HAHAHA!!!
Villains ran wild along the avenues of Hawaii, striking at random.
One or two, and people might have let it pass. Ten would have drawn frowns, and still no one would have lost much sleep. But a hundred? Two hundred? What if they poured out without end—and the terror was aimed at people alone?
From that moment, it was a disaster.
Tat-tat-tat-tat!!! A helicopter tore past above the citizens' heads, and the gunship spat fire from the sky. Even from a distance, people stood and watched.
"Evacuate calmly! Stay calm!"
The police scraped together what little manpower they had and herded the citizens out. The city had become a battlefield. Between the villains flooding the streets and the heroes and officers who stood against them, the blood never had time to dry. Gunfire kept ringing. Buildings came down. Overnight, beautiful Hawaii turned into a sea of fire.
High on a tower above it all, Aurone, saintess of Ilshikgyo, looked down on the chaos.
"Ah. The filthy pigs are trembling with fear."
She reached out and drew her hand slowly across the scene below, and her body shivered as she drank the disorder in.
KWAANG!
"GYAAAAAH!!!"
"Backup! We need backup! Superpowered villain on scene! Superpowered villain on scene!"
"A hero! Where's a hero!"
Blood and agony ran wild. Slaughter unfolded. Heroes and police killed villains, and the villains ran wherever their appetites drove them, while the citizens caught between them scrambled for any road that still led to living. People who were not villains killed other people by accident. Buildings went up in flame, and firefighters hurled themselves into the blaze. The ground gave way and buried the living.
The saintess who had made the disaster sat on the railing and idly swung one foot. She was the author of all of it, and not a shred of guilt touched her face. What showed there was the satisfaction of a duty done.
Of course. This was purification—a righteous cleansing of a world fouled by filth. Anyone who felt guilty about sweeping trash off a street would have to be insane. In the saintess's mind, the world was a garbage can. Who could take pleasure in living day after day in garbage? To clean even a little of it was a kindness.
"What a shame."
Regret crossed her face.
"With only a little more time, I could have purified this place completely."
She had bought the villains with money and fanned their desires until the disaster took, and still it was not enough to slake her thirst. Hawaii's heroes and police were not incompetent. The villains held the advantage for now, but they had no true center, and men who rampaged as they pleased would start to be driven back as the hours passed. The military was already moving. Once the army's own superhumans joined in earnest, the villains would be helpless.
"Mmm."
She decided she was satisfied. She would not grow greedy. Hers was a body that had received revelation; if she stepped forward carelessly and was found out, everything still to come would suffer for it.
The Eclipse God was pleased enough. From deep in her soul a vast presence stroked her, comforting her labor the way a father praises a child. At that mercy she dropped to her knees.
"Thank you! Thank you! O Morning Star! Thank you for rejoicing in this lowly servant's offering!"
She wailed for a long time. The hand clenched around Ilshikgyo's symbol bled, and her throat tore until blood welled up in place of her voice. Even that pain, she counted a blessing.
Fire leapt from the road. A helicopter fell out of the sky and struck a building. A hero clutched the arm that had been torn from him and screamed. A villain laughed as he died.
For an instant, another thought took her.
She wanted more of the Eclipse God's mercy. A god's warmth was more precious than anything, and rapturous, and an impulse rose that she could not bear. If she offered more, would he be better pleased? Could she feel that vastness again? Every human in Hawaii was fated to vanish anyway. Why not offer at least the ones below?
Reason and faith. She set them on the scale.
Then she burned her own thigh.
SSSSZZZT!
"Saintess!"
"I am fine, brother. This is a punishment I lay upon myself."
She turned the approaching believer away and looked down at her thigh. Skin peeled back and muscle showed. The muscle burned as well; flesh roasted, and even the blood evaporated.
"To hesitate. What impiety."
To set an act done for her god on the same scale as her own safety—if the Pontiff heard of it, he would be struck with horror. She rose, leaving the burning thigh as it was.
"S-Saintess..."
The faithful stamped in distress. The smell of cooking meat hung thick in the air.
