The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 315: 315 | I Hate The Media

I stood. The chair scraped against the floor, and twenty pairs of eyes swiveled toward me with the synchronized attention of an audience that had just been told the entertainment was about to begin.

Steele walked toward my row with her hands behind her back and her stride loose enough to look casual. It was not casual. Nothing about Imara Steele was casual. She stopped three feet from my desk and looked up at me with an expression that combined amusement with something considerably more pointed.

"Did I, at any point during orientation, during conditioning, during our first assessment, or during any interaction we have had since you set foot on this campus, authorize you to speak to the press on behalf of this cohort?"

"No, Ms. Steele."

"Did the academy’s public relations office contact you, brief you, or provide you with approved talking points prior to the interview?"

"No, Ms. Steele."

"So you freelanced."

"I responded to a direct question from a reporter who had a camera pointed at my face."

"You responded beautifully." She said it without sarcasm, which made it land harder than any criticism would have. "You quoted your instructor by name. You referenced institutional values. You positioned yourself as a thoughtful, articulate representative of the Halloran student body. The academy’s PR office has received eleven positive media inquiries in the last forty-eight hours, three of which specifically reference your interview as evidence that Halloran produces exceptional candidates."

She paused.

"Sit down."

I sat.

Steele turned to face the full classroom, her arms still crossed, her expression shifting from pointed attention to the broader address that homeroom required.

"Here is what none of you understand yet, because you are eighteen years old and you think being a hero means fighting villains in cool costumes." She paced to the left side of the podium, then back to the right, her weight shifting with each turn in a way that communicated restless energy barely contained within a professional context. "Being a hero means the media decides who you are before you get to decide for yourself. It means reporters show up on your campus without authorization and shove cameras into the faces of students who have been awake for twenty minutes. It means everything you say, everything you do, everything you wear and eat and post gets consumed by an audience that does not know you, does not care about you, and will form opinions about your character based on a four-second clip taken out of context from a conversation you didn’t even want to have."

She stopped pacing and planted herself at the center of the podium.

"I hate the media." She said it flatly, without performance. "They twist things. They cherry-pick. They take the worst three seconds of your worst day and make it your defining moment. They will write articles about your costume’s neckline being too low or too high. They will speculate about your relationships based on who you were photographed standing next to at a grocery store. They will dig through your family’s history looking for anything that generates clicks, and they will publish it without asking you first, and they will call it journalism."

The room was absolutely silent.

"I hate the politics." She continued at the same level, the same register, the same flat honesty that made every word feel like it was being carved into the desk in front of me. "The Hero Commission has opinions about everything you do. The IHL reviews your license every three years based on metrics that change depending on which committee member is chairing the review. Sponsors will try to control your costume design, your public statements, your patrol routes, and your personal relationships because protecting their brand investment matters more to them than protecting civilians. Agency directors will negotiate your contract in ways that maximize their revenue share while minimizing your leverage, and they will frame it as mentorship."

She looked at us. All of us. Twenty teenagers who had spent the last week being assessed, pushed, and confronted with the realities of a profession that looked nothing like the posters on the wall.

"And none of that changes the fact that this is the job." Her voice warmed by a fraction, the anger settling into something more sustainable. "The media, the politics, the sponsorships, the commission reviews. That is hero work. Not all of it. Not the best of it. But enough of it that anyone who pretends these things don’t matter is either lying to you or hasn’t lasted long enough to learn the lesson."

She picked up her tablet and tapped something.

"Belmont’s interview." She gestured toward the smart board, which displayed a frozen frame of my face mid-sentence, the Halloran crest visible behind my left shoulder exactly where Felicity had noticed I’d positioned it. "This is what it looks like when someone understands that reality and uses it instead of being used by it."

She tapped play.

My voice filled the classroom. Calm, confident, warm. Talking about symbols and service and being worthy of civilian trust. Quoting Radiant. Complimenting the institution. Doing exactly what Diane had spent years teaching me to do in rooms full of people who thought they were getting honest answers.

Steele let the clip run for thirty seconds, then paused it.

"That was smart," she said. "That was well-executed. That demonstrated awareness of brand positioning, media dynamics, and public perception that most active heroes do not develop until their fifth year of licensure."

Her pink eyes found me again.

"It was also unauthorized. It was also a risk. And it was also exactly the kind of decision that can end a career before it starts if the content doesn’t land the way you intended it to."

She turned back to the class.

"The point is not whether Belmont handled the situation well. He did. The point is that the situation existed at all. You are students. You are not licensed. You do not have agencies or PR teams or media liaisons. When a reporter puts a camera in your face and asks you a question, you do not have the institutional infrastructure to recover from a bad answer. One wrong sentence. One misquoted phrase. One facial expression that reads as arrogant instead of confident. That is all it takes."

She tapped her tablet again, closing the video.

"Effective immediately, all press inquiries are to be directed to the academy’s public relations office. If a reporter approaches you on campus, you say ’no comment’ and you walk away. If they follow you, you find me. If they persist after that, I will handle it personally, and I promise you the handling will be significantly less diplomatic than what Belmont provided."

Caden’s hand went up.

"Holt."

"If we say ’no comment,’ doesn’t that make us look like we’re hiding something?"

"Yes." Steele’s grin returned. "That’s the PR office’s problem. Not yours. Their job is to manage perception. Your job is to not give anyone ammunition to manage." She looked at the rest of the room. "Any other questions about how the real world works?"

Silence.

"Good." She picked up her tablet and pulled up what appeared to be a schedule. "Then let’s talk about your actual curriculum. You have six core courses this semester, plus conditioning with me every monday, tuesday, thurdsday at six and Hero Basics with Radiant twice a week. Your first Hero practicum is scheduled for next Wednesday. Your Aspect Development Lab sessions begin Thursday under Dravid. And your first graded assessment is in exactly twelve days."

She smiled again. The wide one. The one that made the gold in her jacket seem brighter and the room seem smaller.

"Twelve days. That’s how long you have to prove you belong in the Combat Operations track. After that, grades post publicly. Rankings update. And every agency scout in California starts building files on the students they want to recruit and the students they want to avoid."

She set the tablet down.

"Welcome to Class 1-B. Let’s make sure you’re worth the investment."