The bald man's question hung in the air, so mundane it was almost absurd. The void creature, a being that defined itself by its ability to instill absolute silence and terror, tilted its non-head.
"What is... going on?" the creature repeated, its voice a discordant hiss of static. "We are correcting a cosmic imbalance. We are silencing the noise of aberrant power." Its flickering form turned fully towards Saitama. "You. You are the loudest of them all. A shrieking, unbearable cacophony in the stillness we crave."
Saitama just stared. "So you're like a librarian? But for superpowers?"
Genos stepped forward, his palm already glowing. "Sensei, be careful! My scans indicate its nullification field is active. Its radius is 1.12 meters. Any offensive ability deployed from within that range will cease to exist."
Tanktop Master, still slumped against a pile of rubble, looked up with wide, desperate eyes. "He's right! It drains you! I can't... I can't feel the Tanktop anymore!" The existential horror in his voice was thick enough to taste.
The void creature began to glide towards Saitama. "Come. Let us show you the peace of nothingness. Let us quiet you."
"Yeah, that sounds like a real pain," Saitama said, shifting his grocery bag to his other hand. The king crab legs were starting to drip. "Look, can you just move? You're kind of in the way of the supermarket."
The creature ignored him, its reality-eating hand outstretched. It was almost within range. Genos tensed, preparing to fire a long-range blast to draw its attention, a move with a low probability of success but one he had to try. Tanktop Master squeezed his eyes shut, unable to watch another hero be snuffed out.
From a rooftop two blocks away, Fubuki watched through a pair of high-powered binoculars, her heart pounding against her ribs. This was it. The ultimate test. An opponent who didn't fight with strength, but with absence. If Saitama's power was just another "ability," he was about to become a bald, unemployed man in a Halloween costume.
The void creature's hand entered the one-meter zone. The air around Saitama seemed to shimmer, as if reality itself was bending. The creature fully expected Saitama's immense power signature—that deafening roar it had sensed from blocks away—to simply vanish.
Nothing happened.
The creature stopped. It was like it had walked into a wall. The nullification field, which had effortlessly quenched the powers of a dozen heroes, was doing absolutely nothing to Saitama. It wasn't that his power was fighting back. It felt more like his power didn't even acknowledge the field was there. Like trying to put out a forest fire with a single drop of water. The drop just evaporated before it even got close.
"Error," the creature hissed, a note of something like confusion in its voice for the first time. "Power signature remains constant. Field integrity is at 100%. Data does not compute. You… What are you?"
Saitama sighed. The day was getting long. His ice cream was probably melting. "Me? I'm just a guy who's a hero for fun."
He took a step forward, closing the distance between them. The creature instinctively recoiled, but it was too slow.
Saitama's fist wasn't fast. It wasn't one of his serious punches. It was a lazy, annoyed swing, the kind of motion you'd use to swat a fly that had been buzzing in your ear for an hour.
His glove made contact with the center of the creature's flickering form.
There was no sound. No satisfying crunch. No shockwave. For a single, bizarre moment, it looked like Saitama's fist was just… gone, swallowed by the darkness.
Then, with a faint pop like a soap bubble bursting, the void creature imploded. Not in a shower of gore, but into itself. The flickering static, the oppressive silence, the reality-warping field—it all just folded inward and vanished.
Where the creature had been, reality rushed back in to fill the gap. The air smelled normal again. The streetlights seemed a little brighter.
Saitama pulled his fist back and examined his glove. "Weird. Felt like punching a TV that wasn't plugged in."
Silence descended on the warehouse district. Tanktop Master stared, his mouth hanging open. A warm, familiar tingling sensation was returning to his muscles. He clenched a fist, and the concrete beneath it cracked slightly. The power of the Tanktop was back. He had been saved. He, an S-Class hero, the pinnacle of strength, had been rescued by… that guy. The one everyone in the Association called a glory-hogging cheater.
Genos was furiously scribbling in his notebook. "Conclusion: Sensei's power is not an 'ability' that can be nullified. It appears to be a fundamental state of his existence, as immutable as the laws of physics. Or, more accurately, his existence has become its own law of physics."
On the rooftop, Fubuki lowered her binoculars, her hands shaking slightly. She'd come to observe a new threat. Instead, she had witnessed the absolute invalidation of every strategic model she'd ever built her life around. There were no tactics against that. No strategy. No weakness to exploit.
