A/N: I am just loving the attention that my first chapter has gotten in only a week! Every review, fave, and follow makes my day brighter. Stay sweet!
Disclaimer: I do not own One-Punch Man.
Chapter 2: The Rule of Two
Cool and collected, Tatsumaki directed a nonchalant finger towards Saitama and commenced her volley of miscellaneous objects.
She silently decreed that in order to blow off some of the night's disappointment, she would start small and toy with him a bit before slamming the gavel down on him for good. To that end, she started the first wave with only small stuff: pebbles, mailboxes, trash lids – and maybe the occasional stray cat.
The currently cape-less baldy watched it all fly, and in his heightened perception, it all seemed to drift slowly towards him, like leaves on a gentle stream.
With an emotionless expression, he uttered something incoherent to the green-headed girl:
"Warming up the milk."
Her concentrated gaze broke slightly to reveal a small, befuddled scowl. "Wha?"
Effortlessly, he parkoured over a few larger projectiles of debris thrown at him whilst allowing the smaller pieces of trash to glance off his body. A few rocks and shards of glass cut across his pajamas as they sailed by, but he didn't seem to take notice of the damage.
He spoke again, as if not even thinking about the fight. "Time in the microwave should be twenty more seconds."
She blinked at him a few times trying to make sense of his ramblings, but finally shrugged and ultimately decided not to waste precious braincells on comprehending fools.
"Impressive reflexes," she applauded slow and half-heartedly, "…for a shaved vegetable. Maybe I'll allow you to entertain me for a bit longer after all."
The glow around her body shimmered brighter. Wooden planks tore away from nearby fences, and bricks were plucked out of alley walls. Her new harvest of junk ammunition coalesced and orbited around her like the trashy rings of a tiny trash-talking Saturn.
"It's good to know that you can at least move faster than a C-Class. Keep it up, and I might just start treating you like a Wolf-Level Threat." The objects around her stopped their rotation, and with a flick of her wrist, they spread evenly around her and poised to launch forward. "Time for your next test. Let's see how well you can dodge things that are more clustered together."
On cue, she emitted a slightly larger blast wave, and her makeshift missiles flew for him again. The same as before, Saitama uttered something strange as he held his ground.
"Rolling up the blankets."
He tucked into the ground, and in an anomalous burst of speed, he undulated beneath everything that flew, kicking up a huge cloud of dust and trailing a heavy scar in the street. Circumventing her gimmicks once more, he stopped his advance right in front of the dumbstruck esper and popped up straight just a few inches from her face.
"Milk's done."
She burst into hysteria and hissed. "Shit!" This time driven more by natural reflex than careful calculation, she sent him soaring back in the other direction by launching a pillar of concrete out from beneath his feet like a springboard trap.
He let himself pretend to be a bird for a bit, then corrected his course and landed on his feet again.
"Why do you keep spouting that nonsense?!" She pointed at him accusingly. "All that should have hit you for sure! You're cheating somehow!"
His response was just as mysterious as his others. "You're being stubborn. Just drink your milk and get ready for bed."
She gritted her teeth in outrage. "Oh, you still wanna treat me like a kid, I see. Fine then – see who it hurts. That'll just make it more humiliating when I smack you down!"
This time, underground water pipes burst out from below the street and wrapped around Saitama like thick metal snakes, covering every inch of his body except for his head. Saitama grimaced, and while Tatsumaki proudly took it as a sign of fear, it was actually him merely hoping that she didn't just rip out all of the plumbing from his apartment to use as she pleased.
Securely fastening him to the ground, she was confident that it was smooth-sailing from there on out. "What's wrong?" She crossed her arms and gave one of her antagonizing signature smirks. "Can't you move?"
He glanced out at her, seemingly unfazed by his restraints. "Your attitude stinks." He replied. "Time for your bath."
In a performance that would have made Houdini shed tears, he breached the confines of the pipes with one effortless twist, rupturing them in the process. As water spewed forth out of each conduit like fire hoses, he kicked their points of entry outward in Tatsumaki's direction.
The S-Class munchkin, stupefied at what was happening, could not react fast enough to save herself from the barrage of high water pressure. Her delicate floating frame took a dead-center slam from the geyser that sent her plummeting several yards back. Fortunately for her, it only took seconds to recover and respond, and she managed to kite her way around the oppressing torrent.
"Ack!" She gagged with her tongue out, trying to expel the fresh taste of earth from her mouth.
Saitama looked almost disappointed by her willingness to escape. "That's no good – gotta clean behind those ears too…" He stomped down on the head of one of the pipes, skillfully adjusting the course of its blast.
Right as she thought she was free of the water assault, a small stream of it broke off from the main body and pelted her in the face, though not strong enough to knock her back this time. Instead of trying to evade again, Tatsumaki simply threw her arm out to the side, deflecting the liquid away through means of some invisible wall.
Even so, the mucky fluid had already done all the damage it could. She was thoroughly drenched in muddy ground matter and dripping wet. Her messy hair hung down in limp strands like a green mop, completely obscuring her facial features. Her shoulders shook wildly, and Saitama couldn't discern if it was because she was angry or just cold.
With a small growl between heavy breaths, she splattered a hand over her mossy hair-covered face and slicked it back. It was then that Saitama could plainly see which of the two cases it was.
Tatsumaki's face was bright red. Her teeth were clenched and biting down as hard as they could – he could hear them grinding together all the way from where he was standing. Her eyebrows were bearing heavily down over a pair of shrunken pupils, and a vein was popping indignantly out of her forehead.
As Saitama silently concluded to himself that her hair might actually look better straightened out like that, that very same hair floated upwards over the Tornado's head, held unnaturally by a redoubled amount of her psychic power.
"Y o u…" The venom in her tone was dripping more than anything else on her body was. And that was impressive. "You're a dead man."
"Uh-oh." Saitama answered blankly. "Stayed in the bath too long. Here, let me help you dry off."
In a rather telegraphed movement, he began to jog plainly up towards her. But this time, she wasn't in the mood to play anymore.
Pumping her legs up, she threw herself down to the ground with a powerful two-foot stomp. In direct response, Saitama was utterly smashed in between two rising plates of concrete like a tectonic egg sandwich.
With his body out of view and presumed to be shattered, Tatsumaki sank to her hands and knees to cough up the last bit of water she had almost choked on. "That slippery brass-balled bastard…" She struggled with to regain her breath. "But with this…it's over." She huffed with some lingering distress, but looked otherwise contented with herself. "Maybe the Association will even make me Hero of the Month just for scraping you off the bottom of their shoe for them."
She took a moment to twist some of the water out of her locks and managed with some partial success to regain some of their curl. As she prepared to set off into the starry night, she grunted when she heard a small cracking sound coming from the stony prison she had just pulled her victim into.
Unbelievably, the lips of the cloistered shell began to split asunder, and from within emerged the seemingly flawless pearl of her adversary's head.
"Story time. I'm cracking open the book." He said casually as he shrugged both sides of the demolished road from his shoulders.
Tatsumaki's jaw dropped "You're unhurt?! How can you be unhurt! Are you stupid? Do you not even know when to be unconscious?!"
