Zero Hand

The dust from the Ninety-Ninth Hand had yet to settle.

Netero stood at the edge of the crater, the veins in his arms having mostly receded. All of Guanyin's palms had returned to their fan-shaped formation, each one trembling faintly—not from damage, but from bearing the full recoil of ninety-nine consecutive strikes. His breathing was heavy, yet his clasped hands did not loosen.

Saitama stood in the very center of the crater. His yellow T-shirt was completely unharmed, though the collar was slightly crooked. Guanyin's palm strikes had caved the rock layer in by several meters, but beneath his feet was the only small patch of rock that had not shattered. He raised a hand, straightened his collar, and looked up at Netero. "Finished?"

Netero looked at Saitama—this man standing motionless at the bottom of a crater he had blasted several meters deep, his clothes intact, his only action being to straighten his collar. Suddenly, Netero remembered the days of his youth, when he had punched before a waterfall deep in the mountains. Back then, he threw ten thousand punches a day, from sunrise to sunset. When he withdrew his fists, the waterfall spray would splash across his face, and he had thought that was the end of martial arts. Later, he descended the mountain and fought masters of every school. He defeated them all and thought that was the pinnacle of martial arts. Later still, he mastered the 100-Type Guanyin. Its ninety-nine hands covered the sky and blotted out the sun, and he thought that was the limit of martial arts. Now, he had poured out the strength of his entire life and completed the Ninety-Ninth Hand, only for the man across from him to stand at the bottom of the crater he had created, straighten his collar, and ask whether he was finished. He gave a soft laugh. It was neither bitterness nor self-mockery—it was the relief of someone who had waited an entire century for an answer.

"Not yet." He rolled up the cuff of his yukata another turn, revealing lean yet sturdy forearms. The 100-Type Guanyin slowly folded behind him, shrinking from ninety-nine hands to two, clasped before its chest. "No one has ever seen Guanyin's final form in all my life. It isn't that I never had the chance to use it. It's that no one was worthy of it. (Meruem was worthy, but this timeline is wrong.) The person standing before me now is more worthy than anyone."

Saitama readjusted the elastic at his T-shirt collar. "What's it called?"

"Zero Hand." Netero was no longer merely announcing the name of a technique; he stated it calmly. "The final form of the 100-Type Guanyin—Zero Hand. It will drain all of my Nen and compress it into a single beam of light, which will fire from Guanyin's throat. Anyone struck by it meets only one fate. There are no exceptions."

Saitama glanced at Guanyin—its palms clasped before its chest in a manner slightly different from before. The Ninety-Ninth Hand had been fully spread out in a fan formation; Zero Hand had its two hands wrapped around the front of its body, as if protecting something, or gathering something. Guanyin's mouth was slightly open. There was no light in its throat yet, but the air around it had already begun flowing in that direction. It was not wind; before the light even made a sound, it was already sucking the airflow toward itself.

Netero suddenly remembered the first time he had mastered Zero Hand. That day, in a mountain dojo, he struck his final palm at empty air. Guanyin appeared behind him and spewed golden light from its mouth. Half the dojo was sheared away, wood chips and roof tiles burning into ash in midair. He had knelt amid the ruins and laughed toward the sky.

But now, he was kneeling not because he was laughing, but because the recoil from the Ninety-Ninth Hand had driven his knees into cracks in the rock. He dug his fingers into the stone and pushed himself up, standing straight again. Several dozen seconds had already passed. The bald man's sense of time was different from Meruem's—he was not calculating the openings between moves, nor thinking about the angle and rhythm of the next palm strike. He was looking at Guanyin. Just looking. With the same expression one might use to look at fluorescent lights in a supermarket.

"Ready?" Saitama suddenly met his gaze, then looked back at Guanyin's mouth, still waiting for that legendary light.

Netero did not answer. He slowly raised his arms and clasped his hands above his head, interlocking his fingers into a fist. He had practiced this movement countless times, every motion precise down to the curve of each knuckle—the angle of Guanyin's throat was controlled by the curve of his interlocked fingers. A single degree of deviation would send the beam off target. He had spent ten years eliminating that final degree of error. And now, at last, he no longer needed to worry about missing—the man before him would not dodge.

"Zero Hand."

The Guanyin statue vanished from behind Netero. In the next instant, it appeared behind Saitama. It was not an afterimage, nor a translucent outline—it was solid. More substantial, heavier, and more oppressive than at any previous moment. Guanyin's feet sank into the rock, and the entire island's center of gravity tilted half an inch in that direction. Its enormous mouth opened, golden light gathering in its throat. The air was sucked away, sound was sucked away, the waves on the sea were pressed into a straight line, Bloodthirsty Butterfly's wings froze in midair, and even the scattered stones forgot to fall.

Only that mass of golden light remained on the rock platform, pulsing like a miniature sun.

The light arrived first. The sound came after.

The entire island was illuminated in blinding white. Even the examinees on Glasses Island had to raise their hands to shield their eyes from the light reflected off the sea. Beans hugged his clipboard and curled up behind a reef, his eyes shut as he silently calculated the beam's duration—from the moment it fired until now, quite some time had already passed. Zero Hand's energy output showed no signs of weakening. The Chairman's total Nen could not sustain output of this level. Ten seconds was the limit.

