For the first time, Nemo used his superhero identity card fully armed as KS to enter the Grimm Tower, and it could only be for the purpose of visiting his partner and comrade, Salamander.
Salamander had always been quite popular. Many netizens imagined that beneath his mask was a stunning Middle Eastern handsome man. This time, he was the first to confront the Sea Giant, fighting alongside Leviathan and Michael, barely holding out until other superheroes arrived, but ultimately retreating due to exhaustion. Many people who couldn’t evacuate in time witnessed this scene and were moved to tears.
The battle with the Sea Giant made many people see another side of superheroes. They weren't invincible, but they willingly endured more harm to buy time for civilians to safely evacuate. Besides them, the military and many volunteers who helped maintain order and provided backup were also the unsung heroes of this large-scale emergency evacuation.
Nemo had seen all the online praises, but what neither the people nor Nemo knew was that Salamander, in order to inject venom, had to consume too much kaiju blood. When he was sent to the emergency section, he triggered a severe allergic reaction. The medication was ineffective, and in the end, the medical staff had no choice but to knock out Angie and induce a coma using a low-temperature environment, saying it was a close call with death.
When Nemo received the news that Salamander's condition was stable, it actually meant that if it wasn’t stabilized, he would soon be declared deceased. But the injuries and conditions of superheroes were classified, and even though Nemo was Salamander's partner, he, as a non-family member, had no right to know the details.
Even Angie herself, before losing consciousness, had expressed that if they couldn’t save her, then so be it. She didn’t want to disturb the superheroes or KS man who were still fighting.
After two days of phone calls, Angie finally agreed to let Nemo visit her, saying that her tired face wasn’t presentable. Nemo didn’t care about her appearance, but he respected her dignity.
In the depths of the Grimm Tower's experimental zone, in a high-level ward safety space, Angie lay on the bed, her exposed skin covered in red patches resembling burn marks, even her beautiful face was no exception.
"See? I wasn’t lying," Angie said with self-mockery.
"You’ll get better," Nemo couldn’t stand the unclear nature of Angie’s injuries. He had already asked Matthew through back channels about the real situation and understood the dangerous condition and the aftereffects described in the medical records, so he also understood why Angie didn’t want to be seen.
"They once discussed giving me a blood transfusion, but in the end, the vote was against it. The reasoning was that since the kaiju blood was affecting me and the medication was ineffective, I could only rely on my superpowers to fight it off. Naturally, they couldn’t let me lose more blood and lose energy. Anyway, it worked out. I’m now just waiting to recover my strength, transform a few more times to metabolize the Sea Giant’s influence. But in this state, the recovery period after transforming is much longer than usual. I’ll get better," Angie explained.
"Next time, are you going to create a venom with effects similar to the mental breakdown caused by the Sea Giant's blood?" Nemo was really worried about Angie's physical condition.
"It’s possible! Then I’ll have to bottle it up in small bottles!" Angie said excitedly.
"That's not what I meant." Nemo thought that one day, Angie would annoy him so much that he would drop his pride and hit her like he did with Tolya.
"I thought you were going to scold me like crazy." Angie puffed out her chest, striking a heroic pose. "Come on! I’m ready!"
"You’re the greatest contributor in this battle. Who dares scold you? And your battle instructions were suggested by me. If anything is wrong, it’s because I wasn’t strong enough to step in personally," Nemo said.
"Very well! Now you're emotionally blackmailing me! Just scold me properly if you want to! I’m very grateful for your clear instructions. At least I could try my best, otherwise, I’d be rushing in without knowing how to attack properly," Angie said as she leaned against Nemo, who was sitting beside her hospital bed.
"If I suggested that Matthew appoint you as a logistics officer, would you be angry?"
"What kind of logistics officer? Actually, I don’t mind the position. This time, I just happened to arrive first and had to step up," Angie said.
"Still the kind who needs to fight. If a comrade in battle gets injured or falls, you’ll be responsible for going into the most dangerous front lines to rescue them."
"I like it, but can I still do this when I transform into a giant lizard?" Angie’s eyes lit up.
"Matthew and I will do our best to make sure you can, including developing equipment that you can use after transforming. I just think it’s a pity to use your ability solely for combat. For example, next time something like this happens, you could at least use your tongue to pull out a survivor from a helicopter splashed with kaiju blood."
"Oh, I absolutely want to do that! Please, Nemo! Help me apply for the relevant training and equipment from Matthew!" Angie continuously shook Nemo's hand, acting cute.
"You need to ask yourself, and if he dares to refuse, I’ll teach him a lesson for you," Nemo said firmly, looking at Angie.
"Alright," Angie teased Nemo on purpose. She wasn’t really a helpless little woman.
