The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 511: 511 | Gravity Remembers

The fire did not stop coming.

Thatch stood in the center of the plaza with his hands spread and black flame poured from his palms in cascading waves that ate the red emergency lighting and turned the broken fountain into slag. The heat was wrong. Real fire lit what it touched. This fire swallowed light wholesale, consuming visibility along with oxygen, and Steele’s lungs burned just breathing near the edge of it.

She circled wide, boots crunching on shattered tile, and let Bom Ba Ye build through her legs. Ring Presence rolled out from her body in a continuous field, sharpening her own reflexes while the white creature stood in the center of the inferno completely unaffected by heat that should have turned bone to powder.

Nexo turned its head and tracked her movement with the horrible patience of something that had decided she would die but had not yet selected the method.

"Cole," Steele said into the channel. "You cannot suppress it."

"I am aware." Dravid’s voice came from somewhere behind the collapsed stair riser, flat and unhurried despite blood running down his temple from where Nexo had nearly removed his head from his shoulders six seconds earlier. "However, the boy remains suppressible."

"The boy is standing inside a lake of fire that I cannot approach without losing skin."

"Yes. That is inconvenient."

Steele laughed despite herself, the sound coming out breathless and sharp. She loved working with Cole Dravid because the man treated apocalyptic combat scenarios with the same tone he used to discuss cafeteria lunch schedules, and it kept her sane when everything else was burning.

Thatch moved.

Not toward her. Toward the north corridor where Percy Mendoza’s voice had confirmed students were gathered.

"No," Steele said.

She ran.

Bom Ba Ye charged through every step, forward momentum accumulating into devastating force that could not be recalled once committed. She covered forty feet in less time than her lungs needed to process the burning air and hit Thatch from the side with her shoulder driven into his ribs.

The impact sent him staggering six feet to the left, away from the corridor, but the black fire never stopped pouring from his hands. He recovered his footing and turned toward her with his burn scars glowing bright enough to hurt looking at them directly.

"You are fast." His voice carried that same shelter-animal emptiness, observing facts without investing emotion in their meaning. "Ring Presence gives you approximately fifteen percent enhanced output across all physical stats within a twenty-foot radius. Your students perform better in training sessions because you are making them better without their knowledge."

Steele planted her feet and let another charge build. "My students perform better because they work hard and listen to instruction."

"No. You are cheating for them. You stand at the edge of the mat and radiate advantage and they internalize the success as their own capability. When they leave your field they will crash. You are building them on a foundation that does not exist outside your immediate vicinity."

The observation landed harder than the black fire would have.

Steele knew it was true. She had known it was true since her second semester at Halloran when the statistical analysis came back showing her students consistently outperformed projections during live sessions but regressed toward the mean in independent evaluations. She had filed the data and kept teaching because the alternative was removing herself from the training floor entirely and that would help nobody.

"My students," she said, and her voice came out rougher than intended, "are learning what their ceiling looks like when they operate at full capacity. When they internalize that standard they will reach it on their own."

"You are lying to yourself." Thatch smiled, and the smile was worse than the fire because it carried genuine sympathy underneath. "You are building them to need you."

Steele moved before her brain finished processing the sentence. She closed the distance in two charging steps and drove a kinetic-loaded fist toward Thatch’s sternum with enough force to crack ribs.

He stepped aside.

The punch hit empty air and Steele’s momentum carried her forward into the space where Thatch had been standing, and his hand came up trailing black fire and pressed flat against her extended forearm.

The pain was immediate and absolute.

Her skin did not burn. Her skin ceased being skin. The fire ate through the fabric of her jacket and found flesh underneath and consumed it with the same indifferent efficiency that it consumed light and oxygen and hope. Steele screamed before her brain caught up with her mouth and jerked backward, but the damage was done. Her entire right forearm from wrist to elbow was scorched black, the skin cracked and weeping, and when she tried to flex her fingers they did not respond.

She staggered backward clutching her ruined arm against her chest and tasted bile.

Thatch tilted his head, considering. "That was foolish. You let me make you angry."

"Cole." Steele’s voice came out thin and high. "I require assistance."

Dravid was already moving. He crossed the plaza at a dead run despite having no weapon and no way to meaningfully damage either Thatch or the creature standing behind him. Suppress activated the moment he closed within twenty feet, and the black fire guttered and died across Thatch’s hands.

Thatch’s mouth opened in a silent scream as the fire vanished.

Nexo turned toward Cole Dravid with the horrible mechanical certainty of a machine receiving updated targeting parameters.

"Do not look away," Steele shouted into the channel, but she was already too late.

A boy named Rocco Vale wandered into the northern corridor entrance.

Thatch saw him immediately.

The burn scars around Thatch’s eyes flared bright amber and black fire erupted from his mouth in a gout that arced toward the corridor entrance.

"ROCCO GET DOWN," Steele screamed, but the boy was still staring at his phone.

Cole Dravid broke eye contact with Thatch.

The fire died three feet from Rocco’s nose.

Dravid had shifted his focus fast enough to catch Thatch in his suppression field again, killing the flame before it reached the student, but the redirect cost him everything.

Nexo’s longer arm came around in a horizontal arc and caught Cole Dravid across the chest.

The impact was not dramatic. There was no explosion of force, no shockwave, no sound except the flat meaty thud of knuckles meeting ribs. The creature simply swung its arm like a man swatting a fly and Cole Dravid left the ground.

He flew backward through the air in a trajectory that physics should not have permitted given the angle of impact, his body rotating twice before gravity remembered him and brought him down hard onto broken tile thirty feet from where he had been standing. He hit the ground and did not get up.

"COLE!"

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