This Is the Place
Whoooosh.
The plane settled onto a landing ground Terra had prepared in secret.
"To think a place like this existed..."
Dan Miryu was shaken. There was a place in Korea that had slipped the Dan Clan's eyes.
"They are not entirely without resources."
"They certainly got one over on us."
Dan Miryu rubbed the back of his head. Korea was the Dan Clan's pride. Within their own country, they had been certain that no one could slip past their influence, a certainty built on the strength of a house piled up across thousands of years.
"...You haven't planted people on our side as well, have you?"
"No comment."
Dan Miryu sighed inwardly. His work had just doubled.
"You and Chuyeon go on ahead. The rest of us will manage."
For the moment, he meant to send the noncombatants home. Mi Soryeong and Dan Chuyeon were forces enough to fight Ilshikgyo, but they fell far short of facing the Heavenly Punishment. Caught up in that, they could easily be dragged under, so getting them somewhere safe came first.
Mi Soryeong drew Dan Chuyeon into her arms and nodded.
"We'll take the luggage and head home. Please be careful."
"Hang in there, Dad."
"I will. You look after your mother."
Dan Miryu stroked his son's hair. Green, the same shade as his own, slid soft beneath his hand.
"Ms. Soryeong. If you find yourself in danger, unfold this."
"What is it?"
Phantom stepped up to Mi Soryeong and held out a slip of paper. She only blinked, bewildered.
"A precaution, should the unforeseen come to pass. I would much rather you never had to use it."
"All right. I'll remember."
Mi Soryeong and Dan Chuyeon gathered their things and departed.
"A car has been prepared, so you ought to be able to head straight back."
"Thank you. You've saved us the trouble."
Captain Kid smiled, sure of himself.
"Children and women are a hero's foremost charges."
"And men don't qualify?"
"Only the elderly."
"That's too harsh."
A light joke, to clear the air.
"But, Mr. Dan Miryu—why didn't you evacuate that girl?"
Captain Kid asked it carefully. Where he pointed, a bronze-skinned girl was scampering about in a flurry, for all the world like a child set down in a foreign country for the first time.
"Because she isn't a girl. She may look like that, but she is older than I am."
"Pardon?"
With an awkward smile, Dan Miryu let him in on a sliver of the truth.
"...If she is older than you, does that make her the eldest person here?"
Dan Miryu kept the rest to himself. In truth he was only the third-oldest among them, but explaining would only wear out his mouth.
"She is a venerable personage of Hawaii. She will not fall short of me."
"...Very well. I'll trust you this once."
Her looks alone left him far from easy, but when he thought of the man before him, and of Captain Earth, it was not wholly impossible.
"Child of Man! This land is a wonder. Through all this turmoil, it still keeps its own color!"
"What makes you say so?"
"I cannot fathom how a country of its own still stands intact upon this soil!"
"That is Korea."
"Korea!"
This is fine... right?
Captain Kid let it go at once. Worrying over it was a game you lost by playing.
"Captain Kid. This is the Heavenly Punishment's last known route."
A Terra informant stationed in Korea passed him a tablet. Dan Miryu came alongside and looked.
"This place..."
Dan Miryu's face hardened.
"Do you know it?"
"Yes. I do."
Captain Kid read the note appended at the end of the route.
Abandoned the vehicle and entered the mountain. Trail lost thereafter.
The mountain in question is presumed to be the epicenter of unprecedented abnormal weather.
"It seems their claims were not wholly empty, after all."
Hong Yumin had come up beside them, her voice gone hard. A long pipe was already set between her lips.
"I see quite clearly now where they are bound."
"You do?"
"I do."
With clouded eyes, Hong Yumin looked up at the sky.
"It was my home."
"...!"
"Need I say more?"
"...No."
Captain Kid's breath caught hard in Hong Yumin's eyes. They were clear as the starlight of the Milky Way, dark as the abyss, and they held the years of the stars.
The span of his own years could not bear the weight of hers. So even if the grounds were somewhat thin, he had no choice but to believe.
"It doesn't look as though we'll have time to settle both matters."
"We cannot know what they mean to do. Even if our preparations fall short, it cannot be helped."
Captain Kid glanced at his watch.
"Then take the most expensive taxi in the world. I'll have you there quickly."
"Thank you. We'll be in your debt."
"Then—"
"Captain Kid!"
A mechanic came running, all in a lather.
"What is it?"
"An unidentified error has occurred in the TA-04!"
"What do you mean—!"
Captain Kid's legs nearly gave out beneath him.
