5 Sisters

When Boom woke up, he found himself in a hospital bed with his whole body form the neck down bandaged up.

Looking to his left, he saw Bang reading the newspaper while comfortably sitting on a chair.

"Oh, look who's awake." He folded the paper and put it away.

"...Is the boy safe?" Boom asked.

"Yes, he got home safely. You did a good deed yesterday."

"...Thanks." He smiled brightly at his grandpa's words. Until he fully realized what he had just heard. "Wait, what? Yesterday? Damn, how much blood did I lose?"

"A lot, but nothing a good rest and a couple of meals couldn't fix. Would you mind telling me what happened? I find it surprising that there was someone to get you in this state." Bang was curious.

"Well, instead of it being some super rich jerk, they were just some small time gangsters. I don't know how, but they had hired some ninja assassin that was way above their league. My best guess would be that they suddenly got a lot of money in their hands with some luck and that assassin saw a chance to get easy money. But the truth will remain a mystery." Boom pondered. Then his face contorted a bit.

"Fighting the ninja was frustrating. I was stronger, more skilled, and even had better senses and reflexes, but my body simply couldn't follow. I was too exhausted due to training. I survived only thanks to being able to predict his movements. And to win, I had to use Abandonment once more even though I'd just trained with it. Either way, this whole encounter just made me realize how I still have a long way to go."

"Mm. Thanks for sharing." Bang nodded. Then, after a short pause, he got up from his chair. "Well, I'll leave you be for now. The doctor said that you'd have to stay here for at least a week, so please try to stay put." When he was about to exit the door he lastly said, "And Boom, I really am glad that you are ok." And the door closed behind him.

***

Boom finally got out. Once Bang had left, a couple of police officers had come and questioned him about the incident. It seemed like he didn't get into any trouble over it since they never visited him again after that.

He had healed in 2 days and after that he had been itching to start moving again. He was currently taking a walk in the same forest as where the incident happened. He wanted to look traces of the ninja since it seemed that the police never found him.

He knew it was pretty much a fool's errand but he was going to take a walk anyway so why not here then?

He found the place where the fight took place. If he looked hard, he could still see traces of his dried blood on the grass. He continued to the direction of the broken down trees and after about 50 meters, the spot that the ninja supposedly landed on, was empty. No traces whatsoever.

"Welpp, as expected."

Boom then continued his walk through the woods. He enjoyed the fresh air and the singing of birds. However, his admiring was interrupted by the sound of an explosion from not too far away. He turned to look in that direction and found smoke coming from there.

"What now?" Boom sighed and started to run to the scene.

He soon found himself in a clearing with three people, smoke nowhere to be seen. One of them was a curvaceous girl in her late teens with bob-cut dark green hair and light green eyes. She was facing off 2 young men, probably in their early 20s, and based on their looks they were twins. Both of them had spiky blond hair and blue eyes.

What caught Boom's attention was that they were all floating in the air, and that all of them were surrounded by colored auras. The girl was glowing green, one of the brothers was glowing red while the other had a light blue glow. They all seemed to be espers.

The girl seemed to have a wound on her shoulder but no blood was coming out. Boom was only able to notice it thanks to his great eyesight and sense of smell. They seemed to be fighting, for whatever reason.

All of them looked in his direction and one of the brothers started grinning and said, "Now you got your chance Fubuki. You've still got a chance. Kill this subhuman and you can join us."

"Wait, what?! What did I do?" Boom was baffled.

"Hey, you! Get out of here before it's too late!" Fubuki shouted to Boom.

"Too late." The other brother started shooting fire from his hands, aimed at the martial artist, while the other one was shooting frost at the girl so she couldn't intercept the fire.

"No!" The busty girl shouted.

The fire covered Boom as it raged over him. But it soon calmed down as light blue streams extinguished it, revealing a completely unharmed Boom in a fighting stance.

"Pyromancy and cryomancy, huh. Somebody, please explain me the situation here." He said in an irritated mood.

The three people stared at him surprised until Fubuki realized what had happened and quickly elaborated. "Simply put, these two belong to a group of nut jobs who think that they are above humans. And they have a right to do whatever they want to non-espers."

After listening her, and at the same time observing the twins, he started doing stretches. "Sounds like a lively bunch. One that I disagree quite a lot with. Okay! I've decided! I'll help you. Pick your opponent, I'll take the other one."

"Hey, wait! I never said I needed any help!"

"I'll take the human flamethrower, since he already started it with me." Boom ignored her and contrasted himself by picking himself his opponent first and started staring at him "This'll be over in a second."

