The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 123

Chapter 123: 123 | Rebranding the Anomaly

I looked at Sloane standing there by the window, wrapped in nothing but a towel and the weight of everything I’d just dropped on her. The afternoon light caught the water droplets still clinging to her pink hair, making them sparkle like tiny crystals. Her blue eyes were locked on mine with that particular intensity she got when she was processing something that might require her to explode things.

The System was probably having a field day with this conversation. Three objectives completed, household stability achieved, and now I was voluntarily explaining powers I didn’t actually have to cover for the ones I couldn’t explain.

Brilliant strategy, Belmont. Really thinking three moves ahead here.

"Yeah," I said, meeting her stare. "There’s more."

Diane shifted beside me on the bed, her attention sharpening. The CEO mode was kicking in, I could see it in the way her posture straightened and her eyes focused. She was already running calculations, probably figuring out how to manage whatever I was about to reveal.

"My manifestation wasn’t as simple as Force Manipulation," I continued, weaving truth and bullshit together with the skill of someone who’d been doing it for two months. "Late bloomers sometimes get complex expressions. Multiple functions that activate under different conditions."

Sloane’s grip on her towel tightened. "What kind of functions?"

"Enhancement is one. There’s also something like tactical precognition. Split-second glimpses of what’s about to happen in combat situations." I gestured vaguely at my head. "It’s why I did so well during the practical exam. I could see robot movements a few seconds before they happened."

Not technically a lie. The Oracle Feed did exactly that, it just wasn’t an Aspect.

"That’s three functions," Diane said quietly. "Force Manipulation, Enhancement, and Precognition. That’s not a complex manifestation, Lukas. That’s a compound Aspect."

Shit. I’d walked right into that one.

Compound Aspects were the stuff of legend. Heroes with multiple distinct powers that somehow worked together. They were rarer than winning the lottery while getting struck by lightning, and they always ended up either ruling the world or dead in a ditch because everyone wanted to control them.

"Maybe," I said, trying to sound casual about it. "The diagnostics were pretty confused. Charles couldn’t figure out why my Core readings were so diffuse."

"Because you don’t have a single Core," Diane breathed. "You have multiple expressions drawing from different sources."

The way she was looking at me now made my skin crawl. It was the same look she got when she spotted a Hero with serious potential and started calculating how to lock them down to an exclusive agency contract.

"This changes everything," she continued, standing up and starting to pace again. "We can’t just hide an enhancement effect. A compound Aspect with three distinct functions? That’s front-page news material."

Sloane finally spoke up from her spot by the window. "So what do we do?"

"We don’t do anything," I said firmly. "I register exactly what I registered. Force Manipulation with potential secondary developments. We don’t mention the enhancement or the precognition to anyone."

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