Genos's work took a month. A month during which the world held its collective breath under a scarred and healing sky. He had transformed their wrecked apartment building into a monstrous, humming monument to rogue science, siphoning power and raw materials from every available source until, finally, he was ready.
In the center of the living room, a perfect, stable, black-as-pitch gateway now hung in the air. It did not swirl or pulse; it was a silent, patient wound in the fabric of space.
"The gateway is stable, Master," Genos announced, his voice filled with pride and exhaustion. "It is locked onto the Herald's residual energy signature. On the other side... is the Progenitor."
Saitama, who had spent the month mastering the final level of Raging Fighter V, stood and stretched. "Finally. I was running out of things to do."
Kafka, who had been appointed "chief of watching dials that beep," looked at the portal with a mixture of terror and determination. "So this is it."
"Indeed," Genos said. "Captain Ashiro and Officer Shinomiya have been informed. They will... 'handle the public narrative,' as they say."
The two heroines were not there to see them off. A quiet understanding had been reached. This was a battle beyond their world, beyond their jurisdiction. Their job was to protect the Earth while its three strangest guardians were away on an impossible mission.
Saitama, Genos, and Kafka stood before the void.
"Ready?" Saitama asked, not with any sense of drama, but with the casualness of a man asking if his friends were ready to go out for ramen.
Kafka took a deep breath. He was about to willingly step into the heart of the realm of the creatures he had been fighting and hiding from his entire life. But the fear was gone, replaced by a strange sense of purpose. He was the Monster's Advocate, and he was about to go advocate for his entire world with his fists. He nodded.
Genos bowed. "For you, Master, always."
"Alright," Saitama said. "Let's go punch a space-bug."
And together, the three of them stepped through the gateway.
They did not find a world of fire and brimstone. They found... silence.
They were standing on a vast, crystalline platform, floating in a sea of pure, empty space. Below them, a swirling nebula of purple and gold gently pulsed. Around them, stars were born and died in silent, beautiful bursts of light. It was the heart of creation. A place outside of time.
And in the center of the platform sat the Progenitor.
It was not a beast. It was not a monster. It was a being of pure, geometric thought, a constantly shifting fractal of light and shadow, beautiful and terrifying to behold. It radiated an intelligence so ancient and so vast that it felt like a physical weight on their souls.
Welcome, Contaminants, the Progenitor's voice echoed in their minds. It was the same cosmic, crumbling-galaxy tone as the Herald, but a thousand times older, a thousand times more powerful. I have been observing you since my Herald's... malfunction. Your arrival was expected.
Genos immediately went on the offensive, his cannons humming to life. But the Progenitor did not move.
Your weapons are irrelevant here, Machine. This is not a physical space. This is a conceptual one. You cannot fight an idea with fire.
Genos's cannons sputtered and died, the energy unable to coalesce in this strange, rule-breaking reality.
And you, the Progenitor turned its 'gaze' to Kafka. The broken symphony. The flaw in the data. You have chosen to align yourself with the Error that broke the system. A pity. You had such... potential.
"We're here to stop you," Kafka said, his voice surprisingly strong.
Stop me? the Progenitor's thought-voice was filled with a deep, cosmic amusement. Child of dust, I am the very engine of progress. I am the conflict that forges stars from hydrogen. I am the predator that forces the prey to run faster. The worlds I test are clay, and the Kaiju are my hands, sculpting them into something worthy. Your world was just one of my countless art studios. A flawed, and now ruined, piece.
It finally focused on Saitama, the one being in the universe who seemed utterly unimpressed by its cosmic grandeur.
And you. The Singularity. The rock in the river of time. A being of absolute power, and therefore, of absolute stagnation, the Progenitor stated. You cannot grow. You cannot change. You are the antithesis of everything I am. Your very presence is a poison to my great work. I cannot destroy you with force... so I will test you with something far more potent.
The crystalline platform beneath them began to shift. The sea of space faded away, replaced by an image of a battered, but living, Earth.
You have come here to 'punch' me, have you not? A very simplistic solution, the Progenitor said. But let us elevate this confrontation. Let us have a true battle. A battle of wills. A written test, on a cosmic scale.
A single, stark question burned itself into the air before Saitama, written in letters of pure starlight.
WHAT IS THE VALUE OF A SINGLE, UNCHANGING WORLD IN A UNIVERSE THAT SURVIVES ONLY THROUGH CONSTANT, BRUTAL CHANGE?
The weight of the question was absolute. It was the core dilemma of existence. Is peace just another word for stagnation? Is struggle the only true path to greatness?
Genos's processors began to whir, trying to compute the philosophical and ethical ramifications, and found themselves locked in an infinite logical loop. Kafka stared, the question too vast, too profound, for his tired, human mind to grasp.
Provide me with an answer worthy of your power, Singularity, the Progenitor's voice commanded. Convince me that your quiet little rock, this single, failed experiment, is worth sparing. Convince me that its static peace is more valuable than the glorious, eternal struggle I offer.
Succeed, it continued, the image of Earth shimmering, and I will leave your world in peace, a forgotten, stagnant pond in the cosmic ocean.
Fail... it trailed off, and the image of Earth wavered, threatening to dissolve into dust. ...and I will simply Reset the board and begin a new, more promising, Experiment. Your choice. Your final test.
Saitama stared at the shimmering question. He looked at the image of the Earth. He thought of his apartment, the grocery sales, the comfortable silence of an afternoon nap. He thought of his strange, noisy disciple. He thought of his new, even stranger, monster-friend who made surprisingly good coffee.
The Progenitor, a being of infinite intelligence and cosmic perspective, awaited a grand, philosophical thesis.
Saitama just cleared his throat. He had a simple, one-word answer. An answer born not of cosmic understanding, but of a quiet, unshakeable, and profoundly human conviction. An answer inspired by the very things the Progenitor saw as worthless: the simple, unchanging, and beautifully boring details of a life.