The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 266

Chapter 266: 266 | The Unwinnable Scenario

It had been positioned across the stairwell entrance this entire time, waiting for exactly this moment. While Camille focused on pinning me to the floor and processing the fact that I’d kissed her during a training exercise, the construct circled around behind her and wrapped itself around her waist.

She felt it a quarter second before it acted. Her eyes widened and she started to turn, but the construct was already pulling her backward off my body with enough force to send her sliding across the hallway floor.

I rolled to my feet and extended all four constructs. Two pinned her arms wide against the floor. One wrapped around both her ankles. The fourth hovered six inches from her face with a strip of capture tape held delicately in its amber grip.

Camille thrashed against the restraints for three full seconds before she realized they weren’t giving. Her brown eyes locked on mine with a fury that could have melted steel.

"This isn’t over."

"It kind of is though."

I pressed the capture tape to her wrist.

The speakers crackled to life with Radiant’s voice, warm and amused. "Villain Camille Ortega has been captured! Hero team scores one point!"

The observation deck must have lost their minds. I could picture Caden falling out of his chair, Marco choking on a chip, and Felicity covering her mouth while her eyes went wide. The kiss had definitely been visible on camera. The position afterward had definitely been visible on camera. Every single person in Class 1-B had just watched me make out with Camille Ortega to win a training exercise.

Worth it.

I stood up and offered Camille a hand. She looked at it like I was trying to poison her.

"I’m captured. I don’t need your help getting up."

"Just being polite."

"You kissed me."

"You bit me."

"You deserved it!"

I couldn’t argue with that. Blood was still dripping from my lip, and the copper taste mixed with the lingering cardamom in a way that was going to make eating protein bars really weird for the foreseeable future.

"Good match." I meant it. She’d nearly killed me at least four times, and the only reason I’d won was because I’d been willing to do something stupid enough to break her concentration. In a straight fight with both of us at full capability, Camille would have pinned me to the wall inside thirty seconds.

Her eyes softened by approximately one degree. Still furious. But one degree less furious than before.

"You cheated."

"I improvised."

"Same thing."

She pushed herself to her feet without my help, and I noticed that the capture tape on her wrist glowed faint orange where her Aspect was testing the restraint without conscious direction. Even defeated, even pinned, her power wanted to fight back. That was the kind of instinct that made someone dangerous.

"Percy," I said into my earpiece, "status on the hostage?"

Silence.

"Percy?"

The building shook.

The tremor started somewhere above us and traveled down through the structure like a shockwave, rattling the fluorescent lights and sending dust cascading from the ceiling tiles. I dropped into a defensive crouch automatically, constructs fanning out to cover every angle while my Oracle Feed tried to make sense of the sudden chaos.

A boom followed the tremor half a second later, loud enough to rattle my teeth and make my eardrums protest. The sound came from the third floor, directly above our position, and it carried the particular quality of crystalline structures shattering under extreme force.

Petra.

"Percy!" I shouted into the earpiece. "What happened? Report!"

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