//------------------------------// // Chapter 2: To the Wig Store // Story: Hero for Fun - The Hero from Nowhere // by Cinders of War //------------------------------// From an expected fun day on my first day of school in Canterlot, it quickly became my worst day. The reason? I touched the top of my head and I groaned sharply. My hair. My beautiful black hair was all gone. After punching that monster yesterday, it all just dropped from my head, leaving quite the shine of baldness where it all used to be. Everyone kept looking at me and laughing at my lack of hair, which made me wish I hadn’t come to school. “It’s just baldness. It’s not like you’re crippled or anything.” Rainbow tried to cheer me up. “I mean, unless you have crippling depression. Which you don’t. Right?” “I mean, I might…” I sulked. My hair. My beautiful hair. It was all gone and all that was left was the blinding shine my bald head gave off. Yeah, it wasn’t a great way to start school. “Tell you what, we’ll get you a wig after school, okay?” Rainbow patted my back. “Just… hold out till then.” I groaned again. It wasn’t much, but I couldn’t think of any other way to repair my baldness. This was just awful. On the bright side, at least I was now quite powerful. Though I have been asking myself all night… Was it worth it? I still don’t have an answer. So yesterday, I had taken up Rainbow Dash’s offer of a place to stay, since I still had none. Her house was nice. It was a regular two story suburban house with a front yard and a back yard. The insides were mostly painted blue, though the upstairs hallway was white. She had a spare room next to hers for whatever reason. It had a bed and everything, so my makeshift home was quite set. It was comfortable, but it wasn’t quite like what I had back at my actual home. My room had been packed with action figures of anime characters on a shelf beside my bed. I had all kinds of figures, even stuff from an age-old favourite, Digimon. In the far corner of my room was my TV and Playstation 4, which I was frequently found on, but here, in Rainbow’s spare room, all I had was the bed, a cupboard by the window, and a little round bedside table. Yeah, it wasn’t much, but at least it was somewhere I could sleep comfortably enough. School wasn’t all too bad, besides the fact that I was just getting bombarded by laughter all the way through, especially down the halls between classes. I followed along easily enough, and because I wasn’t a troublemaker, I didn’t catch the teacher’s attention much. Well, maybe except for my shiny bald head. When lunch came around, Rainbow Dash brought me over to the table she said she usually sat at. While there, I made friends with six other girls whom she said made up their band, the Rainbooms. There was Twilight Sparkle, a bespectacled girl with purple skin and various shades of purple for her hair. “She can use telekuh-teleko-uh…” Rainbow placed a finger to her chin. “Telekinesis.” Twilight shook my hand. “I can move objects with my mind. Or well, my magic.” “Oh… Wow.” I nodded. That sounded just like Tatsumaki’s power. If you don’t know Tatsumaki, she was another character from One Punch Man. A little green haired girl with telekinesis. Don’t tell anyone I said this, but I always thought she was a cute character. “This one’s Applejack.” Rainbow patted the shoulder of a girl with a stetson and a mop of blonde hair underneath it. “She’s really strong. You don’t want to pick a fight with her. Unless you’re really fast.” “Nice to meet ya!” Applejack shook my hand too. I think she tried to give my hand a squeeze, but I was actually strong enough to resist it. “Hoowee, ya sure have a mighty fine grip!” The next one Rainbow introduced me to was Sunset Shimmer. She was a girl with red and yellow hair, which kinda looked like bacon. Thinking about that made me hungry. It was a good thing it was lunch time. “This here’s Pinkie Pie.” Applejack moved on to the next friend. “Hi there,” I said. “Hi! I’m Pinkie Pie!” She shook my hand vigorously. “You’re new here! But soon you won’t be! Hey, you know you should become a hero or something after what you did to that monster yesterday!” “Oh, you know about that?” “How could we not! Everyone knows about it now! That was amazing how you just bam! And the monster died!” “Uhh… Cool. Right. Yeah. That.” “This one’s Fluttershy here.” Applejack introduced the next friend. She had soft pink hair and she actually looked really cute. A little too cute. I had to stop looking at her or I might’ve died from an increased heart rate. “H-Hi…” She waved. That was so cute. I wanted to say something manly to impress her for some reason, but in the end, all I managed was a measly, “Hur-hello…” I would definitely want to be friends with her. The last girl Rainbow introduced me to was Rarity, who was like some sort of fashion model or movie