Time itself seemed to stretch and groan.
Two suns, one of righteous, brilliant white and the other of cancerous, foul green, were about to collide in the sky above Tokyo.
VMMMMMMMMMMMM!
Mina Ashiro's rail cannon unleashed its judgment. A spear of pure, condensed starlight, it was the pinnacle of human ingenuity. It was the roar of a species that refused to lie down and die. The beam tore through the atmosphere, leaving a vacuum in its wake, its trajectory a perfect, unwavering line aimed at the heart of the apocalypse.
The Cataclysm-Kaiju's response was a tidal wave of annihilation. The sphere of green energy in its palm pulsed once, obscenely, like a diseased heart, before erupting forward. It wasn't a beam; it was a moving ocean of pure unmaking, wide enough to swallow a dozen city blocks whole.
The two attacks met.
For one glorious, defiant microsecond, humanity held its own.
KRRRA-KOOOM!
The point of impact was a supernova of conflicting energies. The sky fractured into a spiderweb of light. The sound was a physical entity, a pressure wave that shattered every remaining window for miles and sent soldiers tumbling like discarded dolls.
Mina's beam, the most powerful weapon ever created by man, drilled into the green maelstrom. It pushed. It fought. It screamed its defiance.
And then, it was consumed.
Like a single candle flame being snuffed out by a tsunami, the white light flickered, sputtered, and was swallowed whole. The green wave of energy didn't just overpower it; it fed on it, growing even larger, even more terrifying.
Aboard the command center, the feedback from Mina's cannon sent every console into a shower of sparks.
"ENERGY SHIELD AT ZERO! CANNON OVERLOAD! IT'S MELTING DOWN!"
Mina grit her teeth, her arms screaming in protest as she tried to force one last ounce of power from the overheating weapon. It was useless. The green apocalypse was coming.
Her eyes, for the first time, reflected not determination, but a profound, soul-deep exhaustion.
So this is it. We gave it our all... and our all wasn't enough.
On the ground, Soshiro Hoshina looked up, his blades held ready, a futile gesture against the descending god of death. His tactical mind, a supercomputer that saw a hundred paths to victory in any fight, saw only one outcome now. Checkmate.
A beautiful last stand, he thought with a strange sense of calm. But a last stand, nonetheless.
Kikoru Shinomiya hung in the air, her golden aura sputtered and weak. She watched the green sun expand, ready to erase her, her city, her world. All her talent, all her power, her entire identity as a prodigy... it was a joke. An absolute joke.
Father... I'm sorry.
The soldiers on the ground stopped running. They stopped screaming. They just looked up, their faces pale masks of acceptance.
The end of the world was a silent, beautiful, horrifying green.
And then, something tore.
It wasn't a loud noise. It was a subtle, disturbing sound, like a canvas being ripped in a silent museum.
High in the air, directly in the path of the descending energy wave, a jagged, black line appeared. It wasn't a shadow. It was the absence of everything. Light, space, reality—all of it seemed to bend and break around this impossible fissure.
P-POP.
Something shot out of the tear. Or rather, two somethings.
One was a streak of yellow and red, the other a blur of black and silver. They flew out with the unceremonious momentum of a stone skipped across a pond.
The tear in reality snapped shut behind them, vanishing as if it had never been.
"Master, my trajectory calculations indicate that the vector force from your last punch propelled us through a dimensional membrane with an unknown coefficient of friction," a monotone, synthesized voice stated calmly. "I lost a lower leg armor plate upon entry. I will require repairs."
"Aw, man, forget your leg plate! My glove! It came off back there!" another voice replied, sounding profoundly bored and a little whiny. "That was my last good pair."
Saitama and Genos landed on the roof of a half-demolished office building. The landing made almost no sound.
Saitama, clad in his simple yellow jumpsuit and red gloves (well, one glove), looked around. "Huh. This place is a dump, too."
Genos, his metallic body sparking slightly, immediately began a 360-degree scan. "Master, the atmospheric composition is similar to home, but I am detecting exotic energy particulates I have never encountered before. Multiple life signs detected. One is abnormally large. A significant threat appears to be—"
"Hey, look," Saitama interrupted, pointing up. "Another one. He looks mad."
Genos followed his gaze. His optical sensors zoomed in on the colossal green wave of energy that was now mere seconds from impact. His processors went into overdrive.
[WARNING. ENERGY SIGNATURE EXCEEDS ALL PREVIOUSLY RECORDED THREATS. CLASS: DRAGON... NO. CLASS: GOD... NO. ERROR. CANNOT COMPUTE.]
