Today was my eighteenth birthday. Only five months had passed since my assignment to S-Class. The funniest part was that by local law, I still couldn't drink alcohol — the legal age was twenty. Not that I particularly wanted to, but the fact itself still struck me as amusing... so how long had I been living in this world by now?... well, it didn't matter. On this fine day, let's say my age is exactly what's written in my documents — eighteen.
Congratulations from all my friends and acquaintances had already come pouring in, first thing in the morning. Even Bomb had sent a text, congratulating me on entering adulthood and expressing hope that I would now have more interesting things to keep me busy — so I would pester him less... what a grumpy old man. Like I'm actually going to leave him alone. I still need another month or two of Whirlwind Fist training, then I'll think about it.
Though he was genuinely right about one thing. With adulthood, the range of interesting activities had expanded somewhat. Personally I had never cared about age, but one particular red-haired individual had made quite an issue of it... well, she was among those invited to my birthday, so who knew... now I just had to calmly finish a couple of hours of patrol and I could head out shopping with Fubuki. Today, surprisingly, she had volunteered for that "task" herself...
As if reading my thoughts and deciding my mood was altogether too good, the hero phone rang.
"Yes?" — picking up with a quiet sigh, I pressed the answer button. "On the line."
"Garou!" — the voice of another operator came through, a male this time. "You're currently in the western part of City F, correct?"
"That's right." — giving a grunt and looking around, I was about to give a more precise address when I was cut off.
"Excellent! Please proceed to the central business district near the park. A terrorist group has been spotted there, led by the B-Class criminal Hammerhead. All members of the group are reported to be wearing unknown combat suits. We believe the threat—"
"Right... I see it..." — hearing some kind of noise in the distance, I abruptly leaped into the air and from that height watched with surprise as one of the tallest buildings in the city began rapidly collapsing. "I'm on my way."
Landing back on the ground, I took off in the right direction. Various thoughts circled unhurriedly through my head as I ran. The most significant being that this was already the second "canonical" event — right after Vaccine Man — in which I was participating. Which meant the main events were about to begin shortly after. The meteor, the arrival of the immensely powerful alien Boros, the Monster Association's attack... so the time to find out how ready I was for all of it had come. On top of that, I really did need to properly meet Saitama — to ensure humanity's survival by having him present in the right places... yes, I would take care of that tomorrow, putting it off any further could simply be dangerous...
Arriving fairly quickly at the spot where the building had recently collapsed, I took in the following scene:
There were large numbers of ordinary civilians around and even more police. All of them were watching with wariness as a group of completely bald people in genuinely strange-looking combat suits moved about unhurriedly. Among them all, only one stood out by his height, musculature, and aura. And also present was a guy in a bicycle helmet and something resembling protective armor. Mumen Rider, C-Class hero rank one, if I wasn't mistaken. It was he who had blocked Hammerhead's gang's path, and to the enthusiastic cheers of the crowd, was preparing to engage them in battle...
I already knew how this "fight" was going to end. One look at the opponents' auras was enough to understand — two, three strikes at most and the hero would be on his way to the hospital, or worse... so I didn't bother waiting for the fight to start. With a leap I cleared the police barriers and the crowd of onlookers, then sent the biggest member of the gang flying with one precisely aimed gut punch. He flew exactly where I was aiming — into the rubble of the recently collapsed building, which had apparently been his handiwork. Along the way, this hulk in his metal suit knocked most of his lackeys off their feet.
The ones I hadn't managed to knock down as "pins," I simply put face-first into the ground. The method was simple — sweep the legs, remove the suit, press the face to the asphalt. Since I was moving at an incomprehensibly fast pace for these guys, they simply had no way to resist. Having dealt with the grunts, I returned to the main instigator of all this chaos and, tearing off what remained of his suit that hadn't already fallen apart from my first punch, left him completely naked and laid out alongside his gang. That seemed to cover it...
"Good work." — turning to Mumen Rider, who had frozen in place, I gave him a friendly two-fingered salute. "You held them up at just the right time!"
Meanwhile, as I looked around the surroundings, joyful shouts began rising from the crowd of onlookers who were only just beginning to process what had happened:
"Hey, that's Garou!"
"An S-Class hero is here!"
"No way! Already?!"
"Garou! Please, can I get an aut—"
Hoping to leave this place before someone once again asked for my autograph, I was already preparing to make myself scarce when suddenly, from somewhere in the direction of the park, came a fairly powerful explosion.
"Oh?!" — having a perfectly legitimate reason to no longer be here, I waved goodbye to the crowd with a smile and immediately sprinted toward the park. "Duty calls!"
Hm... was the gang not alone? Or maybe they split up?...
Reaching the spot before the smoke from the recent explosion had even dispersed, I discovered there not any member of Hammerhead's group, but two fighting individuals who were both very familiar to me from canon.
