Mina Ashiro stood on the balcony of her penthouse apartment, the city lights spread out before her like a carpet of fallen stars. By all accounts, she should have been on top of the world.
Her face was everywhere. On digital billboards that flashed across skyscrapers, on the covers of magazines at every newsstand, on the evening news where pundits debated her "brilliance" and "courage." Children played with new "Captain Ashiro and Heaven's Hammer" action figures. She had become more than a hero; she was a living icon, a symbol of humanity's ultimate triumph.
And it was all a lie.
She took a sip of her tea, the warmth doing little to dispel the chill in her soul. Every word of praise felt like a stone being added to a pile on her chest. Every child who looked at her with adoring eyes made her feel like a fraud.
Her datapad buzzed. It was a message from her PR liaison.
[Captain, your approval rating is at an unprecedented 98%. The Prime Minister sends his personal congratulations. The 'Heaven's Hammer' initiative has been fast-tracked for funding, even though it doesn't actually exist. Please be prepared for the medal of honor ceremony next week.]
Mina closed her eyes, a wave of nausea washing over her. She was the hero of a story she hadn't written, the victor of a battle she hadn't won.
The truth of that day was a closely guarded secret, known only to the highest echelons of the Defense Force. A secret embodied by a bored-looking bald man who had saved the world and then went to buy groceries.
A quiet growl rumbled beside her. Bakko, her white tiger companion, pushed its massive head under her hand, sensing her distress. She stroked its thick fur, the simple, honest presence of the animal a small comfort in her world of gilded lies.
Her thoughts, as they often did, drifted to Kafka.
She had tried calling him, but her calls went straight to a generic voicemail. It was probably for the best. What could she even say? 'Hey Kafka, remember how we promised to fight Kaiju together? Well, a bald god stole my thunder, and now I'm lying to the entire planet about it. How's the monster-gut-scrubbing business?'
She felt a pang of guilt. She had been so caught up in her duties, in the weight of her new, false legend, that she hadn't properly checked in on him since the attack. She knew he had been close, that his name had come up in a report.
Her datapad buzzed again. This time it was a classified internal memo from Soshiro Hoshina. She was one of the few who had clearance for his private annotations.
Her eyes widened as she read.
[Applicant #3217, Kafka Hibino. Passed Phase One. Note: Subject exhibits extreme biological anomalies. Latent regenerative abilities and inconsistent muscle density readings far exceed known human limits. Caused a complete logic failure in the fortitude scanner—a 'Scanner Error' event. Parallels to Anomaly-Alpha's quantitative negation are circumstantial but... interesting. Recommend close observation.]
Mina stared at the words, her mind struggling to process them. Kafka? Biological anomalies? A scanner error? It made no sense. He was just... Kafka. The clumsy, good-hearted underachiever who had been her friend since childhood.
And yet... Hoshina was not a man prone to fantasy. If he flagged something as an anomaly, it was real. A sudden, protective instinct surged through her. Kafka was now on the Defense Force's radar for all the wrong reasons. He was being treated as a specimen, a curiosity linked to the greatest secret in the world. He was in danger.
She had to talk to him. She had to warn him.
But how? The invisible wall between their two worlds had just become a hundred feet thick, made of secrets, lies, and classified reports.
"He's making hot pot again."
In the dark, subterranean world of Project Bald Cape, Kenji Tanaka stared intently at his main screen. His team had succeeded. A swarm of nano-drones, disguised as dust motes and lingering pollen, had infiltrated the apartment. They now had full audio and low-res thermal video of the Anomalies' lives.
It was the most boring, most frustratingly domestic surveillance operation in history.
"Thermal readings indicate the broth has reached an optimal 95 degrees Celsius," a tech reported, her voice deadpan. "Beta is slicing daikon radish with a precision of 0.1 millimeters per slice. Alpha is... complaining."
On the screen, two indistinct thermal blobs moved around a table.
"You're cutting them too thin, Genos!" Saitama's voice, perfectly captured by a dust-mote on the ceiling, echoed in the bunker. "Daikon needs to be chunky so it can soak up the flavor. You're making daikon wafers."
"My apologies, Master," Genos's voice replied. "My programming is optimized for efficiency. I will adjust the parameters for 'chunkiness'."
Kenji rubbed his temples, a headache brewing. For seventy-two hours, they had watched. They had listened. They had analyzed. And the sum total of the intelligence they had gathered was this:
Anomaly-Alpha's diet consisted largely of boiled vegetables and discounted meat.
He spent approximately six hours per day reading manga and four hours watching television.
His primary source of emotional distress was missing supermarket sales.
Anomaly-Beta was a meticulously clean and attentive housekeeper who was documenting his master's every mundane action with religious fervor.
There was no talk of world domination. No discussion of the source of their powers. No grand plans. Just the quiet, mind-numbing drone of domestic life.
"Chief," a young analyst called out. "I've been running deep background analysis on the name 'Saitama,' which Beta keeps using. I found something. It's... probably a coincidence."
"I'll take anything at this point," Kenji sighed.
"Well, there's no official record of anyone matching his description. No ID, no passport, nothing. He doesn't exist. But there is an urban legend. A B-Class hero from a parallel world known as 'Caped Baldy'."
The codename they had chosen. It was a coincidence, but a chilling one.
Kenji zoomed in on the data. "A B-Class hero? What were his accomplishments?"
The analyst looked uncomfortable. "It's hard to say, sir. The official records are spotty. He's often accused of 'kill-stealing' from higher-ranked heroes. His public approval rating is abysmal. Most people seem to think he's a fraud."
The irony was so thick it was suffocating. The entire room fell silent as they processed the information.
The most powerful being they had ever encountered, a creature that could unmake reality with a punch, was, in his own world, a low-ranked, underappreciated joke. A hero nobody believed in.
It didn't make him any less terrifying. In fact, it made him more so. He had the power of a god, but he had received the validation of a failure. What did that do to a person's mind? His apathy, his boredom... maybe it wasn't a personality quirk. Maybe it was a scar.
A new alert suddenly flashed on Kenji's console. [Anomaly-Alpha: Elevated Heart Rate Detected.]
Everyone in the bunker snapped to attention.
"What is it? What's happening?" Kenji demanded. "Is he hostile? Is he powering up?"
On the thermal display, the blob representing Saitama had sat up ramrod straight.
The tech monitoring the audio feed listened intently. "He's... He's watching TV, sir."
"What is he watching?!"
"...A commercial. For a limited-time 'Mega Monster Meat' sale at the central department store."
A beat of silence.
"That's all?" Kenji asked, his voice weak.
The tech nodded. "He just said, 'Genos, we're going out'."
Kenji Tanaka slumped in his chair. They had mobilized the most advanced surveillance network ever conceived to monitor a god. And they had just learned his primary motivation for leaving his apartment was a 50% off sale on minced meat.
Project Bald Cape was no closer to understanding their target. If anything, they understood him even less. And the banality of his existence was more terrifying than any show of power. Because you can't predict a god who acts like a broke, bored human.