Atomic Samurai had placed the aura before Jordan finished crossing the carriage.
He stood, which put him face to face with Jordan at approximately equal height, and his expression had the quality of something he'd decided in advance rather than reacting to: genuine, unguarded, the look of a man setting aside a posture he usually wore.
"Super Cop." A short nod. "It's been a while."
His disciples had already rearranged themselves—Iaian and Bushidrill shifting to adjacent seats, Okamaitachi tucking away her sandwich with diplomatic timing—leaving the facing seats open.
Jordan sat down and gave Atomic Samurai the honest version of the situation.
The program was a pilot cohort. Ten participants. The intention was to give working professional heroes with genuine potential a structured environment to develop—people who could do more with the right support. The reason Atomic Samurai joining as a student was a problem wasn't a judgment about him; it was about the other nine people in the room. Put an S-class swordsman in the cohort and the dynamic changed entirely.
"You'd be the benchmark everyone else was measuring against," Jordan said. "That's not useful for them, and it's not useful for you."
Atomic Samurai absorbed this.
Then, with the expression of a man who had been working through something privately and decided to say it: "I do have shortcomings."
Jordan looked at him.
"Many." Atomic Samurai was not being self-deprecating—his tone was the same straightforward register he brought to everything. "Things I had not considered before."
The arrogance that had defined the man's first impression—the confident certainty that his level was simply higher than anything he needed to worry about—had been sanded down somewhere along the way. Jordan had a fairly clear picture of where. Two confrontations with the specific quality of Saitama's and Bang's respective outputs had a clarifying effect on most people.
That's mine too, Jordan thought, with something that wasn't quite guilt and wasn't quite pride.
"If that's the case," he said, "then here's a compromise. You and your disciples don't take student spots. You're an additional enrollment—outside the original ten."
"That's allowed?"
"I started the program. If I say it's allowed, it is."
Atomic Samurai's expression, for a brief moment, suggested he found this answer both logically sound and somewhat startling.
"In exchange," Jordan continued, "you'll be listed as a visiting instructor for the swordsmanship track. Formally. It gives you a reason to be there that doesn't undercut the other students' experience." He tilted his head. "And if you want to spar and improve, the instructor roster has several S-class heroes. Find them privately."
Atomic Samurai sat with this for the remainder of the carriage crossing.
"Agreed."
The arrangement finalized itself during the last thirty minutes of the train ride.
Atomic Samurai would take a visiting professor designation. His three disciples—Iaian, Okamaitachi, and Bushidrill—would each take class officer positions alongside Genos. Iaian's precise documentation habits made him a natural study committee lead. Okamaitachi, whose manner had an ease that made people comfortable, would handle the arts committee. Bushidrill had the face and the bearing of someone who enforced things without needing to explain himself, which was essentially the entire job description of disciplinary committee.
Genos would transition to joint oversight with Iaian.
It worked.
Back at the training site, the morning was proceeding.
The shadow clone running the intake desk had, Genos had privately concluded, an unusually expressive personality today. Small things. A verbal tic that appeared in a greeting and hadn't been there before. A slightly less measured quality to the reactions.
His sensor reading: beyond the upper limit of measurable range. Definitely Jordan.
He filed the discrepancy and moved on.
The trainees were arriving.
"Super Cop! In person, finally!"
The shadow clone looked up from the intake desk.
The woman striding toward him was tall—nearly as tall as the clone itself—wearing a track-style vest and athletic shorts that showed off the particular kind of physique that comes from professional-level training rather than recreational fitness. Tanned. Ponytail. A cardigan thrown over the top as a concession to the morning air, which she appeared to consider optional. She had a large sports bag over one shoulder and the forward momentum of someone who had been looking forward to this for several days.
She reached the desk, set the bag down, and bowed with a depth that communicated genuine respect rather than formality.
