"Hey—don't call me baldy!"
With that, Saitama lunged at the next robot.
Half a minute later, every giant over ten meters tall lay in pieces. The remaining bots took one look, panicked, and turned tail before Saitama even considered a chase. He wasn't interested anyway.
Saitama cupped his hands toward the tank column. "Hey, who's in charge here?"
There were only a bit over twenty armored vehicles left—tanks and APCs combined. The rest were scattered wrecks. Saitama had just watched a twenty-meter mech hoist a tank and smash it into the pavement. Different leagues entirely.
"Sir!"
An APC door swung open and a man in his forties jogged over, gripping Saitama's hand. "Sir—hello! I'm Major Andrew Rogers, the… current senior officer of this unit."
"Current?" Saitama blinked.
"Yes. The nine officers outranking me on this mission… have all fallen." Rogers' eyes misted. "They were true soldiers—our example for the future."
"Right. Can we get to the point? I'm hungry." Saitama yawned.
Rogers' carefully prepared speech died on the spot. He forced a smile. "Then—if you're hungry, please come with me to Base Five. We were en route to deliver intel there."
"Okay." Saitama nodded, hopped into the APC, and headed for the so-called Base Five.
Once there, he asked why the world had ended up like this.
According to Rogers, ten years ago two groups of robots appeared on Earth. One side made its hostility to humanity obvious; the other seemed willing to coexist.
The hostile leader was Megatron. The other—Optimus Prime. At first, facing an existential threat, the U.S. government was grateful to Optimus' Autobots. Together they repelled Megatron.
But after Megatron was killed—or sealed—the government had second thoughts. With the common enemy gone, "the rabbit dies, the hound is cooked." Allies became liabilities.
What followed was predictable.
Rifts formed between the U.S. and Optimus. Skirmishes broke out. And whenever they were busy feuding, the Decepticons would pop up to cause more chaos. On and on it went—fracture and uneasy cooperation, again and again.
Maybe even the heavens got fed up. On the last operation, that flawed partnership finally collapsed for good. The Decepticons won. They seized the AllSpark—an artifact that can turn living beings into robots and also convert any machine into a Transformer.
Saitama was nodding off by this point. He summed it up in one line: "So, bottom line… where's the AllSpark now?"
"I don't know. I'm only mid-level. Intel on the Decepticon HQ is above my clearance." Rogers passed Saitama a third can of beef. Saitama sighed and ate it anyway. "Then how do I find it?"
"Perhaps go to Base One. You've seen it—Base Three here is basically an empty shell; over eighty percent of the people are civilians. It's more a shelter than a base. Base One is different—it's the current U.S. headquarters." Rogers looked almost reverent, as if Base One held something miraculous.
"Oh." Saitama rubbed his nose, then polished off the remaining cans in one breath. "Where's Base One?"
"Don't rush." Rogers managed a bitter smile. He spread a map on the desk and marked two dots—this base, and Base One, separated by two cities.
Saitama tilted his head. "Doesn't look far. If Base One is that strong, why not combine the two? Wouldn't defense be better?"
"Heh… ha… Saitama, it's not that simple. We're short on everything. Even canned food—those three you ate were the last beef cans. What's left is vegetables. Base One, though, eats fresh meat and greens. If we go there, we split their supplies. It's not scarcity that breaks people—it's inequality."
He wore a twisted smile, lamenting how even at the end of the world, human unfairness only stood out more starkly.
"I see." Saitama set the empty tins on the table. "Call it payment for saving you. Though if those were your last three beef cans, that's… a pretty hefty payout."
"Uh…" Rogers stared at Saitama's face and, for some reason, got a bad feeling. "Saitama—what are you going to do?"
Saitama smiled. "What heroes are supposed to do, of course."
He strode out—aiming not for Base One, but for the city they'd driven through earlier.
Food was precious. Saitama knew all too well the pain of wanting meat but not being able to afford it. If this world's people were to survive, then first—
He would reclaim a city for humanity.
(End of Chapter)
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