"Nope." He answered. "I changed my mind. You've been bad, so you don't deserve a story."
Quickly forgetting her shock, her face twisted back into indignant rage. He still insisted on keeping up with that stupid roleplay?
"I…" She opened one hand out toward him while the other reached up towards the sky, palm out. "…am NOT A CHILD!"
Saitama paused for a second to look up, and it took him a moment to register how the stars above him seemed brighter than usual. Almost as if they were on fire.
Through the delirium brought on by fatigue and the excessive strain of her power to warp natural law, Tatsumaki laughed almost maniacally at his new predicament. "You should see how dumb you look when you're confused." She taunted him from afar. "Then again, I'll bet you look this way all the time!"
She flexed her hand out, effectively tightening her invisible grasp on the numerous spheres of flame floating above them. There, as if the black sky was paper, the fires began to catch and spread across it, each from their own point of origin. The entire city lit up in the esper's counterfeit daylight, and if anyone was awake to see it, they were sure to think that the apocalypse had finally come to claim the planet.
The need to stop her had become all too urgent now; it was growing hotter by the second.
"Breathtaking, isn't it?" She asked him while sporting a sadistic smile. But as much as she struggled to put up a tough front, the exertion she wore on her face was plainly seen. And Saitama surmised that doing whatever she was doing – even for someone of her caliber – was costing her quite its share of effort. Her words were somewhat strained as she spoke again. "A regular person can train their mind every single day for several millennia and never achieve this level of control. Limitless energy. I can even cheat the Laws of Thermodynamics – generate light and heat completely out of nothing if I choose to! And you…you should really learn to play possum when competing against someone with no limits. Now…" capitalizing on her point, she threw both hands downward, "it's the burn unit for you—!"
Before she could even finish uttering her final syllable, Saitama emerged from out of nowhere right in front of her face, using some means that defied the human eye.
"Didn't you hear me?" He asked impatiently. "I said story time's over. Good night." She barely even had time to gasp in panic before he reached out to her face. He curled two of his fingers together against her forehead, and with the loud, abrupt sound of a firecracker, he delivered the only damage that Tatsumaki had sustained in years – a flick.
Instantly on impact, the green barrier around her body shattered like glass, and the sheer force knocked her clean off of her levitational float.
She entered the dreamless rest before even hitting the ground.
"And sleep well." Saitama finished, even though he knew she could no longer hear him.
As if to symbolically signify her loss, all of the incandescence she fabricated with her mind began to dissipate overhead, and the temperature gradually fell back into its normal clime. All the street lamps she had revived began to die again as well. There was never a more appropriate time to say that Tatsumaki's "lights were out" – in every possible fashion.
As the streets descended back into their natural darkness, a familiar voice reached out for him. "Sensei!" He turned to see his self-spoken disciple hurrying over to him. "That was amazing, Sensei! What did you do? The range of motion was too small for my sensors to pick up."
Saitama gave him a shallow glance, as if it should have been obvious to anyone.
"Huh? I just did what I said I would do – I put her to bed."
Genos put a finger to his chin for a moment in deep thought before his eyes widened. Reality had set in. "You just defeated the highest-ranking active hero on the Association's roster! Master, this is irrefutable proof that you should be Rank 1! Or at the very least that Senritsu no Tatsumaki should be demoted by more than a few..."
"Huh?"
Saitama blinked at this a few times and turned to look back down at where the Tornado of Terror had crumbled. She was unconscious, but still breathing heavy from the ordeal. He continued to gaze at her sleeping face for a few minutes, and from the shallow well of emotions he was capable of expressing, there was one particular emotion he got especially close to at the moment:
Pity.
She may have been sleeping, but her face looked anything but peaceful. It looked sad. Sad and frightened. And no matter how she treated people or talked to them while she was alert, he just couldn't hold that reality in his mind as long as she looked like that. A helpless expression is capable of telling an entire story. At some point in her life, he knew beyond the scientific realm of doubt that she had inherited a curse of some kind.
Something happened to her.
Something went wrong.
And for whatever reason, it seemed like the entire world was the only thing she had left to blame. As a coping mechanism, she may have felt that it was her only escape.
Saitama could relate. No one would believe it, but he once came very close to making that very same mistake.
Finally, he answered Genos. "I shouldn't, really…"
The young cyborg blinked. "Sensei?"
"It wouldn't be right for me to take Rank 1. I haven't earned it."
"But Master, what could you possibly mean? Look at her!" He motioned down at her small, wet, crumbled structure. "You did that. You earned that."
"Earned what, exactly?" He asked passively without stopping to glance back at him. "That minikin brat could've been running laps for hours with whatever broke into our apartment before she even got here. Not to mention how late past her bedtime it is. There's no way she was bringing a hundred percent to this fight. And even so, I didn't even really fight her. She fought her. I just blew the leaf over when it was ready to fall."
His roommate frowned. "Forgive me; I am still not sure what you mean."
"Aah, just figure it out. I'm getting tired, ya know?"
"Ah!" Genos livened up as his concerned robo-waifu protocol came back online. "Master must be exhausted! Let us depart. We will figure out what to do about that 'Alexandria' creature tomorrow."
"Wait a minute, man." Saitama stopped him. "What about her?" He motioned down at the topic of interest.
"Eh?" Genos gave him a spacey look. Uncertain of what it was his teacher was hinting at, he struggled incessantly trying to connect the dots as he periodically switched between glancing at him and glancing down at the girl he was gesturing towards.
Ultimately his teacher had less patience than he did, and a vein cropped up on his head as he began throwing clues in. "Is there something about leaving a small, cold, wet, unconscious girl by herself on a deserted corner in the middle of the night that your smart robot compass thinks might be slightly not okay?"
"Forgive this foolish disciple, Sensei! I was not thinking. As always, you are correct." Intent on not wearing his favorite hero's patience any thinner, the Demon Cyborg jaunted over to where Tatsumaki was lying down and gently scooped her up into his arms. "It was careless of me to leave such a renown and distinguished member of the Hero Association behind without returning her to her respective place. It is only proper, after all."
Saitama smiled with a hint of pride at his pupil. "You're learning all the time, Genos."
The cyborg smiled back at his mentor. "Thank you, Master. All in a day's work." He began to carry Tatsumaki off in a random direction. This led to some slight confusion on Saitama's part.
"Umm, Genos? Where are you going with her?"
His apprentice turned back and faced him with the look of absolute determination to return the Tornado of Terror exactly to where she belonged.
"To locate the nearest dumpster, Sensei."
Saitama's eyes almost blew out of his skull. "The living hell you are! Get her inside, you synthetic socio!"
"Y-Yes! At once!"
Despite the gaping hole in the side of the apartment, Genos stood on ceremony and entered through the front door with the esper still in his arms. Saitama followed him in tow, making sure that the cyborg didn't try to take any more…grandiose detours.
The power to the room was still out, so in the darkness, Genos used the light extension from his shoulder to guide them through the black space.
"Hang on a sec. I'm gonna go grab something." Saitama called from behind him with a hint of excitement and disappeared into the next room. A moment later, he reemerged holding an electric lamp in his hand. He felt around the bottom for the switch, and with a click, yellow luminescence swept across the area as the small contrivance buzzed to life. The light took on the odd shape of a cartoonish octopus character with a wide, subjectively creepy grin, wearing an academic dress and cap. At the center of the character's tie was a crescent moon.
