Daehyun's POV

"I'm gonna rip your lungs out and pop them like balloons!"

"You already said that," I reminded the masked wrestler as I ducked under a swinging fist the size of a roast chicken. "Zero points for creativity."

​"Aaaaaaarrrrggghhh!" he roared, and lunged at me. I guessed he must have run out of snappy one-liners. Unfortunately for me, he hadn't run out of energy. He might be an idiot in a ridiculous outfitof lederhosen and suspenders over a bare chest, but there was easily 250 pounds of him against my 170, and he was trying to squash me. 

I jumped back and to the side. As the wrestler lumbered past me I linked my fingers and delivered a quick two-handed kidney chop. Bellowing, he fell forward. His head in its laced leather mask whacked against the wall with a sickeningly loud thud. He hit the floor and stayed down. I winced. That was a concussion for sure.

I contemplated him as he lay there. He was more than 250 pounds, I decided. Maybe even more than three hundred. I shook my head. "Man," I muttered.

When Sungjae and I got this mission from KTCA, no one told us we were going to be facing three-hundred-pound masked wrestlers. I thought it was all about bet-fixing on a college wrestling team. That I'd been prepared for. 

Where was Sungjae, anyway? He'd been keeping watch outside the door to the office where I was downloading files off the computer–or so I thought. But that hadn't stopped Lederhosen Man from walking in on me. Had something happened to my little bro?

My thoughts were interrupted by a door slamming behind me. "You're going down!" a new voice roared.

I spun around–and groaned. Lederhosen Man's evil twin had just arrived. This guy was wearing the same outfit, but I wasn't laughing. He was even bigger than the first guy–at least six foot six and massively muscle bound. The two of them, I remembered now, formed a duo called the Gangnam Riders.

"Uh–I don't suppose we could just talk about this calmly..?" I offered. "Maybe over coffee?.. cheese..cake? no?"

In answer, the wrestler roared and ran at me, arms outstretched.

I faked to the left, then threw myself to the right and rolled over the top of a low file cabinet. I came up in a crouch on the other side. 

Lederhosen Twin number two was a little quicker on the uptake than his fallen brother. He had seen through my fakeout and was facing me. An evil grin spread across his face.

I shoved the file cabinet, which was on wheels, at him. He deflected it easily. But I was already halfway across the room, racing for the door.

"No you don't!" Lederhosen grunted. Moving with surprising speed, he leaped after me and grabbed my left arm. He twisted it behind my back and then hooked his massive arm through it. "This is called a chicken wing," he said in my ear. I felt a fiery pain as he pulled upward.

"Aaagh!" I yelled.

"And this"–he went to hook his other arm through my other one–"is a double chicken wing."

Before he could complete the move, I drove my elbow as hard as I could into his gut. He grunted and the pressure on my left arm eased for a second. It was all I needed. I twisted free, spun, and landed a chopping blow at the pressure point on his shoulder.

Well, that's what I meant to do, anyway. What actually happened was that my hand hit what felt like a leather-covered anvil. The guy's shoulder was so heavily muscled that I couldn't even find his pressure point. 

He just looked at me and his grin got wider.

I skipped backward as fast as I could. A noise to my right made me glance over. My heart hit my boots. Lederhosen Twin number one was clambering to his feet. And he looked, well, kind of mad.

Uh-oh.

"Sungjae, a little help?" I called, though I didn't think it would do much good. If Sungjae were nearby, he'd have been in here by now. 

The Lederhosen twins began to close in on me. "It's Gangnam Ride time," the smaller one snarled.

I gulped hard.

Then I heard a snorting rumble, like a superchanged V-8 engine, outside the door. A second later there was a crash. 

The metal door burst inward, blown completely out of the doorframe. Through clouds of pluster dust and debris, a massive black monster truck painted with Day-Glo green flames loomed. The engine revved. What do you know? It was a superchanged V-8. The Lederhosen twins gawked. 

The passenger door swung open. "Hop in, hyung!" Sungjae's voice called. " I got us a ride!"

I laughed out loud as I raced for the open door. I jumped in and slammed it behind me. "I was starting to think you'd bailed on me. Glad you could make it to the party," I told my brother. "Nice wheels."

"Aren't they special?" Grinning, Sungjae stabbed a button on the dashboard. A monstrously distorted voice rang out from a loudspeaker mounted on the truck's roof.

"I am the GRAVEDIGGER!" it screamed. "Say your prayers while I dig your GRAVE!"

Sungjae shifted into reverse and backed down the long hallway of the sports complex at full speed. "When I saw the size of those two goons, I figured we'd need more than just our muscles," he explained. "So I, uh, borrowed this."

"It's a stylin' ride." I watched the furious faces of the Lederhosen twins get smaller and smaller.

"Did you get the files?" Sungjae asked me, his eyes on the rearview mirror.

