The Architects tumbled out of Astra's portal and landed on a perfectly manicured lawn in a sterile suburban neighborhood. The air wasn't violent or magical; it was steeped in the thick, oppressive odor of existential pointlessness and unfulfilled potential.
Tanjiro gasped, clutching his nose. "It's suffocating! This is the scent of emotional neglect and intellectual arrogance. Everyone here smells like they've given up on trying to be happy."
Dazai sighed contentedly, looking around at the identical houses. "Ah, the beautiful, soul-crushing uniformity of human despair. It's almost elegant in its simplicity. Truly, the perfect setting for a tragic novel."
Gojo, adjusting his sunglasses, wrinkled his nose in genuine disgust. "Ugh. This whole place lacks flair. The architecture is aggressively bland, and the energy flow is so boringly predictable. I feel like my clothes are suddenly less stylish just by being here."
Jin-Woo, ever the pragmatist, immediately sent out his Shadow scouts. "Focus on the objective. The Anchor Point, 'Rick,' is located in that garage. He is the conceptual center of this world's nihilism."
Before the strategy could continue, a bright green portal ripped open on the driveway. Out stepped a nervous, insectoid alien wearing a cheaply made "World's Best Dad" t-shirt, pointing a smoking ray gun at them.
"Y-y-you Earthlings have interfered with the Krellian Prime Directive for the last time! Surrender the... the... hey, did anyone see my portal battery?" the alien stammered, frantically patting its pockets.
Saitama stared at the alien with his usual vacant expression, processing the pathetic nature of the threat.
"It fell out of your pocket when you stepped through," Saitama stated, pointing a finger at a small, glowing battery resting on the concrete.
The Krellian alien froze. It looked at the battery, looked at its empty pockets, and then burst into tears of sheer relief and shame.
"Oh, thank goodness! I almost got fired! You have no idea the bureaucratic nightmare of losing a sanctioned battery! Thank you, thank you!" The alien grabbed the battery, stuffed it back into its pocket, and stumbled back through the portal, which closed instantly.
"What a waste of cosmic travel," Gojo scoffed. "If you're going to threaten the Multiverse, at least do it with some style."
Jin-Woo's shadows confirmed that Rick and Morty were gearing up for a dimension-hopping quest, specifically to retrieve a "Quantum Shard of Nothingness" to prove the universe is inherently valueless.
"We must introduce Absolute, Arbitrary Meaning into their lives," Jin-Woo commanded. "It must be an object of no scientific value, but devastating emotional significance."
Tanjiro pointed immediately to a faded, chipped, plastic garden gnome standing next to a bird bath. "The scent of loneliness is strongest there. It's been abandoned, but its purpose as a whimsical guardian remains."
Kazuma nearly vibrated with excitement. "A lawn ornament? Yes! We can make this gnome worth a fortune in sentimental value! And then, we can impose a mandatory Gnome Tax on the family! Okarun, come on! We're making this thing the most important piece of junk in the galaxy!"
Kazuma dragged Okarun to the gnome. "Focus, Okarun! I need you to psychic-anchor the concept of Childhood Nostalgia and Undying Familial Love onto this cheap plastic!"
Okarun, trying not to touch the gnome, channeled his terrified psychic energy. "It's... it's radiating the feeling of 'I deserve a raise for this' and 'I wish I was home watching TV'!"
Dazai, meanwhile, was etching a tiny, profound inscription onto the gnome's base—a haiku that conceptually implied the gnome was the literal, unmoving center of all universal existence, but only if you were looking at it on a Tuesday.
"A philosophical poison," Dazai mused, stepping back. "The logical mind will struggle to accept that something so ugly could hold so much meaning. It's conceptual torture."
Gojo, finally finding something worthy of his talent, wrapped the gnome in a compressed layer of Limitless space.
"I am not just preserving it; I am making it unquestionably perfect," Gojo explained to Jin-Woo. "Any attack or logical deduction made against the gnome will result in the attacker realizing they are conceptually inferior to its Perfect Whimsy. They won't just fail to destroy it; they'll feel intensely embarrassed for even trying."
Jin-Woo used his Shadow Scouts to place the now conceptually loaded Gnome of Great Purpose directly on the workbench in Rick's garage.
Jin-Woo looked at the absurdity of the plan—using cosmic power to make a garden gnome matter—and simply nodded. "Objective achieved. We have substituted Malak's Absolute Moral Weight with Absolute Arbitrary Significance. Retreat."
The Architects quickly vanished, leaving the suburban house to its fate, awaiting the Anchor Point's hilarious and devastating confrontation with an impossibly meaningful lawn ornament. The mission had been chaotic, vain, and petty, exactly as the Arbiters of Chaos would wish.