Saitama stared dully at the white flag the subterraneans left behind in their hasty retreat. 'Sorry!' The message read, written on the flag.

Saitama was disappointed. His dream left his heart pumping and adrenaline coursing through his veins, but in reality the Subterraneans were just a lame bunch of weaklings. His dream had given what he had lacked for years - a real fight: one where the enemies didn't just tickle him. In his dream, the Subterraneans had actually drawn blood. Blood. Something Saitama hadn't seen on him since he had gone bald. But reality, as always, was a giant let-down. He sighed.

However, Saitama, having nothing else to do at the moment, was slightly curious about where the Subterraneans had disappeared to. He walked over to the hole they had dug and peered into it. It seemed quite deep - he couldn't see the bottom of it. He briefly considered jumping in just to see what was going on in there.

"Well I've got nothing else to do, so why not," he thought, forgetting that he only had pyjamas on. "Maybe that big subterranean guy's actually in there." Saitama hopped into the hole, half hoping for a good fight.

As he fell down the hole, he noticed that the air was gradually getting hotter and hotter to the point where a small sweat was beginning to break out across Saitama's face. But he didn't care, he had trained under the sweltering heat of summer without air conditioning after all.

As the air whizzed by, he began to be able to see the ground below. As it was nearing, it seemed as if his surroundings were bathed in a dim red light. At this point, Saitama had to acknowledge that it was indeed quite hot, the temperature had reached the point where it felt like he was inside a baking hot furnace. The heat of the air seemed to press against him like a vice, causing his thin pyjamas to stick to his skin somewhat uncomfortably. But he didn't notice - his mind was conditioned against the harshest of temperatures.

Saitama touched down on the ground, his landing displacing a large amount of dust. He had landed in a massive cavern, kilometres wide, with great glowing red lamps in regular intervals along the walls and hanging off large chains off the ceiling giving the whole cavern a reddish hue.

"This reminds me of a video game I played when I was younger..." Saitama thought absent-mindedly as he scanned the area.

What caught his attention, however, was the fact that despite the number of footprints he could see on the ground, there was no sign of any living being anywhere in the cavern. They seemed to have left in a hurry.

"Hmm… there's no one around… a bit disappointing..."

Suddenly, he heard a small cry echoing from a small cave entrance on one of the walls of the cavern.

"Is someone there?" Saitama shouted into the general direction of the cry.

There was a cry again, from the same location.

"Might as well check it out," he thought.

Saitama sprinted down down the tunnel with a super humanly fast pace. Who in their right mind would be here? Why did the voice sound so young?

When he emerged at the other end of the tunnel, he was greeted by an unexpected sight - a boy was chained against the wall - there were shackles around all his limbs, restricting his movement significantly. The boy lay on the floor, limited by his chains to an awkward sprawl. He was stick thin - Saitama could clearly see his bones, although there did seem to be a hint of muscle on him. His black hair had overgrown, covering his head in a black blanket. His skin was pale, unnaturally pale. It looked like this boy had been here for a large amount of time and was on his last legs. What worried Saitama was the boy's lack of sweat - he was bone dry where Saitama was drenched in sweat. The boy had run out of water to sweat. This sparked pity in Saitama's dulled soul. He felt compelled to help.

When the boy saw Saitama, his head slowly turned, revealing a glimmer of hope seeping into a sharp yet hollow youthful face. He feebly reached up with a trembling hand and said in a weak voice: "help me…"

Saitama sprinted to the boy and broke his chains as easily as snapping a twig. He cradled the boy in his arms, noting his pale, sunken face. He didn't have long to live. If Saitama hadn't arrived, the boy would be dead within the next few days.

"I'll get you out of here," he said, but the boy was already unconscious.

Saitama jogged out into the vast cavern he landed in, frowning. The boy in his arms lay limp and unmoving, chest rising and falling shallowly, but Saitama didn't really seem to notice. Instead he was preoccupied, gazing at a series of giant toeless footsteps imprinted in the ground of the cavern. What could have caused those? Something very heavy must have passed by recently for Saitama hadn't seen these giant imprints when he landed initially, but somehow he hadn't felt the tremors which the being must have caused as it walked.

Whatever. Saitama had not the time nor the interest to examine this further. Without hesitation, he launched himself upwards into the sunlight.

The boy felt odd. Instead of the roasting heat he usually felt, he was feeling… Cool? In comfort? Instead of the hardness of the shackles he always wore, he felt an unnerving absence. The sweltering heat he was used to feeling was gone, he hadn't felt like in what seemed like forever.

