Book 1.5 — The Gag Flats Incident — Prologue

District Border Infrastructure — Emergency Incident Report Form GFB-9 (Rev. 14) — Gag Flats / Cozy Quarter Shared Boundary Zone

Section 2 — Incident Classification (check all that apply)

Hazard Type:

• Weather Event
• Structural Failure
• Standard Narrative Bleed
• [X] Unsanctioned Escalation-Class Intrusion
• Other

Audio Signatures:

• Ambient District Noise
• Structural Impact
• [X] Internal Monologue Broadcast (involuntary, localized)
• [X] Dramatic Wind (indoors, source unknown)
• [X] Unscored Orchestral Swell

Visual Anomalies:

• Smoke
• Standard Sparks
• [X] Localized Speed Lines (stationary objects)
• [X] Protagonist Aura Visible to Naked Eye
• [X] Impact Star (dimensional)
• [X] Anvil Manifestation

Power Scaling Present:

• District-Standard
• Elevated
• High-Risk
• [X] Please See Attached Log
• [ ] (the box for what I actually witnessed does not exist on this form)

Section 3 — Incident Timeline (Technician Log, verbatim)

08:31:04 — Routine boundary check. All readings nominal. Made coffee. The good kind, not the break room kind. Today was going to be fine.

08:38:17 — Escalation sensor spike from north-northeast. Consistent with shōnen-class power signature. Flagged for monitoring. Not unusual for this quadrant on weekday mornings.

08:39:52 — Second signature detected. Different class. Adaptive-defense type. Absolute-resistance category. Running standard incompatibility check.

08:40:01 — Incompatibility check returned: UNDEFINED. This has never happened before. The system is supposed to return a number. Note: Filed support ticket #GF-4471 regarding undefined return value. Support has not responded. Support will not respond. I have accepted this.

08:41:33 — The two signatures made contact. I want to be precise about what I observed: they did not collide. Collisions have outcomes. This was two irresistible narrative absolutes occupying the same civic airspace and the universe running out of resolution options. Technical term: Physics Deadlock. Practical result: the energy had to go somewhere.

08:41:34 — It went sideways.

08:41:35 — Boundary shielding integrity: 94% → 61% → 34% → 12%. In one second. I watched this happen. I was holding my coffee.

08:41:36 — The Gag Flats physics absorbed the lateral energy discharge and expressed it in the most locally coherent format available. For the record: this is technically correct behavior. The Gag Flats are designed to translate incompatible physical events into district-legible expressions. I did not expect the district-legible expression to be a four-story anvil. In retrospect I should have. The label reads ANVIL. In block letters. The district labeled it. The district was being helpful.

08:41:38 — The Cozy Quarter border, now exposed through the shielding gap, began absorbing residual escalation contamination. Ambient comfort field integrity holding but expanding beyond district parameters. Flagged for monitoring. I did not yet understand how bad this was. I want that noted for the record. I thought it was a field fluctuation.

08:42:00 — Ran full diagnostic. Results: seventeen concurrent anomaly threads originating from a single point of protagonist clustering approximately 0.3 kilometers north of the boundary. Narrative density at point of origin: off the scale. Literally. The scale goes to 10. The reading said 10 and then the display changed its mind and said no.

08:42:47 — Activated emergency console. Located the MAIN CHARACTER SINGULARITY button. Confirmed I was not misreading the situation. Confirmed again. Took a sip of coffee.

08:42:51 — Pressed the button.

08:42:52 — The button lit up red and played a sound I can only describe as "an alarm that has given up on being alarming and is now just expressing disappointment."

08:43:00 — Automated alert dispatched to: Dept. of Continuity Compliance, Mutual of Multiverse (Claims), Genre Zoning Board (Emergency Line), Escalation Ceiling Authority (for all the good it will do), and District Infrastructure Central.

08:43:04 — Began this report.

