Tatsumaki looked at the world she'd been fighting inside for the past hour.
The imaginary city stretched in every direction under the pale green sky—the streets, the buildings, the empty shops and parks, all of it in the one-to-one City A replica that Jordan had constructed from Herrscher spatial authority. The color of it was the specific green that her own powers made the air when she wasn't exerting herself: restful, ambient, hers in a way she hadn't asked for but didn't mind.
The Honkai Beasts had settled back into their positions. Hill-class in the plaza. Mid-range in the streets. The smaller ones wherever they'd found comfortable surfaces, which turned out to be varied and specific—certain ones had apparently decided that rooftops were correct, others had chosen to arrange themselves along canal edges, a few had settled into what had previously been a park and were doing something that resembled resting.
"Well?" Jordan said. "Your call."
She'd been about to answer destroy it because destroying things was clean and efficient and she didn't have the habit of keeping collections.
She looked at the green sky again.
"I'm keeping it," she said.
Jordan sensed the shift in her when she said it—something that wasn't quite emotional in any large way, just the specific quality of a person recognizing something as theirs without having expected to. He reached over and pulled her toward him.
She allowed this for exactly as long as she decided to allow it, which was a reasonable amount of time, and then pushed away with the dignity of someone who had made an executive decision about tender moments and their appropriate duration.
"We should go back."
She rose from the throne and dismissed it—the Honkai energy dispersing without fanfare—and extended her spatial authority outward, locating the coordinates of the OPM world with the ease of someone who had just discovered a new language and found it used the same alphabet as their first.
Jordan leaned over.
Whispered something.
The green of the imaginary sky briefly became considerably brighter, and a highly motivated series of Void Spears materialized with the precision of someone who has identified an exact target and is prepared to act on that identification.
Jordan was already moving.
The Honkai Beasts, scattered across the city below, looked up at the distant horizon where two figures were conducting what appeared to be an enthusiastic disagreement that involved significant aerial coverage. Certain sounds carried across the distance. "You absolute—" and "—just a compliment—" and, at higher register, sounds that suggested the disagreement was going extremely.
The beasts watched.
Then they lowered their heads and resumed whatever they'd been doing, the red light in their eyes settling back to standby levels.
They were guardians of an empty city with a green sky.
They had time.
One month passed.
The news cycle, which had been navigating the intersection of superhero activity and entertainment media for long enough to develop its own genre conventions, offered a representative cross-section of what the world looked like when Jordan wasn't specifically paying attention to it:
Amai Mask's third film, Perfect Idol, had cleared twenty billion in its first week—a number the entertainment press had described as unprecedented with the specific breathlessness they reserved for unprecedented things before they became the new precedent.
City A: A-Class hero Godly Adam, responding to a Demon-level emergence before S-Class assets arrived, held position long enough for Tanktop Master to reinforce. The Giant Rock Clan was collectively dismantled. The footage was good. People watched it.
Drive Knight had joined the S-Class roster at rank 18, appearing in the association records with the quiet abruptness of a hero who had apparently been doing things for a while before anyone started writing it down. The tactical transformation system—Black Weapon designation, multiple combat configurations—had a visual quality that the Hero Association's media team described as striking. Puri-Puri Prisoner, whose ranking had been absorbing the new registrations, dropped to 19. His fanbase, which had opinions about this, expressed them with the intensity that distinguished genuine enthusiasts from casual observers.
Saitama had climbed to S-Class rank 17, pushed upward by an attendance record and monster-elimination count that the ranking algorithm processed with the same democratic indifference it applied to everything else. The name Caped Baldy continued to appear in headlines. The commentary attached to those appearances had shifted in tone over the month, the fanbase that had been assembled—through various processes Jordan would not confirm official awareness of—having done their work with the thoroughness that converted keyboard warriors tended to apply to positive projects.
Genos held at rank 15, Demon Cyborg, ahead of his teacher. The Hero Association's data confirmed this. Genos had noted it once in a tone that communicated careful neutrality on the subject, and then continued cooking.
Garou, hero registration under the name Water Wolf Warrior, had jumped from C-Class rank 324 to rank 5 in a single month's activity. The Most Improved Award arrived from the association with the formal dignity of institutional recognition. Garou's reaction to receiving an award for effort was consistent with everything else about him.
In the public commentary, certain observant fans had begun compiling data on the new superpowered heroes appearing in recent assessment cycles. The thread was careful, referenced multiple public record sources, identified several individuals as having S-Class potential, and noted with particular attention a strength-type A-Class hero recently registered under the name Adam who had received direct acknowledgment from Tanktop Master in a post-incident interview.
The thread accumulated thoughtful replies from a small dedicated readership and was quietly pushed off the trending sidebar by seventeen other simultaneous events.
Jordan read it, noted the accuracy of the analysis, and filed it under controlled.
The A-Class hero Adam was, of course, Number 1 of the House of Evolution's first batch—the two-meter-plus strength specialist who had spent the month establishing himself as someone buildings could be replaced with rather than collapsed by, while keeping his output below the threshold that would trigger the kind of institutional attention Jordan was not yet ready to invite. The second batch of experimental subjects had completed cultivation and joined the deployment plan, distributed across various city jurisdictions in lower ranks, building track records with the patience of people who had been given a timeline and were following it.
Number 6 was operating under the alias Plant, currently registered B-Class—Thornman in the public record—and had submitted a performance report that concluded, in its final line, with the specific energy of someone who had given everything available and wanted that understood. Jordan had noted it. Dr. Genus had noted it. Everyone involved understood that plant manipulation had a glass ceiling. The relevant question was what happened to that ceiling after it was addressed.
Pending. Filed.
Jordan's own month had the quality of a well-managed calendar: hero activities in the mornings, the kind of pattern that maintained rank and public record without requiring the kind of output that made people ask uncomfortable questions. The occasional afternoon with the right person in a restaurant that had good curtains. The imaginary space visited periodically—the Honkai Beasts present and patiently waiting, the city quiet and green and exactly as it had been left.
He checked the Dimensional Walk counter.
Thirty days.
The cooldown had expired.
Jordan sat on the edge of the balcony in the pre-dawn quiet and considered the available options. New worlds offered new resources, new cards, new angles on problems that the OPM world couldn't address directly. The logical next step was exploration.
He'd already decided.
The Dragon Ball world had unfinished business. Vegeta's training. The Frieza arc's eventual approach. The android hibernation project at Capsule Corp. The Senzu Bean cultivation on Namek. A dozen small things that had been running on their own timeline and that would benefit from a check-in.
Besides, he thought, I know the people there.
He materialized the Dimensional Walk card in F-boy's hand.
"Same coordinates," he said.
F-boy, who had been doing the math on this for approximately thirty days, nodded once. The CEO suit was impeccable. The expression communicated that preparations had already been made.
Jordan stepped off the balcony into the early morning air.
And then stepped somewhere else entirely.
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