Chapter Text
The concrete of the upper parking garage deck buckled beneath Seungmin’s boots, sending a cloud of pulverized gray dust into the damp evening air. Down below, the sirens of the Seoul Metropolitan Police were a distant, useless background hum.
Seungmin straightened, adjusting the reinforced tactical strap across his chest. He wiped a streak of grime from his cheek, eyes locked on the figure standing casually at the edge of the roof, outlined against the neon-lit skyline of the city.
Lee Minho—known to the public, the press, and the Hero Registry as Vesper—was currently tossing a piece of heavy, glowing blue circuitry from hand to hand like a cheap baseball. He wasn't even wearing his full combat armor; just the sleek, obsidian mask covering the upper half of his face and a dark coat that snapped crisply in the autumn wind.
"Give it up, Vesper," Seungmin snapped, his voice amplified by his suit's comm-system. "You're boxed in. The perimeter's locked, and I’m not letting you leave this roof with the mainframe core."
Minho stopped tossing the core. He turned slowly, letting out a heavy, exaggerated sigh that was loud enough to carry across the fifty feet of ruined asphalt separating them.
"Oh," Minho said, his tone dripping with profound, unbothered boredom. "It's you."
Seungmin’s jaw tightened. "Yes. It's me. The guy who just spent twenty minutes dismantling your mechanical sentries."
"Right. Seungmin, was it?" Minho tilted his head, resting a hand on his hip. "Look, kid, I'm kind of on a tight schedule tonight. I really don't have the patience to play hero-and-villain with a junior operative. Where's the rest of your squad?"
Junior operative.
A hot spike of irritation flared in Seungmin’s chest. He stepped forward, the kinetic gauntlets on his forearms humming to life with a low, menacing charge. "I don't need a squad to bring you down. I've tracked your movement patterns for three months. I know your blind spots, I know your warp-gate cooldowns, and I am ending this right now."
Minho didn't drop into a combat stance. He didn't even charge his plasma blades. He just rolled his eyes behind his mask, checked a digital watch on his wrist, and muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, 'He's late again.'
"Did you hear me?" Seungmin growled, lowering his center of gravity.
"I heard you. You're very loud," Minho replied smoothly, backing up a single step toward the ledge. "It's just... look, no offense, but this whole 'destined nemeses' routine you're trying to pull? It requires mutual interest. And frankly, your tactical style is a little textbook. Very predictable. Very... ballyhooed."
"I am not predictable—"
Before Seungmin could launch himself forward, a sudden, blinding flash of golden light cracked through the center of the rooftop, accompanied by the loud, static POP of displaced air.
The kinetic force blew Seungmin back two paces, forcing him to throw up an arm to shield his eyes.
When the light faded, a new figure was standing squarely between Seungmin and Minho. He wore a brightly colored, high-tech flight suit, a pair of oversized golden goggles pushed up onto his messy brown hair, and an utterly ridiculous grin.
Han Jisung. Alias: Solaris.
"Did someone call for a real hero, or am I just early for the party?" Jisung announced, landing with a flashy, unnecessary superhero knee-drop that left a tiny crack in the pavement. He stood up, dusting off his kneepads, completely ignoring Seungmin to glare dramatically at Minho.
Instantly, the entire energy on the rooftop shifted.
The bored, slouched posture Minho had maintained for the last ten minutes vanished. His shoulders squared, his frame went taut as a bowstring, and a genuine, razor-sharp smirk spread across his face. The cold indifference was gone, replaced by a dark, intense heat that Seungmin had never seen directed at himself.
"You're five minutes late, squirrel-brain," Minho purred, his voice dropping an octave into something dangerous and deeply personal. "I was starting to think you got scared off after what happened at the docks last week."
"Scared of you?" Jisung laughed, stepping forward into Minho's personal space, entirely unfazed by the threat of the glowing villain. "You wish, Vesper. I had to finish my dinner. Prioritization. You know how it is."
"I'm going to paint this roof with you," Minho snapped, a genuine, sparks-flying plasma blade igniting from his gauntlet with a lethal hiss.
"Try it, cat-guy!" Jisung yelled, drawing twin kinetic blasters from his belt.
Seungmin stood entirely frozen in place, his gauntlets still humming, his heart hammering against his ribs—not from fear, but from a sudden, bewildering wave of absolute, unadulterated outrage.
What about me?
