Chapter Four

Kensuke Masukawa prided himself on his unflappable ability to weather any storm the Japanese government threw at him. After fifty years of service, he had seen every disaster thrown at him and he’d withstood the stress. As he sat at his computer terminal, his face and upper body projected into the deliberation room of the U.N., he listened to the body discuss the issues regarding superhumans. In the whole world, there existed fewer than five hundred superhumans. America had the most at fifteen officially and likely a few dozen more unofficially. Every country lied about how many they had. He just knew there was no way China didn’t have many more than the ten they claimed.

The current issue at hand regarded jurisdiction. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the phrases being thrown around. The General Secretary had, at the start of the hour, presented the problem to the body. A terrorist organization had kidnapped a group of Belgian politicians travelling by private plane from Argentina back to Belgium. The Belgian government had exactly four supers, and none of them could fly or move at super speed. It struck him that the necessary thing to do was quit jaw-jacking about it, suck it up, and send someone like one of China’s speedsters or even a heavy hitter like America’s hero Freedom’s Ring, who could leap miles at a time, run nearly as fast as a rally car, absorb anti-tank artillery, and rip heavily-armored vehicles in half with pure strength.

Instead, he thought, these morons are going to sit around complaining about who should do it. Image and prestige are going to get people killed.

In his line of work, this kind of one-upmanship wasn’t tolerated. What galled him more than anything, though, was the fact that supers did not officially exist. All the sightings and strange occurrences managed to be covered up. Even the incident that brought Haruki to his attention got written off as an attack of some kind. In his career, vagueness never let him down. The vaguer the situation behind an incident, the better. Conspiracy theory worked to his advantage. Here, he saw a bunch of grown men and women arguing over who got to be the biggest star for a play that no one outside the debate chamber would see.

After another ten minutes of listening, not wanting to involve himself in the endless rigamarole, he muted his microphone, disabled his camera, and set Japan’s display module to inform the U.N. that he’d excused himself to use the bathroom. He went to pee, and as he let go, he pulled his phone from his pocket. After a series of beeps that told of a secure line, he heard the familiar voice of Haruki.

“Yeah?” the boy asked, annoyed. “It’s practically the middle of the night.”

“I’m having an issue,” Kensuke said, balancing the phone on his shoulder as he reached to flush the urinal.

“You’re having an issue? I’m having an issue,” Haruki uttered, annoyance in his voice. “My computer sucks. Is there anything I can do to get you to buy me a new one without taking it out of my pay?”

Kensuke weighed the request. He’d meant for the conversation just to be a time waster, to keep him from having to return to the U.N. and its endless deadlock. Instead, he seriously considered the boy’s offer. On the one hand, the Diet would come down on him for taking direct action. He would no doubt be dragged before the Prime Minister and told off by bureaucrats he hated so much. On the other, he certainly would enjoy the look on everyone’s face when he solved a problem no one else could solve. A grin crossed his face. “You know what? Come down here and get suited up. I’ve got just the thing.”

“School sucks,” Haruki said, appearing in the main conference room just moments later, “so I hope you got a good job for me.”

“Perfect,” Matomaru replied. “It’ll be right up your alley. You’ll be rescuing people.” He brought up diagrams on his computer. “Have you ever run on water before?”

Haruki folded his arms. “I been practicing all you told me to. It took a day or two, but I got it.”

“Excellent,” the second-in-command said, transmitting the maps and coordinates to Haruki’s helmet.

“So,” Haruki said, “what do I do?”

“What you want to do,” Matomaru replied, “is go out and get acquainted with the target site and the destination and report back here. Don’t get noticed, and don’t take any action until Masukawa-san gives you the approval.”

Haruki finished sliding his boots on and waited for the display on his helmet to overlay the map in his vision. When his superior gave him the signal, he took off running. His vision became a high-speed movie playing at an ultra-fast framerate. It still weirded him out that it felt like the few moments it was rather than normal speed. I’ve gotta get used to it not being like in movies, he thought, adjusting his running stance so his foot pushed off the top of the water instead of crashing into it and skipping him for miles across the surface.

The art of running on water had come to him after three or four dozen times he crashed and swallowed water at hypersonic speeds. Thankfully, it didn’t hurt, although it itched as his durability shielded his sinuses from the salt in the water. At least once he’d coughed up a swallow of water. It felt strange to have liquid in his lungs that didn’t hurt and came up easily with a cough. The longer he lived, the stranger his powers seemed to him.

After two minutes of running, he passed by the U.S. naval aircraft carrier sitting off the coast of South America. Due to international law, it sat there, its crew doing exercises to prepare for any action that might need to be taken. Right now, none of its commanders wanted to create an international incident, so they simply kept their crew on alert. Another five seconds saw him step off the water’s surface and onto the sandy coast of South America.

He saw the superpowered terrorists keeping guard over their makeshift camp of repurposed cargo containers. As he zoomed by, taking in all he saw, he made sure none of them saw him. Thankfully, none of them appeared to have super speed. He moved on without getting their attention.

Three minutes later, he returned to the base in Japan. “How’d it go?” Kensuke asked, sitting at his computer, microphone muted and camera off.

“Excellent,” Haruki explained, pulling his helmet off. “The helmet’s GPS was able to keep up with my speed. How’d you do that?”

“Trade secret,” Kensuke said, winking.

“Anyway, I got a good mental map of where everything is,” he told his boss. “When do I act?”

“Grab a soda,” Kensuke advised, “because I’m giving these morons exactly one more minute to decide something and then I’m sending you.”

“Understood,” Haruki agreed.

The boy stood just outside of view of the cameras and watched as the governments of the world discussed a situation that should be over already. Kensuke sat, face stoic, arms sitting on his lap. He had a look of utter boredom and disdain. Most people might not have noticed it on the otherwise political face of the old man, but Haruki had been around him long enough to know the tells. The elderly head of Japan’s hero program might as well have been sighing loudly.

As the delegates argued, Kensuke gave a gentle hand wave. That was Haruki’s cue.

Once more he took off, hitting the water moments after leaving the facility. Running on ocean water, watching the night change to daylight as he crossed thousands of miles made him really feel the sensation of speed.

Moving into the Argentinian countryside, he zoomed past cities and country towns and into the wilderness where the enemy base was. Eighteen foreign diplomats and politicians were kept under lock and key and he dashed up to each one. He’d practiced grabbing and running at super speed. His powers transferred his speed’s frame of reference to the target, so there was no whiplash. Also, as long as he kept touching them, they were as durable as him.

So, each time he grabbed a target and hoisted them onto his shoulder, they became aware of him with a start and a few moments later, found themselves deposited on the deck of a ship. He focused intently on each target. The situation didn’t leave him time to have doubts. Despite the enemies not having super speed, he had to get each target away before they noticed anything was wrong. After thirty seconds of intense effort, the last target became aware with a start that he’d grabbed them.

After depositing the last one aboard the American ship, he dashed back to Japan.

“Done,” Haruki said, pulling off his helmet and uniform and depositing them on the floor.

“Thanks,” Kensuke said. “Email me the computer you want.”

Haruki prepared to leave. As he did, he watched as the news came to the U.N., and pandemonium erupted as dozens of delegates took to bashing his boss verbally. Huh, he thought, walking away, watching the elderly Japanese government man get put on the defensive. He’s actually putting himself on the line for this program.

At that moment, immense respect for the old man washed over him. It hadn’t sunk in until just then that everyone had bet their lives on this program.