The wall slid open, revealing a bored as ever Saitama and a surprisingly morose Kana, Tatsumaki wondered what had happened in there, and she assumed she would soon find out. She watched as kana lit another cigarette, certain that the Association had a strict "no smoking" policy, he looked disheveled and discouraged. Kana walked past Tatsumaki dejectedly, his gaze never moving from the floor directly in front of him, his eyes glassy and distant.

"Thank you two for your time," he said as he continued walking."I hope to speak to you soon, miss Tornado." Kana said dismally.

"Hey, where the hell do you think you're going!?" Tatsumaki hollered after the host.

"No more interviews today." He said as he entered the elevator. "I've got other work to attend to."

"Oh, no you don't!"

Tatsumaki held her hand outstretched towards the elevator, expecting the doors to be ripped off of the contraption and for the telepath to fly forward towards her. The elevator doors closed normally as Kana calmly pulled a key out from his suit pocket and scanned the elevator's buttons. The last thing Tatsumaki saw of Kana was him crouching down, and pushing the key towards the area below the buttons. She was baffled, she put a god level of energy into the action and accomplished nothing, that had never happened before. To say the least, Tatsumaki's day was not going as planned, but her boyfriend patted her head and picked her up. Saitama walked towards the remaining elevator with a confused and angry girlfriend in his arms.

"Come on, let's grab some Udon, I'll tell you all about it." Saitama said, accidentally breaking the floor one button as he tapped it with his knee. Nevertheless the elevator traveled to the first floor, and Saitama walked off with an increasingly flustered Tatsumaki.


They sat down in the noodle shop and ordered food, all the while Saitama explained what happened during the interview. He told her about being mistaken for Blast, and the confused but seemingly entertained Kana, speaking at length about kana's sudden change of expression following his last question.

"Huh, what a freak. Why do you think he changed so suddenly?" Tatsumaki asked.

"From the looks of it," Saitama speculated. "I reminded him of someone."


Kana had been riding the elevator down for an hour before it stopped, the lights turning from their easy light blue to flashing green and red like a Christmas tree. The doors opened and Kana walked into the bright white decontamination area. He put on his lab coat and gas mask before pressing the button next to the hall door. All openings surrounding him were shut nearly instantly with an airtight seal before gas cascaded down from the ceiling. It was over in a moment, the doors opened wide for him and he moved forward, a blank expression on his face as he moved past the decomposing corpses and nearly dry skeletons that marked the hallway.

These people whom he had known, who he had worked with and befriended, they meant nothing now. The association had hid this secret from everyone, they even tried to hide it from him, emphasis on tried. To the association, his research never existed, and no one knew any differently. The cameras on the floor were all shattered or had melted to goo, no one would know where'd he had been, even if they did he was able to take care of it: he had gotten used to getting his hands dirty.

Four hundred and forty-four operating rooms, two hundred and twenty offices, seventy-eight laboratories, full of bodies. One thousand people, five hundred professors at the top of their field, countless friends, wiped away without a trace. The families were either paid to keep quiet or taken out by mercenaries, and it was all the association's doing, it was all his fault. He knew he wasn't entirely to blame, but he was the one most at fault, and he was the only one left.

He had been in the room when it happened, though no one told him that when he woke up in the infirmary upstairs with a promotion on his hands. He hadn't thought much of it, the room had strange effects, loss of memory and blackouts were entirely possible. Then he was told he would be unable to converse with any of his former teammates. Maybe it really was suspicious, after all the information could never leave the association, but maybe that wasn't it. Maybe it was his last flailing effort to see and speak with his friends,or maybe it was an obsession, a dedication to his research that he had to finish it himself. Either way, he knew the truth now, there was no going back.

He got closer and closer to the room, the smell got even worse, but no one but him would dare to come down here and clean up. The broken bones began to line the floor, many of which were only broken because he had stepped on them on accident his first time down here. Stepping through the halls now he drew a parallel between his shocked, frighteningly curious, and enthused meandering through the halls upon his first visit after the incident to his current, emotionless, annoyed, and cold straightforward walk to the room. In both situations there was one destination of the trip: the room. Though he didn't know it at the time, the room had been calling to him, it knew him in a way, it was his destiny.

Finally, he reached it, twelve foot tall, thirty inch wide, black doors that contrasted with the white lab covered in the dark, dry blood. The noises from inside crawled in and out of his skin, burning him with the truth of history. There was only one way to atone for this. Kana walked forward and presented his id to the scanner, and the doors slid open.


A/N: Okay, this one took a slight bit longer, but here it is. After a busy day to end a busy week, I'm more excited than ever to take this break, updates will start back up on Tuesday and trade off every two days with a new story. See ya guys then!