"Sitch—we're done here. I'll be heading out."
"Of course! Lord Jordan Evans, take care!"
Blue light flared, and then Jordan was gone.
The training grounds settled into sudden quiet. Sitch stood very still, acutely aware that he was now alone with Tatsumaki, who had her eyes closed and her back to him.
I'm most afraid of the silence after something like that.
"...Honestly." Her voice came out with a studied casualness that wasn't quite convincing. "Messing up my hair like that."
Sitch opened his mouth, attempted an expression of polite neutrality, and produced instead something that read clearly as I saw what I saw. He covered it with a cough. Several coughs. An entire sustained coughing episode that fooled no one.
Tatsumaki had already turned away in mid-air, hands on hips, presenting her back to him with great deliberateness.
"Since I'm already here, Sitch—do you have anything that needs handling? Any active assignments?"
Sitch straightened, grateful for solid professional ground. "Not at present, Miss Tornado. Things are quiet. No monster activity that would warrant your particular capabilities."
"Fine. I'm leaving then."
"Of course. Please take care."
He watched the small green figure rise and drift out over the perimeter wall until it disappeared. Then he exhaled—long, slow, and complete.
"Thank goodness Lord Evans was here. We actually made it through."
He stood for a moment in the empty training grounds, surrounded by scorch marks and the faint smell of spent propellant, reflecting on the afternoon.
"...Though come to think of it, Miss Tornado's temper does seem to have improved lately. Somewhat."
He wasn't sure what to make of that. He filed it away with everything else and went to find some aspirin.
The news cycle had fully committed to its new subject.
"Breaking: Hero Association spokesperson confirms ongoing recruitment drive. New S-Class candidates under review—"
"Exclusive: Leading scientist reaches agreement with Hero Association. Combat armor unit to join S-Class roster—"
"Confirmed: Three-time world eating champion officially registered as professional hero. Hero name: Pig God—"
In the special training villa outside M City, Saitama lay sprawled across the tatami with the particular bonelessness of a man whose entire body had given up on vertical ambitions. One hand propped his head. The other worked the remote. Channel after channel after channel, all of them running the same story with slightly different graphics.
He squinted at the screen.
"The TV in my apartment only gets the free disaster channels." He flipped to another breathless anchor. "How did Jordan Evans get paid channels out here?"
Another flip. Pig God's eating contest highlights.
"Huh." He touched his chin. His expression, almost imperceptibly, shifted—the settled looseness of someone who's been watching the world from a comfortable distance for a while suddenly edging toward something sharper. "There are really that many strong people out there."
The shift completed. He sat up slightly.
"Then I'll have to work harder too."
"Mr. Saitama." King's voice floated up from the kitchen downstairs, unhurried and even. "Could you bring in the fruit from outside? My delivery order arrived."
Food.
Saitama was off the floor before the sentence finished.
"On it!"
Thump thump thump thump—
He took the stairs in four steps, hit the first floor at full momentum, and pulled up just as the heavy stone door swung open from the other side.
Jordan Evans walked in carrying the future of the villa's refrigerator. Bags of fruit and ingredients drifted around him in lazy orbits, suspended in blue spiritual energy, bumping gently off each other like a slow-motion solar system of groceries.
Saitama grabbed the nearest plastic bag. "Oh, Jordan. It's not even dark yet—you finished that fast?"
"Small task." Jordan handed over the bag and moved through to the kitchen, the floating supplies following him in. He leaned in the doorway. "King—you're already cooking? You didn't have to."
"It's no trouble." King stirred something without looking up. The vegetables were already chopped. A pot was simmering.
The groceries descended around the kitchen in rough order of where they belonged. The items that needed refrigerating navigated themselves to the fridge and filed in.
"I can get around quickly, so I stopped by the supermarket." Jordan washed his hands, dried them, leaned against the counter. "You need to eat well to recover. Can't skimp on that."
"Jordan." King's voice was quiet. "You keep spending money on us."
"Don't worry about it." Jordan smiled and headed back to the living room. "So—how are you finding the house?"
Saitama had already claimed the leather sofa. He pressed one hand against the marble-effect wall and looked around the open space with the expression of someone experiencing cognitive dissonance.
"Everything works—water, electricity, all of it. And the furniture..." He shook his head. "Honestly, I've never lived in a place this nice."
Jordan dropped into the armchair, picked up an orange from the bowl on the coffee table, and began peeling it. "If you like it, we can build something like this near Z City eventually. It's not that complicated."
That said—it wasn't entirely simple either. Most of the interior had come from F-boy's card library, a pre-prepared collection of four-dimensional home furnishing materials that Jordan had accumulated for exactly this kind of situation. Building from scratch was a different scale of undertaking.
He tossed a segment into his mouth. "If you want to stay here solo, though, you'll need King along. The electricity for the whole building runs off him right now."
Saitama scratched the back of his head. "Wouldn't that be asking too much of him?"
Thump.
F-boy materialized briefly beside Saitama, lifted two fragment cards from the sofa cushions with brisk efficiency, and dematerialized.
Jordan shrugged. "You could live here alone and pay the utility bills separately. Your choice."
Element detection complete.
Saitama immediately reconsidered. "...Let's invite King."
He leaned back, glanced around the room, then squinted at a corner near the bookshelf.
"Hey—did you just see something purple go past?"
"Purple?" Jordan kept his expression neutral. "I didn't see anything."
"I'm serious. Like a shadow—purplish, kind of hazy. I couldn't track it." Saitama's brow furrowed. "It's been happening since the Z City apartment. And now it's here, which means it followed me all the way to M City."
He turned slowly in place, scanning the room with new wariness.
"...Am I being haunted?"
Jordan pressed his fist against his mouth and stared at the ceiling for a moment.
F-boy's cover is already blown. It's only a matter of time.
He hadn't ever made a deliberate effort to hide the Stand from Saitama—it was just that Saitama, up until very recently, had been completely unable to perceive him. Something had changed. Jordan wasn't surprised.
There was nothing shameful about having a Stand. It wasn't a secret that needed protecting.
F-boy: You're the one who's shameful.
Jordan cleared his throat. "You're probably just tired. You've been training hard."
Saitama pointed accusingly at the corner. "It was right there—"
"Mr. Saitama." King emerged from the kitchen entrance, wiping his hands on a cloth, his voice carrying its usual unhurried weight. "If you ever want to come back for a vacation, just give me a call. I don't mind."
Saitama forgot about the corner.
A low, steady hum of electricity pulsed through King's body—barely audible, felt more than heard. From a normal angle it was invisible: thin threads of current running down through his shoes to the floor, channeled into the large storage battery buried beneath the foundation, distributed back up through a transformer to every appliance in the building. Clean. Quiet. Continuous.
Environmentally friendly, and—more importantly—a form of training that Saitama's hundred-push-ups-and-runs couldn't approximate.
Controlling the current generated by cellular friction required precision. Not accumulation—precision. The ability to modulate, to thread power through a system without overwhelming it. That kind of fine control was the foundation for everything King might eventually become capable of. The electricity was just the current stage of the work.
He'd started late. He knew it. That was why, of the three of them sprawled across this borrowed villa, King's training was—quietly, without drama, and without anyone noticing—the most disciplined of all.
Saitama, in comparison, appeared to do nothing all day.
He was also accelerating toward something that would make the gap irrelevant. But that was a problem for later.
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