The beam abruptly went out. It did not gradually fade—it simply vanished, as if someone had pulled the plug. A circular pit appeared on the rock platform, its edges melted by extreme heat into glassy slag, still steaming. Netero knelt at its edge, his arms hanging by his sides, the cloth over his chest soaked through with sweat. Zero Hand had drained all of his Nen, and the 100-Type Guanyin had completely disappeared.

There was no one at the bottom of the pit.

"Just picked something up." A voice came from directly behind him.

Saitama stood less than two steps behind him. His yellow T-shirt was unharmed, and his collar was still neatly straightened. He looked down at his palm—a Bloodthirsty Butterfly was perched on his index finger, the red markings on its wings slowly changing from ash gray back to deep crimson, its legs still trembling. In the instant before Zero Hand had fired, this butterfly had happened to fall from above his head. He had reached out to catch it, then casually moved a few steps aside. "It happened to be above my head. Your light was too bright. I was worried it might get burned." The butterfly fluttered its wings on his fingertip and flew away.

Netero did not turn around. He simply remained kneeling there, staring down at his still-trembling hands. After a long time, he spoke, his voice so soft it seemed to drift in from somewhere impossibly distant. "...I couldn't even make you seriously make a move."

Saitama thought about it. Walking around the beam to catch the butterfly probably did not count as seriously making a move. He had just picked something up. "That move was pretty bright. You could use it next time the power goes out."

Netero fell silent for a moment, then suddenly gave a small laugh. It was light and brief, the sort that came out through one's nose. It was neither bitterness nor self-mockery—he had lived for more than a hundred years, and this was the first time anyone had evaluated Zero Hand by saying, "You could use it when the power goes out." He clasped his hands and bowed his head slightly in Saitama's direction. This time, he was not gathering power, nor was he praying. It was a gesture closer to gratitude.

"You haven't awakened Nen, yet it feels as though you've seen through everything about me," he said. "You weren't even fighting. You were simply standing there, waiting for me to finish."

"How does that light come out?"

"...Nen compressed to its limit, then fired through Guanyin's throat."

"Generators are too noisy. Guanyin doesn't make any noise, so Guanyin's more useful." Saitama moved two plates of meat over to Netero's side, leaving the third for himself.

The broth in the copper pot had been boiling for a long time.

Saitama sat cross-legged beside the pot and pushed the entire first plate of premium wagyu into it. The meat slices rapidly changed color in the boiling water, fat melting away as the aroma drifted on the sea breeze toward the Bloodthirsty Butterflies still circling in the air. Beans sat nearby, the pages of his clipboard torn apart by the palm winds until only the last few remained, and wrote down his final note. Netero sat opposite him, his yukata draped over his shoulders, holding a bowl of sesame sauce.

"So when you need it, my 100-Type Guanyin ranks behind a generator."

Saitama thought about it. "Generators are too noisy. Guanyin doesn't make any noise, so Guanyin's more useful."

Netero set down his bowl of sesame sauce. "Saitama. May I ask you a question?"

"Yeah."

"You never struck back even once from beginning to end, nor did you actively attack me. I could tell you had that ability, but you chose not to move."

Saitama dipped a slice of wagyu into sesame sauce, put it in his mouth, and chewed twice. "Because you invited me to hot pot."

Netero froze for a moment. "That's it?"

"And there was cumin and salt. You said the seasonings were free."

Netero was silent for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed. Tears ran down the wrinkles on his face, impossible to tell whether they were from laughter or something else. "My 100-Type Guanyin is worth no more to you than the free seasonings for a hot pot meal."

"The wagyu was free too," Saitama corrected him.

In front of the television.

Genos sat cross-legged beside the coffee table. In the pot were discounted pork slices, napa cabbage, tofu, and enoki mushrooms that he had bought at the supermarket that afternoon. Sesame sauce and minced garlic sat on the condiment tray. He had turned the gas stove to its lowest setting, and the broth bubbled away. On the screen, Chairman Netero was laughing so hard that tears had come out, while his teacher said, "The wagyu was free too."

Genos picked up a slice of pork and dipped it in sesame sauce. His teacher had ranked Chairman Netero's Zero Hand behind a generator. The Chairman's 100-Type Guanyin was equivalent to the free seasonings for a hot pot meal. He pulled up the battle footage from the database and began analyzing it frame by frame—his teacher had spontaneously decided to save a butterfly. The butterfly's wingspan was approximately four centimeters. The time between his teacher releasing his fingers and closing them again was less than the half-second before Zero Hand fired. When the butterfly was saved, its wing veins were intact. Zero Hand's firing direction was fixed. If his teacher had appeared directly in front of the point of emission during the half-second before the beam fired, then Zero Hand's force would not have dispersed—it would have reflected directly back onto Guanyin itself.

He stuffed the slice of pork into his mouth. This meant that the next time the power went out, Chairman Netero's Guanyin could not be placed directly opposite his teacher.

Steam from the hot pot seemed to drift out of the screen, mixing with the smell of pork from his own pot. His teacher and the Chairman had wagyu; he had discounted pork—but he had bought it that afternoon, and it was fresh. He got up, fetched another bottle of soy sauce, and poured some into his dipping bowl. The meat slices rolled in the pot. He picked one up and put it into his mouth. Use Guanyin next time the power went out. He remembered it.