The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Not enough to blow the whole thing open. But enough that the gap between my real situation and the story I’d been selling was visible to the one person in the building whose entire career was built on spotting gaps.

I lifted my head off the steering wheel. Checked my reflection in the rearview mirror. Sharp cheekbones. Dirty-blonde hair that never quite decided what it was doing. Amber eyes that looked like they belonged to someone who’d been up too late and seen too much. The scar through my left eyebrow from a childhood I didn’t remember having.

Lukas Belmont. Third-place Halloran applicant. Class 1-B. Phantom Touch. Force Manipulation variant with a convenient progressive manifestation excuse for every new power the gacha decided to hand me.

The face in the mirror looked back at me without judgment. It had seen worse mornings.

I grabbed the electronics bags from the back seat, locked the Range Rover with the fob, and walked into the house. Sloane was in the kitchen making a sandwich with the focus of someone defusing a bomb. Diane stood at the counter with sweet tea in one hand and her phone in the other, exactly where I’d pictured her, hip against the marble, looking at me over the rim of her glass as I came through the door.

Our eyes met. She took a sip. I held her gaze for a full three seconds without flinching or going still or doing any of the things she’d just catalogued as tells.

Her mouth curved behind the glass.

I set the bags on the counter, stole a piece of turkey from Sloane’s sandwich assembly, dodged the elbow she threw at my ribs, and opened the fridge to find something that qualified as lunch. The turkey was decent. I grabbed the whole package and a jar of mustard and a loaf of bread and started building something that would keep my hands busy while my brain processed what had just happened.

"You’re not going to put that much mustard on bread," Sloane said, watching me from two feet away with the expression of someone witnessing a crime against condiments.

"Watch me."

"That’s obscene."

"It’s lunch."

"It’s a mustard delivery system."

"Don’t knock it till you try it."

"I would rather eat the bread plain."

"Then you are living a smaller life than you deserve."

Sloane bit into her own sandwich and chewed with the aggressive satisfaction of someone who had already decided they were correct about everything happening in this kitchen. Diane watched both of us with something warm behind her eyes that she probably thought she was hiding. She wasn’t. Not from me. Not anymore.

The afternoon unfolded in the particular rhythm I was learning belonged to days off in the Fitzgerald house. Sloane claimed the theater room and loaded the Halloran student portal on the big screen, scrolling through course descriptions and faculty profiles with the intensity of someone preparing for war, which she was. I sat beside her and made notes on my phone about Class 1-B’s curriculum, which listed Adaptive Combat Strategy, Tactical Field Operations, Crisis Response Protocol, and something called Applied Aspect Theory that sounded like it would either change my life or bore me into a coma. Imara Steele’s faculty photo showed a woman with dark skin, close-cropped hair, and a jaw that looked like it had been designed for the specific purpose of telling people to try harder. Her listed specialty was unconventional combat integration and threat neutralization in low-resource environments. Below her photo, a single quote was attributed to her.

"If you need your Aspect to win, you’ve already lost the fight."

I stared at that quote for a long time.

Sloane noticed. "What?"

"My instructor’s teaching philosophy is basically that powers are a crutch."

"That’s terrifying for a guy who relies on his powers."

"Thanks, babe."

"I mean it lovingly."

"That’s worse."

She grinned and bumped her shoulder against mine and went back to scrolling through 1-A’s faculty profiles with the possessive satisfaction of someone reading her own class roster. Somewhere in the house, Diane was on a call with her assistant about the Victor Sterling situation, her voice carrying through the walls in fragments. Something about approval metrics. Something about a press cycle. Something about how if Sterling posted one more unvetted photo she was going to fly to his house and physically confiscate his phone.

I leaned back into the couch and let the noise of the house wash over me. Sloane’s warmth pressed against my side. Diane’s voice rose and fell through the walls. The Halloran portal glowed on the screen with course names and faculty photos and the promise of something that started in nine days.

Nine days until move-in. Nine days until Class 1-B. Nine days until I walked into the world’s number one Hero Academy with a fake Aspect registration, a gacha loadout nobody could detect, and a three-section staff called Joyful Cloud that I hadn’t even taken out of the inventory yet.

My phone buzzed. Percy Mendoza.

hey so i mapped the route from our rooms to the main lecture hall and the fastest path is through the east corridor but the second fastest path through the garden courtyard is only eleven seconds slower and has significantly better sight lines which might matter if we’re ever running late and need to assess the environment while moving

I typed back: good to know. we should walk it together first day.

His response came in four seconds.

that would be really helpful actually. um. thank you.

I put my phone down. Sloane glanced at the screen, saw Percy’s name, and rolled her eyes with the affectionate contempt of someone who had already categorized my new neighbor as nonthreatening and therefore tolerable.

"Your nervous friend texts like a dissertation."

"He texts like someone who’s thinking faster than his thumbs can move."

"Is that supposed to be impressive?"

"It’s supposed to be useful."

Sloane considered this for half a second, then returned her attention to the portal. "If he’s 1-B, he’s your problem. Keep him away from my training schedule."

"Noted."

Nine days.

Then everything changed.