The alarm blared through Tachikawa Base with a frantic, piercing shriek that every soldier knew meant one of two things: a catastrophic failure or an unprecedented attack.
Kafka Hibino, in the middle of a grueling session of cleaning Kaiju entrails out of a tank-sized centrifuge, nearly jumped out of his skin. This wasn't a drill.
"CODE JAEGER! I REPEAT, CODE JAEGER! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!" the base-wide PA system screamed. Code Jaeger. A designation so high-level Kafka had only read about it in manuals. It meant a direct, targeted attack on a Defense Force facility itself.
He and the other cadets were herded into a ready room by a grim-faced instructor. "Gear up! All cadets are being mobilized as tertiary support! Grab a rifle and get to the perimeter wall!"
The room was a blur of frantic energy. Reno appeared at Kafka's side, his face pale but his eyes alight with a terrifying, nervous excitement. "This is it! A real one!"
"This is bad," Kafka said, his hands surprisingly steady as he checked the power pack on his rifle. "No Kaiju has been smart enough to attack a base head-on in over a decade."
Not since No. 6, he remembered with a chill.
As they ran towards the towering perimeter wall, the scene that greeted them was one of disciplined, high-tech chaos. Veteran officers in full combat suits were taking up positions, their advanced weaponry humming with power. Searchlights sliced through the night sky. The very air vibrated with tension.
"What's the situation?" Reno asked a senior officer.
"We don't know!" the officer barked back, not taking his eyes off the dark forest beyond the wall. "Our long-range sensors went haywire three minutes ago. All we're getting is... noise. Something is out there, and it's jamming our systems."
Kafka felt a familiar, cold dread. Jamming. That wasn't a brute force tactic. That was a military strategy.
Then, from the darkness of the forest, they came.
They weren't the colossal, lumbering beasts of city-wide invasions. They were smaller, faster. Horrifyingly so. Dozens of them, humanoid in shape, but with sleek, obsidian carapaces and blades of sharpened bone where their arms should be. They moved with a fluid, coordinated grace, not like a horde, but like a pack of wolves.
"New bio-type!" an analyst screamed over the comms. "Fortitude reading is only 4.5, but their speed is off the charts! They're... they're flanking! Moving in formation!"
The Defense Force veterans opened fire, a storm of energy beams and explosive rounds lighting up the night. The first wave of the new Kaiju was torn to shreds, their black ichor spraying across the reinforced concrete.
But they didn't falter. For every one that fell, two more seemed to take its place, weaving through the gunfire with an unnatural intelligence. A few of them reached the wall and, defying gravity, began to scale it, their bladed limbs finding purchase in the sheer surface.
"Wall-breachers! Repel them!" Soshiro Hoshina's voice cut through the chaos, calm and authoritative. He was a blur of silver, appearing atop the wall and dispatching three of the climbers with a series of slashes so fast they were invisible to the naked eye.
Kafka and the other cadets were ordered to a lower parapet, their low-power rifles mostly useless, tasked with picking off any that slipped past the main line of defense. The brutal reality of real combat was a world away from the training simulations. The air stank of ozone and cooked monster. The screams were real.
One of the creatures made it to their level. Before the cadets could even react, it decapitated two of them with a single, sweeping motion of its bladed arm.
Kafka saw red. The Kaiju part of him surged, a hot wave of rage and power. He fought it down, his knuckles white on his rifle. Not here. Not now.
Reno, however, reacted. He yelled a battle cry and charged, his rifle spitting energy. He scored several hits, but the creature's obsidian carapace deflected them. The Kaiju swatted his rifle aside and backhanded him, sending him crashing into a wall. His suit's monitor flickered with red damage warnings.
The Kaiju raised its blade for the killing blow.
There was no time to think. Kafka dropped his useless rifle and charged, grabbing a discarded piece of reinforced rebar from the ground. He didn't use his Kaiju strength, but he used his Kaiju knowledge.
Scythe-type. Its primary joints are behind the shoulder blades, protected by an overlapping plate. But during a full downward swing, the joint is exposed for 0.3 seconds.
The creature's arm descended. Kafka, moving with a desperate, adrenaline-fueled speed, slid under the blow and rammed the jagged end of the rebar up and into the exposed joint with all his humanly possible strength.
It wasn't enough to kill it, but it was enough to make it scream in pain and fury. The blade arm went limp. The creature spun, its other arm catching Kafka across the chest and sending him flying. He hit the wall next to Reno, his world exploding in a flash of white-hot pain. He felt ribs crack. His monitor flared with critical warnings.
The wounded Kaiju, enraged, loomed over them both. This was the end.
Suddenly, a beam of golden light, thick as a tree trunk, descended from the sky and vaporized the creature's upper torso.
Kikoru Shinomiya landed beside them, her massive axe resting on her shoulder. Her expression was grim. "Stay behind me, Cadets. This is an A-level threat."
The battle raged. It was a meat grinder. The new Kaiju were individually weaker than what they were used to, but their numbers, their speed, and their tactics were bleeding the Defense Force dry. This wasn't a rampage; it was a siege. A calculated, intelligent assault designed to wear them down and test their defenses.
Kaiju No. 9 was learning.
Meanwhile, two kilometers away, Saitama was woken from a very nice nap by all the noise.
"Ugh, what is it now?" he grumbled, sitting up on his futon.
Genos was already standing at the window, his sensors glowing. "Master. A significant battle is taking place at the nearby Tachikawa Base. Multiple small, high-velocity Kaiju are engaging the local military forces."
"Are they loud?" Saitama asked, the most important question.
"Yes, Master. Extremely."
Saitama let out a long, put-upon sigh. He stood up and began to reluctantly pull on his hero suit. His brief period of peace and quiet was over. He just wanted one night where the city didn't sound like it was coming apart at the seams.
He walked onto his small balcony, looking out at the distant flashes of light and the faint sounds of explosions. "Alright," he said to the night sky, his voice full of the profound weariness of a man who just wanted to sleep. "Let's go be a hero, I guess."
He crouched, preparing to launch himself into the heart of the battle, not with a sense of duty or excitement, but with the grim resignation of a man who had to go take out the trash because nobody else would. The true, godly action was about to begin, and it was fueled by nothing more than a ruined nap.