It was no perfect substitute for the burnt-out overhead lights, but Saitama was dying for the excuse to show it off. It covered a larger range than Genos's little flashlight – and best of all – it ran separately on good old fashion batteries with no strings attached.
Saitama kneeled to set the gizmo at the center of the room on the floor. The features of the two boys appeared dimly next to the light source, and their long shadows stretched to the wall.
As he watched his idol stand up to look for something else, Genos voiced his concern with a question. "Is she really spending the night here, Master?"
His response echoed from the far side of the room. "I don't see what else we can do. We don't know where she lives, and she isn't in any condition to hurry home either. Just let her sleep it off."
"It is highly possible that she has a concussion." Genos replied. "Perhaps sleep is the last thing she needs."
"Alright then," Saitama came back holding something rolled up in his arms, "if you're that concerned about it, you wake her up. Just make sure you do it when I'm not around for her to bite my head off too."
Heavy with discouragement, Genos slumped his shoulders. Weighing his options, he ultimately decided that her health wasn't worth the risk of tempting a tornadic storm.
"Here, she can use the spare futon." Saitama unraveled the bed on the floor. "Hasn't been used in a while."
"Isn't that because it is the same futon that you spilled miso soup on? Did we ever remember to wash it?"
"Well yeah, it is…" Saitama looked a bit uncomfortable. "And no…we didn't. But I mean come on, that happened like three weeks ago. Maybe the smell's gone away by now…" With an optimistic smile, he pressed the futon to his face to check.
Genos tilted his head with curiosity. "Well how is it?"
Without even bothering to drop his smile, Saitama lowered the material from his face to look up at him with eyes utterly devoid of hope. "Ah. It reeks worse than ever. Smells like a hot foot forest." The two hung their heads in disdain, but Saitama was the first one to recover with a careless shrug. "Well she tried to kill me, so I guess whatever."
"There is another matter." Genos informed him. "Her clothes – she is still wet."
"Aah, yeah. It would be bad for her to catch cold." Saitama agreed. "Let's see…" He put a thoughtful finger to his chin and scanned the room. "What do I have around here that she can wear…"
"Deplorable."
Tatsumaki's eyes shot open in shock. She found herself sitting – or maybe floating – in an empty white space, isolated, and dressed in a simple white gown. Against her desire, she remembered the room all too well.
She remembered that voice too. It was strong and regal.
"Blast?" She called out in an uncharacteristically insecure voice. "I-Is that you?"
For a long period, there was nothing. No response. The cell she was in had not a thing in it besides her; no definition, no features, no color – providing a strange optical illusion that it was stretching out and shrinking in all at once. It was breathing.
The tricks it played on her were almost more than she could take. The motions made her sick.
She fought the urge to double over and retch, instead trying to put her focus on where that distinct voice came from.
"Someone? Are you out there?"
Again, there was nothing. The silence that followed almost had a voice of its own. Like the whir of deep space – the hum of an empty void.
"Deplorable." the voice echoed again – closer now.
She frantically looked around the room for a source, and there was nothing. A pristine glassy interior that seemed to pulse with evil. The empty noise was getting louder. It was grating against her ears.
"All your gifts… All that power…" the voice seemed to emulate from all around her. Surrounding her. Rushing in and out. Like it was running circles around her. "but none of it kept you from forgetting what I taught you."
She put her hands over her ears, trying to block out the abrasive noise that kept increasing. It sounded like she was in a vacuum now.
Blocking it had no effect. It came right through. The voice did the same. She could almost feel the sound slipping through her fingers. It felt like worms squirming into her ears, slimy and writhing.
"You have forgotten yourself. You have forgotten everything." The voice turned bitter – almost contemptuous.
"N-No!" She shut her eyes tight and called back at it. "That isn't true! I haven't forgotten you, Blast! Please…please don't be mad at me!"
She opened her eyes. Her mouth dropped agape with horror at what she saw in front of her.
Its head was bigger than the room. She didn't know how it could possibly be in there with her.
Its six lidless eyes pierced her soul, and even without pupils, she could tell that they were all fixed on her. Its mouth was splayed open from wall to wall in a primal grin, and it opened to reveal everything inside to her: countless rows of razor-sharp teeth, and what she could only perceive to be a window to Hell itself. Every fearful thing in the universe seemed to be staring right back at her through it, and she heard screams of countless souls echo out of its throat.
It was the monster. The one from eighteen years ago.
She raised a hand at it in order to subdue it with her powers, but was mortified when it had no effect. There was nothing in the room to throw at it. Nothing she could do to harm it. Nothing she could do to make it go away.
Letting her survival instincts kick in, she tried to turn around and fly. Run. Anything she could do to put distance between her and those evil jaws. But suddenly something pinned her in place by her head.
She looked up in confusion, feeling around for her restraint with her hands. She felt her fingers run along a cold, smooth dome of metal. It was her headpiece. The last memento she had of the scientists that had used it to experiment on her. The memento from which she endured lasting torture. And now it dangled her in front of her doom like a fishing lure.
"Blast!" Hot tears were rolling down her cheeks. "Help me!"
"I told you…" The voice was brushing up against her ear in a harsh whisper, "…you should never have expected someone to come save you!"
The room was drowned out by a hellish roar as the walls of jagged teeth closed in around her.
"BLAST!"
She screamed out his name as she sprang up, gasping for breath. Wild with fear, she rapidly checked her surroundings. The white room was gone. The sounds, the voice, and the monster too.
Instead, she found herself at the base of a crummy apartment, only distinguishable to her blurry vision through the lamp that shone dimly on the floor next to her.
When she turned to inspect the light more closely, the ugly tentacle monster that it manifested itself as made her jump straight up with her back arched like a cat. She almost shattered it on reflex.
"Hah…! Jesus!" The pang from her startled heart quickly shot up into her brain with a sharp throb, causing her to clutch her forehead with both hands. "My head…" She gritted through her teeth, trying to adapt to the unpleasantness that seemed to revisit her in heavy waves.
Attempting to slow her breathing, she reached a hand to the back of her neck and felt the cold of sweat trickling down her skin.
"What a shitty dream…"
Tatsumaki couldn't remember the last time she dreamt. Ever since the incident of eighteen years ago, she was quick to discover that with great power like hers came great restrictions too. Her brain was in a constant state of duress, exacerbated by the extent of which she used her psychokinesis. Levitating herself took little to nothing out of her, which was why she favored it over walking like everyone else. But stopping the planet on its axis, or attempting to pull stars out of the sky? That shit didn't come for free.
Remembering how hard she pushed herself in her last quarrel, she ran the back of her hand under her nose, and her face darkened when it came back with fresh red smeared on it. A nosebleed.
Instantly she regretted how far she let that conflict take her. Who the hell was she even trying to impress showing off like that anyway? With a little more imagination, she realized that opening up a sinkhole beneath the baldy's feet would have given her what she wanted at less than a quarter's expense of her health. It was a bitter pill for her to swallow, but she discerned that in the end she had her own flaring temper to thank for whatever happened.
