Two men reached the door.

It took them fifteen minutes to secure this very moment. Knockout guards, captured of hostages and headache over-excited men — all for this very moment.

Marley stood before the control room’s gate. Their destination — the Stabilization Core and its Control Chamber—was a mere foot away.

…

Twelve terrorists gathered the hostages in the VIP room. The helpless crowd cowered in terror as the jovial extremists lorded over them. A young boy lost control of himself and cried.

“Shut the kid up!” One terrorist shouted.

The mother quickly covered her son’s mouth.

“How long we have to wait here?” A man said in annoyance, counting the money he looted from one passenger. “Dammit, I am not getting paid enough for this?”

“Stop!” The elderly passenger tried to wrestle his money back. “You don’t understand. That loan was for…”

“Shut up!” Another terrorist booted the man’s head. “You act like you honestly earn this. Don’t make me laugh. You probably extorted someone for quick cash or sold a scam to the sheep like those Aurorin bastard. This money belongs to folks who worked for it.”

More kicks followed. The man silently wept, watching the dream of fifty years disappearing into a pocket of a criminal. He was a grasp away from his dream. How could it have ended like this? He only hoped to fulfill his late mother’s dream to open a cafe and shared her hospitality food with everyone.

The man gritted his teeth. How could such cruelty claimed a title freedom and justice?

“Yeah, guys come on let give the cheater what he deserves,” Another terrorist joined in and punted the man in the stomach, forcing him to cough up blood.

Witnessing an old man failing to fight back, other terrorists followed the example and savagely beat him up.

The other passenger averted their eyes, too powerless to stop the tragedy. The boy stifled his tears in fear.

Even during a merciless beating, the old man kept watching his lifework being stolen. He wanted to pray, but he knew it was useless. No selfish gods answered the prayer of the man with nothing to offer.

Then again, gods were not Superman.

…

Marley opened the door.

He didn’t reach the Stabilization Core. No. What he received was a punishment from heaven.

The glass case housing the Stabilization Core was empty.

Marley stared. His brain blinked rapidly, trying to come up with an explanation. Short-circuited logic devoiced his head in that critical second.

Beside him, the mass of muscle named Bruno spoke the question he failed to answer.

“Where is it?”

Marley got zero answer to deliver. Is this a trap? Had Aurorin’s spy discovered them and moved the Core? No, that was not possible. If that happened, they would be dead. Forget boarding the train. Even leaving the station would be a pipe-dream.

What was happening?

The answer crawled out of the shadow.

Marley and Bruno readied their weapon, but the moment the creature entered the light, they almost dropped their equipment.

She was an elf and a beautiful specimen to boot. She had charcoal-black hair, dainty pointed ears, and a pair of beautiful sky-blue eyes welling with tears.

Aside from her elf’s trait and the Octopus wrapping around her legs, the girl could easily pass as a regular harmless teenager.

The elf noticed them. Her eyes swelled with gratitude and she wailed.

“Thank god,” she leapt at Marley’s leg and hugged for dear life. “Help me, please! The conductor said he will sell me to a rich man for money! He also threatened to eat my pet!”

Bruno stared at the octopus, then the elf, and the octopus.

“An octopus?” Bruno said. “When did an elf pick an octopus as their pet? Where is the owl? The Tiger? What about the eagle?”

“Help!” The elf squeezed out more tears and grabbed Marley’s leg, immobilizing it as she wept with all her might. “The big scary man will eat me. Help me, mister.”

She inched away from Bruno like he’s a plague and hid behind Marley’s leg, much to the giant’s chagrin.

That was the moment chaos ensued.

...

Hyper-channel had two VIP-suits that got taken hostages by the Liberator.

A door to one of them slid open.

“What the hell,” several terrorists gasped in shock.

Spells and weapons flew into readiness. Sadly, that preparation was as useful as blocking explosive with tissue paper. None among them had an idea about the bizarreness landing on them with a force of a falling bathtub.

A honey badger wearing a ‘Make Fantasy Great Again’ cap was looking right at them with murder in her eyes.

“Who are you? Identify yourself!?” One of the terrorist leaders shouted.

But the badger already disappeared.

A paw, packing a surprising amount of force, connected with a Liberator’s cheek. The kick knocked out two of his teeth and propelled him toward another end of the carriage. He somersaulted twice, face-planting the ground two times before slamming into another end of the carriage. The unlucky terrorist twitched twice and fell to the ground like a defeated cockroach.

