By evening, every major media outlet in the country had the same keyword trending.
S-rank training program.
The interviews had done it without coordination — heroes in six cities, asked independently about their new equipment and obvious strength improvements, pointing to the same source. It was the most effective kind of advertising because it wasn't advertising: it was twenty professionals answering questions truthfully, and the truth happened to tell a compelling story. The topic that Jordan had seeded a month ago with a public announcement had been dormant while the program ran. Now the graduates were the proof of concept, walking around in their upgraded equipment and demonstrating the outcomes, and the dormant story had become the loudest thing in the news cycle.
Regular heroes, one month, significant and measurable improvement. The underdog-rises story that people's instincts were built to respond to.
Jordan, floating horizontally on an inflatable pool mat with his sunglasses on and approximately zero concern for traffic metrics, let it run.
He didn't need to monetize it. He didn't need to manage it. The program spoke for itself, and the program's actual purpose — proving that ordinary people could break their limiters if given the right conditions — was being demonstrated in real time by every hero who spoke honestly about what the month had done for them.
Let it run, he thought, and adjusted his sunglasses.
The trainees had claimed the pool area with the confidence of people who had earned a day off and intended to extract full value from it. The mentors had found their way to the spacious outer lawn, where a portable burner and a deep red pot had materialized, and the specific social gravity of people who enjoy each other's company over a shared meal was doing its work.
"Silver Fang." Atomic Samurai raised his beer glass with the expansive warmth of someone who has had one and a half drinks and is behaving like he's had three. "Come on. Cheers."
Bang considered the glass, the warmth of the offer, and the faint overperformance in Atomic Samurai's posture.
"Hehe." The old man's smile was modest and his eyes were sharp. "I'll wait until after this cut has cooked. Then we can talk."
Atomic Samurai's face fell. The manufactured relaxation dropped away like a stage curtain. "You saw through it again." He set his glass down with the resigned expression of a man who has tried this approach multiple times and keeps getting the same result. "I wouldn't lose to you in a straight contest either."
"Nobody said you would," Bang said, and turned back to the hot pot with the serenity of a man whose competitive instincts are entirely satisfied.
The veal went in. Eight seconds in the broth, and then Atomic Samurai's knife made the first cut before the last piece had finished settling, and the plate on his side began a quiet but determined decline.
At the far end of the same table, Jordan had a pair of chopsticks and an opinion about what Tatsumaki could handle.
She had told him she could eat spicy food. She had said this with the specific authority of a person who has decided a thing and does not welcome alternative data points. Jordan had noted the declaration and proceeded accordingly.
The first piece from the hot end of the pot went into her mouth. She chewed. She chewed harder. The color in her face went through several interesting phases before settling on a shade that was technically red and practically communicating something else entirely.
"Spicy," she said. "Spicy—"
Jordan had already gotten the fruit milk from F-boy's direction without turning around, the hand movement practiced, and held the bottle to her lips. Tatsumaki, green bathrobe, bare feet crossed beneath her on the chair, eyes wide, accepted the intervention with the pragmatism of someone whose pride had been briefly suspended by physiological necessity.
She drank. Most of the first half of the bottle.
By the time she came back to herself, her color had stabilized and she had her dignity back.
"It was just the sudden temperature." She set the bottle down with the authority of someone whose position on their own spice tolerance remained unchanged. "That's all. It's none of your business."
"Of course," Jordan agreed, and brought the next piece — also from the hot end, dipped in the sauce — to her mouth with the innocent helpfulness of someone providing assistance.
She took the bite. She chewed.
"SPICY—"
Bang, across the table, observed this sequence with the tranquil expression of a man who has seen many things and this is one of them. King, beside him, was looking at a specific point in the middle distance with the focused concentration of someone who has decided not to have an opinion about what they're watching.
Above, two trails crossed the hotel's outdoor sky — blue and green, closing the distance between each other in patterns that had more to do with momentum and spite than aerodynamics. The sound of Tatsumaki expressing her views on the situation drifted back down at intervals.
They made two full laps around the property before the gap in the trails indicated that one had caught the other, and then a single path curved back toward the main building in a lazy arc.
Digestive exercise, Jordan had called it, with the composure of someone who had planned this outcome.
At the poolside, Genos had found a seat beside Saitama and taken on, with quiet proprietary confidence, the task of keeping everyone's cups full. He poured Saitama's tea, started on Bang's, registered the shadow in his peripheral vision, and stopped.
