The warm sunlight of Rio de Janeiro slivered through the gaps in the curtains. Lin Xiao lay on the luxurious single bed in the luxury cruise ship, feeling somewhat listless; Mei hadn't come along.
The night before arriving in Brazil, Lin Xiao told Mei the news, wanting to surprise her. Mei was initially very happy, even taking out her bikini, which she hadn't worn in a long time, and showing it off, making Lin Xiao envious. Soon after, Mei thought of something and said, "You're going on a mission, what would it look like if I followed you? It would embarrass you. Besides, Peter has exams in the next couple of days, and I have to stay home and supervise his studies. That kid only knows how to play games with Ned when no one is looking after him."
Lin Xiao had no choice but to agree. He and the team leader flew to Brazil, Brazil then took a cruise ship directly to Rio de Janeiro.
Lin Xiao stared at the Crystal chandelier on the ceiling, and began to make plans in his mind.
Since we're already here, after completing the task, we should bring them some souvenirs to take back. For now, let them familiarize themselves with the environment, and we can bring them here again next time. With that thought in mind...
Lin Xiao rolled out of bed, changed into his swimming trunks, put on his flamingo battle robe, and shuffled out of the cabin in his flip-flops. As soon as he stepped out of the cabin, the sea breeze carrying the salty smell hit him. Sun umbrellas had already been set up on the deck, and several Brazil beauties in bikinis were sunbathing on deck chairs. Their honey-colored skin shone with a healthy glow in the sunlight, which made Lin Xiao nod in satisfaction. They were really a feast for the eyes.
Lin Xiao's gaze swept across the deck, finally settling on a figure. He was somewhat surprised; he hadn't expected Carol to be out sunbathing as well.
She leaned against the ship's railing, her long golden hair fluttering slightly in the sea breeze. She wore sunglasses and a white bikini with a simple and neat cut that accentuated her shapely figure.
"Good morning." Lin Xiao strode over, a bright smile on his face. "Did you sleep well last night?"
Carol turned her head, pulled down her sunglasses, glanced at Lin Xiao, and a slow smile crept onto her lips.
"I'm fine. I don't need to rest, but I'm enjoying this relaxed feeling on Earth. You seem to be in good spirits."
"Of course. Rio de Janeiro, sunshine, beaches, beautiful women," Lin Xiao paused, then added without changing his expression, "Beautiful captain. How could she not be in a good mood?"
Carol ignored his comment and turned back to look at the sea. Lin Xiao didn't feel awkward. He leaned against Carol and glanced at the beautiful women on the deck again. As if he had remembered something huge, he slapped his forehead.
"By the way, Carol."
"Um?"
Did you apply sunscreen?
Carol turned her head, pulled her sunglasses down, revealing a pair of eyes that seemed to be smiling but weren't.
"I am a clone of the Binary Form, I don't need sunscreen."
"This is where your knowledge is blind spots." Lin Xiao held up a finger, his expression suddenly becoming extremely serious. " The Binary Form can indeed resist most radiation, but Earth's ozone layer has been severely damaged in recent years. Ultraviolet rays can burn people no matter what form you're in, and besides, Rio's latitude means that the ultraviolet radiation intensity here is at least 30% higher than in New York."
Carol stared at him for several seconds. His face was full of seriousness and professionalism; if she hadn't known him for several days, she almost would have believed him.
"Where did you learn all this?"
"You're never too old to learn." Lin Xiao said without changing his expression, a bottle of sunscreen already appearing in his hand. "Here, let me apply it for you. You can't reach your back by yourself, and if you get sunburned, it'll look bad if you keep scratching your back while negotiating with the Skrulls."
Carol looked at the bottle of sunscreen in his hand, then at his ridiculously sincere face. She had met all sorts of people in her life—some who feared her, some who respected her, and some who wanted to take advantage of her—but no one had ever dared to stand in front of her with a bottle of sunscreen and try to fool her with nonsense like "UV wavelength distribution."
Carol rolled her eyes, but neither refused nor agreed.
Lin Xiao interpreted the eye roll as tacit approval. He went behind Carol, squeezed sunscreen into his palm, rubbed it until his palm was full of foam, and then placed his palm on her shoulder.
Carol's skin was much softer than he had imagined. Lin Xiao's fingers pushed down her shoulder blades, the movements slow and deliberate, the pressure neither too light nor too heavy.
"Your shoulder muscles are quite tight," Lin Xiao said in a professional tone. "You must fly too much, right? Let me tell you, maintaining one posture for a long time while flying is really bad for your neck and shoulders. The foot massage I gave you last time was just a temporary fix. To address the root cause, you need to start with your neck and shoulders. Feel the pressure here, is it just right?"