The assault continued before anyone registered what hit them.

Spear’s shaft a man never saw coming smashed his nose. Simultaneously, another man got slashed by a spear-head he registered but failed to dodge. With three members going down in an instant, the other Liberator’s member mobilized their counters.

One woman lunged at Scathach with a sword.

The badger nimbly leaped out of the way and threw one spear toward the man who reached for the screaming hostage. The badger landed on the arm attacking her. Without a pause, Scathach climbed said limb and punted its owner in the face.

Two more threat disappeared in a flash.

Scathach somersaulted across the air in a brown blurred, landing on another terrorist face and slamming him down to the floor.

Her furious attacks continued without a pause.

She spin-kicked one more terrorist to submission before bullet jumping to take out more victims.

One man screamed in panic, firing a series of binding spells to stop the tiny war-machine. Scathach easily weaved through those blasts, crippled his shin, and finished the fight with an uppercut.

“No, no, no,” a Liberator, watched his friend dropped to the ground. “G-Get away from me!”

He dropped his weapon and ran.

The man didn’t go far.

The honey badger scampered along the wall, pulled out her spear from a victim shivering in shock and threw it at a fleeing man.

The spear skewer into the man’s knee, forcing him down with a painful howl.

Scathach heard the clattering of a sword.

“Wait!” Said the final Liberator’s member, holding her hand high. “I surrender! Don’t hurt me.”

Scathach produced a rope and grinned sadistically.

Result: 9 Liberator’s member down, 1 Surrender, Time took: 3 seconds.

…

“Hey, everyone tonight dinner is on me.” One terrorist threw the money into the air and let it rain.

The old man’s eyes were empty. The future he dreamt of mercilessly crushed before it had even begun. Justice was dead without a doubt.

The boy stifled his tears and tugged into his mother’s chest. He couldn’t bear to see this. The world was cruel. A place where dogs ate dogs. But he denied that. The childlike mind refused to accept this future await him.

At that instant, he wished the bad men away.

No gods will answer their prayer. Fortunately for them, it wasn’t a god that arrived.

The entrance began when an elbow shattered the window. A black object flung into the room before anyone responded. In one moment, all people — both hostages and terrorists — froze.

The black object, a smoke bomb, exploded.

“What the hell is happening?”

“I can’t see—“

One terrorist tripped and slammed into the floor, nose first.

“This is an attack!” A bold voice yelled. “Gather up and disperse the smo—.”

Bang! Bang! Bang!

A gunshot resounded. He never completed the order.

Utter panic resumed.

“Contact Commander Marley!” One man tried to take the lead.

Bang!

The bullet shattered another window and hit the shouting man’s kneecap. The man fell in a bloody scream. The message was obvious: take the lead at your peril.

Bang! Bang!

Two shot resounded. The first bullet shattered a communicator. The second shot embedded itself into the holder’s solar plexus with enough force to send him crashing into the wall.

The Liberator shivered. They couldn’t see anything, but they felt it. The unseen terror. Fear of the unknown gripped their heart like death’s skeletal hand. None of them dared to utter another word to displease this mysterious enemy.

In the middle of darkness, the boy trembled. Tears welled in his eyes, but deep down, he knew he would remember this moment for the rest of his life.

The elderly man understood that too, so he observed. Instinctively, he knew where the guardian angel would arrive.

Clash!

Another window broke apart right next to one horrified terrorist. A pair of boot slammed into his face, sending him crashing into the wall. The man wasn’t out yet, hence a foot smashed his face into dreamland.

As the sunlight filtered in and the smoke escaped through the shattered window, the Liberator finally saw their enemy. Many of them would reflect to this cruel moment and re-think their life choice. Most had nightmares for years afterward.

From the floor, the old man glanced at his savior. That very sight brought tears into his eyes. Everything would be okay. Meanwhile, the boy looked at the figure in black with wonder. He had seen a soldier, but none of them looked like this one. What the man wore resembled a festival costume more than the armor and uniform of a soldier.

But somehow, looking at that provoke a kind of wonder the boy never experience. Most would call this an eighth-grade syndrome.

