The capital smelled like money and exhaust.
Leon and I parted ways at the station, him heading north toward the agency district, me south toward the academy complex. He handed me an envelope, squeezed my good shoulder, and said, "Trust your gut. Don't chase stars." Then he disappeared into the crowd with his hands in his pockets and that half-smile catching the light, and I was alone in the biggest city I'd ever stood in with five hundred thousand dollars of someone else's money and absolutely no idea what I was doing.
The academy was called Grandview. The campus sprawled across six city blocks. Glass towers. Manicured lawns. Training facilities that looked like they'd been designed by the same architects who built stadiums. I walked through the front gate with my arm in a sling, stitches on my temple, and the distinct energy of a man who'd wandered into the wrong building.
A volunteer at a check-in desk handed me a lanyard and pointed me toward the main arena. I followed a stream of people through a corridor lined with banners. Alumni who'd gone on to the Top 500, their faces twenty feet tall, their hero names printed in gold. I didn't recognize most of them. But I recognized the feeling. The same one I'd had walking the halls of Highsmore, staring at my dad's plaque and wondering if I'd ever earn my own.
The arena floor was massive. A polished hardwood expanse ringed by retractable bleachers, with a raised observation platform on the far end for scouts and agency reps. I walked down the steps toward the floor level, weaving through clusters of young heroes who were stretching, chatting, bouncing on their toes. Kids my age, some younger, all of them wearing numbered jerseys and the particular expression of someone who'd been training for this moment their entire life.
I found a spot near the edge of the floor, set down my bag, and started reviewing the roster Leon had given me.
"Hey." A hand tapped my shoulder. "You're in the wrong section."
I looked up. A woman in a staff polo was staring at me with the patient concern of someone who'd dealt with lost freshmen all morning.
"Recruits line up on the north end. Scouts and agency reps are on the observation platform. Up there." She pointed to the raised platform I'd walked right past.
"Oh." I picked up my bag. "Yeah, I'm a... I'm a scout. I knew that. I was just..." I gestured vaguely at the floor. "Getting a feel for the space."
She looked at my sling. My stitches. My general state of disrepair.
"Uh-huh."
I climbed the stairs to the observation deck with the posture of a man who had done this many times before and was not, under any circumstances, embarrassed.
* * *
The observation platform was a long, elevated section overlooking the arena floor. Rows of small tables lined the front, each one equipped with a datapad, a nameplate slot, and two chairs, one for the scout, one for the prospect. Behind the tables, a lounge area with coffee and snacks where the scouts were milling around.
And they were a type.
Middle-aged. Suits or business casual. Lanyards heavy with credentials. They moved through the lounge with the easy confidence of people who'd been doing this for decades, trading handshakes and inside jokes, their conversations peppered with prospect names and star ratings and contract figures that made my stomach tighten. These were professionals. Career scouts. Agency veterans.
I was wearing a wrinkled shirt I'd slept in on the train, with a bandage on my head and my arm in a sling.
I poured myself a coffee and stood near the railing, watching the prospects warm up on the floor below. Dozens of them, stretching in organized rows, running drills, a few of them testing their powers in short controlled bursts. A girl who flickered between visible and invisible, a guy whose arms extended like rubber, another whose shadow moved independently from his body.
"You lost, son?"
The voice came from behind me and to the left. I turned.
The man was built like a barrel that had been given a beard and a pair of glasses. Big. Round. The kind of beer belly that enters a room three seconds before the rest of him. His beard was grey and unkempt, his glasses thick-framed and slightly crooked, and he was holding a plate piled with enough pastries to feed a small family. His lanyard read Fredrick Hosch — Broadline Agency — Senior Scout.
"Nope," I said. "I'm a scout."
Fredrick looked at me. Then at my sling. Then at my stitches. Then back at my face. He bit into a danish.
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-four."
"Twenty-four." He chewed. Swallowed. "And you're scouting. For who?"
"Rebel Town Agency."
