The peace, like all things in Saitama's life, was temporary. Its end arrived not with a bang, but with a series of frantic, beeping alerts.
"Master, an anomaly," Genos announced, his usual calm voice laced with a new urgency. He was standing in the middle of their small kitchen, having just finished dicing carrots into geometrically perfect cubes for that night's curry. "A new, unidentified Kaiju has appeared in the industrial sector. Fortitude readings are... inconsistent, fluctuating rapidly between 6.0 and 8.5."
Saitama, who was meticulously trying to separate the prize out of a box of cereal without eating the actual cereal, didn't look up. "Is it big and loud?"
"Its size is moderate," Genos reported, "but its energy signature is highly unusual. It is emitting a directed, pulsating wave of exotic particles. I believe it is a tracker-type, designed to hunt specific energy signatures." He paused, his optical sensors glowing a brighter, more concerned blue. "Signatures similar to my own... or a Numbered Weapon combat suit."
Kafka, who was attempting to scrub a mysterious stain off the floor (a result of one of Saitama's earlier science experiments involving soda and a battery), froze. A hunter. A monster designed to find beings like Genos... or Kikoru. Or, potentially, him. This was one of Kaiju No. 9's new scalpels.
"Alright, alright, fine," Saitama sighed, finally giving up on the cereal prize. He stood up. "Let's go. My curry is getting cold."
But Genos held up a hand. "Master, your presence may be an inefficient use of power. The threat is localized and appears to be a specialized unit. The Defense Force is already responding. Perhaps we should observe first?"
Saitama considered this. He really didn't want to miss curry night. "Okay. But if I hear any explosions that sound annoyingly loud, we're going."
The industrial sector was a maze of chemical plants and rust-colored pipes. At its heart, a Second Division squad was being systematically dismantled.
Their opponent was a sleek, horrifying creature. It looked like a panther made of living shadow and sharpened, biomechanical parts. Wires snaked through its obsidian muscles, and its eyes were cold, glowing-red sensor arrays. It moved with a liquid grace, phasing short distances to avoid gunfire, its claws extending and retracting with a sound like sharpening knives. It was the Hunter.
"It's not taking the bait!" the squad leader yelled, ducking behind a large tank as a volley of plasma bolts from his men passed harmlessly through the spot where the creature had been a microsecond before. "It's ignoring us! It's still scanning for something!"
This was the terrifying truth. The squad wasn't a threat to the Hunter. They were an obstacle. An annoyance. It was looking for a bigger prize, and its head was constantly sweeping the area, the exotic particle wave pulsing from its body like a sonar ping.
Suddenly, a new variable arrived.
With a roar of high-performance thrusters, Kikoru Shinomiya slammed into the battlefield, her landing cracking the concrete. She had heard the alert, heard the "anti-energy signature" description, and had come on her own, defying her father's orders to remain on standby.
"Second Division, fall back and form a perimeter!" she commanded, her axe humming with power. "This one's mine."
The Hunter's head snapped around. Its red eyes locked onto her, the pulsing from its body quickening with excitement. [Target Acquired. High-Yield Energy Signature. Prime Specimen.]
"Finally," Kikoru whispered, a savage grin on her face. "A real fight."
She charged. The Hunter met her, a blur of shadow against her golden light. The battle was on a completely different level. Kikoru's overwhelming power was met by the creature's impossible speed and phasing ability. It was a spectacular, city-block-leveling duel of a goddess against a ghost.
But Kikoru was struggling. Every time she was about to land a decisive blow, the creature would phase, her attack wasting precious energy. It was toying with her, analyzing her, learning her every move. Kaiju No. 9 had built the perfect counter to a straightforward power-type like her.
The Hunter, having gathered enough data, decided to end it. It phased directly behind her as she was recovering from a heavy swing. Its claws, now glowing with a strange, disruptive energy, slashed at the back of her suit.
The blow didn't just cut; it short-circuited. Sparks flew from Kikoru's suit. Her power output dropped by 40%. The creature's claws were designed to disrupt energy systems.
She stumbled, vulnerable, and the Hunter lunged, its maw opening to reveal not teeth, but a swirling vortex.
It was in that moment that the world seemed to freeze.
A figure landed silently on top of a chemical tank between Kikoru and the monster.
It was Soshiro Hoshina.
But he was... different. He wore a new, minimalist black combat suit, devoid of the usual heavy armor plating. Strapped to his arms were the strange, Kaiju-derived bio-stimulators from his lab. Faint, bluish-purple lines, like veins, pulsed just beneath his skin, and his eyes... his eyes burned with an cold, inhuman light.
"Vice-Captain..." Kikoru gasped, clutching her damaged suit.
Hoshina didn't even look at her. His entire being was focused on the Hunter. The monster paused its attack, its sensors trying to classify this new arrival. [Human. Low energy signature. Threat level... recalculating... ERROR.]
"Fascinating," Hoshina whispered, his voice a low, excited rasp. He watched the creature's muscles tense, saw the subtle shift in its phasing frequency. He wasn't just watching. He was reading it. "A biomechanical fusion with a quantum-tunneling nervous system. A masterpiece."
He drew his new blades. They were shorter, more like surgical scalpels than swords, crafted from a material that seemed to drink the light.
Then he moved.
It was not his old, elegant style. This was different. Brutal. Primal. He didn't flow. He erupted. He moved with a speed that was not just fast, but fundamentally wrong. He wasn't predicting the monster's movements anymore. He was moving in sync with them, his own enhanced nerves somehow interfacing with the creature's phasing rhythm.
SHING-SHING-CRUNCH.
He appeared behind the monster. For a second, nothing happened.
Then, the Hunter's body fell apart. Not into two or three clean pieces. It was a precise, systematic deconstruction. Its phasing generator was severed. Its main neural cluster was excised. Each limb was detached at the primary joint. It had not been a killing blow. It had been an autopsy, performed on a living subject at the speed of thought.
Kikoru stared, her mind refusing to process what she had just seen. Hoshina's speed... it was even greater than before. And his style... it was cold, brutal, and terrifyingly efficient.
Hoshina stood over the twitching remains of the Kaiju, not looking at his victory, but at his own trembling hands. The veins on his arms glowed brighter, then faded. A small trickle of blood ran from his nose. The power came at a cost.
"Vice-Captain Hoshina... what was that?" Kikoru asked, her voice trembling slightly.
He finally turned to look at her, and the expression in his eyes sent a shiver of pure dread down her spine. It was not the look of a hero, or a comrade. It was the hungry, triumphant look of a predator who had just successfully taken down a bigger, stronger beast and learned all its secrets in the process.
"That, Captain," Soshiro Hoshina said, a chillingly calm smile on his face, "was the next step in human evolution."
His obsession had borne its first, terrifying fruit. And the arms race now had a new, monstrously powerful, and dangerously unstable player.