Chapter Text
It had been a long time since he had last heard a distress signal.
Maybe that’s why he looked into it. Maybe it was the novelty of it, after going so long without hearing one. An odd moment punctuating the monotonous weeks with something, anything, some event of any kind to at least confirm time was still moving forward.
He was starting to doubt it’d be worth the effort.
“This is Saitama, of the HA-A72,” he said into the receiver, though it was pretty obvious there was nowhere to get the message. Still, he didn’t want to be shot out of the sky if he could avoid it. “Requesting permission to approach, over,” he said -- again, a simple formality. He directed the hull of his shuttle downward, pointed towards the surface, and gave the throttle a healthy push.
The planet was nothing special at first glance. It was small, and It looked universally brown as Saitama brought the shuttle down low, but that turned out to just be a trick of the atmosphere. The air was thick with dust that didn’t clear until he was hovering a few hundred yards from the surface, revealing the planet’s true dark-red and blue colors. The solid earth looked unfriendly, and the sporadic dark-blue pools of liquid didn’t look much better.
Saitama hummed, bringing the shuttle as close to the ground as he felt was safe. “Ah, jeez,” he muttered, eyes narrowing. The pools weren’t full of water or anything similarly benign. They hissed and gave off an acrid steam that radiated enough heat to ping against his shuttle’s external shields. “Not dealing with that,” he said, pulling up and away.
The monitor beside him had gone quiet. The distress signal hadn’t started back up, even after he’d tried hitting the thing on the side a few times to wake it up some. “Damn scanner,” he murmured, wondering how much it would cost to get something like that fixed. He couldn’t be wandering around the expanse of space without a functioning scanner. There was being frugal and there was being stupid, and he was pretty sure he hadn’t crossed the line into the latter yet.
Speaking of stupid… “Warning,” the shuttle system started up, yellow lights flashing at the base of the console. “Unusual weather patterns detected Condition: severe. Recommended course of action: evacuate.”
“Oh, come on,” Saitama growled, giving the scanner a final angry slap before looking out the main window to see what the fuss was. “I just got here, it can’t be that bad--”
The words choked in his throat. Red-brown earth surged up in front of him, crackling with something that looked like lightning, but was green and made the radiation readings on the console spike dangerously. He blinked. “A dirt tornado,” he said, almost thoughtfully.
Well, he’d never seen one of those before.
The throttle was in his hands before he could think much more about the newness of it all. He pulled upwards, the abrupt movement jerking the shuttle ninety degrees, its nose pointing straight upward. “Damn scanner wasting my time,” he grumbled, pushing on the ignition hard until the shuttle screeched in protest, reluctantly accelerating to top speed.
“ Status update: critical. Dangerous proximity to-- ”
That was as far as the computer got before Saitama reached over and punched its panel, muting it.
He jerked the throttle and angled it straight again once he felt he’d gotten out of danger’s way. Or at least his definition of it. The computer was too conservative, and he’d have missed out on his best finds if he let it dictate everything that he did.
“Storms don’t last forever,” he said, flicking the switch for auto-pilot. He kicked his feet up onto the panel, reaching to brush the dirt off his boots, watching as the motes scattered and disappeared into the vents in the floor.
It was a dirty, lonely planet, but the scanner had never gotten it wrong before. The computer told him to leave, but something in the back of his mind was telling him to stay. In his experience, machines had nothing on human intuition.
Not to mention, the tornado itself was intriguing. He was tempted to gun for it, to see if his ship could withstand whatever it was made of. It was exactly the daredevil stunt that usually sparked some heat in his veins. The distress signal was the only thing stopping him.
He couldn’t help whoever might be down there if he was dead, or didn’t have a ship.
He glanced out the display, leaning to look down as the rust-red tornado blew through, well below his vantage point up in the middle atmosphere. It usually wasn’t a great idea to hover so close to foreign planets, but he’d done it often enough to know he could get out of harm’s way if the planet ever decided to demonstrate some life.
But no life made itself known, for hours. Saitama got up a few times, padding around the shuttle and glancing down as the storm intensified, and then lessened, trying to see it from as many angles as his limited number of portholes would allow.
