"It's that older guy from the lab!" Alice didn't share Genos's intense focus at all. Instead, she offered a warm, cheerful greeting to the man she had run into a few times before.
"Older guy..."
The bald man felt that after fighting so many monsters, none of them had dealt as much damage as this girl calling him an older guy.
"My name is Saitama... Just call me Saitama..."
"Uncle Saitama!"
"Don't go adding 'Uncle' to it! If you absolutely have to use a suffix, at least go with 'Big Brother' or something!"
Saitama desperately wanted to make it clear that he wasn't old enough to be called an uncle yet, but seeing Alice's confused, innocent face, he ultimately gave up on arguing with a child.
"Forget it... More importantly, that woman with the pointy hat..."
"That's Auntie Herta."
"Auntie, huh... Haha, well, never mind then." Saitama instantly found being called an uncle by Alice a lot easier to swallow.
At the very least, that Herta looked only about eighteen. Since he was in the same generation as her as an uncle, didn't that technically make him look ten years younger?
"Has that Auntie Herta mentioned anything about me lately? The last time I went looking for her on my way back from grocery shopping, I found out she wasn't in the lab. In fact, I haven't seen her in about two months..." Saitama asked.
He was still counting on his only connection in the scientist community to help him figure out his hair situation, but now the woman was nowhere to be found.
"Auntie Herta has a lot of important things to take care of, so she left this place," Alice explained.
Herta had indeed been a bit busy lately. There was a lot on her plate over in the Marvel universe, and it was already quite a feat for her to squeeze out time to occasionally drop by the One Punch Man world.
Factoring in the different flow of time between the two universes, there was no telling when she would visit next.
Her last visit had merely been to help adjust Alice's body and boost her stats a bit.
Elevating Alice's power to an unimaginable level would actually be quite simple, but the problem was whether that kind of Alice would still be Alice.
In the end, everyone came to the conclusion that they should ditch any upgrades that made her feel less like herself.
Besides, while the One Punch Man world was undeniably dangerous, as long as she possessed a decent amount of strength, Alice wouldn't need to worry about most threats anyway.
After all, wasn't the Caped Baldy around?
Of course, this didn't mean Alice's condition would just be left ignored.
Herta had mentioned that the next time she came around, she would bring Alice more gear to increase her combat effectiveness and further optimize her stats.
"Human... Male... Roughly twenty-five years old." In stark contrast to the harmonious atmosphere between the other two, Genos was rapidly analyzing how the man before him had managed to quietly approach his side without being noticed. "The only suspicious element... Is it really that completely hairless scalp?"
"What are you saying right out of the gate?! Calling someone bald just like that?!"
The bald man, whose face had been perfectly calm just a moment ago, twitched his mouth and shouted in sheer disbelief.
"Did I say that out loud? My apologies. It is because I am perplexed by your sudden appearance right beside me," Genos explained, his face entirely devoid of expression.
"You look completely like an ordinary citizen. If not for the overly glaring eccentricity of your hair—or lack thereof—I wouldn't even be able to tell you apart from the general public."
"Does being bald mean someone isn't an ordinary citizen?! Apologize to the general public right now!"
"But, you only look about twenty-five?"
"Yeah! I went bald at a young age! Is there a problem with that?! Who asked you anyway?!" Highly sensitive about the absolute state of his bare head, Saitama was starting to lose his cool after having it brought up repeatedly.
Genos felt that Saitama had a point, and since he had indeed been rude first, he nodded along with Saitama's words. "Fair enough."
Saitama: ...What is this sudden sense of helplessness? Are cyborgs really this difficult to communicate with?
"So... what are you guys doing here anyway? I heard a massive explosion, so I came over," Saitama said, completely abandoning the topic of hair to pivot back to his initial question.
"Alice and I discovered the monster orchestrating the mosquito plague. We had actually located her, but due to my blunder during the battle, she managed to escape," Genos stated.
"A monster controlling mosquitoes?!"
Saitama froze for a second, his teeth immediately grinding together.
Come to think of it, that mosquito he had been chasing all this time was actually being controlled by someone? No wonder it had flown all the way here. Fortunately, it had been incinerated along with the rest by this cyborg.
Still, letting the monster who controlled those mosquitoes off the hook felt incredibly annoying. Might as well go handle it.
"Where is that monster?"
"In hiding." Genos looked down toward the streets below. "It is impossible for her to have vanished from our sight through the sky so quickly. The only possibility is that she took advantage of the chaos to hide within the city."
"In that case! We must find her!"
Alice's voice drew the attention of both men.
The young girl then adjusted her posture and adopted a stiff, dramatic tone, sounding as if she were reading straight from a script: "O warrior who has suddenly appeared, are you willing to aid the Hero and her companion to uncover the evil lurking within this city?"
Saitama: "Oh, that's a line from The Adventures of Paiguro."
Genos: "Are we going to involve the citizens here?!"
Their voices rang out almost simultaneously.
However, compared to Genos's worried tone and words, Alice and Saitama were clearly far more interested in what the other had just said.
"Wow! Uncle Saitama, you're a fellow fan of The Adventures of Paiguro!"
(T/N: I can only assume this is a fictional RPG…)
"I did live through that era after all... If anything, does a youngster like Alice actually play such an old game? It really brings back memories." Saitama smiled, but immediately felt something was off.
Why did his nostalgic sigh make him sound exactly like an older guy?!
"Though... it's not actually that old of a game... haha," he tried to salvage.
"That's not true! The Adventures of Paiguro is a monumental masterpiece! It was the first to transform RPGs from 2D to 3D for players. It completely deserves to be called an 'old masterpiece'!"
"Even though its sales weren't amazing compared to later titles, that was only because its ahead-of-its-time storyline was limited by the era!"
Alice rattled off the trivia as if it were the back of her hand. "If it were released today, it would definitely be recognized by way more people! Alice loves this game too!"
"Exactly!" Saitama instantly chimed in with agreement, entirely forgetting to argue against the 'old masterpiece' label. "And it wasn't just an issue with the era! Back then, the game actually had an insane amount of buzz! But for some reason, it was nothing but criticism, even though it was incredibly fun!"
Watching the two of them from the side, Genos couldn't help but feel that he was encountering a lot of weirdos today.
Well, maybe not a lot, but running into two oddballs back-to-back was still quite rare.
Was it really alright for them to have absolutely no sense of crisis in a situation like this?
--+--
T/N: If you want advance chapters, you can find it at [email protected]/AspenTL