The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 611: 611 | My Lizard Brain

I took the fire escape down because jumping four stories in front of a crowd of neighbors in pajamas felt like a bad look for a provisional student with an observation flag on his file.

The rungs were slick with condensation and older than my entire legal existence, and one of them bent under my boot in a way that suggested it had opinions about my weight.

I landed in the alley behind the pawn shop, stuffed the card into my jacket pocket, and jogged back toward Delancey with my ribs grumbling where a girl in a diving suit had tried to fold me in half.

The fire was mostly out. Two hoses still ran up the front steps of the duplex, and the upstairs windows had gone from orange to black, which I figured was the correct direction for windows to go. The old man sat on the back bumper of the ambulance with an oxygen mask over his face and the cat carrier in his lap. The cat inside was screaming at a volume that made me respect it deeply.

Dralun stood in the middle of the street.

He had soot across his scales from the jaw down, and his vest was scorched along one shoulder where something upstairs had tried to eat him and lost. His tail moved behind him in long slow sweeps that cleared a six-foot radius of civilians without anybody deciding to step back. His eyes found me the second I rounded the corner of the laundromat, and I felt my spine straighten on its own, the same reflex I got around Steele and Diane and exactly nobody else.

“I told you to stay at the bench,” he said.

“You told me to watch.” I stopped a respectful ten feet away, which was a distance my lizard brain picked for me. “You never said which direction I was supposed to face.”

He grunted once. It was a long one, and Ophelia had warned me that long grunts meant contemplation, so I assumed he was contemplating where to bury me.

Ophelia herself was perched on the back of the bus bench, spiked boots planted on the seat and parasol open against a sun that had set twenty minutes ago. Mr. Stitches sat on her knee facing me, X-stitched eyes radiating judgment in a way a stuffed bear had no business managing. She lowered her phone just enough for me to see her face over the lace edge.

“You ran across the roofs,” she said. “I have it in slow motion, and your form was terrible.”

“My form was excellent.”

“You flailed on the second jump.” She tapped her screen and turned it toward me. On the tiny display, a blurry charcoal figure launched off the laundromat roof and cleared the gap with his arms windmilling in a manner that I was going to deny in court. “Look at your elbow. Mr. Stitches thinks you looked like a pigeon having a medical event.”

“Mr. Stitches can file that under slander.”

“Minus six,” she said, and went back to filming the fire crew.

Dralun crossed the distance between us in three steps. Up close he smelled like burnt drywall and something older underneath, a mineral scent I associated with rain on hot pavement. He was a full head taller than me, and I had a hundred Strength and a Demigod multiplier, and I still had to tilt my chin to hold his eyes. He looked down at me for a long second, and then his nostrils flared.

“Strawberry,” he said.

I had not prepared for that. “Excuse me?”

“You smell like strawberry.” His voice dropped, going from gravel to something closer to a rockslide. “There’s one person in this district who chews that gum. So tell me what you did on that roof, Belmont.”

Ophelia’s phone dipped. Her grey eyes went from Dralun to me, and her pink drill curls swung when she tilted her head.

“I chased a girl,” I said, because lying to a dragon who could smell my shirt felt like a waste of breath. “She came out of the pawn shop with a bag while you were upstairs doing the cat thing. She went up the wall without hands, and I followed her.”

“You followed her.”

“Pretty sure I just said that.”

“And she let you catch up.” It wasn’t a question. His eyes narrowed, and the scarred horn caught the red light from the fire engine. “She doesn’t let anybody catch up.”

“She slipped.” I rubbed the back of my neck, which was a tell Sloane had pointed out and I had never fixed. “Literally. Her heel caught a skylight and she went over, so I grabbed her belt. Then she sort of climbed me for a minute.”

The interface chose that moment to offer support.

〘Note: “Sort of climbed me” is an understatement. Her thighs registered 340 PSI against your lower ribs.〙

〘Recommendation: Do not share that figure with the dragon.〙

Ophelia made a sound behind her parasol that could have been a gasp or a choke. Her pale cheeks went a blotchy red, and she hugged Mr. Stitches to her chest with both arms.

“She climbed you,” Ophelia repeated. “On a roof. During a structure fire.”

“It was a tactical position.” I heard myself say it and immediately wanted a refund. “Her words. I was the unwilling furniture.”

“You smell like her lip gloss.” Ophelia’s voice climbed half an octave, and the lace of the parasol trembled. “Mr. Stitches can smell it from here, and he’s a bear. He doesn’t even have a working nose.”

“Mr. Stitches needs to mind his own business.”

“Minus twenty,” she snapped. “For being gross in public.”

I was beginning to suspect the points ledger had no floor. I was also beginning to suspect that Ophelia Lin was less upset about the strawberry and more upset that someone other than her had gotten to embarrass me on my first day. The interface flickered in the corner of my vision and showed her gauge sitting at five percent, up two from the office, which made zero sense for a girl who had just called me gross. I filed it under things I would think about later and never would.

Dralun held out his hand. His palm was broad and scaled, with a fresh crescent scar near the thumb that I now knew belonged to a raccoon.

“The card,” he said.