The Hero Association HQ was vibrating with the kind of nervous energy usually reserved for imminent apocalypses.
Sitch sat at his desk, his hands folded over the sleek black hard drive Fubuki had just slammed onto the polished wood. It sat there like an unexploded bomb.
"Fifty million," Fubuki said. She didn't blink.
Sitch choked on his coffee. "Fifty million yen? Miss Blizzard, that's... that's extortion. We have a standard finder's fee for intel recovery. It is significantly less than the GDP of a small island nation."
Fubuki leaned forward. She looked impeccable, despite having spent the night running raid logistics for a man who punched elevators. "This isn't lost and found, Sitch. This drive contains the entire dirty laundry list of your biggest competitor. It has proof of monster coercion, illegal cybernetics research, and financial fraud linking them to shell companies in the Cayman Islands. I've seen the file headers."
She tapped the drive with a manicured nail.
"If I walk out with this, I'm sure the media would pay double. Or maybe I just leak it on the internet for free. You know, for 'transparency.'"
Sitch looked at her. Then he looked at the drive. He knew she was right. This was the nail in the Neo Heroes' coffin, and the lifeline the Hero Association desperately needed to regain control.
"Fine," Sitch groaned, signing a digital authorization. "Fifty million. Wiring it to... let me guess, the 'Saitama Asset Management Fund'?"
"Correct," Fubuki said, smiling like a shark. "And I expect a 10% consultancy fee processed separately."
Down in the server sub-basement, Child Emperor was plugged directly into the drive. He wasn't interested in the money. He sucked on a lollipop, his fingers flying across three keyboards simultaneously.
Zombieman stood behind him, leaning against a server rack, cleaning a very large gun.
"This encryption is nasty," Child Emperor mumbled. "It's bio-metric code. It shifts every time you look at it. It's almost... alive."
"Can you crack it?" Zombieman asked.
"Already did. I bypassed the logic gate by feeding it a loop of logic puzzles. It's busy trying to solve a paradox." Child Emperor hit a final key. "We're in."
Screens flooded with data. Blueprints for the bio-suits. Locations of monster holding cells. Bribes paid to politicians. It was damning stuff. But Child Emperor scrolled past it all, looking for the root directory.
"Here," he whispered. "Folder: PROJECT AKASHIC."
He opened it.
Silence filled the room. Zombieman stopped cleaning his gun.
The files weren't about money or recruitment. They were maps. But not maps of Earth. They were maps of… vibration frequencies.
"What are we looking at?" Zombieman asked, squinting.
"They aren't just building suits," Child Emperor said, his voice trembling slightly. "They're building a door. Look at this power source analysis. The suits gather kinetic data, but they don't store it. They transmit it."
"Transmit it where?"
"To a dimension adjacent to ours," Child Emperor zoomed in on a diagram. "They call it the 'Void Space.' And look at the target data."
A graph appeared on the screen. A single, vertical red line that went off the chart.
SUBJECT: SAITAMA (THE ANOMALY)
STATUS: KEYSTONE
OBJECTIVE: DESTABILIZATION
"They think he's a plug," Zombieman realized. "A cork in a bottle."
"And they want to pull it," Child Emperor finished. "The nullification monsters, the psychic attacks, the exhibition match... it wasn't to defeat him. It was to resonate with him. To find his frequency. Because if you shake the keystone hard enough..."
" The wall comes down," Zombieman finished darkly.
In City Z, the wall had already come down. Specifically, the north-facing wall of Saitama's apartment.
King stood in the middle of the living room—or what was left of it. The wind whistled through the gaping hole, fluttering the hem of his hoodie. He held a game controller, staring at the blank spot where the TV used to be.
"So," King rumbled, his 'King Engine' heartbeat thumping a nervous rhythm. "No Mario Kart today?"
Saitama was sweeping dust into a pile that was now larger than the actual furniture. "Nope. TV melted. Console is toast."
"That's a shame," King said, trying to keep his voice steady. Being in a room that looked like a war zone terrified him. "I brought the limited edition expansion pass."
Genos was sitting on a folding chair, Dr. Kuseno fussing over his open cranium panel with a soldering iron.
"I am deeply sorry, King," Genos apologized, not moving his head. "My logic centers were compromised. I nearly vaporized our gaming sanctuary."
"It's fine," King squeaked. "Just... don't do it again."
Saitama stopped sweeping. He looked at the pile of debris. Then he looked at the hole in the floor leading to the downstairs neighbor (who had wisely moved out months ago).
"Fubuki said we got fifty million yen," Saitama said.
"That is sufficient to purchase a small fortress," Dr. Kuseno noted, tightening a screw. "Or repair this building with reinforced titanium plating."
"Nah," Saitama said. "I'm gonna buy a safe."
