The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 459: 459 | Best of Both Worlds

"Which thing."

"The thing where you go somewhere behind your eyes and I can tell it’s not a fun place because your jaw gets tight and you stop blinking."

"I was looking at your stomach."

She blinked. Color rose from her collar to her cheeks in a wave that her Smoke and Mirrors passive could not suppress because it only worked on strangers and I had stopped being a stranger somewhere between the cinema and the moment she told me she wanted a version where nobody loses. "That’s," she started, "that’s a different thing."

"Better thing, though."

"Significantly better thing, yes, and also shut up because Ortega is going to come out of that bathroom in approximately thirty seconds and I refuse to be flustered when she does."

Twenty-seven seconds later, the bathroom door opened.

Camille stepped out and something in the air changed. Same tank top, same compression leggings, same two-tone blonde-over-brown that she’d been flipping out of her face all evening.

But the posture was different. The rigid competitive frequency she’d been running since she walked in and found Felicity already horizontal on my bed was gone. In its place was something slower.

She crossed to the bed. Not to the edge where she’d been perched before like she was ready to launch herself at the next provocation, but to the center. Close enough to Felicity that their knees touched when she settled. Close enough to me that I caught warm cardamom over the sage candle Diane had left burning on the desk.

"Next round," she said. Not to Felicity or to me specifically. To both of us, which was new. The competitive blade in her voice had been put away somewhere and what was underneath it was warmer, steadier, the register I’d only heard once before when she stood in my doorway at midnight and told me nobody ever tells her no and that maybe I should start. "Felicity picks the black card. I’ll judge this one."

Felicity’s eyes tracked over Camille’s face for exactly one second with the analytical precision that ran underneath all the warmth and the constant touching.

The intelligence that had built a perfect sensory illusion of us discussing cinematography while the real us did things in the dark that would have gotten all three of us expelled.

Whatever Felicity read in Camille’s expression made her smile, the real version of it, the one that crinkled the corners of her blue eyes and shifted the light dusting of freckles across her nose.

"Deal," Felicity said, and started dealing cards.

I watched the two of them settle into a new configuration, Camille’s knee touching Felicity’s, Felicity’s shoulder occasionally brushing mine as she leaned to read cards, and I recognized the geometry.

Three points of contact where previously there had been two, with me at the vertex and both of them angled inward, and the shape they were making on my bed was either the most natural thing in the world or the opening formation of something that was going to require a very long conversation with Sloane tomorrow morning.

The game continued and something shifted. Camille started laughing. Real laughing, the kind she usually saved for moments when Zara said something devastating or when she landed a rivet at thirty feet through a gap nobody thought was possible.

Not the sharp bark she deployed when someone made a mistake that annoyed her. Not the competitive edge that ran underneath most of her social interactions. This was the unguarded version, open and warm and running at a frequency I’d only heard maybe twice since classes started.

Felicity had a talent for this, for creating spaces where people forgot they were performing. She did it through warmth and physical proximity and the specific quality of attention that made you feel like the only person in the room even when there were three of you on a bed playing cards at midnight. It worked on everyone eventually.

I’d watched it work on half of Class 1-B over the last two months. Watching it work on Camille Ortega, who had been performing since she was fourteen and decided her body was her business and everyone else’s opinion was noise, that was different.

Watching Camille forget to be aggressive. Watching her lean back on her palms and grin at a card Felicity played, the grin wide and genuine and carrying none of the calculated edge that usually accompanied her expressions.

Watching the flush on her dark skin spread from her cheeks down her throat and into the neckline of her tank top while she laughed hard enough that her brown eyes went bright and wet.

Watching the way her blonde-to-brown hair caught the light when she tilted her head back and laughed at something Felicity said about my taste in movies that I didn’t even register because I was too busy processing what I was looking at.

That did something to me that the System could not have predicted because it had nothing to do with gauges or progression and everything to do with the simple reality that Camille Ortega was beautiful when she stopped trying to win.

And then the notification hit.

The interface materialized at the edge of my vision with the particular urgency reserved for announcements the System considered non-negotiable, gold borders pulsing against the warm light of the apartment, and I felt the familiar cold drop in my stomach that preceded every piece of information the System delivered with theatrical presentation and zero regard for timing.

⚠ MAIN QUEST GENERATED

THE SCUMBAG’S PATH: MANDATORY

Quest: "Best of Both Worlds"

Two heroines. One night. Zero excuses.

Objective: Engage in a full intimate encounter with both Felicity Hardy and Camille Ortega before sunrise. Both parties must be willing participants. Both must reach completion. Both must be in the same room when the encounter begins.

Bonus Objective: Both heroines climax simultaneously during at least one moment of the encounter.

Reward: 3,500 SP | 1 Gold Gacha Pull (Selection) | Temptation Gauge advancement for both heroines | Unique passive trait unlock

Failure Penalty: +40 Defiance Points (immediately)

Quest Classification: Scumbag’s Path — MANDATORY

This quest cannot be declined, deferred, or renegotiated. The Scumbag’s Path has no guardrails. You chose this. Proceed accordingly.

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