The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 269: 269 | Victory Parade Through Hostile Territory [PS BONUS]

The walk out of Building C felt like a victory parade through hostile territory.

Percy walked beside me with his notebook already open, scribbling observations about the match that he’d probably organize into seventeen different categories before dinner. The capture tape on his wrist had left a red mark that he kept rubbing without seeming to notice, but otherwise he looked more confident than I’d ever seen him. Something had clicked during that exercise. The guy who froze when he had too much information had figured out how to weaponize it instead.

Behind us, Camille and Petra were having what could generously be described as a conversation.

"You abandoned your position!" Camille’s voice carried down the covered walkway with enough force to make several passing second-years turn their heads. "I told you to hold the third floor and you went after Mendoza like a first-year playing tag!"

"My defensive architecture was optimal." Petra’s tone could have frozen the Pacific Ocean. "If you had maintained corridor control instead of chasing Belmont into bathrooms, the extraction would never have succeeded."

"Chasing him into—he came at me! With a desk!"

"And you failed to neutralize a mid-tier Channeler with trajectory-controlled projectiles. Explain to me again how that represents tactical excellence?"

I glanced back just long enough to catch Camille’s face contort through several shades of fury. Her compression top was still slightly askew from our encounter, the neckline dipping lower than professional standards probably allowed. She hadn’t noticed yet, or maybe she had and was too angry to care.

Petra, by contrast, had somehow managed to restore her costume to perfect condition during the walk. Every crease was smoothed, every line was straight, every molecule presumably arranged in whatever configuration maximized her appearance. The only indication that anything unusual had happened was the faint pink tinge across her cheekbones and the way her emerald eyes kept finding mine with promises of future violence.

"The extraction succeeded because Belmont exceeded his registered specifications," Petra continued. "His constructs demonstrated range and lift capacity far beyond what his file indicates. I will be filing a formal complaint with the diagnostic department."

"Filing a complaint won’t change the fact that you got captured."

"I was captured through deception, not combat superiority."

"Yeah?" Camille’s laugh held zero warmth. "And what would you call getting pinned against a wall by someone you just said was mid-tier?"

Petra’s jaw tightened. "That situation was... complicated."

"Looked pretty simple from where I was taped to the floor."

"You weren’t watching. You were restrained."

"The cameras were watching."

That gave Petra pause. Her stride faltered for half a step before she recovered, the shift in her expression subtle but present. What had been cold certainty became something closer to genuine alarm, the kind that preceded very specific types of institutional embarrassment. The pink on her cheeks, which had already been present, deepened to a shade that would have looked better in different lighting.

"The cameras," she repeated, and there was an edge to her voice that hadn’t been there before, a hint that she was processing implications she hadn’t fully considered when she’d been occupied with other matters. Like being pressed against a wall by someone she’d just spent several minutes dismissing as functionally irrelevant to the exercise.

"Every match gets recorded for review," Camille confirmed, and the satisfaction in her voice was thick enough to spread on toast. "Standard academy protocol for training exercises. Full coverage from multiple angles so the instructors can evaluate performance after the fact. Which means everyone in the observation deck saw exactly how complicated things got between you and Belmont. In vivid, high-definition detail."

Her smile arrived at that point, the kind that typically preceded either property damage or extremely pointed social commentary. Possibly both at once.

"I’m sure they’ll have thoughts about your tactical positioning."

Petra’s jaw tightened in a way that would have been imperceptible if I hadn’t been watching for it. The kind of micro-expression that suggested she was running calculations about damage control and coming up with numbers she didn’t particularly like. Her shoulders, which had been held at perfect posture, went slightly rigid in the specific way of someone whose composure had just become a deliberate performance rather than a natural state.

"The footage will demonstrate my capture was achieved through deception rather than superior capability," she said, and the precision in her voice had acquired a brittle quality that hadn’t been present thirty seconds ago. "That particular detail will be obvious to anyone reviewing the sequence."

"Sure," Camille agreed, her tone suggesting she was being generous with that assessment. "That’ll definitely be the first thing they notice when they watch you getting pinned to the wall. Not the angle. Not the position. Not the way your costume ended up arranged. Just the tactical analysis. That’s clearly what everyone will be focusing on."

Percy, who had been maintaining his position slightly behind and to my left throughout this exchange, leaned closer without breaking stride. His voice dropped to a register that was probably intended to be private but carried just far enough that I suspected Camille heard it anyway.

"Should we be concerned about the recording?" he asked, and the question contained about seventeen layers of anxiety that I really didn’t have the bandwidth to address in the current context.

"Probably."

"The position you and Petra ended up in was rather... compromising."

"I noticed."

"And the costume malfunction."

"Also noticed that."

"The entire class will have seen."

"Yeah, I got that part, thanks."

Percy nodded and made a note in his notebook. I didn’t want to know what category he was filing that under.

The observation deck loomed ahead, the door already propped open by someone who’d gotten tired of waiting for us. The sound of voices drifted out into the walkway, and I could hear Caden’s laugh cutting above the general noise.

Camille pushed past me without acknowledgment, her shoulder catching mine in a way that was definitely intentional. Her face had gone from furious to something more complicated, the flush on her cheeks spreading down her neck in a way that suggested she was thinking about something other than tactical failures.

"This conversation isn’t finished," she told Petra.

"On that we agree."

They walked through the door together, which seemed like a terrible idea given their current dynamic. I counted to three before following.

The reaction was immediate.

"OOOOOOOH!"