Jordan let the silence sit for a moment, allowing the old master's brain to reboot, before deciding that practical logistics were slightly more pressing than extended mystical contemplation.
"The ones I just handed you are for cultivation. Pure seed stock. I'd like you to treat them accordingly." Jordan paused, the casual warmth bleeding out of his voice, replaced by a quiet, razor-sharp edge of seriousness. "The enemies coming for this planet aren't going to stop at two Saiyans. The martial artists down there are going to need every single advantage available to them. Senzu Beans are a strategic military asset. We can no longer afford to treat them as a casual afternoon snack supply."
He held the ancient cat's gaze.
"In particular—and I want to be extremely clear about this—under no circumstances is Yajirobe allowed to be responsible for the stockpile."
Korin's ears instantly flattened against his skull. The look that crossed his feline features was the specific, bone-deep exhaustion of a landlord who had watched the same terrible roommate repeat the exact same problem for decades, and had simply never found a legal solution.
"Understood," Korin said. Very firmly.
"Good." Jordan's expression warmed again. "Now, moving on. You've been up here alone for a very long time. I imagine the usual food supply situation isn't exactly ideal. I'd like to arrange something."
He paused, letting Korin work through the implication.
"I have a contact down on the surface with functionally infinite resources and a genuine, obsessive interest in solving logistical problems," Jordan continued. "If I arrange for fresh, premium seafood to be delivered up here on a regular, automated schedule, would that work for you? High-quality fish, reliably stocked. Something actually appropriate for an ancient sage who's been single-handedly maintaining the threshold of a divine realm for eight centuries."
The mental image assembled itself in Korin's mind with zero effort. A fresh salmon in the left paw. A premium tuna in the right paw. Never having to ration his own emergency magic beans just because Yajirobe had made a unilateral, catastrophic dietary decision while he was napping.
Korin was eight hundred years old. He possessed immense dignity. He shouldered heavy, divine responsibilities. He had also spent several decades surviving on whatever moss and stray birds happened to exist near the top of an infinitely tall stone pillar. The prospect of a regular, high-end seafood delivery was genuinely moving.
"That would be," Korin said, his voice thick with emotion, "completely acceptable. Thank you, Jordan."
Jordan smiled. In his head, he updated the ongoing Capsule Corporation invoice. Bulma fulfills anything I want, therefore: regular premium fish delivery to the stratosphere, categorized under 'miscellaneous good-faith infrastructure', he mentally filed away.
They spent the next half hour talking shop about mystical agriculture.
Once Korin settled into his element, he was incredibly forthcoming. The beans themselves weren't inherently mysterious in their growth cycle—they followed standard crop logic, requiring seeding, watering, and immense patience. What elevated them from basic legumes into biological superweapons was much harder to replicate: the soil of Korin Tower, heavily saturated with centuries of ambient divine energy, and the tower's unique aquifer, which carried supernatural properties that no one had ever scientifically measured because they usually just drank it all.
Jordan listened carefully, committing the data to memory.
When the lecture reached its natural conclusion, Jordan glanced sideways at F-boy. The Stand had been present and entirely silent throughout the exchange, leaning casually against the outer railing with its hands shoved in its tailored pockets, projecting an aura of bored professional attendance. F-boy caught the look and offered a microscopic nod.
"Would it be alright," Jordan asked politely, "if I took a small sample? Just enough to work with."
Korin produced a handful of dark soil from the garden plot and a small, sealed clay jar of the tower's water without any particular ceremony—the way a master chef might hand over a pinch of salt when asked about a recipe.
The wildly unremarkable-looking samples sat in Jordan's open palm.
F-boy stepped forward.
Card Mastery. Azure spiritual energy flared, geometry aggressively assembling in the thin air above the Stand's hand. Ten seconds later, reality locked the concept into place.
[Fantasy Card: Miniature Bean Plantation] Type: Item Card • Rarity: SSR
Effect 1: Contains soil and water from the summit of Korin Tower, deeply permeated with divine energy.Effect 2: Provides the fundamental baseline conditions required for Senzu Bean cultivation at optimal yield.
Jordan slowly turned the glowing orange card over.
