Several days after the meteorite incident:
—Look, isn't that the police officer who saved City Z from the meteorite? —said a citizen on the sidewalk, talking to those accompanying him without bothering to lower his voice.
—Yes, I think his name is Saitama. Is he really that strong? Why isn't he in the Heroes Association if he can do something like that?
—Haven't you seen what's been going around? According to several leaked messages, the one who really destroyed the meteorite was the cyborg that accompanies him, Genos, and the heroine Blizzard of Hell. He only helped with the evacuation. Basically he directed traffic while the others did the work.
—But he still saved lives, doesn't that make him a hero?
—No, he's a police officer doing his job. Nothing more. Maybe he has a talent for coordinating people, something useful, but there's no need to exaggerate.
—According to an anonymous source close to the Association he could be a fraud. Someone who takes advantage of others' work to project an image that doesn't belong to him.
—Yes, and those two heroes are probably upset because he's taking the credit. Maybe he's even the disciple of those tw…
—If you have anything more to say to sensei, tell me directly. Otherwise get out of here right now!
I said it with more brusqueness than I had planned, and the cannons were already partially deployed before I finished the sentence. The citizens dispersed with enough speed that I didn't have to repeat it. I stood watching them move away for a moment. Today was turning into an accumulated nuisance, and the amount of misinformation circulating about sensei was considerably more irritating than I had anticipated. I was also concerned about the three people accompanying us.
We were in City J completing the morning patrol, a routine that sensei extended to different cities depending on the day. On this occasion we were accompanied by two recent cadets from the House of Evolution who needed exposure to real fieldwork, and Mrs. Fubuki, who had declared without margin for discussion that she had no intention of moving away from sensei, because according to her she wanted to recover the time she hadn't been at sensei's side. Her presence was uncomfortable to me for reasons I had already catalogued and filed: she was disrespectful in her manner, calculating in her decisions and completely bold in the way she occupied the space alongside sensei. However, there was information I couldn't ignore. What she had demonstrated during the meteorite incident, both in the coordination of the evacuation and in the containment of the fragments, was objective evidence. My personal opinions about her conduct didn't invalidate her capabilities, and sensei's relationships were not an area where my criteria had weight or application. What did have application was maintaining attention. Mrs. Fubuki was someone to be observed carefully, and that was exactly what I intended to do.
—Citizens say every kind of foolishness. After everything Commissioner Saitama did that day, they believe any anonymous account on a social network. —said Armored Gorilla, sensei's new officer, with his arms crossed and an expression that did nothing to conceal the annoyance.
—Don't even get me started. I just bought a new phone and the first thing I saw was an article that literally said Commissioner Saitama is a disturbed individual who accepts kaijin into his ranks to build a private army and execute a coup d'état. A coup d'état? Seriously? —said Mosquito Girl with her arms crossed and an expression that oscillated between indignation and genuine disbelief.
—Sensei is someone who deserves respect, not slander fabricated by people who weren't there. I'm going to identify the source of that information and make them answer for it. —I said, clenching my fists. It was a disproportionate reaction for an ordinary patrol and I knew it, but proportion had stopped mattering to me at some point in the last conversation.
—All three of you calm down. —said sensei, unconcerned—. We did the work, there were no losses, that's what matters. Let's continue with the patrol and that's that. For lunch, katsudon? Or better yet sushi, since we're close to the beach.
—I say sushi, and at the best restaurant in the city. I heard they have an excellent wine reserve that's worth trying. I'll treat —said Mrs. Fubuki from sensei's side, her arm linked through his and an expression of satisfaction—. But returning to the topic, Darling, I find this incident serious. And it's obvious it was orchestrated by the Heroes Association.
I turned toward her just as the two officers did. Mrs. Fubuki continued without waiting for confirmation that anyone wanted to listen.
—The Association is financed primarily through citizen donations and contracts with private organizations. Its entire model depends on the public perceiving them as the only effective response to large-scale threats. If the police force starts demonstrating real capacity to handle those incidents, that perception erodes, and with it the revenue. Anonymous publications with controlled misinformation are a cheap and difficult-to-trace way of generating enough noise to neutralize any narrative that doesn't suit them. They don't need to convince everyone — they only need to sow enough doubt so that no one has a clear opinion.
