Saitama looked at the certificate. At the gold S. At the monthly salary figure that Jordan had mentioned, which was still completing its journey through his cognitive system.
"This is great!"
Three words, delivered with the specific warmth of a man for whom an abstract aspiration has just become a concrete number deposited on a regular schedule. The snack in his other hand was briefly forgotten.
Garou received his certificate separately, in the way that things received under certain conditions are received: with a expression that communicated everything he thought about the situation and a complete absence of any avenue to express it. C-Class. The bottom of the professional tier. Bang stood beside him radiating the loving encouragement of a man who has decided his disciple will earn his rank the long way, and the faint blue warmth of his ki—newly expanded, newly settled—filled the space around him like good weather.
There was nothing Garou could say to this. He was aware of that. He said nothing.
Lanny watched her control room, which now had two new S-Class heroes in it and one very unhappy new C-Class hero, and allowed herself a moment of quiet professional satisfaction that she had earned.
"Standard procedure calls for an orientation session," she said, with the easy delivery of someone who already knows the answer to the question she's about to ask. "Experienced heroes share practical guidance with new registrants." She looked at the assembled group. "I'm going to assume that's unnecessary."
"We'll handle anything they need to know," Jordan said. He extended his hand. "Thank you for today, Minister Lanny. You managed an unusual situation very smoothly."
She shook his hand with the composed warmth of a professional who has learned how to receive a compliment without disappearing into it. "Serving everyone well is the job."
She told them the hero names would be formalized within a few days—the Association's standard process of reviewing conduct records and public profile to assign the designation—and then the formalities were complete.
Outside. The afternoon had settled into the pleasant part of itself—light at a good angle, the air having released the morning's humidity.
Saitama paused on the steps, scratched the back of his head, and said to the general direction of Jordan: "Is it actually fine? Sending a Hero Association executive to jail. For a hero registration."
"He sent himself to jail," Jordan said, falling in beside him. "The sequence of events started well before today."
"Yeah, but the timing—"
"The timing would have been any day someone with a brain and a reason to look into him happened to walk into that conference room." Jordan put his arm around Saitama's shoulders—Genos receiving the same treatment on the other side, the three of them moving together down the steps in the easy configuration of people who have been in the same orbit long enough that the geometry feels natural. "It wasn't about you. You were incidental to an existing problem."
Saitama turned this over. The logic held. He couldn't find the specific thing that felt off, but he also couldn't pin it down precisely enough to argue with.
"Okay," he said, which was his standard resolution for situations where the conclusion was fine but the path had been unusual.
"More importantly." Jordan let them go and turned back to the group. Bang was already waiting at the bottom of the steps with the patient posture of someone who has decided where the evening is going and is prepared to wait for the others to reach the same conclusion. "We have something to celebrate. Multiple hero certifications. A good day." He looked at Bang. "Barbecue?"
"Barbecue," Bang confirmed, with the decisive warmth of a man who has been cooking for seventy years and considers this the correct answer to most questions.
"Genos." Jordan turned. "Ingredients."
The cyborg boy's expression was the expression of someone who has been given a mission and intends to execute it completely. "Leave it entirely to me, Jordan."
Saitama's hand was already up. "I'll help."
"Thank you, Sensei."
"Good." Jordan stretched, the small satisfying crack of joints resettling after a long day. "Meet at Saitama's place. I'll collect King and Tatsumaki." He raised two fingers to his brow. "See you there."
"See you there!"
The ki signature was easy to find. King always ran a distinctive electromagnetic field—the particular signature of someone whose power had been developed from the inside out rather than through conventional training, dense and golden, impossible to mistake for anything else.
It was also, at this moment, in the middle of something.
Jordan materialized on a rooftop at the edge of the affected street and assessed.
The cyclops was already falling—a creature that had been, approximately half a second ago, a significant structural problem for everyone in this section of the city, and was now a large and rapidly decelerating corpse. Its head had resolved the argument with King's fist by ceasing to be a coherent object. The shout that accompanied the strike—Magnetic field rotation of one hundred eighty thousand horsepower—Emperor's Crushing Fist!—was still settling out of the air as the body hit the road and the road accepted it with the resignation of infrastructure that has seen a lot.
King landed on a wrecked taxi with the composed authority of someone who has stopped treating dramatic entrances as remarkable. The golden electricity traced across his frame and dissipated. Around him, the citizens who had been frozen in disaster-response adrenaline began the collective exhale of people who have been returned to safety and are processing the return.
"King-san! The strongest on Earth!"
King's head came up. His magnetic field shifted—the alert quality that his power generated automatically when something registered at the edge of his senses. His gaze went to the sky with the sharpness of a man who has learned to trust that the thing he's feeling is probably real.
"Who's there?"
"Friendly," Jordan said, descending.
King watched him arrive with the expression of a man who had known Jordan Evans for long enough to have formed a stable model of what Jordan Evans looked like, and was currently revising that model against available data. "Jordan." He looked at the hair. The height. The ambient quality. "You look—different."
"Hair dye," Jordan said. "And some time away. We're celebrating tonight—Saitama and Genos registered today. Barbecue at the apartment." He paused. "I'm collecting people."
The last of King's combat alert released from his posture, replaced by something warmer. "I'll come." He glanced at the crater. "Give me a moment to check on the civilians."
"Take the time."
Tatsumaki was where her energy said she was, which was in the middle of a street that had recently contained a demonic incursion and currently contained the aftermath of one.
Ghost-level overall threat rating, which the demons had apparently assessed as sufficient. The street's current condition suggested they had been incorrect.
She was standing in the center of it with her arms folded across her chest, her back to the last surviving member of the incursion, her expression communicating that she had stopped paying attention to the situation approximately thirty seconds ago. The green-skinned demon looked at her back. Looked at the landscape around it—the scattered remains of its companions, arranged by physics rather than design across approximately sixty meters of asphalt.
Its expression cycled through fear, through something that looked like calculation, through the specific poor decision that leads to outcomes like the ones surrounding it.
It lunged.
Two beams—thin, surgical, the temperature of exactly enough—crossed the space between Tatsumaki's position and the demon's face at a speed that the demon did not have time to register as a speed. The upper half and the lower half of the demon became two separate problems for gravity to sort out.
Tatsumaki turned at the sound of the landing.
A tall figure materialized above the demon's remaining portion, palms extended, the ki blast complete and precise—obliteration at the molecular level, the specific thoroughness that left nothing to reassemble.
[Fate card draw count +1.]
She looked at the hands that settled at her waist—familiar, warm, the grip of someone who has been here before and intends to stay for a moment.
"Why are you here?" Her tone had the particular quality it had when she was asking a question she didn't actually need answered.
Jordan ruffled her hair. The curls, given their post-session texture, cooperated better than usual. "Taking you home for dinner. Genos is grilling."
Her eyes went bright.
"This is great!"