The silence in the courtyard lingered long after Saitama and Genos had leaped over the wall and disappeared into the night. It was a silence filled with the weight of rewritten rules and shattered paradigms.
Soshiro Hoshina was the first to break it, his voice quiet but sharp over the comms. "All units, stand down. Begin damage assessment. Secure the perimeter. Get the wounded to the infirmary."
The soldiers, shaken from their stupor, began to move, their actions sluggish, almost dreamlike. They were following orders, but their minds were still processing the sheer, impossible event they had just witnessed. They glanced at the black mist that was once a Kaiju, at the clean courtyard where a god had stood, and their gazes were a mixture of awe, reverence, and profound, existential terror.
Kafka, his side throbbing with pain, was helped to his feet by Reno.
"Did you... Did you see that?" Reno whispered, his voice trembling. "He just... talked, and they ran. He flicked his wrist, and..."
Kafka just nodded, his throat too dry to speak. He knew Saitama was powerful. But feeling that aura, that sheer pressure... it was like the difference between seeing a picture of the ocean and being crushed by a tidal wave. And Saitama was looking for him, the "Leek Guy." The thought was so terrifying it almost made him laugh.
In the command center, a similar, more high-stakes shock had taken hold. Director General Shinomiya stood before the main screen, which showed a crystal-clear satellite image of Saitama standing in the courtyard. The feed had come from one of Project Bald Cape's proprietary, stealth satellites. Kenji Tanaka's voice crackled through the secure channel, tight with a kind of manic, scientific glee.
"Sir... are you seeing this? He projected a field. Not energy, not psychic... it's a 'threat' field. Pure, conceptual pressure. He didn't just scare them. He impressed upon them the absolute, biological certainty that to oppose him was to cease existing. He weaponized his own godly aura."
Shinomiya said nothing, his face like stone. He was replaying a different memory in his mind. The mock battle.
That day, months ago, they had thought they were testing a strange, powerful anomaly. They had been amused by his nonchalance, baffled by his durability. They had catalogued the results as 'inconclusive' and 'absurd.'
Now, watching this footage, those results were cast in a horrifying new light.
The Speed Test vs. Soshiro Hoshina. They had thought he was just dodging. Now, Shinomiya realized Saitama hadn't even been trying. He hadn't been dodging blades; he had been humouring a child who was waving a toy sword at him. The "afterimages" Hoshina saw weren't a result of speed; they were the barest minimum of movement Saitama could perform without accidentally turning the Vice-Captain into paste.
The Power Test vs. Kikoru Shinomiya. She had unleashed her strongest attack. He had stopped it with a single finger. At the time, they had been awed by his strength. Now, they understood. He hadn't just been stronger; he had calculated the precise, minimal amount of force needed to stop her attack without shattering her arm, her weapon, and her entire sense of self-worth into a million pieces. It hadn't been a display of power. It had been an act of profound, almost insulting, mercy.
The Fortitude Test. The Main Cannon. They had fired their most powerful conventional weapon at him. He had stood there, bored, while a storm of fire and shrapnel engulfed him. The result: a light coating of dust. The footage they were now watching—of a Kaiju exploding into mist from a casual flick—provided the context. The cannon shot hadn't been a test of his durability. It had been the equivalent of a toddler throwing a handful of talcum powder at a battleship.
The results of that mock battle weren't "inconclusive." The results were perfectly clear. They hadn't been testing him. He had been patiently, and with a frightening level of control, allowing them to test him without killing them all by accident.
"The Scanner Error," Shinomiya muttered, the phrase now feeling less like a technical glitch and more like a holy scripture. "It wasn't a failure to calculate. It was a statement of fact."
"He's a singularity, Director General," Kenji's voice said, echoing his thoughts. "A living blind spot in the laws of our universe. The question is no longer 'how do we fight him?' The question is 'how do we convince him not to sneeze in our general direction?'"
Shinomiya's gaze shifted to another part of the battlefield footage, to where Kaiju No. 8 had briefly, heroically appeared. Then to the data file on Cadet Kafka Hibino, the man the singularity knew by a vegetable-based nickname.
The path forward was terrifying, but it was the only one they had.
He cut the connection to Kenji. He turned to Mina Ashiro, who had been watching the entire event from the command center, her face pale, her fraudulent halo feeling heavier than ever.
"Captain," Shinomiya said, his voice cold and hard as iron. "Your official report will state that the base's new, automated defense grid, 'Project Cerberus,' successfully repelled the invasion. The system is highly classified. There will be no further details."
Mina simply nodded, her stomach churning. Another lie. Another stolen victory to add to her growing legend. She had just watched a man single-handedly do what her entire division could not, and now she had to help erase him from the record.
"As for the rest of you," Shinomiya said, his voice dropping, now filled with a gravity that froze every officer in the room. "What you saw here tonight does not exist. The man in the cape does not exist. His power does not exist. Anyone who speaks of this to anyone without Level-10 clearance will not be court-martialed. They will be sent to a psychiatric facility for the rest of their natural lives. Is that understood?"
A wave of solemn "Yes, sir!" was his reply.
The official cover-up was in motion. But every single person, from the lowest cadet to the Director General himself, knew the truth.
Their understanding of power, of Kaiju, of warfare—it was all obsolete. A new age had begun. An age defined not by humanity's struggle against monsters, but by its desperate, terrifying need to stay on the good side of an apathetic, sleepy god who lived next door. And the reactions were exactly as they should be: a silent, soul-deep terror, masked by military discipline and frantic, top-secret lies. The real battle for humanity's survival had just begun, and it wouldn't be fought with guns and swords, but with psychological profiles and a desperate prayer that they never, ever, ruined Saitama's day.