Standard Disclaimer: I lust after the rights to One Punch Man like the Werewolf General lust after the Alpha's daughter.
A/N: I've uploaded a second Fanfic named "Part of Us- Behind the Scenes". It is a place where I deeply explain the concepts, abilities, and battles used in PoU that would otherwise turn my chapters here into boring drabbles. In other words, the second Fanfic is a giant, informational Wiki. I encourage you to check it out!
And now, please enjoy Chapter 3!
Cha. 3- Bust!? Or Is It?
Previously…
"A missile…"
The glass to the control room of Factory Q liquefied as a beam of light rippled through so fast space bent around its existence.
In seconds, the cirrus clouds of the stratosphere volatilized in a vortex of red.
Much below it, an aurora borealis painted the sky and spread north to the mountains, but Blast paid no attention to Metal Knight.
His concentration was trained dead on the leftover traces of the rocket, trails of its trajectory still undispersed in the infinitesimal collision of atoms in the sky.
But, he needed to be faster.
Blast separated from the flight path and accelerated north. An expansive wave of his Pneuma loomed over a quarter of the Wasteland, which was the size of the Alphabet itself.
Immediately, he detected the rocket, at the brim of the mesosphere, as well as the ballistic missile in the distance that was piercing through the thermosphere.
So it's planning to enter the same low Earth orbit and crash into Maki when Stellar's track transitioned from parabolic into elliptical!
And right when they are entering the teleporter!
The Top S-Ranker felt a shiver through his spine at the toxic scheme. He knew Tatsumaki could easily handle a single missile, but…
The problem was that they were to clash when she reached the teleporter!
Space distortion was among the most dangerous form of travel… one mistake, and you'll be crushed into a million fragments! Or, even more horrific, your organs bent outward, and your skin twisted inward, and your liver could be your new nose!
Was she to exercise her power at the mouth of the wormhole… even the slightest disturbance would deform the delicate tunnel and have it cave inward…
The continuum of space itself would be nullified into a blizzard of distortion that tore apart all and everything. Even if she survived, by the figment of chance, who knew where the hell the waves of space would sweep her to… but for damn sure not to New Earth! He had sent her off to avoid the mess that would ensue, NOT to some banishment!
Blast had not been surprised to this degree in a long while. For decades, he thought he had Earth and the Core grasped in his palm. And… something screwed up at this key moment!?
A fit of anger long lost in his ceaseless years of scavenging expedition in space fumed into deadly wrath. His speed was raised again, reaching near a hundredth that of light.
In seconds, the rocket was past him, and so was the ground. The horizon around him blackened, but his sight was unmistakably clear as a cone-shaped torpedo whipped through the atmosphere.
Blast growled. A horrible aura arose and spun into a whirlwind noticeable by the satellites. From the eye of the storm, a colossal hand of orange extended and slapped into the missile like it was an ant.
The resulting nuclear explosion only wisped into a tiny mushroom before the Third-Limiter's crushing gust rended the combustion.
But abruptly, in the place of the eruption, a hologram materialized, immune to the physical effects of psychic.
"Blast. We meet again."
The S-Ranker's figure emerged in front of the formation. "Who the hell are you!?"
"Ahhh… Forgotten me so fast? It has been but only eighteen years."
Eighteen years ago… Blast's pupils solidified. Only one incident had happened in that year and it was…
"So you're the cricket behind that Project Cyborg… I had been curious where you disappear to. The First-Limit bot had no soul within."
"First Limit? If you didn't interfere, the girl's fusion could have made it Second Limit! Instead, the power went to her. A waste!"
"Who are you, and why have you come out after the many years? Not afraid anymore? What's the new card? Maki would be so glad to know that you're alive to be killed."
"That girl!? Hahaha! Good luck with that, Blast, you shall never see her again!" The hologram's tone abruptly shifted.
Blast's heart quaked. "What are you talking about!? I searched the northern Wasteland already! This is your only missile! Plus, there's no way the HA could let you get another off!"
"Oh, how naive, Blast, or… shall I call you… Blaine?"
The Top hero's eyes bulged and his hand quivered, accidentally bursting the hologram into blinking lights. However, they materialized back to a translucent shape a second later.
"WHO ARE YOU!?" His voice elevated eightfold.
"You were so much more competent when you abandoned the alliance then. The talk of the centuries. Even the Legends couldn't stop you. Who had thought, decades later, I, a mere enlisted, trash in your eyes, could play you in my hands? How much have you actually recovered?"
"You…!" The image shattered under excessive force, but reformed yet again.
"Oooo, I'll let you off with one more news, 'Commander.' I have people in your play-thing too. Well… people. The missile the girl is on has… wait for this… a compressed nuke… one I brought to Earth hundred years ago. Guess when it would detonate."
"The wormhole…" Blast's eyes widened. His figure glowed and dashed into the clouds. He flew off for only half a second before realizing that something was off… he was not actually covering distance! It was as if his brain was perceiving that he was flying, but he was stuck!
"Don't bother. This missile was never for her. It was for you. A small time bomb. I've been saving it for a century. Time is frozen in this area for minutes… enough for her to enter the wormhole… How ironic. You were who invented it and demolished Avatar's galaxy with it three thousand years ago. How does it feel?"
Suddenly, Blast glowered back at him and calmed dramatically. Gone from his expression was anger: only an ominous, dehumanized null. "Pray that you have a good hiding spot."
The hologram, on the other hand, continued like the threat was never issued. "Why, though, I've always been wondering, you would toss away your glory to sit in this rotting planet? Care to inform me? A thank-you gift for not ratting your position out in the hundreds of years?"
The hologram shattered into pieces in Blast's grip, but the voice still cackled as it faded. "I'm sure you're going back now and carpet bombing everything to find me. We shall meet soon, Commander, and I expect a logical mind next time for our cooperation. That pirate found this place, and I'm sure others will come soon. You've waited too long, Blaine, and so have I. Her death is just a warning."
The streaming dazzle died. Blast levitated in the thermosphere with a countenance that was so condensed water could seep out at any moment.
He looked down at a remote in his hand. The remote to the teleporter. He picked his head back up at space. The dark, dark space.
The remote evaporated into plasma. He raised his hand. A starry contraption dropped like a meteor from thousands of feet up.
The teleporter, miniaturized.
He glanced down. A screen formed in his Pneuma.
Transportation Incomplete. Energy disrupted. Destination lost.
Blast closed his eyes and swallowed.
History… it was fast.
Tatsumaki's head leaned against a huge, furry pillow that was trapped between herself and the window of the rocket. She glanced out.
It had been seven minutes since Stellar launched. The sky was being discolored at an increasing pace, the dawning sun deserting her behind. Soon, it was going to be as black as her pillow.
The torrents of vibrations washed against her protective green and were neutralized, unable to stir even the corner of her silky dress.
*Crunch
Her eyes dangled precariously after the source of the sound as she was invariably reminded that someone else was here… with her… in this crowded space.
In her vision, a cyborg was munching on a waffle produced out of nowhere, his body flipped upside down. Catching her glimpse, Saitama grinned with attempted droll, while showing her the contents of his mouth.
Tatsumaki's face twisted into one of disgust and slanted her eyes back toward the window, wordlessly. She had nothing to say to such an unserious and disrespectful weakling, and, on top of that, a pig.
The tiny strand of faith from Blast's conversation disintegrated. How in the hell was this barbarian supposed to be her adviser!? On top of that, how the hell did she manage to let her ex-guardian bamboozle her into this muddled arrangement?
"Hmmm? What's bad? An itch or something?" The annoying voice pursued from her left.
Tatsumaki took a deep breath. It wasn't time to squash this fool yet, she told herself. She was to be a lady and wait until they get to the planet, and then she'll teach him the meaning of courtesy with a series of Psybeams…
"Oh, I know! You're still mad at me. Don't be angry. It's bad for puberty. You get a lot of pimples." Saitama remarked as he scratched his forehead, memory flashing back to middle school.
Tatsumaki snapped her head at him, glaring daggers at the metal sheen. "WHAT did you say!?"
"Huh? Caring for your health." The male hero tilted his head at her. "That's all."
"Just WHO do you think you are!? WHO!?" The esper shrieked. "You think you can be so abrasive and sarcastic and cocky!? WHAT gave you the courage, your dumb brassy scraps?
"Hey! You said a bad word." Saitama looked at her with disapproval and shook his head. "Strike one."
Tatsumaki stared at him in disbelief. What… just what was wrong with him!? "Are your moronic wires loose or something?"
"I thought 'dumb' was a bad word in kindergarten." Saitama rubbed his skull in realization. "Oh wait. You're past that. My bad."
It took the psychic powerhouse a second to comprehend the statement. When she did, her curls electrified into straight spikes like a porcupine. "SAY! WHAT?"
"What?" The hero-for-fun complied vacantly.
Tatsumaki's eyes swelled before magnifying into a brilliant inferno. Her delicate face, still encapsulating the youth of adolescence, contracted even further. He just… pissed her off SO much, like he had an inexplicable cloud of provocative aura that catalyzed her already easily-triggered fury with the slightest of ease.
Especially with that careless attitude, that absurd smile, and his nonchalant expression that was blasting the fact that he really did think of her as a child! He was not merely yapping to enrage her. He really did feel that way!
Tatsumaki was seething, shaking all over. Repeatedly, she had to tell herself this was not the time to pummel him.
Saitama blinked. "Are you ok? Do you have a seizure? Should I call an ambulance?"
"SHUT UP!" She couldn't hold back anymore. It was impossible. Why didn't she kidnap Drive Knight to be her partner? Wait… had he made her this desperate…
An obscure blackness overwhelmed her, literally. With a furious shake, the rocket entered the designated teleporter.