…Not that she would ever admit that out loud.
Suddenly her mind was drawn away from recent events and towards a bizarre smell arresting her nose. Unless her blood had somehow turned ramen-flavored since the last time she was awake, someone was going to have questions to answer.
"What the hell…" She murmured with a repugnant squint and gave the air around her a few good whiffs. It smelled like the Deep Sea King and Puri-Puri Prisoner fight-fucking in the middle of a rotten cabbage field.
She followed her nose downward towards the offending source, stopping short when it reached what she was wearing. "Wha…?" She explored its soft texture with a few tugs, fairly confident that she didn't go out wearing any color other than black.
Sparing no time, she shot up out of the futon and surveyed the area for a mirror.
Finding none in proximity, she scouted out the bathroom and slipped inside, using her power to carefully shut the door behind her and snap the lights on. There, she faced the glass wall head-on.
Her eyes widened into dinner plates. What she saw herself wearing…staggered her.
Her jaw dropped to underscore her disbelief at the detail of the over-sized hoodie she wore around her slender frame. The colors were not overly dynamic, with the shoulders and arms a crimson red and its torso a plain white. Its most eye-catching feature, however, were the letters displayed in obnoxious gold print across her chest, spelling out the word 'OPPAI'. Directly below that hung a peculiar design. Two curvy half-circles side-by-side were each wrapped around a single dot, which Tatsumaki could only presume represented a pair of boobs right over the spot her actual boobs would be if God didn't hate her.
Gazing at the spectacle, her mouth remained wide open, and when no sound other than a crack would escape her voice, she resorted to simply mouthing her sentiments to her reflection:
What. The. Fuck.
When her eyes finally had their fill of the abomination wrapped around her, they moved upwards and narrowed suspiciously at a patchy red spot on her brow. She poked a finger at it to test it with some pressure. It hurt enough to make her wince. And no wonder the headache. She looked like an absolute mess.
After taking a moment to clean the blood from her face, she reappeared in the main room to reconvene with her situation. She spotted two reclining shapes along the floor some distance from where she had woken up and knew who they had to be. Using the ultimate stealth cheat, the miniature esper hovered her way towards her hosts to prevent any footsteps from alerting them.
Floating right over the space between the boys, Tatsumaki had a good view of both sleeping faces from her tactical vantage point.
The first one she noticed was Genos. She regarded him with a curt, dismissive scoff and moved on. Studying him was a waste of time. There was nothing special about the Demon Cyborg – he was a glorified Backstreet Boy with a horsepower engine welded to his ass. All-in-all his mechanical parts were probably the most useful thing about him, and even then, she wasn't convinced that he was worth their expense. After all, they already had Bofoi and Drive Knight, so what did they need a point-five version for? Anyone she could just pick up and throw around with impunity like an old ragdoll wasn't worth her attention.
She looked over her shoulder at the other sleeper in the room.
Then there was him.
Narrowing her eyes into a sharp stare, she adjusted her floating position to lean closer to the resting egghead. She scrunched up her nose at his underwhelming appearance. With his eyes closed and his drooling mouth open, he looked arguably even dumber asleep than awake.
And yet visions of their encounter flashed back. Even when she was going easy on him, there was no way a regular B-Rank would be able to wade through all of that punishment – not without getting reduced to swiss cheese. That he made it look so easy only made it harder to believe.
The confusion surrounding the bald man in front of her frustrated her greatly. And realizing that her headache was quickly escalating into a migraine, she knew that thinking so hard about it wasn't making it much better. Her pending review of this weirdo's talents could wait a day or two.
Instead of focusing on that, she found that she now had him in a rather helpless position. Looking down at him with a deadpanned expression, she opened her palm to reveal the green globe projecting from her fingertips. Tempting was the thought to repay him for all the humiliation he had given her during their bout…for getting her cold, wet, and dirty…for laying his filthy hand on her, tucking her in like a puppy on a stinking futon next to a glowing tentacle rape monster and dressing her in shamefully debaucherous clothes. He had quite a lot to answer for.
Her sinister grin stretched wider across her cheeks as she reached down with her radioactive hand outstretched to his face. A few inches more, and being bald would be the least of this asshole's problems.
Right as the eerie glow got to the tip of his nose, she remembered something.
He didn't have to tuck her in like a puppy. And while she wasn't all too happy with her current fashion statement, he probably just gave it to her because it was warm and dry.
She frazzled her hair in self-loathing. Was she really arguing for this imbecile?
But breaking through her layer of stubborn pride, she had to question her alternative chances. Outside, unconscious in the pitch black of night, soaked in cold sewage, by herself in a world where predators came in both human and monster varieties. She supposed that rather than leaving her to face what was out there while she couldn't even defend herself, it's possible the two may have shown her a modicum of chivalry by allowing her to be sheltered for one night.
Sure they may be losers…but polite losers anyhow.
With this nagging thought keeping her from maiming them in their sleep, she huffed at it like the big inconvenience it was. She returned to her pungent bedding only to pick up her shoes and dress, bundling it all up in her arms before ascending through the gaping wall.
Just before she launched herself off into the breaking dawn, she remembered yet another thing. It was something that she always reminded herself – every morning she woke up, and every night she'd go to sleep:
'Owe them nothing.'
As a matter of integrity both professional and personal, she kept herself alive with the resolve never to put herself in the debt of someone else. Not after…
'You have forgotten yourself. Everything…' There was that voice again – echoing through her ears like before.
"Tch…!" She shook it violently out of her mind. "I didn't forget jack shit…"
She glared passively at Saitama from over her shoulder where he was still reclining. His mouth hung open to make way for a somewhat tension-diffusing snore.
She snorted softly at his crude sleeping manner and shut her eyes in a sharp, focused blink. A shimmer radiated across the room, and she at last turned to leave for good.
As she departed, she muttered one last thing under her voice.
"We aren't done with each other yet…B-Class Baldy."
Swift and silent, she continued to elevate upward into the sky with her belongings, shrinking into the distance until the orange sunrise finally consumed her shape.
"Unacceptable!"
The pillow that Genos held in a crushing bear-hug burst under the immense pressure, causing feathers to scatter all over. Unnoticed by him, the fluffy explosion messed up his hair, causing spiky blond strands to stick up.
Saitama had his pinky finger jammed up in his ear to staunch the volume of his roommate's anger. "Dude, relax. Drink some tea."
"Discourteous!" The cyborg would not be quelled. "Uncouth! R-Rude…!" After he rattled his brain empty of synonyms, Genos grew quiet and still, then proceeded to amble over and sit cross-legged on the other side of the broken table, still clutching the demolished pillow in his arms. A few stray feathers still clung to him.
The cyborg took a long pause to stare at an invisible object in the corner of the room, ashamed to look at Saitama's face. After a long minute of silence, he peeked over at his teacher from the corner of his eye and confessed something startling.
"…I popped a pillow."
"I can see that…" Saitama cupped his hands around his heated beverage, closing his eyes before taking an exasperated sip. He didn't brew enough chamomile this morning… Not for this crap. "Can't you just be happy that she kept her word and turned the power back on?"
