Breaking the Barrier (Saitama x Tatsumaki)

Deduction

Drip. Drip. Drip. The murky darkness of the sewer was reminiscent of a swamp, the vast space seemingly too large for an ordinary sewer system. The moss growing was palpable, a rancid stench in the air that Saitama never really addressed all the time he'd lived here.

As they took another step, they could feel the sloshing beneath them, and it'd turned out that it was disgusting enough for Tornado to force her boyfriend to let her onto his shoulders so that her feet wouldn't somehow contract an unbelievable amount of plague.

The water beneath them was a vomit-like green, exactly what you'd expect from a third grader who couldn't mix their paint properly. The viscosity of the liquid beneath them didn't even fully resemble water, but a mixture between mud and oobleck. Safe to say, it was a mess.

There held a certain quietness and tranquility in the steps that Saitama took. They weren't silent by any means, but they held a rhythm that added...life to the party. Vitality to the dark, rank, dank area they were in.

He heard a crack beneath him, looking down only to be met with the sight of one of the Subterraneans. He hummed, a confused expression coming upon him. From what he knew, the group probably disbanded after he took care of them after the dream that he'd had.

He, making sure that he didn't shake Tatsumaki off balance or annoy her, carefully crouched down to take a look at the corpse, realizing that its protective shell on its face had been cracked. His eyes widened a little bit, seeing its eyes.

"Tats...this thing's alive," he remarked. "You remember the psychic eye dude?"

Tornado deadpanned, "I've fought like...a ton of psychics before. Which one are you talking about? The one that I literally just fought?"

Saitama nodded, "Yeah, the rag that insulted Fubuki."

She nodded, crossing her arms, annoyance clear in her voice from just thinking about him, "Yeah...what's the point you're trying to get at here?" Saitama couldn't help but recognize that tone of voice from when he first met her.

"I'm pretty sure that the Monster Association's been getting rid of any monster that just lived here before," he darkly informed her. "Look." He pointed at the one eye that the monster had, though the other one had been ripped out rather gruesomely.

As she lifted herself up in the air with her telekinetic power, she nodded at him, signaling that she was going to lift the monster up into the air. However, as she did, her breath hitched, feeling the pulse in the monster still beating. Its heart was still beating.

"They have been..." Tornado's voice faded off as she realized that the accusation was true. "Do you think they've done with...other sorts of species that might have lived here? Because...that's not the only one that's here."

She gestured to a few feet in front of them, pointing at yet another Subterranean, face in the ground. It seemed to be struggling to move, hanging onto the last thread of life. As Saitama and Tornado approached it, they realized that it was probably the last one that was alive other than the others.

"Wait, Tats, you can sense others' presence from heartbeats?" Saitama questioned, slightly confused. He'd never heard of her using that power before. He turned to face her as he walked through the sticky substance that had even coated the wall lightly.

There were a few bits of light that came in through the sewer grates from the overworld that afforded them vision, but otherwise, they were relying on their other senses as they navigated through the sewer, taking care not to step on any more Subterraneans.

"Yeah, but I have to actively pay attention to the thing that I use my psychic power on," she calmly explained, biting the inside of her cheek to hide the fact that she was just as freaked out as the normal person, seeing these almost-corpses just lying, unable to do anything about their predicament.