Once Saitama was in motion, there was a particular quality to it that the average monster encounter rarely got to appreciate for long.
Eyes like lightning. Punches like a closing argument. Every monster that showed itself got one exchange before the arithmetic caught up with it—a brief collision with the end of something, followed by a crimson mosaic where a threat used to be.
Tremble, you monster.
Your middle-aged, balding approximation of Chibi Maruko-chan's grandfather has arrived on set.
N City — City Center
The commercial street of N City's downtown had, in recent memory, been a pleasant place to spend an afternoon. Clothing stores, food vendors, the kind of mid-city density that generates foot traffic and noise and the comfortable sense of people getting on with things.
That was several minutes ago.
The towering column of flame that had erupted from the center of the street was now approximately forty meters tall and spreading horizontally. The parked cars along the road had been promoted, against their will, from vehicles to countdown timers—each one bursting into a new fireball on its own irregular schedule, the sequence of explosions running down the street like a very destructive fuse. The crowds that had been laughing and browsing moments before were gone, replaced by the sound of running and the automated voice of the Hero Association's emergency broadcast system carrying through every speaker in range.
"Warning. Warning. A major fire has broken out in downtown N City. The Hero Association's Disaster Response Division has assessed the incident as monster-caused, initial disaster level: Demon. Nearby heroes are in transit. Citizens in the affected area, please evacuate immediately. Warning. Warning—"
From within the fire, something moved.
The footsteps arrived before the figure did—each one a ground-shaking concussion that rolled through the asphalt in waves—and then the Pumpkin Lantern Monster emerged into the firelight.
It was enormous. It occupied the full width of the commercial street with its massive orange body, its jagged carved mouth containing an active furnace, its hollow triangular eye sockets blazing with internal fire. The expression carved into its face was a permanent leer, which was fitting, given that it appeared to be enjoying itself.
A fresh column of flame erupted from its mouth, turning a nearby clothing store from a building into a torch in approximately two seconds.
"Stupid humans!" it announced, to the general area. "Every year—every single year—thousands upon thousands of my kin are hollowed out and used as decorations for a pointless holiday! Well, no more!"
The laugh that followed was the specific cackle of a villain who has rehearsed their monologue: high, cackling, the kind that echoes off burning buildings with great satisfaction.
"I am the first Pumpkin Lantern Monster to awaken! I will hollow out your bodies—every one of you—and make you into lanterns! I will show you despicable humans what cruelty looks like!! JIE JIE JIE JIE!!"
The flames had absolutely no effect on it. It stood in the middle of the inferno with its arms at its sides—
Well.
With its sides at its sides. It didn't have arms.
It surveyed the burning commercial street with the satisfaction of a being whose plan is proceeding according to schedule, watching smoke rise over the city, listening to the distant sound of evacuation.
"Hehehe... Hmm?"
A sound from outside the fire. Not screaming, not explosions. Something quieter and therefore more out of place.
Through the haze of heat and smoke, the Pumpkin Lantern Monster's burning eyes picked out a white afterimage—a figure crouching near the edge of the flames, just beyond the fire's reach.
Saitama set the two unconscious shop assistants down with the careful precision of someone handling something fragile, stood up, and walked toward the monster.
The yellow and red rubber suit caught the firelight as he emerged from the smoke. His profile—square jaw, flat expression, the particular look of someone who has already decided how this is going to end—was the profile of a man who radiated invincibility from the shoulders down.
From the forehead up, the firelight was catching several isolated hairs.
"Hey," Saitama said, walking closer. "What you're describing—that's not actually possible, is it?"
The Pumpkin Lantern Monster stared at him.
"Nonsense!" it thundered, recovering from the interruption with the volume of something that has been waiting to say this. "I am a monster born carrying the sacred fate of the Pumpkin Clan! The omnipotent Monster Lord! How could I fail to—"
Saitama was not looking at the monster's face. He was looking at the monster's sides.
Both of them. Empty.
He pointed.
"You don't have hands."
The Pumpkin Lantern Monster stopped.
It was a round pumpkin. Its face was on the front of a round body. Looking at its own sides was not something it could accomplish by moving its head, because its head was its entire body. It would have to rotate the whole thing, which—
It rotated the whole thing.
