In which Thorvald mistakes KaiserIOT for WYOS:
There's a small sector of society that's been up in arms over the Korean government's mandatory long-form census since the day it was introduced, denouncing at least once a week what they purport to be an attack on "supers' rights". What these so-called activists—most of whom protest from the comfort of desk chairs half a world away—fail to understand is that Seoul really
does believe the national archive necessary, and I wholly sympathize with its rationale. After all, in a country that has seen the deaths of more supers in a year than most states have reported since 1945, one can't fault the government for scrabbling after every possible means it can find to aid, however marginally, our special brethren from shadowy people that one might almost suspect of
hunting the poor souls.
People like me.
Oh, Seoul is perfectly aware of
what is happening, even if it won't publicly admit it. Bodies turn up with clear markers as to how their lives were ended, and even if it's politically incorrect the state spooks would be fools
not to profile the prime suspect; their problem is, they find the cadavers in the remotest regions, where
anyone, super or otherwise, has no reason to be. Tracking down my lair has been the government's secret obsession since the Other was flung back into the void, and the census is one bland-but-not-impractical tool to help it divine concrete leads.
Take, for instance, the case of Donald Summers, or as he's known by his superhero alias, Fallout Boy. A high school science geek, he took after David Hahn, secretly assembling a breeder reactor in his backyard. According to his testimony he managed a sustained reaction... then got so excited that in a classic case of teenage clumsiness he accidentally blew it up. Rather than do the normal thing and die, he wound up a literal radioactive boy scout, not unlike Mr. Neytronov but less of a health hazard to the people around him.
Now, puberty can be a confusing time for anyone, but to be 18 and super? Don wasn't ready for the fame; at least, that's what he
told himself. He covered it up as best he could, refused to register his status with the relevant offices in his American homeland, and swore his friends to secrecy. So, according to
official records, Fallout Boy never existed. But, within about a year, he was bitten by the hero bug and started down the classic trail of the moonlight vigilante. Built up a fairly impressive career in it, too. So it wasn't the
fame he was averting, merely the
publicity, which, given the average life of a super, is a fairly wise course of action.
But, as you've probably discerned, his rapid rise was mirrored by an equally frantic fall. After taking out the Matador crime syndicate more or less single-handedly, his confidence went to his head and he started venturing outside his home turf. Oh, he did well in the South Pacific, if we discount his clandestine activities provoking political disputes between countries that mistook his wake as rival nuclear programmes... Then he sought to take on me. He
said he knew what he was getting into, in which case his bravado really was the stuff of legends. And yet
still, knowing
full well Korea's body count, he skirted registration at customs, since if he clocked in as a super his whole secret history would come to light.
Long story short, he entered Korea with too many presumptions about his own abilities and without any exit strategy (which, admittedly, few ever bother to consider). I suppose it didn't help that I have a guilty pleasure for the dramatic and deliberately lulled him into a false sense of accomplishment; hell, I even let him penetrate one of the main labs. But when we at last met face-to-face, him hulking like a Mike Magnum cosplayer, me leaning nonchalantly against the guardrail, I began to ponder if the press had overblown his previous exploits or if he'd just caught a lucky break. He, too, realized that he'd been boxing against lightweights his whole life. "Hwayeombangsagi," he breathed, clearly awestruck that I did, in fact, exist.
"Yes, that's my name." To say the truth, I
was impressed that this Yankee could not only navigate my 'full' name, but did so with the proper accent. As ever, I was ready to kill him on the spot. And from his posture he was a hair-trigger from launching into a full fight. But he'd lost the initiative and I opted to spend the next five minutes... just talking. Sadly for him, it wasn't the villainous spiel, it wasn't even much of a gloat; oh, I made sure to highlight the gaping maw of the deathtrap before us, pointed out the gravidic disruptors, laser-guided auto-turrets, the whole shebang, but as tête-à-tête's go, ours was uncharacteristically subdued. Looking back, I think
I was the one stalling.
Now, don't get me wrong: I was born outside the 'super era' and I don't subscribe to its house-rule ethics, but his bid to take me down was so
amateurish that I very nearly let him walk away. By which I mean, throw him out, because shaken though he was he clearly wouldn't leave without at least a token show of force. Nothing baffles me more than superheroes' (and indeed, some supervillains') willingness to
die just to prove a point. And die he did. Whatever pity I felt for Donald Summers' ill-timed enlightenment, he'd broken further into this base than even the triple-A grades usually managed (the deathtrap was actually designed for Typhoon Phil—yep, he was mine too) and I was not particularly enthused to have to relocate on such short notice. Besides which, it gave me the opportunity to test the labs' latest novelty, a radiation-cancelling nine-millimetre charge.
Make no mistake, Hwa-yeom isn't going soft, but for those bleeding-heart types I will confide that his death was quick and comparatively painless. Would've been even faster if the damned thing had performed to proper specs. As with all my opponents, right before shooting him I asked if he'd registered in the database, so that I might drop off the body near people that were expecting them; I'm cruel, not sadistic, so no sense dragging out anxieties. Since he hadn't, we dumped his corpse off the beach in Gunsan. It wasn't even concealed yet they didn't find it for two days; it took another week before they figured out he was a super, and half a month before his home country finally connected the dots.
So, please, if you
are a super, take twenty minutes and complete the form. Frankly, Seoul needs all the help it can get.
> update status JIMMY
> [rustling intensifies]
