Chapter 630 | That’s a Better Number [GT BONUS]

Chapter 630: 630 | That’s a Better Number [GT BONUS]

Tomás looked at me like I had betrayed his entire generation. Mr. Haddad looked at me like I was his favorite nephew. Dralun made a low sound in his chest that Ophelia later translated as approval, delivered in the tone of someone passing a kidney stone.

The sixth call wasn’t even a Hero call. A water main blew out under Sixth Street at 3:15 on Friday afternoon, right as the schools let out, and it sent a geyser twenty feet into the air. The city crew was forty minutes out, the traffic lights were dead, and the intersection turned into a demolition derby of honking minivans.

"Nobody else is coming," Dralun said. "You take north and west, and I’ll take south and east."

We stood in the middle of the street for two hours and waved cars through by hand while cold water sprayed us both. My jacket soaked through in the first ten minutes. My shoes squelched every time I pointed at a driver. A woman in a Prius honked at me eleven times in a row, as if I personally controlled the plumbing infrastructure of the Eastside and had chosen violence.

Ophelia showed up at the forty-minute mark under her black lace parasol, holding two coffees from the bodega. She made it eight steps into the intersection before the main belched and a sheet of water came sideways under the umbrella. It hit her square in the chest.

She stood there dripping in total silence. The plum velvet had gone dark and heavy across her entire front, wet enough that the fabric clung directly to her skin. The lace trim stuck to the pale curve of her cleavage.

The corset strings hung limp and dripping over her stomach, clinging to the boned structure underneath. Her drill curls had collapsed into pink ropes that stuck to her neck and shoulders. The eyeliner had started to run in two black lines down her cheeks.

"Don’t you dare look at me," she said in a voice of ice.

"I’m directing traffic right now, and I’m very busy."

"You’re looking at my chest, Belmont."

"I’m looking at the coffee," I said, and I took one out of her hand before she could retract it. "Thank you for the coffee."

"That’s minus one hundred for you." She shoved the other cup at Dralun with enough force that some of it sloshed over the rim. She turned on one squelching heel and marched back toward Lin’s. Her soaked skirt clung to her hips and thighs the entire way, outlining every step, and I kept my eyes on a stalled delivery truck because I have survival instincts and prefer not to lose any more points today.

The coffee was cold and terrible, and I drank it anyway because Grandma Lin brewed it and there are rules about these things.

\[Ecchi Logic Event Logged: Water Main Exposure.\]

\[Temptation Gauge: Ophelia Lin — 13%\]

\[Note: Host lied about the coffee, and heroine knew it. The gauge still went up.\]

The city crew got the water shut off at 5:20. Dralun and I sat on the curb in front of a boarded-up tax office and drank our cold bodega coffee while the street drained into the gutter. My shoes were full of water, and the sky over the river had gone orange.

I pulled up the Hero Network on my phone while I sat there, scrolling with slightly wrinkled fingers from the earlier flood. The interface loaded slow on the Eastside connection — two bars of signal doing their best — and Dralun’s profile appeared after the third attempt to refresh.

He was still ranked two hundred and forty-first in California, which put him just outside the bottom third of the state’s active roster. His public approval rating sat frozen at the same number it had been holding since the start.

It hadn’t shifted a decimal point. His case resolution count for the current week displayed a clean, unambiguous zero.

Because a stubborn woman with seven cats didn’t count as a case. A kid on a bus bench watching his mother’s shift end through hospital glass didn’t count as a case.

A row of melted parking meters, a drunk in a pickup who needed a ride more than an arrest, a shoplifter who owed eight bags of hot fries and a lecture, and two hours spent directing foot traffic through a flooded intersection while the city crew fixed a water main — none of that made it into the system.

None of it was ever going to make the news. Point of Impact wasn’t going to dedicate a segment to the guy who cleared Sixth Street so people could get home dry. Nobody was cutting highlight reels out of me standing in a doorway holding a shopping bag while a cat with a vendetta chewed methodically on my ankle.

I thought about Isabelle Crane in her sleek purple mask telling us that heroes were brands, that the public didn’t want protection so much as they wanted spectacle, that presence was the real currency and everything else was just noise in the margins.

Then I thought about Mrs. Petrosyan patting my arm with flour-dusted fingers and thanking me for getting her cats back before they ate each other. I thought about Tomás stocking shelves on a Saturday morning because his father was three months behind on rent and couldn’t afford to lose the corner store.

I thought about Dani tearing through a vending-machine sandwich in six methodical bites while her mother ran through the glass doors of a building she’d been terrified she wouldn’t reach in time.

Every single one of those calls had ended with somebody who needed help getting it. Not a photo opportunity. Not a ranking boost. Just help, delivered by a dragon who showed up when the call came through and didn’t leave until the situation was handled.

The interface stayed silent for once, which was probably a first for the entire week. I didn’t feel like poking it. I didn’t feel like making a joke about the gauge mechanics or the mission queue or the fact that I’d spent the entire afternoon doing unpaid community service that wouldn’t generate a single System Point.

"You’re doing the face," Dralun rumbled beside me.

"What face are you talking about?"

"It’s the one from the hill, where you’re thinking about your ranking." He finished his coffee and crushed the paper cup in one claw. "Stop it, since the ranking doesn’t live down here."

"You’re two hundred and forty-first, man, and you should be in the top fifty."

"The top fifty lives in Creston, and they get to the Eastside fourteen minutes late." He stood up, and his knees cracked like old branches. "I’m here at minute one, and that’s a better number."

He started walking back toward Halverson without waiting for me. I sat on the wet curb a moment longer and watched the last of the water run down Sixth Street into the storm drain, and the second heartbeat under my sternum pressed outward, slow and patient and pleased.

Then I got up and followed the dragon home.