First left. Then right. Then left again, just to be certain.
"AAAAGH!!" The Pumpkin Lantern Monster's carved mouth blazed with renewed fury. "Mind your own business!! My fate is to hollow people out and I will do it, somehow, without needing your commentary on my—"
"Sorry," Saitama said, looking at him, "how, though?"
"SHAMELESS HERO!! I'LL BURN YOU TO ASH!! PUMPKIN FLAME LEAP!!"
Saitama's eye twitched.
Not because of the fire column that erupted from the monster's carved mouth—which was substantial, fully ignited, building in size as it surged toward him in the shape of a burning dragon—but because the monster had just made a comment about his outfit.
His gaze dropped to the battle suit.
Custom-fitted. The clothing store owner three blocks over had done the tailoring himself, insisted on it. The proportions were exactly right. The craftsmanship was solid. The red and yellow color scheme was the same as always—which was a deliberate choice and had nothing to do with being unable to change it.
"What," Saitama said, to the oncoming fire, "is wrong with it?"
The fire dragon opened its jaws.
Saitama puffed out his chest, filled his lungs—
"Ordinary Breath."
The Level 18 gale arrived.
In physics terms, what Saitama had just exhaled was a directed air mass of sufficient velocity to create a localized vacuum between itself and the fire. Fire requires oxygen. The vacuum created by Saitama's breath preceded the breath itself, cutting off the supply before the flames could compensate. Every fire demon in the vicinity—every burning vehicle, every storefront torch, every column of flame that had been spreading across the commercial street in the past four minutes—went out simultaneously, snuffed like candles under a dome.
For reference: in documented incidents, Saitama's serious sneeze had displaced approximately half of Jupiter's upper atmosphere. An ordinary breath extinguishing a city-block fire was, in relative terms, extremely restrained.
This is very reasonable.
What reached the Pumpkin Lantern Monster was not a fire-extinguishing breeze. It was a wall of moving air that had no interest in what the Pumpkin Lantern Monster weighed. For reference: the Pumpkin Lantern Monster weighed tens of tons.
It left the ground.
The onlookers who had stopped running to watch—a universal human response to spectacle even when the spectacle is dangerous—observed the Dragon-level monster transform into something resembling a massive orange bouncy ball as it hit the asphalt, bounced, hit the asphalt again, and began rolling away down the street at speed, leaving a trail of cracked road surface in its wake.
Rumble. Rumble. RUMBLE.
Saitama stood in the center of the now-extinguished commercial street, in a column of smoke, and coughed.
Then coughed again.
He patted his chest with one fist, wheezing through the aftereffects of breathing out that much air that fast.
"Huff—huff—cough—"
After a moment, he straightened up.
The Pumpkin Lantern Monster had rolled an impressive distance before a tangle of pumpkin vines in an empty lot had brought it to a stop. Saitama watched it bounce to a halt, considered the logistics briefly, and started walking.
The Pumpkin Lantern Monster, having recovered its equilibrium and most of its rage, was already mid-tirade as he arrived.
"—despicable trick!! A shameless technique unworthy of any genuine warrior!! I will tear you into pieces for this humiliation!! I will hollow you out and—"
Saitama had covered the remaining distance in two steps.
He swung his arm.
"Shut up."
The punch arrived.
A torrential rain of orange-yellow descended on the empty lot—pumpkin chunks of every size, pumpkin seeds, pumpkin innards, the whole agricultural profile of what was formerly a Dragon-level monster distributed evenly across several hundred square meters.
Saitama stood in the rainfall.
His eyes moved across the spread with the particular expression of a man who has just remembered that he still needs to buy groceries.
He stepped forward, crouched, and lifted a chunk of pumpkin monster meat roughly half the size of his torso with both arms. Dense. Heavy. Good weight to it.
If I bring this back, he thought, doing mental arithmetic, it's going to be tight in the fridge. But Genos and I could probably get through it in a week if we plan it out.
He hoisted the chunk onto his shoulder and looked at the rest of the scattered haul.
Speaking of Genos...