Shunshi was a seventeen-year-old boy who kept himself in above average shape. His eyes were an intense blue, and his black, shoulder-length hair was styled to have spiked tips. He lived at home with his parents while his older sister was away at college to become a doctor.
One day, as he rode the train home from high school, he saw an advertisement for some sort of new company called the Hero Association. Not knowing what to think of it and only having a basic poster advertisement to look at, he made a mental note to look up more information once he got home.
Once he had returned to his mother and father's house, Shunshi looked up the Hero Association on his laptop and eventually found a commercial being narrated by a pretty girl in a business suit. The commercial explained that the Hero Association was an initiative that had been set up by a wealthy businessman after a vigilante saved his nephew from a monster. They held regular entry exams, and this organization would accept anyone who passed as a Pro Hero. Not only would this make all Pro Heroes legal vigilantes, but they would also get paid for their work as one.
As someone who had always loved superhero comics and manga, Shunshi's interest could be considered far more than peaked. More excited than he'd ever been in his life, Shunshi's pumped-up mind felt fairly confident that he could at least pass the Hero Association's entry test. Admittedly, his confidence wasn't completely unfounded. He was fairly athletic from exercising somewhat regularly and had been studying martial arts since he was twelve.
The day after his research, Shunshi had made up his mind and headed out to take his exam. He rode his bike to one of the Hero Association's testing centers and took the test alongside thousands of others to see if he could qualify for the job he'd wanted since childhood, to be a superhero.
A few hours later, the would-be Hero walked away from the testing facility in shame. Despite there being so many others who had passed, he had fallen short and only received a score of sixty-two out of a hundred points on his overall test. A minimum of seventy points was needed to qualify as what they called a C-Class Hero, so he wasn't even as good as this organization's weakest.
Despite the heavy blow to his pride, Shunshi refused to allow his dream to die that easily now that the possibility to make it a reality existed. The young man renewed his determination, now focusing on proving himself as a true Hero to this organization.
Shunshi decided that he needed to train as hard as the superheroes in his comic books and manga trained, and he would need to do it for years. In his mind, this was the only way to become worthy of standing alongside the other powerful Heroes that had proved their worth at the testing facility and made it into the Hero Association.
During Shunshi's training years, he improved his physical abilities with calisthenics and weight-lifting at his hometown's gym. This wasn't his only focus, though, as he quadrupled down on his martial art training. Lastly, the young man took to meditation to help improve his mental state and. On top of all this, during the rare occasions that he'd come across them, Shunshi would chase after and fight weak monsters in his free time.
Despite his enthusiasm, Shunshi's first attempt at taking on a monster, the Wolf Level Threat, Massage Ball Man, ended poorly. The monster proved too strong for a normal Human, like him, to fight in hand to hand combat, and the creature ultimately thrashed Shunshi. He only survived the encounter because he grabbed a steel pipe to protect himself until the B-Class Hero, Reculsamurai, arrived to save the day.
Regardless of this awful experience, Shunshi only found himself motivated even more. He ultimately chose to see the encounter as a learning experience, coming to the realization that he needed to work on how well he could take a hit and dish one out. As such, Shunshi began training to toughen his bones through means such as punching sand.
After three years of intense training, Shunshi had reached the age of twenty. While his lack of faith in himself kept him from joining the Hero Association, he had created a costume for himself. Not only that, but his strength had grown to superhuman levels, and he'd greatly improved his skills as a martial artist. However, his meditation ended up putting all of his other progress to shame. Through it, Shunshi had unlocked an ability of the Human body that either the rest of Humanity had either been unaware of or had long since forgotten about.
This unheard-of ability that Shunshi discovered was something that he decided to call Kie. Whenever he activated his body's Kie, it made his flesh roughly twice as durable. It also created an inch-thick field of white flames over his entire body. On top of the increase in defense, this strange energy would heal Shunshi at a slightly accelerated rate, which came in handy whenever he'd hurt himself by working out too hard or taking on a monster out of his league. However, when it came to offensive abilities, Kie's most useful trait was that it allowed him to created balls of light. These orbs would burst with high powered explosions when Shunshi threw them at solid objects, and the more time spent charging up a ball, the more powerful the explosion would be.