Frame by the sunlight and black smoke was a man wrapped in black combat gear and a voluminous black cloak. He was wearing a white-mask and fedora concealing his face. The masked man knelt on the body of the terrorist he had handily defeated, as if he was praying to a celestial goddess of war. The ominous red-visor scanned the Liberator, uttering no words. The hero rose to meet the gang. His power surged, sending everyone’s hair standing from animalistic fear.

“So cool,” the boy muttered. His eyes widened.

...

Every fight was like a puzzle.

That was Rem’s tenet. A problem would always a question. How to beat an overconfident badger in a game of monopoly? How to disable interdimensional parasite? The question change, but the game remained.

The current problem was simple but troublesome.

How could he eliminate eight well-armed and possibly well-train personal in a cramped space of the train carriage without harming the hostages?

Answer: surprise, theatrics, and raw terror.

That was the plan Rem devised.

Speed was the key. That was why Rem supercharged his body with magic and strode toward his enemies at superhuman speed, smashing the toppled terrorist for good measure as he entered the fray.

“Oh sh-“

Crack!

One more down.

“Awesome!” The boy watched his hero turned into the blurred, ran over a bad-guy and left trails of smoke where he moved.

The boy and his mother saw the man in black rushed to meet a villain, lifting him in a choke-hold. The bad-guy knifed fell to the floor, too slow to connect to the hero.

The Liberator crawled at Rem’s arms, terrified by the blank white-mask. But Rem had a plan for him. Attacks were coming, and he needs a meat-shield.

“Fire everything!” A panic man yelled. “Fires everything!”

“Get away from me.” Another man launched a fireball at the cloaked figure. “Called Marley! Or we are doom!”

The old man saw six bullet-casings clattered on the floor like the death god’s decree. His savior was using his tormentor's body to absorb barrage of attacks. It was merciless. The terrorist got reduce into a bag of crying, burnt bruise in a minute. Then the man in black disappeared with his captive. The old man heard a grunt, before a terrorist fell next to him like a broken doll.

The boy’s mother was seriously concerned. Her son was glued to the fight and cheering like crazy? Would he copy this? She needs to tell him it was not right to attack someone in the throat and headbutt people to submission.

Then she remembered the last ten minutes and started cheering. Those bastards deserved everything they were getting.

A door slid opened and the blonde goddess sneaked into the room to fix the problem. She sighed in relief. The terrorist was too busy trying to survive than gunning for the hostage. This made her job a lot simplers.

Meanwhile, Rem threw the meat-shield at the terrorist with superstrength and tossed in another smoke bomb for good measure. He whipped out his Silver Silhouette magnum and reloaded it with his magically augmented speed. With a gun on his left and throwing knives in his right, he let loose.

Two bullets punched through the man. Throwing knives met its mark on a Liberator’s face, causing her to claw in pain. Being a kind and generous soul, Rem delivered an uppercut to end the woman’s suffering. Following that, he landed a punch in the jaw and a bullet at a kneecap to end another criminal’s career.

The last man standing stumbled out of the smoke with his Senpai body smashing into the wall behind him.

His only solution was forking out cashes.

“Here! Take this,” he trembled. “You want it, right? Take it and forgiv — ack!”

Rem took the stacks of credit after booting the man’s mouth so hard he lost half his teeth.

He tossed the note behind him.

“You are missing these”

“Thanks,” said the goddess, gathering the notes on the floor and putting them back in a bag. Next to her sat an old man who was visibly healing from his wound.

The young goddess handed the bag containing all the money to the elderly man.

“Here grandpa,” said an innocent voice. “It is yours, isn’t it? I am not certain, but I think I got all of it.”

The goddess stood up, and together with the man in black, she started leaving.

“Mister,” the boy ran toward Rem excitedly before his mother can stop him.

Rem looked at the grinning boy.

“Thank you for everything! Please told me how do I become strong like you?”

In a rare moment, a drop of feeling bled from that fossilize heart.

“Be kind,” Rem tousled the boy’s head kindly and replied in a garbled voice. “Be a good boy and never give up. Most of all do the right thing, no matter how hard.”

The old man watches both of them leave, and that was when he decided the name of his new café.

“The Unsung Hero,” the old man whispered, already coming up with a logo.

Result: 12 men downed, no survivor. 7 ended up with PTSD. One quit Liberator afterward to become a cameraman. Time taken: 2 minutes.