The mental link snapped shut.
F-boy's rebuttal to the strict "one-N-card-per-day" policy had been, in the split second before the severance, both comprehensive and anatomically creative. Jordan absorbed the first three explicit suggestions, mentally commended his Stand on its expanding vocabulary, and slammed the connection closed before the fourth.
The beach was a lot more peaceful without a phantom CEO cursing him out.
Footsteps crunched in the sand behind him—heavy, steady, the gait of someone who had never once been told to tread lightly.
"Jordan! What are you doing all the way out here?"
Goku padded around the beach lounger, balancing a ridiculous handful of grilled meat skewers clearly not meant for a single human serving. He dropped into a crouch beside Jordan with the effortless grace of a martial artist who basically lived cross-legged on the dirt, offering up a kebab.
"Is the food not good? Bulma's been grilling for a while—"
"The food is excellent." Jordan sat up, accepted the skewer, and took a bite. It really was. "My abilities evolved tonight. I just needed some quiet to process the system updates."
"Oh." Goku blinked. His face shifted into the pure, unfiltered concern of a guy realizing he'd just crashed a private moment. "I didn't bother you, did I?"
"Not at all."
The tension bled out of Goku's shoulders. He settled completely onto the sand, staring out at the dark waves. He looked at his food, then at Jordan.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Go ahead."
A pause stretched between them. The campfire behind them threw flickering orange shadows across the beach, accompanied by the distant, animated cadence of Krillin telling another tall tale. Goku slowly turned a kebab in his hand, thinking.
"I'm... not very confident," Goku admitted. The raw honesty made the words hit harder than they should have. "About the invasion next year. The other Saiyans."
"The power gap," Jordan supplied.
"Yeah." Goku kept his eyes on the water. "I've been running the fight since this afternoon. Even if everyone does everything right—if we train until our bones break, prepare as much as possible—there's a ceiling for Earthlings. A limit that doesn't apply to a warrior race. Raditz proved that." He paused, his jaw tightening. "We can get stronger, but there's a difference between improving and actually catching up."
Jordan chewed his meat, swallowed, and watched the firelight dance on the ocean surface.
"Hard work isn't enough on its own," Jordan agreed smoothly. "You need the right method to break that ceiling." He glanced sideways at the Saiyan. "What about the training you did up at Kami's Lookout? You need an environment that pushes you past the parameters of normal martial arts."
The effect was instantaneous. Goku's eyes widened, shining with the specific brilliance of a man whose brain had just handed him the exact puzzle piece he was missing. He pointed his kebab at Jordan like a triumphant sword.
"Kamiii! Of course! If anyone knows a way to break limits, it's them!" He practically vibrated with renewed energy as he straightened up. "That's exactly right. We need to go back."
Jordan smiled at the ocean. There it is.
"One more thing," Jordan added, striking while the iron was hot. "The Dragon Balls. I'd like to borrow access to them. Not urgently, but eventually."
Goku considered this for all of two seconds. "If it's you, sure. Bulma's got the Dragon Radar—she can help you track them down whenever you're ready."
"Appreciate it." Jordan extended a fist.
Goku looked at it, grinned, and bumped his knuckles against Jordan's. It was a quiet pact—a mutual warmth between two fighters recognizing they were walking the same path.
The oppressive gloom that had shadowed Goku since the afternoon vanished entirely. He happily tore into his kebab. Jordan went back to looking at the moon.
Morning broke with the pale, indecisive gray of a sky that hadn't quite committed to a color yet.
Jordan stood knee-deep in the rolling surf, barefoot, facing the horizon where the sun was inching upward. He had swapped his clothes for something lighter—a casual beach outfit practically identical to Saitama's, which he'd noted in passing and deemed functionally perfect for standing in the ocean. The water was biting cold, the kind that forcibly rebooted your nervous system.
He was reviewing the previous night's haul, and the fundamental rewrite it had already performed on his cellular structure.
The context, in reverse:
After their heart-to-heart, Goku hadn't immediately returned to the party. Instead, with the uncomplicated enthusiasm of a man who viewed "let's test it" as the logical conclusion to any deep conversation about power, he had suggested a quick spar. Not a real fight. Just an exchange of blows to test Jordan's newly evolved Stand.