Fredrick's chewing slowed. His eyes moved sideways to a cluster of scouts standing by the coffee station. One of them, a thin woman with silver hair, glanced over. Then another. A couple of heads turned. Then a couple more.
"Rebel Town," Fredrick repeated. "Leon Martin's outfit."
"That's the one."
A sound moved through the scouts. Not quite laughter. The throat-clearing, lip-pressing precursor to laughter that polite adults do when they're trying not to be rude and failing.
Fredrick didn't bother hiding it. He laughed, a full, belly-driven eruption that shook the pastries on his plate.
"Kid. Rebel Town is two people. You and Leon. That's it. That's the whole roster. What are you scouting with, pocket lint?"
"We have funding," I said. My voice came out flatter than I intended.
"Uh-huh." He bit into a second danish. "What's your hero name?"
"Don't have one yet."
"Don't have..." He stopped chewing. "Every hero has a name. What's your real name?"
"Maxey."
Fredrick's jaw paused mid-chew. The danish hung there, half-bitten. Behind his thick glasses, something clicked. He looked at me differently.
"Maxey." He said it differently now. Slower. "As in Maxamillion's kid? Ultraman's boy?"
My fingers tightened around my coffee cup. "Yeah."
"Well, shit." Fredrick set his plate down on the railing and turned to face me fully, which was a production involving the rotation of significant mass. "I knew your old man. Not well, met him at a few of these events. Hell of a hero. Watched his last ranked fight, the one against the Kraken in Sector Nine. Used wind manipulation to..." He caught himself. Looked at me. "You know all this."
"Yeah."
"Right." He cleared his throat. "So, Ultraman's kid. No hero name. Arm in a sling. Working for Leon's garage band agency." He picked up his plate again. "First time scouting?"
I considered lying. But Fredrick had the kind of face that suggested he'd been lied to by professionals and wasn't going to be fooled by an amateur.
"First time."
"Christ." He sighed, a long, theatrical exhale. "Alright. Here's how this works. Pay attention because I'm not repeating myself."
Below us, the prospects had finished their stretches and were lining up in rows for the opening announcement. A woman with a megaphone was organizing them by number. Fredrick leaned against the railing, his belly pressing into the metal bar, and gestured at the floor with a pastry.
"These kids graduate from the academy with a star rating of one through five. One is the bottom. Five is${em}"
"Zero through five," I said.
Fredrick's head turned. "What?"
"The rating scale. It goes zero through five."
"No it doesn't. Nobody gets a zero. Zero isn't a real rating."
"Trust me." I took a sip of coffee. "I know."
Fredrick studied me for a beat. Whatever he saw in my face made him decide not to press it.
"Fine. Zero through five. The point is, you've got your tier ratings, and then you've got what actually matters, which is what you see today." He pointed down at the floor. "Three phases. First: interviews. You sit at your table, they rotate to you. One-on-one. If you did your homework beforehand, you already know which ones you're interested in. You don't have to interview every kid, just the ones on your list."
The prospects were settling into position now, shaking out their arms, rolling their necks. A tall kid at the front of the line was doing a series of stretches that looked more like a performance than preparation. Exaggerated lunges, unnecessary splits. Showing off for the scouts above.
"If the interview runs long," Fredrick continued, "that's usually a good sign. Means they're buying what you're selling. But you'll hear a sharp alarm, it's called the switch alarm. That means time's up, they rotate to the next table. Non-negotiable."
"Got it."
"Phase two: individual workouts and testing. Speed, strength, power output, endurance. Standardized metrics. You watch, you take notes, you compare to your interview impressions." He licked frosting off his thumb. "Phase three: the tournament. Bracket-style fights. Seeded by projected strength. Number one seed fights number fifty. Number two fights forty-nine. So on and so on. This is where the real information lives, kid. Interviews and workouts tell you what a prospect can do in a controlled environment. The tournament tells you what they do when someone's trying to knock their teeth out."