His energy analysis had limits, but it had detected something — faint, blurry at the edges, present in the space that was currently also occupied by the tea service. Not a threat signature. Not anything his combat parameters recognized. More like the outline of something that had decided to help with the cups before he got to them and was continuing to do so.
He looked at Saitama.
Saitama was nodding at an empty space to Genos's left. A small, confirming nod, the way you'd acknowledge someone who had made a reasonable point.
Genos set down the teapot with the careful movements of someone processing new information.
There is something here. Saitama-sensei can see it. It is performing household functions. It is competing with me for the household functions. He looked at the space again. It has been here this whole time.
"...Hiss." The sound was involuntary.
Saitama glanced over. "You okay?"
"Yes," Genos said, in the tone of someone who was technically accurate.
Later, after the aerial situation had resolved itself and the spice had been fully processed, Jordan carried Tatsumaki back to her room. She had been sleepy since the third lap and was not disguising it — bare feet dangling, one arm around his neck, eyes half-closed with the specific indignation of someone who would like to be awake and alert and is being comprehensively failed by their body.
"I'm not tired," she said.
"Of course not," Jordan said.
She was asleep before he reached the corridor.
Two hours later, the S-class heroes had changed back into their working clothes.
There was no explicit signal for this — no announcement that the social portion of the evening was over. It was more that the nature of the people present meant that a certain amount of time in recreational mode was followed, naturally, by a return to operational mode. The bathrobes went back, the hero uniforms came on, and the group that reconvened on the manor's outer terrace had the organized, available quality of people who can be deployed at short notice and are quietly indicating this fact.
Jordan stepped through the terrace door and found them arranged around the garden furniture with the casualness of people who had been waiting without making it obvious they were waiting.
Atomic Samurai had a bamboo skewer in his mouth in place of his earlier toothpick. He drew it out, held it between two fingers, and made a slow cutting gesture across his own throat.
"The Monster Association is underground beneath Z-City." He looked at Jordan. "We know the location. Should we go and finish this now, before they realize we know?"
The suggestion had the specific quality of a tactical recommendation delivered by someone who has been thinking about it for the last two hours and is reasonably confident in the reasoning.
It was not a minority view.
Bang set down his teacup. Behind his mild expression, the light that sometimes appeared when he was genuinely interested in a problem had found its way to the surface. "Atom is right. An organization of this type doesn't improve with time. The sooner it's addressed, the better."
"Great minds," Atomic Samurai said, with a slight smile at Bang.
"If you're going." King's voice was quiet and uncomplicated. His eyes were neither quiet nor uncomplicated. "Take me with you."
He had come away from the Elder Centipede fight with the honest assessment of someone whose self-knowledge had improved along with his technique: he had pushed hard, produced significant output, and the target had regenerated through it. The gap between what his current magnetic field could sustain and what would have actually mattered in that fight was specific and knowable. The only way to close it was to fight things that required him to close it.
More of those, faster.
Genos, on the bench beside Saitama, had been tracking the conversation with his full attention. At King's declaration, his ears effectively shifted forward. "I want to go as well."
Saitama had been looking at the sky.
The sky was a particular shade of evening blue that apparently warranted extended consideration. He had made no contribution to the last several minutes of conversation. After a moment, he stretched, both arms out, a full body yawn that communicated the complete suspension of whatever thought he'd been engaged in.
"What a hassle," he said.
Genos observed his teacher's posture, catalogued the tone, and filed the result.
Of course, Genos thought, with the resigned accuracy of someone who has correctly predicted an outcome they would have preferred to be wrong about. He has no interest in an organization that hides underground and plots in the dark. It has nothing to offer him as a fight.
He sat a little straighter.
Then I suppose that part is ours.
Jordan looked at the assembled heroes. Looked at the terrace. Looked at the sky in the direction of Z-City, where 1500 meters below the surface a beautiful woman with a maniacal smile was mixing iridescent compounds and building toward something.
"We don't go tonight," he said.
Several expressions shifted.
"We go when we're ready," Jordan continued, with the specific patience of someone who has been watching a situation develop and has a clear sense of when it will be optimal to intervene. "There's a difference between acting quickly and acting carelessly. The Monster Association has been underground for months. Another few days won't change the outcome." He looked at Atomic Samurai. "But your instinct is correct. We're not going to wait indefinitely."
The bamboo skewer went back between Atomic Samurai's teeth.
"How long?" Bang asked.
Jordan considered the variables. Psykos's compound, the artificial Dragon-peak monster on the table, the organizational structure of what was still assembling itself below Z-City's surface. What was ready. What wasn't.
"Soon," he said.