He shuffled back onto the small bridge as the storm lost its strength, reaching to straighten out the computer panel’s components before he sat down again. “Sorry about that,” he said to it, setting the chips back into place and plugging its small electrical components back into place.
It took a few long moments for the computer to reboot, and Saitama imagined it doing so spitefully. “ Reboot sequence: complete. Memory recovery… … … complete. ”
Saitama watched as its small display blinked back to life, showing a cursory scan of the planet below him, now sans the angry tornado in the middle. He turned to sit, grabbing at the throttle and pulling his chair forward, reaching to flip autopilot off.
“ Alert: one unread message. ”
Saitama paused, glancing back at the computer. “Uh, what is it?”
The computer took its sweet time, and Saitama didn’t know if it was the lack of human contact or what, but he could swear the thing had developed a mind of its own. “ A distress signal. ”
“Timestamp?”
“ 0345, galactic time. ”
It didn’t matter what the time was. Saitama grinned and turned back to the display, reaching over . All that mattered was that the time was different from the last signal.
It felt so good to be right.
“Let’s see if we can un-distress this unlucky guy,” he said, gunning the throttle forward, hurtling back towards the angry red planet below.
.o.
The tornado had done enough damage in the area Saitama had originally surveyed that he didn’t bother hanging around for long. If anyone was alive down there, they weren’t anymore.
He took it slow at the computer’s suggestion, but gunned the shuttle closer to the surface than was strictly recommended. “I won’t be able to see if anyone’s down here,” he groused when the ship’s proximity alert started going off. He pressed the throttle down, relishing in the drop his stomach made as the planet’s gravity took hold of the shuttle and held on tight despite its speed.
A few miles, and the scanner still gave him nothing. A few more, nothing still. He gritted his teeth and tried to resist the urge to push the computer to mutiny, but he was really starting to consider disabling it outright.
Until the scanner gave off a short blip, stopping him dead.
He pulled up on the throttle, the shuttle’s whirring engine shrieking in protest as it was pulled up short. The ship rattled ominously, but Saitama barely noticed. He was too busy grabbing his hazard hoodie, scanner in one hand while slamming the auto-pilot button with the other.
“Signal detected: unknown source. Caution recommended--”
“Yeah, yeah, got it mom,” he said, punching at the door release. The hatch opened with a pneumatic hiss and he wrinkled his nose; whatever had been in that tornado spelled awful.
Taking a big gulp of stink-free air, he stepped off the side of the hatch and dropped the several feet to the ground, landing with a dusty plop . He pulled the hoodie over his head, careful about not breathing in any of the dirt -- it had been laced with acid, after all. He held the scanner out, waiting a few painful moments for it to do something -- worried that it was acting up again, that he was wasting his time -- and it gave off a blip.
A few yards away.
Saitama walked in the direction the scanner indicated, slowing himself down after backtracking a few times as the scanner struggled to lock onto the weak signal. Finally, after what seemed like forever stomping through the dust, the scanner blinked an affirmative and flashed the screen asking for confirmation.
But there was no one there.
Saitama looked up from the scanner and squinted, wondering if the person might be very small. No… all he was looking at was trash strewn about the planet’s surface like dirty laundry. It looked like ships had wrecked in earlier storms, possibly piloted by less-cautious computers.
He frowned, and shook the scanner, but the confirmation request persisted. He started kicking around in the dirt, trying to unsurface what he hoped would be a living person and not a dead body -- and then, an arm?
He reached down and pulled the arm out of the dirt, and found it attached to a body. And the body had a head and another arm, and apparently at least one leg. But it wasn’t a person; it was a robot, made of metal. Badly-rusted metal, at that.
It was some kind of android, its human-like features uncanny in how real they looked. Saitama placed the scanner down and dug his hands into the dirt, scooping the body out of the dusty sand. “Where’s your other leg?” he asked it, getting up and kicking around the dirt some more until he surfaced a limb that looked like it might be a match.
