The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 314: 314 | Belmont. Stand Up.

Rina slipped into the second row without announcement, her white hair catching the fluorescent lights with that faint otherworldly glow it carried in certain conditions. She’d managed to tuck her horns beneath the collar of her blazer in a way that made them look less like biological mutations and more like accessories, though her tail remained visible through the custom slit in the back of her skirt, curling against the seat. She placed her sheep mug on the desk with the careful tenderness of someone handling an explosive device and immediately opened her tablet.

Her purple eyes found mine for exactly one second. A small nod. The tail swished once, then settled.

Behind Rina, Nyx and Maribelle took their seats in coordinated silence. Nyx wore her uniform like a statement of war against institutional conformity, the blazer unbuttoned, the combat boots visible beneath the regulation skirt, her black bob sharp enough to cut glass. Maribelle settled beside her with the effortless warmth of someone who had decided Nyx was her person and that everyone else could simply adjust. Her honey-blonde waves caught the light differently than Felicity’s, warmer and softer, and her green eyes carried the particular quality of someone permanently amused by whatever Nyx was about to say next.

Theo claimed his front-row seat with the self-assurance of someone whose physical presence guaranteed personal space. Lyra materialized in the second row without anyone noticing her arrival, which was either a function of her Aspect or a genuine supernatural ability to exist without disturbing the air around her. Vivienne sat in the center of the middle row and became the most watched person in the room simply by sitting still, her green eyes cataloging everything with the calm patience of someone conducting a census.

Camille entered from the east door and walked to her seat without looking at me. Her two-tone hair swung with each step, the bleached blonde catching light while the warm brown roots grounded the look into something aggressive rather than fashionable. The fitted blazer pulled across her shoulders in ways that the standard issue had not been designed to accommodate. She dropped into her chair at the end of the row and opened her tablet with the focused violence of someone who had decided that productivity was a weapon and she intended to wield it against anyone foolish enough to make eye contact.

I made eye contact.

Her brown eyes found mine for a fraction of a second. Something hot and complicated moved behind her irises before she looked away with deliberate force and began scrolling through her tablet with the aggressive disinterest of someone absolutely not thinking about midnight hallway confrontations or the taste of cardamom lip balm.

Petra arrived last. Of course she did.

She descended the stairs from the upper entrance with the unhurried grace of someone who believed the class could not begin without her, which was technically incorrect but aesthetically convincing. Her black hair fell in geometric waves that framed her face with the kind of precision that suggested either genetics or an extremely dedicated hairstylist. The Halloran blazer sat on her shoulders like it had been tailored in Milan rather than ordered from a institutional supplier, and her skirt hit exactly two centimeters above her knees, not one millimeter more or less, because Petra Lang did not do approximations. She carried her leather planner against her chest like a shield, her emerald eyes sweeping across the room with the detached evaluation of someone pricing real estate.

Those eyes found mine.

Held.

Something passed between us that had nothing to do with documentation discrepancies or training room entanglements. Her chin lifted by a fraction of a degree, her lips pressed together, and her nostrils flared with the precise dilation of someone who had not forgotten a single detail about being pinned against a wall while her costume fell apart.

Then she sat in the top row, opened her planner, and became utterly unavailable to the rest of the classroom.

The door at the front of the room opened without warning, slamming against the interior wall hard enough to make half the class flinch.

Imara Steele filled the doorway the way a thunderstorm fills a sky. Completely. Without apology. With the absolute certainty that whatever had been happening before her arrival was now over and whatever came next operated on her schedule.

She wore her standard teaching outfit. Fitted athletic jacket in deep gold over a cropped white top. High-waisted tactical trousers in charcoal. Clean training shoes that probably cost more than Marco’s entire wardrobe. Her pale blonde hair fell past her shoulders in that sheet of controlled chaos that somehow managed to look both immaculate and perpetually in motion, the two tufts framing either side of her face giving her an asymmetric energy that defied conventional beauty standards while simultaneously making you want to stare.

Her pink eyes swept the room in a single pass. Every student. Every seat. Every tablet that should have been open to the homeroom syllabus and wasn’t.

She smiled.

That wide, easy grin that communicated she was already having a better time than anyone else in the building and the day had barely started.

"Good morning, Class 1-B." Her voice carried without effort, filling every corner of the room with the warm authority of someone who had spent years commanding attention in far more dangerous venues than a lecture hall. "Welcome to your first official homeroom. For those of you who forgot, my name is Ms. Steele. I’m your homeroom instructor, your Combat Operations lead, and as of this morning, apparently the woman who tells reporters where to shove their cameras."

She dropped a tablet onto the podium with enough force to make the surface ring.

"Which brings me to our first topic." She crossed her arms, the fitted jacket pulling across her shoulders and biceps in ways that made the gold fabric strain at the seams. "Somebody talked to the press."

Silence.

"Somebody stood in front of a camera on my campus, on a Monday morning, during what was supposed to be a controlled media situation managed by the academy’s public relations office, and gave a two-minute interview that has been viewed approximately" she glanced at her tablet "forty-seven thousand times as of this morning. On three different networks. With a comment section that my assistant described as, and I quote, a dumpster fire of opinions about a student none of them have ever met."

Her pink eyes found me.

Not accusingly. Worse. With the specific interest of someone who had identified something worth examining and intended to examine it thoroughly.

"Belmont."

"Yes, Ms. Steele."

"Stand up."