—I understand the logic, but the Association has access to first-level media outlets. Why settle for anonymous posts on social networks? They could generate a much more effective scandal if they wanted to. —said Mosquito Girl with a furrowed brow.
It was a valid question. I had doubts in that direction too. The Heroes Association had high-level political, media and financial backing. Anonymous misinformation seemed too modest a resource for an organization of that caliber, unless there was a specific reason not to escalate. What I found most interesting was the way Mrs. Fubuki spoke about the subject, with the precision of someone who was not speculating but describing something she knew from the inside. If she had information about the Association's internal operations, it was a resource that could be relevant to my own investigation into sensei's past and the mission I had set for myself to help him.
—Because I stopped them. —said Mrs. Fubuki with the same nonchalance with which one mentions something of no importance—. I can establish mental barriers across considerable perimeters, monitor movements from a distance and coordinate with my subordinates telepathically without any external party detecting the communication. Any careless movement on their part would have been intercepted before it could be executed. They decided not to take the risk and limited themselves to the minimum. Frankly, I was a little disappointed. I was expecting more.
—That explains why she's not concerned about walking this close to the commissioner in public. She has an active barrier around the group. —said Armored Gorilla with a tone somewhere between genuine surprise and the discomfort of someone who has just understood that they have been inside a controlled perimeter for some time without knowing it.
—Correct. —confirmed Mrs. Fubuki—. Mental control is my real specialty. Barriers, projection, reading, interference. I can enter the mind of any person within my range without them noticing. Like right now, for example…
She turned toward Armored Gorilla with a smile that presaged nothing good.
—Officer. Last Tuesday, when Mosquito Girl asked you if you had eaten the portion of cake she had stored specifically for herself in the refrigerator, you told her you had no idea where it had gone. You know perfectly well where it went. You ate it at two in the morning directly from the mold, standing in front of the open refrigerator, with a serving spoon because the small one no longer reached the bottom. And then you washed the mold and put it back on the shelf to make it look like it had always been empty.
Absolute silence.
Armored Gorilla said nothing for several seconds. His expression went through at least four distinct phases before stabilizing into something resembling contained terror.
—That is… that is confidential information.
—Damn dirty ape! —the voice of Mosquito Girl arrived from behind at a temperature considerably higher than ten seconds ago—. You told me I was still dazed from the anesthesia of the surgery and could be forgetting things! YOU SWORE IT TO ME! I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!
—AHHH!!
What followed was Armored Gorilla running down the sidewalk with Mosquito Girl behind him throwing blows that he dodged with an agility that clearly came from years of practice in similar situations. Mrs. Fubuki watched them with a satisfied smile and crossed arms, with the expression of someone who considers the result was exactly the right one for a demonstrative example.
—Fubuki. —said sensei in his flattest tone.
—Yes, Darling?
—Don't read the minds of my coworkers.
—It was just an illustrative example. Completely harmless.
—It doesn't matter. Don't do it.
—Alright. —she said with the precise intonation of someone who is agreeing out loud and has not changed their opinion in any real sense.
Sensei looked at her for a moment, evaluated whether it was worth continuing and decided it wasn't. He kept walking. Half a block away, Armored Gorilla was still running.
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—You're really happy, sensei.
—Why wouldn't I be? —sensei replied with a genuine smile—. Look, Genos. Perfectly fresh vegetables, premium meat on offer at a price that makes no logical sense, and best of all… a watermelon at its exact peak of ripeness! In this heat tonight is going to be a proper feast.
—I'm glad for you, sensei.
We were carrying shopping bags from several supermarkets, Armored Gorilla with the majority of the volume distributed across stacked boxes. Sensei had completed the city patrol without incidents and had taken advantage of the remaining time to do the week's shopping before returning to work.
—It's good to see you happy, Darling. With this we have provisions for several days.
—Yes, I'm already looking forward to eating the water…
—Bang!
The tremor arrived without prior warning. It was strong enough for the citizens in the street to stop walking and look around in confusion, and my seismic sensors catalogued it as artificial in origin before the first second was up. In the distance columns of smoke were rising and multiple civilians were running away from something that still had no direct line of sight. A kaijin attack in progress? I was going to alert Sensei about the emergency situation immediately, but just at that instant while Sensei was trying to maintain his balance during the tremor, his precious watermelon slipped accidentally from his hands and began rolling quickly downhill along the slanted street, moving away from us.
