Thunderclaps 3: Chapter 2 - Infinity Battle

“We cannot change the decisions made by our countries’ governments or stop the will of our peoples. But we refuse to use our god-given powers to assist this conflict.”

(1973, joint announcement made by Israeli and Egyptian superheroes during the Fourth Arab–Israeli War)

 

“Huh? Where did she go?”

After losing sight of Flare, Snow Wing’s gaze wandered around the 19^th floor. Flare had vanished just as Snow Wing had her cornered.

“This will not end well if I can’t find her.”

The announcer’s head moved nervously side to side until the ceiling shattered above her.

She looked up in surprise to find a fist flying toward her. She immediately used her wings.

“Too slow!”

Flare’s right fist caught Snow Wing on the neck.

“Agh!”

The single blow knocked Snow Wing unconscious. Her wings went limp, her body lost its lift, and Flare caught her in her arms.

“I’m not about to lose to a rookie. It wasn’t my Offbeat powers that won this; it was my combat instincts.”

Flare descended to the 16^th floor with the unconscious announcer in her arms and laid Snow Wing down in the living room sofa there. She viewed the woman’s peacefully sleeping face and sighed.

“With a pretty face like that, I can see how she got a job as a TV announcer. So is she being mind-controlled?”

The images of several Offbeat criminals with brainwashing powers came to mind. She could come up with more than 30 suspects off the top of her head.

“But not many of them would have the guts to attack the Justice Circus HQ. Hm?”

Unconscious Snow Wing’s throat was twitching. Her lips parted and moved like she was muttering something.

“What? Do you have something to say?”

Flare moved her ear down toward Snow Wing’s lips. At that exact moment, the sleeping announcer’s mouth opened wide and black smoke emerged from her throat, passed her tonsils, and left her mouth.

“Wh-what the hell!?”

The smoke covered Flare’s face. But unlike with real smoke, this smoke crawled along her skin in a way that inspired a biological disgust.

She scratched at her face and small black objects dropped to the floor, each with six skinny legs. She crushed a few of them below her boots, but most of them opened their backs, spread their wings, and took flight to swarm her again.

“Bugs! These are bugs!”

What had looked like black smoke was in fact a swarm of small scarab beetles. They gathered on her arms, legs, and body while she was busy getting them off her face. Of course, a swarm of bugs couldn’t actually harm her. Not even a swarm of hornets could scratch her skin.

But a bizarre sensation hit her. The strength drained from her body and she had trouble even staying on her feet.

(They’re draining my strength! Could these be the bugs controlled by Damned Beetle, who Captain Sky fought once?)

The computer at the Thunderclaps’ home had data on Damned Beetle, saying he controlled energy-draining insects.

(But he was permanently sealed between dimensions ten years ago.)

While she thought, the strength left her knees and her hips hit the floor. Her upper body toppled over and landed on Snow Wing’s suited chest. The scarab beetles on her face swarmed to her back.

With her vision recovered, she saw a beautiful man had entered Snow Wing’s private room at some point.

He looked so perfect you would think a genius artist must have carved him out of pure white marble. He had a slender build and sparkling white skin. His build and skin could also have been described as gaunt and sickly, but he still had a beauty that charmed the souls of all who laid eyes on him.

His long silver hair and the black leather belts wrapped around his body in lieu of ordinary clothing both added to his charm.

Flare twisted her head to the side while using Snow Wing’s soft chest as a pillow. Her movements were maddeningly slow.

“Are you Damned Beetle?”

“I am.” His pale lips moved, producing a voice similar to a clear whistle. “And you must be Flare-kun, the superheroine praised as the strongest in Japan ever since the year 2000. Offbeat society has changed a lot in the decade I was away, so I am honored I could meet this generation’s greatest hero.”

“I thought you were sealed in the dimensional void?”
“I was. It was painful. I can only describe it as an eternal hell. But I was rescued and brought back by the Emperor of the Dark Arena.”

“Who’s this emperor? And what’s the Dark Arena?”

“The Dark Arena is a place dedicated to the most wonderful joy and pleasure. You will know all about it before long.”

