Chương 32: The Tyranny of the Escort

The afternoon sun baked the cobblestone streets of Vale, reflecting off the glass windows of boutique shops and casting long, sluggish shadows across the bustling sidewalks. It was a beautiful day, the kind that usually inspired lighthearted strolls and pleasant conversation. Saitama, however, looked as though he was marching toward a firing squad. He shuffled forward, his shoulders slumped so low his arms seemed to dangle uselessly at his sides.

He wore his casual civilian clothes, a plain, completely blank yellow hoodie, paired with baggy blue jeans and red sneakers that scuffed rhythmically against the stone. Clutching a crumpled paper bag containing absolutely nothing but a single, pristine head of green cabbage, his small, dotted eyes stared blankly ahead. Behind him, walking in a loose semi-circle, was his mandated security detail: Ruby Rose, Blake Belladonna, Lie Ren, and Nora Valkyrie.

"I can't believe this," Saitama muttered, his voice a flat, nasal drone of pure misery.

"I'm a grown man. I have a housing association... well, I had one. The point is, I don't need a chaperone. Why am I being chaperoned to buy a single vegetable? It's humiliating."

"Oh, cheer up, Saitama!" Ruby chirped, skipping slightly to keep pace with his sluggish stride. Her red-trimmed cloak billowed gently behind her.

"Professor Goodwitch was super clear! After what happened at the international supermarket, you're a public relations hazard. We're not chaperones, we're...

'Tactical Security Liaisons'!"

"You're a bunch of teenagers keeping me from enjoying a peaceful, solitary walk," Saitama corrected, not looking at her.

"And that scary lady Glynda is just being petty. She's still mad about the ceiling tiles in the arena. It's not my fault the glass they use here is so cheap."

"To be fair, Saitama, you did blow a hole clean through the eastern wall of the combat hall," Blake pointed out quietly. She walked with her hands buried in her pockets, her black cat ears twitching beneath her bow as she scanned the crowd.

"And then you got filmed absorbing military-grade ammunition at a supermarket on public television. Atlas is still trying to figure out how to classify you."

"They should classify me as 'A Guy Who Wants to Be Left Alone,'" Saitama grumbled.

"Look on the bright side!" Nora bounced into his field of vision, walking backward with terrifying ease while balancing her hands behind her head.

"With us around, nobody can sneak up on your cabbage! I will personally flatten anyone who tries to bruise the leafy layers!"

"Please don't flatten anyone, Nora," Ren said, his voice a calm, steady anchor as he walked slightly to the side, his eyes scanning the rooftops with practiced hunter precision.

"But Saitama does have a point. The public attention is... escalating." Before Saitama could ask what Ren meant, a high-pitched gasp cut through the ambient street noise.

"Look! Over there! It's him!" Saitama froze. A cold shiver of pure, unadulterated dread ran down his spine. From across the street, a group of three teenagers carrying shopping bags stopped dead in their tracks, pointing directly at his bald head. Within seconds, a nearby cafe patron stood up, knocking over his plastic chair in his haste.

"It's the Hero of Vale!" a woman screamed, clutching her hands to her cheeks.

"The one who swatted Junior's thugs like flies!"

"Oh, no," Saitama whispered, his face blanking into an expression of absolute horror.

"They've spotted the beacon."

"Hey! Hero! Look over here!"

"Can I get a picture? Please!" In an instant, a small mob of civilians began to converge on their position. Scrolls were whipped out, their camera lenses catching the afternoon sun as flashbulbs began to pop in rapid succession. A local baker in a flour-dusted apron rushed out of his shop, holding a freshly baked baguette like a trophy.

"Sir! A photo with the bread! For my shop window!" the baker pleaded, shoving the loaf toward Saitama's face. Saitama stood completely rigid, his eyes reduced to tiny black dots as a teenager squeezed next to him, flashing a peace sign and snapping a selfie.

"Look, I do the hero thing as a hobby," Saitama said, his voice completely flat as he tried to shield his cabbage behind his back and dodge the camera flashes.

"But right now, I'm off the clock. I am literally just trying to get this cabbage home before it wilts in the sun. Go take photos with a Huntsman. Look, the red girl has a giant scythe. That's way cooler."

"No way! You're the guy who doesn't even need a weapon!" a young boy cheered, pulling on the hem of Saitama's yellow hoodie.

"Do the slap! Do the slap thing you did to the bad guys!"

"I'm not slapping anyone," Saitama muttered, sweat beginning to bead on his bald scalp from the sheer, suffocating pressure of social interaction. He turned his head slowly toward Ruby, his neck moving with stiff, mechanical jerks.

"Ruby. Help. Use your rose petal thing and carry me away. I'll buy you cookies. The good ones. Not the discount brand."