In the back of her mind, there was a gradually elevating premonition of danger. It was the keen sixth sense of danger trained through years of combat and evolution. However, in her wrath, she completely disregarded the beeping in the unconscious.
But, Saitama had not. In fact, his alarm was bawling much louder, infused with the power of a Third Limiter. Reflexively, the bald hero tensed up into a ball of suspense ready to pounce before his mind could even process the message.
Many moments passed until he came to terms with what the feeling was. It had been years since its last emergence. YEARS.
The intuition of peril. Not even of a simple hazard, but of a terminal disaster. One that could… kill him.
His vacuous visage immediately squirmed to form strict, distinct lines that defined each corner and edge. An august glow of magnificence shot from his eyes, integrated with the hidden confidence that finally saw the light after so long of concealment.
Saitama's sixth sense was never wrong. He had learned the phenomenon in the early days of battling, and it had saved his untrained butt countlessly. But, it was among the addicted emotion that drifted away as he strengthened.
Time, nevertheless, did not let it fade. Saitama acted on instincts.
He dashed toward Tatsumaki, who, having her concentration locked on him, cried and lit up in viridescence. Before she could react, though, he arrived by her side and grabbed her by the wrist, popping the surfacing psychic like it was a mere bubble.
Her jaw slammed down. The male did not even cast her a glance as he raised his fist and… punched right through the wall of the spacecraft!
Her brain short-circuited. Tatsumaki did not as much as twitch as he pulled her through the consequential crater directly into the wormhole. The rocket soared past them at a blinding velocity.
It wasn't until her bodily barrier reappeared in protection against the sharp winds of the Continuum did her conscious return from her trance. "WHY THE HELL DID YOU…"
*BOOM!
From afar, a wave of energy swept across the tunnel that was within space itself. The receding spaceship vaporized as a terrible shudder resonated through the Continuum expanse at a startling frequency. A rare feeling long since felt streamed in Tatsumaki's body, like… that time when she was strapped to the table of the underground lab in the midst of a giant earthquake as they all ran out…
A scarlet light originated from the distance. Before she knew it, it had stretched above her head and across the entire shaft. A second later, thousands of similar light dazzled through the wormhole, adding deadly cracks to the construction of the tunnel. Eerie winds of chill wrung the marrow from her bones.
Some of the colors of the lights she had never seen in reality. They were not just the electromagnetic spectrum, but… an indescribable occurrence that existed like they were imprinted on her mind. They were almost… beautiful, the way most poisonous things were.
"HELL are you staring at, kid!? Fucking run!" A voice jolted her back to reality.
An unyielding force yanked her to the right. Her pupils accommodated only rapidly enough to catch a blue light rushing past where her head was and slicing through her psychic defense like it was cake. A green lock of hair floated onto her hands.
"Come on! Do you want me to carry you?" A dominant tone sounded from the right, and it was off in a second.
"YOU!" Tatsumaki barely recovered from the shock and cascaded after Saitama in a splendid green. Rage and confusion spun in her head, but it was no longer a veil for the screaming trepidation from within.
Even if she was the most arrogant hero on Earth, she knew she was no match for the universe's power, especially not right after one strand of distorted space had almost killed her moments ago.
She chased after the figure that was already becoming a dot in the horizon, unknowingly recognizing the fact that she was following his lead. A cold light swiped across inches behind her, impelling shivers down her spine.
Biting her lip deeply, she picked up speed again. Yet, no matter how hard she tried, she could not catch up to the silhouette ahead of her.
The ball of radiance behind intensified. More and more cracks extended from the center in the form of unstoppable blades tearing apart the fabrics of space and anything in it.
"HEY!" Tatsumaki finally cried out, in desperation. Her ability had spoiled her from ever encountering a condition she couldn't get out off, and the one time she was in such a dead end she was rescued by Blast, so she had not a clue in her mind when she was truly powerless. She… panicked.
As if on cue, Saitama stopped, but not because of her yell. He rotated and faced the ball of light. Tatsumaki stopped beside him. Before she could speak, the Third-Limiter took a step and roared. "ONE! SERIOUS! PUNCH!"
A calamitous aura detonated from him. He lashed forward. Crossing space and time, a strand of light emerged in front of his fist and exploded.
Tatsumaki's eyes nearly fell out of their sockets. Did… did he just extinguish a… what the hell was this even!? The universe? He just rivaled the universe!?
The spatial light dissipated in a shower of harmless energy. Saitama began to laugh like a lunatic as he examined his arm. A long cut extended from the back of his hand to the upper arm where blood seeped out wholly.
It was not a deep injury, but… he was injured! The feeling of pain! Saitama's eyes were bathed in a hysterical glimmer. A current long lost was coming back to him. It was even more gripping than the anticipation of a true fight. It was the lust of humanity.
He cracked his neck upward to marvel the darkness above and laughed crazily. "Damn Kuseno! You said I'll be fighting monsters, not some dimensional…"
"LOOK OUT!"
Another strand dashed madly at them, attracted by the rumbling of the energy from the previous blow. Tatsumaki materialized an enormous hand of green and grabbed at the incoming purple beam.
A deep pain shot through her mind. She watched breathlessly as the violet penetrated the full force of her attack, slowing by a mere fraction.
Saitama stepped and threw a second punch, ripping it apart while adding another tear in his shoulder. "Don't make flashy structures out of your attacks, girl. You have to focus your energy. You use too much surface area. They're good against squishy monsters, but they're useless against a true opponent."
"Don't you lecture me! How are you so strong!?" Tatsumaki retaliated without thinking. "What do we do? We can't sit here forever!"
"We punch our way out of this." Saitama replied with a burning passion. "There's nothing that one punch couldn't solve. If there is, then give it two punches."
"You're fucking hurt!" The esper pointed at the two dreadful wounds on his body, ignoring how a cyborg was pouring out blood. "How are you going to punch out of this!? It's impossible."
"No! There's a way out of everything. We need to think." Saitama, in his altered, serious form, flung a third punch that shattered another light, which in its death added an additional gash to the bald hero. "Everything has its weakness."
"Well what the f-" Tatsumaki screeched before an insight rippled across her memory. Blast's words resonated in her brain. "Wait…"
"You ain't got much longer!" Three, THREE strands flew in his direction at the same time. Tatsumaki dodged aside instinctively. Saitama lashed out with both fists while whirling for the momentum of a roundhouse kick.
Three explosions launched him back, reducing his cyborg disguise to shreds and adding more colorful patterns to his body, but neither heroes cared in the instant.
The afterimage of the sharp lights, seen from the side, pierced through the fog in Tatsumaki's logic. "I HAVE IT!"
"What!?" He was by her in a blink. Shaking blood from his cuts, Saitama failed to pay attention to either his pain or the thrill of combat. He was trained on her words.
The esper spoke quickly. "The lights! What are they!? They only emerged after the rocket blew up, which means that they are what is destabilizing this spatial tunnel! You can't punch through the walls of the tunnel by yourself, right? That'll be like trying to open a wormhole. So what if…"
As she spoke, a mirroring epiphany germinated in the male's head too as he shouted in interruption. "What if I punch with the cracks and not against them!?"
"YES! Punch through the side of the cracks! Maybe it'll be strong enough to…"
Their eyes connected. "Open a hole to reality!"
"Genius!" Saitama leaped up with an exhilaration the likes of which were not displayed in years. Another spatial light was flashing toward them.
He squinted his eyes to tiny slits. Time seemed to slow down around him. The light rushed toward his head. Saitama inclined his body and rotated clockwise, staring at the incoming rift.
"Pun-" Tatsumaki yelled. Saitama's fist thrust forward. An empowering aura fluttered into the distance, blasting through the afterimage of the passing ray.
Just the afterimage.
"Shit." The bald hero deadpanned. "This is nearly impossible. Hitting the side of the light while it's moving is like trying to snipe a bird from the other side of the hemisphere."
"You're the one who freaking said nothing's impossible!" Tatsumaki retorted with heavy hostility. "If it's too fast, I'll slow it down for you!"
"You're kidding, right!? This isn't playtime!" Saitama reciprocated. "You're trying to freeze space itself!? You couldn't even endure a beam by yourself!"
"You think I can't do it!? I'm the strongest esper on Earth!" Tatsumaki roared. "And damn it! I'm not a CHILD!"
"Well then do it!" The male pointed. Another light was slicing at them, a torrent of similar fractures following. It had been nearly two minutes since the spaceship exploded. Lights were shooting around them psychotically. There was no way the tunnel could last for more than…
"HOLD!" The green sprite screamed. A solid block of extrasensory energy coagulated around the two like jello. The light contacted.
The spatial rend, as if hitting a marsh, decelerated for just a second. An immense agony inundated her brain at the collision. By reflex, the psychic let go of her concentration for a fraction under the pressure.
The writhing beam came right back to life and smashed straight through the weakness of her spell, glissading directly at her!
At the last moment, Saitama plucked her away from the fate of decapitation as it skated past. "I said you can't manage it."
"Of course I can!" Tatsumaki bellowed and thrashed away from his grasp. Her eyes blazed back up to brilliance, hair wriggling in her circle of power without a care.
Her psychic elevated, higher and higher, until it reached the highest capacity in which she was ever encompassed. In her Pneuma, she saw the forbidden zone Blast said to never cross.
But this was life or death. If she still abided by his rules, she would die. If she didn't, there was a chance. At this point, it was not much of a struggle to choose.