star. She was really beautiful, but she didn’t catch my eye like Fluttershy did. I think I just have a thing for cute girls. Rarity had the power to throw up barriers, so I figured she was something like Violet from The Incredibles, except she couldn’t turn invisible. After introducing ourselves, we just talked for a bit while we ate lunch. So besides being a band, Rainbow also told me they were Canterlot’s Defenders, and it was their duty to keep Canterlot safe from harm, be it forces from Equestria, that horse world I had come from when I woke up, or evil-doers from this world. “Wow, that’s really cool,” I said. “You’re just like the Hero’s Association from One Punch Man.” I went on to explain to them what One Punch Man was and what a cool manga it was and how Saitama had trained so much that he became the strongest man alive. “That’s neat, right?” Rainbow asked her friends. “I wonder if I could get that strong if I just amped up my training everyday.” “Well, that’s if you want to go bald too.” Applejack chuckled. “Yeah, okay, fair enough.” Rainbow ran a hand along her multicoloured hair. “Don’t want to lose this. Being bald stinks.” I sighed. It really did. “Oh, no offense, Georg.” Rainbow gave me a pat on the back. “And besides, we’re getting you that wig after school. Don’t forget that. You’ll be good as new once we’re done.” “Meh.” I waited patiently till school was out that day. It wasn’t long, but literature class felt surprisingly long. We had to analyze a poem about a man and two roads and how he somehow wound up in prison. I didn’t get it, but then again, who would? The mall wasn’t far from school. Rainbow and I arrived in about seventeen minutes by foot and she brought me straight to the wig shop. It was a small store at the far end of the first floor, manned by an old man with broken teeth. He gave us a rather creepy smile when we entered. Not knowing what to do, I gave him a creepy smile back. After that, he stopped. I don’t know if that was a good thing or not. The store had rows and rows of wigs of all different shapes and colours. Most of them were long and flowy, almost like anime hairstyles, but there were also shorter hair wigs along the top row, which was what I was after. “Hey, this one’s nice. You like it?” Rainbow held up an orange afro and grinned. “Meh, you know what, there was a time Saitama went to a martial arts tournament impersonating another character. It kinda looks like the wig he wore when he did that. I don’t want to wear something similar.” “Oh. Well, uh, sure, we’ll pick another one out.” She put the wig back on the mannequin head. We spent more time walking around the store and trying all sorts of wigs. I even tried one that looked like Spongebob. Yeah, crazy right? Especially since Spongebob doesn’t have any hair. Eventually, I decided to get one close to the entrance of the store. It was just a simple black wig which kinda looked like it was gelled up into spiky points, kind of like an actual anime hairstyle, but in real life. It was the same colour as my actual hair, so it wasn’t too out of place. “Hey, I think that’s a good one. It looks good,” Rainbow said after we left the store, with the creepy old man waving to us as we headed out. “You think so?” I adjusted the wig atop my head. “I think so too. It feels good not to be bald anymore.” “A little plain, but it works.” She nudged my side. “Plain? Really? It looks normal to me.” “I mean…” Rainbow pointed at her own hair. “C’mon. You see this?” I nodded. True, her hair was really nice. It was long, flowy and it was vibrant for sure, but it was a little bright. “I guess.” We were about to leave for the mall entrance when a portion of the wall near the elevators blew out, forcing us down. I wrapped myself around Rainbow to shield her from the blast, with my cape getting torn from debris shooting through it. Thankfully, they bounced off my skin harmlessly and I managed to shield us both from a potential horrible death, should I not have had Saitama’s powers. A monster stepped through the new hole in the wall, with the edges melting around it as people around us began screaming and running for safety. It was a giant dark red turtle standing on two legs and it had quite the long neck, more like something you’d see on an eel. Fire puffed out from its nostrils and its menacing yellow eyes focused on Rainbow and I. “Beware! I am Turtle Fandrango!” It raised its arms to its side. Steam poured from under its shell and began melting more of the broken wall. “I have come to destroy all of Canterlot for building over what was once my beautiful home!” “We didn’t do anything,” I said to it. “Just leave us and we’ll leave you alone too.” “Didn’t do anything?” Turtle Fandrango whipped its head over to where I was. “That house on the hill away from your city center used to be my home. I raised my children in