—NOOOO, MY WATERMELON!!!
Sensei took off running after it without letting go of the rest of the bags, making balancing maneuvers that in any other situation would have been worthy of analysis. The rest of us followed him down the street while the watermelon continued its unstoppable trajectory along the sidewalk until it came to a stop on a wide street with a direct view of the seaport.
All of us immediately began chasing after him, running down the street as fast as possible while the watermelon kept rolling unstoppably along the slanted sidewalk, until it finally came to a stop on a wide street very close to the seaport that had a direct view of the ocean.
—What a relief, my watermelon is perfectly fine and undamaged!! —exclaimed Sensei approaching with visible relief as he carefully set down the other shopping bags on the clean ground and crouched down to pick up his intact watermelon, but just at that moment…
—BANG!!
A piece of rubble of considerable proportions fell from above and crushed the watermelon at the exact point where sensei was about to touch it, turning it into reddish pulp, splattering his entire face and beyond any possibility of recovery. Sensei went completely still, kneeling, staring at the point of impact in silence.
—Ah… —that was all that came out of him.
I looked up to identify the source. It was a kaijin of humanoid morphology with cephalopod characteristics — in other words, an octopus — large body, a toga partially covering it and a presence that would have been threatening under other circumstances. Under these circumstances it was primarily a nuisance.
—Surrender, pathetic humans! We, the Deep Sea People, will rule the surface! Your annihilation is inevitable!
The Deep Sea People? An organized invasion? I couldn't continue the analysis because the kaijin had already located sensei, who was still kneeling on the ground being silently consoled by Mrs. Fubuki at his side.
—Look at that blockhead. Are you some kind of octopus relative or something? HAHAHA. And there you are, crying crouched down. Did I kill someone important to you? Well… I'M GOING TO SEND YOU TO JOIN THEM!! HAHAHA!!
It raised its fist toward sensei with the intention of crushing him against the pavement. I was already calculating the interception angle when something stopped me completely. It wasn't a conscious decision or a system failure I could diagnose. My movements simply stopped executing, as if the signal between intention and action had been cut at some point I couldn't locate. Armored Gorilla and Mosquito Girl were equally still at my sides, with expressions that confirmed the phenomenon was not exclusive to my systems. The kaijin itself had stopped its fist mid-trajectory. Not by its own decision. Its arm had simply stopped obeying, and the expression on its face was that of a creature that had just registered that something in the immediate environment represents a level of threat its instincts don't know how to classify or where to orient.
The only ones moving normally were sensei and Mrs. Fubuki.
She rose slowly from where she was beside sensei. There was no urgency in the movement. No defensive posture adjustment, no visible preparation. She simply stood up, turned toward the kaijin and looked at it with a completely flat expression that contained no evident hostility nor any cataloguable emotion. It was the look of someone who had already made a decision and was waiting for the right moment to execute it. The kaijin couldn't sustain it. Something in that look triggered in the creature a terror response it couldn't suppress in time and that had no identifiable rational source.
Then Mrs. Fubuki tilted her head slightly, a blue light surrounding her entire body.
The kaijin's tentacle bent backward against its own jaw with a force that corresponded to no voluntary movement. The impact knocked out several teeth in one blow and the sound of the collision resonated throughout the entire street. Before the creature could process what had just happened, the same tentacle contracted again and connected once more, then again. A methodical rain of blows began that made the kaijin suffer and bleed violently with increasing intensity, while its screams were drowned by its own blood.
Then she made a lateral movement with her hand, barely perceptible.
The tentacle rotated on itself and tore the kaijin's right arm from the joint with a ripping sound that was extremely violent. The creature's scream was immediate and completely involuntary, a sound that had nothing threatening about it — only pure agony. It served no purpose. Another limb was torn away before the first had finished falling, then another, with the same precision and the same calculated interval between each action, as if the creature's pain were irrelevant information to the process. The tentacles were next, each one separated from the body with an efficiency that left no margin to interpret what was occurring as anything other than a systematic and deliberate execution.
What remained of the kaijin when Mrs. Fubuki finished was a mass of flesh without functional extremities, with a single tentacle moving among the remains without any useful purpose. The creature was still conscious. That was evident from the way its eyes moved, still processing what had happened to it while being completely unable to do anything about it. Only simple sounds of agony.
