Thanks, Cha Huigyeong

Yoyoboy… was turned into a Villain by Director Amos?

I had trouble believing what was in front of my eyes. He’d been hauled off by a security robot, so I’d figured something would happen to him: an interrogation, a stint as research material. But turning him into a Villain outright, just like that.

The strange part was that there was no life in his eyes at all.

“But… is this all right?”
“Is what?”
“If you Villainize a Hero he only gets stronger, so wouldn’t it end up building the Heroes’ fighting strength for them…”
“Ahem! ’Course I thought about that much!”

Amos puffed out her chest and put on a smug little face.

“Ya don’t gotta worry ‘bout that. I asked Wrath to tinker with its mind a lil’ bit.”
“Its mind…? Wrath?”
“There’s a Wrath! Oh — No. 1 prob’ly hasn’t met her, huh?”

I nodded.

Wrath… another one at Director level, I suppose.

I knew of exactly two Directors. The squirt in front of me… Amos, Director of Gluttony. And Belia, Director of Greed, the one who’d brought me into Beyond Villain.

If the Directors’ titles came from the Seven Capital Sins, then there were probably seven Director posts in all.

“Anyway, Wrath can mess with other people’s memories!”
“Manipulate memories…”
“Uh-huh, so we gave its memories a touch-up. Just in case it got its real ones back, we planted a real strong memory in there.”

— Rummage-rummage.

Amos dug around inside her coat and came out with a banana. The moment it appeared, the monkey that had been Yoyoboy… stirred inside the incubation pod.

Amos worked a button, and the banana slid into the pod.

“Oo! Oo-oo-oo!”
“…”

Yoyoboy hooted like a monkey and ate the banana.

“This one’s got the memory that it’s a monkey.”
“Not even a person — a monkey?”
“Uh-huh, the further it is from its real memories, the lower the chance of gettin’ ‘em back. I think there was somethin’ else they said, too… but I forgot!”

Amos tapped her own head and beamed innocently. Right. If any problem came up, we could just go ask this Director called ‘Wrath’.

I pulled up Yoyoboy’s information on the computer monitor in front of the incubation pod.

So the Gift is wire manipulation, just as I expected.

A Hero’s Gift can be looked up through the Hero Association. A sidekick, though, is effectively still an apprentice in the stretch right before Hero status, so information on one is anybody’s guess.

Yoyoboy’s Gift was the ability to manipulate wire. He turned the yo-yo’s string into wire, and that was how he sent it snapping through the air along any trajectory he wanted.

“What did you do about the yo-yo?”
“I stuck the yo-yo on its wrist!”
“On its wrist…”
“It’d be a big deal if it dropped it partway, wouldn’t it?”

With a monkey’s intelligence it would struggle to use the yo-yo properly at all. Then again, there’s such a thing as muscle memory. It would probably find some way to put its own ability to work.

“Its brains went down, but its reflexes got like three times faster’n when it was a Hero.”
“…”
“If the Combat Analysis and Evaluation Office trains it up, we’ll totally get an amazin’ invention outta it! Ya can look forward to it!”

I looked into the eyes of the Yoyoboy who had been turned into a monkey. The pupils staring at nothing glistened oddly. Whether that was tears or my own imagination, I couldn’t tell.

Turning away from him, I drew the bag of snacks out of my pocket and held it out to Amos.

“Splendid work, Director.”
“Hunh? Snacks!”
“A token of my respect for you, Director.”
“Hehehe, thank you! I knew No. 1 would like it too! I was a lil’ bit worried, actually… ‘cause I always make Villains after talkin’ it over with No. 1.”

Amos hesitated, the snacks in her hands. Come to think of it, a Villain’s appearance and overall direction were always things I worked out with her. Otherwise the whole thing would end up going off the rails somewhere absurd.

Unlike the previous ones, this Yoyoboy job… left nothing much to fault.

“It’s plenty impressive even though you made it alone. I’m looking forward to seeing it in the field.”
“Hehehe! Let’s work reeeal hard!”
“I’ll work hard to assist you.”

Amos hopped about, apparently thrilled by the praise. She didn’t seem to know that the Yoyoboy in front of her had attacked me the day before. I stroked her head while she munched happily away, and thought.

What would Cha Huigyeong think if she saw this?

A sidekick who vanished, and then, a few days later, a Villain in the shape of a monkey that played with a yo-yo.

“How about we deploy the next Villain at Yangjae Station in Seoul?”
“Hunh? Yangjae Station? Why?”

I named the district Speedgirl was in charge of, and smiled.

“No reason… I just think it’d be fun to put it there.”

“That little shit… where the hell did he go?”

Cha Huigyeong bit at her nails and paced the living room uneasily. Yoyoboy, the sidekick who had vanished without a word. Three days now with no trace of him, and the Association had already given notice of disciplinary action for unauthorized absence. What was the point of handing down a punishment when the man due to receive it had gone missing?

Surely… it isn’t that.

The last day she had seen Yoyoboy.

That day, Cha Huigyeong had taken him with her and forced her way into Im Taeseung’s home, and in doing so she had confirmed that he had some sort of connection to Beyond Villain. Only, Beyond Villain sat inside Villain Special City itself, which made it hard to act rashly. Any Hero who reached B-rank sooner or later learned the ‘frightening thing’ about that city.

Don’t tell me that idiot… went into Villain Special City?

