaction. "Being kind and being a doormat aren’t the same thing, and it turns out most people can actually tell the difference, even when you couldn’t."

**

Back at the headquarters, the equipment bay was alive with the particular energy of someone gearing up for real deployment after too long behind a podium. Miss Brooks checked the seal on her boots, ran a hand along a ravager rifle she hadn’t carried into the field in years, and rolled her shoulders like she was testing whether the old muscle memory still lived where she’d left it.

Lila walked past, slowing.

"What’s going on here?"

"Brooks’s first op back," Sophie said, arms crossed near the doorway, watching. "Been a while."

Lila’s eyebrows lifted, genuine interest, or a good enough imitation of it. "Didn’t think that’d happen so fast."

"She asked. I said yes." Sophie kept her tone easy, conversational. "Figured we could use her out there more than behind a lecture podium right now."

"Makes sense." Lila leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed loosely to match Sophie’s own posture. A beat passed.

"Hey, so, random. Where did I send you yesterday, again? The secretary detail, right? How’d that end up?" Sophie asked.

"Uneventful," Lila said. "Boring, honestly. Guy talked my ear off about trade tariffs for six hours."

"Sounds rough."

"It was." Lila’s smile stayed easy, nothing in it that read as off, and yet something in the air between them had gone very slightly taut, both of them holding a conversation that sat one inch to the left of where either of them actually wanted it.

"Where’d you end up after," Sophie asked, casual, like she was just filling silence. "Didn’t see you back at HQ till late."

"Grabbed dinner somewhere in the Cardinal. Needed a minute after six hours of tariffs." Lila shrugged. "Why, you keeping tabs on me now?"

She said it light, almost teasing, but Sophie caught the edge underneath it, faint, deliberate.

"Just making conversation," Sophie said, matching the same light tone right back.

"Sure." Lila pushed off the doorframe. "I should let Brooks finish gearing up. Good luck out there, ma’am."

"Thanks," Brooks said, not looking up from her rifle.

Lila walked off down the corridor, unhurried, and Sophie watched her go a beat longer than the moment strictly required before turning back to Brooks.

"Everything alright?" Brooks asked, not missing much despite her focus on the weapon in her hands.

"Fine." Sophie shook it off, resetting. "So. Your op. Small settlement out past the eastern ridge, reporting bandit activity, nothing that should be above a routine security sweep on paper. But the reports have been inconsistent, numbers shifting every time someone calls it in, which either means panicked civilians exaggerating or something bigger than bandits actually operating out there."

"You want me leading a small team."

"Four, maybe five bodies. You, plus whoever you want alongside you. Recon first, engage only if it’s confirmed hostile, and pull out clean if it’s bigger than advertised." Sophie handed over a data slate with the settlement’s coordinates already loaded. "You’ve run exactly this kind of op a hundred times over. I trust your read on it more than I trust the settlement’s own panic."

Brooks took the slate, scanning it quickly, something settling into her posture that hadn’t been there in months of teaching, a kind of clarity that came easier to her out here than it ever did behind a podium.

"I’ll take Marcus and Reyna," she said. "Good instincts, good under pressure, and they won’t second guess a call I make in the field."

"Good pick."

"Thank you," Brooks said, quieter now, something genuine under the professionalism. "For trusting me with this."

"You earned it a long time before today," Sophie said.

Brooks gave a short nod, turned back to finish checking her gear, and Sophie stepped back to let her work.

Kelvin found her a few minutes later, jogging down the corridor with that particular urgency he carried when something had actually caught his attention rather than just his curiosity.

"Hey," he said, slightly out of breath. "Got a second?"

"What’s up."

"Lucy," Kelvin said. "She wants to talk. Called in about ten minutes ago, said it was time sensitive, wouldn’t give me details, just said she needed you specifically."

Sophie’s stomach tightened, some instinct already bracing for whatever came next.

"Did she say what about."

"No. Just that it couldn’t wait." Kelvin studied her face, something careful in his own expression now. "You good?"

"Yeah," Sophie said, already moving toward the command center, already running through every possible reason Lucy would call this urgently after their last conversation had ended the way it had. "Let’s find out what she needs."