The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 474: 474 | The One and Only

Wednesday. 8:20 AM. Downtown Verano.

The burning sedan flew through the air like a four-thousand-pound fastball, trailing smoke and the screams of the family still trapped inside.

Radiant caught it with one hand.

His palm connected with the undercarriage. The impact was a shockwave, traveling up his arm with enough force to shatter a normal man’s bones. The metal groaned. The suspension crumpled where his fingers sank into it. He lowered the vehicle to the street with the gentleness of setting down a sleeping child, then ripped the driver’s door off its hinges and tossed it behind him without looking.

"Good morning, citizens!" His voice carried across the intersection in a boom that made pigeons scatter and civilians stop screaming long enough to stare. "Please exit the vehicle in an orderly fashion and proceed to the safety perimeter! Radiant is here, and that means your day just got significantly better!"

The father inside the car gaped at him with the particular expression of someone whose brain had not caught up to the fact that they were alive. His wife clutched their daughter in the backseat, both of them covered in glass from the windshield that had shattered during whatever impact sent them airborne.

Radiant reached in and unbuckled the father’s seatbelt with two fingers. "Sir, I’m going to need you to move those legs. Walking is preferable to being carried, though I am absolutely prepared to princess-carry you to safety if that’s what this situation requires."

"I... you..."

"Outstanding verbal communication! Now let’s get that family moving!"

The father stumbled out of the driver’s seat on legs that didn’t quite believe they still worked. Radiant was already at the rear passenger door, peeling it open like the lid of a sardine can and extending his hand to the mother with a smile that could have sold toothpaste to a nation.

"Ma’am. I have exceptionally good news. You and your daughter are going to be absolutely fine, because Radiant does not permit alternative outcomes."

The little girl stared up at him with eyes the size of dinner plates. She couldn’t have been older than six. Her pink dress was torn at the shoulder and there was a cut on her forehead that would need attention, but she was alive and conscious and looking at him like he had personally descended from the heavens to rescue her, which was technically accurate depending on how you classified his flight trajectory.

"Are you really Radiant?"

"The one and only!" He lifted her out of the car with hands that could have crushed steel and cradled her against his chest with the softness of holding something precious. "And I have to say, young citizen, you are being exceptionally brave right now. I’m going to recommend you for a commendation."

"What’s a commendation?"

"It’s a fancy piece of paper that says you did something heroic. Would you like one?"

She nodded so hard her whole body moved.

"Then it’s settled!" Radiant passed her to the mother, who had finally managed to extract herself from the backseat, and pointed toward the police line three blocks away where emergency services had established a perimeter. "Safety is in that direction! Medical personnel will address that cut, and I strongly recommend ice cream as a follow-up treatment! It has been scientifically proven to improve morale!"

The family ran. The father kept looking back over his shoulder like he expected Radiant to vanish, like he needed visual confirmation that the rescue had actually happened.

Radiant watched them go. A warmth expanded in his chest. It had nothing to do with his Aspect. It was the entire reason he wore the costume.

Then the warmth curdled.

His hand moved to his abdomen without conscious thought, pressing against the golden fabric of his costume where something inside him was wrong in a way he could feel but couldn’t see. The timer ran in his peripheral awareness like a countdown clock he couldn’t turn off. Three hours and forty-seven minutes remaining. Yesterday it had been four hours and twelve minutes. Last week it had been five hours even. The numbers kept shrinking and the shrinking kept accelerating and he did not know how to stop it.

Blood dripped from his nose.

He wiped it away with the back of his glove before anyone could see, the crimson smear vivid against the white fabric. Another symptom. Another warning. Another piece of evidence that the body he had used for twenty-three years was no longer willing to sustain what he demanded of it.

"Radiant!"

He turned with a smile that revealed nothing of what was happening behind his eyes. Apex was jogging toward him across the intersection, her crystalline armor catching the morning sun in prismatic bursts that would have made an excellent photograph. She was Rank 34 in California, a solid B-tier Hero who specialized in crowd control and property preservation, and she was looking at him with an expression that mixed admiration with something that might have been professional envy.

"You know, you could save some heroics for the rest of us." She stopped a few feet away and gestured at the wreckage strewn across the intersection. Three overturned vehicles. A collapsed storefront. The crater where a villain with a concrete manipulation Aspect had made the mistake of thinking he could challenge the Number One Hero in California. "I’ve been trying to build my quarterly resolution stats, and every time I respond to a call, you’ve already handled it."

"Apex! Excellent response time! Your dedication to civic protection continues to inspire!"

"That’s not actually a response to what I said."

"It is a response to the broader context of your excellent work!" Radiant clapped her on the shoulder with precisely enough force to be friendly without triggering her armor’s defensive protocols. "The citizens of Verano are fortunate to have heroes of your caliber protecting them!"

pex stared at him for a long moment, her professional admiration giving way to a flicker of something else. Something closer to concern.

"You okay?" The question came out softer than her previous complaint.

"You look... I don’t know. Tired, maybe?"

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