The Heart of the Abyss was a beautiful, terrifying thing. It was a swirling vortex of pure, chaotic energy, a raw wound torn in the fabric of reality, its depths pulsing with the promise of a thousand screaming nightmares and the cold, hungry darkness of the void. It hummed with a power that warped the air, that made the stone of the fortress rooftop vibrate, that whispered insidious promises of oblivion directly into the minds of any who beheld it. It was the culmination of the Cult's centuries of work, a doomsday engine on the verge of catastrophic, irreversible activation.
Saitama looked at it. The decoy boss was gone. The annoying chanting had stopped. It was just him and the "big, swirly purple thing." He had his fist cocked back, the words "Serious Series…" hanging in the air, a silent promise of absolute, landscape-altering finality. He could feel it. This… this might actually be a challenge. This might be the one. The fight that could finally make him feel something again. A tremor of genuine, long-forgotten excitement, a ghost of a thrill, ran through him.
He prepared to unleash the full, devastating force of a Serious Punch, a blow that would not just destroy the vortex, but likely annihilate the entire fortress, the mountain it stood on, and a significant portion of the surrounding geopolitical landscape.
And then… he paused.
His fist, trembling with contained power, remained held back. A thought, a simple, annoying, and profoundly heroic thought, had just occurred to him. He remembered what Archmagus Theron and Princess Iris had said. 'The energies are unstable! A single, misplaced blow could trigger the very cataclysm we seek to prevent!'
He looked at the roiling vortex. He looked down at the vast battlefield below, at the thousands of soldiers from Midgar and Oriana, still locked in a desperate, bloody struggle. He looked at Iris, Kristoph, and all the other people who were, for some reason, counting on him to not just win, but to win cleanly.
"Aw, man," he grumbled, his excitement deflating like a punctured balloon. "Right. 'Don't make a big mess.' 'Don't break the planet.' Always with the rules."
The Serious Punch was out. That would definitely break the planet. A Normal Punch was probably out too; it would likely cause the vortex to explode, which also sounded messy. He needed… a different approach. Something that wouldn't just smash the problem, but… neutralize it? Dispel it? Like… popping a balloon without making a loud noise.
He lowered his fist, a look of profound, almost comical, concentration on his face. He stared at the swirling, reality-ending vortex of pure chaos, and began to think. Really, truly think, in a way he hadn't had to since that one time he'd tried to figure out the instructions for assembling a piece of IKEA furniture.
Okay, so, it's a big swirly ball of bad energy. It's not solid, so punching it might just make it splash everywhere. That's bad. It's like a giant, evil tornado made of purple stuff. How do you stop a tornado? You can't really punch a tornado. Maybe… you have to spin the other way? To, like, unwind it?
This, by Saitama's standards, was a stroke of profound strategic genius.
He looked at the vortex, which was swirling in a clockwise direction. "Okay," he said to himself. "Spin the other way. Counter-clockwise. Got it."
He took a new stance. He raised both his hands, palms facing the vortex. He began to rotate them, one over the other, in a slow, deliberate, counter-clockwise motion. It looked less like the preparation for a world-saving ultimate technique and more like a child pretending to be a washing machine.
"Okay," he muttered, concentrating. "Gotta match the spin speed. But… backwards."
He began to move his hands faster. And faster. And faster. Soon, his arms were a blur, a whirlwind of yellow and red, moving with a speed that defied the eye, churning the air in front of him into a focused, counter-rotating vortex. The air itself began to hum, to whine, not with magical energy, but with the sheer, raw friction of displaced molecules.
He took a deep breath. And then, he pushed.
"Serious Series…" he announced, his voice filled with the grim determination of someone trying a very complicated and untested new recipe.
"…Serious Water Gun."
He thrust his cupped hands forward, and from the small opening between his thumbs, a single, perfectly focused, impossibly dense, hyper-compressed jet of… air… shot out.
It wasn't a blast of wind. It wasn't a shockwave. It was a thin, coherent, shimmering stream of air, compressed to a state that was almost liquid, moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light. And it was spinning. Rapidly. Counter-clockwise.
The super-compressed air-jet struck the Heart of the Abyss.
The result was not an explosion. It was an… unraveling.
The jet, like a divine drill bit, pierced the outer shell of the vortex and burrowed into its chaotic heart. The counter-rotation of the air-jet met the clockwise spin of the dark energy. The two opposing forces clashed, not in a violent detonation, but in a cascade of mutual annihilation.
