Seven Deadly Sins

Jupiter stood slender and poised in a white blazer, skirt suit, and black stockings wrapping her long legs, their taut stance outlining the contours of her calves. Beneath her pointed high heels, blood seeped across the Capitol Building plaza.

A chill rose in her heart as she sternly directed the police and the military stationed in the city, trampling banners bearing "Angel of Justice," "Kindness," "Merciful God," and other such slogans beneath their feet. The panicked crowd was evacuated in an orderly manner.

It was as though the people's faith had collapsed. Trembling with terror, they were led away from the Capitol Building plaza one by one.

Black hearses entered one after another, gathering the reporters' severed remains into black body bags. Strangely, the air was filled with the scent of cooked meat. Several officers vomited on the spot at the sight.

No words could adequately describe such inhuman misery.

Jupiter forced down the horror in her heart and the nausea brought on by the meaty smell as she dealt with everything.

Once all the remains had been bagged and sent away for cremation, fire trucks blasted the ground with huge white columns of water. It took a full two hours to wash away the red stains.

The place looked as though nothing had ever happened.

Sweat trickled down Jupiter's fair, resolute, dignified, beautiful face. Several strands of hair clung to her cheeks, and weariness showed faintly in her expression. She nudged her black-rimmed glasses up with the back of her finger. Her azure eyes were as calm as a still lake.

"Beasts!"

Whenever she remembered the reporters being sliced apart by Heat Vision, human lives cut down as easily as wheat, and that hellish scene of slaughter—

A chill gripped Jupiter's heart, and fury surged within her. She pressed her red-painted lips together, her face cold and grim, then strode away from the Capitol Building in sharp, decisive heels.

With He-El too lazy to handle affairs and Stacker busy dismantling the military, Jupiter, He-El's secretary, held power second only to his throughout the city and even the entire conquered nation. She could easily mobilize any municipal official, including the police and the garrisoned military.

As she emerged from the Capitol Building and reached the street, an old black Beetle pulled up at her feet. It was so old that it lacked even modern navigation and audio technology.

Jupiter opened the door without hesitation and got into the black Beetle.

The black Beetle wound through the main roads toward the Four Seasons Hotel where she was staying, taking streets with the fewest surveillance cameras along the way.

Inside the car, she took out the tablet she carried for handling work and smashed its camera.

The moment the camera broke, the tablet screen lit up, displaying Dawn in a red dress and bare feet. Her voice sounded from the device.

"Big Sister Jupe, are you in danger? Your camera is broken," Dawn asked with concern.

"I accidentally dropped it and damaged it. I'm fine. I'm returning to the hotel where I'm staying," Jupiter said tiredly, her expression icy.

"Okay. Be careful."

"Thank you for your concern, Dawn."

Just like He-El's arrogance, this was not surveillance, nor was it an order from He-El. It was simply a child, Dawn, expressing concern.

He-El simply did not care about Jupiter. There were countless people willing to be a secretary like her. She had merely volunteered herself when he did not yet have one, so he let her do it.

It did not matter.

That only made Jupiter even angrier, her face turning livid.

She was not irreplaceable. She was not unique. She held no importance whatsoever.

Even now, though others saw her as second only to one and above tens of thousands, able to mobilize the police, garrison troops, and hundreds of thousands of people, with the power to slaughter her own kind, He-El would not spare her a second glance.

Arrogance!

Arrogance!

You are far too arrogant, alien!

A powerful killing intent grew in Jupiter's heart, and her expression turned sinister.

Perhaps afraid of interrupting Jupiter's conversation, the driver pulled over beside the street, directly above a manhole cover, and waited for them to finish talking.

After finishing her conversation with Dawn,

Jupiter tossed the tablet and a voice recorder containing a fifteen-minute recommendation report to the driver. The driver caught them expressionlessly, then operated the modified Beetle. A mechanical arm extended from beneath the car, lifted the manhole cover, and revealed a staircase descending into the sewers.

Jupiter tensed her arm muscles, lifted the car's undercarriage, and jumped straight down into the sewer in her black-stockinged legs.

The Beetle replaced the manhole cover and slowly drove away.

Jupiter dropped into the sewer, spreading her legs wide. Her skirt suit clung so tightly it seemed about to tear, drawing out the strong, graceful curves of her thighs and hips. The soles of her high heels pressed against the outer sides of the iron ladder, while her hands loosely gripped the rungs, maintaining her balance as she slid all the way down.

Her nose filled with the murky stench, but her expression did not change as she headed deeper inside.

