Bang turned the information over, examining it from the angle of a man who had spent seventy years thinking about how bodies moved and what they were capable of. He knew nothing about mechanics or cyborg engineering in any technical sense—his relationship with smartphones was purely adversarial—but Jordan had explained it simply enough that the relevant parts landed clearly.
He looked at Genos properly. The mechanical chassis caught the lamplight with a cyberpunk sheen, all hard angles and deliberate engineering. But when his eye moved to the arms, the thighs, the articulation points—
Biological materials. Actual muscle fiber analogs. Artificial tendons.
The skeleton was metal, the power source was whatever Genos ran on, but the mechanics of movement—the way force translated through the body, the way leverage worked, the load-bearing logic—it was built on the same physiological blueprint as any other fighter he'd ever trained.
Bang nodded slowly.
"Alright, Genos-kun." He looked at the young cyborg with the warm, unhurried expression he reserved for students he'd already decided to take seriously. "You'll stay here for the next few days. Train with me."
Genos snapped to attention with the full-body commitment of someone who took standing at attention as a motor skill worth perfecting. "Yes, Master Bang! I will give everything I have!"
Jordan turned to find Atomic Samurai already watching him.
The swordsman's posture had shifted somewhere between the second and third cup of the evening—the relaxed dinner-table version of him folding back into the particular stillness of someone who has been waiting for a specific moment to arrive. The toothpick moved from one side of his mouth to the other. His eyes had the quality of a blade being drawn slowly.
"Super Cop." His voice carried the measured patience of someone who had been very politely not saying this for several hours. "Should we—"
"Perfect timing, actually." Jordan cut across him without raising his voice. "I have another favor to ask."
Atomic Samurai blinked. "...What."
"Your three disciples." Jordan gestured vaguely toward the other end of the table. "All solid A-Class fighters. If you don't have a fixed schedule for the next stretch of your training journey—" he looked at Atomic Samurai with the expression of someone raising a very reasonable idea— "why not let them stay and spar with Genos or Saitama for a while? The practice would benefit everyone."
Everyone being Genos and the combat chip's learning curve.
Atomic Samurai's eye twitched. He parsed what Jordan had just done.
"YESABSOLUTELYFINE—"
Okamaitachi's entire body had come forward with the enthusiasm of someone already mentally unpacking her bag. The look Atomic Samurai turned on her could have etched glass. She sat back. Immediately.
He worked his toothpick in silence for a moment, expression thoughtful.
"The three of them came on this trip specifically to sharpen their skills," he said finally. "Time at Silver Fang's dojo would serve that purpose." A measured pause. "I agree."
From behind Atomic Samurai's shoulder, Okamaitachi slowly clenched one fist.
"One question," Atomic Samurai said, glancing around the table before Jordan could continue. "Who is Saitama?"
Jordan opened his mouth. Closed it. Let Genos handle it.
Genos was already crouching beside a cushion at the edge of the room. On the cushion: a plainly-dressed young man with thinning hair and a sequence of snot bubbles that expanded and contracted with complete unconscious rhythm.
"This," Genos said, with the earnest solemnity of someone introducing the Prime Minister, "is my teacher. Saitama-sensei."
Every gaze in the room arrived at Saitama simultaneously. Saitama continued sleeping.
Atomic Samurai looked at him for a long moment. His expression moved through several phases and arrived somewhere that wasn't contempt. Something more attentive than that.
This kid. He replayed the evening—the three hundred and however many rounds, the mountain of bottles, the total absence of anything resembling strain in those dead eyes. I don't know what his fighting level is. But his drinking capacity is something else entirely. That, at least, I can acknowledge.
He nodded once, said nothing, and turned back to his cup.
Jordan studied him with something approaching genuine surprise. Did he just—without being prompted—extend Saitama a form of respect? He kept this observation to himself. No need to examine it too closely. Things that worked deserved to be left alone.
"Genos." He turned to the cyborg. "Take Saitama to a guest room. Once he's settled, come back and start with Master Bang."
Genos bolted upright like someone who had been waiting for a task. "Yes! You're right—Saitama-sensei will catch a cold sleeping on the floor like this! I should have noticed sooner, forgive my oversight—"
"It's not actually about catching cold, it's more—"
Genos had already scooped Saitama up, the still-snoring man draped across his arms like a man-shaped piece of furniture, and jogged toward the corridor at a pace that made explaining anything structurally impossible.
Jordan watched them go.
Explaining to that kid is always like this. Just leave it.
"Super Cop."
He turned.
Atomic Samurai had set his cup down. The dinner-party version of him was gone entirely now—the relaxed posture, the comfortable warmth of a man who'd enjoyed the evening. What remained was cooler, more precise, the samurai that existed underneath the social layer. "It's getting late. Shouldn't we—"
"You've been patient." Jordan stood. "Let's go."
"Now?" Atomic Samurai's gaze swept the room—the remaining disciples, the scattered dishes, the people who would absolutely watch. "Right here?"
He'd expected logistics. Rules. A proposed location, at minimum. Some verbal back-and-forth that would establish terms. He was prepared for all of those things.
He was also prepared to not need any of them, sword or no sword, terms or no terms. He was Atomic Samurai. The conditions were irrelevant.
He gripped the hilt.
Something changed in the air—or rather, something happened to the air that hadn't happened from the outside. It came from everywhere at once, a pressure that had no direction, and then his vision blurred, and the restaurant wasn't there anymore.
The imaginary space opened around them.
Dark red sky. Pixelated mountains. The color-block geometry of a world rendered at its most fundamental, every surface built from square tiles roughly a meter on each side, as if someone had generated the terrain and left before installing anything on top of it.
Just the two of them.
Atomic Samurai's hand was still on his hilt. He came to a ready stance immediately, gaze moving across the environment with the professional efficiency of someone assessing a battlefield. Strange space. Unknown rules. Single opponent.
Workable.
"Another dimension?"
"Something like that." Jordan rolled his neck. The pop of vertebrae cracked across the silence. "Just the two of us here. No audience, no collateral concern." A corner of his mouth pulled up. "After all, Atomic Samurai—you wouldn't want to lose face in front of your disciples, would you?"
The silence that followed had a specific weight.
"...You brat." Atomic Samurai's expression moved through something that was almost offended before it settled. "You think that's going to get to me?"
Jordan waited.
Atomic Samurai breathed in through his nose, long and slow, and let the accumulated frustration of the evening go with the exhale. The flush of irritation left his face. His shoulders settled.
The man who stood in the imaginary space when it was done was different from the one who'd been arguing over tea gifts at the dinner table. Cooler. Quieter. The particular stillness of a swordsman who had stopped performing for anyone and was simply present.
His hand rested on the hilt.
His eyes didn't move from Jordan.
"Come on, then."