Jordan made the brief trip back to Z-City's Special Affairs section, clocked in, assigned everything that mattered to the people most likely to handle it competently, and clocked out.
Department head hours. Genuinely one of the perks.
The next day proceeded as follows.
He slept in. The bedroom in City A was large and quiet and had a mattress that someone had spent real money on, and Jordan honored this investment by remaining horizontal until mid-morning. Then he teleported to four different cities and conducted a thorough evaluation of their street food scenes—several dozen cups of milk tea across multiple vendors, three separate rounds of egg waffles from stalls he'd been meaning to revisit, an unreasonable quantity of mixed snack platters, and one bowl of something that was presented as a simple noodle dish but turned out to be a meaningful culinary experience.
Throughout this, his shadow clones were working.
He encountered several of them—different cities, different errands, each one processing card-related tasks through the Mind Network while conducting themselves with the professional composure appropriate to extensions of Jordan Evans. They looked like him. They moved like him. Several of them were clearly not pleased about the current division of labor.
He waved cheerfully at the third one he passed.
The Mind Network delivered the response at roughly the speed of thought.
Are you actually eating milk tea right now?
"Fourth cup," Jordan confirmed.
A pause. Then, from multiple directions at once, a sentiment that could be summarized as we hope you choke on it, affectionately.
F-boy's contribution arrived distinctly: the mental equivalent of a middle finger, executed with great dignity.
Jordan patted his stomach. Completely flat. No evidence of the afternoon's campaign whatsoever—the physical consequences of eating that much had encountered his current constitution and decided to become someone else's problem.
"I could not have done any of this without your hard work," he said sincerely, to all of them at once. "Your contributions are deeply appreciated."
The silence that followed had texture.
He wrapped up a small cluster of clueless Wolf-levels that wandered across the afternoon, handed the cleanup to F-boy via Mind Network relay, and teleported back to Z-City as the sun started angling toward evening.
Genos arrived home to find fresh groceries already in the refrigerator. He scanned the contents with the systematic attention of someone who takes cooking seriously, and his internal inventory reached the Sichuan spicy hot pot base that Jordan had apparently picked up on the way back—premium grade, well-packaged, the kind that required a full complement of ingredients to do justice to.
He turned.
"Saitama-sensei. Jordan." He held up the package. "Sichuan-style beef hot pot for dinner?"
Saitama's head came up from the couch cushions with genuine enthusiasm. "Absolutely."
On the other couch, Jordan had acquired a husky-themed cushion at some point in the past month—large, fluffy, printed with the expression of a dog that has accepted everything—and was currently occupying approximately twice its intended surface area.
He raised one hand. "Seconded."
"Then I'll begin preparations." Genos turned back to the refrigerator and began producing ingredients in quantities that bore some relationship to the number of people eating and rather more to the standard he applied to everything. The stack he extracted reached roughly chest height.
Two people on two couches observed this process.
"Thanks," they said, in unison.
Dinner was in progress on the stove. Jordan and Saitama had relocated to the appropriate lounging positions—sunflower seeds, television, the loose companionship of two people who had gotten used to the specific texture of each other's company.
The free disaster broadcast was running the day's incident reel. The Black Forest Mousse Cake Monster appeared on screen—aerial footage, the ruined dessert shop, the usual Hero Association lower-third identifying the threat level and resolution status.
Saitama watched the playback of the monster's capture with the focused attention of someone evaluating something specific. His jaw moved slightly.
"That's a very large mousse cake," he said.
Jordan glanced over.
"High-end, too, by the look of it." Saitama's voice carried the weight of a man sitting with a missed opportunity. "Pig God has excellent taste."
"You can tell him that yourself," Jordan said. "Next S-class gathering."
Saitama turned. "S-class heroes have regular gatherings?"
"Irregular ones. Coordinating that many schedules is genuinely difficult, and even when the Association organizes something, attendance isn't guaranteed." Jordan cracked another seed. "Mostly we're only all summoned together for actual emergencies—large-scale disasters where the situation warrants it."
"Oh." Saitama processed this. "Then it might be a while."
"Probably."
The coverage shifted. A brief segment—a few seconds, the kind of thing that made it into the reel as a human interest note rather than the main story—showed Mumen Rider being assisted by a roadside medic after the incident. The hero looked disheveled, thoroughly bandaged, and was apparently declining the ambulance with the polite firmness of someone who had done this many times.
The segment lasted eight seconds, credited him as C-Class Rank 1, and moved on.
Jordan ate a sunflower seed.
He looked at Saitama, who was watching the television with the unfocused expression of someone whose attention had partially returned to the mousse cake, and then looked at the ceiling for a moment.
An ordinary person who stood between a Tiger-level monster and civilians with three broken ribs and absolutely no illusions about the outcome.
A hero who bought time, because someone needed to.
And if there were more of them—
He sat up.
"Hey, Saitama."
Saitama turned his head. "What?"
Jordan said it in the same casual tone he'd use to suggest going out for ramen. "Let's start a hero training program."
Silence.
"Professional heroes are still too underpowered across the board," Jordan continued, with the energy of someone who has had an idea and is now discovering what he thinks by explaining it aloud. "We start a training class—open to any professional hero who feels they're not strong enough and wants to improve. Free of charge, no strings."
Saitama stared at him.
Then, very slowly, his gaze drifted to the kitchen, where Genos was focused on the cutting board with the full-body commitment he brought to all tasks involving knives.
One Genos. Something moved across Saitama's face—not quite trauma, but the specific expression of a man doing rapid exponential math. Just the one. That's exactly the right number. Exactly.
He shook his head. The motion had the commitment of a man preventing a disaster.
"Daily training plus hero work is already a full schedule," he said. "Adding students on top of that—even thinking about it is exhausting. No."
Jordan had already moved—some agility surviving even the lounging position—to sit beside him. "Hear me out. It's still just a concept at this point. Small class, tight numbers."
Saitama looked at him sideways.
"You're already training every day," Jordan said. "Same routine. You take the students through the basics—same thing you do anyway—and you're done. Everything after that is someone else's problem."
"What someone else?"
"That's the part that actually works." Jordan counted on his fingers. "Genos is class monitor and training assessor. He tracks everyone's progress, runs evaluations, handles the administrative side. You know he'll build a complete methodology by the second week."
In the kitchen, the pace of chopping had slowed by approximately twenty percent. The knife was still moving. The ears were not.
"You're the physical education lead," Jordan continued. "Basic training, run them through it, sign off. Done. Master Bang comes in as a visiting instructor—combat sports, technique, whatever he wants to cover. Once a week, maybe less. He's been running his own intake for years; this is just a different venue."
Saitama's objections were reorganizing themselves into something less immediate.
"And King—" Jordan's expression carried a specific satisfaction— "visiting professor. Electromagnetic applications, power theory, anything that falls into his wheelhouse. He can field most of the questions the students are going to have, and frankly he'll enjoy it."
Saitama blinked. He looked at the ceiling. He appeared to be doing arithmetic of a different kind—not the exponential panic of a moment ago but something more interested.
"We actually have a lot of teachers," he said, mildly.
Jordan reached for his tea.
"That's what I said."