Kikoru Shinomiya stood frozen, her head craned back, staring at the empty patch of sky where the ridiculous man and his cat had vanished.
The cool night wind whipped strands of her blonde hair across her face, but she didn't notice. Her mind, a precision instrument honed for high-stakes combat, was caught in a recursive loop of utter bafflement.
'He jumped… twenty stories. Holding a cat. After telling me he was performing civic duty.'
The sheer absurdity of the event was an assault on her senses. It was like watching a mountain get up and apologize for blocking the view. It simply didn't compute.
"Shinomiya?" Vice-Commander Hoshina's voice, laced with an uncharacteristic thread of amusement, crackled in her ear. "Status report. Did you… require assistance subduing the feline enthusiast?"
Kikoru's face, which had been pale with shock, flushed a deep, furious crimson. The heat was so intense, she could feel it through the internal cooling system of her suit.
"He got away!" she bit out, the words like chips of ice. She spun around, her golden eyes blazing. "Don't just stand there! Get the long-range scanners on his trajectory! I want a location!"
The two troopers, still slack-jawed, jolted into action, speaking frantically into their comms.
But it was too late. The brief, superhuman leap was a single point of data. By the time he landed—wherever that was—he could have once again suppressed his energy signature. Finding him now in the sprawling, three-dimensional labyrinth of Shinjuku would be impossible. He had vanished as completely as their first target, Sovereign.
"Stand down, Shinomiya," Hoshina commanded, his tone shifting back to business. "The trail is cold. He's gone."
"But we had him!" Kikoru protested, stomping her armored boot with enough force to crack the concrete beneath it. "He was right there! He was… he was just some dumb-looking guy!"
"A dumb-looking guy who can leap a hundred meters into the air and mask a Kaiju-level energy signature," Hoshina gently reminded her. His voice became graver. "This complicates things. First, we had Sovereign, a singular, god-like entity. Now we have this… 'Jumper.' A second anomaly. Are they related? Is one subordinate to the other?"
Kikoru's fury began to cool, replaced by the chilling steel of analysis. Hoshina was right. This wasn't just about a missed capture. The entire strategic landscape had just shifted.
"The energy signatures were different," she recalled, accessing her suit's sensor logs. "Sovereign felt… empty. Cold. Like absolute zero. This guy… he felt like a furnace. Wild. Chaotic."
"One is the void, the other is the inferno," Hoshina murmured, his mind already piecing together a profile. "But they were both in the same place at the same time. That cannot be a coincidence. An alliance? A rivalry? We're no longer dealing with one ghost. It seems Shinjuku is haunted by two."
He looked out over the glittering expanse of the city, a thoughtful, dangerous glint in his eye.
"The old order is breaking, Shinomiya," he said quietly. "The simple war of us versus them, human versus Kaiju, is over. New pieces are on the board. And we don't even know the rules of their game."
Several miles away, Kafka Hibino landed with a jarring THUD in a dumpster full of cardboard boxes, sending a cloud of dust and the stench of old paper into the air.
He lay there for a moment, groaning, every muscle in his body protesting the ridiculous feat of athleticism he had just performed. The cat, surprisingly unharmed, scrambled out of his jacket and perched on his chest, purring as if this were all a perfectly normal end to an evening stroll.
"Glad one of us enjoyed that," Kafka wheezed, pushing the cat gently aside and sitting up.
His body ached, but the throbbing pain was secondary to the roaring adrenaline and the lingering echo of his new power. He had done it. He had escaped. He had faced down the prodigy of the Defense Force, Kikoru Shinomiya, lied to her face, and then jumped over a building.
A giddy, slightly hysterical laugh escaped his lips.
"I jumped over a building…" he said to the cat, who just blinked its big green eyes at him.
The reality of his situation quickly smothered his brief moment of elation. He was now a person of interest. Not just a secret, but a hunted one. Hiding his identity, his double life, had just become exponentially harder. They had his face. A blurry, night-vision image, maybe, but they had it.
He crawled out of the dumpster, brushing off scraps of cardboard. The night was quiet here, a residential area far from the commotion of the hunt. He had to get home. He had to pretend to be a normal, boring janitor who had definitely not just performed a physics-defying leap with a stolen cat.
As he began his walk home, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, he felt a sudden chill crawl up his spine. A familiar, soul-deep cold that had nothing to do with the night air.
He was being watched.
He stopped, his head slowly turning. The street was empty. Tree-lined sidewalks, parked cars, shuttered windows. Nothing.
And yet, the feeling was undeniable. A gaze that didn't come from a specific direction, but from everywhere.
From the shadow under a car. From the dark space between two houses. From his own shadow, stretching out long and thin behind him.
A voice, low and devoid of emotion, echoed not in his ears, but directly in his mind.
[Adequate. You survived. But your methods were crude. Panicked. An animal fleeing a trap.]
Kafka spun around, his heart leaping into his throat. There was no one there.
"Who's there?!" he hissed, his eyes darting around wildly.
[Your escape was a failure. You were seen. Your face is now a target. You traded a temporary victory for a long-term strategic loss. Inefficient.]
The voice was Jin-Woo's. But it was everywhere and nowhere at once. Kafka felt like a bug under a microscope.
"Where are you? Show yourself!" Kafka demanded, his fists clenching.
[Showing myself is unnecessary. I am always near. Your shadow is now my doorway.]
Kafka looked down at his own shadow. It seemed to pulse, to deepen, the edges wavering as if it were a pool of black water. A profound, existential dread washed over him. He wasn't just in a bargain with Sovereign. He was leashed to him.
[Your control is infantile,] the voice continued, relentless and cold. [You used brute force. A real predator uses its environment. It uses fear. It does not perform circus tricks.]
The 'circus tricks' jab hit home, making Kafka flinch.
[Your training begins tomorrow. Midnight. The abandoned Umizu industrial complex on the waterfront. Come alone. If you do not, I will find you during your janitorial duties at the Third Division base. We can have our first lesson there. Perhaps your Commander would be interested in observing.]
The threat was not shouted. It was stated as a simple, undeniable fact. A promise. And it terrified Kafka more than any Kaiju roar. This being knew where he worked. He could walk into the heart of the Defense Force at will. He could expose Kafka at any moment.
The presence, the chilling, all-encompassing gaze, began to recede. The oppressive weight lifted from the air.
[Do not be late, Kafka Hibino. Predators do not wait for their prey.]
And then, he was alone again. Truly alone.
The street was just a street. His shadow was just a shadow. But everything had changed. He was no longer a man hiding a secret. He was a student, an unwilling one, to a teacher who could be anywhere, and who demanded absolute obedience.
Kafka looked up at the moon, the purring cat now rubbing against his leg.
His life had been complicated before.
Now, it was a waking nightmare of impossible choices, wrapped in a bargain with a king of shadows. And his first day of school was tomorrow.