I held up a CD in a case. "Right here."

Still in reverse, Sungjae swerved to the left a we zoomed down a wide ramp and out the open doors of a loading bay. We rolled to a stop across a parking lot from the arena, next to our own car. Sungjae grinned and we bro-fist.

Mission accomplished! Finishing an assignment always gave me a rush.

As we drove toward home, though, I felt some of the excitement drain away. My left shoulder gave a twinge where it had been chicken-winged. I winced and rolled it, trying to work-out the soreness. 

"Is it just me," I said, "or does it seem like all the missions we're getting from KTCA these days seem to involve bad guys of unusual size?"

"Hmm. Well, there were those biker thugs we had o deal with on the last mission," Sungjae said in a thoughtful voice. 

"And before that we had to investigate that football team for the steroids thing," I added.

Sungjae shrugged,"Wae? What about it?"

"Molla, I'm just a little sick of getting pounded on by plus-size dudes." I said. I rubbed my sore shoulders some more.

Sungjae braked at a light and turned to look at me. His brown eyes were narrowed in puzzlement. "What are you saying, hyung? You wanna quit doing missions for KTCA?"

KTCA stands for Korean Teens Crime Annihilators. It's a secret organization that was founded by our dad, Choi Myungsoo. It's grown into a pretty major thing. We have agents all across the country. Our job is to tackle the things that the ordinary, adult branches of law enforcement can't easily handle–crimes in which teenagers are involved, a lot of it organized crime, but being carried out by people the same age as me and Sungjae. Sometimes, ofcourse, it leads us to adult criminals, as our last couple of cases had.

It's the coolest thing I've ever done. 

"Pabo!," I retorted. I slapped the side of Sungjae's head just for good measure. "Ofcourse I'd never quit KTCA. I just wouldn't mind a different kind of mission, that's all. You know, where we get to use our brains a little more and our brawn a little less."

"Neh, algusimnida, James Bond stuff," Sungjae said. He glanced in the rearview mirror and slicked back his black hair. "Choi. Daehyun Choi," he said in a terrible fake English accent. Then he grinned. "Hyung, as long as we get hot girls like Bond, I'm all for it."

I snorted. "You have a one track mind, have I told you that lately?"

—————

Things were quiet for a couple of days after that. The local news was full of the arrest of a college wrestling coach in the next town over for a bet-fixing scam. Our aunt Hyayun, who lives with us, clucked her tounge as she watched the story on TV one afternoon. "Can you imagine?" she said to no one in particular. "It's a good thing Daehyun and Sungjae have never gotten mixed up in anything like that." 

"Nugu? us?" Sungjae put on his most innocent face.

Aunt Hyayun has no idea that Sungjae and I are in KTCA–or that KTCA even exists, for that matter.

I heard the kitchen door open. Our mom's voice called, "Daehyun-ah? Sungjae-ah?"

"In the living room," Sungjae hollered back.

"Neh eomma," I added.

"Boys, there's a car full of groceries in the driveway. Would you unload them please?"

"Neh," I answered, prying myself off the couch. Beside me, Sungjae hadn't moved. I poked him, "I'm not doing it by myself."

"Slaves. We're slaves in our own house," Sungjae grumbled as he followed me out to Mom's car.

"Sungjae,"

"Bwo?"

"Shikkoro."

I opened the hatch door and started pulling bags out of the back of Mom's SUV. Sungjae and I each made two trips inside. Then as I was setting the last of the bags on the kitchen counter, I noticed an ad circular sticking out the top. It was for a local video arcade. On red paper, it was crudely painted and clearly homemade. "TRY OUR LATEST GAME, KTCABOID!" it shouted in big block letters. A CD in a cardboard sleeve was attached. 

KTCABOID? My scalp prickled. That was no random typo. It had to be from KTCA! That's how they sent us our new missions–in innocent-looking packages.

I pulled the flyer out of the bag. But before I could show it to Sungjae, Aunt Hyayun snatched it out of my hands. "Ige-bwoya?" she demanded. "Ktcaboid? Oh, goodness, and have you ever seen such a word? These people who work at the arcade ought to be forced to go back to school!" Crumpling the flyer, she made to toss the whole thinginto the garbage.

"Aunt Hyayun, andwae!" I shouted, panicked.

"Andwae bwo?" she said severely. " Don't tell me you actually want to try out this silly game. Daehyunni, it's obvoius these computer games are terrible for young people's brains. I'm doing you a favor, chinha." And she threw the disk and the flyer right into the garbage pail–which happened to be full of rotten produce, as Mom had just finished cleaning out the fridge.

Oh, ugh. I stifled a groan. Now I was going to have to get that disk out....

