Operation Motor City (1)
Detroit, Michigan, USA. Once the heart of the world's automotive industry, now a prime example of a fallen city—a wasteland of abandoned factories. In the midst of this cold steel forest, a humming roar had recently filled the air. It was the heartbeat of the S-rank villain Magnet Floyd: the sound of his magnetism.
But now, that magnetic heartbeat had stopped. All that remained was the ragged breathing of Korea's one and only S-rank hero, Rapid Star, standing tall amid the chaos.
"Hah... hah..."
With every rise and fall of his shoulders, white steam rose from his overheated body. Sweat droplets traced his jawline and plopped onto the ground.
At Rapid Star's feet lay the culprit behind this incident, the S-rank villain Magnet Floyd who had terrorized the entire United States.
"Uh... uh..."
"Finally croaked, huh..."
A rebar as thick as an adult's arm pierced straight through the center of Magnet Floyd's skull—from the crown of his head down through his jaw joint and deep into the floor. Like an insect pinned for display, he lay face-down, limbs paralyzed, dangling from the metal spike.
"Uh... uhhh..."
Even as his body cooled, foam bubbled from his pierced mouth. Only meaningless groans escaped him.
Rapid Star looked down at the carnage with indifferent eyes. It had taken far too long to reach this point.
Operation Motor City. The initial suppression had failed, and during the delay, Magnet Floyd had linked himself not just to the city of Detroit but to the entire Michigan power grid. Drawing on that immense power, his magnetic domain expanded beyond the U.S. government's wildest predictions.
Every hunk of metal within hundreds of kilometers shot into the sky. A storm of magnetic force formed a dome that swallowed not only Detroit but half of Michigan. In the ensuing chaos, countless villains—emboldened by the flashy alias "Magnet Floyd" and their own delusions—flocked to Michigan like it was some revolution.
They saw him as a symbol of the black civil rights movement oppressed by white police. They wildly imagined he harbored noble ideals of abolishing racism or saving persecuted minorities, and they went wild with excitement. Of course, those villains who came with such flimsy hopes were reduced to mere chunks of meat, shredded by the rampaging magnetic field and impaled on swirling rebar alongside the dust.
With elections looming, all sorts of high-level conspiracy theories proliferated about the operation's delays.
Michigan is a key opposition stronghold, so the ruling government deliberately dragged its feet to disenfranchise voters ahead of the presidential race.
The public and media spat venom, blaming the government's political calculus.
"What a load of bullshit."
But to Rapid Star—who had rolled in the trenches, where even breathing felt like lockjaw and metal poisoning—such lofty political conspiracies were laughable nonsense. Hell, if it really had been some grand, head-scratching delay like that, he'd have given them a golf clap.
America's S-rank heroes. Before they were national assets, they were superstars and mega-corporate holdings tied to logistics giants, airlines, or military-industrial complexes. The real reason they botched the initial suppression and dragged their feet? Corporate policy—aka pure self-preservation.
If an S-rank hero got smashed by flying metal in the heart of that magnetic zone and died... the company would slap the family with astronomical lawsuits, citing plummeting stocks and massive asset losses. Fight to the death and get hailed a hero? Nah—you'd leave your family homeless and buried in debt. Even S-ranks hesitated to charge the front lines, hanging back on the periphery, playing it safe.
It started with the precedent of "Incredible," a hero sued and forced to pay damages after saving a suicidal citizen. That lawsuit-created precedent was the true culprit that let this mess spiral out of control.
"Yankees are a riot. No wonder I've been overflowing with energy since stepping on U.S. soil."
Rapid Star flicked his tongue and nudged Magnet Floyd's side with his toe—the spot next to the rebar skewering his skull.
"Hey. Say something."
He squatted down with a sneer.
"What grand ideology made you use that awesome power just to slaughter the villain scum who flocked to you? Those were your followers, right? The ones who came to join your cause."
As Rapid Star said, the abandoned factory grounds were littered with American villains who'd rushed to "help" Magnet Floyd—only to have their bodies torn apart by his magnetism, crushed under metal debris.
"You killed all the villains, but when it came to me, why'd you just take it lying down like some quitter? No real fight, just getting your ass handed to you. Made it easy to catch you, but with your mouth hanging open like a retard, it looks pathetic. And ugly as fuck."
Rapid Star scoffed and added,
"Magnet Floyd, huh? Name straight out of the black civil rights playbook... Oh, right, that guy's a felon. Anyway, you're white as snow. Worst concept ever."
"Uh... uhhh... guk."
Magnet Floyd just rolled his eyes back, groaning in time with his slowing heartbeat. The rebar had shredded his frontal lobe—language function completely wrecked.
"Can't interrogate you like this."
Rapid Star rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a syringe. KHC Association's top-grade Regeneration Serum.
A miracle drug that forced dying cells into temporary division and revival.
Plunge!
Without a second's hesitation, Rapid Star jammed it into Magnet Floyd's neck vein and emptied the serum.
"Grrraaahhh...!!"
The instant it hit, Magnet Floyd's body arched like a bow and convulsed. His dying brain cells forcibly repaired, his near-dormant power surged back to life.
Woooong—!!
The magnetic field blanketing Detroit's skies reactivated. Thousands of tons of scrap metal lifted into the air, a deafening roar tearing through the atmosphere and shaking the factory district.
"Rapid Star took him down! But the magnetic field's back up! No entry! All units, no entry!"
