The first day of training was a grueling baptism by fire.
Cadets were pushed through punishing drills, endless weapons maintenance, and hours of Kaiju biology lectures. Kafka Hibino, however, was experiencing a special, personalized version of hell. Vice-Captain Hoshina was watching him.
Everywhere Kafka went, he felt Hoshina's sharp, analytical gaze. During target practice, Hoshina would stand silently behind him, not offering correction, just observing his form. During close-combat drills, Hoshina would walk past, his eyes lingering for a moment on Kafka's stance.
It wasn't hostile. It was worse. It was the intense, focused scrutiny of a scientist studying a particularly strange lab rat. Kafka was so paranoid about accidentally using too much strength that his performance was abysmal, earning him the scorn of the instructors and a steady stream of extra latrine-duty assignments.
"He's testing you," Reno muttered to him as they scrubbed floors that evening, their muscles aching. "He suspects something. You need to be more careful."
"I'm being so careful I can barely lift a bucket," Kafka groaned, his back screaming in protest. "If I act any weaker, they'll think I'm medically unfit and discharge me."
His life had become an impossible balancing act: perform well enough to stay in the Defense Force, but not so well that he revealed the monster lurking just beneath his skin.
Across the base, in his private office, Soshiro Hoshina was not looking at Cadet Hibino's file. He was engaged in a far more important, and infinitely more frustrating, task. He was analyzing the uncredited victories.
On his holographic display, two figures were highlighted. The first was Anomaly-Alpha. The second, to his surprise, was Anomaly-Beta, the cyborg. A new, heavily redacted report from Project Bald Cape had just landed on his desk.
"Sir," a tech had told him earlier, "we managed to intercept a… document."
The document was Genos's daily report to himself on his Master's activities. He apparently uploaded it to a secure, multidimensional server every evening. Kenji Tanaka's team had managed to snag a single, corrupted packet of data. The text was mostly gibberish and unknown scientific notations, but some of it was legible.
Hoshina read the fragmented text for the tenth time, his mind reeling.
[...Target, designated "Rhinoceros Major," displayed a Fortitude of 8.9. Master was experiencing elevated emotional distress due to a failure in procuring discounted bovine protein. The resulting emotional state, designated "Mildly Annoyed," was sufficient to completely arrest the target's momentum with an open-palm strike, causing catastrophic internal structural failure...]
[...Follow-up strike against "Mole Minor," Fortitude 6.2, was executed from a distance of 1.27 kilometers. Projectile was a compressed air-pressure wave generated by a Normal Punch. The wave traveled at a velocity exceeding my sensor's ability to measure, achieving perfect target decapitation. Analysis: This confirms Master does not need to make physical contact to apply kinetic force. The air itself can be weaponized with terrifying efficiency. My theory that his punches negate the strong nuclear force may need revision...]
Hoshina's hand trembled slightly as he put the datapad down.
A tactical meltdown was happening inside his head. It wasn't a panicked breakdown, but a cold, logical deconstruction of everything he knew about fighting.
His entire combat philosophy was built on closing the distance. Getting in close where his blades, his speed, and his technique could overcome a stronger opponent. He was the scalpel to Mina's cannon.
But what did that mean in a world with beings like these?
The cyborg, Beta, had documented his master neutralizing a high-level threat from over a kilometer away with an air punch. A casual, off-hand strike that was faster and more precise than any sniper rifle ever invented. How did you close the distance on an opponent who could kill you from the next town over without even taking a step?
And Alpha himself... the open-palm strike that stopped a sixty-ton charge dead. It wasn't just strength. It was an absolute denial of the laws of momentum.
My speed is meaningless, Hoshina thought, the realization a block of ice in his gut. My blades are irrelevant. My techniques are a child's scribbles.
For years, the evolution of warfare had been a steady, predictable climb. Stronger armor, faster jets, more powerful guns. Kaiju had forced them to make quantum leaps, but the principles were the same.
This was not a leap. This was a whole new staircase, and he was stuck at the bottom.
This was not a threat he could overcome by training harder or getting a new set of blades. This was a paradigm shift so fundamental that it threatened to render his entire existence as a warrior obsolete.
Some men would despair. Some would retire.
Soshiro Hoshina felt a cold, terrifying fire ignite within him.
He stood up and walked to a locked case at the side of his office. He opened it, revealing dozens of intricately crafted Kaiju-part blades, trophies and prototypes from his career. They were the pinnacle of bladed-weapon technology.
And they were all toys.
He picked one up, a wicked-looking short sword crafted from the claw of a Fortitude 7.2 monster, renowned for its ability to slice through anything. He held it up to the light, then looked at his own reflection in its polished surface.
He saw the Vice-Captain. The Blade Master. The genius tactician.
And he realized he was looking at a fossil.
With a sudden, violent motion, he snapped the priceless blade over his knee. The sound of tortured, exotic metal screaming as it broke was the only noise in the room. He dropped the two pieces to the floor.
Obsolete, he thought, not with despair, but with a newfound, terrifying clarity.
He turned back to his desk and pulled up the schematics for his own combat suit and weapons systems. He wiped them clean.
Then he opened a new file, the title blinking in the empty space. [Combat Protocol - Singularity Class].
His first entry was a question.
How do you cut a man who can punch the air and kill you from a mile away?
The obvious answer was: you don't. The real answer, the one Hoshina was now obsessed with finding, was far more complicated.
You didn't try to match him. You had to do something different. You had to be faster than his thoughts. You had to predict the unpredictable. You had to find a weakness in a being who seemed to have none. You had to weaponize concepts, not just steel.
Hoshina began to design a new training regimen, one that bordered on self-destructive. He requested R&D data on experimental Kaiju nerve clusters that could enhance reaction times. He started sketching designs for new blades—not just sharp, but blades that could warp space, blades that moved in non-linear paths, blades that didn't exist until the moment they struck. It was all theoretical, impossible science fiction.
But impossible was now the new normal.
He also brought up Genos's fragmented report again, his eyes drawn to a specific phrase: normal punch.
The cyborg had capitalized it. It wasn't just a description; it was a classification. This implied the existence of something else. Something… not normal.
A new obsession took root in Soshiro Hoshina's soul. He would decipher the secrets of Anomaly-Alpha. He would find a way to become relevant again. He would find a way to stand on the same battlefield as a god and not be rendered utterly meaningless.
His professional tactical meltdown was over. His evolution had just begun. And at the center of it was a single, maddening goal: he had to see one of these "punches" for himself. Up close. And he had to survive it.