Convict Unit: Black Parade

“Giga Window is hella strong!”

“Aw yeah baby! Knew I had it in me!” Status Window yelled, pumping his fists in excitement next to a terrified Jae-hee.

“No, it’s not you!”

“You got this desu, me-in-my-prime! Take ’em all down desu!”

“Stop cheering for him!”

The next instant…

“Grrrrrr!”

Rabid Dog shot to its feet, lunged forward with frightening speed, and viciously sank its teeth into Giga-Status Window’s neck.

“Rrrrrgh!”

With a finishing move of pure, rabid head-shaking, it tore out Giga-Status Window’s throat.

Splat. Splat. Gush.

Thrashed like a dusty rug, Giga-Status Window’s entire body dissolved into jelly fragments, bursting outward in all directions like a firework.

Watching the spectacle, Status Window dropped to his knees. A single tear trickled down from behind his glasses.

“My ultimate evolution… to end so pathetically…”

Too exhausted to deal with him anymore, Jae-hee ignored Status Window and looked to his side.

“Ah…”

Dia was holding her breath, staring at her own Mirror Slime.

“You are… me?”

“…”

The Mirror Slime, which had taken the form of an ordinary young girl, simply stared back up at her.

Swallowing hard, Dia slowly reached a hand out toward the creature…

Crash! Squelch!

Rabid Dog charged in and annihilated the Mirror Slime.

“…”

Crunch. Squish. Squelch. Thump-thump-thump!

After flattening it with a body slam, the dog tore into the largest remaining pieces, chewing them into an unrecognizable pulp.

Still not satisfied, it growled and stomped wildly all over the jelly fragments.

Dia stared at the shattered remains of her Mirror Slime.

“…Wuh.”

“Wuh?”

“Waaaaah!”

“Ah, she’s crying.”

She began to wail at the top of her lungs.

A panicked Jae-hee broke into a cold sweat and cautiously approached. “Umm, Miss Dia? What just got destroyed was only a sl—”

“Yes, it was none other than me!” Dia shrieked, dropping into a squat. “I… I’m actually a total scrub…!” she sobbed.

The common slang sounded utterly alien coming from her.

Jae-hee’s sweat flowed freely.

“I wanted to Awaken… but no matter how much money I spent or what tools I used, no matter how many elite tutors I hired, I couldn’t Awaken.”

“Huh? But even if you haven’t Awakened, in every other respect you’re…”

“It doesn’t matter how many other stats I build up. In an age of superhumans, being a Non-Awakened… that in itself is a huge handicap.”

Thirty years had passed since the Gates opened. The tendency to judge and discriminate between the Awakened and Non-Awakened was already a deep-seated part of society.

“My father is a legendary Hunter, so why am I a Non-Awakened? Why am I so… ordinary?”

“…”

“As the President’s daughter, I tried so desperately to be perfect. But as someone with no abilities… there’s a wall I can never overcome.”

Jae-hee asked carefully, “Then, could it be that the reason you came into this Gate today was…”

“Yes. I thought that if I entered a real otherworld, overflowing with Gate particles, I might find a clue to Awakening…”

Dia laughed bitterly.

“Yes, but I knew… I knew it was all just a desperate fantasy… that I would never, ever Awaken…”

Tears streamed down her face.

The other convicts exchanged uneasy glances, unsure what to do, and fell silent.

It was then that Rabid Dog slowly padded over to the weeping girl. It cautiously stuck out its tongue… and licked away her tears.

“Sir Rabid Dog…?”

Startled by the feeling of a tongue on her cheek, Dia’s expression slowly morphed into one of profound emotion.

“Are you… comforting me?”

Her eyes welled up with fresh tears, and she threw her arms around Rabid Dog’s neck in a tight hug.

The dog, meanwhile, continued to diligently lap up the tears streaming down her face.

I don’t think he’s comforting her. Probably just licking up her tears for the salt, Jae-hee thought but kept his mouth shut.

“Rabid Dog… you weren’t a real dog after all, were you?”

Dia’s gentle hands carefully parted the fur on Rabid Dog’s face, revealing the features of a woman, half-human and half-canine.

Watching them, Jae-hee was even more flustered than she was.

Wait, she’s a woman…? Or, a female? What’s the right word here?

Dia gazed at Rabid Dog with glistening eyes. “To be able to act so much like a dog, even though you aren’t one… How tirelessly you must have worked…?”

What kind of work that could be was anyone’s guess, but Dia was clearly moved.

For some reason, a bizarre piece of dog-inspired wisdom popped into Jae-hee’s head.

He cleared his throat and stepped forward. “Miss Dia.”

When Dia looked up, Jae-hee spoke in a soft, soothing tone. “Rich or poor, tall or short, Awakened or not… none of that has anything to do with the person you want to be. All of those things are just tools to help you become your true self.”

“The person I want to be…?” Dia mumbled slowly. “My true… self…”

“Look at Ms. Rabid Dog!”

The squatting canine scratched furiously behind her ear with a hind leg.

