Falling sucks.
Falling through a void that smells like burning toast and ozone sucks even more.
Kazuma Satou was screaming. It was a dignified scream, he told himself—manly, deep, authoritative. In reality, he sounded like a teakettle being murdered.
Beside him, Aqua was doing the backstroke through the dimensional ether, crying waterfalls that turned into sparkling mist.
"KAZUMA! MY GODDESS STATUS! I CAN'T FEEL MY GODDESS STATUS!"
"You never used it anyway!" Kazuma roared back, grabbing her ankle to keep from drifting away.
They weren't just falling down. They were falling sideways. Through loops. Through geometries that hurt the brain to look at.
A flash of orange.
Goku flew past them—actually trying to fly. His aura flared, golden light erupting, but sputtered out like a wet match.
"Whoa!" Goku spun out of control. "My Ki... it feels sticky! I can't lock on!"
"Incompetent monkey," a deep voice smoothed over the chaos.
Anos Voldigoad was descending with his arms crossed. He wasn't falling. He was simply deciding to lower his altitude. He looked like he was riding an invisible elevator.
"The laws of physics here are merely suggestions," Anos commented, glancing at a passing fractal pattern. "How amusing."
"AAAAAAAGGGGGGHHH!"
Asta zoomed past Anos, flapping his giant sword like a wing. It wasn't working.
"I'M GOING TO DIEEEEE BEFORE I BECOME WIZARD KIIIIIING!"
Tanjiro, meanwhile, was holding his breath. Total Concentration Breathing. He twisted his body in mid-air, scanning below.
He smelled wet concrete. Rust. Dust.
"Everyone!" Tanjiro's voice cut through the wind. "Brace for impact! Aim for the..." He squinted. "The giant pile of trash!"
"Trash?!" Kazuma looked down.
Below them wasn't a nice grassy field. It was a landscape made of nightmares. Skyscrapers fused with medieval castles. A spaceship crashed into a giant pagoda. It looked like a child had dumped six different Lego sets onto the floor and stomped on them.
The ground rushed up fast.
"Shield!" someone yelled—not from their group, but from below.
A neon-green hexagon materialized in the air.
SLAM.
Kazuma, Aqua, Darkness (who was blushing), and Megumin hit the barrier face-first. They slid down it like bugs on a windshield, landing in a heap on top of a crushed taxi.
Goku landed on his feet, cracking the pavement.
Anos touched down silently.
Asta crashed into a billboard that read "DAILY BUGLE" but in Japanese kanji, slicing it in half.
Tanjiro rolled, absorbing the impact, and immediately checked the box on his back. "Nezuko? You okay?" A soft hmpf answered him.
Then, a final whistle.
Plop.
Saitama landed in a dumpster.
Garbage bags exploded upward. Banana peels rained down.
Silence fell over the crash site.
"Ow," Kazuma groaned, peeling his face off the taxi's hood. He looked around. "Where... what is this dump?"
"It appears to be a convergence of discarded timelines," Anos said, dusting an imaginary speck of dirt off his sleeve. He looked at the green barrier that had saved the Konosuba group. It was fading away. "And we aren't alone."
A figure stepped out from behind the crushed taxi.
He held a shield with a glowing green gem. He wore a cloak, armor, and a scowl that could curdle milk.
Naofumi Iwatani looked at the pile of idiots who had just fallen from the sky. "Great. More refugees. Just what I needed."
"Refugees?" Goku shook his head, slapping his ears to clear the pressure. "Hey, Shield Guy! Where are we? Is there food?"
"Food?" Naofumi's eye twitched. "You just fell through a hole in reality, and you want lunch?"
"My eggs," a muffled voice came from the dumpster.
Saitama rose from the trash like a zombie. He held up the plastic bag. Yellow yolk dripped sadly from the bottom.
"They're broken." Saitama sounded devastated. More devastated than when he faced world-ending alien warlords. "All of them. Even the organic ones."
"Dude, who cares about eggs?!" Asta yelled, jumping down from the ruined billboard. "WHERE IS THE WIZARD KING? IS THIS THE UNDERWORLD?"
"QUIET!"
The shout came from the ground. Or rather, in the ground.
A tuft of black hair shaped like a mushroom was poking out of the concrete near Asta's feet.
Everyone stared.
The concrete cracked. A boy burst upward, scattering rocks. He was holding a half-eaten cream puff in one hand, completely unharmed. He wore a black robe that looked vaguely magical but filled out with impossible muscle mass.
Mash Burnedead took a bite of his cream puff. "You made me drop a crumb."
"You were buried in cement!" Kazuma pointed an accusing finger. "How are you eating?!"
"Muscles," Mash explained, as if that answered the question. He looked at Asta. He looked at the giant anti-magic sword. "Nice sword. Is it heavy?"
Asta's eyes sparkled. "IT IS! YOU WANNA TRY?"
"Sure."
Asta handed Mash the Demon-Slayer sword. The sword that negated magic. The sword that weighed a ton. Mash took it with one hand. He swung it like a twig. The wind pressure blew Aqua's skirt up, revealing blue-and-white stripes.
"Hey!" Aqua shrieked, holding her skirt down.
"Not bad," Mash noted, handing it back. "Good for triceps."
"DID WE JUST BECOME RIVALS?!" Asta screamed, inches from Mash's face.
"I'd rather go home and bake," Mash said deadpan.
"Okay," a new voice joined the fray. "Can we pause the testosterone fest for two seconds?"
A blue slime bounced off Naofumi's shoulder and landed on the pavement. The slime shimmered, grew, and shifted. In a second, a small, androgynous figure with silver-blue hair and a katana appeared.
