Superheroes

by Margaret Ronald

  “What, you too?” grumbled E-Gui in English, and he dematerialized his free hand, plunging it into Blastman’s chest.

  “Bukkoroshite yaru zo,” Neko growled at E-Gui. I’m gonna beat you to death, it meant. Though he couldn’t speak Japanese, Wonjjang had heard her say it enough times to know what it meant.

  Kim and Iron Monkey revelled in the heroes’ discord, cackling. Kim’s other henchmen cautiously joined in a few moments later.

  Blastman looked at E-Gui in shock. “You’re my teammate. Are you going to … ?”

  “No!” E-Gui yelled. “Just … calm … down. What will happen if we kill Kim before we get the information we need?” Blastman nodded, and E-Gui extracted his hand from the American’s chest. “Now, help me with Wonjjang.” Blastman reluctantly grasped Wonjjang’s arms, restraining his onetime supervisor. Wonjjang struggled, his head full of images transmitted by Big Myoung: heroic fliers being shot down from the sky, descending broken with battle cries and farewells on their lips.

  “Where’s his mother?” E-Gui demanded in Korean.

  “Down there,” Kim gestured, further down the tunnel, where Iron Monkey had appeared. “Hurry, maybe you can grab her before the island gets blasted apart.”

  “How do we shut down the machine?”

  “Give me your choppers’ startup and override codes, and I’ll tell you … ”

  “Aie, sshiballoma!” Wonjjang roared, struggling again. “I’m gonna beat you till you cry, you baby-dog!” Blastman held him firmly but didn’t try to shut him up. “What do we need him for? He doesn’t know anything. Let me at him!”

  E-Gui switched to Chinese, speaking to Kim but eyeing Wonjjang carefully. But he was soon silenced by a loud sob.

  It was Laotzu. Wonjjang struggled against Blastman’s grip to turn and look at the Chinese-Korean shoopah, who was hunched over the body of Keun Dwaeji.

  “When I was young,” Laotzu said, sobbing, “my mother would give me comic books about real-life Korean shoopahs. She said it didn’t matter how ugly I was … that I could be a hero like Keun Dwaeji someday. Now,” Laotzu rose up, tearful. “He’s … dead.” He turned and began shouting at E-Gui in Chinese.

  They argued, their incomprehensible exchange crescendoing quickly and then falling apart. Wonjjang could feel Blastman’s attention wandering, his grip loosening by degrees while all those strange words flooded his mind. Wonjjang waited until Blastman was completely lulled into distraction, and then he tore himself free. Crouching quickly, he launched himself up and rebounded off the tunnel wall toward Kim, who was already making a move.

  Quick as an ajumma nabbing a seat on the subway, Wonjjang became a lethal weapon. Bouncing from wall to wall, Wonjjang spun himself round the axis of his hips, so that his feet were facing the Nork, and compressed himself like a spring. At the last moment, he slammed one foot outward. It connected with Kim’s face with a crack, and the Nork madman sailed up through the air above his henchmen, tumbling in silent shock up the tunnel, back the way he’d come. Before any of the goons had time to grab him, Wonjjang rebounded and streaked past them. He bounced once more off the tunnel wall and landed on his feet behind Kim’s thugs, blocking the space between them and their leader.

  “Yaaa, yi saekideul! Deombyeo!” he said, and assumed a taekwondo fighting stance.

  Deombyeo—“Bring it on!”—was an invitation that Kim’s henchmen couldn’t pass up, but they would have done better to think about the crowd of shoopahs behind them. Most of the henchmen stupidly rushed at Wonjjang, but moments later a wave of mutilation crashed upon them from behind. Neko’s claws flashed, her screams echoed amid the splattering of a dogman’s guts. Blastman puked globules of ball lightning at a pair of deformed monks. Laotzu dove into the crowd of soldiers and mutants, threshing them like wheat with his uncarved-stone-and-wood arms.

  The few Norks who made it to Wonjjang didn’t last long. He was a blur of fists and kicks, rebounding from walls and flinging stunned soldiers in every direction. But more Norks came … they flooded down the tunnel from outside, howling mad, and Wonjjang had to keep moving if he was to avoid being caught. He bounced and kicked and punched, entranced by the movement of bodies, the steady beat of punches and kicks, the music of snapping bones, so that at first he failed to notice the walls of the tunnel shuddering again. When he did notice, his heart sank.

  Umma—

  Wonjjang abandoned the battle, bouncing over the brawling mob and down the hallway.

