The dust settled. Or rather, it was still settling, fine particles of pulverized concrete and atomized debris drifting lazily in the aftermath of Saitama's reality-affirming punch. The air, stripped of its oppressive psychic weight, now carried the mundane scents of scorched earth and ozone, a familiar perfume to the heroes of City Z.
Saitama, oblivious to the awestruck and terrified stares of his S-Class colleagues, was already halfway down the block, his red boots kicking up little puffs of the ubiquitous grey dust. His mind wasn't on the conceptual annihilation he had just faced and casually dismissed. It was on king crab. And the irritating, persistent sensation that had bloomed within him the moment the Void Maw had attempted to unmake his existence.
It wasn't pain. It wasn't discomfort, not exactly. It was... an itch. A deep, internal, unscratchable itch. Like a phantom limb, but for a part of his being he hadn't known existed until it was prodded. It was a vague restlessness, a subtle thrumming deep within the core of him, a feeling that something fundamental had been jostled and hadn't quite settled back into place. Or perhaps, had settled into a new place, one he didn't recognize.
"Sensei! Wait!" Genos, his metallic body gleaming despite a fresh layer of fine dust, caught up with him in a few swift, booster-assisted strides. His optical sensors were still whirring, trying to process the impossible data from the recent encounter. "The Hero Association is requesting an immediate debrief. Director Sitch is... agitated. They registered the energy spike as an event exceeding any previously recorded planetary threat."
Saitama paused, glancing back at the plaza. Tatsumaki was berating a shaken Atomic Samurai, her voice shrill but lacking its usual venom, replaced by a bewildered frustration. Bang was calmly helping some of the dazed civilians, his weathered face unusually grim. The shimmering fracture in space, where the Void Maw had fled, pulsed with a faint, sickly luminescence, like a wound that refused to heal. It was about the size of a doorway, hanging silently in the air, its edges blurred and indistinct. Looking at it made his internal itch flare slightly.
"Debrief, huh?" Saitama grumbled. "They gonna pay for my cab fare if I go? And what about those crab legs? This whole mess probably made all the supermarkets close early." He patted his pockets. Empty. "Damn."
"Sensei, the nature of that entity... the way it manipulated reality, the way it absorbed energy and psychic attacks..." Genos pressed, his voice tight with analytical urgency. "And your counter-measure... it was not a simple application of kinetic force. My sensors detected... I cannot accurately describe it. A wave of pure existential affirmation? It registered as a reality stabilization event on a quantum level, yet paradoxically, it also generated further spatial-temporal distortions. Dr. Kuseno will need every scrap of data."
Saitama just shrugged. "It was being annoying, so I punched it. Seemed to work. Now, about those crab legs..."
A sleek, black drone, no bigger than a dinner plate, whizzed down from the sky, hovering before Genos. A holographic image of Metal Knight, Bofoi, flickered into existence. His metallic voice was devoid of inflection, yet carried an undercurrent of intense, almost predatory, curiosity.
"Demon Cyborg. Report. The anomaly designated 'Void Maw.' Its dispersal method. The energy signature of the Caped Baldy's attack. Provide all telemetry. My preliminary scans indicate a localized breakdown of fundamental physical laws, followed by a forced recalibration initiated by an unknown energy type originating from Subject Saitama."
"As you can see, Doctor," Genos gestured towards the lingering spatial fracture, "the entity was not destroyed, but rather repelled. It retreated through a self-generated dimensional rift. Sensei's attack appeared to overwrite its negating properties."
Bofoi's drone circled Saitama slowly, its multiple lenses focusing. "Subject Saitama. Your internal energy readings are... perplexing. There's a residual resonance. A fluctuation. Unstable. Can you describe the mechanism of your attack?"
Saitama looked at the drone, then at the sky. "Mechanism? I dunno. I just punched it. Hard." He scratched his bald head, the itch flaring again, a faint, almost imperceptible golden light briefly outlining his hand before vanishing. No one but Genos, with his enhanced senses, caught the fleeting shimmer. What was that? Genos wondered. A new manifestation?
"Insufficient data," Bofoi's drone stated flatly. "Further observation is required." It then zipped back towards the shimmering rift, deploying smaller sensor probes that cautiously approached the distortion.
Tatsumaki finally stalked over, arms crossed, a scowl etched on her face. "Oi, Baldy! You're not just gonna walk off after... that! What the hell was that thing? And why didn't it just splatter when you hit it the first time? Your punches usually make things go pop." There was a tremor in her voice, a crack in her usual arrogant facade. She had felt her own immense power be utterly nullified, then witnessed something that defied her understanding of power itself. It was unsettling. Deeply.
"Beats me," Saitama said, genuinely. "It was squishy. Like punching a really stubborn jellyfish made of TV static." He looked at the rift. "That thing it left behind looks kinda like a broken window. Hope nothing crawls out."
As if on cue, the rift pulsed, a little stronger this time. A faint, almost inaudible whisper, like dry leaves skittering across pavement, seemed to emanate from it. The surrounding air grew colder by a noticeable degree.
"The rift is unstable," Genos observed, his arm cannons subtly warming up. "It is emitting tachyonic particles and exotic matter signatures. It may be a decaying gateway, or... something else."