“Like hell I will!” roared Flare.

She planted her hands on the sofa, clenched her teeth, and pushed herself up. Her fingertips tore the sofa’s leather and its stuffing came out.

She stood up with the dark demon bugs still swarming her.

“Fantastic! A normal human would have been killed after losing so much energy, but you can still move. Through the bugs, I can feel the wonderful quantities of energy within you. But your resistance ends here.”

Damned Beetle snapped his skinny fingers. The scarab beetles swarming Flare began moving all the more. A groan escaped her throat.

“Agh! Ahh!”

The strength left only her arms and legs this time. She could remain standing, but she couldn’t clench a fist or throw a kick.

However, she felt a different change in her torso. Heat was gathering around her chest and lower stomach.

“Wh-what? Ah, ahh.”

The heat in those places gradually grew until it took on a clear shape. Flare finally realized the meaning of the heat she felt.

These were sexual flames. Sexual desire was poured into her body against her will.

“Wh-what is this?”

“I can sense everything you are feeling, Flare-kun. My bugs do not just take energy away. They can concentrate energy and send it into you, activating a specific part of your body. They are currently pouring energy into the sexual parts of your body.”

“Did you think I would give up if you did that?”

“Look, your desire is already running wild.”

A sinister smile spread across his pale face. The scarab beetles all began to move.

“Ahhhh!”

Flare arched her back and collapsed onto Snow Wing’s stomach. The beetles slipped through the neck, arm, and leg holes of her white costume.

“Eek, s-stop!”

The feeling of their legs on her skin was enough to provide a tingling sensation. The march of the insects stimulated her sensitive body. It was a vivid, frustrating, and maddening kind of pleasure, like being tickled all over with brushes.

“Ahh, khh, ahn.”

She couldn’t help but twist her body and press her thighs together. Her hands subconsciously grasped at Snow Wing’s arms and legs below her.

“Ahh, ahn, n-not there!”
The swarm of bugs had made its way inside her bra. Countless insect legs ascended those soft mountains that were nowhere near as large as Star Thunder’s.

“Ahh, ah, ahhhh!”

A feeling no human could ever provide surrounded both her breasts. They must have been injecting energy into her breasts at the same time because a tingling static-like feeling reached the inside of the mounds. The unfamiliar but intense stimulation created sweet surges of electricity inside her. Her breasts reacted by growing aroused. She felt short of breath with her costume pressing on her chest. Her nipples grew hard, pushing back at the solid material of the costume.

“Ahh, kh, nhh, hh.”

“Oh? Your body isn’t quite human, is it?”

“Sh-shut up.”

Damned Beetle’s words brought her further humiliation. She was technically not human at all. She was an artificial human created from the molecular level as a slave soldier for the genius mad scientist named Doctor Disorder. She officially claimed to be 19, but she had actually been born less than 2 years ago.

Even with so many people accepting her as a superhero, it still weighed on her heart that she was secretly the product of a vicious criminal who had spread fear and chaos around the world. You could even say that origin was the reason she fought as a hero in the first place.

But the clearly inhuman Damned Beetle knew none of that inner turmoil and kept his tone light.

“Then again, not many Offbeats can be said to be fully human.”

“Shut up. What would a criminal like you know about Offbea- ahhh!”

An insect arrived at her right nipple. Another one reached her left nipple. An intensely sweet jolt raced from the tips of her breasts to the rest of her body, melting her spine and boiling her brain.

“St- ah, stop! Not there! Ahhhh!”

The scarab beetles obeyed their instincts instead of any kind of intelligence and they had just found a fleshy hole to dig inside. The two black bugs shoved their heads inside the holes at the tip of her nipples.

“Kh!”

Sparks of tingling carnal pleasure exploded inside her nipples. She shook her head wildly and heated moans left her throat.

Flare’s nipples were built completely differently from a normal human’s and they provided incredible pleasure. Doctor Disorder had created her breasts as sensitive sexual organs so that his artificial human could be a greater sex slave than any human.

Her nipples were stiff on the outside, but the narrow passageway within was soft and warm. The scarab beetles used their six legs to crawl their way deeper and deeper.