  After a few hundred metres, the din of the battle gave way to a roar so immense that Wonjjang could hardly think in its presence. He bounced on, around a couple of sharp turns, until he reached an enormous laboratory.

  There sat his mother, at a computer console, fiddling with the keyboard and mouse. Behind the computer, a glass barrier sealed off a bare-walled white room with a small glowing red box at its centre.

  “Umma!” he called out, and bounced straight to her.

  She shrieked and tucked her hands behind her back immediately, pretending they were still bound, until a look of recognition came across her face.

  “Oh, it’s just you,” she said loudly, relaxing.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What, this? Oh, aigo, aigo,” she lamented. “I can’t seem to get this silly thing to shut down. It’s in English. I heard him thinking … er, saying the password,” she said, with a sly little smile, “But, you know, I haven’t studied English in years.”

  “It’s in English?” Wonjjang yelped, crestfallen. Heard him thinking? he repeated to himself. Suddenly, a lot of his childhood made sense.

  “Yes,” she shouted, and smacked him in the belly, hard. “Now you see! After all the times I told you to study English harder, and you kept going swimming in the Nakdong instead … ”

  Jang Won frowned. His mother never missed a chance to scold him about how he’d brought mutation on himself by swimming instead of studying, and he usually just let her, but there wasn’t time now. “Umma, let me try,” he interrupted her, hopeful. He was good with computers. Maybe he could figure it out.

  “What? No!” she shouted over the growing din. “We have only fourteen minutes! You go catch that Kim boy. What a nuisance! He smells like foreign liquor! He’s such a dreadful brat, no wonder he’s still unmarried. Now, send your American friend here to help me. He speaks English, right?”

  Wonjjang bristled, but his mother was a real, old-school ajumma—there was no telling her what to do. “Yes, Umma,” he said, nodding dutifully, and bounced away in a flash. If he didn’t catch that blasted midget shoopah-criminal, his mother would never stop nagging him.

  He returned to a scene of carnage in the hallway. Blood, bits of fried flesh, and slivers of shattered bone clung to the walls, the floor, and everyone’s uniforms. Only disembodied E-Gui was free of gore. Panting and exhausted, they were just finishing off the last of Kim’s relentless henchmen, who were gleefully sacrificing themselves for nothing.

  An image flashed in Wonjjang’s mind then, transmitted by Big Myoung: Kim Noh Wang, scurrying down the mountainside as fast as his pudgy legs could carry him.

  “Kim’s getting away!” Wonjjang hollered, as the last Nork thudded to the floor. He grabbed Blastman by the arm, and said, haltingly, “Mom … my mommy is … stop machine. She say … you help she … ” he said, pointing at Blastman.

  “Me?” Blastman asked.

  Wonjjang nodded, and explained, “The computer … Englishie computer. Thirteen minutes left … boom!” He pointed down the hallway, mimicked an explosion with his hands, and ordered, “Blastman, go!”

  Blastman took off, and Wonjjang turned to face E-Gui. In Korean, he said. “I know your government doesn’t want you to fight Kim. If you can’t help us, get out of our way. Kim’s insane. He’s going to destroy this island, and it won’t be long before Shanghai, or Beijing, is next. Stop protecting him. Go help Blastman, if you won’t fight with us.”

  E-Gui frowned grimly and closed his eyes for a moment. Then, with
out so much as a second look or a single word, he stepped out of Wonjjang’s way and drifted off after Blastman.

  To Neko and Laotzu, Wonjjang yelped, “Let’s go!”

  Laotzu gently hoisted Keun Dwaeji’s broken body onto his gigantic, barky shoulder, and they set off toward the exit.

  Laotzu’s stone-and-jade fist smashed open the locked steel exit doors to reveal a hellscape. The slopes of Mount Halla were littered with the tangled bodies of Norks and some of LG’s finest shoopahs, and the air was full of their moans and screams.

  Still, a few airborne heroes had managed to stay aloft, swarming around a helicopter. That’s where Kim is, Wonjjang realized, and it occurred to him that the stream of images Big Myoung had been transmitting had cut out sometime earlier.

  He ignored a pang of worry for his friend and said, “Let’s go!”

  Neko and Laotzu—with Keun Dwaeji’s body still on his shoulder—ran after Wonjjang toward the spot beneath the swarm of shoopahs. As they got closer, they could see more clearly what was happening: the strong hands of a few dozen heroes desperately gripped the landing supports on the bottom of the chopper, holding it in place. But slowly, surely, the chopper was tugging its way free. A gunshot rang out above, and an airborne shoopah plummeted from the swarm, blood spurting from her chest.

