The Old Sewers beneath Midgar's Merchant District were a world away from the gleaming white marble of the Royal Palace. They were a labyrinth of crumbling brick tunnels, slick with centuries of grime and moss, the air thick with the cloying stench of stagnant water, decay, and the collective waste of a bustling city. Faint, ghostly trails of phosphorescent fungi provided the only light, casting long, eerie shadows that writhed and danced with the slow, sluggish flow of the dark water in the central channels. It was a place sane people avoided, a forgotten underbelly where rats grew fat and rumors of darker things festered.
For Saitama, however, it was… an adventure.
He moved through the dark, stinking tunnels with a quiet, almost cheerful, curiosity. His "Mysterious Cloak Guy" disguise was surprisingly effective; the hood cast his face in deep shadow, and the plain grey tunic allowed him to blend in with the general gloom. He was, for the first time in weeks, unburdened by royal liaisons, formal banquets, or the existential weight of a dwindling noodle supply. He was just a hero, on a quest, looking for bad guys to punch. It felt… right.
"Man, it really stinks down here," he commented to a large, unusually bold-looking rat that was watching him from a ledge. "Worse than that monster's breath back in the forest. You guys should really think about getting some air fresheners. Potpourri, maybe? Or one of those plug-in things."
The rat just stared, then scurried away into a crack in the wall, wisely deciding not to engage the cloaked figure who was critiquing its home's ambiance.
Saitama, following the vague directions Alexia had given him, navigated the maze-like tunnels. He had been told to look for a "place where the shadows feel cold and the silence is too loud," which was not particularly helpful, as the entire sewer system fit that description. He decided to just wander until he found something interesting, or a monster, or maybe a lost vending machine.
He hadn't been walking for long when he heard it – a faint, rhythmic clink… clink… clink… echoing from a side tunnel up ahead. It was the sound of metal on stone, like someone digging. Curious, he followed the sound, his footsteps making no noise on the slick brick floor.
He peered around a corner into a larger junction chamber, where several sewer lines converged. In the center of the chamber, illuminated by a single, harsh magical lantern, two figures were working. They were not cultists or monsters. They were dressed in the simple, sturdy garb of city laborers, their faces grimy with sweat and dirt. They were using heavy pickaxes to pry up a large, circular stone manhole cover set into the floor, one that didn't look like it belonged to the original sewer construction. It was newer, sealed with strange, complex locking mechanisms.
Saitama watched them for a moment. "Hey!" he called out, his voice echoing in the chamber. "You guys city workers? You here to fix the smell? Because it's really bad. Maybe try some industrial-strength bleach?"
The two laborers froze, spinning around, their eyes wide with panic. They saw the hooded, cloaked figure emerge from the shadows and their hands immediately went for the daggers at their belts.
"Who are you?!" one of them snarled, his voice tight with fear. "You're not supposed to be down here!"
"Me? I'm just… uh… a concerned citizen," Saitama said, trying to sound mysterious. "Doing a… smell inspection. And you guys failed." He pointed at the heavy stone cover. "What's that? Secret clubhouse?"
The two men exchanged a panicked glance. "It's none of your business, stranger! Turn around and walk away, if you know what's good for you!" the second man warned, drawing his dagger.
Saitama sighed. "Look, I'm just looking for some assassins or monsters. You guys seen any? Or are you the assassins? You don't look very assassiny. More… diggy."
The first man, seeing that Saitama wasn't leaving, made a desperate decision. He let out a piercing, two-toned whistle. In response, the murky water in the central channel began to churn violently. A long, serpentine form, covered in dark, slimy scales, rose from the depths. It was a Sewer Serpent, a nasty, magically-mutated eel with a powerful constricting body and a jaw filled with needle-sharp teeth that dripped a paralytic venom.
The serpent fixed its dull, black eyes on Saitama and lunged from the water, its mouth gaping wide.
Saitama watched it come. "Ooh, a big water snake! Cool!"
The two laborers grinned, expecting to see the stranger paralyzed and devoured.
The Sewer Serpent's jaws clamped down on Saitama's outstretched arm. Its venomous teeth, which could punch through boiled leather, scraped harmlessly against his skin, unable to find purchase. The serpent, confused, tried to constrict, wrapping its powerful, muscular body around Saitama, squeezing with enough force to crush a stone pillar.