Fortunately Aunty Hyayun and Mom had disappeared into the pantry. Taking a deep breath, I reached into the garbage and fished out the CD. A bit of slimy rotten cucumber clung to the cardboard sleeve. I grimaced as I carried it to the sink and rinsed it off. 

Sungjae was grinning at me. "Better you than me," he said in a low voice. "I'm guessing that's not really an arcade game?"

"The things I put up with for KTCA," I said with a sigh. "Come on, le's see what's going on."

Upstairs in my room, I slotted the CD into my computer's disk drive and clicked Play.

A mug shot of a young guy, maybe a year older than me, appeared on my screen. He had shaggy black hair, deep circles under his deep-set eyes.

"Park Changmin," a voiceover began. "Age twenty, student of archaeology at Seoul's University. Arrested in Rome, Italy, when he tried to sell stolen archaeological artifacts in an online auction." The photo changed to show two small, etched medallions that looked as if they might be made of gold.

"Rome?" Sungjae commented. "What does that have to do with us? KTCA is a Korean operation."

I shook my head, baffled. "Let's see."

The next thing that appeared was a grainy video sequence. It showed Park Changmin being questioned by an Italian police officer. The room they were in looked like the interrogation room of any police station–dingy, with yellowish beige paint on walls that were otherwise bare. The only furniture was a metal table and two metal chairs.

"Who were you working with?" the bearded officer asked in excellent English. "You must have had help."

Changmin just shook his head.

"We know you did not steal these objects on your own." the officer insisted. "Tell us who helped you or you will have even more truoble than you do now."

Changmin gave a short laugh. "That's not possible." he muttered.

"We can help you," the officer said, switching tactics. " If you tell us who you were working with, we can make sure you get a lighter punishment. Why don't you want to help us help you?"

Changmin turned away, his lips pressed tightly together, " I can't help you. And you can't help me." 

I squinted at the video. Flourescent lights made harsh shadows on Changmin's face, which looked tired and drawn. 

"He seems scared of something." Sungjae commented.

I nodded. This was just what I'd been thinking. "But of what? He's already been caught. Anything he tells them at this point can only make things better, I'd think. What does he have to lose?"

Sungjae leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. "Maybe whoever helped him steal those artifacts is scarier than the police."

The video froze on a closeup of Changmin's face and the voiceover resumed. 

"The Italian authorities haven't been able to get Changmin to say anything more. We know he must have had some help, because certain records were falsified and there's no way he could've gotten access to them on his own. The Italians are comcerned because the digsite that Changmin was working on is of great historic significance. It's called the Emerald Bower of Claudius, and it's one of the most important archaeological finda of this century in Rome. Changmin was working with a team of students from Seoul University, and the Italians suspect that one or more of them may have been Changmin's accomplices.

"They are particularly worried because, to date, no one has uncovered the one artifact that everyone was expecting to find right away: the Emerald-Eyed Lions of Emperor Claudius. The authorities are afraid theymight havebeen stolen already."

A new picture came on the screen. It was an old looking painting of two lion statues. Atleast, I assumed they were supposed to be lions. They looked sort of like between a lion and a pug dog. They were made of some kind of yellow metal and had huge green eyes.

"It's not common knowledge, but there was a theft ring that operated at another Italian archaeological site six years ago, and managed to make off with several pricless antiquities. The Italians want to prevent this from happening again at all costs. Your mission is to infiltrate the dig, posing as archaeology students, and see what you can find out about a possible theft ring."

"Archaeology students?" I sputtered. The sum total of what I knew about archaeology was how to spell it, and even that I wasn't too sure about. How were we suppose to pass as any kind of experts?

"See too if you can locate the Emerald-Eyed Lions," the voiceover went on. "And above all, be discreet. KTCA is invloved precisely because we want this taken care of quietly,under the official radar. The Italians have gotten very touchy about foreigners looting their art and artifacts, and we are trying to keep the situation from getting worse.

"You fly to Rome this evening. Your plane tickets and other travel documents will be delivered in a separate package. Once you arrive in Rome, you'll receive dig kits and a further briefing on the dig. We're counting on you, Daehyun and Sungjae. As usual, this disk will be reformatted in five seconds."

A graphic of a clock appeared on the screen, with the second hand counting down from five to zero. A moment later the screen went blank.

"We're going to Rome?" Sungjae said, his eyebrows rising. "Score! Roadtrip!"

"I guess we are," I said slowly. " I just wish we had more to go on. This KTCA briefing is even skimpier than usual."

"No sweat, we'll figure it out like wealways do," Sungjae said condifedently. "Don't look so serious hyung! Isn't this what you wanted? I doubt we're going to run into any masked wrestlers or biker thugs on an archaeological dig!"

As I thought that one over, I started to grin. "You have a point," I said. "An excellent point."

Excitement was bubbling up in my gut, We were on a mission, and we were headed to Italy, too!

My grin widened. I loved this job!

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