The poking of their legs elicited a series of damp cries from Flare.

“Ah, ahh, ahhh!”

The rubbing of their round backs brought a moan of even deeper pleasure.

“Oh, ohhhh!”

Two little bugs had shoved her into an abyss of pleasure the likes of which she had never before experienced. The carnal torture was not over yet, however. After the first ones, another bug dug down into the holes. More and more pushed inside her nipples like they were gathering around some sweet tree sap.

“Ahhh, a-another one? There are so many of them in there, ahh.”

Having her nipples expanded from within was concerning. The wriggling bugs arrived deep in her breasts, digging up further pleasure and melting them from within.

“Ohhh…nhhh, no, wait!”

Flare pushed out her chest as several powerful tremors ran through her. A pressure different from the bugs rapidly grew inside her breasts. She bit her lip to suppress the humiliating noises she was making.

(At this rate, these bugs will make me cum in front of a criminal. I can’t let that happen. It’s too much.)

But no matter how much her mind rejected it, the sensitive body created by her father was approaching climax. The growing breast pleasure and the increasing internal pressure finally pushed the moans past her bit lip.

“Ahh, no, it’s happening! My nipples are cumming!”

Pleasure erupted inside her breasts. Hot magma quickly rose through them.

“Ahhhhhh!”

The beetles inside her nipples were pushed back out again.

A white liquid sprayed from both nipples inside her costume.

“Ahhhhhh! My milk! My milk! Ohhh, I’m cumming, my boobs are cumming!”

The thick breast milk continued flowing for more than five full minutes. The whole time, her body trembled and she cried out in orgasm.

“Ahh…ahh…”

The afterglow settled in while the milk-soaked chest of her costume rose and fell. The white liquid dripped down from her miniskirt and formed a puddle on the floor. The milk was escaping through the crotch and butt of her bodysuit.

Damned Beetle spoke up in awe of the mixture of sexuality and lurid he saw in Flare now.

“Spectacular. You eject large quantities of breast milk when you climax? Your lewd body is a wonderful surprise. By the way, what is that lifting up your skirt?”

Flare quickly turned her heavy head toward her lower body.

“Ahh!”

Something was pushing her skirt up from below and trembling. Just like an erect penis would. Her beautiful face stiffened at her body’s unwanted reaction.

(It’s erect. He just saw my secret.)

Flare’s penis was another product of Doctor Disorder’s twisted desires. The penis normally remained hidden within her body, so the only people who had known about it were her Thunderclaps teammates, her father Disorder, and Eclipse, a sister artificial human created by the same mad scientist. Her father was currently held in the rebuilt National Ogasawara Super Maximum Security Prison, but her sister had escaped and remained at large.

Flare tried to hide the embarrassing secret, but her arms and legs felt as heavy as stone and refused to move. She tried to will the erection away, but she knew all too well that it never went away until she had ejaculated several times.

She trembled in humiliation as Damned Beetle approached with a grin. Terror’s icy hand clutched at the hero’s heart.

(He’s going to torment my penis!)

She tensed, but he walked right past her, reached out a skinny arm, and touched Snow Wing’s forehead where she still lay unconscious below Flare.

“Rise and shine, birdie.”

He emitted something from his pale fingertip and Snow Wing’s eyelids rose. The other hero looked confused and the young man smiled down at her.

“Use your hands and mouth to pleasure Flare-kun’s fat cock.”

Snow Wing’s eyes widened when she the bulge in Flare’s miniskirt.

“Ahh! It can’t be.”

Flare looked away, trying to avoid the other woman’s shocked gaze.

“Please, Snow Wing. Don’t look.”

“Oh, I-I’m sorry, Flare-san.”

Snow Wing tried to turn away, but Damned Beetle grabbed her shoulders. He dragged her out from under Flare and lowered her to the floor. Then he had her kneel between Flare’s legs. The skirt’s bulge was right in front of the blushing announcer’s face now.

Snow Wing’s tearful voice reached confused Flare’s ears.

“I really am sorry, but I have no choice.”

