The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 380

Chapter 380: 380 | A Fundamentally Incompatible Approach

I pocketed my phone and finished my food, aware of Felicity watching me the entire time. She didn’t push. She didn’t make demands. She simply existed in my space with a comfort that suggested she planned to keep existing there indefinitely.

"For what it’s worth," she said as I stood to leave. "I think the Crucible is going to be interesting."

"Interesting good or interesting bad?"

"Interesting." She smiled up at me, and the light caught her eyes in a way that made my chest do something inconvenient. "With you, I’m never quite sure which one it’s going to be. That’s part of the appeal."

I left before she could say anything else that would make the walk to the faculty building more complicated than it needed to be.

The faculty conference room was on the third floor, accessible via an elevator that moved slowly enough that I suspected it was designed as a punishment for students who preferred vertical transportation to stairs. I took the stairs.

Petra was already there when I arrived.

She sat at the long conference table with her leather planner open and her posture perfect, looking exactly like someone who had arrived fifteen minutes early to establish territorial dominance. Her dark hair was pulled back in its usual severe style, and her emerald eyes tracked my entrance with the kind of attention usually reserved for prey animals.

"Belmont." Her voice was cool. Professional. Completely at odds with whatever had been happening between us since that moment in my room when she’d walked in on me and Camille.

"Lang." I took the seat across from her rather than beside her. Strategic positioning.

"You’re early."

"So are you."

"I’m always early. Punctuality is a baseline expectation, not an achievement."

The room was empty except for us, which meant we had approximately ten minutes before whatever faculty member was running this meeting showed up. Ten minutes alone with Petra Lang, who had won the female representative seat by one vote and clearly blamed me for making her victory less decisive than she’d wanted.

"About Friday," I started.

"I don’t want to discuss Friday."

"We’re going to have to discuss Friday eventually. The joint coordination meeting with 1-A happens in three days and we need to present a unified front."

"I’m aware of the timeline." Her pen tapped against her planner in a rhythm that suggested agitation. "I’m also aware that you and I have fundamentally incompatible approaches to leadership."

"We haven’t tried working together yet. Hard to know if we’re incompatible when we’ve spent more time antagonizing each other than cooperating."

Her eyes narrowed. "Are you suggesting we attempt civility?"

"I’m suggesting we attempt professionalism. Civility is optional."

The corner of her mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, but closer than I usually got from Petra Lang. "That’s almost reasonable."

"I have my moments."

She studied me for a long beat, her expression unreadable. Petra Lang was hard to get a read on because she worked actively to make herself hard to read. Every gesture calculated, every word measured, every reaction filtered through whatever internal framework she used to navigate the world.

"The Crucible changes things," she said finally. "The joint exercise with 1-A isn’t just about our class’s performance. It’s about how we’re perceived relative to them. How you and I are perceived as representatives."

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