The Heart of the Abyss, the world-ending cataclysm, began to… unwind. Like a ball of yarn being pulled from the center, the swirling purple energies were caught in the vortex of Saitama's "water gun," their chaotic spin neutralized, their reality-warping properties collapsing. The vortex began to shrink, its terrifying hum turning into a pathetic, draining whine. The raw dark energy, stripped of its structure, its purpose, simply… dissipated. It broke down into its component parts, harmless background radiation, vanishing into the atmosphere with a faint, final sizzle.
In the space of about ten seconds, the swirling, world-ending Heart of the Abyss was gone. Utterly, completely, and silently, gone. The sky above the fortress was clear. The oppressive dark energy that had blanketed the mountain vanished. The unnatural storm clouds parted, allowing the clean, honest light of the afternoon sun to stream down onto the battlefield.
Saitama lowered his hands. His palms were smoking slightly from the immense friction. "Huh," he said, looking at his hands. "It worked. It actually worked." He seemed genuinely surprised and pleased with himself. "Serious Water Gun. Pretty cool name. Gotta remember that one."
On the battlefield below, the effect was instantaneous and profound. The Cultists and their demonic beasts, their power, their rage, their very existence tied to the dark energy of the ritual, suddenly… faltered. The pulsating purple light in their eyes dimmed. The dark magic that wreathed their weapons sputtered and died. They looked around, confused, weakened, like puppets whose strings had been cut.
The allied armies of Midgar and Oriana, however, felt a sudden, invigorating surge of hope. The oppressive darkness had lifted. The sun was on their side. They let out a great, triumphant roar and charged, their blades now cutting through the weakened, disorganized ranks of the Cult with renewed vigor. The tide of the battle had not just turned; it had become a rout.
From his command post on the hill, King Olric stared up at the now-empty rooftop of the dark fortress, his mouth agape. He had seen the swirling vortex vanish. He had felt the oppressive evil lift. But he had not seen a great explosion, had not felt a world-shaking tremor. The problem had just… disappeared. Silently. Cleanly. "What… what did he do?" he whispered to Archmagus Theron.
Theron, who had been observing through his most powerful scrying orb, just slowly, deliberately, sat down on a nearby rock. His face was completely, utterly, blank. "He… Your Majesty…" the Archmagus began, his voice a reedy, trembling thing. "He appears to have… un-spun it." He then just stared into the middle distance, mumbling about "counter-rotating kinetic energy cascades" and "the utter, complete, and final death of all known arcane theory."
Saitama, satisfied with his work, took a moment to enjoy the view from the top of the fortress. It was a pretty good view, now that the big, swirly purple thing wasn't in the way. He could see the whole battle, the good guys clearly winning now, which was nice. He could see the distant, green plains of Midgar. He could almost, he imagined, smell the faint aroma of the Royal Kitchens.
He then heard a faint scraping sound behind him. He turned.
One of the Ritual Guardians, the ten-foot-tall constructs of iron and bone, the one he had pushed into a heap earlier in the courtyard, had somehow survived. It was damaged, its armor cracked, one arm hanging uselessly, but it had dragged its massive form all the way up through the fortress, its single red optical sensor now fixed on Saitama with a burning, programmed hatred. It had one final directive: destroy the intruder.
It raised its remaining, un-crushed mace and lumbered forward, letting out a grating, mechanical roar.
Saitama looked at it. He looked at the vast, peaceful sky he had just cleared. He looked down at the battle, which was now basically just a cleanup operation. He looked back at the giant, angry robot.
He sighed. The deepest, most profoundly, utterly bored sigh he had ever sighed in his entire life.
The brief thrill was over. The challenge had been met (and been found wanting). The world was saved. And now, he was right back where he started. Staring at another big, dumb monster that was about to be a boring, one-punch affair.
The robot swung its mace.
Saitama didn't even bother with a named attack. He just… punched it.
The Ritual Guardian, the last, defiant remnant of the Cult's might at the Crown of the Heavens, vanished in a silent, expanding cloud of fine, metallic dust, which was then caught by the gentle mountain breeze and scattered to the four corners of the world.
Saitama stood there, alone on the rooftop, under a clear, peaceful sky, the sounds of a distant, triumphant victory rising from below. He had done it. He had saved the day. He had won.
And he had never, ever, felt so completely, utterly, and profoundly… bored.
He just wanted to go home. The only problem was, he still wasn't entirely sure where that was.