Was this his missing person? He knew some androids were programmed to give off automatic distress signals, especially if they were accompanying humans. He gave the robot a quick once-over glance, unable to find any indicator of ownership.
No apparent owner, left alone out here on his forsaken planet. An idea went off in his head, and it smelled like money.
Saitama picked up the bulk of the robot, startling as its one leg fell off and dropped back into the dirt with a heavy thud, kicking up dust as it did. “What the hell are you doing out here?” he asked it as he reached to pick up the limb, scanning the ground and finding a few more scraps of metal that very well may have been part of the bot as well. It seemed eager to fall apart on him.
Once he was satisfied he’d picked up most of it, he dragged it and its pieces back to the shuttle, placing them on the loading deck the computer helpfully supplied before climbing aboard himself and dragging the hatch closed. He wrinkled his nose and brushed himself off, trying to get the dust off of him as he watched another storm kick up in the distance, dragging the red earth up into an angry cyclone.
“Don’t want to deal with that again,” he said to the robot parts as he hauled them inside, laying them carefully on the deck table before hopping into the driver’s seat. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, flipping the switches and twisting the dials; practiced movements, second-nature after hundreds of takeoffs, dozens of departures.
The red and blue planet fell away, one robot poorer, and Saitama pointed his shuttle towards civilization for the first time in a long time. He had to sell this thing, after all, and his scanner was still acting up. He sighed and set his sites for Satellite Z. “Better now than later,” he murmured, gunning the thrusters and letting lightspeed take him home.
.o.
“Sonuva--”
Saitama sucked at his knuckle, smarting after getting it stuck between the robot’s joints.
“Suggestion: Leave repairs for a professional.”
“Shut up,” Saitama snapped, shaking his hand to get it to stop hurting. The robot was more difficult to put back together than he had anticipated. “I’m not paying a mechanic to do this,” he said, picking his screwdriver back up. “I’ll figure it out.”
The robot’s parts were more delicate than he was used to seeing -- most bots were mass-produced, hastily put together with plug-and-play parts that were easy to replace and repair. He had a small assortment of the most commonly-lost parts under his bed, but none of those were going to help this sorry guy.
He almost gave up in frustration a few times, but the thought of how much money the robot would make him in good condition was enough to keep his mind on task. It was tedious work, but he finally managed to solder circuits back together and un-dent joints enough so they could be reconnected.
“There,” he said, reviewing his handiwork. The robot was laid out on his workbench, limbs detached but in their proper places, extended from its torso like an anatomy diagram. Its face was still cracked but the circuitry beneath was intact, somehow. Cosmetic damage was something he didn’t trust himself to not screw up, and part of this android’s appeal had to be how handsome his face was.
“Now let’s give you some juice,” he said. He bent down and unspooled a cable from the wall, extending it and pulling it out over the workbench. He had found what looked like a power plug on the robot’s back, luckily matching a cable input he had ready on he shuttle. At worst, it didn’t work and he’d have to wait until he arrived at the space station to wake the robot up. At best, it worked and he could see what it was capable of before setting a price for it.
“Power: connected. Current charge: 0%.”
Saitama nodded and hummed a confirmation, feeling abruptly drained. He turned towards the washroom and flipped the faucet on hot, sticking his hands under the water to scrub off the oil and dust.
He caught a look at himself in the mirror, covered in dust that had grimed over in the hours since they’d left the angry planet. He sighed and resigned himself to showering before calling it a day.
Cleaned up and in pajamas, he looked out from the washroom and assessed his little shuttle home. The robot was sitting there on the workbench, the computer beeping in minute-intervals as it focused on charging it up. It was silent otherwise as he bent down to undo his sleeping mat, pushed into the corner opposite the cockpit, overlooking one of the hatch windows and into the vastness of space.
He collapsed onto it, pulling a blanket out of the wall compartment and sighing into the soft material. Current charge: 0%. He could relate, he thought as he closed his eyes, stars winking from the window as the shuttle brought him closer and closer to the world.
.o.
The computer’s voice was creepy when it was issuing an alarm.