Carol didn't speak, but Lin Xiao sensed that her breathing was a beat faster than before.
Lin Xiao's fingers slid from her shoulder blades to the back of her neck, his thumbs gently pressing on the acupoints on both sides of her cervical spine. His technique was indeed quite skillful; the acupoints he pressed on felt sore and swollen, which Carol found somewhat novel.
The problem was that as he pressed down, his hands started to get restless, gradually trying to reach forward.
Carol didn't say anything, but turned her head and glanced at Lin Xiao out of the corner of her eye, which startled Lin Xiao.
His hand stopped just below Carol's collarbone, one step too short. What a pity.
Lin Xiao swallowed a few times and quickly tried to change the subject.
" Carol, you said the Skrulls have been hiding on Earth for so many years, usually disguising themselves as humans using shapeshifting, right? Then there's a technical question: after they've disguised themselves and been exposed to the sun, do they need to apply sunscreen? If so, do they apply it over their camouflage layer or over their original skin? I'm very curious about this question; I've been thinking about it for a long time."
Carol was silent for a moment, then took off her sunglasses, turned around, and looked at him with an expression as if he were an idiot.
"... How did you go from putting sunscreen on me to wondering if Skrulls need to wear sunscreen?"
"Divergent thinking," Lin Xiao said without changing his expression, "Is a sign of high intelligence."
Carol stared at him for several seconds, then did something that Lin Xiao never expected. She took the bottle of sunscreen from Lin Xiao's hand, squeezed some into her palm, and began to apply it to her front half. Her movements were swift and decisive, without any unnecessary hesitation.
Lin Xiao looked at his palm and his lips twitched. The topic had been changed so successfully that even the sunscreen had been diverted.
"... You applied it quite professionally."
"You've been applying it for almost thirty minutes, I'd be a fool if I didn't." Carol tossed the sunscreen into his arms, put her sunglasses back on, and turned back to look at the sea.
Lin Xiao caught the bottle of sunscreen, and the corners of his mouth slowly turned up.
Lin Xiao's destination was a soft drink factory hidden deep in a slum. It was a three-story gray building with graffiti covering its exterior. Lin Xiao Lin Xiao at the factory entrance, already dressed in his prepared gear, a dark gray jacket. He pulled an ID from his pocket—a fake police ID—swiped it around his neck, and pushed open the factory door.
" Doupao, send Carol your location to let her know I've arrived, and also scan the factory interior."
The first floor of the factory was an abandoned bottling workshop, with rusty conveyor belts and empty bottles scattered all over the floor. Several workers were moving miscellaneous items. When they saw Lin Xiao enter, they looked up at the same time, their expressions changing from casual to wary, and then from wary to confused. A burly man over two meters tall barged in, wearing a police badge, clearly not a friendly visitor.
"Police!" Lin Xiao shouted in English, then, remembering they were in Brazil, switched to Chinese: "Don't move! Everyone, put your hands behind your heads and squat down!"
The workers exchanged glances, clearly not understanding what he was saying. But Lin Xiao's height and the badge on his chest were enough to explain things. One of them, quick-witted, immediately raised his hands and started babbling something, probably something like, "We're just workers."
Lin Xiao ignored them. His gaze was already fixed on a small, thin figure in the corner.
The man, dressed in the same blue overalls as the other workers, was looking down and trying to shrink behind a pile of plastic crates.
"You, yes, it's you, stop hiding."
The slender figure froze for a moment, then suddenly turned and ran towards the back door of the factory. His speed was incredible; he darted to the back door in a few steps, raised a pipe-shaped object in his right hand, pulled the trigger, and the pipe-shaped object flashed a blinding blue light, flying past Lin Xiao's head and striking the wall behind him, burning a fist-sized black hole.
Lin Xiao reached up and touched the top of his head, his fingers brushing against a tuft of curly hair. He looked down at the dark stain on his fingers, then looked up at the Skrulls had already run out the back door, his eyes slowly narrowing.
"You dare to perm my hair? Fine, very well." Lin Xiao's voice was unusually calm as he darted out.
Outside the back door was a narrow alley, its sides piled high with discarded soda bottles and plastic crates. The Skrulls ran fast, but Lin Xiao was even faster. He picked up a discarded plastic pipe from the ground, about two meters long and as thick as a bowl—a waste product from the factory's bottling plant. He tossed the pipe into the air, caught it, and aimed it at the sprinting Skrull, flinging it out like a lasso.
