Chapter Text
“Time for breakfast!”
He woke up to the hazy sun greeting his eyes, shining through the small opening in the curtains. It was a bother, but he welcomed it, opening the curtains to feel its warmth on his face. He yawned vocally as he crawled out of the covers—inviting as it was to go back in—and neatly made his bed before going straight into the bathroom, towel over his shoulder to wash up. Behind the door he could hear his older brother knock on the door and call his name to let him in. He locked the knob to keep him out, making him groan and leave to go downstairs and eat while he waited. Snickering, he went to the sink to brush his teeth.
Get up, brush your teeth, bathe, put on your uniform, eat breakfast, go to school. This was the routine that got him going the moment he woke up, especially when it came to competing for the bathroom before breakfast. He didn’t complain; it’s not like he minded the sudden activity first thing in the morning. It simply meant that he was home.
He came downstairs, a serene look on his young face. His mother and older brother (who had a pout as he ate) were at the table while his father was upstairs still asleep, recharging from his night shift. “Good morning,” he greeted them and sat down at the table, putting his hands together with a quiet “let’s eat” before digging in. It was simple today, as usual: rice, thick slices of rolled omelette with roasted seaweed inside, grilled fish, and miso soup, along with buttered toast and juice.
“It’s your last day today, dear,” chirped his mother, grinning broadly. He wondered how she managed to stay so cheerful in the morning, despite waking up so early to make breakfast. “After vacation, it’s straight to high school! Are you nervous?”
“I wouldn’t exactly say nervous. I’m certainly looking forward to it,” he answered before eating some of the omelette and fish. Delicious and still warm even with it was left out, a clear characteristic of his mother’s skillful hand. “More so if Brother shows me around the school.”
“Alright. Don’t expect me to let you cling to me during break, okay?” his brother replied in a muffled voice, putting his bowl of rice to his mouth for better access. “You have to make some new friends eventually. You have all of vacation to prepare. Not surprised you got in so easily, either. It’s the only one you chose, too.”
“Thank you, Brother.” He showed a smile, his eyes glinting at his compliance. A hand went to ruffle his choppy short hair, moving to give a couple of heavy pats on his shoulder.
“As expected of my little bro to be so smart, eh? No doubt you’re gonna go far,” his brother praised as he picked out more food from the plates and took a gulp from his miso soup. “You’ve always been getting high marks! I got a good feeling! Right, Mom?”
“Exactly right! Oh, I do hope you make new friends. Maybe a girlfriend, if you’re lucky!”
“Brother…Mother, please,” he protested. The praise filled his ego, but he started to feel a warm blush inch from his ears to his face as he tried to hide it by bowing his head. That didn’t stop the smile that stayed on his face, or the laugh that broke through his lips. Embarrassing as it was, he wanted to cherish this fuzzy feeling for as long as possible, even if it was for himself.
He was happy. It may not have been much to most people, but that didn’t matter. This was all he needed. He was home, home with his family. And later, he had good friends to meet at school. They were all going to different high schools after vacation was over, and a couple were going to the same school as him, so he made sure that they would keep in touch no matter what. What more could one ask for?
Finishing his last bite of rice, “Thank you for the food,” he got up to put his dishes in the sink while his brother went back upstairs to shower. He put on his school bag and walked to the hallway to go to the front door, calling out to his brother, “I’m going ahead! I’ll meet you at the—”
His sight fizzled out for a moment in static, along with a faint whirring sound, then it returned to normal. He scratched the back of his head in confusion when he heard clicking come from his raised arm, and saw it glitch into some sort of cybernetic prosthetic, then back to his own skin. “What the?” he murmured, quickly putting his arm down to stare at the palm of his hand, only to see nothing wrong. “Hm.”
“Son? Is something the matter?” he heard his mother in the other side of the hallway, noticing he hadn’t left yet. “Did you forget your lunch?”
He took fleeting glances at his hand and his mother before shaking his head. “No, I have it, Mother,” he said, though he wasn’t entirely sure. Shrugging, he continued down the hall to the entryway where they kept the shoes, leaving what he saw as a discussion with his father after school. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Y—Yes, Mother.” He looked back at her. He could have sworn the hallway had glitched into a scorching mess and reverted back in an instant. He snapped his head back forward and blinked to focus his vision, and swallowing, he said, “Uh…can you tell Brother I’ll be going ahead to the statio—”
A resounding boom knocked him forward as he sat at the entryway to put on his shoes. Blood-curdling screams pierced through his ears, and crashing noises soon followed. He wasn’t sure whose voice that was; all he knew was there was one that barely sounded human. Once he regained his senses, he found himself trapped under a tent of concrete and split pieces of wood, and his foot was caught between two slabs. He hurriedly twisted his body and pulled himself out by his leg with a pained cry, already sure he had some broken bones.
He heard the robotic snarling from behind him, separated by that crude divide of rubble, finding a small hole to risk peeking through. A bulky figure was what he saw, dimly lit with flames and black smoke that engulfed his former home. Other than that, the rest of his family was nowhere to be seen. Just scorched masses on the floor that he intentionally overlooked. And when the figure turned its head, he fell back and cushioned himself with his hands, one shooting up to shut his mouth and nose to keep it from hearing him breathe.
After what seemed like an eternity, the figure let out one more blast of its laser beams at the debris before shooting off the ground, leaving his house in a heaping pile of flaming debris.