It was literally just dirt and water. The most unprepossessing, visually boring physical samples imaginable, yet the gacha system had aggressively rated them as SSR-tier without a single second of hesitation. It said something profound about where true power actually lived. It wasn't always found in dramatic, planet-cracking abilities or legendary beam struggles. Sometimes, it was found in the foundational substrate that made those extraordinary things possible in the first place.
He tucked the card safely into his inventory. The chemical analysis could wait for Dr. Genus.
The House of Evolution's superhuman development project had been running quietly in the background back in the OPM universe without any dramatic results—which was entirely fine. Genetic research was a long-horizon investment, and Jordan had never expected to walk in with one sample and walk out with a god. But the theoretical question was undeniably interesting: What happens when you introduce Korin's divine cultivating conditions to a state-of-the-art laboratory that possesses cross-universe cloning technology and a mad scientist whose curiosity had just been successfully reignited?
He didn't know the answer yet.
But finding out was going to be highly entertaining.
He offered a polite farewell to Master Korin—who was already meticulously sorting his fifty seed beans with the laser-focused attention of a man guarding the nuclear launch codes—and stepped casually off the edge of the platform.
The freezing air rushed past him as gravity took over, and then he was gone.
Far below, the ocean was violently rupturing.
"Haaaaa!!"
Twin beams of incandescent ki collided in midair with a deafening, concussive boom that made seagulls reconsider their life choices three kilometers away. Massive columns of seawater shot skyward in every direction—towers of churning white foam that crested twenty meters into the air before gravity reclaimed them, crashing back down into the boiling surface below. The sheer kinetic impact left the sea violently choppy for a hundred meters in every direction.
Krillin's boots skipped across the churning waves. He burned off the residual kinetic force with a sharp, hissing pivot, his white aura flaring brilliantly as he stabilized himself.
He was breathing hard, his chest heaving. A nasty, purple bruise was already blossoming on his left cheek, promising to be deeply unpleasant by tomorrow morning. By any honest, tactical accounting, the martial artist had absolutely not gained a decisive advantage in this fight.
He attacked anyway.
Directly opposite him, Raditz hovered just above the water. His wild, knee-length hair whipped in the gale. Even with his monstrous power locked down to a fraction of its natural ceiling, the Saiyan casually crossed his arms, absorbing a flying kick to the forearms that would have comfortably put a normal human through a reinforced concrete wall. The impact still managed to knock the alien backward a few feet. Krillin's lack of height had been working against him for the entire spar, but right now, it allowed the monk to seamlessly duck under a brutal tail-whip that was absolutely supposed to end the exchange.
Krillin countered, burying his fist square into Raditz's jaw.
Crack.
Raditz's head violently snapped sideways. He bit down on empty air, his teeth clashing together with enough force to send blinding white sparks dancing across his peripheral vision.
That little—
The Saiyan's rage was immediate, total, and completely unhinged. He launched himself forward with a roar.
Krillin was already moving. His aura surged as he pushed the pursuit, matching Raditz's terrifying acceleration straight up into the sky. The brutal exchange escalated from the surface of the boiling water into the cloud layer, leaving the glittering expanse of the ocean far below them as they traded a blinding flurry of blows and ki blasts.
Up on the sandy beach of Turtle Island, three pairs of eyes tracked the aerial dogfight.
"Incredible," Yamcha muttered, shaking his head slowly. The word lacked any of his usual cocky bravado; it was quiet and genuinely impressed. "The alien's power is capped at maybe a tenth of his max output, and Krillin is still violently bleeding for every single inch."
Tien Shinhan stood near the water's edge, his three eyes locked onto the distant, flashing explosions of ki. His muscular arms were tightly folded across his chest, his jaw set in that specific, rigid way that meant his brain was currently running bleak tactical calculations. "The worse problem is the second variable," Tien said grimly. "this Vegeta operates at ten times what Raditz is currently putting out. I keep trying to mentally model that fight, and the math never gets any more encouraging."
He didn't look down at Chiaotzu as he said it, but his voice carried a heavy, crushing weight beneath the stoic analysis. It was the same existential dread that had settled over them ever since Jordan delivered the brutal briefing about the incoming Saiyan elites.
