Chapter 8: Officer Sakura’s Request

Today was Yuuki’s first day back at Aegis.

He had found the address for Aegis’s headquarters and office from his blood-stained employee badge and arrived at the company without incident.

As soon as he stepped through the door, he saw Melika already seated at her desk. She gave him a wide, cheery smile. “Good morning! Welcome back, Yuuki.”

“Good morning, Senior Melika,” he replied with a nod. As Melika turned back to her keyboard and began typing away, Yuuki took the chance to survey this scene—strange yet familiar.

It was called a security company, but its scale was truly small… Only two employees handled external security assignments, just one was responsible for cybersecurity, making it not much different from a small workshop.

Yet, it was a workshop brimming with hidden talent—a former police officer, a robot, an alien, and a human host fused with three Ultra Warriors.

One after another, these remarkable individuals entered, greeting Yuuki as they arrived.

The company president set her bag on her desk, glanced around the compact, high-tech room, then clapped her hands for attention. “There are no assignments this morning—let’s clean up our Aegis!”

“Alright!” “Yes, ma’am!” All four, including the president, shouted in response, then set to work with rags, buckets, brooms, and mops.

This was the daily life at Aegis—no commissions, no jobs, no monsters, no battles—just an ordinary day.

But, as lunchtime approached, the door opened, and an older man in a sharp suit appeared, his face alight with familiar warmth. Seeing the energetic cleaning scene, his own spirits rose.

“Not bad! Hard at work, I see,” Officer Sakura strode in, greeting everyone, then turned to size up Yuuki, who was back at work on his first day out of the hospital.

“Excellent, excellent! You’re full of energy!” Officer Sakura nodded approvingly.

Yuuki gripped his mop handle, responding with a sheepish, slightly stiff smile.

Officer Sakura then handed a metal USB drive to Melika, signaling her to open it. President Sasaki folded her arms, half amused, half exasperated—why did he order her employees around so familiarly?

Officer Sakura explained his purpose for visiting: he had a job to commission to Aegis. He gestured to the images playing on the wall screen—the footage appeared to be surveillance from a port. One side showed stacks of containers, the other reflected the glittering sea. At that moment, a line of fin-like objects glided across the water. Before long, port workers noticed the anomaly—some spoke into walkie-talkies, others ran toward the water. Just then, the “fins” submerged and vanished from view.

“They claimed it was a lost whale, but what whale looks like that?” Officer Sakura pointed helplessly at the frame where the fin-like form appeared, grumbling about the Public Information Division’s lack of convincing explanations.

As the room fell silent, Yuuki considered the scene. He crossed his arms and twisted his hands in demonstration. “Couldn’t it be something like… a burst water pipe, with just a segment of pipe wall still connected, a row of plastic sheets stuck on top, drifting with the current? Against the light, it’d look pretty much like that, wouldn’t it?”

Yes, just like the Loch Ness Monster.

Most “sea monster” mysteries turn out, in the end, to be man-made objects or industrial debris.

“Calling it industrial waste sounds better than calling it a whale—what whale has a dorsal fin like a stegosaur? Then you segue into a segment about the dangers of dumping industrial waste into the sea, make it educational, and people will probably assume the video was just an environmental PSA. Problem solved.”

“…”

“…”

The room remained quiet until Officer Sakura clapped his hands together with a smack and beamed at Yuuki. “Young man, you’re talented! Come work for our Public Information Division!”

President Sasaki was immediately displeased—was he poaching her employees right to her face?

Startled, Yuuki hastily shook his head and waved his hands—he was in no position to handle the Public Information Division’s work!

In the Taiga Universe, the Public Information Division was nothing short of legendary. Dozens of titanic monsters and Ultra Warriors fought in the city center—giant versus giant, giant versus monster, monster and giant teaming up against another giant—over twenty episodes' worth of battles, countless buildings destroyed, and yet, somehow, these officials managed to keep it all under wraps.

Yuuki couldn’t even imagine an excuse that would keep Earth’s people oblivious to the existence of giants and kaiju.

That kind of work was beyond human capacity.

Unless, of course, the Public Information Division had hidden aliens with special powers, using some reality-bending technique to affect the five million residents of the city—making them believe all the destruction was just earthquakes or other natural disasters…

…Which, honestly, might not be far from the truth.

If there really were such superhumans at work, what would they need him for?

With that thought, Yuuki withdrew his gaze, ignoring the back-and-forth between President Sasaki and Officer Sakura, falling into contemplation.

If he remembered correctly, the true identity of the fin was…

Tiny.

As a child, Yuuki used to sneak away after school to the famous tokusatsu filming site under the big bridge to play with a little monster that had wandered to Earth. He’d made a nest out of discarded tangerine crates and settled the creature—about the size of a stray cat—in there.

He’d named the little guy “Tiny.”

It was a chocolate-loving, infant sea beast of the Glas species.