Sometimes life had this really unfortunate way of being both really hilarious and breathtakingly awful at exactly the same time. One of those times happened to be right now; nothing really prepared you for staring your own death in the face when it came in the form of a giant sixty foot roided out pincer-bird monster who had just torn the entire roof of a well-sized building with a single pull.

In fact, the only good thing about this situation was that, like most monsters, the roid fish was already winding up into a truly spectacular introductory speech. Not that Mizuko was bothering to pay any attention at all to what he was saying; like any good civilian she was currently attempting to flee for her life before the monster got to the next phase of his dastardly plan (which generally was to just start murdering people indiscriminately). Pressing herself down belly first under the deli counter she started searching for an exit from the mayhem. She had a pretty good view of the ankles of the fleeing shoppers but not much in the way of line of site to the doors. It took her a few beats to realize that dumb shiny bald-headed man wasn't making any kind of attempt to get away. His feet were firmly planted in the same place they had been when she'd ducked and covered. She thought he was actually leaning forward a bit to look down into the deli case, like he was still trying to shop. She stared up at him and blinked once, twice, three times rapidly and yes, he still hadn't moved.

A moment of indecision struck her; dumb shiny bald man was either the stupidest person she'd ever had the misfortune of meeting or he was high on something because he wasn't even twitching. Above them the monster was screaming something about "the sins of the fathers" but otherwise not doing much in the way of being threatening- yet. Although the fact this one was bothering to villain speech right now was something of a return to form. More and more monsters weren't doing anything before they started killing which was probably better for their villainy efforts but very bad for anyone who wanted a chance of surviving them. However- this exact moment wouldn't really be the time to look the gift horse in the mouth. If she wanted to make the modicum of effort to save baldy that would let her sleep at night she needed to get moving - now.

Reaching out she grabbed him by the bottom of his shorts and tugged aggressively.

"Hey!" she hissed, "Hey dumb-ass what are you doing?!"

"Oh, are you trying to hide?" Bald man asked bending at the waist to consider her evenly. He didn't look the least bit perturbed by all of the action going on above them or the fact she was trying to save his life. Roid-bird was awkwardly stepping over the half-decimated store wall sending bits of concrete and metal skidding everywhere. The dry goods isle was going the way of the dodo under one heavy foot-claw as they spoke. Baldy stared down at her blankly the slightest smile curving at the corner of his mouth like this whole situation was amusing in the way that watching puppy's and kittens trying to climb stairs was cute but also really funny because they fell over nine times out of ten. Man- if this guy wanted her to hate him he was doing a really good job of pissing her off right now. He looked sleepy, like he could just lie down in one of the aisles and take a healthy nap.

"Yes, I'm trying to hide!" she pointed frantically up at the monster, "Because if you haven't noticed this place is about a minute of solid ranting away from becoming a murder fest. I did not sign up for this today! I signed up for meat-based discounts! Not death!" She reached up and grabbed the hem of his shirt dragging him down closer to her level. He went easily enough bending down on one knee and ducking his head slightly with the air of someone who really was only going along with this on account of not really having anything better to do. She had just enough energy left between panicking and planning to feel a hot flash of anger at the situation, here she was trying to be a good Samaritan and make sure he didn't die and he wasn't even doing her the dignity of being remotely interested in actually attempting to live through this whole scenario.

"Well you could just leave." He said thumbing at the side of his nose and craning his head back to look up at the monster who had moved from phase one of his villain speech to phase two which seemed to be picking up and throwing shelving units haphazardly at fleeing people while laughing.

"Oh, yea I could just leave, yup." she said popping the last p as aggressively as she could while lying flat on the linoleum, "Real easy to just get away from a giant monster. What are you even doing man, are you high? Or just stupid?"

Tilting his head back down he raised an eyebrow and reached down to pull her hand away from the bottom of his shirt where she was, at this point, rather pointedly and angrily pulling in the general direction of 'down'. Never let it be said she was anything other than stubborn. He waved a dismissive hand in her direction, standing back to his full height and turning away from her tilting his head back up and rubbing the back of his neck with one broad palm. She gawped at him and darted her eyes to the side, she estimated it was only a few more seconds before this whole encounter got really deadly for everyone involved.