"I am sorry, Master." Genos spoke plainly. "But I cannot abide Tornado's disrespectful behavior. We opened our home to her, you let her wear one of your favorite shirts, and she did not return so much as the courtesy of a handwritten sentiment before she left."
"That's what you were expecting? This isn't some shōjo slice-of-life manga you know…"
Genos slammed a metal fist down on the rickety table in protest. "Well perhaps it should be!"
The two of them grunted at the sound of cracking wood where the cyborg's fist just landed. A second later, the legs of the table completely caved in and the entire structure collapsed into a pile. The poor piece of furniture finally had enough.
Genos hung his head in renewed shame while Saitama just stared at him blankly. "Okay, you know I was going to make that sci-fi looking thing pay for that, but now I don't feel so bad about just letting you handle it."
Genos couldn't muster the courage to look at him. "I…I will."
Taking another sip of his drink, Saitama glanced over at the open hole where the outside landing used to be. "You think she made it back home okay? That kid?"
Genos closed his eyes with resentment. "Unfortunately, I do. She is Rank 2, after all."
Saitama tried to disarm him with a light grin. "Jeez, Tin Man, have a heart. She came all the way to our city before losing that thing she was hunting, and then to top it all off, she lost to a B-Class hero too. Think about how that would feel if it were you."
Genos was about to answer him, but a ringing sound went off in his pocket. He reached into it and pulled out his cellphone, reading the text that had been left on it.
"Oh? What is it?" Saitama asked, curiosity piquing.
Genos deepened his scowl as soon as he finished scanning the words, and he slipped his phone back away. He turned to address his mentor with a dark look.
"We need to get to Headquarters. Now."
As the two stepped into the wide marble building, they were met with a huge crowd of people sitting in uniform rows of chairs no doubt laid out for them by the Association staff. The entire space was abuzz with chatter.
Saitama, clad in his proper hero outfit, felt a renewed sense of appreciation for just how large the Hero Association was. There were several hundreds of heroes lined up and awaiting the purpose of today's emergency assembly, but if he were to stumble upon them without knowing what was going on, he would've just assumed that he had wandered into a comic-con.
All shapes and sizes, colors and textures were in view, and it made him feel as though he and Genos were just two mere drops in the ocean designed to serve and protect all cities everywhere. For a brief moment, he thought about what it would be like if he got to know every single one of them as well as he knew Genos, but ultimately dismissed the logic as it would involve memorizing too many names. As he once heard a great philosopher remark with romantic cadence on the news channel: 'Ain't nobody got time for dat.'
If the message that Genos read to him was to be believed, every single hero from C to S was here, with very little exception. Since truancy to the meeting was to be met with immediate repercussion, the popular summation was that this was about something pretty damn important.
The two exchanged glances and gave each other a reassuring nod as they stepped forward to merge into the mass. There, they sought out two vacant seats to make themselves at home on.
However, Saitama caught glance of someone already sitting and trying to flag them down. The person waved a gloved hand at him and the cyborg, and admittedly, neither of them recognized him at first. But upon a closer look, Saitama's face livened up into a wide grin, and the pair rushed up to meet the familiar stranger that was clad in his glorious biking gear.
"Mumen Rider, you slick son of a bitch!" He and his friend smacked gloves together in a bro-style handshake, making Genos wince from behind with slight envy. There was a special place in the bald hobbyist hero's heart for people who treated him to free meals. "Where've you been hiding?"
The top C-Class Cyclist of Justice leaned back in his seat, sporting a friendly chuckle. "If I was hiding from you, I wouldn't have tried getting your attention. Don't go giving yourself an ego now – not all of us are afraid of you!"
"Oi, did you hear what this meeting was about?" Saitama inquired as he and Genos took their seats next to him.
Mumen shrugged. "Seems like everyone here got the same message." He added with a toothy grin, "Kinda' careless of the Association to copy and paste a text to us without even including that much detail, isn't it?"
"Well, we're here now. No sense in spiting them by leaving." Saitama leaned back in similar fashion to his bespectacled chum.
"Psst! Master…" Genos whispered from his left. When Saitama looked over to see what he wanted, the young synth pointed a cautionary finger away from the group center. He followed it all the way up to a familiar green glow set around a rather grumpy-looking creature that they felt as though they had seen only yesterday.
Apparently she had noticed them first, and when the cyborg compromised her position to the other hero, she flinched and hastened her gaze somewhere else. Then she ultimately flew off, disappearing from view.
Saitama silently motioned his mechanical companion not to worry about her.
Mumen Rider nudged the Caped Baldy in the side with his elbow. "Oh, I think it's starting."
A serious-looking line of black suits approached the front stage, stepping up one-by-one to the rising platform. There, they took their own seats arranged in a small row off to the side. Saitama counted ten attendants altogether. Among them, there was only one he recognized. It was Sitch, the Minister Officer of Justice who called the S-Class meeting just before the alien invasion that leveled City A.
Most of the other staff members had very distinctive features. He knew he wouldn't have to wait long before they were introduced, because he watched one of the staff members approach the podium with the eagle of the Association's logo plated on it.
The man who stepped up to it tapped against the microphone hanging over it a few times to test its quality and glanced out to look at his audience. At the sound of the booming mic, the chatter in the room slowly began to die down, and heads were turning to face the front.
The fear on the orator's face was quite palpable even from where Saitama sat, but then again, holding the attention of every known hero in the nation was sure to give anyone more than a little spot of stage fright.
Before he began, he took a moment to scratch his stubbly beard. He appeared to have a young face, but the long hours he must have endured helping to run the staff left him looking blatantly overworked.
"Th-thank you all for making it up here today for this mandatory meeting." The speech was off to a bit of a rocky start – the microphone did not do much to hide the nervous cracks that escaped his voice. Desperate to remedy the distraction, he quickly reached over to sip from a bottle of water before setting it back down to continue. "First off, we would like to apologize for taking time out of your Sunday. However…your staff has great faith in your understanding that we would not call absolutely all of you out here if it wasn't for a very serious reason."
Saitama didn't know the man's face, but he recognized his voice. It was the same guy he spoke to on the phone right before he went out to confront that Deep Sea Whatever. Without his permission, he probably wouldn't have found the monster in time to save all those people.
The man paused for a moment to take a deep breath. "We also understand that with the city streets left unpatrolled by heroes, it is paramount that we make this assembly meeting as short as possible by—"
"Well then just get to the point for Chrissake!" Anyone who spent five minutes around the tough-sounding voice knew exactly who it belonged to. "I had to duck outta' another of my sister's piano recitals for this mess goddamn it!"
"Oh enough about the recitals already, you jersey sis-con." Another voice called out. "You're starting to make the expression 'batting for the other team' sound like a best-case scenario!"
"Neh?! The hell said that?!"
A third voice joined in. "Can you guys just let the man talk? Some of us have cram school, you know…"
"I'll give ya something you can cram…!"
"Guys, please, calm down! Is this any way for professional heroes to behave?"
"It is when they're supposed to be off-duty!"
The speaker closed his eyes and cleared his throat in an attempt to subdue the chaos threatening to boil over. He achieved very little success – the ball had already started rolling too fast.
