Bang read the recommendation form with the careful attention he gave to anything that arrived without prior context—methodical, patient, reading twice rather than once.
Then he nodded. "Saitama-kun. Of course." He accepted Jordan's pen and found the second signature line without needing to be directed to it. "And this space here—"
"That one's for Tatsumaki. Leave it blank for now."
Bang's expression shifted into the particular knowing look he wore when something confirmed a suspicion he'd been carrying for a while. He signed his hero name first, then his full name beneath it in crisp strokes, and handed the form back.
"Done."
A few steps behind Bang, Garou had been watching all of this with the specific focused quality he brought to things he didn't entirely understand but had decided were worth understanding. He'd tracked the blond hair, the adjusted height, the quality of stillness Jordan carried that was different from before—not different in a way he could name, but different in a way he could feel in the back of his neck.
A night, he thought. He was gone for one night and now everything about him is heavier.
Just dye.
That is absolutely not just dye.
Jordan glanced at him. Garou held the eye contact without flinching.
Jordan looked back at Bang. "Master, I can't have you signing things for nothing. How about this—I've been working on a new technique. Could you help me test it?"
Bang tilted his head, curiosity displacing caution. "What kind of technique?"
"It requires physical contact. About three seconds."
"My body's handled worse." Bang considered for exactly as long as it took to decide the answer was yes. "Go ahead."
Jordan placed his hand on Bang's shoulder.
Inside the Potential Guidance's perception space, everything was different.
Not like Goku's field—the sky full of dormant stars—and not like Vegeta's—the black ocean of accumulated combat. Bang's potential unfolded as two figures standing in darkness, one on either side, both watching Jordan with the patient attention of a man who has long since made peace with the fact that he contains multitudes.
On the left: the young one. Not a memory—a presence. Black hair, eyes that looked at the world from a height most people couldn't reach without effort, the arrogance of someone who had tested himself against everything available and found it insufficient. The aura around him was the color of weather about to happen. This was what the martial arts world had called the Blood Wind—the young Bang who had moved through dojos and tournament brackets and the whole organized landscape of competitive fighting like a storm front, leaving wreckage and reputation behind him.
On the right: the current one. Silver-haired, the aura that moved like water moving around stones—not diminished, just redirected, every sharp edge still present but held inward rather than presented outward. The expression of someone who had found his answer and stopped needing to announce it.
Jordan looked at the young figure for a long moment.
If I bring this back— The thought completed itself with the image of Garou, who was currently standing thirty meters away being developed with some care toward something valuable, meeting an upgraded version of the exact thing that had created his entire relationship with power in the first place. —that boy's timeline shortens considerably.
He turned to the silver-haired figure. For the sake of everyone's continued good health.
The choice made, the technique completed itself in the space of a breath.
In the physical world, less than a second had passed.
Then Bang's aura came alive.
The blue energy of the Flowing Water Rock Smashing Fist—the style's signature color, the visible expression of ki shaped by sixty years of mastery—ignited across his body not in the careful controlled way it usually manifested, but all at once, a sudden total presence, blue flames that caught the morning air and burned in all directions from the source of them. It was not violent. It was not aggressive. It had the quality of something that had been waiting, very patiently, for enough room to actually breathe.
The path outside the dojo became considerably less casual.
Two steps back. Garou had moved two full steps back before he'd consciously decided to, the reflexes that kept him alive overriding everything else, and now he was standing at the edge of the aura's radius staring at his teacher with an expression that had no name because he'd never needed it before.
Impossible. The word arrived and immediately failed to do what he'd asked it to. His aura—that's not the same thing it was ten seconds ago. That is not even close to the same thing it was ten seconds ago. His teeth were slightly apart. What did Jordan do? What is that technique? How does that—
Jordan watched Bang close his eyes and go somewhere interior—the master's expression the expression of someone taking a precise inventory—and let go.
The increase was substantial. More than he'd estimated, actually; Bang's potential in the OPM world's physics had been compressed by the world's rules to a degree Jordan hadn't fully accounted for. What the Potential Guidance had released wasn't a modest multiplier—it was the gap between where Bang actually was and where the ceiling would have let him be.
This world caps everything, Jordan noted. The upper limits here are lower than they should be for someone with his development. Makes the unlocking more dramatic.
And the other thing.
Jordan looked at the faint residue pattern that the technique sometimes left visible—the signature of what it had read. He looked at it twice.
Huh. He stored the observation. Filed it for later.
The aura began to settle. Bang's eyes opened—two focused points of light sweeping the immediate space with the automatic scan of a practitioner integrating new data. He turned.
Jordan was gone.
Bang held still for a moment, the residual energy of the technique still present throughout his body, and then turned his head. "Garou. Where did he go?"