[PROJECTED DESTRUCTION RADIUS: COMPLETE CITY ANNIHILATION.]
[PROBABILITY OF SURVIVAL FOR SURROUNDING POPULACE: 0.000%]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: IMMEDIATE EVACUATION. EVACUATION IMPOSSIBLE.]
[NEW RECOMMENDED ACTION: MASTER, PLEASE HANDLE IT.]
"Master, that energy ball is—"
"Yeah, yeah, I see it," Saitama said with a sigh. It was the sigh of a man who had been hoping for a quiet afternoon. He took one step forward to the edge of the roof.
He raised a single, bare fist.
He wasn't preparing for a world-shattering blow. He wasn't gathering energy. He wasn't even bracing himself. His posture was lazy, his expression flat. He looked like he was about to swat a fly.
Down below, the members of the Defense Force could only stare in utter confusion at the two bizarre figures that had appeared from nowhere.
"Who...? What are they?" Daisuke whispered, his voice trembling.
Mina squinted through her targeting scope. "Unidentified hostiles? Civilians? What in the world...?"
The green sun of death was about to make contact.
Saitama swung his fist forward. It was a casual, almost dismissive punch.
It connected with the very edge of the city-destroying energy wave.
And the world did not explode.
There was no shockwave. There was no blinding light. There was no deafening roar.
There was only a single, tiny, ridiculous sound.
pop.
Like a soap bubble bursting.
The entire, colossal, apocalyptic wave of green energy... vanished. It didn't dissipate. It didn't scatter. One moment it was there, a roaring tsunami of extinction. The next, it was gone. Completely. Utterly.
Silence.
A profound, deep, mind-breaking silence fell over the battlefield.
The Cataclysm-Kaiju, its single red eye wide with what could only be described as disbelief, froze mid-attack. It had just unleashed a power that could have cracked a continent, and it had been erased by... nothing.
Saitama stood on the roof, lowering his fist. He blew a loose particle of dust from his knuckles.
He looked at the Kaiju. The Kaiju looked at him.
"You're the one making all this noise, right?" Saitama asked, though his voice was too far away to be heard. "Can you stop? I'm getting a headache."
The Kaiju, a being of pure instinct and overwhelming power, felt an emotion it had never known. A cold, primal dread that seeped into its very core. It did the only thing it could. It raised its other four arms, energy crackling around them, and roared its cosmic fury.
"Guess not," Saitama said to himself.
He crouched slightly.
And then he was gone from the roof.
No one saw him move. Not Hoshina, with his superhuman perception. Not Kikoru, with her advanced suit. Not Mina, with her state-of-the-art optics.
One moment, he was on the roof. The next, he was a barely visible yellow speck in the air, directly in front of the Kaiju's face.
He threw another punch.
Normal Punch.
This time, there was no sound at all.
Not a single one.
The Cataclysm-Kaiju, the monster with a fortitude rating of 10.0, the god-beast that had broken the spirit of humanity's finest warriors... just came apart.
It didn't explode in a shower of gore. It didn't get blasted across the horizon.
It disintegrated.
Like a sandcastle hit by a gentle breeze, its entire colossal form dissolved into fine, grey particles that drifted away silently into the twilight sky. One second, a mountain of flesh and fury. The next, just motes of dust.
The punch hadn't made a sound, but the silence it left behind was the loudest thing anyone had ever heard.
The pressure, the dread, the overwhelming aura of the Kaiju—it all vanished. The air was light again. The sky, though choked with smoke, seemed brighter.
Saitama landed back on the roof, a gentle tap of his red boots on the concrete. Genos was already beside him, his notebook miraculously out.
"Master! A magnificent strike! The enemy was dispatched with a single blow of minimal effort. I have recorded the atmospheric displacement, the lack of thermal radiation, and the particle decay. My hypothesis is that your punch doesn't just apply kinetic force, but momentarily negates the strong nuclear force within a target's atomic structure. I will need more data to confirm—"
Saitama ignored him, looking at his bare hand. "Still can't believe I lost that glove."
A light breeze blew across the ruined city.
fwip.
It was the sound of a cheap, white cape settling on his shoulders.
In the command center, the operator stared at his screen. The Kaiju's life signature, a blazing red icon, had simply winked out of existence. Now, he pointed a trembling finger at the new reading coming from the rooftop where the bald man stood.
"Sir..." he whispered, his voice cracking. "Sir... what does this mean?"
On the main screen, in big, bold, flashing red letters, was a single, terrifying, beautiful message.
ERROR: FORTITUDE CANNOT BE CALCULATED.