However inconceivable it was, the green intensified even further, until it condensed so tightly a new form of energy was born from it, like when water dripped from vapor. At the core of her brow there was an unprecedented angelic white. Like a rising sun, the esper stared into the distant Continuum. A strand was fast approaching.
She threw both hands out and stretched her fingers to their extent. A pressure that would distend the body of any Mid-Second Limiter rushed out.
This was the capability of a Post-Second!
Tatsumaki was employing the force of a Post-Second at the level of Mid-Second! The stress it was exerting on her mind was beyond anything she had ever experienced. It was as if an executioner had wrested out her spine from her back and was whipping her with it at the speed of the universe's expansion!
Instantly, she thought her conscious was going to implode. Cracks spurred up in her soul realm, shattering her from the center of her soul. Right as she was about to collapse, the pearly white at her forehead dissolved into the green gleam.
As it melted, the aggressive backlash threatening to destroy its user was painted over with an ivory luminosity that turned the violent energy into a milky green.
Meanwhile, the rush of anguish was diluted into a more tolerable concussion that was a fragment more tender. It was still as excruciating as heaven and hell, but a newfound confidence surged in Tatsumaki.
She could do this. She had done it before. Eighteen years ago.
All of everything happened in the blink of an eye. The spatial rend was right above her. With all her might, she hollered. "HOLD!"
The astral vibrancy flooded the beam and contracted. The distorted space beam gurgled as it ripped apart the energy field, but it was visibly slowing!
Deep in Tatsumaki's unconscious, in the shadow of her Pneuma where even she could not notice, was a grave ravine. It had stood frozen for two decades, unchanged.
But, as her energy poured out, the cliff shook rhythmically. Then, in a god-decreed miracle, the walls of the ravine were being squeezed together like the tectonic plates of her Psyche were forcing them to recombine into a perfect, flawless soul.
The rumbling did not continue for long though. Tatsumaki's Psyche stopped quaking, but the ravine was no more the same. The width of its gap had minimized by a fifth… mending.
Outside, the spatial rend squirmed to the stop. Tangible chains of green locked on to the beam, though they were breaking by the instants. The truculent esper cried. "What are you waiting for!? PUNCH IT!"
Saitama was beside the fragment of light before she finished. All around them, the tunnel of the Continuum was crumbling into a hurricane of space that distorted and shredded all.
However, to the male Third Limiter, they were all invisible. In his eyes, there were only his shooting fist, the frozen light, and the shining girl.
He connected with the side of the crack of space. The fragment burst, but unlike prior. As if by arcane magic, a hole opened in front of his eyes, a hole that led to… a background of starry dots!
The dissipating energy of the spatial light melted into Tatsumaki's enveloping psychic glow. A torrent of occult intensity infused with an inscrutable knowledge of 'space' overwhelmed her mind.
It was beyond mystic. For a second, the esper thought she was reading and touching the universe, physically! However, a frantic shout interrupted her dreamlike contemplation.
"HELL! Don't faint right now!"
A pair of strong arms grasped her by the waist and hauled her in a direction. A rush of vigor ruffled through her body like it had transitioned between two worlds.
Quickly, Tatsumaki blinked herself back to her sense, just in time to catch the closing of the spatial gap. Around her were the billion specks of the night sky… of… reality.
They were back. Out of the storms of the Continuum. Into the universe.
Not shredded to pieces. Not bent to a long wire of flesh.
Safe… for now.
"You good?" Saitama waved his hand in front of Tatsumaki. No sound came out of his mouth, but it echoed straight in her mind. It was a sort of advanced vibration technique that was as easy for a Third Limiter to utilize as walking.
Scenes of the past few minutes whipped through her memory. Tatsumaki shuddered. She was a figment away from death… again.
A stringent migraine knocked her out of her recall and almost out of her awareness— the punishment for overexerting her psychic.
She registered their current state gradually. Thrown out of the wormhole. Lost in space. Out of AIR!
Her face darkened into the night. She was distracted by their concurrent emergency enough to ignore Saitama's ludicrous gesture. They were both evolved Limiters, so even if they were without oxygen for a few hours, their powers solely were enough to fuel their vitality.
But, even they could not live for long periods in empty space, uprooted, in the middle of NOWHERE!
Tatsumaki frowned. Immediately, a shot of pain stabbed into her Pneuma from the pale attempt to think. She bit hard on her tongue, choking out a few words using psychic vibration, each of which was another injection of agony. "Wait… let me… recover… Idea."
She pulled her body into a meditating stance, sat down, and closed her eyes. Her left hand pointed up, while her right down. Her conscious fell into her Pneuma.
Tatsumaki's astral realm was… a complete disaster, like an EF 5 tornado had just trampled across her soul. The thorough, abundant green landscape decomposed to wreckage of brown, chipped corners, and broken ravages.
However, in sharp contrast, at the center of her soul, there lied a transparent, sparkling liquid that radiated a foreign scent. By it was a white speck of will-o-wisp she had, too, never seen before. But, looking at the white, Tatsumaki was engulfed in a familiar fondness.
As she concentrated on it, the sphere shook and released a tiny tuft of green that flowed into her soul, patching up a spot of brown.
It wriggled toward the silver liquid to its side, expressing a strong desire to ingest it. Tatsumaki gave the snowy ball a gentle push, allowing it to roll into the mysterious puddle.
Promptly, a reaction commenced. Like dumping sodium into water, the puddle bubbled and steamed. On the other hand, the sphere was devouring the pool that was a hundred times its own size at a swift rate, while letting off a geyser of green energy that was repairing Tatsumaki's realm.
An enigmatic overflow of information suddenly appeared in her mind as if it was stuffed in by some complicated structure a million times that of DNA.
Her vision warped away from her accustomed Pneuma, vanishing without control. Lights flashed past her harmlessly. It was an eerie feeling, as if she was being teleported across…
All of the dazzles faded. Around her was oblivious darkness. Nothing.
The Origin. An absent voice spoke.
Tatsumaki did not know how long she had stayed until an image came into emergence in the emptiness.
The figure of a Great Man.
He was as tall as the universe itself.
He was the pillar that held up reality.
He was an utterly inconceivable being, existing only in her mind…
In his hand was a momentous ax composed of a length that was his height. It and the Man's body were the definition of the universe's three dimensions.
The man raised his arms up, along with the hatchet. Time lost its meaning. Tatsumaki could not even comprehend the strength infused in those muscles. The bare look at them sent a shiver of submission into her that destroyed the attempt to gawk.
The ax fell. Light exploded into what was previously undisrupted blackness. The perfect completion of duality was separated by the force of the chop.
The immaculate Yin Yang divided into black and white. The Concepts of time and space, reality and illusion abruptly came to shape.
As if he had put all his life into that one hack, the Great Man crumpled. His body turned to galaxies and quantum particles, stars and cells.
Deeply in shock, Tatsumaki did not even realize when wavering lights wrenched her back to her Pneuma. She forgot how long had passed, but her internal realm was filled with a silver green so lively the vitality of which could flourish species and communities.
The angelic white and the strange puddle had disappeared. In their place at the center of her soul was an exotic prism the size of a normal bedroom.
Wait! Tatsumaki froze. A tangible bedroom!?
This was her imagination! Nothing here had a solid state! Everything was in their incorporeal form and was constantly shifting! This was a material space!?
She clutched her head, which was miraculously not aching at all. It took a period of contemplation before a flash of insight dawned on her as to what might have happened.
The mysterious puddle… that was the remnants of the spatial rend. When Saitama breached the gaps of the Continuum and reality by puncturing the rend, the broken shards of space dissolved into her Pneuma, the power of which was surrounding and freezing it in place.
The white sphere had an extremely familiar sense to it. It was some part of herself. Maybe an undispersed matter from eighteen years ago hidden deep. Whatever it was, it absorbed the leftover spatial evidence and converted it to the psychic power that healed her injury which would have otherwise taken weeks, if not months.
In the process, the fragment of space combined into her memory and revealed… a piece of Creation? This was the part Tatsumaki was yet fuzzy about.
Was the spatial remnant like a neuron for the universe and it stored some of its eternal history? Or, was the scene a consequence of her own hallucination?
The esper shook her head instantly at the second conclusion. There was no way she could dream up a power of such magnitude. Even Blast, compared to the Great Man, was a speck of dust.
He was not a man. He was God. No. He was what created the world. He was… dare she say it.. above Gods.
And… what was the square prism in the center of her Pneuma? Her soul encircled the contraption as an ambitious idea formed. If this was what she thought it was…
Outside, Saitama was sitting across from the other Earthling, a concealed look of worry in his eyes.
The cyborg uniform he had peeled off. From the inside of the costume, he salvaged pieces of torn fabric which are used to wrap up his cuts, already healing from the stalwart genetics of a Third Limiter.
His injuries might look awful, but they were all surface lacerations, none of which even touched the bone. He was much more concerned for the childish psychic though.
Saitama was an Ichor-trainer, but it didn't take much to tell how strained she was. Pneuma damages were intangible and extremely difficult to deal with, hidden in the delicate structure of ultimate complexity: the brain.
He never expected her to help as much as she did in the Continuum, which, in all seriousness, had the potential to kill him. He had just taken a trip to the river of Hades and back.
There were the adrenaline and the thrill, but the accompanying fright was not just a flickering joke either. He was reminded why he had trained so hard in the past— for the same reason why people do most things: to simply not die.
"Did no one teach you that it is rude to stare?" A pesky voice rang in his mind in the form of psychic vibration. His pupils focused to see her glaring with the signature iciness. Unlike when she last talked, her voice was now instilled with a dense stability backed by confidence and restored power.