  Laotzu roared in anger—there was no way he’d even get close to the chopper—but Wonjjang seized him by his rocky arm and said, “It’s alright. Bounce me!”

  Laotzu brightened. Without dropping Keun Dwaeji’s corpse, he grabbed Wonjjang around the waist, lifting him overhead.

  “I’ll grab you after one bounce,” Wonjjang yelled to Neko, and then, to Laotzu, “After this … ”

  “After this, I’m going to go find Iron Monkey,” Laotzu told him.

  “You can do it,” Wonjjang shouted, ignoring his suspicion that Iron Monkey was with Kim.

  Laotzu smiled ferociously as he held his boss over his head. “Ready?”

  “Now!” Wonjjang bellowed, and Laotzu slammed him into the ground as hard as he could, so that Wonjjang rebounded high. As he passed the chopper, he yelled his encouragement to all the shoopahs clinging to it. When Wonjjang began to fall again, Laotzu lifted Neko up in a single enormous hand and lobbed her up toward him.

  Still descending, Wonjjang caught her with both hands, around the waist, and lifted her above his head. As he connected with the ground, he absorbed the energy of the impact into his legs, and then he pushed up with all his might, sending himself rebounding toward the chopper with Neko still overhead. When they got close, he flung Neko through the open side-door. Her bloodcurdling battle-shriek filled the air, and Wonjjang caught a glimpse of flashing claws and spraying blood before he began falling once again. With any luck, one more bounce would get him into the chopper, too.

  He slammed into the ground so forcefully that the stone cracked beneath his feet. He used his muscles to rebound as hard as he could, sending himself straight toward the bottom of the chopper. It wobbled overhead, and all he could do was hope that it wouldn’t move so much that he’d fly straight into the helicopter’s blades. On his way up, he saw a figure forced out the door, falling toward him. It was one of Kim’s poor nobodies, dressed in cheap fake slamdex. The man wouldn’t survive the fall, unless he was a mutant—and the chances of that were slim—but what sent a chill through Wonjjang was the look on the Nork henchman’s face. The plummeting Northerner stared dully through him, betraying no hint of fear or sorrow. It was as if he were already dead. Wonjjang glanced down to where Laotzu had been, but the big lummox was already running up the mountainside, so Wonjjang turned his attention back to the chopper.

  It had climbed higher into the sky. The shoopahs anchoring it were tiring out, though a number of them had noticed Wonjjang’s approach and were hauling one side of the helicopter down to angle the door for him to bounce through. Wonjjang’s aim was true: he passed through the doorway with stunning precision.

  The inside of the chopper was a mess. The floor was slick with blood and goop, and the air stank of fresh wounds and hard liquor. Neko was clinging for her life, with one set of her claws sunk into the cushions of a seat in the rear of the cabin. She slashed her other set of claws at a nimble, evasive figure that Wonjjang recognized immediately as Iron Monkey, but Neko missed as the Nork sprang into the air and spun behind her, chittering wickedly. Wonjjang cursed at Iron Monkey as she wrapped her tail around Neko’s throat. The catwoman struggled desperately, stabbing her vicious claws blindly over her own shoulder. The Nork continued to chitter with glee, dodging Neko’s slashes and crushing the Japanese shoopah’s neck.

  “No!” Wonjjang howled, and slammed himself against the wall behind him, launching into the air toward the struggling pair. Neko’s eyes widened when he sped toward her, but suddenly a hand flashed before him and fluid sprayed onto his face. His eyes reflexively shut against the sudden, searing pain, and he raised his hands to his face.

  Someone or something ploughed into him, and Wonjjang yelped in shock. Just then, the floor of the chopper’s cabin righted itself. Wonjjang felt a weight on his chest and the blows of small, iron-hard fists pounding into his face. He fought to open his eyes, but they were watering and everything was blurred. His arms flailed, until something cold and hard and very tight closed around one wrist, and then the other, binding them together.

  A maniacal laughter filled Wonjjang’s ears, and he forced his eyes open and stared at the blurry form astride him. He could make out enough—beady little eyes, the green slamdex Mao suit, and that stupid bouffant hairdo—to know that it was Kim Noh Wang. He slammed his head back against the floor and it rebounded hard, thumping Kim in the face. But the little psychopath held on, shrieking in rage as he began slapping Wonjjang across the face and screaming, “I warned you! You had your chance to serve the Dear Leader! You could have been a Hero of the People!” In the background, Neko and Iron Monkey’s struggle became frantic, and then Iron Monkey shrieked in pain.