Looking around, he located a small opening of white light and started to crawl, trying to ignore the rumbling of his destroyed home, a warning that it was going to cave in at any second. He shoved the smaller pieces away first and could hear his huffs become forced and more frequent, the air thinning in the pocket of shelter. So he got up and began to push from his feet, and felt the splintered wood scrape and cut at his arms through his uniform, so he gnawed at his lower lip to distract from the pain, hard enough to almost draw blood. “Come…on!”
The wreckage burst out from the other side, which made him fall through the hole and collide with the ground before he could get himself out. When the concrete and wood started to shake, he leaped out onto the sidewalk and the rest of the house gave away and collapsed in a plume of smoke, the fire quickly spreading on whatever it could grab.
“Mother, Father!” he shouted at the pile of gathering ashes and dust, “Brother?! Anyone! Please, answer me!” and what answered was the crippling silence and the crackling of burning debris beneath the cracks. “No…” He turned around to witness the rest of the destruction, the sinking feeling in his stomach setting in and pulling his heart down with it. “No…!” he breathed. It was completely covered in a blanket of smoldering heat and fire, bright enough to reflect in his eyes that were full of tears. He stared down at his dirtied hands, cut up and smeared with his blood. Luckily, the pain hadn’t set in quite yet.
WARNING: STRESS LEVELS RISING. INTERRUPTION OF SLEEP CYCLE IMMINENT.
High-pitched static invaded his hearing, and for a second, his vision glitched to show his flesh had become a mesh of metal and steel cables. He stumbled back onto the street, terrified, gasping noisily as he fell onto his back and a sharp sting shot up his spine. He put his hands up in front of his face, his vision continuing to glitch, then a veil of pixelated yellow surrounded it. “What—what is this?” he choked, rubbing his eyes with his tattered uniform in a feeble attempt to remove it. The veil loaded a sort of interface, which started running a series of diagnostics.
INTERNAL TEMPERATURES EXCEEDING TOLERATED LIMITS.
Lines of large text appeared in the form of warning signs, blinking in a corner of the interface. Blocks of text scrolled down from top to bottom in a mass of letters and numbers, and boxes containing his vitals panned up on the left.
ACTIVATING COOLING SYSTEMS. OPENING VENTILATION PORTS 1-4.
He closed his eyes, hard and tight, shaking his head. The letters and numbers still remained behind his eyelids. “Get out…get out!” he whimpered through his teeth. He curled into a ball to tightly hug his knees, then let out a startled yelp when he realized his skin was no longer there, replaced by metal panels. “Please, get out!”
OPENING VENTILATION PORTS 5-8. INITIATING RELEASE SEQUENCE.
The loud spinning of fans and metallic clicking replaced the silence, following a succession of screaming hisses of steam that sounded like a line of tea kettles boiling all at once. He put his hands to his ears, finding nothing but padded fingers barely make perceivable contact with his face, and the release of steam became louder. He was so sure he had them there. They were there, he saw them right in front of his eyes. But he could barely feel any heat radiating from his fingertips. Or of anything, for that matter.
SLEEP CYCLE INTERRUPTED. SCANNING FOR SIGNS OF LIFE.
“My hands…” He stared at them again in horror. “I can’t—” A shaking hand went to squeeze the other, and a dull pressure was on his fingers, as if they had gone numb. No heat, no supple skin, only metal and silicone and rubber to help him grip, not feel. He was void of any tactility. His breathing became heavy and erratic—the single organic function he had left, save for his brain—and he started to bite the inside of his trembling lip again. Even that felt like it wasn’t his own. No part of him felt like it was his own, as if he was put in someone else’s body. “My hands! I can’t—I can’t feel my—”
LIFEFORM DETECTED.
“What? No, that’s impossible!” he argued with the interface, agitated. Everything was overwhelming him, now, as his person rattled, right down to his torso of more metal panels, tubing, and his thrumming core. The sounds and sights were too much to bear, especially of himself. And he couldn’t feel any of it. All he could focus on was the infernal humming that didn’t seem to let up. Like a bug constantly buzzing in your ear, unable to see where it is. “You’re wrong!”
LIFEFORM IS NON-HOSTILE. ACTIVATING PRIMARY DEFENSE: MELEE MODE
“What defense?! What lifeforms?! No one is here but me! Everyone is de—”
GENOS.
He winced at the thundering voice. In his heightened panic, he made fleeting glances in all directions and scooted backwards until he bumped into a piece of concrete and made a clunking sound against the asphalt. “W-who’s there?!” he stammered, “Who are you?!”
GENOS, WAKE UP.
“No…no, it’s not me!” He jumped up to his feet, still trying to locate the source of the voice. “That’s not me!”
IT’S ME, GENOS. IT’S SAITAMA. WAKE UP.
“Whoever that is, that isn’t me!” he yelled. He was getting angry. Who in the world was this “Genos” person? A strange name, he thought in his frantic state. And of all places, how could this person be here, when there wasn’t a single person alive here except for him?
SNAP OUT OF IT! YOU’RE DREAMING, WAKE UP!
“Go away! Leave me alone!”
GENOS, I’M BEGGING YOU, PLEASE! WAKE UP!
“I’M TELLING YOU, THAT’S NOT MY NAME!” Out of nowhere, his voice turned into a roar, bearing his teeth at the sky in hopes that the voice would cower away. To no avail; the voice was getting louder, more powerful each time he shrieked back at it.
GENOS!
“STOP! CALLING ME THAT!”
GENOS, WAKE UP!
“THAT! IS NOT—”