Electra
Electra
The rooftop of a building.
I stood there, looking down.
Beside me was a large camera.
Watching the alley below, I spoke.
"This is Ego. Control tower, respond, respond."
[Control tower, really? What are you watching now? Anyway, responding.]
"Good. It should be about time to put the plan into action, right?"
[...Yes. Right now seems like the optimal window. We've also disabled all the CCTV around the area.]
"Perfect. Then we just have to do it. Choi Se-hee?"
"...Hoo. Yeah."
"All right, go. Just stick to the plan, okay?"
"....Okay. But you really, absolutely have to come back for me at the end, got it?"
"Of course. That's exactly why I brought the camera. Don't worry."
I waved the camera I had suspended with telekinesis as I spoke. She nodded and took a deep breath.
"....Phew. I'm heading out now."
Though nervous, Choi Se-hee had a faint look of excitement on her face as she flew into the sky and extended a hand.
And so, the attack began.
***
An intersection in Seoul.
The place was busy and alive, packed with cars and people rushing about.
In this lively, peaceful place.
Out of nowhere, lightning struck.
KABOOM—
"Aaaahh!"
Completely out of the blue.
A bolt from a clear sky.
It wasn't just one or two lightning bolts that fell.
They began crashing down on the roadside trees—KABOOM, KABOOM—one after another.
"Aaaaagghhh!"
In the sudden chaos, people panicked and scattered.
Only those inside cars, still trying to figure out what was happening, stopped where they were and poked their heads out the windows.
And in that moment.
KABOOOOOOOOOM—
At the center of the intersection, the largest bolt yet—a massive pillar of yellow lightning—crashed from the sky with a thunderous boom.
It tore up the asphalt as it fell, displaying enough force to smash everything around it.
Only then did people realize something was gravely wrong. They began frantically driving away, horns blaring.
Just as they fled, the smoke at ground zero cleared, revealing a woman.
Her orange hair was tied in a ponytail, whipping in the wind.
She appeared to hover in the air, standing on an electric storm churning beneath her legs.
Scattering electricity through the air, she made her entrance.
Making her first public appearance, she drew a breath and shouted.
At the same time—
Hundreds, thousands of sparks—too many to count—erupted from her body in every direction and began destroying everything in the intersection.
The incident was immediately reported to the Hero Association.
A villain was staging an attack in the middle of downtown Seoul.
***
Shin Ha-ru.
She looked like any ordinary college student, but she held a secret she could never tell anyone.
The truth was, she was the A-rank hero, Stardus.
She attended university classes, but she wasn't always on campus.
When she wasn't at a café with Chae-hyun or at home, her primary location was her office in the Hero Association building.
The office was the most convenient place to receive real-time updates on villains and dispatch when they appeared. Unless she was meeting Chae-hyun during the day, she was usually there.
And so, right now.
Sitting in her Hero Association office, she was browsing a website she'd developed a habit of checking.
*
[Egostic Fan Cafe Declaration]
We, the 100,000 members of the Mangostic Fandom,
Elegant, a new paradigm, and a genius with zero casualties and nationwide live broadcasts—yet he has not staged a single attack in two months.
Ignoring his supporters' desperate pleas, he has gone into hiding without a drop of blood or tears.
We request severe punishment for the wicked and inhumane villain Egostic.
Egostic, end your radio silence and make your presence known immediately!!!!!
Please.... I'm going to die at this rate...
Why isn't he coming? Why isn't he coming? Why isn't he coming? Why isn't he coming?
=[Comments]=
[I support this^^]
[That's not Egostic, that's Bongostic now]
[For real, at this point, three months is just his passive mode]
[A terrorist? Not committing terrorism? Isn't that dereliction of duty?]
[I'm so cold... why won't he come]
[Only Stardus is happy about getting no work, everyone else is miserable lol]
↳ [For real lol, even the Stardus fandom says they’re bored to death these days]
↳ [Why them?]
↳ [With Mango gone, only small-fry villains show up, so there’s no spectacle. They all get one-shot lol]
↳ [Oh lol, now that I think about it, he really only ever did call for Stardus]
↳ [A Stardus without Egostic is like a bun without the bean paste]
↳ [But honestly, whether they’re bored or not, Stardus is probably all smiles because she’s got it easy lately lol]
*
"Haa..."