Garou had been staring at the space Jordan had occupied with the expression of a man whose reference framework has recently taken damage. When his teacher's voice arrived, he straightened with practiced composure and said, in a tone that was more or less level, "He said he had something else to do. Disappeared."
Bang was quiet for a moment. He looked toward Z-City—the skyline familiar, the morning ordinary, the whole situation unremarkable to anyone who hadn't been standing here for the last sixty seconds.
Jordan, he thought. What exactly are you?
And then: Whatever you are—thank you.
He breathed out slowly, feeling the new alignment of the energy inside him, and began to walk.
City A. Hero Association Headquarters.
Sitch's office had the quality of a place where a great deal of paper moved through in an orderly fashion, which was the way Sitch preferred things. He did not look up from his current document when the junior staff member entered.
"Leave it on the desk. I'll review it shortly."
The staff member placed a folder and departed. Sitch finished his paragraph, set the document aside, and opened the folder.
One page. A4. The text was brief—a standard recommendation form preamble, the candidate's details in the designated field, and then, occupying most of the lower half, signatures.
He read the first name.
Stopped.
Read the second.
Read the third, fourth, and fifth, each one landing with the incremental weight of something that was building toward a conclusion he was not prepared for.
Super Cop Jordan Evans — he knew that signature. Tornado of Terror — he knew that one intimately. Silver Fang Bang — present. Atomic Samurai Kamikaze — also present. The Strongest Man on Earth King — present.
He read the candidate name at the top.
Saitama.
He searched his database. Found the current assessment roster for Z-City.
Sitch was a man who had worked in the Hero Association for long enough to have developed a professional relationship with the extraordinary. He had processed Tatsumaki's tantrums, Jordan Evans's appearances, King's intimidation field at close range. He had absorbed a great deal without losing his professional composure.
He stood up from his desk anyway. Collected his folder. Walked toward the door with the purposeful stride of someone who has decided that whatever is happening in the Z-City assessment facility right now, he needs to be looking at it.
"Hero Assessment Department." He had his communicator at his ear before he'd reached the hallway. "This is Sitch. Patch me through to the Z-City venue surveillance. All feeds. Now."
The apartment in City A's residential district was the quiet kind of quiet that morning brings to spaces where someone lives alone by preference—unhurried, the air settled, the light coming in at an angle that suggested the day had no urgent claims on the place yet.
Tatsumaki was finishing breakfast.
She was doing it in the way she did most things: efficiently, with full attention to the task and no energy wasted on acknowledging that the task was happening. The food was excellent—it always was, when the source was Genos's kitchen, which meant that the container Jordan had arrived with this morning had been received without comment but finished with what could be interpreted as appreciation by someone paying close attention.
Jordan was on the sofa, going through the recommendation form and confirming the signatures against his mental checklist. Six.
"This scientist you want me to meet." Tatsumaki set down her utensils. "What does he do?"
"Research. The interesting kind. I think you'd find it worthwhile."
"Old people's research is usually not interesting." She floated up from the chair, crossing to the sofa with the unhurried drift of someone who has decided the conversation is worth continuing but is not going to hurry for it. "I'll go see Sitch. There might be missions."
"Fair enough."
She settled beside him on the sofa armrest with the casual familiarity of someone who has stopped treating physical proximity as something that requires a decision. Her hair was still slightly damp—she'd showered an hour ago, and the seaweed curls had their post-wash texture, looser than usual, the ends not yet fully shaped.
She looked at his hair.
"Your hair." She reached out and prodded it once, experimentally. Jordan's ki had given it the property of returning to its natural position regardless of external intervention—the strand she pushed sideways drifted back on its own in approximately two seconds. She pushed it again. Watched it return. "How does it do that?"
"New superpower," Jordan said, without looking up from the form.
"That's not how superpowers work."
"Mine do."
She considered this with the expression she wore when she was deciding whether a conversation was worth pursuing or whether she was going to declare herself correct and move on. The strand of hair drifted back again. She watched it.
Jordan set the form down. He turned his hands over once—the familiar preparation—and let his ki settle into the warm quality that worked for this particular application. When he placed both hands on top of her head, she went still in the way she always did: not resistant, just processing the contact, the body's response preceding the mind's response by half a second.
The warmth moved through the damp hair systematically, the ki doing the work that would otherwise take a towel and a mirror and fifteen minutes of effort. She'd accepted this arrangement some time ago—not loudly, not with any acknowledgment that could be quoted back to her, but accepted it.
"By the way," Jordan said, in the tone he used for things he'd been thinking about separately. "I tested something this morning on Bang. An improvement technique—the one I've been developing. It worked."
"What does it do?"
"Releases potential that the body has stored but isn't using. Makes the ceiling higher." He continued the motion—slow, thorough, the way he'd learned she preferred it to fast and perfunctory. "I thought you might want to try it."