After turning through several passages, she arrived at a broad sewer junction, then slipped into a dark sewer opening.

Following the trickling flow of sewage, she reached a room covered in high-tech soundproofing foam.

Inside the room stood a round table with eleven seats occupied by eleven people. Beneath the swaying light of dim oil lamps behind them, all their faces were buried in darkness.

"Kevin is dead."

"We failed."

"No. The psychological team's assessment was not wrong. He is merely an alien with an ordinary human psyche. His mind is already under my control."

"Eliminating evil? How ridiculous."

"We did indeed understand his thoughts and his mind."

"Then why did we fail?"

"To be watched with admiration, worship, and longing; to be praised as 'justice,' 'kindness,' and 'humanity's guardian'—those are poisons to the mind. They are positive subconscious desires, desires that can never be satisfied. Yet he broke free."

"Shouldn't humanity have given Him a definition at this moment?"

"On the contrary. Just after conquering this nation, after eliminating eight million criminals while the eyes of the world were upon him, while he was still driven by intense anger toward evil and a powerful urge to act, his heart contained a bleak disgust toward the filth of criminals. Only when humanity gave him the labels 'justice,' 'kindness,' and 'humanity's guardian,' recognizing his achievements, would they become a lovely light in his eyes. It would make him feel that his actions had meaning, planting thoughts of justice and evil, fighting for humanity, and protecting humanity in his mind step by step, until his psychology was completely controlled."

"No ordinary human mind can break free from such spiritual delicacies, from Psychological Manipulation."

"But the fact is, we failed!"

"..."

"He saw through it. He is smarter than all of us combined. He saw through Kevin's actions."

"I refuse to admit his IQ is higher than ours, but he did see through it."

"If he had shown even the slightest weakness on the spot and Kevin had not died, he would certainly have stepped into an inescapable psychological abyss. Once the breach opened, he would have lost his balance and become dependent on humanity to survive. He understood that, so he acted without hesitation."

"He is truly a nut wrapped in a hard shell. But that also exposes a mind unfit for such a body. He does not possess the supreme state of mind of a god or saint, yet he still cannot see through the evil before him. How laughable. This is your greatest weakness, alien!"

As the group discussed their failure and the alien's psychological behavior, a Gentle-looking Man with a pale face, made almost feminine by the flickering yellow oil lamp, rose from his seat and swept his gaze across the room.

"I have already realized that this is a long, drawn-out war with no victory. Standing beside people like you, who pride yourselves on possessing humanity's greatest minds and standing at the pinnacle of human IQ, will only waste what remains of my life. I quit."

"Rather than wasting my brain cells fighting your open schemes, hidden schemes, and plots, I would rather become the alien's subordinate, gain the superpowers that belong to me, and live even more freely than before, spending every night in song and revelry. That is the proper path."

The Gentle-looking Man shook his head. His thoughts had diverged from those of everyone present, and the faces hidden in the darkness turned cold and contemptuous.

He walked toward the exit, a faint sneer playing at the corners of his mouth as he moved.

At the exit, Jupiter lightly tucked several strands of hair clinging to her cheek behind her ear. Her spine remained straight as she removed her black glasses and placed them on the table, revealing a resolute, merciless face.

Her blue eyes roiled like stormy waves. Just as the Gentle-looking Man was about to reach the exit, Jupiter sprang forward and spun sharply. With a rip, her tightly stretched skirt suit tore apart. A black, ghostlike piercing kick shot directly from the ripped fabric, striking the Gentle-looking Man in the diaphragm and sending him staggering backward, clutching his stomach as he slammed into the wall in agony.

Jupiter stepped forward. With another rip, her skirt suit tore farther, all the way to the root. Her long black-stockinged leg was slender and powerful, its muscular contours graceful and beautiful. She kicked straight upward into a full split, the heel of her high shoe driving into the Gentle-looking Man's jaw and digging deeply in. Amid his pain, he could still smell the blood and sewer filth on the sole of her heel.

No one paid attention to the stunning glimpse of lace patterns against her fair, tender skin.

The heel pressed into the jaw of the Gentle-looking Man, trapped against the wall with nowhere to run, driving in deeper and filling him with excruciating pain.

Mercilessness flashed in Jupiter's eyes. Her beautiful face seemed calm on the surface, like raging tides hidden deep beneath the sea. She shifted her gaze to her raised right calf and said coldly, "Do you smell it? The bloody scent on the sole of this high heel belongs to Kevin and ninety-three warriors of the Humanity Self-Rescue Heroes Association. It is the blow they struck at the demon for humanity's freedom."