"Hey! You're okay! That was actually really fast. Twenty minutes." Saitama rubbed his bald head, which was now revealed for the universe to see.
"Of course! Look who I AM!" Tatsumaki scoffed and crossed her arms, dismissing the issue flamboyantly. "Now, for the real question…"
Her eyes scanned him up and down. Saitama, suddenly aware of the lack of his disguise, sighed. "Uh-oh."
Tatsumaki's eyes trailed into the distance. "How the hell are we going to get on land?"
"Ohhh…" Saitama coughed, a hint of ambivalence crossed between disappointment and relief mixed in his eyes. "I thought you were going to ask…"
"Who you are?" Tatsumaki snickered. "Fine. I guess since you're not too much weaker than me, you deserve for me to know your name."
The male hero raised an eyebrow. Was she… you know what, he'll overlook her blindness this once since they had bigger problems to deal with. "Saitama. My name is Saitama. What's your name again, child?"
The esper trampolined up and growled. "I said I'm NOT a child! I'm twenty-eight, you weak… you egg! I am the Tatsumaki!"
"Hmmm… never heard of it." Saitama tilted his head and pondered.
"'IT'? I'm not a thing!" A vein popped out of her forehead. "Then how about Tornado of Terror!?"
The bald man scratched his head. "Uhh…"
Tatsumaki's eyes twitched at a convulsive frequency. "You son of a…"
"Watch it." Saitama dangled a finger in front of her eyes. "You already have a strike."
"Strike one my ass! Are you going to cooperate or not!?" The esper slapped the anatomy away in vexation.
"You started it." Saitama deadpanned. Seeing her building aggravation, he whistled as if the ticking oxygen clock was fictional.
"Why can't you just listen like when you were in the space tunnel?" She exploded at him in a fit of pique.
Seeing fumes coming out of her nose, the male finally decided to stop teasing her. He was slightly worried that she'll fall into a stroke had he not terminated his replies. Pulling his pair of pinna apart frivolously, he invited her to continue as he was on 'all ears.'
Tatsumaki glared for a few seconds before turning in a direction. "Forget it. I'll just show you."
"Women are so troublesome." Saitama muttered.
"I heard that!"
"..."
"% !"
A few minutes later, Saitama sensed something approaching at a very high velocity. Tatsumaki huffed. "It's here."
"What?"
As soon as the words left his mouth, a large, icy comet the size of a small cliff entered his horizon. It sped after them until it was a few kilometers away, jolted to a halt in an outline of green.
Tatsumaki dashed off. "Come on! You don't expect that we walk to wherever we're going?"
Saitama raised an eyebrow and landed on the asteroid after her. "What does this have to do with oxygen?"
The esper waved. A tangible dome of green materialized above them like an upside down bowl. Tatsumaki smirked in triumph. "Ever heard of photoelectrochemical water splitting, Mr. So-Called Adult?"
Saitama regarded her blankly for two seconds and stuck his pinky in his ear to drag out a stew of its product. "Come again?"
"Can't you just…!" The psychic turned away in repugnance, but a glimpse of his expression of being at a complete loss satisfied her enough to not pursue the complaint. "Anyway, it's basic chemistry. Water is made of two hydrogen and an oxygen atoms. Comets have ice. All I need to do is simply supply them the energy for some oxidation-reduction processes."
Saitama comically sweatdropped. "You don't look like a classroom genius…"
"Did you just call me stupid!?" Fire spurted from her eyes as she spun. "I'm a great student!"
"So you are a child!" Saitama slammed his right fist into his left palm. "I knew it!"
"You… GAAHHH!" Tatsumaki bit down so hard her teeth were on the verge of cracking. But, as she was simmering, a comeback entered her brain. Her expression jumped. "Aha! A graduate student! Take that!"
"You? A grad student?" The Third-Limiter's eyes traced her petite frame judgingly. "What's nine plus ten?"
"..." Tatsumaki's lips twitched. It took all in her power to restrain herself from shouting out the obvious answer. "SHUT UP! You wanna breathe or not?"
Saitama gestured flippantly. Touching his chin, he evaluated that he had found another of her weakness.
Scoffing, Tatsumaki raised a hand, good mood long gone. Her fingers snapped, and the exterior carpet of ice and snow vaporized. The vacuum was replaced suddenly with a concentrated reservoir of oxygen blocked in by her barrier.
"See! Magic!" She grinned victoriously. "You may punch hard, but you can't do something cool like that!"
Saitama took a deep breath, before his brain started to blast the boisterous alarm of his sixth tense. His body tensed. A flash of knowledge crossed his mind as the fragments of high school chemistry came to him.
The law of conservation.
"Hey… Tatty, you said that water is made of oxygen AND hydrogen?" Saitama ignored the dirty look and continued in a solemn tone. "Ummm… so where's the hydrogen gas? Isn't that supposed to explode easily… especially since we're in pure oxygen?"
Tatsumaki's eyes widened.
At that moment, a shard of rock bounced away from the comet in its altering momentum and collided with the esper's shield, which propelled it back downwards.
A spark generated from the friction of its impact with the ground flew upwards.
*BOOOOOOM!
A giant fireball lit up in space and combusted. A yellow and a green beam of light dashed out clumsily.
"FUCK!"
"Strike two!"
"... SHUT UP!"
Three hours later…
The duo were riding on a second comet, with a similar green dome enclosing their heads. Saitama had laid down on the surface of the rock with a leg crossed over another one, which made a right triangle with the ground, a posture made possible by the artificial gravity Tatsumaki had induced.
On the other hand, the psychic was sitting in a more ladylike position on a throne she carved for herself out of boredom. "Are we there yet?"
Saitama yawned. "I swear…"
"Are we there yet?"
"Shut up."
"Are we there yet?"
"Shut up."
"Are we there yet?"
"..."
Tatsumaki snorted. So there was a time when even he couldn't find a retaliation. "I'm hungry."
At her mentioning of food, corresponding babbling rumbled from both heroes' stomach.
"You have a point." Saitama concluded. "This comet is traveling too slowly."
"What do you me…"
The Third Limiter shot out of her psychic bubble and slid to the edge of the asteroid. He placed both palms at its side and cried. "ONE! SERIOUS! PUSH!"
A formidable aura roared out against the meteoroid and propelled it at a speed tenfold of before into the distance. The green pixie's jaws dropped. In a yellow flash, he was back.
"Showoff!" Tatsumaki accused sorely.
Saitama rolled his eyes. "What now? You could've done the same thing easily."
The girl blinked and turned around silently. Internally, she was crying.
How was she going to tell him that she was actually powering the comet's velocity with half of her power…
A few more hours later
"Baldy. I'm bored." Tatsumaki spoke in last resort to the possible solution of her ennui.
"Great." The reply was never delayed… nor wholesome.
"Hey! I got it! You're boring. How do you deal with your own existence?"
"Are you listening to yourself!?" Saitama asked in exasperation. Peering at her attentive face, it seemed that she was actually earnest in her interrogative.
"Of course. It's one of the great joys of my life." She responded without the least shame.
The bald man facepalmed. "This is going to be a long ride."
Twenty minutes later
Saitama glanced up. She had been… silent for nearly half an hour. He was starting to wonder if she caught a heart attack.
Tatsumaki was staring into space as if hypnotized. Saitama couldn't resist but to pick up a pebble.
*Phew! The rock went bolting at the esper's face, before it was automatically plasmarized by her psychic. "HEY!"
Saitama chuckled and chucked another pebble at her. "Wanna play fetch?"
"No!" The sprite snatched the stone from the air. An esoteric light lurked in her eyes. "Wanna see a magic trick instead?"
"Whatever."
Inaudibly criticizing his lack of zeal, she flicked the cobble in the air and pointed. "Disappear!"
The pebble vanished on command. She smirked smugly at the emotionless egghead. "Applause?"
"Booo!" Saitama snickered as he stood up. "I can do the same thing."
He threw a stone up and shouted. "Go away!"
A torrent of energy poured out and disintegrated it to dust. "Tadah!"
Tatsumaki sniggered, already predicted that he would mock her with something alike. "Fine. But can you make it reappear?"
She snapped and the previous nugget reappeared. Saitama raised an eyebrow, faintly surprised. His eyes caressed her body up and down, trying to spot where she could have hid the gadget.
"Ayeee! Where are you looking at!?" Tatsumaki squeezed her legs together and shuffled back. No men had dared to stare at her like so. She would dig their eyes out if they did.
"Nothing much." Saitama snorted sardonically.
"Better not." The esper growled.
Black lines formed on his head. Did she sincerely not get it or… "Well? So how did you do it?"
Tatsumaki didn't answer as she bent down and put a hand to the ground. "Watch this."
A blade of green sliced into the comet and carved out a rectangular prism as large as a mobile trailer, levitating it out. She touched the giant piece of rock. Then, without the fluttering of light or energy, it disappeared!
Saitama's eyes shone. This time, he really was amazed. "Woah! That's actually pretty cool."
The psychic's hand clutched. The room-sized boulder fell from nowhere and landed behind her. "Will you believe me if I told you I might have gotten a superhuman ability from the collapse of the space tunnel?"
He eyed her inspectingly. She was aligned with such sobriety it was hard for even him to doubt her. "Go on."
"I think… a fragment of space combined with my psychic. Apparently, now I have… a small storage lot in my Pneuma." Tatsumaki flicked a lock of hair from her eye. "Yeah. It's about as big as the size of that rock."
Saitama's jaw hung. It took him seconds to digest it, before jumping up. "That's not fair! I punched, like, seven of those lights! You just held one in place! How come I didn't get it?"