Baldy was- holy crap he was yawning - loudly. Even from behind with a very limited view, she could almost see the apathy rolling off him in waves. Was this guy even real? She'd seen plenty of people who thought they were the next S Class Hero in the making jump into fights with monsters; all bravado and false calm in the face of the storm but this was a whole level of weirdness. The guy wasn't even the slightest bit afraid, hell he seemed more bored than anything else. The thought flashed across her mind that he might have just - cracked down the middle, euphemistically speaking. It wasn't exactly unheard of for people to just lose it and stop caring or fighting back, rare yes but not unthinkable. Sometimes the fight just bled out of a person and they just- stopped. They both watched in silence as the monster continued tearing through the store like a hot knife through butter. The crowds were almost gone at this point everyone either dead, dying, or getting the hell out.

The moment of peace was gone almost before it began, the monster it seemed was smoothly moving into phase three also known as "murdering time" and of course the first person he caught sight of once the crowds had cleared out was baldy, probably because the jack-wagon wasn't even attempting to hide. Just standing exactly where had been when they were jostling over rib-eyes like nothing untoward was happening. Mizuko despaired, the time for scuttling out of the way without getting caught was firmly behind them. Now came the panicked running for your life section of the plan, and god this guy was just so stupid she could not even believe it. She couldn't leave him behind now, no way, he was a sucker and sure to die horribly and she was going to feel terrible about leaving him. It would be like leaving a very dumb puppy in the street- sure the puppy was supposed to be able to get itself out and sure it was independent but also it was a DUMB PUPPY. Clenching her eyes shut she desperately wished this wasn't happening for all of half a second before letting out a deep puff of air and pulling them open again. Her mind was decided- time to try to save the dumb-ass. She inched toward Baldy's feet leaving the relative safety of the deli counter's overhang behind.

Wow, she thought as she moved - eyes roving over the back of his body looking for a good handhold to shove him down- the guy is so out of it he can't even be bothered to try and get matching socks. The left was a grungy grey sagging around his ankle which contrasted nicely with the high-topped pink/purple polka-dot pattern on the right. Mizuko lived in a slum for god's sake and even she managed to get socks that were the same general color and length (most of the time anyway). She clenched and un-clenched her hands as the roid fish started in on his next spiel. Baldly's complete lack of response to the fish's threats had apparently inspired the guy to really pump himself up. The gestures were dramatic, the prose purple, and the cape flaring abundant.

Hand's down this was the worst ever trip to the grocery store she had ever experienced; she was about to die trying to save an idiot. The monster began to menace forward a large shelving unit daintily clasped in its left claw. It was still talking (monologuing) but Mizuko's staccato heartbeat and the roar of adrenaline through her veins was blocking most of noise out. Her eyes tunnel-visioned on Baldy's back as she slowly wrested herself into a crouch, hoping against hope the bulk of the larger man's body would shield her until the last possible second.

The monster let out a screech hauling back with its claw and sending the shelving unit tearing through the air apparently finished with his Oscar bait moment. Mizuko let out a wavering cry and leapt from her crouch wrapping her arms around Baldy's middle, trying to bear him to the ground under her body weight and the element of surprise. Two things happened then; first Baldy stumbled a step forward off-balance from her surprise attack and then he got beamed in the side of the head by a steel shelving unit going fast enough to decapitate a rhino. Head rending speeds, as it were.

Mizuko had already kind of come to terms with the idea she was going to go splat by this point so when - instead of getting bathed in the blood of a decapitated idiot and/or dying painfully alongside him - the shelving unit snapped in half with an shriek of abused metal she was more than a bit shocked. With wide saucer-like eyes she followed the trajectory of the shelf as it sailed away and into the middle distance (presumably to land in some other horribly inconvenient place for someone else to deal with) and out of sight. Above her, the monster was doing much the same and it was in unison that they both turned back to Baldy, who was just sort of staring down at Mizuko's hands where they were clasped around the lower part of his stomach like they were a particularly nasty pair of worms.

Uh," she said very intelligently.

"What?" said the monster above them sounding very put out, "That wasn't supposed to happen."

The bald man sighed and righted himself pulling Mizuko, who still had a death grip around his middle, into a half standing position behind him. She turned her head down and pressed her forehead into the center of his back and started swearing as creatively as she knew how.

"Can you uh, let me go?" Baldy said poking at her hands with his fingers apparently no longer willing to put up with her hanging off of him like a limpet. Dropping her hands Mizuko stumbled back on jelly filled legs and slowly sunk to the floor in a daze. She began to entertain the thought that this was what the afterlife was like which was incredibly disappointing.

