Episode 336: To Rage Trouble (10)

"I meant to tell you yesterday, but the mood wasn't right to bring it up. You guessed correctly, Yeongeun. It was me."

"Hmm. I see. Had you planned it from the moment you called me off the aircraft carrier?"

"Yeah."

At the admission that it had all been arranged beforehand, Yeongeun swept a lock of hair aside with a thoughtful look, let out a small sigh, and spoke.

"Ah. So that's why you asked me only to watch. Hehe. This is going to turn very interesting."

There was something faintly sinister in the low laugh, and for a moment Yeongeun had the air of a villain at the head of her own syndicate. I grinned darkly along with her, and beside us Franc sighed with the face of a woman who had given up trying to stop any of it.

"What did they tell you on the phone earlier?"

"Nothing much. A giant tortoise, desert-colored, about thirty-eight meters long, was spotted roughly a hundred and thirty kilometers southwest of Las Vegas. It's heading for the city along Interstate 15."

Oho. So it had finally started to move. I'd thought its temperament looked rather docile, but waiting nearly ten ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hours before it stirred — wasn't that a little too cautious? Still, now that it was moving, America would be turned upside down before long. And the black bear? Still not found?

"I made another one, too, up in the mountains of a national forest in Kentucky. Looks like that one hasn't been discovered yet."

"Another one? You only made two? What kind? What rank?"

Yeongeun's eyes lit at the news of a second, and the questions spilled out all at once. I hadn't recorded any of it, worried the footage might leave a trail. Maybe I should have.

"At first I was going to drag dozens of them out of the Phase World and scatter them around, just to wipe America off the map. That felt a bit much, so I cut it down to two. And those two were Lowest-Rank Variants I found in the area and evolved."

She flinched at the part about scattering dozens, but the news that it had been reduced to two put a look of relief on her face.

"Anyway, the other one is a black bear. I couldn't just evolve anything at random, so I picked individuals with low fertility that keep to themselves and don't roam underground, through the sky, or underwater. The desert tortoise is at 1.5 million Phase Power. The black bear is at a million."

"Mm. Good judgment. If you fed them TP, they'd be subspecies, so that puts them at high-tier subspecies... And not pulling them out of the Phase World was a good choice, too."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Mm. Sorry for making you work on Christmas."

She had gone into the dressing room to change for work, so I followed her in to apologize, and she answered with a smile that lifted my mood just to look at, caught my cheek, and kissed me deeply.

"This is my work, and I'm doing it for you, Seoha. If you go apologizing for something like that, I'll be hurt~."

She patted my cheek, opened a closet packed with suits, and drew out a matte black one. I was enjoying the view of her starting to undress when I remembered something I had forgotten to mention.

"Oh, right. I also gave Sophia some Phase Stones and told her to go after the Trumpet family's assets."

"Oh my. Sophia has a talent for that sort of thing, too?"

"I don't know if she does. She sounded confident, so I put her on it. Stocks? Capital firms? Attacking from that angle, absorbing them or taking them over. Seems she's got a friend who's good at it."

"True enough. Sophia was a daughter of the British nobility, and she had spy training on top of that, so she must have picked up a few techniques in slander and character assassination. Hup."

She peeled off the baggy sweater and the shorts and stood in nothing but sexy underwear patterned with white and yellow like waves. A glance back at me, a smile that lived in her eyes, and she began to sway her hips and pelvis in a slow, teasing roll — a show put on for my benefit, sexy and cute at once. Watching it, I couldn't help grinning. Of course, the blood was starting to pool in one very particular place.

"Hehe. Then I can roughly see how this plays out. They might scrape together some kind of answer to a single high-tier subspecies, but if two of them appear and you declare, with open hostility, that you won't lift a finger to help... hehe. This is going to be genuinely fun."

I slipped up behind her as she murmured it, back still turned, still in her underwear, cupped a breast over the bra, and slid a hand into the low-rise panties that looked too small to hold a handful. As if she had been waiting for exactly that, she turned her head and brushed a light kiss against my lips.

"Do you want to?"

"You've got to head out, don't you. It's fine."