"So yeah… now I have an enormous, weightless backpack." Tatsumaki smiled proudly. She loved getting a victory over him. "This just proves once and for all that psychic is better than Ichor."
"Leprechaun." Saitama reminded.
"AVOCADO SAY WHAT!?"
The two astronauts lied on their backs, staring at the sky without any movement. They were… numb. Utterly numb to the overbearing blackboard dotted by white chalk that they had once thought celestial.
It was now the third day in their space travel. On the first day, after hours of mindless wandering, Saitama had noticed a speck in the surroundings that was bigger than the others, hinting at a nearby solar system. Thus, he switched the direction and headed in accordance.
Sixty hours later, the specks were becoming only slightly enlarged, from the size of a mosquito to a bottle cap— which were actually many multitudes of magnification.
As they zoomed closer, the bald hero, eyesight reinforced with the concentration of a Third Limiter, noticed that the bottle cap was not actually one, but rather three individual suns huddled in a cluster.
He dismissed the observation as trivial and sat back down, whistling. Tatsumaki was beside him, eyes expanded and sleepless. It was not easy to sleep on an empty belly. It was nowhere near enough to kill them— they could go months without food, years in fact— but it still depressed both Limiters.
Or was it even the third day? They had stopped counting the hours in the beginning of Day 2, when starvation set in.
It seemed as if reality was forever stuck in the emptiness, before a ray of brilliant fire ripped across the space next to them.
Like a switch was flicked violently, Saitama and Tatsumaki heaved themselves from the ground with a thirsty look of anticipation. Was something interesting actually going to happen!?
Their horizon was enveloped with a second torrent of fire, this one accurately striking the comet and engulfing the entire structure.
Tatsumaki's shield cracked under the heat. Her face changed drastically and pulsed out a second shield that replaced the rusted one. Her eyes sparkled with astonishment.
She was… feeling a sort of pressure under the flame. It was not enough to break open the barrier, washing across it like waves of the shore, but it was a power she had not felt for long on Earth.
The green light crested outwards forcefully, sweeping it into vortices that spun away while clearing their sight.
Miles ahead, there was an enormous Phoenix rushing at them, mouth charging up another breath of inferno. The bird was as large as one of the Cities back on Earth, and its attack was no less in size.
It had sneaked up in the duo's hunger-induced inattentiveness. Tatsumaki frowned and cast a look to her right. "You go take care of it."
Saitama rubbed his neck. Like her, he didn't feel like moving either. "Aren't you supposed to be undefeatable?"
"Aren't you supposed to splatter anything in one punch?" The esper retorted crudely. "Here's your chance."
The third flame arrived. The bald hero sighed and sling his fist half-heartedly. The fire breath dissipated in the face of the great force without resistance.
A light flashed across his brain at taking a second look at the Phoenix. "Tatty, wait."
"Wat!? I don't have energy for your crap!" She glared.
"You have to be the one taking care of it." Saitama turned expectantly at her. "Haven't you wondered where this thing came from?"
Tatsumaki's eyes lit up. "A planet!?"
"Maybe, but it has to come from somewhere." He shrugged. "There's this Nature episode I watched as a kid that said animals run back to their homes when they're hurt. We can trace it back to its nest and find land that way!"
"The Nature channel!? Are you serious?" The esper deadpanned. "Fine. Why not? We can try that. Why don't you go and punch it then?"
"I kill everything in one punch. From its breath, I can tell this thing is only Pre-Second Limit." Saitama looked worriedly at the giant bird gliding in. "If this chicken goes splat, it might be bad…"
Tatsumaki's countenance froze. This 'chicken' was nearly as powerful as she! Her eyes twitched as she put her hands on her hips. "So? I'm not your hitman!"
"You have to go fight it and you know it." Saitama pointed at the Second Limit bird, the equivalence of a God Level Threat.
Tatsumaki growled and stuck a finger inches from his nose. "Just this once, skinhead. Because we both have to get on land."
The esper dashed off in a ray toward a fourth incoming flame, which was torn apart by a furious green Psybeam. Saitama saluted. "Don't get roasted!"
She ignored the comment and soared atop the giant bird, being much more agile than the Phoenix. The fire beast, while huge, was not too much slower than her, actually.
Tatsumaki had time only to slam down one beam before a mouthful of fire was flung her way. The psychic attack connected against its fiery surface, letting loose a flock of feathers and ember.
When her vision cleared, the Phoenix was floating oppose to her, eyes shining with the vigilance and acknowledgement of a worthy opponent.
On its back was a charred spot of baldness that failed to regenerate. A hint of viridescence lingered. Compared to its massive body, the damage was but a drop in the ocean.
It flapped its wings strenuously. Nine blasts of fire the size of a skyscraper spawned from under its wings, pouncing after her swiftly.
She huffed and opened her palm. In the altitude above her, a giant green hand materialized and closed around her, as if protecting her in an unbreakable fist.
The nine beams collided one after the other, producing a heated hurricane in space. When it faded, the pinky of the hand had been incinerated.
Tatsumaki's expression darkened. "Enough play. You had your chance."
A green blade condensed in the midst of the herculean fist and sliced toward the Phoenix.
A shocked look of fright blinked in its eyes. Quickly, it stirred its wings, aiming to dodge the attack.
Tatsumaki scoffed and roared. "HOLD!"
A green outline wrapped around the bird, attempting to grasp it in place. It struggled without success to break the restraint, the same type of which that could hold spatial rends in place.
Frantically, the fire on its body converted to an exceptional blue that soared up miles high. Within half a second, the green was melted off, and the bird lunged away.
But, its motion was betrayed by its own gigantic stature and the strain from using its special boost. While its upper body slanted away, its lower torso was not fast enough.
The psychic sword ruptured the sheen of fire and dug deep into the bird's flesh, proclaiming a furious cry through soundless space as a tremendous trail of blood spurted from the injury.
"Running away yet?" Tatsumaki hummed. The Phoenix's aura was stained into a blood scarlet. In its eyes was not the fright of a hurt animal, but the gruesome rage of a Second Limiter.
Its fire bellowed out, immersing hundreds of miles of space into a brilliant fireball. Tatsumaki swiftly pulsed out a green shield.
However, her normally impenetrable defense could not deter the wrath of the Phoenix. Temperatures rose precariously even within her bubble.
The esper frowned. Sixteen Psybeams flew into the currents of inferno, while she used the psychic momentum to soar back away from the sun-like environment.
There was no way the Phoenix could sustain its attack for long. The bird was a stage below her, and even she did not like using such torrent of power. The backlash would cause an irritating headache.
To her prediction, the expansive fire was dying down within minutes. She smirked, victory in sight.
As she let her guard down, a spike of condensed crimson hidden in the surge of red protruded the ball of fire and rushed at her. Before she could react, the spike was already a mile from her.
The spike was small, but a formidable power throbbed from it. In fact, even the sea of flames behind it was less horrifying, for that the terrible magnitude of force was compressed into a tiny space.
Tatsumaki's eyes widened. Her alarm was blaring even louder than when they were stuck in the Continuum. To her disbelief, the spike was much capable of piercing through her defense, through her shield, and through… her life.
Her mind faded into a blank. Was she… seriously going to get incinerated here!? To die in the hands of a being less Evolved than her!?
The words of a baldy surged into her mind, spoken not too long ago. She was using too much power spread apart. Her psychic was never condensed at a single point of max damage. It was useless against foes of her own level, like her shield.
She bit down on her lip hard and let the taste of blood flood her tongue. In the back of her Pneuma, the concealed Ravine ached grossly.
If it wasn't for the Ravine limiting her abilities and magnifying their backlash…
She… had nothing she could do. The tables turned so fast. Tatsumaki had never been in a Second-Limit fight beside one with Blast a decade ago. She wasn't used to the rhythm.
Her life… flashed across her eyes, closed painfully. She CAN'T die here! She made it through the impossible Continuum! She was only twenty-eight! HOW…
Wait! Continuum!?
Scenes of the spatial rends rocketed across her memory in lightning speed. Uncontrollably, or by some insight, her Pneuma twitched and the glow of her psychic condensed into a thin beam much like the Continuum lights.
An unseen energy mixed with the mystic fragments of the meaning of space leaked from the spatial core in Tatsumaki's Pneuma into her newly formed beam.
Her eyes snapped open. The Phoenix's spike was a hundred feet from her. In a Second-Limiter battle, such distance prohibits nearly any action except the raising of a shield, which was not remotely enough to stop the offense.
The esper opened her mouth. A green dazzle soared out at the speed of light. There was an eerie calm in her expression, which was still haunted by leftover panic. A whisper snuck out of her mouth. "Spatial Rend."
The green dazzle was even thinner than the spike in comparison, but it stabbed through the fiery attack like a needle through pudding.
Time seemed to freeze in the contact of the two attacks. Tatsumaki shivered as a cold ran down her spine. If they were to explode this close to her…
But instead of detonating, a tube of black formed in the path of the needle, through the center spike where the spatial rend had punctured.
The vermilion blaze folded into itself, into the microscopic black hole created by the enhanced manipulation of space. Within a second, the entire spike crumbled and dissipated, leaving a wide-eye Tatsumaki in place.
She had acted on auto-pilot in the last five seconds. Her intuition was congratulating her on realizing a new move infused with the power of the universe itself. She stared at her hands, still in shock.
On the other hand, the spatial rend, an almost identical copy of one from the Continuum, shot through the still tumbling sea of fire. Before she knew it, a scream of anguish rang through space, and the flames dissipated a second later.
A frenzied image was darting into the distance, while leaving heavy trails of blood that covered the stars.