The monster blinked and squared its shoulders; done it seemed with this little derailment of its master plan.

It never got any farther than that because baldy lifted a hand up punched vaguely in the general direction of the monster's facial area. The monster then exploded. Violently. The back-draft whipped her braid backwards and sent most of the remaining contents of the store into a twisting aerial dance before it ended just as abruptly as it started, sending pieces of furniture and general store goods clattering (or smashing) back to the ground several feet backwards and in some cases even farther than that. The whole thing was over, in seconds, like the worlds most anti-climactic joke. Just...over. She hadn't even been able to throw an arm up to shield her eyes from the sting and grit of dust. Silence filled the ruins of the store, broken intermittently by the rush of the wind and the clattering of bits of concrete falling from the shattered walls. The store was empty now save for the two of them - the other civilians either fled or dead somewhere in the rubble.

Mizuko stared for a beat before closing her eyes and slumping forward pressing a hand against her face.

Baldy shook a bit of monster meat off from where it had landed on his shoe.

It wasn't that she was ungrateful to be alive it was just - it was just something. She started to shake a little- fine body tremors shivering up and down her spine, jaw locked shut in a grimace. Her vision was tunneling in and out leaving her with the panicked feeling she was going to hurl and pass out any second now. She ground her knuckles into the corners of her eyes and shakily smoothed a hand down her hair from the crown to the tip of her braid. She could feel herself smearing dirt down her face as she went.

Baldly turned around and raised his eyebrows like he was more than a little surprised that she was still there, not that she could blame him because if she wasn't rooted to the spot in a metaphysical sense, she probably would have already done a runner. The fact she hadn't gone flying like the store detritus was probably because she'd been mostly shielded from the back-blow by Baldy's own body.

"Do you think they would be upset if I took some steak?" he asked conversationally stepping past her and back to the deli counter.

"No." she slurred pulling her hands away from her face, "Not really, they're probably dead."

He took a moment to look back at her brows furrowed like he was confused.

"You think so?"

"Dunno, it's pretty likely." she pointed shakily to the destroyed front of the store where the office used to be (but what was now just a pile of dribbly rubble).

"Oh." he turned back to the steak and made a humming noise of dissatisfaction, "they're dusty!"

"A building did just go...poof? You know, all over" she asked trying to unsteadily gain her feet again. The only other time she'd ever felt like this in her life was the twenty-four hours following a very ill-conceived visit to a discount sushi store. Like her insides had all been scooped out through her nostrils. She was still shaking -adrenaline with nowhere to go and nothing to do with itself. She fought down a deep breath and tried to center herself, counting backwards from ten and imagining a cool ocean lake. It didn't work but at least it gave her something to focus on.

"It was more of a kapow!" he said leaning down and picking up a slab of meat which he shook halfheartedly - as if that would be enough to get the thin layer of concrete dust off the surface. Predictably the meat just flopped back and forth with no particular elegance

"Semantics." She was finally back to standing but she wasn't sure if moving was on the table yet. Her body buzzed uncomfortably and she blinked away moisture at the corner of her eyes.

Not that she was crying or anything it was more like a psychosomatic eye leak as a direct result of her adrenal glands being beaten up like rock-em sock-em robots.

She dragged a hand across her face again (probably smearing the dirt and grease even worse) and snuffed into her shirtsleeve unsteadily before tottering back to the deli unit. Baldy was jumping the counter to get at the plastic wrap having apparently given up attempting to dust the meat off in favor of packaging it up for himself.

"So." she started - white knuckling the bottom partition of the cooler to stay standing, "That happened." She felt muffled, floating.

"Oh, yea uh, sorry did you want to do something about it." He had the gall to look a little sheepish at that as he stuffed the wrapped meat into a plastic grocery bag, like he had interrupted some kind of heroic deed she'd been planning for months.

"No not really. Uh. I was just here for the-" she points wordlessly at the steak.

"Yea. Me too. Because of the -"

"Discounts." they said in unison, like this was a well-known fact of the universe and could not be disputed.

They lapsed into awkward silence. There was really no manual on the "after" for something like this.

"So are you-"

She paused narrowing her eyes testily before continuing.

"Actually, nah I don't really care." She reached into the deli section and started aggressively picking up and shoving the meat that baldy hadn't already scavenged into a spare plastic bag. He frowned over at her, or maybe it was a pout, hard to tell his face was both expressive and severe at the same time.

