"Fan mail?" Saitama asked, barely glancing up when Genos threw an envelope his way. From the smoldering pile under the open window, he could tell that all the hate mail, along with any letters squishy enough to contain undergarments, had already been disposed of.
"It's from the Hero Association," Genos answered, feeling another envelope before setting it on fire. Saitama squashed the small swell of pride he felt at seeing that; the first time Genos had received a pair of boxers from a fan he'd wanted to keep them, expecting they were from a concerned citizen who'd seen him lose all his clothes in some fight or another. Saitama had finally been able to teach the cyborg something useful, and Genos had looked like he'd hated every second of that, which meant Saitama had probably done the teaching thing right at least.
"Send it back," said Saitama, immediately losing interest. After all, if it were urgent, they'd send him one of those buzzing button thingies.
"It could be important," Genos reasoned.
"Or not."
"Or it could."
"Or not."
"Or it -"
This went on for a while, until Saitama started suspecting he'd triggered an infinite for loop in Genos' programming.
"Fine!" Saitama flicked a finger at the envelope and it gave up the ghost. "'B-Class Hero Annual Barbeque'," he read. Something else fell out of the folds of the paper, and Saitama picked it up. "'We look forward to your mandatory attendance. Regards, Team Fubuki.'"
Well. That only made him not want to go more. Saitama tossed both papers onto the 'incinerate' pile, but Genos fished them out immediately.
"That sounded serious," said the cyborg.
Saitama stared at him.
"Yes, this is definitely a very important Hero Association event!" Genos exclaimed, and Saitama wondered if they'd read the same words from that paper.
"A barbeque."
"There will be free food."
"Hmmmm." Genos had a good point. The only thing better than discounts at the supermarket were 100% off discounts from anywhere else.
"Of course, it's common courtesy to bring something along to contribute to the meal. That's what my mother always taught me. What will you bring, Saitama-sensei?"
"Eh." Saitama felt a brief moment of casual panic at the mention of Genos' family and the possibility that that might bring about another episode of his long and tragic backstory, but it seemed his disciple had learned his lesson about the word limit. "I'm a decent home cook, but for a party they'll probably expect something gourmet."
Hot pot was Saitama's star dish, and it wasn't exactly portable.
"Oh." Genos paused. "I don't really cook."
There was a reason that they cyborg was on permanent dish duty. Saitama shrugged his shoulders and went back to his game. The stupid buttons still weren't doing what he told them to do. "Guess that's that, then," he said, once he'd accidentally pressed the pause button for the third time in a row.
"Would the other B-class heroes doubt your strength if you showed up empty-handed?" Genos wondered, a furrow appearing between his eyebrows. It was then replaced by that determined, bull-headed look Saitama knew usually ended with Genos missing a limb and an eyeball. "Don't worry, Saitama-sensei! Please, allow me the honor of dealing with this!"
Saitama sighed. He probably shouldn't get in the way of his student actually learning things. "Sure, I guess."
There was an intruder in the kitchen.
"Oi, Genos!" called Saitama, just as said intruder executed a dramatic turn, purple scarf rippling somehow in the non-existent wind flow.
"You thought it was Genos, but it was me, S-"
"Can you move?" Saitama interrupted. The mochi ice cream he'd bought was melting, and he'd really like to put it in the freezer.
The intruder, who was starting to look vaguely familiar if only for the absolutely deranged smile on his face (this hardly narrowed down the possibilities, though. Saitama came across a lot of people with deranged smiles in his line of work), tried his announcement again. "It was me, Sp-"
Saitama nudged him aside, just a little, and accidentally sent him flying into the opposite wall. Damn. He'd just re-done the tiling the other day. Sighing, he put the mochi in the freezer.
"Saitama-sensei! Since neither of us can cook fancy stuff, I found someone who could!" Genos appeared at the door to peel the stranger out of their wall.
