The spirit rose in pieces.
White particles—fine as ash, bright as static—lifted from the lava corpse in a slow cascade, drawn upward by something that had nothing to do with heat or air current. They converged into F-boy's open palm like water finding a drain, compressing and taking shape: a miniature version of the monster, half-bodied, frozen mid-roar, still trying to be intimidating at a scale that fit in a closed fist.
F-boy looked at it with the expression of a professional regarding paperwork.
His grip tightened. The miniature spirit thrashed, compressed further, and collapsed inward—the roaring mouth still open as the dark purple card crystallized around it. He held it up briefly, catalogued it, and filed it into his skirt armor.
He turned his head.
Tatsumaki had been watching him the entire time with the focused attention of a scientist who has just observed something she doesn't have a category for yet. She'd been like that since he manifested—tracking his movement, reading his spiritual signature, trying to place him in some existing framework and finding the framework insufficient.
F-boy met her gaze. Held it for exactly one second. Gave a single, professional nod.
Then he dissolved back into Jordan's silhouette and was gone.
I have more questions now, not fewer, Tatsumaki thought, and said nothing.
[Fate Draw Count: +1]
Jordan glanced at the card that had materialized in his hand.
[Fantasy Card: Child of Lava] Type: Character Card (Monster) • Rarity: SR
Childhood: The Child of Lava is underdeveloped; grants 200% explosive power while grounded, but cannot leave the earth's surfaceLava Body: Skin exists between solid and liquid magma; internal temperatures melt incoming attacks, flowing magma seals wounds rapidlyLava Core: A solid crystallized energy heart; if destroyed or deliberately detonated, produces a catastrophic explosion
Jordan looked at it for a moment.
Dark, ugly, SR-rated, specialized toward a fairly narrow use case. By his current standards—the kind of standards that had been revised repeatedly upward by an increasingly unreasonable card library—this was enhancement fodder. Useful for its materials, not worth fielding directly.
He was already moving past it when something in the description snagged.
Prince.
He read it again.
A prince of the Lava Clan, born from the planet's malevolent intent—
He stared at the card.
To have a prince, there must first be a king.
Jordan looked down at his feet. The Mind Network expanded without conscious effort—extending outward, downward, drilling through the surface layer and then deeper, past the infrastructure substrate and the bedrock and the complex geology of fifty kilometers of crustal material—
There.
An ultra-high-temperature life signature, large, dense, and moving upward with the unhurried momentum of something that had all the time in the world because nothing in its environment had ever suggested otherwise.
Jordan measured it against the crater he was currently standing beside.
Twice the size.
He breathed out slowly through his nose.
It really does have a father.
The OPM world had a recurring theme with this—monsters who styled themselves kings, most of whom Saitama had ended before anyone else had time to form an opinion. The Deep Sea King, the Underground King, the Sky King. The Ancient King, the Underworld King, the Forest King. Creatures with impressive titles and power levels that actually backed them up—Dragon-level or close to it, most of them—who had the considerable misfortune of existing in a world that also contained Saitama.
Somewhere approximately forty-five kilometers below M-City's commercial district, something that was presumably calling itself the Lava King was ascending through the earth's crust at speed.
Based on its current velocity: five minutes, give or take.
Jordan pocketed the card and turned to King.
"Hot pot in Z-City," he said, hooking an arm around King's shoulders and steering him forward with the decisive energy of someone who had already done the math. "Bang's dojo. You're coming. We've got about five minutes to sort out a detour first."
King considered this with the gravity he brought to most things. "I just received a delivery at home—a box of fresh seafood. I could bring it."
"Go get it quick—"
A sphere of green light dropped from the sky directly into their path and resolved itself into a very small person with a very significant amount of presence.
Tatsumaki landed with her arms already crossed, green psychic energy still crackling faintly at her fingertips. Her dead-fish stare tracked between Jordan and King with the velocity of someone who had been ignored once and was registering a formal objection.
"Hey."
Jordan stopped. He looked at her with the expression of a man who has just noticed something he'd walked past. "Oh—hey, little Tornado."
Tatsumaki's eyes narrowed. "...Little."
"You know," Jordan said, with the thoughtful air of someone examining a genuine puzzle, "I've always wondered why I say it like that." He looked her over—a brief, descending survey—and his gaze paused for approximately one second somewhere that made Fubuki's eyebrows shoot upward and King suddenly find the middle distance extremely interesting. "I think it's because you're smaller. In every way."
The silence that followed was the kind that precedes weather events.
He said it, Fubuki thought. He actually said it directly.
Oh no, King thought.
He actually— Tatsumaki's internal monologue hit a wall and stopped completely, anger and something else colliding and generating a kind of static that was very difficult to act on coherently.
"So," Jordan said pleasantly, as though the previous sentence had been about something else entirely, "was there something you wanted?"
The question punctured the tension before it could fully pressurize. Tatsumaki opened her mouth. Closed it. She had rushed forward with the very clear purpose of—
The purpose slipped.
She'd been watching F-boy. And then Jordan had been leaving with King. And she'd blocked their path with the general intent of accountability, but now that accountability was being requested she found she didn't have specific charges ready.
The frustration converted cleanly back into anger.
"You pushed me," she said. "Did you want to fight about it?"
"That was an accident." Jordan spread his hands. "I was in a hurry. Don't make it a thing."
"Don't make it—"
"Is the hot pot thing what you overheard?"
Tatsumaki blinked—the shift in topic landing before her momentum could recover—and Jordan exchanged a look with King. "They heard us."
King was briefly puzzled. It wasn't as though hot pot was classified information.
Tatsumaki had begun to orbit Jordan in a slow, deliberate circle—floating just above eye level, arms still crossed, the movement carrying the energy of someone who was enjoying having leverage and hadn't yet decided what to do with it.
"If you're apologizing," she said, completing half the circuit, "you could at least make it sound like you mean it."