Ninety-Ninth Hand

The sea breeze stopped dead.

The Guanyin statue's right hand came down without warning, fingers pressed together and pointing down. There was no windup, no gathering of strength, no rush of displaced air—the hand was so enormous that its shadow covered the entire rock platform as it fell. Saitama's yellow T-shirt turned dark in the shade. His bald head was the only thing still reflecting light.

The knife-hand strike hit him square on the head.

The tremor reached the soles of his feet half a beat late. First came an upward push through his knees, then a pressure against his eardrums, and finally seabirds burst from the cracks in the distant reefs. A ring of spiderweb cracks spread through the volcanic rock around Saitama's feet. Pebbles broke from the edges and bounced off his shoes.

Saitama reached up and touched his head. It didn't hurt; there was just dust on it. He brushed it off and looked up at the huge hand suspended above him. Guanyin's hand still hung there, fingers together, frozen in the posture of its downward strike. That hit had been a lot heavier than the ones during the ball game on the airship.

Netero gave him no time to keep looking. A second palm swept in horizontally, Guanyin's left hand cutting in from the side with its fingers slightly spread. The gust flipped the hem of Saitama's T-shirt all the way up to his chest. The fabric blocked his view, and by the time he pulled it back down, a third palm had struck his back.

The rock platform shuddered. Not like an earthquake, but like a hammer striking an anvil—rapid, sharp, relentless. Netero pressed his palms together, his knuckles white with effort. Guanyin's hands fell from four directions at once, then eight, then sixteen. Every strike hit precisely where Saitama stood. Their gusts piled on top of one another, creating a pocket of low pressure above the platform. Pebbles and volcanic ash rose into the air and whirled around Saitama.

He stood at the center of the vortex, his clothes snapping in the wind, his feet planted firm. He counted—four strikes, eight, sixteen. At sixteen, he gave up. Too many. Couldn't be bothered. Guanyin's palms came from every angle: downward chops, sideways sweeps, diagonal thrusts from behind. He felt like he was standing in front of the egg display at the supermarket, with people pushing in from all sides. Last time eggs had gone on sale, a woman buying three cartons had stood ahead of him, an old man with a shopping cart behind him, and someone had cut in from the side aisle. Guanyin's palms were using the same formation, just without the shopping cart.

Twenty-four hands.

Netero's breathing finally faltered—not from fatigue, but because he had squeezed his Nen to its limit. Guanyin's strikes were no longer separate movements. They formed combinations: two hands feinted left while a third cut in from the right; four struck the head in succession to pin Saitama in place; eight swept up from below to attack his legs and torso. Netero had studied Saitama's stance. The man had not shifted his weight since the first strike. So Netero concentrated every ounce of force on one point.

Saitama's heel scraped lightly against the rock.

He hadn't been pushed. His foot had just gotten itchy from standing so long. He changed his stance, shifting his weight from his left foot to his right. The instant he lifted his foot, the rock beneath it crumbled. It didn't crack; it turned to powder, kicking up a cloud of pale dust. He looked down at it. "Ground's not very sturdy." He moved his foot half a palm's width to the side, clear of the loose rubble, and settled back into place.

Netero saw that foot rise. Then it came down again. Saitama was still in the same spot, merely standing on the other foot. Netero's hands did not stop, and neither did Guanyin's strikes.

Thirty-six hands fell at once.

The rock platform broke apart completely. The once-flat volcanic surface became a field of rubble under the blows, the bottom of the crater sinking deeper around Saitama's footprints. Beans sheltered behind the largest reef rock, the pages on his writing board torn away by the gusts until only a few remained. He was trying to calculate a figure that had never appeared in the Hunter Association's records: if the chairman exhausted all his Nen and still could not make Saitama move a single step, what category of file should hold this match's cause-and-effect assessment?

The thirty-six strikes ended. Netero paused to catch his breath. Every one of Guanyin's hands hung motionless in the air. As the dust slowly cleared, Saitama stood in the exact center of the crater. One corner of his yellow T-shirt had curled up a little; he pressed it flat. A thin film of dust coated his bald head.

