The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 315

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.

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