Full Summary:
A year after Saitama's fight with Boros, Earth is in catastrophe—Saitama's epic jump off the moon has knocked it out of orbit, causing drastic environmental changes and social breakdown. Saitama becomes a wanted man, and the many heroes he once knew harden themselves to survive in an unforgiving world.
Living in the abandoned husk of City Z, Saitama and Genos make a discovery that alters their lives forever. Together they build a home, an oasis on ground zero. As their enemies circle closer, Saitama and Genos are prepared to fight for what they love until, one day, they bring their monsters home with them.
Author's Note: Hello! After being in awe of this fandom for so long, I have finally posted my own fanfiction. thank you for clicking on it. it means a great deal to me. I would love it if you would leave a comment so that you can tell me what you think of my writing! I hope you enjoy it :-)
Also, someone told me that I had accidently posted the wrong document for this fanfiction, resulting in chapter 1 being about the legend of Zelda and subsequential smut. It's been fixed now! _;
City Z blistered under the glare of the sun. The only sound was the hiss of heat waves, for the city was deader than ever before. The steel bones of office towers and apartment complexes peaked out from crumbling walls. Private homes were bowed-in gingerbread.
The sun was the one true god in this dying world, its punishing light rivaled only by its reflection off of Saitama's bald head.
"Potato chips!" he said, hoisting a family-size bag over his head. "I found potato chips!"
"Sensei!" Genos' head popped up, gopher-like, over a crumbling wall. He bore that wide-eyed intensity common amongst small ground-dwelling mammals. Hurrying to his sensei's side, he pulled aside the splintered pantry door. The beams in his eyes flicked on, illuminating cans, cans, packages, and more cans.
"Sensei has an incredible nose for free food." Genos thrust out a palm, and a gentle fan whirred away generations of dust-bunnies. Saitama did an inner 'Hurrah!' at the sight of preserved vegetables and fruits, rare necessities in this era of semi-apocalypse. Genos began piling goods into canvas bags already lumpy with toothpaste and toilet paper ransacked from the bathroom.
Saitama stepped back to let the pro have his space, the rattle of waffle cut potato calling to him from inside its bag. He swiped a finger across the dust-caked label. Barbecue. Sweet. "We could fetch a buttload for these at the flea market, but I sorta really want to eat them."
Potatoes had become a rare delicacy since they'd bit it near the beginning of everything. Their extinction had been a blow to the balls of civilization, for if anything could have survived the dramatic temperature shifts it should have been potatoes. Alas, nature was fickle.
"We could make western style mac and cheese with the chips crumbled on top," said Genos, his head deep in the pantry. His voice sounded soft and sleepy, like he was winding down for a nap.
Salt, spice, and everything nice. Saliva welled in the pockets of Saitama's mouth. "Mac and cheese it is."
He wandered into the living room, rocking on the balls of his feet. Honeyed sunlight poured through a massive hole in the ceiling. Debris crunched beneath his boots. A faded flower-print sofa. A shelf stocked with Korean soaps. The mantel was decorated with souvenirs and photographs and—wait…Wait…!
Saitama snatched up a photo, bringing it to his nose. With great concentration, he wiped a window through the grime to reveal a hunch-backed grandma, so withered that her eyes were wrinkled shut. Next to her stood a twenty-something youth wearing a blue tracksuit; he reluctantly clutched an enormous bag of candy. At their feet lay the battered body of a zombie-sunflower-thing, its maw stretched open in its death throes.
"Hanako-obaachan," Saitama murmured. "I didn't know you lived here." As he lowered the photo, he caught sight of something—somebody—camouflaged in mold and dust. "Oh… Hanako-obaachan. Hello. How are you?"
The jerkied corpse of the late Hanako lay sprawled across the sofa.
"I guess this means you died in home-sweet-home," Saitama mused. "Nice place you got."
The photo was whisked out of his grip. Genos' eyes darted between corpse and picture, his brow bunching in a way that told Saitama that the cyborg had a disagreement and was conflicted about voicing it. Perhaps he did not want to trod on Saitama's relationship with this skeleton. Saitama smiled patiently as Genos hmmmed and mmmmed before facing his sensei dead on. "This cannot be your Hanako-obaachan. It looks nothing like her."
Saitama smacked him on the head with the chip bag. "Well, duh, crockpot! She dried up!"
"No, sensei. This skeleton is too tall, and it has male pelvic bones." Genos pointed towards a recliner opposite of them. "That is most likely Hanako-obaachan."
There was no mistaking that skull and its sagging bun of gray hair. Saitama was so jealous. Even dead people had more hair than he did.
No body was to be seen. "I'll get the shovels from the cart," Genos said, disappearing outside.
