What Do You Think
Drip. Drip.
Blood fell and soaked his trousers, a cold and lukewarm feeling seeping through the cloth at once. He closed his fist and opened it again. The blood made his skin stick, as if resentment itself had been smeared into the palm.
At Captain Earth's feet lay an Ilshikgyo high priest with his skull burst open. Behind the body yawned a crater large enough to swallow a soccer stadium whole—the wake left by the fight against the cult as it retreated. Ruin no human strength ought to have been able to make lay strewn in every direction, as if dozens of bombers had emptied themselves over the ground.
Captain Earth turned his back. The faithful who had been showing him their heels had gone down before that fist. He was sorry not to have caught every last one of them, but he had only one body. This was the best he could do.
"You've worked hard, sir."
His sidekick held out water and a towel: a middle-aged man who looked to be in his forties, one-eyed, wearing glasses. True to the name, Captain Analyst was a hero built for analysis.
Captain Earth wiped the blood away with the water and the towel.
"Enjoying a luxury like this on a battlefield...... If I start thinking it's too much, do I look terribly old?"
"You were old to begin with. And this is no luxury. These days, if it can be done, it is done. Have you forgotten what country we come from?"
"It wasn't like that in my day."
In the First World War and the Second he had been too busy staying alive. When the supply lines failed, hunger had driven him to catch rats and eat them.
"Say that with a face like yours and no one is going to sympathize. If anyone ought to be saying it, it's me."
Captain Analyst brushed the wrinkles at the corner of his eye. The marks of years.
Captain Earth scratched his cheek. What met his fingers was firm, glossy flesh without a single scar. Captain Analyst had worked a magic of his own—the sixties made to pass for the forties by superpower and self-discipline—but set beside an ageless man who had lived through the world wars, it amounted to little more than a party trick.
"All that complaining over a wrinkle or two......"
"Have you ever even had a wrinkle?"
Captain Analyst's mouth jutted.
"Look in a mirror and you can watch yourself age by the day. I spend a fortune on skincare. I do personal training. What good is any of it? No one wins against time. These days my heart drops every time I find a hair on the pillow."
"You going bald?"
"I am not. I am still in my prime."
For a man in his prime, the hair did look a little thinner......
"Kindly do not think useless thoughts. Have you forgotten what my power is?"
"All right, all right. Touchy."
Captain Analyst's grumbling went on for some time. In the business he was the Iron-Blooded Analyst. Here he was no different from a boy in the thick of puberty.
"When my time comes, I am putting a curse on you. May you go bald."
"I'm your employer. You can talk like that?"
"Are you going to fire me? The places that would love to have me are stacked and waiting. Shall we set a new record for a hero's transfer fee while we are at it?"
One wrong word, and he poured the rest out like a storm.
"Anyone watching would think you were my wife."
"Your wife would be glad of it, if anything. Do you know how many tendons she has torn, cleaning up after your incidents?"
Damn it. My ears are about to bleed.
"All right. I was wrong. Stop."
"Good. If you were wrong, then go home and sit at a desk for once. This deployment has everyone in an uproar."
Analyst smiled, sly as a clerk with a knife behind the ledger.
The hair on Captain Earth's neck stood straight up.
"They are going to hound you. Thoroughly."
"Haa......"
"You chose this. Endure it on spite and grit."
Captain Earth pressed a hand to his brow. I've raised a tiger cub.
"Is the tiger not an East Asian turn of phrase? Change it to an eagle. That is the American way."
"You really......"
That damned power. Maybe I ought to just dunk him and be done with it.
"If you can......"
"AAAAH! Enough! Stop! We're done!"
Captain Earth clapped, and that was the end of it. Air burst under a clap that carried real feeling. Analyst's hair streamed off on the wind—a modest clump of it.
He didn't notice, did he?
"Ahem. In any case, there is no more Ilshikgyo here, is there?"
"No, sir. You have killed nearly all of them. Nothing left worth a look."
Analyst glanced around. What remained of the cultists, barely even corpses, lay strewn in every direction. Far off, heroes and soldiers were clearing the bodies away.
"And the other countries?"
"Nearly finished there as well. Mopping up the remnants is still left, but that is not our work."
"If it were up to me, I'd want to see that through too......"
"Restrain yourself. A hero's work is done. From here it belongs to the armies and the nations."
Looking at what Captain Earth had already accomplished, it was an open question whether any army could finish the rest. Other countries had their pride, though, and their politics. Better that he stop here.
"Tch. All right."
He swallowed the regret.
"Then, since it's over, I ought to let them know."
"I will not stop you from that."
Captain Analyst covered his ears with both hands.
Captain Earth drew breath until his lungs swelled past anything natural, his chest jutting with the sheer volume of air. That air became sound and rolled out in every direction.