"My name is Saitama!" he whined almost petulantly apparently very upset she hadn't asked who he was.

She shot him a venomous glare as she twisted and tied the top of the bag off. Oh, okay now the emotions were starting to leak back into her brain, primarily rage. Rage was easy, anger was an old friend to fall back on in times of need.

"Don't care!" she barked pointing at him, "You ruined discount day!"

"The monster ruined discount day!" he snapped back.

"But he's gooey guts and I'm sublimating my anger about the situation onto you because you tried to fight me for my rightful meat discounts!" She gripped the edge of the counter in one hand and leaned over into his space eyes flashing.

He pushed forward just as aggressively his own meats abandoned for the time being.

"I-" She cut him off by aggressively smacking him in the face with a slab of dirty meat before he could get more than a word out and turned to begin stomping her way out of the store. She was high-stepping over rubble and not looking too hard at any of the stains or piles of meat. Best not to look too hard at anything post monster massacre, that way lie madness. Better to ride the shock out until the end of the line and get the hell out of dodge before you started to go from fuzzy at the edges to uncomfortable clarity. Behind her Baldy, Saitama, was sputtering and making offended sorts of noises but she wasn't paying him any mind now. She was past the altruistic part of the day; she'd done her level best to help the guy and her soft friendly feelings were 100% exhausted. He was live, she was alive, it was done with. If his feelings were delicate enough to get upset about getting smacked with a filet and walked out on, he could just deal with it.

Hilariously enough the sliding doors at the front of the store were still standing, albeit they were no longer actually attached to the rest of the wall. At her approach the right glass panel whirred like it was going to open and then popped right out of its track- tumbling to the ground and shattering. The left panel slid a few inches and then bounced back repeatedly. Discretion being the better part of valor she just walked around them. Glass crunching under her feet she paused at the threshold to glance back, the store was predictably empty. Saitama it seemed wasn't any more willing to stick around than she was. Not that she blamed him considering she'd just smacked him with a filet and walked out on him first.

The trek back home was going to be a pain, even more so than it already was. Dragging her feet reluctantly she began to slowly pick her way back the way she had originally come. The street around the store was, if possible, even more abandoned looking than it had been on her way in; the ruined store behind her now just another empty shattered building on a street of equally ghostly spaces. She didn't think they were going to be able to recover from this one, she'd have to find some other place to shop.

Her thoughts drifted back to Saitama as she walked. It sounded like a normal enough name for a normal enough guy but blowing up a two-story tall monster with a lazy right hook wasn't exactly, well, normal. Guys with that kind of power didn't just fall out of trees randomly, but she couldn't for the life of her imagine the guy as any kind of Hero. Not that she exactly knew a whole lot about Hero's or how they worked in the grand scheme of things. Mostly they just did their thing and ended up on the evening news for her to sarcastically clap for in the same way she liked to clap at people in sports cars who revved their engines for no reason and tried to cut people off in traffic. What she was saying is that most of them seemed like self-aggrandizing dicks, the ones she knew about anyway. Baldy wasn't exactly changing her opinion anytime soon if he was a hero.

She scoured her memory for the guy's name and came up blank. If he'd made the news it wasn't in any capacity she remembered. Maybe Andrew would know who the guy was, she'd have to ask when she got back home, not that it would change her general opinion but at least she would know who she was shit-posting about online later.

--

"Oh my god what happened to you?!"

Mizuko sighed dropping her meat bag to the floor with a wet thump and slumped onto the stool, the only other place to sit that wasn't a retrofitted gurney in Andrew Yarnef's makeshift clinic. She snatched a new sucker from the cracked bowl on the sideboard as she stretched her legs out popping her left knee with a grunt, it always got a bit peaky after long walks. Andrew, a sturdy looking guy with downy blonde hair and sharp brown eyes, frowned at her from a makeshift office which occupied the back-left corner of the already cramped tent. Turning away from his makeshift plank desk, the squeaky wheel on his rolling chair protesting loudly, he took in her disheveled appearance without much amusement.

"Monster." She said unwrapping her new prize and shoving it into her mouth with the savagery of a five-year-old.

"Yes, I could have guessed that." He said narrowing his eyes at her like she was one of his petulant patients. Luckily for her Mizuko had known Andrew for years and the LOOK had ceased to work on her somewhere around puberty when he had been six feet of awkward braces and acne scars. It was hard to be intimidating when your voice cracked over every third word. "What KIND of monster and do you need medical attention?" He reached up and tried to pull the sucker out of her mouth flinching when she slapped at his wrist with a stinging retort.

