Of the three cards F-boy had casually fanned out across the white tablecloth, Jordan worked out the sourcing instantly.
One pull per physical contact—Goku, Piccolo, and Kami. The Element Pickup passive didn't care about the diplomatic quality or length of the encounter. A split-second brush against someone sufficiently extraordinary was all the Stand needed to rip out a conceptual fragment worth keeping.
The Ki card came from Goku. That was glaringly obvious in retrospect. Ki was the fundamental, driving currency of this entire universe—the localized life energy powering every devastating beam attack, shockwave, and dramatic screaming power-up Jordan had witnessed since making planetfall.
It was an N-rank pull, standard white border. It was the kind of baseline biological function that was probably so common in the Dragon Ball multiverse that a freak of nature like Goku generated it passively, like background radiation.
But 'common' was a highly relative term. Chakra was the absolute foundation of the Naruto world's entire combat economy, and Jordan had spent months in the dirt learning how to cycle it properly. Ki was an entirely different beast—similar in spiritual character, but wildly different in physical execution—and this card bypassed the agonizing training arc to hand him the genuine, hardwired article.
Any legitimate Z Fighter needs to know how to fire a proper beam attack, Jordan mused, tapping his finger against the table. It's a matter of professional standards.
He mentally cracked the card.
The energy hit his nervous system like a lit match dropped into a dry powder keg.
It was immediate, it was enormous, and it was entirely manageable—but for approximately two seconds, it was genuinely terrifying. Jordan possessed one hundred and thirty trillion human cells. Every single one of them had been genetically reinforced by the Hashirama Sage Body. And every single one of them violently received a fresh, localized allocation of ki at the exact same millisecond.
The raw mathematical sum of that sudden internal expansion was not small. The spiritual pressure that erupted upward from the integration momentarily spiked hard enough to register as a deep-crust seismic event on hypersensitive tectonic monitoring equipment across West City.
Outside on the sunlit streets, martial artists and individuals with better-than-average sensory perception suddenly froze, looking down at the pavement with a spike of primal dread. Cars abruptly swerved in their lanes. A phantom impulse to evacuate rippled through several city blocks before the crushing pressure vanished exactly as quickly as it had manifested.
Inside the quiet, Michelin-starred restaurant, Jordan's breathing hadn't hitched once.
Fortunate that I already possess a highly reinforced energy core, he thought calmly, feeling the violent surge smooth out and settle into his cellular baseline.
The ki had fully integrated. It didn't displace his existing chakra or his psychic reserves; it simply joined the violent, roaring currents of his internal energy like a massive tributary feeding into an already overflowing river. His biology adapted instantly, seamlessly weaving the new power source into his existing supernatural architecture.
Sometimes, a low rarity rating was just a measure of local abundance. Ki was everywhere in this universe, so the gacha system rated it as a common drop. The exact same algorithmic logic had applied to his early chakra pulls. What actually mattered was the scale of the user. Dump enough raw fuel into a massive enough engine, and you fundamentally crossed a threshold.
He moved on to the remaining two cards.
Piccolo and Kami's contributions were both Namekian racial abilities. It made perfect sense—F-boy was highly pragmatic, and having the two violently split halves of a single, ancient alien species standing in the same room was just efficient resource management.
The purple SR card, Namekian Regeneration, was brutally straightforward about its tactical value. Severed limbs violently regrowing in seconds. Massive, concussive trauma sealing shut in minutes. Jordan already possessed the Hashirama Sage Body's passive, baseline auto-healing, but in a lethal combat scenario, there was a massive difference between 'I will heal eventually' and 'I am fully healed right now.' He absorbed the card without ceremony. He instantly felt his cells aggressively rewrite themselves, acquiring a rapid-response repair mechanism that hadn't existed three seconds ago, quietly nesting underneath his existing Sage Body regeneration like a reinforced biological failsafe.
The final card, the Dragon Clan Magic, was the one he thoughtfully turned over twice before activating.
