**Z-Valhalla. District 1 (Residential Zone).**
**Thursday. 7:59 AM.**
Genos stands in the kitchen. His optical sensors are locked on the toaster.
He inserts two slices of bread. He depresses the lever.
*Click.*
The coils glow red. The smell of wheat heating up fills the air.
The timer ticks down. 10 seconds. 5 seconds.
Then, the universe hiccups.
*Whoosh.*
The lever pops up. The bread is ejected.
It is cold. It is soft. It is un-toasted.
Genos blinks. "System error. Temporal causality violation detected. The bread has reverted to its pre-heated state."
Satan (Mr. Red), sipping coffee at the table, spits his drink back into the mug.
Not because he chose to. Because the coffee defies gravity and flies out of his mouth, swirling back into the cup, which then heats up.
"My caffeine," Satan gasps, clutching the mug. "It... retreated?"
Saitama walks in, scratching his stomach.
"Genos, is breakfast ready? My alarm didn't go off. The second hand on the clock is moving backwards."
**The Basement of Reality.**
Deep beneath the fusion of Z-City and Asgard lies the Prison of Tartarus.
It is a void where time does not flow. It stagnates.
But today, the stagnation is disturbed.
The gears of the cosmos, usually invisible, begin to manifest. Great, ghostly cogs made of stardust and regrets turn in the sky.
*CLICK. CLACK. GRIND.*
A figure sits on a throne of fossilized seconds.
He is ancient. His skin is made of sand that constantly crumbles and reforms. His eyes are clock faces spinning counter-clockwise.
**Kronos.** The Titan of Time. The Father of Zeus. The Keeper of the Order.
He was not awoken by noise or power. He was awoken by **Messiness**.
**"The timeline,"** Kronos whispers. His voice sounds like a pendulum swinging. **"It is a knot. Merged dimensions. Resurrected myths. Roommates."**
He stands.
**"Disgusting. I will unwind it."**
**The Surface.**
Zeus is jogging in the park. He wears a tracksuit. He is trying to get back in shape after the "Saitama Incident."
He stops.
A shadow falls over him. Not a shadow of light, but a shadow of *age*.
Zeus's skin wrinkles. His muscles atrophy. In three seconds, he ages five thousand years.
"F-Father?" Zeus wheezes, collapsing onto the grass.
The sky turns sepia tone.
The clouds stop moving. The birds freeze in mid-air.
Sound frequencies drop to zero.
**Absolute Time Stop.**
**"The Pause,"** Kronos announces, stepping out of the thin air in the middle of Main Street.
He raises a scythe made of an Event Horizon.
**"I shall separate these worlds. I shall rewind Z-City to its origin. I shall rewind Valhalla to the chaos. I will correct the mistake."**
He swings the scythe horizontally.
A wave of temporal energy washes over the city.
The fused buildings begin to vibrate. They want to separate. They want to un-exist.
Statues of heroes revert to blocks of marble.
Hot dogs revert to pigs.
The silence is absolute.
Nothing moves.
Except...
**Saitama's Apartment.**
Saitama taps his watch.
"Piece of junk," he mutters. "I changed the battery last week."
He looks around.
Genos is frozen mid-sentence, mouth open, LED eyes stagnant.
Satan is frozen in horror, coffee cup halfway to his lips.
Fubuki (who slept on the couch) is frozen mid-yawn.
"Guys?" Saitama waves a hand in front of Genos. "Hello? Earth to toaster?"
No response.
Saitama sighs.
"Is this a prank? Are we doing the 'Mannequin Challenge' again? That meme is years old."
He walks to the balcony.
The city is sepia. The birds are stuck in the sky.
Giant gears turn in the clouds.
A massive, sand-skinned giant stands downtown, swinging a scythe that is erasing skyscrapers.
Saitama squints.
"Hey!"
**Downtown.**
Kronos pauses his scythe.
He hears something.
Sound shouldn't exist in the Time Stop. Sound requires time to travel.
Yet, he hears a shout.
**"Impossible,"** Kronos turns his clock-eyes.
He sees a yellow blur hopping across the frozen rooftops.
Saitama lands on a streetlight directly in front of the Titan.
"You there," Saitama points. "Sand-man."
Kronos looks down.
**"You move,"** Kronos states. **"Within the Stilled World. Why?"**
"My watch is broken," Saitama says, holding up his wrist. "And my toast didn't toast. Are you doing this?"
Kronos feels a twinge of recognition. The energy. The plainness.
