The profession of hero was, on balance, full of people who meant it.
Jordan had met enough of them to know the baseline—the ones who showed up to Tiger-levels alone and at night, the ones who patrolled areas nobody else wanted, the ones who'd been doing this for years with no particular recognition. The majority were carrying genuine conviction and working with what they had.
But the majority wasn't everyone.
He drew a line through two names on the roster with a single stroke.
Tank Top Tiger. Tank Top Black Hole.
He'd seen the future of the Tank Top Army's operational history to have a clear read on the two of them. Using Saitama's meteorite resolution as a reputational stepping stone—trying to redirect credit for an outcome they'd contributed nothing to toward their own public profiles—was a specific kind of calculation, and the kind of people who made it didn't belong in a program designed to make heroes better at protecting people. They'd signed up for the exposure.
He set the pen down.
Tank Top Master's recruitment standards need a conversation. The man himself was genuine—Jordan had no doubt about that. But "willing to wear a tank top" was an insufficient filter, and the results were showing up in the applications.
Not today's problem. Today's problem was the list.
He finished the review and handed the compiled folder to Lanny's assistant, who would deliver admission notices through the Association's internal channels. The roster he'd landed on:
Five C-rank heroes. Four B-rank. One A-rank.
The A-rank was a case he'd added specifically.
"Green" was currently sitting at the very bottom of A-rank, and had been there for some time. His superpower involved growing and controlling plant matter through his own body, which was a genuinely interesting ability with a significant practical problem: the plants metabolized his personal energy as fast as they grew. The result was a hero who consistently looked like he'd missed several meals in a row and fought with the haggard focus of someone operating on reserves.
This reminding him of a B-rank hero with plant-type abilities had recently emerged—and that this hero's power didn't drain him the way Green's drained did. The career threat had motivated the application.
Thornman, Jordan thought, with an internal acknowledgment in the direction of the House of Evolution's Number 6. You're making waves.
The plant-type affinity was directly relevant to one of Jordan's existing development tracks—his own Plant Manipulation card was R-rank with a ceiling he'd been eyeing since acquisition, and the Wood Release pathway required exactly this kind of foundational understanding to develop. Green joining the cohort was useful on multiple levels.
He added the name.
The roster had texture beyond its power distribution. The B-rank heroes included Strong Voice—ranked eleventh, with a style that had picked up considerable following among younger fans—and Lightning Max, currently fifth in B-rank, a martial artist who'd built his fighting technique around the discharge chemistry of his modified footwear. Both were ascending careers that had genuine capability behind the aesthetics.
The rest varied in power level but not in what mattered. Every application Jordan had moved to the approved pile shared the same quality: a sense of responsibility that showed up consistently in the incident reports, a willingness to take assignments nobody else wanted, a track record of showing up.
The cohort was ten people who would do something with the opportunity.
That was enough.
The first to arrive was Mumen Rider.
He had, Jordan later learned, made it to Z-City the previous day and spent the intervening hours completing hero assignments in the area while waiting for the program's opening—treating the time as useful rather than wasted, carrying out his standard patrol activities as though the registration site were simply the next stop on a regular route.
He showed up at the intake desk with the same unhurried directness he brought to everything, signed the registration form in clean handwriting, and turned to find the person standing nearest to him.
His hand came out.
"Super Cop. I'm here." There was warmth in it, and certainty—the expression of someone who has been looking forward to something and has arrived. "Thank you for this chance. I'll work hard."
The tall blond figure whose hand he was shaking seemed briefly surprised, then recovered into a wide, genuine smile.
"I know you will." A thumbs up. "Good luck."
Mumen Rider straightened slightly, the way people do when something they've been carrying gets lighter.
"Yes!"
Genos, working behind the intake desk with the quiet efficiency of someone who had appointed himself organizational backbone of the entire program, noticed something as he filed Mumen Rider's form. He ran a brief passive scan.
Jordan's energy signature.
The reading came back immediately: exceeds sensor ceiling. Continental-scale destructive potential.
Genos filed the form.
It is Jordan, he confirmed. There can be no doubt.
He did note, with a small fraction of his processing capacity, that something was slightly different about Jordan's behavior this morning. An indefinable quality. He could not pinpoint it.
He moved on to the next form.
What Genos's sensors did not flag was the fact that the Jordan running intake this morning was a shadow clone.
The original had left before dawn.
He had a train to intercept.
The high-speed rail line between F-City and Z-City ran through a long stretch of open terrain before hitting the urban gradient. In seat four of car seven, Atomic Samurai was doing something that his three disciples had not, in years of training under him, seen him do at a station or a terminal: he was sitting in an economy class seat, dealing with the minor indignity of not having managed to secure tickets before the first-class section sold out.
"Iaian." He spoke without looking up from the window. "What time does this arrive?"
Iaian—the eldest, seated to his right—had checked approximately four minutes ago. "Around eleven, Master. Z-City station."
"Then we'll need ground transport from the station." Atomic Samurai's jaw worked slightly. "The program site is in the uninhabited zone. Apparently not accessible by conventional taxi."
Across the seats, Okamaitachi was working through a sandwich with the focused appreciation of someone who takes breakfast seriously. Bushidrill had positioned himself facing backward, the better to monitor the car's rear section—a habit born from somewhere and maintained by practice.
Iaian waited for the appropriate conversational gap to arrive, then said, quietly: "Master... is it possible we didn't receive an admission notice?"
Atomic Samurai looked at his eldest disciple with the expression of a man processing a question that had not previously occurred to him. "With my standing," he said, after a moment, "is a formal notice required?"
Iaian said nothing.
The silence communicated several things.
It's possible, Okamaitachi thought, from behind her sandwich, that you were invited as an instructor and submitted a student application.
She didn't say this.
The carriage shifted—the subtle pressure differential of someone using spatial displacement to board rather than a door. It was the kind of thing that swordsmen noticed.
Atomic Samurai's head came up fractionally.
That aura.
Not alarming—nothing dangerous in it. But familiar in a way that took him a moment to place. He'd encountered this presence before, at a distance, in a context that involved a Z-City event and a feeling that the situation was entirely out of his control despite nothing obviously threatening happening.
Before he could complete the identification, something in his peripheral vision caught his attention.
He turned.
Okamaitachi was sitting across from him, sandwich in hand, not eating.
Her eyes had become hearts.
Atomic Samurai looked at her.
He looked at the direction she was looking.
He looked back at her.
"..."
Jordan, standing in the aisle three rows back and running a broad-area Sharingan genjutsu that had persuaded every other passenger in the car that they had watched him board through the front door in the normal way, noticed the swordsman's head turn in his direction with the alert precision of someone who had just solved a problem.
He raised a hand.
"Long trip," Jordan said pleasantly. "I heard Z-City was your destination."