The bathroom was small. Really small. It was barely big enough for one bald superhero to contemplate the stain on the grout, let alone two bald superheroes to have a potentially world-ending fistfight.
Dark Saitama's punch launched. The black energy wreathing his fist wasn't heat or shockwave; it looked like liquid shadow, consuming the light around it.
Saitama raised his left hand. Catch.
The impact was… dull. It sounded like a wet sandbag hitting a mattress. There was no sonic boom, no shattered building (well, the bathtub was already shattered, but nothing else broke).
Saitama looked at his own palm, then at the fist he had caught. He squeezed slightly. The shadow energy sizzled and popped, like water hitting hot oil, then evaporated.
"Weak," Saitama said.
He didn't shout it. He just stated it as a fact.
The Dark Saitama's eyes widened. Not in fear, but in confusion. In his world—a blasted hellscape of eternal twilight—this punch had shattered mountain ranges. It had broken the spine of King the Conqueror. It was absolute. Here? It was caught by a guy worried about his lease.
"How?" Dark Saitama growled, straining against the grip. The veins on his grey forehead bulged. "I carry the weight of a dead world! My pain is my power!"
"Yeah, yeah. Pain, suffering, darkness. I get it," Saitama said, sounding bored. He let go of the fist and flicked the other Saitama on the forehead.
Thwack.
Dark Saitama flew backwards, crashing through the wall into the living room, skipping across the debris-covered floor, and slamming into the far wall right next to a terrified King.
"Eeep!" King squeaked, pulling his hood tighter.
Genos had his incineration cannons primed, aiming at the new threat. Dr. Kuseno was hiding behind a overturned sofa.
"Identify yourself!" Genos commanded, his core glowing. "Why do you bear the face of my Master?"
Dark Saitama slid down the wall, shaking his head. The flick had left a bright red mark on his grey skin. He looked up, seeing the cyborg. His expression softened into something tragic.
"Genos..." he whispered. His voice cracked. "You... you're still whole here. Still... shiny."
He looked at his own hands, trembling. "In my world... I couldn't save you. I wasn't strong enough. Not then."
The air in the room shifted. The aggression faded, replaced by a heavy, suffocating sorrow. This wasn't just a clone. This was a ghost of a failure Saitama never had.
Saitama walked out of the bathroom, dusting plaster off his shoulders. "So, you're from another dimension or something? Like in those sci-fi mangas?"
Dark Saitama stood up slowly. He looked around the messy, broken, wonderfully mundane apartment. "Another dimension. A darker one. The 'Shadow Line.' The Monster Association won there. Garou... he didn't stop. He killed everyone. The heroes fell one by one." He looked Saitama in the eye. "I was the last one standing. But standing alone isn't victory. It's just survival."
"Sounds rough," Saitama said. "Want some hot pot? The broth is getting cold."
The tension snapped. Dark Saitama blinked. King lowered his hood slightly. Genos's cannons powered down with a whine.
"Hot... pot?" Dark Saitama asked, as if the words were foreign.
"Yeah. Beef. Tofu. Cabbage. It's good." Saitama gestured to the pot still simmering on the portable stove amidst the rubble. "We have extra bowls. Probably."
Dark Saitama stared at him. He expected a battle. He expected a interrogation. He got an invite to dinner. A tear, dark and thick like oil, leaked from his eye.
"I... haven't had cabbage in five years," he rasped.
Meanwhile, chaos was unfolding at the Hero Association HQ.
Child Emperor's screens were flashing red. "Dimensional breach detected! Origin point: Sector Z, Ghost Town district! Energy signature matches the theoretical 'Anti-Saitama' particles found in the Neo Heroes data!"
Sitch slammed a fist on his desk. "Anti-Saitama? What does that even mean?"
"It means antimatter!" Child Emperor yelled, pulling a second lollipop from his backpack purely for stress relief. "If this duplicate touches our Saitama, they might not fight. They might annihilate! Matter and antimatter canceling out! The resulting explosion could wipe out the solar system!"
Fubuki, standing nearby, went pale. "We have to separate them immediately. I'll deploy the Blizzard Group to establish a perimeter."
"Too late," Child Emperor said, pulling up a satellite feed. "They're already in contact."
The feed showed thermal signatures inside the apartment. Three heat sources were huddled around a smaller, central heat source.
"Wait," Sitch squinted. "Are they... eating?"
In the sewers beneath the apartment, Psykos scowled at her scrying orb.
"Why aren't they fighting?" she hissed. "The doppleganger is fused with the essence of a dead dimension! His hatred should be uncontrollable! He should be tearing that apartment apart!"
The Cybernetician tapped on his keyboard. "Reading fluctuating emotional states. The doppleganger's aggression index is dropping rapidly. His 'Despair' levels are being overridden by..." He paused. "High concentrations of sodium and umami?"
