The presentation in the Project Bald Cape bunker was the culmination of weeks of obsessive, round-the-clock work.
Kenji Tanaka stood before the Director General and the government's top brass, his usual frantic energy replaced by a cold, grim focus. The screen behind him was split into two images. On one side was a detailed anatomical schematic of Kaiju No. 8, extrapolated from Kikoru's and Hoshina's combat data. On the other was a complex, swirling diagram of Anomaly-Beta's—Genos's—energy systems, pieced together from fragmented reports and sensor readings.
"Gentlemen," Kenji began, "for weeks, we have focused on Anomaly-Alpha. We treated him as the primary subject, and his companion as a secondary concern. We were wrong. Alpha is a god, a force of nature. We cannot understand him, and we cannot replicate him. But Beta..."
He pointed to Genos's schematic. "Beta is different. He is not a biological or metaphysical anomaly. He is a work of staggering, brilliant, and terrifying engineering."
He brought up the footage from Genos's 'demonstration' in the combat chamber. They watched the cyborg's tactical drones, his precise energy strikes, his flawless execution.
"We have had our best scientists and weapons designers analyze this data," Kenji said, his voice grave. "Their conclusion is unanimous. Anomaly-Beta represents a leap in technology so far beyond our own that we cannot even begin to reverse-engineer it. It would be like a medieval blacksmith trying to replicate a smartphone."
He let the weight of that statement settle in the silent room.
"His power core alone," Kenji continued, "is a self-sustaining plasma furnace small enough to fit in his chest, yet it generates more power than the Tachikawa Base's primary reactor. His armor is a memory alloy that can repair microfractures in seconds. His processing speed allows him to perform trillions of calculations per second. He is, for all intents and purposes, a walking, sentient Numbered Weapon."
Director General Shinomiya leaned forward, his expression harder than granite. "So you are saying he is a threat."
"I'm saying he is the future, Director General," Kenji corrected him. "Or a blueprint for it. Humanity's struggle against the Kaiju has always been an arms race. They get stronger, we build bigger guns. It's a linear, predictable path. But we are nearing the ceiling of what our current technology can do. Beta... Genos... he shows us that there is a whole other level. He is the key."
He swiped his hand, and a new initiative flashed onto the screen, overriding the "Project Bald Cape" title.
Project Chimera: Bio-Mechanical Weapons Division
"We can't replicate his technology," Kenji explained, "but we can be inspired by it. We can try to build our own version. We have the biological material from captured Kaiju. We have the weapons technology from our Numbered arsenal. Project Chimera's directive will be to fuse them. To create our own cyborgs, our own powered armor, our own advanced drones. We will no longer be fighting Kaiju with just guns and swords. We will fight them by becoming a new kind of monster ourselves."
A murmur went through the room. The ethical lines were blurry, the risks enormous. Creating unstable, bio-mechanical weapons... it was a path from which there might be no return.
Shinomiya looked at the footage of Genos effortlessly dispatching the holographic Kaiju. He thought of the new, intelligent, tactical Kaiju that had besieged his base. The enemy was evolving, getting smarter. Humanity had to do the same.
"Begin the project," he said, his voice a low growl of finality. "Give Tanaka's team whatever resources they need. I want a prototype within the year."
The new arms race had begun. Humanity was about to take a dangerous, ambitious leap forward, inspired by the cyborg demon who walked in the shadow of a god. They had no idea that they weren't the only ones who had been so inspired.
Deep in its sewer lair, Kaiju No. 9 was watching the same footage.
It had hacked a low-level Defense Force server, siphoning off scraps of unencrypted data. The video of Genos's four-second decimation of the 'Chimera' simulation played on a loop on one of its monitors.
The creature's shifting, pale form was still, its entire consciousness focused on the chrome demon.
For eons, Kaiju evolution had followed a simple, brutal path. Bigger claws. Thicker armor. More destructive energy blasts. It was an organic, biological arms race.
But Genos... Genos was a revelation.
He had no claws. He used manufactured drones. His armor was not grown, but forged. His energy was not a biological byproduct, but a contained, controlled nuclear reaction. He was a perfect synthesis of the two things Kaiju No. 9 had always seen as separate: the savage power of the natural world and the cold, deadly efficiency of human technology.
Organic evolution is too slow, the monster thought, a profound and paradigm-shifting idea echoing in its silent, alien mind. Limited by biology. Prone to error. The human fusion of flesh and machine is weak. Unstable. But a Kaiju fusion... Kaiju flesh, with its rapid regenerative properties and inherent strength... fused with their technology...
Its own body began to contort. One of its tendrils lengthened, the end sharpening to a point. With a wet, tearing sound, it plunged the tendril into a nearby power conduit, siphoning electricity. The tendril sparked and glowed, and the skin around it began to harden, forming a crude, bio-metallic shell.
It studied the result for a long moment, then reabsorbed the limb. A proof of concept. It was possible.
Its plan had now fully crystallized.
It no longer sought just to create an army of intelligent Kaiju-human hybrids based on Kaiju No. 8. That was only the first step. The infantry.
Now, it had a design for its generals. Its champions.
It would not just mimic Genos's results. It would mimic his methods. It would become an engineer. It would begin to forge a new breed of Kaiju. Monsters of wire and bone, of flesh and steel. Bio-mechanical horrors designed with the express purpose of countering the weapons of both man and machine.
Kaiju No. 9 would create Kaiju with built-in EMP generators to disable suits like Kikoru's. It would forge beasts with kinetic-dampening armor to render cannon-fire useless. And it would build creatures with energy-siphoning capabilities, designed to feed on and neutralize warriors like Genos.
The new arms race had two sides, and neither knew the other was competing. On one side, humanity, desperately trying to catch up to a technological future embodied by Genos. On the other, the Kaiju, led by a silent, learning monster, using Genos as the blueprint for a terrifying new generation of biomechanical terror.
And walking between them both, completely oblivious, was Saitama, a simple man whose disciple had just inadvertently triggered a world-wide, secret, and monstrous technological revolution that would forever change the face of the war. The tension was no longer about a single battle, but about the future of evolution itself.