A yellow flash was by her. "Good job! Chase!"
Tatsumaki, just coming out of the astonishment of the power of her new move, took a glimpse at the comet. "What about…"
"No need. Whatever this is, its nest must be near!" Saitama grabbed her arm and sprinted toward the bird mercilessly.
A fiery red darted through the emptiness of space. In its path, meteors shattered and were pushed away like dust, as if they were fragile sandstones.
However, the seemingly unstoppable stream of light was not nearly as potent as it appeared, a trail of its vaporized blood seeping behind.
Following the scent were two flashes, one of yellow and one of green. Compared to the rush of the scarlet dazzle, their travel was much more composed, warping around space debris gracefully.
"Wow. The chicken still hadn't bled out yet." Saitama commented absently. The gaseous odor of blood undetectable to the most elite machines on Earth was as obvious to him as his own sweat. "We really can track it to its planet."
"Are you kidding? Have you ever heard of a Second-Limiter bleed out? Plus, that's a Phoenix. They're known in lore for regeneration." Tatsumaki rolled her eyes. "In fact, she's probably healing."
"Maybe." Saitama shrugged. "But maybe not. Her wounds should be closing if she is."
"We are forcing her to fly very fast." The esper remarked. "How much time has it been?"
"Eight… hours?"
As the estimation left the bald hero's mouth, the Phoenix turned sharply and headed to her right. In her new direction, there was an orb that was becoming increasingly bigger.
Behind the geometry was a much larger, silver-colored sphere. In its background were three enormous suns that were orbiting in a circle around a center point of vacuum.
It had been many hours since the Phoenix had led them into this bizarre triarchic solar system that they were initially flying towards.
When Saitama and Tatsumaki first flew toward the stars, they did so by simply assuming that they appeared the largest, and therefore the closest, not realizing that they were really three stars in one.
In fact, neither of them had ever heard of a triarchic solar system before— perhaps a binary system, with two stars.
As they moved in on the stars, they also noticed many things peculiar about the astronomical structures, the most significant of which being that one of the suns was pure black.
From afar, it was brilliant, but the radiance was only caused by electromagnetic rays out of the color range. When they sped nearer and nearer, the sun became dull, and eventually deformed into an obscure blackness that could swallow the souls of all mortals.
On the other hand, the two visible stars were yellow and green. Unlike Earth's sun, they were not blinding to the retina. They appeared almost as if they were… inhabitable.
In addition, there were thirteen planets orbiting the suns in the triarchic system, and they all revolve in an abnormally orderly formula.
Divided into three groups, each quatrain spun in accordance to one sun without violating the mutual center space of all three suns. They and the suns all have an equivalent rotational velocity, and so each of the four pairs would never see the other two suns. The last planet circulated the entire system like an oval that dictated its border.
Unlike the map of Earth's solar system being nine ellipses surrounding a dot, that of the triarchic system was three concentric circles: the innermost layer being the three suns revolving around their center of gravity, the second frame being the twelve planets, and the outermost being the remaining outlier.
The Phoenix was zooming toward one of the planets in orbit with the green sun. No, rather, she was diving in the direction of one of the silver planet's moons.
The moon was many times smaller than its companions, being at merely a tenth of the volume of Earth's moon, which were the average size for the others.
As they approached the runt of the satellites, both heroes noticed there was something bizarre about it.
The moon rotated in complete synchrony with the silver planet, trapped in a gravitational deadlock. What's more, its rotational speed was exactly the same as the planet, which meant that the sun was eternally blocked by the planet! Light would never reached the tiny moon!
However, instead of being trapped in complete darkness, there was a lit green dome that covered the back half of the moon facing the depth of space, providing it with the precious light against the same oblivion suffered by the opposite bisection.
At the center of the brilliant dome was a tall pillar that extended outwards. It was most likely as tall as the radius of the moon itself.
No, it was no pillar. Growth spurted out of the gargantuan structure and covered a tenth of the moon's altitude in the forms of leaves and masses of green. It looked as if it was the astronomical version of a plant bulb, with the bulb being the moon and the stem being the gigantic tree that defied logic.
The Phoenix fluttered toward the tiny moon with a suddenly increased speed, desire of life strengthened exponentially at the sight of home. Saitama and Tatsumaki exchanged a glance and accelerated.
However, to their surprise, they had underestimated the fire bird, who had hastened her trajectory to eight times her previous speed. Before they could catch up, she melted into the translucent dome and entered the moon, disappearing from their sight.
"Green? This is an imposter." Tatsumaki snickered and dove after her without hesitation.
Saitama's face modeled his common blank. "Should we spare the chicken for leading us to land?"
"No. I want turkey for dinner." The esper growled and rubbed her stomach.
"You have a point. It'll be like Thanksgiving." The Third-Limiter replied. "We're thanking by having it become our meal. Perfect."
Tatsumaki decided that she had bigger issues to handle than trying to comprehend his 'immaculate' logic. Instead, she was pouring her power into her shield, which was to contact with the hood of the tree right…
*SPLOOSH
She soared through the dome without effort. To her amazement, it was a surface of hovering, intangible light that served no protection at all— only a distortion for sight.
There were some branches and leaves in front of her, but she slapped them aside easily. They were… actually just normal leaves! No tricks!
A second later, Saitama came crashing down beside her, with a leaf comically stuck to his head. He pointed nonchalantly toward the apex of the giant tree, which were some distance away from where they had breached the makeshift atmosphere. "Dinner's that way."
"I'm not blind!" Tatsumaki snapped in response. "This is my kill. Don't you dare steal it!"
Saitama raised his hands in mocking. "Woah. So we're not sparing the chicken anymore?"
"Didn't you agree to turn it into a turkey dinner!?"
"So? It's still sparing it."
"I…" The esper flew off instead of a continued attempt to converse. It was too stressful.
Within minutes, a green beam found herself to the vertex of the dome. The extensive tree was only a mile below her. At this height, she could not even see the ground with naked eyes.
It was impossible to imagine looking up at this autotrophic monstrocity from the ground. A senseless animal would probably think it the God of the realm and worship it for generations.
In contrary, the esper had no such reverence. Instead, she forced her psychic brutally into the massive crown of the timber, tearing apart tremendous shroud to uncover her target. A rain of greenery precipitated.
A giant hole appeared, but there was no sign of the Phoenix. The depth was remarkable. Tatsumaki spun up a second ball of attack.
Abruptly, the leaves that were torn off suddenly dissipated into a cloud of luxuriant energy that cluttered around the attached branches. When they touched, the branches began growing and sprouting at a lightning rate, all but in a second replenishing the damage that Tatsumaki.
A crude laughter sprung from within, communicating by a vibration of brainwaves that conveyed her meaning that ignored the language barrier. "Scram, tiny creatures! I only lost in space because I mistook you for ants. Now, I am in my terrain! You cannot touch me! I am undefeatable here!"
"Oh?" The duo looked at each other. "Why is that?"
"Hahaha, clueless pygmies! I've inhabited this moon for Great Parasol Tree has helped me spread my flame to all parts of this hemisphere, ever since I arrived! It is my ultimate defense! There is not a thing that can rupture the security of the Tree's essence!"
"I don't know what our dinner is saying, but it seems pretty intimidating." Saitama sniffed. "I think I should go in for the kill here."
"Don't you dare!" Tatsumaki retorted instantly. "Shouldn't you already be used to monsters overstating their accomplishments?"
"...Yes. They always turn out a disappointment." Saitama sighed. "They never last more than one punch."
"Foolish critters! Even if you are stronger than me, you cannot penetrate the Parasol! Not even the Dukes of the planets could overcome me here. Perhaps the three Monarchs could defeat me, but you have no chance! Now flee, weaklings!"
"Quite some talk for a chicken who dares not even come out to face me." Tatsumaki gave herself a mental high-five for the vernacular spin.
"You! Fool, I shall not waste time on you! If you think yourself so mighty, come through the Tree!"
"I WILL!" The sprite roared and pulsed out a massive whirlwind that ripped apart a mountain's worth of twigs and foliage.
As soon as her psychic tornado dissipated, the ravaged greenery collapsed into a heavy aura that was reabsorbed by the Parasol Tree, which rejuvenated its growth in a matter of seconds, as if nothing had happened.
A wave of smug laughter bellowed from within. "Just quit, you shrub! You will never get in! I am the Parasol's first owner, and I am its last! Nothing can hurt me here! Not Ferra, and certainly not you!"
Tatsumaki gritted her teeth, her annoyance climbing increasingly by the second.
She motioned her hands in exaggeration. Surges of power traversed her veins, stacking up one wave after another and rummaging her hair. She channeled her power to the maximum capability, a fragment below breaching Post-Second, and slammed down at the Tree.
A horrid turbulence inundated the crown and plasmarized miles and miles of vegetation. Verdant energy swarmed the sky of the moon in dazzles that rendered the eyes of all beings useless.
Tatsumaki panted heavily as her figure ascended. The blow had taken quite a chunk out of her. If she was to land a similar attack on Earth, even the Hero Association HQ would be destroyed.
However, her jaws dropped as she glanced down at the crown of the Parasol Tree. It was… undamaged. Crisscrosses of greenery still lined the skies, already healed, like her previous attack was merely an illusion.
Saitama floated next to her, a torrent of air spinning at such a rapid rate beneath his feet that he was able to sustain his Ichor-induced levitation. "Nice light show."
Tatsumaki bit down hard on her lip. A formidable current materialized as the blaze of her rage mixed with the nitro of power. A dot of angelic white threatened to make an appearance on her forehead.
