One Punch

Saitama crouched at the edge of a stone slab, looking down at the cratered ground below. Then he suddenly paused—not because of Silva's attack, but because he remembered something.

"The supermarket. Today's Wednesday—no, wait, what day is it? Anyway, there's a sale at the supermarket today. That old lady with short hair, the one in red, always gets there before me."

Silva's elbow struck the back of his head. Saitama did not budge and kept muttering to himself.

"She handles a shopping cart like a pro. The wheels never pull sideways. Last time, the cart I took veered left and crashed into the shelves three times. She said you have to lift it a little before pushing—right, it was her. Last time, she snatched the last discounted carton of eggs."

Silva's knee drove into his back. Saitama staggered half a step forward—not from the blow, but because the more he thought about the supermarket incident, the angrier he got.

"I stood in line for forty minutes for those eggs. Forty minutes. She got there before me by about—actually, I have no idea when she got there. It's like she always arrives before me. Every time I reach the supermarket entrance, her cart is already half full. Genos said she might live nearby. I said no way. She must have some kind of sale-information network I don't know about."

Silva seized the opportunity. He drew a deep breath and condensed all of his outward aura against the surface of his body. The density of Ken rose sharply, and the pressure of his aura blasted away all the rubble still rolling around him. Then he concentrated all of Ken's aura into his right fist—this was Ryu, an almost total shift in his offensive and defensive ratio. For that instant, his body was nearly defenseless, while the aura around his right fist swelled violently, silver-white light spilling through his fingers.

"Everything into this. This is the final strike."

His right fist smashed viciously into Saitama's chest.

Saitama was driven into the ground by that punch, his body slamming into the center of the ruined training ground like a cannonball. The earth collapsed again, and a deeper round hole sank into the center of the hundred-meter crater. Rubble and dust shot into the sky, blotting out the moonlight.

Silva did not stop. He dove down, firing aura bullets continuously from both hands—not just one; every single shot landed precisely where Saitama had fallen. Rubble exploded, tremors continued, and the hundred-meter crater sank several more meters. Farther away, Mike lay down, curling its three tails beneath its belly. At the Forest Sea training ground, Gon raised his head and saw the firelight from the back mountain go out and flare up again, while the rain of rubble continued for a long time.

Silva landed and stood at the edge of the pit, gasping for breath. Sweat ran down from his brow, his aura nearly depleted, the silver-white glow of Ken already so faint it was barely visible. Wutong stood at the edge of the ruins, still holding the timer, though the numbers on it had stopped long ago.

The smoke and dust slowly dispersed. At the center of the hundred-meter crater, at the bottom of that deeper round hole, one lone stone slab remained where it had been.

Saitama stood on that slab. His yellow T-shirt was covered in dust, and its collar had slipped completely below his shoulder. He looked down at his clothes, then turned to survey the utterly destroyed ruins of the training ground.

"This shirt really can't be washed again. One more wash and it'll tear. Genos said he'd buy me a new one last time, and I said no—kind of regret that now. He also said pure cotton shrinks after three washes. This one's been washed way more than three times. I don't know whether it shrank, but the collar keeps getting looser. Next time, I should buy a blend."

Silva stood at the edge of the pit, still catching his breath, staring at the bald man at the bottom complaining about T-shirt fabric. He lowered his gaze to the knuckles on his right fist, injured by the recoil. The entire area was silent for a long time. The training ground no longer existed. The stone gate that had flown away earlier was still embedded in the rubble at the foot of the mountain, while the training ground itself had become a hundred-meter crater wider and deeper than the distance the gate had traveled. Zeno stood at the edge of the ruins and looked down at the rubble by his feet—it was stone from the training ground's outer walls, now scattered everywhere.

Silva slowly steadied his breathing. Then he turned to Saitama, let his hands fall to his sides, and gave him a solemn bow.

"Mr. Saitama. I would like to ask you to throw a proper punch. Let me see the difference between us."

Saitama looked at him. This man was a professional assassin who had just unleashed a full chain of assassination techniques and nearly exhausted his aura. Now he was bowing to him. Saitama rolled his neck, and his vertebrae cracked twice.

"Then get ready."

Saitama flexed his wrist, slowly opening his fingers, clenching them into a fist, then relaxing them again. He drew into a punching stance.

The air suddenly froze.

