I'll Shape It Exactly as You Wish
A thin, rising whine cut the air.
The strike team's fighter settled through a whirl of snow. It was a flat, stingray-shaped overtechnology jet out of Terra—the TAR-03, a step beyond the TA-04 Captain Kid had flown in Hawaii.
The hatch opened without a sound, and Mi Soryeong came running.
"Miryu!"
She crossed snow and ice as if they were packed earth. Not a single footprint remained behind her, and that uncanny footwork said everything about how far above the ordinary she stood.
"Honey."
Dan Miryu gathered his wife in as she threw herself against his chest. Hair gone damp with tension brushed beneath his chin.
"Is it over?"
Mi Soryeong looked around, worry plain in her eyes.
The beautiful glacial plain was gone. In its place yawned a sinkhole with no visible end, bored open like a hole into hell. The instinctive chill rising out of it drew a cold sweat down her spine.
"Not yet."
Dan Miryu looked up. Someone was still coming down from the far side of that blue sky.
"Clinging to a useless hope."
Scientist, bound tight in tree limbs, let out a cold sneer.
"If you've got eyes, you saw it. The one who tore out of the world of death at the end is on another plane entirely from the one you met at the start. I recommend you kill yourselves. Quickly. Unless you'd rather die in despair...!"
"You haven't been hit enough."
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Hwang Seokgu and Elder Wildflower laid their punishment on the man spitting ill omens. Revenge soaked every blow, and Scientist endured it with his teeth clenched.
"You don't know who He is! He is the Absolute of the universe, and my master! Armed with nothing but a shoddy sense of justice, the only road left to you is death!"
"Shut your trap."
Pele stuffed her foot into Scientist's mouth.
"You say your piece once, then you stay quiet. A dead man, still stacking sins."
"Mmgh—ghhk!"
"Hey. You think we're waiting because we're idiots? Win or lose, we're waiting on the comrade who went out to fight for us with his life on the line."
None of them could forget it. The blade of death that had flashed beneath the protection of Life and the divine. How hard they had whipped themselves just to endure the temptation to give up on living. Not one of them had failed to cough blood. Not one of them had come away without the scar of it in the mind. Even Pele, a goddess, had struggled to steady body and heart, and if it had been left to feeling alone she would have sent every last one of them away.
They hadn't.
They had believed.
The man they knew was infuriating enough that they wanted to beat him senseless every day—but in a matter like this, he never lost. He would come back. He always did.
"He's coming."
The immortal whose hair was thread drawn out of fire murmured it, soft and clear. Every gaze rose to the sky.
A shooting star was falling toward them.
Pele's transcendent sight caught what the star really was.
The shooting star was...
"Kyaaaaaaah! Yahoo!!!"
...dropping in a Superman pose, cheeks flapping in the wind.
Naked.
"Oh."
Pele's heart jumped at the cheer, and in the same breath she smacked her lips at the thing swinging free on the falling star. She brought her hands together and set them against her lower abdomen.
"I'll have to grow this body a little."
I won't be able to take all of that.
"......"
Hong Yumin was at a loss.
If it had been small, she meant to take it in this form?
For the record, Pele's divine avatar was a tiny child. If the size that suited that was the proper one, wouldn't there be a problem?
Mm...
No. Size didn't especially matter. What mattered was stamina...
I've lost my mind.
Her friend's dirty talk had pickled her brain. All that so-called sex education, and how gleefully she had gone on about her own nights. It made a person imagine without meaning to...
A poke. Another.
"...?"
"What are you thinking about?"
Pele's eyes curved, sly. Under a look that saw straight through her, Hong Yumin played innocent.
"I was thinking it was a relief he seems to have come back safely."
"And?"
"Is there anything more to it than that?"
"Oh, is that so?"
Pele made a circle of thumb and forefinger and slid the index finger of her other hand in and out of it.
"I was thinking about this."
Guess it was only me.
The gesture left nothing to interpretation. Hong Yumin turned her face away, hiding the jolt that went through her.
"He has arrived. Brace for impact."
"Agh!"
Boom!
The warning had barely left her mouth when the shooting star hit the ground. A shockwave rode in on the blizzard and swept over them. Pele, her attention fixed on Hong Yumin, took it square and went tumbling end over end.
The nuisance was gone. Hong Yumin quietly quickened her step. She did not know why, only that she did not want to arrive later than that goddess.
People crowded toward the place where the star had fallen.
"Oh. Such a welcome, and I hardly know where to put myself."
