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‘Not here either…’
Genos looked over the scattered bodies of aliens, their purple blood coating the walls like a strange graffiti. A small part of him was bothered by the sight, but he pushed it down and exited the empty spaceship, floating back to his own.
He had to find Saitama.
Word of Saitama's strength had spread throughout the galaxy after his fight with the Space King Boros. This had incited many new attacks from alien factions, all of them trying to see if they could best the man that had defeated Boros.
A few had even tried to convince him to join them.
All of them had been defeated or sent on their way.
Until, one day, Saitama disappeared.
They had been walking through the streets, on their way back from a particularly good sale. The sun was shining down, reflecting off his master’s head in the most perfect of ways. Off in the distance, Genos could hear children playing in a park. He had smiled then, forgetting for just a moment how fucked up their world was.
But when he turned to smile at Saitama, he was nowhere to be found.
He had just vanished, like he never existed to begin with.
The only trace of him that remained was one of his sandals, flipped over and forgotten on the patch of sidewalk Saitama had occupied the moment before.
Genos had frantically looked around for hours, panic driving him late into the night. He never stopped clutching the grocery bags the whole time. How had Saitama just disappeared? It didn't make sense. His natural senses were at such a high level, they sometimes exceeded even Genos's robotic ones. There was no way he could have been snuck up on without both men noticing. And beyond that, Saitama hadn't made a sound.
As the sun began to kiss the sky the next morning, Genos collapsed in the apparent end they had shared, grocery bags still clutched in his hands.
Genos tried to push the memory down as he looked over star charts. The next ship wasn't far off-he could probably reach it by tomorrow. He set the course on his small spaceship and set off, never looking back at the corpse of a spaceship he left behind.
He had been searching for Saitama for months now with no signs of the other man. While looking everywhere on earth he could think to find him, turning over every known crime organization, he had run across some aliens attacking a city, claiming they had kidnapped the strongest hero on Earth so now they were here to terrorize the people. Genos had beaten them, questioned them, and then dragged them along as guides to their ship. And, when they inevitably tried to betray him, he killed them. It bothered him, slightly, killing so many in pursuit of Saitama. It made him feel like he was becoming a monster, like the one that had killed his family. But he couldn't think about that. He had to turn his heart cold and focus on the one thing that mattered more to him than all other lives in the universe.
Finding Saitama.
He kept his eyes laser focused in front of him, barely remembering to blink. One hand held the steering mechanism forward at full speed. The other clutched a dirty sandal, worn to the shape of its owner.
‘I’ll find you before the stars do… That's a promise, Sensei.’
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Saitama looked at the flight deck of the alien ship. A million red and yellow lights flashed before his eyes, an alien voice yelling from a computer that was slowly dying. He had seen this before, on Boros’ ship, but this time there was a sinking dread in his stomach. This time he knew he wasn’t on earth, and wherever he was, how ever strong he was, he wasn’t going to be able to get home from here on his own.
The hero glanced out through the large windows behind the helm. A strange sun stared back at him, a few moons in the distance. Another galaxy lay before his eyes. With a frustrated sigh he tried desperately to remember how he had ended up there. He was put into some sort of stasis, that was certain… but for how long? And how had they managed to capture him? His memories were fuzzy at best. He remembered waking up, immediately attacking everything that came at him, until there was nothing else left. But before that was still cloudy. He had been walking, grocery shopping, with Genos…..
Oh, God Genos!
Was Genos alright?
Saitama felt his heartbeat quicker, the sinking feeling filling up his guts. He glanced around at the alien bodies strewn out into blobs of blood and flesh. He felt like he was going to be sick.
Idiot! You should have at least kept one of them alive! Nice one badly. You don’t deserve to go home.
Saitama gasped in for another breath, realizing with a rising fear that there probably wasn’t much good air left in the ship. Maybe a few more hours, maybe a day. He didn’t know he wasn’t a scientist. Genos would know...
If Genos were here what would he do?
Saitama tried to hold onto the happy thought of Genos beside him, that serious face, he heard a familiar voice in his head.
‘We must search for an escape pod Sensei’
Saitama smiled. Excellent idea Genos. It was almost like he was there with him.
