The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 443

Chapter 443: 443 | A Practical Seminar in Heroic Proportions

"So manly," Eden whispered to himself, and I caught the reflection of his grin in the window glass, wide and unselfconscious and belonging to someone who had decided at a very young age that the world’s most obvious feelings deserved the world’s least apologetic expression.

"For the record," Percy said, his pen moving again, "Eden’s response time to the Apis question was point three seconds. That is faster than his documented reflex response during Steele’s conditioning circuit, which measures at point four seven seconds for stimulus-reaction pairs. His emotional investment in the subject produces measurably superior physical performance."

"Percy just proved scientifically that Eden is faster when he’s horny for Apis," Marco translated.

"That is a grotesque oversimplification of a nuanced data point."

"But accurate."

"Technically."

Caden had been quiet for approximately forty seconds, which for Caden Holt constituted either deep contemplation or system failure. He stared out the windshield at the highway traffic with his chin resting on his hand and his blonde hair catching the sunlight in a way that would have looked contemplative if his hazel eyes weren’t calculating something with the sharpness that most people missed beneath the grin.

"Grande Dame," Caden said. "Fuck."

"That’s what Belmont said too."

"Grande Dame fuck is the objective correct answer and here’s why." Caden held up one finger with the authority of a TED Talk presenter who had lost his slide deck and was proceeding on conviction alone. "Paradigm Shift. Her Aspect. She controls her size between eighteen inches and sixty-seven feet. Those are her extremes. Everything between those numbers is a sliding scale."

"We covered this," Marco said. "I mentioned the logistics."

"You mentioned the logistics of the extremes. I’m talking about the middle." Caden’s second finger joined the first. "Imagine you’re with Grande Dame. Normal height. Five eleven. Everything’s great. Beautiful woman. Violet eyes. Jet black hair. Hourglass figure she maintains with obsessive discipline. And then she adjusts. Not to sixty-seven feet. Not to eighteen inches. She goes to six foot two. Or six foot four. Or she stays five eleven and just shifts the proportions by five percent. Ten percent."

The interior of the Uber had become a graduate seminar in applied Aspect theory that none of our professors would sanction.

"She has complete control over her physical dimensions," Caden continued, his voice dropping to the register he used when he was being genuinely intelligent rather than performing stupidity. "Complete. She can grow and shrink in any combination. At will. With precision. Think about what that means for a person who already treats her body as a brand asset she maintains with the dedication of a professional athlete."

"I’m thinking about it," Eden confirmed from the back.

"Grande Dame is vain, arrogant, competitive, and obsessed with being the most spectacular thing in any room she occupies." Caden folded his arms. "Those are documented personality traits that translate directly into specific bedroom behaviors I will not elaborate on in front of Percy."

"I appreciate the consideration," Percy said, though his pen had not stopped moving. "For the record, I am documenting this conversation for archival purposes and will not be sharing the transcript."

"Noted."

The Uber took an exit I didn’t recognize, pulling off the highway into a stretch of commercial district that sat somewhere between downtown Verano’s glass and steel ambition and the Eastside’s stubborn refusal to participate in the same aesthetic conversation. Strip malls gave way to older storefronts with hand-painted signs and parking lots where the asphalt had opinions about recent weather.

I sent a text to Sloane that said only: Eden watches Apis footage forty-seven times. He has her costume description memorized.

Sloane’s response arrived in four seconds: tell him she does the waggling thing with her fingers when she’s thinking about her stingers. it’s a subconscious tell. maribelle showed me a compilation video last week.

I did not relay this information to Eden because some knowledge carries the responsibility of choosing when to deploy it, and watching Eden Wilkinson receive confirmation that a compilation video of Apis’s finger-waggling habit existed on the internet felt like a detonation best witnessed from behind adequate cover.

"Almost there," Caden announced, his grin returning to full operational capacity. "Two blocks."

"You’re going to tell us where we’re going now."

"Absolutely not. The surprise is the point."