Yesterday's gift must have worked wonders. Affection poured off her face even at a glance. With a faintly regretful look, she rubbed that peach-plump bottom lightly against my lower stomach, then started putting on the suit she had laid out.

These days Yeongeun wore trousers with her suits more often than skirts. I stood with my arms folded, watching bare skin disappear under fabric, when reporters began to gather at the entrance of the Grand Blue Building.

"...Hm. Reporters are gathering at the main entrance of the Grand Blue Building."

"You saw that with Spatial Perception?"

"Yeah. Should I go out and say something?"

"That you won't help them hunt the Aberrants that appeared in America? Don't. Wait until America is beaten back once in a subjugation, and announce it then. It'll hit harder that way."

"Got it. I'll do it that way."

Fully changed and lightly made up, Yeongeun called Sophia over to have her hair styled. While it was being done she ate the vegetable sandwich and drank the strawberry juice Suhan had brought, entirely at ease — the look of someone long accustomed to being waited on.

Anyway, once the simple breakfast was finished and she was ready to leave, she glanced from the terrace at the gathered reporters and clicked her tongue.

"Good grief. Heavy snow coming down, and they're out there waiting in raincoats. Journalism is no job for a person. I'll be off, then?"

"Yeah. Hang in there."

I ate my own breakfast — bean-sprout soup and a proper eight-dish spread — then gathered Miho into my arms and stroked her tails, and the snowfall grew steadily heavier. Chin resting on her head, I fixed my eyes on an American news channel and watched the breaking reports roll past, and a low chuckle rose out of me on its own.

Las Vegas is a city of pleasure known the world over. They say the gambling money has all drained away to Macau and the city has lost its crown, but between the weight of the American name and Las Vegas's own peculiar tourist offerings, crowds of visitors still come. I had seen as much on the Certifier. And so the footage of soldiers — National Guard, or maybe out of some Air Force combat center — evacuating citizens and tourists, on the news that a desert tortoise evolved into a high-tier subspecies was heading for the city, was being broadcast in full.

Tourists fled northeast along Interstate 15 in their own cars through the dark, or gathered at McCarran International Airport and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stamped their feet in anxious circles. They were desperate enough that the dark airport's runways blazed, planes and helicopters taking off and landing without pause, while broadcasts announced that every ticket had sold out. At Nellis Air Force Base, north of Las Vegas — and why does everyone say Las Bay-gas when the spelling is Las Vegas? anyway — even military transport aircraft were being mobilized to help civilians evacuate. It felt like watching a city at the end of the world. Perhaps because it was a major city with a military installation stationed nearby, there didn't seem to be any riots or unrest.

Miho, watching the aerial footage of the evacuation with her mouth hanging open, spoke up.

"People look like bugs."

"Miho! You mustn't say such things!"

"Eek?! I-I'm sorry~!"

Caught by Franc for blurting it out without a thought, Miho flapped her ears, begged forgiveness, and then bolted. Franc, who had looked ready to chase her, glanced at the screen and let out a small sigh instead.

"They're evacuating under the military's guidance. That, at least, is a mercy."

I nodded at what she had said and flipped through the other news channels, but every last one of them was Las Vegas. The spelling is Las Vegas, so why does everyone insist on Bay-gas? They were all running coverage of a thirty-seven-meter Highest-Rank Variant moving on the city.

Oh. On a screen badged Live, a salvo of missiles suddenly dropped toward the white desert tortoise. Crimson flame and black blast-smoke erupted across dozens of meters, and the shockwave must have struck the helicopter, because the picture shuddered. A fierce gale from the explosions shoved the sand aside, and more missiles kept falling on the tortoise.

"Whoa. That's only going to piss it off."

Sure enough. Amid the chain of explosions lighting the black night sky, a pillar of white light burst out of the black smoke, cleaved the heavens, and blew apart every missile still flying in behind it.

