"If we let private citizens get involved, it could lead to unnecessary risks." Genos took a deep breath, interrupting their conversation after all.
"Uncle Saitama is really strong, you know! Even Auntie Herta said he's a very interesting research subject!" Alice explained to Genos.
Yet, this failed to win any real attention from Genos.
After all, he had no idea who this Auntie Herta was, and his impression of Alice had always remained firmly rooted in her being a "junior."
To him, the standard of "really strong" coming from a young girl carried very little weight.
"I was actually planning on tracking down the mastermind myself anyway. It'll probably be faster if the three of us split up," Saitama said, completely unfazed by Genos's dismissive remarks.
People only truly care about things they lack or don't have.
Saitama was the exact same way.
Call him weak, look down on him—none of it bothered a guy with such a massive sense of self-awareness. But if you attacked him for being a hairless, prematurely bald caped baldy, then he'd get upset.
"...Fine."
Looking at the two of them—one completely naive, the other utterly lacking self-awareness—Genos gave up trying to reason with them.
"Since we're splitting up, let's divide into two groups. Mr. Saitama and I will move together, and Alice will operate on her own." Realizing he was the only dependable one here, he divided up their assignments.
Pairing up with Saitama wasn't because Genos doubted Alice's combat abilities, nor was he trying to teach her a lesson through a little tough love.
He simply believed that dragging along a dead weight would only tie Alice's hands, drastically increasing the unpredictability of the battlefield.
Instead of letting that happen, it was better if he looked after the bald man himself.
He knew this guy probably possessed some degree of strength, but that meager power would be far from enough against the monster.
Fortunately, that Mosquito Girl had both her legs broken by Alice during her escape. Otherwise, he wouldn't even have the confidence to keep this man safe.
Alice and Saitama had no objections to the arrangement. Alice figured that if she ran into Mosquito Girl, she could handle it directly, and if Genos ran into her instead, Saitama would be right there to protect him.
Even though all of Mosquito Girl's mosquitoes had been wiped out this time—meaning she shouldn't be able to evolve and brutally beat Genos—having a safety net was still a good thing.
Saitama wasn't thinking nearly as much. He was just realizing that after witnessing the scene earlier, he'd probably save some money on meat today.
After all, after seeing so many pitch-black, physically revolting images, anyone who could still stomach meat had to be superhuman.
He was certainly feeling a bit averse to it, or at least couldn't eat meat for the duration of a meal.
And so, the three of them split into two groups and began their search in different directions.
Things weren't going smoothly on Alice's end. She didn't possess any specialized scouting methods.
While she could try to hack into the local surveillance network, the embarrassing reality was that the cameras in Z-City had basically been left unmaintained. If they hadn't been, there wouldn't be so many criminal incidents or monsters nesting here in the first place.
She didn't find Mosquito Girl along the way, though she did casually defeat two Wolf-level monsters.
Having run almost all the way from the city center to the very edge of town, Alice found this tracking phase to be an absolute headache. She felt like her CPU was about to start smoking.
Before she could grow truly anxious, however, she spotted brilliant bursts of fire flashing in the distant sky. That was clearly Genos's attack. So in the end, that side had found Mosquito Girl first?
Whether she should lament the sheer inertia of the plot or something else, Alice didn't hesitate.
She rushed toward the flashing fire at her absolute fastest speed, only to feel a massive tremor reverberating from the distance as she made her way there.
The ground cracked open, and even the clouds in the sky were "split" down the middle to both sides by the sheer force of the impact.
This casual rewriting of the landscape made it incredibly easy for Alice to realize exactly what had happened.
Sure enough, when Alice arrived, she saw Saitama standing there with a conflicted expression, clumsily handling Genos's somewhat shattered body on the ground.
No, "somewhat shattered" was an incredibly restrained description. Genos was currently in a state of total immobilization: his leg joints were twisted, his waist was nearly severed, and both his hands were completely hacked off. If he were a normal human, he would have died a long time ago.
"Alice! You came at the perfect time!" Catching sight of the girl rushing over, Saitama instantly looked like he had found a savior. "I have absolutely no idea how to carry him out of here like this! Since you're both robots, I'll leave him to you!"
"I am not a robot, I am a cyborg..." Genos clarified.
Alice didn't answer Saitama's words. Instead, her face filled with shock and sorrow. "To be hurt this badly... did you run into a very dangerous monster?"
"No, it was that Mosquito Girl. Blood is not merely food to her. It not only healed her injuries, but raised her strength by a massive margin." Speaking to this point, Genos's tone and mood grew quite heavy. "I was careless. She caught me off guard, and I completely lost the ability to fight back."
He was full of self-blame and deeply ashamed.
He had originally wanted to demonstrate to Alice what a real battle looked like, yet he had exposed such a pathetic side of himself due to carelessness and underestimating the enemy.
"It's all because Alice couldn't make it here immediately to help... that's why..." However, the young girl was clearly even more self-critical and guilt-ridden than he was.
"It couldn't be helped. The battlefield is a place where many 'unavoidable things' happen." Genos hadn't expected his teaching moment to come at a time like this.
But he wasn't someone who cared deeply about saving face; since his pathetic display could be put to use, using it as a warning for her wasn't a bad idea either.
Seeing the two of them like this, Saitama found it a bit hard to speak up about wanting to leave quickly to buy groceries.
It finally clicked in his mind that while entrusting a robot to another robot seemed reasonable enough on the surface, entrusting him to a little kid was actually highly unreasonable.
And while Alice was indeed a robot... compared to being a robot, she clearly had a lot more "little kid" attributes going on, didn't she?
Watching both of them scramble to take the blame, Saitama scratched his cheek awkwardly. "Uh... maybe it's my responsibility?"
After all, he hadn't stepped in immediately.
"No, the reason Master Saitama didn't intervene right away was also to give me a mature education, wasn't it?" Genos simply interpreted Saitama's words as a desire to keep the two of them from blaming themselves.
He could feel the kindness behind it, but he was far more accustomed to rational thinking.
"Just like how I teach Alice, Master is incredibly strong, so he saw through my immaturity and used this incident to leave a profound impression on me."
"Is... is that how it was?!" Alice let out a soft cry of surprise, then turned to look at Saitama.
Her eyes were filled with confusion, but also carried a fair amount of disapproval. "Uncle Saitama, your way of educating a companion is so harsh..."
Saitama: ...How did he actually end up calling me Master.
"It really was my fault..." After a moment of thought, he ultimately said.
Not just because of Alice, but also because just a moment ago, in a brief lapse of attention, he had actually agreed to become Genos's master.
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T/N: If you want advance chapters, you can find it at [email protected]/AspenTL