Tony guided his armor down to the street, thrusters whining as he landed a short distance from Saitama. The faceplate snapped open with a hiss, revealing an expression so tangled it almost hurt to look at—shock, curiosity, disbelief… and a faint stab of humiliation all jumbled together.
He opened his mouth, staring at the bald head gleaming in front of him, and suddenly had no idea what to call this guy.
Sir?
Bald hero?
One Punch Man?
Nothing seemed to fit.
Steve arrived a moment later, boots crunching on broken glass and frozen rubble. He shot a wary glance at the scepter stabbed into the wreckage and at Loki, who now looked like his soul had left his body. Only then did he look properly at Saitama.
He drew in a deep breath, forcing his voice to stay steady and respectful.
"Sir… thank you for your help just now. I'm Steve Rogers. Captain America. This is Tony Stark—Iron Man."
He gestured toward Tony.
"We're trying to repel this alien invasion. You're… very strong. We need your help to end this war and protect the people of this city."
Saitama's steps slowed to a halt. He turned around, those famously blank, sleepy-looking dead-fish eyes landing on Steve, then drifting over to Tony's "what-even-are-you" stare.
"Help you… end the war?"
Saitama scratched his bald head, looking genuinely troubled.
"But… I'm really hungry."
He pointed at his own flat stomach.
"I only had one discount egg this morning. Finding a half-off hotpot place is more important right now."
He paused, actually thinking it over, then his eyes lit up slightly as an idea occurred to him. He pointed vaguely at the scattered Chitauri still firing in confusion around them.
"How about… you guys keep fighting for a bit? I'll go find a place to eat. I can bring some back for you while I'm at it. I think there's a shop over there that hasn't completely collapsed yet…"
His gaze drifted again toward that crooked signboard in the distance, full of unshakable longing for food.
Steve: "…"
Tony felt a rush of heat shoot straight to his head. He almost had JARVIS crank his external speakers to maximum so he could yell at this bald man properly.
An alien invasion. A battle for Earth's survival. And this guy wanted to put all of that behind a discounted hotpot? With takeout?!
At that moment—
VoooOOOmm…
A deep, immense engine roar rolled across the battlefield, layered with a pressure that felt like it could crush bones. It drowned out all the other sounds of war, rumbling down from the swirling portal above Stark Tower.
It didn't sound like the Chitauri's craft. This was older, heavier—metal and energy fused into a single, oppressive note that seemed to shake the soul.
Everyone, including Saitama—who had been seconds away from resuming his hotpot search—instinctively raised their heads.
The massive spatial rift at the top of the tower, its edges flickering with unstable blue light, suddenly rippled and twisted like a lake struck by a boulder.
From the far side of that tunnel, from some distant corner of the star-filled universe, something enormous began to push through.
First came a colossal ramming prow, the size of a mountain peak.
It was forged entirely from a dark, star-metal sheen, cold and heavy as if smelted from the cores of dead suns. Brutal, ancient patterns were carved into its surface, radiating a suffocating sense of pressure.
Then the rest of the ship followed, a star-dreadnought so immense it blotted out the sky.
It wasn't anything like the Chitauri's bio-mechanical horrors. It was pure, brutal engineering—cold, hard, built on a philosophy of overwhelming power and beautiful annihilation.
On either side of the hull, vast cannon muzzles yawned open, like the maws of abyssal beasts. Deep within, a dull red radiance began to glow ominously.
The warship was so huge that even with only a portion of its prow poking through the portal, its shadow already covered half the Manhattan combat zone. The Chitauri Leviathans, by comparison, looked like dinghies next to an aircraft carrier.
At the top of the ship, the command tower rose like a jagged crown.
And there, floating above it, was a throne.
A massive throne of dark gold metal, suspended in the air like a judgment seat of the gods.
On it sat a figure.
He was enormous—a towering, heavily muscled titan clad in dark-gold battle armor so thick it might as well have been a moving fortress. Scars from countless battles cut across his plates and pauldrons, melted into the metal in jagged burns.
His skin was an eerie purple, the color of some deep cosmic nebula. His jaw was ridged with vertical, rocklike grooves.
Most terrifying of all were his eyes.
Cold. Ancient. The eyes of someone who had watched stars die and species scream their last across the ages, and felt nothing more than passing interest. To him, life and death on a planetary scale looked like a casual game.