The god-like ability to manifest physical matter directly from raw energy and intention. Whatever object you fundamentally understood, you could instantly produce—its mass, density, and physical form entirely variable within the hard limits of your scientific comprehension and available ki reserves.
It was incredibly simple in practice, which was exactly why the original manga mostly depicted Piccolo using it to spontaneously spawn heavy training weights and stylish gi uniforms out of thin air. But it was profoundly terrifying in theory, which was exactly why Jordan strongly suspected this specific magic was the foundational prerequisite for forging something as reality-breaking as the Dragon Balls.
His Magnet Release bloodline could already aggressively recombine matter at the sub-atomic level—essentially achieving the exact same output via brute-force electromagnetic manipulation. But that was physics. That was engineering.
Dragon Clan magic was something else entirely. It was closer to divine executive decision-making. This object should exist. Therefore, here it is.
He physically felt the difference the exact millisecond the card integrated. A brand-new, entirely alien channel of energy opened somewhere deep in his chest. It was much quieter than the roaring fire of his ki, operating more like a shifting weather pattern than a live electrical current. It was inherently creative, rather than inherently destructive.
Magic, Jordan thought, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his face. He felt the deep satisfaction of a master craftsman who had just acquired the final, perfect tool to complete a lethal set. Actual, literal magic. Excellent.
The restaurant owner finally pushed through the oak doors, nervously levitating a massive silver tray bearing the first course.
He found his quiet corner booth occupied by a young man who was, apparently, a master illusionist. This was firmly established by the fact that the customer was currently, systematically conjuring solid objects out of thin air and then instantly dissolving them with the casual, bored interest of a man testing a new ballpoint pen.
A porcelain teacup. A heavy hardcover book. A glass vase. A crisp white dress shirt. A pair of weighted training shorts. Each object materialized with a soft, localized flash of white light, rested on the table for two seconds, and then dissolved into mist the moment the test was complete.
"Sir, excuse me, are you a—"
Jordan casually pointed at the empty table. A standard, cellophane-wrapped deck of playing cards instantly materialized between his fingers, fanned out in a flawless spread.
"Just a minor hobby," Jordan said pleasantly, making the deck vanish. "Nothing particularly impressive. Please, don't let me keep you—that smells absolutely extraordinary."
The owner looked down at the massive platter of braised wagyu beef ribs he was carrying, looked at the empty space where the deck of cards had just been, and made the rapid, pragmatic survival calculation of a seasoned food service professional: Compliment the talent, deliver the meat, retreat immediately to the safety of the kitchen.
"Please enjoy your meal, sir!"
Jordan looked down at the mountain of ribs.
The SSR Saiyan card's sixth passive effect had explicitly specified: Appetite is approximately thirty times the human baseline. He had been trying to get a practical, biological sense of exactly what that math meant since he integrated the bloodline. The arrival of twenty full-grown adults' worth of premium beef gave him an incredibly useful data point to start with.
His newly rewritten stomach loudly announced its opinions on the matter. Strong ones.
Jordan picked up the first rib.
What followed was a highly productive, terrifying use of the next hour.
The owner, checking in periodically from the safety of the kitchen doorway, watched in mounting horror as twenty people's worth of premium food was systematically annihilated at the speed of a woodchipper. He frantically relayed the incoming data to his sweating kitchen staff in the hushed, urgent tone of an air traffic controller managing a crash landing.
The kitchen aggressively adjusted. Entirely new courses were fired and expedited to the table. Jordan effortlessly maintained pace with every single delivery, wiping each massive platter completely clean before the next cart even arrived.
If there's one thing this universe gets right, Jordan thought happily, effortlessly demolishing a massive serving bowl of braised pork and pickled vegetables that had utterly transcended the mortal concept of comfort food, it's the catering.
When the final, massive dessert platter was cleared, Jordan leaned back against the leather booth. He performed a brief, internal biological accounting of a man who had just consumed a terrifying multiple of his ordinary caloric intake, and was deeply pleased to discover that his body had simply... processed it. Zero lethargy. Zero physical discomfort. The alien Saiyan physiology possessed massive, burning requirements; the requirements had been met with premium fuel; the energy was already violently metabolized into his reserves.