Saitama just stood there, letting it happen, a thoughtful look on his face. "Huh. It's like a big, slimy hug. But kinda tight. Okay, that's enough."
With a single, effortless flex of his bicep, he didn't just break the serpent's hold; he caused the creature's entire body to ripple with a catastrophic shockwave. There was a sound like a string of firecrackers going off, as every bone in the serpent's body shattered simultaneously. It went limp, its head still clamped uselessly around Saitama's arm, its body now as rigid as a cooked noodle.
Saitama shook his arm gently, and the dead Sewer Serpent flopped off, landing in the water with a sad, wet splash.
The two laborers stared, their daggers forgotten, their faces a mask of pure, unadulterated terror. They had just watched their pet monster, the guardian of their secret work, get flexed to death.
Saitama looked at them. "Okay, so you guys do have monsters. Are you the bad guys then? The monster-keepers?"
The two men, without another word, dropped their pickaxes and ran, scrambling over each other in their haste to flee down a side tunnel.
"Hey! Wait! You didn't answer my question!" Saitama called after them. He sighed. "Rude." He looked back at the heavy stone cover they had been trying to open. "Well, guess I should see what they were trying to hide."
He walked over to the cover. It was sealed with a series of complex, interlocking gears and arcane wards that glowed faintly. It would take a master locksmith or a powerful mage hours to open. Saitama just hooked his fingers under the edge and lifted.
With a sound of groaning metal and shattering enchantments, the multi-ton stone and steel cover came away from the floor as easily as a manhole cover made of styrofoam. He tossed it aside, where it landed with a ground-shaking CRUMP that echoed through the sewers.
He peered down into the opening. A narrow, spiraling stone staircase descended into darkness, a different kind of darkness from the sewers – drier, colder, carrying the scent of ancient dust and something else… something chemical, metallic. And from the depths, he could hear the faint, humming sound of complex machinery.
"Ooh, a secret passage!" Saitama said, his interest piqued. "This is getting more like a real adventure! Hope there's treasure at the bottom. Or at least a clue about the noodle hoarders."
He started to descend the spiral staircase, his cloaked form disappearing into the darkness below, utterly unaware that he was about to stumble into a secret far more dangerous, and far more significant to the shadow war for Midgar, than any simple cultist stronghold. He had just found a hidden laboratory belonging to the mysterious third faction, the ones who had killed the Shadow Walker defectors.
Miles away, in a hidden control room…
The leader of the black-clad operatives, the one with the metallic voice, stared at a series of scrying monitors. One monitor, showing the sewer junction, fizzled and went dark. Another showed the two panicked laborers fleeing down a corridor. A third showed a cloaked, hooded figure effortlessly lifting the sealed entrance to their subterranean laboratory.
"Intrusion alert, Sector Gamma," a voice announced calmly over a communication system. "Seal has been breached. Level one defenses… failed. Serpent guardian… neutralized."
The leader watched the monitor showing Saitama descend the staircase. "It's him," he said, his voice a low, disbelieving murmur. "The Tempest. How did he find this location? Our cloaking shields are perfect. No one should have known…"
An aide stepped forward. "Commander, all reports indicated he was contained within the Royal Palace, preoccupied with… domestic matters."
"The reports were wrong," the leader snapped. "Or incomplete. He's off his leash. And he's just walked into one of our most sensitive research facilities." He watched Saitama's descending form on the monitor. "He moves without purpose, without guile. Like a child wandering into a minefield. Is it random chance? Or is someone… guiding him?" He thought of the whispers about the King's desperate gambits, about the machinations of the Oriana Kingdom, about the movements of the enigmatic 'Shadow.' The board was more complex than he'd thought.
"Seal the inner labs," the leader commanded, his voice cold, decisive. "Activate Protocol Chimera. Release the experimental subjects. And get me a direct feed. I want to see this. I want to see what happens when the anomaly meets our… finest work."
He leaned forward, his unseen gaze fixed on the monitor, a flicker of cold, scientific curiosity overriding his strategic concern. "Let's see what it takes to make the god bleed," he whispered to the empty room.
The odor of intrigue, and old sewage, was about to be replaced by the smell of burning metal and unleashed science.