The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

The delivery arrived at ten-fourteen, which was sixteen minutes ahead of Gerald’s estimate and instantly made him the most reliable human being I had encountered since arriving in this body. Bobby turned out to be a kid about my age with a truck that looked older than both of us combined, and he hauled the drywall sheets and backer board to the front door with the grim resignation of someone who had been doing Saturday deliveries since he was old enough to lift fifty pounds.

I tipped him twenty bucks. He stared at the bill like I’d handed him a religious artifact, mumbled something about having a good one, and drove off in his rattling truck before I could change my mind.

Now came the actual work.

I stood in the foyer with sixteen hundred dollars worth of building materials piled around my feet and a hard hat sitting on my head at a slight angle that I refused to adjust because adjusting it would mean I cared about how I looked while doing home repair, and I absolutely did not care. The yellow plastic felt ridiculous against my dirty-blonde hair. The safety glasses sat snug over my amber eyes. The respirator hung around my neck on its elastic straps, waiting for deployment.

The gym was down the hall, through the living room, past the kitchen, and down a half-flight of stairs. That was a lot of trips for a lot of heavy material over a lot of expensive flooring that Diane would murder me for scratching.

Or.

I raised both hands, palms up.

Three amber constructs materialized from my forearms, translucent and faintly glowing in the morning light that poured through the foyer windows. Spectral Reach. Fifteen-foot range. Eighty Dexterity feeding directly into the fine motor control of each construct. They hovered in the air like phantom servants, their edges rippling with that distinctive amber hue that Charles Weber had noted during my registration as unusual for a telekinetic.

Who knew ghost hands would be this useful for home improvement?

I directed the first construct to grab the drywall sheet, the second to scoop up the bag of tools and compound, and the third to cradle the heavy bag mount and the box of lag bolts. The constructs lifted everything with embarrassing ease. Fifty-seven pounds of drywall floated at shoulder height like it weighed nothing. The tool bag hung suspended three feet off the ground, swinging gently. The mount and hardware hovered behind me in a neat formation.

I looked like the world’s most aggressively equipped interior decorator.

"Let’s go."

I walked through the living room with my spectral convoy trailing behind me, each construct adjusting its position as I turned corners and navigated doorways. The drywall sheet was wider than the hallway, so I tilted it sideways with a thought and threaded it through the gap with maybe two inches of clearance on either side. My fingers never touched it. My brain did all the work, spatial geometry resolving in real time at eighty Intelligence while my feet carried me forward and my eyes tracked the path ahead.

This was what two months of training and a gacha system built for maximum inconvenience produced. Not a superhero. A supernatural moving crew.

I rounded the corner into the kitchen and found Sloane sitting on the counter.

She wore running shorts and a compression top dark with sweat, her pink hair pulled back in a damp ponytail that stuck to the back of her neck. She’d finished her run. A half-empty water bottle dangled from her left hand. Her right hand held a protein bar wrapper that she’d already demolished. Her blue eyes, still bright from the cardio, tracked me as I entered the kitchen with three glowing amber arms carrying construction supplies behind me like a bizarre parade float.

She said nothing.

I kept walking. The drywall sheet drifted past her at head height, close enough that the air displacement ruffled the loose strands of her ponytail. The tool bag followed. The mount and hardware brought up the rear. I descended the half-flight of stairs to the gym entrance, guided everything through the door, and set the materials down against the far wall with the gentleness of someone parking a car they couldn’t afford to dent.

Then I went back upstairs for the second load.

Sloane still sat on the counter. Still watching. Still silent.

Second trip. Backer board, sawhorses, plastic sheeting, LED work light on its telescoping stand. The constructs carried everything down while I walked ahead with my phone in one hand, a YouTube video playing at full volume. A man named Carl with a magnificent mustache and a flannel shirt was explaining how to cut drywall with a utility knife and a T-square, his voice carrying the patient authority of someone who had been teaching strangers to fix walls for decades.

"You want to score the paper first," Carl said from my phone speaker. "Just the paper. Don’t try to cut through the whole board. Score it, snap it, then cut the backing paper from the other side. Clean break every time."

I nodded along as I passed through the kitchen again. The backer board floated behind me. The sawhorses flanked it like honor guards.

Sloane’s water bottle paused halfway to her mouth.

Third trip. Plastic sheeting, work light, respirator, safety glasses, sandpaper, gloves. The constructs had this down to a science now, threading through hallways and around corners with the spatial awareness that my brain fed them continuously. Carl on YouTube had moved on to discussing mud application techniques. His mustache was truly outstanding.

Sloane set her water bottle down.

"What am I watching?"

"Home repair."

"You don’t know how to do home repair."

"Carl does." I held up the phone. Carl waved at the camera in his pre-recorded intro segment. "He’s very thorough."

"Are those your phantom hands carrying drywall?"

"They’re carrying backer board. The drywall’s already downstairs."

She stared at the procession of floating construction materials as it disappeared down the stairs. Then she looked at me. Then at the hard hat on my head. Then at the safety glasses pushed up on my forehead. Then at the respirator dangling around my neck.

"You look like a haunted construction site."

"Safety first."

"Since when?"

"Since Gerald told me drywall dust is nobody’s friend. Gerald is wise. Gerald knows things."

"Who the hell is Gerald?"

"A man at the hardware store. He installed Diane’s garage floor coating eight years ago. He says hello."