He patted the white tablecloth once in genuine, heartfelt appreciation, stood up, and casually handed over Bulma's black Capsule Corp card.
The owner personally escorted him to the front door, looking at him with a mixture of deep professional respect and abject terror. Jordan performed one final, minor conjuring—a perfect, blooming white rose, produced from thin air and offered to the maître d' with a slight, polite bow—and stepped out into the bright West City afternoon.
The space around him silently warped, and he was instantly elsewhere.
The sprawling residential districts on the extreme west side of the city had been designed with the staggering architectural confidence of a civilization that had completely stopped questioning whether displaying obscene wealth was socially appropriate.
The estates here were massive in a way that aggressively communicated a fundamental dominance over real estate. These were properties built for people who didn't view square footage as a limitation, who didn't view a private botanical garden as a luxury, and for whom the concept of 'street parking' was an offensive joke.
One specific property, however, aggressively refused to fit the aesthetic category.
It occupied roughly the exact same geographical footprint as a medium-sized shopping mall. The central structure was a colossal, bright yellow hemisphere capped with a pristine white dome. It was an eccentric, cartoonish shape that would have looked utterly insane on any other property in any other city. But here, it simply communicated a terrifying reality: the people living inside were operating on a completely different set of intellectual and financial requirements than their billionaire neighbors.
Emblazoned across the massive front security wall in clean, bold letters was a single word: CAPSULE.
The heavy steel gate smoothly slid open before Jordan even reached for the intercom. A small, spherical guidance drone hovered out to meet him. Its optical sensor whirred, mapping his facial geometry and pinging it against the estate's VIP registry in the exact time it took Jordan to blink.
"Boop— Welcome to the Brief Estate, Jordan."
"Thank you," Jordan replied. "Is Bulma currently in?"
"Beep— Miss Bulma and the Doctor are currently occupied in the primary laboratory. Please follow me."
The sprawling grounds safely enclosed within the massive security wall were not 'gardens' in the traditional, manicured sense. They were gardens in the sense that everything currently growing was technically organic—but the overarching organizational logic was clearly dictated by a man who had decided the property should contain as much of the untamed natural world as could be physically crammed inside without compromising the structural integrity of the house.
Rolling, pristine lawns and aggressively sculpted hedges shared space with massive, ancient trees that had been allowed to grow wild to their maximum height. Exotic flowers banked violently along the winding paths in chaotic combinations that strongly suggested someone had planted them entirely for aesthetic color, completely ignoring seasonal consistency or climate requirements. Massive artificial hills and a roaring waterfall occupied the central axis of the estate.
Jordan strolled past all of this with the measured, calm appreciation of a man taking in a very expensive landscape painting.
Then, he heard the heavy, concussive sound of something massive violently moving through the dense vegetation just beyond the fountain.
He stopped and turned his head.
Three fully grown, carnivorous dinosaurs were currently occupying a large section of the eastern grounds, aggressively engaging in what appeared to be heavy recreational wrestling. These were not juveniles. These were not the kind of reptiles you could charitably describe as 'manageable exotic pets.' They were massive, apex predators, their thrashing tails violently displacing the air and shredding the surrounding foliage. Yet, they seemed completely, lazily comfortable with the yellow hemispherical mansion looming behind them.
The small guidance drone hovered faithfully beside Jordan, its optical sensor tracking his line of sight.
"Beep— Those belong to the Doctor. He frequently encounters them on his afternoon walks and brings them home."
Jordan stared blankly at the thrashing T-Rex.
"He... finds them," Jordan repeated flatly.
"Boop— Affirmative. The Doctor categorizes them as stray animals. Right this way, please."
Jordan slowly turned and followed the hovering drone toward the reinforced laboratory entrance. He took a moment to deeply consider the specific, terrifying personality type of a man who could look at a three-ton, carnivorous apex predator wandering through a city, and genuinely categorize it as a stray cat that needed adopting.
Dr. Brief, Jordan decided, was going to be an incredibly interesting man to meet.