"Sp… sp…"
Genos clapped the spitting man on the back. A chunk of whatever their walls were made of - concrete, most likely, or else Saitama wouldn't have bothered moving in here in the first place - flew out of his mouth.
"Speed of Sound Sonic!" screeched the man, and Saitama wondered if it was really possible for himself to forget such a redundant name twice.
Turns out it was.
"Who?"
"Your rival, Saitama! The only one allowed to kill you! The -"
"The ninja person!" Saitama finally placed him. He then turned to frown at Genos. "How do you know he can cook?"
The kid was decent with knives, Saitama knew, but he also knew that that alone did not a good chef make.
"He tried to eat a monster cell and did it wrong."
"Oh?"
"I did not do it wrong, what kind of sadist doesn't pan-sear steak and serve it with Béarnaise sauce and a ten-year-old acidic red?"
"Eh?" Saitama wasn't sure what Sonic was going on about now, but that was fairly par for the course. His whole rival thing never made sense either.
"He spammed the group chat at two in the morning from the toilet because he was sure there was no way it was his cooking, so there had to be some weird poison in those things."
Saitama privately thought it would make less sense if there wasn't some poison in monster cells, but he'd latched on to a more interesting detail. "What group chat?"
Genos immediately brightened up. Saitama was suddenly very concerned. "It's your fan club, Saitama-sensei!"
"It is not," hissed Sonic.
"A film study group."
"A support group for rivals seeking to rip your shiny head off."
"Really?" Saitama scratched said head. Maybe this was what it felt like when people said they were touched, although no one was actually touching him at the moment.
"Sonic, Mumen Rider, King and I discuss your fights and training tactics in order to become stronger!"
"In order to finally defeat you, after a long and fulfilling rivalry."
Saitama blinked. He didn't remember committing to that.
"I don't remember committing to that," he said. Hell, a disciple was enough of a handful. Saitama wasn't sure he had time for a long-term rival on top of that.
Sonic screeched, and Saitama silently wished that the ninja's voice would also break the sound barrier so that Saitama wouldn't have to hear it any more.
"Anyway," said Genos, after finally stopping the enraged ninja from bouncing around the walls like a squash ball by wrapping him up in his scarf, then grabbing him by the waist and hanging him over the balcony rail, "You promised to be good. Or at least, not evil," Genos scolded Sonic, shaking him a little.
He turned to Saitama. "Sonic agreed to show us how to cook a killer dish for the barbeque."
"Heh. Heh heh hee hee heh," cackled the ninja, swinging back and forth in manic glee.
Saitama scowled over the railing at him, seeing an abnormal number of teeth on display. "Your evil is showing, put it away," he said.
Giving him one last shake, Genos hauled Sonic back onto his feet and stared him down.
Sonic pouted for a second, before flipping his hair with a huff. "Prepare to be amazed," he declared. "My culinary skills are second only to my ninjitsu skills, which are second to none!"
"I can make great hot pot," offered Saitama, as he and Genos trailed after Sonic to the kitchen that assuredly would not fit the three of them.
"Dr. Kuseno recently outfitted me with an upgrade," said Genos, holding out a palm. A vegetable peeler sprang out of his forefinger. "Housework Arms: Vegetarian Mode!"
Sonic didn't even look back from his scathing visual judgement of their tiny kitchen. "As a human-shaped toaster, you only have one job, and I doubt you've got the fine control necessary for that."
"What is it?" asked Genos, excited for a challenge. "Pulling noodles? Salting vegetables?"
"Don't burn the toast."
"We're making toast? I'm out of bread," said Saitama.
"We're making bruschetta! A simple, timeless, yet tasty hors d'ouvre that not even you fools could mess up!"
Saitama made a disgusted face. "I don't think anyone wants to eat horse, Sonic."
Sonic stared at him with murderous intent as he dropped a bag of flour on the counter in a poof of white powder, maintaining eye contact the entire time. Then he closed his eyes and started muttering under his breath.
"Eh? What's he on about?" Saitama whispered to Genos, who could enhance his hearing at will.