**"You are the Knot,"** Kronos realizes. **"The one who anchors this chaos. The Anomaly."**
Kronos smiles. It causes sand to spill from his lips.
**"You ignore the flow of time. But can you ignore the Ravages of Age?"**
**Technique: Time Withers All.**
Kronos points a finger.
A beam of accelerated entropy hits Saitama.
This beam ages a star into a supernova in nanoseconds. It turns mountains to dust.
It hits the yellow suit.
Saitama stands there.
The fabric of his suit grays. It frays. Holes appear as the thread rots from age.
His cape turns to dust and blows away.
His belt buckle rusts and snaps.
Saitama looks at his ruined outfit.
"My suit," he whispers. "My favorite suit. The zipper finally worked perfectly."
**"And your flesh?"** Kronos presses, pouring more power. **"Why does your flesh not wither?"**
Saitama looks at his skin. It's exactly the same.
Bald. Shiny. Smooth.
"I use lotion," Saitama says.
**"LOTION DOES NOT STOP CHRONOLOGICAL DECAY!"** Kronos screams.
The Titan swings his scythe.
**The Harvester of Epochs.**
The blade cuts through the timeline. It attempts to cut Saitama not just in the present, but to sever his past self so he never existed.
Saitama catches the blade.
With his bare hand.
The edge of the scythe—made of black holes and lost seconds—grinds against his palm.
"You broke my watch," Saitama says. "You ruined my breakfast. You dusted my cape."
He grips the scythe.
*CRACK.*
He snaps the blade off.
"And," Saitama adds, his face shadowing over. "You made me late for the limited-time sale on eggs. The sale ends at 10:00."
**"Time means nothing!"** Kronos roars. **"I control the concept of—"**
"It means something to *me*!"
Saitama pulls his fist back.
He visualizes a clock face.
He visualizes punching the hands forward.
**Serious Series: Serious Alarm Clock.**
He punches Kronos in the chest.
It isn't a strike to kill. It's a strike to *start*.
The kinetic energy hits the Titan of Time.
Kronos explodes into a massive cloud of sand.
The shockwave ripples out, hitting the giant gears in the sky.
*SPROING.*
The gears shatter. The mechanism of the Time Stop breaks.
The sepia tone vanishes. Color snaps back.
Sound rushes in like a dam breaking.
*BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.*
Thousands of alarms go off across the city simultaneously.
**The Aftermath.**
Kronos reforms on the ground, human-sized now. He is just a pile of sand with a face.
He coughs.
**"You... restarted... the universe?"**
"I punched it until it moved," Saitama says, looking at his wrist.
His watch starts ticking again.
*Tick. Tick.*
8:02 AM.
"Nice," Saitama smiles. "I only lost three minutes."
Back at the apartment, Genos unfreezes.
"...temporal causality violation resolved." He looks at the toaster. The bread pops up.
Perfectly brown.
"Toast sequence successful. Master will be pleased."
Satan unfreezes. The coffee enters his mouth.
He swallows.
"Good acidity," Satan nods. "A dark roast."
**Downtown.**
Saitama looks down at the pile of sentient sand.
"So," Saitama says. "Are you gonna put everything back? Or do I have to use the dustpan?"
Kronos sighs. A sound like an hourglass emptying.
**"I submit. The Knot is too tight to untie."**
The sand shifts. It forms a small, gritty man in a beige robe.
**"But I have nowhere to go. My prison is merged with a sewage plant."**
Saitama rubs his shiny head.
"Genos said something about a Zen Garden on the roof. We need sand for the raked gravel part."
Kronos blinks his clock-eyes.
**"I... am a Titan. I devoured my children. I ruled the Golden Age."**
"Yeah, and now you're decorative gravel," Saitama says, turning to walk away. "Just don't freeze the cat if one walks by."
**Epilogue.**
**Roof of the Apartment Complex.**
It is peaceful.
A small rock garden has been set up. The sand is arranged in perfect, mesmerizing concentric circles.
Kronos (in sand form) lies there, meditating.
Odin sits on a cushion nearby, staring at the sand patterns.
"It is calming, Grandfather," Odin admits.
**"It is eternity,"** the sand whispers. **"Also, the cyborg rakes me every morning. It is... exfoliated."**
Downstairs, Saitama eats his toast.
"Genos," he says. "We need a new cape. And thread. Maybe I can sew a patch over the holes."
"I will contact the S-Class Tailor immediately, Master."
Life goes on.
Time moves forward.
Because Saitama punched it in the right direction.