For three weeks, the world was deceptively quiet.
The public celebrated the "success" of the Joint Combat Tournament. The Defense Force, now with a massive new budget approved in the wake of the public spectacle, quietly poured resources into its two black-ops projects: Hoshina's disturbing experiments in biological enhancement and Kenji Tanaka's frantic race to build biomechanical weapons.
And in a small, two-bedroom apartment, a fugitive and a god fell into a strange, domestic rhythm.
"You missed a spot," Saitama said, pointing a thumb at the corner of the ceiling. He was lying on the floor, reading manga.
Kafka, wearing a pink apron over his sweats and standing on a chair to reach the cobwebs, sighed. "Coming from the guy whose main contribution to cleaning is creating a 'dust vortex' by waving his hand around."
"It's an efficient system," Saitama replied, not looking up.
Living with Saitama and Genos was a surreal experience. Genos treated Kafka like a fascinating, if slightly contaminated, biological specimen, constantly trying to take "tissue samples for analysis." Saitama treated him like a slightly useless younger brother who was freeloading on his couch. Kafka had been "repaying" them by taking over all household chores. For the first time in his adult life, he wasn't cleaning up monster guts; he was cleaning up Saitama's dirty laundry. It was, he had to admit, a slight improvement.
He was in limbo. Hiding. His dream was in tatters, but for the first time in a long time, he felt... safe. No Hoshina. No Kikoru. No pressure to be anything other than a guy trying to master the perfect rice-to-water ratio.
The peace was not to last.
It started subtly. The lights in the apartment flickered, then died.
"Power outage," Saitama grumbled from the darkness. "Genos, pay the electric bill."
"The account is fully funded for the next century, Master," Genos's voice replied, his optical sensors glowing eerily in the dark room. "This is a grid-wide failure. The entire J-City sector is offline."
Kafka went to the window. Outside, the vibrant, neon-drenched cityscape was plunged into an unnerving darkness, punctuated only by the headlights of stalled cars. The city that never slept had been forced into a coma.
Then the second blow came.
"My phone is dead," Kafka said, looking at the blank screen. "Not just the battery. No signal at all."
"The communication network is down as well," Genos confirmed, his internal sensors whirring. "Cellular, internet, even the emergency broadcast frequencies are just... static. This is not a simple outage. This is a coordinated infrastructure collapse."
This was it. The opening salvo of Kaiju No. 9's new war. A silent, crippling attack. No explosions. No roars. Just a suffocating, technological silence.
And for Saitama, it was the ultimate inconvenience.
"No power?" he said, his voice taking on a dangerous, low tone. "But... my show was about to come on. And the meat from the tournament prize is in the freezer. It's going to defrost."
Panic, real and potent, began to spread across the city. Without power, without communication, the modern world ground to a halt. Hospitals struggled to keep life-support running on backup generators. Emergency services were flying blind, unable to coordinate.
In the Project Bald Cape bunker, which ran on its own isolated power source, Kenji Tanaka and his team were in a state of controlled panic.
"It's the Node!" an analyst shouted, his face pale. "The central data hub in Sector Gamma is completely offline! All data is being... corrupted. Wiped clean. It's not just a power failure; something is eating the information!"
"That's the phased-burrower," Dr. Arisugawa breathed, watching the seismic sensors. "We detected faint tremors there hours ago but dismissed them as geological noise. It didn't tunnel to the facility. It phased through the damn foundations."
This was the new warfare. Brutally effective. Completely unseen. A single, specialized Kaiju had just decapitated the entire region's nervous system.
Then, the true genius of the plan was revealed.
As the city stumbled in the darkness, the secondary attacks began. Small, specialized Kaiju, the ones designed for psychological warfare, emerged from the sewers. Creatures that didn't just attack, but mimicked human screams to sow confusion. Beasts that could phase through walls to appear inside panicked homes.
It wasn't a military invasion. It was a terror campaign, designed to break the spirit of the populace, to turn the city into a pressure cooker of fear and paranoia. The Defense Force, for the first time, was completely helpless. They couldn't coordinate a response. They didn't even know where to send their troops. They were an army without eyes or ears.
And on the apartment balcony, Saitama stood, looking out over his dark, silent, and deeply inconvenient city. His freezer was defrosting. The TV didn't work. His day was officially ruined.
Genos appeared at his side. "Master, multiple low-level Kaiju threats have been detected throughout the city, causing significant civilian panic. The Defense Force is organizationally paralyzed. What are your orders?"
Saitama didn't answer. He was listening. In the silence of the dead city, he could hear the distant, isolated screams. He could hear the fear. He could hear the chaos that was interrupting his quiet life.
This, more than any giant monster, more than any galactic threat, was a direct, personal insult. These new monsters weren't just destroying a city. They were making his world annoying.
Kafka came out onto the balcony, his face grim. "They need help," he said. "People are being targeted. The Defense Force can't get there in time." He looked at Saitama, then down at his own hands. The choice was clear. His days of hiding were over.
"Let's go," Saitama said, his voice flat and cold as ice.
"What is the plan, Master?" Genos asked. "Shall we proceed to the source of the outage at Sector Gamma?"
"No," Saitama replied, his gaze sweeping over the darkened cityscape. "The problem isn't the broken machine. It's the bugs." He cracked his knuckles, the sound like a thunderclap in the quiet night.
"You and me, Leek Guy," he said, glancing at Kafka. "Pest control. Let's show them what happens when they really, really tick me off."
The escalation had come. The quiet war had broken out into the open. And Kaiju No. 9's brilliant, strategic plan to cripple the city and annoy a god into submission was about to backfire in the most spectacular and terrifying way imaginable. It hadn't just inconvenienced a hero. It had unleashed him.