The aura press came with the eyes.
Atomic Samurai's gaze settled on Jordan the way a blade settles into its target — not a search, a finding. The psychic field around Jordan's body rippled outward like the surface of water registering a dropped stone. He acknowledged the sharpness of it privately and kept his expression neutral.
Swordsman through and through. He'd felt Bang's version of this — the way a grandmaster's attention becomes physical, a technique in itself. Atomic Samurai's carried the same quality but expressed through a different geometry entirely. Where Bang's aura was omnidirectional, adaptive, a river finding its path around every obstacle, this one was an edge: precise, singular, oriented in exactly one direction at a time.
It was impressive.
Jordan put his hands in his pockets.
"Long time no see, Atomic Samurai." A slight inclination of his head. "What can I do for you?"
"It has indeed been a while, Super Cop." The toothpick shifted. The probing quality didn't stop — it simply confirmed what it had been looking for and transitioned into the next phase. A glint appeared in those sharp eyes that was not threatening so much as anticipatory. "Bang has mentioned you. More than once, as a matter of fact. He speaks well of you — says you're among the rare truly strong among the younger generation."
He took one easy step forward. The hand that had been resting near his sword hilt didn't move, but the intent behind it became legible in the air between them.
"Since we've happened to meet — why not spar? I have considerable interest in testing myself against you."
Behind Atomic Samurai, three things happened simultaneously: Iaian's eyes lit up. Okamaitachi's hand went to her collar in a reflexive attempt to look composed. Bushidrill's expression achieved the exact configuration of someone who had called this outcome before leaving the food stall and was experiencing the quiet satisfaction of being right.
As expected, the three faces communicated in unison, here we go.
Jordan raised an eyebrow. "Should I take that as a challenge?"
"'Challenge.'" Atomic Samurai repeated the word with the ease of someone picking up an object that doesn't belong to them. He turned it over, examined it, set it down. "That's the language of the weak addressing the strong. I don't have opponents anymore who fall into that category." He smiled — not unkindly, but with the particular confidence of someone who had tested this statement enough times to trust it. "Bang has approved of you. I haven't. Those are two different things, Jordan."
You infuriating old man, Jordan thought, with complete clarity, while his expression remained at mild interest. If your sword weren't genuinely fast enough to back that up, someone would have knocked you down a peg years ago.
He stroked his chin thoughtfully.
Atomic Samurai's smile broadened a fraction — the specific expression of a martial arts obsessive who has recognized the tell of someone calculating whether to accept. He took another unhurried step forward, right hand settling on the sword hilt with the natural ease of something he'd done approximately ten thousand times. "So — shall we begin?"
"Nah.. I'll pass."
Atomic Samurai stopped.
The toothpick remained exactly where it was. His back didn't quite complete the small motion it had begun toward the draw. Three disciples, positioned behind him, went completely still in the specific way that people go still when a thing they were not expecting has happened and they are waiting for the next beat before reacting.
Jordan was already rising.
"I've got work to finish." He shrugged — not dismissive of Atomic Samurai, but genuinely unconcerned with the conversation's outcome. "We can do this some other time when I'm not in the middle of a city run."
The advantage of flight, as a concept, becomes very practical in situations like this one. The ground system, however accomplished, requires the flight system to come back down. Jordan had no particular reason to come back down.
He was twenty meters up before the silence below finished establishing itself.
Down in the ruins of the seafood market, three disciples did not look at their master.
They looked at the fish stall debris. The ice sculptures. The scorch marks on the cobblestones. A spot somewhere in the middle distance that required careful, sustained attention for no particular reason. The sky, though not the specific portion of sky where Jordan had been.
The silence from Atomic Samurai's direction was a specific kind — the kind that has weather in it.
The sound of his breathing was slow and deliberate in the way that breathing becomes deliberate when the person doing it has decided to manage themselves.
"When," Atomic Samurai said, to no one, "has I ever been—"
He stopped himself. Adjusted the toothpick. Breathed.
The three disciples had developed, over years of training under this man, a finely calibrated sense of when to wait and when to retreat. Current reading: wait. Definitely wait. Retreating would require moving, which would draw attention, which was the exact wrong outcome.
A long moment passed.
Then Atomic Samurai's shoulders dropped half a centimeter and something in his expression resolved into something else — something that was not quite a smile but was not the alternative either.
He looked at them. They looked back with the expressions of three people who had been very carefully not-looking-at-him and had been caught at it.
"What are you all standing there for." He turned and walked toward the street. "Let's go."
Iaian blinked. "—Here? Now?"
Bushidrill followed, and in a mutter quiet enough to pass for private: "He adjusted that quickly? As expected of Master."
Beside him, Okamaitachi swallowed. "...Is he actually back to normal? Something feels off."
"You're talking about Master again—"
"I'm not talking behind his back, I'm expressing concern! There's a difference! Also—" a glance toward the sky where the blue light had disappeared "—he's an S-Class hero on par with Amai Mask. Aesthetically speaking."
"There it is. You have your eye on him again."
"So what if I do? I have standards, not restrictions."
"I will end you—"
"Enough."
Atomic Samurai said it from the front without turning around. The two fell silent. He kept walking.
Iaian jogged to catch up. "Master." He fell into step. "The market's been destroyed. The seafood we were going to bring Bang—"
Atomic Samurai reached up to scratch his chin. The competitive irritation had genuinely drained — replaced, slowly, by something that was perhaps better described as reassessment. "Bang likes tea. There's a shopping district nearby. Two boxes of high-end tea."
"...Yes, Master."
They walked. The three disciples exchanged one more glance behind Atomic Samurai's back — a glance that contained, in equal parts, relief that the crisis had passed and the unspoken acknowledgment that something had just happened that would be discussed at length, in private, at a later date.
The city lights were doing their thing below when Jordan dropped onto King's apartment balcony.
He'd covered a lot of ground since the seafood market. Six cities, eight incidents — the disaster channel had been generous today, and he'd worked through the list with the efficiency of someone who had done this enough times to stop finding the individual incidents memorable. Grab dinner somewhere around city four. Finish the circuit. Come home.
The sliding door opened into a living room that smelled like dish soap and something Genos had apparently decided was an appropriate dinner for three people who had varying opinions on portion size.
Saitama was on the floor, which was not unusual. What was unusual was the newspaper — yesterday's, which meant he wasn't reading it, he was using it as something to look at while thinking about something else. His expression had the quality of a man who has been turning a problem over and hasn't found the side that faces the right way yet.
Genos's voice carried from the kitchen, the rhythm of someone who had been narrating his own dishwashing process to no one in particular and had stopped when the balcony door opened.
"You're back."
Jordan crossed to the sofa, grabbed a handful of sunflower seeds from the bowl on the table, and sat down. He studied Saitama's face for approximately two seconds — the specific downward set of the mouth, the unfocused quality of the dead-fish eyes, the way the newspaper had been folded and refolded without being read. He bumped him with his elbow.
"What happened? You've been brooding."
Saitama looked up slowly. "...How did you know?"
"It's on your face. All of it." Jordan leaned back. "Talk. It'll do you good and it'll entertain me, so we both benefit."
"You bastard..." The dead-fish eyes rolled sideways. Saitama scratched his head, exhaled, and looked at the ceiling. "It's the bounty hunter thing."