"Chanting about how one of the core principles of ninjitsu is patience or something like that."
"Really?" Patience and speed hardly seemed to go hand-in-hand. Maybe there was more to Sonic than Saitama thought (not that he could really remember what was the ninja's deal in the first place).
"Yeast." Sonic's eyes snapped open and he waved a packet at the two of them. "Needs to bloom. Warm water, a small spoon of sugar or honey, leave it alone for five minutes. The foundation of every bread."
"Whoa, we're making bread." Saitama looked around the kitchen. Only problem was…
"I don't have an oven."
"No one else lives in this entire neighborhood, much less the building. We'll just break into a better-equipped flat."
"We're heroes, not criminals," protested Genos.
Sonic snorted. "You're squatting illegally in a condemned building."
"I pay rent!"
"Saitama is squatting illegally then. And anyway. You may not be that kind of criminal, but lucky for you, I am."
Saitama, who had lost interest in the argument once it had exceeded twenty words, was sniffing the yeast and water combination. "Say, that smells really awful. No one's going to want to eat that. Some beer monster is probably about to hatch from it." Things like that tended to happen in this neighborhood.
"Nothing but a delicious baguette is going to hatch from it! Observe!"
After more attempts than necessary at kneading dough (another downside of being just too strong, Saitama noted; he couldn't seem to be gentle enough not to terrify the gluten into maximum stringiness), even Genos was starting to warm to the idea of breaking and entering. Saitama's kitchen looked like the Terrible Tornado had been through there, or maybe a Hellish Blizzard if either of the sisters decided to toss around flour instead of pebbles.
Saitama sighed, made a few holes in walls because open plan had always appealed to him, and eventually they found a flat with a working oven and enough counter space that three people together wouldn't murder each other. Although since one of the people in question was an assassin, the murder thing was still TBD.
Everyone was still alive an hour and a half later, however. Saitama suspected it was because most of that time was spent literally watching dough rise. Sonic seemed to find it meditative, but Saitama was pretty sure he just wanted to get out of cleanup duty, which was Genos' job anyway, but eventually the head chef finally deemed them ready to move on to the next phase. "We'll punch the dough, shape it, then let it rise again while the oven heats. While it's baking we can start on the toppings…"
Saitama raised a hand. "I don't think you want me punching the dough. Is there a less destructive alternative?"
Sonic blinked. "Hmmm. How are you at tapping things?" He held out a clove of garlic.
Saitama tapped it gently. It became garlic paste. He sighed. "That's why I cook mostly curries or hot pots," he explained.
Genos tried next, and only slightly toasted the garlic.
"This won't do," Sonic muttered. "This won't do at all. Oh well, I'll do it for now, and you two figure out a way to overcome this gross culinary handicap. Maybe wrap some ice around your hands or something, Mr. Toaster. Anyway! Toppings. Where's your organic tomatoes and aceito balsamico di Modena?"
"Organic?" Saitama thought that word sounded familiar in the context of tomatoes, but he couldn't be sure. "The supermarket in Y-City only sells normal food."
"That is a huge problem," declared Sonic, busy setting a timer. "Okay. I know you are nowhere near as fast as I am" - Saitama decided not to correct him, although it really looked like Genos wanted to - "but there should be enough time to get to the organic market in O-City and back before the second rise is done."
Genos and Saitama were suddenly left with the ninja's afterimage. His voice drifted back from halfway down the street.
"And you're paying!"
"Gotta go fast, gotta go fast…" Genos was fairly certain that's what he was hearing the ninja chant under his breath the entire duration of the run, but since they were all supersonic he wasn't quite sure. Once they reached a more populated area, it became an audible howl of "Out of my way!"
Suddenly, Genos and Saitama had their hands full pulling unsuspecting civilians out of the path of a rabid Sonic, who was speeding along with his katana between his teeth like a dog with a bone, hell-bent on reaching the organic market.
