"You disgusting bug! Who do you think you're talking to?! I'll crush you!!"
Black Dwarf roared, completely forgetting about his original target—the main tower of the bridge. The massive chain hammer Ruin swung down with space-tearing force, wrapped in dark red, destructive light and shrieking air pressure, smashing straight toward that tiny figure in the red cape—the bald guy still chewing on his rice ball amid ruins and fire.
The hammer fell so fast it left afterimages. Its power looked like it could drive the entire stretch of ramp straight into the East River.
On the bridge, Steve; on the rooftop, Clint; farther away, Natasha; and every civilian who happened to see this scene—all of their hearts leapt into their throats. It felt like, in the very next second, they would see that bald guy, along with the plastic bag in his hand, pounded into the road and turned into a smear of bloody paste.
Faced with this strike that could tear steel and shatter stone, Saitama just chewed his rice ball twice more. His left hand still held that precious half-price cup noodle. His left hand did nothing—but his right hand moved.
Casually.
He simply flicked his right arm upward and forward, as if he were lazily swatting away a fly from a dining table.
The motion was extremely simple, with no sign of him gathering strength. It even looked a bit absent-minded.
PFF—SHHHHHH—BOOM!!!
A bizarre sequence of sounds rang out: first, a dull pop like someone had punched a hole through an enormous, ultra-tough rubber ball; next, a violent hiss like a high-pressure gas cylinder blowing out all at once; and then, a chain of heavy, crashing impacts and shattering noises, as if something had been flung away at extreme speed and smashed through everything in its path.
All anyone saw was a track—so fast the naked eye couldn't really register it—flashing past in an instant.
And then—
A heartbeat ago, Black Dwarf had still been roaring and swinging his colossal hammer with world-shaking momentum. The next heartbeat, he was gone.
Only Ruin remained, that massive, heavy chain hammer. Its head slammed straight down into the already-damaged bridge deck and stuck there, buried deep in the broken surface. The dark red glow from its engine core dimmed rapidly, accompanied by the angry sizzle of shorting circuits.
Hundreds of meters away, on several old warehouse buildings near the Brooklyn shoreline, a thunderous crash announced the sudden appearance of a gigantic, jagged humanoid hole carved clean through the walls. Bricks, concrete, and twisted rebar blasted outward from the impact.
At the deepest point of the ruptured structure, one could just barely make out a few dark gray fragments, like chunks of "rock" that had been crushed in a hydraulic press, embedded in the inner steel wall of a huge shipping container, still shedding the occasional spark from the violent impact.
The air went dead silent.
It was as if someone had pressed pause on all the noise of the bridge in a single instant.
Only the crackle of burning flames remained.
The rush of water hammering against the river and bridge piers.
The distant thrum of helicopter rotors.
And…
The faint, muffled noise from the bald guy who, in his surprise, had forgotten to chew and was just sitting there with a mouthful of rice ball.
He shook out the arm he had just used to flick his punch, as if flinging off something dirty. Then he looked down at the ramp beneath his feet—still completely intact, aside from the cracks that had already been there—and at the path ahead, where the huge stone obstacle was now completely gone.
He nodded, satisfied.
"Mm, the road's clear."
Still talking mostly to himself, he lifted the plastic bag with the half-price cup noodles, stepped over a small patch of still-burning debris, and continued along the ramp toward the warehouse district on the other side. His stride was steady, as if all he'd done just now was casually sweep aside a not-too-big, not-too-small rock that had been in his way.
On the Brooklyn Bridge, everyone was petrified—including Captain America, Steve Rogers.
His eyes moved with difficulty from the massive hole smashed into the distant warehouse wall, back to the bald figure who was about to walk off the ramp, then down to the vibranium shield in his own hand.
A feeling called "smallness" pressed down on him—more real and more crushing than ever before.
(End of Chapter)
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