"It's just not fair," she whispered to herself, a laugh bubbling up that was equal parts awe and hysterical despair.
Saitama turned to Tanktop Master. "You good? You can stand up, right?"
"I… Yes…" the big hero stammered, getting to his feet. He looked from his own hands to Saitama, his pride warring with undeniable gratitude. "Thank you. You… you saved me. I don't understand how, but…"
"Okay, cool." Saitama started walking away. "C'mon, Genos. That two-for-one deal isn't gonna last forever."
"Right behind you, Sensei!"
They walked off down the street, leaving a deeply humbled S-Class hero standing in the rubble, questioning everything he thought he knew about strength.
Back at Hero Association HQ, chaos reigned.
"The camera crew's feed went dead!" an executive shouted. "What's Tanktop Master's status?"
"His tracker is still active, but his biometrics flatlined for a full thirty seconds!" another panicked. "Sir, I think we sent him to his death!"
Sitch gripped the edge of the conference table, his knuckles white. His career was flashing before his eyes. He'd sent one of their most beloved heroes into a meat grinder for a PR stunt. The scandal would destroy them.
Just then, his personal tablet beeped. It was a priority alert from the dispatch system. His eyes scanned the report, his expression shifting from dread, to confusion, to utter disbelief.
"Get me eyes on Sector 9 again, now!" he commanded. "Use Metal Knight's surveillance drone! I don't care what it's doing, redirect it!"
A few frantic keystrokes later, a high-altitude image of the warehouse district appeared on the main screen. They saw Tanktop Master, standing alone but alive. There was no sign of the entity. No threat.
"He did it…" one executive breathed in relief. "Tanktop Master pulled it off!"
"No," Sitch said, his voice quiet. He zoomed in on the data log from Tanktop Master's suit sensor. "His power output registered at zero for three and a half minutes. He was neutralized. Then… there was another energy spike. Off the charts. An unregistered signature." He pulled up a grainy image captured by a traffic camera a few blocks away. It showed two figures. A cyborg and a bald man in a yellow suit.
Sitch recognized him immediately. The oddball from B-Class. The one who kept showing up at the scene of Dragon-level incidents. Saitama.
He stared at the screen, putting the pieces together. The meteor. The Deep Sea King. Elder Centipede. Boros's ship. Every time, S-Class heroes were present, but this guy was always lurking in the background. They'd written it off as luck, or him stealing credit. But this time… this time an S-Class hero was the witness. An S-Class hero was the one who was saved.
They couldn't spin this. They couldn't ignore it. It was undeniable.
"Gentlemen," Sitch said, his voice heavy with resignation and a strange sort of decisiveness. "We have a problem. And a solution. We've been misclassifying an asset." He looked around the room. "Effective immediately, by emergency executive order… promote Saitama to S-Class. Bury the report about Tanktop Master's failure and frame this as a joint operation. I don't care how you do it. Just make it happen. Now."
Saitama finally got home, crab legs in hand, feeling victorious. The sale was still on. He'd even found a coupon for an extra 10% off. It had been a good day.
He was just about to start boiling the water when a small, sleek Hero Association drone buzzed up to his apartment window and knocked politely with a small metal claw.
Genos let it in. The drone extended a different claw, holding a single, official-looking envelope.
Saitama took it, tore it open, and scanned the letter inside.
Dear Hero Saitama (Registered Hero ID: 7717),
Due to exceptional performance in the field and the resolution of the recent Threat Level: Dragon incident in City D, the Hero Association Promotion Board has unanimously approved your immediate transfer to S-Class, Rank 18. Your new registration and responsibilities will be outlined in the attached documents. Welcome to the top.
He stared at the letter. S-Class. Rank 18. Huh. They finally got one right. Then he read the second line. "New registration and responsibilities."
His face fell.
"Responsibilities?" he groaned. "Great. That sounds like a lot of paperwork." He crumpled up the letter and tossed it on the table. "This is gonna be such a pain."
Far away, in the top floors of the Hero Association headquarters, a small, green-haired figure floated in front of a monitor, her psychic energy crackling around her like a miniature storm. The S-Class roster had just updated. A new face, a bald, stupid-looking one, had appeared at the bottom.
Tatsumaki's eye twitched. "S-Class? That B-Class nobody?" she hissed, the windows of the room beginning to rattle. "They're letting just any bald fraud in now? On whose authority?!"