“Why is a member of the Justice Circus obeying this villain?”

“The Dark Arena has installed a bomb in an elementary school somewhere and they will detonate it if I don’t obey.”

“No…” Flare was dumbfounded, but she finally nodded. “Fine. Do as he says.”

“Flare-san.”

Snow Wing looked up at the more experienced hero. Snow Wing was older, but she looked younger – partially because of her smaller breasts and butt.

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

Snow Wing hesitantly reached out her hands and grabbed the bottom of Flare’s miniskirt. She slowly pulled it up, bringing the abnormal sight below into view for Snow Wing and Flare herself.

The crotch of her bodysuit had a large bulge in it. The already stretchy material was wet with her milk and clinging to the object below enough to clearly make out the shape of a penis head.

Flare’s size rivalled that of Snow Wing’s lover Captain Sky, aka Kashima Kengo. Its great girth and length contrasted her feminine waist.

The shape of aroused and partially opened labia showed through below the erection.

Snow Wing’s fingers grabbed the edge of the wet bodysuit and pulled it aside.

“Ohh!”

The rubbing of the material made Flare moan. Her confined penis sprang out in front of Snow Wing’s eyes and the announcer gasped in awe.

“Wow…”

She sighed and stared intently at it. She saw a penis so erect it looked ready to ejaculate at any moment and below that she saw a vulva dripping with nectar thanks to the beetles. An erect clitoris was poking out at the top of the vulva.

Snow Wing let the body suit catch on the base of the penis and let go. The stretchy white material dug hard into Flare’s female flesh.

“Ahh!”

The rubbing of her costume fried her nerves with pleasure and she could not bear to have Snow Wing staring at her exposed crotch.

“Please, Snow Wing. H-hurry.”

“O-okay, Flare-san. Excuse me.”

Snow Wing’s slender fingers touched the erect shaft.

“Kh!”

Flare pressed her back against the sofa, causing it to creak.

“Oh, it’s so warm,” said the announcer.

“Ah, ahh, h-hurry.”

“Right.”

Snow Wing lowered her head and touched her lips against the twitching tip. A hot jolt ran from her lips to the head and down the shaft.

“Eeek!”

Flare’s untouched labia spread wide and the flesh within squirmed. Love juices flowed from deep within. The clitoris positioned just below the penis grew even larger and throbbed.

She could feel the semen circling in search of an exit within the testicles contained in her stomach.

(Ahh, I’m not going to last long like this.)

Snow Wing repeatedly kissed the head, rubbing her saliva on it and poking the tip with her tongue. Each touch of her tongue made Flare’s head rock back and forth.

“Ah, nh, nhh, ah, ahh.”

The technique drilled into Snow Wing’s body made Flare moan. She hated how she ended up using the technique she had learned in the Dark Arena.

The announcer fully swallowed the saliva-covered head, surrounding it with her mouth and licking at it with her tongue.

“Nh, nhh, mh.”

“Ahh, ahh, ahhh!”

Snow Wing used her full mouth to pleasure the head while also stroking the shaft with her right hand. With a man, she would have fondled the balls with her left hand, but Flare didn’t have any. Instead, she skillfully pulled back the clitoral hood and rubbed the clitoris between her fingers. Flare’s moans grew even louder.

“Ahh, th-there too? Ahh!”

This was something Snow Wing had learned how to do when the Dark Arena made her perform lesbian shows with the other Justice Circus women.

“Ahh, wait! Wait, Snow Wing! I’m cumming!”

Flare’s penis had already been fired up by Damned Beetle’s bugs, so the Dark Arena sex slave’s refined technique brought her to climax in no time. Her hips hopped up on their own, shoving her dick down Snow Wing’s throat.

“Ahhh, I’m cumming!”

“Nh, ghh!”

Snow Wing gagged but reflexively used her throat to squeeze the entire erection. She also gave a strong twist of Flare’s clit.

Flare’s testicles opened the floodgates and her semen was released. The pleasure of the semen rising through her erection began a flash of light that dyed her mind white.

“I’m cummiiiiiiiiiing!!”

