HERO
HERO
"Aaaah!"
The plane began to plummet.
Passengers screamed, clutching their armrests.
[No! You made a sound! I’m cutting the last wire too! Bang!]
Another bang rang out,
and the plane began falling faster and faster.
All of it was being broadcast live.
"That crazy bastard..."
Of course, someone was watching it all unfold in real time...
"...Mr. Chairman, what on earth do we do now?"
[What else can we do...? Give up. I’m busy drafting a statement condemning him. Haa, I’ll have to bow and apologize all over the place again. You should get ready to write an incident report for throwing popcorn at me. Ah, damn. The reporters are downstairs. I’m hanging up.]
And just like that, the call with the Chairman cut off.
Stardus was left alone, staring up at the sky with a heavy heart.
"Haa..."
The plane continued its steady descent.
Because it was falling so slowly, you could almost mistake it for a normal landing just by looking at it.
But the smoke pouring like mad from both wings made it clear to anyone that a critical situation was unfolding.
Stardus thought.
Wouldn’t this become one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in history?
Egostic... that bastard finally went and did it.
The most crushing part was that she could do nothing, only stand and watch.
The plane was moving at least 1,000 km/h.
The train she had barely managed to stop was moving at roughly 100 km/h. This was about ten times faster.
Trying to stop that really was like an egg trying to crack a rock. Like an ant trying to stop a car.
So, there was nothing she could do.
It meant she could only watch, powerless.
As she stared upward with a heavy heart,
a ringtone suddenly sounded through her earpiece.
"...?"
She frowned at the call coming at such a strange moment and reached up to disconnect it.
‘Wait... This earpiece should only be connected to the Association.’
Once that occurred to her, she tapped the earpiece again and accepted the call.
A man's voice came through.
At that voice, now all too familiar, Stardus chewed her lip.
[Hello, Stardus. Egostic speaking.]
"You piece of trash..."
Unable to contain the sudden surge of anger, she nearly ripped out the earpiece and hurled it to the ground.
But his next words made her shut her mouth in an instant.
[I was wondering about something. Why aren’t you going to save them?]
"...What did you say?"
[You should fly up there and save the plane. What are you doing?]
Stardus’s temper flared at the shameless way he spoke after bringing the plane down himself.
But realizing that showing her anger would just play into his scheme, she forced it down and spoke calmly.
"...So you’re telling me to stop that falling plane? After you brought it down?"
[Yes. Of course.]
His shameless answer made Shin Ha-ru sincerely want to punch him.
Hard enough to kill him instantly.
Forcing her anger down, she spoke.
"How am I supposed to stop that? Huh? It’s falling at 1,000 km/h! Are you telling me to die? Oh, of course you're. You lunatic."
...Her anger was leaking out, and her hero persona was beginning to crack.
Before she could finish shouting, however, Egostic cut her off.
[No, you can do it.]
The seriousness and apparent sincerity in his voice, audible even over the phone, left her momentarily speechless.
[You can do it. Stop the plane from falling.]
As if stating an undeniable truth.
As if stating the obvious fact that the sun rises when the moon sets.
His voice was utterly unwavering.
She lost her voice for a moment, then gathered herself and spoke quietly.
"...Does that make any sense? You think I don’t know you’re trying to get rid of me while you have the chance?"
[Why would I try to kill you?]
His calm voice continued.
[What meaning could I possibly have without you? Without you, I’m merely another dime-a-dozen villain.]
[You complete me.]
[So step forward. Clench your fists, brace your legs, and fly into the sky to save those people. You can do it. Because that is who you are.]
With those final words, the call disconnected.
Left alone by the sudden turn of events, she stood blankly for a moment as though under a spell...
Then she came to her senses and shook her head hard.
That madman was just spouting his usual nonsense.
He was the one who had blown up the plane and sent it falling in the first place.
I knew my own abilities. How was I supposed to stop that?
Wasn't he simply trying to get me killed while he had the chance?
Even so, his words continued to echo through her mind.
‘No, you can do it.’
‘You complete me.’
Because that is who you are.
He had said the sort of thing that, heard without context, could only have come from one of her fans.
Yet those words had come from her enemy—from Egostic.
‘Doesn’t that make them even more credible and objective?’