“Intruder alert!” it screeched, guide lights along the floors and walls flashing an ominous red. “Intruder detected!”
Saitama sat up and rubbed his eyes, looking around as his vision cleared. He didn’t see anyone. “Where?” he asked the computer blearily.
“Proximity: immediate--”
Saitama’s head jerked up. “We’ve been boarded?” he asked, alarm propelling him out of bed and onto his feet. “Where in the ship?” he asked, reaching for his hazmat hoodie to pull over his pajamas.
The computer shrieked over the alarms. “Location: main cabin.”
Main cabin? “What--” he started to ask, spinning around with his fists up, searching for whoever it was. “Who’s there?” he demanded of his apparently-invisible guest.
Nothing, just alarms going off. Saitama steadied his breathing and started to pace on the perimeter of the ship, hands out and searching. He’d never run into invisible aliens before, but he supposed it was possible. His pulse quickened at the thought, a thrill searing his veins every time he reached into a corner and hoped to brush against something unseeable.
But there was nothing. Minutes passed and he failed to find anything, and the temperamental scanner from the day before came to mind. His hopes started to deflate.
“Manual override: false alarm,” he told the computer, pressing against the override button on the console. “Guess I ought to spend some money to get you looked at too,” he grumbled, pulling his hoodie off and grunting when it got caught on his pajama top, fighting to get it off without tearing any buttons.
“Manual override: denied,” the computer said; Saitama poked his head out of the hoodie’s head-hole, glaring at the screen. “Presence detected,” it repeated, alarms stubbornly blaring.
Saitama stared at the screen, taking another hard look as he wriggled his shoulders back into the hoodie. There was a presence -- indicated by a small red dot, blinking faintly but persistently.
He looked left and right, spinning around again but still, there was no one here. He scrutinized the walls, the floor, and then-
The workbench. The robot.
“Oh!” he shouted, startling himself with the realization. He ran to the side of the bench, reaching to turn the android on now that it was probably recharged -- it would be an easy thing to turn off its presence indicator, probably how it was able to remotely give off a distress signal--
But the robot was staring at him, already on.
Saitama stopped short, pinned in place by its yellow glare. “Uh,” he said. “Operator designation?” he tried, wondering if is vocal processes would work long enough for him to identify it.
The robot’s eyebrows knitted together, sharpening its glare. It opened his mouth as if to speak, but all that came out was garbled static. It snapped its mouth shut, averting its eyes as though embarrassed.
Saitama watched this all, distantly aware that this wasn’t how an android usually acted. Another word started floating through his head - a word that changed this whole situation drastically: cyborg.
Not a robot.
The realization sent Saitama reeling and the alarms weren’t helping. “Manual override: presence accepted,” he said to the computer, waving at the console to get it to stop. “The intruder is friendly, it’s fine,” he said shakily, hoping he wasn’t telling a lie.
Now that he could think straight, Saitama reached to help the cyborg sit up. It was still just staring at him, apparently unable to speak. “Geez, I didn’t realize you were--not--you’re not a robot, are you?”
The cyborg continued to glare.
“Okay--uh, nod if you’re not a robot,” he said, starting to wonder if it understood galactic common.
The cyborg nodded obediently.
“Your--uh--voice box thing, is it broken?” he asked.
Another nod.
“Okay, alright,” Saitama said, taking a deep breath. He felt better with next steps, action items. “Do you want me to fix it?”
The cyborg stared for a few long seconds this time, before finally giving a curt nod.
“It’s the least I can do after making you sleep on a hard table all night, geez,” he said, pushing off the workbench to get some tools. He tried to ignore the way his knees shook; guilt for something he hadn’t even done was gnawing at him, the thought that he would have sold off something alive tugging at the back of his mind. “You must have recharged enough to give off the signal again,” he muttered mostly to himself, for once grateful for the computer and its nagging.
“Do you think it’s just a shorted wire?” he asked as he set the tools up on the bench next to where the cyborg was now sitting. It stared at him again but didn’t move to nod. “You can just, um, blink if you don’t know,” he offered.