The plastic tube precisely looped around the Skrulls's upper body, trapping him from head to waist. The Skrulls lost his balance, collapsing to the ground, struggling inside the tube and letting out a muffled cry.
Lin Xiao walked over, stepped on the pipe to stop it from rolling around, squatted down, and looked into the pipe. The Skrulls's face was pressed against the plastic pipe wall, and it had now returned to its original appearance. The texture of its green skin was distorted by the pressure, and its eyes were full of terror.
"When you're out in the game, you have to follow the rules." Lin Xiao tapped the outside of the plastic pipe with his finger, making a tapping sound. "You hitting me, I don't mind. But touching my hair, that's going too far. Do you know how much I spent on my hair last time?"
The Skrulls made a series of indistinct sounds from inside the pipe, which Lin Xiao didn't bother to translate with his Doupao. He stood up, tied the two ends of the pipe together, and carried it on his shoulder. Occasionally, when the sounds from inside the pipe became too loud, Lin Xiao would shake the pipe, and the sounds would turn into a muffled groan. On the way back, Lin Xiao always felt that something was watching him from behind.
He turned his head sharply, his gaze sweeping over the row of abandoned shipping containers beside him. A blurry shadow flashed between the containers and quickly disappeared; the person's steps were unsteady, and their figure was rather thin.
Lin Xiao squinted, looking in the direction the shadow had disappeared. He sighed, seemingly remembering something, then shouldered the plastic pipe, pushed open the back door, and headed towards the factory's gatehouse. Inside sat an elderly man with gray hair, wearing faded work clothes; he was the factory's night shift guard. The seventy-something Brazil man was completely dumbfounded when he saw Lin Xiao carrying a wriggling plastic pipe in.
"Are you the guard here?" Lin Xiao asked.
The old man clearly understood English and nodded hurriedly. Lin Xiao didn't care about anything else, took out a bag of White Rabbit Creamy Candy from his pocket, placed it on the table in the guard room, and pointed to the direction in which the figure had disappeared.
"When that guy who just went out comes back, give him this."
The old man nodded. Lin Xiao patted the old man on the shoulder, put down $100, and carried the plastic pipe out of the factory gate.
When Carol returned to her room on the cruise ship, she found that the other two Skrulls had already been picked up. They were a man and a woman, both middle-aged, dressed in ordinary Brazil clothing. They were sitting on stools, looking much more relaxed, and their eyes were filled with gratitude when they saw Carol.
Lin Xiao strode in carrying a dusty plastic pipe, stood it upright on the ground, and untied the rope binding it. A muffled thud came from inside. The Skrulls inside the pipe let out a muffled scream, slid out of the pipe, and collapsed to the ground.
"The person has been found, alive."
The Skrulls on the ground struggled to his feet, pointing a trembling finger at Lin Xiao, his voice shrill and cracking. "This man is violent! He abused me! He put a pipe over me and kicked me!"
Lin Xiao curled his lip in disdain.
"Violent tendencies?" Carol raised an eyebrow.
"Absolutely not." Lin Xiao tossed the plastic tube aside, spread his hands, and looked utterly innocent. "He ran too fast and fell into the tube. I carried him back; that's called rescue. As for kicking him, did you see me kick him? I was just shaking the tube; there was sand inside, and I was afraid he'd suffocate."
The Skrulls's face turned even greener with anger. "You're lying! It was clearly you who kicked the pipe with your shoe! And there wasn't even any sand in the pipe!"
"Alright." Carol raised a hand to stop the farce. She looked at Lin Xiao, the corner of her mouth curling into a dangerous smile. "He said you used excessive force. What do you have to say?"
"Yes." Lin Xiao looked up and pointed to his hair. "Look at my curly hair, you can tell who started it! I almost turned into Aunt Qian."
When Carol saw the slightly burnt ends of Lin Xiao's hair, which was curled into an extremely comical arc, she completely lost her composure and burst out laughing.
Lin Xiao stood in the middle of the conference room, watching Carol laugh so hard she couldn't stand up straight, and the corners of his mouth slowly turned up. He didn't know why, but seeing her laugh like that, most of the frustration from getting his hair permed suddenly dissipated.
The Skrulls wanted to continue complaining, but Carol smiled and waved her hand, signaling him to stop. She took a tissue from the table, wiped her eyes, stood up, and began to speak.
Lin Xiao.
"Um?"
"Remember to wear a hat on future missions."
Lin Xiao touched his curly hair and sighed softly, "Alright, I've got it."