Kafka didn't even make it halfway back to the base before the world erupted.
He was speeding down a dark, deserted mountain road on his motorcycle, the smoking caldera a terrifying silhouette in his rearview mirror, when his secure comm unit shrieked to life. It was a Priority Alpha alert, a signal reserved for national-level disasters.
Mina Ashiro's face appeared on his helmet's small HUD display. She was in the main command center, and the background was a scene of controlled pandemonium. Red lights flashed, and alarms blared. Her face was a mask of cold, focused fury.
"Hibino," she said, her voice like ice chips. "Your fabricated 'recon mission' to Mount Fuji is over. We have a Level 10 Kaiju emergence in the Hakone region. The signature is unlike anything we have on record. Seismic and thermal readings are off the charts. Tell me. What did you do?"
The question was not an inquiry. It was an accusation. She knew. He'd gone rogue, and now a god-tier monster had woken up in the exact same location. The coincidence was too perfect.
"Commander, I…" he started, his mind scrambling for a plausible lie, but he came up with nothing. The scale of his failure was too immense.
"Don't," she cut him off, her voice dangerously quiet. "Just get back to base. Now. The ATU is being scrambled. You are grounded until further notice." The line went dead.
Grounded. Just like that, his newfound trust, the long leash he'd been given, was gone. He had overplayed his hand and confirmed their worst fears: he was an unpredictable liability.
When he arrived back at the Third Division base, he was met not by his team, but by two grim-faced military police officers who escorted him directly to his room, which was no longer his quarters, but a cell once more. He was under house arrest.
He could only watch the developing crisis on the room's news feed. The first helicopter footage was starting to come in. The smoking caldera. The ruined power plant. And then, the first clear shot of the monster.
The world was seeing the Daitetsu for the first time. It was climbing out of the volcano, its stone body now streaked with veins of glowing, fresh magma, embers falling from it like fiery tears. It looked less like a monster and more like a vengeful god of the earth. News anchors fumbled with their scripts, their voices trembling as they struggled to describe the walking mountain. Resilience scores were meaningless; the sensors couldn't even get a proper reading, as if the concept didn't apply.
The government was in a full-blown panic. The existence of the Izanagi Protocol, the secret Kaiju relic they had hidden for fifty years, was a political bombshell. Who was responsible? Why was it kept secret? And most importantly, who woke it up?
Kafka knew he was at the center of that storm. A convenient scapegoat. The rogue operative whose 'unstable' bio-weapon had accidentally triggered the disaster. His career, the fragile life he had built here, was over.
He sat on his bed, the weight of his actions crashing down on him. He hadn't just failed the Defense Force. He had failed his true master. He had been sent to observe, and instead he had broken the most important thing in the room.
[Your failure is noted,] Jin-Woo's voice echoed in his mind, colder and more distant than ever before. There was no tirade, no lecture. Just a simple, devastating pronouncement of his inadequacy. [The Golem is now active. This complicates the Architect's plans, but it also complicates mine. You have created an unpredictable variable that I must now account for. The Architect now possesses the data to create his own Golem, and the original is now rampaging across the countryside. An inefficient outcome.]
'I'm sorry,' Kafka thought, the mental words feeling pathetic. 'It was a trap. I did the only thing I could to survive.'
[Survival is the bare minimum expectation for one of my soldiers,] the Monarch replied. [Excuses are the currency of the weak. You were given a simple task. You failed. There will be consequences.]
The Monarch's presence receded, leaving Kafka in a silence that was more terrifying than any punishment. He was now an enemy to his keepers, and a failure to his master. He was utterly, completely alone.
The door to his room hissed open.
He looked up, expecting the military police to take him to a more permanent, deeper cell. But it was Kikoru Shinomiya who stood there. Her expression was a hard, unreadable mask.
"They're sending everyone," she said, her voice flat. "First and Second Divisions are being mobilized. The Prime Minister is considering authorizing the use of a strategic-class Numbers Weapon. They're planning to throw everything we have at this thing before it gets to the coastline."