"Thirty-six hands. And you still haven't moved." Netero wiped the sweat from his forehead. "The next wave will be forty-eight."

Saitama did not answer. He was watching the Guanyin statue. Its hands were no longer spread in a fan as before. They were lining up in a single row.

All forty-eight palms thundered down from the same direction.

This was no longer an attack from all sides. It was a barrage. One strike after another, each driving into the last, all hitting the same spot on Saitama's chest. Guanyin's attack pattern had changed completely. If the scattered blows before had been raindrops, this concentrated barrage was a water jet. In his youth, Netero had trained beneath a waterfall deep in the mountains, throwing ten thousand Straight Punch Thrusts every day. Water could wear through stone. Later, he had built that principle into the 100-Type Guanyin: when every strike focused on the same point, it could bore through granite.

The blows pressed a dent into Saitama's T-shirt, and the fabric sprang back. Press down, spring back. Press down, spring back. His body did not budge, but his shirt kept changing shape. Discounted pure cotton, washed three times, and still plenty stretchy. The last time the supermarket had offered a buy-one-get-one-free deal on T-shirts, he had kept one and given the other to Genos. Genos had said cotton breathed well and absorbed sweat, making it good for summer.

After forty-eight strikes, Netero stopped to catch his breath. Saitama looked down at his chest. The fabric where the blows had landed had developed a fine layer of pills. He rubbed at it with his fingers, but they wouldn't come off. He tried again. Still nothing.

"My shirt's pilling. Guess the discount one doesn't hold up."

Netero stared at the little cluster of pills. He stayed silent long enough for the sea breeze to return across the reef, gently stirring the sleeves of his robe. Then he steadied his breathing, separated his joined hands, and formed another sign.

Sixty-four hands.

No more groups. No more holding back. The knife-hand chop of First Hand, the horizontal slash of Second Hand, the crushing press of Third Hand—he packed every move into a single wave of attacks. Knife-hands fell from above as straight punches struck from the sides. Spear-hands thrust up from below as elbows slammed in from behind. Sixty-four palms crashed down from every direction, each one landing solidly on Saitama. The rock platform trembled. The sea shook. On distant Glasses Island, the Bloodthirsty Butterflies stopped flying at once, their wings suspended in midair.

Saitama did not give him a chance to work his way up to ninety-nine. He raised a hand and held up one finger. "Wait."

Netero's joined hands froze in midair. Every one of Guanyin's palms stopped short. The man who had taken over a hundred strikes without budging was holding up a finger at him.

"Your Guanyin—can it bring all ninety-nine hands down at once? Don't do it in batches. Get it over with in one go."

"...Why?"

"The hot pot's almost boiling."

Netero looked down at his joined hands, then up at the bald man across from him, who was rolling his neck. The hot pot was almost boiling. To this man, the 100-Type Guanyin Netero had spent his life developing was something to pass the time before a meal.

He suddenly laughed. It began as a faint, low chuckle deep in his throat. Then he tipped his head back and laughed aloud. The sound echoed across the empty reef shore, shaking pebbles loose from the crater's rim. Tears ran down the wrinkles of his face as he laughed. Whether they came from laughter or something else, he could not tell.

"Fine! All at once—Ninety-Ninth Hand!"

All ninety-nine hands opened. They blotted out the sky, each one aimed at where Saitama stood. Nen Pressure thinned the air, and the waves on the sea flattened into a straight line. Beans poked half his head out from behind the reef rock, then ducked back.

Saitama looked up at the hands. He felt no fear, no excitement. He merely narrowed his eyes a little so the wind wouldn't blow dust into them. He raised a hand and tugged up the collar of his T-shirt. Ninety-nine hands coming down at once would probably kick up more wind than forty-eight had. With his collar in place, the dust wouldn't get in. Then he thought for a moment and added, "We eat when you're done. There's sesame paste at the condiment station. I forgot where you said it was from."