The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 466: 466 | It Depends on the Wall [GACHAPON BONUS]

Felicity dealt the Wavelength cards with the speed of a Vegas pit boss running from a bad audit, her wrists snapping each card flat against the comforter in a rhythm that suggested she’d spent considerable time perfecting this exact skill for situations nobody should need it perfected for. The spectrum dial landed between us, that cheap plastic semicircle with a hidden target window and a sliding needle, and the five of us arranged ourselves around it like generals around a war table, except two of us were in pajamas and one of us was wearing a crop top that left about four inches of fabric between decency and federal incident.

"Rules," Felicity announced, holding up one finger. "Clue-giver sees the target position. Everyone else guesses. You argue your case. Majority rules on where the needle goes. Wrong answers mean you drink." She held up a second finger. "And Petra, before you say it, no, this is not an IHL compliance violation, this is a game, and you are going to have fun or I will make it weird."

"You’ve already made it weird," Petra said from the reading chair, which she’d scooted three inches closer to the bed without acknowledging the migration. Her cream silk pajama top had a single button that sat lower than regulation would have permitted, and her planner lay across her thighs like armor she was pretending she didn’t need. "The weird happened when I walked in and found you sitting on his bed in those shorts."

"These are lounge shorts."

"Those are underwear with branding."

"They have a visible waistband and a functional drawstring. That is structurally a short."

"The drawstring is decorative. The fabric is insufficient."

"My fabric is none of your concern, Lang."

Vivienne uncapped her pen with a soft click and drew a single tally mark in the margin of her tablet. When four pairs of eyes found her, she smiled the patient smile of an anthropologist documenting a mating ritual she’d predicted six minutes in advance.

"I’m keeping score," she said. "Of what, I haven’t decided yet."

I grabbed the spectrum card before the conversation could devolve further into textile litigation. The card read: UNDERRATED on the left, OVERRATED on the right. I checked the hidden target window. The needle sat at roughly thirty percent from the UNDERRATED end, meaning the ideal clue would describe something that was moderately underrated.

"Okay," I said. "My clue is: Percy Mendoza’s combat potential."

The room split in half immediately.

Camille sat up from her reclined position, her tank top shifting in a way that the overhead light caught the defined line of her collarbone and the shadow it threw across her chest. "Underrated. Hard underrated. That boy called timing on our match and I didn’t register what he was doing until I was already pinned."

"He’s the reason we won," I confirmed, though the rules said I couldn’t confirm or deny. I’d already broken the rules. Felt appropriate.

Felicity’s hand landed on my thigh like a bird of prey deciding on a perch, casual and possessive and warm through the denim. "Agreed. Percy’s the sleeper of the whole cohort. He just needs someone to press the go button, and then his brain does the rest." She squeezed once, left her hand there. Vivienne’s pen moved. I pretended not to notice either thing.

Petra leaned forward in the reading chair and adjusted her grip on the planner. The motion pulled her collar open by a centimeter, revealing the line of her throat and the place where I’d watched her pulse run at one-twelve approximately ninety minutes ago. I stopped that thought in its crib.

"Slightly underrated," Petra said with the cadence of someone issuing a market analysis rather than playing a party game. "His processing speed exceeds his communication speed, which creates an impression of hesitation that masks genuine capability. But his physical stats remain below cohort average, which caps his deployment ceiling regardless of analytical output. He’s underrated, but not dramatically."

"That’s the coldest correct answer I’ve ever heard," Camille said.

"Accuracy doesn’t require warmth."

Felicity moved the needle to about thirty-five percent from the underrated end. When I revealed the target at thirty, the room erupted. Felicity pumped her fist. Camille grinned the real grin. Even Petra’s mouth twitched in the specific direction of satisfaction before she killed it.

"Close enough," I said. "Nobody drinks."

"Disappointing," Vivienne murmured, and made another tally mark.

Camille drew the next card and studied the spectrum with the intensity she brought to reading stress fractures in load-bearing walls. Her brown eyes moved twice, and her Precision Read fired on instinct because Camille Ortega did not have an off switch for tactical assessment, just varying degrees of restraint.

"Spectrum is BORING to THRILLING," she said, and looked directly at me with an expression that made the room temperature climb by two degrees. "My clue is: being pinned against a wall by someone stronger than you."

Felicity made a sound that was not a word and was definitely not appropriate for institutional housing.

Petra’s pen cracked against her planner.

Vivienne wrote three tally marks in rapid succession.

"That’s not a clue," I said. "That’s a loaded weapon."

Camille’s grin arrived wide and sharp and completely predatory, her two-tone hair catching the lamp as she tilted her head at the specific angle she used when she knew she’d hit center mass. "It’s a clue. Interpret it."

The room became very quiet in the way rooms become quiet when five people are all thinking the same thing and four of them are women who have each independently decided they have opinions about the answer.

"Thrilling," Felicity said immediately, and her hand tightened on my thigh hard enough that I felt each individual finger. "Like, extremely thrilling. Off the charts. Past the spectrum. Through the wall."

Petra said nothing for four seconds, which in Petra’s conversational framework constituted a lengthy dramatic pause. Then: "Depends on the wall."

Camille’s eyebrows rose. "On the wall?"

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