I knew most of this. I'd been through a version of it at Highsmore. Smaller, crappier, with fewer scouts and worse lighting. But hearing Fredrick break it down with the casual authority of a man who'd been doing this since before I was born made it feel different. Bigger. Realer.
"Any tips?" I asked. "For finding the best prospect?"
Fredrick grinned, wide and wolfish, crumbs in his beard.
"Well, normally I'd keep my trade secrets close to the chest. Can't have you swiping all the good ones." He paused. Glanced at my lanyard. The words Rebel Town Agency sat there in plain black text, looking exactly as small-time as they were.
He chuckled. "Ah, I think I'll be fine."
A few of the nearby scouts snickered. I felt the heat rise in my neck, but I swallowed it. Kept my face neutral. Filed the moment in a folder I was keeping in the back of my head, labeled: People Who Laughed.
* * *
Phase One — Interviews
The scouts filed to their tables. I found mine, last row, far right corner, close enough to the wall that I could lean against it if I needed to pretend I was relaxed. I set down my datapad, arranged Leon's folder in front of me, and sat.
The tables were spaced a few feet apart. To my left, Fredrick was already settled, his bulk spilling over both sides of his chair, a fresh plate of pastries stationed at his elbow. To my right, the silver-haired woman from earlier was organizing her notes with surgical precision. Across the platform, two dozen other scouts sat at their stations with the practiced ease of people who'd done this a hundred times.
The prospects filed up the stairs in a line. They moved table to table, sitting, talking, standing, moving on. A human conveyor belt of ambition and anxiety.
I watched the first wave approach. I knew one name on the roster. One. SunNova, the top-rated prospect, the one every channel and expert had been hyping for months. One of the best to come out of this city since my dad. I'd studied his file on the train, memorized his stats, watched every available clip of his training footage.
The rest of the roster was a blur of names and numbers I hadn't had time to process.
My strategy, such as it was, went like this: let the first few interviews be practice. Get the rhythm down. Figure out what questions worked and which ones made me sound like an idiot. Then, by the time SunNova rotated to my table, I'd be warmed up, polished, something resembling competent.
A chair scraped across the floor in front of me.
SunNova sat down.
First.
He was my age, maybe a year younger, but the kind of younger that doesn't show unless you're looking for it. Tall, lean, with the sort of jawline that belonged on a recruitment poster. His jersey read #1 across the chest. He sat with his back straight and his hands folded on the table, chin slightly raised. The posture of someone who'd been told his whole life that he was exceptional and had no reason to doubt it.
But his eyes were different. There was something behind the composure, a flicker he covered almost immediately. He was scanning me. The sling. The stitches. The wrinkled shirt. The lanyard that said Rebel Town.
His lip twitched.
Across the platform, I caught Fredrick watching. A couple of other scouts had paused their conversations. I could feel it, that specific gravity of secondhand embarrassment, the room collectively deciding to watch the kid fail.
"So," I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected. "Name and power."
SunNova blinked. The twitch in his lip deepened.
"You...don't already know that?"
My face got hot. "Right. Yeah. I do. I... yeah."
Silence. The kind that has texture.
He pressed his lips together. His chest expanded slightly. He was trying not to laugh. I could see the effort, the way his jaw clenched, the way he looked down at the table for a second, the way his nostrils flared.
"Sorry," he managed. "It's just... are you my age?"
"Twenty-four."
"I'm twenty-three." His eyes went to my sling again. "What happened to your arm?"
"First mission. Got thrown into a wall by a guy the size of a school bus."
The composure cracked. SunNova laughed, a real one, sudden and unguarded, the kind that comes out before you can stop it. He caught it with his hand, pressed it flat against his mouth, and straightened up.
"Sorry. That's not funny. That's not..."
"No, it's pretty funny."
He laughed again. Shorter this time, but warmer. The posture had shifted. His back was still straight but his shoulders had dropped an inch. The recruitment-poster chin lowered to something more human.
