The lead thug didn't even see Saitama approaching. His world was small, focused on the trembling old woman and the purse in her hand. He was a jackal, picking at the scraps left behind by lions. The Kaiju were the lions; he was just a man trying to get by, and getting by meant taking from those who couldn't fight back.
"I'm not gonna ask again, old la—"
His sentence was cut short by a hand gently clamping down on his shoulder. It wasn't a hard grip. It felt casual, almost friendly. But he couldn't move. It was as if his entire body had been bolted to the concrete.
whump.
"Hey," a calm, monotone voice said from behind him. "That's not very nice."
The thug tried to turn, his heart suddenly hammering against his ribs. He couldn't. His friends, seeing his predicament, stepped forward, puffing out their chests.
"Who the hell are you?" one of them growled, pulling a small knife from his pocket. "This ain't your business, baldy. Scram before you get hurt."
Saitama looked from the knife to the man's face. He didn't look scared. He didn't look angry. He just looked... tired.
"Look, I just bought some really nice kombu for a hot pot," Saitama said, his voice flat. "I was in a good mood. Don't ruin my good mood."
The man with the knife laughed. "Or what? You gonna hit me with a leek?"
Saitama sighed. He let go of the first thug's shoulder.
For the briefest of moments, nothing happened. The thugs stood there, smirking, ready for a fight.
Then, Saitama moved.
To an outside observer, it would have looked like he simply vanished for a split second.
To the thugs, it was a cascade of incomprehensible events.
Thug #2, the one with the knife, felt a light tap on his chin. tap. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he crumpled to the ground, unconscious before he even knew he'd been hit. The knife clattered uselessly onto the pavement.
Thug #3, who was moving to flank Saitama, suddenly found his pants and underwear yanked clean up over his head in a brutal, lightning-fast atomic wedgie. He was lifted off his feet, yelping in a comical high-pitched shriek, and was left hanging by his waistband from a nearby lamppost.
Thug #1, the leader, finally managed to turn around just in time to see his two friends dispatched with humiliating, non-lethal efficiency. He stared at Saitama, his bravado melting into a puddle of pure, undiluted fear.
The man in the hoodie hadn't even broken a sweat. He hadn't even changed his expression.
"I told you not to ruin my mood," Saitama said, taking a step forward.
The thug did the only sensible thing a person could do in that situation. He screamed, turned, and ran for his life, leaving a small, damp spot on the asphalt behind him.
Saitama watched him go, then dusted off his hands. "Jeez. So dramatic."
He turned back to the old woman, who was staring at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. Her purse was still clutched tightly in her hands.
Saitama's expression softened slightly. "You okay, miss?"
The woman could only nod, her mouth opening and closing silently.
He then walked over to the lamppost where the third thug was still dangling and squirming. Saitama reached into the man's pocket, pulled out a stolen wallet, and handed it back to the old woman.
"I think this is yours," he said.
He gave her a small, awkward nod, then turned and walked back towards Genos, who had been observing the entire scene with analytical detachment.
"Okay, let's go," Saitama said, taking his bag of groceries. "I'm starving."
Genos fell into step beside him. "Master, your technique was flawless. You neutralized the threats with minimal force, causing no lasting physical damage while maximizing psychological deterrence. The 'atomic wedgie' is a particularly effective maneuver I had not previously considered. I will add it to my combat database."
"It's not a combat maneuver, it's just..." Saitama trailed off, trying to think of the word. "Annoying."
As they rounded the corner, the old woman finally found her voice.
"Wait!" she called out.
Saitama stopped and looked back.
"Thank you," she said, bowing deeply. "You're... you're a real hero."
Saitama just stared for a moment. He gave a short, almost imperceptible nod, then turned and disappeared with his cyborg disciple into the night.
The woman watched him go, a look of awe on her face. The hero who had saved her wasn't a shining figure in a high-tech suit. He was a quiet, tired-looking man in a cheap hoodie who just wanted to go home and eat his dinner.
Meanwhile, several kilometers away, in a darkened apartment that smelled of stale coffee and disinfectant, Kafka Hibino was having the worst day of his life.
He stared at his reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror. His face was pale, his eyes bloodshot. He still ached all over from where his sweeper-crew truck had been thrown by a shockwave.
But that wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was the memory that kept playing on a loop in his mind.
He had been trying to drag an injured co-worker to safety when a piece of a collapsing building, a chunk of concrete the size of a car, had broken free and tumbled towards them. There was no time. No escape. It was over.
And in that moment of pure desperation, he had let go.
He had allowed the thing inside him to take over.
He remembered the feeling of his bones shifting, his muscles expanding at an unnatural rate. The brief, horrifying sensation of his skin turning grey and hard. He had become Kaiju No. 8. He had caught the falling debris, saving them both, before shrinking back down into his human form in a hidden alleyway.
He had saved a life. But he felt like a monster.
He splashed cold water on his face, trying to wash away the feeling. He was thirty-two years old, stuck in a dead-end job cleaning up the messes left by the creatures he had once dreamed of fighting. And now, he was one of them. A secret, ticking time bomb.
He walked out of the bathroom and slumped onto his small, lumpy couch. He picked up his phone, scrolling through the news feeds. Every channel, every site, was plastered with the same images.
The horrifying visage of the Cataclysm-Kaiju. And the glorious, shining face of Captain Mina Ashiro.
Mina...
He felt a familiar pang in his chest, a mixture of pride, regret, and a deep, yawning distance. They had made a promise as kids. That they would stand side-by-side in the Defense Force, fighting Kaiju together.
She had kept her promise. She had become the nation's brightest star.
And he... he cleaned up their poop. And now, he was one of them. The irony was so thick he felt like he was choking on it.
He clicked on a video link: "EXCLUSIVE SLOW-MOTION ANALYSIS: HEAVEN'S HAMMER!"
He watched the grainy footage. He saw Mina's cannon fire. He saw the colossal green energy blast. And then... he saw the glitch.
A tiny flicker in the video. A single frame where two shapes appeared out of nowhere.
He paused the video, scrubbing back and forth. His finger traced the outline of the bald man in the strange yellow suit. He saw the casual way the man stood, the way the green energy just... popped. Then he saw the monster dissolve.
It wasn't Mina's cannon.
Kafka's eyes widened. He had spent his entire life studying Kaiju, watching every battle, analyzing every report. He knew the capabilities of the Defense Force's weapons better than almost anyone. A shot from a rail cannon, no matter how powerful, left a certain kind of impact. It was a piercing, thermal event.
What he saw in that video was not a weapon firing. It was an erasure. Something had simply un-made the Kaiju.
He zoomed in on the figure, the image distorting into a mess of pixels. It was just a bald man in a cheap-looking cape.
Who... who are you?
He felt a shiver run down his spine. It wasn't the heroic, televised story of Mina's victory that scared him. It was the glitch. The impossible, unmentioned man who had appeared for a few seconds and apparently punched a god out of existence.
The world was celebrating a lie, a comforting story to help them sleep at night.
But Kafka Hibino, the man with a monster's secret, knew he had just seen the truth. And the truth was a thousand times more terrifying, and a thousand times more fascinating, than any Kaiju he had ever seen. The rules of his world hadn't just been broken. They had been tossed out the window. And he had no idea what came next.