The rubble around the edge of the hundred-meter crater began rolling back—not because of the wind, but because it was being drawn in, then suspended in midair. It was not floating; it was trapped within that area by some invisible force field. The timer in Wutong's hand suddenly seemed to lose its weight, rising upward as though something were supporting it. Mike let out a low whine in the distance, its three tails clamping tight at once. At the Forest Sea training ground, Gon stopped running—not because he was tired, but because the air had suddenly become so heavy that he could feel his heartbeat amplified several times over inside his ears.

Silva did not retreat. He crossed his arms before him, bent his legs slightly, lowered his center of gravity, and tensed every inch of muscle in his body. This was the most instinctive defensive posture of the Zoldyck family head.

Saitama vanished.

The next second, he appeared before Silva. His fist was only a fist's breadth from Silva's forehead. It had not touched him, but the pressure of the wind had already blown Silva's silver hair back, his aura cloak shuddering violently in the shockwave as the silver-white specks of light scattered and gathered again.

Silva stood where he was. He did not retreat, and he did not close his eyes. The instant the fist stopped, his pupils shrank to pinpoints. His body had already assumed a defensive stance, but something flashed through his eyes—something he had never experienced before—

Death.

Not fear. It was an instinct purer than fear. It was what prey experienced before a predator, when fangs were about to tear through its throat. He had been an assassin for decades, yet he had never experienced that word from the prey's position. He had killed countless people, and every person who died by his hand had worn that expression before the end. He had thought it was fear, but now he understood—fear was the emotion of being killed. Death was when you had not yet been killed, but already knew with certainty that there was no possibility of survival.

The fist remained suspended in midair, and the wind pressure remained. Silva's heart was still beating, though he could no longer remember whether it had raced fastest when Saitama vanished, or during those few beats when the pressure of the fist near his brow made it abruptly stop.

Saitama withdrew his fist. The wind pressure kicked up by it abruptly vanished, and the rubble suspended in the air fell back to the ground at once. The timer in Wutong's hand regained its weight. Mike's tails slowly loosened and began brushing lightly over the rocky ground. Silva remained standing there and slowly straightened up.

"That Big Bang move just now had the right angle. Move the point where you exert force back by half a palm, and the aura bullet's rotation speed will double. You probably don't get much use out of it fighting monsters these days—but since you practiced it, it's always good to fix it."

He kicked away the last remaining stone slab on the ground and walked back along the edge of the training ground ruins. The collar of his yellow T-shirt had completely slipped beneath his shoulder, and his back was covered in dust. He patted himself twice as he walked, realized that only made more dust fly up, and stopped.

"Have someone clean up your backyard later. It's covered in stone chips. Even the dog doesn't want to come back."

Silva watched his back without speaking. Zeno handed Silva his coat, and Silva took it and draped it over his shoulders.

"We'll repair the gate tomorrow. Rebuild the training ground while we're at it," Zeno said, looking down at the utterly ruined rubble beneath his feet. The last time this place had been rebuilt was decades ago. After it was completed, Silva had undergone the final trial of his coming-of-age ceremony here. Now even the doorframe had been pulverized. But the Zoldyck family did not need a new site—anyone capable of destroying this place was worth rebuilding it for on the same ground. "We gained a lesson today."

Silva nodded and turned to Saitama. "Mr. Saitama. About the hot pot—the Zoldyck family keeps its word."

"Okay." Without looking back, Saitama raised his right hand in a wave and continued walking away.

Netero sat on the only intact chair at the edge of the ruins, holding a cup of tea that had gone cold. He watched Saitama pass by, brushing dust from his T-shirt, then paused and said, "Actually, there's a spare gate to the left of the gate." Saitama did not turn around. "That's a spare one. It doesn't count as the official gate."

At the edge of the Forest Sea training ground, Gon stood on the rocky ground, still dragging his weighted rings in his hands. The fragments of training-ground stone slabs that had been drifting in the sky had all fallen, leaving only a few wisps of fine dust floating in the moonlight.

He stared toward the back mountain at the stretch of ruins wider than the Forest Sea canopy. After the mountain's collapse had stopped, he heard one last faint scrape of rubble sliding from that direction, quiet and swift, as though someone had stopped a fist from a great height. He asked Kurapika whether that person was Brother Saitama.

Kurapika looked on for a moment without answering. Leorio panted behind them and said that anyone who could turn an entire training ground into ruins should be able to bring Killua out too.

Gon said nothing. He only looked toward the back mountain, then continued running forward.