Chapter 3. Catching a Shadow

That Friday, the search operation for Riela got underway. Since Vector had been the last person with her, the likelihood that she had been abducted by him was high.

More precisely, the working conclusion had already been reached that Vector had taken her. So Hero HQ was running the search in the direction of finding Vector the villain.

The problem was that the places Vector might be hiding were also popular hideouts for other villains, and it was obvious that heroes poking around those areas would spark clashes all over the place.

Everyone entered their assigned zones tense and braced for a fight.

Every zone except one. Port P, handled by none other than top hero Carbon, had a different atmosphere entirely.

“Heroes! What the hell are you doing crawling in here!”

The villains noticed the heroes’ arrival and came pouring out with weapons in hand. Even knowing a fight was coming, they were riding high on confidence. The countless shipping containers filling the port were their turf, which meant they had the numbers and knew the terrain.

But.

Boom!

A single strike from Carbon left the area where the gathered villains had been standing looking like a meteor shower had hit it.

“Aaaargh!”

“Wh, what? What just happened? Did they bring a tank?”

“No, it’s Carbon! Carbon’s here!”

The villains who recognized him murmured among themselves. The bravado of ‘come at us’ might as well have been a past life. Their spirits crushed, they began shuffling backward. Carbon, of all people. There was no winning this.

A few of the bolder ones tried to fight back despite their panic, but it was no use.

Carbon sidestepped the barrage of attacks without effort and picked up a chunk of concrete debris larger than a truck and threw it.

Whoosh! His arm muscle shifted, and the moment it left his hand the debris shot out like a bullet. Of course, given the size of it, the impact was nothing like a small, neat bullet hole.

Crash!

The stacked containers crumpled. The thought of what would have happened to anyone inside made the villains go pale.

“Surrender! We surrender, stop attacking!”

The heroes who had come along rounded up the villains as their will to fight collapsed one by one.

“Eeek!”

One villain, unable to watch his companions get caught, panicked and tried to run.

“That one’s mine.”

Carbon, close by, grabbed the villain by the scruff of the neck.

“No! Let go! Let go of me!”

“Settle down.”

“I don’t wanna!”

That was when the problem started. The villain, still too green to properly control his own ability, lost control of it entirely.

“Ugh! No!”

Slipping away on his own would have been no trouble for Carbon. But he was a hero. First rule of a hero’s duty: minimize damage to civilians. When the dangerous moment came, Carbon chose to fulfill that duty.

In other words, he chose to sacrifice himself to protect civilians and prevent damage to buildings and property.

His ability made him harder than steel when activated, so most things wouldn’t leave a scratch on him. And if he did take some injury, as a top hero he would be first in line for treatment.

His calculations done in an instant, Carbon stepped toward the villain whose ability was going critical.

Flash! A massive vortex tore through the air. A black hole-like opening split the space, and it sucked Carbon in. His mind went blank for a moment.

But there was something Carbon hadn’t anticipated.

“Carbon! No!”

His sidekick Hyde, reaching out to grab him, got pulled in along with him.

* * *

When Carbon opened his eyes again after being swept up in the villain’s ability, he was lying in an unfamiliar place.

“Ngh.”

He gripped his throbbing head and sat up, scanning his surroundings. None of the colleagues who had deployed to Port P with him were anywhere to be seen.

No. One person was beside him.

“Hyde!”

Carbon grabbed Hyde urgently. She was limp and unconscious, her face pale and her breathing faint, and his stomach dropped.

“Mmh……”

Looking more carefully, she didn’t seem to have any serious injuries. She appeared to have simply lost consciousness and fallen asleep.

That was at least something. Carbon set her down carefully, then looked around.

It wasn’t Port P. He had never seen this place before. The terrain and surroundings were nothing like the city they lived in, which suggested they had been stranded somewhere quite remote.

“Tsk. A spatial displacement ability, then.”

The runaway ability must have been spatial displacement. Most spatial displacement abilities could only move things short distances within line of sight, but the ability going critical had apparently produced a result like this.

Outside, a fierce blizzard was raging. Moving along narrow cliff paths with zero visibility was out of the question. They would have to wait until the blizzard stopped and they could see before going anywhere.

“At least we ended up in a cave and not out in that snowfield.”

Carbon swallowed a sigh and moved through the cave looking for firewood. He was fine, but Hyde couldn’t stay on the cold floor in the chill for long without her health suffering.