08:43:06 — The shockwave from the initial physics deadlock arrived at the station window. The window survived. My plant did not. I did not previously have strong feelings about the plant. I have feelings now. Personal note, not for official record: I want it stated that I did everything correctly. I monitored the signatures. I ran the incompatibility check. I pressed the button at the appropriate time. None of this was preventable by anything within my authority. I just want that noted. Somewhere. By someone.

Section 4 — Immediate Actions Taken

Emergency alert dispatched. Shielding emergency patch protocol initiated (estimated repair time: 72–96 hours pending parts availability). Cozy Quarter field monitoring escalated to hourly. Anvil logged as district asset pending ownership determination. Coffee finished.

Section 5 — Recommended Next Steps

Someone should go look at whatever is happening 0.3 kilometers north of the boundary. I am not going. I have a boundary station to monitor and the Cozy Quarter field is already at 108% and climbing and I think that matters more than whatever the readings are calling a "protagonist clustering event" up there. Someone with a clipboard should handle the protagonist clustering event. I am not that person. I have a plant to mourn.

0.3 kilometers north of the boundary, the Adventurers' Guild of District Zell had been open for four hours and forty-two minutes.

The receptionist had already lost two threat crystals.

She was on her third coffee and her first existential crisis of the morning, which was, by the standards of working the front desk at a guild hall in the Gag Flats administrative zone, a relatively good start.

Then the doors opened.

A man walked in wearing an unremarkable yellow jumpsuit and an expression of such profound, weaponized boredom that it briefly suppressed the ambient comedic physics within a six-foot radius.

He looked at the quest board.

He looked at the receptionist.

"Hey," said Saitama. "Do you know if the market on Fennel Street still does the weekend cabbage sale, or did that end?"

The receptionist opened her mouth.

Behind Saitama, the doors opened again.

A girl in full plate armor rode in on the back of a creature that the receptionist's training had not equipped her to classify, still cheerfully eating something that was glowing faintly purple. She looked around the guild hall with the bright, receptive expression of someone who found everything interesting and most things delicious.

"Hi!" said Maple. "Is this the right guild for the emergency quest posting? My friends said there was an emergency quest posting!"

The receptionist looked at the quest board. There was no emergency quest posting. There had not been an emergency quest posting this morning.

There was one now.

She had not put it there.

The quest board, apparently, had taken the initiative.

The receptionist reached under the desk. She found the form she was looking for by touch — she had been finding it by touch more and more often lately, which said something about the trajectory of her career that she chose not to examine directly.

She began, with the mechanical calm of someone operating well past the point where panic was useful, to fill out Form GFB-9 (Rev. 14).

She had gotten as far as Date of Incident: Tuesday when the doors opened a third time and a boy approximately twelve years old walked in radiating enough divine energy to register on three separate monitoring systems, looked around at everyone present, and immediately began apologizing to the architecture.

The receptionist checked the box next to Unsanctioned Escalation-Class Intrusion.

Then she checked the box next to Internal Monologue Broadcast (involuntary, localized), because she could hear three of them already and the morning had barely started.

Then she put her pen down, picked up her coffee, and looked at the ceiling in the way of a person conducting a brief, private conversation with whatever force governed the distribution of professional fates.

The ceiling offered nothing.

The ceiling, in her experience, never did.

"Welcome," said the receptionist, to the room at large, in the voice she used when welcome was the word the situation required and sincerity was a resource she was conserving for later. "Please do not touch the threat crystal. We are on our third one today and I have feelings about it."

Saitama looked at the threat crystal.

"Is it load-bearing?" he said.

"Emotionally," the receptionist said. "Yes."

Saitama nodded with the gravity of a man who respected load-bearing structures and moved away from the crystal.

The receptionist made a note of this. Under any other circumstances it would have been unremarkable. Under these circumstances, it was the first thing that had gone right all morning, and she was going to count it.

She picked up her pen.

She kept filling out the form.

Outside, 0.3 kilometers south, the Cozy Quarter field was at 109% and climbing, and a woman named Norra was putting fresh flowers in a window box and feeling, without knowing why, that today was going to be a very full day.

She was not wrong.