Regarding Shunshi's other abilities, it really was no exaggeration to claim he was at a superhuman level. His legs had become strong enough to jumps dozens of feet into the air, fall from great heights, and outrun an average car. When it came to his arms, they had become so strong that he could lift several tons and punch through solid stone with ease.
Not only had Shunshi developed physical might, but after devoting himself to the practice of martial arts, his skills had skyrocketed. By now, he had mastered four different forms and was fluent in two others.
When it came to his costume, Shunshi put his shop class hobby to good use. His costume was colored black and gray, and most of the suit was made up of flexible but weak body-armor. The gauntlets and boots were made of interlocking solid steel with a fabric interior, had small spikes on the knuckles and toes, and claws on the gauntlets' fingertips. The knee and elbow pads were made of iron and had small spikes on them as well. He wore a collapsible steel helmet that covered his head, face, and neck. He'd designed the helmet's appearance to loosely resemble that of a dragon-themed monster he'd seen on emergency television. The final touch that the enthusiastic young man added to his costume was a hooded black cloak that went down to the back of his knees.
One day, when Shunshi was listening to the news while he was working out, he saw a report about there being some sort of deadly mosquito outbreak in City-Z. This motivated him to throw on his armor and go to City-Z to investigate. He intended to go see if he could find anyone who either wasn't in a state to leave on their own or just hadn't managed to evacuate yet.
While running at high-speeds through the city, Shunshi saw a man breaking in and out of an electronics store. The individual had a large sack of goods in his left hand and a smirk plastered on his face.
As soon as he saw this robber, Shunshi thought to himself in annoyance, "Really?! He's robbing a store!? Why did this idiot even stay here after the warning was given?! Geez, what a pain in the ass." Despite his annoyance with this man's backward priorities, Shunshi started to make his way towards the robber to stop him and get him to safety.
However, before the darkly-clad Hero could even take a few steps, a massive swarm of mosquitoes suddenly flew past him, creating a gust of wind with enough power to blow Shunshi's cape into the air. Afterward, Shunshi saw a mosquito land on his arm and begin to try and squirm through his armor. He was about to swat it, but suddenly, half of the fly-by swarm covered his entire body before he could crush his target.
Out of a sense of fear and hatred of these bugs, Shunshi shouted, "Get off me, you little bastards!" He then turned on his Kie, burning up all the miniature vampires in his veil of white flames.
While gasping for breath in an attempt to slow down his panicking heart, Shunshi saw that the crook's body had been drained of all its blood by the mosquitoes. All that was left of the man resembled a mummy without its bandages, with even his eyes having been drained. This sight disgusted the young man and filled him with rage and regret at his failure to save the man.
Noticing where the surviving bugs were going, Shunshi watched in disgust as these little parasites flew towards some sort of female mosquito monster in the sky above them. The mosquitoes emptied all of the blood they had gathered into the female creature until the insect abdomen attached to the back of her waist stopped pulsating red.
Once the pulsating stopped, the creature complained, "Oh, come on. That's not nearly enough!" After stretching out its arms to relax, the Mosquito Girl spotted Shunshi glaring at her.
After noticing the flame-covered individual, the female monster smiled sadistically, licked its lips, pointed at him, and exclaimed, "You guys missed one! Go get me some more delicious liquids to drink!" Following their master's orders, the bugs formed, what looked like, a river of insects. This river was a ragging rapid and was aiming to crash right into Shunshi.
The armored youth's still visible eyes became filled with a horrible fury when the Mosquito Girl gave this order, opening his palms to form a Light Ball in each one.
As the mosquitos grew ever closer to him, Shunshi thought to himself with pure malice, "You kill a man, and now you think you're gonna turn me into a snack?! Like Hell, you will!"
In retaliation, Shunshi started firing a volley of small Light Balls at the stream of mosquitoes headed for him. Each of his attacks created a powerful explosion on contact with these insects. The detonating orbs managed to hold the river of mosquitoes at bay, much to the monster woman's annoyance.
The Mosquito Girl's frustration at this Human's audacity of keeping his blood from it only grew as its swarm diminished. Recognizing that its little minions would fail, the mosquito creature decided to take the matter into its own claws.