"You're all acting like spoiled brats! I'm invoking my authority as an S-Class to demote you all to the bottom rank of Class C, effective immediately!"
"What the hell? S-Classes have no such authority!...d-do they?"
"Like you have the right to call anyone a spoiled brat, you beansprout midget!"
As more voices joined the shouting match, Saitama gave Genos a singular look of disdain. "Well, this won't end in a hurry, will it… I'm getting hungry too. I was hoping to swing by Old Man Bang's and cook a hot pot before his dojo closes, but it looks like now we won't be able to—"
"Master."
"Huh?"
Genos's eyes were shut in an almost haunting level of calm. After a moment of becoming one with his inner serenity, the cyborg re-opened them and flashed him a look of trust. "…Say no more."
As his devotee slowly rose to his feet, Saitama looked up at him with a worried expression. "Genos, what exactly are you planning to—"
=BOOM=
Without missing a beat, the cyborg aimed the repulsor of his palm straight up and blasted a blood-orange laser with a six-foot diameter right through the roof of the building. Just by itself, the thunderous blare of the shotgun from Hell was enough to rattle everyone in the room – even the most composed of the S-Class supers.
"EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Genos had the frenzied look of pure, unadulterated rage scrawled across his face. The golden pupils of his eyes burned hot with murder inside of their pitch-black sclera. "SENSEI IS GETTING HUNGRY AND NEEDS HIS HOT POT! THE NEXT PERSON TO DISRUPT THE FLOW OF THIS ASSEMBLY WILL BE MET WITH EXTREME AGGRESSION! I WILL BLACKEN YOUR FLESH AND LIQUIDATE YOUR ORGANS! THEN I WILL USE THE EXCESS HEAT OF YOUR REMAINS TO FUEL MY MASTER'S NEXT MEAL AND YOUR CHARRED BONES TO GREASE MY FLEXILE JOINTS IN YOUR COAGULATED FLUIDS!"
Following this tiny outburst, the entire arena fell as silent as the grave. Saitama was actively trying to make himself as small as possible with a hand shielding his face, mortified by his neighbor's lack of subtlety. Everyone who was standing immediately took back their seats while Genos held his pose with his arm pointed up just a bit longer for lasting effect. He looked around the room before casually sitting down himself, placing both hands neatly on his lap with a mild manner that defied everything he spouted in the last half minute.
He turned to Saitama and gave his mentor a stoic thumbs-up, confident that he had done every correct thing in the book to handle the situation. His bald and unwitting accomplice responded by turning to face the other way with an awkward, crooked grin. 'You don't have to look so pleased about threatening an army of metahumans...'
The association staff member that had been pushed to the side took the moment to pick up the mic and speak again with a refreshed understanding for how Genos acquired the 'Demon' part of his hero name. "Ahem…yes, thank you for that timely intervention, Demon Cyborg… I guess…" The man loosened up his tie in an attempt to let some cool air in. "My name is Shouta Yamamoto. I am a staff worker for the brand-new A-City Headquarters. May I present to you my associates…" He motioned to the well-dressed customers off to his right side. "First, my office partner, Kyle Hebert. Please stand for us, Kyle."
The man he was gesturing towards rose out of his seat and faced the assembly of heroes with a dignified smile. He looked even younger than the man introducing him, with neat hazel hair perfectly parted in the middle of his brow, and matching eyes that were obscured from behind a pair of circular eyeglasses. He gave the assembly a bow and sat back down.
"Next, Kanami Satō, an operator for Z Branch."
Even younger still than the other two, the girl who shot timidly to her feet looked like she could still be in high school. She had a bobbin hairstyle with brown hair that she wore at chin length. She stood with her arms rigidly stuck to her sides, regarding the large audience with a gulp before she too sat back down.
"Song Xing Xiao, of the Z Branch Committee Office…"
The man carried on with his introduction of each present member of the board, beginning seemingly with the low-ranking desk clerks, but eventually working his way up the list to the Special Committee and executive heavy hitters.
"Executive Chairwoman Michelle Deco."
The lady that stood upon call of her name was by all standards a gorgeous Caucasian with short dark hair swept to one side of her no-nonsense face and a small beauty mark resting under her mouth. Beneath her right eye was a blue tattoo underlining her lashes almost like some sort of druidic brand. She regarded everyone with an elegant bow and sat back down.
"And finally, may I present to you the board member responsible for organizing today's meeting… Executive Chairman and Officer of the Party Planning Committee, Sekingar. I will now be turning the floor over to him. Please give him your full attention."
As the last man at the end of the stage stood up and paced evenly towards the center to meet Yamamoto in the middle, Saitama leaned over and whispered to Genos. "Officer of the Party Planning Committee? So he's like a cop in charge of remembering everyone's birthday?"
"I think you may be misinterpreting the title, Master." The cyborg replied. "Sekingar-sama is one of the most influential directors on the board. His main responsibility is calculating compatibilities between heroes and applying them to arrange team sorties."
"So a dodgeball coach then."
"…What?"
"Nothing."
Among all the committee members introduced, the man of interest seemed to be on a whole separate plane of existence. He wore a distinguished air of ambition on his shoulders, and every step he took up to the podium was carried with unwavering purpose.
When he turned his profile full-front to address the league in front of him, his features were laid bare for all to see. He stood at least a good head taller than most of his peers, and his well-toned frame neatly filled out the black business suit he wore. His short brown hair was combed back, underlined by the somber features of his face. He had strong cheekbones and a mouth that seemed utterly incapable of smiling. Overall, a real "grim reaper" type of guy.
But easily the most noticeable of his traits was his signature metal prosthetic right eye, gleaming out at everyone with sleepless vigilance. Everyone who had seen Sekingar's unique oculus just once had never forgotten who he was. His cold half-human stare was a staple of what made the executive board so mysterious.
With a straight face, he shook hands with Yamamoto who was stepping off, and took control of the stand.
"Some of you living near the scene of the incident are already aware." Sekingar's voice was a parallel opposite from the previous speaker's. His tone was deep, calm, and straight to business. "Last night at just around twenty-one hundred hours, Child Emperor's security net at Y-City picked up a strange variant of electromagnetic interference that seemed to function independently from natural lightning storms. He couldn't triangulate its point of origin, because the source kept pacing around on power lines– like a caged animal." In response to this, a few voices in the audience whispered quietly among themselves. The stoic man ignored the chatter and continued. "With no appeal for logic, we can only assume this activity to be part of some kind of attack. We do not yet know if this is the product of terrorism, a monster, or something else entirely. At this time, the media can only offer conjecture to the public, but with Metal Knight's permission, we managed to convince them that he merely suffered a misfire while testing some new EMP tech. We have already issued a formal apologetic statement." He stopped speaking for a moment to pull out a stack of papers and set them on the podium.
Taking advantage of the distraction, a voice called out from the front row. It appeared to be Stinger, from Class A. "Why lie to the public about this thing? That's like some next-level government conspiracy shit going on right there."
A few voices in the crowd seemed to murmur their agreement.