The first was Genos — a young guy with a fully cybernetic body, a youthful face, and spiky light hair. About the same height as me.
The second was Sonic — a somewhat older guy, but with such a feminine face that he could easily have been called a trap. He wore a tight black ninja suit, had long black hair, and held a katana. Since he was constantly crouching, evaluating his height was fairly difficult — but he appeared to be about five centimeters shorter than Genos and me.
Being honestly surprised by such an unexpected encounter, I nonetheless quickly grasped the reason for the recent explosion. These two were fighting each other — and were still doing so right now, apparently not noticing my arrival. Sonic had used his explosive shurikens... though I doubted he would have had any trouble without them.
Possessing considerable speed, he was easily outpacing his cybernetic opponent and had already dealt him several visible wounds. Then, right before my eyes, he accelerated sharply again and in a single moment severed both of Genos's legs, one arm, and finally the torso itself — splitting him in two.
With a face contorted in shock, the cyborg began falling to the ground.
"Hey, you could actually kill him!" — before the ninja-trap could land a finishing blow on his enemy, I abruptly stepped between them and deflected Sonic's katana to the side. "He's mostly metal, sure, but he's not entirely a robot..."
"What are you babbling about?" — leaping back and standing several meters from me and the fallen Genos, Sonic looked at me with a grim expression. "He interfered with my work — and I don't like that... actually, it doesn't matter anymore." — the guy's face suddenly twisted into a truly diabolical grin. "You managed to deflect my attack. That's the problem. Born in a ninja village, I honed my techniques from childhood... and you managed to interrupt one of them... I won't let that go unpunished. My pride won't allow it. Whoever you are — you're not walking away!"
"Watch out!" — Genos's voice came from somewhere below.
But even without his warning I could see Sonic vanishing from his spot and darting off to the side. He pushed off a tree once, twice, three times...
"How do you like this? Can you see me? Can you keep up with this speed?"
Moving rapidly and never staying in one place, he had filled virtually the entire clearing with his presence.
A genuinely useful and effective technique, but...
The moment he slipped around to my back and tried to attack, I spun around, deflected his katana to the side again — and this time also snapped off the tip of the blade — then sent the toe of my sneaker precisely between his legs with a well-aimed kick.
The shriek that filled the entire area a moment later hit the ears far harder than any sword strike. But I definitely had no regrets.
"You alive over there?" — watching Sonic writhe and wail in pain for a couple of seconds, I turned around and looked down at the cyborg split in two.
"...!!!" — Genos stared at me with his single intact eye, mouth hanging open.
"Apparently alive." — I gave a satisfied nod. "I don't know what you two had against each other, but I'm taking this scumbag — attacking a hero will get him locked up for a good long while. Do you need help? Want me to contact someone to come get you?... Hey! Can you even hear me?"
"A... yes!" — finally snapping out of it, the guy apparently tried to get up using only one arm. "I am a cyborg who fights for justice! My name is Genos!"
"Right, nice to meet you." — I raised a friendly hand. "I'm Garou."
"Please take me on as your disciple!"
"No." — remembering perfectly well what a headache agreeing to a similar request had been for Saitama in the canon, I refused without a moment's hesitation. "Although..." — a useful thought immediately appeared in my head. "I could point you toward someone who's considerably stronger than me..." — hearing a faint crunch of leaves on the ground, I glanced over and immediately spotted the familiar bald figure in a jumpsuit and cape. "And actually, here he is now!..."
Offloading the cyborg onto Saitama turned out to be surprisingly easy. The bald cape himself had come here because the news had reported a gang of dangerous bald men, and he had decided it would be better to defeat them quickly before the shadow of "villain" fell upon him. Satisfied that I had already handled everything, One Punch Man immediately lost all interest in the proceedings and decided to head back home. But he wasn't destined to escape my tenacious grip.
To start, I invited him to a friendly sparring session — during which, of course, I was destined to suffer defeat after the very first punch. After that, Saitama asked for a second time whether he could leave. But by then Genos had latched onto him like a tick, pleading to be made his disciple. Without much thought, Saitama gave an indifferent nod. Then I myself — having recovered from my recent defeat — invited them both to bolster the hero ranks by joining the Association, since they were already doing that kind of work, and took contact details from the two. Genos presented no difficulty — after I had saved his life, he was ready to come to my aid at any time. Saitama resisted a little, but I solemnly promised to call him only in the event of an incredibly serious problem. Sonic I handed over to the nearest police station, where special accommodations for individuals like him had already been prepared.
Having wrapped up in this manner what I had only planned to do tomorrow, I was completely satisfied — and parting ways with the newly minted bald teacher and his broken disciple, I decided I'd had enough hero work for the day.
It was time to focus on preparations for celebrating my birthday. And since Fubuki was still occupied, I texted Mizuki and before long set off for City Q to meet her after her training session ended...