The Black Cling-Suit Hero
Even after all this time, certain memories remained etched in Ellyse Bertman’s mind with unusual clarity. The paths each person had walked in life. Among them, the footprints carved deepest. For some, it might be the moment they were scolded by their parents or a teacher. For others, the radiant smile of a first love, or the stinging pain of scraped knees on asphalt. Because every road traveled was different, the vivid marks left behind were equally unique. Everyone would recall something different.
In Ellyse Bertman’s case, a rookie inspector in the Special Affairs Division of the Central City Police Department, the memory that lingered was of the hero she had encountered as a child.
Boom!
The head of a house-sized monster exploded like a firework. Shards flew in every direction. The young girl stared at the scene in blank astonishment. Footsteps rang out through her tear-blurred vision. Fearfully, she lifted her head. At the same time, the face that had towered far above her crouched down. In an instant, it drew closer. Their eyes finally met at the same height.
“……”
“……”
A long silence stretched between them. The girl’s heart pounded as violently as it had when she faced the monster, yet there was no terror. Ellyse raised a dusty hand and wiped her eyes with the relatively clean back of it. As she did, she studied her savior carefully yet discreetly, from head to toe. But she gained little insight. A pitch-black mask covered his face, presumably to conceal his identity, and an enormous cloak that could swallow his entire body draped over a skin-tight black suit. It was certainly an unusual outfit, yet at the time it felt impossibly distant from her everyday life.
A girl who still loved fairy tales had no way of guessing why he said nothing or what purpose such clothing served. She could only vaguely assume from his visible build that he was male.
Even as Ellyse reached that rather dull conclusion, the man remained silent. He neither helped the girl up from the ground nor comforted her. He simply watched. By then her tension had eased, and she tilted her head, openly studying the person before her from every angle. How much time passed like that? Roughly when her eyes had dried and her heartbeat had settled, he suddenly stood.
In the blink of an eye, the face she had been looking at rose high again. The man turned his back and began to walk away. He was leaving.
…Huh?
Startled by the unexpected departure, she scrambled up in a panic. She tried to say something, anything. But her still-racing heart refused to cooperate. Only choked, broken sounds and thin breaths escaped her throat. Her trembling legs kept her from chasing after him even belatedly.
“……”
She could only stare. She never managed to thank him for saving her, or ask who he was. The question she had wanted to pose—if there was time—about whether he liked black clothes and skin-tight suits, remained buried. All she could do was stand there, sobbing bitterly without a word as his back receded into the distance. Thinking that her prince was taciturn, cold, and incredibly dark…
The police arrived at the scene not long after.
Time passed, and Ellyse outgrew her fairy tales. She came to accept the truth: there was no prince in this world who existed solely for her. The black cling-suit man she had met as a child was simply someone to be grateful for. He wasn’t a fairy-tale prince. Look, she would tell herself. She had waited so long, yet he never showed his face again.
She repeated it endlessly, doing her best to normalize the memory that had been romanticized until the monster-strewn road looked like a flower path. She tried to erase the tears she had shed while waiting for her destined husband. As she wished, the traces of sorrow grew fainter and duller with time. But erasing them completely proved impossible.
The most dramatic moment of one’s life becomes the greatest turning point, and for a young girl it was more than enough reason to give birth to a dream. Ellyse, who had once longed to become a fairy-tale princess, changed her path. She would become a Hero. She would devote her own life to saving someone else’s. She dreamed of that noble ideal.
It was not some fleeting childhood delusion that lasted only three days. It remained an earnest wish and vivid reality even now that she was an adult. Ellyse Bertman became a police officer. Not just any officer—she belonged to the Special Affairs Division, the department with the strictest recruitment standards and the highest mortality rate within the Central City Police Department.
At nineteen years old, she had thrown her life into the cause of public safety. It was the path of repayment she had chosen instead of the youth and romance of her teenage years. The crybaby from her childhood had become a hero.
“Fifteen deaths by instant cranial destruction, three by exsanguination following thoracic penetration. The warehouse’s outer wall shows a jagged breach, concentrated bullet marks in that direction, scattered impact traces throughout the interior, and signs of crushing in multiple locations.”
And now Ellyse was undergoing her probationary period to grow accustomed to Special Affairs Division duties. Accompanying her senior to observe post-incident cleanup was part of that process. It was more brutal than usual, but she thought this scene was no different from the rest.
“Inspector Bertman. What do you make of this?”
More precisely, she believed there was no way they could fail. If one person couldn’t do it, a colleague would help. Even if he failed, someone else in the division would succeed. As long as they worked together and never gave up, nothing was impossible for them.
