Why?
The reason was simple.
Not long after Saitama, Vivian, and the others checked into the Beverly Hills villa, a phone call suddenly came through—specifically asking for Saitama to answer it himself.
When Saitama put the phone to his ear, all he heard was a woman's panicked cry for help.
"Y-you… who are you…? N-no, don't come any closer!"
Then the call abruptly cut off, and a location for the incident was sent to Saitama's phone.
"Ding. New storyline has been unlocked. Now entering Terminator 3 storyline. The world is entering doomsday countdown!"
"If the host can stop the destruction of the world, you will receive a Power-Up Gift Pack!"
"If the host fails to stop the destruction of the world, you will perish together with this world!"
Saitama stared at the prompt. "Seriously? A single phone call is all it takes to open a Terminator 3 dungeon now? This world is getting more and more ridiculous…"
He glanced over at Vivian, who was still watching him closely, then hurriedly hung up the phone.
"Vivian, I need to head out for a bit to deal with something. Can you manage without me for a while?"
"Dear, what happened? Don't tell me it's another…"
Saitama nodded slightly.
Vivian didn't try to stop him. She just gave him a gentle look and said, "Go on, the sooner you go, the sooner you'll be back. No matter when you return, I'll be waiting for you."
Then she leaned in and planted a kiss on him.
Faced with the sudden "attack," Saitama could only feel helpless. What could he do? American women were just that bold and open.
Whoosh—
Saitama vaulted out of the Beverly Hills villa in a single leap.
Under the system's guidance, he quickly arrived at a clothing store just outside the villa district.
According to the system, it had detected trace evidence of a temporal disturbance here. There was no doubt—someone had just used time travel to arrive at this spot.
Even more awkwardly, right after the system picked up those time fluctuations, it detected that someone had hacked into Skynet.
And the one who hacked Skynet was now following the network connections, trying to hack into Saitama's system itself.
"Huh? What's going on? Wasn't this supposed to be a straight-up Terminator dungeon? Why is there hacking involved now?" Saitama muttered.
A string of text appeared on his system interface.
"In the original Terminator 3 storyline, the 'metal being' hacked into Skynet and triggered the nuclear launch protocols, pushing the world into the post-Judgment Day era."
"If the host does not believe it, you can browse 'Terminator' in the system's archive."
Right after that line appeared, a video clip popped up: a steel-muscled man in a black leather outfit and sunglasses—the Governor himself.
The shot shifted, showing him roaring down the road on a Harley motorcycle.
"Host, please locate the original story's protagonist as soon as possible. Otherwise, the Governor may steal your spotlight."
Saitama stared at the message, and only one thought surfaced in his mind.
The system was getting cheekier, changing little by little right along with him.
Following the trace marker in the system, Saitama began tracking the metal being from the original film.
Up ahead, the female metal lifeform that had traveled to this point in time had just stolen a car and was speeding toward L.A. to kill the destined protagonist, Connor.
As she passed a billboard advertising Victoria's Secret, she casually adjusted her figure—her chest inflating from an A-cup to a D-cup in an instant.
A patrol officer on the night shift chased after her speeding car. "Do you have any idea how fast you were just going?"
The metal being, now wearing the angelic face of a stunning beauty, looked like Kristanna Loken brought to life.
She gave the officer a slow once-over. All her attention ultimately settled on the gun at his waist.
The weapon was enticing, radiating the alluring scent of gunpowder.
"License and registration," the cop said.
The beauty, Loken, replied, "I like your gun."
Before the officer could process her words, the beautiful "woman" reached out—and his life ended in an instant.
The metal being now in the form of the beauty Loken truly resembled an angel fallen into hell. Behind that heavenly exterior was a soul already sold to the lord of hell, Lucifer, dedicated solely to the business of killing.
Next, Loken headed to a burger joint.
There, one of the future human Resistance's core members, a man named Jose Barrera, was working.
He was also one of her assassination targets.
After confirming his identity, a gunshot rang out.
Sirens wailed again.
"Oh my God, someone's shooting people in broad daylight!"
Local residents who heard the gunshot all ducked behind the edges of buildings, peeking out to watch.
They quickly realized that the beautiful woman with the pistol had no interest in them at all. After killing her target, she simply turned to leave.
Of course, the word "escape" was only something the nearby onlookers imagined.
For this metal executioner from the future—who had already gunned down two human targets within minutes of arriving—there was no such word as "run away."
If anything, you could call it: mission complete, time to walk off openly and confidently.
At that moment, a miraculous figure appeared.
Saitama.
He appeared right in front of the car Loken was driving and raised a single finger, effortlessly stopping the vehicle in its tracks.
"Huh? Strange. This man… is he the human hero?"
Loken stared at Saitama without any change in expression, then calmly drew her pistol and fired at him.
For machines like her, sent to the past, completing the mission was everything. Nothing else mattered.
But right before her eyes—
Saitama once again displayed the classic "bullet-dodging body" move straight out of The Matrix.
Loken's expression froze.
"What is this? Since when can humans in this era dodge bullets with their bodies?"
Refusing to accept it, Loken fired several more rounds.
Moments later, she saw that Saitama had already caught all the bullets between his fingers.
"Not good. The plan has encountered a variable."
Just as Loken concluded that Saitama was absurdly strong, her internal system began to glitch.
When she first traveled back, her mission parameters were clear: eliminate the key members of the future human Resistance.
But now she was suddenly discovering that the large-scale wars between humans and machines that were supposed to erupt in the future… had never happened here.
What was going on?
The data stream inside her CPU scrambled and conflicted.
Loken came to a halt, frozen by the internal error.
To the civilians peeking out from hiding, though, it simply looked like this: the moment Saitama arrived, the "evil woman" who had just killed people in the street immediately stopped in her tracks and submitted.
However, things were not nearly that simple.
While the data chaos in Loken's CPU left her unable to act, a bright sphere of light suddenly appeared at one corner of the street.
Crackle—
With a surge of electricity, a naked man stepped out of the glowing sphere.
"…You've got to be kidding me. Is that the Governor?!"
(End of Chapter)
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