“Agh, nhhhh!!”

The dreadfully powerful ejaculation shot down Snow Wing’s throat. It was far too much for her to swallow, so she pulled the cock from her mouth and let it shoot cum all over her face instead. The clitoral climax also made love juices squirt from Flare’s pussy, soaking Snow Wing’s chest.

“Ahhh…”

“Cough…ugh.”

Flare collapsed back into the sofa after experiencing two climaxes at once and Snow Wing coughed back up a lot of woman semen. That was when they heard the demon shaped like a pale young man speaking.

“A splendid show. I just know a joint performance between the Thunder Claps and the Justice Circus will be the best attraction the Dark Arena could ever hope for. Oh, and your show just now was broadcast live to the entire audience.”

“Wh-what?”

Flare looked up with sweat soaking her flushed face and Damned Beetle responded with a charming smile.

“The same is true of the other six women too, of course.”

 

“Uh, oh. She’s going to drown.”

Seeing Star Thunder sinking unconscious below the water, Silver Bullet quickly jumped in the pool. She dove faster than a fish to grab Star Thunder and emerge from the surface.

She pulled Star Thunder over to the poolside to keep her head above water.

“Explaining this to her later on is going to be diff- gyahhhhhhhh!!!”

Just as she placed her hand on the edge of the pool, bluish-white electricity surged out across the pool. Silver Bullet was instantly knocked out and sank to the bottom of the pool. Conversely, Star Thunder came to and treaded water.

“Sigh. That worked well. I’m glad I trained for this.”

Star Thunder had used self-suggestion and training to make sure she would automatically create enough electricity to shock her brain awake if she was knocked unconscious. That would else send enough of a current around her to damage the enemy who was bound to be nearby.

“I didn’t expect the first victim to be someone on our side, though.”

In a reversal of earlier, Star Thunder scooped up Silver Bullet and climbed onto the poolside. She laid the woman’s limp body on a nearby deck chair.

“I need to ask her what is going on- ah!”

Unconscious Silver Bullet’s hand shot out and grabbed Star Thunder’s wrist.

“Impressive, Rindou Rei. Or should I call you Rindorek?”
“How do you know my name from my home planet!?”

Star Thunder looked down at Silver Bullet in surprise, but the woman was still fully unconscious from the electric shock.

Except her eyelids rose, revealing eyes dyed a dark red with no distinction between the whites and the pupil.

The red-eyed woman sat up with the force of a jack-in-the-box. With her wrist still in the woman’s grasp, Star Thunder watched as Silver Bullet’s hair stirred unusually and then rose.

Her forehead split open below her bangs and something like a dark drill tip emerged. More of the same emerged above her ears, giving her a total of three twisted horns on her head.

“It can’t be. Are you Malign Gale!?”

That tragedy had occurred three years ago when Rindou Rei had only just left her home planet and arrived on her mother’s home planet of Earth. Suwa Natsuko, a college student majoring in archeology, had unleashed a legendary monster sealed in a doll she had excavated in Africa. Natsuko had been possessed by the monster, turning her into a monster that ran at supersonic speed and spread chaos and destruction wherever she went.

The monster that transformed a promising young student into a monster was the Malign Gale, which a certain African tribe feared more than death itself.

The Justice Circus had fought the monster and finally separated it from the student. Malign Gale had been sealed in a new doll and sunk to the bottom of the Japan Trench.

Suwa Natsuko had been freed, but the monster had left her a gift: the power to move at supersonic speed. Upon learning she was a speed Offbeat, she had chosen to join the Justice Circus.

And that Suwa Natsuko was now known as Silver Bullet, the current leader of the Justice Circus.

“I am indeed known as the Malign Gale.”

Silver Bullet’s mouth produced a deep voice similar to a sandstorm. It sounded nothing like her own voice.

At the same time, the horn on her forehead split vertically, revealing a new red eyeball glowing at the base.

“The Emperor of the Dark Arena fished me out of the deep, dark depths. And now I must make up for three years’ worth of pent-up hunger. Hya ha ha ha ha ha!”

