The battlefield was a triptych of impossible confrontations.
On one side, Saitama stood holding the fist of the Kaiju-Mina, his expression one of mild annoyance, like a man who'd caught a fly in his soup. The monster, a being of pure replicated malice, was experiencing a new and terrifying sensation: the complete, absolute negation of its own strength. It pulled, it strained, but its limb was held fast by an anchor of pure, indifferent reality.
In the center, Mina Ashiro was on her knees, her rail cannon beside her, forgotten. She was not looking at the main threat, Kaiju No. 9. She was staring at its challenger, at Kaiju No. 8, at the monster that moved with the familiar, clumsy determination of the boy she had grown up with. Her mind was a maelstrom of denial and dawning, heartbreaking recognition.
And in that central conflict, Kafka, as Kaiju No. 8, faced his progenitor and nemesis. This was the monster who had cursed him, who had hunted him, who had forced him into the shadows. The rage, fear, and desperation of the past months coalesced into a single, explosive point of focus.
"You took my life from me!" Kafka roared, his voice a deep, resonant growl that was part human, part monster.
"I gave you a new one! I gave you power!" Kaiju No. 9 countered, its form shifting, sprouting blades and hardened plates. "But you are an imperfect model. Uncontrolled. Sentimental. I will correct that now."
It charged. Kafka met the charge head-on.
Their battle was brutal and primal. It was a clash of titans, fist against blade, hardened flesh against bio-mechanical armor. Kafka was outmatched in skill and tactics, but he fought with a wild, desperate ferocity, a strength born not of training, but of a profound, bone-deep need to protect what was behind him. He took deep gouges in his armor, his black blood steaming in the air, but he did not yield an inch. He was not a soldier. He was a shield.
Mina could only watch, paralyzed, as the two monsters tore each other, and the world around them, apart. The roaring, bleeding, heroic creature... it was him. She knew it, with a certainty that shattered her heart. And she had spent months signing the orders that hunted him.
Meanwhile, Saitama was getting impatient.
"Look, are you going to just stand there wiggling, or are we gonna fight?" he said to the Kaiju-Mina, who was still futilely trying to wrench its fist free. "Because my friend over there," he gestured with his head towards Kafka, "looks like he's having a much more interesting fight, and I'm starting to feel left out."
The Kaiju-Mina, driven by its creator's intellect, finally did something clever. Instead of pulling, its body dissolved, liquefying and leaving only its trapped arm behind, which it immediately abandoned. The puddle of monstrous flesh reformed a few meters away, now sprouting a dozen energy cannons. It had learned from Mina's own data.
It unleashed a full-power barrage, a storm of white-hot energy beams that converged on Saitama's position.
Saitama just stood there, letting the storm wash over him.
VMMMMMMMM!
The light was blinding, the sound deafening. The attack kicked up a massive cloud of dust and debris, completely obscuring him from view. The scientists, whom he was still shielding, screamed. Mina, even in her daze, looked over in horror.
The light died down. The dust began to settle.
Saitama stood in the center of a newly formed crater, completely unharmed. His cheap yellow jumpsuit was pristine. The only thing different was that his cape was fluttering a bit more dramatically in the heat-wash of the attack.
He looked down at himself, then at the smoking Kaiju clone, and a look of genuine disappointment crossed his face.
"Seriously?" he said, his voice flat. "That was your big move? It didn't even mess up my suit."
This was it. The final letdown. He had arrived, hoping for a good fight, for a monster that might finally be a challenge. But it was just another light show. Another disappointment. The King's boredom, the black hole of apathy at the center of his soul, returned with a vengeance.
He decided to end it.
"Okay," he said, his voice dropping, losing all its previous hints of annoyance and becoming something terrifyingly empty. "My turn."
He didn't pull back his fist. He didn't even take a step.
He just vanished.
The Kaiju-Mina's advanced sensors couldn't track him. Mina's eyes couldn't follow. He just... ceased to be in one place and began to be everywhere at once.
He reappeared for a nanosecond, delivering a single, contemptuous backhand to one of the creature's cannons. Consecutive Normal Punches. A blur of fists, so fast they looked like afterimages of afterimages, each one landing with no sound, but with the force of a collapsing star. Every part of the Kaiju clone—every limb, every weapon, every sensor—was hit by a dozen 'normal' punches simultaneously.
Saitama reappeared where he had started, his hands in his pockets.
The Kaiju-Mina stood frozen for one perfect, silent second.
Then, it was unmade.
It didn't explode. It didn't turn to dust. It simply... came apart. As if it had been perfectly, microscopically disassembled by a bored god. Every component, organic and mechanical, just fell to the floor in a neat, useless pile of component parts.
The absolute, silent, and effortless totality of the victory was the most violent act of all.
The main battle froze. Kaiju No. 9 felt the clone's death, not as a loss, but as a silent, terrifying error message from the universe. It stared at Saitama, who was now just standing there, looking utterly, profoundly bored.
It had made a catastrophic miscalculation. It had planned for every contingency of the Defense Force. It had not planned for a being who could disassemble its creations by being mildly disappointed in them.
This was the 'Game Over' state.
It looked at Saitama. It looked at the battered but still-standing Kafka. It looked at the broken Mina.
And it made a tactical decision. It had the data. It had achieved its primary objective. To remain here was suicide.
With a final, parting shriek, its body dissolved, not in defeat, but in a calculated retreat, melting into the sewer grates before anyone could react.
The battle was over.
Saitama, seeing that the bad guys had run away, just sighed. Another unsatisfying conclusion. He looked at the pile of monster parts, at the mess, at his friend who was bleeding black goo everywhere. His epic fight had turned into more cleanup.
He walked over to Kafka, who was now struggling to stay in his Kaiju form.
"Hey. You're leaking," Saitama observed.
He looked over at Mina, who was now slowly, unsteadily, getting to her feet. She was staring at Kafka with wide, tear-filled, heartbroken eyes. The hero and the monster. The lie and the truth, all laid bare.
Saitama looked at the whole, complicated, emotional, messy scene. A secret identity revealed. A lifelong friendship shattered and maybe, just maybe, about to be reforged. A world of pain, lies, and emotional turmoil.
His King's Boredom reached its absolute zenith. He turned his back on the entire dramatic climax.
"This is all way too complicated," he announced to no one in particular. "I'm going home. There might still be some udon left."
He leaped into the air and was gone, leaving a trail of devastation, a pile of disassembled monster, two broken heroes, and a hundred unanswered questions in his wake.
The unmaking was complete. Not just of the monster, but of the status quo. The schism was now a gaping, open wound. Mina knew the truth about Kafka. Hoshina was on a dark path. The government had lost control. And Kafka was a monster with nowhere left to hide, except in the shadow of a bored, indifferent god. Saga 1, The Anomaly, was truly, finally, over. The Escalation had just exploded into an all-out, secret war.