She had decided. She would change the order a little. There might be trouble for it later. For now, she would move for the Eclipse God. She was capable. Given time, she would offer all of Hawaii in the end.
"Brothers. We purify every last bit of that filth."
"...May the Morning Star bless you!"
They bowed their heads to her benevolent face.
As she took a step, something fell out of the sky.
FWOOOOOOSH!
WHAM!
It dropped straight into the heart of the melee, where villains and heroes were tearing at each other, and the shape inside the smoke was a person's.
"...It can't be!"
In that instant her mind snapped clear. The smoke broke apart, and a man stood there with the Earth upon his chest. The strongest hero in the world had come.
"It's Captain Earth! Captain Earth's here!"
"We're saved!"
WAAAAAH!!!
Despair went out. Hope came up. Aurone clenched her fist against the blaze of light that filled the street.
"Captain Earth...!!!"
Captain Earth had descended to save Hawaii.
His laugh shook heaven and earth. The villains packing the streets hunched in on themselves.
"Shit! Why's the bastard who ought to be in America here!"
One of them jabbed a finger. Captain Earth was suddenly standing in front of him.
"I'll give you the answer, villain!"
Muscle like a calf bunched and drove. The fist buried itself in the man's gut.
"I leapt across the sea!!!"
"GUEEEEEK!!!"
CRASH!
"HAHAHAHA!!!"
Captain Earth laughed. The villains shook like cowards.
"Villains! I'll make you an offer!!!"
BOOM!
He stamped, and the road split as if an earthquake had hit it.
"Rot in a cell, or take a beating!"
"AAAAAGH!"
"The choice, of course, is mine!"
He pounded them and never once stopped laughing.
"...Oh dear."
Reason came back to the saintess. The fanaticism that had packed her skull drew itself in and hid. Captain Earth was dangerous. With him on the field, Ilshikgyo could not move.
"Saintess. Something has gone wrong at the hotel."
"What do you mean?"
Worse and worse. Trouble had risen even at the hotel she had tended with special care.
"Every villain on the hotel side has been subdued."
"They failed to do any damage at all?"
"Yes."
"And the reason..."
Her face twisted. Captain Earth had already soured her mood, and now she was furious at villains who could not bring down a single hotel.
"A t-tourist from Korea subdued them."
"Are you joking?"
Korea was a nation that had shut the door on heroes. The state itself had gelded superhuman power. There could not be an ability user of that caliber.
"I-It's true. Please, look."
A video opened before her eyes.
A twitch ran through the corner of her eye.
"What is this?"
An untimely party had broken out in front of the hotel. A man in the Smiling Mask snapped his hips and danced among the villains, playing with them, and the villains wept as they scrambled to humor him. At that grotesque sight, the saintess could not find another word.
"This, as well..."
The beach was no better.
"......"
The saintess said nothing.
On the screen the villains sat in a cozy little circle, and at the center a boy and a villain were fighting. A woman lounged on a sunbed, stroking a cat and calling out advice from the side.
"...And the villains we sent inside?"
"Th-that is..."
She pressed a hand to her brow.
"Speak. Quickly."
"Eeeek! Word—word's been cut off!"
No believer had gotten inside, so unlike the streets, the interior sent back no news at all. Then again, if the outside was already this much of a circus, how could the inside be fine?
WHAM! WHAM!
"HAHAHA!!! A perfect sandbag! You—any interest in employment as the sandbag at our gym? The pay's generous!"
"Please spare me! Please spare me!"
"That isn't money!"
THUUMP!
Captain Earth drove the villains into the earth like gravestones. The road bristled with them, a forest of villain telephone poles.
"...We withdraw."
"...Yes!"
She left the reckoning for another day.
"Captain Earth... and those nameless Koreans..."
Someday I will purify you.
She carved it into her soul.
"We proceed as originally planned."
"Yes!"
Ilshikgyo sank away into the dark.
"HAHAHAHAHHA!!!"
Laughter rolled through the empty air—the laugh that brought hope and light—and it did not cease until daybreak. The terror that had broken over Hawaii ended, in that moment, as a victory for the heroes.