The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 326

Chapter 326: 326 | Even Gods Fill Out Forms

Steele let the room settle for approximately fifteen seconds longer than necessary. She possessed an instinct for silence that Radiant lacked, or rather, that Radiant didn’t need. Radiant filled silence with presence. Steele used silence the way other people used loaded weapons.

"Good afternoon, Class 1-B."

The greeting carried no warmth and no hostility. Just Steele, speaking to a room she owned regardless of whose name was on the schedule.

"I can see by your faces that you were expecting someone taller." She took another sip of coffee with zero urgency. "Radiant sends his apologies. His agency required his presence for an operational review that apparently couldn’t wait until after your lesson. Paperwork. Even the Symbol of Hope has to file quarterly assessments."

"So he’s doing... office stuff?" Eden sounded personally offended. "Instead of teaching us?"

"He’s doing office stuff instead of teaching you." Steele’s confirmation carried no sympathy. "Welcome to the Hero industry, Wilkinson. Even gods fill out forms."

The class absorbed this with varying degrees of grace. Hiro looked like someone had cancelled Christmas. Rina clutched her mug tighter, her purple eyes wide with the specific anxiety of a comfort source being removed from schedule. Maribelle whispered something to Eden that made him sit up straighter, which was her particular talent. Petra’s expression didn’t change at all, which was her particular talent.

Camille, from her seat at the far end of the row, looked at Steele with the focused interest of someone who’d just been handed an unexpected opportunity. Her brown eyes had that quality they got before she started firing, the one that said she’d already identified the weak points in whatever was about to happen and was simply waiting for authorization to exploit them.

"So what." Camille’s voice carried across the tiered seating without effort. "You’re here instead. What are we doing?"

Steele’s coffee cup lowered. Her pink eyes found Camille with the weight of someone who appreciated directness but would never say so out loud.

"I’m glad you asked, Ortega." Steele stood from the platform’s edge in one smooth motion, setting her coffee on the nearest surface with a soft click. "Because what I have planned is going to be significantly less fun than anything Radiant would have done, which means it’s going to be significantly more useful."

She walked to the smart board and tapped it once. The screen illuminated with a diagram I didn’t immediately recognize. It looked like a building schematic crossed with a chess board, overlaid with colored zones and numbered positions.

"Radiant teaches you what heroism looks like. That’s his gift. The man walks into a room and every person in it remembers why they wanted to wear the costume." Steele turned to face us, her gold jacket catching the light. "I teach you what heroism costs. That’s mine. And today, the cost is going to be your comfort zone."

She tapped the board again. The schematic expanded to fill the screen, revealing itself as a multi-floor building layout with labeled rooms, corridors, and what appeared to be civilian placement markers scattered throughout the structure.

"This is the Silverbrook Shopping Center. Fourteen months ago, a Villain with a spatial displacement Aspect took seventeen hostages across three floors and held them for six hours while four licensed Hero teams failed to resolve the situation."

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