While Carbon was busy moving around, Hyde came to as well.

“Ow, my head.”

Pressing her fingers to her throbbing temples, Hyde looked around in a daze.

Dark, full of rock. This wasn’t a regular building. It looked like a natural formation, a cave.

“Hmm? Why am I in a cave? Where is this?”

Hyde tilted her head, and then the memory of just before she lost consciousness came back to her. She had reached out to grab Carbon when the villain’s ability went out of control, and she had been swept up along with him.

“Oh! So Carbon should be here too?”

The thought that she might have been dropped somewhere alone made Hyde use her ability anxiously.

Hyde’s ability was shadow manipulation.

As long as there was light, darkness, and shadow, she could use it. It wasn’t raw power like Carbon’s, but depending on how it was used, it was versatile and useful in many ways.

Reconnaissance, for instance. Hyde stretched her shadow long and spread it wide, weaving it through the surrounding shadows as she moved it.

What she found was that the place was remote and isolated, but there were no other threats present.

And that there were only two people in this space. Her and Carbon.

“It’s a relief the situation isn’t dangerous. And Carbon is here with me, so even more……. wait.”

The reassurance of Carbon’s presence gave way to a sudden thought.

‘Isn’t this an opportunity?’

The idea struck her like a flash, and Hyde reached into the small bag at her hip. The utility bag she always carried had everything from recovery medicine to emergency weapons, but what Hyde pulled out was the glass vial with the pink liquid inside.

She hesitated, then uncorked it. The trapped scent burst out. Sweet bubblegum.

‘Okay, good. It doesn’t smell disgusting. That’s a relief.’

Reassured, Hyde squeezed her eyes shut, brought the vial to her lips, and drank the contents down in several gulps.

She emptied the vial in one go and tucked it back into her bag, then sat quietly waiting for the effects to kick in.

“Did I buy the wrong thing? Or did it go bad?”

Had it been sitting too long and lost its potency? For something that cost that much, wasn’t the shelf life a little too short?

More importantly, she needed to get ready before Carbon came back. Should she think of another approach fast?

Hyde was running out of patience when the change began.

“Uh?”

Her entire body went hypersensitive in an instant. Her skin crawled as though something was moving across it, and she felt her n*pples harden. Pleasure pooled low in her belly and made her itch. Her entrance clenched, and a rush of slick arousal spilled out.

Even the air brushing against her felt like stimulation. Her limbs trembled.

‘I didn’t think it would be this…… strong……’

A pleasure she had never felt before made her mind go blank. Her vision blurred, and a pain that was hard to describe made Hyde curl in on herself and m*an.

“Ahng!”

Carbon heard the sharp m*an cut through the air and stopped his search, turning back quickly.

“Hyde? Are you alright?”

Hyde was slumped against the wall, her face flushed, breathing in ragged, uneven gasps.

“S-something’s wrong. My body, hng, it’s too, too hot, hic!”

A crawling, itching sensation gnawed at her heated skin and she couldn’t keep herself upright. Hyde whimpered and twisted her trembling legs together.

“Mmnh, it’s itchy, hhng……”

She had been scraping her nails against the cave floor, but Hyde couldn’t hold out any longer and spread her legs apart. Her small hand found its way between her open thighs and began groping at the suit covering her p*ssy.

She rubbed at the tingling spot like she was trying to scratch an itch. Every time her fingers grazed a sensitive area, her hips jerked upward. Her muscles clenched over and over.

Carbon saw all of it. His expression hardened as he stared blankly at Hyde writhing in heat.

“Ah, mmh, ahng!”

One hand kneading her chest and the other fumbling at her p*ssy, Hyde still couldn’t get enough pleasure to satisfy her and scrunched her face in frustration.

‘Please, someone, anyone, just make this itch go away……’

She forced her hazy eyes open and looked around, and that was when she spotted Carbon staring blankly at her.

“Car, Carbon, please, hng, ah……”

Hyde reached out her hand.

“Mister……”

Carbon stared at the hand stretched toward him with conflicted eyes and ran through his options fast.

The reason Hyde had suddenly ended up like this. The most likely explanation was that the villain’s hidden ability had activated. If not that, she might have been hit with some kind of poison.

Either way, they needed to get back to Hero HQ and have her treated. If she received a healing from the on-call healer at HQ, the heat would break immediately.