that lake, but then you humans killed all of us and ate us and only I escaped with my life! After that, I was imbued by power from the King of all Monsters and now I have come back to exact my revenge! I will kill all of you and eat your charred remains! Observe!” Turtle Fandrango took in a deep breath and I dashed Rainbow out of the way as a ball of fire left its mouth, sailing into a couple of ATM machines, blowing them into smithereens, with burning money now flying everywhere. “Someone needs to teach this monster a lesson.” Rainbow pumped her fists together. “I’ll take care of this. Defender style.” Rainbow Dash was just about to run off when both of us began hearing the sound of… cycling. No. It couldn’t be… Could it? “Justice crash!” A very familiar bicycle came through the hole in the wall and slammed harmlessly against the monster’s shell. It fell to the ground and was whipped away by its tail, sending it crashing into a potted plant by the side, ending with a descending ring. A man with a green helmet and goggles dressed in orange armor stood at the hole, his fists raised to do battle. “Mumen Rider?” I called out in disbelief. How was he here too? “Huh?” He turned to face me. “You know me?” Before I could even remotely give him an answer, he was swiped away by Turtle Fandrango’s tail and he flew over into a bush outside, which promptly went on fire from cinders from the monster’s body. “I’ll get him out of here.” Rainbow hopped about on her feet. “You deal with the monster. I’m pretty sure you can take him.” And she disappeared in a flash of colours as she moved to get Mumen Rider to safety. “So it’s just you now, puny human. You think you can beat me? You saw what I did to your friend?” Turtle Fandrango poked my head with one hand, which irritated me, because it shifted my wig a little. “Don’t touch my head,” I said sternly, hoping to intimidate the monster off, but all I did was make it laugh at me. “You jest!” The monster patted his belly. “I have the power of an active volcano! Just releasing my steam can melt walls!” Flexing its arms, steam gushed from under its shell and the hole in the wall got wider and wider and the plants around us were set on fire from the immense heat. Somehow, I wasn’t too bothered by how hot it was. I continued to stand there, my arms folded, unimpressed. “Just give me your best shot already,” I said. “I don’t have all day.” “Then behold my Magma Buster Cannon! My ultimate move!” That pissed off Turtle Fandrango and he stomped a foot into the ground and breathed in very deeply. I placed my right foot back and readied myself as a gigantic fireball left the turtle’s mouth. It was so big that it destroyed the floor above us as it sailed towards me, melting the hall and everything around us. Kicking off, I threw myself at the fireball, pulling my right arm back as far as I could. Just before the fireball could hit my head, I flung my arm forward with so much force that the entire fireball dispersed in a rush of wind, and I flew right through it and then through Turtle Fandrango and the wall as well, skidding to a stop on the road outside as it began to rain. Turtle Fandrango exploded into a dozen pieces behind me as I stood up and looked back at its remains. Only the monster’s legs were left. Its thick shell that seemed to be able to deflect everything was now scattered across the mall and the street, shattered like a porcelain plate in the kitchen. “Easy enough.” I raised my smoking fist. It had been hot enough to… Wait a minute. I looked down and my hands instantly shot to the spot between my legs. I was completely naked! The heat from the turtle’s fireball must’ve burnt off all my clothes. “Georg, that was amazing!” Rainbow was back in a flash, throwing her arms skyward. Then her eyes moved downward. “You just blew that monster away, just like that! And I mean, wow, for someone like you, I didn’t expect your-” “Stop looking!” I blushed and pushed her face aside. “Hey, so you got Mumen Rider to safety?” “Oh, yeah totally.” Rainbow grinned. “I got him over to school. Safest place, right? Even got his bike there too. Friend of yours?” “Well… Not exactly. He’s from One Punch Man too, like the character I became. I don’t know how he’s here too.” “How odd.” Rainbow rubbed her chin. She crouched down and picked up a piece of the monster’s shell. “So people are randomly being transported here while they sleep or something. Monsters are becoming more frequent. I wonder what’s going on. Oh, hey Georg, your uh, wig’s gone. Must’ve burnt up with your clothes too.” I ran both my hands over my head and I was dismayed to not feel any damp hair. Instead, all I felt was the smooth texture of my bald head. “NOOO!” I yelled to the sky. As my body jerked upwards however, I felt a part of me smack into Rainbow Dash and she fell to the ground unconscious. “Oh dear…”