"I can't!" Ruby hissed back, trying to politely block a civilian who was attempting to touch Saitama's bald head for good luck.

"Glynda said no public displays of anomalous physics! If I carry you, it'll look like an emergency!"

"This is an emergency!" Saitama cried, his voice cracking with comedic desperation.

"My personal space is being entirely invaded! My cabbage is getting warm!"

"Everyone, please, back up!" Ren announced, stepping forward with his hands raised, attempting to create a human barrier. His calm demeanor was the only thing keeping the crowd from completely engulfing them.

"Please respect our consultant's privacy." Suddenly, the festive atmosphere of the street was violently shattered. BOOM! A loud, metallic crash echoed from the end of the block, followed by the high-pitched screech of tearing metal and screaming tires. A Schnee Dust Company armored transport van, carrying a highly valuable cargo of refined, volatile Fire and Lightning Dust, had been T-boned by a heavily modified, spiked semi-truck.

The crowd of civilians instantly panicked, screaming and scattering into nearby alleyways and storefronts, leaving Saitama and the four students standing in the middle of the cleared street. From the back of the spiked truck, five heavily armed mercenaries wearing ballistic armor and crimson-painted skull masks leaped out, brandishing high-caliber rifles.

"Nobody move!" the leader roared, aiming his rifle at the cracked door of the SDC transport.

"We're taking the Dust! You Huntsmen kids step aside if you don't want to get painted on the pavement!" Ruby's expression instantly shifted from panicked teenager to disciplined Huntress. Her hand flew to her lower back, unfolding Crescent Rose with a heavy, mechanical clack as the crimson sniper-scythe locked into place.

"Protect the civilians!" Ruby commanded, her voice ringing with authority.

"Blake, take the left! Nora, front line! Ren, cover the flanks!"

"On it!" Nora grinned wildly, pulling Magnhild from her back and slamming it into its heavy grenade launcher form.

"Wait, guys--" Saitama started, raising a hand. But they were already gone. Blake blurred into motion, leaving a shadow clone behind as she dodged a volley of ice-dust rounds. She swung Gambol Shroud, the ribbon wrapping around a street lamp as she hoisted herself into the air to rain down precise shots on the mercenaries. Ren moved like a ghost, sliding under a hail of gunfire, his StormFlower pistols clicking rapidly as he targeted the weapons of the attackers to disarm them.

Nora let out a battle cry, leaping off a mailbox and bringing Magnhild down in a massive vertical swing, sending a shockwave of pink electricity through the asphalt that forced two mercenaries to dive for cover. Saitama stood about twenty yards back, completely ignored by both the Huntresses and the criminals. He watched the chaotic, flashy battle with a deeply bored expression, cradling his cabbage in one arm.

"Man, they really love doing those flips," Saitama observed dryly, taking a slow step backward to stay out of the crossfire.

"Seems like a lot of extra movement. If you just walk up and--" His foot caught the edge of a loose cobblestone. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. In any normal human, this would result in a minor stumble. But Saitama's physical mass, combined with his complete lack of attention, caused him to lurch forward awkwardly. His arms flailed in a desperate bid to keep his cabbage bag upright.

"Ah! My cabbage!" Saitama yelled. His left foot shot forward to catch his balance. The sheer, involuntary kinetic force of his foot slamming into the ground to prevent a fall acted like a localized seismic event. CRACK. A massive fissure split the cobblestone street, traveling instantly in a straight line directly past Ruby and Ren.

The shockwave of displaced air and earth ripped through the street, catching the leader of the mercenaries, who was currently aiming a rocket launcher at the SDC transport, directly in the chest. The gust of wind didn't just knock the leader down. It stripped his heavy ballistic armor clean off his body, turning it to scrap metal, and launched him three hundred feet backward, where he landed perfectly, comically wedged buttocks-first into a large, hollow metal trash can with a loud CLANG.

At the exact same moment, Saitama's flailing hand, still trying to stabilize himself, swung outward. His knuckles lightly tapped the side of the spiked semi-truck. The entire multi-ton vehicle lifted off the ground, spun three times in the air like a tossed coin, and landed upside down with a colossal crash, perfectly trapping the remaining four mercenaries beneath its hollow, reinforced truck bed like a giant metal bowl. The street went dead silent. The gunfire stopped. The smoke cleared.

Ruby, Blake, Ren, and Nora slowly lowered their weapons, staring in absolute, jaw-dropped silence at the overturned truck and the mercenary leader waving his legs helplessly from the trash can down the street. Saitama stood in the center of the devastation, his posture awkward, one leg still extended as he carefully checked inside his paper bag. He let out a long, relieved sigh.

"Phew," Saitama muttered, adjusting his grip on the bag.