There stood Do Kyungsoo, naked and entirely unashamed.
"...And where did you leave your clothes?"
Dan Miryu, blocking Mi Soryeong's view, twitched at the corner of his mouth.
"Friction heat in the atmosphere burned them off. I was so focused on getting down that I never thought of it."
"You were perfectly fine on the way up, weren't you?"
"I got drunk on the joy of victory. That's all."
"Haa."
Dan Miryu's head ached at a situation with no decent answer.
"There are spare clothes on the fighter. I'll bring them."
Captain Kid took off for the jet at a run.
"I do hope Kid hurries. I'm weak to the cold. I think I may freeze to death."
Do Kyungsoo indicated skin flushed red and pleaded his suffering. The people watching, of course, filed it under dramatics.
"You make fools of those who waited and worried."
"You were worried? You needn't have been."
"Enough. If you're well, that is all that matters."
Hong Yumin looked him over. No obvious wound showed anywhere. His body's better than I expected. The muscle was solid, without a flaw worth naming, and the thighs were swollen to just the right degree. The abdomen sat in a balanced line, the abs there and not quite there, and the shoulders were broad and squared—a body not built by exercise, but one that had settled into place on its own as he grew. A Greek masterpiece, born as a man.
And the most important place.
Mm...
Seeing the real thing up close, there was quite a bit of volume. If the cold had shrunk it to that, what was it like the rest of the time?
"Here are the clothes."
"Thank you."
A shame (?), but Captain Kid had brought them at superhuman speed, and the thought had nowhere left to go.
"Hiiing."
Pele, a dangerous flame in her eyes, made a whimpering sound. A finger that had lost its way circled at her lips.
Once he was dressed, Do Kyungsoo spun. The clothes became a suit the way a magical girl's transformation did.
"A phantom thief does need a suit, after all. I was uneasy without one."
He straightened his tie. Mask aside, he was the Phantom Thief as usual.
"Mr. Phantom."
Once the mood had loosened, Dan Miryu stepped forward to ask for all of them.
"If you're standing here, we ought to take that as meaning what we think it means?"
He was asking again when he already knew. Do Kyungsoo was not ignorant of what that meant. Everyone's expectation reached him, and he raised a hand.
"That's right. We won."
They were all about to cheer.
"Don't make me laugh!!!"
Only Scientist threw cold water on it.
"Him! There is no way He lost! Even if it was a fake, Him losing is absurd!!!"
A god greater than gods. The single fixed point Scientist had chosen and worshipped. The universe might perish, and still the notion of Him falling was not a thing one was permitted even to assume. In this moment, even the finest mind on Earth was useless. However brilliant the head, Scientist was human, and humans were creatures ruled by feeling. Seeing only what one wished to see, hearing only what one wished to hear—Scientist was no different. Ironically, the way he thrashed now was no different from the countless human crowds he had scorned.
"Enjoy it while you can! Him falling is nothing but your delusion! Soon enough you'll see the truth!"
"You're wrong, Mr. Scientist."
Do Kyungsoo approached the man who could not read the room. Scientist glared as if he meant to kill him.
"Your ultimate masterpiece lost to me. And your boss—a fake, granted—but he lost to me just now as well."
Do Kyungsoo submitted his evidence: Death One, set down when he landed, and the Book of Death, which had not been visible even when he was naked. The Book woke the terror of death in Scientist. He could not remain unmoved before the proof that it was genuine.
"No. No, it isn't."
But Scientist chose flight. He wanted rest more than he wanted to deny his faith.
"This is a dream. A vicious nightmare. No—no. Yes! This is His test! He would not want to see me flailing this ugly!"
Suddenly he was rambling. Do Kyungsoo watched with a smiling face.
"Mr. Scientist. I told you the truth, and if you simply refuse to hear it, that puts me in a difficult position. My efforts go unrecognized, my feelings are hurt, and I don't know what I'm to do about it."
"Ah!"
"Now that I think of it, Scientist has always been a little self-righteous, on account of that clever head."
"I failed to take that into account."
"Mr. Scientist. There is a great deal I want to say to you, but you mustn't turn stupid like this. A slight adjustment of consciousness is in order."
"...What?"
The last of Scientist's reason caught the words. That was survival instinct, begging him to apologize—however little, and quickly. Do Kyungsoo snapped his fingers.
"Until you yourself are satisfied."
"Go on, then. Do try your best."
"Wai—"
Scientist's consciousness receded. In the vision going dark, there was only the Smiling Mask, grinning wide.