Chapter 2: Welcome to Gotham City

Saitama blinked as the blinding light around him began to give way into streets and alleyways. As the world around him stopped spinning, the bald hero calmly looked around his new surroundings as he realized that he had definitely been teleported. F-City had given way to a dark, dreary metropolis that was made of a towering skyline, rows of dense, low-income housing, and an indescribable chill that seemed to hang around the dimly-lit streets.

“Where the heck am I now?” the hero calmly asked out loud, before looking towards the wrecked car and the dead villain within. “Where exactly did you take me?”

Not receiving an answer, Saitama walked some ways down the alley that he’d spontaneously appeared in. It looked to be late at night so there weren’t many people on the streets, but Saitama eventually spotted a scruffy-looking man loitering by a bus station, swigging a beer as he chuckled to himself.

“Pardon me, sir, but could you tell me where I am?” the hero asked.

“Huuhhh wuzzat?” the man asked, before belching loudly. “Damn, who sold you that knockoff Superman costume? It’s blue and red, not yellow and white!”

“Superwho? No, I’m just a guy who’s a hero for fun,” Saitama said with a light grin. “I’m from Z-City, do you have any idea of how to get there from here?”

“Z-City? Hehe, boy, you’re in Gotham City now,” the man chuckled before taking another swig of his beer. “Wherever you’re from, you should have stayed there. This place is the butthole of America.”

“America? Never heard of it. How far did that clown guy teleport me…” Saitama mumbled to himself. Upon the mention of the clown, the scruffy man immediately tensed up.

“D-did you say clown?” he asked. “Oh God, where is? Did you see him?”

“Yeah, he’s over there in his wrecked car, I think I might have accidently killed him,” Saitama replied with a sigh as he pointed towards the alley where he’d emerged from. “I didn’t mean too, I thought he was one of the monsters that are always attacking the cities.”

The scruffy man immediately scrambled into the alley, where he gasped upon finding the destroyed purple car.

“Holy crap…its him, it’s really him!” he exclaimed excitedly. “The fricking clown prince of Gotham, you friggin killed him! Damn, that’s something that not even Batman was able to do.”

“I’m sorry, I’m pretty confused,” Saitama admitted. “Was this guy some kind of powerful villain? Because if so, then I wouldn’t know. Fighting is a little boring for me, you see, I mean it’s always over in one punch.”

“This bastard was one of the most infamous criminals in the city, if not all of America,” the man replied as he spat on the ground. “Good riddance. Whoever you are, thank you. These streets might have just gotten a little safer.”

“You’re welcome,” the caped baldy said with a small smile, before taking a glance across the streets. “Well, I guess I’ll try to figure out a way to get home. It was nice meeting you.”

Waving goodbye to the stranger, Saitama took his leave and began walking down the sidewalk off a random street, unsure of where he headed but knew that he had to find some more information on where exactly the villain had teleported him to. His ears perking up, the hero became aware that somebody was watching him, although he didn’t sense any danger and thus chose to ignore his stalker for the time being.

Perched atop a 5-story roach motel across the street, a certain man who was dressed in a tight-fitting black costume with a blue v-shape across the chest and stretched over the shoulders, watched the yellow and white-suited hero walk away. Dashing across the rooftop, the man leapt through the air and landed with a drop-roll on an adjacent building, before gently landing in the alleyway where the wrecked car still was. Peering inside, he spotted the bloodied clown within, where he imminently lifted his hand and began speaking into a tiny communicator on his wrist.

“Nightwing here, I went to where CCTV spotted that flash of blue,” the man stated, his eyes hidden beneath a bat-shaped mask in the middle of his face. “It’s the Joker, Bruce. He’s dead. A guy in a costume was here in the alley with him for a second, and he’s heading north on Avery Avenue now. I don’t know if he’s a hero or villain, but I’ll keep tailing him for the time being…”

Whistling to himself, Saitama continued strolling down the street over the ambience of honking cars and police sirens in the distance. His stomach rumbling, he regretted leaving to do hero work before eating dinner, and he wondered if the small amount of pocket change that he had on him would even be enough to grab a bite to eat in the strange city that he’d ended up in.

As he rounded a corner, Saitama spotted a hospital in the distance, where for a brief second, the hero thought about what would happen if he suddenly dealt a punch in the direction of the building. To his horror, he ended up snickering at the thought of his all-powerful punch leveling the place in a second, where he shook his head as he wondered what had just come over him. A distant scream pushed the thought out of his completely, where the caped hero leapt into action and after bending his knees, jumped high into the air as he covered the distance of several blocks within seconds.

Landing in front of what looked like an abandoned warehouse, Saitama listened closely as the scream in question appeared to be coming from inside. Easily pushing aside a slightly-ajar door, he entered the brown-bricked building and looked around. A woman’s scream continued to echo deeper inside, prompting him to venture deeper into the darkened expanse.

“Hello? Does someone need help?” Saitama called out in the dim light, confidently striding closer and closer to the source of the screams.

“PLEASE, ANYONE! HELP!!” the woman’s shriek called out, prompting the one punch man to break into a run.