"Hey!" Seungmin shouted, raising his voice over the crackle of Minho's plasma blade. "Hey! I was literally in the middle of arresting him!"
Neither of them looked at him.
"You took my core, Minho," Jisung said, taking another step forward, his eyes locked entirely on the villain. "And more importantly, you scratched the paint on my hover-bike last Tuesday. That was personal."
"Everything I do to you is personal, Han," Minho hissed back, stepping so close their chest plates almost touched. "I built an entire EMP network specifically tuned to your suit's frequency just to watch you drop out of the sky."
"Aww, you built that just for me?" Jisung mocked, faking a touched expression. "You really shouldn't have."
"Shut up and fight me!" Minho roared, lunging directly at Jisung with a strike fast enough to break the sound barrier.
Jisung ducked, flipped backward over Minho's head, and fired a barrage of light-energy blasts. Minho deflected every single one with terrifying precision, laughing—actually laughing—as he pursued Jisung across the roof, fully engaged, completely focused, and entirely consumed by the fight.
Seungmin lowered his arms. His gauntlets sputtered out.
He watched them exchange high-speed blows, a perfectly rehearsed ballet of hatred and familiarity. They called each other by name. They referenced past battles Seungmin had only read about in official registry files. Minho didn't look at his watch anymore. He didn't look bored. He looked alive.
He looked at Jisung the way Seungmin spent every night dreaming Minho would look at him.
A strange, hot knot twisted in Seungmin's stomach. It wasn't just frustration. It was a bizarre, bitter jealousy that made his teeth grind.
He had spent six months analyzing Minho’s fight footage. He knew Minho’s preferred entry routes, his sleep schedule, his favorite hideouts in Sector 4. He had customized his entire suit specifically to counter Minho's warp mechanics! Seungmin had made Minho his singular focus, his ultimate goal, his official, arch-nemesis.
And Minho didn't even remember his name without checking his notes.
"Hey!" Seungmin yelled again, charging forward and firing a concussive shockwave directly between the two of them.
The shockwave detonated, forcing Jisung and Minho to spring apart to avoid the blast. Both of them landed cleanly, finally turning their heads to look at Seungmin.
Jisung blinked, looking genuinely surprised to see another hero there. "Oh! Seungminnie! Hey, man. What are you doing here? Did the agency send back-up?"
"No, 'the agency' didn't send back-up!" Seungmin snapped, pointing a trembling finger at Minho. "I tracked him! I trapped him! This was my bust!"
Minho sighed, resting his plasma blade against his shoulder and looking at Seungmin like an annoying fly that refused to be swatted. "Look, Seungmin... Kim, right? Kim Seungmin? Good job tracking me, really, gold star for effort. But the adults are talking now. Why don't you go down to the street and help the police direct traffic or something?"
Traffic.
Seungmin’s eyes narrowed into slits. The sheer disrespect was a physical weight on his chest.
"I have spent three months preparing to beat you, Lee Minho," Seungmin said, his voice dropping into a deadly quiet tone. "I am your opponent tonight."
Jisung frowned, looking between Seungmin and Minho with an awkward chuckle. "Uh, bro... no offense, but Vesper and I have kind of had a whole rival thing going on for like two years now? He blew up my apartment once. I ruined his shadow-corp launch. It's... a whole narrative arc."
"I don't care about your narrative arc!" Seungmin snapped, stepping past Jisung to thrust a finger into Minho's chest plate. "He is my target."
Minho looked down at Seungmin's finger on his chest, then up into Seungmin's furious eyes. For a fraction of a second, a spark of genuine curiosity crossed the villain's face—before it was immediately replaced by his signature, infuriating smirk.
"Cute," Minho murmured, leaning in slightly. "Unbalanced, but cute. Tell you what, kid. If you survive the next thirty seconds, I'll let you pick up my discarded armor pieces."
Before Seungmin could react, Minho clicked something on his belt.
A blinding blinding flash of purple shadow erupted from the pavement beneath their feet. Seungmin swung his fist, but his kinetic gauntlet hit empty air. When the dark smoke cleared a second later, the edge of the rooftop was completely vacant.
Minho was gone. And so was the mainframe core.
Silence fell over the roof, save for the distant police sirens below and the wind whistling through the torn concrete.
