The rooftop creaked under Gwen's boots as she stood. "Alright," she muttered, dusting off her hoodie. "That's it. I'm going down there. I have questions."
"Are any of them 'Will you marry me?'" Cindy asked sweetly, swinging her legs as she leaned back with a smirk.
Gwen gave her the most done-with-this look in the known multiverse. "Seriously?"
"What? You've been tailing him for an hour like a lovesick detective. Might as well commit."
"I'm committing to figuring out what he is, not planning a double wedding with you and Moon Knight."
"That was one time and it was a fever dream."
Gwen backflipped off the edge. Cindy followed casually, stepping off and using her webs to swing down low, landing beside Gwen with an easy flip.
Across the street, Saitama was still on the bench, now feeding crumbs to a pigeon that had perched on his bald head like it owned him.
He didn't seem to mind.
Gwen approached slowly. Cindy hung back a few feet, letting her lead, arms folded behind her head like she was here for the entertainment.
Saitama turned his head lazily as Gwen stepped up. "Yo."
"Hi," Gwen said, eyeing the pigeon on his head. "Um. Do you... realize that you just knocked out a supervillain with one punch?"
He blinked. "Oh. That guy? He was loud."
"Yeah, Rhino's always loud," Cindy chimed in from behind her. "But, like, not that easy to take down."
Saitama tilted his head. "He didn't even dodge."
"....Right." Gwen cleared her throat. "Okay, sorry, backing up a bit. I'm Ghost-Spider. This is Silk. You're clearly not from around here."
"Nope."
"You know where you are?"
Saitama looked around. "Somewhere in New York, I think. A weird part."
"You ever been to New York?"
"Nope."
"...And yet you speak English," Cindy pointed out, narrowing her eyes.
"Do I?" He looked genuinely surprised, then thoughtful. "Huh. Weird."
Gwen exchanged a look with Cindy. "Okay, listen. I'm gonna be honest with you, mister..."
"Saitama."
"Cool, Saitama. You just flattened a guy who usually takes all three of us to pin down. That makes you a major anomaly in this city. So.... uh. Are you a mutant? An alien? Magical? Science accident?"
"Just a guy who trained really hard."
"....That's it?"
He nodded.
Cindy squinted. "Like how hard? Yoga twice a week? Marathon runner? Do you eat lightning? Punch black holes?"
Saitama rubbed his chin. "Hmm. A hundred push-ups, a hundred sit-ups, a hundred squats, and a ten-kilometer run. Every day."
Gwen stared.
Cindy coughed.
"And you got that strong from that?" Gwen asked.
"Also, no air conditioning."
Silence.
"....That part is kinda hardcore," Cindy admitted.
Saitama stood up, brushing crumbs off his hoodie. "Anyway, I was on my way to the grocery store. Still need to get those leeks."
"Hold up," Gwen said quickly. "Look, there's clearly something bigger going on here. The part of the city you're in? It's not supposed to exist anymore. It's like a chunk of nowhere stuck between time zones. Abandoned for years."
"Oh," Saitama replied, unimpressed. "That explains the weird squirrels."
"You saw them too?"
"One gave me this." He held up the acorn necklace.
Cindy leaned toward Gwen. "Okay, that's it. We're adopting him."
"Cindy!"
"Nope. It's decided."
Saitama blinked. "Wait, what?"
"You're coming with us," Cindy declared, throwing an arm around his shoulder. "There's a noodle place near our hangout that sells the best spicy ramen in any dimension. First bowl's on me."
"I did skip lunch..."
"And we can figure out why a god-tier bald man dropped into broken-space New York while we eat."
Gwen sighed, smiling in spite of herself. "Fine. But if anything else explodes, I'm blaming the pigeons."
As the three of them walked off together down the fractured sidewalk, the sun dipped further down the sky, casting longer shadows across the strange, twisting alleyways.
...
The noodle shop was nestled in a crooked alley, half-buried beneath layers of old neon signs and graffiti.
It didn't look like much, just a faded paper lantern swinging above the door and a flickering sign that said "NOOD."
Half the letters were missing, but the smell leaking out from the cracked window was enough to make Saitama's stomach growl.
"Here we are," Cindy announced, hopping onto the step with the confidence of a local tour guide. "Best spicy miso in the multiverse."
"I dunno," Gwen said, tilting her head skeptically. "Last time we ate here, the owner tried to kill us."
"That's because you didn't tip."
"I did tip!"
"With Canadian quarters."
Gwen threw her hands up. "How was I supposed to know he was anti-Maple?"
Cindy kicked the door open, and the little bell above jingled like it hadn't seen customers in a century.
The interior was tiny, cramped, and filled with a warm haze of steam and spice.
A few crooked stools lined a counter, behind which a grumpy old man with cybernetic arms stirred a massive pot. He squinted at them.
"You again."
"Don't worry, she brought real money this time," Cindy said, jerking a thumb at Gwen, who responded with a look that promised retribution.
The man grunted and waved them in.
Saitama took it all in, hands in his pockets, eyes drifting over the cracked menus, the single flickering TV in the corner playing some bizarre black-and-white martial arts soap opera, and the ancient cat sleeping on a shelf above the ramen pot.
"This place feels like home," he muttered.
"You have a thing for crusty murder chefs and spicy noodles?" Gwen asked, sliding onto a stool.
"Just the spicy noodles part."
They ordered three bowls, extra spicy, per Cindy's orders, and sat in relative peace for a moment. The shop was quiet, warm, and somehow comforting in its janky chaos.
The soup arrived, and Saitama slurped with alarming speed.
