Serious Saitama

Chapter 4

oOo

"Oi, baldy, where are we going?" The bat carrying punk demanded from behind, sounding slightly winded as I guided my three new students from Z City and into the wilderness. After the the school thug, cyborg, and way-too-tightly-clad ninja had shown up at nine in the morning, I'd told them I'd need to evaluate them if I was going to train them.

For calling me baldy, I promised myself I'd punch the bat kid first. Not too hard or anything, but hard enough to make him not use that nickname again.

We got to a giant canyon that looked pretty devoid of life, so I called a stop, frowning at the bat guy as he stopped to catch his breath. He was definitely going to be getting some specialized stamina training for panting for breath like that. Genos and the ninja kid looked fine, though Sonic's hair was a little matted with sweat. Maybe he'd need some stamina training too, but clearly not the way the school punk did.

"So you guys spread out. Whenever you're ready to attack me, do it all at once. I need to figure out your skill level," I offered, moving to stand in the centre of the canyon. My pinky finger explored the wax in my ear as I turned back to face them. "Take your time and come up with a plan. I don't want you coming at me one at a time. I want you to try to work together to take me out. And come at me like I'm those underground things from before. Show me your true power."

They talked for a moment, and all three nodded once as they seemed to come to a plan, before they spread out in a more or less circle around me. I couldn't call it a one hundred and twenty degree spread, but it probably would have taken a protractor or something to call it accurately.

"Attack at any time, guys," I asked, tapping one foot.

For three seconds, nobody moved. At three seconds and a tenth, that Metal Bat kid launched himself at me pretty hard, his bat over his shoulder for a swing which would connect when he got to me at four seconds. At three seconds and six tenths, Genos threw his arms back and used the blasters on his arms to burst himself forward, and he'd be arriving in about four tenths of a second.

At three seconds and nine tenths, Sonic darted at me and would be completing his slash when he got to me.

They'd come up with a three-pronged pincer attack. It was kinda impressive, if you couldn't process things at the speed I did in combat. They probably could have killed as many of the underground warriors as I did with teamwork like that.

Of course, I couldn't let them complete it.

I shifted slightly to the side and very lightly punched Metal Bat's arm up about an inch, which made his bat intercept Genos' downward swing as I stepped back and out of the way. With ninja boy closing in on my back, I stepped on the bat and the arm to further distract them as I pushed myself skyward, avoiding the ninja-to slice by Sonic which would have decapitated me if I was slow and weak enough.

I'll give Sonic this: While Metal Bat and Genos were still recovering from the failed assault, he used them both as a launch pad to suddenly change the direction of his momentum to follow me into the air. He almost got me a couple times in the hundreds of swings he directed my way in the next second or two, before I booted him back into the pile of my other two students, who'd just recovered.

The impact sent all three sprawling across the canyon floor, though before I'd even landed the cyborg was pressing heat into the ground and somehow making lightning which rippled back up his arms and made him float. Weird. Then the blond dude was suddenly as fast as Sonic just as my feet touched the ground, ripping the earth apart as he took a random direction charge at me, launching a lightning-laced kick that was so easy to dodge I bent forward.

Ninja dude was pretty damn opportunistic by being ready to decapitate me like that. I grabbed the lead hand on his double-handed swing and used that to take a step forward and hip throw him into the school punk guy, bowling them both over and over and way out of range of me as the pair tumbled across the canyon floor.

"BURN!"was the only warning I got as I turned to face Genos, who had what looked like hundreds of guns coming out of his robot arms as he stared me down. I had a quarter second to act, so I punched the ground and spread my fingers as I pulled it out, flinging huge chunks of rock into the air, before fire was everywhere.

So I jumped and rebounded off one of the suddenly-molten rocks I'd flung into the air, landing lightly behind Genos even as he exhaled after his attack. I shifted my foot to let him hear me enough to turn towards me and brace for what was coming before I booted him halfway across the canyon with a standing stomp into his ribs, which was apparently what Sonic was waiting for.

The speedy ninja dude tried to take my leg off at the knee almost as soon as I made contact with Genos' ribcage. As soon as I saw it coming I rotated my body while shifting my leg to keep it on course, and did a backflip towards my target which also shattered Sonic's ninja-to with my free foot. I hadn't even landed when Metal Bat was completing his jumping overhand attack, a double-handed swing aimed directly at my skull.

It kinda stung as I blocked the bat with my right forearm, which drove me hard into the canyon floor and threw up a bunch of chunks of rubble right when the first batch from before was just hitting the ground. I smiled at the shocked look on his face at me blocking the strike as easily as I had before I uppercut him hard enough that he'd probably hit one of the canyon walls. Yet despite that... His death-grip on his weapon never wavered.