“In order to live the way she wanted, to become a dog, she cast everything else aside!”

Things like clothes, or human dignity… she had certainly cast aside a great deal.

“Money, looks, Awakened abilities—those are just secondary tools to help you become who you really are! You can throw them away anytime.”

“…!”

“Miss Dia, what kind of person do you want to be? Not based on conditions or stats, but on your life’s true goal.”

“The person… I… want to be…?” Dia’s voice trembled. “I… no, I…”

Her hands clenched into tight fists.

“…I don’t actually want to be the President’s daughter. This position is too much of a burden.”

Her voice grew more intense. “Being swayed by what others think, pretending to be perfect… I’m so sick and tired of it! I don’t want to live like this anymore!”

A sharp glint flashed in her large, dark eyes.

“That’s right! Like Ms. Rabid Dog, I want to cast off society’s expectations, its shackles, its obsession with abilities and stats!”

“That’s it!”

“I, too, want to be this cool, this confident, this free…!”

Finally enlightened, Dia threw her arms around Rabid Dog and shouted her true, innermost desire.

“I want to be a dog!”

Question marks appeared over everyone’s heads.

Even Rabid Dog, caught in the embrace, shot Dia a sidelong glance that seemed to say, What the hell is she talking about?

“Excuse me?” Jae-hee asked, doubting his own ears at her conclusion, which had skipped several light-years of logical thought.

But Jae-hee had not misheard.

“Yes, I finally understand my own heart…”

Blushing, Dia cupped her hands over her chest, as if cradling an invisible heart.

And then she declared it once more.

“I, too, wish to become a dog!”

***

Meanwhile, at the entrance to the dungeon.

“Kuh!”

“Surround her! Take her down at once—?!”

“She’s too… strong—Gaah!”

This was the site of the battle between the Shape-Shifters disguised as Secret Service agents and the Black Parade convict—callsign Ghost.

Clang! Clang! Claaang!

The final act of a sword-ballet was unfolding.

There were five Shape-Shifters to Ghost’s one, but the gap between them was too vast to be bridged by numbers.

No matter how much a fox thrashes, it can never defeat a tiger.

Ghost’s white hair, tied back, flowed behind her. Every time the black blade in her hand danced, a spray of red blood from the Shape-Shifters painted the air, trailing the paths of black and white.

The difference in combat power was clear.

The fight had been decided in the first few exchanges. And yet…

“I can’t fall in a place like this…”

The Shape-Shifters clung to her with grim desperation.

“We must… we have to complete our mission…!”

“Hraaghh!”

Knowing they couldn’t win, they fought with every last ounce of their strength.

Ghost frowned. Why are they going this far?

The question, of course, did not stay her hand.

There was no mercy in her strikes.

Slice! Stab! Splurt!

In the end, all five Shape-Shifters were left scattered across the dungeon floor, limbs severed or bodies slashed, barely clinging to life.

“Kagh, urk…!”

“What is this… monster…”

The five Shape-Shifters glared up at their defeater, trembling with rage.

As Ghost sheathed her black sword, she didn’t have a single scratch on her. In fact, there wasn’t a single drop of blood on her new suit.

“Hoo…”

She placed a new cigarette between her lips, lit it with a match, and surveyed her still-breathing enemies. She hadn’t killed any of them, intending to take them back for interrogation.

Her cool blue eyes swept over the subdued agents as she asked, purely out of curiosity, “Why did you orchestrate all this?”

“…”

“Fine, you don’t have to answer me. The specialists will get the information out of you anyway.”

As Ghost considered how to haul them out, she heard a faint, chuckling sound.

“You wouldn’t understand, you damn convict… the conviction with which we carried out this mission…”

“I’d like to think I have a decent understanding of an assassin’s conviction.”

“No, you don’t. You never will.”

Lying on the ground and staring up at nothing, one of the Shape-Shifters let out a long breath and muttered, “Long live the Republic of Korea.”

Instantly, all five Shape-Shifters bit down on their molars.

Crunch! Crunch!

Startled, Ghost lunged forward and tried to pry their mouths open.

“You crazy bastards…”

But it was too late.

The assassins had all crushed the poison capsules hidden in their teeth, committing suicide.

The poison was so potent that their faces melted with a wisp of smoke, dissolving beyond the point where their original features could ever be identified.

“…”

There was nothing more she could do.

Ghost clicked her tongue at their brutal methods, her brow furrowed.

Even if they oppose the law, is there any reason to go this far?

Their fanatical willingness to leap into death was enough to unnerve even her.

Perhaps… this whole affair was more twisted than she had expected.

After a moment’s thought, Ghost shook her head.

What good would it do to think about it any further? In the end, she was just a sword wielded by Hae-eun Seo.

A sword didn’t need to think.

“Heave-ho.”

She gathered the five melted corpses and piled them in one spot to make collection easier.

“Anyway…”

Ghost stood before the cave leading deeper into the dungeon and flicked her cigarette, tapping the ash to the ground.

She tilted her head.

“Where the hell did they get to?”