In the martial arts arena — converted into a temporary meeting room after someone had seen to the floor repairs — Bomb sat in one of the folding chairs that had been arranged in its center and stared at his hands.
Specifically, at what they were holding.
An old man who had spent sixty years believing that the only honest advancement came through sweat and accumulated deliberate effort now found himself in possession of something he had never anticipated. The feeling running through him was not unlike the feeling of a man who has spent his whole life convinced that the sky is one particular shade of blue, and then gone outside.
He made very sure his expression was composed.
Inside, he was trembling.
Two things, specifically, were responsible. First: his path, which had felt immovable — which had been immovable for the better part of two decades — had been shattered and redrawn at a level he was still cataloguing. Heightened. Opened. The ceiling he'd been pressing against had simply... ceased to be a ceiling.
Second, and this was something Bomb was not going to say aloud:
I can finally handle that little brother of mine the way I used to.
He turned the gift over in his hands, letting himself feel precisely as satisfied as the moment warranted.
On the street outside the training camp, a graceful figure was standing in the middle of an intersection and looking mildly annoyed at the city.
Tall, blonde, a finely crafted ninja sword worn at the waist, an expression that most people would describe as cool and a very small number of people who knew him well would describe as lost.
Flashy Flash turned his head slowly, taking in the commercial district's uniform desolation — closed storefronts, identical shuttered facades, roads that looked exactly like the other roads — and arrived at the conclusion he'd been resisting for the past several minutes.
He had absolutely no idea which direction was which.
Getting to Z-City hadn't been the problem. High-speed rail, no complications, arrived on time, found a map of the city center, asked a station employee for directions to the no-man's-land. Simple. Efficient. Handled.
The part where the directions had ended at "leave the city center and head into the uninhabited zones" was the problem. Because once you were in the genuinely uninhabited zones, there were no more helpful employees, no more legible signage, no more passersby to ask—
He registered the sound of approaching footsteps from the nearest intersection.
Oh. An eyebrow lifted. There are passersby here?
Flash turned his head, and a figure in yellow and red came jogging around the corner at a steady pace, focused entirely on his run, clearly not paying attention to the intersection ahead.
Flash took in the distinctive silhouette — sparse-but-present hair arranged with what appeared to be genuine care, simple oval face, the particular quality of motion that said this person is very comfortable at this speed and probably considerably less comfortable at many other things — and assessed: not a monster, not obviously a civilian, hero or hero-adjacent.
He brushed his bangs aside out of habit.
"Excuse me," he said, in the direction of the approaching figure. "Bald man up ahead — do you happen to know where the Monster Association extermination gathering is being held?"
Saitama's foot caught on absolutely nothing. His body continued forward on momentum while his feet briefly stopped participating in the process, and he went face-first into the asphalt at a speed that would have concerned anyone watching who didn't know him. The asphalt dented. His face did not.
He peeled himself up from the road with the expression of a man recalibrating his entire morning.
"What?" He looked at Flash with the specific dead-fish blankness that preceded genuine displeasure. "Where did the bangs auntie come from? If you want to ask for directions, at least be polite about it."
He tilted his head forward, indicating the relevant area with a pointed look.
"And I'm losing hair. Right now, in this moment, in an ongoing process. The special serum Genos got hasn't been working, I'll give you that — but I am still meaningfully far from bald. There's a distinction."
Flashy Flash looked at Saitama's head.
He looked at Saitama's head for another moment.
...So the issue is the word "bald." They're bothered by the word. His mind continued without permission: Genos. Related files... S-Class, Demon Cyborg, the mechanically augmented one. Currently stationed in Z-City. And by extension this would be... "The Caped Baldy." That nickname really is accurate.
He did not say any of this. His face remained completely still.
He also did not have a good counterargument for "at least be polite," because Flashy Flash was, as a point of honor, not heartless. He simply looked.
"All right," he said, adopting a tone of scrupulous technical accuracy. "Excuse me, Mr. Balding-In-Progress. Would you happen to know where the gathering is?"
That's still not significantly better, said something in Saitama's expression.
"Hero who came in response to the summons, right?" Saitama did not dignify the nickname with further commentary. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Meeting point's back that way. Someone'll meet you when you arrive."
"Understood." Flash inclined his head, a fraction. "Thank you, Mr. Balding-In-Progress."
"You're welcome, Auntie Bangs."
The air between them briefly achieved a specific electrical quality — not hostile exactly, more the sensation of two immovable objects discovering they have very similar architectural principles. Neither of them moved. Neither of them looked away. For approximately three seconds, the intersection held them both in perfect, charged standstill.
Then they broke and walked in opposite directions.
Flash made it two steps.
He stopped.
He looked at the intersection around him. He looked at the street ahead. He looked at the street to his left, which looked exactly like the street ahead, and the street to his right, which looked like both of the others.
...Which direction did that bald man point.
A very faint sound — the kind that wouldn't be audible to most things that weren't a trained assassin — came from behind and to his left, followed by the slight displacement of air across his hair.
He did not turn immediately. He assessed: the suppression had been total, the noise footfall essentially nonexistent, the entry into his immediate radius occurring at a speed that would have been completely invisible to a normal observer. By any technical measure, that qualified.
He turned.
Saitama was running in the same direction Flash was now facing, apparently having looped back mid-route without breaking stride.
He glanced sideways at Flash with the dead fish eyes.
Flash fell into step beside him with the unhurried manner of someone executing a plan.
A Z-City S-Class, he thought, with private approval. Moving at speeds like that without comment or concern. Mental fortitude by S-Class standards — technically passable. He's not particularly impressive-looking, but the lack of reaction to a supersonic arrival indicates functional baseline composure.
"Hey." Saitama's eyes slid sideways with the specific quality of someone who suspects a silent judgment is being made at their expense. "What are you doing."
"Running."
"You just appeared behind me at full speed and now you're jogging alongside me looking at me with that—" Saitama's expression processed the described scenario— "that weird look, and now you're running with me. That's weird. That's strange. Don't do that, Auntie Bangs."
A vein moved on Flashy Flash's forehead.
He folded his hands behind his back and continued jogging.
We haven't found the meeting point yet, he told himself, with a patience he had built specifically for situations like this. We are in an undifferentiated commercial district. This local S-Class knows where the meeting point is. Conflict with the eccentric local S-Class before reaching the meeting point would be tactically counterproductive.
I will endure this.
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