"You seem to possess some degree of skill for a subhuman, but that seemed to have made you arrogant. From the moment we were born, we were destined to rule the world. We espers, true humans, have these innate abilities you will never be able to learn. As one of the future world leaders, it is my duty to educate you, who are so very far gone, with force." The fire bender blabbered.

'Dude, you literally wanted to kill me the moment you saw me! And I'M the one too far gone?' Boom thought. He found talking to this maniac was meaningless so he decided to just attack.

Usually, Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist waited for an opponent to attack and then counter it, but this time he had to take the initiative since the opponent relied on keeping his distance.

'No problem!' Boom grinned internally.

He took a firm footing, shifting his center of gravity forward, the ground cracked under his foot, and in the blink of an eye, he dashed at the fire esper.

The psychic had not been ready. Never in his wildest dreams had he thought this subhuman would be capable of such speed. That was the last thought that went through his mind before his vision turned black.

"""..."""

Silence. The remaining people, Boom included, were too surprised to say anything. Fubuki and the other brother were surprised at his prowess, while Boom's reason was similar, but not quite the same.

He realized that he was faster than he was used to, not much, but still noticeable. He couldn't even move around that much during the last week, but still had this kind progress. The old him could have beaten his opponent the same way, so it didn't change the outcome of the fight in any way, but it was still surprising nonetheless.

This could only be because of that fight with the ninja. Being close to death and struggling to survive seemed to boost his progress several fold. This changed everything. He had been feeling recently that his progress had stagnated. That just training and sparring with his grandpa wasn't enough anymore. He had just realized a dangerous, and probably stupid, way to get stronger

Boom smiled and turned to look at Fubuki. "Your turn."

This woke both of the espers out of their stupor.

"You scum!" The young man got mad seeing his twin brother's state and started blasting frost and ice shards at the young martial artist, but was interrupted by Fubuki knocking him out with a psychic blast to the back of his head.

"Huh.. that took less time than I thought it would." Boom noted.

"Yeah, he was too focused on attacking you, and he couldn't defend and attack at the same time, so taking him out was easy." The girl explained to him.

Then a heavy presence loomed over them. Boom suddenly started glowing green and was made unable to move.

Fubuki started looking upwards while wearing a frustrated expression. "Big sis..."

Boom followed her gaze and saw HER once again, after 3 years. 'Big sis? As in, this busty girl is her little sister? Which would mean the she is most probably an adult already. Hot damn! Now that I look at her more clearly, she does have womanly features, especially those legs...' He stopped his thoughts there. He had been keeping a perfect poker face so far.

Unlike last time, Boom didn't become flustered and was able to appear calm. He had practiced this for the last three years, thinking about this situation over and over again in his head, getting ready for if they would meet again.

His practice included thinking about his preferences. And every time he had walked on the streets, he had tried to think about himself with many different passerbys in a romantical way. Men, women, young, old, but he never felt the same way as he had when looking at Tatsumaki. One time he tried thinking himself with a young girl and almost threw up. It couldn't have made him happier. It confirmed he was not THAT kind of person.

From these mental experiments, he had achieved enlightenment. He likes petite women. The more petite the woman was, the more attracted to her he felt. And Tatsumaki really takes the cake on that one, which is most likely the reason to his great amount of attraction to her. On top of that, he was raised surrounded by the appreciation of strength. That definitely played a role in it too.

She was currently staring at Boom with a vicious expression and assaulted him with multiplied gravity. The ground started cracking and he had to struggle just to keep himself standing.

"Hey, stop it big sis! He is not the enemy, he helped me!" Fubuki shouted at her sister.

"Oh? Is this another one of those burdens you call your group?" Tatsumaki questioned her sister with an annoyed look.

"W-what group? Please, Tatsumaki. I'm just a passerby. I did nothing to your sister, I swear." Boom pleaded.

Her expression got vicious again. "How do you know my name?"

From that he came to a realization. "Oh, right! I forgot to introduce myself. I am Boom, grandson and disciple of Bang. You probably don't remember me, but we've met once before."

Ignoring him after hearing who he was, Tatsumaki viewed the field and the 2 unconscious brothers and released Boom from all the restraints. "Tch. So these guys are Otento's pawns. I'll take them with me."

"But sis-"

"No buts! Stay out of this from now on and let me deal with the rest!" She the then lifted the 2 brothers in the air and flew away with them in tow, followed by two different gazed. One of them was frustrated and the other was admiring.