Breaking the Barrier (Saitama x Tatsumaki)

Heroes

Been a while since I had one of these, right?

So, this'll be the shift from manga up until chapter 144-ish, to the webcomic. At the point of me starting this rough draft, Chapter 147 just dropped, and honestly speaking, I can't see this arc finishing by the time I actually make it to the end. This is sort of just me going all in, betting that it won't finish so that I can just go the webcomic route, you feel?

By the way, did y'all see how goddamn cool chapter 146 was? I really wanted to put it in the story just because it was so goddamn cool to see all the other swordsmen!

In fact, I'm gonna have the other swordsmen be in here, and even though they're probably gonna get clapped in the manga, I'm going to have them get knocked back by Garou in the end, too, before Saitama comes along.

That being said.

Once I finish this story, I'm considering coming back once the arc finishes so I can revise these chapters. As of the release of this chapter, it'll be the webcomic, but once the story finishes and maybe the arc finishes, I'll consider coming back to this so I can change it into a manga-following story instead of having to shift to webcomic.

Naturally, there'll be some modifications. Fubuki doesn't go against Psykos, cause, y'know, Psykos is already defeated. Tornado isn't carried by Genos when she's injured all the way back to Fubuki because, in the manga, Tornado got injured during battle, which resulted in Genos and Bang having to come in to rescue her (see One Punch Man Manga chapter 144). In comparison, like from the end of the last chapter that I wrote, Tornado ends up deciding to stay with Fubuki instead of heading off, which also differs from her being sent flying by the Monster Association after all of them gang up on her. You get where I'm going with this. There are some other ones, but yeah, that's the main gist of it.

~~~~~

It isn't every day that the largest amount of S-Class heroes have to come together to fight monsters. It'd truly only happened twice ever since the formation of the Hero Association. One, the Alien Invasion. That...was something else. The entire, instant destruction of City A? Of course that'd warrant a large amount of heroes.

It also isn't every day that an entire city falls from the power of a single psychic, twisting it all into a single spiral, literally making the city itself into a weapon. To bring down the monster king that organized a successful attack on multiple cities? You'd need something that powerful, especially when they led multiple Dragon-level monsters themselves.

Even more, it isn't every day that you see the strongest heroes at work all together. Tank Top Master, Pig God, Demon Cyborg, even the Tornado of Terror.

Yet, there'd always been one hero that'd seemed to sit on the side, patiently waiting. As if searching for the moment to strike, he lurked. Like the lone-wolf hunter he'd taught, the same man who he'd been hunting for, he preferred to wait for the opportunity to present itself. It wasn't passiveness, he often repeated when asked the question of why he wasn't as active as other S-Classes. It was patience.

While the other S-Class heroes undoubtedly had extremely...eccentric personalities, he was arguably one of the more normal heroes, or at least, one of the heroes that behaved normally. He seemed like your ordinary martial arts teacher that was unusually old, yet abnormally able.

Abnormally able was the key phrase. It took more than just a simple martial artist to climb the ranks in such a way that other heroes such as Flashy Flash, Superalloy Darkshine, Zombieman, Demon Cyborg, and even Atomic Samurai could not best him.

It took a true master. A genius. With power combined with the heroics that was, officially, only bested by the Tornado of Terror and Blast, it was a mystery why he wasn't on the street more often dealing with monsters.