One hand rested lazily on the armrest of his throne. The other held a massive double-edged blade the size of a door, its edge glimmering with a chill that stank of death.
He wasn't trying to radiate power.
But the instant he appeared, a crushing, nameless weight descended on the battlefield, like a silent tsunami rolling in from the beginning of time itself.
Every Chitauri soldier that had still been firing or moving froze in place, as if someone had hit a massive pause button.
Their crimson eyes filled with instinctive, marrow-deep awe and terror. As one, they lowered their heads toward the ship and the figure on the throne.
Even Loki, who'd been dazed and half out of it, snapped into focus when he saw that silhouette.
His eyes flickered with a twisted mix of fear, ambition… and something like a subordinate's reflexive submission before an absolute master. He struggled to rise, as if to pay formal respect.
On Tony's face, the earlier absurdity and frustration vanished in an instant, replaced by a gravity he almost never showed—and a flash of pure dread.
JARVIS's alarms were now a shrill, frantic chorus in his ears.
"Warning! High-dimensional energy source detected! Energy readings… exceed database upper limit! Threat level… extinction-class! Repeat—extinction-class!"
Steve's grip on his vibranium shield tightened until his knuckles turned white.
He had seen the worst of war. He had fought Hydra, aliens, gods. But he had never felt anything like this—this suffocating, unmistakable sense of despair.
It felt like the entire planet itself was shivering in the shadow of that purple giant.
Black Widow and Hawkeye went pale, bodies tensing instinctively like small animals faced with a natural predator.
Even Hulk, who usually only knew anger, shifted his stance and let out an uneasy rumble, the pure rage in his eyes replaced by a wary instinct he barely understood.
The whole battlefield fell into a silence even heavier, even more suffocating than when Saitama had first appeared.
Thanos.
The Conqueror of Worlds. Eternal son of Titan.
He had come.
His massive, detached gaze slowly swept across the ruined battlefield below—past the broken city, the tiny Earth heroes, the shattered Loki.
Then, finally… it settled on one spot.
On the bald man in the dirt-yellow jumpsuit and red cape standing in the middle of the street. On the one who had held the scepter—and casually thrown it away.
Thanos's gaze lingered on Saitama for a fraction of a second longer than on anyone else.
Deep in those cold, purple eyes, something flickered—something as faint and elusive as stardust.
Scrutiny.
And… maybe a hint of doubt.
Eventually, his gaze shifted again, landing on the Mind Scepter stuck upright in the ruins near Saitama's feet, its blue gem still glowing softly.
Armored fingers tapped once, lightly, on the armrest of the throne.
Thud.
A sound no louder than a slow knock, yet it hammered against every heart on the battlefield.
A voice followed—low, heavy, resonant, echoing directly inside their minds, ignoring distance and the thin air of Earth's sky.
"The Tesseract. The Space Stone."
"The Mind Stone."
"Give them… to me."
"Or…"
Thanos's gaze rose again, sweeping slowly across New York City. The sheer destructive intent behind his eyes seemed to dim the sky itself.
"Watch your world… turn to dust."
Boom.
A dull impact roared across the city like a giant fist pounding New York's shattered heart.
The prow of Thanos's colossal flagship—the mountain-sized structure of star-metal and weapons systems, that war-machine whose very presence carried the weight of planetary extinction—met something impossibly small.
Saitama's fist.
When he moved, no one knew.
One instant, he'd been standing in the street. The next, his tiny knuckles, insignificant as a speck of dust, were pressed against the ship's armored ram.
There was no blinding explosion.
No galaxy-bright chain reaction.
It was like time itself suddenly slowed.
The super-alloy ram, forged to smash apart asteroids, clad in dark star-metal and threaded with conduits of terrible power—
Began to crumble.
Starting from the point where Saitama's fist touched it, the entire structure came apart silently, as if shoved into the heart of a cosmic grinder.
All of it: the armor, the inner framework, the power lines, everything that made up that prow, was reduced in an instant to raw, fundamental dust—back to its smallest, most basic particles by a force beyond any physical law.
And the collapse spread faster than light.
The ram vanished first. Then the massive front sections of the ship. Then the entire portion of the flagship that had just emerged from the portal…
Erased.
As if some universe-sized eraser had scrubbed it right off the fabric of reality.
In less than a ten-thousandth of a second, the flagship—Sanctuary II—whose mere appearance had brought the weight of extinction with it… was gone.