Jisung groaned, throwing his head back. "Ah, man! He used the shadow-veil again! I told tech support we needed a light-frequency jammer!" He turned, slapping a hand on Seungmin's shoulder. "Well, hey, good effort, man! You almost had him distracted enough for me to flank him. Let's head back to headquarters and grab some ramen."
Seungmin stared at the empty space where Minho had stood just moments ago. He brushed Jisung’s hand off his shoulder, his fists clenched so tightly his gloves groaned under the tension.
"He called me 'kid'," Seungmin whispered dangerously.
"Yeah, he does that," Jisung said casually, stretching his arms. "He called me 'rodent' for six months before he finally started using my hero name. You get used to it."
"I am not getting used to it," Seungmin said, turning on his heel and marching toward the rooftop exit, his brain already running through a hundred new tactical calculations. "He's going to know my name. If I have to drag him through every wall in this city, he is going to realize who his actual archenemy is."
The neon halo of the Seoul skyline faded behind Seungmin as he slammed the heavy double doors of the District 9 Hero Agency open. The HQ was buzzing with the quiet late-night hum of graveyard shift analysts and technicians, but Seungmin marched straight past the front desk, his heavy combat boots squeaking angrily against the polished linoleum.
"Seungminnie, wait up!" Jisung jogged behind him, unzipping his bright yellow flight suit to reveal a faded graphic tee underneath. "Seriously, it’s not a big deal. Vesper escapes like seventy percent of the time. It’s practically in his contract."
"It is a big deal," Seungmin said, stopping so abruptly that Jisung almost plowed into his back. Seungmin whirled around, pointing an accusatory finger. "He didn't escape because he outsmarted me. He escaped because you interrupted a tactical containment field I had been setting up for four hours!"
"I didn't interrupt! I answered an Alpha-level ping!" Jisung held his hands up defensively. "Besides, Vesper and I have history. The guy literally bought the building across from my apartment just to set up a laser pointer to annoy my cat. He’s my problem."
Seungmin’s jaw clicked shut. He bought a building just to annoy Jisung?
A deep, dark pit of envy twisted in Seungmin's gut. Minho had never bought a building to annoy him. The most Minho had ever done to Seungmin was hack his suit's display to play a three-second video loop of a dancing cat before remotely shutting off his thrusters. It was dismissive. It was low-effort.
"He's not your problem anymore," Seungmin muttered, turning back toward the elevator. "I'm going to the tactical lab."
"At two in the morning?" Jisung called after him as the elevator doors slid shut. "We’re supposed to get ramen!"
The lift hummed as it carried Seungmin down to Sub-Level 3, the agency’s central research and intelligence wing. The lights were dimmed, casting long shadows across rows of supercomputers and holographic projectors.
Seungmin walked straight to his designated workstation, swiped his ID badge, and pulled up the primary threat database.
A sleek blue hologram flickered to life in front of him, displaying a three-dimensional rendering of Lee Minho. Underneath the glowing render, the bold red letters read: SUBJECT: VESPER. DANGER LEVEL: S-RANK.
Seungmin aggressively swiped his hand through the air, bringing up the battle logs.
- Vesper vs. Solaris (Han Jisung): 42 Encounters.
- Vesper vs. Aegis Squad: 12 Encounters.
- Vesper vs. Seungmin: 3 Encounters.
Three. A miserable, pitiful three.
And according to the file notes, Minho had logged Seungmin under "Minor Interferences" rather than "Primary Threats."
Seungmin slammed both palms onto the console, his eyes burning as he stared at the file. "Minor interference?" he whispered to the empty room. "I spent four weeks reversing the polarity of his gravity-disruption mines! I memorized his entire bio-energy signature! I know he prefers cold brew over espresso!"
He grabbed a digital stylus and opened a new blank file. At the top, he typed in heavy black letters: PROJECT: ABSOLUTE NEMESIS.
If Minho wanted a dramatic, deeply personal rivalry, Seungmin was going to give him one so intense it would make Han Jisung look like a temporary nuisance.
For the next three days, Seungmin didn't sleep.
While Jisung was off doing press interviews for stopping a bank heist in Gangnam, Seungmin was sequestered in the agency’s underground workshop, surrounded by sparks, blueprints, and empty aluminum cans of energy drinks.
He didn't just upgrade his gear; he redesigned his entire hero persona around Minho’s weaknesses.
Minho used shadow-warp technology? Seungmin engineered localized quantum-anchors that locked down spatial coordinates in a fifty-meter radius.