The cart had been lifted from City Z's central shopping plaza, a graveyard market now haunted by possums the size of dogs. Saitama and Genos had been chasing the neighborhood flasher—Mooney Mooseman, a mutant elk and sole other occupant of City Z—when they spotted the cart and liberated it from a life of ennui. It now helped ferry their goods from pillage site to home base.
Genos soon returned with two steel-tipped spades and a tin of incense. The men dug through the floor, positioned the bodies, and smoothed the grave to perfection. They stuck incense in the dirt to accompany the spit-shined photograph. Soon, a cheap fragrance drifted about the house.
"Thank you, Hanako-obaachan and friend." Saitama bowed deep, Genos following suit. Then they headed back to the pantry and took every last scrap of food.
"Thank you, Hanako-obaachan."
The sun had climbed higher in the sky when they emerged from the Hanako family house. The light was piercing. It almost hurt to see. The crazy thing was that Saitama could also see the moon—a pale, watery disc riding the smogline. No one had noticed when it had first begun its slow goodbye.
Saitama remembered every second he'd been up there, his boots digging into the silvery crust before he'd jumped, cutting through space, then the fire of the atmosphere. He remembered the throb of his pulse, the scream of his muscles. He doubted he'd get the same rush again. The moon looked so far away now. It was slipping farther away.
"It's not your fault, sensei."
Saitama turned to see Genos pushing the cart down the wasted road like it was his natural place in the world. Like he had been pushing that cart for years and would continue to do so for as long as Saitama was there to share in the loot.
The corner of Saitama's mouth ticked into a smile. He threw his arms behind his head. "Yeah, it's not like I could have known I'd knock the damn moon out of orbit, but..." Sweat trickled down the side of his nose. The heat was an ever-present reminder of his blunder. He wished he had a hat, if just for some relief from his conscience.
"I will make sensei a hat," said Genos.
Saitama laughed because, god, they knew each other so well. "Dude, we both need hats. I wouldn't want your brain to boil in that metal aquarium." He ruffled the cyborg's hair and snickered when Genos' face scrunched into something both weird and adorable but mostly weird.
Once, when his sinuses had been clogged and his brain muddled with cough syrup, Saitama had zoned through a documentary about the moon and its Earthly effects. Tides blahblah gravity blahblah ecosystem blahblahblah. Now, he could appreciate the destruction live and in person. As the moon drifted, its weakening gravitational pull slowed the Earth's rotation. Longer days meant longer hours of sunlight, climbing temperatures, ecosystems destroyed, and civilization derailed.
All the fix-its he and Genos had discussed wouldn't help. Jumping off the Earth to haul the moon back might knock the Earth out of orbit. Kicking the moon back into its original orbit would leave him drifting off into space. Regardless of his abilities, the righting of this planetary disaster required math and physics—the stuff that made Saitama's head spin.
He heaved a sigh and cracked his back, wishing his worries would pop just as easily. "Genos, get in the cart."
Genos was a cyborg of many talents. Climbing into shopping carts was not one of them. The honeycomb plastic groaned beneath him when he finally squished his ass amongst the bags. He wrapped his arms around his knees and looked back at Saitama like a kid at the grocery store.
"Ready?" Saitama grabbed the cart. The asphalt scritched beneath his soles as he sank into a sprinter's fold. Then he was lightning on the road. The wheels screamed and smoked but Saitama kept running until he could feel the sting of the wind in his eyes. Then he jumped on the standing bar, his cape streaming behind them like a flag. He looked down and saw Genos, head pinned back by the wind, eyes slivered, a huge doofus grin plastered across his—
BAMMM!
Saitama's body lurched into the air as they collided with something solid. Flying was how he'd always dreamt it would be—out of control, limbs flailing. He landed face-first on the asphalt. His neck gave a pleasant pop.
Eh, just the right spot, he thought as canned loot exploded around him fireworks of beans, corn kernels, and sliced peaches.
Somewhere beyond, Genos groaned in pain. Saitama sat up and was greeted with gore. "Holy shit, we killed a dog!"
More precisely, a monstrous wolf with a trap full of alligator teeth and an obsidian pearl of a third eye. Its body had burst open like a balloon, ribbons of guts and flesh sizzling on the tarmac. The stench of blood assaulted their noses.
Genos crawled up to the corpse, the denim scraped clean off his metal knees. "That's not a dog. That's the breed of monster the HA has been talking about—omega."
Killer wolves encroaching on human territory. Their mating cycles had gone wonkers since the moon thing happened, so said the officials. Saitama's lip curled. "For all we know, the HA could be breeding these things in their labs. You never know what that creep Boifoi is up to holy shit don't get your face so close to it!"
