TS and Forced Reenlistment
The Superhuman Bureau's Special Mission Battalion. For convenience, we just called it the Special Task Force. Together with the Security Force that patrolled high-crime districts and maintained public order, it formed one of the core pillars of the Bureau and represented its most powerful combat unit. Since the government only recognized two official combat superhuman organizations, it wasn't exactly surprising that someone like me—with the outright broken abilities of manpower and repulsion force—would get pulled into this one.
That said, the Special Task Force operated under much stricter rules than the Security Force. Nominally we were civil servants, but in reality it was the military in all but name. Think police versus soldiers. The Security Force was basically the cops; we were the actual troops. So of course the universe thought it would be hilarious to forcibly conscript a guy who'd been gender-bent into a woman in this novel world and drop me straight into the military equivalent.
Just think about it. Getting hit with the TS beam was already unfair enough. Having to deal with magical girl transformations once a month made me want to scream. And then, out of nowhere, dimensional rifts started tearing open and the Superhuman Bureau forcibly drafted me. Surprise! The place I got sent to was basically boot camp with better pay. The only real differences between the Special Task Force and the actual military were slightly higher salaries and significantly higher chances of dying. When you boiled it down, it was just the army with hazard pay. Might as well call it mandatory reenlistment.
In my previous life I'd been an orphan who voluntarily enlisted even though I didn't have to. At the time I thought it was the right thing to do. It didn't take long to realize what a pointless, arrogant mistake that had been. It was a completely useless experience. I can still see the pitying looks from my seniors, the ones that seemed to ask why the hell I'd crawled into this place of my own free will. Honestly, I agreed with them. Why had I done that?
That's how the military became one of the biggest black marks on my life, the most serious error in judgment I'd ever made. If I ever found myself in the same situation again, I'd obviously skip the active-duty enlistment. But this time it wasn't even my choice. I was being forcibly reenlisted, and just remembering it filled me with a deep, seething rage I couldn't suppress.
At this point, planting a righteous soccer kick on the back of the author's head would be ruled self-defense. TS and reenlistment? What kind of unholy hybrid is this?
The root of this entire mess was the dimensional rifts. If they hadn't appeared, I wouldn't have been running around using my powers in public, and I wouldn't have been forcibly drafted by the Superhuman Bureau. Shockingly, though, the rifts weren't some natural disaster or mysterious phenomenon. They were man-made. Some insane superhuman had deliberately brought the dimensional rifts into this world.
Back when the rifts were opening and the world was slowly falling apart, I'd been working in the Special Task Force for about three years. That's when three superhumans—including the man who would later rise as the central figure in the Bureau's research division, "Professor" G—fled to the Bureau for protection. From their testimony, we learned that a villain was responsible for spreading the dimensional rifts across our world.
The Special Task Force moved immediately. After several attempts, we managed to capture the leader of the rift-opening villains: Dr. Oh. The data he possessed confirmed that he had indeed been the one who opened the dimensional rifts. Dr. Oh paid for throwing the world into chaos with his life.
Unfortunately, his research contained no information on how to close the rifts. We continued studying his materials, searching for a way to shut them down, but even up until the moment I died, we never found a complete solution. I have no idea what results my actions produced after my death, but it doesn't really matter.
The most certain way to prevent the dimensional rifts is to eliminate Dr. Oh himself before he can open them.
"These bastards are genuinely useless. They're not even proper monsters."
Some people might think having an opposing force actually helps elevate the status of superhumans. In fact, that was more or less Dr. Oh's intention when he opened the rifts. His grand cause was to break the current system where superhumans with powerful abilities were controlled by the government and create a world where superhumans received the respect they deserved.
Rifts open. Monsters appear. Superhumans fight back. Society acknowledges their value. The nation treats them preferentially. That was the general flow Dr. Oh had envisioned.
But that was nothing more than a pipe dream. Reality wasn't nearly that kind.
Their official designation was Unidentified Creature of Outer Space. We shortened it to UCOS. Depending on their form, they were classified as Type A, Type B, or Type C, and reports would list them as UCOS Type A. That was what the pencil-pushers in the office wrote. On the actual battlefield, we just called them "those fucking things" or simply "fuckers."
Just the nicknames alone tell you how much resentment and pure anger the field agents carried, doesn't it?
These things were genuinely worthless trash. They didn't drop useful resources like mana stones, nor did they provide new materials. Their corpses only emitted toxic substances we couldn't handle, requiring ages to clean up. The only way they benefited humanity was by not existing at all.
Given the situation, even talented superhumans weren't particularly eager to hunt them. Bounty systems for extermination missions had led to the creation of PMCs, but most of those were just villains who'd rebranded their criminal organizations as companies to launder their identities. They weren't much help.
That was why Yonghee's Dragon Blood was so special.