I made a decision. The formal approach was dead on arrival. I'd killed it in the first ten seconds. But I had something no other scout in this room had. I was the same age as SunNova. I'd sat in his chair less than two years ago. I knew what the academy felt like from the inside, and I knew what it felt like to graduate into a world that didn't want you.
So I stopped trying to be a scout and started talking like a person.
"Alright, forget the standard questions. What's the strongest person you've ever beaten?"
SunNova leaned back. "This kid named Jerad. Other five-star in the class."
"How'd you beat him?"
"Patience. He's got heavy kinetic absorption. The harder you hit him, the stronger he gets. So I didn't hit him hard. I kept the pressure low and constant. Solar radiation at forty percent for three straight minutes. He couldn't absorb enough to power up but he couldn't escape the field either. Eventually his body overheated and he dropped."
"Smart."
"I read a lot." He shrugged, but there was a quiet pride in it. The shrug of someone who'd been told his whole life that his power was the whole story and knew it wasn't.
We talked. Not like scout and prospect. Like two people in their twenties sitting across from each other and realizing they spoke the same language. He told me about the pressure of being the top seed, about the media coverage, about the agents who'd started circling him at seventeen. I told him about Highsmore, about zero stars, about the fact that I'd graduated with an empty inbox while everyone around me was signing deals.
His eyes kept drifting to my chest. Not in a weird way. To a specific point just below my collar. My chain. I wore it under my shirt, but the collar of the wrinkled button-down had shifted, and the pendant was showing.
SunNova's hand came up. He pointed. "Is that..."
I looked down. The pendant. My father's logo. Ultraman's crest, a stylized wind spiral inside a circle, the symbol that used to be on every billboard in the country.
"Are you a fan?" SunNova asked. His voice had changed. Softer. Almost reverent. "Because Ultraman, he's the reason I wanted to be a hero. I used to watch his fight footage every night before bed. The Kraken fight? I've seen it probably three hundred times."
My throat tightened. I tucked the chain back under my shirt.
Don't. Not yet. Sign him on your own first.
"Yeah," I said. "Big fan."
We sat in a silence that felt full rather than empty. The clock on my datapad told me we'd been talking for twelve minutes. The average interview, according to Fredrick, was four.
I decided to swing.
"Look, I'm going to be straight with you because I have no idea what I'm doing and you seem like the kind of person who'd appreciate honesty over bullshit." I leaned forward. "Would five hundred thousand be enough to sign you?"
SunNova's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. A laugh escaped, disbelieving, almost delighted.
"Damn, bro. Buy me dinner first."
We both laughed. The scouts around us glanced over. Fredrick raised an eyebrow the size of a caterpillar.
SunNova leaned back, still grinning, and shook his head. "Look, man. To be honest? My agent says my value is sitting around one-point-five million. So I can't... I mean, five hundred K is a lot of money, but it's not..." He spread his hands. "Sorry. But hey, it was genuinely great talking to you. Most of these scouts are..." He jerked his thumb at the room. "You know."
"Yeah." I nodded. Tried to keep my face from showing what my chest was doing. "Yeah, it was great meeting you too."
SunNova stood. Pushed his chair in. Turned to go.
"Wait."
He stopped. Looked back.
I reached into my collar and pulled the chain free. Let the pendant hang in the open. The wind spiral, the circle, the crest that had been on every billboard in the country.
"This chain," I said. "I don't wear it because I'm a fan."
SunNova's eyes dropped to the pendant. Then rose to my face.
"I wear it because he's my father."
SunNova's mouth opened. His eyes went wide. Not polite surprise. The real thing.
Before he could speak, the switch alarm split the air. A sharp, metallic ring that killed every conversation on the platform at once. Time's up. Rotate.
SunNova's mouth was still open. He looked at me. Looked at the pendant. Looked at the line of scouts waiting for him at the next table.
He closed his mouth. Nodded once, slowly, like he was deciding something.
Then he walked to the next table.