"Sorry, ma'am! Excuse us, sir!" Saitama almost hadn't made it in time, which was surprising. Maybe he could enjoy this market trip, after all… oh no.
He turned at the sound of a sick squelch, and saw sunlight through a Sonic-shaped hole in something organic and formerly alive. The market?
No, that wasn't a market, it was a monster. "Huh," Saitama remarked, just now hearing the blaring klaxons announcing the arrival of multiple monsters ranging from disaster class Tiger to Demon. Then he got a face full of Sonic, who had a face full of monster face.
"What are you stopping for?! This isn't tourism! We have to get there before the shop closes because of this stupid monster attack!" Sonic drew his sword in a slash behind him, decapitating another monster.
Saitama didn't stop him, appreciating the ninja's dedication to the sacred art of grocery shopping, but he decided he would bring up Sonic's sudden distaste for monsters at a later point. After all, monster killing seemed like something a self-proclaimed villain shouldn't do too much of. Especially with all these cameras around. He yawned, punched the giant foot about to descend on him, and meandered after Sonic and Genos.
"The door! Get the door, you useless can opener!" Genos took great offense - the can opener in his Housework Arms was very useful indeed - but stuck his arm in the closing door anyway. Sonic turned sideways and slid under through the gap in a flash, then Genos made the gap a little bigger for himself and Saitama.
He looked around. "I thought an organic market would be more like a parts shop," he admitted. "I'm pretty sure Dr. Kuseno mentioned getting eyeballs at a place like this."
Sonic, who had suddenly become very image-conscious and managed to conceal his katana God-knows-where, was primly wiping monster goo off his face and straightening his hair and clothes. It looked exactly as it always did to Genos, and that was saying something. He could compare with his internal database to find if a single hair was out of place, and nothing had changed besides the strands growing a few centimeters since the last time they'd met.
"Looks pretty fancy, Genos. I don't think a place like this would sell eyeballs," observed Saitama.
"Au contraire," sniffed their guide. "You can only get eyeballs at a fancy place like this. Or out back of a butcher's shop."
Saitama thought that his neighborhood ought to be on that list, but kept that to himself. They were here for tomatoes anyway.
"Are these really tomatoes?" Genos asked, reverently cupping a plump red fruit in his hand.
"No way," said Saitama. "They're too bright. Red is the color of poison, you should stay away from those."
"Red is the natural color of ripe tomatoes!" Sonic was busy putting half a dozen of them in a cloth bag.
"They smell wrong," Saitama said, because he wasn't about to serve guests bad food.
"They spell perfect," argued Sonic. "All the vegetables in Y-City supermarket were grown in sewer water and chemical waste. That's why there's always discounts there. Top performance requires high quality nutrition! And that means organically grown food when possible!"
He was looking rather doubtfully at Saitama while saying all this, so Saitama just shrugged. The vegetables at Y-Mart might come predominantly in varying shades of brown, but they hadn't killed him yet, and he was pretty sure a couple had mutated into monsters and tried.
"Organically grown," Genos was muttering, still drawn in by the bright poison fruit. "Like in my village?" He sounded a bit unsure of himself.
"Well, unless your village was like mine, they probably did grow food there," Sonic shot back.
Saitama didn't know what they were talking about, but then he'd never been out of the megatropolis, unless you counted his brief visit to the Moon. A village was a rather foreign concept, but he tended to think of it as just a much smaller city.
"I don't have a lot of memories of before I was a cyborg," Genos confessed.
"So, what, you have the mental age of a six-year-old?" scoffed Sonic. "Makes sense. How else could you not know what a tomato looks like?"
Saitama had never really thought of it that way before; Genos had always seemed intelligent enough. "I thought it was just because he doesn't know how to cook," he said in his disciple's defense. And because half the things in this shop Saitama had never even seen before. He wondered if this really was food, or if this was where Sonic got his ninja poisons.