Minho used rapid-fire plasma blades? Seungmin woven liquid-metal alloys into his suit that absorbed thermal energy and turned it directly into kinetic momentum.
Minho liked to taunt his opponents with grand, arrogant monologues? Seungmin installed a high-decibel directional noise-canceling field so he wouldn't even have to hear the villain's infuriatingly smooth voice.
"You're looking a little feral, man," Hyunjin, the agency's head gear analyst, observed on Friday morning. He leaned against the workshop doorframe, holding a mug of coffee and eyeing Seungmin’s bloodshot eyes and disheveled hair. "Is this all for the Vesper raid tonight?"
"It's not just a raid," Seungmin said without looking up from his soldering iron. "It's a statement."
"Right... well, Jisung is already down in the briefing room. He’s bringing the flight team."
Seungmin froze, the soldering iron hovering an inch above a circuit board. "Jisung is coming?"
"Yeah? Vesper’s attacking the Central Energy Grid. It’s an S-rank threat. Jisung is the lead hero assigned to Vesper."
Seungmin set the iron down with a sharp clank. He wiped his hands on a grease-stained rag, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. "Not tonight he isn't."
The Central Energy Grid was a massive, fortress-like facility on the outskirts of the city, illuminated by glowing blue conduits running along the concrete walls.
By the time Seungmin arrived on his modified tactical bike, the perimeter fence had already been cleanly sliced open with plasma marks. Sparks showered down from the upper gantries, and the alarm klaxons blared in a rhythmic, deafening cadence.
Seungmin kicked his bike onto its stand, drew his newly upgraded kinetic batons, and marched through the breach.
Inside the main generator hall, Minho was casually tapping away at a floating holographic console, downloading raw energy sequences directly into a portable drive.
"You know," Minho said, his back turned to the door, "the security here is almost insulting. I expected at least a few auto-turrets." He detached the drive, tossing it in the air and catching it. He turned around, expecting to see a bright yellow flight suit.
Instead, he found Seungmin standing in the doorway, drenched in the harsh emergency lighting, wearing a completely overhauled, pitch-black combat suit with glowing silver accents.
Minho blinked behind his mask, tilting his head. "Oh. It's... the textbook guy. Did you get a new outfit? It’s very gloomy."
Seungmin didn't waste time talking.
He slammed his foot onto the metal catwalk. The quantum-anchor on his belt detonated with a low hum, spreading a dark blue ring of light across the entire floor.
Minho flicked his wrist to trigger his shadow-warp, intending to step behind Seungmin—but nothing happened. The shadow-veil flickered once and instantly collapsed under the spatial suppression field.
For the first time since Seungmin had met him, Minho’s smirk faltered. He looked down at his gloves, then up at Seungmin, a genuine flash of surprise crossing his features.
"My spatial drive," Minho murmured, his eyes widening slightly. "You nullified the frequency."
"I told you," Seungmin said, stepping forward as his batons flared with blinding white light. "I know your blind spots."
Minho’s surprise melted away, replaced almost immediately by an intrigued, dangerous grin. He ignited his twin plasma blades, stepping into a low, lethal combat stance. "Okay, kid. You've got my attention."
Seungmin’s heart gave a strange, violent thud against his ribs. Finally.
He lunged forward, swinging his left baton in a lethal arc. Minho brought his plasma blade up to block, expecting the light weapon to slice right through it, but Seungmin’s liquid-metal alloy absorbed the heat instantly, transferring the energy into a massive kinetic shockwave that threw Minho backward across the metal gantry.
Minho skidded to a halt on his boots, his dark coat billowing. He wiped a streak of glowing blue plasma energy from his collar, looking at Seungmin with genuine, breathless shock.
"You built that suit specifically for me," Minho said, his voice dropping into a low, fascination-laced quiet.
"I spent seventy-two hours studying your combat patterns," Seungmin said, advancing on him step by step, his batons crackling. "I know how you move. I know how you fight. You are not escaping tonight, Vesper."
Minho let out a short, dark laugh that echoed off the steel walls of the generator room. He raised his blades again, his eyes locked onto Seungmin with absolute, unbroken focus. No watches. No sighs. No boredom.
"Well, Seungmin," Minho purred, saying his name correctly for the very first time, "it looks like I severely underestimated—"
BOOM!
The skylight directly above them shattered into a million sparkling shards of glass.