Suddenly, the monster woman vanished with a speed that was too much for Shunshi to keep track of. The bug creature, then, reappeared behind him. Taking his attention away from the mosquitoes for a moment, Shunshi instantly realized the advantageous position the monster had gotten in. To defend himself, the Hero spun around to hit Mosquito Girl with a round-house kick to its head. Unfortunately, the monster easily dodged his attack and clawed at his torso, ripping open his armor's chest-piece and cutting a couple of inches into his flesh. Aside from the sharpness of her claws, the amount of strength behind the monster woman's attack was enough to send Shunshi flying into a nearby building.
While laying on his back in a mixture of rubble and his own blood, Shunshi thought to himself in pain, "That... definitely would've killed me if I didn't have Kie... Is that thing a Demon Level Threat?! Crap! I'm way out of my league here!"
After summoning thousands of more mosquitoes from seemingly nowhere, the Mosquito Girl pointed at Shunshi and shouted with pure sadism, "Suck out every last drop of that delicious red goo from the blood bag over there!"
As the horde of mosquitoes closed in to mummify him, Shunshi thought to himself, "Oh, shit! Is this the end for me?! I didn't even get a chance to try and join the Hero Association again! No, no, no, no, no!"
However, before the mosquitoes could move in on Shunshi, a large fireball was blasted at Mosquito Girl. Seeing the attack coming, the Mosquito Girl had intercepted it by having its minuscule minions gathered around it like a shield. This saved the monster from incineration but left the bugs to their fate.
Forcing himself to ignore the pain in his bleeding chest, Shunshi climbed out of the hole he was in and saw his savior. It was a younger man than him, with blond hair, black scleras, yellow eyes, and metal arms with what looked like fire coming out of them.
After quickly looking this kid over, Shunshi thought to himself in confusion, "I don't remember seeing anyone like him on the Hero registry... Is he new?"
Not having noticed that Shunshi was even there, the young man pointed one of his arms at the Mosquito Girl and coldly stated, "I am going to eliminate you. Hold still." The Mosquito Girl looked a little confused by the young man's statement before beginning to laugh maniacally.
She, then, asked him an angered and psychotic question, "You're going to eliminate me...? Just try it!"
Without a moment of hesitation, the young man shot a large ball of fire at the Mosquito Girl, but the creature quickly dodged it. The young man then ran up the side of a building, jumped off of the building's side, and tried to punch the Mosquito Girl while in the air. Unfortunately, it once again dodged the attack and used one of its claws to slash across the young man's back, creating sparks against his apparently metal torso.
The monster woman then tried to slice at the boy's head, but he managed to block its attack, launch himself back towards the building and then blast back at the monster while throwing another punch. The beast woman countered with a punch of its own before slamming him into the ground. However, as soon as the young man hit the ground with enough force to crush a car, he stood up as if unfazed by the same level of attack that had nearly killed Shunshi a moment ago.
After watching all of that spectacular combat between this blond-haired boy and the feminine mosquito monster, Shunshi thought to himself, "Holy crap! This kid must be in, like, the top ten of A-Class or something!"
While Shunshi watched him, the metal young man pointed his hand into the air and calmly said, "Incinerate."
He then shot an automatic volley of fire blasts at the Mosquito Girl, but it easily dodged each ray as she flew closer and closer towards him. After quickly closing in on the blond-boy, the monster used the horn on its head to impale the arm that was shooting at it, ripping most of it off in the process.
When Shunshi saw this, he was hit with the realization that he'd been letting this boy fight a monster all on his own and exclaimed to himself, "Oh no! What am I doing just sitting here?! I have to do something to help him!"
Reaching for the outside of the hole he'd been put in, Shunshi dug his clawed gauntlet into some stable wall and began climbing up the side of the building. After making it to the top of the structure, he leaped off of it and straight at the Mosquito Girl. Once he was close enough, he punched the female monster in the back of its head, sending it flying towards the ground.
"I... actually hit her?" Shunshi thought as he started falling
Once Shunshi had landed, he was a few feet from where he swatted the bug down to. Hoping that he'd killed the monster through some miracle, he approached his stunned target. However, all he got was another shock when he saw that the thing's legs had seemingly been ripped off.
