Saitama was in his apartment, watching an emergency broadcast on TV about "unusual astronomical phenomena." The footage happened to cut to a scene of Captain Marvel fighting the locust swarm in space.
He picked up a potato chip and popped it into his mouth.
"Oh, so that's the thing they mentioned on the news earlier? Looks like a bunch of giant bats. There sure are a lot of 'em." He commented, not particularly bothered.
Suddenly, the air beside him shimmered with a warped halo of light, and that familiar, unpleasant weightless sensation hit him again.
"Again?" Saitama didn't even finish the word before his figure vanished from the cozy apartment.
The next instant, he appeared in an icy, dark, weightless environment. In the distance was the huge blue-and-white Earth; farther still was the Sun, radiating light and heat, and beyond that
A dense, endless metal locust swarm.
The boundless void, deep darkness dotted with distant starlight, should have been absolute silence. Yet the space near Earth's orbit was filled with a scalp-crawling "buzz."
It wasn't sound—there was no air to carry it.
It was some kind of energy vibration acting directly on consciousness: a mental interference wave produced by the wings of hundreds of millions of space locusts, sweeping over everything like a tsunami.
Saitama floated right in the center of that chaos.
He wore his slightly worn yellow jumpsuit and white cape—though the cape hung limp and lifeless in the vacuum. Just a moment ago, he'd been in the Helicarrier's lounge, watching a replay of a supermarket discount commercial, while tearing open a fresh bag of chips he'd just bought.
Then, in the next second, a powerful tractor beam had yanked him straight into this place.
The weightlessness was kind of novel, but what really irritated him was that the TV signal had been cut off, leaving only static on the screen. And worse, the snack bag he hadn't even gotten to eat properly
Because of the sudden loss of gravity and the jolt, all the crumbs had floated out, slowly orbiting him like a bunch of tiny planets.
He blinked and stared at the sky-filling sight in front of him.
These creatures called "space locusts"—each one was about the size of a small drone, their shells gleaming with a cold metallic sheen. Their compound eyes burned crimson, their mouthparts opening and closing, capable of tearing through the hardest alloys.
Gathered together, the swarm looked like a massive, writhing curtain, blotting out even the faraway Sun and casting an ominous shadow that made your chest feel tight.
A few locusts seemed interested in this suddenly appearing bald man who gave off a faint life-signature. They peeled away from the swarm, wings vibrating, and shot toward Saitama at full speed, razor forelimbs aimed right at his face.
Saitama's brow twitched—not from fear, but from annoyance.
He reached out and casually grabbed the first one to arrive. The hard, icy shell pressed uncomfortably against his fingers. The locust thrashed wildly in his grip, mouthparts chattering as it released a shrill, piercing energy screech—but it couldn't harm him in the slightest.
"So loud," Saitama muttered, his gaze sliding past the swarm as if he was still trying to find the missing TV signal. "And now I can't even eat my chips in peace."
He loosened his hand and let the locust fly off.
Then he looked at the enormous swarm that nearly filled his entire field of view
And casually threw a single punch.
No earth-shaking flash. No complicated energy burst.
Just a simple, straight punch.
(End of Chapter)
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