At the Hero Association Headquarters, pandemonium reigned. Director Sitch, a man perpetually on the verge of a nervous breakdown, was practically vibrating in his chair. Screens around him displayed alarming graphs, incomprehensible symbols, and the bewildered faces of S-Class heroes reporting from the scene.
"A Dragon-level threat that absorbs S-Class attacks? That inflicts existential dread? That was repelled by... by Saitama's punch in a way that broke our sensors?!" Sitch wrung his hands, his tie askew. "What are we dealing with here? Another Boros? Something worse?"
A nervous analyst piped up, "Sir, the energy readings from Saitama's final attack... they don't conform to any known energy scale. It's as if... as if he didn't just hit it, he un-voided it. The readings peaked beyond zetajoules and then simply... ceased to be measurable, as if the very concept of energy couldn't contain it."
"Un-voided it?" Sitch repeated, looking like he was about to faint. "What does that even mean?"
Dr. Kuseno's calm, synthesized voice came over the main comm line. "Director Sitch, if I may. What Genos's preliminary data suggests is an interaction on a fundamental level of reality. The entity appeared to be a localized negation of existence. Saitama-kun's power, in this instance, seems to have acted as an equal and opposite assertion of existence. This is, of course, highly speculative. But the implications are... staggering."
"Staggering is an understatement, Doctor!" Sitch exclaimed. "The man complains about missing supermarket sales, and he's out there rewriting the laws of physics with his fists! How do we even categorize him anymore?!"
Back in City Z, Saitama had decided the debrief could wait. Crab legs, however, could not. He found a supermarket a few blocks away that was, miraculously, still open, albeit with staff cowering under counters and a few aisles blocked by fallen debris from the earlier shockwaves.
He navigated the chaos with practiced ease, his expression brightening considerably when he found the seafood section. "Aha! King crab! And it's... 30% off! Not half price, but I'll take it!" He grabbed the largest pack, a blissful smile briefly gracing his lips.
As he paid (the cashier was too terrified to argue when Saitama only had enough loose change for about a fifth of the price, simply nodding numbly), the internal itch flared again, stronger this time. It was accompanied by a fleeting, incredibly vivid image in his mind's eye: the Void Maw, not as a formless tear, but as a single, despairing eye, looking back at him from an infinite distance, promising... something. Then, the image was gone.
Saitama blinked. "Huh. Weird heartburn." He attributed the sensation to hunger and the anticipation of crab.
Genos, ever vigilant, had followed him. "Sensei, are you experiencing any adverse effects from the encounter? Your energy signature is still exhibiting unusual fluctuations. That golden shimmer around your hand earlier..."
"Shimmer? Nah, just hungry. This itch is annoying, though. Like I need to sneeze but can't." Saitama hefted his bag of crab. "Let's go home. Maybe a hot pot will fix it."
As they walked back towards their apartment, they passed the plaza again. A Hero Association cleanup crew was already there, along with a heavily armed scientific team led by Dr. Bofoi's drones. They had erected a cordon around the shimmering rift, which now pulsed with a more regular, rhythmic light, like a grotesque heartbeat. The air around it felt... thin. Fragile.
Saitama glanced at it. The itch intensified, and for a microsecond, he felt an inexplicable pull towards the rift. Not a physical pull, but a strange resonance, as if something within him recognized something within it. He paused.
"Sensei?" Genos asked, noticing his master's uncharacteristic stillness.
Saitama looked at his own hand, the one that had delivered the final punch. He flexed his fingers. The itch wasn't just an itch anymore. It felt like... potential. A vast, coiled energy he hadn't consciously tapped into before, but had been there all along, awakened by the Void Maw's attempt to unravel him. It wasn't that his strength had increased – how could it, when it was already effectively limitless? It was more like the nature of his strength, its very definition, was subtly, terrifyingly, expanding.
He had punched a hole in a monster. He had punched invaders from space. He had punched interdimensional conquerors. He had even punched a hole in the concept of nothingness.
But this itch... this felt like he had punched a hole in himself, revealing something even he didn't know was there.
"You know, Genos," Saitama said, his voice oddly contemplative as he stared at the rift, "this hero stuff. It's usually pretty straightforward. Monster shows up, I punch it, it's over. Then I worry about sales." He looked down at his crab. "But that thing... and this weird feeling... it's different."
A flicker of something profound, something ancient and powerful, flashed in his usually placid eyes, gone as quickly as it appeared. "It's like... the world is bigger than I thought. And maybe... maybe I am too."
He then shrugged, the moment passing. "Ah, whatever. Let's go cook this crab before it goes bad."
But as he turned away, the rift pulsed again, and this time, the faint whisper was clearer, though still incomprehensible. It wasn't just a sound; it was a call, a beckoning, across unimaginable distances. The universe, or perhaps universes, had taken notice of the bald man in the yellow jumpsuit. The paradox was indeed being corrected. And the consequences of that correction were beginning to stir in the fractured silence of City Z.
The unscratchable itch within Saitama thrummed in response, a silent promise of godlike power yet to be fully understood, even by its wielder. The game was changing, and Saitama, in his oblivious, crab-loving way, was at the very center of it. The thrilling, terrifying next act was about to begin.