"I'll be here with you, reading the data. Do you think you can sleep?" Nemo had heard from Matthew that Angie had requested to be transferred to a cabin or safe house for recovery, but Matthew had rejected the idea, citing her unstable condition and the risk of being alone.
Nemo agreed with Matthew's judgment, but he knew Angie would likely find it hard to relax.
"I’ll try," Angie replied, not very confident.
"If you can recover enough to transform at least once, get rid of some of the Sea Giant's blood's negative effects, and Matthew agrees to let you leave experimental zone, I’ll take you to my safe house for recovery. At least I’ll be there for a long time and can keep an eye on you."
Nemo’s offer was too tempting, considering how much he valued his personal space. Angie immediately cranked up the air conditioning and burrowed under the blanket, closing her eyes to try and fall asleep.
Nemo, meanwhile, opened his laptop and continued reviewing information on violent crime reports and notifications from the northern district of Lone Star City. He occasionally tapped a few keys to open new files, organize the blacklist, or jot down thoughts and assessments in character notes. Once he confirmed a target, he made sure to memorize the surrounding maps, building layouts, and escape routes.
Despite the monotony of compiling intelligence, it was an excellent way to pass the time in bad weather or when confined indoors. After getting used to it, it brought a sense of peace, like collecting a large amount of game materials.
※※※
Nemo’s actual combat plan was disrupted by the Sea Giant’s landing, causing a ten-day delay before the city cleanup mission could resume. During this break, Matthew had exhausted his energy, so Nemo spent two days assisting him.
Meanwhile, Nemo spent three days accompanying the severely injured Angie in her hospital room. He took this opportunity to fully recover his stamina, strengthen his physical and combat training in the Grimm Tower, and spend the remaining time in the safehouse taking care of Angie while catching up on the preparation work for the next mission.
When he returned to his apartment, Tolya informed him that parts of the South District and the port had been sealed off, and over 60% of the gangs in Lone Star City were in chaos.
No need to fight for territory anymore. The U.S. military had helped you seal everything off and reshuffle it. How thoughtful.
Some gangs outright moved to New Orleans to establish new strongholds. The situation with bloodsucking mosquitoes and related crimes had significantly eased, and the police force had either been withdrawn or redirected to support security in the South District of Lone Star City. As a result, the previous issues surrounding human trafficking and related industries in the Swamp Factory incident had sparked a wave of gang conflicts. With casualties on both sides, some positions were inevitably left vacant, creating a prime opportunity for territorial takeover.
The need to reassess the environmental changes and the movements of targets was another major reason for the delay in the operation plan. Adapting to unforeseen changes was part of the training, and luckily, most of the prey that couldn’t get used to the harsh living conditions or afford accommodations soon returned to their nests.
At least, the top targets on Nemo's list, despite the Sea Giant's impact on Lone Star City, showed no signs of reform. They still believed that, with superheroes to fall back on in the face of external disasters and security threats, they were the boss at home.
After dealing with a few domestic violence cases, Nemo felt the hardest part was when he had to bring the abuser and the victim together in the same space without letting the children witness the violent scenes. Nemo didn’t encourage kids to learn his behavior.
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If the victim was a child, it was simpler. Nemo usually handled it one-on-one, though alcoholics, drug addicts, and pedophiles were beyond saving. For the latter two, Nemo would report them to the police when possible. In some situations, when there was no ideal or quick solution, Nemo had no choice but to tell the children to run away if they couldn’t fight back, leaving the question of whether they could stay in foster homes aside. The primary goal was to prevent further harm.
Nemo had admitted to Matthew from the beginning that he wasn’t responsible for reforming criminals or saving victims, especially the former, as a careless approach might even corrupt children. However, it couldn’t be denied that beating up some of the lower-level monsters still living at home and taking embarrassing photos of them did have some effect.
If the abuser was a woman, there were no special allowances. In fact, it was often easier to act. There were many options for creating humiliating photos without nudity, and recording criminal evidence to threaten them with public exposure could work. It’s hard to say whether men are generally more shameless or if society simply allows them to be. Nemo also found it uncomfortable, as it increased his workload and lowered his sanity points.
Lone Star City wasn’t particularly outstanding in terms of crime rates across the U.S., but in Nemo’s eyes, it was just as bad as a den of evil. Matthew had said that heroes were easily dragged into the abyss, and this was what he meant.
Tonight, Nemo was dealing with a college student who was a repeat offender of getting girls drunk and letting his frat brothers rape them. The student filmed the crime and shared it with his friends, and someone even uploaded the video to a porn website. It was extremely vile.
When it came to the first target, it was a long list, and breaking them down one by one was still a bit exhausting. When there was no evidence, Nemo could share humiliating photos with the victims to keep the terror balanced, but with evidence, he didn’t hesitate to report them directly. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about the victims’ feelings; the reality was that Nemo couldn’t always cover everything.