"I never learned how to cook because I was too busy spending my teen years undergoing intense experimentation and body modification to become a killer cyborg," Genos explained, and held up an eggplant. "What's this?"
"An aubergine," said Sonic, which according to the sign reading 'brinjal' was also incorrect.
"Oi, Genos." Saitama's curiosity had been piqued by the combination of events. "Did you go to school?"
"You're my teacher, aren't you?"
"Eh…" Shit. Genos was so screwed. Was Saitama supposed to be teaching him geometry and literature? He'd introduced the cyborg to a good manga or two, that had to count for some educational requirement. "Sonic, did you go to school?"
The ninja looked up from where he was sniffing two identical glass bottles filled with dark liquid. "I don't know, does the horrific ninja training camp I grew up in as a slave count?"
Saitama shrugged. "Probably." From the way Sonic was scrutinizing the ingredients list and place-of-origin labels on the bottles, it looked like he could at least read.
Genos, on the other hand… had he been pretending all along? "Olive oil burns efficiently and has a pleasant odor, Sensei. Do you think I should use it in my parts?"
"Get it anyway," Saitama suggested. He was feeling generous, surrounded by so many products of failed educational systems, and how expensive could oil be?
Pretty damn expensive, he found out shortly, mouth dropping open in horror. The smug ninja beside him used Saitama's moment of petrified shock to filch and swipe his credit card.
"Hey," shouted Genos, lagging a bit behind in the following chase out of the shop. "Look over there!"
Saitama glanced that way, and saw a basket of elongated loaves advertised under a sign reading "Baguette sale".
"Why didn't we just buy baguettes?"
Saitama tuned out Sonic's evil monologue on the whys and wherefores, and allowed himself a small smile.
At least Genos could definitely read.
It turned out that bruschetta was damn tasty. Saitama was torn between what he liked better, the finished product or the heavenly, fresh-out-of-the-abandoned-neighbor's-flat's-oven bread.
Genos was ecstatic. "Master, Hellish Blizzard will have to admit you're out of her league when she tastes this! She'll never bother us with her gang business again!"
"Good luck replicating this masterpiece, My Little Toaster," drawled Sonic, swirling the contents of a wine glass Saitama had definitely not owned this morning.
"I have recorded your techniques, and am certain I can replicate them within 0.01% precision!"
"Hmph. I'll be the judge of that."
"How?" wondered Saitama.
"With my mouth?"
"What Saitama-sensei is trying to say," explained Genos, over-eager as always, "Is that you're not invited to the barbeque, so how would you be able to judge the quality?"
"I wasn't going to say that," muttered Saitama, because he might be an insensitive asshole, but he wasn't mean.
"What do you mean I'm not invited to this party." The look on Sonic's face was rapidly flashing between utterly flat and deranged Cheshire cat.
"Well, it says here," said Genos, further demonstrating his reading ability. "Only the B-class hero and a plus one are allowed to attend. Of course, I'm Saitama's plus one."
Did Saitama ever say that?
"After I did all this work," snarled Sonic, settling on deranged. "Typical of heroes to take credit for other people's work."
It almost made sense when Sonic tried to kill Saitama after that. Although Saitama spent most of the time fending off Genos' underhanded attempt to use the distraction to scarf the rest of the bruschetta, he did spare some moments to wonder what had gone wrong.
After all, Sonic's vendetta wasn't supposed to operate on logic.
The next time Saitama saw Sonic, the ninja had a new yet puzzling attack; shoving a paper in Saitama's face.
It was a fancy-looking paper, too, which was why Saitama didn't immediately punch through it. This was kind of a bad time, since he was on his way back from suffering several crushing defeats at the hands of King. Saitama hadn't even known it was possible to lose in a dating sim.
"Twenty words or less," Saitama requested in what he hoped was a reasonable tone. "I don't have time to fight you today, sorry." He hung one of his grocery bags off the katana handle protruding over Sonic's shoulder.
"It's my invitation to the barbeque." The ninja sounded smug.