Sekingar cleared his throat nonchalantly. "Tell me something… Do you believe that people are designed to act rationally under fear or pressure?" His question was met only with silence and hard stares. "In times of war and terror, the moment people can no longer feel the arm of the law shielding them, their basic human compulsion overrides their pretense to act civil. Order gets thrown out the window. It turns ugly in minutes. People loot. They trample each other to escape. They leave loved ones behind. Those of you who have fought anything from a Tiger to Dragon-level threat know exactly what panic does when it proliferates to nearby pedestrians. Sometimes in the interest of preserving the peace, we are forced to withhold information that the public couldn't use for their benefit even if they had it."
Puri-Puri Prisoner decided to steer the topic in a different direction. "Has the power returned to all the affected cities?"
"It has." Sekingar confirmed. "The last affected area was restored three hours ago. I had Child Emperor and Metal Knight work together to do a full-scale recon of every city under our jurisdiction. They used special cameras designed to spot irregularities in the light spectrum. But what those cameras picked up…was something more troubling."
To demonstrate his point, Sekingar turned away from the podium to face the solid wall behind him. He touched a finger to the side of his head, and his prosthetic eye lit up. In a show of technological achievement, a light beamed out of the iris and projected a huge image on the wall for all the heroes to see. The man was like a walking movie theater.
Illuminated on the wall, they saw feed from the camera. For a few seconds, the image just showed a normal street corner. But then the image began to blur and distort. Different colors came flying in, and something at the edge of the picture visible rippled. A few seconds more, and a burst of light caused the image to go black.
Before the viewers of the footage could be given time to speculate, Sekingar rewinded the digital clip and played it forward in super slow motion. As the mysterious light reappeared, he paused the footage with expert timing, catching its shape in a single frame.
A sense of familiarity swept across Saitama and Genos. And somehow, they got the feeling that Tatsumaki was reaching a similar conclusion.
Without a doubt, it was the same creature that had visited them just last night.
"The figure that knocked out the camera showed up in only three frames." Sekingar informed the crew. "That's a fraction of a second. Whatever this thing is, it can move. And we speculate that it's responsible for the strange events of last night to early morning." He stopped projecting from his eye and turned back to face the assembly of heroes. "Luckily the camera it struck was only being held by one of Metal Knight's drones. If it happened to be any of you…I shudder to think."
"Well if the electricity really has returned to all the cities, maybe it's already moved on." Lightning Max suggested, raising his voice just to be heard from the distance.
Sekingar closed the only real eye he still had with lament. "I wish it were true. But just after we thought things had returned to normal, we received another report from Metal Knight. After he recovered the drone that the mysterious being made contact with, his entire laboratory started to display odd behavior. His whole network became compromised by some sort of virus that ate through all his firewalls and security in less than a minute. And he claims that whatever had gotten inside his server…spoke to him."
"And how does that concern us?" Tatsumaki asked, crossing her arms impatiently. "It's his mancave. If he can't fix it himself, tell him to call Geek Squad or something."
"That's the thing," the one-eyed man returned, "this virus managed to break into something that…by all standards shouldn't even be breakable. The technology needed to completely bypass his custom-optimized Silverswitch Skynet Program simply isn't available, not even to the Black Market. It took all of our combined efforts and resources just to keep it quarantined in that lab. But who knows how far or fast it could spread if we gave it half the chance to."
"If it's the internet you're talking about losing," Atomic Samurai spoke up, "then good riddance. Mankind was doing just fine before all this new-age crap came along."
"You don't understand." Child Emperor cut in. "Things like this always start small. Like having trouble streaming videos or being locked out of your Myplace account," four mechanical spider-like legs emerged from the boy's backpack, and he used them to navigate over the heroes into an open space. "but think about what the world-wide Web has evolved into. Online banking. National secrets. Nuclear codes. Cram school e-books."
Virtually everyone heaved a small scoff at the prodigy. His suggestions seemed to escalate in extremes until he hit that last note.
"Did…did you really just prioritize school over Hiroshima and Nagasaki?" Someone else asked him wearily.
"So then what do you guys expect us to do about it, huh?" Metal Bat posed rhetorically. "Do I look like someone equipped to handle machines through any means other than to bash 'em with this fuckin' stick? Why'd ya bring us here?"
Sekingar gave his eyes a tired rub before elaborating on the point of the assembly. "Because early this morning, I received an anonymous tip saying that last night, three heroes came into contact with this very threat, but instead of combining forces to subdue it, they fought against each other instead. I have elected to honor my source by agreeing not to share their identities."
Saitama and Tatsumaki both winced from opposite sides of the room. There was a slightly open possibility that he was referring to them.
"The only pertinent information for me to share is that one of them was in B-Class and the other two were in S-Class."
The "slightly" open possibility just blew completely open – it was definitely them.
"Keh! What kind of careless dumbasses would choose to fight their allies instead of their enemy?" Stinger snickered.
Sweat started to run down the "anonymous" heroes' cartoonish faces.
Sekingar continued with his disclosure. "Today we may be faced with an adversary that we have no conventional means to fight, and that is chiefly because of the dissension between the only people who had an opportunity to stop it. And this isn't even the first report of poor coordination either. The executive staff spent all morning discussing what should be done, and it occurred to all of us that while each of you was evaluated on what it means to be a hero by yourself, we have neglected to reinforce the importance of cooperating with your peers – be they friends or rivals…acquaintances or complete strangers." The man's serious face quickly became even less pleasant. "In a business where lives are constantly threatened, you need to be more than colleagues. You need to be family to each other. And if that means I have to be your austere father and put my foot down, then that's what I'll do to ensure that this institution lives up to its original promise." He leaned forward over the podium and uttered the next words into the microphone with slow and poignant emphasis. "To preserve. The peace."
The long strong silence that spread across the room had a number of contributing factors. Respect and fear were two definite ones. No one could rebuke what the man was saying, simply because the congealed way he said it made them believe in their hearts that they had no right to. He stood out to them as a natural-born superior. And you don't confront your superiors.
"How you treat each other should not be held accountable by rank, class, creed, or lifestyle. You serve a cause greater than yourselves, and your priorities need to start reflecting that." He held the papers in front of him high up in the air. "You see these documents?" He received a series of nods and verbal affirmation. "Take a good look, because these files will be your homework assignment for the next few years. Effective after today, we are inaugurating a new mandatory program. We call it the Rule of Two. Many of you are probably wondering what exactly this plan entails."
Saitama raised his hand. This genuine gesture sort of surprised Sekingar, but he reluctantly gave the B-Class hero a soft nod, letting Saitama know that he had permission to speak.
"Is it a new law prohibiting the use of more than two condiments on a single hotdog?"
The executive chairman blinked at him, uncertain if he was joking or not. "No…"
"Is it a new law stating that you have to refill the coffee pot if you're the last one to use it?"
Sekingar cleared his throat. "Well that would be considered a common courtesy, but no…"
"Is it a new regulation stating that each of us has to take turns buying toilet paper for the faculty bathrooms?"
The posh man being bombarded with ridiculous guesses ignored the giggling coming from various places around the assembly. "Why don't you just…let me explain."
"Oh." Saitama pouted softly. "None of those were right?"
The older gentleman took his eye off of him and glanced upward to regard the whole room. "The Rule of Two is the new policy of team match-ups. Upon careful review of hero dossiers, my committee's role will be to pair you up with new partners based on the qualities of your rank, abilities…and temperament."
