This kid is genuinely dedicated.
Jordan stood at the back entrance a moment longer, watching the Mind Network signal move through the trees—Garou's footwork pattern, the particular focus of someone who trained alone not because there was no one to train with but because he preferred it that way. His gaze moved between Bang's group in the open training ground and the forest where Garou worked in isolated silence.
Then he disappeared from the spot.
Back on the training ground, Saitama watched Genos practice the basic stance for a while.
Genos moved through the form with intense precision. Bang offered a correction; Genos integrated it immediately. Bang offered another; same result. The learning chip was doing exactly what Jordan had described.
Saitama watched this. Then he watched the mountain in the middle distance. Then he felt something that was unmistakably the early stages of sleepiness.
Martial arts. He turned the concept over without particular enthusiasm. The thing where you have to make all the poses. Very complicated. Definitely not for everyone.
"Hey." He looked around. "Where's Jordan? Didn't he come with us?"
"Hey."
The voice came from below and to his right. Saitama looked down.
Atomic Samurai was sitting cross-legged on the ground nearby, eyes forward, expression cool in the specific way of a man who had been maintaining his composure under significant provocation. The gaze he turned on Saitama had no warmth in it.
"You talking to me?" Saitama asked.
The three disciples—Iaian, Okamaitachi, Bushidrill—had been sparring at a distance. All three stopped simultaneously.
Why is Master's hand on his sword? — three separate internal thoughts, identical conclusion.
"...Super Cop is one thing," Atomic Samurai said, voice low and controlled and clearly working hard to stay that way. "But you—an unknown nobody—how dare you—"
"Uncle, what was that? Is your throat bothering you?" Saitama frowned and leaned closer, cupping a hand around his ear with the sincere effort of a man trying to be helpful. "Speak up. I can't catch it."
The three disciples went very still.
He's done it again.
He has no idea what he's done.
Unfortunate hairstyle. If you're going to violate a man's taboo, at least look the part.
"I said—"
Something unusual happened to the air around Atomic Samurai. The mountain was calm and windless, but the pebbles and dust in his immediate radius trembled. Small things, responding to something that wasn't quite a sound. The sword at his hip had not moved, but the hand near it had changed quality.
He breathed through his nose and found a degree of calm.
"Have you forgotten what I told you earlier."
It was not quite a question. Saitama took it as one anyway, running back through the afternoon with genuine effort.
The honest answer was that his primary memory of the last few hours was: drink, find person, drink, find different person, drink. He scratched the back of his head. "Sorry. Honestly, I don't remember."
The murderous intent around Atomic Samurai subsided fractionally. He nodded with the slow resignation of a man adjusting his expectations.
Fine. He's just a civilian with no memory retention. That's all. Let it go.
"But uncle—" Saitama's voice was completely sincere— "whatever it was, was it important?"
The sincerity was the worst part. Atomic Samurai had been successfully held together by the theory that Saitama was doing this deliberately. The sincerity destroyed the theory. There was no malice here—just a cheerfully oblivious man with thinning hair who found "uncle" to be a perfectly natural form of address for a man of thirty-five.
Something gave way.
"I am thirty-five years old—"
The roar came with aura behind it, a real release of killing intent that turned the air sharp and sent the dust around them scrambling outward. Saitama's increasingly sparse hair stood fully on end. He opened his eyes wide against the gust.
Then blinked.
"I can't call you 'uncle'?" He appeared to be genuinely working through this. "What should I call you instead?"
Atomic Samurai stared at him.
His professional instincts, which had been operating in the background through this entire conversation, were processing something that his pride was refusing to accept. The aura release had been real—a genuine, unrestrained deployment of his killing intent, the kind that sent capable fighters stumbling backward. This man had stood in it and emerged asking a clarifying question about honorifics.
That's not normal. A face flashed through his mind—the figure from the imaginary space, the one who moved like weather changing. No. Absolutely not. That level of existence appearing twice in the same era would be completely—
He shook his head. Hard.
Impossible. One is already extraordinary. Two is a statistical absurdity.
He reached for his toothpick. Found it still in his mouth. Bit down on it, hard.
"Hey, kid." He fixed his gaze on Saitama with the focused clarity of a man who had redirected. "You're the robot's master, right?"
"Uncle, Genos is a cyborg," Saitama corrected, with the patient tone of someone providing accurate information.
"Cyborg, robot, I don't care what he is." The toothpick came out and got flicked aside. Atomic Samurai's eyes had found a different quality—less fury, more assessment. "That kid of yours has something to him. If you're his master, you've got to have some real ability."
Saitama tilted his head. "...Huh?"
We were just sitting here peacefully. Watching Bang do the teaching thing. Perfectly fine situation. And now—
"Uncle." He said it carefully, as if offering a compromise. "Do you want to fight?"
"UNCLE, UNCLE, UNCLE—"
Atomic Samurai was on his feet. The sword was drawn. He'd been holding this in through a full lunch, a gift competition he'd lost, a drinking contest he hadn't won, and a running honorific that had been applied to him six times in thirty-six hours. The dam had found its limit.
"You are completely and utterly unreasonable!! If we're going to do this—do you want to go somewhere further away or do we settle it right here?!"
"Saitama-sensei—!"
Genos had turned the moment Atomic Samurai's voice hit that register, already in motion, two steps toward Saitama before he felt a hand come down on his shoulder.
He stopped. Tried to move forward. Couldn't.
He looked back.
Bang's hand was on his shoulder, grip unhurried and absolute, the way a mountain is unhurried and absolute. The old man's expression was pleasant—the particular pleasant expression of someone who had made a decision and was comfortable with it.
"Genos-kun." Bang's voice was warm. "You've committed to training. You can't keep letting your attention split." He pressed down, very gently. "Your teacher is fine. You know how strong he is."
Genos processed this. The first layer of the thought was: but Atomic Samurai has drawn his sword. The second layer was: but Master Bang is not concerned. The third layer arrived and stayed: Master Bang has seen Saitama-sensei up close. He has reason to know.
He let the tension go. Straightened up. Turned back toward Bang with an expression of renewed apology. "You're right. I was rash. I'm sorry, Master Bang." A beat. "From this point on, I will focus entirely on training."
"That's the spirit." Bang released his shoulder. "Come—let's find a better spot."
He turned and walked, hands behind his back, in the direction that was away from where Atomic Samurai was currently expressing his feelings at volume. Genos fell into step beside him.
It's genuinely not safe here right now, Bang thought, watching the dramatic scene unfolding behind him with the pragmatic assessment of a man who had seen a great deal of this sort of thing over a long career. Better to be elsewhere before something lands on us.
"By the way, Genos," he said, as they walked. "You pick things up very quickly. I demonstrate once and you have the key points. Is that the chip at work?"
"Yes." Genos matched his pace exactly. "Any technique or method of force application that I've understood gets converted into brainwave data and transmitted to the combat chip for analysis and storage."
Bang considered this carefully for several seconds.
Then he decided that understanding it completely was less important than the practical implication, which was that they could move much faster than a standard curriculum. "I don't quite follow the mechanism, but the result is clear enough. You should be able to cover the full foundation in an afternoon. Let's not waste time."
On the previous training ground, Saitama looked at the blade in Atomic Samurai's hand with mild irritation.
"Eh, so we're really doing this?" He glanced back at the spot where Bang and Genos had been standing—both now gone, with the subtlety of people who had found somewhere better to be. "Weren't we just having a normal afternoon? Sitting around watching the training. Very peaceful. What happened?"
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