"Okay, no offense, but this slaps," he said, mouth full.
"Told you," Cindy grinned. "So, Baldy, spill it. You seriously don't know how you ended up here?"
"Nope. I woke up, brushed my teeth, trimmed my nose hairs... then went outside to take out the trash and boom. Whole neighborhood's gone sideways."
"And the language thing?"
"Still weirding me out."
Gwen tapped her fingers on the counter. "This part of the city isn't on any map. Even the Spider Society doesn't come here often. It's like it fell through a crack in reality and decided to stay stuck."
"Do we know anyone who can unstick it?" Cindy asked.
"Maybe Strange? Or that new girl, America? She punches holes in space or something."
"We can ask later." Cindy leaned in toward Saitama. "So, you're seriously just a normal guy with weird workouts? No radioactive bug bites, no mystical weapons, no secret military experiments?"
"Nope."
"No tragic backstory?"
Saitama paused for a second, thinking. "...I guess my supermarket had a sale and I missed it once."
Gwen actually snorted. "Wow. That is tragic."
He slurped his noodles. "Still haunts me."
The shop door creaked again. Everyone glanced up.
Nothing.
Just a gust of wind.
The ramen chef stopped stirring.
The cat opened one eye.
And somewhere outside, in the alley beyond the paper lantern, a slow scraping sound began. Like claws dragging across brick.
Gwen reached for her mask instinctively.
Cindy's expression sharpened. "Please tell me that's just this place's sketchy plumbing."
Saitama took another bite of his noodles, unbothered. "It's probably a raccoon."
A deep, low click echoed down the alley.
The lights flickered.
"...Okay," Gwen said quietly, "definitely not a raccoon."
...
The weird scratching sound in the alley turned out to be exactly what Saitama predicted, a raccoon.
A huge, scarred-up one with one eye and a limp, sure, but still just a raccoon. It knocked over a trash can, stared at the trio like it owned the block, then waddled away into the shadows.
"Called it," Saitama said, tossing a tip on the counter and getting up, noodles finished.
Gwen and Cindy exchanged a look as he walked out of the noodle shop, hands in his pockets, looking like a bored tourist who just missed his train.
"You think he's messing with us?" Gwen asked, zipping up her hoodie.
Cindy stretched her arms behind her head. "Nope. I think that's just him. Peak weirdo energy."
Outside, the sun was starting to dip behind the derelict buildings, throwing long shadows over the cracked pavement.
The air was still warm, buzzing faintly with city static, distant sirens, muffled chatter, the occasional honk of a car from streets that technically didn't exist on any map.
Saitama started walking back toward where his apartment block was awkwardly wedged between two skyscrapers like it had spawned there overnight.
Gwen glanced at Cindy.
"Walk with him?"
Cindy smirked. "You sure you don't like him?"
"I don't!"
"Right, right. You just 'casually' tail him, eat noodles with him, and now you're gonna 'coincidentally' walk home next to him."
Gwen blushed a bit under her hood and gave her a light shove. "Shut up and walk."
They jogged a few steps and caught up with him.
Saitama didn't look surprised. "You two following me?"
"Walking," Gwen corrected.
"Stalking," Cindy added helpfully.
He shrugged. "Cool."
The three walked side by side down the mostly-abandoned street, their footsteps echoing off the graffiti-covered walls and boarded-up shops. There was something oddly peaceful about it.
"So," Cindy said, chomping the last of her takoyaki on a stick, "any idea where you're actually from? Because your whole 'accidentally teleported apartment' situation is a pretty big mystery."
Saitama scratched his cheek. "City Z. Japan. I think. Though that whole world's probably gone by now or something. Not the first time something like this happened."
"That... doesn't bother you?" Gwen asked.
"Eh. As long as the rent's still low."
"That's what you care about? Rent?" Cindy blinked.
"Well yeah. And discounts. I still haven't found a proper grocery store. The one I went to earlier didn't even have sale signs. You know how weird that is?"
"Not nearly as weird as you punching a mutant rhino through a truck and then walking away like it was Tuesday."
"That was Tuesday."
"No, it wasn't, wait, seriously?"
Gwen shook her head, laughing despite herself. There was something kind of charming about his blank, deadpan vibe. Like he was too chill for this reality.
(Saitama's 1% charm, bro literally got himself Fubuki ToT, so jealous)
Cindy peeked over at her and grinned.
"What?" Gwen whispered.
"You're smiling."
Gwen instantly wiped the grin off her face. "No I'm not."
"You so are."
Saitama glanced between them, then pointed to a turn ahead. "That's me."
They turned the corner, and sure enough, a completely out-of-place Japanese apartment block sat awkwardly in the middle of an alley like someone had dropped a Sims building into a Marvel map.
The lights were on. A laundry line hung from the third floor with hero-themed boxers drying in the breeze. It even had a vending machine out front.
"You live here?" Cindy blinked.
"Yeah. Don't ask me how it got here. I just woke up and there it was. Still works, though. Electricity and everything."
He stepped toward the door, paused, and looked back.
"You two wanna hang out or something?"
Gwen and Cindy blinked.
"Like... right now?" Gwen asked.
Saitama shrugged. "I mean, I'm just gonna go play video games or nap. Not much else to do."
Cindy leaned over and whispered, "Gwen. That's either the most boring or most interesting invite I've ever heard."
Gwen hesitated, eyes flicking between him and the absurdity of the apartment.
"...Sure. Why not."
Cindy threw an arm around Gwen's shoulders. "Girl, if we end up in a boss fight inside a PlayStation, tell Miguel it was worth it."