The last thing Glue Gunner saw was a hand that wasn't a hand. It was a hole in the world, a five-fingered patch of shimmering darkness that didn't reflect light so much as swallow it. When it touched his forehead, there was no pain. No impact. Just a sudden, profound quiet in his mind. The frantic drumbeat of his heart faded. The sharp sting of fear dissolved. His whole life—memories of hero academy, the pride of getting his license, the taste of the cheap ramen he had for lunch—it all just... stopped being important. It stopped being anything.
His eyes glazed over. His body went limp, sliding down the brick wall into a heap. He was still breathing, still alive, but the person who was "Glue Gunner" was gone. Only an empty shell remained, staring blankly at the wet pavement.
The void creature looked down at its work, its form wavering. "Another noisy spark, silenced," it whispered to no one. It turned and flowed back into the deepest shadows of the alley, leaving a C-Class hero career to end not with a bang, but with a vacant stare.
Back in Saitama's apartment, the TV had moved on to a commercial for men's hair growth products. Saitama clicked it off with a sigh.
"So, his power just switched off," he said, more to himself than to Genos.
"Correct, Sensei," Genos replied, already cross-referencing data streams on his laptop. The screen was filled with code, hero registries, and city surveillance feeds. "The energy signature vanished instantaneously. My analysis suggests an external field with a radius of approximately one meter that actively deconstructs a target's connection to the biological or technological source of their abilities."
Saitama blinked. "Uh, so it's a turn-offy field."
"An apt, if simplified, summary, Sensei." Genos's face was grim. "This threat is unprecedented. Brute force is irrelevant. Tactical superiority is irrelevant. Against a foe that can nullify the very concept of your strength, conventional combat is impossible. It is the ultimate anti-hero weapon."
He looked over at Saitama, his golden eyes filled with a new kind of worry. He wasn't worried about a monster being strong enough to hurt Saitama. He'd long ago concluded that was a statistical impossibility. No, he was worried about a threat that could take away the thing that made Saitama who he was. A monster that didn't fight him, but just… deleted his power.
What would be left of his Sensei then? Just a man?
"Huh." Saitama stood up and stretched, a series of loud pops echoing from his back. "That sounds annoying." He walked over to the kitchen and stared at the faucet. Drip… drip… drip… "This is also annoying." He whacked the faucet with the side of his fist. The drip stopped.
"Sensei, your precise application of percussive maintenance is remarkable," Genos noted, already logging the event. "I calculate you applied the exact force required to reseat the washer without damaging the pipe structure."
"Yeah, whatever." Saitama opened the fridge. It was mostly empty, save for a carton of milk and a single, sad-looking piece of wilted cabbage. "We're out of food. Let's go for a walk."
Genos was on his feet, his serious expression returning. "Are you going to investigate the disappearances in City D?"
"Nah. I'm going to the supermarket in City D." Saitama pulled on his yellow hero suit. "They have that special on king crab legs today. Two for one. And it's farther away, so it'll be, you know. A longer walk."
The logic was airtight. Genos didn't question it further. "Understood, Sensei. I shall accompany you to provide tactical support during your procurement mission."
Meanwhile, in the sterile, windowless briefing room of the Hero Association headquarters, the mood was anything but calm. Sitch, the gruff minister of the Association, slammed a fist on the long conference table.
"Seven!" he bellowed, his face red. "Seven heroes vanished in a single week! Three more since the news report last night! What are we paying our intelligence division for?"
A room full of executives in crisp black suits flinched. One of them, a weaselly-looking man with thin glasses, cleared his throat. "Sir, the data is… incomplete. There are no witnesses, no monster corpses, no energy readings. The heroes are simply gone. The only lead is the corrupted security footage, and even Metal Knight's drones can't make sense of the entity shown."
"So it's a ghost? A ghost that eats C-Class heroes?" Sitch growled, rubbing his temples. "The public is panicking. Our stocks are down three points. We need to project strength. Send in the S-Class."
"Which one?" another executive asked. "Tatsumaki is still recovering from the last battle and her temper is… volatile. Flashy Flash is off on some solo mission in the abyss. Bang has retired. Atomic Samurai is busy training his disciples."
The weaselly man spoke up again. "What about King? His mere presence has been known to make mysterious threats simply give up and die."
Sitch grunted. "King is in the middle of a private, high-stakes tournament for the new 'Heartthrob Fighter VII' game release. His manager says he is 'unreachable at this critical juncture.' We need someone we can deploy now. Someone strong, dependable."
There was a moment of silence as they all mentally ran through the available roster.
"Send Tanktop Master," Sitch finally said. "He's tough, his public approval is high, and he follows orders. Tell him to go to City D, find whatever is doing this, and crush it. And get a camera crew ready. We need a win, and we need it on the evening news."