  “Ryun Ja!” Kim shouted, his voice high-pitched above the whine of the helicopter, and Wonjjang’s vision cleared a little. “Now!” More of the burning fluid splashed through the air from behind Kim, where a blurry figure now stood, and Wonjjang’s eyes began burning again. Kim clung to him like a kid on a bucking pony, while Wonjjang kicked and struggled. When moments later his ankles, too, were bound in cold metal, Wonjjang shivered in panic. Not far from him, Neko and Iron Monkey’s desperate screams filled the air as their fight intensified. Suddenly he could feel a face close to his, and the garlic-and-cognac reek of Kim’s breath wafted into his nostrils.

  “We’re going to take you home with us, Jang Won, and re-educate you. You’re going to be a great asset to the People’s Republic … and I’m going to train you personally.” The little monster laughed, and the stink made gorge rise in Wonjjang’s throat.

  “Never!” Wonjjang shouted.

  “Fine, have it your way,” Kim said, and the weight shifted on his chest. Wonjjang struggled to break his bonds, but he wasn’t strong enough to snap steel. He never had been. Suddenly, he was struck by a vision of the future that awaited him, should Kim succeed: he’d seen pencil-sketches of the “freak gulags,” the concentration camps where dangerously powerful mutants were brainwashed into serving Kim’s government. He could see himself sleeping on the filthy floor of a tiny hut, hundred-pound weights on each ankle to keep him from bouncing away. Trudging through his life, until maybe someday he became crazy enough to actually accept a mission. Blow up some subway station in Tokyo, or bounce into downtown Seoul with a knapsack nuke on his back. His body stiffened, as if trying to die in order to avoid such horror, and he forced his eyes open again. He wanted to see Kim, so he could remember how he’d been captured, what he’d been fighting for so long. So he would not give in and become a Nork agent.

  “Ryun Ja,” Kim called out again, his head turned. “Inject him, now!”

  Over Kim’s shoulder, Wonjjang made out a blurry figure struggling to advance
as the helicopter floor began slowly to tilt again. Everything—Wonjjang, the blood all around him, Kim on his chest, the hazy figure beyond—slid suddenly toward the peril of the open doorway.

  The figure got close to him, and he caught the unmistakable scent of …

  … hard liquor?

  Ryun Ja? It was a girl, Wonjjang realized. She was dressed in Nork slamdex, with her long dark hair dangling around her shoulders. He couldn’t see her face clearly, but he saw her hesitate. Then Neko screamed, “No!”

  He blinked his eyes hard, willing himself to see, and opened them again.

  The Nork girl was still there, blurry, clutching something in her hand. Kim was shouting something at her, his voice inaudible because his head was turned away from Wonjjang. She was not looking at Kim, though: she was staring over his shoulder, at Wonjjang himself. Despite the blurriness, he could see the hesitation on her face.

  This was his chance, his last moment to escape the prospect of permanent bondage. He carefully raised his head up as high as it would go, and then with all his strength he slammed it back against the floor of the chopper and let his spine go completely rubbery. His head swung up into the air and spun like a tetherball, clobbering Kim in the back and sending him sailing through the air.

  Kim landed in a slippery puddle of blood just as the helicopter tilted sharply, and he slid straight for the doorway. In a flash, Iron Monkey was streaking through the air toward him, with Neko right behind her. Iron Monkey caught Kim by the arm and hauled him back into the chopper.

  Wonjjang sat up, flung his back against the ground, and bounced himself to his feet, landing right in front of the Nork girl. Suddenly, he was drowning in the scent of cognac, and in her dark eyes, and in the nearness of her, even while Neko and Iron Monkey struggled over Kim on the floor nearby, their battle having devolved into a kind of blood-spattered tug-of-war.

  “Why?” he said, his voice hard but quiet, and then, instantly, he realized that he knew her face. He recognized her lips, her long black hair, those beautiful, determined brown eyes, and that scent of cognac that hung all around her. This girl who smelled like French liquor, she was … the college girl from the airport washroom—the agent who’d given him the exploding pen! So beautiful—how could she be a Nork? How could he fight her? He wanted to kiss her, to swing an arm around her body, but his hands were bound together with tight metal handcuffs. He raised them up toward her.