Chapter 10: Debriefings, Damage Control, and a Deeply Troubling Blank Space
The arrival of the rest of the U.A. faculty was a whirlwind of professional heroism. Snipe's bullets incapacitated fleeing villains, Present Mic's voice disoriented the stragglers, and the other teachers quickly secured the perimeter. They were met with a scene of utter devastation, at the center of which stood a steaming and depleted All Might, a traumatized class of first-years, and a janitor looking thoughtfully at a perfectly circular, sky-blue hole in the dome's ceiling.
The police arrived soon after, with Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi leading the investigation. His Quirk, Human Lie Detector, was an invaluable tool, allowing him to cut through deception to find the truth. He prided himself on his ability to read people and build a factual report of any incident. Today, his pride was scheduled for a brutal execution.
He found Saitama being fussed over by paramedics, who were confused by his complete lack of any injuries, shock, or elevated heart rate.
"Excuse me, sir," Tsukauchi began, his notepad out. "I need to take your statement. For the record, please state your name and occupation."
"Saitama. I'm a consultant here. And a groundskeeper, sort of."
Tsukauchi felt a familiar sensation in his mind. Truth. Strange, but plausible.
"And your Quirk, Saitama-san?"
"I don't have one," Saitama said plainly. "I got strong from a workout routine. A hundred push-ups, a hundred sit-ups…"
Tsukauchi paused, waiting for the tell-tale feeling of a lie. It never came. Truth. His brow furrowed. That… that wasn't possible. He must be delusional, but he believed it to be true. A psychological issue, perhaps.
"Right," the detective continued, deciding to move on. "Can you describe the events leading up to the villain known as Nomu being… neutralized?"
"He was big and ugly," Saitama said. "He was hurting the teacher and about to hurt the kids. The tall blonde guy told me to get the students out of there. So I punched the bird-guy to get him out of the way."
Truth. Every word was registering as a sincere belief.
"You… punched him?" Tsukauchi pressed, looking at the man's unassuming physique. "The Nomu was reportedly able to trade blows with All Might himself. What kind of punch did you use?"
"A normal one," Saitama said, his eyes glazing over with a hint of boredom.
Truth.
Tsukauchi felt a bead of sweat trickle down his temple. The man was either a pathological case unlike any he'd ever seen, or he was telling a truth so absurd that it looped back around to being unbelievable. He looked at the hole in the ceiling, a perfect circle carved out of the sky. He looked back at the man who claimed to have done it with a "normal punch" because he was on a workout plan. The detective, for the first time in his career, wrote in his notepad: "Witness statement is factually… problematic."
In the sanitized quiet of Recovery Girl's office, Toshinori Yagi sat on a cot, a blanket draped over his skeletal shoulders. He had seen the punch. He had felt the aftershock, a wind so powerful it had nearly stripped the muscle from his bones. He had seen a power that did not roar or announce itself with a catchphrase, but had simply… happened. It was a quiet, absolute power that made his own, the sacred torch of One For All, feel like a flickering candle in a hurricane.
"He is… a problem, young Midoriya," Toshinori confessed, his voice a strained whisper. Midoriya, nursing his own broken fingers, looked at his mentor with wide, worried eyes. "A power like that, with no history, no registration… It defies all the rules. It's a variable we cannot account for."
Class 1-A was on a bus back to the main campus, the adrenaline replaced by a heavy, shaken silence. But in the digital space of their class group chat, a storm was brewing.
Mina Ashido: srsly did anyone SEE that punch??!?
Denki Kaminari: Dude I didn't see anything. One sec the monster was there, the next POOF
Eijiro Kirishima: It was the manliest thing I've ever seen in my life. Just ONE PUNCH!
Tenya Iida: His actions were unauthorized, but undeniably effective. However, we must not forget the official explanation: he is a Structural Integrity Consultant.
Katsuki Bakugo: …
Momo Yaoyorozu: Iida-san, with all due respect, no 'consultant' can do that. The physics are impossible. The energy required to displace that much mass, let alone vaporize it, would be on a nuclear scale.
Hanta Sero: so what we're saying is… our school janitor is the strongest person on earth???
Bakugo stared at his phone, his thumb hovering over the keyboard. He had felt it. The sheer, effortless finality of that punch. It wasn't a goal he could strive for. It wasn't a rival he could overcome. It was like a mountain trying to rival the sky. For the first time, his rage was quiet, cold, and tinged with something he'd never felt before: utter irrelevance.
That evening, the three key faculty members convened in Nezu's office. On the large monitor, they watched the security footage of the punch, slowed down to a thousandth of a second. They saw Saitama appear. They saw his fist move. They saw the Nomu vanish frame-by-frame. There was no energy signature, no Quirk activation reading. Just… cause, and impossible effect.
Nezu turned off the monitor, the room plunging into shadow. "Tsukauchi's report is in. The subject sincerely believes he has no Quirk. He believes his strength is the result of calisthenics."
"He's insane," Aizawa grunted from his position on the couch, wrapped head-to-toe in bandages.
"Or," Toshinori added grimly, "he is telling the truth as he knows it, and the truth is something our world has no framework for."
Nezu stared out at the twinkling lights of the city. "For decades, our society has been built on the pillar of All Might. A known quantity. A power we could measure, understand, and rely upon. But this… this man is a blank space in our knowledge. A living question mark with the power to erase nations. We cannot fight him. We cannot control him. And we cannot, in good conscience, simply ignore him."
He turned to his two most trusted teachers, his beady eyes gleaming with a terrifying mixture of scientific curiosity and cold, pragmatic fear.
"We have to know his limits. We need data," Nezu declared. "Gentlemen, effective immediately, we are initiating a new clandestine protocol. We will call it… 'Operation: Gauge the Anomaly'."