Jordan had a routine for disaster sites now.
Step one: threat neutralization. The Visual Shockwave had solved that the moment he'd arrived over the market and clocked the obvious Dragon-level-or-above signature radiating off the thing with the fish head and the frozen swords. Heat Vision, one pass, two clean beams crossing in an X. By the time he'd fully descended, the monster was already a matching pair of ice sculptures.
Step two: casualties.
He pressed two fingers to his brow.
"Ninja Art: Palm of the Immortal Spring."
The green chakra that spread from him didn't look like chakra, exactly — it looked like something growing, like the first suggestion of spring breaking through frozen ground. It moved outward in a slow wave, pale and warm, and where it reached the wounded it didn't fix them with a sudden jolt but settled over them the way warmth does, gradual and complete. Breathing that had been labored evened out. Color returned. The particular tension in injured bodies — that involuntary bracing against pain that holds longer than the pain itself — released.
The Mind Network was already mapping the rubble. Every life magnetic field in the collapsed stalls and overturned structures registered as a distinct presence in his perception — some steady, some flickering, a few that needed to come out now rather than in a minute.
He extended the psychic field outward until it covered the full ruin of the seafood market. Blue light bloomed from beneath the collapsed structures — careful, precise, distributed to a hundred different points simultaneously — and the rubble rose in sections, each piece of debris lifted away from the people beneath it with the specific patience of something that understood which direction was safe.
The civilians inside each pocket of rubble found themselves surrounded by translucent blue spherical shields, rising through the gap left by the moving debris, drifting toward the open lane while the healing ninjutsu continued to work.
The crowd that had been pressed to the market's edges watched all of this happening and made the specific transition from we almost died to we are being rescued with the sudden emotional urgency that transition always carries.
"The monster's dead!"
"Super Cop — it's Super Cop!"
"He saved us! He actually saved us!"
"My son — that shield has my son — thank you, thank you—"
Jordan continued working through the debris map without looking up. The praise was genuine and he accepted it in the way you accept rain — present, noted, not the point.
Not far away, three swordsmen who had been actively fighting this monster for the past ten minutes stood in their triangular formation and watched a crowd of civilians credit the person who had been on-site for approximately ninety seconds.
The silence from that direction had a particular texture to it.
The red cloak arrived at the edge of the scene quietly.
Iaian caught the motion in his peripheral vision and turned fast, then stopped himself from reacting further when he registered who it was. "Master — when did you—?"
"During your fight." Atomic Samurai's voice was even, his gaze moving across the battlefield with the specific attention of a swordsman cataloguing what had happened based on what remained: the damage patterns, the ice sculptures, the wounds in the cobblestones. A professional reading a professional record. "I saw it."
Okamaitachi and Bushidrill arrived a step behind Iaian, realized the same thing simultaneously, and straightened.
"No need for formalities." Atomic Samurai waved it off before anyone could bow further. His eyes were still moving across the market.
Iaian's jaw tightened. He looked at the ground. "You saw everything?"
A nod.
The grip on his sword hilt went white. "I'm sorry, Master." He kept his voice level — the specific discipline of someone who has learned to contain what they're feeling and present instead its distilled form. "My skills weren't sufficient. I brought embarrassment to you."
Behind him, Okamaitachi had gone quiet in the particular way she went quiet when something hit harder than she'd expected.
Bushidrill's hand had found his sword grip, not for combat — habit, something to hold.
They were all three looking at the ground.
"Ha." Atomic Samurai's snort was not unkind. He crossed to Iaian in three steps and put a hand on his shoulder — not the careful placement of someone being deliberate, but the easy contact of someone who'd done this before and expected it to land. He gripped once, released. "What nonsense."
Iaian looked up.
"That monster wasn't easy." Atomic Samurai's voice had dropped — not softer, exactly, but direct in a way that cut through the self-criticism to the thing underneath it. "Regeneration. Cold-weapon defense. Demon-level speed. With your current strength, what you accomplished was already more than most heroes could manage." A pause. The toothpick shifted to the other side of his mouth. "The problem wasn't your sword. The problem was that you let a setback shake your composure for those few seconds."
He looked at all three of them.
"A swordsman who loses his determination the moment things don't go as planned has no business carrying my name. You know that." Another pause. His mouth curved up, just at the corner. "But you also know that that's not what I saw."
Iaian was quiet for a moment.
Then he straightened, and the resolution that had been there during the fight — real resolution, earned through getting knocked down and getting back up — settled back into his expression where it belonged.
"I hear you, Master."
"Good." Atomic Samurai stepped back. "A thousand sword swings when we get back. All three of you. Consider it remedial coursework."
"Yes, Master." — three voices, clean and simultaneous, the harmony that develops between people who have trained together long enough that their timing for this kind of thing is automatic.
Behind Iaian, Okamaitachi had quietly started crying.
Bushidrill had a sleeve in each hand, and he was making full use of both. Bushidrill, whose expression suggested he was currently engaged in a silent conversation with the universe about the indignity of this situation, had decided the atmosphere made extraction impossible and was enduring it.
"Alright." Atomic Samurai brought the scene to a close before it escalated further, in the tone of a man who had shepherded these three through many variations of this exact dynamic. "That's enough. What you didn't finish today, you'll finish with a better sword tomorrow."
Iaian followed his master's gaze as Atomic Samurai looked away from them — and tracked it to the tall figure still moving through the market debris, still pulling people out, still placing shields, the pale green glow of the healing ninjutsu mingling with the blue of the psychic field.
S-Class Rank 2. Super Cop. Jordan.
Iaian had heard his master after the S-Class meeting — the oblique comments made at the end of the third drink, when Atomic Samurai's verbal filter thinned just enough for the competitive part of him to speak directly. "That man. I want to know how he measures."
He pitched his voice low. "Master. The threat's been handled. Should we...?"
"Wait." Atomic Samurai's hand dropped away from his sword hilt. His posture had changed — the aggressive readiness that was his default in uncertain situations had shifted into something more considered, watching Jordan work with the specific attention of a senior professional evaluating a peer. "Since we've already run into each other — it would be discourteous to leave without a greeting."
Iaian knew his master's greetings.
He was moderately reassured by the fact that the target was also an S-Class hero, and therefore presumably equipped to receive one.
Jordan finished lifting the last civilian clear, confirmed via Mind Network that the rubble field was clean, and rose into the air. He ran a quick scan of the surrounding area out of habit — the mechanical efficiency of someone who had done enough disaster response to know that the obvious crisis is rarely the last one.
His Spider-Sense registered the aura before his Mind Network pinpointed the source.
It arrived like a blade held a foot from the back of his neck — precise and deliberately, not hostile exactly, but carrying the specific intent of a challenge framed as a greeting. Spiritual power threaded through it the way a master calligrapher threads intent through brushwork: the mark of someone who had refined a single discipline until it could do what words were too blunt for.
Jordan rotated in the air, very slowly, and looked toward the red cloak.
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