The shimmering gateway in Saitama's living room pulsed, a chaotic swirl of color and light. Genos's body was sparking, his internal temperature soaring as he wrestled with the trans-dimensional equations.
"It is... unstable," he grunted, steam venting from his joints. "Dr. Kuseno's signal is being... interfered with. There is another energy signature piggy-backing on his frequency."
"Is it a bad guy?" Saitama asked, looking mildly interested for the first time. "A strong one?"
"Its power level is..." Genos's sensors whirred, unable to lock onto a consistent reading. "...significant."
Suddenly, the gateway flared violently. A wave of pure, psychic pressure washed over them, a feeling of ancient, cosmic indifference. It was not the raw, terrifying aura of Saitama's annoyance, but something different. Colder. More ancient.
The portal stabilized, no longer a chaotic swirl, but a perfect, black circle of absolute nothingness.
And something stepped through.
It was humanoid, but tall, impossibly slender, and clad in smooth, featureless white armor that seemed to be carved from solidified light. It had no face, only a smooth, blank expanse where its features should be. It didn't walk; it flowed across the floor, its feet making no sound. It carried no weapons, but the very air around it seemed to warp and hum with contained, immense power.
It stopped in the center of the room. It did not look at Saitama or Genos. Its blank face turned, as if a great, unseen eye had opened, and focused directly on Kafka Hibino.
You, a voice echoed, not through the air, but directly inside their minds. It was a voice that sounded like crumbling galaxies and dying stars. The Error. The Aberration. The Broken Symbiosis.
Kafka felt a chill so profound it seemed to freeze his very soul. This being wasn't looking at him. It was looking through him, at the Kaiju core fused to his being. And it was judging him with a cold, cosmic disgust.
Genos immediately moved, placing himself between the being and his master. "Identify yourself! You have trespassed—"
The white-armored being raised a single, slender finger.
Silence, Machine, the voice echoed again. And Genos's voice box was filled with a torrent of pure, white static. He tried to speak, but only a deafening shriek of electronic noise came out. At the same time, the creature's thought-voice filled his private network. Your creator sends his greetings. He apologizes for the inconvenience. He did not realize this frequency was already claimed.
The Herald had hijacked Dr. Kuseno's signal to get here. The hope of returning home had been a trap.
"Hey, are you going to stop making my friend screech like that?" Saitama said, finally standing up. The atmosphere in the room shifted. Saitama's casual, bored pressure began to push back against the Herald's cold, cosmic aura. Two immeasurable forces were meeting in a small, cheap apartment. "It's really annoying."
The Herald's blank face finally turned to Saitama. For the first time, the telepathic voice held a flicker of something other than indifference: surprise.
The Singularity. So, it is true, the Herald thought. An OOC—an Out of Context Contaminant. An existence that is not part of the Experiment.
"What are you talking about?" Saitama asked, cracking his knuckles. "And why are you after him?" he hooked a thumb at Kafka.
I am the Herald of the Progenitor, the being explained, its voice a tidal wave of information and ancient history. The Progenitor is the engine of galactic evolution. It seeds promising worlds with conflict, with tests. Your 'Kaiju' are its instruments. They are designed to test, to strengthen, to cull the weak and force life to achieve its ultimate potential. This world was one of its laboratories. An experiment.
Kafka stared in horror. The Kaiju, the source of all their suffering, their entire apocalyptic struggle... it was just a science experiment. A galactic-scale, brutal R&D project.
But this Experiment has been contaminated, the Herald continued, its gaze returning to Kafka. His creation, it gestured to him, was not part of the design. A flawed, accidental synthesis. An impure variable that corrupted the data. And your arrival, it turned its gaze to Saitama, is a fatal error. Your absolute, static power defies the very principle of evolution. You have broken the Experiment simply by existing.
The Herald raised its hand. Light began to gather in its palm, a miniature, swirling galaxy of destructive energy.
Therefore, the Progenitor has issued a single, final command. The broken laboratory must be cleansed. The failed experiment must be erased. This world is scheduled for Reset.
The sheer, arrogant, cosmic certainty of the proclamation was absolute. They were a lab rat in a cage, and the scientist had decided to sterilize the cage.
Saitama just stared at the swirling galaxy in the Herald's hand. He wasn't thinking about the Progenitor or the fate of the world. His thought process, as always, was much simpler.
This guy, this shiny, faceless, long-winded jerk, had used Genos's hopes to get here. He had called Kafka a mistake. And now, he was threatening to blow up the planet, a planet that contained Saitama's apartment, the last of his udon, and the promise of a future supermarket sale.
"No," Saitama said simply.
The Herald paused, its non-existent eyebrows figuratively raised. Your objection is noted. But it is irrelevant. The Progenitor's will is absolute.
"I'm not objecting," Saitama clarified, his face settling into that familiar, terrifyingly calm, blank mask. "I'm telling you."
He took a step forward, the floorboards groaning under the sheer, conceptual weight of his presence. His quiet, lazy aura was gone, replaced by a storm of silent, furious intent.
The Herald finally recognized the true nature of the being before it. This was not just a contamination. This was an antibody. A cosmic immune system responding to an infection.
For the first time since the dawn of time, the Herald felt a flicker of something it had never experienced before: hesitation.
Saitama pulled back his fist. The air in the room, the building, the city, did not just still. It seemed to hold its breath.
"Serious Series," he said, his voice a low, final whisper. The two words that Genos's journal had prophesized, the classification that Hoshina had dreamed of. The real fight, the fight that mattered, the fight he had been unconsciously craving, had finally, finally arrived at his front door.
"Serious Punch."