Saitama plunged into the void.
It was an experience unlike any other. There was no wind resistance, no feeling of movement. One moment he was flying through the air, the next he was suspended in a cold, absolute nothingness. The sirens and screams of the city vanished. The light from Genos's glowing core was extinguished. Even the faint hum of his own hero suit seemed to die.
He couldn't see anything. He couldn't hear anything. It was like being submerged in thick, silent ink.
Saitama floated in the black, unmoving. He tried to throw a punch, but his arm felt sluggish, heavy, as if moving through invisible molasses. It wasn't that his strength was gone—he could still feel it, a familiar furnace burning deep inside him. But it had no purchase. His power was an engine disconnected from the wheels. It could rev all it wanted, but it couldn't affect the nothing around him.
He was right. This was a lot more annoying than the last guy.
Outside the void, the scene was one of disciplined chaos. The puppet heroes shuffled forward, their faces blank. They weren't fast, but their advance was relentless, forcing the panicking civilians back.
"Incineration Cannon!" Genos roared, unleashing a pinpoint blast of energy. He didn't aim at the heroes themselves, but at the ground in front of them, creating a trench of molten asphalt. The controlled heroes stumbled, their advance momentarily halted.
"Fubuki! Report!" Genos's comms crackled.
Her voice came back, strained but steady, over the sounds of shouting and sirens. "We're holding the line at 12th Street! The police have a barricade, but these things... they just don't stop!"
A burst of psychic energy flared in the distance as Fubuki's Blizzard Group used their powers not for combat, but for crowd control. Men were encased in swirling wind shields, lifting them over barricades to safety. Others erected temporary barriers of telekinetically-held debris. It was a textbook evacuation, efficient and professional.
But they were just buying time.
Genos analyzed the controlled heroes. "Their power levels are suppressed, but their bodies retain their enhanced durability. A non-lethal response is… difficult." He couldn't just blow them away. They were still heroes. Hostages.
Suddenly, a massive shape landed between Genos and the advancing puppets. Tanktop Master, his face set with grim determination. He was followed moments later by the gleaming form of Drive Knight and the stoic, disciplined martial artist, Superalloy Darkshine. S-Class backup had arrived.
"I owe that bald guy one," Tanktop Master grunted, slamming his fists together. "I'm not letting his sacrifice be for nothing! TANKTOP… THROW!" He ripped a manhole cover from the street and flung it like a discus, expertly striking Glue Gunner's still-functioning adhesive cannon. The weapon misfired, covering three other puppets in a thick layer of incapacitating goo.
"Target confirmed: Brainwashed heroes under enemy control," Drive Knight said, his voice a synthesized monotone as his body shifted into a sleek combat form. "Lethal force is contraindicated. Suggestion: Tactical dismemberment."
"No!" Darkshine boomed, his polished muscles gleaming under the streetlights. "We do not harm our comrades! We restrain them! With the overwhelming power of my GLISTENING BICEPS!" He charged forward, his body a seemingly invincible wall, and began grappling with the puppet heroes, overpowering them with sheer, non-lethal force.
The tide was turning. The combined might of the S-Class was holding the line. But all of them, even as they fought, kept glancing nervously at the silent, ever-expanding circle of black that had swallowed Saitama whole.
What was happening in there?
Inside the void, Saitama was starting to get bored. The Specialist's mental monologue had been going on for what felt like ages.
Saitama had stopped listening. He was trying an experiment. He balled his fist, focused, and tried to flick his finger. He couldn't create a shockwave, but he could feel the slight displacement of… something. The molasses-like resistance. It wasn't true nothingness. It had properties. It was a medium. And if it was a medium, it could be affected.
This feels like that dream I had where I was trying to run underwater in a swimming pool full of jelly, he thought. What did I do then? He remembered. He had stopped trying to run and had just pushed off the bottom.
But there was no bottom here. No walls. Just him, his own power, and the void.
He closed his eyes. He didn't need to see. He ignored the Specialist's droning. He ignored the oppressive silence. He focused inward, on the one thing the void couldn't touch: his own existence.
The void creature had said his power was loud. It was a noise. Fine. So, what happens when a sound gets really, really loud in an enclosed space? It vibrates. It resonates. It shakes the container it's in.
Saitama began to... vibrate. It wasn't a visible shake. It was a subatomic resonance, an oscillation so fast and so powerful that it began to affect the fabric of the void itself. The stagnant, molasses-like medium around him started to shimmer, disturbed not by a physical punch, but by the sheer, overwhelming presence of his power.
The Specialist's monologue sputtered to a halt.
"Hey," Saitama said. His voice didn't travel through the void, but the vibration of his vocal cords added to the resonance, a new frequency in the growing hum. "I think I'm getting the hang of this."
The blackness around him began to glow with a faint, crimson light, emanating from Saitama's own body. The furnace inside him was no longer just burning; it was pulsing.
The Specialist tried to intensify the field, to crush the burgeoning resonance. It poured more of its energy into making the void thicker, more absolute. It was like trying to smother a nuclear reactor with a wet blanket. The blanket didn't just burn; it was atomized.
The faint crimson glow around Saitama exploded into a sun. The void, a dimension of absolute nullification, was suddenly filled with an absolute something. Light. Heat. Pressure.
Existence.
Saitama opened his eyes. He could see again. The void was no longer black. It was a roiling chaos of crimson energy, a universe being born and dying in microseconds around him. He could see the Specialist now—a terrified, writhing core of pure darkness at the center of the storm he had created.
He pulled his fist back. Now he had a medium to punch. Now he had a target.
"You guys talk too much," he said.
Outside, the S-Class heroes saw it happen first.
The perfect, black circle in the middle of City Z began to glow. A deep, angry red bled from its center, spreading outwards like a drop of ink on water. The ground began to shake, not from an earthquake, but from a low, omnidirectional hum that vibrated deep in their bones.
"What's happening?" Tanktop Master yelled over the growing noise. "Is it going to explode?"
"Scans are… incomprehensible," Genos said, his processors overheating. "The energy levels within the field are exceeding all known theoretical limits. It's not a monster. It's… a star. He's created a star in there."
The puppet heroes all stopped moving, dropping to the ground as if their strings had been cut. The Specialist's control was broken, its concentration shattered by the impossible event happening inside its own domain.
Fubuki, watching from the command post she'd established on a hill overlooking the city, saw the red glow and felt a terror that was quickly replaced by a profound, earth-shaking awe. He isn't just a strong man, she realized. He's a natural disaster. He's a law of physics unto himself.
The red glow intensified to a blinding white light.
And then, Saitama threw his punch.
They didn't see the punch itself. What they saw was the result.
The entire five-block radius of the void erupted. Not outwards, but inwards and upwards. A colossal pillar of pure white light and energy shot straight into the sky, punching a hole through the cloud cover and continuing on into the blackness of space.
The terrifying hum ceased. The ground stopped shaking. The light faded.
And where the silent, black void had been, there was now a five-block-wide crater, glowing faintly with residual heat. Everything that had been in that circle—buildings, roads, cars—was gone, vaporized.
Floating in the exact center of the crater, completely unharmed, was Saitama. He floated back down to the ground, landing with a soft scuff of his boots. He looked around at the devastation he'd just created.
He clicked his tongue in annoyance. "Great. I overdid it again." He looked at his still-smoking glove. "Now the city's gonna need even more repairs. My taxes are gonna go up for sure."