The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 453: 453 | A Grenade in a Fruit Bowl

I stared at the message for six seconds, which at one hundred Intelligence meant I processed approximately four thousand implications, seventeen potential responses, and one extremely clear image of Felicity Hardy in a towel that I had not asked my brain to retrieve and could not return.

"Want to do something together as friends?"

The word "friends" sat in that sentence the way a grenade sits in a fruit bowl. Technically present. Technically inert. Technically going to rearrange the entire kitchen if someone bumped the table wrong.

I typed back: "Just got back from Boyz Day. Genuinely want to do nothing for the rest of the evening."

The response came in four seconds flat.

"Perfect! Doing nothing is my specialty. Your room or mine?"

The SUV hit a pothole on the 405 and the ramen container shifted on my lap, warm broth sloshing against the lid in a way that demanded immediate attention. Percy glanced at the container with the focused concern of someone who had strong opinions about liquid transport safety. Finn did not open his eyes. Caden, riding shotgun, turned around with the specific grin of a man who had read something over my shoulder through the gap between the seats and considered the information a gift from the universe.

"Who’s texting you with that energy at two forty-five on a Saturday?"

"Nobody."

"Nobody texts with exclamation points and room location options." Caden’s hazel eyes crinkled at the corners. "That’s Hardy."

Marco leaned forward from the far back, a chip balanced between two fingers like a tiny golden frisbee. "How do you know it’s Hardy?"

"Because Hardy is the only person in our cohort who would ask to hang out with Belmont immediately after he spent an entire day avoiding every woman in a fifty-mile radius." Caden settled back into his seat with the satisfaction of a man who had solved a crime and expected no reward. "She’s got a sixth sense for when he’s relaxed. The moment his guard drops, she materializes."

I put my phone face-down on the ramen lid. "She asked to chill. People chill."

"People chill." Caden repeated the words the way a lawyer repeats a defendant’s statement before dismantling it. "People absolutely chill. You know who chills? Finn chills. Percy chills. Eden chills with an open flame and no supervision. You know who does not chill? Felicity Hardy does not chill. Felicity Hardy arrives at a chilling event with a strategy, a backup strategy, and an outfit selected specifically to destroy the structural integrity of whatever room she enters."

Eden, from the far back seat with his plush bear wedged between himself and the window, looked up from his phone. His dark brown eyes were open and earnest in the way they always were when he had arrived at a conclusion that the rest of the conversation had moved past three sentences ago. "She’s nice though."

"She’s a weapon system wrapped in vanilla perfume and platform sneakers," Marco said through a mouthful of chips. He popped another one into his mouth while he said it, the small golden disk disappearing between sentences.

"Those things aren’t mutually exclusive," I said. The words came out before I had fully decided to say them. The car went quiet for a beat that communicated everyone agreed with me and nobody wanted to be the one to say it out loud. The silence stretched just long enough to register as agreement before someone broke it.

Percy, who had been writing through the entire exchange with the focus of a man transcribing divine revelation, turned one page in his notebook with the careful precision of someone who had strong feelings about paper condition. He did not look up. He never looked up when he was delivering analysis he considered self-evident. "Hardy’s average response time to Belmont’s messages is four point seven seconds. Her average response time to all other contacts is eleven point three seconds. The differential suggests either prioritized notification settings or active monitoring of the conversation thread. Both interpretations carry implications I am choosing not to articulate."

The silence that followed Percy’s analysis was different from the one before it. It carried weight. Marco stopped chewing for a full second, which was the Marco equivalent of a complete system freeze. Caden’s grin widened into something that was technically still a smile but operated more like a tactical assessment. Eden looked confused in the specific way that suggested he had understood every word Percy said and had no idea why any of it mattered.

"You have that data?" I asked. My voice was flat. The flatness was deliberate.

"I have all the data." Percy turned another page without looking up. His pen kept moving across the paper in neat, compact lines that suggested he was documenting the current conversation in real time. "Pattern recognition is not optional. The information arrives whether I request it or not."

Finn, who had been silent for so long I had forgotten he was awake, opened one eye. His gaze tracked to me with the lazy precision of someone who had been listening the entire time and had simply decided his commentary was not required until now. "Man, that’s either really flattering or really concerning. I haven’t decided which."

"It’s data," Percy said. His pen stopped moving. He looked up for the first time since the conversation started, his warm brown eyes carrying the specific quality of someone who had just realized he had said something that required social navigation and was uncertain how to proceed. "The data is... just data. What you do with the data is separate from the data existing."

"That’s the least reassuring thing you could have said," I told him.

Percy went back to writing. "I am aware."

"Thank you, Percy."

"The data is free. The analysis costs extra."

I picked up my phone again and typed with my thumb while the SUV merged into the exit lane: "My room. I’m bringing ramen for Sloane first. Give me an hour."

The response arrived in three seconds. One second faster than the documented average.

"Take your time bestie! I’ll bring activities :)"

The smiley face contained enough compressed intent to power a small generator.

Sloane answered her door in the stolen hoodie and compression shorts, her pink hair piled in a messy bun that she had clearly constructed with deliberate carelessness, and the Bond Resonance flooded my chest with the particular warmth that meant she had been thinking about me for the last forty minutes and was furious about it.

"You’re late."

"I brought ramen."

Sloane took the container from my hands, popped the lid, inhaled the steam with her eyes closed, and made a sound that the Bond transmitted directly into my nervous system at a frequency my body interpreted as both affection and a threat.

"This is acceptable."

"High praise."

"Adequate praise for adequate ramen." She walked to her bed and sat cross-legged on the dark grey sheets with the container in her lap, chopsticks already appearing from a drawer in her nightstand. Sloane kept chopsticks in her nightstand the way other people kept phone chargers. The Bond carried satisfaction, hunger, and underneath both a soft territorial pulse that said you brought me food, you came to me first, this is correct and I will permit you to live another day.

I leaned against her doorframe and watched her eat with the specific appreciation of someone who had learned over nine years that Sloane Fitzgerald consuming food she genuinely enjoyed was one of the most honest versions of herself that existed. No performance. No volume. Just a girl with pink hair and a Legendary Aspect demolishing pork broth with the same commitment she applied to three-pointer robots and emotional confrontations.

"How was Boyz Day?" She said it around a mouthful of noodles, which Diane would have found unforgivable and I found perfect.

"Caden took us to a strip club that was closed."

Sloane’s chopsticks stopped moving. Her blue eyes found mine over the rim of the container with the particular sharpness that preceded either laughter or property damage.

"Explain."

"He didn’t know strip clubs have operating hours."

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