Chapter 417: Getting Straight To It
Ryū looked up at the sky above. Even with the naked eye, the clouds up there had visibly begun to warp and twist. Through Observation Haki, he could clearly sense the strange spatial distortion rippling through that entire stretch of air.
He rolled his wrist once, then slowly raised an arm. Ki, vast enough to rival an entire ocean, surged violently, gathering at his palm.
An enormous orb of Ki gradually took shape, its deep blue light blazing intensely, packed with an almost unfathomable amount of destructive potential.
By the time that blue orb had grown to roughly the size of a basketball, the space overhead abruptly tore open — a massive gash ripping violently across the sky.
The rift expanded almost instantly into a perfectly circular spatial jump gateway, at least a thousand meters across.
That vast, ominous, gaping tunnel now hung directly over New York City, plainly visible to every last resident below.
People on the street stopped in their tracks, craning their necks upward at the strange, circular "black hole" hanging in the sky.
The unknown always stirred up curiosity in people — but it stirred up fear in equal measure. Especially given how genuinely ominous the gateway looked, radiating an unmistakable sense of dread even at a glance.
Down on the street, a one-eyed man in an eyepatch — our resident braised egg head — stared up at the strange black hole in open bewilderment.
"What the hell?!"
Nick Fury, a senior figure at S.H.I.E.L.D. whose recent stress levels had apparently gotten so bad his eyebrows were falling out, had finally carved out an afternoon to clear his head — only for the sky itself to spring open into some bizarre, unexplained "black hole."
Fury genuinely started wondering if the universe had it out for him personally. All he'd wanted was one quiet afternoon off, was that too much to ask?
The moment he spotted that massive "black hole" overhead, Nick Fury's first thought was: some lunatic scientist causing trouble again, presumably.
His second thought: or maybe HYDRA's up to something again.
His third thought: or some other unhinged bastard chasing his own personal world-ending fantasy.
Fury didn't bother alerting the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. — the thing hanging in the sky was so obvious that if his own people hadn't already spotted it themselves, they'd deserve to be fired on the spot.
"Tony Stark lives around here somewhere... that weird black hole couldn't possibly have anything to do with that flashy playboy, could it?!"
Fury's brow furrowed. Just as he reached for his phone, intending to call Stark and find out what exactly was going on —
His pupils narrowed sharply. A dazzling beam of deep blue light had just streaked directly toward that "black hole," blazing with unmistakable, almost blinding intensity.
"What in the actual hell?!"
An unsettling premonition crept over Fury, and the next instant, he watched that "black hole" erupt into a violent explosion, apparently triggered by the blue beam's impact.
A terrifying shockwave surged outward in every direction, visible to the naked eye, sweeping without mercy across the entire skyline.
The sheer force of it looked practically identical to a Tsar Bomba detonation, and Fury's pupils clenched tight all over again — if that shockwave actually reached ground level, all of New York would be finished.
And then, in the very next instant — the massive "black hole," the rapidly expanding shockwave, all of it — simply vanished. Completely. Gone.
The sky returned to a flawless, unblemished blue, no trace of anything wrong left behind — if the shockwave hadn't already shredded the clouds apart moments earlier, Fury might genuinely have started questioning whether he'd hallucinated the whole thing.
But now what exactly had just happened? A sudden "black hole." A sudden blue beam. A sudden chain of explosions. And then... all of it, simply gone.
The entire sequence had unfolded in the span of maybe ten seconds flat, leaving Fury utterly baffled, with absolutely no idea what he'd just witnessed.
Something clicked in his head, and he hastily pulled out his S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued phone, dialing Tony Stark directly.
"Hello, Director Fury, this is JARVIS. Mr. Stark's asked that anyone trying to reach him please try again in a few days, thank you. Of course, if this is something urgent, feel free to leave a message with me, and I'll relay it to Mr. Stark when he returns. Thank you."
The voice on the other end left Fury's expression darkening on the spot. He took a deep breath and muttered flatly, "...Never mind. Wrong number."
Hanging up, Fury felt more and more convinced that Tony Stark almost certainly had something to do with whatever had just happened.
Or, more accurately — absolutely, definitely had something to do with it!
Meanwhile, inside the massive mirror-space the Ancient One had opened —
The terrifying shockwave had swept through the mirror-space's own replica of New York City, tearing apart most of the buildings as easily as paper, reducing well over half the city to rubble, a towering cloud of dust and debris rolling skyward.
And that was just the fringe of the blast. No telling what the actual epicenter of the explosion had done.
"We're planning to fight the alien army inside this mirror-space?" the Ancient One asked. "This is a Tier 1 quest — I'm not sure the mirror-space can hold up against damage on that scale."
Ryū watched the spatial jump gateway hovering overhead, quiet for a moment. That single Ki blast, per his Observation Haki's readout, had already wiped out several thousand life-signs in an instant.
In response to the Ancient One's concern, he said, "No need to fight them inside the mirror-space at all. We'll just go straight to them and wipe out every enemy on the spot — that'll clear the quest just fine."
Go straight to them and...
wipe out every enemy?
Classic Admin, honestly — bold thinking, bolder execution, and, from the sound of it, genuinely workable too.
The Ancient One couldn't help but privately marvel at that before nodding along. "No objections from me."
Tony Stark, fully suited up in his Iron Man armor, nodded as well. "None here either. Though — shouldn't we wait for my Avengers to show up?"
Tatsumaki cut in. "No need to wait. Let's just get in there and handle it directly."
Saitama had no objections either. "Whatever you all decide works for me. I'm the new guy here, no strong opinions."
"..."
Looking up at the spatial jump gateway, Ryū gave a faint smile. "Alright then — let's head up."
An instant later, a thunderous crash rang out beneath his feet, tearing a two- or three-meter-wide crater straight through the rooftop, and Ryū's entire body vanished on the spot.
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