Ha-ru sighed, watching them laugh and joke without a clue.
From her perspective, Egostic was... no matter how she looked at it, probably dead. That was her opinion.
And whenever she was reminded of that fact, a faint, aching pang always struck her chest.
...As if it mattered whether some villain lived or died.
Why did it bother her this much? Why did she feel guilty?
She was sitting there blankly, her mood slightly dampened, when—
Bang. The office door flew open, and an Association agent rushed in.
"Stardus! A villain has appeared in downtown Seoul again! We need you to deploy immediately!"
"...Understood."
She rose from her seat.
Regardless of her current mood, she was a hero.
She moved at once to subdue the villain.
***
The sky.
Suited up, she cut through the blue sky toward the scene, receiving reports from the Association along the way.
[The culprit appears to be a female in her twenties. She possesses an electricity-based ability.]
[She is currently destroying fixtures in the intersection at random. All civilians have evacuated, and there are no casualties.]
[A B-rank hero near the scene attempted suppression, but was immediately struck and is now incapacitated.]
[Please, exercise caution.]
"Understood."
Having grasped the general situation, she mulled it over as she kept flying.
She'd just have to swing a few punches and it would be over quickly anyway.
By now, most villains couldn't stand up to her power.
...Except for Egostic, who always had something backing him up.
"Tch."
She'd thought of him again. She shook her head to clear it and focused.
When you're fighting a villain, you have to concentrate as much as possible, no matter what.
After a short flight, she arrived at her destination and assessed the situation from above.
A deserted intersection, everyone having fled.
In the center of it all, a single figure was visible, wreathed in countless electric shockwaves.
The woman stood in the eye of the electric storm, firing bolts of lightning at every fixture around her.
Roadside trees, traffic lights, utility poles, transformers, the asphalt, the outer walls of buildings—everything in that intersection was being scorched to ruin.
There were no casualties yet, but no one knew what would happen if she was left unchecked. Her ability appeared to be running wild. She had to be subdued immediately.
Having reached her conclusion, she descended from the sky.
BOOM. She landed with a classic hero landing.
At the sound, the villain reacted.
She stopped her wild, random destruction and turned her head, looking straight at Stardus.
Her orange ponytail swaying, the villain looked at Stardus and spoke as if she'd expected her.
"Ah. So you're Stardus, huh?"
"Villain. Cease your attack and surrender immediately. If you refuse, I'll subdue you by force."
Stardus called out the standard warning as per the manual.
Toward her, the orange-haired villain gave a derisive smirk and said,
"Surrender? I don't think so."
At the same moment, the villain fired a concentrated bolt of electricity at her.
Stardus dodged it and charged at the villain, intent on capturing her.
But the villain also whipped up a storm of electricity and flew upward into the sky.
High in the air, sparks radiating from her hands, she shouted for Stardus—and everyone watching—to hear.
"My name is... Electra!"
Wreathed in lightning from head to toe, the villain stared down at Stardus. Electra grinned and spoke.
"I came to face you, Stardus—for him."
As those words left her mouth, she unleashed tendrils of lightning in all directions.
Stardus gritted her teeth, dodging the baptism of electricity raining down on her.
She didn't know what the villain meant by coming to face her, or who this 'him' was.
But she'd get all the answers naturally once she took this villain down.
Stardus clenched her fist and dove back into the electric maelstrom.
The battle had begun.
***
Meanwhile, the entire spectacle was being transmitted live on the news, captured by a circling helicopter's cameras.
While people watched the fight on their TVs or phones, wondering what the hell was happening now,
I stood on a nearby rooftop, taking it all in firsthand.
Damn, Choi Se-hee. All that time I spent training her one-on-one had really paid off.
Look at her holding her own against Stardus. Was this for real? My heart swelled with pride...
Eventually, though, she would start losing ground. I would have to step in around then.
Munching on the popcorn I'd brought, I watched the battle unfold live before me.
"This is fun."
Popcorn really was the best thing for watching a fight.
It tasted sweet. So sweet.