"I'm Captain Mizuki, B-rank number seventy-eight. Former professional athlete." She looked up, eyes bright. "You and Super Alloy Darkshine are both my idols. If you have even a moment—could I get an autograph? Please?"
The shadow clone processed this for a brief moment.
Then scratched the back of his head, a gesture that was slightly less polished than Jordan's usual composure, and smiled. "Sure—no problem! Sign in first, though!"
—Oh. Mizuki filed away a small observation. He has a cute way of talking.
Behind her, Genos stopped mid-document.
It is confirmed, he thought, with the quiet certainty of a high-performance sensor that has just registered an anomaly it cannot explain away. Jordan is definitely not operating normally today.
He filed this also.
The rest of the morning brought the remaining trainees in.
A young man in standard sportswear jogged up directly after Mizuki: "Super Cop! Glasses, B-rank ninety-one. Reporting in." Efficient. Straightforward.
"Over there to sign," the clone said, gesturing. "Nice work getting here early."
The C-rank contingent arrived in clusters over the following hour. Mecha-Esper, Student, and Red Scarf Fighter had each crossed paths with Jordan at some point during monster incidents—their experience of him was indirect, limited to the aftermath of situations that had resolved faster than expected.
The last C-rank to arrive was Battery Man.
He'd made the cohort on merit. His combat record was solid, his dedication genuine. The reason Jordan knew his name at all was from a year ago: a card pull session during which a monster Battery Man had been engaged with had been resolved by a bolt of electromagnetic force from Jordan's direction before Battery Man could finish it. From Battery Man's perspective, he'd been saved by lightning from a clear sky.
He arrived, bowed, and said: "Battery Man, C-rank forty-seven. I'm grateful to be selected."
"You earned the spot," the clone said, and meant it.
When the full cohort had assembled, they looked at their instructor roster.
Silver Fang. Atomic Samurai. King. Caped Baldy. Demon Cyborg as class monitor.
The combined power level in this facility was not something any of them had ever been in proximity to simultaneously. The realization moved through the group in stages—recognition, recalculation, an upward revision of what the next few weeks might involve.
I thought I'd get guidance from one S-class, was the general internal register. There are four of them. And the class monitor is also S-class.
Mizuki covered her mouth with both hands, which was a very restrained reaction.
The opening ceremony proceeded normally until its final minute.
In City A, approximately two hours earlier:
"No." Tatsumaki said it immediately. Her longer emerald hair was pulled back in a tight high arrangement that made her look, if possible, more imperious than usual. "I'm not teaching weaklings who can barely protect themselves."
She was also in the right, which was a thing Jordan had learned to acknowledge. She had her principles and they were consistent.
"You wouldn't be teaching," he said. He reached over and ran his fingers gently through the section of her hair that had escaped the arrangement, which was either a calming gesture or a distraction tactic or both. "Dean of Students. Nominally. Mostly I just need a presence that makes people take the program seriously."
"Dean of Students." She turned the words over. Something in her expression shifted—the specific look of someone who has just located a feature they hadn't expected to find interesting. "And if someone isn't taking it seriously?"
Jordan thought about it. "You can do what you do best"
"Then I'm in."
When Tatsumaki appeared at the back of the room at the end of the opening ceremony, the recognition went through the gathered trainees and instructors in a visible wave.
Captain Mizuki, who had composed herself entirely by this point, un-composed herself.
Tatsumaki walked to the front with the unhurried authority of someone who does not adjust their pace for rooms. She looked at the assembled cohort for a moment—small, impeccably composed, radiating the specific energy that had earned the word terror in her hero designation.
"Listen carefully," she said. Her voice was not particularly loud. It didn't need to be. "Anyone who fails the graduation exam might not survive the experience."
The room was very quiet.
They didn't mention anything about mortality rates in the registration materials, was the unanimous private thought, expressed with slight variation across ten individuals.
Mizuki, fan credentials temporarily suspended, went slightly pale.
Jordan, standing to the side, made a note to clarify the curriculum details before the first class.