The shelter was a tomb of living fear. The air was thick with the smell of wet clothes, unwashed bodies, and the sharp, metallic tang of panic. Every thunderous impact from outside—the roar of the Deep Sea King, the crash of collapsing masonry—made the massive structure shudder, sending a fresh wave of whimpers and sobs through the huddled masses. Children cried into their mothers' sides, and men stared blankly at the floor, their fists clenched in helpless fury.
This was the heart of mediocrity, Hakai thought. Not in the lack of power, but in the utter surrender to circumstance.
He had slipped inside unnoticed during the chaos, blending into the shadowy recesses near the back wall. He stood apart, a still, dark pillar in the storm of human emotion. His white-and-red eyes scanned the scene not with empathy, but with a detached, analytical coldness. He watched the way fear stripped people down to their bare essentials, revealing the raw, unvarnished truth of their nature. It was… informative.
Near the front, the remaining heroes were putting on a pathetic display of bravado. A man with a whip, another with what looked like golden yo-yos. They were posturing, trying to rally the civilians with hollow words.
"Remain calm! The Hero Association has the situation under control!" one shouted, his voice cracking with a strain that betrayed his own terror.
Hakai almost laughed. Control? He had just watched their best hope, the cyborg Genos, be reduced to a sparking heap. There was no control here. There was only the inevitable, crashing wave and the fragile dam about to break.
His gaze drifted to the front entrance, the reinforced metal doors now serving as the only barrier between this pocket of desperate life and the monstrous death outside. Each thunderous blow from the other side made the metal groan and buckle inward. Dust and chips of paint rained down from the frame. It was not a question of if the doors would give way, but when.
The rhythmic pounding was a countdown.
BOOM.
The whip hero flinched, his false confidence evaporating.
BOOM.
A child screamed, the sound high-pitched and piercing in the tense silence between impacts.
BOOM.
The metal around the door locks began to splinter, sharp slivers of steel pinging onto the floor.
This was the calm before the storm. Not a true calm, but the agonizing, drawn-out moment of anticipation before the universe reasserted its brutal, indifferent nature. The heroes here were not champions. They were sacrifices on the altar of a power they couldn't comprehend. The civilians were not victims to be saved. They were the audience for a tragedy they couldn't escape.
And Hakai? He was the sole critic in the theater, waiting to see if the final act would offer any surprising nuance, or if it would be as disappointingly straightforward as he predicted. The thrill he had felt upon hearing the Deep Sea King's name had faded, replaced by the grim certainty of a foregone conclusion. There was no challenge here. Only an execution.
He let out a soft, weary breath. It seemed he would have to intervene after all. Not for them. Never for them. But to personally put an end to this dull, monotonous farce. To deliver the coup de grâce that this boring world so richly deserved.
The final, cataclysmic BOOM shattered the air. The metal doors tore from their hinges, flying inward in a twisted heap of scrap. Framed in the torrential downpour and the ruined doorway stood the Deep Sea King, fully hydrated, immense, and radiating pure, primal menace. Water streamed from his colossal form, and his fanged maw split into a grotesque smile as his eyes swept over his cowering prey.
The calm was over. The storm had arrived.
The monster took a ground-shaking step inside, his voice a guttural rumble that vibrated in every chest. "So this is where all the little insects are hiding."
The whip hero lunged forward with a desperate cry. The Deep Sea King didn't even look at him. A casual, backhanded swipe sent the hero flying across the shelter to smash against the far wall with a wet, final crunch.
Silence. Absolute, terror-stricken silence.
This was it. The peak of the crisis. The moment of absolute despair.
Hakai, still shrouded in the shadows at the back, finally moved. He didn't surge forward. He didn't shout a challenge. He simply began to walk, a slow, deliberate, and utterly silent advance through the crowd. Civilians shrank back from him, not out of recognition, but from the unnatural aura of calm that radiated from him—an island of stillness in the sea of their fear.
His path was clear. His target was locked. The warm-up was over. It was time to see if this "King" could provide even a moment's distraction from the crushing weight of the world's mediocrity.