The bald hero frowned and grabbed her by the wrist, pulsing his energy up her arm and effectively interrupting her next offense. "Stop. The turkey is purposely trying to tire you."
"Let. Me. Go!" The esper growled at him, baring teeth.
"Promise to not attack."
Tatsumaki glared at him. Saitama met her glance stoically. If her death stare had any effect on him, she couldn't find it herself. Her brain cooled, giving a chance for the hot-headed powerhouse to digest the situation.
The Third-Limiter, seeing that she had regained her sense, released his grasp. "You know, I can always…"
"No! You're going to steal my kill!" Tatsumaki spat menacingly. "I want to squish its body into nuggets, and turn its head into my soccer ball. Don't you dare interfere!"
"Geez… that doesn't sound like a very delicious dinner." Saitama judged. "How about this? You're at a stalemate here. I'll open a hole for you through the overgrown bush, and you can take your kill, since it's so important to you."
The esper sifted through his words, evaluating the sincerity of them. At last, she nodded. "Fine."
"But in return, I call dips on the wings." Saitama smirked.
"... Whatever."
The male took a step and cracked his knuckles. A line of vision from within the Parasol caught his motion, and its owner bellowed out a stream of laughter. "HAHAHA! Another one is coming to bite the dust!?"
Tatsumaki smirked. "Hey! Someone's calling you weak, Baldy!"
Hearing her words, Saitama's brow dipped for just a millimeter. He took another step forward. A cyclone of energy formed around him. In the blink of an eye, it had ripen to the climax of any un-Evolved Mortal power.
"Is that all you got, tiny scum!?"
He took another step. A dignified aura soared like invisible serpent guardians, shoving away the engulfing green light of the Tree. The sound of glass shattering reverberated as his power rose expeditiously. Pre-First. Mid-First. Post-First.
Step. The cyclone magnified into a thunderstorm that replaced the jade shine as the sky of the moon. Pre-Second. Mid-Second. Post-Second…
Saitama rose until reaching the apex of Post-Second, a hair away from releasing his full capacity. His aura had cleared the altitude above him of any viridescence, which was squashed tightly against its leaves.
Without looking back, he addressed the female. "The bird might be hurt a little when I break the Tree. I'm not doing this on purpose… so I still have dips on the wings."
"Wait… hold on…" A distraught voice boomed from within the plant. "Can I apolo…"
*POM!
Saitama's arm broke the sound barrier before it was even fully extended. The image of an enormous fist formed behind him and lashed toward the Tree. The second was barely over, and they connected.
*BWOOOMMMM!
The square mile of initial contact vaporized, but the shockwave was far from extinguished. It spread into the distance, breaking leaves and twigs as it radiated unstoppably. The greenery tried to repair itself, but as soon as it rebuilt, another wave of energy smashed it to pieces.
The damage multiplied and stretched until all where the eyes could see were ravaged wood and a palpable fog of viridescence that were faltering to regenerate the Parasol.
Astonishment danced across Tatsumaki's countenance, but she instantly wiped it clean, allowing no one the privilege of observing it.
Meanwhile, a screech of horror rippled across the moon, rivaling the thunderous destruction. A flash of scarlet dashed out and into the distance, trying to camouflage by the haze and failing miserably.
The esper sprinted toward the injured bird, her expression locked in deadly concentration. A giant psychic hand concretized in air and snatched at the Phoenix, imprisoning the panicking bird in a quintuple-barred cage.
The fiery fowl shrieked and pulsed out a ring of fire, scorching Tatsumaki's construction. At last, the restraint collapsed, and she flitted frantically away.
"Too late." A deadpan vibrated as a human pixie descended from the heavens, lit up in silverly emerald, resonating with her equally mossy surroundings as if she was the true dictator of the moon.
"NOooo! Please! Don't kill me! I'm too powerful to die!" The Phoenix spluttered madly. "Please! I'll do anything! I'll serve you! Please! You must want a Second-Limit servant!"
"I want food. I've been starving for days." A savage smile appeared on Tatsumaki's face. "I bet even Blast had never had real Phoenix wings."
"Wings are mine." An unruly utteration interjected, the articulator of which ignoring the darkness on the esper's face and the fear in the bird's eyes.
"PLEASE! I'll.."
"JUST DIE ALREADY!" A bolt of lightning whiffs down from above, its radius as wide as the base of a skyscraper, and pummeled into the staggering avian.
She let out a pain ridden bawl. From the top of her shoulder, the Phoenix's entire right wing dislocated and shot into the sky. Immediately outlined by green, it was flung toward the male Ichor-trainer.
"Take your damn wings!"
"Wing." Saitama corrected as he skillfully secured his prize. "Singular versus plural. One plus one equals two. They should've taught you this by now."
Tatsumaki scowled, and her fury transformed into another bolt that slammed into the Phoenix's chest, accelerating her free fall.
The bird leered up at her with the eyes of malice and hatred that were the doors to hell. Suddenly, a pulse of blue zapped from the Phoenix, which slowed her and somehow allowed her to maintained struggled flight. "You…!"
"Mmmm?" The esper hummed as she conjured another attack in her fist.
"You think you can take my life without a price!? I'm taking you down with ME!" Her words dropped with venom, but it was nowhere enough for Tatsumaki to back off.
But, something else was.
The Phoenix's body started to fledge with a purple flame that instantly released a wave of intolerable heat sweeping across the battlefield. The Parasol's verdant energy in the area withered and disintegrated, a feat even Saitama's punch had little success with.
The creature's own feathers and skin were burning off. The magenta conflagration was so ardent a Phoenix was melting.
A perilous premonition hollered in Tatsumaki's head. She dashed backward without hesitation.
The Phoenix was on the verge of death. There was no chance she could live, so she was determined to trade her life away for an ultimate attack! She was using her soul as fuel, hoping to take the esper with her to hell!
And Tatsumaki had no intention of exchanging her own life for the bird's death!
But, she had covered no distance when the Phoenix had disappeared wholly in the globe of inferno. In her place was a condensed ball of dark purple the size of a baby's palm, but radiating with the potency of a Post-Second Limiter!
SHIT!
She cursed internally before channeling her energy straight to full and threatening to exceed it into Post-Second, like she had in the Continuum. The angelic white dot was in full appearance on her forehead.
Cringing at the wager of months of concussion and drained power, she goggle the purple blaze, which had finished structalizing and was accelerating toward her.
As she was about to release her psychic, a foreign energy crept out from her body and disrupted her power, neutralizing her spell in an instant!
It was the remnants of the force Saitama pulsed into her minutes ago to stop her power from exceeding her limits! And it was doing it again!
The esper froze. There was no time for her to raise another spell. The deathflame was right in her face… and she was about to be hit with a Post-Second attack with only a slim shield as defense!
As her life flashed in front of her, the Ichor energy that stopped her psychic boiled and trailed into her artery. Uncontrollably, her arm hurled outward.
A giant fist of aura not unlike the one that destroyed the crown of the tree spawned in front of her and smashed into the deathflame, dissipating it to smoke.
Tatsumaki's jaws dropped. It wasn't until a few seconds later did she realized what had happened. Saitama found his way next to her, carrying a gigantic wing.
"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU DOING!?" The esper immediately spun and shouted at him with rage. "You locked up my psychic cap! I could have died!"
"You? Dying to a chicken? Really?" Saitama looked at her playfully.
"Gggrrr…" Tatsumaki opened her mouth, and closed it immediately. No way was she going to admit that.
Noticing her stubborn face, Saitama smirked to himself. He was equally glad that he had successfully quieted her and that his preparation worked.
Seeing the eeriness of the Parasol Tree, he was slightly concerned that it might dispel an attack that could hurt the girl, so he added a pulse of his own energy in Tatsumaki when he stopped her from exceeding her capability the first time.
It would only emerge when she encountered an attack so forceful she needed to push her limits to neutralize the attack. If it activated, then she didn't have to suffer the aftereffects of going Post-Second because his punch would take care of it.
Although, he didn't expect the Phoenix to lash back with such a dangerous attack at the brink of her death. It was quite a scary thought, really, that an injured lower-Evolved could charge up such an offense at the cost of her life.
Speaking of the Tree…
Although it resembled miles and miles of total annihilation from first gaze, the result was actually much less malignant. The portion eradicated was only about a tenth of the Parasol, which was remote from erasing its existence.
In addition, it proved how immensely colossal the creation was.
The stupendous ravage was being replenished at a breathtaking rate, as the plant's energy finally succeeded in recombining into branches and leaves after Saitama's punch had wore off.
"Hmmm?" Saitama's eyes caught on to something in the distance where the Phoenix had burned up. A cloud of leftover ash flew in his direction harmlessly.
Then, a mild warmth came from his shoulder. He turned to find the enormous wing he was holding igniting in an enlarging blue flare.
Gasping, he threw it into the air, more of surprise than fear. The blaze spread rapidly, rendering the whole wing a pile of ash in ten seconds.
The smaller pile joined the arrived heap, creating a mountain's worth of remains. The mass of ash condensed and minimized, and the two heroes watched in amazement as the residue was compressed until into a sphere of some sorts, the size of which comparable to a small military tank.
A current of wind blew by, and the surface remains fluttered away, revealing a huge, scarlet-dotted, black egg that sunk into free fall.
However, it did not travel far before Tatsumaki pulled it back with a burst of psychic. "Interesting."
"I lost my wing." Saitama poked his head over, an obvious frown carved on his face. "Well, at least there's fried eggs tonight."
"I am NOT letting you turn this into dinner!" The esper huffed. "Have you never heard about the lore of a phoenix?"
"Uhhh? I have… none of them are true on earth though."