Wrapped in black smoke, the desert tortoise wasn't clearly visible, but from the pale flashes of it that showed through, it was obvious the thing was completely unharmed. Bright red cinders burst out of the smoke in every direction, and the scattered coals began to set the sparse vegetation and the desert itself ablaze. As the surroundings brightened like midday and the enraged tortoise began to rampage, the network helicopter filming it must have felt its life was in danger. The camera swung away, and it fled as if its tail were coming off.

Right. Broadcaster or not, you look after your own life first. If they had been ability users, the tortoise would have shot the helicopter down on the spot, but they were ordinary people, and that was probably why they had survived.

I was passing the time on the urgent broadcasts when, thirty minutes after Yeongeun left for work, a text arrived.

That was all. America was only now scrambling to call up its ability users, but the desert tortoise had already reached the city's doorstep. Las Vegas was going to be torn to pieces.

"...What song is that?"

I was sunk into the sofa, checking the text from Yeongeun and humming to myself, when Franc looked down at me with a thoroughly baffled face.

"A bad man?"

It was a song I had stumbled across on the internet, and one particular stretch of it clung to the tongue. After that, just before the desert tortoise now named the White Thorn Turtle arrived in Las Vegas, footage of a King Bear creeping along the border between Kentucky and Tennessee went up online, and the situation began to swell out of control like a wildfire caught by an autumn wind.

Three hours later, while Franc, Sophia, and Suhan sat together prepping side dishes, a video arrived from Lydia.

"A video just came in from Lydia."

"What kind of video?"

"Princess Lydia?" Sophia piped up.

Hwayeon, apparently with no intention of going out to train today, had been sitting on the living room carpet, meticulously polishing Ispect with a fine cloth. At my words she showed interest and came closer. Franc washed the bright red seasoning from her hands and sat down beside me as well.

"Let's see. The name on the attached video file is..."

Franc's eyes and Hwayeon's narrowed at the same time. Docking favor with both of them at once — I figured I ought to pray for Lydia's soul. Anyway, I opened a hologram window and enlarged it, and Miho, who had been rolling around the living room floor playing a game with Darky, perked her ears, crawled over, and fixed her gaze on the hologram.

The file looked like satellite footage. It was dyed green, as if green cellophane had been laid over a night-vision view. Indecipherable figures ran along the edge of the screen beside a timestamp: UTC-7. Which meant around eight in the evening.

Was the time difference between here and Las Vegas fourteen hours? If it was ten in the morning in Korea, then...

"Filmed an hour ago."

I nodded at Hwayeon's reading of the time and focused on the screen. Las Vegas in the pitch-black dark was blazing in scattered patches, firelight flooding the night sky, and at the center of it the desert tortoise called the White Thorn Turtle was tearing the city apart, pouring laser breath from its mouth. A hundred and fifty kilometers in under three hours. The missile strike must have completely set it off.

The parts of the shell that rose like sharp triangular horns were weapons too, it seemed. From them it fired the bright yellow fireballs I had seen on the news, one after another, blowing the surrounding buildings apart, while the sharp spines along its legs launched whenever tanks came swarming in over the ground, turning the tanks into honeycombs. Needles nearly the size of an adult torso fired in rapid bursts and regrew almost at once. Worthy of a high-tier subspecies, I had to admit. Elemental ability aside, it had attack skills of its own like that.

A tank crushed under the White Thorn Turtle's enormous forefoot exploded in a brilliant boom, and Miho let out a small cheer.

"Whoa!"

Only tanks and fighters showed on the screen, no ability users. The soldiers looked like they had been thrown in to buy time. Whether the line had been pushed back or not, the fighting was in the middle of Las Vegas, so they had simply gone down in a blaze of useless glory. With that, the city's annihilation was decided.

"How vicious..."

Franc murmured it with a troubled look, watching a laser the size of a house pour from the White Thorn Turtle's gaping maw and melt high-rises and hotels in a single breath. She had foreseen a situation like this, but faced with the reality of it, she didn't seem at ease. I forwarded the video from Lydia to Yeongeun, drew Franc's slender waist into my arms, and whispered in her ear.

"They said there was plenty of time to evacuate, so there shouldn't be any deaths among ordinary people. The news earlier was full of civilians getting out. And there wasn't a single person in that footage."

"..."