So was the dark-gold throne atop its command tower.
And the purple giant seated upon it, whose indifferent eyes had just surveyed the battlefield.
Ship, throne, and master—all gone.
No wreckage. No falling fire. No shattered hulls.
The huge tear in the sky itself warped and shuddered from the sudden annihilation of that much mass, rippling like a wounded beast—
Then began to stabilize again.
Only the faintest ripple of disturbed air spreading out from Saitama's punch remained to suggest any of it had actually happened.
Silence.
Absolute silence, like a frozen river, swept over the entire New York battlefield.
Below, the Chitauri soldiers who had just been kneeling in instinctive submission to Thanos now twitched and glitched where they stood.
The crimson light in their eyes flickered wildly, like broken bulbs. Their simple processors had just watched not one, but two events that completely violated their basic understanding of existence.
Something deep in their logic cores burned out.
Some of them began emitting shrill, meaningless screeches—pure electronic noise without purpose.
On Stark Tower's balcony, Loki—who had been struggling to rise and offer a bow—simply froze.
It was as if the highest-grade petrification spell had hit him square in the chest.
On his handsome face, the elegance, arrogance, ambition, and spite that Asgard's second prince had polished for centuries all shattered at once, leaving only one expression—
Blank, bone-deep stupefaction.
Golden blood dripped from the corner of his mouth onto the broken glass at his feet. He didn't notice.
His father, his terror, his goal.
The being he had taken as the embodiment of absolute power in the universe…
Gone?
Just like that?
Wiped out by a single punch?
"B… big… guy?"
Hulk's huge body swayed. His massive green fist slackened, the pulverized Chitauri corpse he'd been crushing slipping from his grip and plopping to the ground.
The murderous fury in his eyes had evaporated, replaced by something Hulk barely ever felt—pure, uncomprehending confusion.
That huge purple guy… had seemed bigger than Hulk. Stronger, even.
But the bald man… was stronger than him. Stronger than that purple guy.
Hulk's brain couldn't handle it.
Smoke-laced white breath blasted from his nostrils as he let out a long, puzzled grunt that didn't mean anything at all.
On a far rooftop, Hawkeye's recurve bow clattered to the floor, his fingers finally losing their grip.
He stayed frozen in his firing stance, mouth hanging open wide enough to fit an egg.
Beside him, Black Widow's sharp, battle-hardened gaze—usually able to catch the smallest shift in an enemy's stance—lost all focus.
She slid slowly down the cold, ruined wall behind her and sat heavily, nails digging into her own arms as if only pain could prove this wasn't some absurd nightmare.
"JARVIS… report… what the hell just happened?"
Tony's voice was so dry it sounded like sandpaper scraping steel, each word trembling.
He hovered in the air, red-and-gold armor catching only the faintest touch of sunlight. His faceplate was open, and the usual cocky smirk was gone.
All that remained was the dazed horror of a man whose entire worldview had just been taken apart.
"Sir…"
JARVIS's voice was lower than ever before, sluggish, full of static from overloaded computations.
"Target: Titan-class flagship 'Sanctuary II'… signal… completely extinguished. Structural disintegration: 100%. Energy core… no response. Associated target individual: Thanos… life-sign… terminated."
The AI actually paused for several seconds, as if it needed time to accept its own data.
"Logical… core… in severe overload. Unable… to analyze attack pattern. Threat assessment… target individual Saitama… reclassification: irresistible force. Recommendation… immediately cease all hostile activity."
"Irresistible force…"
Tony repeated the phrase under his breath.
He stared at Saitama's silhouette in the center of the street, mind empty.
All his proud science.
All the armor he'd poured his genius into.
All the rules of the universe he thought he understood.
In front of this bald man, they felt as fragile and childish as a soap bubble.
With a metallic clang, Steve's vibranium shield slipped from his numb fingers and hit the broken concrete at his feet.
The man who had survived the worst of World War II, who'd been frozen for seventy years, who had stood firm against alien armies, felt a chill race up his spine and explode behind his eyes.
His legs suddenly had no strength left.
He dropped to one knee on the shattered street, chest heaving, breath coming hard and uneven as he stared at the impossible figure at the center of it all—
The man who had erased both a god's flagship and the god himself with a single punch.
(End of Chapter)
[Check Out My P@treon For 20+ Extra Chapters On All My Fanfics!!]
[[email protected]/Draumel]
[Thank You For Your Support!]