The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 203: 203 | Twenty Heroes-In-Training

"Pancakes adjacent." His pen moved across the page with the focused intensity of someone documenting a natural disaster for future analysis. "Caden’s interpretation of the recipe involved creative substitutions. The results have been characterized as ranging from acceptable to structurally concerning."

Across the room, Eden was eating something that looked vaguely circular from a paper plate while Maribelle watched with the horrified fascination of someone witnessing a car accident in slow motion.

"He’s on his fourth one," she said when she caught me looking. "I don’t understand how his digestive system is processing this."

"Fire powers," Eden answered through a mouthful of alleged pancake. "Burns off everything. Can’t gain weight, can’t get food poisoning, can’t die from whatever unholy chemistry is happening in this batter."

"That’s not how Aspects work."

"That’s exactly how my Aspect works." He took another bite with the confidence of someone who had tested this theory repeatedly and emerged victorious each time. "Flame Forge, baby. Everything burns eventually."

The morning passed in a blur of social navigation and protein bars because I was not eating whatever Caden had created no matter how many people insisted it was actually pretty good if you didn’t think about it too hard.

By one-fifteen, the common room had emptied as students headed to their rooms to change into proper training uniforms and mentally prepare for whatever Steele had planned. By one-thirty, small groups had started forming near the entrance, comparing notes about what they’d heard from older students and what they expected from an assessment that apparently warranted a Saturday afternoon scheduling.

By one-forty, I was walking toward Field Epsilon with Percy on my left and Finn on my right, both of them matching my pace with the comfortable silence of people who had already decided we were worth walking next to.

"Route C saves approximately four minutes," Percy offered without being asked. "Though Route A provides superior visibility of the athletics complex, which may be tactically relevant for future navigation purposes."

"Route C sounds good."

The faculty garden shortcut was exactly as Percy had described. A winding path through carefully maintained greenery that somehow felt both institutional and inviting, with small benches placed at regular intervals and a fountain that was almost certainly too elaborate for a simple garden pass-through. We emerged on the far side of the athletics complex with thirteen minutes to spare.

Field Epsilon was a rectangle of immaculate grass bordered by white lines that suggested it could be configured for multiple training purposes. Bleachers lined one long edge. Equipment storage buildings lined the other. The space felt empty despite being technically occupied by the scattered arrival of Class 1-B students who had apparently chosen similar timing strategies.

Camille was already there, stretching near the center of the field with the focused intensity of someone who took warm-ups seriously. Rina had found a spot near the bleachers where she could sit with her back against the metal supports and watch everyone else without being directly in the social flow. Felicity was doing something that might have been yoga poses or might have been an elaborate excuse to present her flexibility to anyone paying attention, and given the way her shorts rode up every time she bent forward, several people were definitely paying attention.

One-fifty became two o’clock, the sun climbing higher and the temperature climbing with it, the empty field stretching out around us in a way that was starting to feel deliberately empty rather than accidentally so.

Two o’clock became two-fifteen, which was when the first murmurs started circulating through the scattered clusters of students who had distributed themselves across the grass in what looked like social groupings but was probably just people gravitating toward whoever they’d already established tolerances with.

"She’s late." Petra’s observation arrived with the flat precision of someone who considered punctuality a moral imperative rather than a professional courtesy. "This is extremely unprofessional."

"Maybe she got held up with something." Theo’s voice carried the specific quality of optimistic uncertainty, someone trying to project the best possible interpretation onto a situation that was increasingly not supporting that interpretation through available evidence.

"Or maybe she’s testing us." Nyx had her notebook out again, pen moving across the page in quick, precise strokes, documenting what was probably turning into a psych evaluation theory that she would present later with citations. "Psychological evaluation through enforced waiting. Monitoring how we handle uncertainty and delayed expectations."

"That seems unnecessarily complicated." Caden had migrated from standing to lying flat on his back somewhere around the two-ten mark, staring at the sky with the boneless relaxation of someone who had decided that stress was a choice he was declining to make in this particular context. "Pretty sure she’s just late."

Two-twenty arrived without accompanying instructor.

"Are we sure this is the right field?" Marco’s question landed in the space that had been hovering at the edge of everyone’s collective awareness but that nobody else had been willing to actually vocalize, the possibility that we were all standing in the wrong location doing the right thing.

"Epsilon." Percy confirmed it with the immediate certainty of someone who had already cross-referenced the location three separate times. "The notice specified Field Epsilon. This is Field Epsilon. The signage is clearly visible from three approach vectors and the field configuration matches campus documentation exactly."

"Then where the hell is our teacher?"

Nobody had an answer that satisfied the question, which left us collectively standing in an empty field on a Saturday afternoon in matching uniforms, waiting for an instructor who was apparently operating on a schedule that bore no relationship whatsoever to the one she had posted in the official notification.

The mood had shifted somewhere between two and two-twenty, moving through the predictable progression from anticipation to confusion to something approaching genuine concern, twenty first-year students occupying a space that was starting to feel less like a training field and more like a container designed to hold us while something else happened elsewhere.

"Maybe we should send someone to check the main building," Vivienne suggested from her position near the center of the field, where she had stationed herself with the specific awareness of someone who understood that center positioning provided optimal observation angles for everyone else. "In case there was a scheduling change we weren’t notified about."

A feminine voice from behind. "Or maybe you should learn to wait five more minutes before assuming the worst."