When trash like this roamed free, the government ultimately had to deal with them. Useless creatures kept popping out, and handling and cleaning up after them cost money. Naturally, tax revenue leaked like a sieve while the citizens' burden grew heavier. Add in the victims raising hell and causing chaos, and it was a complete spectacle.
That's just how humans are. When something goes wrong, the first thing we do is look for someone to blame. In this case, the targets of their resentment were naturally the Bureau's combat superhumans.
The superhumans were too slow to deploy, resulting in casualties. The superhumans failed to take appropriate measures, leading to increased property damage. The Superhuman Bureau collects so much in national taxes—why is their work so sloppy? And so on.
As someone who had been forcibly conscripted into the Bureau, I couldn't exactly look at the organization favorably. But even I had to admit this was unfair. Even I, the ace of the Special Task Force, had received an absolute torrent of criticism.
We were already risking our lives every single day in terrible conditions. Being showered with every curse imaginable crossed a line. No matter how I thought about it, the dimensional rifts should never have existed. The same went for Dr. Oh.
"Of course, I don't know if the current Dr. Oh holds the same beliefs as the one from the first timeline..."
Recalling the message I'd checked right before dying, there was a possibility that, unlike the first timeline, this version of Dr. Oh wasn't researching dimensional rifts. But this was far too important an issue to dismiss even the slightest chance.
This was something I needed to confirm with my own eyes before I could feel at ease.
"So let's go see for myself."
Dr. Oh's hideout was an abandoned factory in a quiet area on the outskirts of Seoul. The exterior looked like an ordinary derelict factory, but he'd built a proper fortress underground. It probably wasn't at that level yet, but I still needed to be prepared to face a dozen or so underlings.
It was the weekend, one day before I was supposed to join the other members at our shared accommodation. I'd chosen today as D-day because it was the only day off the company had given me. I had no idea how long this would take, and it would be awkward if I had practice scheduled. Lately the staff had been treating me a bit more warmly as my points accumulated. It would be stupid to miss practice for no reason and lose those points.
After all, I was doing all this to survive. I couldn't throw away my present life.
For today, I'd quietly prepared weapons. One eighteen-inch machete and one butcher knife. I'd wanted to get something better, but the problem was money. As you know, my bank balance was only about 120,000 won. That wasn't enough to buy anything decent.
Still, in the current situation these weren't bad choices. Knife possession laws still existed in this world, and if I got caught in a random inspection, it could lead to unnecessary trouble. An eighteen-inch machete didn't violate the regulations, at least. Of course, people might ask why I was carrying something like that. If I insisted I was just a pretty girl carrying it for self-defense, I could probably get away with it. I had no criminal record and it wasn't illegal—what could they do?
Considering there were villains running around with firearms, the knife laws seemed almost comical. Well, pretty much everything on this side of things was like that.
The location had poor transportation access, so I had to walk quite a bit to reach my destination. It was the exact same hideout where our team had captured Dr. Oh in the previous timeline. Seeing two suspicious-looking men loitering outside the deserted factory confirmed I had the right place.
"Code name: Kali. Deploying."
Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction. That had been my code name during my time in the Special Task Force. It was a past I wanted to forget, but for today I needed to become that person again.
My physical stats were roughly thirty to forty percent of what they'd been at my peak. My superpowers were still far from their former level, but they were more than enough to handle some villain trash.
"I'll cover my face just in case... but it'd be best if no one leaves here alive."
I set down the bag I'd prepared in the corner and picked up my tools with both hands. Then I approached as stealthily as possible, avoiding their line of sight, waiting for the right moment to strike.
The guards didn't seem to think anyone would come to such a remote location. They were quite relaxed. These guys didn't even seem to be superhumans—what exactly were they relying on to be so bold? They were even giggling together, sharing some amusing story. They must not have been through much yet.
"Huh? Who—urk!"
"You son of a—gack."
Then they had to die. This world was a cold place where letting your guard down meant you were finished, right?
While they were distracted by their conversation, I crept up behind them and drove the blades in. The target was the nape of the neck. It was the cleanest method that minimized noise. Wasting time on low-level grunts who weren't even superhumans would be an insult to my career.
After silencing the two of them in an instant, I immediately searched their belongings. They didn't even have proper security systems in place yet—there weren't any communication devices like earpieces. From what I could see, they didn't have CCTV either. This really was the early stage.
"But... they've got guns?"
Their armament was surprisingly decent. Even these pathetic underlings were carrying pistols. If the lookouts had handguns, I might need to account for rifles as well. With superhuman villains taking over the back alleys, gun-toting thugs had become more common, so seeing firearms wasn't strange. Still, if there were too many opponents, it could get tiring. At my current level of power, I couldn't block incoming bullets yet.
"Not that I don't have ways around it..."
Reminding myself once more that the enemy had guns, I quietly made my way into the abandoned factory.