Her mind was in complete turmoil.
She had already felt powerless and desperate at the thought of watching everyone aboard the plane die in real time.
Then the villain who had brought it down called and told her to save them from his own attack. Her mind finally snapped.
‘Right. I stopped a train, so why couldn’t I stop a plane? When you thought about it, wasn’t a plane just a flying train? Plane, flying train—practically the same thing. So maybe I could stop one after all.’
Her mind began following a seriously flawed chain of logic.
Eventually, it reached a conclusion.
[The 247th Regular Meeting of Shin Ha-ru’s Cerebral Decision-Making Council]
[Resolution: Go save the plane.]
‘Right. If I stand here and watch them die, the guilt will crush me for the rest of my life. In that case, I’d rather try and have no regrets.’
Immediately,
she flew into the sky.
***
"Aaaah!"
"Waaaaah!"
"Aaaah!!!"
Screams filled the plane.
Despite the explosion, the plane was somehow descending fairly smoothly. That did nothing to lessen the passengers’ terror.
Outside the window, the ground was drawing closer and closer.
At first, they could see nothing but clouds, but now the sea below was coming into view.
People screamed, prayed to God, fainted, or simply gave up and closed their eyes.
As the sea drew closer and everyone began losing hope, thinking they had only minutes left to live—
Thud.
A sound came from the front of the plane.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
It kept repeating.
It sounded as though something were striking the nose of the plane over and over.
Then came a sonic boom.
KABOOM.
"Uuugh?"
A tremendous impact suddenly struck the front of the plane.
Every passenger lurched forward at once.
The impact was strong enough that anyone not wearing a seat belt would have been thrown from their seat.
The shock ran through the cabin as though a car had slammed into a row of trees—as though the nose of the plane had struck something.
The plane had been hurtling toward the sea, ready to shatter on impact.
Gradually,
gradually,
it began to slow.
"...Huh?"
At first, the passengers thought the impact meant they were finally dead. Then they began to realize that something was strange.
They were certainly drawing closer to the surface,
but the plane was slowing more and more, as though coming in for a landing.
"Huh...? Huh?"
The plane continued to lose speed,
until it finally settled onto the sea with a heavy thud.
—BANG.
"Aaaah!"
The landing still brought a jolt, and the fuselage cracked from the sudden impact.
But in the end,
every passenger survived.
"...What?"
The passengers were dumbfounded by the sudden turn of events.
They did not know what had happened. They could not even process that they were alive, much less celebrate.
Once a few of them recovered their senses, they stood and went deeper into the plane in search of the flight attendants.
The attendants lay unconscious on the floor.
The passengers woke them, had them open the doors, and deployed the evacuation slides down toward the life rafts. One by one, they slid out and boarded the rafts.
Still dazed, several passengers rowed around to the front of the plane. There they saw
a blonde woman in red tights atop its badly crumpled nose, still gripping the fuselage with enough force to dent it. Sweat poured from her as she struggled to catch her breath.
It was Stardus.
The passengers instinctively understood that she had saved them.
One of them murmured without even realizing it.
"A hero..."
A hero.
A superhero.
A savior.
Everyone there looked at the exhausted woman catching her breath atop the enormous plane and felt the same thing.
That was it.
That person.
The one who had just saved them all.
She was our hero.
***
[Yes!!! Stardus has!!! Successfully landed the plane!!! Every passenger is safely!!! Disembarking!!! People of Korea!!! South Korea is safe!!!]
[Yes, and as you can see... Wow. She did it! Viewers, the Korean A-class hero Stardus just stopped a plane from crashing in midair! It is unbelievable that this happened in Korea.]
[Yes, the Korean hero Stardus has just succeeded in stopping an airplane in the sky. Amazing. Is there anything Korea can't do?]
[The Korean hero Stardus stopped the plane. Yes, that is impressive for a rogue nation on a peninsula.]
[In Korea, a small country in the East, a hero stopped a plane in the sky. Her name is Stardus.]
[America is shocked and Japan is stunned! Who is Stardus, the hero praised by China and feared by France? “Japan can only admit that it has been completely defeated by Korea when it comes to heroes. Even ten Japanese heroes together could not defeat Korea.” A shocking revelation from Japan’s Minister of Internal Affairs!]