The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 476

Chapter 476: 476 | My Students Will Understand [CASTLE BONUS]

He flew her down to the street and passed her to the first paramedic who stepped forward, then launched himself back toward the fourth floor before anyone could ask questions.

Three minutes and eighteen seconds until structural failure.

The three in the bathroom were a mother, a father, and a boy around eight years old. They had sealed the door with wet towels and filled the bathtub with water in case they needed to submerge themselves. Smart. Resourceful. The kind of civilians who gave themselves extra time by not panicking.

Radiant punched through the wall beside the door rather than opening it and exposing them to the hallway’s heat.

"Good morning!" His voice filled the small bathroom with the kind of cheerful confidence that made people believe things would be okay even when the evidence suggested otherwise. "I have excellent news! Your rescue is currently in progress!"

The mother burst into tears. The father said something that might have been thank you but came out as a sound without consonants. The boy stared at him with the same expression the girl in the car had worn, hero worship in its purest form, the thing that made all of this worth doing.

Radiant gathered all three of them in his arms. The mother weighed maybe a hundred and twenty pounds. The father closer to one-eighty. The boy couldn’t have been more than sixty. Four hundred pounds of human being pressed against his chest as he walked back toward the hole in the wall.

The timer pulsed. Three hours and thirty-one minutes.

His nose was bleeding again.

He felt the warm trickle running down his upper lip and there was nothing he could do about it because his arms were full of civilians and the ceiling was starting to groan above them in the way that preceded collapse. He flew out of the building with all three of them clutched against his body and descended to the street in a controlled spiral that kept the wind from whipping at their faces.

The crowd cheered.

He set them down and the mother grabbed his arm and said something through her tears that he couldn’t hear over the roaring in his ears. The father was shaking his hand and the boy was tugging at his cape and emergency services were swarming around them with blankets and oxygen masks.

Radiant smiled.

"Another successful rescue! Remember, citizens! When disaster strikes, heroes answer!" He wiped his nose on his glove and the blood smeared red against the white fabric, but nobody noticed because they were all looking at his face and his face was showing them exactly what they needed to see. "Stay safe! Stay vigilant! And have an absolutely outstanding day!"

He launched himself into the air before anyone could ask if he was okay.

The timer read three hours and twenty-eight minutes.

Halloran was twelve minutes away by normal flight speed. He had time. He could make it. The Crucible didn’t begin until nine-thirty, and it was only eight-forty-two. He could be there in time to greet the students, deliver his prepared remarks about the importance of civilian protection, watch them deploy into the simulation environments.

He turned east toward the hills.

"HELP! PLEASE, SOMEONE!"

Another voice. Another direction. South this time, toward the commercial district near the waterfront.

Radiant stopped again.

The explosion came two seconds later, a fireball rising from somewhere near the Strand that painted the morning sky orange. Not an Aspect discharge. Not a gas main rupture. The signature was wrong. Too hot at the center, too cold at the edges. Chemical, maybe. Industrial.

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