He'd probably taken a lot of face hits before to keep his hand on his weapon. Or at least that's what I assume based on his looks. For a teenager he was remarkably ugly and beat up. Like he took a lot of shots to the face.

Ninja boy was after me again, and he wasn't slow. He was fast enough I kinda had to pay attention, but with his weapon shattered and only his tools available, it was just a case of catching and discarding his shuriken. When he started to retrieve them to use them once again, once I caught them I started to fling them out of orbit so they'd never trouble anyone, or me, again. After he'd started to slow down, I closed in and kneed him in the gut and sent Sonic tumbling across the canyon.

"BURN!" I'd heard that before, but this time some sort of core-thing in Genos had been pulled out he'd shoved it into his arm. The amount of fire was about the same, but the temperature of it was a LOT higher. I debated dodging the fire before simply deciding to deal with it the way I dealt with most of my problems these days.

I punched the fire, and the bow wave and sheer pressure of my strike dissipated the blast entirely. Seeing as Genos was still recovering from the blow based on the steam he was breathing as he listed to one side, I spin-kicked him into the canyon wall a little more lightly than I might have, normally. He still struck and stuck there for a moment, cracks spreading from his point of impact.

I didn't have much time to admire my handiwork, because Metal Bat was closing back on me. Damn he was slow and obvious: I'd have to work on that part going forward, because his blows had enough power that I might have had to pay attention to him if he were a little more subtle. Rather than tank the blow the way I had before, I slid down and under his swing before I kneed the bottom of the bat, sending it out of his reach before punching him in the face.

Like I said, I can't do much worse to his face than has already been done. Maybe surgery will fix his nose this time. God knows it hadn't the last.

Sonic caught the tumbling bat I'd knocked free from Metal Bat, and he closed on me with it with confidence even though I could see the way his swings wavered that he was unused to using the weapon beside his blade. Still he whipped the thing through the air around me with considerable skill as I bobbed and weaved, the club almost rolling over me at times as Sonic came close to hitting me. Thirty-four strikes in and the ninja had left me enough openings that I felt okay booting him across the canyon floor once again, separating him from Metal Bat's weapon in the process.

"Machine-Gun Blow!" Ah, there was Genos. I turned, and though I wasn't pressed to the limit of my speed by him, the cyborg was still pretty damned fast and powerful with his blows: I allowed him to push me across half the canyon, testing his stamina, before I realized that he'd keep going until he ran out of steam at this rate. He'd also put his core-thing back in his body, because it wasn't acting like a giant bicep anymore.

Between one punch and the next, I kneed him hard in the gut and aimed him towards Sonic, who'd barely recovered from our last round of exchanges. Both of the heroes went down and I paused as the earth shook, turning towards the source.

Damn, that Metal Bat kid looked pissed. He'd recovered his bat while I was playing with my other two students, and he looked half beat to shit. Still, the grin on his face with the blood dripping down his jaw might have been frightening if he was a threat to me.

"My true strength, Saitama-sensei!?" The pompodour punk demanded, wiping the blood from his face. I felt the increase in his strength as he momentarily screamed, his injuries from the fight seeming to disappear for a moment. "Fine! Here it is! Enjoy my Savage Tornado!"

With those words, Metal Bat began to spin like a top out of hell as a whirlwind encompassed both of us. I could have jumped free of the attack easily, but where would the fun be in that? Instead, I weathered the attack, deflecting each shot with precision even as the young man making the attack utterly exhausted himself in the all-out technique, finally slowing as he ran out of energy.

"Not bad," I commented, before booting him into the canyon wall. He stayed there when he got stuck in it.

Sonic and Genos struck both at once then, but I was getting hungry. I grabbed them both by the throat and smashed them into the same wall I planted Metal Bat, lashing out with a kick to shatter the wall of the canyon into a million pieces as I dropped the duo, catching my one immobilized student in the form of Metal Bat as I did so.

"Not bad, but I can clearly teach you all something," I stated, ignoring the looks on their faces as the sounds of thousands of tonnes of shattered canyon hit the wasteland in front of me. I jiggled Metal Bat a bit where he lay on my shoulder, earning a sputtered half-consciousness from him in the process. "Let's go get some udon. My treat. You guys did better than I expected."

I didn't bother to wait as I started to sprint back to Z-City. If we were in time, I could get them all to the half-price stand before the prices went back up. They'd done well enough I was willing to treat them to half-price udon, at least.

oOo

Author's Notes:

So yeah... The House of Evolution arc got cut. Aside from MAYBE Asura Kabuto, I don't see anyone from that place surviving the 'dream' sequence any more than the rest of the huge percentage of humanity which got cut down, so including it was never really on the cards.

Instead, you got Genos, Metal Bat, and Sonic versus Saitama, in a battle which takes the awesomeness of the original Genos vs Saitama spar to new heights.

Because sometimes I have to remind people I write god-damned awesome fight scenes.