The rift hung in the sky like a jagged scar, its edges fraying into fractal tendrils that clawed at the fabric of reality. Cid Kagenou stood at the precipice of the cliff, the weight of the world—and his own unraveling legacy—pressing down on his slouched shoulders. In his palm, the coin spun relentlessly, Saitama's bored face and his own smirking visage blurring into a single, taunting spiral. Click. He caught it mid-air, tails up—his own image staring back. "Predictable," he muttered, though the word tasted hollow. His shadow, once a weaponized extension of his will, flickered weakly, a guttering candle in the face of the rift's pulsating hunger. Cities across the globe rebuilt in ignorance, their laughter and sirens a dissonant chorus to the silent war raging above.
In the blank, infinite expanse of The Backstage, Saitama slurped noodles from a cup that refilled itself endlessly. The walls whispered in the Void Eater's fragmented voice, a ghostly echo clinging to the edges of this purgatory. "You do not belong here. You are… unscripted." Saitama shrugged, chopsticks clinking against the rim. "Tell me about it. The decor's worse than my old place." A hairline crack splintered the void's seamless white. He punched it idly, and the room shattered like glass, spitting him back into the ruins of City Z. He landed in a crater where his apartment once stood, the rift above throbbing like an infected wound. Eclipse Spawn oozed from its edges—grotesque hybrids of shadow and light, their bodies glitching between Cid's theatrical flair and Saitama's brute simplicity. One abomination, a hulking titan with Cid's manic grin stretched across Saitama's bald head, crushed a skyscraper with a laugh. "NORMAL ATOMIC PUNCH!" it roared, obliterating an entire district in a shockwave of neon and ash. Saitama yawned. "Knockoffs never get the details right."
Cid materialized beside him in a swirl of dying shadows, Slayer of Gods sputtering in his grip like a faulty lighter. "Took you long enough, Baldie," he sneered, though the bite in his voice had dulled to a rasp. Saitama glanced at him, unimpressed. "You look like a burnt marshmallow." Before Cid could retort, the rift convulsed, vomiting forth the Harbinger Titan—a colossus with Claire's weeping face grafted onto its chest, Alpha's silver mask fused into its flesh like a twisted medal. Chains of screaming souls writhed around its limbs, each link a frozen moment of agony. "Brother…!" it wailed, Claire's voice warped into a sonic weapon that liquefied concrete and bone. Cid's blade trembled.
Claire sprinted through the ruins, Alpha at her side, the journal's final page—"All stories end. Make yours loud."—clutched in her bleeding hand. "Cid! It's using your fears!" she screamed, voice raw. The Titan's chains lashed out, aiming to impale her. Alpha intercepted, her scythe shattering on impact. "Go!" she barked, shoving Claire aside as Gamma and Delta surged forward, their attacks buying seconds at the cost of their bodies.
The Titan's fist descended like a meteor. Saitama caught it mid-air, boots carving trenches into the earth. "Family drama's the worst," he grunted, veins bulging as he hurled the Titan into the horizon. Cid lunged, blade piercing its mask—but the Titan dissolved, reforming as Minoru Kagenou, a trembling, powerless reflection of Cid's deepest shame. "You're nothing without your lies," it spat, eyes hollow. Cid froze, the blade slipping from his grip.
Saitama's fist atomized the illusion. "Boring." He grabbed Cid's collar, hoisting him eye-to-eye. "You done moping? That thing's eating the world." Cid's gaze burned—not with grandeur, but desperation. "Then let's feed it."
The Last Script
They plunged into the rift, a realm of swirling memories and dead timelines. The air thrummed with the whispers of forgotten worlds—heroes who fell, villains who won, and Cid Kagenous who never escaped their mediocrity. At the heart of the chaos loomed the Eclipse Tree, a blackened monstrosity with roots that devoured realities and branches that bore fruit of screaming faces. Nestled in its trunk pulsed the True Void Eater, a fetal abomination of pure entropy, its skin a translucent membrane stretched over collapsing stars. "Pathetic," it gurgled, voice a wet, infantile mockery. "You cannot kill what you are."
Cid's blade disintegrated, the last of his magic spent. He turned to Saitama, the reforged Eclipse Core glowing in his palm—a orb of condensed paradoxes, Saitama's resolve and Cid's desperation fused into a singularity. "Hit me."
Saitama raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"Punch. Me. Into. It."
Saitama shrugged. "Weird request, but okay."
"SERIOUS PUNCH!"
The blow struck Cid—not with destruction, but purpose. His body dissolved into a storm of shadows, merging with the Core, and rocketed into the fetus. Light and anti-light erupted in a silent supernova, unraveling the tree, the rift, the Void's final breath. Reality screamed—then sighed.
Epilogue: Shadows Fade, Fists Remain
The world stitched itself back together, the moon whole again, cities reborn with no memory of the storm. Claire found Cid in the ashes, his once-flawless facade cracked, his eyes hollow but human. "Who are you now?" she asked, voice trembling. He smiled—no smirk, no theatrics. "Just… Cid."
Alpha rebuilt Shadow Garden from the rubble, the void-worm's desiccated husk enshrined in their vault as a relic of hubris. Gamma pinned Saitama's cracked coupon to the wall—"50% OFF HEROICS"—its edges singed but intact.
Saitama returned to a new apartment, its fridge blissfully mundane. Inside, a note waited: "Rent's due. -Cid." He snorted, tossing it aside as the microwave hummed.
But in the deepest reaches of the cosmos, a single star flickered—a winking eye.