Feeling a little fatigued, Nemo encountered an ambush on his way back. First, he sensed that two people were following him, so he quickly changed his escape route to prevent them from finding his safe house. After a short parkour run on the rooftop, he managed to lose one of them, but the other kept on his tail.
Nemo decided to stop and wait, steadying his breathing. A minute later, the other person climbed to the rooftop and was a muscular stranger in black leather and torn jeans.
"Hello, KS."
"What do you want?" Nemo didn’t waste time.
"Give me those expensive-looking weapons of yours as a souvenir, and let me see if your face is cuter than my buddy’s. We might be able to settle this peacefully tonight," the leather-clad goon said.
"So, are you from the 'Kingdom'?"Nemo suddenly asked.
The leather-clad goon froze. "How do you know?"
"Just a guess, but you admitted it."
The thug cursed, enraged, and clenched his fist to strike. Nemo quickly dodged, but when he tried to grab the joint, the thug violently broke free. They exchanged several blows, with Nemo getting hit twice. The pain from his wounds was sharp, and his movements slowed for a moment.
The leather-clad goon grinned and went for a decisive punch aimed at KS Man's throat. Nemo raised his left hand quickly, but it felt as though he had collided with an acrylic wall. He immediately pulled back, but the thug's powerful punch hit the invisible wall, causing him to cry out in pain.
"WTF! Hako!" The thug shouted a name... or a codename.
Nemo stared as another young Asian man, about the same height and build as himself, emerged from the staircase behind the thug. He looked to be around 25, likely a partner of the leather-clad man.
"Sorry, our boss seems to be very interested in you. He didn’t say you couldn’t be killed, nor did he say you couldn’t be saved," the young Asian man with black short hair said in Japanese. He appeared to be teasing, as it didn't seem like he expected Nemo to understand.
"I'm not interested in you, as long as you don't get in my way," Nemo replied in Japanese, giving the impression that the young man was not trying to hide his identity. It was clear that he had come to assert his local gang’s power, not concealing his intentions.
"Wow, you speak Japanese, you're truly my idol!" The young Asian man commented, keeping a high level of awareness despite changing his position, never turning his back to the staircase.
"Just a little bit of a basic level. Your pronunciation is very natural, you’re definitely Japanese. Standard Tokyo accent, did you specifically practice?" Nemo wasn't good at speaking Japanese, but his listening ability was decent, especially since he grew up listening to Japanese voice actors’ works. Even if he couldn't speak Japanese, he could still distinguish the distinct accents of native speakers.
The young man paused for three seconds. Being mistaken for a Japanese person was one thing, but being recognized as actually being Japanese was another. In the melting pot of America, Japanese people still stood out, and the key point was that he had tried to appear impressive, only to be caught out. He'd be laughed at by his companions if he went back.
"KS-san, how about we make a deal? You didn’t meet us today, and we didn’t meet you. Next time we meet, we can be friends again," Hako switched to fluent English.
"Sure. I quite like your Warring States history and anime culture." Matthew had already warned Nemo that the 'Kingdom' organization also valued secrecy. If they were speaking in their native language now, it likely meant the young man was concealing another identity—perhaps pretending to be Korean or Chinese, identities that would clearly hold more value.
"Which side do you support?" Hako asked.
"Oda(織田)."
"I like Cao Mengde."
"Sounds good."
KS Man leaped over the rooftop wall, landing with a heavy thud. The leather-clad goon chased after him, only to find a car on the side of the road with a dent on its roof. The ninja-style superhero was nowhere to be seen.
"That car looks a bit familiar," the leather-clad goon murmured.
"We arrived at the scene three days ago to collect protection money from the 'Black Owl' gang, and the car was already parked there. You should eat more ginkgo."
The two, assigned as representatives of the 'Kingdom' in their territory, decided to leave the scene as if nothing had happened. After all, protection money didn’t cover vehicle damage or accidents.
"Why did you interfere and stop me?" Back in the car, the leather-clad man rested his hand on the steering wheel, waiting for the young Japanese man to calmly buckle his seatbelt in the passenger seat.
"You should really get your eyes checked, too. You didn’t even notice that KS was holding a shuriken in his left hand, aiming it at your artery to use your force against you. If that punch had landed, your right arm would’ve been out of commission for at least a month," the young man coldly reminded.
"Shit! That guy’s so devious!"
"No, it's you who are too embarrassing. If he really wanted to kill you, all he needed to do was throw a shuriken at you when you just climbed up and exposed your head. But he deliberately let you engage in close combat, which means he has plenty of time to spare and wants to lure me out as well," the young man kicked the leather-clad goon, who shrugged nonchalantly, not taking it seriously.