Fubuki sat in her office, a high-tech penthouse that served as the Blizzard Group's headquarters. The city spread out below her like a circuit board, a tapestry of lights and shadows. On the massive screen that dominated one wall, the same corrupted footage of the beetle hero played on a loop.
Her fingers drummed on her polished mahogany desk. She'd tried to dismiss her conversation with Saitama as another fruitless effort. But his casual disinterest was an itch she couldn't scratch. And her own parting words haunted her. 'Things you can't just punch away.'
Was this it? Was this the kind of threat she'd warned him about?
Her subordinate, the one called Monkey, entered the room hesitantly. "Ma'am? We have reports from our street-level informants in City D. They say the last three heroes who disappeared were all operating in the old warehouse district. Sector 9."
Fubuki nodded, her eyes still locked on the flickering static figure on the screen. It wasn't a monster of flesh and blood. It was something else. Something abstract. Her psychic powers gave her a sensitivity to things beyond the physical, and this thing… it felt cold. Like a void.
"And another thing, ma'am," Monkey added. "Hero Association dispatch just deployed Tanktop Master to that exact area."
Fubuki's expression hardened. Tanktop Master. A hero whose entire identity was tied to his overwhelming physical strength. Sending him against a creature that nullified powers was like sending a lit match to fight a hurricane. The Association was sending him to his doom, all for a quick PR victory. It was incompetent. It was suicidal.
Saitama would punch him once and go home, a small part of her brain supplied. She angrily pushed the thought away. This wasn't about him. This was about navigating the new, dangerous landscape of their world. She had to be smarter than the HA. She had to anticipate threats they couldn't even comprehend.
"Get the car ready," she ordered, standing up. "We're going to City D."
"To assist Tanktop Master?" Monkey asked, surprised.
"No," Fubuki said, a cold, calculating look in her eyes. "To observe. And to gather data. I want to know exactly what we're up against." Before her sister, before the Hero Association, and certainly before that infuriatingly simple bald idiot ever got there.
City D's warehouse district was a graveyard of rusting steel and broken concrete. Tanktop Master landed in the center of the main street, his impact cracking the asphalt. He stood tall, a mountain of muscle wrapped in a blue-striped tank top. His fans loved him. The Association trusted him. He was the embodiment of pure, honest strength.
"Alright, you coward!" he bellowed, his voice echoing off the derelict buildings. "Hiding in the shadows, picking on the little guys! Face the power of the Tanktop!"
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, from the mouth of a dark alley, a figure emerged. It didn't walk; it drifted. The shifting, flickering void of a creature solidified just enough to look him in the eye, its form still blurry and indistinct.
"Power," the static voice hissed. "You reek of it. It's a loud, ugly noise. We have come to bring the silence."
Tanktop Master grinned. "Silence this!" He crouched low, his massive leg muscles coiling like industrial springs. "TANKTOP… TACKLE!"
He shot forward like a freight train, a living battering ram of righteous muscle. He was an S-Class hero. He'd toppled buildings with this move. He could feel the familiar, comforting surge of his own superhuman power flowing through him, ready to pulverize this shadowy freak.
The void creature simply raised a hand.
When Tanktop Master came within a meter of it, the feeling was instantaneous and horrifying. The river of strength inside him didn't just stop; it evaporated. One moment, he was a locomotive. The next, he was just… a man. A very large, very muscular man running in a tank top, his momentum carrying him forward on utterly normal human legs.
The S-Class hero stumbled, his charge dissolving into a clumsy, confused jog. He stared at his own hands, flexing them. The muscles were still there, hard as rock from years of training. But the power behind them, the superhuman force that let him lift trucks and punch through concrete, was gone. Utterly and completely gone.
"What… what did you do to me?" he gasped, his voice tight with panic.
"We did nothing," the void creature purred, gliding closer. "We are a field of absolute stillness. In our presence, your loud little spark simply went out. As it should."
Tanktop Master took a stumbling step back, his heart pounding with a fear he hadn't felt since he was a child. He was helpless. The chiseled physique he'd built his entire life around was now just useless meat.
The creature's shimmering, dark hand reached for his face, just as it had for all the others. "Now, for the silence."
Clomp.
The sound was out of place. Unassuming. Just the sound of a rubber boot hitting asphalt.
Clomp.
Both Tanktop Master and the void creature turned toward the sound.
Down the street, two figures approached. One was a glowing, heavily armed cyborg whose optical sensors were already scanning and analyzing everything with terrifying intensity. The other was a bald man in a cheap-looking yellow jumpsuit, a bag of groceries in one hand.
Saitama stopped, looking from the terrified, depowered S-Class hero to the flickering, reality-distorting creature. He took a long, thoughtful look at the bizarre scene.
"Hey," he said, his voice flat and bored. "What's going on here?"