Jordan had agreed, primarily because he had a very specific ulterior motive.
The exact millisecond their first strike connected—Goku's fist slamming into Jordan's raised guard—Element Pickup (Limit Break) triggered.
The feedback wasn't subtle. It was an avalanche.
A waterfall of skill data cascaded across Jordan's retinas like a glitched RPG class-selection screen. Turtle Hermit Martial Arts, Flight, Afterimage Technique —and deeper, stranger intrinsic traits. [Optimistic and Sincere Person] had popped up as a genuine, replicable attribute with actual combat implications.
But he only had one activation. One guaranteed card pull from his first physical contact with this target. The cooldown for bleeding Goku dry a second time would skyrocket based on the rarity of his first pick.
He bypassed the martial arts. He chose the one thing he'd been eyeing since Raditz crashed into that farmer's field.
[Fantasy Card: Saiyan] Type: Ability Card • Rarity: SSR
Effect 1 (Warlike Spirit): Inherent biological drive toward strength and combat; grants near-unbreakable willpower in battle. Fights hardest when most endangered.Effect 2 (Near-Death Enhancement): Passive ability. Recovering from a critical injury or near-death state releases latent potential, substantially multiplying combat power. Scales with training history.Effect 3 (S-Cells): Specialized unstable cells concentrated in the upper spine, granting rapid regeneration and powerful vitality. Accumulate via calm-minded training; multiply exponentially under extreme rage. Crossing the threshold enables transformation into a Super Saiyan.Effect 4 (Great Ape Potential): Pure-blooded Saiyans possess a prehensile tail weakness that can be mitigated through training. Direct visual exposure to a full moon emitting 17 million Zeno units of Blutz Waves triggers Great Ape Transformation, increasing base combat power by 10x.Effect 5 (Warrior's Hairstyle): Saiyan hair maintains consistent length and structure across normal states. Transformation modes unlock multiple hair color variations that can be toggled at will.Effect 6 (Extended Prime): Exceptional vitality and appetite (approx. 30x normal human intake) fuel a prolonged physical prime. Cellular aging is effectively suspended across the vast majority of the adult lifespan.
Jordan stood in the freezing surf and mentally unpacked the implications.
Effect 2 was the immediate jackpot: the Zenkai boost. He'd watched Goku exploit it yesterday, and now it was hardwired into his own DNA. All those brutal, near-death beatdowns he'd barely survived back in the OPM world? That compound interest was about to hit his system retroactively.
Effect 3 was the long game. Cultivating S-cells, pushing them through pressure, and eventually cracking the Super Saiyan threshold. He didn't have a strict timeline for it, but he definitely wasn't complaining about the roadmap.
Effects 5 and 6 were cosmetic, but Jordan wasn't going to pretend he didn't care. Halting his aging process and getting RGB hair transformations? He wouldn't call them the primary reasons he ripped the card, but he highly approved.
Effect 4, however, made him pause.
Great Ape Transformation. Tenfold combat power multiplier.
Less than twelve hours ago, he had reviewed F-boy's new Fantasy Moment ability, which offered the exact same tenfold multiplier via a different mechanism.
He had been in the Dragon Ball universe for barely two days.
The gacha pool adapts, F-boy had told him.
Jordan looked out at the horizon. The sun had finally committed to a color—a brilliant orange-gold spreading across the water in long, flat bands.
As for the SSR rarity? It made perfect sense. As of right now, the Saiyan species consisted of exactly four living individuals in the known universe. The gacha pool for "Saiyan" traits was scraping the bottom of an incredibly shallow barrel. Scarcity drove rarity. The Stand's internal logic clearly understood supply and demand.
He rolled his neck, feeling the dense, alien vitality settling seamlessly into his human architecture, and decided the morning felt tangibly different. Sharper. He thoroughly approved.
Behind him, back on the dry sand, someone was stoking the fire to start breakfast.
The water was still biting cold.
He stayed in it a while longer.