"You’re still helping him!" The thug grumbled, clearly frustrated that the young man had made his appearance just to look impressive.
"Our mission is to 'coexist' with the local gang, opposing superheroes is not part of the plan. I wasn’t planning to hurt him; KS is the only new superhero stationed in Lone Star City! Such a rare creature! Even though he's weaker compared to other superheroes, he's still interesting and helps promote Japanese culture as an Asian. Besides, you really thought it was one-on-one?"
"You want to side with him?"
"Not for now, I’m watching how you perform. I think we were being watched before we even contacted KS. It wasn’t until you started attacking that he showed his intent to kill. The proof is the bomb under the car that was activated."
"When was that planted? Why didn’t you warn me?"
"I just wanted to know when you'd figure it out. There are 58 seconds left, but the bomb can be remotely triggered. Anyway, I can escape with you in time, since I’m a barrier-type superpower user."
"Are you trying to blow up my beloved car?"
"I’ve already warned you. I’m a fan of KS! Being a superhero is tough enough, and then he has to deal with annoying people like you," the Japanese man sighed. "If I had met a hero like KS Man back then, I wouldn’t have joined the 'Kingdom.' I’d be living a good life as an ordinary citizen under his protection."
"It's so ridiculous that you, a killer, admire superheroes! And what good would that little guy do by not killing and letting offenders go free? Killing the original criminal just creates broken families and orphans—what kind of justice is that?"
From the way the hero’s codename was taken and the dark tactics of using embarrassing photos of villains as leverage, it was clear that this superhero didn’t want to be seen as a partner in justice. The Japanese man held back the retort he wanted to make.
"At least I don’t need KS to save me! I’ve always yearned for a simple life, and having my favorite superhero as a bit of a relief is just right. I could even open a private clinic and treat him for free when he’s injured, while admiring his strong yet fragile appearance."
"..." The leather-clad goon shivered after hearing this morbid fantasy.
"There used to be a vigilante with the same name as KS. Only a few people knew he existed, and if those two are the same person, I have to say, I wouldn’t dare compare numbers with him. Now I’ve been using batch methods for everything. Before the Meteor Shower Event, superhumans were just a thing of movies and comics. That guy killed over a hundred with a single strike, one at a time, drip by drip!"
"Where did you hear that urban legend?"
"A bounty hunter gave me that intel a few years ago when he invited me to join. He said that if that vigilante could be captured alive, he’d be worth a lot. I was busy with my graduate exams, so I turned it down. The bounty hunter wasn’t very skilled or charismatic, but he had a wide network, so I teamed up with him for a job when I needed money. We didn’t need to kill that old, drunk homeless man, but he insisted the witness had to be silenced, and just shot him. I almost lost control and stabbed him in the lung, but thankfully I stuck to my principles in the end."
"Do you have obsessive-compulsive disorder? What happened to the bounty hunter afterward?"
"I’ve had it since I was little. I don’t like unexpected issues outside of our agreed terms. I had planned to deal with the unpleasant person myself, but then that guy just disappeared into thin air. You said beforehand that if we ran into KS Man, you wanted to have some fun with him, and that it’d be fine as long as you reported it. But could you not ruin my fangirling experience, please?"
"Still not sure it’s the same person. You mentioned that the vigilante killed over a hundred, but I’ve never heard of it. He must’ve been operating under the radar for many years. He should be over forty by now, right? The young kid we just saw, though, from his build and lower face, looks to be in his early twenties. Also, the KS Man currently on the superhero rankings hasn’t killed anyone, not even collateral damage. Unlike those other superheroes, where just showing up leads to exaggerated casualties and property damage, tsk tsk!"
"True, although his voice is fake, his actual age may be older than he looks. Saying it's the same person is a bit far-fetched, but even if it’s a tribute or successor, he’s worth protecting! And besides, I admire the current KS. Whether he kills or not doesn’t matter to me! In my homeland, social death is far worse than actually stabbing someone. I especially like how he leaves the knife to the victim to decide when to publicly execute the punishment, psychologically torturing the perpetrator little by little. It’s wonderful!" the Japanese man said, moved and in awe.
"You random fishing gang killer, you're basically a sadistic pleasure seeker!"
"I’m not interested in slaughtering cows or pigs. The look of collapse on the faces of bullies when they’re suddenly killed is what I find really wonderful!"
"So Boss specifically sent me to make sure you don’t catch all the fish in the pond!"
An explosion rang out in the street, immediately drawing the attention of the residents. Firefighters and police cars rushed to the scene. After extinguishing the fire, they discovered it was just an empty car, with its license plate showing it was a stolen vehicle.