When Kikoru Shinomiya arrived at Sub-Level C4, she found not a battlefield, but a scene of chillingly quiet resolution.
The corridor was cordoned off, manned by grim-faced members of the Director General's personal guard. The dust from the disintegrated Kaiju had been swept away, but the clean, gaping scores in the walls from Hoshina's wild swing remained, a testament to the strange forces that had been unleashed here.
Vice-Captain Hoshina stood in the center of the cordoned area, speaking quietly with her father. Hoshina's face was a mask of cold, fanatical calm. Her father's expression was an unreadable monolith of stone.
"Father! Vice-Captain!" she said, striding over. "What happened? Where is Cadet Hibino?"
The two men turned to look at her.
"Cadet Hibino has been... reassigned," Director General Shinomiya said, his voice leaving no room for argument. "He is now under the direct authority of Vice-Captain Hoshina as part of a new, highly classified special project."
"A special project?" Kikoru asked, her eyes narrowing with suspicion. "What kind of project? What happened to the intruders?"
"The situation has been contained," Hoshina answered, his new, unsettling calm grating on her nerves. "And the details of the project are on a need-to-know basis, Captain. You do not need to know."
The blatant dismissal, the wall of secrecy, infuriated her. She, the prodigy of the First Division, the public face of their victory, was being stonewalled by a Vice-Captain and her own father. And Kafka, the frustrating, mysterious man she had been relentlessly investigating, had just been spirited away into a black-ops project she was not privy to.
She looked from Hoshina's fanatical gleam to her father's cold pragmatism. A line was being drawn. A fundamental, ideological schism was forming right in front of her, and she was on the outside.
Far from the base, in Saitama's sparsely furnished apartment, the atmosphere was thick with a different kind of tension.
Kafka sat stiffly on the floor, wearing a spare set of Saitama's oversized sweatpants and a hoodie. Genos had, with his usual ruthless efficiency, "sanitized" the area after their escape, ensuring no trackers had followed them. Now, the cyborg sat a few feet away, silently taking notes, his optical sensors occasionally whirring as he performed scans on their new, unexpected guest.
Saitama dropped a bowl of instant noodles in front of Kafka. "Here. You look like you're about to pass out."
"Thank you," Kafka mumbled, taking the bowl. "I... I can't go back. They know. Hoshina knows. I'm a deserter. A fugitive. On top of being a monster." He let out a dry, humorless laugh.
"A sensible tactical decision," Genos chimed in, not looking up from his notes. "Revealing your abilities under the direct observation of a high-ranking officer was a critical error. The optimal course of action now is to remain here under my Master's protection until the threat level de-escalates."
Saitama just slurped his noodles. "So what's the plan, Leek Guy? You just gonna hide here and play video games forever? The new Raging Fighter is supposed to come out next month."
The question, as always, was deceptively simple but hit the core of the issue. Kafka had no plan. He had spent his whole life dreaming of joining the Defense Force, and his dream had finally, spectacularly, imploded.
"I... I wanted to protect people," Kafka said quietly, staring into his noodle soup. "That's why I joined. That's why... the power comes out. But if the people I'm trying to protect see me as a monster to be hunted... what's the point?"
It was the heart of his conflict. Who is the real monster? The man who looks like one but saves lives, or the society that would hunt him for being different?
Saitama paused his slurping, a rare moment of thoughtful silence from him. He remembered his own early days as a hero. The confusion. The public scorn. Being called a cheater, a fraud. Being feared.
"Who cares what they think?" he said finally.
Kafka looked up, confused.
"You're a guy who sometimes turns into a monster," Saitama stated, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "And you punch other, worse monsters. That's what you do. It's not complicated. You think they care what you look like when a building is about to fall on their heads? Just show up, punch the bad guy, and leave before they can start asking dumb questions. It's easy."
This was the Saitama-brand of heroic philosophy. A philosophy of profound, unshakeable simplicity in the face of overwhelming complexity. Don't worry about public credit. Don't worry about your identity. Just do the job.
It was, Kafka realized, a kind of freedom. Freedom from the need for approval. Freedom from the fear of being misunderstood.
"Easy for you to say," Kafka mumbled. "You're..." He trailed off, not wanting to say 'a god.'
"...strong," Saitama finished for him. "Yeah. I guess." He went back to his noodles, the conversation apparently over.
A new status quo had been set. Kafka was now a fugitive under the reluctant protection of the most powerful and laziest being on the planet. And Saitama had just, in his own off-hand way, given him a new purpose. If the Defense Force wouldn't have him, if society would fear him, then he wouldn't be their soldier.
He would be a hero. A monster who did good deeds in the shadows, just like the Silent God who was now his unwilling roommate.
The tournament was officially declared a massive success. The final match was cancelled due to a "technical malfunction," and the grand prize of a lifetime supply of beef was quietly awarded to the First Division in honor of their "overall outstanding performance."
When Kikoru learned of this, her rage was legendary. The beef, her leverage, her excuse for interacting with the Anomaly, was now just a symbol of her father's political maneuvering. He had used her, used the whole tournament, to further an agenda she didn't understand.
The seeds of the schism were now firmly planted.
On one side, Director General Shinomiya and a radicalized Soshiro Hoshina, embarking on a dark, secret path to create monster-soldiers, viewing Kafka as a priceless asset to be controlled and exploited.
On another, Kikoru Shinomiya, now alienated and suspicious of her own side, her personal investigation into Kafka now entangled with the greater mystery of Anomaly-Alpha, whose path she had now lost.
And caught between them all were Saitama and Kafka. A god and a monster, now unlikely allies, bound by shared misery and a simple, straightforward desire to just be left alone.
Saga 1, "The Anomaly," was drawing to a close. The mystery of what Saitama was had been answered: he was a god. But the consequences of his arrival, the ripples he had created, were now forming into massive, crashing waves. The stage was set for Saga 2, "The Escalation," where the secret war between these fractured factions would truly begin. The question was no longer "What are you?" It was now "Whose side are you on?"