The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 260

Chapter 260: 260 | The Analyst and the Telekinetic

"But if I—"

"Percy." I pulled the half-mask up over my nose and mouth. The matte black fabric settled against my skin with the weight of something that meant business. My amber eyes were the only part of my face still visible. "You won’t freeze. Because I’m going to be in front of you, and if you freeze, I get hit. And I know you well enough to know that the idea of someone getting hurt because your brain lagged is worse than any Rivet Camille can throw."

Percy stared at me through the gap between my half-mask and the collar of my tactical jacket. Something in his expression shifted. Not a smile. Not confidence. Something more useful than either of those things.

Recognition.

The timer hit two minutes.

Percy’s voice came steady. Not loud, not fast, but completely free of the stutter that had marked every word he’d said before I put the mask on. "We enter through the east stairwell. It’s narrower, which limits our movement but also limits Camille’s Rivet angles. She needs line-of-sight for trajectory control. Tight spaces degrade her precision advantage."

I watched him shift from muttering to deciding in real time. The change was something you could measure.

"We move up to the second floor and pause at the stairwell exit to assess. I’ll call Analyze the moment we have visual on the hallway. Whatever I see, I’ll tell you. You go where I say when I say."

"What about Petra?"

"Petra’s Conjuration requires line of sight and approximately one point two seconds of concentration to generate a complex construct." Percy’s hands moved while he talked, mapping invisible architecture in the air between us. "If we can force her to react rather than prepare, her advantage disappears. She had ten minutes to build defenses, which means her prepared constructs will be impressive. But anything she generates in response to our approach will be faster and less sophisticated."

"So we make her react."

"We make both of them react." He pushed his glasses up with one finger. The nervous tic was still there, but the voice underneath it wasn’t nervous anymore. "Camille is dangerous at range but vulnerable if someone closes the distance past her suppression threshold. Petra is dangerous with preparation but vulnerable if someone disrupts her concentration. If we can split their attention for even two seconds—"

"I’ll give you two seconds." I meant it. Spectral Reach could generate four independent amber constructs. Two to create noise and movement in one direction while my actual body moved in another. Three seconds of misdirection that would look like a real approach from two separate angles. More than enough to fracture whatever defensive setup they’d established.

The timer hit one minute.

"One more thing."

Percy waited.

"Camille and Petra both watched the first two matches from the observation deck. They saw how Caden and Marco won by making the Hero team split up and attack without coordination. They saw how Lyra won by adapting her form to the architecture instead of fighting through it." I glanced at the timer. Fifty-eight seconds. "They know what losing looks like. They’ll expect us to come in coordinated and careful."

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