And I sat there with my father's crest hanging from my neck, my heart hammering, not sure yet whether that had been smart or stupid.
* * *
The next interviews went better.
Not because I'd suddenly figured out the formula. There was no formula. But I'd found something. The relatable angle. These kids had spent all morning talking to men and women in suits who spoke in contract figures and career projections and five-year development plans. Then they sat down across from me, a beat-up twenty-four-year-old with his arm in a sling who talked like a human being, and something loosened. Some of them opened up. Some of them didn't. But the ones who did gave me more in five minutes than Fredrick probably got in fifteen.
I turned around to say bye to the second to last prospect I had interviewed then turned around to have the last prospect already sitting there. Shit startled me.
"Lets get this over with, im sure your tryna go home"
I laughed "read my mind! First question: how's your day?"
Her eyes which were focused on the training grounds suddenly darted back at me.
"Favorite first question so far. Its been complete dogshit"
"My day too"
She leaned back she started staring at me, like actually looking at me for the first time. The person not the khaki blob that represents me. But what was truly me.
"Why are you fucked up?"
My eyes flicker as I slightly stutter
"Well that starts the day my dad died"
She blinked rapidly with her mouth gaping
"Oh god no, I meant why do you look like someone fucked you up like physically"
I looked at my cast
"Oh shit, my bad" as I let out a chuckle
"Oversharing already on the first date, I like to overshare too"
She said while twirling around her pink ring on her finger
I raised my hand that had a pen in it to give her the green light to overshare. Part of me imagined the pen was a glass of wine. And this scouting table was a dinner table and Fredrick is our fat waiter. I felt something, like a small knot in my stomach, I was getting a bit more nervous. I was starting to stare at her like at her hazel eyes. Her lips and .. . . stops stop stop stop. We are here to scout. Nothing less and nothing more.
She studied me for a second. Then: "This is the longest I've gone talking to a scout without them asking me my power first."
"I'll get there. Now hurry and overshare before the bell rings?"
She had a half smile that turned into a sigh
"My father treats the house as his hero breeding grounds. He has over 8 kids. 4 of them amazing speedsters the other 4 not so much.
"Are you in the amazing side or the not so much side"
She let another smile escape those lips
"Um well im rated 2 stars so"
"Oh shit nice"
She snickered and folded her arms
"look honestly I'm sorry that your going through that your dad sounds like a asshole.
"Did you notice my last name on the datapad?
I looked down and quickly re-read her profile, nothing out of the ordinary. I looked up with a slight tint of confusion.
"My name Lydia…..Tywinter"
I reread it again to see if I finally catch what im missing.
"Yea I know"
She gasped
"Your the first person to read my father's last name and still call him a asshole"
She leaned forward on her chair. "After I tell my sob story I might get them say something slightly mean but then couch it with 100 pounds of fluff. Im sure he had his reason. We'll he is a very busy man." She said that last party sarcastically.
She smiled "thank you for calling him what he actually is"
A tear started rolling down her eye
I shifted "look i like your personality, your powers might lack. But you have the most important part…. A good heart
Another tear came out "look you dont want me. My family doesn't want me. Im sure yall would regret having me. "
I awkwardly put a hand on her shoulder
"Your family won't know what there going to miss. You nervous for the tournament?
Another tear fell "fucking terrified, they put me up against a chick that is the #3 ranked hero and her power is a counter to mine"
My eyes widened "the fuck? Are they trying to get you killed"
She rolled her eyes "I tried complaining to them but they said, in a real fight you cant control your opponent"
"Hey im sorry, I'm sure you'll do your best."
One of the most overused corny ass sayings. But thats the only thing I can come up with. What type of man would treat his family like him. People like him are part of the reason this system is rotted to the core. I wish I can help her.
"one thing you have that no one else has is your pain. Use it to amplify your powers. When your there imagine its your dad"
She wiped her tears "I'll try that"
"Kick some ass"
The switch alarm went off.