She hoped it wasn’t so, and the more she hoped, the more the certainty grew. The sarcasm he had let show so openly whenever the three of them ate with Im Taeseung. He might well have talked himself into believing he could go alone and take down a man like Im Taeseung. Without ever knowing the place was a tiger’s maw.

— Vrrr—! Vrrr—!

The phone on the table broke the silence. Cha Huigyeong snatched it up at once and checked the emergency dispatch order that had come in by text. Sidekick or no sidekick, a Hero had to face Villains. Villains didn’t show up going easy on Heroes.

“Dammit!”

Cha Huigyeong pulled on her Hero suit and went out the front door. Helmet on, she swung onto the motorcycle and hit the accelerator, harder than usual, trying to shake off the unease.

Yangjae Station. On the asphalt, an enormous ape was drawing silver arcs and reducing everything around it to rubble.

Fine. I’ll take it out on you, then.

A sidekick who had vanished as he pleased, an Im Taeseung who had fled somewhere too dangerous to go after, and on top of that her own image plummeting with every fresh defeat. Right up until she lost Im Taeseung, her path had looked like a clear open road. Now it was collapsing under her. The only thing a Hero with nowhere left to turn could vent her anger on was, in the end, a Villain.

— Fwoosh!

Fist clenched, she launched herself straight at the monkey Villain. Speedgirl, standing in front of it in the time it took to blink. And just as her fist was about to drive into its jaw.

“…Huh?”

The instant her gaze went to the Villain’s wrist, the computation inside Cha Huigyeong’s head came to a halt. The yo-yo lodged in the monkey’s wrist. Its shape was identical to the one Yoyoboy used to carry. Far too identical.

“Yoyo… boy?”
“Ookee-yaaagh!!”

— Whirrr—!

The familiar metallic whirring hit her ears. The yo-yo, dancing where it sat lodged in the beast’s wrist, turned on her, and she took it full on and went flying backward.

“Nnngh…!! Yoyoboy…!”

Even in the instant she was struck in the leg and sent flying, Cha Huigyeong saw it. The grotesquely twisted trajectory of the wire. It resembled the technique of Yoyoboy, the sidekick she had kept at her side for years, closely enough to make her skin crawl.

“You… don’t tell me it’s you? Can’t you recognize me? It’s me! It’s me!”
“Ookee?”
“Speedgirl! Cha Huigyeong! It’s me! The one who took you in as a sidekick…”

She shouted as if begging him to remember, and edged slowly closer, hands raised high above her head to show she had no intention of attacking.

But what came back was not an answer. It was an alloy yo-yo, tearing the air as it flew at her.

“Kyeeeeek—!”
“Wh… what! Kh!”

The monkey shrieked with eyes emptied of self and swung the yo-yo. As if trying to eliminate the ‘something’ that had stirred its memory. Its attacks came faster than they ever had in its Hero days, fast enough that even Cha Huigyeong’s Super-Acceleration struggled to keep up, and the leg she had taken a hit to earlier left her unable to evade properly.

— Snick—!

“Aagh!”

The wire she failed to dodge in time cut deep across Cha Huigyeong’s right calf as it passed. The muscle that was as good as Speedgirl’s lifeline, cut open. She clutched the leg, blood pumping out of it, and pleaded.

“Yoyoboy! Snap out of it!”
“Ookee-yak!!”
“Yoyobo— Hrk!”

— Thud!

The yo-yo, buried precisely in her abdomen. Cha Huigyeong, unable to run any further, took the attack full on. And there was no easier target in the world than a Super-Acceleration Hero who couldn’t run.

“Speedgirl lost again…?”
“But why is she fighting like that?”
“Do they know each other?”
“An ex-boyfriend, then?”
“Ugh, this is annoying. I’m going to be late for my appointment — what are the Heroes even doing? Gorging themselves on our taxes.”
“Who was it that called her a prospect?”

The citizens’ reaction to Speedgirl was cold. Back in the days of her winning streak there had been no shortage of people singing her praises. But a run of defeats, the controversy over her attitude in using a phone mid-fight, and the rest of it had punched her image through the floor and kept driving it down.

Nor was that a problem confined to the real world. In communities like the Hero Gamble site Beyond Villain ran, opinion of her had hit rock bottom too.

└ ffs i kept telling myself no way but now shes getting beat down by a monkey bastard lololol
└ theres no suckers still believing in speedgirl right? lolol
└ if a bastard like this makes A-rank the countrys finished. seriously.
└ beyond villain on mad form lately
└ beyond villain << just shove your money at these bastards
└ money literally duplicates itself man lolol

Cha Huigyeong, your reputation’s fallen into the abyss now too.

I took in Cha Huigyeong’s wretched state on the screen in the TF team’s meeting room. Yoyomonkey’s yo-yo battered her again and again, and her face was a mess of tears and snot. She’d probably have to take another five minutes of it before a second Hero was deployed out to her. Not that it was any business of mine.

— Ding!

Look at how much this comes to.

I checked the balance on my tablet PC and smiled. Money I’d made a while back going all in on the Liger Villain. Out of that, I’d invested the 3,840,000 won I was due to receive as a performance bonus, and turned the bonus alone into 12,000,000 won.

“Thanks to you I won’t have to worry about this month’s results. Thanks, Cha Huigyeong.”

That despairing face on the other side of the screen was sweeter to me than any dessert.