"Hey...hey…" he heard a voice say.

Still half asleep, the boy drawled, "Whaaat? Come to leach my power again, you stupid moles?"

"What?"

Accompanying the surprised exclamation was a faint aroma of what smelled like lobster. Lobster! The boy's eyes shot open. His hungry eyes immediately fixed on the bowl Saitama held.

"Gimme!" he said and snatched the bowl from Saitama's hands.

The bald hero stared at his hands in shock. He hadn't seen anyone be able to snatch something from his hands before, but then again, he didn't hang around people often.

His gaze returned to the boy. He was downing the bowl of lobster soup like he hadn't had a meal in a year, which was probably not far from the truth considering how skinny he was.

When the boy had finished demolishing the soup (which was not a small quantity), he seemed reinvigorated. His skin had already started turning into a more natural tone, his eyes had a new spark of life that he was lacking before. The boy was making an amazingly quick recovery considering he had been in a cave for whoever knows how long. The boy cast around at his surroundings. He noticed that he was in a tiny apartment, it was quite cramped, but it was infinitely better than the cave. A strange bald man was sitting next to him on a swivel chair, observing his actions with a semi-bored face. The shackles and chains he usually wore lying in a heap on the floor nearby.

"Who are you? Where am I?" he enquired, looking around. His vision locked onto Saitama's head. "Why are you bald?"

Saitama groaned inwardly. Why does everyone ask him why he was bald? It's so annoying! What's so strange about his baldness?

"I'm Saitama, you're in my apartment, lay off my baldness!"

"Saitama… huh. Never heard of you. Your apartment's tiny. You're strong though, you broke my chains like it was nothing. You seem like a good guy as well, your soup was delicious!" the boy said eagerly, smiling as he rapidly spoke.

Saitama felt bombarded by this boy's words.

"Okay," he replied simply. He wore his trademark blank face. Suddenly, it turned into one of confusion as he realised he didn't even know the boy's name. "What's your name?"

"I'm Holocho," he responded uncertainly, as if he had trouble remembering. "You're gonna ask me what I was doing in that cave right?"

Saitama nodded slowly.

"Can you give me a short answer-"

"Well it's quite a story. When I was small, I was often bullied by other kids because of my height. I was quite short then, you see. One day, a bully pushed me too far. Literally. He pushed me into a river. I didn't know how to swim! When I managed to escape the river, I vowed to take revenge. People underestimate me due to my size, but I'll show them that size isn't everything!"

Saitama looking strained, tried unsuccessfully to break into Holocho's monologue of sorts.

"So I trained day and night for a whole year. I trained and trained. I know this sounds like me being obsessive, but trust me, if you've been bullied for years, you would do the same. So after the year of training, I was still being bullied during that year by the way, and my bullies are pretty strong, I gathered up the courage to stand up to the bullies and beat them up. I beat them up so badly they had to go to the hospital! After that I became feared by all the other bullies in my town and was never bullied again! But one day, when I was walking home from school through the woods, a bunch of strange moles came up to me and said-"

"KEEP YOUR STORIES TO 20 WORDS OR LESS, DAMMIT!" Saitama yelled. This kid was definitely too talkative! He looked only around 12 or 13 but damn, he had a lot to say. How could he have recovered so much from a simple lobster soup? Taking a look at him now, he was almost a completely different person from who he was before. His posture was better, he was livelier, overall, he seemed to undergo days of recovery in merely five minutes.

"Woah! Sorry!" Holocho exclaimed. "If I had known-"

"Just tell me a short version." Saitama said, irritated.

"I... was bullied, trained myself to beat my bullies up, got tricked by moles and was trapped in the cave," Holocho said concisely. "Precisely 20 words!"

"Okay," Saitama said, satisfied. Then he noticed something odd about the boy's little story. "How did you get tricked by moles? Aren't they the small, fuzzy creatures that dig holes?"

Holocho winced slightly. "I was as surprised as you when they started talking. But they gave me some really good chocolates But after I ate a few, I fell asleep and ended up inside that cave you found me in."

Saitama stared at Holocho blankly. "They talked? Are you sure you weren't hallucinating?"

"Hey! I-"

Saitama raised his hand to stop him from speaking. He had something more important to deal with.

A dull whine permeated the air. His ultimate enemy, the mosquito, had returned.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed reading. Constructive criticism would be welcome, this being my first fanfiction I've written. (I've gone over this chapter and edited it slightly in case anyone notices anything weird.)