The world held its breath in the space between heartbeats.
Kaiju No. 9 was gone. Saitama was gone. All that remained was the wreckage, the pile of inert monster parts, and the three people at the epicenter of the fracture: a kneeling monster, a broken hero, and an unconscious boy.
Mina Ashiro took a single, unsteady step forward. Her eyes were locked on Kaiju No. 8, who was now flickering, struggling to maintain his form, black blood sluggishly leaking from a dozen wounds.
"Kafka…?" The name was a whisper, a fragile question loaded with a lifetime of memories, promises, and a new, world-shattering horror.
He didn't answer. He couldn't. The physical and emotional toll of the battle was too much. With a final, shuddering gasp of steam, his Kaiju form collapsed, melting away to reveal the man inside, battered, bruised, and clad in the torn remains of his clothes. He fell to his knees, then pitched forward, unconscious.
Silence.
The only sound was the distant wail of approaching sirens. The lie was dead. The truth was lying bleeding at her feet.
The debriefing was not a debriefing. It was an inquisition.
The room was the deepest, most secure bunker beneath Tachikawa Base. Present were Director General Shinomiya, a stone-faced Councillor Tsuburaya, a grim Mina Ashiro, a newly awakened but heavily sedated Reno Ichikawa, and Soshiro Hoshina, whose cold, analytical calm was more unsettling than any rage.
At the center of the room, held in a state-of-the-art energy-restraint field, was Kafka Hibino. He was awake now, his wounds partially healed by his monstrous biology, but his expression was one of hollow defeat.
"Let the record state," Shinomiya began, his voice like the grinding of tectonic plates, "that at 15:47 hours, Cadet Kafka Hibino, without authorization, transformed into the entity known as 'Kaiju No. 8' on Defense Force property, engaging a hostile Kaiju in direct violation of protocol."
He turned his cold, hard gaze on Mina. "Captain Ashiro. You were the commanding officer on the scene. You saw the transformation. Confirm it."
Mina's hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists under the table. This was it. The moment of betrayal. Her testimony would be the final nail in Kafka's coffin. She looked at Kafka, at his exhausted, defeated face. She thought of their childhood promise, of his stupid, earnest, heroic charge into a fight he couldn't win, all to protect her.
The symbol, the political weapon, the woman who had carried the weight of a dozen lies for the "greater good," finally broke.
"No," she said, her voice quiet but ringing with absolute defiance.
Every head in the room snapped towards her.
"What did you say, Captain?" Shinomiya asked, his voice dangerously low.
"I said no," Mina repeated, standing up, her chair scraping loudly against the floor. "The record will state that Kaiju No. 8, an unknown friendly entity, intervened to save my life and the lives of dozens of civilians. Cadet Hibino was a casualty, found unconscious at the scene. He is a hero, not a traitor."
It was a blatant, politically suicidal lie. She was directly contradicting the irrefutable evidence. She was choosing him.
Councillor Tsuburaya sighed, a sound of profound disappointment. "Captain, we appreciate your... loyalty to your childhood friend. But we have a dozen other eyewitnesses. We have the data."
"Then the data is wrong!" Mina shot back, her voice now raw with a fury she had suppressed for months. "I am the ranking officer from the engagement. My report is the only one that matters! And my report will say that Kafka Hibino is innocent!"
This was no longer just about Kafka. This was about her. About the weight of the lies, the stolen credit, the puppet she had become. This was her drawing a line in the sand.
A schism, a crack that had been forming for months in the foundation of the Defense Force, just split wide open.
"Your sentiment is touching, Captain. But irrelevant," Soshiro Hoshina's cold voice cut in. He looked at Kafka not as a person, but as a prize. "Hibino's nature is no longer a matter for debate. It is a matter of science. A resource. He is the single most valuable asset we have ever acquired. He represents the future of this Force. My future."
"He is a man!" Mina roared, turning her fury on Hoshina. "Not a specimen for your twisted experiments!"
"He is whatever the Director General decides he is," Hoshina replied, his gaze flicking to Shinomiya.
The Director General stood, the final arbiter. He looked at his finest captain, her career in flames, consumed by sentiment. He looked at his most promising Vice-Captain, now a radical visionary on a dark path. He looked at Kafka, the key to it all.
And then he looked at another data file on the screen, one brought in by a shaken and newly reverent Genos, who had been "debriefed" as Anomaly-Beta. It was an official offer, dictated by Genos on behalf of his Master, a message Saitama had probably grumbled half-asleep after getting home.
[Official Request from Anomaly-Alpha. Item 1: Leave my friend, the Leek Guy, alone. He's weird but mostly harmless. Item 2: Stop making so much noise near my apartment. Item 3: Do you know if that lifetime supply of beef is transferable?]
The request was absurd, almost laughable. But coming from the being they called a god, it was a threat of unimaginable weight. It was the first, direct political statement Alpha had ever made. He was advocating for the monster. He had chosen his side.
Shinomiya now stood at a crossroads. On one side was his daughter, Kikoru (who was furiously trying to get into the room), his best Captain, and a god, all advocating for Kafka's freedom. On the other was his top military advisor, Tsuburaya, his most dangerous new weapon, Hoshina, and the entire logical framework of military protocol.
To declare Kafka a monster to be dissected would be to openly defy a god.
To declare him a hero would be to lose his most valuable scientific asset and show weakness.
So he did neither. He chose a third path. A political solution.
"Kafka Hibino is a unique case," he declared, his voice echoing in the tense silence. "He is neither a simple traitor nor a simple hero. He is a paradox. A weapon. And he will be treated as such."
He looked at Kafka. "You will not be executed. You will not be dissected. You will be... integrated. You will be officially designated as Numbered Weapon 8. You will be placed under the joint command of Captain Ashiro and Vice-Captain Hoshina. Ashiro will be responsible for your tactical deployment and your... conscience. Hoshina will be responsible for your training, your containment, and the study of your abilities."
It was a brilliant, impossible compromise. He had chained his two rival subordinates together, with Kafka as the lock. He had acknowledged Kafka's power without condoning it. He had created a new, special unit, a monster on a leash, satisfying the pragmatists without completely alienating the idealists.
But he had also just formalized the schism. He had created two new, opposing factions within his own command structure: Mina's Pragmatists, who would see and fight for the man within the monster, and Hoshina's Radicals, who would see and exploit the monster within the man.
The argument wasn't over a rank. The fight for Kafka's soul, and for the very soul of the Defense Force, had just officially begun. And Anomaly-Alpha's seemingly simple request to "leave my friend alone" had just become the catalyst for a full-blown civil war, fought not in the open, but in the secret training rooms, the labs, and the hearts of every soldier forced to choose a side.