Rimuru Tempest smoothed his coat. "I've been analyzing everyone's magicules—or energy signatures, or whatever you call them—since you landed."
Rimuru pointed a finger at the sky. The rift they fell through was sealing up.
"Raphael says that wasn't a portal," Rimuru said seriously. "It was a deletion. Your universes didn't just connect. Parts of them were ripped out and stitched here."
"Stitched?" Tanjiro stepped forward, his hand trembling slightly on his sword hilt. He could smell it now. The overwhelming scent of too many people. "Are you saying... our homes are gone?"
"Not gone," Anos corrected. He walked over to the edge of the junk pile they were standing on. He gestured outward. "Displaced."
They all moved to the edge.
Kazuma gasped.
Goku whistled.
Saitama looked at the view, then back at his eggs, then back at the view.
They were high up on a mountain of debris. Stretching out to the horizon was a city that defied logic.
To the north: The shining, futuristic skyscrapers of Hero Association's City Z, mashed directly into the chaotic architecture of Cyberpunk's Night City.
To the east: The walls of Attack on Titan, but breached, with parts of the Soul Society from Bleach seemingly grown over them like ivy.
To the west: A massive forest that looked like the Great Forest of Jura, but centered around a giant floating castle that Kazuma recognized from Konosuba.
And everywhere—floating islands, upside-down pyramids, trains running through the air on tracks of pure light.
"It's a mess," Naofumi muttered, crossing his arms. "I've been here for three hours. People are panicking down there. Heroes, villains, civilians... all mixed up."
"Billions," Goku murmured. His goofy demeanor vanished. His eyes darted around, tracking movements too fast for the others to see. "I can sense billions of powerful energies. Some are evil. Some are good. And some..." He looked up at the very center of the city.
Hovering in the sky, miles away, was a massive, rotating ring of black metal. It pulsed with the same violet light as the rift.
"...Some are just scary," Goku finished.
"So," Kazuma rubbed his temples. "Let me recap. We have a Goddess, a Demon King, a loud kid with a rusty sword, a mushroom-head who eats rocks, a slime, a shield bro, a samurai, and a monkey-man."
"Saiyan," Goku corrected.
"Whatever." Kazuma looked at the sky. "This is an isekai nightmare. What's the quest? Kill the Demon Lord? Save the princess?"
"Survive," Naofumi said darkly.
"Attention, anomalous entities."
The voice didn't come from a speaker. It vibrated in their bones.
Everyone flinched. Tanjiro covered his ears. Asta dropped his sword.
High above the city, on the black ring, a hologram projected itself against the clouds. It was a giant eye.
"WELCOME TO VECTOR PRIME."
The voice was mechanical, cold, and utterly devoid of empathy.
"UNIVERSAL INTEGRITY HAS BEEN COMPROMISED. YOU ARE THE RESIDUAL DATA. RECONSTRUCTION IS IMPOSSIBLE. COOPERATION IS MANDATORY."
"Mandatory?" Anos scoffed. "I don't take orders from geometric shapes."
"SURVIVAL RATE ESTIMATE: 4%."
"Four percent?!" Aqua cried, hugging Kazuma's leg. "I'm too beautiful to be a statistic!"
"INITIALIZING SORTING PHASE. CLASS S THREATS DETECTED."
Red laser grids swept across the junkyard. They passed over Kazuma (Green light - Harmless). They passed over Tanjiro (Yellow light - Potential).
They hit Anos. [ERROR].
They hit Goku. [WARNING].
They hit Saitama.
The laser scanner lingered on Saitama's bald head. It beeped. It whirred. Smoke started coming out of the projection ring in the distance.
[ANALYSIS FAILED. ERROR. ERROR. INFINITE VALUE DETECTED.]
"My head isn't infinite," Saitama said, annoyed. "It's average sized."
BOOM.
Something exploded in the city below. A massive column of fire erupted, shaking the junk mountain.
"That Ki..." Goku turned sharply. "I know that Ki!"
From the smoke of the explosion, a figure shot into the sky. Blue hair. Blue armor. Radiating energy that made the air shake.
"VEGETA!" Goku shouted, cupping his hands.
But Vegeta wasn't alone. He was fighting something.
A creature made of black slime and white armor plates. It moved like liquid, dodging Vegeta's energy blasts.
"Is that..." Rimuru narrowed his eyes. "That looks like a monster from my world. But twisted."
"It's a Void Creature," Naofumi said, raising his shield as debris rained down. "They started showing up an hour ago. They eat magic. They eat energy. And they don't die."
The Void Creature slapped Vegeta out of the sky. The Prince of Saiyans crashed into a building shaped like a giant mushroom.
"Okay," Goku cracked his knuckles. The gold aura flared to life, shaking the loose trash around them. His hair stood up. "Looks like the sales pitch is over."
"We fight?" Asta grabbed his sword, grinning wildly. The fear was gone. This was a fight to protect people. That, he understood.
"We fight," Tanjiro agreed, taking a breath. The air tasted metallic, but Oxygen was Oxygen. Water Breathing...
Anos looked at Saitama.
"Shall we?" the Demon King asked.
Saitama tossed the bag of broken eggs into the fire. He looked surprisingly serious now.
"Yeah," Saitama said, clenching his gloved fist. "That thing ruined Vegeta's landing. And I'm pretty sure it just stepped on a grocery store down there."
The Void Creature roared—a sound like twisting metal—and turned its eyeless face toward them.
Kazuma sighed, pulling out his short sword. His hand was shaking, but he didn't run.
"Fine," he muttered. "Opengers Assemble... or whatever."
They leaped.