Mrs. Fubuki observed the remains for a moment without changing expression. Then she placed her boot on the kaijin's face, which was the only thing she had left intact, and applied sustained pressure while looking it directly in the eyes. No words. No variation in the aura. No change in her posture indicating that what she was doing generated any kind of measurable internal response.
It was then that I recovered control of my body.
Until that moment I hadn't even been aware that I was immobile. Upon feeling my extremities again I understood what had occurred. Mrs. Tatsumaki had held us with her psychic powers and had blocked all of our movements without the slightest effort. A chilling demonstration of the power that one of sensei's wives possessed.
—You'll understand that this was the greatest mistake of your miserable existence, disturbing my Darling. What a lamentable fate. —A smile appeared briefly on her face—. Well now… so you were only a messenger. Mm… a global-scale invasion? An army capable of razing continents? The King of the Deep Sea? Interesting…
The smile vanished as quickly as it had arrived.
—Unfortunately for you, I no longer need you to keep existing.
—NO…ooO…!!
A simple snap of Fubuki's fingers echoed through the air.
The single remaining tentacle suspended in the air descended like a guillotine. It impacted directly on the kaijin's head and pulverized it instantly. Bone, flesh and brain matter exploded in every direction, becoming an unrecognizable mass that splattered the ground. All that remained was a pool of blood mixed with organic remains.
As if nothing had occurred, Mrs. Fubuki turned around and walked toward us. Her smile returned immediately. Every trace of the brutality from moments ago had disappeared from her face.
Afterward she approached sensei, knelt at his side and hugged him with enthusiasm.
—Darling! I have excellent news.
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—My lord, we have sent one of our soldiers to the surface to deliver the message of destruction. Soon they will know of your greatness.
In the shadows a smile illuminated the chamber.
—Perfect. With this invasion we will show the surface who their true masters are. —said the King of the Deep Sea with a smile that distorted every feature of his face into something that had no equivalent on the surface.
The King of the Deep Sea was not a creature that had reached his position through inheritance or political agreement. He had conquered the oceanic depths meter by meter, personally eliminating every entity that claimed territory in the abyssal zones until no voice remained to dispute his own. His body measured over 20 meters in erect position, a gleaming crown and a cape that displayed his royalty, with a muscular density that had withstood the pressures of the deepest ocean trenches and a strength that had split underwater continental platforms with direct blows during his expansion campaigns. In the depths there was no classification that described him with precision. The surface's threat categorization systems were instruments designed to measure things that didn't come close to him.
His palace was the exact reflection of what he was. Built atop the compressed remains of the creatures he had subdued over decades, it extended across several kilometers in the abyssal zone, with structures of volcanic rock and reinforced bone that had survived earthquakes of considerable magnitude without losing structural integrity. The main halls had capacity to simultaneously house thousands of his soldiers, and the walls were covered in the emblems of every territory he had incorporated into his dominion. It was an inventory of conquests, not a decoration. Each symbol represented a campaign, and each campaign had ended the same way — in a glorious massacre.
—Good. We begin the march to the surface to…
—MY LORD!!
One of his subordinates burst into the main hall with an agitation that in other circumstances would have cost him his life for the interruption.
—What is happening?
—It's a being from the surface, my lord!
—No living terrestrial being could withstand the maritime pressure of the depths.
—It has eliminated the majority of the army in under ten minutes! Those that remain are retreating toward the palace but are not holding their ground at all! If it continues advancing at this speed it will reach the…!
The subordinate didn't finish the sentence. The door to the main hall was launched from its frames with enough force to pass through the messenger and distribute his remains throughout the entire hall before the sound of the impact had finished propagating.
The King of the Deep Sea looked at the destroyed entrance in silence for a moment. Then he looked at what remained of his subordinate on the floor. Then he looked at the entrance again.
In the darkness there was a silhouette. It was human, with a uniform that corresponded to no military system he recognized, a completely bald head that caught the minimum light reflection available in the depths and something that partially covered its face. A creature with no physical characteristics that justified what had just occurred in the corridors of his palace. The King of the Deep Sea processed that image for a second and reached a conclusion he found completely reasonable: whatever had eliminated his army could not be this. There had to be an error in the reports.
