A Hitman's Guide To Becoming A Hero

Selena pulled the car to a smooth stop in front of the guard post. The structure was clean and modern nothing like the association building with its display dome and celebrity energy.

This place didn’t advertise itself.

A robotic voice came from the speaker mounted beside the post.

"Please scan your identification pass on the reader to your left."

Selena rolled down her window and reached out, pressing her card against the scanner. A soft ting followed.

"Before we go in." She turned to Nicholas. "Put your glasses on."

Nicholas reached into his coat without comment and slipped the X Glasses into place.

The large metallic gate rolled upward slowly, revealing the landscape beyond.

----

Meanwhile, somewhere within the academy, in a corridor removed from the main entrance path, a woman in a neat blazer approached two men in exquisite brown suits

She spoke quietly, her voice low and measured.

"Hero Phantom has arrived."

The taller of the two men said nothing. He simply adjusted his cufflink and turned his gaze toward the entrance road where the car was pulling through.

The shorter one smiled, "No other scouters are here, so we’re sure to take Phantom with us today"

-----

As they drove inside, Selena spotted the lady who was directing them to the parking area.

It was a middle-aged woman. She guided Selena to a marked space, waited for them to step out, and began walking before they’d fully oriented themselves.

The facility unfolded around them in stages.

"Please, allow me to guide you." the lady said as she gestured for them to follow her, pointing and telling the places as she moved.

First the outer grounds — immaculate, wide, with the kind of maintained grass that suggested nobody actually played on it casually. Beyond that, the gymnasium block. Three buildings connected by covered walkways, each one easily the size of a concert hall.

"Training facilities for physical conditioning, combat fundamentals, and ability development," the woman said without breaking pace.

Then the sports fields.

Then the dormitories — long residential buildings set back from the main campus, quiet at this hour.

Then the classrooms.

Then the dome above them, which up close was even more imposing. The curved structure caught the light differently depending on angle, almost like looking through tinted glass at a sky that was the same sky but somehow more contained.

"The dome serves as both a containment structure and a training amplifier," the woman explained. "Abilities used within its boundary are tracked, measured, and regulated."

Katherine had stopped listening to the explanation approximately thirty seconds after it began.

Her head was on a constant swivel — the fields, the gymnasium, the other students moving between buildings in small groups.

"Brother." She tugged Nicholas’s sleeve. "Brother, look."

"I see it."

"Brother, look at that one."

"I see that one too."

"Brother—"

"Katherine."

She went quiet for approximately four seconds before tugging his sleeve again.

Nicholas looked down at the little girl with a smile as she pointed at a robot moving some bricks in the distance.

"Alright, we are here" the Lady said, as she stopped by a door.

The registration office was smaller than the rest of the facility suggested. A practical room with filing systems, two desks with chairs arranged for discussion, and a window that looked out onto one of the training courts.

Several students were already inside for various administrative reasons. The moment Nicholas walked through the door the whispers started.

"Is that—"

Pointed looks. Nudges.

"It’s Phantom—"

"No way, why is he here?!"

Nicholas paid them no attention.

Katherine, beside him, stood slightly taller.

In the corner of the room, slightly apart from the others, a boy sat with a football suspended in the air in front of him. It rotated slowly, shifting angle, dropping and rising with small precise movements. He wasn’t showing off — he was practicing something specific, his focus entirely on the ball. He didn’t look up when Nicholas entered.

Katherine noticed him immediately.

The ball moved in a small arc. Came back. Rotated again.

Selena had moved toward the administrator’s desk and was beginning to explain the enrollment situation. Nicholas stood beside her.

Katherine drifted toward the door.

She wasn’t paying attention to where she was going.

The corridor just outside the registration room was wider than necessary.

Katherine was looking back through the doorway at the boy with the floating ball when she almost stepped directly onto someone’s shoe.

She pulled up short, looked up.

Two men in brown exquisite suits looked down at her.

The taller one barely registered her. The shorter one who she almost stepped on looked down at her, irritation printed on his face. Like he’d stepped on shit.

"Watch where you’re going." His hand shot out and shoved her aside.

Katherine’s foot caught and she tipped sideways—

A hand caught her arm.

Firm. Immediate.

She looked up.

Nicholas stood beside her.

She hadn’t heard him move. Nobody in the room had — one moment he was standing at the administrator’s desk beside Selena, the next he was here, one hand steadying Katherine with a grip that was completely gentle, his eyes on the man in the brown suit.

The corridor went quiet.

The students who had been watching from the registration room doorway had stopped moving.

Selena looked across the room, her expression shifting as she read what was happening.

The man in the suit looked at Nicholas.

Nicholas looked back at him.

He didn’t say anything yet.

He didn’t need to.

The air in the corridor had changed in a way that was difficult to explain and impossible to ignore. The particular quality of stillness that arrives when someone very calm is deciding something.

Katherine, steady on her feet now, looked between her brother and the man.

She had seen Nicholas fight on a screen.

She had seen him come home with injuries and talk about it like it was nothing.

But this was the first time she had seen that look in person.

And even she, at her age, understood instinctively that the man in the brown suit had just made a significant mistake.

Nicholas asked with a low quiet voice, "Which hand pushed her?"