The monster cackled vulgarly and the disturbing sound of tearing flesh came from the possessed hero’s back. The back of Silver Bullet’s costume tore and several twisted horns grew out. From Star Thunder’s perspective, they looked like giant spider legs.

The hard-looking horns wriggled around and tangled themselves around Star Thunder’s curves. Silver Bullet’s monster-controlled hands squeezed Star Thunder’s large breasts.

“Hya hya ha ha ha. These are the best tits I’ve ever felt. You are well worth devouring.”

After that announcement of pure desire, the horns on Star Thunder’s shoulders, around her upper arms, atop her stomach and butt, and between her thighs split apart at the tip. Star Thunder wrinkled her brow and groaned.

“Ugh, khh.”

She was surrounded by what smelled like rotting flesh. It was a strange smell because it also stimulated something deep in her brain, filling her with a sexual feeling. The smell came from the dark red penis heads that emerged from the split horns. The dozen or so rock-hard penis heads were dripping with a sticky fluid that gave off the rotting stench.

They pressed against her cheeks and rubbed their goop all over them.

A disgusted groan grew in her throat.

“Ah, ahhh.”

Two more penis heads slipped between the fingers squeezing her breasts and pressed against the nipples through her costume. More crawled along her stomach and back, making her even stickier.

They naturally rubbed their goop on and between her butt cheeks too. Two of them found her crotch and vibrated against it, squirting out their stickiness the whole time.

“Ka ka ka ka ka. How does it feel being violated by a hideous monster?”

“It could be a fascinating experience. Too bad you can’t make good on your threat.”

Star Thunder draped her arms around the monster’s neck like she was embracing a lover. Then she activated her Offbeat power.

Instead of generating electricity, she absorbed the electricity from Silver Bullet’s neck. The nerve impulse the human brain sent out to move the body was a weak electrical current. By absorbing those impulses from the brainstem before they could reach the body, she could fully incapacitate someone. This was her ace in the hole.

Silver Bullet shouldn’t have been able to move, yet her hands groped Star Thunder’s chest even harder.

“What? How?”

The monster’s red third eye narrowed.

“Ka ka ka ka ka ka ka. Give up. Who the hell do you think I am? Physical attacks are meaningless against a monster without a physical body. Now to fuck you while you beg me to stop! Hya ha ha ha ha ha!”

“Nooooo!”

Screams and sticky, fleshy noises rang across the pool’s surface.

 

Metal quickly covered Kitahara Shizuko’s face, recreating the head of her Rose Device armor. However, she was immobilized by a magical scroll and unable to activate the weapons installed within.

Madam Scroll’s kind voice mocked her from behind.

“It’s no use. Science is powerless against my scrolls.”

“It is true my armor’s sensors cannot analyze this scroll. However…”

Shizuko converted her thoughts into EM waves to directly access an external unit using the nanomodules that formed her brain.

Five small disks attached to the workshop ceiling emitted highly-directional ultrasonic waves on a single point.

“Gweeeeeee!”

The five soundwaves intersected on Madam Scroll, causing her to freeze in place. The soundwave weapon had zapped her brain, knocking her out. The Madam collapsed to the floor and the scroll came free of the armor to follow its master to the floor.

“That worked well. I never imagined I would have to test it here.”

Shizuko had learned how powerless she was against magic during a previous battle against an Arabian djinn. She had concluded her only chance against magical Offbeats was to catch them by surprise, so she had built a weapon that could be remote controlled.

However, she was unaware that her leader had said much the same thing. Or what happened to that leader afterwards.

“That was just embarrassing, my niece. You bring shame to the Ryuengi name by letting science get the better of you.”

Once again, something had appeared in the room that her armor’s composite sensors had entirely failed to detect. She turned her face toward the voice.

“Eh? How?”
She had heard the voice. She could determine someone’s location down to the millimeter using their voice. The echoing of the sound told her this adult woman was hanging upside down from the ceiling.

But she couldn’t see anyone there. She could only see the ceiling and wall behind where this new intruder had to be. Her sensors would have detected something if this woman had erected a polarization field to bend the light around her or if she had chemically turned her body tissue transparent, but Shizuko’s armor failed to detect anything.

