One Punch Man in Baki's World

"Shall we get started then?"

Garou moved.

In a flash of light and distortion, he crossed the entire field and collided fists with Saitama.

The shockwave shattered the upper ruins of the underground facility. Platforms exploded. The onlookers were thrown back by the sheer force—even from dozens of meters away.

Time didn't slow.

It skipped.

One second, Saitama was mid-air, blocking a strike from Garou's spiraled elbow. The next, he was spinning through clouds, having been punched across the atmosphere.

He didn't hit the ground.

He stopped himself mid-air, dusted his sleeves, and launched himself back with a bored expression.

They clashed again.

A punch. A counter. A flicker of light. Saitama vanished. Reappeared behind Garou. Landed a blow that cracked the cosmos in the sky above them.

Garou coughed black stardust, and grinned.

"Those pills they took? I made them," he said. "They gave me their life force in exchange for a taste of power. A guy named Yanagi was the first, wasn't he? Now, I've become a predator across all realities. Your punches mean nothing to me anymore."

Saitama shook his head. "Still talking, huh?"

Another exchange, so fast that not even Yujiro could track it. Saitama was smiling now, just a little. Not out of arrogance, but because, for the first time since he arrived in this world—

He might actually need two hands.

From below, Retsu, Doppo, and Oliva watched the sky fracture.

This wasn't martial arts anymore.

This was divine violence.

And it had only just begun.

The atmosphere buckled under their speed.

Thousands of feet above the labyrinth, surrounded by lightning-torn clouds and flickers of stars leaking through fractures in reality, Saitama and Garou traded blows that didn't just disturb the air, they erased it.

Each punch carved vacuums through the heavens. Every clash shattered the barrier between now and what came next.

Garou struck first, an arcing meteor kick amplified by warped gravity.

Saitama tilted his head slightly, letting the blow slide past his bald crown, then countered with a jab that seemed lazy, until Garou's entire arm snapped back from the force.

"Still just punches?" Garou asked, rotating his shoulder as if it didn't almost dislocate.

"Still just talking?" Saitama replied, kicking off a floating shard of destroyed platform to close the gap again.

This time, Garou moved faster.

Faster than light. Faster than thought.

He became a blur of entropy, cloaked in shadows and arcs of pure cosmic law.

His fists were not fists anymore. They were collapsing dimensions, folded into forms humans could barely perceive. He struck Saitama in the chest—

And the world tilted.

Below, Doppo stumbled to one knee as gravity shifted sideways. Retsu was forced to anchor himself using a broken steel beam. Oliva's jaw clenched as his skin rippled with the pressure change.

A sonic boom didn't even arrive.

There was no sound.

Only after three seconds of paralyzing silence did the impact register as a golden flash that split the horizon like a god had cracked a mirror.

Saitama went flying.

He bounced across the sky like a skipping stone before stopping midair and slowly turning back.

His shirt was torn slightly at the chest.

He looked down.

"Huh," he said. "Haven't seen that in a while."

He vanished again.

When he reappeared, his fist collided with Garou's torso so hard that reality folded into itself.

Garou's body bent backward at an unnatural angle—but he recovered instantly, spinning into a gravity-imbued axe kick that forced Saitama back down toward the surface.

For the first time… it looked like Saitama was exerting himself.

Garou floated higher, pulsing with energy. "You still don't get it. I've transcended death. I've absorbed knowledge of infinite fighting styles. I am evolution!"

Saitama hovered, brushing dirt from his shoulder. "That's cool."

Without warning, Garou opened his hands and created a black hole between his palms.

It wasn't symbolic.

It was an actual, warping, pulsating mass of nullified time and mass—held between his fingers like a marble of despair. He hurled it toward Saitama with a roar.

The black hole devoured everything in its path—air, light, sound, time.

Saitama stood still.

The moment it reached him, he raised one finger—and flicked it.

The singularity unraveled like cotton.

Garou blinked.

"Was that… a flick?"

"Yeah," Saitama said. "I became One Flick Man here."

Below, Oliva couldn't hold back a grin. "He actually said it…"

Retsu whispered, "This isn't a martial artist… this is a law."

Doppo just nodded slowly. "I'm glad we didn't try."

And far away, buried in shadow, Yujiro Hanma smirked.

"It took a god to make him use effort."

The next collision came without warning.

Saitama moved forward, not teleporting, not flashing—just stepping. But each step compressed the air. Garou braced, summoning infinite techniques into a single stance.

They clashed again.

And this time…

The world watched both flinch.

As the ripples of their clash echoed through the void, space itself groaned.

A rift opened and sucked them both inside.

Stars flickered unnaturally, as though reality held its breath. Far below, the Earth, barely visible now, was a pale sphere of blue and silence.

There were no more spectators.

No audience.

Only two beings now, so far beyond the mortal concept of strength, that even gods might envy their simplicity.

Saitama hovered with a crack along his cheek, just a bruise, but for him, a rarity. His fist, still clenched from the last strike, hummed with residual pressure.

Opposite him, Garou floated motionless, one eye bleeding black ichor, his right arm trembling despite the armor of cosmic force encasing him.

The blow had landed. Both had felt it.

"…You flinched," Saitama said quietly.

Garou's lip twitched. He chuckled, though his breath caught midway. "So did you."

Saitama said nothing. For the first time since this multiversal madness began, his expression was unreadable. Not blank. Not bored. But measured. Focused.

Garou reached out one hand and tore open a rift behind him—a window to other timelines.

Within it flickered dozens of his past selves: Beast Garou, Monster Garou, Cosmic Puppet Garou. Each warped form screamed back at him like ghosts made of regret.

"They failed," Garou said. "They all failed. You beat them. Every time. Even when I wasn't myself. Even when I cheated."

The rift closed with a crack of light.

"But this time, I'm not using borrowed power. This time, I'm me."

Saitama nodded slowly. "Good. I don't like rematches with cowards."

Garou surged forward again.

No warning.

No monologue.

Just pure fury.

His fists struck faster than natural law allowed, weaving symbols of extinct martial arts into the shape of his strikes.

A movement from a forgotten alien war.

A form derived from black hole orbitals. A technique copied from the last breath of a dying god.

And Saitama?

He just blocked.

Not lazily anymore.

Not mockingly.

His arms moved with rhythmic precision, brushing each blow aside as though weaving through water.

Garou's expression twisted—fury, confusion, awe.

"You're learning mid-fight," he gasped.

Saitama's voice was calm. "So are you."

They collided again.

This time, neither flinched.

The resulting force split a nearby moonlet in half.

Chunks of rock spiraled away into endless night.

From light-years away, a deep-space probe recorded the burst of power and labeled it a supernova event.

Back on Earth, at the Hero Association, readings went off the scale. Alarms blared. Genos—rebuilt, watching from the command room—tightened his fist.

"Sensei…"

In the void, Garou pulled back, panting. "Why… why do you keep holding back?!"

Saitama floated closer.

"I'm not."

Garou's eyes widened.

And then… he smiled.

"Finally."

He opened his stance one last time.

The cosmos behind him bent inward, swirling into a vortex.

He screamed, channeling every version of himself into a single moment.

Saitama raised a fist.

But this time, his other fist came up too.

Double punch.

A clash that tore open a rift larger than galaxies.

As they disappeared into it—

Space bent. Time folded. Reality itself screamed.

And the fight moved beyond the mortal plane.

TO BE CONTINUED...