Utterly baffled, Shunshi asked aloud, "What the heck?! I took her legs off with a punch to the back of the head?! How the Hell does that even work?!"
After freaking out about having possibly broken the laws of physics, Shunshi saw the young man walking towards him and holding the monster's legs in his remaining hand before discarding them to the ground.
While seeing the metal armed man tossing away the Mosquito Girl's legs, Shunshi muttered to himself, "Wait... When did you...?" Thinking back to when the Mosquito Girl had torn off this robot guy's arm, Shunshi realized that he must have torn the legs off at that point in the fight.
After piecing this together, Shunshi took a bow and introduced himself in a respectful tone, "Hello there, I'm Shunshi."
The young man responded in a polite but disinterested tone, "I am Genos. Now please move aside so that I can finish that bug woman off for good." As soon as Genos requested this, the Mosquito Girl sprung up and flew away from Genos in terror.
Shunshi started charging up a Light Ball to try and stop the monster. However, before he could throw it, Genos shot off a large fireball that was equal in destructive force to what Shunshi was trying to do but readied in one-third of the amount of time it would have taken him. Although, before the fire could hit Mosquito Girl, another swarm of its namesake insects formed around it and took the hit for it once again.
Having grown slightly frustrated with this monster's insect-based defense, Genos stated, "You cannot escape me."
A moment of continued fighting later, both Genos and Shunshi were running after Mosquito Girl as it flew away. The two of them had been attempting to intercept it with rays of fire and exploding spheres of light, but the beast always managed to either dodge or deflect these attacks with mosquitoes. Eventually, Mosquito Girl stopped when over a million mosquitoes flew at it from all directions and formed into a colossal orb of bugs.
Fed up and disgusted by all of the bugs, Shunshi thought somewhat fearfully, "I hope this Genos guy has enough firepower to take out all these damn parasites."
As if on queue, Genos stared at the swarm of mosquitoes for a second before preparing to fire off another massive fire blasts from his remaining arm.
The golden-haired teenager then looked at Shunshi and quickly instructed him, "Get on top of a building as quickly as you can. Now!"
Before Genos could fire off his attack, or Shunshi could start climbing, their attention was taken away by some weird-looking bald guy running down the street in their direction.
As he ran, the bald guy was blasting bug spray at a mosquito he was chasing and shouting furiously, "Get back here, dammit!"
When the bald man got near the two of them, he noticed the swarming mass in the sky and asked, "What's that squirming thing up there? Is it... mosquitoes?"
In a calm tone of voice, Genos ordered the bald man, "You over there. Evacuate now." In response to this command, the bald man just gave Genos a confused look.
Shunshi then explained the situation as fast as he could, "Dude, listen to him! Inside that swarm is a powerful monster that has mosquitoes drain people of all their blood. The monster is even strong enough to beat a powerful Hero like me. And it even took off... um... Genos' arm!"
The bald man looked a little frightened when he heard this and asked, "Is that so? That's bad! We gotta get-." Before the baldy could finish his sentence, the giant ball of mosquitoes began to plummet down at the three of them.
Shunshi immediately did as Genos told him to do priorly, and jumped, ran, and climbed up to the top of a nearby building as an ocean of mosquitoes rained down on him. At the same time, the yellow-eyed cyborg quickly charged up and shot off a fire blast that was powerful enough to cover the streets of an entire city block in scorching flames. Thusly, the apocalyptic swarm that the Mosquito Girl had gathered up was gone in only a few seconds.
After Genos had finished his attack, Shunshi was taking a minute to catch his breath from all the excitement. He went to sit against an exhaust vent on the roof, simply appreciating the absence of countless proboscis poking into him.
Placing the palm of his gauntlet to his helmet, Shunshi thought to himself in relief, "Good thing a Pro Hero like Genos showed up to save the day." After relaxing for a few more seconds, the realization of horror hit Shunshi that he had left the bald man back on the street.
Falling to his hands and knees, Shunshi immediately began to cry as he thought in despair, "What kind of Hero just leaves an innocent person to die to save his own skin!? How could I have failed so horribly?! He's probably burnt to a crisp now!"