"Mine!" she growled scooting her stool back and trying to ward him off with feet, knocking into his knees.

"Those are for the kids!" he barked making another go of it only to be warded off by a kick to the bottom of his chair which sent him lurching back into his desk. The towers of reclaimed books and cracked plastic cabinets with salvaged medical equipment wobbled threateningly sending him scrambling to the rescue.

"As you can see." She replied pulling the sucker out to gesture at him with it, "I'm a kid at heart."

He shot her a venomous look as he finished righting the things on his desk.

"You are vile and I hate you." He said dropping back into his chair.

"Oh, you know I'm great don't whine. Besides," she whined fake piteously, "I almost died today I deserve one!"

"You already stole one today Miu! Those are for my patients! Specifically, the ones under eighteen! You're twenty-seven!"

"More like seven am I right?!" She wiggled her eyebrows and raised her hand for a high-five which he ignored in favor of glaring. She always knew she was being effective when he broke out the nickname.

So, she high-fived herself and then flipped him off because she was a strong independent woman who don't need no man, and also, she couldn't leave herself hanging that was such an anti-bro move. He scowled some more as she grinned; Andrew was always such a stick in the mud, she thought, because his position as the slums one and only licensed (kind of) medical professional made him try extra hard to put on the appearance of competence. Riling him up was more fun than it had any right to be mostly because she was one of the few people who could get past the facade these days, a benefit of having known him for almost twenty years. It was hard to stay professional in front of a person who had once watched you fart yourself awake at a co-ed sleepover in grade school.

"So?" He said pointedly leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms dropping the sucker crusade in favor of being an adult and actually asking after her wellbeing.

"Ugh. Fine." She popped the sucker out of her mouth and carefully wrapped it back up in its wax paper before tucking it into her pocket. A year ago she would have just thrown it away, but suckers weren't as easy to get as they used to be. "I'll talk copper. Ya got me."

"I'm not sure what it was to be honest," she started, "looked like some kind of weird bird but also with lobster claws." She shrugged, "I mean monsters, right? Whatever it was it was ugly and mean but that wasn't unusual. What was unusual was who I met at the store." She leaned forward draping her arms across her thighs and clasping her hands between her knees. Andrew remained quiet as she spoke the sounds of the slum drifting in through the canvas flap that separated the clinic tent from the rest of town. One thing to appreciate about Andrew was that he was a damn good listener when he wanted to be.

"And then we got in to an argument about," she waved her hand down at the bag of meat next to her foot, "meat."

Andrew sighed and rubbed a hand across his face, a nervous tic they both shared.

"Did you really-"

"Yea." she replied leaning back in her own chair crossing her legs at the ankles "so have you ever heard of him?"

"I'm not a font of information on Hero's Miu." he responded "but no I've never heard anyone in the top tier who matches that kind of description. Not unless you ran across one of the illusive ones out of costume, which I really doubt. People like that don't go slumming around in places like this." He flaps his hand towards the exit to indicate the sprawl of the slum outside the tent door.

"Well yea. Got me on that one." She hadn't expected him to just know who the guy was but it would certainly have been nice to know more.

"He didn't look inhuman? At all? Not even a little?" He asked. Monsters, even the more human ones, generally couldn't walk around in normal society without sticking out like sore thumbs. Most, if not all, had some kind of tell; wither that was proboscis or something even more outlandish.

"No not unless you count being obscenely bald." She said patting the top of her head, "Like I'm talking wax figurine shine, like seeing your reflection fun-house style, like could be a lighthouse near the bay levels of light reflection."

He snorted out a laugh.

"Write a novel why don't you."

"I'd put all the smut authors out of work and you know it, this level of talent just can't be handled by the general public." She shot back throwing a few finger guns out for good measure as she gathered her things. It was almost dark and she didn't relish the thought of staying out and awake for too much longer. Sleep was a reward and she was ready to claim her daily prize.

"Well if you hear anything let me know. Just for curiosities sake if nothing else, the guy was annoying and if I'm going to spend my limited internet bandwidth smack talking him I at least want to know who I'm making fun of. If he does turn out to be some kind of hero."

"Sure thing Mizuko." He glanced down at her shoes and grinned "Oh, and by the way you have monster guts on your shoes."

"Aw goddammit, not again!"

What a waste of a good day.