Therefore, Ellyse answered her superior’s question without hesitation, offering her inference with confidence.
“Yes. Looking at the marks on the outer wall, it appears someone broke in using physical force rather than shells or thermal beams—”
Even though the opponent was estimated to be a monster capable of crushing containers, withstanding rifle rounds, and leaping up to ten meters in a single bound, it was the Special Affairs Division’s role to deal with such threats somehow. It was the duty of those responsible for the nation’s security. Ellyse believed this without a shred of doubt.
Her senior, having heard her passionate response, slowly nodded. He even clapped, replying in an impressed voice.
“Wow, as expected of Inspector Bertman. Your observational skills are impressive. Who would believe you’re only a first-month rookie?”
“No, it’s not that much…”
Ellyse reflexively offered a humble reply, but honestly she was delighted. It had taken her only a month to realize her senior was not one to give praise lightly. For a brief moment her mood soared and her guard slipped.
“Which is why, as a reward, you’re on three days of disciplinary confinement.”
“…Pardon?”
What? Disciplinary confinement?
At the abrupt statement, Ellyse blinked. Perhaps sensing her inner cry, her senior waved his hand with a smile and corrected himself.
“No, I mean your probationary period is over, so I’m giving you vacation. Why the shock? I’ll handle this case alone, so go rest up.”
“…Yes, sir.”
“Oh, and I’m glad you seem familiar with the scene now, but you missed one big clue. If you don’t bring back the corrected answer by the time you return, your disciplinary confinement will be extended.”
“……”
“Fight on. Fight on.”
With that, her senior patted her shoulder and left the scene. Watching his carefree retreating figure with a forlorn gaze, Ellyse Bertman thought,
This is hopeless.
I frowned, alternating my gaze between the freshly delivered report and the ‘Combat Suit’ visible beyond the glass window.
Reinforced exoskeleton, prototype Machine-0. A powered weapon that allowed the human species to surpass its physical limits, and a decisive weapon capable of securing overwhelming superiority in guerrilla warfare. It was the fruit of a project into which the company had poured considerable resources in every respect. And last night, stagnant field data for the project had finally been added.
“…The durability is certainly impressive.”
As expected, even after receiving a concentrated barrage of bullets for several seconds, the surface showed only faint scratches. There was no complete breakage or penetration anywhere on the entire body. It meant firearms were perfectly blocked. Since they had never expected it to withstand artillery shells, at least its durability could be considered to have reached practical combat capability.
That said, it was not so sluggish that its mobility was poor. The machine had been designed from the start to exceed the physical limits of the human body. It moved far faster than an ordinary person’s walking speed, and its strength was beyond comparison. Moreover, when output was increased, it could leap in a way that practically erased distance. In terms of raw ‘power,’ it had already surpassed humans and reached the level of monsters.
However, that also meant it required a tremendous amount of energy to compensate for the consumption. That was precisely the machine’s problem. Simply put, it was a premature-ejaculator that would run out of power after a single battle. Having experienced actual combat conditions rather than the test room, it was now painfully clear.
…I need to fix this before it can be used.
Deploying it only for short, decisive battles made no financial sense. It would be better to mass-produce a downgraded version with reduced output. Yet having already sunk so much money and manpower here, that felt like a waste. The chief researcher, reading my expression, spoke cautiously.
“Well… the output is simply too high…? A small battery can’t handle it. Unless we attach power cables to its back, we’ll need to develop an optimized electrical power source suited to this machine…”
“Just give me the main point, simply.”
Sensing that the explanation would drag on endlessly, I cut him off immediately. The chief researcher paused for a moment, then clasped both hands together and pleaded.
“Please allocate additional budget…”
It was the most predictable request. But it was also the correct one. Once the power source development was complete, the project would essentially be finished. Yes, the final stage. Considering the funds and researchers that had already been sacrificed, an additional expenditure hardly counted as a great sacrifice. Money was something I had in excess right now.
If I could at least know whether developing a power source optimized for the machine—rather than a generic battery—would take a month or a year, I would gladly open my wallet. But they couldn’t give a definite answer.
You people honestly can’t say whether this will take a month or a year, can you?
Instead of waiting in such uncertainty, it was only natural to be drawn to a magical method that could reach the destination quickly with just a slight detour. I had tried to avoid abusing it whenever possible, but with time running short, there was no helping it.
I looked at the chief researcher, whose eyes were sparkling with anticipation, and finally made my decision.
“It can’t be helped.”
Time to go meet that damned demon.