Tatsumaki had settled onto Jordan's shoulder at some point, just drifted there, the way things find their level. She was small enough that it barely registered as weight.
She waved at F-boy across the small distance between them.
F-boy regarded her with the composed dignity of someone maintaining professional standards under unusual circumstances. He extended his hand.
Tatsumaki reached out and shook it.
Cold. Dense. The texture of something solid that hadn't originated in biology—nothing like the ambient warmth of Jordan's hands, which she had apparently developed a reference point for without consciously filing it anywhere. The contrast was immediate and specific.
She pulled her hand back and turned it over briefly, thinking.
"We've encountered each other before, haven't we," she said. Not quite a question. "Even if I didn't know what I was looking at."
F-boy gave a minimal nod.
"Every time I meet you," Tatsumaki murmured, mostly to herself, the words arriving with the quality of something being worked out in real time, "there's something new. Some ability that wasn't there before. If he can collect elements from the outside world and make them his own—"
"What are you muttering about?"
The hand came down on her head. Tatsumaki's shoulders came up reflexively—the automatic response of someone who has been approached from above—and then she caught herself, shook the hand off, and floated clear of Jordan's shoulder to face him properly.
Her expression had shifted into something more deliberate.
"You said if your Stand is injured, you take the same injury."
Jordan's manner changed. Not dramatically—just became more direct, the slight ease of the last hour settling into something more attentive. He glanced at F-boy, then back at her.
"Yes. The user and the Stand are always equal in that sense." He said it plainly, the way you state facts that matter. "If the Stand is destroyed, the user dies. If the user dies, the Stand ceases to exist."
Tatsumaki was quiet for a moment.
"That's significant tactical information," she said finally. Her tone had an odd quality to it—careful, almost hesitant, which was not a register she used often.
A beat.
"Is it alright to tell me?"
Jordan looked at her. The question was genuine—she was actually asking whether he'd miscalculated, whether the disclosure had been an accident he might want to walk back. She was giving him the opportunity.
He reached out and ruffled her hair.
Tatsumaki's eyes closed briefly. The reflex was involuntary and she didn't appear to notice it.
"I already told you," he said. "So I'll have to ask you to keep it."
She opened her eyes. Something in her face settled—not the closed-off professional composure she deployed by default, but something that was choosing to be still because it wanted to be. She nodded once.
"I will."
They drifted through the deep blue quiet.
F-boy followed at a respectful distance, carrying the shochu bottle with the unhurried competence of someone whose job description has always included things that don't require explanation.
Neither Jordan nor Tatsumaki spoke. The imaginary space held its particular hush—no wind, no ambient noise, the residue of her earlier storm already absorbed into the world's architecture. The blue had deepened slightly since then, or seemed to have.
Jordan became aware, gradually, that a small hand had arrived in his palm. He wasn't certain when it had gotten there. He wrapped his fingers around it gently.
It felt nice. He didn't remark on this.
Tatsumaki was looking at the blue distance. A faint color had arrived in her face that wasn't there before.
"Didn't we say we were going to drink?" She kept her eyes forward. Her voice was quieter than usual. "Do we have cups?"
Jordan reached into the spatial permission around them—the Herrscher core responding to the intent—and the air beneath their feet shifted, invisible forces locking the space into something stable and flat. Solid as ground.
F-boy stepped forward without being asked. Three white cards left his hand in sequence, each one releasing into something specific as it landed—a low table, two chairs, a celadon wine set, all settling onto the solidified air with the naturalness of things that have always been there.
Jordan poured. A small measure in Tatsumaki's cup. A full measure in his own.
"If you don't like it, stop," he said. "It's strong."
Tatsumaki picked up the cup. She'd watched Saitama and Bang with this—the clink, the immediate tilt, the eyes closing on the way down. She had the methodology recorded.
She clinked her cup against his and drank the whole thing in one motion.
The pause that followed lasted approximately two seconds.
Then: "—Spicy—"
The cup left her hand. Tatsumaki left the chair. The deep blue space acquired a fast-moving green streak as the shochu acquainted itself with her entire respiratory system simultaneously.
Jordan watched her for a moment.
The entire cup. First drink. She watched two grown men do this and decided it was the correct methodology.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose, stood up, and teleported.
She ran into him on the way down from her second loop—not a collision, more of a landing, the momentum carrying her directly into his arms at the exact altitude where he'd placed himself to catch her. He steadied her with a hand at her waist.
Tatsumaki, with tears at the corners of her eyes from the burn, looked up at him with the expression of someone who has made a tactical error and is seeking immediate assistance. She pointed at her mouth.
Help. Water. Something. Anything.
Jordan had already produced a glass of something cold—the spatial permission making this easy, the imaginary space being cooperative about such things.
He sat back down, settled her into a better position against his chest, and held the glass where she could reach it. She drank with the focused relief of someone whose priorities have been reorganized by circumstance.
The cold cut through the burn. The burn faded to warmth. The warmth spread in the particular way that good alcohol does when it stops being an emergency and becomes an experience.
Tatsumaki exhaled slowly. The sound she made was not quite a word.
"...I'd like another one," she said eventually, in a very small voice.
Jordan looked down at the top of her head—the green, slightly chaotic after the aerobatics—and kept his expression composed.
"No problem," he said.
The two-hour limit arrived quietly
Jordan returned from the imaginary space with Tatsumaki—who had discovered, over the course of the second cup and a long conversation, that alcohol operated differently when you weren't also managing a psychic storm—and settled her in the room that had been arranged for guests.
Fubuki was already there. She'd changed into her pajamas at some point during the evening and achieved the specific depth of sleep that follows a large meal and genuine emotional release. She'd wrapped herself around a blanket with the committed grip of someone who had found something good and wasn't letting go.
Jordan gently extracted the blanket and replaced it.
Tatsumaki made a small sound, already halfway under. Her hand found something soft. She pulled it closer and was asleep before she'd finished the motion.
Fubuki, without waking, redistributed herself—one arm going over her sister, one leg pinning her in place, face pressing into something that apparently smelled correct. The sisters settled into each other with the ease of people who have been doing this their whole lives and can still find the arrangement even unconscious.
Jordan stood in the doorway for a moment.
Then he pulled the door closed and went to find the hallway.
The dojo's older generation had been managed by Genos with characteristic efficiency—each of the evening's casualties located, transported, and installed in appropriate sleeping arrangements with the methodical thoroughness of someone who had anticipated this outcome and prepared for it. The hallway floors were already clean. The kitchen was already dark.
Light was coming from the restaurant entrance.
Genos stood in the doorway with both forearms raised, several nozzle modules extended from each, directing a sustained low-pressure blast of air through the room. The residual smell of hot pot—rich, red, complex, and now rather more present than anyone needed it to be at this hour—was moving out through the far windows in organized waves.
He turned at Jordan's footstep without lowering his arms. "Jordan. Welcome back."
Jordan watched him for a moment. The nozzles. The systematic approach. The fact that this was clearly a considered solution to a specific problem.
"When did you add that?"
"I discussed it with the professor during my last equipment upgrade." Genos maintained the air-pressure operation without interruption, his voice carrying its usual precise earnestness. "Considering Sensei's enthusiasm for hot pot, I thought a low-intensity pressurized air function would be useful for clearing the space afterward. It's an adaptation of the Incineration Cannon's output mechanism—an air pressurization module. I've been calling it the Dispersal Cannon."
Jordan stared at him.
He added a ventilation setting to his combat weapons because his teacher likes hot pot and hot pot smells linger.
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