With the monster gone, a new, more complicated problem presented itself: a dark city and a severed continental power conduit.
Genos immediately went into analytical mode, his sensors scanning the mangled remains of the power and data lines at the bottom of the crater. "The primary plasmic energy conduit has been completely severed. The fiber-optic trunk lines are shredded. Re-establishing the connection would require a specialized engineering team and an estimated three weeks of work."
Saitama peered into the crater. "So all those broken wires are the problem?"
"Essentially, yes, Master," Genos replied. "They must be fused back together with microscopic precision."
"So, like... reconnecting a plug?" Saitama asked.
"An analogy that is functionally incorrect on almost every conceivable level, but yes," Genos conceded, deciding not to argue the finer points of plasma physics with his Master.
Kafka, who had just watched a man punch a monster into the Earth's core, was still struggling to process the scale of everything. "Three weeks... the city can't survive three weeks without power and communication."
Saitama looked at the sparking, frayed ends of the massive cables. They were as thick as his body, a tangled mess of complex, color-coded wiring. It looked like a giant bowl of very important spaghetti. This whole situation was becoming more and more of a hassle. He wanted to go home. He wanted his TV to work.
"Alright, stand back," he said.
Kafka and Genos both took a few cautious steps back. They knew that when Saitama used that tone, something profoundly reality-breaking was about to happen.
Saitama hopped down into the crater. He stood between the two severed ends of the colossal conduit. He grabbed a handful of the thick, tangled cables in each fist. They were live, arcing with enough residual power to vaporize a normal human. Saitama didn't even seem to notice.
He looked at the two bunches of cables, like a man trying to figure out which end of a USB cord goes in. He shrugged. "Guess it doesn't matter."
And he just... pushed them together.
FZZZZZZZZZZT-VMMMMMM!
For a single, terrifying moment, a sun was born at the bottom of the crater. A blinding flash of pure, white-hot energy erupted as untold gigawatts of raw power surged through the single point of contact that was Saitama's body.
The ground shook. The air itself screamed, ionized into a plasma field. Kafka and Genos were thrown back, shielding their eyes from the blast.
But the light vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
In the aftermath, the crater was filled with an eerie, humming silence. Saitama stood in the middle of it, completely unharmed, still holding the two ends of the conduit together. They were no longer a frayed mess. They were... fused. A single, seamless, glowing tube of perfectly rejoined metal and fiber optics. He hadn't just connected them. He had forced them to merge on a molecular level, using the raw, chaotic energy of the short-circuit as a forge and his own invulnerable body as the anvil. He had, in effect, performed fusion welding with his bare hands.
He let go and dusted off his gloves. "There. Toaster's fixed."
He turned and looked expectantly at the dark, silent fortress of Sector Gamma. "So...?"
Nothing happened.
"It still doesn't work," he said, his voice flat with disappointment.
"Of course not, Master," Genos explained, his voice full of awe as he scanned the impossibly perfect fusion. "You have repaired the conduit, an act my sensors indicate is physically impossible. However, the station's primary reactor would have automatically scrammed during the initial attack. It needs to be manually restarted from the control room."
Saitama sighed. It was always one more thing. He looked at the sealed blast door with the neat little hole he'd knocked in it. "Okay. This time, we're doing it my way."
Before Genos could protest about 'structural integrity,' Saitama walked over to the thickest part of the facility's reinforced wall. He didn't punch it. He didn't even pull his arm back.
He just flicked it.
flick.
The same sound that had vaporized the Kaiju at the base.
A section of the wall, ten meters wide and ten meters high, thirty feet thick of solid, layered concrete and steel... just turned to dust. Not an explosion. Not a hole. The section of wall just ceased to be, leaving a perfect, clean, rectangular doorway and a pile of fine grey powder on the ground.
Saitama walked through the newly created entrance into the pitch-black facility. "Anybody know where the light switch is?"
Genos and Kafka followed him in, their minds still trying to catch up with the sheer, casual, and utterly unnecessary displays of power.
It took Genos's internal mapping systems thirty seconds to locate the control room. It took another minute for him to interface with the main reactor console and begin the complex, multi-stage reboot sequence.
And as the final command was entered, a low, deep hum began to vibrate through the facility. It spread outwards, a wave of life returning to a dead city.
Across J-City, lights flickered back on. Streetlights, apartment windows, hospital monitors. Televisions blared to life in the middle of silent living rooms. The internet surged back into existence. The heart of the city began to beat again.
In the Project Bald Cape bunker, every screen, which had been showing red error messages, suddenly flashed green.
"Sir! We're back online!" an analyst yelled, a cheer erupting through the room. "The grid is stable. Data networks are re-establishing! But... how?"
In its sewer lair, Kaiju No. 9's few remaining monitors flickered back to life. It had felt the death of its phase-burrower, a chilling confirmation of the Anomaly's power. And now, the chaos it had orchestrated, the crippling blow that should have taken weeks to repair, had been undone. In minutes. The sheer, overwhelming efficiency of the response was a terrifying new data point. Its enemy was not just powerful; it was relentlessly, maddeningly effective.
Back in Sector Gamma, Saitama, Genos, and Kafka stood outside, watching the city blaze back to life beneath them.
It was over. They had, in the space of about an hour, put down a city-wide terror campaign, defeated a reality-bending monster, and repaired a piece of infrastructure that was beyond the capabilities of an entire nation's engineering corps.
Kafka stared out at the city he had just helped save, not as a Defense Force soldier, not as a sweeper, but as... something else. Something new. "We did it," he whispered, a note of genuine awe in his own voice.
Saitama just yawned. He turned, his job as the universe's most overqualified handyman finally complete.
"Alright," he announced, a profound sense of relief in his voice. "The TV works. The freezer is safe. My work here is done." He started walking back towards their apartment. "Let's go home. I think I have some leftover udon."
Their new role in the world had been silently, unofficially, and absurdly established. The Defense Force were the soldiers, the public heroes who fought the wars.
But Saitama, Genos, and now Kafka... they were the city's exterminators. The janitors. The repairmen. The quiet, uncredited guardians of the world's boring, peaceful, everyday life. And Saitama wouldn't have it any other way.