"The leaves didn't even rip. That was close." Slowly, the civilians who had been hiding in the shops began to peek their heads out. They looked at the captured criminals, then at the massive fissure in the street, and finally at the bald man in the yellow hoodie who was currently inspecting a vegetable.

"He... he did it again!" a voice cheered.

"With one stumble! He didn't even look at them!"

"He defeated the whole gang by accident! He's a god!" Within seconds, the street erupted into a roaring stadium of cheers. People flooded out of the shops, completely ignoring the four heavily armed, highly trained Huntsmen-in-training, and began to swarm Saitama.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Saitama groaned, his face twisting into pure agony as the baker tried to shove the baguette into his armpit again for a photo.

"I tripped! I literally just tripped! Why are you guys cheering for a bad step?!" Ruby, Blake, Ren, and Nora slowly walked over, their faces pale, completely ignoring the adoring crowd. They weren't looking at the fans. They were staring at the massive, ruined street, the shattered water main that was currently bubbling up from Saitama's footstep, and the crushed municipal property. In their minds, a terrifying, synchronized vision appeared.

They saw Headmistress Glynda Goodwitch standing in her office, her riding crop bent nearly in half from the sheer force of her grip, her eyes glowing with a dark, terrifying purple Aura as a vein throbbed violently on her forehead.

"You let him walk where?!" Her imaginary voice echoed in their heads.

"We are so dead," Ruby whispered, her silver eyes shrinking to tiny pinpricks of pure terror.

"She's going to make us clean the entire campus with toothbrushes," Blake muttered, her cat ears pinning flat against her skull in genuine fear.

"I'll take the library," Ren said, his voice trembling slightly for the first time in his life.

"The dust is preferable to her wrath."

"I don't think a toothbrush will clean the street," Nora squeaked, looking at the massive crater. Saitama, currently being lifted onto the shoulders of two enthusiastic construction workers, looked over at the terrified teenagers with a face of hollow, sympathetic defeat.

"Hey," Saitama called out over the cheers, his voice a flat, deadpan whisper.

"Do you think Glynda will let me use my 80% off coupon if I offer to sweep the rubble?"

The dim, drafty interior of the safehouse in Mistral smelled faintly of damp stone and ozone. High up on the cliffs overlooking the terraced, wind-swept city, the hideout was swallowed by the shadows of a encroaching dusk. The only significant source of light in the room was the stark, cold blue glow of a large holographic projection hovering in the center of the stone parlor. On the screen, a Vale News Network broadcast was playing.

"... unbelievable scenes out of the commercial district today," Lisa Lavender's voice echoed, her professional, polished tone contrasted by the sheer absurdity of the footage rolling behind her.

"What began as an attempted heist of a highly valuable Schnee Dust Company transport by heavily armed mercenaries ended in seconds. And once again, the city has one man to thank." The footage shifted to a shaky, civilian-recorded scroll video. It showed Saitama, clad in his blank yellow hoodie, holding a crumpled paper bag with a single cabbage. He was looking in the complete opposite direction of the armed mercenaries, entirely checked out, before his foot caught a loose cobblestone.

The camera shook violently as the screen recorded the localized earthquake of his stumble. The shockwave ripped through the street, and the next frame showed a mercenary leader flying backward, landing perfectly, comically wedged buttocks-first inside a metal trash can. The broadcast zoomed in on Saitama's face. He was looking inside his paper bag, letting out a massive sigh of relief because his cabbage was unbruised.

"The 'Hero of Vale' strikes again," Lisa Lavender continued, a hint of amusement slipping into her voice.

"Eyewitnesses claim the security consultant neutralized the entire threat with what appeared to be a single, accidental stumble, protecting the volatile Fire Dust shipment without sustaining a single scratch, or damaging his groceries." A hand, pale and trembling with a volatile mixture of fury and deep-seated terror, reached out from the darkness. Cinder Fall clenched her fist. With a sharp flick of her wrist, she channeled a sudden, localized burst of superheated Maiden fire.

The holographic projector sputtered, hissed, and dissolved into a shower of dying blue sparks, plunging the stone parlor back into a suffocating, shadow-draped gloom. Cinder stood in the center of the dark room, her breathing shallow, heavy, and jagged. Her left hand, the black, skeletal construct of her Grimm prosthetic, clenched and unclenched, the sharp claws digging painfully into the leather of her sleeve.

Even though Salem's dark magic and the healing chambers had put her physical body back together after the disastrous Battle of Beacon, her chest still throbbed with a phantom, agonizing ache. She closed her eyes, but she couldn't block out the memory. She was back on the tower. She had the power of the Fall Maiden. She was a goddess. And then... him. She remembered the yellow suit. She remembered how he one-punched the Wyvern to nothingness, and eradicating the flock of Nevermores in an instant.