"Huh?" Saitama was surprised. "Oh." Sonic had probably stolen one from some B-class hero. Saitama really hoped it was Fubuki's. "Really?"
"It has my name on it and everything!"
Well, that was odd.
"Master!" Saitama saw Genos approaching, slightly smoking. The cyborg narrowed his eyes at Sonic. "Want me to take out the trash?"
It wasn't trash day. "No, help take in the groceries, though," suggested Saitama, looping more bag handles off of the spiky bits on Genos' arms.
Sonic did the paper-shoving move on Genos, before quickly removing it from the line of fire that spewed out of Genos' palm.
"You got invited to the barbeque?" Genos sounded suspicious. "Let me see that."
Sonic did not. Half a minute later, Saitama had a hand on each head, forcefully keeping the two apart and wondering where he had gone wrong in life.
"They gave you a hero certification?" Genos had finally managed to take a scan and was appalled.
"What? No! Where does it say that?"
"Right there! B-class hero, rank 100, Speed of Sound Sonic!"
That managed to shut Sonic up, and Saitama cautiously let go of his head.
"Congratulations on getting a real job," he offered.
Sonic was staring wide-eyed at the fine print underlined by Genos' thumb. "No," he moaned. "No way! This is an outrage!"
Genos nodded furiously, prompting Saitama to let go of him with a sigh of relief. Finally, something the two idiots agreed on.
"I'm not a nine-to-fiver! I'm a highly specialized independent contractor! This salary is a joke, I could easily make that with a few hours of consulting murder!"
"The benefits really suck, too." Saitama could commiserate. "You're going to have to get private health insurance." Especially if he kept coming after Saitama.
"What did I ever do to deserve this… insult," Sonic complained.
"It's probably because of that viral video of you destroying monsters on our way to the supermarket," offered Genos. "Bad career move for a villain."
Sonic swore. "I quit!" he yelled, waving the paper around so fast it really ought to have broken. Then he paused, considered, and updated his terms and conditions. "After the barbeque, I quit!"
It was the day of the barbeque, and Genos was ready to quit.
Now he knew how Master felt when he missed a sale (if Genos had been incinerating any announcement flyers that came by post ever since learning what a tomato was supposed to look like, that was his business). The bread had come out of the oven flat yet bloated, burnt and undercooked at the same time. The tomatoes had ended up as sauce - Genos blamed Saitama - and everything looked just about as appealing as a raw and pulsing monster cell.
"This is at least a disaster level Dragon," Genos moaned. Saitama stepped back into the apartment, having taken a brief outing to beat back the brigade of monsters who'd been drawn to the smell of raw fresh bread. Genos only pouted for a minute, because he'd had his fair share of monster fighting this week, and was feeling discouraged at having not noted any real improvement in his performance, despite rigorous mental training.
"Oh, yeah. I can't stand a lot of those people but I'm not going to serve them that," Saitama agreed.
Crap. It really was worse than Genos had thought. "What are we going to do? Mumen Rider moved up to B-class just for this! We can't show up without anything!"
Saitama pondered. "I don't suppose we can bring hot pot?"
"Where would we find a hot pot that big? You defeated the hot pot monster a month ago!"
"Shouldn't have punched him so hard," Saitama agreed. "It could have been useful. Oh well. What about kelp soup? We still have a bunch left over from that... sale."
The motors in Genos' throat whirred awkwardly. "About that," the cyborg admitted. He'd dried and powdered it and had been sneaking it into the cooking pot at every opportunity in order to stimulate hair regrowth.
Saitama was not pleased to hear this.
Some time later, there was no longer any edible food in their kitchen, as the heat from Genos' engines had cooked everything into charred lumps as he did his best to avoid Saitama's half-hearted wrath.
"Don't ever try that crap again!" Saitama finished, slowly setting back to his usual state of existential boredom. He was pleased that he wasn't empty of strong annoyance as an emotion, although he would have preferred it if almost any other emotion had chosen to stick around. "Now let's get going, if we're lucky we can pick something up on the way."