Chiaotzu floated loyally at his shoulder, his small, pale face completely serious beneath his cap. "We'll just train harder," he said. It was the simple, unwavering certainty of someone who fundamentally believed that any mathematical deficit could be violently corrected if you simply applied enough physical trauma to it. "I'll always be with you, Tien."
Something microscopic shifted in Tien's rigid expression—barely visible, but there if you knew how to look for it.
"Chiaotzu." He reached over, resting a heavy hand briefly on the small fighter's head. He exhaled slowly. "Come on. Krillin's taking entirely too long. I'm tagging in."
"Hey, we agreed I was next!" Yamcha snapped instantly, his voice spiking. "You can't just cut the line—we literally established a turn order—"
High in the sky above, Raditz caught the faint echoes of the argument drifting up from the shoreline. The Saiyan briefly, miserably, considered his current situation.
He was wearing a humiliating glowing collar that artificially suppressed his terrifying power. He had just been violently uppercut by a bald, bruised monk who barely reached his chest. There were two more weakling Earthlings standing on the beach openly arguing about who got the privilege of punching him next. And the absolute monster responsible for orchestrating this entire nightmare was currently somewhere in the upper stratosphere making a social call.
"One at a time!" Raditz roared down at the beach, clinging to the shredded remnants of his Saiyan pride. If he was going to be treated as a glorified, interactive training dummy, he was at least going to insist on some basic administrative standards. "Form a line if you have to, you miserable runts!"
Yamcha and Tien both stopped arguing. They slowly looked up at the sky.
Then they looked at each other.
"Did the alien invader just tell us to take turns?" Yamcha asked flatly.
"Yes," Tien said.
A brief beat of silence passed on the beach.
"It's still my turn," Yamcha grunted. He aggressively cracked his knuckles and stepped toward the water's edge.
The mechanical system silently orchestrating this entire circus in the background was, Jordan had to admit, one of his more elegant engineering constructions.
The glowing force-field collar locked around Raditz's neck was just the visible, superficial component. It was the physical restraint. The hard power cap. It was the part that Raditz knew about, and had accepted with the grim, resigned dignity of a warrior who had completely run out of leverage.
What Raditz didn't know was the hidden, secondary subsystem nested deep inside the collar's matrix.
Call it a dynamic sub-network. It was a brilliant piece of conditional logic hardwired into the collar's frequency, explicitly designed to read the fluctuating combat power of whoever was currently engaging Raditz. Based on that biometric data, it actively adjusted the Saiyan's internal energy ceiling on the fly. It closed the gap. It didn't eliminate the threat entirely—Raditz absolutely had to feel like he was fighting for his life, and the Earth warriors needed the genuine fear of death to actually trigger their Zenkai-equivalent growth—but it kept the power differential strictly within a margin where the fight was brutally instructive, rather than instantly fatal.
In practical application: when Krillin's aura spiked in desperation, Raditz was quietly granted a little more leash. When the frantic exchange pushed Krillin to absolute muscular failure, the collar clamped down just enough to allow Raditz to counterattack without vaporizing him. When Tien inevitably stepped into the ring tomorrow, bringing his precise, three-eyed focus to bear, the collar's algorithms would seamlessly recalculate the math.
It was, if Jordan was being completely honest with himself, not entirely unlike the experience of watching a game developer push a stealth balance patch that absolutely nobody asked for. Everyone in the lobby was going to notice it, but nobody would be able to mathematically prove it.
Some balance adjustments have been applied to the boss encounter, Jordan mused internally, a sardonic smirk tugging at his lips. We hope this improves competitive play.
The Earth warriors were going to learn how to hit infinitely harder. They were going to move faster. They were going to learn how to read and predict alien energy signatures they had never encountered before. And it was all going to happen because the collar was meticulously ensuring that every single sparring match ended in exactly the right, agonizing place.
By the time Vegeta and Nappa finally breached the atmosphere, they absolutely wouldn't be fighting the same terrified locals who had met Raditz.
Hovering miles away, Jordan watched the distant, rapid-fire exchange of ki blasts light up the ocean horizon like a localized thunderstorm, and was quietly, thoroughly satisfied.