In fact, the voice was all she could detect. She could not sense the beating of a heart or body temperature. For Rose Device, this person might as well not exist if not for their voice.

“This is impossible. Just impossible.”

“Ho ho ho ho ho. Let me guess – you’re confused because you can’t see me.” The woman’s haughty laughter inspired further anxiety in Shizuko. “You’re a cyborg, aren’t you? If your senses are purely mechanical, then you can never see me no matter what you might try. After all, vampires have no reflection and thus cannot be captured by any type of lens. No machine can detect us.”

“Y-you’re a vampire!?”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance. I am Countess Cruel, Madam Scroll’s aunt and the most powerful spellcaster of the ancient Ryuengi family. I also happen to be the widow of Count Mackenzie, a vampire who haunted the Scottish nights.”

If djinns existed, it shouldn’t be surprising for vampires to exist too. Shizuko had even heard news of American and European superheroes battling vampires. She also knew vampires could not be photographed. But it was only after encountering one for herself that she realized just how inhuman she had become herself.

“But that doesn’t make senses. How is a vampire out and about before the sun sets?”

“Ho ho ho ho. I know how to protect my skin from the sun.”

Rose Device couldn’t see it, but the vampire widow hanging upside down from the ceiling was fully covered by a black outfit similar to a diver’s wetsuit. The material that kept out her greatest foe – the sunlight – was skintight, so it showed off a body even more alluring than Madam Scroll’s. Above the neck, she wore a mask covered in the same material as mirror shades.

But a vampire being here during the day didn’t frighten Rose Device as much as how the Countess’s voice was moving.

She could detect no other evidence of motion. If the Countess hadn’t been speaking, Rose Device would have no way of knowing where she was.

(I can’t see her, but I do know she’s in this room.)

Rose Device sent commands to her external units. A great din roared through the entire workshop. The volume was loud enough to not just burst a human’s eardrums but possibly kill them from shock. Rose Device switched off her armor’s sound pickup.

“Ho ho ho ho. Did you really think you could harm a vampire with this?”
A cold and sickly sweet voice rang inside her supposedly deaf armor.

The voice was located just outside her right ear.

“Kyah!”

Rose Device – no, the 17-year-old girl named Kitahara Shizuko – had never experienced fear like this, so she panicked and did something she never would have done otherwise.

She aimed her left hand at her right shoulder and fired the anti-tank machinegun installed on the wrist where the Countess’s face had to be. With the deep booms of gunfire, the ricocheting bullets rapidly turned the Justice Circus’s valuable equipment to scraps. The machinegun quickly ran out of ammo.

The dry clicking of the empty gun were joined by another hair-raising voice. It was still located above her right shoulder.

“It’s no use.”

“Eek!”

“And now it’s my turn.”

The glittering mask parted to the sides and the vampire widow’s alluring face appeared. She didn’t need the mask in this underground workshop. Shizuko could not see her beautiful crimson eyes or damp scarlet lips.

Her magic-imbued fangs easily pierced the metal protecting Shizuko’s neck. They entered the girl’s skin and arrived at her artery.

“Ahhhhhh!”

A scream echoed through the workshop.

It was Shizuko’s scream as she was reduced from a superhero to a girl quaking with inhuman terror.

 

Ocelot held her knees in her arms while floating in infinite darkness.

She was motionlessly curled up in the fetal position. Her triangular animal ears were drooping and her tail was curled up.

“Any superhero would be powerless here.” Cemetery walked through a darkness with no up or down. “Because this place – this gap – is my own personal world.”

Nanjou Shino’s father had called it the shadow dimension.

It was the underside of the world. The world found below every single shadow. None of the world’s languages had a word for it. Why would they when only Shino’s father had ever been able to move freely to and from the shadow dimension? He had used his unique Offbeat power to work as the dark superhero Mister Unfair.

Twelve years ago, when Shino had been 5, his power to enter the shadow dimension had transferred to her. She still didn’t know why, but it meant she could move freely through shadows now.

She had used that power to become the lone wolf street gang named Cemetery.