The U.S. support forces—rushing in now that they'd heard Magnet Floyd was subdued—halted at the factory outskirts, crushed by the resurgent magnetic dome.
But Rapid Star, at the epicenter, was calm. Metal chunks whizzed like bullets, the field raged, shredding skin—but he'd adapted.
"Stings a bit. Hurt like hell at first."
His physical enhancement went beyond strength, syncing his body to external pressures for immunity.
"Alright, serum's kicking in?"
Grinning, Rapid Star gripped the exposed end of the rebar in Magnet Floyd's skull with both hands.
Grind.
"Gaaaahhh—!!"
Grind. Grind.
Rapid Star brutally twisted and stirred the rebar side to side. Chilling sounds of brain matter mashing and bone grinding echoed from inside the skull.
Serum regenerated neurons; rebar pulverized them anew. Tuning for the perfect state: speech possible, powers crippled.
Like dialing a busted radio, he fine-tuned the rebar, forcibly reconnecting and stimulating the villain's wrecked language centers.
"Uhh, quit groaning and speak straight. What ideology made you pull this shit?"
Grriiind. Crunch!
"Ah, aaah...!"
Did the frequency align? As the rebar pressed a specific nerve, Magnet Floyd's groans miraculously turned to human speech.
"Gotta... kill 'em all..."
"Who? Me?"
"Villain scum... all of 'em... gotta kill every last one...!"
The villain's lips trembled.
"But... why am I the murderer? Why treat me like a monster...!"
Rapid Star's hands froze at the cry.
"Oh."
His eyes gleamed with interest. That radical, violent creed: slaughter all villains without trial.
"I like it. That's exactly what I think."
He burst out laughing, genuinely delighted.
"Uh... ugh... aaah..."
But as brain-mangled groans leaked out again,
"Whoa, frequency slipped. Speak right. Things are getting fun."
Mercilessly, he whipped the rebar in the skull to retune.
Crack!
"Graaaah! I, I... I just...!"
Writhing in agony, Magnet Floyd spoke again. Tears mixed with blood, dripping to the floor.
"I just... killed him. That school shooter... blasting away at innocent kids... I skewered the bastard on a metal grate with my power... that's all...!"
"Hmm... not ringing a bell. Which one? Need year, month, day, time."
"Cops and heroes weren't there yet—the kids were dying... so I killed him! But... that fucker was a minor villain, had rights... why'd they treat me like a murderer and arrest me...!"
Magnet Floyd gasped out his grievance.
Strange. Arresting the kid who killed a shooter? Why?
Rapid Star questioned the villain's wail.
"And... I only killed villains... never messed up! Why? My kills count, but they pin theirs on me too!"
Then Magnet Floyd slumped, exhausted. From the gap in his clothes covering his nape and neckline...
"...!"
From the back of his neck down his spine: hundreds, thousands of swollen injection scars and needle marks.
Even junkies high on dope don't shoot up spots like that.
Only in rigidly controlled environments—periodic, forced administration against one's will.
A vigilante with the power to kill a school shooter. The U.S. government branded him a murderer, secretly snatched him up. To weaponize his mighty magnetism, higher-ups greenlit human experiments and drug indoctrination.
The result? A mindless monster, lost to reason, obsessed only with slaughtering villains. The birth of today's Magnet Floyd.
Why the higher-ups insisted on capture over kill for this uncontrollable villain. Why the U.S. government dithered instead of crushing it early with force.
It all clicked. Capture was to bury evidence of their experiments, recover the fortune and time poured into their asset.
"Hah, fucking hell."
Rapid Star let out a disbelieving laugh.
"These guys are nuts. Now I get why they freaked out so much about saving him."
He glared with disgust at the hundreds of needle scars on the villain's nape, spitting on the floor.
"Classic America. Ballsy. Unlike war-crime pussies experimenting on foreigners—they test on their own. Always have."
He shook his head with a mocking sneer.
"No wonder flat-Earth retards and moon-landing hoax nuts won't die out. Their shit's beyond imagination, fuck."
He felt no pity or sympathy for Magnet Floyd's tragic tale. Backstory aside, this bastard's rampage had crushed countless innocents under metal.
Sharing his extreme sense of justice was intriguing, but no mercy for a villain who'd lost control and massacred.
"Alright. Heard enough."
Shunk.
The words barely left his mouth before Rapid Star yanked the rusted rebar from Magnet Floyd's skull in one pull.
"Anyway, you'd just get strapped down and drilled again. Die easy by my hand."
"Guhk... Th-thanks..."
Rapid Star crushed the villain's skull in his grip. He lowered his stance, powering his legs to snap the neck and rip head from spine in one go.
"Rapid Star!!! Stop right there—!!!"
Rumble—!!
Behind him, shattered concrete and dust erupted from the factory ruins. America's S-rank hero Rolling Stone rolled toward him using his power.
"Don't kill him! He's a capture target! Arrest first! Hands off now!!!"
Rolling Stone's desperate warning boomed.
But.
"Bullshit."
Ignoring the oncoming S-rank hero,
Crunch—!!!!
"...!!"
Rolling Stone's eyes widened as he rolled.
Crack.
Rapid Star's hands wrenched Magnet Floyd's head clean off—skull, neck bones, and spine intact—yanking it from the floor.
Thud.
A long trail of white spine dangled from the severed neck. The headless body crumpled without support, collapsing in a heap.