The hallways of the ship were lit with a green glow, as Saitama made his way down passage after passage, looking for anything that resembled a hanger. Almost an hour into his search he took a seat and placed his head in both hands.
You don’t even know what you’re looking for you idiot!
Saitama wasn’t the type of man to cry, he hadn’t in years. Not since far before his training. Genos had made him feel close to crying on several cases, but that was from the intense sense of happiness that he felt surge through his empty shell. Now he was alone again, hundreds of thousands of miles from anyone. He would probably die here and no one would know. He leaned his head back against the metal hull of the ship and let a few silent tears roll out of the corners of his eyes. He thought of Genos smiling at him, Genos cooking dinner, Genos fighting beside him, Genos laughing… With the last bit of determination in his body Saitama swallowed back the lump in his throat and stood back up.
I’m not going to die after being kidnapped by a bunch of stupid aliens!
Anger seemed to replace the sadness now, and anger was a much more motivated friend. Instead of walking down the hallways Saitama started ripping apart the walls themselves. He punched through the ship, a reckless destructive force of power, until he actually managed to find himself on what looked to be some sort of docking bay.
He laughed out loud at his good fortune. The progress gave him renewed hope that maybe he wouldn’t die here. He glanced up at the ships, unsure of how to open them, knowing if he was able to open one driving it would be a completely new problem.
Hesitantly, he placed his hands onto the outside of the ship. A hissing noise erupted from the machine as lights began to turn on and gears shifted within it. Luckily, the glass above the cockpit slid back, beckoning him inside to a seat that looked meant for someone of human or at least mostly human anatomy. Saitama jumped into the seat and looked around him. He was overwhelmed by the dials on the console.
He shrugged after realizing his complete lack of ability to operate the machine.
“Here goes nothing…” He mumbled as he pressed the green glowing button in the center of the console.
The ship revved its engine and began an auto-pilot program, shooting him out of the hanger like a rocket and into the black abyss in front of him. It really was beautiful. The sky that covered the entire expanse of his vision through the glass roof of the small ship. He was dwarfed by the planets and moons that surrounded him. A sad sort of peace tugged at his heart. He still wasn’t any farther away from death, but at least this was beautiful. It almost didn’t seem real that he was even here. He remembered looking at the stars through his telescope as a child, when he still fostered dreams of becoming something extraordinary, before school, and society, and high expectations had beaten all the hope and ambition out of him.
He continued to float through the expanse without a clear direction, noticing with each hour that passed he was getting more and more tired. He leaned forwards towards the glass blowing on it gently to fog up just enough space to draw a few letters…
I <3 U
S&G
4ever
He laughed at the childishness of it. Reclining in his seat he let his eyes drift closed, praying that he would dream of something nice, not knowing when he would wake up.
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“SENSEI!”
“SAITAMA-SENSEI CAN YOU HEAR ME?!”
“PLEASE SAITAMA WAKE UP!”
Saitama heard a voice in the distance, his limbs felt heavy. Then there was the hiss of steam and the glass top of his little ship lifted up and back. Genos had halfway crawled into Saitama’s lap and was plastering his face with kisses, his cybernetic legs still dangling off the side of the ship. It took Saitama a second to realize that he wasn’t dreaming.
He grabbed Genos by his shoulders and held him close to his chest.
“Genos, oh god, Genos you’re real! How are you even here?”
Genos pulled back from him smiling the smile that Saitama had been missing for so long. The golden eyes stared into the deep brown ones, then shifted to the side looking at the glass of the ship with a slight smirk appearing on the beautiful face. The steam had re-fogged the glass momentarily to reveal Saitama’s doodles.
Genos laughed happily and pulled Saitama in for a deep kiss. Saitama closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. Genos smelled like valve oil and coolant and home.
Genos cautiously helped him out of the ship. It was then that Saitama realized he was in another ship’s hull. A ship that Genos could apparently fly pretty well by this point. It took Saitama a bit to register how amazing Genos was and how he had literally traveled through space and time to rescue him. Saitama felt like the luckiest man in the world. That’s when he noticed something familiar sitting on the ship’s console.
“Genos, is that my other sandal?”