Psykos threw the orb against the wall. It shattered. "They're sharing a meal! The Idiot Factor is too strong! Saitama's indifference is neutralizing the dimensional rage!"
"Calculated risk," the Cybernetician said calmly. "The doppleganger was just the opener. He weakens the membrane. He proves the door is open. Now... we send something through that doesn't eat."
He hit a large, ominous Enter key.
Back in the apartment, the mood was surprisingly chill. Dark Saitama—who King had dubbed "Shadow-san"—was on his fourth bowl of rice.
"This flavor..." Shadow-san mumbled, broth dripping down his chin. "It reminds me of before the skies turned to ash."
"You should try the beef," Saitama said, dumping more meat into Shadow-san's bowl. "Fubuki bought it. She's loaded."
Genos sat across from them, recording everything. "Interrogative: Shadow-san, in your timeline, did I receive the scheduled incinerator upgrade before my... termination?"
Shadow-san paused, his chopsticks trembling. "No. You... you blew up your own core to try and stop Overlord Garou. It didn't work."
Genos nodded, taking notes. "Noted. Self-destruct efficacy is insufficient against cosmic threats. I must request Dr. Kuseno to increase core yield by 400%."
"Or just don't self-destruct," Saitama suggested. "That seems like a better plan."
Suddenly, the air rippled again. Not in the bathroom this time, but in the center of the room, right above the hot pot.
A claw, made of pure white light, tore through the air. The reality rift widened, screeching like metal on metal.
From the rift emerged a figure. It floated, glowing with an ethereal, holy light. It had no face, just a smooth, white surface where a head should be. Wings made of geometric shards of light spread from its back.
"God," Shadow-san whispered, dropping his bowl. It shattered. "An Angel of God."
The figure didn't speak with words. It spoke with pressure. A gravitational force that slammed everyone except Saitama and Shadow-san into the floor. King was pinned flat, wheezing. Genos's metal frame groaned under the weight.
It pointed a glowing finger at Shadow-san. A beam of pure disintegration fired.
Shadow-san closed his eyes, accepting his fate. He was tired anyway.
Slap.
The beam was deflected. It punched a hole through the ceiling and shot into the night sky.
Saitama stood in front of Shadow-san, his hand still raised from the backhand slap. He looked annoyed. Not 'world-ending threat' annoyed. Just 'you knocked over the soup' annoyed.
"Hey," Saitama said, looking at the Angel. "We were eating."
The Angel paused.
It raised both hands. The light intensified. The entire building began to disintegrate, turning into glowing dust.
"Outside," Saitama said.
He grabbed the Angel's ankle.
"We. Are. Going. Outside."
He threw it.
He didn't just toss it out the window. He threw it through the rift it came from, then grabbed the edges of the rift itself. With a grunt of effort, he pulled the reality tear closed like a stubborn zipper.
Zzzzip. Pop.
The Angel was gone. The pressure vanished. King sucked in a desperate breath of air.
The building stopped disintegrating, leaving half the walls missing and the night breeze blowing through.
Saitama turned back to the group. "Man, people really need to learn to use the door."
Shadow-san stared at him, awe replacing the sorrow in his sunken eyes. "You... you just threw an Angel back into Heaven. How? Even in my prime, I couldn't touched them."
Saitama sat back down and picked up his chopsticks. "I did a lot of push-ups." He poked the pot. "Great. Now there's dust in the soup."
Genos stood up, rebooting his sensors. "Sensei, that entity... its energy signature matched the being Homeless Emperor spoke of. It was a direct manifestation of 'God'."
"God, angels, dimensional clones," Saitama sighed. "It's getting crowded. Shadow-san, you gonna finish that beef?"
Shadow-san looked at the bowl. He looked at Saitama. A small, genuine smile touched his scarred lips.
"Yes," he said. "I think I will."
For the first time in five years, he didn't feel like the last survivor. He felt like just a guy having dinner with friends.
Outside, the retreating Fubuki Group saw the beam of light shoot into the sky and dissipate. Fubuki lowered her binoculars.
"The signal is gone," she reported to HQ. "Whatever it was... he handled it."
"Handled it how?" Sitch's voice crackled over the comms.
"I don't know," Fubuki said, looking at the ruins of the apartment building that somehow still stood. "But I think he owes his landlord an entire city block now."
As she turned to leave, she saw a figure watching from a rooftop. Tatsumaki. Her sister's green aura was faint, flickering. She wasn't angry. She looked... contemplative.
Tatsumaki caught Fubuki's eye, held her gaze for a moment, and then vanished into the night.
Fubuki shivered. The game board was changing fast. Dimensions were colliding. Gods were interfering. But as long as Saitama was worried about his soup, she had a feeling they might just be okay.
She just needed to find a really good lawyer for the lease agreement.