The cyborg blinked, golden irises ringed in inky black sclera. Inverted for some reason, making his stare unnervingly intense.
“I’d guess, based on the static you spat out a minute ago,” Saitama said, reaching for a pry to undo the paneling at the side of the cyborg’s throat. That’s how he figured the vocal cords weren’t organic, either; he didn’t know how much of this cyborg was still anatomically human, but it didn’t seem like much flesh remained.
He wasn’t a doctor, so he certainly didn’t mind. He was much better with metal than he was with people.
“Feel free to jerk away if this hurts,” he said as he undid the paneling, revealing sparking wired beneath the thick sheet of metal at the core of the cyborg’s neck. “Oh, easy,” he said, reaching a thin hook of aluminum in to untangle the cords, feeling a sting of electricity jump to his fingers and up towards his elbow. “Ow,” he groused, but managed to keep his hand steady until the job was done.
“There!” he said, replacing the panel and pulling back to see the cyborg looking straight at the wall, face screwed up in obvious discomfort. “Hey, I said to jerk away if I hurt you,” he said, leaning in close. “Can you talk now?”
The cyborg nodded a few times, but didn’t say anything for a few long moments. Then, finally, a hoarse, “Yes.”
Saitama blinked, surprised by the sound of his voice. He was so pretty-looking, the deep voice almost didn’t suit him. “Alright, now we’re talking,” he said, “Or, you are at least.” The cyborg was still staring at him, now looking confused. “Anyway, what’s your name?”
“Genos,” the cyborg supplied automatically, voice stiff even as the static cleared with every passing syllable. “Genos, of SA-A.”
“The prime space station?” Saitama asked. It was now his turn to glare, confused. “That’s a dozen quadrants over, dude. What are you doing all the way over here?”
“Seeking help,” Genos said simply. “You saved me, and I witnessed your ability as a pilot. Your assistance would be greatly appreciated, if you have the time to spare. And,” he added, pointedly. “You would be rewarded for your efforts.”
Saitama perked up at that. Helping people, and getting paid for it? “You’ve got my attention,” he said, tilting his head as he reached to start putting his tools away. “But uh, we should probably get you fixed up,” he said, interrupting Genos before he could start on with the sales pitch again. “We’re not far from SA-Z, where we could get you to a doctor who could help you. I’m good with bots, less so with cyborgs.”
Genos shook his head vigorously. “No, there is no time. I have somewhere I have to be,” he said, shifting on the workbench restlessly, though it was apparent he wasn’t going to be moving anywhere soon.
“Easy there,” Saitama said, nodding at the power cable he still had attached. “You’re all busted up from surviving the storm down there. And don’t pull my cable out of the wall,” he warned. “Where you gotta be so bad that you have to skip repairs?” he asked, turning his back on Genos to pad over to the computer, checking that autopilot was still on.
Genos made a low growling sound. “I just said, SA-A.”
Saitama snorted, and pressed confirm on the coordinates for SA-Z. “Sorry, kid,” he said, shaking his head. “No amount of money would convince me to get even three quadrants close to SA-A,” he said, turning around to face Genos again, who was now earnestly attempting to get up from the bench. “Hey, hey. You’re gonna undo all the work I did.”
“I appreciate your help,” Genos said gruffly, struggling as Saitama pressed him to the bench. “But you must be a criminal or, worse, a bandit if you’re hiding this far out,” he said, glaring at him from under dirty-blonde bangs.
“What, me? Nah, I’m just a guy out here scavenging for fun. You’ve got it all wrong,” Saitama said, shaking his head.
“Do I? Who are you?” Genos demanded, going still on the bench. “Why did you save me, if not to sell me for parts?”
That something that had been nagging at the back of Saitama’s mind flared up, prompting him to speak without thinking. “I’m Saitama, and yeah maybe I was going to sell you but I’m obviously not going to now!” he said, some anger in his voice at the accusation.
He realized it was a mistake the moment he saw Genos’ reaction. The glare was gone, replaced by a wide-eyed look. Shit, he thought.
“Saitama? As in, Saitama the Hero?”
Shit, shit, shit.