"No kidding. They're all imposters." Tatsumaki waved dismissively. "But this, this may be real. Bl- Legend has it that a Phoenix can reincarnate from ash and return to its egg form when its soul dies. Only its spirit comes and goes. Its Ichor never ceases."
"I got it! Damn that's smart!" Saitama slammed his fist into his palm and started clapping. "So you want to raise up a second Phoenix to repay me with my wings!?"
The esper facepalmed. "CAN YOU THINK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE THAT'S NOT FOOD!?"
"I'm hungry." The male declared simply.
"Well, I'm no-" A rumble from her stomach interrupted her words. Tatsumaki's eyes twitched and glimpsed back at the giant, delicious…
She blinked and forcefully braked her descent down the very slippery slope. "Think! If we can raise this bird up, then we are going to have a pet Phoenix!"
"How can you guarantee it'll listen? I mean, it'll be like herding a lion, but a thousand times worse" Saitama looked at his fist. "Actually, we can punch it…"
"Better idea." The esper snapped her fingers deviously. "I'll prove to you again why psychic is superior to Ichor."
Ignoring his eye roll, she sat down midair in a cross-legged position. Closing her eyes, she twisted her fingers in weird patterns.
A few minutes passed, and a silver green light shone on the top of her head. The faint silhouette of an elfish humanoid wavered in the blinking luminosity.
The humanoid floated into the air as if it was tangible and glided over to the titanic egg. A speck flickered off onto the shell and diffused through without difficulty.
A scarlet light projected out of the egg and into the air, materializing to form the tiny anatomy of a bird, completely immobile. The humanoid moved closer and touched the diminutive dove.
Patterns of green danced across its surface, metamorphosing it to stripes of ruby and emerald. The silhouette gestured, and the now scarlet and verdant oscine returned to its egg.
On the other hand, the elf flashed above Tatsumaki and merged back through her skull, before she opened her eyelids.
"Done!" She stood up while dusting her hands. "I impressed a mark of submission onto its soul, so it must always follow my commands. Normally, I can't do this until I get to Third-Limit and formed a solid Pneuma that could leave my body, or else my enslavement spells won't have enough punch."
"Why? You pack plenty of punch." Saitama judged.
"No, not physical punch, you airhead! Enslavement spells require my conscious Pneuma to leave my brain for it to be cast, since our souls have to touch. That's basically de-rooting my psychic power, since I'm not a Third-Limiter, so my psychic dissipates at a rate a thousand times faster than if my Pneuma stays in my mind. The spell only succeeded because the egg's soul is literally just forming two minutes ago. It's too weak to struggle. This is an once-and-done thing!"
"Sure… whatever…" Saitama sighed and rubbed his stomach. "Now what about food?"
"Let's get to ground. There has to be food if there's an atmosphere here."
"Are you sure we can't eat the egg?"
"WE'RE NOT EATING A FUTURE PET PHOENIX!"
When the duo descended the altitudinous elevation along the bulky trunk, the sight that greeted them on the ground was one beyond any of their imagination.
An enormous crowd of lifeforms had gathered around the base of the Parasol, gawking at them with mysterious looks.
There were thousands and thousands of beasts of all sizes that inundated the ground and painted the horizon.
"This is… interesting." Saitama's stolid expression straightened at seeing the ocean of Evolvers. Despite the numbers, they were all lined up in surprisingly organizational arrangements.
Four especially giant beings stood out from the rest, standing each in one of the four navigational directions centered on the Tree… and the heroes.
To the north was a levitating land octopus that size of a cliff. To the east was a three-headed falcon, all six eyes trained on them. The south had an anaconda coiling into a voluminous ball, and at the west sat a mighty mammoth that was twice the stature of his three counterparts.
Behind Octopus was a sea of water elementals, from giant crabs to floating sharks. Falcon led a flock of perched birds, and Anaconda had swarm of reptiles slithering at her rear.
The Mammoth, however, commanded only a herd of his own species. While their numbers were no match for the three, none of the others seemed to show any disrespect for the ivory tusks.
The other half aside from the four obvious alliance was a mass of diverse lifeforms who sat equally rigidly.
Tatsumaki panned out with her psychic and frowned. "Most of them are Mortals, but a tenth are in First-Limit. The four in front are Post-First."
"Hmmm… this might take a few punches." Saitama stroked his chin while grinning. "But here's food for days."
The esper filtered out his nonsense out and increased her rate of decline, power already spinning in preparation.
When she fell below cloud level, something she wouldn't have expected in her wildest dreams occurred. The northern Octopus suddenly kneeled, touching all eight tentacles to the ground and bending his head to the ground.
Falcon, Anaconda, and Mammoth were only a second behind. Behind them, thousands of lifeforms bowed in a wave of moving anatomy.
A bellowing roar found its way to Tatsumaki's ears, translated through psychic vibration. "Our most humble greetings, new Governor!"
The esper's eyes bulged. "Wha… what!? What are you doing, you crazy pests!? What did you call me!?"
The entire land drowned in a quenching silence. The Octopus raised his head. "Lady Governor, please call me Octo. Welcome to our Moon. I understand that what we are doing must appear beyond queer, but I implore an opportunity to explain. In simple words, you have defeated the ex-Governor, so we beg of you to become the next ruler."
As his voice died, Saitama's figure sunk to Tatsumaki's right. "Wow! That's some weird rules. You kill the king and you become king."
"Oh! There is another of your honor!?" Octo caught Saitama's figure. "Are more arriving? Should I start my explanation?"
"Go ahead! Just us two." The esper motioned impatiently.
"Shorten whatever you are saying to twenty words or less." Saitama added. "I'm hungry."
Octo's composure faltered before he commanded for someone to go retrieve food. "My I request a lengthening of my word count if your meal is supplied?"
"Fine!"
The Moon on which the humans landed had no name. Initially, it was a barren land trapped in infinite darkness as it revolved its planet, the Titanium Cranium, apparently so since the beginning of the triarchic system's existence.
Many millennia ago, one early Duke of the Titanium Cranium sent its first batch of banished felons to the misery of darkness on the moon to serve their life sentence.
Some lived, some died, and some more joined. Exact records were lost long in history, but they were recognized as the ancestors of the moon's current creatures.
They lived in oblivion for generations, so long so they forgot the taste of light, aside from the few blinking stars that had no means of satisfying their appetite.
Gradually, they adapted, like with all difficulties. An ancient lifeform evolved the ability to harvest energy directly from the bare space. Another activated the genes to convert waste gas to oxygen. Others evolved methods to create water and heat.
Through the tens of thousands of years, they trudged through the countless tests of the wretched terrain, changing and perfecting their genes in the infinite hazards of obscurity and emptiness.
Even so, life was barely tolerable. While their genes had exceeded the limits their ancestors living in the comfortable planet were encased with, few had the energy to break through the First-Limit mold.
A struggling food web came in place, and thus, different alliances, which was the mold of the configuration of today. While everything changed over the eon, there was one thing that hadn't: the Parasol Tree.
The enormous tree had stood astute since the origin of their knowledge. The first felons had discovered it and tried to obtain energy from it, but they were never able to use the Tree's energy. Even if they swallow the leaves, the green energy would simply leave their body and reform into branches.
Future generations tried to utilize the colossal autotroph as well, but each attempt led to another failure.
Thus, over the years, less and less attention was paid on it, until the day the Phoenix arrived.
The fiery Phoenix was the only creature any of them had seen that came from the outside, and the only source of bright light they had ever known.
So, they naturally swarmed the Phoenix, attempting to capture her and put her up as a trophy… until every one of them was beaten up by the Second-Limiter.
The Phoenix found her perch at the apex of the Parasol Tree. And, like a miracle, the Tree lit up from an eternal slumber. And since that day hundreds of years ago, the moon was no longer in a state of blackness.
Well, at least the half of the moon the Tree could reach its light to.
Immediately, species swarmed the lit hemisphere, attempting to gain a piece of land for their survival. Life was boundlessly more comfortable in light, the rare phenomenon they had not seen in many centuries. For a tiny moon, space quickly ran out, and bloodshed broke out.
The winners later became the current four alliances, as well as other beings that held an entitlement of land.
Meanwhile, the Phoenix rightfully gathered the ruling claim to the moon, being the Second Limiter able to activate the Parasol Tree and giving them light.
And such was how the state of the moon were until the humans came and slayed their Governor.
"That is…" Saitama was at a loss. "Much, much longer than twenty words."
Tatsumaki gave him a grimace and spoke up. "In this case, won't you want revenge for your 'light source'?"
"We have no such desire." Octo pointed at the Parasol Tree. "Have you notice that the Tree is already getting dimmer?
Tatsumaki did not need to squint to confirm his statement. The bright green they had witnessed in space had waned to three quarters of the brightness.
"In the hundreds of years, we have gotten used to the light, and we would do anything to keep it. If you agreed to stay and power the Tree for us, there is not a thing we won't do for you." The Octopus continued. "As long as you keep the light alive."
"Why don't you do it?" Saitama pointed out.
"We're not strong enough. Only a Second-Limiter can." He sighed. "But if any of us were Second Limit, we would've left this accursed place a long time ago."
Only Second-Limits could travel space. It was the definition of a Second-Limit, after all.
Saitama took a glance at Tatsumaki. Thoughts flashed in his head, before he touched his nose with a finger. "Not it!"
A/N: This is one action-packed chapter!
More world building, of course. I will explain in intricate details in Behind the Scene about my setup with the Phoenix, Parasol Tree, the Triarchic System, the Continuum, and Tatsumaki's abilities and flaws.
Did someone pick up on the Shakespeare insult?