"But it won't be gourmet! Or organic!" Genos protested, trailing after him. "Master, you're going to lose face in front of all the B-class heroes."
"Well, wouldn't you like that if it meant I'd get a new one, with hair?"
That shut Genos up. Hmmmm. Mean and petty had stuck around too, much to Saitama's disappointment.
"We'll bring drinks," he decided when they got to the store. "If you mix a bunch of them together - Genos what are you doing."
"Buying drinks," said Genos, arms full of glass bottles filled with clear liquid.
"You might still be underage, here, let me," offered Saitama. He was winning at the mentoring thing today. "Oh, and grab some pineapple juice and club soda to hide the taste."
"Pineapple's already going to be there."
Saitama considered, but the other B-class hero had never done anything deserving of being punched into juice, so he just told Genos to buy it anyway.
They ended up fifteen minutes late to the barbeque, which stressed Genos out despite Saitama insisting it was fashion.
"You wouldn't know fashion if it punched you in the face," declared a familiar face that, in Saitama's opinion, fully deserved a low-effort punch if only because its owner clearly had no better idea about fashion than Saitama did. At least Saitama knew yellow brought out the shine on his scalp. He wasn't sure what the skin-tight, long-sleeved crop top, scarf, and glittery harem pants were bringing out on Sonic.
Saitama stole a snack from the covered tray the ninja was holding and walked away without a word. "Come on, Genos, let's make the punch then go hide from the Buzzard Bunch."
Saitama clamped the sesame-covered ball between his teeth and untwisted the cap on the first liquor bottle.
"Oh," he exclaimed, pausing at the scent wafting up his nostrils. His teeth broke through the crisp surface through a warm, chewy coating to be met with red bean paste with just the right amount of sweetness ."Wow. Hey, Genos, new training exercise."
Saitama quickly lined up the glass bottles over the bowl, slapped them, and let the contents and assorted glass shards fill it up. "I'll be right back."
Leaving Genos to get rid of the glass, Saitama swallowed his mouthful and went back to get another one of those divine desserts. He found Sonic surrounded by the Blizzard Bunch and looking annoyed enough to do murder for free, so he tapped the ninja on the shoulder.
"Hey, what's in those sesame balls? Can I get another one?"
The annoyed look turned on him, but Saitama was used to getting Sonic's murder services pro bono so it didn't affect him. Judging by the uneasy looks Fubuki was throwing at them, the same could not be said of her gang.
"They're sesame balls," said Sonic, as if that explained anything. "And you already had one. How'd the bruschetta turn out?"
"Uhhhh," Saitama also answered with a non-answer. "We decided to bring drinks instead."
"Demon Toaster Oven burned it, didn't he."
Saitama considered the gleeful look starting to spread across Sonic's face, and sighed.
Sonic threw his head back and laughed. "SAITAMA! I have defeated you! Your strength in cooking has no chance against my precision and speed! Of course it is impossible for any slower chef to time deep-frying to precision golden-brown - HEY! GIVE THOSE BACK!"
Saitama decided it was time to demonstrate his strength in dodging, evasion, and thievery to make off with a ball in each hand. Unfortunately, this was an area where he and the ninja were rather evenly matched, and he only managed to eat one before Sonic stole back the other.
Naturally this conflict summoned Mumen Rider, who separated them with his bicycle and looked generally Very Disappointed in them both, although slightly more disappointed in Saitama. No fair.
"Are your drinks that bad, too?" asked Sonic, still in a gloating tone, when he'd finally stopped trying to get Saitama to regurgitate the stolen goods by shoving the bike so that the handlebars jammed into Saitama's stomach.
"Of course not!" Genos, ever eager to defend his master's honor, yelled from across the room. "Everyone, come taste Saitama-sensei's wonderful punch!"
Cups were filled and distributed in record time; Genos' Housework Arms came with a bartending mode.