The echo hung, and for a while there was only stillness.
"Long live Captain Earth!"
"Long live Europe!"
Waaaaaah—!
A vast cheer rose on the heels of the shout.
"A victory cry really does sound good, no matter when you hear it."
"You sound like an old man."
"Quiet."
The two heroes walked on together. The rising sun threw their shadows ahead of them, shadows large enough to cover Ilshikgyo whole.
The war that later ages would call the Eclipse War ended in the victory of justice.
Captain Earth shook the water from his hair. The towel grew damp, and drops struck the floor. He dropped onto the cot and called Captain Kid on the dedicated line.
Captain Kid: "Speaking."
Captain Earth: "It's me. How are things over there?"
Captain Kid: "The passphrase, if you would."
Captain Earth: "Oh, come on......"
Captain Earth sighed. Was there a single normal person on his staff?
Captain Earth: "We are the great heroes who guard the Earth."
Captain Kid: "And never shall we bow to absolute evil."
The voice on the other end lifted, oddly bright. Is this bastard enjoying himself?
Captain Kid: "You remembered today. You usually forget."
Captain Earth: "Do you enjoy this? Don't you get tired of setting a new passphrase every single day?"
Captain Kid: "Yes. Watching full-grown adults hem and haw their way through it is far too entertaining."
Captain Earth: "......Forget it. What is there even to say."
This one's worse than Analyst. At least that one mellowed once he got older. This one only gets worse.
Captain Earth: "More importantly, how was it? Did anything unusual happen?"
Captain Kid: "........."
Captain Earth: "Something did. A lot of it."
Captain Kid: "......Yes. A great deal, if you count it one way. Very brief, if you count it another."
Captain Earth: "Tell me properly."
Captain Kid reported, in detail, everything that had happened in Hawaii.
Captain Earth: "Is that true?"
Captain Kid: "I will file a separate report later. Video and photographs, packed in until there is no room left."
Captain Earth: "......Ha."
His own side of the world had been vicious enough. The other side had not been any kinder.
Captain Earth: "So Ilshikgyo really was in Hawaii."
And they had made an enormous mess of it. Mauna Loa had collapsed. Some unidentified anomaly had broken out at Kilauea.
Captain Earth: "A complete disaster."
Captain Kid: "Even disasters come in kinds. This one is enough to make you wonder how such a thing could happen at all—and whether a human being could have done it."
Captain Earth: "Probably wasn't a person."
Captain Earth thought of his wife's faith.
Captain Kid: "......Do you believe in God?"
Captain Earth: "I don't believe in God."
Only—
Captain Earth: "I do believe that gods are real."
Captain Kid: "......In the old days, I would have asked what you were on."
Haa. A sigh came through the line.
Captain Kid: "Now I am not so sure. The way the world turns......"
Captain Earth: "You're worrying too much. Gods existing is only my claim, nothing more."
Captain Kid: "......Understood. And over there? Has the war ended?"
Captain Earth: "Would I be calling if it hadn't? The news will be out any minute."
Captain Kid: "That is a relief."
Nothing was better than ending a war while you still could. Captain Earth might have been the strongest of humankind, but a war was a place swarming with variables.
Captain Kid: "Will you be coming straight back?"
Captain Earth: "Robert said I should. But the villains decided this was their moment and tore the place up. I can't leave without taking a look. I'll be a little late."
Captain Kid: "That is simply how you are...... Then what do you intend to do about the Korean heroes?"
Captain Earth thought for a while.
Captain Earth: "Tell them our association exists."
Captain Kid: "......Are you serious?"
Captain Earth: "Yes."
He looked at the world map on the wall. That lovely world was a long way from peace. Incidents erupted without season or hour, and people suffered for them. Even the strongest hero on Earth had only one body. However far his goodness tried to reach, there was never enough time, and never enough to spare.
So he had made one. An association for the sake of justice.
Captain Kid: "Do you mean to take them in?"
Captain Earth: "That isn't mine to decide. We are one, and we are the whole."
Captain Kid: "We do not know them."
Captain Earth: "I know. But the power, at least, is real. You saw it yourself."
Captain Kid: "......I will not be able to talk you out of it. Then I will make contact myself. I will bring back every piece of information that can be had."
Captain Earth: "I'm counting on you. Good work."
Captain Kid: "Yes. And thank you for seeing the war through."
Captain Earth: "You worked hard too."
Click. The line went dead.
Captain Earth pressed the burn switch built into the handset. The phone warmed, caught, and crumbled into ash. He scattered the ash outside.
"A god......"
What was the Eclipse God after? Why start a war at all? Or did that god even truly exist?
He had been careful with what he said to Captain Kid. But gods were real. And they were close. They had simply gone unrevealed through a very long age.
Gaia.