"Super Cop." Okamaitachi set her cup down and leaned forward slightly, cheeks already past rosy and heading somewhere more committed. "Eliminating monsters puts real strain on the shoulder joints. I've noticed you roll your right shoulder sometimes."
She had not, to Jordan's knowledge, been watching him closely enough to notice that. The implication that she had was its own kind of information.
"Before I became Master's disciple, I did a systematic study of therapeutic massage techniques." She delivered this with the earnest confidence of someone presenting legitimate credentials. "Even Master praised my skills. I could help you relax. Just therapeutic. Very professional."
Jordan felt the specific cold sweat that had nothing to do with physical threat.
Homelander, he reflected, at least had the decency to come at me in a straight line.
He glanced sideways along the table to where Bang was sitting with the contented expression of a man enjoying his own party. Jordan performed a rapid cost-benefit analysis.
"Actually," he said, setting his cup down with careful deliberateness, "I've been noticing that Master Bang's shoulders seem a little stiff lately. He mentioned it to me earlier. You might want to check in with him—"
"Is that so?" Okamaitachi's expression fell like a curtain coming down. The ambient energy around her dimmed perceptibly, turning her whole manner a shade of dejected gray.
She looked at Bang.
Bang looked back with the expression of a man who had just been handed something he didn't order.
"Young man," he said with considerable feeling, "I am in excellent physical condition. I can run several dozen kilometers without losing my breath. Don't go around slandering people with actual athletic ability—"
He stopped.
...Is it me, or is there something slightly unusual about that young person's voice?
Bang considered this. Filed it under things to examine later. Raised his cup.
Elsewhere at the table, the disciples had discovered each other and were well into the process of getting along the way young people get along when there are enough bottles involved.
Okamaitachi, having pivoted from Jordan with the adaptive grace of someone who considered this a minor setback rather than a defeat, had redirected her attention to the next most relevant target at the table: Genos, who was objectively also very handsome and had the additional advantage of not having just blamed her on Bang.
She was working on persuading him to drink.
Genos had no particular feelings about this one way or another. His body modification was comprehensive enough that the concept of being affected by alcohol no longer applied to him in any practical sense—the moment sake entered his system, the internal furnace broke it down into organic fuel, compressed it, and redirected it toward his core as usable power. He accepted Okamaitachi's toast without hesitation.
Teacher's battlefield is over there, he observed, watching Saitama and Atomic Samurai from across the table. The disciples' front is over here. Someone has to hold this line.
He drank. The furnace converted. He showed no sign of any of this.
If Genos had been human, the pace he was keeping would have required urgent real estate decisions about proximity to bathroom facilities.
Across the table, the Saitama vs. Atomic Samurai drinking contest had exceeded three hundred rounds and shown no signs of resolution.
Atomic Samurai was a man of extensive experience in many areas. He had not anticipated this particular variety of problem. The young man across from him—unremarkable appearance, bald in progress, dead eyes with no particular depth to them—had kept pace with him through three hundred and counting, and the arithmetic was beginning to suggest things Atomic Samurai was not prepared to accept.
The flush on his face was doing things he didn't approve of. He excused himself from the battlefield with a dignity that he felt was fully preserved, crossed to Bang's end of the table, and picked up a quieter cup with the composed manner of a man who had simply decided he preferred this particular seating arrangement.
Temporary repositioning. Strategic pause. Not a retreat.
He looked up and found Jordan already sitting next to Bang.
The space between them charged up immediately—two incompatible atmospheres discovering each other—but both of them were eating, and neither stopped. Jordan turned a piece of food over with his chopsticks with complete unconcern. Atomic Samurai's jaw tightened and he picked up a dish anyway.
Bang observed this with the expression of a man who has decided to be useful.
"Come on," he said, topping up both glasses with the peaceful authority of someone who has been managing difficult personalities for seventy-plus years. "We've all fought on the same side at one point or another. No need for all this tension." He pushed the cups forward and gave Jordan a pointed look.
Jordan interpreted the look correctly. He set down his chopsticks.
"I don't particularly have a problem," he said, which was true in the way that a storm doesn't have a problem with a coastline. "If Atomic Samurai genuinely wants to spar, we can find a time."
"Finally." Atomic Samurai leaned forward, the drunken flush metabolizing away from his expression with visible speed as his attention sharpened. "I was starting to think you'd spend the whole evening running away."
"Running away." Jordan looked at him. "You've been challenging me."
"Ridiculous. I wouldn't waste the word 'challenge' on someone I haven't evaluated yet."
They picked up their cups. Clinked them together. Neither of them was backing down, which somehow made the gesture almost friendly.
Bang watched this and felt the mild despair of a man who had spent two minutes engineering a peace and produced instead a scheduled conflict.
Young people.
He sighed internally, then immediately reconsidered. He'd been more combative than either of them at their age. And Jordan—his concern wasn't the fight itself. It was the specific instruction he'd once given the boy about what not to do if Atomic Samurai's sword actually made contact.
Atomic Samurai's blade was extraordinary. If Jordan actually lost his temper afterward—
"Silver Fang!" Atomic Samurai turned to him, cup extended, tone companionable in the way of someone who has had enough sake to temporarily like everyone. "Stop sitting there thinking. Drink with me."
Bang looked at him for a moment. Then he smiled and raised his glass.
Well. He let the worry go. It'll work out however it works out.
"Gladly."
The evening wound down gradually, as these things do. Food disappeared. Bottles accumulated. The noise level moved through several phases and settled into the comfortable middle range of people who were full and pleasantly warm and had stopped trying to prove anything.
Everyone present could, if they chose, simply refuse to be drunk. The bodies in this room were not ordinary bodies—metabolism, muscle density, neurological response time, all of it operating well above human baseline. A professional hero who decided not to be impaired by alcohol would simply not be impaired.
Most of them were choosing not to make that decision for the moment. It was a good evening for it.
Atomic Samurai made the decision first. His color normalized. His eyes sharpened back to their usual cutting clarity. He turned to Jordan across the table with the focused quality of someone who had been waiting for the right moment.
Jordan was already talking to Bang.
"Master Bang. We actually came with a request, while we were at it."
Bang set down his cup. "What's on your mind?"
"It's about Genos."
Jordan laid out the situation plainly: Genos's situation, his combat chip, the way the learning system worked—battlefield accumulation, skill integration, direct upgrade through experience rather than gradual repetition. Bang listened, stroking his beard, until Jordan finished.
"A cyborg," Bang said finally, turning the idea over. "In all my years teaching, I haven't run into this specific case before." He thought for a moment. "I can teach him the Flowing Water style—the full curriculum, techniques and key principles both. Sparring is no problem. But I can't promise you what the actual results will look like. I've never calibrated expectations for someone learning this way."
"Don't worry about results." Jordan turned and beckoned.
Across the table, Genos was on his feet before the gesture finished, already crossing the room.
"Genos's armor runs a learning-type combat chip," Jordan explained, watching the cyborg approach with the easy confidence of someone who has thoroughly tested the product. "It integrates skills and combat experience directly through actual fighting. Every sparring session writes into the system. The more he does, the more it compounds."
He looked at Genos. Then back at Bang.
"He just needs the material to work with."
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