The spider-Kaiju, for all its advanced, tactical programming, had no file for a bored-looking man in a cheap hero suit. Its prime directive was the capture of Specimen No. 8. The new arrival was an unclassified variable. It ignored him, tightening its grip on Kafka and preparing to inject its paralytic venom.
This, Saitama decided, was a mistake.
He took a single, casual step forward.
It was not a move; it was an event. The air in the corridor did not rush past him; it was violently, completely evacuated from his path. A vacuum formed in his wake. To the super-human senses of Hoshina and the suit-sensors of the others, it was as if reality itself had been bent into a bowstring and released.
Before the Kaiju could even register the threat, Saitama was there. He wasn't even looking at the monster. His focus was on Kafka.
He reached out with two fingers, not with a strike, but with the precise, delicate motion of a man plucking a ripe fruit from a thorny branch. He pinched two of the spider-Kaiju's limbs that were wrapped around Kafka's chest.
And he pulled.
There was no sound of tearing metal or screeching biology. The two limbs simply... came off, as if they were made of wet paper. Saitama tossed them aside with a look of distaste. He then put a hand on Kafka's shoulder and pulled him free from the monster's grasp, setting him down behind him.
"Stay there," Saitama said. "You're getting black goo all over the place."
The entire sequence had taken less than half a second.
The spider-Kaiju finally registered what had happened. Its prime specimen had been effortlessly removed from its grasp. Its impenetrable capture limbs had been torn off like weeds. Its cold, analytical mind was flooded with a single, overriding, alien sensation: Error.
It let out a furious, chittering screech and redirected all its attention, all its weapons, all its malice, at Saitama. Its remaining six limbs shot forward, each one a razor-sharp, paralyzing spear.
Saitama just stood there, his hands in his pockets, and watched them come. He didn't dodge. He didn't block. He just... let them hit.
TINK. TINK. TINK. TINK. TINK. TINK.
Six perfect, melodious notes, like a small, out-of-tune wind chime.
Each of the creature's limbs, forged biomechanical weapons designed to pierce battleship plating, shattered into dust on contact with Saitama's unyielding body.
The creature stared at its six broken, useless stumps, its analytical mind crashing completely.
Saitama finally gave the monster his full, undivided, and utterly bored attention.
"My turn," he said.
He delivered a single, open-palmed tap to the center of the creature's head.
Consecutive Normal Taps. No, not even that. It was just a tap. A quiet, condescending, infinitely powerful dismissal.
The spider-Kaiju froze. Its glowing red eyes flickered once, then went dark. The complex, biomechanical systems within it just... shut down. The command from Saitama's 'tap' hadn't been one of physical destruction. It had been a simple, undeniable, physical packet of information sent to the creature's core programming that said, simply: 'You are no longer operational.'
The monster collapsed to the floor in a heap, completely intact, but as inert and lifeless as a disconnected appliance.
The godly action had not been a spectacle. It had been a silent, contemptuous "off" switch.
Silence. The civil war, the Kaiju invasion, all of it, forgotten in the face of this absolute, casual display of utter dominance.
Kikoru, her suit still powered down, stared, her pride and her understanding of power shattering for the tenth time.
Hoshina, finally freeing himself from the goo, looked at the perfectly intact, but functionally dead, Kaiju, then at his own trembling, bio-enhanced hands. His dark path to power, the agonizing process he was putting himself through... what was the point, when this level of effortless victory was possible? His new obsession wavered, threatened not by a superior force, but by a superior, and unattainable, simplicity.
Saitama, his job done, turned to the assembled, frozen soldiers of both factions. "Right," he said, "as I was saying. You guys are making a huge mess, and my friend here," he hooked a thumb at Kafka, "is supposed to be having his day off or whatever. So I'm gonna need all of you to just calm down."
He didn't raise his voice. But the quiet, lazy command carried with it the same pressure, the same absolute weight that had broken an entire Kaiju army. It was the aura. The King's Boredom, now directed at them.
The soldiers, both Radicals and Pragmatists, felt their killing intent evaporate. Their anger, their ideals, their fierce loyalty... all of it seemed petty and insignificant in the face of this man's profound, cosmic annoyance. Rifles were lowered. Combat stances relaxed. The war just... stopped.
The silence was broken by a new voice, echoing from a newly-opened door at the end of the hall.
"He is correct. The internal conflict is... illogical."
Genos stood there, gleaming and pristine, not a scratch on him. From the smoke behind him, the inert, deactivated body of Kaiju No. 9's main form was dragged into view by several of his tactical drones. Genos had won his own battle in the rafters and had been systematically pacifying the rest of the base.
The siege was over. The Kaiju had been defeated. The civil war had been halted.
All by two beings, an annoyed hero and his ruthlessly efficient disciple.
Director General Shinomiya arrived on the scene minutes later to find his two finest commanders, Hoshina and Kikoru, standing amidst their defeated squads, their heads bowed, not in military defeat, but in a kind of spiritual exhaustion. And in the middle of it all stood Kafka Hibino, flanked by the two most powerful and unpredictable forces on the planet.
The fracture within the Defense Force hadn't been healed. It had been rendered completely and utterly irrelevant. The power games, the political maneuvering... it was all a child's squabble.
Saitama looked at the arriving Shinomiya, the apparent top boss. "Hey. You're in charge, right?" he asked. "Control your kids. And tell them to clean up this goo. It's getting on my shoes."
With that, he turned, put a hand on Kafka's shoulder, and began to lead him away. Genos fell into step behind them. They walked past the assembled soldiers, past the high command, and nobody dared to stop them. They had just walked into the middle of a war, ended it by being vaguely annoyed, and were now leaving with the prize everyone had been fighting over.
The siege of Tachikawa had come to a quiet, absurd, and absolute end. And the schism, the central conflict that had defined an entire saga, had just been rendered completely obsolete by the simple, undeniable fact that in a world with Saitama, their internal squabbles did not, and could not, ever truly matter.