"And you?" Kafka asked, his voice hollow.
"The ATU is spearheading the initial engagement," she said. "Hoshina's theory is that since it's a terrestrial entity, it might have exploitable weaknesses that aren't in a normal Kaiju's biology. We're supposed to find them." She took a step into the room. "Mina is fighting for you. Arguing with the Joint Chiefs. She's refusing to sign the order for your permanent detention."
Kafka looked down at his hands. "She shouldn't. They're right. This is my fault."
"Was it?" Kikoru asked, her voice sharp, cutting. "You disappear on an unsanctioned mission and a mythical monster wakes up. I'm not an idiot, Kafka. You're many things, but you are not a fool who would do that by accident. You were sent there. By him. Weren't you?"
He didn't answer. His silence was its own confession.
Kikoru let out a bitter, humorless laugh. "Of course. We're all just pawns in his game, and he just sacrificed your position on the board to see what one of the other pieces would do." She shook her head, a flicker of genuine anger in her eyes. "He's a monster, Kafka. Using you, using all of us."
"I know what he is," Kafka replied quietly.
She took another step, her voice dropping. "Then why do you obey him? Is that… 'Vow' you mentioned in your dreamscape-babbling once that powerful? Does it really control you completely?" She was referring to the whispers and sleep-talking some of his minders had reported after his more intense 'nightmares'.
Kafka thought about the leash on his soul, the Monarch's absolute command. He thought about the Architect's puppets, mindless slaves to their creator.
"It's not about control," Kafka said, finding a strange clarity in his despair. "The Architect's creations… they have no will. They are just tools. But Sovereign… he doesn't want a tool. He wants a weapon. And a weapon has to have a will of its own to pull the trigger. He wants me to be strong, to make my own choices…" he gave a wry, bitter smile, "…as long as they are the choices he would have made."
It was a strange, twisted form of freedom, but it was not the absolute slavery he saw in his enemies.
Kikoru just stared at him, the complex web of their situation seeming to settle on her shoulders. He was a prisoner of a god, working for a military that feared him, fighting an enemy that wanted to dissect him.
"The Vice-Commander sent me," she said finally, changing the subject. "He said you are officially grounded. He also said that the hangar bay with the long-range transports is on the other side of the base, and that the guard rotation is particularly sloppy tonight."
Kafka's head snapped up. His eyes met hers.
She tossed a small object onto his bed. A data chip. "That's the full tactical analysis and predicted route of the Daitetsu. Along with the access codes to the ATU's emergency equipment locker."
He stared at the chip, then back at her, speechless. This wasn't grounding him. This was… an invitation.
"We're flying out in one hour," she said, her expression now a familiar mask of fierce, competitive fire. "If a certain 'unstable asset' were to steal a transport and show up at the engagement zone, Mina's hand would be forced. She'd have to let him fight. And if he were to be instrumental in, say, stopping a national disaster… well, the Joint Chiefs would have a much harder time locking him in a box forever."
She turned to leave. "The ATU has been ordered to find a weakness," she said, pausing at the door. "But our monster is the only one who has actually stood in a room with their new god. You saw things we didn't. You are our best, and only, shot."
The door hissed shut, leaving Kafka alone with the data chip.
It was an insane gamble. Hoshina and Kikoru weren't just disobeying orders; they were orchestrating a jailbreak, banking everything on the hope that the monster they were about to unleash could be the world's salvation.
Kafka picked up the chip. The choice was his. Stay here, accept his fate as a prisoner, a failure. Or disobey every order he had been given by the Defense Force, embrace his role as the Monarch's unwilling weapon, and go face the mountain he had woken up.
It wasn't much of a choice at all. He had to fix the mess he had made. He had to pay his debt.
His loyalty wasn't to the Defense Force's rules. It wasn't to the Monarch's grand strategy. It was, as he had told Hoshina, to the people he wanted to protect. And right now, they were flying into a battle against a god. And they needed him.