Garou found himself back in the dojo. Not the battlefield, not the forest, but the polished wooden floor of Bang's old school. He was seventeen again, arrogant, his knuckles white as he gripped a wooden staff.
"Let me take him," Bang said. "The 'Spanking' is not a punishment. It is a correction. It is the last technique I will ever teach him."
"A 'spanking' is not about pain. It is about attention. For ten years, Garou cried for the world to notice him. Today, the world finally looked. And it yawned. That is the real lesson."
He sipped the sake.
"Fessée du Maître," Bang had called it. The Master's Spanking.
Garou sobbed in the dream. The anger, the carefully constructed philosophy of "absolute evil," crumbled like dry clay. He had wanted to be the hero that monsters feared. But all he had become was a bully that children ran from. Saitama had shown him the absurdity of his power. Bang was showing him the tragedy of his soul.
The dust had not yet settled on the ravaged battlefield. The air in the ruined outskirts of City Z was thick with the stench of ozone, blood, and the faint, acrid smoke of Garou's shattered ambition. The Hero Hunter lay unconscious, half-buried under a collapsed pillar, his monstrous form receding like a tide, leaving behind only a broken, feverish young man. One Punch-Man S2 12 VOSTFR- La fessee du maitre
He picked up the chopsticks. The oden was cold. It was the best thing he had ever tasted.
The Master's fessée had landed. And for the first time, Garou felt clean.
While Genos stammered about the DVR being full of hero fight data, Bang knelt beside Garou. He placed a weathered palm on the young man's forehead. The fever was breaking. The nightmare was ending. Garou found himself back in the dojo
Later that night, Bang sat on the porch of his dojo, staring at the broken sign out front. Bomb sat beside him, pouring sake.
The wind rustled the broken sign. Somewhere in the city, a hero with a chrome dome was complaining about a sale on cabbage. And in a hospital room, a former hero hunter wept, not from the bruises of a fight, but from the grace of a second chance.