He rose from the throne. The entire hall vibrated with the weight of his mass shifting, and the water around him compressed in visible waves that struck the structural walls of the palace. He walked toward the intruder with the deliberation of someone who has had no reasons to hurry in decades.
—Well, well. An inferior creature that arrives with arrogance. Let's wipe that expression off its face.
He disappeared from the human's visual field in a fraction of a second and reappeared directly behind him. The blow he delivered concentrated decades of accumulated force into a single point. The impact wave propagated in every direction simultaneously, collapsed three structural sections of the palace, killed the soldiers that remained alive in the throne room through the pure pressure generated by the wave, and the sound reverberated through kilometers of water in every direction. A completely reasonable price for eliminating the nuisance.
But… the human was still standing at the same point.
Without moving. Without registering the impact. Without any expression indicating that it had registered that something had just occurred. It turned slowly toward the King of the Deep Sea and looked at him with a seriousness completely disproportionate for someone who should have been in pieces distributed across the ocean floor.
—Interesting. You're stronger than I expected. So my message to the surface worked. They sent someone capable. But it won't be enough. I am the King of the Deep Sea. All life on this planet has its origin in the ocean, and I am the absolute ruler of that origin. That places me at the apex of every evolutionary pyramid that has existed or that could exist. That means you, regardless of what you are, are belo…
The King of the Deep Sea stopped. The human pulled a food bar from the pocket of his uniform.
He removed the mask covering his face, took a bite with complete tranquility and replaced the mask with the same care with which he had removed it. Then he waited with the same serious expression as before, chewing.
The King of the Deep Sea looked at him for three complete seconds. His patience had broken.
—Damned vermin, DIE!!
The blow he launched was different from all the previous ones. It was not a warning strike nor a demonstration. It was the complete force of a creature that had split underwater geological formations and annihilated civilizations, concentrated into a single point, directed to finish what was before him once and for all without possibility of continuation. The fist moved toward the human at a speed that distorted the surrounding water and generated a massive cavitation in its trajectory. It was his end.
But then… something occurred that the King of the Deep Sea couldn't process with the speed it required.
The water around him disappeared. It didn't displace, it wasn't pushed to the sides. It disappeared, as if it had ceased to exist in that space, and the human was now at a distance that corresponded to no movement his eyes had registered. And his own arm was still on the trajectory of a blow that no one was there to receive.
The human's fist connected.
There was no resistance. There was no impact in the sense the King of the Deep Sea knew, where two forces collide and each absorbs part of the other. It was a unilateral and total energy transfer that passed through his body from front to back without finding anything worth stopping at. The wave generated by that single punch destroyed what remained of the palace in the same instant, collapsed the surrounding abyssal structures and opened a channel of force that extended upward through kilometers of ocean at supersonic speed.
The remains of the King of the Deep Sea traversed the entire water column in fractions of a second. The ocean floor, the mesopelagic zones, the light zone. Everything passed at speeds that left no time to register any detail. And then the impact with the water surface from below, and the sky.
Blue. Completely blue and open in every direction.
That was the last thing he processed with any degree of coherence: the expanse of sky he had never seen from below, in the instant before what remained of his consciousness fragmented along with what remained of his body. One eye fell into the sea. The fish that inhabited the surface found it within seconds.
The cycle continued without interruption, as it had always continued, completely indifferent to who it was that had fallen.
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Saitama looked at the empty palace. The hole he had opened in the ceiling let filter columns of water that cascaded down every surface, and what remained of the internal structures groaned with the redistributive pressure of the ocean reclaiming the space. Everything was destroyed or in the process of becoming so. He looked at his right hand for a moment.
"Another kaijin finished in one punch. I thought it was going to be fun. I couldn't even hear it well because the water pressure clogged my ears. How disappointing."
He sighed and was already turning to leave when something on the floor caught his attention. He moved closer. Under the rubble and among the remains of what had been the walls of the throne room there was gold. Quite a lot of gold. And jewels. And more gold behind that gold.
He stood completely still for three full seconds processing the scene.
A smile spread across his entire face.
"Well. It wasn't a waste after all. And I also took care of something that could have done a lot of damage. Anyway… Time to go buy more watermelons!!"