A streak of golden light crashed through the roof, slamming into the catwalk right between them with a dramatic, deafening explosion of dust and sound.
"Fear not, citizens!" Jisung’s voice boomed through his suit's speaker as he straightened up from his superhero landing. "Solaris is on the—oh, hey Seungmin! Wow, you got here fast!"
Minho instantly dropped his combat stance, his eyes shifting away from Seungmin to glare at Jisung with familiar, burning fury. "Han," Minho hissed, his tone instantly shifting back to that deeply personal, bitter hatred. "You just ruined a very interesting moment."
"Ruined it?" Jisung laughed, drawing his blasters. "I came to save the day! Did you miss me, cat-guy?"
Seungmin stood in the settling dust, his white-hot kinetic batons still glowing in his hands. He looked at Minho, whose focus had completely reverted back to Jisung, then at Jisung, who was grinning like a fool.
The blue ring of the spatial suppression field flickered and died as Jisung’s entrance damaged the generator floor.
"You..." Seungmin whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying mixture of rage and exhaustion. "You ruined it."
"What?" Jisung asked, casting a quick glance over his shoulder. "Seungminnie, get back, I'll handle him!"
"I HAD HIM!" Seungmin roared, the sound echoing so loudly that both Jisung and Minho froze, staring at him in shock.
Seungmin’s face was flushed red, his knuckles white around his weapons. He glared at Jisung with a heat that rivaled Minho’s plasma blades. "I had him trapped! I nullified his warp! He was looking at me! He said my name!"
Jisung blinked, utterly bewildered. "Uh... good job?"
Minho looked between the two heroes, a slow, wicked realization dawning on his face behind his mask. He looked at Seungmin’s furious, trembling posture, then at Jisung’s total confusion.
Minho’s lips curved into the widest, most dangerous smirk Seungmin had ever seen.
"Oh," Minho purred softly, deactivating his plasma blades and crossing his arms. "I get it now."
Seungmin stiffened, his head snapping toward Minho.
Minho stepped closer to the edge of the broken gantry, his dark eyes sparkling with wicked amusement as he looked down at Seungmin. "You're jealous."
"I am not jealous!" Seungmin spat. "I am a professional hero trying to execute a precise tactical apprehension!"
"You custom-built a suit just to get my attention," Minho said smoothly, dropping down off the gantry to land gracefully on a steel pipe just a few feet above Seungmin’s head. He leaned down, his voice a low, teasing purr that only Seungmin could hear over the alarms. "You want to be my primary target so badly it's making you crazy."
Seungmin raised a baton, pointing it straight at Minho's chest. "Shut up."
"Make me," Minho whispered, winking from behind his mask.
Before Seungmin could swing, Minho triggered a flash-bang grenade at his feet. White light engulfed the room, forcing Seungmin and Jisung to shield their eyes.
When the light cleared, Minho was standing on the ruined rim of the shattered roof, holding the energy drive in one hand. He looked down at Seungmin, giving him a dramatic, sweeping bow.
"Until next time, Seungmin," Minho called down, his voice echoing with genuine delight. "Try not to let Solaris ruin our next date!"
With a quiet snap, Minho melted back into the night shadows, vanishing entirely into the Seoul skyline.
Silence fell over the generator room.
Jisung lowered his blasters, coughing slightly in the smoke. "Man... he's really getting faster with those flash-bangs. Anyway, great team effort, Seungmin! We drove him off!"
Seungmin didn't answer. He slowly lowered his batons, staring up at the empty rooftop opening where Minho had vanished.
His suit was covered in dust. His spatial field was broken. The villain had gotten away with the energy drive.
...But Minho had remembered his name. And Minho had called it their next date.
A slow, terrifyingly focused smile began to creep across Seungmin's face.
"Hey, Jisung?" Seungmin asked quietly, turning to look at his fellow hero.
"Yeah, bro?"
"I'm requisitioning your tactical file on Vesper," Seungmin said, stepping past him toward the exit. "All of it. Every battle log, every scrap of footage, every single line of code."
"Wait, why?" Jisung called out, jogging after him. "What are you planning?"
Seungmin didn't answer as he walked out into the cool night air. He pulled out his personal communicator, opening the PROJECT: ABSOLUTE NEMESIS file, and added a single new entry at the bottom:
Phase 2: Eliminate Han Jisung from the rivalry.