"If you look closely, even the military hardware — the armored vehicles and the rest — is running on unmanned systems, so..."

"Yes. I'm all right, Seoha. I prepared myself for this. You needn't comfort me."

"Yeah."

I held her tight as she stared at the hologram with a resolved face, and I watched the window just as closely. The footage now showed fires raging all across the city. Firelight surged through the whole of it and lit the night sky, and it looked as if the heavens themselves were burning and a sunset were falling.

"The sun... is setting..."

"Yes?"

"Hm?"

"You said just now that the sun was setting. I wondered what you meant."

"Ah, uh. It's nothing. I just felt like I had to say it."

Embarrassing. Nonsense that had never passed through my brain's filter, popping straight out. This habit still hadn't died.

Word that Las Vegas was being destroyed by the attack of a Highest-Rank Variant — presumed — spread in real time, and the whole world went up in an uproar. The Swordfin had only just been dealt with, and already the next Highest-Rank Variant was here? Korean broadcasters cut in with emergency news to report the city's ruin as well, and in the midst of it came the added report that a colossal black bear Aberrant, a hundred meters tall, had appeared and was smashing the Kentucky and Tennessee region in the eastern United States, compounding the shock.

Articles sprang up one after another about citizens of the great cities adjoining Las Vegas — St. George, Los Angeles, San Diego — trembling with fear and evacuating. And with yet another Highest-Rank Variant on the loose, unlike Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, where the desert had packed residents together, the more scattered populations of Kentucky and Tennessee were all taking to the roads at once. Photos and videos of it, translated and interpreted into the languages of every country, spread fast.

The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠worked very hard indeed. Not only in the states where the Aberrants were rampaging, but to citizens of neighboring states as well, they urged evacuation through emergency disaster broadcasts and text alerts, and mobilized every institutional measure available so people could flee with relative ease. A model answer for getting a nation's people out in a national emergency.

What caught my eye among them was an online article from an American public broadcaster. The west was one thing, but the east had the capital, Washington, D.C., right nearby, and a little farther up, New York, so the government had quickly organized an ability-user raid team, sent them out, and engaged once. They had been badly defeated.

"They fought it once? Then why didn't word get out?"

"If it came out that the raid had failed, in a situation like this, the panic would spread past anyone's control. Perhaps they hid it on purpose?"

"The press is under control, but it seems they couldn't stop the freelancers."

Franc and Hwayeon had a point. Suhan and Sophia were nodding too, so that was probably the reason. I couldn't tell the scale of the defeat, but if the bear had killed ability users and absorbed their Phase Power, it might well have climbed from a high-tier subspecies to a highest-rank subspecies. Did that mean raw ability alone could push it to Transcendent-grade?

How strong was Transcendent-grade, anyway? The words left me a little tense, but the black bear Aberrant was a simple Physical Reinforcement type, and with a body that size it couldn't fly. Take the fight into the air, and it might be worth having a go.

Meanwhile the U.S. government and the White House had issued no statement at all, and then another text came in from Yeongeun.

The messages were full of playfulness, but the content was something America could never take as a joke. I confirmed it, snorted a laugh, and got to my feet.

"You're making the announcement?"

"Yeah. Yeongeun says to announce it now. Foreign reporters are packed in at the front entrance of the Grand Blue Building too, so I can just go down there and do it. Hwayeon, come with me."

I turned my head toward her as I said it. But even though I had called her, she sat in front of the living room window as if she hadn't heard, staring only outside.

"...?"

The moment she had woken that morning, Hwayeon had been talking with the humming Nuhodi, and even after breakfast she had kept her seat by the window with Ispect in hand, only nodding now and then. She had been like that ever since. Franc and I came close, and she didn't notice. Gripping Ispect tight in both hands, staring blankly out at the heavy snow, she made me curious. What was Nuhodi telling her, to leave her this spellbound?

When our eyes met, Franc pointed at Ispect with a finger. She was curious what Nuhodi was saying, too. We took hold of the spear together where it rested in Hwayeon's hands, and Nuhodi's slightly excited voice came through.

What the hell is this.