Heroes in the room started looking all around at each other, already wondering – or dreading – who they might be matched with.
"After announcing your formation, you will be tasked to remain in close proximity with your partner at all times – both on and off duty. The reason for this is to establish a natural rapport with each other, not just as respective heroes, but as individuals. For this first rotation, we are assigning each A-Class hero to work with at least one C-Class hero, and for each S-Class hero to be appointed at least one B-Class hero."
This caused quite a stir in the audience. In just a short debriefing, the executive officer had singlehandedly raised a number of concerns. Chief among them, living conditions. If they were required to stay together, then there would be some massive power shifts in the many cities that the heroes occupied.
As if this worry was corporeal enough for the man to read, Sekingar added, "We know that many of you are concerned about adapting to the new changes this arrangement will bring. However, let me assure you that options do exist. With the construction of the new HQ building, we are willing to provide housing to all heroes that for any reason cannot settle together on their own. You will still need to pay a monthly rent, but we have ensured that each living quarter in the building is spacious enough to accommodate at least two people. However, since space is still relatively limited, we ask that you only take advantage of this offer if you absolutely must. The headquarters is not an apartment complex."
"And what if we don't like who we get paired with?" Tanktop Master inquired. "What if we refuse participation in this pet project?"
Sekingar frowned at the label that the burly man gave it, but answered his question regardless. "There is no such option. That's why I mentioned that it's mandatory. If you do not sign these consent forms provided at the end of this briefing, you will be considered absent to this assembly and suspended without pay. If you do sign it and are later caught refusing to uphold the agreement, the board reserves the right to permanently ban you from future work with us. Your name and rank will both be scrubbed."
"So you would fire us for preferring to work alone?" Drive Knight asked in his cold, impersonal voice. Other heroes seemed to support his question with varying degrees of outrage.
Sekingar met his mechanical eye with the mechanical one of his own. "To ensure that this faction maintains the level of integrity needed to keep the world safe? We do what we must, Drive Knight." The hero being addressed straightened up with his arms crossed and a featureless expression that did well to hide his reaction. After all, having practically no face meant having the best poker face in Class S – next to King, of course; nobody could read King.
Not wanting to cause extra tension, the well-dressed man disengaged from the cyborg and took back control of the meeting. "All of you can either perceive this as simply punishment or the opportunity that it represents. Because while you're all busy thinking of the restrictions, you mustn't overlook the perks that this will bring too."
"What perks?" Another voice shouted from the crowd.
"Recognition." He replied. "This is an opportunity for lower class heroes to capture the eye of the media. Whenever your pair is dispatched for a mission, C and B-Class heroes have a statistically higher chance to promote their images by being seen by the public and earn special privileges in exchange for smooth cooperation. This has been a complaint among lower rankings for a long time, and now we are taking measures to address it. Meanwhile, higher class heroes have the added benefit of sewing strong connections. S-Classes may be in a good spot of their career right now, but bear in mind that the future is never certain. Even the strongest person in the world may one day need to lean on someone else's shoulder. It might as well be one of the friends you'll make."
Like many other heroes, Saitama took a quiet moment to digest this. It did seem to make sense to him, but he knew that there were several more people in the ranks who were sure to disagree. Whether they thought this was a good idea or not, the Hero Association was taking an insane gamble. Even if it paid off, their numbers were sure to suffer. But perhaps the board of executives just saw that as a chance to cull less subordinate members from the association and save some money in the process.
Sekingar took advantage of the temporary relief from complaints in order to close the meeting. "Waiting for you near the exits are copies of these documents. All heroes of every class will be expected to submit a detailed critique of their partner at the end of each week. Reviews will be due every Sunday before midnight. All instructions for how to do this are included in the print. I will take a moment for further questions, and then I will turn over the podium to Executive Michelle Deco, who will provide the assigned pairings for all of the Class S/B heroes."
After hosting his feedback session, the imposing man excused himself from the stand, and Michelle stepped on.
Reading off of the paper in front of her, the woman began pouring names into the microphone with a clear sustaining voice.
"For S-Class Rank 17, Puri-Puri Prisoner will be assigned with B-Class Rank 50, Darkness Blade."
"Eyyyyaaaay~" Prisoner squealed his glee with a girly demeanor far from matching his masculine features. "I get to go on quests with my dark prince~!"
Some distance away, the young man clad in black armor slapped a gloved hand over his face. His spiked gauntlet left bloody scratches on him, but he ignored the damage as he let it slide down. "Fuck my life." He muffled dismally through his fingers.
"For S-Class Rank 16, Tanktop Master will be assigned B-Class Rank 25, Pink Hornet. For S-Class Rank 15…"
She continued down the list while Saitama, Genos, and Mumen Rider all pushed their heads together.
"Well, today sure is taking an odd turn of events." Saitama stated casually.
"Master, do you suppose this means we will no longer be able to see each other?" Genos asked.
"I wouldn't worry too much about that," Mumen replied, "you guys are already thick as thieves. I'm sure that the Association is more concerned about building relationships between the heroes that have never interacted with one another before."
"I have an unsettling feeling about how things will proceed from here." Genos warned them.
"You seriously need to learn to relax." Saitama dismissed. "People have good days and bad days, but no matter what, everything always turns out fine. This particular day will just…happen to be a few years long, that's all."
"If you insist, Sensei."
The three turned back to tune in to the matchmaking. After listening a bit longer, Genos grimaced when he realized that he had missed the name of who he was assigned to. For the time being, it seemed he would have to live with a bit of mystery.
"Rank 3 of S-Class Silver Fang will be assigned to B-Class Rank 74, Lily of the Three Section Staff, along with Rank 71, Captain Mizuki. And finally, for S-Class Rank 2…"
Tatsumaki winced. She happened to be on the side of the fence that thought this was a horrible idea. Forget the fact that she didn't particularly like any of these people, forcing her to play House with someone else went directly against her moral philosophy about maintaining distance. She had been taking care of herself ever since she enlisted, and she was contented to remain living that way. So no matter what the staff asked her to do, she had no intention of playing nice with whatever unlucky soul ended up glued to her hip.
With an unwelcoming scowl, she opened her ear to the final verdict.
"Tornado of Terror is assigned with B-Class Rank 7…Caped Baldy."
The temperature in the room fell twenty degrees, and the distant sound of shattering glass echoed out of the background.
Other heroes began chatting to their neighbors, expressing intrigue at the staff's choice for pairings. Some of them expressed sorrow for Caped Baldy. The poor little guy wouldn't last the first day with her.
As Deco indifferently carried on to the list of A and C-Class pairings, Genos dropped his jaw with a sharp gag, and if it wasn't held together by his synthetic skin, it would have surely hit the floor.
From their separate sides of the massive room, the Tornado and Baldy both stood frozen in the moment; the exact same thought panging through their heads:
'This cannot be happening…'
A/N: If it hasn't already shown, I put a whole shitload of research into this chapter. Since some of the board committee members haven't yet been given proper names in the web series, I decided to give them the names of their voice actors. If you happened to notice this on your own, well done. You have achieved a heightened state of obsession by surpassing mine.
