For a split second, the multiverse held its breath.
Saitama's voice, stripped of all its usual apathy, was an event horizon from which no bullshit could escape. The Cleaner, a being designed to purge conceptual errors from reality, had just become a bug in the system. And Saitama was the uninstaller.
Its liquid obsidian form flowed, instantly healing the crater in its chest. The single line of purple light that served as its eye focused on Saitama with cold, analytical fury.
"Threat assessment updated," its static-laced voice echoed, not through the air, but directly inside their minds. "Target: Bald Cape. Designation: Singularity. Uncategorized threat to systemic chaos. Priority one."
It abandoned Mob. Its mission parameters had shifted in the face of a greater anomaly.
Goku watched, his arms crossed, a low, excited hum in his chest. This was it. The feeling he'd gotten earlier wasn't just a fluke. This was a power that made no sense. It didn't ripple, it didn't spike, it didn't have a signature. It was just an overwhelming, final truth.
Anos Voldigoad observed with the intensity of a scholar discovering a new, impossible theorem. "His existence does not adhere to logic," he murmured to himself, a genuine smile gracing his features for the first time. "He does not overwrite law, he simply ignores it. He is a walking, breathing paradox. How utterly magnificent."
The Cleaner attacked. It didn't lunge. It simply ceased to exist in one spot and appeared directly in front of Saitama, its obsidian claws swiping at his face. But it wasn't a physical attack. As its claws passed through the air, the very concept of "space" in their path was deleted. It wasn't cutting Saitama; it was trying to un-exist the volume he occupied.
Saitama tilted his head to the side. The conceptual erasure attack missed.
His fist came up.
Normal Punch.
The sound was disgustingly final. Like a watermelon being dropped from a skyscraper. The Cleaner's head exploded into a spray of liquid black shards. Its body went rigid, then slumped to the ground.
It began to melt, the obsidian armor dissolving into a pool of black goo. But the goo was bubbling. Reforming.
"It's regenerating!" Tanjiro yelled, his enhanced sense of smell picking up the scent of re-creation.
"Axiom protocol dictates that systemic threats must be met with overwhelming force," the re-forming puddle hissed. It shot out a dozen tendrils, each one sharpening into an obsidian spear, all aimed at the other heroes. A distraction. "Consume the variables. Isolate the singularity."
Goku just grinned and batted a spear away with the back of his hand. Anos raised an eyebrow, and the spears aimed at him and Mob simply dissolved into harmless purple dust a foot away from his body. Sebas and the Pleiades moved like lightning, shattering the tendrils aimed at them with practiced efficiency.
Kazuma screamed and ducked behind Darkness, who took a spear to the shoulder with a grunt of ecstatic pleasure.
While everyone was distracted, the main body of the Cleaner launched itself at Saitama, its form now a churning vortex of razor-sharp shards. "[System Purge: Conceptual Fragmentation]!"
It wasn't attacking Saitama's body. It was attacking the very idea of him. His history, his purpose, his existence. Trying to break him down into scattered, meaningless data.
Saitama looked at the oncoming storm of metaphysical nonsense. He sighed. It was the same sound a man makes when he realizes he has to take out the trash during his favorite TV show.
"You guys are really… annoying."
He threw a series of punches. They weren't particularly fast. They weren't flashy.
"Consecutive," he droned.
WHUMPHWHUMPHWHUMPHWHUMPHWHUMPH.
"Normal Punches."
Each punch didn't just connect with the Cleaner's physical form. It connected with the attack itself. He was punching the un-punchable. His simple, absolute force was so potent it could physically impact a conceptual assault. The [System Purge] shattered like cheap glass. The Cleaner's swirling form was caught in the barrage, blown apart, reformed, and blown apart again a dozen times in less than a second.
It screamed, a shriek of pure digital agony that grated on the soul. It tried to retreat, to phase out of reality.
Saitama's final punch landed square in the center of its mass.
It was still just a normal punch. But it carried the weight of his irritation. The full, catastrophic gravitas of his stolen meal.
The punch carried through.
It tore a hole.
Not in the Cleaner.
In the world behind it.
For the second time, a ragged, shimmering wound opened in the fabric of the merged reality. Through it, they could all see a glimpse of somewhere else—a modern city at night, impossibly tall skyscrapers, and the glint of a blindfolded man standing on top of one. The suction was immense, pulling debris and dust into the void.
The Cleaner, its form destabilized beyond recovery, was caught in the pull. It was sucked into the tear, its static-filled scream fading into nothingness as the hole, just as before, snapped shut with the sound of a breaking universe.
Silence. Again.
Everyone stared at the spot where the reality-eating monster had been. Then they all slowly turned to look at Saitama.
He just stood there, dusting off his red gloves. "Okay. That's done. Now, about that ramen..."
His voice trailed off as he saw Mob. The boy was still trembling, but the blank, hollow look of ???% had faded slightly. His eyes were wide, a flicker of lucid terror within them. The psychic pressure radiating from him dropped by half. Seeing someone else so effortlessly obliterate the thing that had terrified him had grounded him, just a little.
"Th-thank you," Mob whispered, his own voice sounding foreign to him.
Goku was right beside Saitama in an instant, his eyes sparkling like a kid on Christmas morning. "That was AMAZING! You just punched it! You didn't even use ki! What was that?! How do you do that?! Can you teach me?! We have to fight right now!"
"No."
Sebas Tian performed a perfect ninety-degree bow. "On behalf of the Great Tomb of Nazarick, I extend my… gratitude. It is clear we were mistaken. You are not an enemy." You are a natural disaster that we must never, ever antagonize, his internal thoughts added. He subtly gestured to the Pleiades. Retreat. Report. Immediately. They faded into the shadows.
From the portal where Yuno and Noelle had appeared, more figures emerged. The rest of the Black Bulls. Magna was swinging a flaming bat, Luck was cackling with battle-lust, and Charmy was already trying to conjure a fluffy sheep to cook the twitching alien tail that lay nearby. The Convergence was still pulling people in, using this nexus of power as a focal point.
Saitama looked at the growing crowd of weirdos. He looked at Goku, who was now doing warm-up stretches. He looked at Anos, who was studying him like a fascinating new species of insect. He looked at the wreckage. His chances of finding a decent meal before the heat death of the universe were dropping to zero.
The spot where Saitama's last punch had sealed the tear in reality began to shimmer. Not violently. Calmly. It rippled, like the surface of a pond.
A figure stepped out of the shimmer as if he were stepping over a puddle.
He was a tall man with stark white hair, wearing a simple, dark high-collared jacket and a black blindfold. He walked with a lazy, effortless confidence, a lollipop stick hanging from the corner of his mouth.
He stopped, his blindfolded gaze sweeping across the impossible scene. He saw the demon-boy with the big sword. The kid in the checkered coat who smelled of ash and sorrow. The magical knights. The two beings who were blatant violations of universal law. And the ridiculously overpowered bald man.
His Six Eyes processed it all in a nanosecond. Cursed energy, ki, magic, anti-magic, psychic phenomena, and two singularities that defied classification. A data overload that would have fried any other sorcerer's brain.
Satoru Gojo took the lollipop from his mouth. A wide, cocky, infinitely self-assured grin spread across his face.
"Well, now," he said, his voice dripping with amusement and the promise of beautiful, beautiful chaos. "This looks like a party."