"Kanpai!" chorused the heroes, and threw back the contents.
"Wow! This is great!"
"Pineapple's my favorite!"
"I'm my favorite, too!"
"What's in this, Caped Baldy? It's fantastic!"
"Don't call me that! Genos, what did you put in it?"
"Fancy sparkling water!" The label on the bottles had said 'Everclear', but Genos assumed that was just the brand.
"This isn't sparkling water," said Mumen Rider. "I don't think I should be riding my bike right now."
"You shouldn't be riding your bike anyway, this is a sophisticated gathering," scolded Fubuki.
"She's a mean drunk," a ninja stage-whispered in Saitama's ear before blurring out of sight.
Saitama had the sinking feeling that he would have to catch him before the end of the night. He sniffed the beverage in his hand. There were definitely a lot of alcohol fumes hidden under the bright pineapple scent. How Genos thought that was water was beyond him.
"Hmmm." Saitama shrugged, then drank up.
Colors suddenly seemed brighter and people more interesting. Was this what he'd been missing in life?
"Oi, Genos. Do you feel anything?"
"No?" answered the cyborg. "I am, however, beginning to be alarmed at the uncharacteristic behavior of many of our friends and colleagues, and our one sworn enemy."
Saitama looked around. The barbeque was indeed beginning to look like the start of a shitshow. Sonic was zipping around on Mumen's bicycle, while the hero himself barely managed to give chase in a straight line. Fubuki was systematically demolishing Darkness Blade's armor functionality-to-fashion ratio, and Tank Top Black Hole was looking for his tank top, which he seemed to think he'd lost within himself.
"Hmmm," he said again, sensing some tickle of something rising up from deep inside him. Was this… amusement? Saitama certainly wasn't bored for once.
"This punch," declared a very drunk Fubuki some time and a necessary change of clothes later. "Is amazing. It's… it only took one, y'know?"
Behind her and somewhat supporting her together with themselves, the Blizzard Bunch nodded.
"Well, I…" Saitama started, but words hadn't been his friend for the last half hour. "Genos…"
"Nah, it's all you! You did it! Just one punch, man!" cried Mumen Rider, flinging his arms around Saitama. Saitama could tell from the way his goggles were fogging up that Mumen was probably crying.
"Lez get… nother one… toast… Caped Baldy!" yelled someone else. Saitama was momentarily pissed that the only thing they articulated clearly was the hero name he hated, but then he was rather thrilled that he was pissed. So many emotions in one evening! He was almost glad he'd come.
"That's not my name!" he yelled anyway.
"Yeah! It's so good, man, the punch… just… one…"
"Just one cup, I swear!"
"Caped Baldy…we should change that name… all in favor!"
Finally, a movement of Fubuki's that Saitama could get behind.
"I never had a name," said someone softly, and Saitama looked up and saw Sonic somehow wedged into the pavilion roof. He wondered if he'd done that, but although the position looked anatomically impossible Sonic didn't look too uncomfortable with it. "Just my shinobi sign. Why can't I even have a name?"
Be careful what you wish for, Saitama almost warned him before he remembered the sheer redundancy of the ninja's moniker. Still slightly less loathsome than Caped Baldy, though.
"Saitama-sensei only needs one punch," Genos was seriously lecturing the crowd. "Whether it is for defeating villains, or for getting the party started!"
"Yeah! Party!"
"One punch!"
"All in favor!" screeched Fubuki, banging a small Metal Bat action figure on the table in lieu of a real metal bat, or an actual wooden gavel.
Saitama perked up in alarm; were they really going to re-name him without his consent? He supposed it was how he'd gotten his hero name in the first place, and at least the direction the crowd was headed this time had something of a ring to it. One Punch Man might be something Saitama could get used to…
"The 'ayes' have it!" announced Fubuki, triumphantly holding up her long-empty cup. "The hero Saitama, formerly known as Caped Baldy, shall forthwith be known as… One Cup Man!"