After continuing to wallow in agony for a second, Shunshi could hear talking from the streets below. Jumping to his feet, he quickly ran over to the roof's edge and saw Genos and the bald man, who was now naked, standing next to each other. Confusion and relief overcame Shunshi as he jumped down from the building to the chared city streets to try and talk to this strange bald person.
As Shunshi walked towards him, the now naked bald man told Genos, "Man. You really made them bug out! Ba-dum-tsh... Get it? I was making a joke with them being bugs and-." Just as Shunshi was about to ask this person how he was still alive, the three men heard some crazy laughter coming from the direction that the Mosquito Girl had been in.
The Mosquito Girl had returned, with its legs now grown back and its skin and claws now crimson red and black colors. On top of all that, its long, white hair had now become completely unruly and frayed.
After finishing its laughter, the Mosquito Girl arrogantly exclaimed to the people standing below it, "Idiots! I no longer need the little ones! Just look at how strong I've become." In a demonstration of its power, the monster slashed one of its claws through the air in the direction of a building, demolishing the structure with just the wind force of her attack.
As Genos and Shunshi felt overcome with horror, the bald man at their side remained strangely calm. In fact, he seemed to have no response to this display of destructive power at all.
Within an instant, the Mosquito Girl had flown behind Genos and slashed open half of his torso before he was even able to figure out what happened. Shunshi tried to attack the creature to help Genos. However, without even looking in the older Hero's direction, the Mosquito Girl kicked him in his pelvis. This strike broke the armored man's waist and left him unable to stand.
Desperate to defend himself, Genos tried to turn around and punch at the female monster, but, before his attack even had a chance of hitting, it effortlessly slapped him hundreds of feet into the air. The Mosquito Girl quickly followed him into the sky, smacking him around each time it got near him, cutting off more and more of his robotic body with each attack.
Genos eventually started falling back down towards the ground but was torn to shreds with only his metal spine, keeping his two halves together.
With a bloodthirsty smile on its face, Mosquito Girl started rushing at the falling Genos. While watching him fall, Shunshi noticed that a ball of light started forming in Genos' torso while the monster woman was getting closer to him again.
This horrid sight caused Shunshi to shout at Mosquito Girl without thinking, "NO, STOP! Leave him alone! I have blood! Take me!"
Before things could get any worse, the naked bald man moved in front of the Mosquito Girl and slapped it in its face. This attack had enough force behind it to send the bug lady flying towards a building so fast that its body exploded into a mass of blood as soon as it made contact with the structure.
The bald man, with a small, satisfied smile on his face, said in amusement, "Mosquitoes... suck."
Almost unable to comprehend what he'd just seen, Shunshi thought to himself in utter confusion, "He... I... What just...? This guy's strong... He must be a new S-Class Hero!"
Feeling that he had no more reason to stick around, the bald man started walking away.
However, before he could go very far, Genos shouted to him in an urgent tone of voice, "Hold on!"
The bald man turned to look at him and replied emotionlessly, "What's up?"
While struggling to keep his head up, Genos stated, "Please tell me your name."
The bald man, still without any emotion, replied, "It's Saitama."
"I would like to be your disciple!" Genos exclaimed.
Upon hearing this, Shunshi thought in surprise, "Wait a second. You can just ask an S-Class Hero for something like that?!"
Saitama simply replied to Genos' request with an unconcerned, "Oh, okay... Huh?"
Hoping against hope, Shunshi worked up the courage to shout to Saitama as well, "I'm Shunshi! I'd like you to teach me too, Saitama!"
Saitama then stared over at the seemingly crippled guy in a suit of horrific black armor and asked, "Wait, what?"
Hello, my alias is Batty1377, and there are a few interesting things about the One Punch Man universe that some fans aren't aware of that I feel should be mentioned: First off, there are no countries in this world. All of civilization is on one supercontinent, and each of this world's so-called cities are about the size of a medium to large-sized country. It really puts into perspective how dangerous a Demon Level Threat is if it could destroy one of this world's cities.
The second thing worth mentioning is that, in this universe, the Earth has four moons, each the size of the one in real life. I have no idea what the purpose of having four moons serves to the story, but they're there.
That's about it. Thanks for reading the first chapter, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the story. If you don't, please tell me why. I appreciate criticism as I feel it helps me improve as a writer.