The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 316: 316 | Either Your Best Friend or Your Most Dangerous Enemy

The rest of homeroom passed in a blur of administrative announcements and schedule confirmations. Steele covered training facility access hours, equipment checkout procedures, and the seventeen different ways a student could lose dormitory privileges for unauthorized Aspect use after curfew. By the time she dismissed us, my brain had already started organizing the morning’s chaos into categories of problems I could address and problems I would ignore until they became unavoidable.

Camille was out the door before I finished turning toward her direction. Her two-tone hair caught the fluorescent strip lighting as she disappeared through the threshold, the aggressive set of her shoulders broadcasting everything her mouth hadn’t bothered to articulate. She was still pissed about Sunday night. About the fact that I’d told her to leave instead of doing something about the tension that had been crackling between us in that hallway. About the fact that Petra had materialized at exactly the wrong moment and Camille had been forced to retreat without any resolution whatsoever.

I understood the anger. I just wasn’t going to chase her down to apologize for making the smart call when the smart call was the only option that didn’t end in disaster.

Petra left three seconds after Camille, taking the opposite corridor with the kind of deliberate route selection that suggested she’d mapped exactly how to avoid crossing paths with anyone she didn’t want to encounter in the post-homeroom chaos. Which apparently included me. Her black hair swung against her shoulders as she moved through the doorway, and she didn’t look back once.

Also understandable. Also not my problem to fix according to her timeline or anyone else’s expectations.

Felicity materialized at my elbow before I’d finished gathering the syllabus packet and the schedule addendum that Steele had distributed during the final five minutes of homeroom.

"Dravid next." She linked her arm through mine with the casual possessiveness that I’d started to recognize as her default operating mode with people she’d decided were worth maintaining proximity to. "Combat Theory and Tactics. The fun one."

"You think Dravid’s class is fun?"

"I think watching you navigate a room full of people who are simultaneously attracted to you and annoyed by your existence is fun." She steered me toward the door with surprising strength for someone who looked like she survived exclusively on expensive coffee and whatever gossip the student body was currently circulating. "Also, I want to see if he does the thing where he appears directly behind someone who wasn’t paying attention. Happened twice last week. Both times to Caden, which I found genuinely hilarious."

"Caden pays attention."

"Caden pays attention to things that interest him personally." Felicity’s grip on my arm tightened fractionally as we cleared the doorway into the corridor. "Dravid’s lecture on tactical positioning protocols during multi-target civilian evacuation engagements apparently did not qualify as personally interesting enough to warrant sustained focus."

We joined the flow of students moving through the Athena Wing toward Building D, where Combat Theory occupied a lecture hall on the third floor. The morning fog had burned off completely, leaving the campus bathed in that golden California light that made everything look like it belonged in a recruitment brochure. Students from both classes mixed in the corridors, though the social clustering patterns were already visible. 1-A stayed with 1-A. 1-B stayed with 1-B. The exceptions were people like Felicity, who seemed to exist outside normal social gravity, and people like me, who had somehow become a point of intersection whether I wanted the attention or not.

Percy fell into step on my other side without announcement. His notebook was already open, pen moving across the page in small, tight script.

"Your media coverage has expanded to three additional outlets since yesterday evening." He didn’t look up from his writing. "Two regional news stations and one national morning show ran abbreviated versions of the interview. Combined viewership estimate is approximately four hundred thousand, though engagement metrics suggest the actual impact is significantly higher due to social sharing patterns."

"You’re still tracking this."

"I find the data interesting." He finally glanced at me, his expression completely neutral. "Also, I wanted to mention that the insurance documentation research I mentioned has yielded some preliminary results. Nothing conclusive, but the regulatory framework around Aspect classification and premium calculation is considerably more complex than I initially anticipated. There are seventeen different categories of exemption, and the criteria for each overlap in ways that create significant interpretive flexibility."

I translated that in my head. Percy was telling me he’d found potential loopholes. Gaps in the system that might explain away inconsistencies if anyone looked too closely at my file.

"Appreciate it."

"I’ll have a more comprehensive summary by Friday." He made a note in his notebook, underlined something twice, looked forward again. His pen kept moving while he talked. "Rina mentioned you offered to help her test her Aspect in a controlled setting. That was kind of you."

I could hear what he wasn’t saying. The subtext. Most people wouldn’t volunteer to experience weaponized emotion if they could avoid it.

"She deserves to know what she’s capable of," I said.

Percy’s pen paused. He looked at me with that specific quality of observation that made him seem like he was cataloguing something.

"Most people would find the prospect of experiencing her full Aspect output uncomfortable enough to decline the opportunity entirely."

"Most people aren’t paying attention to the people around them."

He nodded once, like I’d confirmed something he’d already suspected. His pen resumed its movement across the page.

Percy considered that for a moment, then nodded once and peeled off toward a side corridor that led to a different section of Building D. His schedule apparently diverged from ours at this point. Felicity watched him go with an expression I couldn’t quite read.

"He’s interesting," she said.

"That’s one word for it."

"He noticed things about your file that nobody else caught. He’s offering to help you navigate the regulatory implications. And he’s tracking your media coverage with the obsessive attention of someone who has decided you’re worth studying." She squeezed my arm. "Either he’s your best friend or your most dangerous enemy. Haven’t figured out which yet."

"Maybe both."

"Wouldn’t that be exciting."