The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

I maintained my distance while three more people cycled through the line. Koda kept talking at roughly the same volume as before, which was to say she had given up on indoor voice as a concept and decided projection was a lifestyle choice. The girl with the short black bob eventually appeared from the stairwell carrying a single cardboard box that looked like it had been packed by someone who understood geometry. Gia, presumably.

She set it down near the cluster of bags by the elevator without looking at anyone and picked up a form from the check-in table.

"Mercer. Third floor."

The RA scanned the list, nodded, handed her a room assignment card.

"Elevator’s down the hall to your left, but there’s a wait right now."

"I’ll take the stairs."

It wasn’t really a question. The sentence came out flat and dry and perfectly self-contained, a statement disguised as an inquiry that expected no answer because Gia Mercer had probably already calculated the elevator’s average cycle time and found it wanting.

"Move-in day," Dash offered from somewhere behind me. "Everyone’s using it at once."

"Stairs exist."

"Third floor with boxes?"

"I have one box."

She walked past all of us toward the stairwell door without breaking stride or acknowledging that anyone else in the room had thoughts about her decision. The door clicked shut behind her with a sound that communicated her entire opinion about communal elevator dependency and the people who practiced it.

Koda tracked her movement with visible appreciation. "I love her already."

"You love everyone," Dash said.

"Not true. I love people who are interesting. She’s interesting." Koda turned back toward me with the pivot speed of a fighter in the ring who had just registered I was still standing there. "So, Belmont. Your girlfriend is Sloane Fitzgerald, right? Pink hair? Legendary rarity? Blew up half her testing field during the practical?"

I blinked once before I could stop myself. "How do you know that."

"The entrance exam scoreboards were posted to the student portal yesterday. Top ten results by field. She was number two in Field Five with the second-highest combat score in the entire applicant pool." Koda’s grin widened in a way that suggested she had already started planning future sparring sessions with someone she had literally never met. "I’m going to fight her. I’m going to lose. It’s going to be great."

"I’ll let her know you’re excited about it."

"Tell her I said hi. And that I’m going to hit her so hard her grandkids feel it."

"I will absolutely not tell her that."

Dash put his hand on Koda’s shoulder and steered her physically away from me with the practiced ease of someone who had been managing Koda’s energy for at least fifteen minutes and had already developed working coping strategies. "Good luck with 1-B, man. We’ll probably see you around the training grounds."

"Yeah. Good luck to you too."

Koda waved from over her shoulder as Dash herded her toward the elevator, already launching into a new argument about something I couldn’t quite catch. Their voices carried across the common area, bright and combative, two people who had met less than an hour ago and already operated like they’d been arguing for years.

I watched them disappear into the elevator bank. Something shifted underneath my chest that I didn’t have clean language for. Not envy, though envy was probably part of it. Something that tasted like standing outside a room I used to occupy without permission.

These were Sloane’s people now. Class 1-A. The flagship track. The premier combat program at the world’s best Hero Academy. Koda with her fists that could crater concrete and her immediate assumption that losing a fight was somehow aspirational. Dash with his rapid-fire bolt generation and his default setting of yes. Gia with her single box and her silver-grey eyes and her absolute refusal to use the elevator like a normal person when the stairs would suffice.

They were loud and strange and absolutely fearless in ways I recognized from every shonen protagonist lineup I’d ever read, and they were going to spend the next two years living in this building with Sloane while I lived across campus in 1-B’s Prometheus House learning tactical flexibility and non-traditional Aspect applications under a former military specialist who taught combat theory the way some people taught religion.

Different classes. Different buildings. Different lives during the hours that actually mattered. The architecture of the campus made the distinction physical. The curriculum would make it operational. Sloane would wake up in the East Tower of 1-A’s building every morning and walk downstairs to find Koda arguing with someone in the common room about proper striking form. I would wake up in 1-B’s building and walk downstairs to find whatever strange configuration of students the administration had decided constituted optimal peer grouping for people who didn’t fit cleanly into the standard combat categories.

She’d be fine. Better than fine. She’d be exactly where she was supposed to be, surrounded by people who matched her frequency, and I’d be wherever the Scumbag System decided I was supposed to be instead.

The Oracle Feed didn’t comment. It rarely did when I was thinking things I already knew were true.

I finished bringing Sloane’s boxes up and found her already half-unpacked, her training gear folded with military precision in the closet and her bedding still in the packaging. Diane stood by the window going through the orientation schedule on her phone. I set the last box down and kissed Sloane on the forehead while Diane wasn’t watching, which Diane was definitely watching because Diane watched everything, and Sloane punched my arm in the exact spot Koda had punched it earlier and told me to go set up my own room instead of hovering.

"Your classmate Koda says hi," I said from the doorway. "She also says she’s going to fight you and lose and she’s excited about it." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

Sloane’s head came up. Something lit behind her eyes that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the promise of someone who wanted to test themselves against her without holding back. The corner of her mouth twitched.

"Tell her to stretch first."

I left 1-A’s Prometheus House through the main entrance, stepping out into the morning sun with my single duffel bag over one shoulder and nothing else. The campus spread out below me, white concrete and glass and manicured green catching the September light. Students moved along the covered walkways in every direction, carrying their lives in boxes. Parents lingered at cars. The local news drone circled overhead, its camera sweeping the crowd for footage.

Somewhere to the west, past the Academic Spine and up the second ridge, my own Prometheus House waited. Room 205. Percy’s welcome mat that said GO AWAY. A walnut desk positioned three inches to the left of where I’d originally planned because Diane Fitzgerald had opinions about lamp cord placement.

I took a breath. Held it. Let it go.

This was it.

My Hero Academia.

===

END OF SEASON 1