She remembered the dull, stupidly blank expression on his face right before he threw a punch. There had been no Aura. No Semblance. No majestic, soaring displays of magic. Just a fist. A fist that had bypassed her absolute power as if she were nothing more than a wet sheet of paper, shattering her ribs, tearing her flesh, and casting her down into the abyss of defeat. The lingering pain of that single strike was not just physical. It was a rot in her soul.

Every time she saw his bald head, the carefully constructed illusion of her own absolute superiority shattered all over again.

"Cinder...?" A soft, cautious voice broke the silence of the room. Emerald Sustrai stepped out from the arched doorway, her dark eyes wide with intense, worshipful worry. She kept her hands close to her sides, her posture hesitant, as if she were approaching a wounded, highly volatile predator. Behind her, Mercury Black leaned casually against the stone doorframe, his hands buried in his pockets, though his usual cocky smirk was noticeably strained.

"Is... is your arm acting up again?" Emerald asked, her voice dropping to a gentle whisper as she took a small step closer.

"We can get the medicine. Or we can call for--""I don't need medicine," Cinder hissed, her voice a low, venomous growl that vibrated with suppressed rage. She didn't turn to look at them.

"And I do not need him occupying another second of my thoughts." Mercury let out a quiet, dry whistle, tapping the heel of his metallic prosthetic leg against the stone floor.

"Gotta hand it to the bald guy, though. He cracked a reinforced cobblestone street just by taking a bad step. I've seen some heavy-hitters in the Mistral leagues, but that's... well, it's something else. It's almost funny." Cinder's head snapped toward him, her single visible eye flashing with a terrifying, crimson Maiden fire. The temperature in the room instantly spiked, the air becoming dry and suffocating.

Mercury immediately shut his mouth, raising his hands in a mock gesture of surrender, though a bead of cold sweat rolled down his temple.

"Do you find my defeat amusing, Mercury?" Cinder whispered, her voice dangerously calm as she took a slow, predatory step toward him.

"No. Not at all, Cinder," Emerald intervened quickly, throwing herself slightly in front of Mercury to draw Cinder's wrath away.

"Mercury is an idiot. He doesn't understand. We know that man is an anomaly. But he's in Vale. He's a continent away. He's... he's irrelevant to what we are doing here in Mistral."

"She is correct, you know." The cold, precise voice cut through the heavy tension of the room like a scalpel. From the shadows of the hallway, Arthur Watts stepped into the parlor. His hard-soled leather shoes clicked rhythmically against the stone. He adjusted the cuffs of his immaculate, high-collared coat, his mustache twitching with a look of supreme, intellectual condescension as he glanced at the burnt-out holographic projector.

"A fascinating, albeit crude, display of raw physical force," Watts said, his tone dry and entirely unimpressed.

"But a buffoon chasing cabbage through the streets of Vale is hardly worth delaying our schedule. Salem expects results, Cinder. Not emotional regression over a glorified street sweeper." Cinder glared at Watts, her teeth grinding, but she slowly forced the Maiden fire in her eyes to recede. She stood up straight, her posture returning to its rigid, proud carriage, though her skeletal Grimm hand remained tightly clenched.

"What do you want, Watts?" Cinder asked coldly. Watts smiled, a sharp, smug expression that didn't reach his cold eyes. He pulled out a sleek Atlas-designed scroll, tapping the screen to display a map of the dense, mountainous forests of Mistral.

"Our mutual friend, Headmaster Lionheart, has finally proven himself useful," Watts announced, pointing a manicured finger at a blinking red coordinate on the map.

"He has confirmed the location. The Branwen bandit tribe is currently camped in the northern valleys." Cinder's eye narrowed.

"Raven Branwen."

"Precisely," Watts said, sliding his scroll back into his pocket.

"The coward who fled her duties, yet somehow managed to secure the Spring Maiden. Salem wants that power, Cinder. And she wants the Relic of Knowledge locked beneath Haven Academy. But we cannot access the vault without the key." He took a step back, gesturing toward the exit of the dark safehouse.

"The coordinates are locked in. The transport is prepared," Watts said, his voice carrying a dark, triumphant finality.

"It is time we pay a visit to Raven's little tribe and reclaim what belongs to us." Cinder stood in the darkness for a moment longer. She looked down at her hands, one human, one monster. The terror of Saitama's fist still echoed in the marrow of her bones, but the burning hunger for power, for the strength to ensure she would never be weak again, flared up to swallow it whole.

"Let's go," Cinder commanded, her cloak sweeping behind her as she strode past Watts and out into the cold Mistral night.

"I want the Spring Maiden's power. And I will burn anyone who stands in my way."