Cemetery spoke to Ocelot again.

“The Thunderclaps’ magician is no exception. You will go insane soon enough.”

Matter could not exist in the shadow dimension. There wasn’t a single photon of light or decibel of sound. Neither Cemetery nor her father knew how they could move through a space without matter. Or how they could see without any light.

For anyone but her, this space was even more lonely and empty than being adrift in the vacuum of space. Not even the strongest mind could bear it. They would be overwhelmed by infinite terror, panic, and finally lose their mind. Even the coldhearted criminals Mister Unfair had trapped there had been reduce to utter cowards.

Cemetery continued talking to herself because even she got restless when she couldn’t hear her own voice here.

She peered into motionless Ocelot’s face and placed her arms around her back.

“But I’ll let you out before that happens. This much should only knock you out for about an hour.”
“How kind of you, meow!”

Ocelot’s right arm shot out like a snake striking at its prey. Her claws caught Cemetery on the neck. She only applied a weak grip, but if she squeezed even a little, her claws would pierce the blood vessels in Cemetery’s neck.

“What? How are you still conscious in the shadow dimension?”
Ocelot pulled back her lips to bare her carnivore fangs.

“I don’t know who you are, but you shouldn’t underestimate South America’s strongest shaman, meow.”

“H-have you been in the shadow dimension before?
“No, this place is new, meow. But the Amazon’s beasts thrive in the darkest nights. I can see without light. I’m not afraid of the dark.”

“I see. Then I will show you what true darkness is.”

A third voice spread throughout the shadow dimension.

“Meow?”

“When the hell did you get here?”
Both of them used their shadow-piercing vision to view their surroundings. Then they realized that the shadows themselves were moving to surround them.

The living shadows poured down on Ocelot and Cemetery like a landslide.

“Meowwwwwwww!”

“Stop this, Nether Brute! Agh!”

The shadows entered their mouths and used every available hole to fill their bodies.

After engulfing those two, the shadows began moving with a slow satisfaction.

 

Intermission 2

 

A jet flew across the Pacific.

Its shape would have puzzled any of the world’s aviation experts and it was uncannily silent for a jet.

Three seats were lined up, one behind the other. The frontmost one acted as the cockpit and the person operating the heavy-duty controls looked terribly out of place there. An old woman with her gray hair done up nicely wore a brand new pilot suit and a helmet shaped as strangely as the plane. Outfit aside, she would have looked more at home sipping tea atop the tatami mats in an old-fashioned Japanese home.

She twisted around behind her while flying the jet over the ocean.

“How do you like the new jet my husband and I developed together? This one includes quite a few of my own ideas.”

“I love it, Azusa-san. I would expect nothing less from Professor Hoshiyama – no, from both the Hoshiyamas.”

Kashima Kengo, an elderly man with his gray hair hidden below a helmet, directed a charming smile toward Hoshiyama Azusa.

“You always did have a way with words. But what good is seducing an old lady like me anyway?”
“I could always use a partner my own age.”

“Liar. I know you’re dating that Snow Wing girl.”

“Nothing gets past you, does it?”

Kengo had a playboy look on his face when Nanjou Shuhei tapped on his helmet from the rearmost seat. He set the microphone in his helmet so only Kengo could hear him and started complaining.

“Hey. Why are you all over Granny Hoshiyama?”

“I have to be. Her husband is the only person I know who we can ask to borrow a stealth aircraft no questions asked. And he was insistent that Azusa-san pilot it. Besides, who better for the job than the legendary pilot Comet Hawk?”
“Old age hasn’t slowed you down at all,” grumbled Shuhei, looking upset.

“She promised to wait for us from a safe distance, so it’ll be fine. And it hasn’t slowed you down any either.”

“Azusa is five years older than us.”

“Oh? And who was it that got into some hot water after falling in love with a certain older married woman way back when? I shudder to think what would have happened if the media got wind of that superhero cheating scandal.”

“Hmph.”

Shuhei twisted his mouth into a frown and kept his retort to himself.

(This is why I wanted to stay far away from our old friends.)