"Why in the world would it break? I inspected every last part of it myself, and when it was cleared they even stamped the thing as free of problems!"
"I-I'm sorry. We don't really..."
The mechanics here were a cut below the ones at base, but they were hardly talentless hands who couldn't manage an aircraft. They were geniuses, screened and screened again. How could they fail to fix a single error?
"Of all times!"
"Too neat for a coincidence."
Hong Yumin breathed out a slow stream of smoke.
"It may not be a coincidence."
"It could be fate."
"This is hardly the time for jokes!"
"Calm yourself. A breakdown is a breakdown, is it not? We had better move by car."
Dan Miryu checked Captain Kid before he could boil over. Grinding his teeth, Captain Kid glared at the mechanic.
"Have it fixed before I get back!"
"Y-yes, sir!"
Sweat pouring off him, the mechanic fled at something close to a crawl.
"Calm yourself. He has done nothing wrong."
"I know. I know, but... haah!"
Captain Kid heaved sigh after sigh, then leaned in and whispered at Dan Miryu's ear.
"The price of that thing..."
"...Mm. It will have to be fixed at once."
His anger was justified. It was a mercy, really, that he had not taken the mechanic apart on the spot.
"...That is money belonging to a pure organization. No support from any state."
"...Let us go."
Dan Miryu decided he had heard enough.
"If we mean to go, we had best go quickly."
Hong Yumin felt the sky growing dark.
"The feeling of it sits ill with me."
It looked as though rain would fall today.
Three figures picked their way across a low hill. Even there they did not lose the path, and they pressed steadily on.
"Eleventh Apostle."
"Yes. Speak."
"How were Korea's heroes?"
"Unremarkable. Calling them a Hero Association was almost laughable."
"Do you think they will hinder the work?"
"Hard to say... You need only watch the one they call Association President. The rest are much of a muchness."
The Eleventh Apostle let out a hollow laugh.
"In all my life, I have never seen an association so easy."
"The wages of trusting solely in their own nation's peace."
The First Apostle recalled the armies that had barred the road at every turn. In quality and in number they had been tolerable enough for a national military, yet an overwhelming superiority of quality had crushed every last one of them to pulp.
"Had they taken heroes in with any seriousness, it might have been another matter..."
"Well, I find it strange the peace holds so well even without heroes. In China they kill them out in the open, and still they swarm like cockroaches."
"Some vast organization must be directing Korea from the shadows."
"Who can say. The Seventh Apostle is the one who knows these things..."
After a spell of idle chatter, the three came to a clearing reduced to ruin.
The First Apostle's eyes narrowed.
"It is immense. What in the world happened in this place?"
The Eleventh Apostle was startled by the reach of the destruction. A great typhoon seemed to have raged within arm's reach.
"Pardon?"
The First Apostle lifted his hand from the earth and smiled, rapt.
"Eleventh Apostle. This is where the Heaven we observed descended."
"OOOOOOH!!!"
The Eleventh Apostle roared. The ranges rang with it, and animals burst from cover in a blind rush.
"Verily! Verily! What a sublime thing! We have arrived at last!!!"
Thud! Thud!
Like a child who could not bear the wait for an amusement park, the Eleventh Apostle stamped his feet. Each time they struck, the mountain shook.
"Compose yourself, Eleventh Apostle. Heaven did come, yes, but there is still much we must investigate."
Such devastation could only have arisen for some special cause. Heaven's wrath falling, perhaps. Or the yearning of someone who hungered for Heaven.
But this I will declare. We have at last seized the outline of Heaven, which has ever hidden its form.
"We must gather the other apostles at once. This is not a matter I can resolve alone."
"Ah, what a shame. If only those strange meddlers in China had not been there, more of them might have come with us..."
"It is well. Time yet suffices."
The First Apostle settled what must come first.
"While I preserve this holy ground and summon the apostles, Eleventh Apostle, pray cleanse the surroundings. We cannot admit the faithless here."
"Understood. How far would you have me clean?"
The First Apostle turned the lay of the land over in his mind. He fretted over it a few times, then gave it up because it was a bother.
"Simply clean until the other apostles arrive. That should suffice."
"True enough. One could clean every day and still fall short."
The Eleventh Apostle knocked his fists together.
"Then shall I begin simply, with the insects nearby? There happens to be a colony down below."
"A wise judgment."
The First Apostle and the Eleventh Apostle laughed, bright and pleased.
In their minds, the land around them was already a spotless blank.
Nothing there.
Nothing living.
A thoroughly pristine place.
The Eleventh Apostle, it seemed, was in for a great deal of suffering.