"A safe?" King asked.
"Yeah. A big one. For the coupons. And maybe some gum." Saitama sighed. "But first, I gotta fix the bathroom. The draft is killing me."
He walked toward the bathroom door, which was hanging off one hinge. Zombieman had gone through it hard.
Saitama stepped inside. The tiles were cracked. The mirror over the sink was shattered in a spiderweb pattern. But the weirdest part was the air.
It felt… sticky.
Saitama waved his hand. The air rippled. Not like wind, but like water. Visual distortion. It looked like heat haze on a highway, but inside his bathroom.
"Genos," Saitama called out. "Did you leave the shower running? It's weird in here."
"Negative, Sensei. My hydration systems are offline."
Saitama peered into the shattered mirror. He saw his reflection. Bald head. Yellow suit. Bored expression.
Then, his reflection blinked.
Saitama hadn't blinked.
He froze. He leaned closer. "Hey. There's something on your face."
The reflection grinned. It wasn't a nice grin. It was a grin full of sharp teeth and malice. And the suit the reflection was wearing wasn't yellow.
It was black.
In the deepest shadow of the Ghost Town, beneath the rubble of the Monster Association, something stirred.
Psykos knelt before a swirling vortex of black energy. It wasn't a monster. It was a tear in the fabric of the world, held open by ancient stone pillars covered in glowing runes.
Beside her stood a man. He didn't look like a fighter. He looked like a salaryman, but his eyes were voids of scrolling binary code. This was the "Backer." The intelligence behind the Neo Heroes. The Cybernetician.
"We have the frequency," the Cybernetician stated. "The exhibition match provided the final variable. Saitama's power resonates at a frequency that technically shouldn't exist."
"Chaos," Psykos whispered. "Pure, unadulterated chaos wrapped in human skin."
"Precisely. Our world cannot contain him much longer. The structural integrity of this dimension is fracturing around him. Look."
He projected a hologram. It showed a map of Earth. Red cracks were spreading from City Z.
"The drive we let them take? It was a Trojan horse," the Cybernetician smiled cruelly. "While Child Emperor analyzes our files, the drive is broadcasting a homing signal to the 'Other Side.'"
Psykos laughed, a sound that bordered on madness. "The seal is breaking. God is getting impatient."
"Let him be impatient. We aren't summoning God. Not yet. That would be suicide." The Cybernetician adjusted his glasses. "We are opening the spillway. We are going to let the pressure equalize. We are going to merge our reality with a timeline where 'He' never broke his limiter."
Psykos's eye widened. "A world without Saitama?"
"No," the Cybernetician corrected. "A world where Saitama lost."
Saitama touched the mirror.
Instead of glass, his finger poked into cold liquid. The ripples spread out, distorting the evil grin of his reflection.
"Ew," Saitama said. "It's slimy."
Suddenly, a hand shot out of the glass.
It grabbed Saitama's wrist. The grip was strong. Not human strong. S-Class strong.
"Finally," a voice rasped from the other side of the mirror. It sounded like Saitama's voice, but deeper. Rougher. "I found a way out."
In the living room, King's game console beeped an error code. The lights flickered and died. The air pressure dropped so low that King's ears popped.
"Uh, guys?" King stammered. "Why is the Doom Music playing in real life?"
Genos shoved Dr. Kuseno aside and leaped toward the bathroom. "Sensei! High-energy spatial anomaly detected! Step away from the plumbing!"
Saitama looked at the hand gripping his wrist. The glove was tattered black leather. The skin was grey.
"Hey," Saitama said, annoyed. "Let go. You're smudging the glass."
He pulled.
He didn't just pull his arm back. He pulled the entire reflection out of the mirror.
Glass exploded outward. A figure tumbled into the cramped bathroom, crashing into the bathtub and breaking it in half.
The figure stood up, shaking off ceramic shards. It was the same height as Saitama. Same face. Same bald head.
But his eyes were sunken and surrounded by dark bruises. He wore a black, tattered version of the hero suit, stained with dried blood. A jagged scar ran from his forehead down to his chin. And he wasn't looking at Saitama with boredom.
He was looking at him with pure, unadulterated hunger.
"So bright," the Dark Saitama whispered, shielding his eyes. "This world is so... painfully bright."
Saitama looked at his doppelganger. He looked at the black suit.
"Hey," Saitama asked. "Did that suit come in black? The shop guy told me yellow was the only color left."
The Dark Saitama laughed. It was a broken, wheezing sound. "You care about the suit? In my world... the suit is the shroud we bury the gods in."
He drew back a fist wrapped in black energy. The air in the bathroom screamed.
"Genos," Saitama called over his shoulder, not moving into a stance. "Call the landlord. I think we definitely broke the lease this time."