Protection

At lunch the following day, Nayuta bullies two classmates into surrendering their desserts in her school cafeteria. The children note how many peers are missing; some guess relocation out of Tokyo, while another suspects death. When a bespectacled boy names a recently dead classmate, a friend insists in denial that the kid is merely gone. Before Nayuta can probe further, armed officers storm in and seize her.

In a hospital across town, Asa jolts awake from a nightmare to a broadcast about the previous day's attack. An elderly patient beside her remarks that a grandchild crushed under rubble was around Asa's age, while staff hurry in fresh casualties and clear space. Dazed, Asa reflects that Chainsaw Man has again spared her life. The report adds that gravity shifts tied to the Falling Devil are triggering disasters worldwide.

The broadcast cuts to Haruka Iseumi pitching his Chainsaw Man Society, a self-styled crusade for world peace, on television, only for the host to ridicule him until the studio audience piles on. Stung, Haruka asks Fami why she sent him there, and she replies that the humiliation was needed and that he should stop thinking. A shadowy figure rests a hand on his shoulder, backing Fami and declaring that the Society will guide people toward a world cleansed of evil, naming Fami its mind and Haruka its face. Cowed by this apparent mastermind, Haruka submits while telling himself it all serves Chainsaw Man. Meanwhile Denji, stripped to his underwear and lashed to a chair in a cell, listens to Yoshida boast of having 'protected' him. Denji rejects that framing, and after learning Asa's location he demands to know about Nayuta and his dogs, only to hear they are 'protected' too. Enraged, he throws himself off the chair and threatens to kill Yoshida should they be mistreated, mockingly offering sexual favors for their release; Yoshida declines while they remain in custody, insists no harm is meant, and Denji tells him to go to hell.

Released as Hogo, meaning 'Protection,' this Volume 15 chapter falls in the Chainsaw Man Church arc and turns the word protection into bitter irony as Denji finds his family detained. It also introduces the shadowy figure steering the Society and ties the worldwide chaos to the Falling Devil.