Chapter 10: Boot Worship Confession
The leather tasted of salt, blood, and distant rain. Saitama’s tongue moved in slow, deliberate circles over the arch of Do-S’s boot, his world narrowed to the scent of polished hide and the faint, electric tingle of her skin beneath. Each stroke was a prayer. Each whimper a hymn.
“You missed a spot, Dog Shit.” Her voice was a languid purr from above. “By the toe. The little scuff from when you cratered that tank. Remember?”
He did. It hadn’t been a tank, technically. It had been the lead armored vehicle in the final barricade before the city council building. He’d simply stepped on it. The memory was flat, like a photograph. The feeling he got now, her heel pressing against his temple to guide his ministrations, was not.
“Yes, Goddess.” The words were muffled against the leather. He found the scuff, a darker gray smudge on the black, and worked at it with a devotion that would have shamed any saint.
She laughed, a sound like coins scattering on stone. “Good boy. You’re learning the only history that matters. The marks you make in my service.” She leaned back on her throne, the obsidian groaning as if in pleasure. “Now the other one. And be thorough. I have a visual coming up.”
Saitama shuffled on his knees to her other boot, his own reflection a pale, distorted moon in its shine. The throne room’s eerie, pulsing light painted everything in tones of bruise and amber. He set to work.
A deep, resonant hum filled the chamber, and a section of the jagged wall to their right shimmered and became transparent. It revealed a window, not to the outside, but to another place entirely: a lavish, panicked war room. Men in crisp uniforms stood around a holographic table, their faces etched with a panic so raw it was almost comical. Saitama recognized the insignia of the Hero Association’s central command.
Do-S crossed her legs, draping the newly cleaned boot over Saitama’s shoulder. She didn’t address the image directly. She spoke to her pet.
“Look up, Dog Shit. Do you see them?”
He lifted his head from her foot, his eyes dull and focused. “I see them, Goddess.”
“They’re talking about you. Well, about the ‘Unstoppable Calamity.’ They don’t know your name. They don’t know you lick my boots. They think you’re some mindless force of nature.” She reached down and idly stroked the top of his bald head with the handle of her whip. It was a possessive gesture. “Tell me what they’re saying.”
Saitama’s senses, dulled to everything but her, effortlessly sharpened. He could hear the rustle of paper, the static of bad comms, the quick, thrumming heartbeat of the man pointing at the hologram.
“‘Deploy S-Class,’” Saitama recited, his voice monotone. “‘Tatsumaki. Atomic Samurai. Whoever is closest. Containment is impossible, elimination is the only…’ He’s sweating. The one with the medals.”
A slow, vicious smile spread across Do-S’s face. “They’re finally sending the real toys. How do you feel about that?”
He thought about it. The names should have meant something. A spark of excitement, maybe. A flicker of the old, boring challenge. Instead, he felt only a vague irritation, like a fly buzzing near the sanctity of his kneeling. They were an interruption. A distraction from his service.
“They will annoy you, Goddess. They will waste your time.” He rested his cheek against her boot. “I am sorry I left them standing.”
Do-S’s laughter filled the throne room, echoing off the whispering runes. “Oh, you perfect thing. You really are.” She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “But I want you to think about this. When you see them… will you feel anything? A little tickle of that old ‘hero’ spirit? A desire to… I don’t know, shake hands and compare notes?”
He didn’t hesitate. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you told me I am Dog Shit.” He said it with the plain finality of someone stating the weather. “Heroes do not associate with filth. They try to clean it away. They are the enemy of what I am.”
The gleam in Do-S’s eyes was hotter than the molten gold in the throne. This was it. This was the victory that went beyond breaking bones or cities. This was the sculpture of a soul, remade in her image.
“Good,” she breathed. “Now, I have a gift for you.” She snapped her fingers.
A section of the floor slid open with a grinding of stone. From the darkness below, a figure was elevated. It was a man, or what was left of one, in the tattered remains of a B-Class hero costume. He was bruised, bound in psychic energy, and his eyes were wide with a terror that had gone beyond screaming. He’d been watching everything.
“This,” Do-S said, gesturing casually, “is Veil. He was scouting the ruins of Bay City. Got a little too close to my perimeter.” She uncrossed her legs and stood, pacing a slow circle around the kneeling Saitama and the hovering, captive hero. “He’s been quite the little audience member. He saw you walk through an army. He heard you just now.”
Veil twitched, a strangled sound escaping his throat.
“He thinks,” Do-S continued, her tone light, conversational, “that there’s still a man in there. A hero. He’s praying for it.” She stopped behind Saitama and placed both hands on his shoulders. Her voice dropped, warm and intimate in his ear. “I want you to disabuse him of that notion.”
Saitama looked at Veil. The hero’s eyes were pleading, desperate. A week ago—a lifetime ago—Saitama would have sighed, defeated the monster, freed the captive, and been home in time for the supermarket sale. Now, he just saw a problem for his Goddess. A stray thought that needed erasing.
“How, Goddess?”
Do-S’s whip slithered down from her hand like a living thing, its tip coming to rest in Saitama’s open palm. The leather was warm, almost alive.
“With this. One strike. Not enough to kill him. Just enough to make him… understand.”
The command hung in the air. It wasn’t about strength. Saitama could vaporize the man with a breath. This was about precision. About control. About using the symbol of her dominance as the instrument of her will. It was a sacrament.
Saitama’s fingers closed around the whip’s handle. It felt alien in his grip, a conductor for a power he had never needed. He stood. The movement was smooth, effortless. He took two steps toward Veil, who began to shake his head wildly, the binds the only thing holding him upright.
“Please,” Veil choked out, finding his voice. “Saitama, please, whatever she’s done to you, fight it! Remember who you are!”
Saitama tilted his head. The name meant nothing. It was a ghost, a whisper from a hollow life. Dog Shit was real. The weight of the whip in his hand was real. The approving gaze burning into his back from the throne was real.
He didn’t speak. He simply moved his arm.
The crack was not loud. It was a precise, cutting sound, like the sky tearing. The whip’s tip found the space between Veil’s collarbone and his jaw, laying open a line of bright, shocking red. It was a wound designed for pain, not death. For message, not removal.
Veil screamed, a short, sharp burst of agony.
Saitama watched, his expression serene. He felt the recoil of the whip in his wrist. He saw the blood well and begin to drip. And he felt it—a warm, dark, syrupy satisfaction blooming in his chest. It wasn’t the satisfaction of a challenge met. It was the satisfaction of a task completed perfectly for her. It was better.
He turned and walked back to the foot of the obsidian dais. He sank to his knees, holding the whip up, handle first, like an offering. Blood smeared the leather.
Do-S descended the steps. She took the whip from his hands. She studied the red stain on the tip, then used it to tilt Saitama’s chin up.
“Look at me,” she whispered.
He did. His eyes were clear, utterly empty of everything but her reflection.
“What are you?” she asked.
“I am yours,” he said.
She smiled, and it was a thing of terrifying beauty. “Yes. You are.” She glanced back at the weeping hero, then at the holographic war room still displaying its frantic plans. “And soon, everyone else will be, too.”
She placed her boot, still warm from his attentions, back on his shoulder, claiming her ground. Saitama leaned into the pressure, the solid, comforting weight of it. The throne room hummed around them, a cathedral to a new and terrible faith, its conversion now complete.