"Don't worry, sensei. The virus is only transmittable by saliva and blood. And even if it bit me, well…" Genos sank eye to eye with the corpse's pearl before prodding it with a metal finger. Surprisingly, it squished. "We should take whatever chance we have to learn about these creatures."
Saitama hoppity-hopped on the sidelines, a twitchy dance of agitation and horror. Genos was breathing in its dust! They were practically making out!
Suddenly, Genos jerked up. Saitama's relief birthed and died in the same moment.
"They usually come in packs."
A howl crept along the wind and soon mingled with two others. Several canines crowded the far end of the street.
"Oh, gross! I do not want to see a dog orgy," said Saitama. He grabbed Genos around the middle and hauled him towards the mangled cart, bobbing along the way to snatch up whatever else had survived the crash. He dumped Genos into the cart and rained everything else on top of him, chips included.
"Sensei!" Genos said. "They do not have orgies, just very intense heat periods. The only animals that actively seek out orgies are humans, bonobos, and dolphins."
"Dude… you just ruined dolphins for me for, like, forever."
The omegas paced the skyline, rippling with agitation. "It's because we killed a member of their pack," Genos said. He twisted within the cart until he could see face forward. "Don't run too fast. The wind will rip off my legs."
The pack split, its members disappearing into the wreckage of the city. Saitama let himself marvel at their intelligence before saying, "Okay, Genos, I'll push. You fire away if they get too close."
Saitama sprinted down the open road. As they picked up speed, they could spot the monsters flanking them, sneaking through alleyways. Genos stretched out a hand to fire, yet they seemed uninterested in closing in for the kill. As the cart shot homeward, Saitama twisted one last time to see the omegas gathered around the body of their dead companion. Their silhouettes were dark, somber, shrinking into the distance.
After their apartment complex had literally slumped over backwards, Saitama jumped into the remodeling business and punched away the upper floors. He and Genos squeezed the broken pipes shut with their own fists and moved into the ground unit directly below their old one.
Today, Genos and Saitama bypassed their door altogether, silently trodding down a stairwell into the building's basement. Yanking open the heavy door, Saitama flicked on the light to reveal a foam and feather palace: layers of blankets gave the concrete floor a seductive squish; pillows bulged like creamy furnishings. The finishing touch: two sheep and duck-print futons spread before a small TV.
Groaning, Saitama collapsed onto his futon, cans rolling out of his toppled canvas bag. "Let's organize the stuff later. I wanna sleep," he mumbled into the fluff.
"Feel free to nap, sensei. I'll listen to the HA bulletin for us." Saitama heard a soft dial up tone, the buzz of static, and then Genos cursing the lesser machine.
Saitama's tired muscles were almost oozing off his bones. He could have slept right then and there, but he was starting to have trouble breathing with his face planted in the bedding. He rocked to the side, strenuously rolling onto his back to tug at his hero suit. Wiggling his way out was a battle, the sweaty fabric bunching up in all the most difficult places. At last, it came off as a thick yellow donut roll. He flung it into a distant corner and tried not to think about how badly he smelled.
A heavy thunk—metal striking metal—and the burble of static changed to Amai Mask droning about the development projects in City C. Genos crawled back with a satisfied smile. Saitama was peeved by how the cyborg could look so pleased when they had to stare at that prissy mug, but it was a necessary evil. Information was precious.
Try as he might, he couldn't drift off. Amai's voice had sunken its hooks into his brain, reeling him back towards consciousness every time he tried to slip away. In fact, now, as he listened, he could detect a new quality in the man's tone. It was slight; Amai was as composed as always. Yet something pulsed beneath the careful professionality, something raw, roiling.
"And now our most important news—research progress regarding the moon and our environmental crisis."
Saitama yanked himself upright. Next to him, he could hear the creak of gears as Genos sat up straighter.
"The space drones recently deployed by Metal Knight have discovered shocking new information about the moon's surface. As stated before, many satellites have photographed the epic crater thousands of miles in diameter that appeared after the alien invasion three years ago. Now we have determined its cause…"
A photograph filled the screen. The moon's face was shattered silver. The camera zoomed deep into the pit. At first, Saitama and Genos had difficulty processing what they were seeing, so strange as it was. But the image was sharp and clear. There was no denying what lay in the epicenter of the destruction…
A pair of footprints.
"It may be hard to believe that one man is responsible for a global disturbance, but Metal Knight's drones were even able to plaster cast the evidence. A footprint expert has determined that whoever had stood in these shoes was preparing to jump, and that they were headed towards our Earth."
Amai's face stared back at them, cold and predatory, like he could smell blood in the air. "A warrant has been placed for the arrest of the 'Man on the Moon.' He is a size 10 and of medium build. If you have any information relevant to this case, please contact the HA.
"That ends today's bulletin."
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I am so proud to finally contribute to this fandom.